Category Archives: Radical Tradition

Canon

Thomas Jefferson, United States founding father and deist, took it upon himself to compose a private view of Christianity by crafting a book which extracted teachings from the New Testament, careful to exclude all miracles and the supernatural including Christ’s resurrection and the like. The full breathtaking title of Jefferson’s 1804 version was The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, being Extracted from the Account of His Life and Doctrines Given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Being an Abridgement of the New Testament for the Use of the Indians, Unembarrassed with Matters of Fact or Faith beyond the Level of their Comprehensions.

Most Bible Christians would be appalled at Jefferson’s scissors and glue reconstruction of Holy Scripture, especially since Holy Scripture, in several places, warns of adding, subtracting or modifying it. And yet, one could argue that the fathers of the Reformation, starting with the views of Martin Luther, did exactly that when assembling the Protestant Bible. In addition to removing several books of the canonical Old Testament including the deuterocanonical books of Judith, Maccabees and Wisdom, Martin Luther also tried to exclude Hebrews, James (which he lampooned as the Epistle of Straw), Jude and Revelation, presumably since these books did not line up with the sola fides pillar of the Reformation he was in the process of erecting. Sola scriptura, the second pillar, apparently required some truncating to level nicely with the first.

More recently, there are Christian movements afoot that would discredit those parts of the Bible composed by Saint Paul—the so called Pauline epistles. It should be enough that the apostle’s name has been formed into its own adjective1 but these writings also constitute about two thirds of the New Testament. So why are denominations crafting this canonical extreme makeover? Recall that Paul’s letters to various churches around the Mediterranean are attempts to get Christians back in line where they deviated from orthopraxy. So when Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands, exhorts husbands to love their wives (Ephesians), condemns homosexuality (Romans), excommunicates the immoral brother or commands other directives that force us to conform to the truth, new denominations are compelled to “toss out” portions of scripture that don’t jive with their modern spirit of tolerance and political correctness. In the extreme, we might one day create a new Christian denomination that tosses out the baby of religion with the bathwater of sacred scripture altogether. And presto, atheism.

What might surprise the average reader of the New Testament is that Jesus had to deal with this same issue during his Earthly ministry. Remember that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead since they only recognized the Torah (or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament) as authoritative, excluding histories, Psalms, and prophetic books. Nevertheless Jesus was able to clarify the doctrine anyhow using only the Torah as reference—brilliant! But it probably did not sway them anyway.

To be fair, the idea of making a unilateral decision as to what parts of the Bible belong in one’s orthodoxy is not just the problem of Jefferson, Luther, Calvin, Sadducees, deists, agnostics, atheists and reformers, it’s everyone’s problem—today—even if we leave the Bible physically intact. Even if we call ourselves Catholic.

1 If you knew that the adjectival form of my name, James, was “Jacobite” you may already have won a trip for two to the Cinncinnati Club Med, no expenses paid.

The New Pope

Apparent that I was going forward on full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, friends and family would volley questions my way as if I’ve become an expert in theology. What about purgatory, salvation through grace, the Immaculate Conception?

Last week, just before my confirmation, my mother tossed out a softer question: what did I think about the new Pope, Francis? After a little thought I provided the following answer:

Hey Mom,

I don’t know a lot about Pope Francis but I can definitely tell you that he is way better than the guy who used to be pope…me. Popes may be elected, may be martyred, may be canonized and may even resign. But my pope was fired. He is no longer pope. Thank God.

James

What Validation Means to Me

On March 17 2013, (St Patrick’s Day) as part of my journey to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, my marriage of 21 years was validated.

Why?

The technical answer involves me having been baptized in the Catholic Church and not officially leaving as a teen and then getting married later without the Church’s permission. This all came as a surprise to me, since, I didn’t know I belonged to the Catholic Church, let alone departed unofficially, and needed permission to marry whomever I wanted. So I had to get two witnesses to fill out notarized affidavits as did Kimberly. Then we had a small ceremony which amounted to a wedding. Our daughters were our witnesses. It was really beautiful and extremely cool.

The not-so-technical answer came as a surprise to me too.  This was not so much explained as it was revealed to me while going through the process. To unearth my spiritual past, I discovered that the old non-denominational church through which I was married had no internal record of our marriage. I was directed to the civil authorities that maintain such records and licenses. In essence, my marriage was validated by the full faith and credit of the State of Maryland which is next to worthless anyway.

In addition, civil “progress” on marriage would have us believe that a marriage between a man and a woman is just one of many marriage formats including same sex marriage and the many that will follow—and they will. Forget natural law, divine law, social health and morality, what the people want, even arbitrarily, by popular vote and the force of media will become the civil definition of marriage. And so, my marriage, is simply one of those floating in a broth of what’s-happening-now.
But there is a governing body that thinks otherwise, one that has been around for thousands of years, transcending government institutions like the Supreme Court and simply outlasting the continuous cycle of hard work->prosperity->stupidity->moral decline->extinction nations are prone to repeat including ours. Now my marriage is validated, recognized and archived under a more logical and stricter definition. It requires submission on my part (i.e, conforming to the truth, not redefining it) but will also provide backing for the onslaught already in progress.

What also came as a surprise is the deepening of my relationship with Kimberly. At least for me, it has changed me at the core and in ways words cannot describe. In the days that followed our validation and the resolve to live according to Church teaching, it was like being in love again. I couldn’t stop thinking of her; I wanted to get home as soon as possible to see her and be with her.
So then, reprobate world, redefine marriage however you want. Muster meaning in a world of malleable definitions including the ones that suit you. Let the governments of the world declare freedom for its people—freedom to marry whomever they want. Freedom to do what’s right in their own mind like a drug addict thinking more drugs will liberate him. But I have discovered true freedom: the power and desire to do what is right and I know now that everything else is a counterfeit.

Cut Hillary Some Slack

It should not be a surprise to everyone that my politics and world view and that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton anti-correlate. Whereas I think that the traditional role of women (and men for that matter) is one of the most important elements of our society we routinely discard to our self-destruction, most laud her non-traditional role as a model for women’s empowerment. But that’s a topic for another time and on this post I would like to increase the overall entropy of my blog by (gasp!) defending her.

For the greater portion of her public life, she has enjoyed a level of media favor that her lesser conservative counterparts would only dream about. Because she represents the liberal-feminist ideal, the liberal media will often morph their own truth around her own incongruence. But lately she’s been a bit of a target for something outrageously stupid—what she does to unwind. Photos have emerged of her and a dozen of her female associates living it up at a discotheque in Columbia (South America) with a few beers and some likely outdated dance moves. It should be noted that the beers were being consumed straight from the brown, long neck bottles in the most non-traditional, unladylike fashion.

Well I’m appalled.

Personally, I don’t want to see my Secretary of State on DWTS or staggering sloshed but let’s stay on topic. Mrs. Clinton has a tough job in world full of evil and discord. I think I like her in this role much better than as U.S. Senator, First Lady and (please, God, no) President.  If she needs to cut-loose in this way, leave her alone. I’m surprised it was only a few beers. If it were me, I’m not sure I’d stop at one given the assignment.

But more important than the media’s reporting on this non-incident is the response of the public. If as a conservative, you jump up and down shouting “Aha! Aha!” remember how the media blows out of proportion the events of Sarah Palin, Ann Romney, Michelle Bachmann and the lives of conservative female figures. And, if as a liberal, you chide the media for blowing this out of proportion, remember how you respond when conservative role models are being unjustly lampooned, demonized and raked over the coals by boneheads like Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Matthews and David Lettermen.  Do you applaud, promote it and approve? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

Don’t demand fairness and civility in the public square if you are only demanding it when it’s your candidate.  What good is that? In the vocabulary of the information sciences, the entropy of such responses is zero.

Men of Our Era and Shopping Malls

 

Special thanks to my brother for pointing this passage out from the book Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens.

In their utter reverence for oaths, men of [Sir Thomas] More’s era were in my view as superior to us as the builder of Chartres Cathedral were to the builders of shopping malls. Our ancestors’ undisturbed faith gave them a far closer, healthier relation to the truth – and so to beauty – than we have.  Without a belief in God and the soul, where is the oath? Without the oath, where is the obligation or the pressure to fulfill it? Where is the law that even kings must obey? Where is Magna Carte, Habeas Corpus or the Bill of Rights, all of which arose out of attempts to rule by lawless tyranny? Where is the lifelong fidelity of husband and wife? Where is the safety of the innocent child growing in the womb? Where, in the end, is the safety of any of us from those currently bigger and stronger than we are?

Truth, Inculcated Falsehood

This excerpt is from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, an American historian.  If you haven’t read his book, you should, especially if you use Nazism as an historic prop to any of your arguments.  The author benefitted from actually living in Nazi Germany as a foreign correspondent and relayed some of the historic events of the time from a first person viewpoint—something you don’t expect in a book on an historical subject.

In this excerpt, Shirer talks about the effects of propaganda in that society which has an eerie correlation to the current climate in the U.S. as undocumented opinions from journalists and pundits become the parroted remarks of social streams, feeds and blogs. The repeated inculcation of misinformation becomes “truth” which can be dangerous when leveraged in the mechanisms of our country (public school, higher education, crowd wisdom, news outlets coupled with a populace that doesn’t read or think critically) to engineer a desired outcome, good or bad.

Do not skim:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state.  Though unlike most Germans, I had daily access to foreign newspapers especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda.

Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspaper. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence as if one bad blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth said they were.

As Peter Hitchens (brother and opponent of the late Christopher Hitchens) stated, “Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?”

Sweet about the soul

My wife reads her Bible every morning, assiduously studying it with colored pencils and supplemental material.

I eat cereal and drink coffee.

I suppose she could be getting ready for work outside the home so that we could have additional income. Or that she could find a career that would give her some public interface to our image conscious society. Our home could be filled with consumer goods and people like me who are pragmatic, scientific, self-actualized, driven, opinionated, informed and full of useless information.

That is, until the storms of life come.

Thereupon most of us might trust in the resources we’ve amassed: education, home-equity, mutual funds, retirement accounts, credit cards, health insurance, technology, organic food, shopping, alcohol, hobbies, the Internet, associates, information, video games, escapism, celebrities or any one of the infinite number of idolatries available to us in our modern age of irreligion.

But some storms can’t be weathered that way; there is security and then there is REAL security.

If I were to tell my wife, “I just won a billion dollars in the national lottery!” She’d be excited—no doubt. But it wouldn’t change her at all. She’d be up the next morning just like every other, reading and marking up her Bible.

Conversely, if I were to call home and say, “I’m quitting my job right now! I don’t know where our next check is coming from!” her response would be “So will you be driving by the store on your way home? We’re out of bread…”

Whereas I may know a thing or two about the Bible, my wife, well, knows the Author.

 

Our signal-to-noise ratio

A tech blogger made the announcement that he was doing something unorthodox, heretical and anathema: he was going to turn off his electronic gear, computers, internet connection and mobile devices to read a book—a real book, one made of paper and ink. In making this proclamation he made reference to an idea I’d been coining in my mind for years—that is, a reference to an overall increase in signal-to-noise ratio.

For those without engineering degrees, signal to noise ratio, or SNR, is a measurement of the energy of a signal relative to the environment in which it is received. A simple example is a busy cocktail party in which a friend is shouting something to you from across the room but you can’t make it out from the clamor. Your friend’s voice is the signal which is attenuated as it travels across the room. The overall din of conversation at the party presents as a summation of noise the signal must overpower in order to be heard. Other sounds from surrounding directions may pose as interference to your friend’s message too.  SNR is the ratio of your friend’s voice (signal) as heard at your ear over the combination of things that hinder you from hearing it (noise).

Increasing SNR is the goal of many engineering domains (communication systems in particular) and can be done using a number of techniques:

  • Increase signal. Tell your friend to speak louder.
  • Decrease noise. Tell everyone else to shut up.
  • Lower transmission loss. Move closer to your friend.
  • Spatial filtering. Cup you hand to your ear.
  • Spectral filtering.  Tune your hearing aid to the frequency of your friend’s voice.
  • Correlation. Use non-verbal cues and gestures to ascertain what your friend said in context.
  • Redundancy. Have your friend repeat his statement over and over until you get the entire message put together.

Things only get complicated if the cocktail party is being held in a marble cathedral which presents another form of noise called echo. But enough of this! What does this have to do with life, the universe and everything?  Does this train have a stop?

Yes.

The noise of our daily life –the news, radio, television, internet, social networks, media, addictions, sin, idolatry, fear, self talk— all drown out the small faint signal of God’s voice, the one speaking to us over the din of the “cocktail party”.  The season of Lent is designed to increase SNR: we move closer to the one that is speaking to us while silencing those things that contribute environmental noise. As Jesus spent 40 days in the desert to fast and meditate, so Christians spend the forty days starting on Ash Wednesday in preparation and in expectation of Easter, the day celebrating the Resurrection.

So, this Lent, increase your SNR.

Devotions for the Skeptic – Part I Mathematical Meditations

This is an introduction to a potential series of essays that I’m entitling Devotions for the Skeptic.

This entry is the first of what I am perceiving as a set of Mathematical Meditations. Given the notations required including the equation editor, I have to submit the post as a link to a PDF file. I hope  you are able to read it.

2011.12.04 Mathematical Meditations

Enjoy.

Man’s Ascent

A particular rant on a popular social website lay claim to the “ascent of man” while insulting and name calling a presidential candidate in the most profane and uncivilized manner. This seemed ironic, for in what way do we measure and lay claim to man’s ascent? By bashing someone?

I began to think about this a bit more and concluded that the ascent of man will never be measured in our species’ artistic or technological achievements. If that were so, the nation of Israel would not have a problem staging the operas of Richard Wagner. But they do have a problem because, even though Wagner’s music is lauded as a massive humanistic achievement, his anti-Semitic views expressed during his life cannot be overlooked by the Jewish state even though anti-Semitism is not readily apparent in his operas. And many times we are called to boycott someone who has expressed a certain viewpoint even though their talent or work seemingly contributes to our supposed “ascent”. Why?

Because the “ascent of man” is not really expressed in what we do with physical mediums such as marble, wood, metal, sound, film, silicon, technology or physiology. It is advanced in how we treat other human beings when we are both powerless and powerful. It is shown in how we treat others when we disagree politically, ideologically or demographically.

When I think of man’s ascent, I don’t think of marble statues, works of literature and massive operas. I think of the great manifestation of divine attributes like forgiveness, mercy, compassion, humility, sacrifice, honesty and things for which only a few people have been lauded but which each of us can exercise everyday—despite our talents or resources. Do we?

Consider these individuals that have contributed to the ascent of man even though you may not find their work in a museum or cinema:

  • Nelson Mandela
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • Corrie Ten Boom
  • Jesus of Nazareth
  • Paul of Tarsus
  • Mahatma Gandhi
  • Oscar Schindler
  • Amish Congregation of Nickel Mines, PA.
  • Mother Theresa
  • Saint Francis of Assisi
  • Albert Schweitzer

So next time you feel the need to rant about Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Atheist, Wall Street protesters, Tea partiers, Michelle Bachmann, Barack Obama or anyone else and drag them through the mud with a stream of spewing vitriol, please don’t claim a role in man’s ascent. You have forfeited that alliance.