A Lesson From Zimbawe

Alright, I confess. Santa brought me an iPad 2. I’m guilty of high-techery and my punishment is that I have become the reincarnation of Sisyphus. The more this gadget opens me up to the newspapers of the world, the more I go up the hill of learning, only to find that the crushing boulder of so much global information pushes me back down to re-open that iTunes app called Newseum the next day to selectively scan the front pages of 800 newspapers from almost 80 countries.

Google News is another resource that one can get lost in. I happened across an article from Zimbawe, in lower Africa.  That’s right…Zimbawe…whose president is the infamous Robert Mugabe who has held power since the country’s independence from the British crown colony, the former Southern Rhodesia, in 1980.

The country is predominately Christian, belonging to Anglican, Methodist, and Catholic Churches.

The newspaper is The Standard, the country’s leading Sunday paper. The article which got my attention was “Time for a ’Christian Spring’ to revamp religion”. Author: “Rational Believer.” http://www.thestandard.co.zw/opinion/33307-sunday-view-time-for-a-christian-spring-to-revamp-religion.html.

The lead paragraphs say it so well.

As a Christian, it hurts me to see how ignorant and gullible many fellow-Christians can be. Many Christians believe virtually anything that merely sounds spiritual. In the process: They throw away the credibility of Christianity.

They give many non-Christians, some of whom DO think rationally about things, all the necessary ammunition to blast holes in Christianity.More specifically, ignorant and gullible fellow-Christians are the ones who contribute to Christianity as a religion having a bad name among Atheists and Agnostics.

I continuously search for the harmony between the Bible and science. I cannot understand how any person is able to live a dualistic life where he or she believes one thing in the tried-and-proven world of science and maths, but has to switch off part of his/her mind in order to believe in the Bible and God, and vice versa.

God is not the proper object of contemporary empirical science, i.e. God cannot be perceived with instrumentation. Nonetheless, that does not mean that empirical scientists should deny realities which are not directly perceivable. There is nothing intrinsic to contemporary empirical science which closes it off from another science which is beyond physics, i.e. metaphysics.

I might interject here what I remember about Rhodesia…the country practiced apartheid…separation of the races, with overt implications of racial inequality. This observation segues into to following from The Standard’s article:

For example, it was not long ago when apartheid was being preached from the pulpit. But that “gospel truth” has since been found to be wrong — and we changed our mind about it (or I hope all did!). Similarly, only a few centuries ago, it was believed that the earth was the centre of the universe — based on Bible scriptures. Now it is common knowledge that the earth is a planet in a solar system filled with more, in a galaxy with billions of stars, in a universe with billions of galaxies. It was found that the scripture was interpreted too narrowly.

The one thing we Christians have to learn is to not become fundamentalist in our mindset about what we think we know about the Bible; about how we understand God, and what we believe. Instead, we have to grow.

Oh, and how we need to grow as Christians. We need to understand how the Bible was written, when it was assembled, the midrashic elements in it, the poetry and parables that it contains. We need to learn both about science and its changing frontiers as well as the evolution of thought away from a fundamentalist approach to understanding the Bible.

New Year’s resolution for Christians: Get thee to a bible study group that explores the historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible and toss away the fundamentalist approach which can only cause severe rifts with science…

Secularism: Pushing Back

I have watched with interest the occupy movement over the past few months.  Cities have tolerated these individuals as they protested the wealth of banks and the 1% to the detriment of the 99%.  I’ve also watched the deterioration of the morality of our society and the denigration of organized religion.

Two articles recently caught my attention.  The first, an article by Bill Murchison entitled “The Atheists and the Savior” posted in Townhall.com. http://townhall.com/columnists/billmurchison/2011/12/20/the_atheists_and_the_savior.

In it Murchison writes about the death of Christopher Hitchens, the world famous British atheist, in December of last year.  Hitchens died of oesophageal cancer.

According to Murchison, Hitchens was against all religions, or at least said he was. The title of a best-selling book he published several years ago was, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. 

Everything. Well, that’s a little stiff, perhaps.  One problem, according to Murchison, with such a stance was its dogmatism. If you think, say, that Christians are dogmatic — inflexible in views that are open to question or, anyway, examination — what about dogmatic atheists?

It is fair, Murchison continues, to suggest that Christianity has maybe actually facilitated the atheist movement.

Murchison:

How? you say. By downplaying, I would say, its own truth claims while up-playing its social conscience and good works. This leaves the impression on minds inside and outside the church that faith in Christ, while possibly a good idea, is just a good, modern-style choice — take it or leave it. The drama of the faith thereby loses its drama, its pull and its intensity. Is it just a choice? OK. Which is where the atheist fraternity rushes in, expostulating about the stupid things Christians have done — e.g., kill and persecute each other — and saying, what person of sensitivity could believe in such stuff? Q.E.D., end of debate — assuming there ever was one.

The over-arching, all-consuming factuality of the faith is the point Christians tend to leave alone, out of fear they might hurt the feelings of non-believers or out of — I hate to say this — their own waning conviction that it’s really, deep-down true, hence inescapable.

I think Murchison is onto something here.  We Christians in the United States have tolerated the nonsense of not being allowed to put up Christmas nativity scenes in public squares for fear of offending atheists and other religions.

This past Christmas season, a town in Texas pushed back against a Wisconsin based group which threatened action against the town’s nativity scene.  Several thousand Christians turned out in support of keeping the display on public property.  Don’t mess with Texas.

The second article that caught my attention was one by Chuck Norris entitled “The Feds’ war on religion”. http://townhall.com/columnists/chucknorris/2011/12/20/feds_war_on_religion_part_1_of_2/page/full/.

According to Norris:

It’s one thing to watch “merry Christmas” be omitted from signs in your favorite department store but quite another to see Bibles withheld from wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It’s true! On Dec. 2, the Family Research Council reported that it had discovered a memo released in September at the esteemed military hospital, in which Navy officials announced that “no religious items (including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.”

Norris is not a theologian…rather an iconic figure whose public persona is one of a macho man.  However, his instincts are in the right place, in my opinion.  Highly respectful of the military, Norris wonders in his article about the future of our military under the present commander in chief.  Excerpts below:

But imagine if the FRC had not found this memo. Imagine how many others like it aren’t found and are circulated around the federal government.

If you think this is an isolated incident, consider the following dozen-plus examples reported in the past six months alone by the FRC and Rep. Forbes’ office and a few of my own I found, which document how religious freedom and Christian liberty in particular have been limited, quarantined, omitted or outright obliterated.

–The Air Force Academy apologized for merely announcing Operation Christmas Child –a Christian-based charity and relief program designed to send holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world.
–Yet the Air Force is building an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship site for “earth-based” religions, including “pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths.”
–The Marine Corps considered tearing down a Camp Pendleton cross meant to honor fallen heroes.
–Air Force officials stripped religious curriculum from a 20-year-old course on “just war theory.”
–The Department of Veterans Affairs censored references to God and Jesus during prayers at Houston National Cemetery.
–The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate passed the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which included a repeal of Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which states: “Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy.”
–The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new health care rules that ignore basic conscience protections for medical workers with faith-based objections to abortion and contraception.
–Officials at HHS denied funding for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ successful program for sex trafficking victims because of the church’s teaching on human life.
–Administration officials refused to intervene in the closing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
–President Barack Obama has lobbied for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would trample on the faith of employers in hiring, firing and promotion decisions.
–The Pentagon released new regulations that force chaplains to perform same-sex “weddings” despite their religious objections.
–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonized other countries’ religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights.
–Just this past week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter to officials at Travis Air Force Base, demanding the removal or transfer of a Nativity scene and a menorah that are part of a larger holiday display on the base.

What is going on in the U.S. military? Why is it so difficult for the feds to understand the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which says they “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

And how many of these restrictions of our religious liberties are direct results of President Obama’s being in office? And if these occurred in just the past six months, imagine what would happen in another four years if Obama were to be re-elected. Our service members, as well as our devoted military Christian chaplains, deserve better.

Gone are the days when the commander in chief rallied the troops and nation with a religious presidential call as Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt did. FDR declared in his Christmas address to the nation Dec. 24, 1944 (the first Christmas after D-Day): “Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and Good Will. … We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth, in which all the nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come.”

The United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values.  Just a cursory study of the writings of our founding fathers makes that very clear.  Are we turning into a nation whose government wants to obliterate all things religious?

Speaking of the Constitution’s structural division of powers, members of the U.S. House of Representatives have been told they can’t send constituents Christmas greetings and have it paid for with tax dollars according to the Congressional Franking Commission – which reviews all congressional mail to determine if it can be paid with tax dollars – and was told that Christmas greetings can’t be sent in official mail.

According to the commission, cards can’t say: “Merry Christmas or Happy New Year” and be paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but they can say “Have a happy new year,” referring to the time of year, but not the holiday. A manual explaining what the Franking Commission is, is available at http://cha.house.gov/sites/republicans.cha.house.gov/files/documents/franking_docs/franking_manual.pdf.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is also on to something when he suggests that Congress should review the existence of appeals courts and activist judges which continue to take this country down the road to pure secularism.  The Constitution of the United States in the limited space it gives to the judicial branch specifically states in Article Three, Section One that “the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts that Congress from time to time shall establish.” http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html.

It was never the intention of the founding fathers that the three branches of government be co-equal. Checks and balances, yes, but the legislative branch was to have dominant say. What has happened over our history is that the judicial branch has assumed power it simply did not have in its founding.  Judicial review of laws passed by the legislative branch came later in Marbury vs. Madison.

Over the past twenty years, no court in the land has made more anti-American and anti-Christian rulings than the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals.  Located in California, the heart of the most liberal part of the country, the land of nuts, fruits and flakes, the 9th Circuit certainly holds true to its surroundings. According to Gingrich, “The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial and far too powerful.” I agree.

I guess I am tired of all three branches of our federal government, to a greater or lesser degree, establishing the religion of secularism. I have read the First Amendment, am familiar with many of the nutsy-cuckoo decisions of the 9th Circuit (such as declaring the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional), and am well-acquainted with the original intent of the founding fathers not to establish a state religion for the U.S…but, come on people, we are losing our common sense, and many of our elected officials are first on the list of theophobes.

Speaking about Christmas

Soon we will celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ. The four week period of preparation called Advent will come to an end. These last four weeks in the secular world are, filled with Christmas carols, parties, gift buying, and all other sorts of preparations for this day. However, Advent will take on a different tone in many churches around the world. The liturgical readings will not filled with the steady stream of new variations of “Santa Claus is coming to town” or “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.”

Many Christian churches have readings from the Prophet Isaiah which prophesy the coming of a Messiah.  In this world of war, poverty, joblessness, sickness, and 24-7 news reports on a host of discomforting stories, finding a little joy in the Christian liturgy is certainly welcome.

Christianity has generally been at odds with the world and its values.  While the world has focused on the collapse of the world and global economy, the threat of a rogue nations getting and using nuclear weapons, and a creeping depression of mind and spirit, the readings from Deutero- Isaiah found in chapter 40 not only gave the Jewish people in exile hope, but they give us hope today.

Isaiah reminds us that better times are coming, maybe not in this world, but in the next.  Advent is not so much about preparing for the birth of Jesus Christ as it is about his Second Coming.  That is something to look forward to with an anticipation far greater than opening gifts on Christmas morning.

Is 40:1-5, 9-11
Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
the rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.


Go up on to a high mountain,
Zion, herald of glad tidings;
cry out at the top of your voice,
Jerusalem, herald of good news!
Fear not to cry out
and say to the cities of Judah:
Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD,
who rules by his strong arm;
here is his reward with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.


Life on this earth is tenuous at best.  Every day hundreds of thousands of people die unexpectedly.  As one ages, the thought of death comes up frequently.  We can try to block it out, avoid discussion about it, or put it at the bottom of our “to do” list.

Technology has, in some ways, distracted us from the “simple gifts”, so the Shaker hymn goes…to which my son Matt emailed me back: “It seems to me that your use of technology is making others appreciate the ‘simple gifts’ of life.” Whatever the case, who would’ve thought, years ago when I purchased my eight K Vic 20 that I would be TALKING TO a computer, and, with minimal use of my keyboard, composing this post?

So, as we celebrate Christmas today, let us look past the fancy wrappings, tinsel, temporal gifts, and give the “simple gifts”  this day, and every day… kindness, compassion, gentleness, patience, and good will. Merry Christmas!

Is Jesus Christ Welcome in Islam?

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority released a list of more than 1,600 words that it considered to be “vulgar, obscene or harmful” and ordered phone companies to block text messages containing those words.

However, an official from the authority told Agence France-Presse that it would review and shorten the list before issuing the ban. It did not list a time frame.

Included in the list of “vulgar, obscene, or harmful” words were the words “Jesus Christ.”

“If the ban is confirmed, it would be a black page for the country, a further act of discrimination against Christians and an open violation of Pakistan’s constitution,” said Father Nadeem John Shakir, secretary of the commission for social communications for the Pakistani Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

Article 19 of the 1973 constitution of Pakistan states:

Every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, or incitement to an offense.

Apparently, the words “Jesus Christ” are not considered “in the interest of the glory of Islam,” although the Koran mentions Jesus twenty-five times, more often, by name, than Muhammad.

Jesus is considered to have been a Muslim (i.e., one who submits to the will of God), as he preached that his followers should adopt the “straight path” as commanded by God. Islam rejects the Christian view that Jesus was God, or that he died on the cross and was resurrected from the dead. Judas Iscariot is given the role of having been crucified. The Koran emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human being who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God’s message.

Muslims believe that Jesus (Isa) will return at a time close to the end of the world. According to Islamic tradition which describes this graphically, Jesus’ descent will be in the midst of wars fought by the Mahdi (lit. “the rightly guided one”) against the Antichrist (al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl,and his followers. Jesus will join the Mahdi in his war against the Antichrist. Eventually, Jesus will slay the Antichrist, and then everyone from the People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb, referring to Jews and Christians) will believe in him. Thus, there will be one community, that of Islam.

After the death of the Mahdi, Jesus will assume leadership. This is a time associated in Islamic narrative with universal peace and justice. Jesus’ rule is said to be around forty years, after which he will die. Muslims believe that God will hold every human, Muslim and non-Muslim, accountable for his or her deeds at a preordained time unknown to man, but apparently at the death of Jesus in the end times. Traditions say Muhammad will be the first to be brought back to life. Presumably Jesus will be raised from the dead a second time, since the Koran emphasizes the inevitability of resurrection, judgment, and the eternal division of the righteous and the wicked.

Islam is the state religion of Pakistan and about 95-98% of Pakistanis are Muslims. Sunnis comprise 80-95% of the Muslim population, while Shias the remaining 5-15%.

The Mahdi doctrine is common to both Sunnis and Shias.

The U.S. government has had a tenuous relationship with Pakistan, strained recently by the revelation that Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabod, only about 40 mi from Rawalpindi, military headquarters in Pakistan.

Although there is a political mending of fences between the U.S. and Pakistan, I suggest there is an irreconcilably deep divide between Christianity and Islam…certainly in each’s eschatology.

Steve Jobs' Last Words

Back on August 24^th this year, the world learned that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. It was only a matter of time until his death a few weeks later on Oct. 5^th. The world had lost one of its most brilliant innovators…the mastermind behind Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes. He was compared to Thomas Edison and even to Leonardo da Vinci. He was only 56, succumbing to pancreatic cancer.

His eulogy was given by his sister, Mona Simpson on Oct. 16, 2011, at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. Below are excerpts. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his wife Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Biographer Walter Isaacson relates that Jobs, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, began questioning the meaning of life and God in the past few months before his death.

“I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God,” recalled Isaacson. “He said, ‘Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.’”

Isaacson continued, “Then he paused for a second and he said, ‘Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone.’ He paused again, and he said, ‘And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.’”

As a Catholic theologian, I was fascinated by the last words Jobs spoke  “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

Steve Jobs had traded his time for human progress. Not for personal pleasures. This was not a man who spent his time building homes or custom yachts or who otherwise obsessed with how to spend his billions on himself. And no one would say of him that he ever seemed to have a lot of spare time on his hands. There is little doubt in my mind that the Higher Power Jobs wondered about turned the “on” switch for him in all its brilliance.

It would be no surprise to me in eternity to learn that Jobs’ last words were followed by “Well done, my good and faithful servant… Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ”