A Facebook friend posted a survey which attempted to rank American cities on the basis of how "Bible-Minded" they are. It probably won't come as a surprise to readers to learn that the survey concluded that a number of towns in what used to be called the "Bible Belt" were considered to be most "Bible-Minded." Conversely, the least "Bible-Minded" cities were in the northeast, and on the west coast.
Looking at the results, I wondered what criteria were used to make these determinations. I'd be willing to guess they estimated percentages of the local populations that said they attended church regularly, went to Bible study classes, could quote passages of Scripture, and claimed they said daily prayers.
I'm not against any of those things, mind you, in fact am in favor of them, but doubt that's all it takes to be "Bible-Minded." (Actually, I stridently deny that's all it takes to be "Bible-Minded.")
People who engage in the activities I just mentioned, and who don't follow up with what my parochial school nuns called the "corporal works of mercy" seem to me to be like the object lesson in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. I hope you remember the story. The Pharisee stands at the front of the temple and brags to God about how holy he is, while the Publican - a despised tax collector - lingers in back and begs for mercy as a sinful man. The lesson was that the Publican will find a merciful God and the Pharisee will not.
So, I wonder, was the amount of money given to worthy charities part of the survey-takers' calculations? I don't know.
I do know that the states that are allegedly most "Bible-Minded" have the highest rates of homicide and assaults with intent to kill in the United States. That's right, the very places identified as most "Bible-Minded" seem to pay the least attention to the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." We hear in the news about the terrible murder rate in big cities like Chicago, but the statistical evidence clearly shows that Americans are most prone to kill each other in the states that were once part of the Confederacy. (Years ago, when I was a park ranger, I saw the FBI statistics that indicated more law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire in wildlife enforcement than in any other activity, and more of those officer deaths were in the south than anyplace else. And that persisted year after year.)
Another method of weighing "Bible-Mindedness" might lie in looking at the percentage of marriages that end in divorce. Once again, the places where divorce is most common are the same places the survey alleges are most "Bible-Minded." (I was divorced myself once, so I'm living in a glass house as I mention this.) The Bible, as we know, is ambivalent about divorce. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible were permitted divorce under some narrow circumstances, and the Talmud comments extensively on the matter, but the Christian Bible seems to prohibit it. "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." Catholic teaching through the centuries is that divorce is anathema, but other Christians take a somewhat more lenient approach. The fact still is that divorce is most common in those "Bible-Minded" places.
Shall I even talk about race relations? Jim Crow, legal segregation and lynch mobs are things from the past, and it's wrong to condemn the children for the sins of their fathers - or grandfathers. These horrors, by the way, happened throughout the country, but there's no denying they were worst in the south. No part of the country can claim to be free of residual racism, but de facto segregation remains more entrenched in the south than elsewhere.
And what of persistent poverty? Over and over, Jesus tells his followers that they must give of all they possess to the poor. It's a central message of the Christian faith. Where does poverty linger most in the United States? I think we all know.
I'm feeling Pharasitical myself as I write this, so will end here, except to reiterate that trying to determine where people are most "Bible-Minded" is much more complicated than the survey might lead us to think it would be, and that this survey allows people living in the areas spotlighted as "Bible-Minded" to become complacent and smug.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
TR, Taft and Progressivism
Recently, I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's history of the progressive age, The Bully Pulpit. The book concentrates on the two careers of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and contains some interesting items. I was aware of some of them, but others have been surprises.
Probably the most upsetting part of the history, so far, is the tragedy of Theodore Roosevelt's home life. His sister "Bamie" suffered from curvature of the spine that made physical activities painful for her and rendered her nearly an invalid. Then, while Teedy, as his family called him, was a sophomore at Harvard, his much loved father died of colon cancer, in great agony, and before Roosevelt could reach New York to say good-bye. If that wasn't enough, Roosevelt's mother passed away after a short illness when Roosevelt was twenty-four, and on the same day his wife succumbed to Bright's disease after giving birth. That's right, he lost his mother and his wife on the same day, both after very short illnesses.
It was an overwhelming loss for Roosevelt, who tried to find solace in work and then by heading west to spend a year as a cattle rancher in North Dakota. After he returned to New York he remarried and resumed custody of his toddler daughter, only, a few years later, to confront the horror of his brother Elliot's disintegration in alcoholism, and his death.
Taft's history was comparatively placid, but not less interesting. Known as "Big Bill" at Yale, he had grown up in rather affluent circumstances and had been pointed towards a law career from early childhood. His rise can be attributed to his affable scholarly demeanor, but also to the ambitions of his wife Nellie. A far better politician than Taft, she is credited with urging him into the political arena when he always wanted to be a judge. The Supreme Court was his ultimate goal, not the White House.
Taft was able, friendly, and a conciliator, good qualities for most occupations, but not for the presidency.
In addition to following the lives of the two presidents-to-be, Ms. Goodwin traces the progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the staff of McClure's magazine, the best forum for political idealism of its time. And before talking about the magazine, she dwells on Henry George and the single tax.
As a young man, George had puzzled over the conundrum of rising productivity in the machine age and increasing poverty. Why were some people becoming enormously rich while others struggled through life sinking gradually into worse and worse distress? Then, according to George, one day while gazing at San Francisco from a distance,
George's argument was that all improvements on property belong to the person who made those improvements, or bought them, but the land itself belongs to all citizens. Therefore, taxes should be reckoned and paid on the basis of what unimproved property is worth. He called it the single tax. If enacted, there would be no need for income tax, sales tax, tariffs, or any other tax.
Now, it seems to me that such a scheme would require an army of assessors to value property, and lead to endless disputes about the size of the assessments. But then, don't we have an army of IRS agents now, not to mention the army of lobbyists in Washington and every state capital, endlessly trying to get tax breaks for their clients?
And why am I bringing this up on a January day in 2014, when George's idea went into the dustbin a century ago? Why, because we have the same dichotomy now that was so troublesome back then. I have taken to thinking of it as the lottery economy, in which a lucky few become enormously rich by doing nothing of anything approaching commensurate benefit to the country, and the rest of us plug along in life trying to keep body and soul together and having a tougher time of it every year.
Need proof? Just look at any highway junction or shopping center parking area, and you'll see beggars now, where there were none a generation ago. We need another Roosevelt. We could use another Taft.
Probably the most upsetting part of the history, so far, is the tragedy of Theodore Roosevelt's home life. His sister "Bamie" suffered from curvature of the spine that made physical activities painful for her and rendered her nearly an invalid. Then, while Teedy, as his family called him, was a sophomore at Harvard, his much loved father died of colon cancer, in great agony, and before Roosevelt could reach New York to say good-bye. If that wasn't enough, Roosevelt's mother passed away after a short illness when Roosevelt was twenty-four, and on the same day his wife succumbed to Bright's disease after giving birth. That's right, he lost his mother and his wife on the same day, both after very short illnesses.
It was an overwhelming loss for Roosevelt, who tried to find solace in work and then by heading west to spend a year as a cattle rancher in North Dakota. After he returned to New York he remarried and resumed custody of his toddler daughter, only, a few years later, to confront the horror of his brother Elliot's disintegration in alcoholism, and his death.
Taft's history was comparatively placid, but not less interesting. Known as "Big Bill" at Yale, he had grown up in rather affluent circumstances and had been pointed towards a law career from early childhood. His rise can be attributed to his affable scholarly demeanor, but also to the ambitions of his wife Nellie. A far better politician than Taft, she is credited with urging him into the political arena when he always wanted to be a judge. The Supreme Court was his ultimate goal, not the White House.
Taft was able, friendly, and a conciliator, good qualities for most occupations, but not for the presidency.
In addition to following the lives of the two presidents-to-be, Ms. Goodwin traces the progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the staff of McClure's magazine, the best forum for political idealism of its time. And before talking about the magazine, she dwells on Henry George and the single tax.
As a young man, George had puzzled over the conundrum of rising productivity in the machine age and increasing poverty. Why were some people becoming enormously rich while others struggled through life sinking gradually into worse and worse distress? Then, according to George, one day while gazing at San Francisco from a distance,
I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, 'I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre.' Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilegeOr, as Will Rogers advised years later, "Buy land. They ain't making any more of it."
George's argument was that all improvements on property belong to the person who made those improvements, or bought them, but the land itself belongs to all citizens. Therefore, taxes should be reckoned and paid on the basis of what unimproved property is worth. He called it the single tax. If enacted, there would be no need for income tax, sales tax, tariffs, or any other tax.
Now, it seems to me that such a scheme would require an army of assessors to value property, and lead to endless disputes about the size of the assessments. But then, don't we have an army of IRS agents now, not to mention the army of lobbyists in Washington and every state capital, endlessly trying to get tax breaks for their clients?
And why am I bringing this up on a January day in 2014, when George's idea went into the dustbin a century ago? Why, because we have the same dichotomy now that was so troublesome back then. I have taken to thinking of it as the lottery economy, in which a lucky few become enormously rich by doing nothing of anything approaching commensurate benefit to the country, and the rest of us plug along in life trying to keep body and soul together and having a tougher time of it every year.
Need proof? Just look at any highway junction or shopping center parking area, and you'll see beggars now, where there were none a generation ago. We need another Roosevelt. We could use another Taft.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
No More Football (For Me)
Probably, I started paying attention to football when I was about eight years old. I remember playing at recess in the third grade at Blessed Sacrament school in Tallahassee, Florida. I remember it because the son of the Florida State University football coach, Tom Nugent, was in my class. His name was Terence Daniel Nugent, but he liked to be called TD, for obvious reasons.
Many of the eight-year-olds had helmets, so I began annoying my father to get me one. I wore him down and he bought me one, but it was an old leather kind of helmet and the other kids had new shiny plastic headgear. I was a little embarrassed to wear it.
That same year, I recall watching Notre Dame play Oklahoma on television. The Sooners owned an enormously long winning streak, I think forty-seven games in a row, but the Irish won, seven to nothing, much to my satisfaction. I had been told, after all, that Notre Dame was a Catholic school, and I already had some slight feelings of inferiority as a Catholic in Tallahassee.
By the time I was ten, the family had moved back to Miami, and my father began taking my brother and me to Miami Hurricane games. Aside from the father-son bonding, I guess the highlight of those games was seeing the Heisman Trophy winner for 1959, Ernie Davis, when UM hosted Syracuse in the Orange Bowl. Syracuse didn't do much passing in that game, I don't think. Their offense was pretty much, "Davis to the left, Davis to the right, Davis up the middle." Years later there was a movie about Ernie Davis called, "The Express" which I recommend.
By ninth grade I had become pudgy and I had always been a slow runner, and asthmatic, so I quickly gave up efforts to make the Columbus High junior varsity team. I watched a lot of football games, in person and on the tube. I do remember seeing a Miami Dolphins game, in 1966 I guess, the only pro game I've ever attended. In those days the Dolphins, only one year removed from their expansion team origins, were practically giving tickets away. I had a grandstand seat in the Orange Bowl for one dollar. That night, th e Houston Oilers clobbered the Dolphins and their rookie quarterback, Bob Griese.
At Florida State, I went to many games, often alone, sometimes with a date. Football games were formal occasions then. Men wore ties and coats, women wore dresses, stockings, and make-up. It seems very quaint to think of it now.
Since then, I've been to a few high school and college games, but most of my exposure to football has been via television. Gradually. I've become disenchanted with the sport and with the entire football culture in American life. I guess this started when I heard that an FSU offensive lineman had to come out of a game because he was bleeding from both ears. He was bleeding because the opposition lineman was jamming his fingers through our boy's helmet earholes on every play.
Aside from dirty play, there was the matter of illegitimate payoffs of one kind or another to college players. I read that one high school player decided to go to Syracuse after making a visit to campus where one of the cheerleaders was encouraged to spend twenty minutes in the back seat of a car with him. I doubt they were discussing defensive strategies. Rumor had it at FSU when I was there that the star wide receiver on the team was being paid a large stipend for turning out the lights in the physics building each evening. I don't think anyone became upset with him if he forgot to do it.
Sex and money, the two motivators in many a young man's life. In the years that followed it often seemed that prize athletes - not just football players, though they seemed to get most of the press - came to believe they could get away with anything. Sex assaults, bullying behavior, stupid behavior while driving are hardly confined to football players, but they do seem particularly prone to them.
And the money. Football coaches are almost always the highest paid employees at state and many private universities. I ask my readers, does it make sense at an institution of higher learning, to reward a coach with something like twenty times the salary a tenured professor makes? Or more, as it often is now?
And the injuries. "Football is a rough game," I still can hear coach Aiello telling us during my brief effort to play high school ball. Rough I can support. Broken bones I can tolerate. Men I have known who did play high school ball often tell me how difficult it is to get out of bed in the morning now, how their knees creak, and pop.
The simple truth is that anyone who plays football for any length of time is just about guaranteed to have health problems later in life.
What has finally tipped me away from football, however, is the head injuries. It appears that concussions are endemic among football players, and brain damage occurs all too often. Young men are selling out their later years for a chance at fleeting fame and fortune.
It isn't right. I venture to say it's immoral. And I have decided that I'll have no part in it. So no NFL Sundays for me, no BCS bowl games, even though FSU might well play for the national championship. I'll have none of it.
I miss it already.
And don't even get me started on the exploitation of the young women who become pro football cheerleaders.
Many of the eight-year-olds had helmets, so I began annoying my father to get me one. I wore him down and he bought me one, but it was an old leather kind of helmet and the other kids had new shiny plastic headgear. I was a little embarrassed to wear it.
That same year, I recall watching Notre Dame play Oklahoma on television. The Sooners owned an enormously long winning streak, I think forty-seven games in a row, but the Irish won, seven to nothing, much to my satisfaction. I had been told, after all, that Notre Dame was a Catholic school, and I already had some slight feelings of inferiority as a Catholic in Tallahassee.
By the time I was ten, the family had moved back to Miami, and my father began taking my brother and me to Miami Hurricane games. Aside from the father-son bonding, I guess the highlight of those games was seeing the Heisman Trophy winner for 1959, Ernie Davis, when UM hosted Syracuse in the Orange Bowl. Syracuse didn't do much passing in that game, I don't think. Their offense was pretty much, "Davis to the left, Davis to the right, Davis up the middle." Years later there was a movie about Ernie Davis called, "The Express" which I recommend.
By ninth grade I had become pudgy and I had always been a slow runner, and asthmatic, so I quickly gave up efforts to make the Columbus High junior varsity team. I watched a lot of football games, in person and on the tube. I do remember seeing a Miami Dolphins game, in 1966 I guess, the only pro game I've ever attended. In those days the Dolphins, only one year removed from their expansion team origins, were practically giving tickets away. I had a grandstand seat in the Orange Bowl for one dollar. That night, th e Houston Oilers clobbered the Dolphins and their rookie quarterback, Bob Griese.
At Florida State, I went to many games, often alone, sometimes with a date. Football games were formal occasions then. Men wore ties and coats, women wore dresses, stockings, and make-up. It seems very quaint to think of it now.
Since then, I've been to a few high school and college games, but most of my exposure to football has been via television. Gradually. I've become disenchanted with the sport and with the entire football culture in American life. I guess this started when I heard that an FSU offensive lineman had to come out of a game because he was bleeding from both ears. He was bleeding because the opposition lineman was jamming his fingers through our boy's helmet earholes on every play.
Aside from dirty play, there was the matter of illegitimate payoffs of one kind or another to college players. I read that one high school player decided to go to Syracuse after making a visit to campus where one of the cheerleaders was encouraged to spend twenty minutes in the back seat of a car with him. I doubt they were discussing defensive strategies. Rumor had it at FSU when I was there that the star wide receiver on the team was being paid a large stipend for turning out the lights in the physics building each evening. I don't think anyone became upset with him if he forgot to do it.
Sex and money, the two motivators in many a young man's life. In the years that followed it often seemed that prize athletes - not just football players, though they seemed to get most of the press - came to believe they could get away with anything. Sex assaults, bullying behavior, stupid behavior while driving are hardly confined to football players, but they do seem particularly prone to them.
And the money. Football coaches are almost always the highest paid employees at state and many private universities. I ask my readers, does it make sense at an institution of higher learning, to reward a coach with something like twenty times the salary a tenured professor makes? Or more, as it often is now?
And the injuries. "Football is a rough game," I still can hear coach Aiello telling us during my brief effort to play high school ball. Rough I can support. Broken bones I can tolerate. Men I have known who did play high school ball often tell me how difficult it is to get out of bed in the morning now, how their knees creak, and pop.
The simple truth is that anyone who plays football for any length of time is just about guaranteed to have health problems later in life.
What has finally tipped me away from football, however, is the head injuries. It appears that concussions are endemic among football players, and brain damage occurs all too often. Young men are selling out their later years for a chance at fleeting fame and fortune.
It isn't right. I venture to say it's immoral. And I have decided that I'll have no part in it. So no NFL Sundays for me, no BCS bowl games, even though FSU might well play for the national championship. I'll have none of it.
I miss it already.
And don't even get me started on the exploitation of the young women who become pro football cheerleaders.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Immigration Revisited
Friday, July 23, 2010
On Immigration
I pity the poor immigrant, who wishes he'd stayed at home
--Bob Dylan
The immigration issue has been heating up in recent months, especially here in the west. Arizona has passed draconian measures to control illegal entry to their state and similar proposals are before other state legislatures. Hispanic residents of these states are indignant, feeling they are being subject to police harassment and are being used as a political football.
The number of people living in the US illegally is estimated as somewhere between four and twenty million. They came for numerous reasons, but economic opportunity certainly is the most often cited enticement for people to enter the US. In this, they are no different from generations of people who came to America in the last four hundred years.
Current immigration law favors people who have a skill or profession that will (allegedly) be of benefit to our country, or who have money to invest here. So, if you're a doctor, or can hit a breaking pitch, or have a large wad of cash in your pocket, you can go to the front of the immigration line. Such folks are not exactly your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Other applicants are admitted by quotas among the nations on a lottery basis.
Naturally, the numbers of people in foreign lands who want to reside in America vary widely. People in nations where there is a huge demand for legal emigration might wait all their lives for a chance to come here legally. Is it any wonder that desperate people are not willing to wait patiently for legal status?
Since illegal immigrants risk deportation to the place they risked their lives to leave, we can hardly expect them to come forward and meekly accept expulsion. Even if all immigrants did volunteer for repatriation, however, the logistics of removing them are daunting. If we use the commonly cited total of twelve million illegals and an average capacity per airplane of two hundred (a generous average) then it would require sixty thousand flights to carry all of them out of the country. The country's bus lines could help take deportees to adjacent lands, but this would not diminish the number of flights very much. I'm not saying it couldn't be done or shouldn't be done, but lets not kid ourselves into thinking it would be quick, easy or inexpensive.
This also gives rise to another question. Can we ethically just dump deportees in the country they left at a border town or their capital? It might be argued that what happens to them once they're across the line is not our business, but the problems of one country often become the problem of other nations. Economic stress in other countries is the reason we have this situation in the first place.
The Obama administration has proposed that illegal immigrants will be obliged to pay a fine for entering the country and back taxes and then can be placed at the back of the line for those awaiting citizenship. Much as I like and respect President Obama, I think this is ludicrous. Illegal residents of the US are paid in the underground economy and records of their earnings will be spotty at best. Would you tell the truth about your earnings if doing so would cost you money you worked hard to get, and the government couldn't check your statement? I suspect this proposal is just a sop to conservative critics.
So here's my immodest proposal. The quota of legal immigrants from high demand countries like Mexico should be raised drastically. Three million legal permits per year is reasonable to me. Applications for legal entry could only be received and processed in the individual's home country. A criminal check would be made on prospective immigrants, confined to felony warrants or convictions or outstanding judgments against the person. No fees or taxes would be collected.
What would we get by doing this? Well, start with regaining control of the border. Once there is a real chance of coming to America legally, I suspect the incentive to enter by breaking our law will diminish. In addition, once immigrants have legal status they can take jobs in the above ground economy, pay taxes and contribute to social security. Five million additional contributors to social security would not solve all the problems of the fund, but would certainly help.
And why would anyone who is here already return to his native land to re-enter legally? They could demand at least minimum wage for their work. They would not have to fear the police, and if victimized by crime could seek justice in the legal system. They would have the same chance to advance and prosper as any American citizen.
There is one exception to this policy. The parents and siblings of so-called "anchor children" must be given legal status immediately. I realize this is not fair to other immigrants, but there is no other workable solution. Kicking the family of such a child out of the country effectively means deporting an American from our country, or leaving the child behind. Neither of these constitutes a family value in my opinion.
For those who want to expel illegal immigrants from the US, I ask that you examine your motives. If you're outraged because our laws have been broken, I'm with you, but if your objection to illegals is cultural, or you think they drain the economy, we part company.
I welcome comments on my plan.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
The Life and Times of Jesus
Recently, I read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. This is my book report.
First of all, let us say that Professor Aslan has excellent credentials concerning the first century and events in southwest Asia at that time. That is to say, he holds a PhD degree in religious studies and is a tenured professor, I think I recall, at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Aslan says in his preface that he became absorbed into the Christian tradition and fascinated by it as an adolescent. Since he has become an adult, however, he has decided that Islam is the truest reflection of God's desires for humanity. He is able to look at the life of Jesus with some detachment therefore. The first question any Christian would ask, of course, is whether Aslan is prone to prejudice concerning Jesus. Let's allow him to speak for himself, through his book, and then decide.
Judea, Galilee, and to a lesser extent the Jewish diaspora in Greece and what's now Turkey, were in a state of ferment at the time Jesus was born. Occupied and tyrannized by successive foreign powers, most recently the Romans, the Jews could hardly have helped being resentful and living in anticipation of a great leader, a warrior king, a messiah, who would expel the pagans and restore the kingdom of David in all its glory. That, Dr. Aslan writes, is what they believed in as the messianic tradition. Also, the Jews were furiously resentful of the priestly caste who lived in (comparative) luxury while trying to appease the Roman authorities. More than one high priest was assassinated during the years around the lifespan of Jesus.
The time and place were rife with would-be messiahs. Often considered outlaws by the Sanhedrin and the Romans, they zealously proclaimed the coming kingdom and offered themselves as kings. Almost all came to violent ends, usually at the hands of the Romans.
It was into this world that Jesus was born. Professor Aslan dismisses the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke out of hand, however. He claims that Caesar Augustus never ordered a census, though Quirinius did. This occurred in 6 CE, when Jesus would have been about ten years old. No shepherds, no wise men, no birth in Bethlehem, and no virgin birth.
He does believe that Jesus was a Nazarene. Nazareth was a tiny hamlet then, perhaps home to one hundred people. Certainly, it was not populous enough to support a carpenter, much less a family of carpenters. (Dr. Aslan pays considerable attention to James, Jesus' brother, as well as at least one other brother and possibly sisters.) There was a new Roman town abuilding near Nazareth, however, Sepphoris by name, and Aslan speculates that Jesus would have found work there as a day laborer.
Exactly when Jesus encountered John the Baptist is not known with any certainty, but the professor feels it was a hugely significant event. Jesus remained as a disciple of John until the wild holyman was arrested. Only then did Jesus start a ministry of his own.
The men who wrote the gospels, of course, emphasized that Jesus was unlike the false messiahs of those times, that he proclaimed a kingdom not of this world, and by inference at least, that good people must comply with civil authorities, even tyrants. Dr. Aslan just doesn't think this was the real Jesus at all. "I come not with peace but with a sword," Jesus says, contradicting this view of a non-violent savior. That's the Jesus of Dr. Aslan.
Now, about the passion and death of Jesus. According to the professor, Jesus arrives in the big city of Jerusalem for the passover, perhaps greeted by enthusiastic crowds, perhaps not. He does go to the temple on Tuesday for the ritualistic cleansing and there causes a great disturbance. The temple was huge, however, and Aslan tells us it's likely that many people there that morning never noticed what was happening.
The Jewish priestly class certainly noticed, however, and decided Jesus had to go. By Thursday night they had assembled a large arrest party, and, tipped off as to Jesus' location by Judas Iscariot, they made the pinch in the garden of Gethsemane. Please notice, Aslan says, that they took a bunch of people, expecting a brawl, and that Peter drew a sword to defend Jesus, confirming the professor's view of Jesus as not abjuring violence. Jesus, however, knowing his arrest must lead to his death, tells Peter to stop. He skips over the episode of Jesus putting the high priest's servant's ear back on, perhaps not believing it happened.
Of the trial, the crucifixion, and Jesus' death, Aslan follows what many other secular historians believe. Jesus was condemned as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrin, taken before Pontius Pilate (And there is documentary evidence that he existed.), who sentenced him to death after only a moment or two - just one more bit of business on a Friday morning - and Jesus suffered an awful death in the time honored Roman way.
What happened then? The gospels tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, and appeared to many people before ascending into heaven. Dr. Aslan does not believe in the resurrection - it does contradict everything we know about death after all - saying it's irrelevant what happened to Jesus' body. What is important is that the apostles began telling the Jews about Jesus and gathering a small number of believers. One of them, Stephen, was soon stoned to death in Jerusalem for blaspheming.
The murder of Stephen was a great event, Dr. Aslan claims. It clarified the thinking of the apostles and placed them squarely outside the mainstream of Jewish thought and practice. Led by James, Jesus' brother, they continued to tell any Jews who would listen that Jesus was the messiah and the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophesies. (Aslan says the Hebrew prophesies cannot be interpreted as leading to Jesus by any reasonable person.) Gradually the apostles and their followers became more and more estranged from the Jews of Jerusalem, though still complying with the Hebraic laws concerning diet and circumcision.
Enter Paul. Sometime during the two or three decades after Jesus' death Paul, who had been a Pharisee, comes to believe in the Jesus of the apostles and begins preaching to the Jews of the diaspora and to gentiles. He is soon summoned to Jerusalem by James and the others to answer for what they regard as apostasy - that gentile believers need not abstain from foods the Bible forbids, or undergo circumcision. Paul agrees to mend his ways, though he does call Peter to book for trying to have it both ways, but now carries his message further afield, ultimately to Rome, though Peter arrives first and warns the church there to be wary of Paul. How or when the two men died is not very important to Dr. Aslan.
What is important is the Jewish rebellion against Rome and the suppression of that rebellion by the imperial legions. Wholesale murder, rape and destruction accompanied the Roman army, culminating in the famous mass suicide at Masada. Thereafter, the locus of Christianity shifted away from Israel and the church grew among the gentiles much much more than among the Jews.
Dr. Aslan thinks it would have been impossible for Jesus to have become knowledgeable about the Hebrew Bible, growing up in what was almost literally the back of beyond. His scanty knowledge of the Bible explains the often confusing acts and sayings attributed to him. Now, I quarrel with that. I much prefer to think of Jesus as a bookish boy, a real Yeshiva paragon, devoting every spare moment to studying the Torah and the other books of the Bible. It's hard for me to imagine any other version of Jesus arguing successfully with his neighbors, much less the Pharisees.
Likewise, I think Dr. Aslan takes some interpretive liberties. Documentary evidence about Jesus by contemporaries is almost entirely non-existent, it's true, and the historian must speculate a bit. Aslan is right to say the first gospel, Mark's, was written something like forty years after Jesus' death, meaning by someone who probably didn't know him, but that doesn't give him license to guess about Jesus' life any more than it gave to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. (On the other hand, if Mark was writing his gospel at about the age I am now - sixty-four - he might well have known Jesus, or known of Jesus, as a young man.)
Get this book and read it. I think Dr. Aslan has made an honest effort to explain Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity, though his version of it is much different from what we learned in Sunday school.
First of all, let us say that Professor Aslan has excellent credentials concerning the first century and events in southwest Asia at that time. That is to say, he holds a PhD degree in religious studies and is a tenured professor, I think I recall, at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Aslan says in his preface that he became absorbed into the Christian tradition and fascinated by it as an adolescent. Since he has become an adult, however, he has decided that Islam is the truest reflection of God's desires for humanity. He is able to look at the life of Jesus with some detachment therefore. The first question any Christian would ask, of course, is whether Aslan is prone to prejudice concerning Jesus. Let's allow him to speak for himself, through his book, and then decide.
Judea, Galilee, and to a lesser extent the Jewish diaspora in Greece and what's now Turkey, were in a state of ferment at the time Jesus was born. Occupied and tyrannized by successive foreign powers, most recently the Romans, the Jews could hardly have helped being resentful and living in anticipation of a great leader, a warrior king, a messiah, who would expel the pagans and restore the kingdom of David in all its glory. That, Dr. Aslan writes, is what they believed in as the messianic tradition. Also, the Jews were furiously resentful of the priestly caste who lived in (comparative) luxury while trying to appease the Roman authorities. More than one high priest was assassinated during the years around the lifespan of Jesus.
The time and place were rife with would-be messiahs. Often considered outlaws by the Sanhedrin and the Romans, they zealously proclaimed the coming kingdom and offered themselves as kings. Almost all came to violent ends, usually at the hands of the Romans.
It was into this world that Jesus was born. Professor Aslan dismisses the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke out of hand, however. He claims that Caesar Augustus never ordered a census, though Quirinius did. This occurred in 6 CE, when Jesus would have been about ten years old. No shepherds, no wise men, no birth in Bethlehem, and no virgin birth.
He does believe that Jesus was a Nazarene. Nazareth was a tiny hamlet then, perhaps home to one hundred people. Certainly, it was not populous enough to support a carpenter, much less a family of carpenters. (Dr. Aslan pays considerable attention to James, Jesus' brother, as well as at least one other brother and possibly sisters.) There was a new Roman town abuilding near Nazareth, however, Sepphoris by name, and Aslan speculates that Jesus would have found work there as a day laborer.
Exactly when Jesus encountered John the Baptist is not known with any certainty, but the professor feels it was a hugely significant event. Jesus remained as a disciple of John until the wild holyman was arrested. Only then did Jesus start a ministry of his own.
The men who wrote the gospels, of course, emphasized that Jesus was unlike the false messiahs of those times, that he proclaimed a kingdom not of this world, and by inference at least, that good people must comply with civil authorities, even tyrants. Dr. Aslan just doesn't think this was the real Jesus at all. "I come not with peace but with a sword," Jesus says, contradicting this view of a non-violent savior. That's the Jesus of Dr. Aslan.
Now, about the passion and death of Jesus. According to the professor, Jesus arrives in the big city of Jerusalem for the passover, perhaps greeted by enthusiastic crowds, perhaps not. He does go to the temple on Tuesday for the ritualistic cleansing and there causes a great disturbance. The temple was huge, however, and Aslan tells us it's likely that many people there that morning never noticed what was happening.
The Jewish priestly class certainly noticed, however, and decided Jesus had to go. By Thursday night they had assembled a large arrest party, and, tipped off as to Jesus' location by Judas Iscariot, they made the pinch in the garden of Gethsemane. Please notice, Aslan says, that they took a bunch of people, expecting a brawl, and that Peter drew a sword to defend Jesus, confirming the professor's view of Jesus as not abjuring violence. Jesus, however, knowing his arrest must lead to his death, tells Peter to stop. He skips over the episode of Jesus putting the high priest's servant's ear back on, perhaps not believing it happened.
Of the trial, the crucifixion, and Jesus' death, Aslan follows what many other secular historians believe. Jesus was condemned as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrin, taken before Pontius Pilate (And there is documentary evidence that he existed.), who sentenced him to death after only a moment or two - just one more bit of business on a Friday morning - and Jesus suffered an awful death in the time honored Roman way.
What happened then? The gospels tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, and appeared to many people before ascending into heaven. Dr. Aslan does not believe in the resurrection - it does contradict everything we know about death after all - saying it's irrelevant what happened to Jesus' body. What is important is that the apostles began telling the Jews about Jesus and gathering a small number of believers. One of them, Stephen, was soon stoned to death in Jerusalem for blaspheming.
The murder of Stephen was a great event, Dr. Aslan claims. It clarified the thinking of the apostles and placed them squarely outside the mainstream of Jewish thought and practice. Led by James, Jesus' brother, they continued to tell any Jews who would listen that Jesus was the messiah and the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophesies. (Aslan says the Hebrew prophesies cannot be interpreted as leading to Jesus by any reasonable person.) Gradually the apostles and their followers became more and more estranged from the Jews of Jerusalem, though still complying with the Hebraic laws concerning diet and circumcision.
Enter Paul. Sometime during the two or three decades after Jesus' death Paul, who had been a Pharisee, comes to believe in the Jesus of the apostles and begins preaching to the Jews of the diaspora and to gentiles. He is soon summoned to Jerusalem by James and the others to answer for what they regard as apostasy - that gentile believers need not abstain from foods the Bible forbids, or undergo circumcision. Paul agrees to mend his ways, though he does call Peter to book for trying to have it both ways, but now carries his message further afield, ultimately to Rome, though Peter arrives first and warns the church there to be wary of Paul. How or when the two men died is not very important to Dr. Aslan.
What is important is the Jewish rebellion against Rome and the suppression of that rebellion by the imperial legions. Wholesale murder, rape and destruction accompanied the Roman army, culminating in the famous mass suicide at Masada. Thereafter, the locus of Christianity shifted away from Israel and the church grew among the gentiles much much more than among the Jews.
Dr. Aslan thinks it would have been impossible for Jesus to have become knowledgeable about the Hebrew Bible, growing up in what was almost literally the back of beyond. His scanty knowledge of the Bible explains the often confusing acts and sayings attributed to him. Now, I quarrel with that. I much prefer to think of Jesus as a bookish boy, a real Yeshiva paragon, devoting every spare moment to studying the Torah and the other books of the Bible. It's hard for me to imagine any other version of Jesus arguing successfully with his neighbors, much less the Pharisees.
Likewise, I think Dr. Aslan takes some interpretive liberties. Documentary evidence about Jesus by contemporaries is almost entirely non-existent, it's true, and the historian must speculate a bit. Aslan is right to say the first gospel, Mark's, was written something like forty years after Jesus' death, meaning by someone who probably didn't know him, but that doesn't give him license to guess about Jesus' life any more than it gave to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. (On the other hand, if Mark was writing his gospel at about the age I am now - sixty-four - he might well have known Jesus, or known of Jesus, as a young man.)
Get this book and read it. I think Dr. Aslan has made an honest effort to explain Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity, though his version of it is much different from what we learned in Sunday school.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
This is a post from three years ago, but it seems as relevant now as it was then.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Wing Nuts
This morning while driving I tuned in to one of talk stations I refer to as "right wing radio." The host today was a man named Bob Beauprez who two years ago was the Republican candidate for governor here in Colorado. I was deeply disappointed when he agreed with a caller who claimed the Obama campaign deliberately brought about the economic downturn of 2008 in order to win the election!
Here was a supposedly responsible politician accusing a member of the other party of wrecking the nation's economy on purpose, putting millions of people out of work, causing massive defaults on home loans and subsequent foreclosures, probably shortening many lives, to win an election. And all this, according to the caller, with the connivance of the (Republican) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen.
I bring it up as one more example of the insanity, the paranoid hatred that parts of our American population are exhibiting. The credulous are being driven by hate mongers who, for reasons known only to themselves, have adopted the old Bolshevik strategy for gaining political power: "The worse things are, the better they are for us." They are pursuing a deliberate course aimed not merely at defeating a president and his party but at dividing the nation into two warring camps. They will have a heavy reckoning before the bar of history.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
More on Obamacare
There were no comments concerning "Obamacare" after my last piece, so I guess either everyone agrees with me and Time magazine, or no one read the darn thing. Therefore, I'm going to wing it with a few more remarks of my own.
Just what do opponents of the law object to? Public opinion polling is touted by the Republicans to the effect that most Americans don't like the law, but it only takes a second looking at the poll numbers to realize that part of that opposition is from people who don't think the act went far enough. If those people are included with supporters of the law, there's a rather healthy (Irony intended in use of this word.) majority for it, or for a more comprehensive involvement of the government in health care.
Perhaps we could parse the law to find out what the objections might be. Young people can remain on their parents' health insurance policies until age twenty-six now, instead of nineteen or twenty-two. I doubt anyone outside the insurance business finds that onerous. Applicants for insurance cannot be denied coverage because of pre-existing illnesses. That too seems innocuous, actually I think very popular with the public. Premiums for women cannot be higher than premiums for men. Some men might object, thinking they're effectively subsidizing women's health care, but I think they must be very few in number.
We've knocked down the straw men, so now lets consider what I imagine people really do find troublesome. Obamacare obliges people to buy health insurance coverage or pay a tax penalty that starts out kind of small, but becomes larger over several years to the point where it is truly punitive. The fury of the opponents of the law centers on the cost of non-compliance and the infringement on individual liberty they think the law comprises.
Given the changes the law makes, that I pointed out already, it seems to me there must be some negative incentive to get people to buy a policy. If you can't be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, what's to stop people from doing without insurance until they're truly sick, then rushing to buy coverage, literally on the way to the hospital? Normally I'm not sympathetic with the insurance companies, but I can see that they wouldn't stay in business very long under those circumstances.
My readers, a small but honorable group of people, say they would never abscond on a bill, or declare bankruptcy to get out from under a mountain of debt. Still, it must be admitted that a majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States come about because of large medical bills, and part of the reason those bills are so high is because a percentage of hospital patients don't pay for their treatment, effectively sticking the rest of us for the cost of their care. Most of these people, I'm convinced, truly want to pay their own way, but either don't know how expensive medical care is, or are of such modest means that they would be hard pressed to buy a plan, and decided to take a chance that they wouldn't get sick.
My brother is a perfect example of this. Insurance is a racket, he said for years, and when he was ill he paid cash for doctor services. "But what if you need surgery?" I used to ask him. "You could be wiped out financially by a week in the hospital."
Now he's covered by Medicare, and he managed to keep all the money he might have spent on health insurance. He's a lucky winner, and there are other people like him, but for the great majority of us, there will be a need for expensive hospital care before we're on Medicare. A Facebook friend posted not long ago that he spent a week in the hospital after a heart attack and (I presume) heart surgery, and received a bill for $144,000. He did have a very good policy that paid all but $500 of his bill. Without it, he'd be working until the day he dies to settle the cost of one week of his life.
And what about people who have no intention of paying for emergency medical care? There are some, we all know it, whether we like to admit it or not. How do we get them to do the right thing? Obamacare requires that they buy insurance too, or pay the tax penalty. It might be a weakness in the act that there will still be people - drifters, the chronically unemployed, substance abusers, and their children - who don't file tax returns and therefore won't be troubled by any provisions of the tax code. To opponents of the law, this is egregiously unfair, but the solution, I think, lies not with getting rid of Obamacare but in strengthening it.
By the way, the tax for not buying insurance is a civil matter. No police officer will call on anyone who decides not to get insurance, a la my brother the Libertarian.
Once again, I welcome comments, and will print them in a future posting.
Just what do opponents of the law object to? Public opinion polling is touted by the Republicans to the effect that most Americans don't like the law, but it only takes a second looking at the poll numbers to realize that part of that opposition is from people who don't think the act went far enough. If those people are included with supporters of the law, there's a rather healthy (Irony intended in use of this word.) majority for it, or for a more comprehensive involvement of the government in health care.
Perhaps we could parse the law to find out what the objections might be. Young people can remain on their parents' health insurance policies until age twenty-six now, instead of nineteen or twenty-two. I doubt anyone outside the insurance business finds that onerous. Applicants for insurance cannot be denied coverage because of pre-existing illnesses. That too seems innocuous, actually I think very popular with the public. Premiums for women cannot be higher than premiums for men. Some men might object, thinking they're effectively subsidizing women's health care, but I think they must be very few in number.
We've knocked down the straw men, so now lets consider what I imagine people really do find troublesome. Obamacare obliges people to buy health insurance coverage or pay a tax penalty that starts out kind of small, but becomes larger over several years to the point where it is truly punitive. The fury of the opponents of the law centers on the cost of non-compliance and the infringement on individual liberty they think the law comprises.
Given the changes the law makes, that I pointed out already, it seems to me there must be some negative incentive to get people to buy a policy. If you can't be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, what's to stop people from doing without insurance until they're truly sick, then rushing to buy coverage, literally on the way to the hospital? Normally I'm not sympathetic with the insurance companies, but I can see that they wouldn't stay in business very long under those circumstances.
My readers, a small but honorable group of people, say they would never abscond on a bill, or declare bankruptcy to get out from under a mountain of debt. Still, it must be admitted that a majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States come about because of large medical bills, and part of the reason those bills are so high is because a percentage of hospital patients don't pay for their treatment, effectively sticking the rest of us for the cost of their care. Most of these people, I'm convinced, truly want to pay their own way, but either don't know how expensive medical care is, or are of such modest means that they would be hard pressed to buy a plan, and decided to take a chance that they wouldn't get sick.
My brother is a perfect example of this. Insurance is a racket, he said for years, and when he was ill he paid cash for doctor services. "But what if you need surgery?" I used to ask him. "You could be wiped out financially by a week in the hospital."
Now he's covered by Medicare, and he managed to keep all the money he might have spent on health insurance. He's a lucky winner, and there are other people like him, but for the great majority of us, there will be a need for expensive hospital care before we're on Medicare. A Facebook friend posted not long ago that he spent a week in the hospital after a heart attack and (I presume) heart surgery, and received a bill for $144,000. He did have a very good policy that paid all but $500 of his bill. Without it, he'd be working until the day he dies to settle the cost of one week of his life.
And what about people who have no intention of paying for emergency medical care? There are some, we all know it, whether we like to admit it or not. How do we get them to do the right thing? Obamacare requires that they buy insurance too, or pay the tax penalty. It might be a weakness in the act that there will still be people - drifters, the chronically unemployed, substance abusers, and their children - who don't file tax returns and therefore won't be troubled by any provisions of the tax code. To opponents of the law, this is egregiously unfair, but the solution, I think, lies not with getting rid of Obamacare but in strengthening it.
By the way, the tax for not buying insurance is a civil matter. No police officer will call on anyone who decides not to get insurance, a la my brother the Libertarian.
Once again, I welcome comments, and will print them in a future posting.
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If we don't want people working here illegally and not paying taxes on their work, then clearly, we need enforcement not on the illegals, but rather on the companies that hire the illegals and make it profitable to cross the border illegally. If it is more expensive to pay the fines for illegals than it is to hire people legally, these companies will stop flouting the law.
I have to think that it must not be much of a secret where all these illegals are working. Our government turns a blind eye to the companies that exploit these people to their detriment and ours. Meanwhile, they toss a 'bone' to the people frothing at the mouth about this out-of-control problem by promising to enforce the incarceration of the illegals. The system continues to self-propagate because it is in the interests of some very rich people that we have a shadow population - one that works for a tax-free pittance from them while enjoying some of the government services the rest of us have paid for (probably not the police, but fire, medical, schools, water etc).
The illegals aren't the problem. The companies hiring the illegals are the problem.
I hope no American is so hard-hearted as to deny these people or their children access to needed services. "Sorry, Maria, your parents brought you here illegally, so you can't come to our public school."