The Boom Heard 'Round the World

In the aftermath of the Marathon bombings the "why" questions are once again swirling around the tempest in the Boston teapot. The allusion to Boston as a place of disputes over dissatisfaction with government is intentional. There is a critical distinction to be made, and there are undeniable similarities to be discovered. What follows must not be mistaken for a defense of what the Boston bombers did; it was a heinous act of cowardly treachery which can never be condoned under any circumstances.

 

Readers who are recent graduates of our public school system may not have heard of the Boston Tea Party. The reference is not to the 21st century political movement, but to an evening of civil disobedience perpetrated in 1773 just prior to the Revolutionary War with England  by people called Patriots who were upset over the King's tax policies pertaining to the American colonies. Dumping the cargo of tea into the harbor would be tantamount to closing every Starbucks across the entire nation. Depriving the merchants of their expected revenue and the citizens of their daily stimulant was a cause for serious concern. In other words, the Patriots made their point loud and clear.

 

Similarly, the Boston bombers made quite a splash, albeit a deadly and (again) inexcusable one. Whereas last week's bombers used violence as their first move, it was the British who precipitated the bloodshed that led to the costly Revolutionary War. Crown troops fired on civilian protesters in 1770 in what has become known as the Boston Masacre and later on an April morning in 1775 it was again the British from Boston who fired the "shot heard 'round the world" and began the war in earnest. It may be putting too fine a point on it to say that the Patriots were simply acting in self defense; after all, the government was merely trying to collect duly levied taxes on commercial goods. The fact remains, the protesters were in a defensive posture, not offensive (in both senses of the term.)

 

So much for the distinction; now to the similarities. It is assumed at this point that the Boston bombers were radical Islamist sympathizers. As such they are a powerless minority chafing under what they consider to be an immoral and oppressive regime against which duty calls them to rage. Likewise the Patriots had exhausted their rights of legal protest under the British monarchy and resorted to civil disobedience as a form of unlawful protest. They were equally powerless (in their eyes at least at first) against the military and commercial global superpower which was England. It is pure speculation, but it would seem likely that on that fateful evening in 1770, someone probably suggested burning the ships in the harbor as opposed to just dumping the cargo. The salient point is that no such violent protest occurred.

 

The history lesson might continue by remembering the actions of a Medieval Roman Catholic Church which slaughtered Islamic radicals who were pushing their way deeper and deeper into European territory. The Crusades, as they were called, were a form of "Christian" jihad: violence against infidels. Then there is the violence perpetrated by the Inquisition where heretics were tortured mercilessly and burned at the stake. It was the church which was responsible for witch trials at which violence was done in the name of God. All of this church sponsored mayhem has been soundly and correctly criticized and disowned by modern Christian apologists as unworthy of believers in any age.

 

It may be nothing more than a curiosity, but it is interesting that both Christianity and Islam were about thirteen centuries old when their theology broke out in violence. To be sure, Mohamed himself supported violence against those who opposed him, but there have been a dozen intervening centuries during which Islam has been spreading more or less peacefully. It is the 20th century Wahhabi theological branch and their political arm, Al-Qaeda, that seem to have rekindled the flame of jihad in our generation. Perhaps the Sufi or another more peaceful sub-set of Muslims will take precedence in the next generation and quell the radical jihadists. Supposedly, the radicals make up only ten percent of all followers of Mohamed.

 

Americans must hear the cry behind the sound of the Boston bomb; not to condone it, but to understand it. There is a broad segment of today's progressive movement (some but not all Democrats) who lobby constantly for near universal tolerance. There are even those who call themselves Christians who are attempting to syncretize Islam and Christianity. It may not be politically correct to say so, but there are some things that must not be tolerated. There are some beliefs that cannot coexist within the framework of American society as we know it. The attempt to embrace radical Islam or appease their demands is tantamount to cradling fire in one's vest. I think Americans understood that on September 12, 2001. Perhaps the boom in Boston reminds us again.

Strange Bedfellows?

I stumbled across a fascinating article on marriage in World Magazine this week. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of The Ruth Institute, a group that promotes traditional marriage, has a unique view of the subject coming from her training as an economist. She reminds us that in traditional society, family is the bedrock on which systems rest and no-fault divorce, cohabitation, sex outside of marriage undermine that foundation. Economically speaking, it has been shown that single parent households make up a large part of the population which lives in poverty. The interesting thing Morse points out is that there are also long range economic consequences to society from children not raised in a traditional family. She asserts, "By one estimate we’re spending over $100 billion dollars a year on dealing with the consequences of out-of-wedlock childbearing and family breakup and family breakdown [through] the criminal justice system and the cost of welfare, health, and education."

Morse implies that the debate over gay marriage overlooks the fundamental basis of marriage saying, "that the essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children, and to one another. That is still true no matter how much you love your gay neighbor or your lesbian classmate." Young people today want so much to be tolerant of diversity that they often ignore the societal and personal costs of the diversity agenda. In a related article in the same issue, World reprints a sermon by John Piper in which he challenges believers to consider the inherent discontinuity of man-man and woman-woman "marriages." Piper suggests something I have long believed, that the family is the truest representation of the imageo dei we can understand. Subtracting one gender from the family unit subtracts from its perfection as the image we are intended to portray.

 

Even more interesting, Morse draws a parallel between the ideology of the political left and the dissolution of the traditional family. "For people on the radical left, equality is their primary value. But it doesn’t even make sense to think about families in terms of equality because babies are never the equal of the parents and men and women can never be equal in the sense of baby-making and child-rearing and development." Morse then draws a shocking parallel with Marxist beliefs that "monogamous marriage as just as oppressive as private property and capitalism." Today's progressives stridently deny any validity in such a connection, but the similarity is undeniable.

 

Hence we discover the strange conjunction of the pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage factions of our society. It does appear to be a cause of the left to demolish the traditional family. Morse compassionately concludes her article by calling believers to prepare to deal with the fallout of a political decision in favor of gay marriage. "Just as the pro-life movement has spent a lot of effort helping women deal with the physical and psychological fallout of abortion, we need to deal with the victims of the sexual revolution and help them to be whole so that we can move forward in society, whatever the political structure may turn out to be." Sound advice. Sounds like what I imagine Jesus would have done.

The Big Question

Welcome to another installment of Professor Verway's answers to questions nobody is asking. Maybe in this case it is a question somebody should be asking, but no one seems to be. First I will pose the question followed by the assumptions which necessarily precede it. Then I will seek to answer to the apparently unasked question, and in the process hopefully make plain why I believe the question needs to be asked and answered.

 

When does a spirit become united with a human body? Assumptions abound. We must first agree that human spirits exist, and that they are in fact bound to human bodies. An underlying assumption is that the human spirit is somehow unique; only humans have human spirits. For my part, there is a further assumption that the term spirit refers to a singular and distinct element within the composition of that entity which we call the human being. I assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that no other life form has a human spirit. I would go so far as to say that no other physical life form has a spiritual component.

 

The assumptions mentioned so far reveal me to be tripartite in my understanding of the composition of human beings. For those unfamiliar with the term, I mean to say that I believe there is a clear distinction between the terms soul and spirit. To clarify I could say that whereas all mammals have souls, only humans have spirits. I suspect that all things living have something soul-ish about them, but the element I refer to as spirit is unique to humans. It is not my aim to defend that opinion here; it will stand as another assumption.

 

At least one more assumption occurs to me, which I will leave undebated. I will assume for the sake of this discussion that God creates or prepares a spirit for unification with a human body at some point in time. I say "point in time" carefully, because I also believe God exists in a dimension outside of what we call time. Therefore, when I use words that are time-related and involve an action by God, there is necessarily an imprecision. The time element in the question at hand involves our human, finite, time-centered awareness of events; as such, the question may be restated: "At what point does it become material or significant that a spirit inhabits a human body."

 

Two logically possible answers present themselves immediately. Either God imbues a fertilized egg (point of conception) or accompanies the first breath with a spirit. The latter seems to resonate with the language of the Genesis creation account. "God breathed into Adam, and he became a living soul," says Moses of the event. Three things argue against the idea that this refers to the giving of a spirit. First, the Hebrew word for "soul" is used throughout the Bible with reference to animals and humans alike, leaving little room for the uniqueness intended for humans. Second, the progressive nature of God's revelation to humans leaves many details of our existence hidden in His early interactions; perhaps He had no intention of explaining to Moses from whence the spirit comes. Third, Adam is a unique case in that he had no conception in the normal sense of the word; making broad generalizations from his experience is not safe.

 

I prefer the explanation that God places a spirit in the fertilized egg at the moment of conception. This seems to be the most satisfying conclusion both logically and theologically. First, if we assume that a baby, once delivered is human, then a full-term fetus in a mother's womb must be fully human. There is no significant difference between the two beings except in the method by which they receive oxygen and nourishment. A fetus inutero is no different than an adult human on a respirator and intravenous feeding aparatus. No one would claim that a person in the process of having open heart surgery is not human during the time he is on life support.

 

If it is logical to propose that a fetus is fully human, what can be said of the embryo? At what point dare we say that human-ness ceases to pertain to the fetus? There is only a vague distinction between the two terms, and no single point in time or development which demands the switch in terminology from embryo to fetus. A similar problem exists if we attempt to pinpoint a time during embryonic development when that which we call human comes into being. Some would postulate that the presence of a brain signifies human distinctiveness, yet even the lowest creatures have neural control centers that can be called brains in some sense. The other danger in using brain development as a signal for human-ness is that it opens the door for disqualifying certain living humans from the class of humanity.

 

So if the fetus is human, the embryo is human. If the embryo is human, the blastula and eventually the zygote (fertilized egg) is human. I can see no logical defense of any other position than this. Because I identify the presence of a human spirit as that which signifies human-ness, I must conclude that God places a spirit in the fertilized egg.

 

The same conclusion is well supported theologically. The beautiful Psalm 139 description of God's involvement in human pre-natal existence makes a good argument for full human-ness from the point of conception. Paul's argument for God's sovereignty in Romans 9 declaring that children not yet born had irresistible destinies insists that they were indivduals even at that nascent stage. Even the leaping of John in Elizabeth's womb at the presence of his Savior in Mary's womb betrays of a level of existence too human to be denied.

 

Now if you have read this far you are either a very dear friend and you wish to humor me, or you are so stubborn that you will not quit reading until you find out where in heaven this argument is going. I trust you will not think the reward too paltry, but it is firstly this: abortion is wrong because it takes a life, a human life, without just cause. (I do not oppose just war or capital punishment. This is not inconsistent, because the principle at hand is justice, not life.) Secondly, the presence of a human spirit at conception makes awkward the usual interpretation of Paul's teaching that we were all dead until we were made alive in Christ. That theological discussion can wait for another day.

The good news is that recently two states that I know of have passed laws that assign human-ness to fertilized eggs, or said another way, that human rights inhere from conception. Hooray! Dare we hope that Roe v. Wade may yet be challenged? Does this mean that state-sponsored slaughter of humans will be ended in the near future? Realistically one doubts that anything will be done on a national level anytime soon; there are too many liberals who hold abortion, excuse me, women's reproductive rights sacrosanct. This should not keep believers from praying zealously that more states will follow Kansas and North Dakota. If you are up to the challenge, get working on that very thing where you are. There could be a de facto reversal of Roe if all the states followed Kansas and North Dakota; the big question is whether enough of us will get involved to make it happen.

A Prayer Primer

Prayer is one of those activities that is just about universal. Most religions practice some form of communication with transcendent or ascendant entities. Prayer is a central feature of the three main Bible religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Whereas polite conversation is supposed to avoid religious issues in general, few people will object to having prayers spoken around or about them. And the sentiment behind WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle's well known aphorism, "There are no atheists in foxholes," rings true across the globe.

 

Perhaps it is the familiarity with prayer that leads some people to harbor false assumptions about its true nature. Since I have mentioned a journalist already, allow me to use the old newspaperman's outline, who, what, when, where, why and how as a framework for this primer on Christian prayer.

 

Who is involved in prayer? The short answer is every living soul. Prayer is not limited to only those who inhabit some inner circle of God's favor; the Bible is clear that even the cries of people outside God's chosen are heard in Heaven. Consider the case of the Ninevites or the Apostle Paul's insistence that the lost need only to call upon the Lord to be saved. On the receiving end of prayer, God the Father is the only person the Bible recognizes. While the apostles, saints and departed ancestors are worthy of respect, they are not mentioned in the Bible as a proper audience for our prayers. Nor is Mary, though she is certainly among the most revered of women. Prayer is properly directed to our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ Jesus. Anything else is meditation and should not be considered prayer.

 

What is prayer? It is a two-way communication between creatures and Creator. Most people understand the uplink part; we speak to God through prayer. There is also a download side to prayer. Many people don't consider that God also wishes to speak to us as well. Through His Holy Spirit and the Word, God makes His will and ways known to us, sometimes in virtually audible tones, but more often in promptings and leadings within our deepest parts.

 

When is prayer appropriate? Certainly as Pyle implies, in times of dire need. But a proper Christian attitude should be one of continual prayer. It is not right to think that we can handle most things on our own and then call on God when things get tough. As A.W. Tozer said, "The whole life must pray." Islam prescribes specific times of prayer, and to many this seems like a more spiritual thing than unscheduled, unscripted prayer in the Christian manner. Nothing is farther from the truth; Jesus himself said that ritualistic prayer, while appearing godly to those on earth, was of no heavenly good.

 

Where should one pray? The same holds true for this as for "when:" Anywhere and everywhere.

 

Why does one pray? This is the most complicated question to answer. The simple answer could be that Jesus commanded us to pray, so we pray out of obedience. But the question naturally follows as to why Jesus would command such a thing. One could say it is because Jesus himself prayed and we are to follow his example. This is true, but still leaves much unsaid. We are told to pray for our needs: give us this day our daily bread. We are told to pray for the sick. We are told to pray for the success of Christian ministry. We are told to pray for so many things that the upshot is that we should pray for and about everything. But this still does not tell us why we are to pray.

 

The "why" is not answered in Scripture. There is debate among sincere believers as to whether we can change God's mind by our prayers. I happen to believe that God is going to do what he is going to do whether we pray or not, and that he knows that we either are going to or not, so the outcome is established by his will, not our prayer. Having said that, however, I still pray for things in the hope that God will grant my requests. It has become much less an act of me wanting God to do what I ask, and more an act of wanting God to prepare me for what he intends to provide for me in any given situation. I like what someone once said: prayer is not about getting God's will to line up with ours, but about getting our will to line up with God's. The perfect example was prayed in Gethsemane: take this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.

 

How one prays is not really an issue. The anywhere, anytime nature of prayer dictates that it can be done in any position or condition. I have spent countless hours praying while driving. (Note that closing one's eyes is not recommended in this activity.) I have prayed while standing in line at a grocery store. I often pray while lying in bed. I pray with my hands idle at my side, folded reverently, upraised in praise and many other ways. I say most of my prayers in English, but I believe that God gives believers the ability to pray in a language that is not known to them for specific purposes. This is not the place for a treatise on praying in tongues, but I accept it as valid for today's Christians. (I reject the notion that a believer must pray in an unknown tongue to certify salvation or guarantee effectiveness.)

 

I close this primer with an encouragement: if you want to learn to pray, start by praying for wisdom from God; he has promised to grant that particular request every time. If you pray only a little, pray more. If you pray quite a lot, pray more. If you pray continually, bless you and please put me on your prayer list: I covet your prayers... and I really need them... just ask my wife.

What Happened to Debate?

A story hit the wire from AP today expressing mock surprise that a fit of compromise broke out in Washington DC yesterday. Republican senators withdrew the threat to filibuster on gun control and Democrats actually honored John McCain on his 40^th anniversary of release from a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. President Obama’s gesture toward reducing entitlement spending was also mentioned, but I suspect that was more of a gambit than a true compromise.

Sarcasm notwithstanding, it is sad that a return to normalcy makes news. By normalcy I mean the act of sitting down with one’s opposition and actually debating the merits of each side with an eye toward reaching a workable compromise. Political discourse in this country has always descended into hyperbole and name-calling. Beginning with the days of the verbal jousting between Jefferson and Adams, we have always been a bit dramatic, but at least we debated. No more. Think back to 2008 when the Democrats steam-rolled Obamacare into existence with platitudes like elections have consequences; you lost; shut up.

Then there is all the fake angst by the Dems over Republican filibusters. What hypocrisy. Does no one remember the endless hours the Dems themselves spent filibustering Bush’s court nominees? The Senate rules may be arcane, even ridiculous, but they were instituted so that actual debate would be assured, and so that no majority could run roughshod over any minority. The Senate is supposed to be the chamber of reasoned debate; the House is where all the young firebrands dance and gesticulate around the flames of their various popular causes.

Sadly, even those few conservative politicians (both D and R) who would debate are caught up in the battle over issues that have sailed right past the elementary principles and into the murky water clouded by assumptions and predispositions. Two examples will clarify. The debate over health care has drifted so far from the real issue, that even staunch free market advocates are battling over things that wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if the true sticking point were ever settled. To wit: where is it written that every citizen (and illegal alien) is entitled to health care? Since when is health care an entitlement? When did it become my right to expect you to pay for my health care? That is the debate we should be having instead of grumbling about mandates and health boards.

Another example that screams for a more fundamental discussion is gun control. Listening to Bloomberg and Biden and the President, one would assume that it is a settled fact that stricter controls on the sale and ownership of guns would produce a safer society. In this flurry of minutiae, rifles that have a certain appearance become “assault weapons,” and 10 becomes the magic number of bullets that is safe to allow in a weapon. Yet there is no statistical evidence that tighter control of guns reduces violent crime. In fact just the opposite appears to be true. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws anywhere, yet it leads the nation in gun violence. Connecticut had fairly tough gun laws which did nothing to stop Adam Lanza from murdering a score of children.

And so it is with gay marriage, school vouchers, immigration and a host of other issues. There are foundational principles that should be debated before having the arguments we are currently besieged with. Jesus had a lot to say about the importance of the heart in assessing character. This may seem to be a rhetorical stretch, but I think we are failing to get at the heart of the important issues facing our society. Society is no more or less than the amalgam of its people. Christians know it is people’s hearts that matter; we should be a voice calling for a return to the heart of the matter – whatever the matter is.