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God’s Bargain

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One of the charms of Democracy is the barren privilege of our belief that we can bargain with an incredibly powerful being – our government – that knows almost nothing about us. We have a vote, and we hang on the words of candidates, hoping to hear a promise that we can bind with our vote. Those that draw upon other resources (whether the free market or faith) to garner security tend to wish to limit the role of government. Those looking at success from the outside often wish to draw upon governmental power to avert personal calamity. In most of the electorate, those two impulses join in incoherent combination. Witness, for example, the Floridian retiree who pronounces that entitlements must be cut to reduce the federal deficit, but insists that Medicare and Social Security are sacrosanct.

Entitlements for the elderly were established as a “New Deal” during the Great Depression. At that time, the elderly were the most impoverished segment of society. Since that time, the elderly have become the wealthiest segment of the population, being replaced on the lowest tier by our children.

The challenge of loving people unconditionally – of saying that you will invest in the survival of others without regards to merit – is to create conditions in which the loved ones may choose to use their power to hurt themselves and others. In our modern democracy, the elderly – the community with the most time for political organization – have used that opportunity to steal power from those without a political voice – children. That hasn’t happened directly, and any specific senior citizen would be angered by my characterization. But governments are aggregates, and my statement, in aggregate, is irrefutable.

The Bible, of course, is the story of Unconditional Love’s attempt to enter into and glorify the world. It celebrates episodes of human grace, but for the most part it is a record of iniquity – of the rejection of unconditional love in favor of material possessions (land, wealth or political alliance) that provide security. Inevitably, the strategies of material possession create competition between individuals and communities, often culminating in violence.

How does God deal with this problem? Well, in the Old Testament, generally by disassembling the nation. In the record we have Noah’s Flood, the subjugation of Egypt, the culling of the Golden Calf, the jealous threats of Exodus and the exile to Babylon. So we have this paradox: the gifts of Unconditional Love are showered on the people, but when they abuse them, they suffer terrible punishment.

Unfortunately, the power of this rebuke was projected onto individuals. If the nation should suffer as a whole for sin, so must the individual. Personal misfortune was interpreted as a consequence of personal sin, when in most cases it occurs as a result of sins committed by others. The hungry child sleeps at her desk while the septuagenarian on social security tees up on the golf course.

Jesus rails against such hypocrisy in the opening verses of Luke 13. He speaks of Galileans whose blood was added to the Hebrew sacrifices, and the people killed by the collapse of a tower, and warns that they were not alone in their sin. To the audience, he proclaims twice:

Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

But then Jesus tells a strange little story about a landowner that planted a fig tree in his vineyard. When it bears no fruit, he orders his gardener to cut it down as it was “wasting the soil.” To this, the gardener replies [ESV Luke 13:8-9]:

Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put manure on. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

In many other parables, Jesus speaks of himself as a landowner, prince or bridegroom, but in this case, I see him renewing his role as a tender of life, most familiarly through the parables of the shepherd. To those familiar with the story of the Golden Calf, it might come to mind that God threatened to destroy the entire Hebrew nation, and relented only when Moses assumed responsibility for their future conduct.

Here Jesus says that the problem is not with the Hebrew people (the tree) but with the ground they are planted in. He vows to spread his loving spirit on them, and counsels that they will flower and bear fruit under his care.

And if not, then God may destroy them. Note that: the landowner orders the gardener to cut down the tree, and the gardener offers to care for it another year, building a bond of caring that means that the landowner must do the work of clearing the ground.

In disobeying the owner the following year, will the gardener himself by cut down? Is Jesus offering this assurance to his disciples: “I will care for you as Moses did, and if you fall, I will fall with you.” Recognizing both that sin must not be allowed to take root in the land, but also committing himself without reservation to preservation of the tree of human spirit that will eventually spread Divine Love over the entire world?

Ultimately, the only stable security is in knowing that we are loved. God is the only perfect source of that love, but his restless seeking to heal the world means that we cannot take that love and hide from the world. We cannot “retire” in comfort. We must go into the dark places where people hunger and live in fearful ignorance and bring them love. If we do not, love will pass round us seeking another way, and the sins of others will overwhelm us.

God’s purpose is pure, and embraces everything. It can serve us only if we serve others.

God loves us, but he cannot be bargained with like we can bargain with a government.

But why would we want to?

Private Property as a Principle of Social Terrorism

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James Radcliffe offers a UK perspective on Trump’s presidential candidacy. I offered this context.

There’s an aspect of the American political trajectory that is perhaps worth highlighting to those outside the country, because it is developing steam in other places.

Fundamentally, government is concerned with negotiating the rules that control the distribution of power in a society. For all of human history, it has been either at odds with or coopted by the concept of “private property,” which most often is allocated arbitrarily from the commons, and held by force even when mismanagement of resources leads to preventable social suffering.

What has happened in America is that, since the ’80s, the conservative branch of our political system has adopted an extremist view of this conflict supported by the economic proposition that the only legitimate means for redistributing power is the free market. That actual markets, with their privileged knowledge and contractual Arcana, are by no means “free” in the theoretical sense has not impeded the propagation of policies, laws and political planks that uphold this principle as the foremost goal of all governmental action.

They are blind to the contradictions of their program: the use of government to supplant government with the free market. Karl Rove, conservative talk radio, the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist are the political terrorists driving the implementation of this program. The consequence is that conservative candidates for president have become progressively less qualified to run the government. Their understanding of government has become atrophied because they actually question its legitimacy.

Trump is simply the inevitable consequence of this divorce from reality.

Coming Clean on Student Absenteeism

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Daily Kos reports that allowing poor students access to washing machines at school decreased absenteeism in 90% of cases – as well as improving student enthusiasm and participation.

People facing challenges in life test the effectiveness and fairness of the systems designed by those granted opportunity. When something so basic as personal dignity can be addressed so simply, with such a profound impact, it’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t do what we can to understand their condition.

Healing the Legacy of “Black Gold”

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I was aware of the exploitation of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador by Texaco, and must admit to not being terribly surprised that similar offenses have occurred throughout the world. Reparations and restoration may be impossible, given the vast extent of the degradation. They will certainly bankrupt the industry – Ecuador alone represents a $27 billion liability to Chevron, which bought Texaco back in 2001.

The two European oil giants, Shell and BP, have both made forays into renewables. This piece from Platform London describes their uncomfortable attempts to muster the conviction to do what is right for the future.

In America we addressed the issue of culpability for environmental degradation with the Clean Air and Water Acts. Parts of the legal framework were moderately unfair: “joint and severable” liability meant that if a small-potatoes polluter dumped something into a landfill, non-polluters had to pay to clean up the mess. Even when a polluter was able to pay, the chemical  and oil industries have evolved a sophisticated array of legal practices to avoid financial liability, ranging from divestment of operations responsible for managing polluted sites all the way to bankruptcy.

As it became clear that the original Acts were not going to generate assets sufficient to undo decades of exploitation of workers and ecosystems, Congress responded with a broad tax on the industry. This recognizes that the benefits of exploitation accrued to the society as a whole, motivating local, state and federal elected officials to turn a blind eye to the effects of pollution. The Superfund Act recognized that society as a whole needed to take responsibility for the problem, and contribute through taxation to remedies.

I’m not certain whether those at Platform London and elsewhere recognize that we need to move beyond attempts to hold Big Oil responsible for its servicing of our addiction to fossil fuels. All of us, as citizens of an energy rich economy, need to do our part to contribute to a solution. That means a global pact to finance restoration and restitution.

Given the Brexit vote, it appears obvious that we lack the institutional means to negotiate that kind of commitment. What the activists might consider is that Big Oil itself may be a powerful and motivated partner in creating the conditions under which that negotiation can take place.

Internet Autocracy

Article at The Conversation on the internet as a centralized form of media that can be exploited by authoritarian regimes, particularly among citizens using it primarily for entertainment.

My comment:

I believe that the jury is still out on this one. One of the factors that fueled international respect for authoritarian regimes was external propaganda. Leaders of developing nations were beguiled by the perception that state-run economies and militaries were equally effective as those managed by decentralized cultures. The internet completely skewers that façade.

Most authoritarian regimes are sustained by revenues obtained through labor and resource exploitation by the developed world. As the consumer nations shift to automated and sustainable alternatives (respectively), those revenues will dry up. The old Roman dictum “bread and circuses” fails when there is no bread. When there is no bread, people will be forced to organize in a decentralized fashion to obtain basic goods. The internet will be the mechanism that facilitates that organization.

And there is still the lesson of the Cold War: if the international community can avoid creating external conflicts to justify the fear-mongering, the investment in lies eventually divorces the leadership from reality. The internet only provides the appearance of greater efficacy. The people learn to go about their business independently by pushing responsibility upwards. The retort is always “I’ll do it, boss, if you show me exactly how.” It’s like that scene in Life of Brian where the two prison guards stutter and garble words until the interrogator leaves, then start speaking coherently.

In the meanwhile, liberal societies will rocket ahead using the benefits of network effects (the value of a communications network goes up as the factorial of the number of participants). In the era of rapid change driven by global climate stress, that facility will be essential to survival.

He that Lives By the Gun, Dies By the Gun

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The parable of the Good Samaritan is offered by Jesus in response to a challenge by a Hebrew lawyer, an expert on the law, who asks “Teacher, what must I do to attain eternal life?” Jesus responds with a question of his own, prompting the lawyer to summarize the law. Rather than listing the main categorizes and precepts, the lawyer says [NIV Luke 10:27]:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

To which Jesus affirms:

You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.

Obviously the focus is not this life on Earth, but the life of eternity lived with God. It is in this vein that we should also interpret his warning to the disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane [NIV Matt. 26:52]:

Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

This is not a prophesy of human retribution, but one of a piece with his testimony that eternal life can only be found through him. When we depend upon violence for our security, we sunder ourselves from the spirit of love that forgives all sins – the same spirit that thereby gains the power to heal the wounds in our souls.

So to those that both:

  • see gun ownership as a necessary antidote to governmental over-reaching, and
  • threaten those that see violence as the greatest wound to civil society:

You may be able to assert your power in this world, but you surrender participation in the world to come. You may assert your freedoms in this society, but unless you lay down your weapons of your own volition, you will be left behind when the Prince of Peace welcomes souls into his kingdom.

You see, love amplifies all things, and to allow into heaven those that believe in violence would be to allow violence into heaven, and amplify its presence. That would be to betray those that have invested and suffered  in peace for His promises. He will not bend to the ‘freedoms’ presumed by the NRA, even if they are enshrined in the US Constitution.

Policing as an Avocation

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I ran into a High-School special education teacher that applied to the LAPD. During the police academy interview, he was asked why he wanted to join the force. In response to the reply “I want to help people lead safer lives,” he was told “Don’t quit your day job.” My friend was later apprised that most of the LAPD saw itself as manning the front lines in ethnic and criminal wars. Rather than a culture of public service, they saw themselves as warriors.

Most warriors come back after a couple of years with severe psychological trauma. Considering a career of twenty or more years under similar stresses, we would expect most police officers to have side effects. John Violanti summarizes some of the health statistics for The Conversation.

Also today I came across a piece by Redditt Hudson, a minority police officer, sharing an insider’s perspective on police misconduct at Vox. Police work and disciplinary practices may allow aggressive officers to become progressively more aggressive as their testosterone levels rise through successful confrontation. Hudson observes that 15% of the force create the problem of misconduct, and their aggression draws others into dangers that force them to emulate their behavior.

A senior sheriff once told me that his principal role was to rein in the younger officers. It’s important that civilian authorities recognize the link between the tough and aggressive conduct that safeguards the public and the descent into psychopathic aggression – such as manifests in faces slammed against walls. In Ferguson, where this was allowed to rise unchecked, the only way forward was to fire the entire department and start over from scratch.

Sexual Modesty

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I’ve signed up with the Universal Life Church, and came across this post on female sexual modesty. It tends to emphasize the negative impact of religion as implemented in repressive cultures: I am aware that many religions have teachings that celebrate and heighten sexual experience, most commonly known through the discipline of the Tantra. But I also think that the post tends to see religion principally as a political activity, which misses its purpose.

My response follows:

Much of what is presented here is not limited to religion – modesty in dress and control of women’s bodies has a long cultural pedigree. This should not be surprising: perhaps the most powerful biological urge we have inherited from our Darwinian past is the procreative urge. Religion is not the source of the difficulty we have in managing it, nor is it surprising that people with principally secular motives (property inheritance, for example) often project their program into the religious sphere.

But I think that there’s also a talking past the point of the religious proscriptions. Let me offer a definition: taking religion as management of our spirituality, and spirituality as the negotiation of the boundaries between the “I” and the “we,” the proscriptions have to do with preventing our spiritual landscape from being polluted by lust.

Our society tends to facilitate that pollution in two ways: by celebrating adolescent sexual license, and by limiting our opportunities to express self-love. Intercourse is often the only time that we are allowed to really enjoy our bodies. Even in exercise, our culture has so objectified the outcomes of that effort (both in terms of our self-image and competition) that we rarely enjoy sports.

Here’s an experience: I was doing child-care at a battered woman’s shelter, and the children liked to have me push them on the swing. One night, I was pushing a seven-year-old on the swing, and began to get a distinct feeling of sexual arousal. I stopped pushing the swing and said “I would appreciate it if you would keep your energy HERE” – placing my hands on her heart – “and HERE” – putting my hands on either side of here cranium. The sexual feelings evaporated, and when I began pushing her again, she shook her head and laughed with joy.

You see, she was managing me in the same way that her mother managed her abusive father. I was mature enough to recognize that and demonstrate that a caring man encourages women to manifest other potentials.

So I tend to side with the Rabbi here: little girls should cover their bodies. I also understand why some women in orthodox religions wish to avoid revealing their bodies to lust-filled men. On the other side, I have explained to my sons how to manage unwanted attentions coming from women.

As science currently offers us no explanation or tools for managing our spirituality (except drugs, unfortunately), we need religion. I would also agree that we need religion to do better that command prohibition. But I don’t think that the spiritual aspect of the problem can be ignored. I recommend the chakra model in the vedantic traditions

The Faceless Donor

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Foreign Policy has published the results of a survey that demonstrates that the younger generation rejects their experience of capitalism. The methodology of the survey was not a simple “yes or no” on capitalism per se: respondents were actually asked to identify the favorability of a number of “isms.” At the top of the heap came “patriotism.”

Neither did the survey attempt to define the terms. This means that the respondents were indicating their favor of the terms as used in common social discourse, rather than as understood by those that originally coined them.

Instead, the survey probed with specific policy prescriptions, such as “Should government provide housing and food for those unable to obtain them?” This is obviously a socialist prescription. The answer from millennials was a resounding “yes.”

I wonder why the expectation is that the government should provide this support. What about family and friends? What is it about “government” that is so attractive as a source of support?

I have an unfortunate intuition that the desire to avoid obligation to others may be involved. Receiving something from government as a right means that we can chart our course independently from others. We don’t have to constrain our choices to sustain their good will.

Of course, that is impossible: the “government” is our family and friends. It is us. If the greed of the 1% should remind us of anything, it is of our dependency upon one another. The faceless “isms” don’t care about any of us individually, and our loyalty to them will always be betrayed. Ultimately, we survive only because others care for us, and that requires a reciprocal caring for them.

Disarming Incivility

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Constitutional wrangling aside, as a Christian, my personal choice is to renounce violence as a means of conflict resolution. My experience is that a disciplined commitment to this choice overwhelms aggression in those that come into my personal space. This can manifest in two ways: either the aggressor realizes that I see them as a brother, causing their fear to melt away; or their aggression, finding no harbor in me, turns self-destructively inward.

I have many personal qualities that empower me to renounce fear: I am a man, tall without being imposing, and physically fit. I possess rare intellectual talents and traits of character that make me desirable as an employee. I have modest aspirations that I articulate clearly, and project good will that allows me to manifest my intentions where others might collide with bureaucratic restrictions. Last but not least, I have associations that bring patience and endurance gained through experience of the cycle of life and death that stretches over a billion years.

Recognizing the rareness of these assets, I sympathize greatly with those that crumble under the pressure of aggression. For me, the most powerful moment in the sit-in coverage was the testimony of a female representative describing the routine terror she suffered as a child when threatened by her gun-toting father. Listening to her summary of those events, I could hear the frightened girl crying out for aid.

So when someone touts their Second Amendment right to bear arms, I wonder why their protection against “infringement” must tread so heavily on the desire for others to renounce violence. I trust law enforcement, and see that our modern industrial economy provides financial levers to control governmental abuse of force that did not exist when the founders wrote the Constitution. These constraints are strengthened because mastery of military technology requires a focus that creates dependency upon civilian production of goods and services. On the other hand, I see the ready availability of weapons creating an arms race between police and criminals that tramples upon the peace of mind of the law-abiding citizen. Contradicting the claims that our freedom is secured only when a well-armed citizenry opposes the natural tyranny of governments, I believe that the greatest threat to my safety – and the safety of those I cherish – is the proliferation of arms.

On the whole, then, I am a citizen that would like to renounce his right to bear arms. I would like to be able to limit my associations to those of like mind. Why is it that Constitutional prohibitions against infringement of that right prohibit me from living that desire? Can I not form a community that requires people to leave their weapons outside our borders? But once formed, is that community not governed by laws, and does not the Second Amendment prohibit such laws?