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The God Particle

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When I did my undergraduate studies in physics at UC Berkeley, the textbooks (always a generation behind) celebrated the accomplishments of great particle physicists of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The author lists on the papers, typically eight people, offered a picture of personal and meaningful participation in revealing the mysteries of the universe.

When I stood one step down on the stage at Wheeler Hall, giving my thesis adviser a height assist when passing the Ph.D. sash over my head, the realities of research in the field of particle physics had completely changed. While I had worked on an eight-person experiment, the theorists had dismissed the results even before they were published. Many of my peers worked as members of geographically dispersed teams, either national or international in scope. The design and commissioning of apparatus had become major engineering projects requiring a decade or more to complete. Some of them never sat shift to acquire data, but published a thesis based upon computer simulations of what their data would look like when (or in some cases, sadly, if) their experiment was run. They were forgotten cogs in collaborations involving hundreds of scientists.

The sociological side-effects of these changes could be disconcerting. The lead scientist on my post-doctoral research project acquired most of his wealth trading property in the vicinity of Fermilab, sited in bucolic countryside that sprouted suburbs to house the staff of engineers and technicians that kept the facility running. Where once a region could host a cutting-edge experimental facility, eventually the sponsors became states, then nations. The site selection process for the Superconducting Super Collider, the follow-on to Fermilab, was a political circus, eventually falling in favor of Texas during the first Bush administration. The project was cancelled in a budget-cutting exercise during the Clinton Administration. This left CERN, the European competitor to Fermilab, as the only facility in active development in the world, with thousands of researchers dependent upon its survival.

Obviously managing the experimental program at such a facility requires an acute political ear – not just to manage the out-sized egos of the researchers themselves, but in packaging a pitch for politicians approving billion-dollar line-items in their budgets. I watched with trepidation as every year a low-statistics survey was done at the limits of the machine’s operating range, with the expected anomalies in the data held out as evidence that there was “something right around the corner” to be uncovered if the machine was allowed to continue to operate. This happened year-after-year, and that can have bad consequences: the frustration of the funding community creates pressure that causes things like the Challenger disaster to happen.

When I left the field in 1995 (yes, 1995! And it’s still relevant!), two specific problems were held out as motivations for continued funding. First, the equations used to calculate reaction probabilities developed a serious anomaly at the energies targeted by the next set of improvements: the values were greater than unity. Since an experiment can have only one outcome, this was held out as proof that something new would be discovered. The other problem was the existence of the Higgs boson, known popularly as the god particle.

There are many explanations for that soubriquet: “God Particle”. Some attribute it to Stephen Weinberg, a theorist whose frustration with the difficulty of proving or disproving its existence led him to call it “that god-damned particle.” I had a personal view, which was that every time theoretical physics ran into a difficulty, it seemed to be resolved by introducing another Higgs-like particle. But the cynic might also be forgiven if he claimed that the Higgs had become a magic mantra that induced compliance in mystified politicians, and spirited money out of public coffers – pretty much as atheists like to claim religions do.

So what is the Higgs particle?

Einstein is So 20th Century

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In the two centuries between Newton and Einstein, arguably the greatest physicist of the 19th century was the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell made fundamental contributions to thermodynamics, the study of how gases, liquids and solids change when ambient conditions (such as temperature and pressure) change, and how to convert heat to work. One of the results was an understanding of the propagation of sound waves through the air. But Maxwell also applied the new mathematics of differential calculus to create a unified theory of electricity and magnetism. These are the famous “Maxwell’s Equations” that predict the existence of electromagnetic waves, which we see as “light”.

Maxwell saw the relationship between electromagnetic waves and water and sound waves. Being steeped in a mechanical analysis of the world, he was unsatisfied with his abstract mathematical theory, and invested time in building a mechanical model of the “aluminiferous ether” – the medium in which light waves traveled. Having spent years studying his equations and their predictions, I am fascinated by claims of his success. It’s a magical world in which the linear motion of charges creates rotary magnetic effects. My understanding is that the model was not simple, but contained complex systems of interlocking gears.

Now Maxwell’s work was not merely a curiosity – it was the basis for the design of communication networks that broke down distances with the enormous speed of light. More than anything else, this has brought us into each other’s lives and helped to create the sense that we are one human family. (The social and psychological reaction to that reality is complex, and we’re still growing into our responsibilities as neighbors. In The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin offers a hopeful analysis of the transition.)

So the world of scientific inquiry hung on Maxwell’s words, and in America, two of them, Michelson and Morley, designed an experiment to detect the presence of the ether. If the ether filled all of space, the Earth must be moving through it. Therefore the speed of light should change depending upon the motion of the observer through it. The analogy was with water waves: an observer moving along with a water wave doesn’t experience its disturbance – while one moving against it feels its disturbance enhanced. This is an example of Newton’s laws concerning the change of reference frames.

Since the Earth rotates around the sun, light emitted from the Earth in a specific direction relative to the sun should have a different speed at different times of the year. To test this hypothesis, Michelson and Morley built a sensitive instrument that compared the speed of light travelling in two perpendicular directions. As the Earth varied its motion through the ether, the pattern of dark and light on a screen was expected to shift slowly. Strangely, the result was negative: the image did not change.

The conclusion was that there was no ether. This was a real crisis, because Maxwell’s Equations don’t behave very well when trying to predict the relationship between observations made by people moving at different speeds. To understand how really terrible this is, consider: in Maxwell’s theory, charges moving through empty space creates a rotary magnetic field. But what if the observer is moving along with the charge? The charge no longer appears to move, so the magnetic field disappears. How can that be possible?

This was the challenge taken up by the Dutch physicist Henrik Lorenz. He analyzed the mechanical properties of rulers and clocks, which are of course held together by electromagnetic forces, and discovered a magical world in which rulers change length and clocks speed up and slow down when the speed of the observer changes.

This was the context in which Einstein introduced his theory of Special Relativity. He did not really add to the results of Lorenz, but he simplified their derivation by proposing two simple principles: First, since the vacuum is empty, we have no way of determining whether we are moving or not. All motion is relative to an observer (thus the title: Special Theory of Relativity), and so no observer should have a preferred view of the universe. The second was that the speed of light is the same to every observer. Einstein’s mathematical elaboration of these principles unified our understanding of space and time, and matter and energy. Eventually, General Relativity extended his ideas to include accelerating observers, who can’t determine whether they are actually accelerating or rather standing on the surface of a planet.

Special and General Relativity were not the only great theories to evolve in the course of the 20th century. Quantum Mechanics (the world of the microscopic) and Particle Physics (describing the fundamental forces and how they affect the simplest forms of matter) were also developed, but ultimately Einstein’s principles permeated those theories as criteria for acceptance.

Then, in 1998, studies of light emitted from distant supernovae seemed to indicate that something is pushing galaxies apart from each other, working against the general tendency of gravity to pull them back together. The explanation for this is Dark Energy, a field that fills all of space. This field has gravitational effects, and its effects in distorting the images of distant galaxies have been observed. However, this field cannot be moving in all possible directions at all possible speeds. Therefore, it establishes a preferred reference frame, invalidating Einstein’s assumptions.

Working physicists resist this conclusion, because they have a means of accommodating these effects in their theories, which is to introduce additional mathematical terms. But science is not about fitting data – it is about explaining it. Einstein used his principles as an explanation to justify the mathematics of his theories. When those principles are disproven, the door opens to completely new methods for describing the universe. We can travel as far back as Maxwell in reconstructing our theories of physics. While for some that would seem to discard a lot of hard work done over the years between (and undermine funding for their research), for others it liberates the imagination (see Generative Orders as an illustration).

So, for example, why didn’t Michelson and Morley detect the ether? Maybe ether is more like air than water. Air is carried along with the Earth, and so the speed of sound doesn’t vary as the Earth moves about the sun. Maybe dark energy, which Maxwell knew as the ether, is also carried along with the Earth. Maybe, in fact, gravitation is caused by distortion in the Dark Energy field when it is bound to massive objects.

The Writing of The Soul Comes First

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In Catholic terminology, thaumaturgy is the working of miracles through love. Raised by a skeptical father and steeped in science that disproved the possibility of such experiences, for most of my life I disbelieved.

That changed with the millennium, when personal and political crises brought fear into my life. I began to read widely on spiritual and religious experience. Then one Sunday I entered the sanctuary at St. Kolbe’s in Oak Park, CA. A thirty-foot statue of Christ hangs from the ceiling, not nailed to the cross, but suspended before it. Confronted with this powerful image of human suffering, I instinctively put my hand over my heart, held it out to him, and thought, “Use this for healing.”

In the intervening years, I have learned a great deal about healing through divine love. I learned that many “evil” people are simply doing what was done to them, and desperately looking for someone with the strength to show them how to get over it. I learned that people used to being in control find the sensations that come with being loved to be frightening, almost a betrayal by the thirst of their hearts. I learned that many intellectual atheists are “spiritual”, and those that are not do not realize how frightening others find the strength of their minds. I realized that Biblical literalists use their dogmatism to hold those minds at bay.

As I sought for answers, the astrophysicists announced the discovery of Dark Energy. To those that remember the philosophical roots of modern physics, this discovery was shattering. Einstein’s theories of relativity are based upon the assumption that space is empty. Dark Energy demolishes that assumption. With that called into doubt, we might notice another oddity in the history of physics: where from Ancient Greece to 1950 the complexity of nature was always understood by positing structure inside the smallest objects we could observe, in the modern era physicists assumed that no additional structure was needed. Taking away relativity and adding additional structure reveals a whole new class of theories that have the potential to reconcile science and spirituality (see Generative Orders (GO) and GO Cosmology).

I began to share these insights in 2005 with the web site at http://www.everdeepening.org, in which, as a Greek philosopher might have, I try to prove that love works. Realizing that the material was really difficult, I wrote a “layman’s” treatment back in 2008, the unpublished “Love Works.” Unfortunately, attempts to teach others demonstrated that the ideas were still difficult to grasp.

Then, in 2013, I was moved to re-read the Bible cover-to-cover, and saw it in a completely new light. I realized that what Darwin and paleontology had revealed about natural history was written right into the Bible. No conflict existed, and in fact the consistency of science with the Bible served to substantiate everything else written within.

Reading through the book in such a short time, I also saw the greater work on human nature, and the majesty and brilliance of God’s efforts to prepare us for the manifestation of Christ.

So I sat down at my computer and wrote The Soul Comes First in three weeks. In it is contained all the hopes that I pray I share with Christ: the unification of reason and faith, the hidden strength that will give humanity victory over fear, and the healing of the world through the power of love.

The message may be frightening to some. The job that we forsook in Eden is a big job, and difficult. All I ask is that you remember that it is not in human hands that the work is held. We all do our part, and the farm hand that plants a sustainable crop is no less essential than the ecologist that plans the restoration of a forest. The housewife serving in the soup kitchen is no less essential than the CEO commissioning a new factory. The counsellor that saves a marriage is no less essential than that politician that negotiates a peace treaty. With love, the strength of Christ, and the unifying wisdom of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible.

Why Monotheism?

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When I was in high school in the ‘70s, global politics was dominated by a penis-envy contest called Mutually Assured Destruction. The Soviet Union and the United States amassed huge stock-piles of nuclear weapons that Carl Sagan concluded could wipe out the enemy without even falling on their territory. Simply setting them all off at ground level would raise enough dust in the stratosphere to cause a global winter. The collapse in food supplies would push humanity to the brink of extinction. That the instigator of the war would share the fate of their enemy justified the acronym ‘MAD’. But there were a lot of institutions that spent a lot of money building weapons delivery systems that were faster, more lethal and more accurate – money that might have been better spent improving the educational and living standards.

While Khrushchev threatened that the Warsaw Pact would bury the West under the weight of Soviet armor (pounding his shoe on the table for rhetorical effect), ultimately it was America that buried Russia under a mountain of dollars. Remember – this wasn’t a strategic conflict with concrete goals. It was a penis-envy contest, and letting the other guy get away with more was unacceptable. So Russia bankrupted itself attempting to match the West weapons-system for weapons-system. The United States cynically engaged this policy of “escalation” in many theaters of conflict. Simply introduce more and more sophisticated weapons systems, until the enemy was financially exhausted, then bring them to the table to figure out how to make money together.

We’ve seen this same logic invade our religious arguments over the last hundred years. You know, “My God is greater than yours.” At one point, the Buddhists prided themselves on remaining above the fray, but when I went down to Deer Park Monastery five years back, the speaker was proud to observe that Buddhism had never instigated a war, unlike those Christians and Muslims. I wondered to myself whether Buddhists were running any countries, and now recent events in Myanmar seem to bear out the corrupting influence of political authority.

Religious breast-beating can be traced to theological escalation. Polytheism was accepted practice in the ancient world, and those that cultivated relationships with multiple gods would have been likely to consider themselves shorted in a relationship with a single god. What if the one god doesn’t approve of your goals? Why wouldn’t you want to bargain with another deity? The response from monotheism was often to assert that “Our one God is more powerful than all those other gods put together. In fact, our God is the god of all things seen and unseen, the creator of everything, the ultimate purpose, and look at how our warriors beat you up on the battlefield when we carry his banner!”

I am going to denounce this logic right here and now: monotheism is not the celebration of a god for the purpose of claiming his or her power. Monotheism is, in fact, the original humanism. It was to recognize: “Geez, there’s a lot of spiritual power brought forward from the past, power built up in trees and animals and fish. It’s really hard to be human in this world! Let’s band together and worship a human god, and create a place for ourselves.”

Why was this important? Because our minds are so incredibly powerful. This is recognized in Eden, where after eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve are cast out before they can eat of the Tree of Life. Humanity has a dangerous capacity: the capacity to create ideas, which is to reorganize spirit. The serpent tempted Eve because it knew that it could assault heaven itself with that power, and that is evident in the actions of God himself in the aftermath: an angel with flashing swords is set up to prevent our return to the Garden.

It is also evident in the punishments meted out for creating the golden calf, the judgment against the kings of Israel for allowing polytheism to flourish, the scourges suffered by Ezekiel and the passion of Christ. When humanity is polluted by primitive tendencies, God insists that they be purged. This is also the purpose of the Law: animals are opportunistic and instinctual. They don’t apply abstract systems of rules to moderate their actions. Reasoning about the consequences of our actions is a uniquely human capability.

The full glory of human potential is celebrated by Christ when he announces to Peter [Matt. 16:9]:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

In other words, the Apostles were trained as a corps of spiritual surgeons.

In confronting the power of this capacity, the ancient predators had only one response: keep us from banding together. This is described in Revelation, where John recounts how the dragon (the spiritual avatar of the serpent that appeared in Eden) causes humanity to pursue animal worship, and when we get over that, corrupts our religions from within [Rev. 13:15]:

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

Sound like MAD, anyone? Claim that your god is the best, threaten the enemy, and bankrupt yourself spiritually.

The goal that I offer today, thus, is to put away monotheistic escalation. The ultimate nature of God is beyond our understanding. What is important is to use the divine relationship to most fully refine our human capacities. Our unique skills – the skills of understanding, imagination and creativity – must be strengthened. Ultimately, it is intended that those skills should replace the brutal urge for survival and reproductive opportunity that characterize the animal kingdom.

In guiding us to maturity, all of our great religious traditions hold that there will come an avatar who will help us bring peace and justice to the world. Their name or ethnicity is unimportant, for in that era the divine authority will be manifested in all of us.

Jesus’s Greatest Gift

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Christians take pride in the claim that Jesus never violated the Law of Moses, but Jesus himself didn’t seem to consider that to be terribly important. When called “Good teacher”, he replies [Mark 10:18]:

Why do you call me good? No one is good-except God alone.

In fact, in his teaching, Jesus pares down. To the rich young man seeking to know the path to eternal life, [Mark 10:19] Jesus says:

You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your mother and father.’

And when the lawyer asks for the greatest commandment [Matt. 22:37-40], Jesus says:

‘Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

What is going on here? The pride of the Hebrews was their Law, but Jesus did not come and say,

“Very good, proud servants! You have mastered the 613 edicts of the Law! Now, let me finish it for you!” With a wave of his hand, a completed wiki of law appeared, covering all of life’s possibilities.

No, he said “Use your heart and mind and soul. You love. You draw near to God. You go out and serve your neighbors.”

Adam and Eve failed in Eden because they were weak. The Law of Moses was a prophylactic – an intellectual condom – for those still suffering with that weakness. But after millennia of wrestling with the interpretation of the law, Jesus called his people to leave it behind.

His final refutation was to rise from the dead after the Law was used to destroy him.

Can the rest of Humanity do the same? Some of us, yes, for he says to his disciples [Matt: 16:24]:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

But obviously that was not what he told others (see above).

So why do so many Christians impose rules? Because in a broken world, love hurts. We open our hearts to people and they pour all their poison into us. But Jesus has an answer for that. He says, “I will die for the forgiveness of sins. Pour their poison into me. I will take it from you. I will make the weak strong. I will support the burdened. You – you, dear child of God – you go out and love.”

From our weakness and dependency upon the rules that limit us, Jesus makes an escape into the infinite possibilities of love.

The Peace of the Grave

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In The Soul Comes First, I include Death among the forms of selfishness that the angels release onto Earth for healing. I characterize it as “which destroys utterly”, but I have realized that is unfair. It is how it appears to the rest of us, but the elements of a soul cannot be destroyed, only repurposed. No, it only appears to us that Death destroys the ones that we lose.

Death cuts a soul off from the dance of life. It enters in as a shroud around our spirit, and chokes off the links that tie us to others. We can no longer share ourselves. How is that selfish? Well, Death does not give up its victims willingly. It collects spirits, like insects in amber.

So how is Death redeemed by Love? Jesus’s resurrection proved that Love pierces the veil of death. That control allows lovers respite from the burdens of the world. They can withdraw and process the pain that they receive when healing broken hearts.

Through love, we can control the veil of death, and find peace for ourselves when we need. In love, we find ourselves always yearning to return to the dance of life with others, and so do not remain isolated.

Unless, of course, we don’t build links of love to others, and then death is a terrible and permanent isolation – which is why selfish people fear it so much.

I am astonished by parallels with the process of birth. A spirit separates from the chorus of heaven and enters into the mother’s womb to be bound to a body. The end of that process is a violent forcing out that can break the spirits of either or both participants. The spiritual cycle is almost manifested in the act of birth itself, and I believe that among a woman’s spiritual challenges is the essential intimacy of life with death.

What did this mean for the Magdalene? She was confronted with a glorious man who was committed to a confrontation with death! But his glory is a manifestation of the beauty of the spirits that choose to surround him, and what woman would not want the joy of bringing such spirits into the world? I see her almost swept away by this passion for the life of him, so he cautions her in the cemetery:

Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

He had not yet purged himself of the pain that had been forced upon him, and in clinging to him she was binding herself to that pain.

Among the Biblical commentators are those that see Mary Magdalene as the bride of Christ, but I hear in his words a caution to a woman swept up by events beyond her comprehension.

But there is another among Humanity’s pantheons who might understand, because her experience parallels that of Jesus. The Greeks tell of a goddess, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, who was given up as a bride to Hades to prevent his melancholy from consuming the world. The rest of the world found life in the sacrifice of the jewel of womanhood, foremost among Death’s treasures, whose grace fascinated his attentions. In Spring, she was released from Hades for a day, and life returned with her. If there are any among Death’s captives who deserve liberation, foremost among them is she!

Oh, Christ, bring her forth, and let her inspire us to protect nature, rather than destroying it so that we might profit! Bring us peace, not through death, but a lasting peace built upon the wisdom gained in our long struggle to master the Knowledge of Good and Evil!

Healing Dissension

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In the weary journey that has been this life, I have come to accept that we cannot end sin by trying to destroy the impulses that trigger it. That simply justifies their behavior. So Jesus counsels us [NIV Matt. 5:9]:

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

So I have sought to join the vices to love. That strategy was held out in All the Vice of Jesus. I was pretty satisfied with my progress, and had turned my thoughts from the matter until I realized that Dissension was still at work in my life.

She kept me up all last night, from 12:30 until I rose at 6:45. Competition and fear at work, the cry of “Anti-Semitism” against the reasons for Jesus’s demotion of the Law of Moses, old family history and recent family struggle: they rolled through my mind, one after another, sometimes mixing into toxic stew, and I found myself simply reiterating: “I have so much else to be concerned with! What right do you have to burden me with these trivial complaints that are your responsibilities?”

So I lost that round. I allowed dissension to separate me from those that I seek to love and inspire.

I think of dissension as “she” because I have learned that Mystery, the woman on the red beast in Rev. 17:5, uses it as a favorite tool. Whether in debasing my relationships with younger women by imposing sex or in undermining collaboration with other men, Mystery (I could name the women, but that would be counter-productive) has inserted dissension again as an obstacle to my goals.

When things got really bad at work, I found this piece of wisdom about dealing with conflict, the goal of all dissension:

Find a mutually beneficial solution.
Adapt to surroundings.
Don’t share all your secrets.
Stand up for your dreams.
Sometimes you need to move on.

It’s that last that has come to disturb me: surrender. I have found it to be an effective solution, but a consequence has been that I haven’t been able to build upon the foundations I establish at work and home. Domineering people walk off with them.

There’s another method: dissension justifies the projection of our egos. If we don’t participate, and accept that projection without responding to its harmful intent, people become enmeshed in our love. Eventually they may realize that we can do more together than we can as individuals.

But then comes Mystery again: the quiet lurker in the backwaters of our minds who gains power by picking up the gold that dissension scatters. As we learn to work together, she’s frozen out, and the volume and intensity of her projections goes up.

Is that what I’m dealing with? The last hurrah of Mystery?

That doesn’t seem satisfying. I’d like to redeem her.

So let’s consider: if dissension motivates us to assert our egos in destructive competition, perhaps with love it becomes celebration of our differences? Maybe the answer to a charge of ill intent is to insert, at the top of the list:

Celebrate your opponent’s virtues.

The Great Divide

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The Bible documents the progress made by the Holy Spirit in preparing men to fulfill the role that was forsaken in Eden. It comes with a cost, though, and that cost is no longer supportable. The division between men and woman must be healed.

It was this concern that compelled the writing of Ma.

Being a single man, there’s only so much of this road that I can walk down. In the preface to Ma, I emphasize the grace of the gifts that women possess, and much of the book is a celebration of feminine spirituality. That’s not nearly enough, though. As I man, I feel compelled to take ownership of the problems that men create for women.

The book addresses head-on the central problem: while a craving for physical intimacy is the force that most often compels us into relationships, it’s also frequently the fuel that destroys them. I’m not thinking only of hedonism: powerful men often use naïve women for sexual pleasure, and those women can find themselves eaten up by the spiritual side-effects of conflict.

So Ma will shock most Christian readers, because it starts with two scenes of physical intimacy, rendered in detail. I try to evoke the full power of such experiences, their mystery and wonder, and the two extreme contexts in which they are corrupted: the casual hook-up and the emotionally impoverished political liaison.

The book progresses from those experiences as a slow-motion train wreck, in which the men are confronted with choices between healing their women and the glory of virtuous accomplishment. They are two very different people, and readers will almost certainly sympathize more with one than the other. Along the way is a lot of speculation about the intersection between science and spirituality, social philosophy and cosmic adventure, but in the end the story is meditation on how to redeem the love shared by men and women.

Church and State

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President Obama fanned the flames of controversy when, at breakfast with Muslim leaders, he remarked that Christianity had a history of injustice that should be cautionary when characterizing movements such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The specific examples he cited were the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery in America.

How does each of these examples relate to the effort to create an Islamic State in the Middle East?

The Crusades

The Crusades were a complex political effort. The laws of inheritance in Europe meant that all the younger sons of the nobility were unlanded, and thus unable to provide for a noble wife. As a result, Europe was embroiled in internecine strife, to a degree that the Papacy at one point threatened to excommunicate the nobility if the bloodshed did not cease.

In this context, the Emperor of Constantinople, in whom leadership of both Church and State were gathered, was facing Muslim aggression. Again, the politics was complex: the Emperor was a tyrant, and faced internal dissent both from Christian “heretics” and Jews. The Emperor pled to the Rome for assistance, and Urban, seeing the possibility of reuniting the two halves of Christendom, agreed. Of course, this was also an outlet for the unlanded nobility to attain honors and wealth.

The first of the Crusades was a successful military effort, but revealed its misconceived origins. The Jews fought against the Crusaders, which led to pogroms against the “elder brothers” that Europe had accepted as representatives of their nation. The castles gained were impossible to support logistically from Europe, and ruled by the most aggressive of the European knights, men who insisted on attacking passing Muslim caravans. When the Caliph refused, on Islamic grounds, to retaliate except when the raiders were attacking, he was overthrown by Saladdin, a military slave, who began a concerted effort to conquer all of Christendom.

Back in Europe, the organizational strength of the Catholic Church led to a fascination with Christian ceremony and piety among the nobility. This reached its peak in France, where King Philip decided to mount a crusade as a proof of piety. The logistics were poorly conceived, and the mission ended in disaster. The last of the Crusades, in complete contradiction of Urban’s original intent, ended with the sack of Constantinople itself.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix religion and politics.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition is often spoken of as a single movement, but study reveals that the character of an “inquisition” depended upon the political context.

The worst excesses of inquisition occurred when political leaders began to challenge the organizational power of the Church. Again, this was a complex problem: the Church had benefited from the instability of the European nobility, and so had acquired huge amounts of land and wealth. They used religious authority to protect those lands. As the nobility began to establish independent systems of law and institutions of learning, the more aggressive among them focused on the practical opportunity of the weak Church military. The hypocrisy of many religious leaders also led them to question the authenticity of their claim to the lands held for Christ.

The most horrific inquisitions occurred in Spain and France. Following the Muslim invasion, the crown of Spain holed up in the Pyrenees. When the Islamic world rejected scientific thinking, advances in military technology eventually gave the king the upper hand in the struggle. Sweeping out of the mountains with the fire of religious purity, the king set out to purge Spanish civilization of Muslim collaborators. As in the Middle East, this included many Jewish nobles, who had benefited by Muslim occupation. The king forced them to Christianize their names and convert. Those that did not were stripped of their titles.

The mechanisms of this inquisition were horrific, and that was recognized by the Pope. A papal decree was issued warning the king to cease the program. The king responded with a threat to reform the church in Spain with himself as its head. Rome, for reasons among which should be considered to provide relief to those under indictment, choose to retract its decree and remain active in Spain. The king pushed his advantage by posting Borgia to Rome. The methods used by Borgia to obtain the papacy reflect more the guidance of Machiavelli than Christ.

The prior situation in France was similarly complicated. The French king was in a struggle against the independent southern nobility. The region was also distinguished by its Catharism, a schismatic sect that upheld feminine spirituality and the renunciation of worldly concerns. Rome was an active collaborator in the purge of the region, but was goaded by the murder of its legate by a rebellious noble, Raymond of Toulouse. I do remark that about this time the king invaded Rome and transferred the papacy to Avignon. Obviously, the balance of power in Europe was shifting. Most Cathars chose to convert to Catholicism: those that did not were hanged or burned at the stake.

The French and Spanish Inquisitions bracketed the Medieval Inquisition. Again, this was a complicated situation. Prosecution of heresy was performed under civil as well as Church law, and Rome often found that the proceedings were manipulated to benefit the civil authorities. In an attempt to prevent executions and to ensure that heretics received correct Christian teaching, the papacy attempted to take control of prosecution of heresy. Some assert that the mission saved thousands of lives.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Slavery in America


Obama made the claim that Christianity was used to “justify” slavery. While not having studied the matter deeply, I have never heard anyone claim that the slave masters looked into the Bible and found a command to subjugate the peoples of Africa to slavery. Yes, slavery was mentioned as a common practice in the Bible, but it also came with injunctions against mistreatment. Sympathy and counsel to the slave is given in a charming fashion in the story of Naaman [2 Kings 5], whose humble servants convinced their violence-prone master to accept the guidance of Elisha, and thus to receive healing.

This sense of slaves as part of the owner’s family is contradicted by the zeal and determination shown by God in freeing his people from Egypt. Though jilted by Joseph and his family, who became prominent political figures in Pharaoh’s circle, God heeds the cries of the Israelites under the foreman’s lash. Obviously, God acted in a way consistent with justice.

My sense, then, is that the Bible was used to rationalize the corrupt system of slavery in the American South by those that profited by it. They were eventually beaten down, just as Pharaoh was beaten down. Of course, racism is still strong among all the survivors of that system, but Obama did not mention racism – he spoke of slavery.

So the lesson that I see here is: don’t mix economics and religion.

The Lessons of Christ


The Republican Party likes to draw upon the authority of religion in its legislative program. This has led to some interesting policy contradictions in a party committed both the Christian action and laissez-faire economics. Indiana recently passed a law allowing the state to contract with organizations that require adherence from their employees. You would think that they would prefer those institutions to demonstrate the alignment of those precepts by succeeding against all comers in the open market, and so to be uninterested in government contracts.

To the discerning reader, the Bible gives clear testimony regarding the effects of the mixing of politics and religion. Samuel counsels against the anointing of a king, but relents in a “law of natural consequences” demonstration. While the wisdom and grace of God had guided the nation through trouble unscathed, with the creation of a monarchy, the nation was riven by internecine strife, forsook its covenant, and was eventually destroyed by the Assyrians.

With the return to Canaan, the process is repeated. Jesus finally comes along to counsel “render unto Caesar” and to demolish the authority of the law that had been perverted to make wealth a substitute for actual piety. Dashing the hopes of his Apostles, he renounces an earthly kingdom and submits to destruction at the hands of the authorities of his day. His resurrection was proof that the paternity of God promises greatness that no king can equal.

Christians should understand political systems as a temporary mechanism used to protect against exploitation. Such claims always have an aura of subjectivity: the rich man confident of his contributions to the general well-being may consider taxation to be a form of “exploitation.” Conflicting claims can only be resolved face-to-face, as happened to John McNamara in India. However, when the era of Christ’s reign occurs, the openness of Christ’s heart will make resolution of these claims immediate and obvious to those involved. That era will manifest only when we stop heeding the political philosophies of men, and trust the “still, quiet voice” that talks directly into our hearts.

So the lesson of Christ is that in the face of personal weakness, attempting to legislate justice is a fool’s errand. The Christian path is to expose corruption, and then to heal the victims, thereby disempowering those that use fear to exploit the weak.

So the lesson of Christ is: don’t mix politics and religion.

The Lessons of Islam


Following the death of Mohammed (pbuh), the Islamic Ummah went through a period of upheaval as it assumed the responsibilities of state management. Corruption was rampant. The Eleven Followers of Mohammed (pbuh) tried to restore the integrity of the Ummah, but were systematically destroyed. This is the essence of the Shia-Sunni split, with the Shias coming out on the losing end of the argument. It was the Sunni Muslims in Baghdad that mounted the era of Muslim conquest, although ultimately Islam proved to be a fig-leaf for a sequence of conquerors of diverse nationalities, including Ughurs and Turks.

In the service of celebrating the martial accomplishments of the conquerors, the state-supported Imams glorified and justified their atrocities (as can also be seen in the Bible, with the Babylonian Chronicles a re-write of the disparaging Kings). These nationalist paeans are now held by some as a higher authority than the Qur’an itself, in which Mohammed (pbuh) inveighs against violence unless under immediate attack.

In the modern era, we can see the disastrous consequences of mixing politics and religion in the extremism generated by Saudi Wahabbism and militancy throughout the world when Islamic practices are enforced by the state (as by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

So the lesson of Islam is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Wisdom from the Bully Pulpit?


I obviously find Obama’s comments to lack nuance. Religious history shows that religious states always yield to corruption. Worse, ISIS doesn’t appear to have ever been a manifestation of Mohammed’s (pbuh) moral principles. However, I would agree that nations that profess to be Christian have also failed to practice the moral principles of Christ.

As a moral imperative, I’d like the President to exhort Islamic leaders to renounce state-enforced religion. And I’d like him to remind Christians that legislation of morality has an ugly history in the Bible, not excluding the crucifixion of the man we hold as our Savior.

God granted us free will. In the exercise of that will, we will make mistakes, hurting ourselves and others. This is the path of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that we choose in Eden. The greatness of our God comes in patient forgiveness and healing.

For Christians hoping for the reign of Christ, this is not an idle matter. Jesus died for our sins, but his compassion does not stop there. A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in our eternal souls. When Jesus returns, it will be for the healing. So long as we continue to attempt to prevent sin through the coercive power of the state, his power can only be manifested against the institutions of the state.

Yes, competent administration of the state is essential, but should not be linked to manifestation of his ultimate aims, for his spirit will unite all peoples, and wash away fear with healing. Provide private support for your church and its charitable efforts among the less fortunate, and let the spread of the Holy Spirit make the state irrelevant.

Taking Up the Cross

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While Christianity is filled with joy in the certainty of Jesus’s promises, those promises are balanced with assurances that we will face suffering. In fact, suffering seems to be tendered as a condition of our Christianity, for Jesus says [NIV Matt. 16:24]

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

It’s hard to avoid the impression that if we don’t find a cross to carry, we can’t call ourselves a disciple of Christ.

Now the obvious thing about the cross is the pain involved. But if the experience of pain was a condition of grace, Jesus would have come into the world a cripple, and shown us how to overcome that deficit. And to be healed would be contrary to grace, rather than an act to be celebrated – as Jesus so joyfully did – as a demonstration of great faith.

So we should be cautious against ascribing a long illness as a cross to bear, nor a difficult relationship or financial challenges. Jesus presented us another tool to use in overcoming those difficulties: an openness to the unconditional love tendered from the divine source, and a sharing of its riches with those around us. It was a message of truth that both revealed our nature, and the grace of the relationship that God seeks to share with us.

It is this observation that leads us into an understanding of the metaphor as Jesus offered it. The cross was not just the place of suffering – it was a tool wielded by the rulers of the age to prevent Jesus from sharing his message. Those authorities achieved their position largely through fear. In the case of the Romans and Herod, it was fear through threat of violence. In the case of the Temple priests, it was fear gained through the threat of spiritual corruption.

To take up the cross, then, is to offer the world the experience of our love, and to be harmed by those who use fear to control those to whom we offer hope. It is to speak truth to power, to do it joyfully, and to make courage born of faith a demonstration of the weakness of our persecutors.

There is no place in which it is more important to do this than in our churches. Consider: the only direct assault Jesus mounted against the rulers of his age was against the money changers in the Temple – the intermediaries that profited by standing between the faithful and the healing love of God.

So do not make too much, fellow Christians, of finding that we have pain in our lives. That is not what qualifies us in the eyes of Jesus. We find certain grace as Christians only when our pain serves to overcome the institutions that stand against love: either the perfect love of God, or the love that we offer each other.