Four Kinds of Love

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."[1]

Despite the ongoing obsession of Western civilization with love, humanity needs to face the fact that this modern, Information Age culture knows very little about this most powerful motivator in daily life. This is true even though we are inundated with love-talk, in-utero to eulogy. Consider that most Americans know more about professional sports than they do about love, even though some theologians believe love is the very force which holds the Cosmos together.

The Bible, of course, brims with words about love. God so loved the world...the disciple whom Jesus loved…love bears all things…who can separate us from the love of God? And not just in the Second Testament. My unscientific, quick check of a modern English translation counted over 120 references to “love” in the Book of Psalms alone. Not just the Bible, but literature in general is full of words about love. Though Shakespeare’s heroines were played by pre-pubescent boys in stodgy Elizabethan England, the Bard still manages to splash love across the pages of his scripts like a drunken sailor spilling wine. I suspect most people have given litle thought to whether Shakespeare's sonnets were written for boyfriends or girlfriends; they’re beautiful love poetry, and they work for all flavors.

Almost all popular music is written about love. Most of people are hard pressed to name a few popular tunes that are NOT love songs. A generation ago the Beatles proclaimed, “All you need is love…” Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. Love was all they needed to make millions. With their careers established, the Beatles branched out into pure storytelling ballads like “Eleanor Rigby” and creative excursions like the “Yellow Submarine,” “Abbey Road,” and “Sergeant Pepper” albums. Beatle-mania began with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You”, and The Fab-Four continued to produce quality love music until they disbanded. One of their last, best offerings before the group broke up was “The Long and Winding Road,” a hauntingly beautiful love song.

Movies must have a love interest to maximize their appeal at the box office. Sometimes, romance is the story. The plot of one of the biggest movies of all time was, essentially, “The Love Boat hits an iceberg.” Today, the same producer/director has scored another spectacular hit with a sci-fi thriller that could be summarized: "Blue lovers fight for environmental freedom." (Titanic was so-so, but I absolutely loved Avatar.)

Even though Hollywood has refined the art of cinema romance, movies almost always neglect the deeper aspects of love. For lovers who stroll the silver screen, love equals sexual attraction, usually expressed through intense, semi-nude love-making scenes. Fun to watch, perhaps, but not a good model of what constitutes love. Certainly, passion plays an important part in many relationships, but it is in no wise the singular or even the most important element.

Besides, not all “relationships” are sexual. We have children, extended families, friends, neighbors, work associates, social and business acquaintances, church and community members—none of whom share sexual intimacy with us, even though we may love them dearly.


Some Quick Thoughts

So, if people spend so much time, money, and energy on love, why do we get it wrong so often? Here are a few quick thoughts on popular misconceptions about love:

1) Sensuality. Much of what passes for love is sensual attraction and sexuality. In case you suspect I am advocating celibacy, let me hasten to say there is nothing wrong with sexual passion in romantic relationships. Few marriages last these days without the partners being lovers too, but love involves much more than passion.

2) In Love with Love. Much of what passes for love is mere glamour. At the entry level of a romantic relationship we are infatuated by the physical attractiveness of the other person. New love is a kind of madness, but infatuation is not love, and the rapture of a new relationship wears off eventually. Courtship ends, then what?

3) Enabling/Dependencies. Much of what passes for love is neurotic dependency. Some kinds of relationships are based on feelings of inadequacy. A song lyric made famous by Barbara Streisand goes:

With one person, one very special person
A feeling deep in your soul
Says you were half,
Now you're whole. [2]

Yet, what happens when two half-people find each other? The heart math doesn’t add up to two whole people. If we are in relationships simply because we perceive we lack something which is provided by the other, we have not understood the message of Jesus Christ about the divine qualities within every human being. Only two whole people can truly love one another from their fullness; half-people are locked in enabling dependencies which limit the depth of their potential for intimacy and fulfillment.

4) Fear of Loneliness. Much of what passes for love is fear of loneliness. This is perfectly understandable, considering the alienation with their everyday world in which many people live today. Until my generation, everyone pretty much knew their neighbors. My upbringing was like that; we lived in a row house in Reading, Pennsylvania in the 1950’s. My folks literally knocked on the wall to signal the neighbor lady to meet them in the yard for conversation. We never had dinner at each other’s homes, but we knew the people on both sides, across the street, and down the block by name. We also had blood relatives within an easy drive, city buses to travel to shopping areas downtown, and safe streets to walk day or night. Today in some communities, people feel imprisoned in their own homes.

Although the place where I live now has relatively little violent crime, I’m an example of this neo-local isolation, too. I live far from family members, and I don’t know my neighbors beyond a nod of recognition as they power-walk past on the tree-shaded street of our subdivision. In this isolated lifestyle, many people cling fiercely to their mates and expect the other person to fulfill all the functions which were previously provided by family, neighbors, and a supportive, friendly community. No wonder some relationships fail to meet the needs of the partners.

5) Ego, jealousy and selfishness. Much of what passes for love is unbridled possessiveness. Occasionally, especially when I was a chaplain in the US Army working with young married couples, I have counseled young wives whose husbands got angry and abusive when other men merely noticed them. One man had jealous fits when the OB-GYN doctor performed a routine examination on his wife; another soldier took his wife’s car keys when he went to work in the morning for fear she would sneak out during the day to meet some fantasized paramour. Because the military community is a cross-section of middle class life, I suspect the problem of possessiveness is far more widespread than just the ranks of junior enlisted men in the US Army. When young couples came to me for pre-marriage counseling, they often said their plans had accelerated when the soldier-fiancé received overseas reassignment orders. Some of these young people actually confessed that they wanted to get married now because they were afraid a separation would end their relationship.

Love, in its highest expression, is not possessive but liberating.

6) Convenience. Much of what passes for love is convenience, routine, and economic comfort. Most of us know people who acknowledge they are in unsatisfying, loveless unions, yet their situations persist year-after-year because the partners would rather stay in their rut than risk changing their partners or improving the relationship.

So, What Is Love?

The obvious conclusion from these short summaries is that love isn’t as easy as Hollywood pretends, but another point, seldom considered, is that love comes in more than one variety. The answer to “What is love?” depends on the context. We don’t love our children the same way we love our country. We certainly don’t love friends and neighbors the same way we love husbands and wives, unless we’re behaving like characters in a tawdry novel. What about that obnoxious so-and-so at work? How about friends and family who have been cruel? How can we “love” people who are prejudiced against us, or members of a group which stands against everything we cherish?

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” how far did he intend for that command to stretch? Some would say infinitely. Would Jesus insist that Jewish Holocaust survivors, or freed slaves after the American Civil War, were ethically required to love their persecutors? The question is not as clear as a first glimpse might suggest. Contemplating monstrous evil, like the holocaust or African slavery, can push thinking persons into a dark room. One can metaphysically understand “evil” as the absence of good, as it surely is, but studying the history of human inhumanity makes love of one’s enemies a difficult goal to contemplate.

In this essay, I will attempt to re-discover the underlying principles of Jesus about love by looking at four biblical-era words. It is a topic that clearly requires a separate book, perhaps several volumes. I shall attempt to do justice to the Christian understanding of love through brevity, trusting that others will follow to plumb its depths.

Four Kinds of Love

British Medieval literature scholar C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) wrote extensively on religion, and even when not specifically writing about his beliefs a heavy measure of conservative Christian thought underscored Lewis’s work. Some rather traditional themes about redemption and salvation dance through his science fiction novels and his well-known fantasy series, Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis is so deft at weaving theme and plot that most readers are unaware of the deeply pious sentiments which motivated Lewis to create a talking lion who dies to save the helpless from the powers of evil. Lewis’s stories work at several levels—the Narnia Chronicles are, after all, children’s books—and this ability to communicate deep ideas in layers of meaning is a tribute to his skill as an author.

One of Lewis’s nonfiction works is a thin volume entitled The Four Loves. In this little book Lewis divides love into four categories: affection, friendship, eros (passion), and charity (self-giving). Lewis offers good insights into both the complexities of human love and provides a revised vision of the traditional view of Divine Love, yet I have always believed a complete reinterpretation of the word, based on the four biblical-era terms, would convey a more complete understanding of the vexing, beautiful, alluring power of love.

Some of the conclusions I reach will be very close to Lewis’s views on love, other times not so. For example, he does not elect to discuss hesed, dutiful love, and prefers to establish a separate category for affection. Furthermore, I have assiduously attempted to avoid merely re-writing his book in an essay format. The notes from which this discussion proceeds come from preparation I did for a sermon series over twenty years ago, well before I had read C.S. Lewis’ book. The similarity of my procedure—even the sequence which puts friendship, eros, and agapé in that order—suggests I probably gleaned some “original” ideas from long-forgotten seminary lectures I attended in the 1970s, whose sources reach to Lewis’s 1960 work. Let this chapter be a new statement, then, on the four kinds of love, and let the reader compare my work with Lewis to see how they differ and where they coincide.[3]

Four Words

Although the four words I will discuss are implicit in the teachings of Jesus, the Second Testament only puts one of them explicitly on his lips, and that connection is dubious. The problem is that Jesus likely spoke Aramaic, but the Christian Scriptures were written in Koine Greek, the common language of Hellenistic civilization. Yet, there is some possibility that Jesus was a lot more cosmopolitan than he is ordinarily pictured. For a long time, scholars believed Jesus was from a sleepy backwater town in northern Palestine, but recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Roman city Sepphoris was within easy walking distance. Conceivably, Joseph of Nazareth took his son along to practice their carpentry trade in the bustling, expanding Roman town. Sepphoris boasted a Roman theater and an impressive array of tile mosaics, some now coming back into the light as archaeologists delicately sweep the ruins with fine hair brushes.

Because of the practical need to do business in affluent, Roman Sepphoris, Jesus may have spoken conversational Greek, maybe even a little Latin. The Greek words we’ll discuss in this chapter (philia, eros, agapé) might have been well-known to him, because the concepts behind them certainly play major roles in his stories and teachings.

More likely, Jesus knew the Hebrew word (hesed). Everyone familiar with the gospels knows that Jesus read aloud in the synagogue, and scholars have noted that, as a full adult Jew, he would have gone through the typical Hebrew education for his day. By the 1st century, Hebrew was a dead language which had to be studied so Jewish children could read the Bible, much like European youth for centuries studied Ancient Greek and Latin to read Homer and Virgil in their original tongues. The adaptive Jewish community had produced Greek and Aramaic translations of the “Old Testament” for study and discussion, much like we translate the whole Bible into English versions today. We begin with the Hebrew word.

1. HESED – Love is Steadfast and Loyal

In the Hebrew Bible, a common word for love is hesed, often translated “steadfast love.” Well-known passages come to mind:

Praise the Lord!
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever![4]

Hesed is the kind of devotion that soldiers owe to their commanders, the respect children feel for their parents, and the allegiance citizens pay their country. It is grounded in duty, the whole-hearted faithfulness to someone, or some cause, which deserves our loyalty. Now there's a new concept: Loyalty. Are you old enough to remember loyalty? Elbert Hubbard put it this way:

"If you work for a man, for heaven's sake work him: speak well of him and stand by the institution he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault, why not resign your position? And when you are on the outside damn to your hearts content, but as long as you are part of the institution, do not condemn it; if you do the first high wind that comes along will blow you away and you will never know why."[5]

Can you recall when working for someone meant working for someone? Nowadays, feeling a sense of ownership and pride in the business which employs you marks the employee as somewhat naive. Water cooler talk is seldom about how to make the company better, and discussions of the boss too often deteriorate into “ain't it awful” games, orgies of complaint with itemizations of managerial faults and abuses.

This is especially true about the workplace which should generate the polar opposite reaction in workers, the local church. Most clergy can relate horror stories about disloyal, back-biting, conspiratorial Board members, who seem to relish their role as tormentor of the Minister. Seldom to one's face, of course. Clergy have told me they could deal with honest opposition, provided the aggravated member came to them directly and expressed concerns in the open. Unfortunately, many people despise confrontations, so they follow the line of least resistance and air their grievances in private with other church members.

This practice of triangulation, which is sometimes called enlisting support, may temporarily ventilate a person’s frustrations, but it also begins to undermine group cohesion and works against loyalty to the minister, which clergy must have to effectively lead a congregation. Consequently, when looking for a church assignment after a hiatus of several years, I told all the committees who interviewed me that, if I became their minister, I would never speak ill of them behind their backs and asked them to do likewise. In actual job situations of churches I have served, my positive-speaking system usually broke down over time. People have diffucilty living without complaints. Myself included. But I continue to hope that cooperation and dialogue will triumph in human relations. If I were starting out as a minister today, there would be continuous, ongoing classes offered in Rev. Will Bowen's "complaint free" system.

The natural tendency toward nay-saying becomes deadly when coupled with disloyalty, and the combination has frustrated many a good ministry from developing a loving, open community under the vigorous leadership of a clergyperson who mutually trusts and is trusted by the people.

How about patriotism?

Communities create their own compelling reasons for individual behavior. One of my seminary professors remarked that when he studied in Europe, quite a few years ago, he sent his son to German public school. It was raining the first day of class, so the lad wore a typical American school kid’s yellow raincoat. Kids are kids all over the globe, so he was bitterly ridiculed for the cultural faux pas, and for not having a proper European backpack book-bag. Of course the American parents rushed out, bought the book-bag pack, and their son went smiling off the class the next day with no further incidents. Time passed quickly and the professor completed his studies and moved his young family back stateside. When the boy showed up at school with the European back pack and no raincoat…well, you can guess the reaction from his American school mates. A new yellow raincoat solved the problem.

Who told the children to ostracize their chums for non-compliance with the dress code? No one, of course. There was no nefarious plot behind their corporate behavior; that is just an example of how cultural dynamics operate. I often experienced a different twists on this group-think phenomenon in my ten-year career as a teacher.

From the early 90’s until the turn of the 21st century when I returned to full time ministry, I took an unofficial sabbatical from church leadership and taught in the Georgia public schools. Working with the young people was a great experience; when I taught middle school and sponsored the Drama Club I spent so much time with sixth, seventh and eighth graders that my wife once grumbled, “All your friends are under fifteen.” Then I moved to high school, and I discovered a different world. Those students had formulated and consolidated their values, and they were somewhat impervious to teacher suggestions.

Although my senior high school students displayed lots of admirable traits, there were a few areas where the generation gap (I was then in my early 50’s) created problems for me. Patriotism—or the lack of it—for example. Disturbingly, most of my 11th grade homeroom students flatly refused to say the "Pledge of Allegiance" each morning. When I asked them why, I got mumbles instead of answers. Not that they had any political or ethical objections to the pledge, of course. Their silence was social, not an act of protest. In what was probably an excessive use of teacher-power, I detained a band of 11th graders after the bell and refused to let them go to first period class until they told me why they would not say the pledge. One young man finally blurted, “Because I don’t have to!” Nobody else said the pledge, and he didn't want to stand out. Bottom line on why this group of high school students wouldn't pledge allegiance to the flag?

It just wasn't cool.

In fairness to the kids, this was in the late 1990’s, before 9-11 re-awakened American patriotism. The lesson this teacher learned that morning is still valid. Culture often determines values, and when it comes to religious values, those ideas must be examined in the light generated during an interactive dialogue between embedded theology and the biblical-theological Jesus.

What would Jesus do about war, and how much would he have advocated patriotism? His recorded remarks, if they are historical, suggest a degree of loyalty to the social order as long as it does not compel individuals to violate their higher calling as children of a loving God.

That definitely would not be cool.

Remember Loyalty?

Eastern mystics have long understood the need for loyalty—to spiritual leaders like gurus, sages, and teachers, but also to representatives of social order. In the closing decades of the 20th century, some Westerners laughed at TV images of the Japanese soldiers who stayed in hiding on remote Pacific islands until decades after WWII had ended, but no one laughed in Japan. Asians understand loyalty. If you've read James Clavel's novel Shogun, you know that the Samurai code of honor, Bushido, rested squarely on the principle of Hesed. Samurai would promptly take their own lives if ordered by their liege lord. Dishonor required defeated armies to commit seppuku, or hara-kiri (literally, "belly cutting"), a form of ritualized suicide. This demonstrated their fidelity to Bushido, which in the mythology of Shinto guaranteed their re-birth as Samurai.

Modern Japanese workers seldom kill themselves when their corporations are swallowed up by hostile mergers, but bosses nevertheless expect fierce loyalty of employees, who can usually count on working for the same company for life.

Where the principle of Hesed is applied, relationships firm up. Dependable love reshapes the dynamics of collegiality, co-working, partnership, friendship, marriage and family. An argument could be made that today, especially in the realm of romantic love, a little stubborn loyalty wouldn't be a bad thing.

2. Philia - Love Is Friendly

Loyalty alone is not enough to form a high theology of love. So, let's add the next element, a Greek term found in the Second Testament, PHILIA, which can be translated "friendship." Before the feminist revolution, we called it "brotherly love."

The term philia is found only once in the Second Testament at James 4:4, and even there it appears to have in an uncomplimentary context. ("Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?") The word itself simply means "friendship" or "brotherly love." Philadelphia was named after it. The “city of brotherly love” was founded by Quakers.

What Does Friendship / Brotherly Love Imply?

• Equality. Friendships are mutual relationships.
• Trust. Friends are loyal and faithful.
• Free choice. We don't choose family, but we choose friends.
• Enjoyment. Friends are people we like to have around.
• Reciprocity. Friends will do things for us, and we for them.

Doubtless this war-plagued world could use a lot more philia. Friends get along by learning that anybody can have a bad day, even the people we like best. Some kinds of behavior steps so far out there that even a friend must call it wrong.

This was surely the case when four white Los Angeles policemen beat up Rodney King, an African-American taxicab driver who was allegedly high on drugs at the time of his arrest. When the brutal beating was caught on videotape and played repeatedly on all news networks, many people who saw the video—myself included—thought it showed a disgraceful abuse of police powers. A predominantly white jury nevertheless acquitted the policemen. In the aftermath of the acquittal, racially motivated riots broke out across the country. The worst violence occurred in Los Angeles itself, with fifty-five deaths, 2,383 injuries, over 7,000 fire responses, and more than 3,100 businesses vandalized by angry mobs. Total damage in the Los Angeles riots amounted to over $1 billion.

In the midst of this ferocity, a plainly bewildered Rodney King came to the microphone and asked the nation, perhaps the world, a profound question: “People, I just want to say, you know, can't we all just get along?"[6]

His question was motivated by a spirit not unlike philia, a simple desire to coexist in a friendly world, regardless of the momentary evils which might spring from the combination of human free will and spiritual immaturity. Although it was plainly wrong for those policemen to beat and abuse Rodney King, an offense compounded by their acquittal by an all-white jury, the rioting in the aftermath of the verdict only expanded the tragedy and further alienated black and white communities. Rodney King’s plaintive question lingers to this day as one of the few good legacies in this sorry affair: “Can't we all just get along?"

The spirit of philia is still needed in this world.


3. EROS - Love is appreciation.

The word eros not specifically found in the Second Testament, although it is implied in several places. Usually it is thought of as sexual love; we get the word "erotic" from eros. However, the meaning goes much deeper. Eros does denote sexual desire, passionate aspiration, and sensual longing, but it also can mean the upward longing for the eternal and the divine.

Generally, eros refers to the attraction felt for some beautiful or desirous object, idea, or event. Although the word is not found in the Bible, but its influence is everywhere. For example, the Song of Solomon, which is clearly meant as a hymn to erotic love.

Hebrew consciousness struggled mightily with its erotic side. Documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to a fine levied for public nakedness. Biblical rules included prohibitions against sex during menstrual period, against men & women wearing each other's clothing, against any kind of public nakedness--including exposure of the middle of the body, against all forms of lesbianism and homosexuality, against a woman intervening in a quarrel between her husband and another man by seizing the opponents sexual organs, and against worshipping through the cult of temple prostitutes. It is interesting to note that prostitution for money itself is never explicitly outlawed. All the condemnations are leveled at so-called “sacred prostitutes” of the various non-Hebrew temples. Of course, all forms of adultery were punishable by death.

What was the definition of adultery? It was a sexual act committed between a married woman and someone who was not her husband. Note that a married man having sex with a single woman was not considered an adulterer; that was fornication, a lesser sin. Jesus leveled the playing field somewhat when he told the crowds that even thinking about it is tantamount to doing it, so don’t act so high-and-mighty.

Eros also referred to appreciation of beauty. To gaze at a magnificent statue was eros; to be carried away by a glorious sunset on the sea was eros. Anything which brought delight through the senses could be understood as eros.

How do the Jesuses of scripture view this type of love? Surprisingly, biblical pictures rather unanimously show us a man who enjoyed life and exhibited a love of good things. He took pleasure in the perfumed oil a woman massaged into his feet; he enjoyed partying, making good wine at marriage feast at Cana. He went to dinner parties, drank wine, consorted with females, and generally had a good time whenever he could. In fact, Jesus was apparently known for partying so much that his detractors called him a “glutton and a drunkard…” [7] One might infer his attitude toward eros was that passion for life is good; life’s good pleasures are to be embraced, not shunned. Aesthetics are important, because beauty is a gift of God. Sensuality-sexuality is the entry-level of romantic relationships.

It is not difficult to imagine Jesus encouraging his followers to enjoy the world and its beauty, because not to do so is sinful.

Was Jesus Married?

Recent theories have floated around about Jesus and Mary Magdalene having an intimate relationship; I have heard my good friend Bishop John Shelby Spong speculate that perhaps Magdalene was his wife. This interesting, albeit irrelevant, question will probably never be answered, but a sexually active Jesus is nothing to fear unless there is something inherently dirty about sex itself. The by-products of human sexuality are ritually unclean in Hebrew thought—to include semen, menstrual flow, etc.—sex itself is a mitzvah, a blessing, which is not only allowed but encouraged on the Sabbath. In fact, nothing in the Jewish Law or the life and teachings of Rabbi Yeshua suggests anything like an abhorrence for normal pleasures. If Jesus was the Messiah, he was unquestionably an erotic Savior in the full sense of the words.

4. AGAPÉ - Love is compassion—selfless, altruistic and counterintuitive.

This is the word favored by NT writers when they speak of Love. It actually means 'selfless love,' the kind that puts the other person first. Perhaps the most powerful biblical example of agapé is the story told by Luke which has come to be called the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I discuss this parable at length in the next essay, but suffice it to say that the Samaritan had no motivation for personal gain in his actions of merciful kindness to the wounded traveler. The unconscious man wasn’t even able to say “Thank you” to this unknown benefactor.

The Samaritan, who was a member of a despised ethnic minority, exceeded all reasonable expectations, not only treating the victim’s wounds but carrying him to an inn, paying for his room and board, and offering more compensation if the money he provided ran out before the victim recovered. That is agapé. It goes the second, third and fourth mile, not for personal reward but simply because it is the loving thing to do.

The “Good Samaritan” story calls for humanity to see that other humans have the right to exist and be regarded with dignity. Apparently, the 1st century church believed the heart of the gospel was this understanding of selfless love. Agapé is more than a moral suggestion; John’s gospel uses this verb in the “new commandment” which Jesus gives his followers(John 13:34-35):

"I give you a new commandment, that you love (agapate) one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."[8]

Remember the Robbers?

It is important to recognize that agapé as demanded by the biblical Jesus—i.e., all people have the right to unqualified acceptance and positive esteem—seems to run afoul of the natural order. In nature there are no rights, only powers. It is a giant leap forward when a species of omnivores, like homo sapiens, accords rights of existence to its own members and begins to hesitate before attacking, killing and eating the stray who has wandered among them. An ocean of blood separates “Live and let live” from the more primordial question “What’s in it for me?” Tolerance of diversity is the moral equivalent of coming down from the trees and walking upright. And, in the social evolution of our race, the movement from coolly tolerating outsiders to embracing the stranger in an act of altruism constitutes a leap from the forest floor to the stars.

Although it may seem counterintuitive for a species member to seek the health and well-being of his rivals, these altruistic values are essential building blocks for all complex societies. Just as the Lakota needed to trust that the hunter sleeping in the next lodge would not steal his horses and kill him in the night, so do nation-states need to know the default behavior of their economic and political adversaries in other lands is not opportunistic aggression but peaceful, commercial competition.

This tolerance is based on mutual need, but Jesus and other great teachers of humanity have long called for humanity to move beyond tolerance to a place where respect yields to mutual admiration and trust. The human race has its challenges—some of us have not yet come down from the trees, or given up tribal warfare. The good Samaritan is the model to emulate, but there are still robbers on the road who have not learned this lesson yet. If 9-11 taught the world anything it was this lesson. Peaceful, kindly humans must continue to help the victims out of the ditch, but someone has to deal with the robbers or the victimization will continue.

One could argue a variety of ways to make the metaphorical highways of life safe from robbers—retribution to reconciliation—but the point here is that nothing in the teaching of Jesus requires denial of the problem or capitulation to helpless suffering. Tough love can still be an expression of agapé. If you doubt this, meditatively visit the Jerusalem Temple and ask moneychangers.

Applications of Agapé

Agapé applies to all kinds of relationships, friend-to-friend, person-to-acceptable co-worker, even person to obnoxious jerk. In her book Seeing Children, Seeing God, St.Pul School of Theology's Professor Pamela Couture says that caring actions which must be independent of the response of the person served. “True generosity continues even when others do not respond as we would like; otherwise, our kind actions were bait, rather than generosity.”[9] This sounds very much like Charles Fillmore:

"Let us give as God gives, unreservedly, and with no thought of return, making no mental demands for recompense on those who have received from us. A gift with reservations is not a gift; it is a bribe.[10]

Even if a truly “Christian” response to enmity from those served requires forbearance, the interactive quality of the event is still paid into the sum of the experience for Pastoral Theology, or we would not be having this discussion. Perhaps, in certain circumstances, a thankless rebuff is more conducive to spiritual growth than a hug-and-a-kiss, although the latter certainly feels better.

Love Prescription: What is Needed in Relationships?

1) Less Eros and more Agape. It’s not that eros is bad, it’s that the sensual-attractive side of relationships has been overplayed. This is so self-evident in Western society that the case need not be explicitly stated; everyone old enough to operate a TV remote knows our culture wallows in sensual-sexual imagery.

2) Less Hollywood and more Jerusalem. Perhaps this idea is contained in the first point, above. Glamour is alluring; action-adventure stories where evil is destroyed in the last moments of the movie give us a sense of satisfaction. Yet, the world is infinitely more complex than two teams of super-attractive athletes squaring off in a battle between good and evil. Who were to good guys and bad guys in the biblical stories? Were the Romans evil, or the Jews? One could understand the Second Testament setting as a struggle between imperial, enslaving Rome and freedom-loving Israel; yet the same story can be cast as a battle between urbane, progressive Hellenistic civilization and fanatical religious terrorists, with Jewish zealots playing the role of Al Qaeda in the 1st century. Certainly there have been times when one side represents monstrous “evil” such as the Nazi’s, but most conflicts have been less black-and-white. Rodney King’s hard question should be set in the stained glass windows of every church in the world: “Can’t we all just get along?”

3) Less emphasis on attractiveness and more on compatibility. This is especially true for romantic relationships, but it probably applies equally to all forms of human interaction. Pretty people have both an advantage and disadvantage in our culture. The advantage is obvious; physically attractive people are simply treated better in almost every circumstance. This has been shown in study after study. A stunningly attractive woman once confessed to me, as her minister, that she didn’t know what people actually thought about her, because they always related to her physical beauty and not her ideas, character, or even personality.

4) A good measure of Philia. Mutuality and reciprocity; each side gives more than 50 percent. The best kind of relationships share and allow for the occasional episode of temporary insanity in others.

6) Resolve conflicts without Winning or Losing. Quarrels between intimates or strangers can best be resolved by looking for solutions rather than identifying villains. Agapé represents the hope for better human relationships, that each participant wishes good will for all and is willing to strive selflessly to achieve healing of the nations.
___________________________

Notes:

[1] John 15:12.

[2] "People,” lyrics by Bob Merril. Online source: http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Barbra-Streisand/People-From-Broadway-Musical.html. Accessed 01-24-08.

[3] C.S. Lewis, The Four Kinds of Love (NY: Harcourt Brace, 1991).

[4] Psalm 106:1.

[5] Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), quoted at “Quoteland.com” website. Source: http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=586192041&f=099191541&m=6531055101 (accessed 01-19-08).

[6] Rodney King Home Page; http://lsnhs.leesummit.k12.mo.us/dtwp/spring07/historical/hour5/historical_bradr/index.htm (accessed 05-15-07).

[7] Matthew 11:19.

[8] John 13:34-35.

[9] Pamela D. Couture, Seeing Children, Seeing God, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2005), 57.
[10] Charles R. Fillmore, Dynamics for Living (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1967), 208.

Authorized Comments

Friends of Theo-Blog: Recently I had to open this form as its creator and delete some vulgar promo's posted by so-called "adult" sites, who have somehow gotten my URL and decided to use the comment section to advertise their wares. Consequently, I have installed a filtering process whereby I will review all comments before they are posted. Please do not hesitate to lambaste me for doctrinal error in the future, but if you're advocating Mistress Mella's House of Pain, take your whips and free trial memberships elsewhere.

But leave the handcuffs.

DrTom

Circles of Sin

I know, I know. You hate that word. For good reasons. All your life, people have insisted you need a Savior, because you're a sinner. You know in your heart that all this "worthless sinner" business is a crock of....yes, of course, you know that. And yet, if you're anything at all like me, there have been times when you have said or done things that you immediately wanted to take back. (I have often found myself wishing that life had something equivalent to MS Word's UNDO key.)

So that brings up a hard question: How does one recover from grevious mistakes? Better question: How do I feel okay about myself after I've said or done something unworthy, nay, verily, reprehensible? It doesn't happen very often in my life, thank God. But when it does, I'm the most miserable of God's children.

Oh, sure, I can tell myself, "You are accepted by God the way you are. Sin is self inflicted nonsense. Sin is error belief. Sin is missing the mark...attempting to negate a divine idea...You should not feel bad. This is a learning experience."

And just as surely as I know that all that "worthless sinner...need a Savior" stuff is not satisfying, some of the above New Thought responses are equally nugatory when I am gripped by the aftermath of a hurtful or selfish choice I have made.

Just as their are circles of faith, circles of belief, circles of love--there seem to be "circles of sin". If I am inside a circle of love or faith or belief, I want to expand it, stay inside its embrace. However, when trapped inside a circle of sin the first item on my agenda is breakout.

The Breakout Formula. I look at what I've done. I affirm that I'm better than this. I accept full responsibility for the mistake, which sometimes calls for me to acknowledge that I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway. I bless, release and forgive myself for making this non-productive choice. I remind myself that it isn't about what's evil and good, it's about what works and doesn't work.

Sometimes, I will give myself an assignment: Center on a spiritual word, playing it like a mantra in my mind. Or do something nice for someone and not tell anyone about it. (Is that penance? I've never been a Catholic, but there's something comforting in actually DOING something to make ammends.)

And then I will repeat the process as often as necessary, whenever the feelings of guilt resurface. Bless, release, forgive. Make ammends as necessary.

Sure, sure. There are people out there who are shaking their heards and murmuring, "I knew he wasn't really Unity..." But why not raid the pantry of Western spirituality as well as Eastern thought? I find no comfort in denying what I am actually feeling--i.e., guilt--rather than dealing with the challenge of missing the mark by picking up my arrow and shooting again, and again, until it hits the target, and I break out of the circle called sin.

That's a mixed metaphor, but I can live with it.

New Thoughts as a New Decade Begins

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Scene 2.

Forty-five years ago, when I was a young US Army soldier stationed in what we then called West Germany, I met an Arab Christian couple from Lebanon who had a new baby. They graciously invited me to their apartment where we shared an evening of food and conversation. During our delightful time together, I noticed the mother and father frequently bending over their infant son and repeating the same word: “Allah, Allah, Allah.”

The father explained, “We want his first word to be the Name of God.”

They were Marionite Christians, teaching their baby the same Arabic word for God as the followers of Islam use in prayer: Allah.

Westerners sometimes translate the great creedal statement of the Islamic world with the words, “There is no God but Allah,” as if our Muslim friends were praying to some alien deity. But the Arabic expression really means, “There is no God but God.” The same Divine Power celebrated in Lebanese Christian liturgies is addressed five times a day by 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

It started me thinking…how many more things do people of different faiths have in common? Certainly, there are differences among the world religions. Not surprisingly, civilizations separated by geographical, cultural and linguistic barriers have solved their spiritual equations differently. Diverse spiritual traditions have inspired rich cultural heritages—beliefs, practices, and theological nuances; characteristic music, dance, and art—which make each faith distinct from all others.

Yet, all the religions of humanity seem to offer a sense of wonder, reverence for life, ethical teaching, some form of the Golden Rule, and an abiding sense of life’s okay-ness because, despite all appearances to the contrary, God has everything under control. Beyond these rudimentary similarities, much healthy diversity is readily apparent.

As I reflected on my Lebanese Christian friends in Germany and their Muslim countrymen back home, it occurred to me that all parents want similar good for their children. Happiness, wholeness, a sense of purpose, and a faith which sets them free to be the best person they can possibly be. Whatever combination of phonemes we select to identify the mystical presence and power of the Divine outpicturing in our lives—even if we find it difficult to use God-language at all—one could argue that the goal of a prosperous, healthy, joyful existence is the baseline hope of all sentient beings and the common religion of humanity.

Last spring I visited Sri Lanka and traveled in the company of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. The intense compassion for humanity and desire to leave our children a better world was indistinguishable among the faith groups I met. Perhaps this speaks to an even deeper common ground than ideas or culture or ritual.

Perhaps the universal yearning for meaning and wholeness indicates we have a self-correcting program running within humanity, and tendencies toward violence and selfishness must give way as we learn more about our brothers and sisters across the street and across the world.

Join me and ponder these thoughts about the underlying oneness of humankind in the decade now begun...

December 24, 2009

Undelivered/ Snowed Out Christmas Eve Message 2009 Unity of the Lakes

Sermon: “Angels we have heard, kings we have seen…”

Texts: Luke 2:1-19, Matthew 2:1-12 (See below for full NRSV texts)

How many of you believe in angels? Oh, don’t worry, This isn’t Peter Pan. An angel won’t drop dead if you state your disbelief in them. So…seriously….how many people believe there are supernatural beings, which we call angels, who interact in some way with God and humanity? Let’s see a show of hands…

As many of you know, I have a show on Unity-FM, our internet radio network. It’s called “Let’s Talk About It.” I invite guest panelists from all sorts of religious backgrounds. I have had a Catholic nun and a Baha’i and a Sikh. Last week, I invited the angel people…. [ ]

Angels are everywhere this time of the year. Christmas carols echo with their choruses; cards and packages display their images; sacred scripture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam testify to their reality. But are there really, really such things as angels? No humbug intended, but have you ever seen one? Why is it that some otherwise rational people, who would never affirm the existence of demons, have no problem believing in angels? My distinguished panel took a close look at angelology to get a “New Angles on the Angels” on Let's Talk about It. The program was broadcast Friday the 18th of December, but it repeats several times this month, and you can find all my shows archived at the Unity-FM website.

Sooo…..what’s all this annual seasonal brouhaha about angels? In the Bible, God is often seen as distant, like a king on his throne. Not always. There are images of God as the loving father, too. But the king-on-the-throne business seems to get more play. A king doesn’t leave his palace to dabble in the daily affairs of ordinary men and women. He sends messengers to do that, and that is precisely what the word which is usually translated “angel” means in Hebrew. The word is mal’akh, and although the Old Testament book of Malachi is really the book of the messenger. The great Medieval Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides defined angels as “totally disembodied minds…which emanate from God and are the intermediaries between God and all the bodies [objects] here in this world.” Only two angels are given specific names in the Hebrew Bible—Michael and Gabriel—and only in book of Daniel.

Early Christians at first simply appropriated Jewish ideas about angels as messengers. Then the Christian view of angels changed from the angel as a messenger of God to a manifestation of God himself. As time went by, other names were assigned to individual angelic messengers like Raphael, Uriel and Sataniel. Actually, Sataniel—from whom we get the name Satan—started as a good guy, God’s inspector general in Hebrew thought. Check out the books of Job and Zechariah. Sataniel only became “the devil” after several Christian revisions of the storyline, borrowed heavily from Persian, Greek and Roman religion.

By the fifth century, angels had morphed into their traditional characteristics in theology and art—angelic wings and a softer, more feminine look; sometimes in Greek-style armor, more usually in gently flowing robes. A hierarchy of angels and archangels was also created by medieval theologians with too much free time.

So, what about the angels we have heard on high? Messengers, of course, directly drawn from Hebrew mythology. They appear to announce the birth of…well, listen to their own words, faithfully recorded by Luke, who was not an eyewitness:

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them,

“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

“Do not be afraid…”

Right. Just ignore this army of supernatural beings floating here in the sky overhead and the heavenly light radiating from us to the illuminate the countryside…I wonder how you and I would respond to that? If we were out under the winter sky somewhere in the country and a great light shined upon you and a loud voice spoke from above—well, I’d assume it was a UFO and I’d run for cover. Unless they seemed nice, then I’d come out of hiding to ask for a ride on their starship.


There is a deep significance in this scene. Look at the audience the angels chose to address. The birth of the messiah is announced as “news of great joy for all the people” and the listeners are ordinary working folks, not the wealthy, the educated elite, or the politically or spiritually powerful. This is a significant statement from the pen of Luke. Jesus was not born for the privileged few; he came for “all the people.” Even the angels are jazzed about the possibilities:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

But there is another first Christmas story in the Bible that shows the message of Jesus is not just a way to comfort for the powerless. If Luke’s nativity scene shows the importance of Jesus to the common people, Matthew’s story of the first Noel reaches into the center of earthly power.

Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

Notice how the scene shifts? No longer are we looking at peasants on the hillsides, shivering in the cold night. No longer is the messiah announced as “good news and great joy for all the people…” of the world. Now we stand in the court of the king, listening to wealthy, powerful men of a distant land who have come looking for a messiah who is the newborn King of the Jews. King Herod calls his “chief priests and scribes” together in the war room of the palace; the governmental and religious leadership meets in emergency session to determine how to respond to the crisis.

The visitors were not really described by as kings in Matthew’s gospel. The word used is magi, which corresponds with Zoroastrian priest. Zoroaster (also, Zarathustra) was a Persian prophet who lived in the 6th century B.C.E. His followers today, who live mostly in India, are called Parsis because of their Persian connection. Zoroaster taught monotheism to his followers and gave the world the concept of a power of evil, an adversary to God who struggled against the good. He also spoke of heavenly signs that would accompany the beginning of a new spiritual era to come. It makes sense that the wise men would come from the East, seeking an earthly manifestation of these prophecies when the signs were right in the heavens. None of this has any known historical basis, but it makes a great story.

What we have in the magi and their visit to Herod is the confrontation of worldly power by the incarnation of Jesus in Bethlehem. If Jesus is the promised one, what does that say to rulers and politicians? If Jesus brings a message of peace and hope, where does the power reside—in God, or wise men, or inspired utterance? Does the authority to declare what is truth and falsehood necessarily come from established power, a fact taken for granted in times of absolute rulers?

Jesus born for the poor people; Jesus born for the wealthy, the powerful, and the highly educated. Does this not suggest that God speaks to all levels of human society in a manner commensurate with the listener’s ability to comprehend? Does this not further suggest that all social and political and economic strata need the message of hope and love which the birth of the Christ child conveys?

This Christmas when looking to the sky, or listening to the news media, remember…remember…remember…Jesus was born for the poor shepherds on a cold winter’s night that was so deep…and also for King of Orient, and Occident, and the democratically elected regimes of today. His birth proclaims hope: there are higher standards than expedience. His birth proclaims Divine Order: despite appearances to the contrary, God is working in through and as the people of every nation and race and religion, to bring world peace and good will. This Christmas is a good time to allow yourself the luxury of optimism, to believe all is well, to expect the best, to believe with your whole heart that humanity is destined to solve its petty squabbles and move forward as one united species to explore the Cosmos.

Look to the heavens…listen for the angels….watch for the star…

_________________________________________________________________

Matthew's Nativity

1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 "And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.' " 7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.


Luke's Nativity

1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. 8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Joining the Advent Conspiracy

"The story of (Jesus) Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas? What if Christmas became a world-changing event again? Welcome to Advent Conspiracy."

(above excerpt from http://www.adventconspiracy.org )


Great Idea--"The Advent Conspiracy"

I have just learned about a new "movement" among Christian churches this holiday season. It's called "The Advent Conspiracy," and seems to cut across deominational and theological lines. Although it is worded in traditional language, I am convinced many Unity folks and other Metaphysical Christians will find its proposal intriguing.

There are four basic principles which motivate the revolution called for by the Advent Conspiracy (and they really aren't all that revolutionary or conspiratorial):

Worship Fully
Spend Less
Give More
Love All

1. This year, move forward to a renewed celebration of God-with-us, which is what the birth of the Christ is all about.

2. Dial back on the expensive presents. Of course, give nice gifts--make some, buy some, recycle some. But cut back on the compulsive need to outspend last year's trappings. (Even Jesus only got gold, myrrh and frankincense once.)

3. Give some of the savings to people and organizations who really need it. With 10% of the nation unemployed and charitable giving spiraling downward, it isn't hard to find somplace to circulate the good by giving from a center of generosity and love. Prosperity begins by letting go, which does not require maxing out the credit cards.

4. Love your family and friends by paying attention, the greatest gift of all. Send the people you love a personally written note telling them why they're special to you. It will take longer than a shopping spree at Wal-Mart if you actually write to everybody. They will treasure your note--or the memory of it--long after the sweater you were going to purchase is faded and threadbare.

So, there it is. Commercialism is not a bad thing, but every good thing can be abused by over-use. This Christmas, why not join the Advent Conspiracy and de-criminalize modest gift-giving, set up a revolutionary council of note-writers, and share the good with those who need a little more Christmas cheer. Individuals, charitable organizations, churches--you find the place you are called to support. This is NOT a tithe, but it is pure prosperity principle in practice.

Here's a thought: You can give a flock of ducks to a needy family across the globe for $20.00 through the Heifer Project. Here's the URL, below, or you can just go to www.heifer.org and paddle obver to the ducks page.

http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.2667667/?msource=kw205&gclid=CKrhr4nC2Z4CFRQhDQodew0qdw

And find a house of worship to celebrate the light of this holiday season with a community of faith. Join the Advent Conspiracy, and we can change the world.

How to Live Confidently Until You Die (Maybe Longer)

‘Tis but a day we sojourn here below,
And all the gain we get is grief and woe,
Then, leaving our life's riddles all unsolved,
And burdened with regrets, we have to go.

The Rubaiyat by Omak Khayyam (c. 1120 C.E.)


Darkness Approaches

How does an aging Boomer find a lifestyle which is both meaningful and enjoyable in the final phase of life? Both Omar Khayyam and the unknown preacher of Ecclesiastes complained about the futility of a life that ends too soon and accomplishes too little. The preacher called life vanity of vanities. “All things are wearisome; more than one can express.”[1]

Why did anyone go to the trouble of hand-copying and preserving such ancient downers? Perhaps cathartic negativity appeals to the human mind because our species has endured wars and rumors of wars throughout history. We Boomers are a fairly cynical generation, the people who snickered as Queen chanted, “Another one bites the dust!” Yet we never felt the lyrics applied to us personally, never suspected the dust-biting was coming our way.


Oh, certainly, everybody knew we were mortal, that nothing was certain but death and taxes. Then the Reagan revolution told us that taxes were optional, and science began to find ways to prolong life…so who knows? We jogged. We watched our weight and took multi-vitamins. We gained weight and fought smoking addiction, not to mention lingering drug relapses here and there. AIDS terrified everyone for a decade or so, then medicine removed the inexorable death sentence from HIV-related illness, and we relaxed into fantasies about immortality once more, even while people continued to die.


But death is coming. It took some people of our generation who should still be here. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Ricky Nelson, Karen Carpenter, John Lennon, John Denver, Jim Henson, Steve Erwin, my half-brother, Darryl John Carter, the list goes on. Statisticians estimate we’ll all be gone by the 2060s.


My own existential awareness of death looming distant occurred in one of the most youth-centered locales imaginable. I was teaching eighth grade at Spirit Creek Middle School in Hephzibah, Georgia, a few miles southwest of the azalea-splashed city of Augusta, known for the Masters’ golf tournament. Students had gone to Unified Arts and Physical Education, leaving our hallway empty and giving us teacher-time to prepare lessons or play catch-up on the ten million other tasks required in public schools. I remember thinking about the strange silence of that wing of the building. Suddenly, I flashed on the idea that, just as UA/PE happens every day with clockwork regularity, so will I follow my ancestors into the approaching shadows of death. It was an organic realization, not an abstract concept. It wasn’t about death as a subject to be considered; it was about death as an unavoidable event which I must one day experience. Not, “All people are mortal and will one day die,” but rather, “You are mortal; you are going to die. The big dirt nap approaches. Everything will go black, and that will be it. Lights out. Sayonara. Another one bites the dust. You. Die. Gone. Blackness.”


It scared the bejesus out of me. I rushed into the hallway, desperate to see someone alive, wishing my irascible middle schoolers would return from UA/PE, so that some of their immortality would rub off. Of course, it did. Activity spun me away from the brink, and the only panic attack of my life passed into legend. Telling you about it helps, too. Community is a healing experience.


These thoughts are not designed to bum you out, just to make it clear that we are all in this together. Life’s end approaches, and the only question facing us is how shall we live while approaching the still-distant but unavoidable dark wall of death? We may live beyond it. Most great religions insist we do. But we cannot avoid passing through its dark gate.

We’ll begin then with a short list of thoughts about living with confidence and joy until you enter the final darkness which leads to…more light? (More about that later. But relax. I told you this book doesn’t peddle a religious philosophy.) So, before we plunge into the ten paths to wisdom from East and West, here are ten starter ideas from a former middle school teacher.

Ten Starters for the Last Phase of (Mortal) Life

1. Get ready. Make eschatological preparations, then savor every day. You have promises to keep, even after you’re dead. Do the legal stuff, take care of your survivors as best you can, then forget it forever.

2. Get back to school. Go learn stuff, no matter how old you are. Nothing stimulates the brain like learning. Even if it’s online, or offered at your house of worship, or requires home tutoring.

3. Get romantic. I misspoke, above. Something does stimulate the brain like learning. Stay as sexually active as you and the pharmacist can achieve. Keep love alive.

4. Get complaint-free. Find solutions, not villains. Try to live complaint free. Practice positive affirmations. Don’t try to prove you’re right and they’re wrong. There are very few people on this planet who are able to stop in the middle of an argument and say, with sincerity, “You know, I get it now. I am wrong and you are right.” No matter how “right” you may be in some abstract sense, that ain’t gonna happen, dude. Don’t try to find out whose at fault. The blame game is like playing catch with a nuclear hand grenade. No matter where it lands, all players get zapped when it goes off. Give people enough emotional space to turn around, to cross over to your side. Appeal to their humanitarian tendencies. Most people will work with you if approached with a request for help. An old Army sergeant once said to me, “Ask, and ye shall receive. Demand, and you can go fuck yourself.”

5. Get political. Party organizations love people like us. We generally have more discretionary income, more free time to volunteer, and are better educated about the issues than the younger generations.

6. Get theological. Study the great thinkers of your religious tradition and compare them with writers from other faiths or denominations. Knowledge is connectional, and critical analysis of comparative ideas about God, life, and eternity is always appropriate. The objective here is to clarify and explore, not to prove who’s right. Earlier in life, our generation excelled at letting people “do their own thing,” but we lost some of that flexibility in the last decades of the twentieth century. Perhaps this is a good time to pick up Sartre and Heinlein and Jonathan Livingston Seagull once more.

7. Get spiritual. Spirituality is a belief system in action. Pray & meditate; return to church or find a new one. You’re looking at the doorway to eternity, so you might as well see what others have said about the journey. Do something from your religious tradition. (If you’ve never dabbled in spirituality, or haven’t recently, you might be surprised how cool some of them are today!) Try working my Eight Scenes in a Peaceful Life exercise, or do variation on the vision quest.

8. Get comfortable. Work as long as you want, but be prepared to phase down later. Do less as needed. You get to say when “later” occurs. You might never fully retire, and that would be okay, too, if you’re enjoying the work. Or you might hang it up at sixty-two. The choice is yours, based on personal preferences, economic considerations and health issues. Learn to relax without guilt. No matter whether you’re working full time, part-time, or fully retired, playing isn’t sinful, indolent, or unproductive—it’s a vital, brain-saving activity. Enjoy simpler pleasures. Go fish. And playing cards helps, too. Watch sporting events, live and on TV. See good movies, read good books. Cultivate a love for art, music, gardening—anything that takes you out of the humdrum to a higher place.

9. Get creative. Find meaningful creative activities. Write that book, or your memoirs. Get online, or expand your online life.

10. Get them together. It takes a community. Gather with your extended family for meals regularly. Celebrate everything possible, especially holidays. Also, learn to let others do for you. Especially your children.


“Give Peace a Chance…”

Our generation, which produced unsung military heroes and a grassroots anti-war movement, will leave behind a paradoxical legacy of service and rebellion, competence and corruption. Richard M. Nixon was far from an ideal leader, but his rush to infamy began with a rather thoughtful speech at the 1968 Republican Convention. As he accepted the nomination for president, Nixon reached across generations and told Americans to stop shouting and start listening to each other. Most of the television audience had no clue that Nixon would be listening via illegal wiretaps, but the point is well taken regardless of how poorly he followed his own advice.

As I cross the line into senior citizenry status, the last thing I want in the last third of my life is to go around nursing grudges or feeling superiority. I don’t have to agree with people or approve of the choice they make in order to treat everyone with dignity and compassion. Confident living begins with a commitment to center oneself in a life of compassion, because all people are worthy of respect. It is joyful way to live in the last phase of life.

So, if you are ready after sampling some preliminary ideas, let’s get busy learning how to relax, let go, and keep active in the golden years to come. The long autumn of life stretches ahead of us like a color-splashed forest path, extending as far as the mind’s eye can see. Take the hand of someone you love, and let’s all go there together.

______________________________________________________

[1] Ecclesiastes 1:2, 8. If you ever want to get seriously depressed, read the first chapter carefully. Had the author been a member of my generation, somebody would have taken him aside and said, “You’re bumming me out, man…”

Giving Thanks for Atheists and Conservatives

[The excerpt following comes from my input in an e-mail exchange among friends at Unity Village.]

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Atheism is a challenge that comes from a direction in which many Unity people are not facing. We tend to stare down Christian conservatism, but to be attacked from the left is a shocker.

Most atheists I've known are anti-YHWH, the god of the Hebrew Bible, and have never given serious consideration to rejecting Thor, Siva, or Allah. Ironically, even in their rejection of the primitive doctrine of God found in some parts of the biblical canon, atheists (and to some extent agnostics) pay indirect homage to the anthropomorphic model by setting it up as the norm. This is like saying, "I want to deny the existence of God--lead me to the Bible, and I'll take Him on!"

Nor have most atheists rejected the concept of value. There are ideas, practices, and relationships to which humans--even atheistic ones--assign value. If there is no divine thread weaving everything together at some supersensible level, what gives anything intrinsic value? Are not the drunk in the gutter and Mother Theresa equally pointless? In what case is love better than apathy, if there is no connectedness above my narrow needs? The fact is, some principles seem to be universals--love, order, imagination, faith, etc....One could mention all the 12 powers, plus a few unmentioned by Mr. Fillmore, like peace and steadfastness. (Aside: Ned Kelly tells me the power of Strength has this quality. He may be right, but I read Strength more as having the resources to do something, whereas Steadfastness speaks of tenacity.)

In any event, the fact that universal values seem to be discernible has sometimes been called the moral argument for the existence of God. Immanuel Kant took this position, among others.
According to Dostoyevsky, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible." The fact that humans instinctively know that NOT everything is permissible, suggests that some transcendent Source of value exists. [1]

One might further argue, as a metaphysical aside, that the above is also a decent argument to see that transcendent Source as the true God. Isn't it possible to see God as the ongoing Process by which the Cosmos outpictures and from (and in) which we continue to emerge? Substance is God energy, said Mr. Fillmore. God energy arises from Principle, which outpictures as the creative force at work in and as the Cosmos. That is not far from a full-blown process theology.

Anyway, I think the real issue about atheism goes to the frustration that thinking/feeling people have experienced when confronted by conservative Christianity. Most atheists I have know are simply fed up with delusional theologies that try to make people think like we did before the scientific age. The Young Earth Theory; refusal of scientific evidence on everything from nuclear wastes to despoiling the environment to climate change; insistence that homosexuality is a choice rather than a biologically determined orientation; rejection of women's full equality; intellectual incompetence by refuting historical-critical studies of the Bible....the list goes on. No wonder, if the conservatives have defined their form of Christianity as THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, that thinking men and women are saying, "Forget it. I'm spiritual, not religious."

There have been days when I have heard radio preachers hammering away about what Jesus wants and how you can get saved by following Jesus (actually, their narrowly defined version of Jesus)--well, sometimes I have fantasized about chucking the Bible out the window and joining the Hindus. (After all, I like Vishnu and Ganesh and love curry with rice.)

But then, graciously, the historian arises within me, and I remember... Jesus had the same problems with the conservatives of his time. And Mohammed fled Mecca to Medina to save his neck from the conservatives (albeit pagans) in his day. And Baha'i prophet Baha'u'llah was imprisoned 40 years by Islamic leaders.

The man of Nazareth himself lamented that a prophet is never honored close to home. Jay Wells more recently has summarized the unavoidable problem for all of us who venture into the center of the discussion about Ultimate Concerns:

“Jesus faced opposition. In every crowd, someone questioned his motives and sought to discredit him. If it happened to him, it will happen to you.” [2]

So, I take a deep breath and, from deep within my Pennsylvania Dutch/ German Reformed/ Unitarian-Universalist/ Eternally Unity soul, say to my conservative Christian brothers and sisters: "You do not have the authority to speak for Jesus Christ, and you certainly don't speak for me."

And to atheists and agnostics, "Keep stirring the kettle. It makes a better soup."

The atheists keep me honest; the fundamentalists keep me sharp. So, this holiday season, I give thanks to the Irreligious Left and Hyper-Religious Right. They seem to be part of that pesky thing called Divine Order in my life...

Unity and the Sacraments

[The following discussion continues comments made in e-mails at Unity Institute and opens the floor for comments and critical analysis.]

My definition of a sacrament is any event (or place) during which the presence of God becomes more readily discernible (Glimpses of Truth). This is a broadening of Martin Luther's basic idea that God's real presence can be discovered in the communion elements, even though there is no more "God" in the bread and cup than anyplace else. It's the conscious awareness of the omnipresent God which rendered some activity a "sacrament"--which by the way is a Latinized translation of the original Greek word mysterion, i.e., mystery, or sacred awareness beyond rational thought.

Since Bishop John Shelby Spong hails from a "high church" tradition (Anglicanism = Episcopalianism in the USA), the sacraments are much more important for him than they would be for, say, someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose background was the "low church" tradition of the American Baptist Church. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Anglicans and others of the "high church" traditions consider the sacraments to be the central act of worship; without holy communion there is no worship in those churches. Unity represents a "low church" tradition in that we have never held the sacraments to be so central, except for one..."The Silence" might arguably be considered our central sacrament, as Ray Nelson remarked in class yesterday.

Anyway, we cannot simply dismiss our of hand the ideas about discerning the presence of God through prayer, ritual, and tradition, and since so many Unity people emerge from (or still participate in) "high church" traditions, it seems to be a good discussion to have. Manmade rituals are attempts to perceive the divine; the discussion might fruitfully consider what works, and what doesn't, for people in the 21st century.

Your thoughts?

Book Launch!

GOOD QUESTIONS:


Answering Letters from the Edge of Doubt

by Rev Thomas Shepherd, D.Min.

I look too fat in the picture, but who cares? Hoo-ray! My new book is out...well, it's supposed to be out by Thursday, October 29. There's a link to a facebook page below that gives information about the book. On to the particulars...
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Book launch events will begin with an autography party and short readings, 4:30-6:00 pm, on Monday, November 2, at the Unity Village Bookstore, 1901 NW Blue Parkway, Unity Village, MO. Light refreshments will be served. .
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This is the first new non-fiction book for me in almost a decade. The work is based on 15 years of Q&A columns in Unity Magazine. Because it's a letter-by-letter format, Good Questions makes good bedtime reading. In fact, it's ideal for any time you have just a few minutes to read. (My wife predicts it will quickly become the #1 published work found in Unity & New Thought bathrooms across the English-speaking world. Some folks would say that's where it rightly belongs...but let's not go there.)
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Foreword
by Rosemary Fillmore Rhea

I'm especially honored that Rosemary Fillmore Rhea, grandaughter to Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore, wrote an embarrassingly complimentary foreword to the book. Her grandfather was the first Unity columnist to write a Q&A column, followed by Dr. Marcus Bach and finally me. Rosemary knew all three of us, and she is gracious enough to speak kindly about my efforts in following the footsteps of those distinguished predecessors.
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Sunday, November 8 - Unity Village Chapel Services
I will be speaking at the Unity traditional service held at the Silent Unity Chapel, Sunday, November 8. My topic will be "Good Questions" (surprise!) and there will be a book signing immediately following the service.

Will I see you at the book launch events?

Here's the facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=189584842844

Limitations on the Ethics of Nonviolence

A common response among some New Thought leaders to people who raise ethical issues with political overtones is to quote or paraphrase the words of Gary Simmons in his book The ‘I’ of the Storm: "There is no one and nothing against you."[1] The “no one and nothing is against you” premise seems to flow from a belief that God is all there is, therefore actions to oppose perceived evil in the world are unnecessary and counter-productive. An action or idea is neither good nor bad; it is what it is.[2] While understanding the positions taken by others is necessary to any kind of productive dialogue, the claim that all ethical propositions are created equal is a trapdoor into antinomianism.[3]

History is benchmarked by the tombstones of evil practices: African slavery in the New World, genocide against the indigenous peoples of North and South America by European immigrants, Nazism, Stalinism, Jim Crow laws and segregation in the USA. All of these were hotly debated and people stood passionately on both sides of the issues. Today we can understand only with difficulty how any moral person could argue in favor of slavery, which testifies to the triumph of truth over error belief. Slavery had to be defeated, which meant some people who passionately stood for slavery also had to be defeated because they were wrong. Not necessarily killed, abused or imprisoned—but clearly defeated.

Both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood that existential evil must be opposed, not accommodated. Whether there is any actual metaphysical force of evil in the cosmos is clearly irrelevant when slave owners are hunting runaways with bloodhounds or their spiritual descendants are unleashing police dogs on peaceful civil rights protesters to obstruct integration. While the non-violent protests of Indians for freedom from British rule and civil rights marchers against racial injustice in the USA and South Africa were successful, some ethicists believe there are times when evil (error-belief) becomes so powerful, dominant and ruthless that the only appropriate response is violent resistance. Marches ended segregation; it took a bloody Civil War to end slavery.

Some would argue that circumstances change the kind of response which is appropriate. Gandhi and King were essentially using the power of public opinion against a governmental system which saw itself as lawful and just. When Americans saw the water hoses and police dogs unleashed against children and peaceful adult demonstrators, the backlash of shame did much to sweep aside decades of prejudicial public policies. However, peaceful protestors marching against a totalitarian regime which has no such moral scruples to embarrass might be considered pointless, as Chinese pro-democracy demonstrators discovered in their 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Estimates of eight hundred deaths and countless arrests point to the power of repressive, amoral regimes. Whether China will come to democracy by evolution or revolution—if freedom comes at all—has yet to be determined. Examples of this phenomenon of violent oppression are sadly too common.

During World War II, German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the long journey from pacifism to tyrannicide. He wrote to friends:

“If we claim to be Christians, there is no room for expediency. Hitler is the anti-Christ. Therefore we must go on with our work and eliminate him." [4]

The assassination plot failed; Bonhoeffer he was hanged by special order of Heinrich Himmler. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it was The Cost of Discipleship.

The problem with armed resistance to ethical and moral ideas is that as soon as one raises a weapon to overthrow some perceived evil system, the pattern for future revolution has been reinforced. The scandal that Americans would carry weapons to presidential events, reinforced by a national insanity about gun rights that makes the USA the most heavily armed population on earth, threatens the future with endless cycles of insurrection. Democracy only works if the system of representative government is supported by the vast majority when one’s favorites are out of power.

This is a complicated maze of issues involving war and peace, individual rights, pacifism, nonviolence, just war theory, self-defense, the right of revolution, opposition to flagrant tyranny, and the very nature of life as a drama of metaphysical unfoldment. Questions abound:

If the Christ was in Hitler, was it still “right” to plot his death?

How many millions of people would have been spared untold misery if a lone gunman had taken out the arch-tyrant?

How can we prevent that model of extreme response to an extreme circumstance from becoming the wish-fulfillment fantasy of everyone who opposes the powers that be?

What are the limits of peaceful protest, spiritual action, resistance to injustice?

If God really has everything under control, why bother to do anything?

Shall we meditate and await the Second Coming, or world peace by gradual warming of the hearts of humanity, or the supernova coming in five billion years which will end the world? Even so come, Lord Jesus.

The questions are not friendly. The answers are not painless. There are people and things against us. God is inside all of these.

Sometimes, I wish life were simpler, but it is what it is…

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[1] Gary Simons, The ‘I’ of the Storm, quoted at http://www.itstime.com/feb2003.htm (accessed 10-16-09).
[2] “It is what it is.” Another ubiquitous saying in New Thought circles, apparently this cliché goes back at least to the late 1940’s. http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/01/it-is-what-it-is-or-is-it.html (accesed 10-16-09).
[3] Antinominanism - The belief that ethical values are entirely person-centered; nothing counts except one’s feelings in any given circumstance.
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Paul Johnson A History of Christianity (NY: Atheneum, 1980), p. 494.

My grandfather, William Henry Quell (1911-1974), was a Socialist. You can tell from his picture (left) that he obviously had sinister designs on the fabric of American society at large. He and my grandmother, Esther Marie Quell, raised me. He is the only father figure I've ever known, and I gotta tell you....he wasn't very good at being a Dad. He was working all the time! He worked nights, and then he drove school buses during the day. He came home between morning and afternoon bus runs to catch some sleep, but he was always walking out the door with his lunchpail and I wanted a Dad to play catch with me. He didn't even talk that much. I thought he was....well...stupid.
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Only after he had been dead a decade did I realize that English wasn't his first language; he was urban Pennsylvania Dutch. Not an Amish black hat riding a carriage with a whip in hand and five hundred acres of planted corn, Pop Quell was a mechanic's helper at the Reading, PA, Bus Company. He never even made mechanic. He was a seventh-grade dropout, a man who struggled to read the evening newspaper and repeated himself frequently when he thought he had said something witty.
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Pop Quell wasn't stupid, rather he was in the purest sense of the word ignorant, meaning he wasn't well-educated in an academic setting and therefore had limited resourcs to understand things like American history, politics, literature, art, or philosophy. It wasn't his fault, and it certainly wasn't due to laziness. William Henry Quell left school at twelve years old to go to work, not just because the family needed extra income, but because that is what working class boys did in the factory towns during the 1920's.
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And he was definitely a Socialist. Well, to be accurate, he had voted Socialist whenever a major Socialist candidate was running for local office. In 1927 Reading elected Mayor J. Henry Stump, who served several terms as the city's only Socialist mayor. When I was a boy in the 1950's, people still spoke fondly of "Stumpy" and his pipe-smoking, common-man politics.
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Pop Quell didn't have a clue what socialism meant. I know this because we spoke about it on occasion. He simply said, "The Socialists always did more for the working man." That was his political philosophy in a sentence. He didn't care what labels people wore; he wanted to know what they would do for "the working man." Working women will identify with this philosophy, too.
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My grandfather was a bread-and-butter Socialist; he didn't know and didn't care what political philosophy motivated people. He wanted a living wage, and Social Security, and un employment insurance, and a chance to work hard and retire with dignity.
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I was moving back to Reading in June of 1974, having dropped out of seminary in Denver in the hope of finding a teaching job in my home town. While I was driving across country, my grandfather died of a heart attack on my 28th birthday, June 10, 1974. He was just shy of 63, and had not survived to collect social security.
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He had a union job and good benefits. But I wonder what might have happened if his nation had adopted universal health care as a fundamental right for all. Would our excellent family physician, Dr. Martin Luther Spangler, D.O., have been more inclined to order tests that may have discovered the blockage that eventually cause his heart attack? Who knows.
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Pop was a nominal Socialist for all the right reasons. Not for political philosophy or some vaugue idea of a workers' paradise. He wanted bread-and-butter benefits for the working man...and woman.
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Somewhere between Marxist Communism (which does NOT work) and laissez-faire capitalism (which also does not work), there must be a responsible, sober, econonically plausible middle ground that will allow the greatest nation in the world to provide health care and social services to its working people.

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My grandfather worked two jobs--cleaning city buses by night and driving school buses by day--and I never had a chance to tell him thank you. I realized recently that the reason he was working so hard was to put me through high school, a level that must have seemed like college to him. Now I have a doctorate, and America does not have universal health care. Our provided-for generation needs to step up and do something for the Pop Quells out there who are holding down multiple jobs to raise grandchildren and wondering why the politicans don't do more for the working man and woman.

"To Boldly Go There...Carefully"

The Lyceum at Unity Village, MO
Sep 30 - Oct 3, 2009

Lyceum 2009 theme - ..
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“Science and Religion: An Evolving Dialogue”

“Before language, before ritual, before self-consciousness itself, our hominid ancestors probably looked to the night sky with wonder. We did not come down from the trees to sit on the ground. Perhaps we came down to find a meadow and get a better look at the stars.”

. ...................................................................................................TW Shepherd
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Abstract of my upcoming Lyceum 2009 Lecture

“To Boldly Go There…Carefully: Theological Ethics after First Contact with Extra-terrestrial Civilizations”

A paper to be delivered at Lyceum 2009 by Thomas William Shepherd, D.Min.

My Lyceum lecture this year will discuss the new Copernican revolution which is coming after the religions and secular philosophies of humanity begin to realize how incredibly small and relatively insignificant the human race appears when viewed against the backdrop of deep space exploration. Specifically, humanity may have to reinvent its most cherished myths when our descendents encounter races from what is probably an ancient, complex, multi-species galactic civilization. This is not the fluff of science fiction but the hard science of astronomers, futurists and other serious theoreticians. The very likely existence of a myriad of intelligent lifeforms in our galaxy alone has been addressed seriously by scientists—to include chemists, physicists and, yes, exiobiologists— and popularized by the late Dr. Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series on PBS.

However easily those of us who have grown up with Star Trek and Star Wars may embrace the concept of a multi-species Cosmos, the potential discovery of intelligent non-human life raises serious challenges which have not yet been fully addressed by the religions of humanity, especially traditional Christianity.

The paper will begin by identifying three currently unfounded assumptions which shape and inform the topic to be presented:

1) Life exists on a multitude of worlds in billions of galaxies, to include our galaxy.
2) Some of those life forms are intelligent.
3) Some day humans will learn how to travel the vast distances between Earth and other biologically friendly planets in a reasonably short span of time.

From this starting point within a post-modern circle of faith, the paper will proceed to a brief overview of the intellectual history of the discussion about the implications of extraterrestrial life, which has been ongoing for at least twenty-five centuries, then proceed to consider how the “new” view of Cosmos affects central Christian doctrines such as the Trinity.

Finally, my paper will look at the ethics of First Contact and attempt to sketch the outlines of an environmental-ecological theology of deep space exploration which allows human development while avoiding the pitfalls of unchecked, conquistador-style exploitation by applying a modified version of science fiction visionary Gene Roddenberry’s “Prime Directive” to all human-alien interactions.

The paper will conclude with an assessment of both the need and longing for exploration of the Cosmos: “When searching for the deepest meanings of existence, humanity appears hard-wired to look toward space.”

This is Iran's Selma

Today, June 24, 2009, the Iranian regime has shown its utter contempt for democratic values and the free speech rights of their people. There was a time that a nation run by religious hooligans and corrupt politicans could have simply shut down the media and done whatever it wanted without fear of the brutality seeping outside the country, but the Iranian tyrants have miscalculated the free flow of information in the twenty-first century. In a live CNN report via cell phone by a young woman in Tehran, the world learned that black clad Iranian security police waded into the crowd of peaceful demonstrators and beat, clubbed and shot them. There are reports of people being shoved off bridges and security police "chopping people like meat" with axes, blood everywhere.

What immediately comes to mind is the Civil Rights movement in the USA and the "Bloody Sunday" incident at Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. Non-violent demonstrators planned to march from Selma to the State Capitol at Montgomery. They made it only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the Dallas County Sheriff 's Department and Alabama Stae Troopers awaited them on horseback and in military formations. "In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful deomonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips. Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. civil rights movement." One woman, Amelia Boynton, was beaten and gassed almost to death in full light of the national news agencies.[1]

The horrific images shocked the nation and deeply embarrassed the people of the South. It was the beginning of the end to officially sanctioned segregation of public facilities and a great step forward toward America truly becoming one nation, under God.

Whereas the majority of Southern whites watched in horror at this violation of their Christian values, members of radical groups such as the KKK saw the protestors as agents of the devil, deserving what they got. It is important to note that the KKK considers itself a Christian organization, hence the burning cross as their symbol. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Christian minister, but his take on the faith of Jesus was infinitely distant from the hatemongering racicism that brought violence to the demonstrators on Bloody Sunday.

Iran is another case. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum; those who profess to be the leaders of Islam are standing behind the hand of state power in its suppression of the rights of free people. Peaceful protest is met with brutality, and that violence is seen as the will of God. Shame on the religious leaders who pervert Islam into a religion of hate and fear. You are the KKK in a turban, and you have no more right to speak for Islam than the Imperial Wizard of the Klan can speak for Jesus Christ.

Fortunately, everyone in Tehran seems to have a cell phone with a camera, and the world knows what is going on in the streets. Everywhere from the Russian arctic to Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina, people are hunched over computer screens reading translated versions of the news about the beastiality of the Iranian regime. Pictures have been released to the world. This is their Selma. God is Great, indeed.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
(accessed 06-24-09)

Walking with Iran, Celebrating the Tiger Gods

President Barack Obama has begun to turn the ship of state from its collision course with the Islamic world. Only a wise student of history with self-confident moral courage could do what the President is attempting to do. He has ended an era of confrontation and posturing and begun the process of educating America about its new leadership role in a post-modern world.

What many Americans and Iranians share in common is ignorance about socio-cultural factors that drive us. Metaphysical nuances aside, everyone is born in a world he or she did not create. The culture we have is the culture we learned as infants. For breakfast today, you probably did not sit in a lotus position eating rice and coriander sauce with your fingers. If you've been following my Sri Lankan Journal (blogs below), you may recall that's the way they greet the morning. If a child is born in Idaho, she is statistically unlikely to be raised a Hindu. Move the birth site to Mumbai, and the numbers reverse themselves. All the evil-doers in the American slave era were conveniently born in the Old South, while my Civil War era Yankee ancestors stood for God, country, and freedom. Moving to Georgia, I got a much different picture of the War of Northern Aggression. It was a hopeless but noble stuggle for independence against a powerful, tyrannical central government that wanted to control and tax the good people of Dixie until our way of life was gone with the wind...

We need to grow up and realize that there are no tiger gods where there are no tigers. Christianity is not the one true faith; neither is Islam. The American way of life, which was good enough for Superman, may not work for people from other lands. The point is, people must be able to choose how they want to organize their societies, and we cannot go around the globe trying to make everyone into suburbanized white Protestants. There are some common causes about which humanity seems unified: Children should be safe and educated; women and men should experience some degree of equality (although the jury is stuill out on what that means); humans should not own, kill or mistreat other humans; public policy must not be motivated by hatred toward any group; and the best way to solve problem is through dialogue and reconciliation, not force of arms.

When did we we adopt this John Wayne foreign policy that characterized the Bush Administration? Was it all about 9-11? Hardly. The advice we Baby Boomers got from the moguls of popular culture was, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Two decades of theatergoers cheered the five-part Death Wish movies (1974-94), when an avenging Charles Bronson killed a series of bad men for the best of reasons. Perhaps we inherited this trait from the movie stars our parents had adored, heroes who met the bad guys in the street at high noon and gunned them down.

John Wayne, whose action-movie career spanned generations, was one of my boyhood favorites, too. Although he had an appealing personality both in film and real life, the Duke’s onscreen characters displayed a consistently violent behavioral repertoire, offering neither empathy for human frailties nor reconciliation with one’s enemies.

A goodly number of young radicals in our generation adopted the modus operandi of the crusading hero by deciding that bringing down the system would transform the world. Beyond ordinary drop-out, get-high hippies, we produced the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Weather Underground Organization, and the Youth International Party (Yippies). These and other groups advocated everything from forming anti-establishment communal refuges to a total revolution and seizing the reins of government. There was a lot of shouting at the meetings, mostly directed against the Vietnam War in general and the Johnson administration in particular. Since a fair number of the anti-war disturbances occurred on University campuses, there was also a significant amount of railing against the educational establishment. Some of the furor escalated because the Establishment—our parents of the WWII generation—responded with slap-down disciplinary measures when their Boomer children protested against the icons of the elder generation, i.e., down with the schools, the military, the government, and conventional morality.

In the 1970 protest comedy Getting Straight, Elliot Gould plays a Vietnam veteran who returns to college for his master’s degree and gets swept up into the culture of chaos developing on American campuses. Near the end of the film, Gould’s character meets with campus administrators during a student riot. They observe a young man rampaging through the halls, breaking things. Gould accuses the faculty “adults” of transforming this student from a peaceful kid, who previously only wanted to get laid, into a raving lunatic who now wants to kill.

It is an overstatement, of course, and inappropriately dismisses the responsibility of the rioters for their behavior, but Gould’s veteran has a point. When people feel they have no recourse to achieve worthwhile goals by peaceful ends, they will often resort to violence, sometimes violence which is haphazard and heartbreaking. That is why the sex-driven young man in Getting Straight became a violent protestor. That is also why the 9-11 terrorists flew their planes into buildings full of people whom they did not know, praying "God is Great!" before they died.

It is long past due that an American leader should understand the complex forces which motivate godly people to do ungodly deeds. It is not simply about good and evil; that was the chief error in the thinking of the previous administration. In American history, good people owned slaves, who were good people themselves; good people fire-bombed the cities of Germany and dropped two nukes on Japan; good people protested the Vietnam War, while other good people marched off to fight it, obeying their country's call. All people are basically good, but in the long and bloody history of the world circumstances have often impelled us to do ungodly things for the highest reasons.

Someone has to blow the whistle and say, "Enough!" It's time for humanity to grow up. I am encouraged that America has finally elected someone who understands the nuances of the real world. It's long overdue that a grown-up should lead us, even a young one. Hold your breath; the ship is turning, slowly but steadily, away from the rocks of ethnocentrism to a new consciosuness of the connectional nature of human life in the post-modern world. I pray he succeds, for the good of all humanity.