Stones Cry Out

The poverty paradox present in Christian ethics is obvious to any casual onlooker, and was brought up in an earlier post. In that post I hinted that I’d offer my resolution to the paradox later, this is that later “resolution.”

Christian tradition, Scripture, and praxis all value rejection of material things and the ascetic embrace of poverty. At the same time however, the Christian virtue of charity calls the faithful to assist those in need. But why, the state of being poor is a state to value. Should the Christian not instead, envy the downtrodden and those without means? To summarize:

• In Luke’s version of the beatitudes, Jesus notes, “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.” A blessing is not to denote a bad thing. One isn’t blessed for having a condition if that condition is morally or materially thought bad.
• In Romans 5, St. Paul notes that we should “celebrate our suffering”, for suffering ties to hope of salvation and leads to endurance and character and other good things. Suffering is a thing then, that should be celebrated, in fact sought.
• Death, seen by the pagan and unbeliever as a thing to fear. But for the Christian death “has no sting” and as the Orthodox Paschal troparion (short hymn) sings, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death and to those in the tombs restoring life.” Poverty and lack of resource leads to an early death … which is a thing not to fear, and has no sting. So … why bother helping those who are in need? Why help the dying, after all it’s no big deal. Right?

In an earlier discussion on Liberation Theology and its ties to Marxism here at Stones Cry Out (a group blog which has graciously permitted me to join), I was asked in a comment thread/discussion what, if anything, was evil about Marxism. In that discussion I had tied much of the evil inherent in Marxism to Leninism, noting Zizek a prominent Leninist political theorist and philosopher crafted a syllogism. That syllogism was Lenin is to Marxism as St. Paul is to Christianity. This I took as a teaching of what Lenin means to Marxism, not the reverse.

But … there is indeed evil (or at least moral error) inherent Marxism and it is the same evil that is found in poverty and why the Christian responds vigorously against it.

For poverty is indeed a blessed thing. It is indeed a thing to which the best and greatest of our fellowship embrace, live, and dwell. From St. Antony,St. Mary of Egypt, St. John Cassian (who brought monasticism to the West), and other in the first millennial ascetics, the entire Eastern and Western monastic traditions, to the modern ascetics such as more famously the Mother Theresa of Calcutta. However there is an essential difference between their embrace of poverty and the Haitian or African child and family eating fried mud because they have no other food. The problem is one of choice. Poverty is a blessed good and a thing to aspire to if you choose it. Choice is the ultimate and crucial difference between poverty as virtue and why we aid those who are afflicted by this particular virtue when it is not of their choosing.

That too is the essential problem with Liberation theology and its embrace of Marxism. Marxism and Christian cenobitic communities both embrace renouncing private property and sharing and sharing alike. However, Christian communal communities are joined by choice. Marxism is a political system which imposes, like poverty in Zaire or today in Myanmar/Burma itself on those it afflicts with no regard to choice.

It is not for nothing that Genesis is a crucially important book. The eden stories of early Genesis teach well that God values our free will. We ignore that at our peril.

I looked at the “charitability” of conservatives and liberals when Arthur Brooks came out with his study in 2006. He noted that conservatives were more charitable with their time and money than liberals.

Today we have a piece about multiple polling groups finding a correlation between the political spectrum and the honesty spectrum. But before I get to the data, I want to address the issue I have when I say “I hate polls”, which I’ve said quite a lot.

I’ve covered this a bit before, but it bears repeating. When we poll people on topics that they have little to no experience in, the poll is meaningless; no more than, as SCO contributor Mark Olson calls them, a cricket race. “Consumer confidence” numbers are as much (or more) a measure of economic news reporting as they are about how a person feels (itself, an ephemeral measurement). “Who would you vote for”, on the other hand, is certainly something each person can know about themselves for sure. Now, that may change over time, but no one else knows you better than you at this moment. It’s not a good measure of who you’ll vote for 6 months from now, but it’s accurate enough for the here and now, much more so than deciding how the economy is going based on feelings.

With that out of the way, on to the results.

Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are “very conservative.” When Pew Research asked whether it was “morally wrong” to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.

(Maybe that’s why liberals are all for tax increases. They figure the conservatives will do most of the paying.)

Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?”

Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.

When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.

The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.

And on the article goes, with more and more examples in the same vein. Buy why is this? Well, this is an opinion piece (because the MSM would never touch this with a 10-kilometer pole), so the writer, Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution fellow and author of a new book on this subject, actually does some analysis and gives us his take, but based on data, not just out of thin air.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all conservatives are honest and all liberals are untrustworthy. But clearly a gap exists in the data. Why? The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.

However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.

The honesty gap is also not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.

Ideas, indeed. Post-modern deconstruction of traditional values did not originate from conservatives. And this is even more important, considering what year it is.

Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate “doesn’t have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”

[tags]honest,conservatives,liberals,polls[/tags]

• Obama accuses McCain of lacking a thing which he himself, arguably, lacks even more. A word for that? Hypocrisy perhaps?
• Global temperatures still dropping. Global mean temperature is not “weather”, I think, and is relevant for those who believe the Gore get-rich-quick global warming scheme.
• In which a push for more complexity in public discourse goes suddenly off the rails.
• A better way to argue.
• Putting modern fuel economy in perspective. Driving slower indeed helps fuel economy, I think I’d be getting 100-120 mpg if I drove 40 on the highway.
• Baseball. Part two here.

"You’re fired."

The firebrand pastor of St. Sabina parish was removed from his duties there Tuesday, according to a statement released by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In the statement, Cardinal Francis George says he asked the Rev. Michael Pfleger, 59, to "take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties." The statement said Pfleger "does not believe this to be the right step at this time." "While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the Church’s regulations for all Catholic priests," George said.

Are we to take it that this is the very first time Rev. Pfleger has spewed this kind of vitriol?  Kinda’ doubt it.  Just like Obama’s recent leaving of Trinity UCC, this seems more like a case of being unable to avoid ignoring the issue once it hit the national stage. 

What a hassle, those internets.

[tags]Rev. Michael Pfleger,Barack Obama,Cardinal Francis George,Catholicism,St. Sabina[/tags]

It’s (mostly) official.  Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, based on the number of convention delegates who are either pledged to him or are super-delegates that say they’ll vote for him.  Partisanship and politics aside, this is a fantastic day for America, having the first black candidate for the White House. 

I believe this isn’t so much a step on the journey as it is an indication — proof, if you will — that those steps have already been taken.  I’m proud of our country, and frankly I’d have been just as proud had Hillary Clinton been the first woman to lead a major party ticket.  That she was a viable candidate the entire way through the primary season also speaks to our progress on that journey.

(And now, let the games begin. >grin<)

[tags]US presidential campaign,Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton[/tags]

Speaking about one’s religion is both a free speech and religious freedom issue.  Both are being chipped away at in England.

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

The Bishop’s charges were denied vehemently, but it turns out he was right.

The "police community support officer" who accused them of the crime threatened to arrest them.

A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive.

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

The police department wouldn’t apologize, and just gave the PCSO training in hate crime and communication.  One would have hoped this training would have come before putting hit out on the street.

Unmentioned in the Telegraph article but picked up by the Daily Mail; the PCSO himself was Muslim.  In addition, there was a threat of violence, and the actual constable on site backed up the PCSO

The community officer is also said to have told the two men: ‘You have been warned. If you come back here and get beat up, well, you have been warned.’

A police constable who was present during the incident in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham is also alleged to have told the preachers not to return to the district.

Presumably, this is not a Jihadi, just a (literal) Muslim-on-the-street (PCSOs are not official police officers) saying that Christians talking about their faith in a Muslim area are, in general, going to get beat up, in a "that’s just the way it is" attitude.  If this is the kind of "law enforcement" that the police themselves are backing up, I fear for the freedoms in Britain.

[tags]England,freedom of religion,freedom of speech,Islam,Christianity[/tags]

• A new Bible translation based on the LOLCat lingo. Blasphemy or not?
• Liberty and Chesterton.
• Promises, global warming and the Democrats. CO2 unreleated to global warming?
• Shouldn’t that list be “heaven’s most wanted”?
• The Habermas/Ratzinger debate re-framed in terms of socialism, i.e., is the socialist state self sustainable?
• New Jersey gets it exactly wrong.

Christian thinking has a strange relationship with poverty. There is at the one hand a strong a call for charity,  to aid the poor, the opressed, and those in need. On the other hand, there is:

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

via Luke 6. And Romans 5:

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So, imagine for a moment, that the dreams of the world economists is bears fruit. That by intelligent policy the world leaders managed to thread the needle between freedom and social networking/support and as well come up with a workable plan and solve the “bottom billion” problem and poverty world-wide is solved. Everyone on the planet by dint of management of resource and economic management is now wealthy. Poverty is no more.

Then … no more will anyone be able to rejoice in his suffering … and have endurance, character and thereby hope (see Benedict on Hope).  Everyone will be as shallow and hedonistic as the average American, without the tempering of either latent Puritan or religion to guide them. Oh, joy.

Furthermore, how should we interpret “blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” … Does that urge us to aid the poor and help them to become wealthy like us … thereby of course causing them to lose the kingdom of God (for there reward will then be in the here and now). Or does is more likely mean that we should not ourselves run the treadmill seeking salvation, ease, and happiness via material things.

So what is the way clear of this apparent paradox, that we are to help the poor … but that being poor is in and of itself a good thing. I have some thoughts … but I’m going to leave them for a later time.

Comments?

From a theological perspective at least. Heresy? Via the corner.

GG: Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA: Yes.
GG: What is sin?
OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.

I can’t imagine a way to spin that as reasonable in or out of context. Sin is being out of line with Obama’s values?

Well, in the light that for the liberal/progressive hypocrisy is the only sin … that makes sense. That is, the only error one can make is not “being true to oneself” or acting differently than one the values one believes in.

However … that isn’t what sin is.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

[tags]C. S. Lewis,tyranny[/tags]

Barack Obama, after having to distance himself from his own pastor, had to distance himself from a guest speaker as well, Father Michael Pfleger. But he was more that just a guest.

Father Michael Pfleger, a fiery liberal social activist and a white reverend at an African-American church — St. Sabina’s Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago — is a longtime friend and associate of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, having known him since the presidential hopeful was a community activist. In September, the Obama campaign brought Pfleger to Iowa to host one of several interfaith forums for the campaign.

Their relationship spans decades. Pfleger has given money to Obama’s campaigns and Obama as a state legislator directed at least $225,000 towards social programs at St. Sabina’s, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Pfleger, as you probably know, mocked Hillary Clinton’s crying, and suggested that her continued fight in the primary was because of racism. Of course, someone could turn that around and say that Obama’s continued fight was because of sexism. Neither is accurate, I imagine, but the accusation was outrageous enough that Obama had to distance himself from yet another speaker at his church.

In addition to the verbal distancing, Father Pfleger became the next person to be scrubbed from Obama’s “Faith Testimonials” web page, following Jeremiah Wright. (Seems that web page is a precarious place to be featured. They’re disappearing faster than political dissidents in the old Soviet Union.)

Which then led him to the, no doubt difficult, decision to leave the church after over 20 years. But even as he did so, he was hoping more people weren’t paying attention to his connection to Pfleger.

“I suspect we’ll find another church home for our family,” Obama said.

“It’s clear that now that I’m a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles,” he said.

“I have no idea how it will impact my presidential campaign but I know it was the right thing to do for me and my family,” he said.

“This was a pretty personal decision and I was not trying to make political theater out of it,” he added.

His association with Father Pfleger, as noted, goes back far, far longer than the Father’s recent appearance at Trinity. This isn’t someone “associated with Trinity”; it’s someone associated with Barack Obama. Again, this is a question of who one chooses to associate with, and combine this with close ties with former, and unrepentant, member of the Weather Underground, calls into question Obama’s judgement.

And this judgement extends to his choice of church. I don’t want to paint all members and guest speaker with a single, broad brush, but I do want to note that he’s attended this church for more than 20 years. Is it really reasonable to assume that this incendiary rhetoric just started in the 5 months since the Iowa caucuses? I find that hard to believe, so if it’s worth quitting the church over now, why wasn’t it worth quitting over years ago?

(Scott Ott, who writes the humorous ScrappleFace blog, has a serious piece at Townhall.com called “Dear Sen. Obama, Join My Church” that speaks perfectly to this issue.)

Obama’s statement gives the impression of not wanting to have to answer to every person standing in the Trinity pulpit. This is most certainly not the problem. The problem is the people in that pulpit who have over the years been his spiritual leaders by choice, and who have longtime relationships with him. Was this parting of the ways a political move or not? If it wasn’t, he’s projecting a false impression of his ties and expecting us to believe this vitriol is new to him. If it was political, then his explanation is disingenuous; this was much more a political decision than a personal one. Either way, this doesn’t speak well for Obama.

[tags]Barack Obama,Trinity United Church of Christ,Jeremiah Wright,Father Michael Pfleger,religion[/tags]

• Milk and sawdust.
• A top 10 “evil men” list … correlate with Marxism?
• Christ and feminism.
• A book and a hero.
• A film, I am David, which I saw in the theater and also recommend it highly.
• The best worst gadget of the year.

Intrade is a betting pool, which uses a market model to “predict” political and other sorts of events. However, it misses many essential features of market which make it less reliable as a device for optimization than one would imagine. Intrade came up in a discussion this morning and the reflections below are the result.

Marxism caricatures the market with a vision of workers slaving away “making stuff” and the “owners” fat catting it up reaping the profits which they fail to share with the blue collar set. However, a casual inspection of actual business in the real world demonstrates a number of important errors in this model (and as well in the Intrade model of market).

The free market works not just because of flexible financing methods like the stock markets, but because there are optimizations in a lot of places. The “workers” at the blue collar level work. But the rest of the business/management is not just “an owner”  collecting due proceeds. There are engineers, maintenance, and developers working on developing new ways of either getting their product out the door with less cost or higher productivity and developing new products. There are sales and advertising people working to find new ways to bring what is made to market. 3M for example, when their engineering people came up with a glue that “failed” … because it didn’t dry some bright people realized that a non-drying glue could be useful … and now post-its are everywhere. A market and demand for a new product was “created” by engineering errors and smart product development people. These people would likely be placed as  “owners” not “workers” in the Marxian caricature of industry. Additionally, management or “owners” do work hard as well. A lot of market development and sales and corporate strategic alliances are developed which cut the deals necessary to get the raw materials and financing necessary to keep a business afloat. Just as working on an assembly line is “work”, so is management. It just requires a different skill set. The point is that a great deal of free market efficiency comes from a lot of people hunting for better ways of doing very many things at the same time. It doesn’t come from market structure, i.e., stock market and particular banking methods. It comes from people being motivated by their best interests (making money and staying in business) to think and work hard to do things the best way. A lot of local optimizations making for fast global optimization.

The Intrade problem is that the majority of market efficiency and innovation is tied up in mangement (those alliances and financing and other engineering/product development) noted above … but this facet is lacking in the Intrade mode. “Placing bets” in a market framework might be a good polling mechanism … but it is basically parimutual betting which doesn’t insure optimal results.

Weekend Fisher at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength has in the last week been running a series on spiritual resources for the terminally ill and their caregivers. Now, where I’m placed in my life’s journey has not found me interacting closely with the terminally ill and I’m not naturally very emotive/empathic anyhow. However, it so happens that this Sunday afternoon our choir visited a terminally ill member of our congregation who is (had been) a member of the choir. I hadn’t gotten to know at all over the past year so we haven’t been visiting until now. But … to the point. When we visited we sang a few songs.

As our final song, our choir sang St. Simeon’s prayer (in the west the Nunc Dimittis) :

??? ???????? ??? ?????? ???, ???????, ???? ?? ???? ??? ?? ??????,

??? ????? ?? ???????? ??? ?? ???????? ???,

? ????????? ???? ???????? ?????? ??? ????,

??? ??? ?????????? ????? ??? ????? ???? ??? ??????.

or more usefully, i.e., in English (which is actually how we sang it but some Greek was sung, i.e., the Paschal Toparion)

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

This is a song well known in Orthodox liturgy as it is part of the Great Vespers service, which in the States is sung every Saturday night.

On the drive home, we were discussing in our family whether this was appropriate to sing in the presence of the dying. I think it is, for that is the precise context of St. Simeon’s urge to speak these words. He has now seen the Christ child and is, as an elderly and likely infirm man … ready to depart … life. The common usage of this song is at the end of a service, and often “now let thy servant depart” is taken as to depart from this place of worship and return to secular life. However, that is now what was meant in the original context. So in that regard, as a song for the dying … it both is appropriate and may provide some comfort.

Comments?

Geraldine Ferraro discusses how the protracted and nasty Democratic primary season has split the party, enough for her to be concerned about November.

LAST YEAR at the beginning of the presidential primary season, Democrats were giddy with excitement. Not only did we have an embarrassment of riches in our candidates but we had two historic candidacies to enjoy. Once and for all our country would show that racism and sexism were not part of our 21st-century DNA.

Here we are at the end of the primary season, and the effects of racism and sexism on the campaign have resulted in a split within the Democratic Party that will not be easy to heal before election day. Perhaps it’s because neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman or what is fueling the concern of Reagan Democrats for whom sexism isn’t an issue, but reverse racism is.

As you may know, Ferraro is a Clinton supporter, so her criticism needs to be looked at through that lens. But the main issue here I think is that identity politics hath wrought this on the Democrats themselves. Frankly, I’ve not seen the sexism or racism Ferraro alludes to. I have read criticism of Obama from Clinton-supporting sites like TalkLeft, and I’ve read (rather nasty) criticism of Clinton from Obama-supporting sites like Daily Kos.

What I have seen are complaints that the Clintons are corrupt liars, Obama doesn’t have broad enough appeal within the base, jabs against folks in Appalachia, and other such sniping, but not sexism or racism. In fact, Ferraro’s column later notes that some are requesting an investigation in whether or not it actually happened.

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