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Christianity Today has an interview with James Dobson on the Gay-Marriage Battle, where he promises that Nov 2 will be the first step in a long fight for traditional marriage. He has also announced that he intends to strong arm several Democratic senators out of office if they block the appointment of supreme court justices.

Paraphrasing Jesus, [weeping] “God, forgive them for they [may] know not what they are doing!”

Dobson illustrates the divergence of beliefs between the different sides of the cultural wars. He speaks of an urgent need to prevent a radical gay agenda from being forced down our throats. What he does not do is to connect the dots for how homosexual marriages would undermine heterosexual marriages. He mainly implies that to change laws that reflect traditional US values would ultimately undermine all morality. It would be interesting to hear him and Ron Sider and the NAE answer my question of whether or not homosexuality is both chosen and not chosen and what implications this factual understanding should have for our political activism?

Dobson’s future agenda is to pass the Alliance for Marriage’s Federal Marriage Amendment . This amendment pragmatically lets states allow for gay civil unions. Dobson is personally against gay civil unions, since he doesn’t see them as that different from marriage, but he then plans to fight civil unions at the state-level, as well as press for court reform against activist judges.

As I understand it, the Federal Marriage Amendment doesn’t have a snow-ball’s chance in hell of becoming law. Too many religious conservatives were snow-jobbed into thinking that their vote based on the amendment would make a difference. And, too many evangelical leaders have seriously over-played the negative consequences of gay civil unions/marriages. I have written in the past that the more effective way to deny legal gay marriages would be to allow for gay civil unions geared to longer-term relationships. Such a move would take the political wind out of their sails and it would prevent the issue from going to the state level. Where it would mainly help to cheaply supply social-conservative votes to the economic-conservative-dominated Republican party and increase the faith-based political acrimony in our country.

One can allow for people to have homosexual orientations without also endorsing a radical transformation of the social-cultural norms for our sexual conduct. One can strengthen marriages and discourage divorce in other more, effective manners(Only some of which involve legal changes) than what Dobson has in mind. Dobson needs to count the cost of whether denying legal recognition that people do have homosexual orientations is the best way for us Christians to let our lights shine before the world. He continues to fail to make his case for why the issue should take on the apocalyptic importance he gives to it and he continues to neglect how our very focused political activism on these “important” issues impacts our public witness to the world.
dlw

I went to visit and read to my grandmother today as part of my Christmas present to her and a way I could serve another at a time when I am unable to serve many who are in desperate need. I read to her from, “God@GroundZero” by Chaplain Ray Giunta who was a chaplain at Ground Zero for 68 days. It was difficult to read. I myself was visiting my thesis advisor for the first time in over a year on 9-11 and had just been told that he didn’t think I would be able to finish that year when he was called by his wife to be told that the second sears tower had crashed. With that, my tower almost crashed as well, since I was in my fifth year as a grad-student and to take another year would diminish my prospects strongly as a researcher. I didn’t have time to grieve 9-11 at the time. I was too busy learning how to rewrite and trying to prove my advisor wrong.

I did learn to rewrite and I did publish a paper in a decent journal and placed at a good institution in Mexico, but my life was changed on 9-11. For me, US int’l manipulations took on a different tone. I went to Mexico, but my heart and mind stayed in the US. I became involved with seeking to reduce the faith-based political acrimony in our country, inasmuch as they harm our democracy and that harms our int’l manipulations, since the checks and balances against moneyed interests are attenuated. My preoccupation with the affairs of my country led to an abrupt end to my stay in Mexico after two years, which then led to my return to school at seminary and my writing in this blog.

I see my blog as my ministry. I could not minister to those whose loved ones died on 9-11. I can not minister to those whose lives are endangered by the Tsunami in Asia, but I am able to read to my grandmother and I can write my reflections here. That is my calling for now. Though, I am moved by Giunta’s description of his ministry of being a tangible reminder of a personal, loving God for those who are in crisis. We will see where God leads me in the future.

dlw

I’m piggy-backing off of Jesus Politics once again. Carlos clued me into a new book by Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theology Seminary, that provides an in-depth look at a consensus that has developed about the nature of the Kingdom of Christ through the prism of evangelical political action.

Moore takes the controversial(and correct) stance that the failure of evangelical politics is due the failure of contemporary evangelical theology to engage politics. This fits with my view that doxy and praxy are inextricably related. In his view,

evangelicalism ought to become both more and less political. Evangelical theology will not serve an activist agenda to be an identity caucus in someone’s political party. But evangelical theology will remind Christians that the call to Christ is not a call to ‘go to heaven when you die,’ but instead a call to be ‘joint heirs’ with the Messiah who will inherit an all-encompassing Kingdom.”

This approach is critical of the two tendencies of evangelicalism, withdrawalism and triumphalism. Withdrawalism “calls on evangelicals to withdraw from the public square and prepare for the coming of Christ.” Triumphalism vests the “political processes with so much hope that they are befuddled when political victories fail to stem the tide of the sexual revolution or the abortion culture.” Alternatively, “Kingdom theology…must inform the social and political engagement of Christians as well as their view of the world’s future.” For the Kingdom “is both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’” and “informs… our priorities — personally, socially, and politically, and also tempers our expectations about what kind of change we can see, and where we can expect to see it.”

I agree that such judgements are necessary for wise political activism. I would counsel that such a theology will inevitably not be based on the Bible alone, inasmuch as judgments about what can and cannot changed and the weighing of different venues for activism are not matters the Bible addresses. These judgments come by virtue of experience and our deliberation on it. My fear is that these judgments will be a source of Christian division inasmuch as their syncretistic nature is obscured.

I also agree that evangelical theology has failed to engage the reality of the political and its impact on our mission to establish the kingdom of God. A good example of this lack of engagement, IMO, is Greg Boyd’s “the Cross and the Sword”. Consider the following paragraphs from the study guide for Boyd’s sermon from 4/18/2004 “Taking America Back for God?”

Greg pointed out that the kingdom of this world is not all bad. The orderly structures of this world are designed to uphold justice and right behavior, and this is a good and necessary thing in a world where God is not universally accepted as Lord and obeyed. Rom. 13 teaches that we are to obey our leaders so long as it does not conflict with God’s will for us. After all, Paul (who wrote Romans) was no stranger to Roman jails! So there is a good and necessary reason for the world to have sound political structures that serve the good of the whole of the human race and all of creation. Greg’s advice is to be good citizens, but keep the Kingdom of God first (we should always be seeking first the Kingdom of God!). A Christian person should never rejoice over the destruction of other human lives regardless of what they did to “deserve” our wrath, as though we too do not deserve God’s wrath every bit as much.
Vote your conscience, but be sure to maintain the values of the Kingdom of God. Don’t be co-opted by the world’s agendas and the methods the world uses to accomplish them. Sin is dealt with on the cross for us all, not in the voting booths where we legislate punishment for a sin someone else is guilty of, but ignore our own – where we vote to our own benefit at the expense of helping others who have much greater need. Vote your conscience, but do not forget which kingdom you are fighting for!

If you look at the overheads for the sermon, they are full of bible verses from all over the Bible, but there is no serious engagement with the political. One moment the world is part of the kingdom of Satan and the next the structures of the world are designed to uphold justice and right behavior. How can this be? I’m sure there are many examples of political institutions that deny justice and permit very wrong behavior. Greg says we need sound structures that will serve the good of the human race and all of creation, but he doesn’t deal with just what are sound structures and how do they come to serve the “good of the human race and creation”. Likewise, he preaches that we are to be good citizens and then glosses over what good citizenship entails. He stresses that we are not to deal with sin in the voting booth, but also chastises us for voting selfishly. And yet, he doesn’t deal with how we discern who has a greater need and should receive more protection of their interests by the sword of the state?

I’m critical of Boyd’s sermon because he was my professor as an undergraduate and I tried a while back to get some feedback on some of what I was writing and he wrote back to me that he didn’t feel called to deal with the political. As such, his sermon series was a turn-around for him. A turnaround that reflects his wishful thinking/desire for the a-political. Although, I understand that the sermon series was meant to counter the moves of some to politicize the Gospel in an improper nationalistic manner. His goal, as a pastor of a mega-church, was to reduce the inter-personal political acrimony over in his congregation, rather than to behoove them to be more deliberate in how they act politically.

But Pastors need to behoove their congregations to deepen their habits of political deliberation. This can be done without a pastor preaching to vote for one side or to make certain issues as super important in one’s vote. For, as disagreeable as politics is, it is inevitably part of our life and part of our public witness as Christians. Its consequences are very real and have great potential to cause long-lasting acrimony, with many other serious consequences. Hence, when we do not take the time and energy to deliberate on it, we risk the vitiation of our witness to others. Boyd’s failure in his sermon series is that he neglects a consideration of what duties, or responsibilities, we as Christians should have in the continual recreation of the structures that govern us all and direct how the sword of the state will be wielded. I’d like to work on how one could preach a sermon series that would address this problem in the year ahead.

dlw

Carlos, over at Jesus Politics, posts a link to a memoriam of a Canadian Baptist, Tommy Douglas, who was heavily influenced by the Social Gospel and pushed for Universal Health-Care in Canada.

It seems unfortunate that the article says Douglas was transformed from a clergyman to a social activist. I would hope ideally that political activism would not subsume, but rather complement, one’s presentation of the Gospel. I do not want to belittle the value of the man’s involvement in politics on the behalf of others. It is important, though, to bear in mind that our notions of justice are fallible and we must be open to learning from experience and adapting our policies.

I don’t think this has been done adequately in Canada. From what I’ve read, there are many serious problems with the universalized health-care system that will have serious consequences if they are not addressed. I think changes can be made that still preserve the basic redistributive, poverty-reducing nature of the system. One of the attractive ideas I’ve heard is to have universal insurance provide for the cost of costly ailments and let people pay as they go for not-so-costly stuff. That may mitigate the glut and permit improvement in the quality of services provided. The expected value of the not-so-costly services could then be transferred via the income-tax system, perhaps in a system like the Basic Income Guarantee system.

dlw

We live in an exciting and disturbing world.

Tragedy In the aftermath of the Tsunami in Asia, I found the writings of one of the more articulate atheists at TWeb to be apropos.

I have no problem with… abstract theological or philosophical argument about the nature, randomness or “purpose” of natural disasters, or perhaps where our sense of empathy and charity for strangers comes from afterwards…but there are tens of thousands of dead bodies still laying on beaches and in city streets across a huge swath of the world. There are countless grieving parents and orphaned children…there are people who have lost everything…with no place to go…And yet some people on this site are using this tragedy as a platform to further spout their typical little shallow tripe…

Why don’t you… show some respect for the dead and suffering? Instead of posting your inane drivel about why some god did, or didn’t prevent this, or what brand of religion has the best tradition of charity…why not go make a donation to a relief agency instead?

Victory In my quest to rediscover my tradition of Swedish Baptist Pietism, I am becoming more and more resolved to spend some time studying in Sweden as of April of this Spring and then spend some time in the Ukraine. Where people have lived the political and religious persecution that my Swedish-Baptist ancestors did and are now finding new ways, some political, to live out their faith. I would very much like to contribute to the development of a tradition of encouraging habits of political deliberation in the Ukraine among Baptists and others there.

Hyper-Consumerism I hope that more people take time out of their planned schedules for this holiday season to give to those who suffer in Asia and to ponder the important geo-political changes going on in our world. I just spent some quality time with my great-uncle/proxy-grandpa(who took the place in many ways of my own grandpa who died eleven years ago of liver cancer. New readers(if there are any of you.) may be blessed by reading his reflections on the blessings of having cancer.) and his two grandsons at a rural retreat.
I do plan to enjoy and reflect on the Matrix Revisited, and to revisit my own interpretation of the trilogy prior to when school begins. But I want to remember those who suffered and still suffer from this great tragedy and to offer help and comfort to them through my blessed situation and I want to express solidarity with those that struggle for their religious liberty in UKraine and the opportunity to have greater political and economic say-so in their country and the world. One way I do that is by disciplining myself to blog regularly here.

I remember reflecting on and sharing about what gifts we have as USAmericans after my foray into Ecuador as a freshman in college. We need to turn away and resist our hyper-consumerism more as a means to strengthen our faiths and families. This is more important than pursuing political lost-causes that repeat the mistakes of the Social Gospel movements of the past. The key mistake is when we mistake our fallible political goals for what we must do to establish the kingdom of God. That’s why in my own “ideal-type” party platform, I do not prioritize the accomplishment of my objectives, or working out a biblically-balanced agenda like the NAE, but rather assert, and seek to demonstrate, that an active involvement in politics can be glorifying to God if done in an ethical manner that is not dogmatic and seeks to widen the range of interests that potentially can be served by the government.

I plan to continue to argue for and demonstrate how this is the case in the days ahead.
dlw

Rob Moll writes a somewhat self-laudatory post about an article by Nicholas Kristof about when the Right is Right. Yet the point is not that we got it right(I mean Adolf Hitler got somethings right, right?), but rather that Kristof’s article points to how we publicly act is part of public witness to the world. It’s not just that “liberals” need to stop treating us with contempt, but that religious conservatives need to start exhorting each other to be more reflective in how we participate in politics, counting the cost with the end in mind of lowering barriers for us to build relationships with others. I recommend Brian McClaren’s suggestions in this regard.

dlw

My friend Solly posts a wonderful article from the Nation by Katrina vanden Heuvel. The article chronicles how the CIA, the Pentagon and the UN are all developing many reports that poverty, disease and climate change are endangering global stability and the future of the United States.

There’s little doubt that extreme poverty has caused excessive population growth and that has caused many other problems.

However, as I understand it, poverty/starvation itself is often due to corruption, not just lack of resources. It is important to bear in mind that Institutions are the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth
. It is not enough to throw money at problems, there also must be a willingness to change the ways we work out solutions to our ever-present conflicts. And its not a matter of making the rest of the world look more like the US. As esteemed Harvard Economist Dani Rodrik writes, there are a couple of important empirical lessons about growth. First, there is no single way to foster growth. Second It is important to encourage and sustain growth and this requires both innovation and assurance of long-term stability against shocks on the behalf of emerging markets* to build and maintain their productive dynamism.

dlw

*My former Mexican economics colleagues preferred the term “emerging markets” over developing or under-developed countries.

I received the Ultimate Matrix DVD set for Xmas. I look forward to sharing my reflections on the commentaries made in the days ahead.

I would like to post my own commentary prior to watching and reading what others have to say. This is a modified version of an interpretation of the Matrix Reloaded(MRel) that I first wrote shortly after it came out, when I had to wait a whole week to see the movie after first reading many reviews of others who were disappointed by the movie.

I am of the opinion that the central point of the MRel is best understood through its contrast with The Matrix(TM) and that The Matrix Revolutions(MRev) continues the themes introduced by MRel. MRel undermines the manicheistic conflict between humans and programs set up in TM, but does it in a way that affirms the reality of both choice and predestination and moral realism. It ends inconclusively, not unlike MRev, reflecting the Wachowski Brother’s gnosticism, wherein Jesus was not God, but rather a human bearing (more of?) the “source code” from God.

In TM, Neo was discovered to be the one who would save humans from the Matrix and destroy the evil programs that enslaved humans. Now in MRel, Neo has been rescuing people for some time. However, the end is far from clear, since Neo is just a man, who is more preoccupied with his love for Trinity than his messianic-status, outside of the Matrix and the Sentinels are about to destroy Zion.

My first impression about Zion was how it was not so different from the Matrix. It too has its control and survives based on an elaborate structure and sophisticated technology. This foreshadows the ending where Neo begins to operate “outside the matrix” in the way he can “within the matrix”.

Neo’s discussion with the Counselor pointed for me, not so much to the need for humans and machines to co-exist, it prepped me for Neo’s meetings with Seraph and the Oracle and Agent Smith. The underlying idea here is that humans and machines are not intrinsically that different. The manicheistic struggle between the two is undermined by the revelation that Oracle is a program, who apparently has free-will and has chosen to aid the zionists in their struggle for change. She has evolved beyond her initial purpose was and is in conflict with the Architect(who I affectionately like to refer to as Arky). She evolved, just as the Merovingian(or Mervy) evolved into an unloving and materialist program, as his wife Persephone points out. Herein, MRel turns TM’s innovation on its head. For TM posits that humans can become program-like automatons, or batteries and so if programs can become human-like then the key distinction between humans and programs/machines is practically-blurred. This blurring is further reemphasized by the Agent Smiths, who demonstrates his own ability to evolve by becoming more human and virus-like. Just as Neo is becoming more and more like a program, along with a further elevation of his consciousness as to what is the Matrix, Smith is becoming more human.

A further key to understanding MRel(and MRev) is the African-American experience of Christianity. It is not a coincidence that the program Oracle chose the form of an black female, just as it is not a coincidence that the agents are white males and Arky is like Freud, who believed the brain was subject to deterministic laws. Christianity was given to the African-American slaves as a form of social control to keep them in their place, but they took it and transformed it into what gave them the strength to transform the Racist United States of America. Likewise, just because the one is meant to be a form of social-control, helping humans to accept their battery-hood, it doesn’t deny the potential for the one to be an actual liberating power.

And while the conflict at first seems to involve guns and then martial arts, the real conflict is in the proper understanding of, “What is the Matrix?” Key for understanding this conflict are the dueling dialogues of Oracle and the Architect(Arky). The main theme of Arky’s dialogue with Neo is that deterministic ontologies are instruments of control, the obverse of what the Merovingian said about free-will/choice. Both can be true though, since an emphasis on free-will, such as with the phrase “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”, can obscure the extent we are swept along by the currents of the past and truly need to deliberate on how we should act to partially escape its influences. Arky’s description of the matrix as a harmony of near mathematical precision stands in stark contrast to Oracle’s description of the evolving states of the programs within the matrix. Oracle professes belief that Neo really is the One, when she states that he has made a believer out of her. We know from later context that Neo is not the first “the One”. Yet, he is apparently not predestined to the fate of his predecessors and the simple perpetuation of their “purpose” of making humans better batteries.

His ability to succeed where others failed is not by virtue of his superior powers, but rather his choice to love Trinity above everything else. Neo chooses the other door because of this love. IMO, Oracle and others(or perhaps, God/The Source) manipulated events to be sure that Trinity would be falling to her death at that moment so Neo would choose as he did and change would be made possible. Some evidence in favor of this are Neo’s dreams and how there are three sentinels who end up destroying Soren’s ship, making Trinity need to enter the Matrix to save Neo.

We see that Arky did not program Neo’s love for Trinity by his remarks concerning how Neo was different from the others. And yet it seems Arky can read Neo’s thoughts and was able to manipulate Neo(and many viewers) into believing that all is going as he had planned.

At this point in my initial interpretation, I speculated on how Arky must have been lying since if Neo’s choice of the other door would lead to the death of all connected to the Matrix and Zion. But if it had led to the deaths of those connected to the Matrix then the humans in Zion would have to be spared to be batteries for the programs. As it turns out, it seems that Arky may have been speculating that the failure of the One to return to the source, with a perpetuation of the cycle, would lead inevitably to another massive failure like what happened with the first Matrix. And Arky’s pessimism about Oracle’s dangerous game of change almost proves true with MRev as the smith-virus threatened to decimate both humanity and the residents of the machine world. But the point of Arky’s dialogue with Neo is that he nearly manipulated Neo into accepting defeat with his talk of balancing equations, or near-determinism.

IMO, this reflects the notion that a belief in determinism is a device for control. Onto-theological determinism implies that any attempt to change our fallen answers to the problem of order can be countered as challenging the authority of God, who is in control. And so we see the battle is not between Man and Machine, but Good and Evil. However, what exactly ought to be the relationship between humans and machines and in-betweens has yet to be determined. It needs to be worked out, over and over. Especially, since the existence of conflict does not come to an end with Neo’s decision to sacrifice himself and return to the source so as to save the Programs of Machine-World. The conflict is mitigated by virtue of Neo’s valuing of the other and the program’s valuing of Neo and holding to their word for the truce, when there was nothing stopping them from wiping out Zion again.

ps, I think deliberating on the Matrix Movies is important in that for many people across the world in many different cultures, they have been exposed to elements of Christianity through the movies. It is a common base of reference that, among other things, raises important questions about the significance of an evolutionary world-view that has been rejected by many Christians historically, particularly in the US. I would venture that the Wachowski(W2) brother’s see the oft near-deterministic world-view of many white evangelical Christians, where “God is in Control”, as a form of control that serves to keep people in their places, or that redirects their energies to evangelization so as to save as many souls (or maybe prevent as many abortions) as possible. I believe the W2 brothers did attend Fuller Seminary for a while. As such, it is likely that their movies are, in part, inevitably a reaction and commentary on white USEvangelicalism and deserves to be analyzed as such. We’ll be doing that here, no doubt.
dlw

is the more fundamental question that should be posed by the ChristianCentury’s “Can We Talk?”

I’m not encouraged by their take on the issue. They do agree that the topic is vast and should be ideally approached on several levels, drawing on insights from biblical, historical, sociological and biological studies, as well as on the church’s moral and theological traditions. Though, the order of these studies presents a rather poor prioritization.

A more reasonable starting point would be to point out the linguistic confusion caused by the dual definitions of homosexuality. The first, modernist definition is the quality or state of being homosexual. The second, traditional definition is erotic activity with another of the same sex. From my experience, a lot of the heat in discussing the politics of homosexuality stems from confusion over these definitions.

The next step would be to consider the history of the two definitions. The modernist definition is of recent origin from the 19th century. It is the source of hypotheses regarding whether or not it is valid to speak of sexual orientations that are not chosen, as opposed to cultural mores and/or chosen lifestyles. To this end, it would be wise to summarize the known scientific facts about homosexuality. The facts would be presumably what we all could reasonably understand and accept, regardless of our faith tradition and whether we are conservative or liberal.

It would then be important to do Anthropological studies on historic, cross-cultural comparisons of social norms regarding same-sex acts, with further reference to the emergence of the notion of having a homosexual orientation. This would be very much preferable to sociological studies that have more often been more of a propaganda vehicle for secularist modernism. To refer to modern sociological theories would likely prove a conversation stopper for people on different sides of the cultural wars. Although, the same may be said for the methodologically cultural relativist anthropological studies like that of David Greenberg, but these approaches would still be a better starting point for improving inter-cultural communication on this issue. Stanley Grenz notes that Greenberg finds that understandings of same-sex practices vary from culture to culture. This helps to refocus the question as involving the sorts of social mores we have for same-sex sexual acts.

Another reason for starting with anthropological studies would be so they may shed more light on the original context of the Bible. A thorough understanding of the context within which the Bible was written is essential to improve our understanding of it and to refine our received moral and theological traditions. It is fundamental for a debate that both Fundamentalists and Modernists try to avoid reading their world-views into the Bible. They need to humble themselves to encounter the other encapsulated in the Bible.

An important part of elevating the Bible is to recognize its limitations. We need to recognize what C.S. Lewis recognized that, “the over-all operation of Scripture is to convey God’s Word to the reader(he[sic] also needs inspiration) who reads in the right spirit.” It is not a book that, “gives true answers to all the questions…which he[the reader] might ask. The very kind of truth we are often demanding was, in my opinion, not even envisaged by the ancients.*” This fits with my own emphasis on the Bible not being an exhaustive definite blueprint for right conduct in every conceivable ethical question. It legitimates some temporary disagreement among Christians as to how best we should show God’s love to people with homosexual orientations, since this was not, per se, a question dealt with by the people who wrote the Bible.

Particularly, we need to make sure we understand the teachings of the New Testament in light of the Old Testament. Paul, in the context of Romans 1:26-27, is writing about the consequences of unbelief as being the repetition of the mistakes of Israel’s past. He speaks of homosexual acts as indecent in the NASB translation. I use NASB, because the translation tries to hold more closely to the original Hebrew and Greek languages(both of which I am going to do my best not to learn ;)). The word indecent in Deuteronomy 23:14 connotes anything among the Israelites that would turn God away from them as a community. The two passages both refer to Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. In these dual passages to lie with a man as one lies with a female is seen as first an abomination and then a detestable act.

Abomination is a reference to Exodus 8:26, where the sacrifices the Israelites would make to their God are described as an abomination to the Egyptians that would merit them being stoned. The use of abomination in this verse refers back to Genesis 43:32 and 46:34. In these two passages it is described what was loathsome to the Egyptians. The cultural traditions of the Egyptians made them loath eating bread with Hebrews(a tradition then broken by Joseph with his brothers) and they loathed every shepherd(or nomadic outsider who follows the life of Abel, not Cain). From this we see that Leviticus 18:22 sets out the cultural norms of the Israelites that would set them apart from other nations. Just as the emphasis on animal sacrifice as atonement for their sins against YHWH refers back to Abel, not Cain; the prohibition against lying with a man as one lies with a female refers back to Adam and Eve, not the cultural practices that had been adopted in varying forms by all of the other cultures of their time.

Detestable is a reference to a wide variety of animals that are peculiar in their attributes, or other than how God’s intention. The earliest reference to detestable is Leviticus 7:21. A detestable thing is linked to being unclean and also readable as swarming. The word swarming goes all the way back to Genesis 1:20 where God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures.” We see then in several passages that swarming things have left the waters and now are on the ground. I.e., they are things that have become other than God intended.

And so this is the biblical background for my a priori belief/”prejudice”, which I shared my friend Jon in an earlier exchange, that for someone to have a homosexual orientation is due to the fallenness of the word. As I stated before I am open to possibly changing this view. I framed my ideal test as follows…

Lets say we’ve proven that our sexual orientations are due to the hormonal balances formed in our brains while we are fetuses and, furthermore, we’ve discovered a risk-free way to intervene at the fetal stage that will prevent someone from developing a homosexual orientation later on in life. The question then could be posed,in a confidential survey whose results are not to be made public, to homosexuals as to whether they would advise the parents of these fetuses to have the operation done or not?

I think in a confidential private interview where the response would impact other’s futures that the truth would come out. Otherwise, my bias is that people tend to rationalize their given conditions and read way too much into the issue for people’s responses to be trusted. One could add a variant on the question that would posit the hypothetical existence of a homophobic-free social environment and see if the responses would vary.

Now, that would be my ideal-type test. I’d be willing to learn from clever, less-than-ideal tests. But it is important to clarify between unchosen orientations and chosen norms/lifestyles. Too much of the heat on this issue stems from how so many issues get bundled together under this topic. We need to find better bases for debate on this topic or else it will become a political black-hole like the politics of abortion from this past thirty years. It will suck in large quantities of political capital from both sides and crowd out many other important issues from having a better chance to be decisive in our elections.

dlw

*W.H.Lewis,ed., Letters of C.S. Lewis (New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), 287. Found in Beyond Mere Christianity by Steven P. Mueller in Christian Research Journal, vol 27, 04.

Taken from the fall 2003 issue of In Communion, the journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, there is an over-view of legends associated with St. Nicholas of Myra, whom Coca-Cola abducted to help sell its soda.

The real “Santa” was not an anagram of “Satan” ;). He was born around 280 AD to a wealthy family but lived for a while as a homeless pauper. He was both a spiritual and material benefactor for many people, served as a bishop, was imprisoned for his faith, defended the Trinity against the Arian heresy(a politically-significant act, since it was highly controversial for Caesar to submit to God who had been a lowly carpenter), intervened against the unjust execution of the death-penalty and has a website dedicated to him.

I plan to share about the real Santa with my kid sister and younger cousins this Christmas as we try to make Christmas more of a counter-cultural holiday.

dlw

ps, it seems the cultural wars have been extended to a battle for the real st. Nick would have been on. Some claim that he would have been a red-stater!

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