St. Paul – The Church’s 1st Generation of New Leaders

Some commentators have noted that once St. Paul becomes a Christian he seems much more aggressive and bold about taking the Christian message to the Gentiles than are the apostles from among the Twelve.   St. Paul embraces the mission to the world in a way which the original disciples  seem reluctant to do.  Additionally, some have accused St. Paul of having changed both the message and the method of the early Church.  Muslims in fact accuse St. Paul of preaching a Gospel different than the one that the rest of the apostles were teaching.

However Christian tradition accepts the writings of St. Paul as inspired by God and belonging to the authentic Scriptures containing God’s full revelation.  The epistles of St. Paul were used by the early Christians to combat false teachings about Jesus.

In defense of St. Paul, we need to keep in mind that his experience of Christ and of Christianity differed from the original apostles.   Paul is the first Christian leader to emerge from outside of the original inner circle of disciples (the Twelve or the Seventy).  He didn’t experience the initial fear that those first disciples felt immediately on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.   The first disciples hid behind closed doors in terror of themselves being persecuted or killed because of being the followers of Christ.  The first disciples had reason to fear not only their fellow Jewish compatriots, but also the Roman government which had carried out the execution of Jesus.

St. Paul on the other hand claimed to be a Roman citizen and so unlike the original disciples he may have felt some protection by the Romans, not just threatened by them.   St. Paul does not in his writing express the hatred for Rome that is an undercurrent in the Gospels.   Additionally St. Paul was part of the Jewish authority persecuting the Christians, so he wouldn’t have felt threatened by the Jews in the way the original disciples did. 

St. Paul represented a new generation of leadership – one which felt emboldened by the Resurrection and not so threatened by being a bearer of the Gospel.   St. Paul would soon experience the rejection  of and persecution by both his fellow Jews and by his fellow Roman citizens.  But Paul’s early embrace of Christ was shaped by his sudden encounter with the Risen Lord, not by three years of slow discipling that abruptly ended with the execution of the Master.    As one who received the Gospel of the Risen Lord and was converted by it, rather than as one who had been a disciple who experienced the death of Christ before His Resurrection, Paul’s path to becoming a Christian was different than that of the original disciples.  Remember,   the original disciples were reluctant at first to receive Paul.  St. Paul experienced and valued the notion of grace, of having received undeservedly the favor of God, and so was eager to share his received faith with others – he understood himself as having been grafted onto the original branch.    His life as a Christian came only sometime after the Resurrection of Christ and after Pentecost.  The disciples still were working through their own experience of the crucifixion of their Master, their own failure to believe, and the change that the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost had meant for them.

St. Paul did not alter the Gospel message, but he seems to have grasped its implication for the world and for Jews who embraced Christ, and was willing to challenge the pre-Christian worldview which was still in play among the first Jewish Christians.  He was a true Apostle of the Lord who received the hand of fellowship from Christ’s own chosen disciples.

Julie’s Graduation

 

 

 

 

 

The Class of 2009 made history today with their graduation.  718 Seniors graduated.  96% plan to continue their education beyond high school.  Julie received her high school diploma with focus on Allied Health.  I took this photo off the JumboTron at the Nutter Center of Wright State University where the ceremony was held.   Julie has diploma in hand and is happy to move on in life.

 

 

Her picture at home before the ceremony.

 

Happiness: In Relationship to Whom?

One of the benefits of blogging for me has been the chance to dialogue with people who hold different beliefs than I do.  In these exchanges with people who embrace atheism or who reject religion that I often wonder “what God or religion are they talking about?”   It is a question Stanley Fish asked in his response to his critics, God Talk Part 2  (which I  commented on in my blog The Truth about What we Believe).

I have often felt in my correspondence with non-believers that I do not believe in the God they reject either.   If I thought what some of them think about God, I too would be an atheist.

I found Philosophy Professor Simon Critchley’s Happy Like God 25 May 2009 New York Times opinion piece to be interesting exactly because of the idea of God which he put forth.  Critchley is opining about happiness and he quotes Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s third autobiography, “Reveries of a Solitary Walker”.  Critchley says,  “This is as close to a description of happiness as I can imagine”:

If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. (emphases Critchley’s)

St. Augustine said the soul can only find such a resting place in God, but then he lived long before the 18th Century redefined the relational human being as an isolated individual.  Rousseau as a true man of the Enlightenment and a deist could imagine the soul finding such rest within the individual.   Critchley writes:

Rousseau asks, “What is the source of our happiness in such a state?” He answers that it is nothing external to us and nothing apart from our own existence. However frenetic our environment, such a feeling of existence can be achieved. He then goes on, amazingly, to conclude, “as long as this state lasts we are self-sufficient like God.”

God-like, then. To which one might reply: Who? Me? Us? Like God? Dare we? But think about it: If anyone is happy, then one imagines that God is pretty happy, and to be happy is to be like God. But consider what this means, for it might not be as ludicrous, hybristic or heretical as one might imagine. To be like God is to be without time, or rather in time with no concern for time, free of the passions and troubles of the soul, experiencing something like calm in the face of things and of oneself.

To be like God in Crichley’s sense reminds me of Genesis 3 wherein the clever serpent tempts Eve by telling her that she will not die if she eats the forbidden fruit:

“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

No happiness resulted from that tempting attempt to be like God!

Critchley through Rousseau imagines happiness being in the individual separated from all other beings.   This certainly would not be God like at all.  Rousseau portrays happiness as being in a state in which no one else is part of the picture and there is no past and no future.  He imagines this as bliss.   It also so contrasts with the idea of God I’ve encountered in Christianity.

First, because Christians understand God to be a Trinity of Persons who are freely and perfectly united together in love.  God is no Enlightenment individualist but always a being of love, relational love, self emptying and self sacrificing love.   God as Trinity is never isolated, separated or alienated for the Trinity always exists in relationship and always loves (if there were no Persons in God, and God were completely mono and alone, the notion that God is love would mean God in eternity is self loving which is no true love at all). 

Second, God is not a being for whom time is nothing.  God brought time into existence when He created the world.  We believe this was an act of love on His part.   Time in some strange way is an expression of God’s love and a revelation of God.  Additionally, in the incarnation of the Word, God enters time and sanctifies it.  The happiness of God is not a timeless state.  God has in love been willing to submit Himself to time and to work with and in time.  God’s willingness to act in time and His willing that these historical actions be recorded in Scripture, tells me for God time is connected to happiness: we learn of God’s past saving actions and hope in His promised future salvation.

Third, Rousseau imagines that perfect happiness comes where there is no fear, desire, pain or pleasure.  Yet the perfect love of God and the perfect joy of God is found in Christ, the incarnate God who as a human experienced all of these things.  God’s perfect happiness in loving His creation is not prevented by the experience of suffering, pain, desire or pleasure.   In fact, since God enters into the human condition and experiences all of these things and does not prevent the creatures He is saving from experiencing them, one has to think that neither pain nor sorrow nor suffering nor desire nor please can ever really separate us from God’s love and happiness.

Critchley apparently accepting the idea of the Enlightenment’s extreme individualism, sees with Rousseau that the individual separated from all human influence (past experience or future expectation) and isolated from all relationships will find supreme happiness.  Yet that is exactly a world in which there can be no love since there is no one else to love.  How can a world without love be happy?    It sounds to me more like hell than heaven.   It is an idea of happiness and of God that for me is vacuous and would lead to the emptiness of atheism.  

As complex as it might be, the idea of the Trinity, of the incarnation and of the death and resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity, is a much more vibrant notion of God and of happiness.

The Truth about What we Believe

Stanley Fish wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled God Talk, one paragraph of which I commented on in my blog The American Myth and Its God.   Fish’s opinion piece brought out a fair number of atheist critics who contrasted science, knowledge and reason to religion, opinion and faith.   Fish in turn responded with a second piece, God Talk Part 2 in which he notes :

According to recent surveys, somewhere between 79 and 92 percent of Americans believe in God. But if the responses to my column on Terry Eagleton’s “Faith, Reason and Revolution” constitute a representative sample, 95 percent of Times readers don’t. What they do believe, apparently, is that religion is a fairy tale, hogwash, balderdash, nonsense and a device for rationalizing horrible deeds.

It is interesting to note in a study of evolutionary biologists of about 150 who responded to a survey almost 80% identified themselves as atheists.   They certainly would have sided with Fish’s critics, but would still be in the minority in America.    Fish is also sometimes criticized by more traditional/conservative believers as his arguments aren’t always comforting to them either.   But Fish found a defender in Paul Campos who authored the opinion piece   The Atheist’s Dilemma.

Fish and Campos both made me think about my own spiritual sojourn.  For certainly at one time I considered myself an atheist and really did think that the only way to a better world was for everyone to be honest about everything, and if we were all honest everyone would have to admit they had never had an experience of God.    What I thought was an obvious and easy solution to all the debates about religion, turned out to be no basis for the discussion at all because some could not say they had never experienced God, or the divine, or angels, spirits or ghosts, because in fact they believed they had. 

Our sense of truth is shaped by what we believe.  This is as true for scientists as believers.  We are constantly trying to make sense of the universe around us and we make certain assumptions which shape what we think is true.  For example, no “miracle” will ever convince an atheist there is a God.  For if one does not believe God exists, one is not going to consider God as an explanation for what one sees.   Depending on what one believes one might see in any event an accident, a miracle, a random event, a cause – effect relationship, a mystery, nature at work, human error, luck or the hand of God.  

Countless witnesses of tragedies and traumas offer person testimony which is not an “objective” account of what happened but is an account filtered through their own ideas of what is true and how the universe works.  (Years ago I read a sci-fi novel – by Robert Heinlein?- in which there were people who were neutral/objective observers and had an ability to record in their minds events they observed almost camera like without interpreting them).   I remember reading once a claim made that the best observers of plane crashes were children who simply reported what they saw, while the reports of those with more aviation experience was often tainted by their own trying to make sense of what they saw and so often included ideas of “what must have happened”  rather than what actually happened.

Those who feel they rely only on proof for what they believe are not likely to be attracted to religion or faith in God, as they will never see proof.   (I one time head someone say to those claiming to accept things only on proof: do you think the sun is 93 million miles from earth?  Have you ever measured that yourself?  So then you do accept on faith the witness and testimony of others!)    There are many things we do accept on faith and we don’t personally prove everything science claims.  Science would still say, yes, but you could at least prove our claims if you had the scientific knowledge of how to conduct the experiments.  Yes, but if you don’t, and most of us don’t, we accept a lot of what science says on faith – we accept the testimony of the witnesses to the experiments.  (That by the way is what we Christians do as well).

Some years ago I began doing the addictive Sudoku puzzles.    Because there are a limited number of squares to fill (81) and since you know what has to go in each square (a number from 1 to 9) and there are established rules as  to how the numbers must be placed, one can assume that the puzzle is solvable by logic, and in fact it is.   However,  one can approach the puzzle “feeling lucky” and think it will be solved easily, or one can look at the rating of the puzzle and be challenged or discouraged by the level of difficulty.    Sudoku players develop various strategies for how to solve the puzzle, and because of the nature of the game there really are only so many strategies to follow and one can exhaust one’s strategies and get “stuck” on a puzzle where no amount of logic seems to resolve the puzzle.  Then one can try guessing (or relying on one’s feeling about a particular number) – just putting in a number and see if it solves the puzzle or not.  This guessing however is not completely random for it is also based on logic – the rules of the puzzle already limit the number of possibilities.   So even when you think you aren’t following logic but just trying numbers at random, you already know what the numbers are you can use, so you are relying on logic.

I mention Sudoku because I think it is a small model of how we approach life and whether we think we are looking at the world through eyes of faith or reason, science or religion, skill or luck, design or randomness.  Our ability to see is limited by the assumptions we make.  Even scientists, medical researchers, police investigators sometimes miss a clue or misunderstand the results of an experiment because they don’t know what they are looking at.  And then when the right frame of reference is given to them, they suddenly understand clearly what was right in front of their eyes.  This I think is how believers see the world differently from non-believers – it is not a matter of proof, it is the frame of reference. 

I eventually abandoned my atheism because I could not make sense out of what I was seeing in the world.  Something was missing; I could not find meaning in my life.   But if I did not have the frame of reference of meaning and seeking something more than scientific fact (I started college as a chemistry major), I might have been quite content in science because there too I was seeking truth.  It is just that I do not believe that reducing a human being to his or her exact chemical composition – no matter how exactly true those facts may be – really explains what it is to be human.

The Ascension: Believers, Get Your Heads out of the Clouds

 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.  After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.  On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.  For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”   So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.  They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.  “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”   (Acts 1:1-12)

One popular idea that many people profess is that we all are going to “die and go to heaven.”  This is an idea of which New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright tries to disabuse believers  (See almost any of his books or my blog The Resurrection: Life Beyond Life After Death).   I would offer that the Feast of the Ascension also does not support a “die and go to heaven” version of Christianity either. 

If Jesus was mostly interested in heaven, it is strange that He taught His followers how to live on earth, and then left His disciples on earth with work to do.  Why did Jesus spend time discipling His followers and then later convince them He had risen from the dead if all that was was important was to get them to heaven?  Why didn’t He simply take His few disciples with Him and abandon the fallen earth to its own devices?

It seems to me that Christ had an interest in a new heaven and a new earth, not in abandoning the original earth but saving and recreating the existing one.    Even if we think back to the story of the great flood in Genesis 6-8, God did not utterly annihilate creation into non-existence and create from nothing again.  Rather the story is that He tried to uproot all wickedness from the existing creation and fully intended to repopulate the earth and use the existing cleansed creation to accomplish His will.  Heaven was not the goal of God, but an earth on which His will was done as it is done in Heaven. 

The Lord Jesus had an interest in convincing His disciples that He had risen from the dead because He fully intended them to continue living on earth.  And on earth, they and we are to be His witnesses.  And to what are we witnessing?  The resurrection from the dead – in other words restoration to the world from which death has taken us.   Christ did not simply die and go to heaven, He destroyed death and was bodily resurrected from the dead.  Apparently Christ thought the body and this world was part of God’s plan of salvation.  Jesus did not abandon the world or His body, but He redeemed them, recreated them.  He invites us in baptism and the Eucharist to participate in and become part of that renewed creation.  

Baptism with the Holy Spirit is not so much for life in the world to come, but for continued life in this world as His witnesses!  We need the Holy Spirit to help us live in this new creation, and to empower us to be His witnesses to the rest of the world.  None of this has to do with exiting this world, but rather has to do with how to live in this world.

Note that the apostles were interested in the restoration of the kingdom of Israel – that was their idea of “other worldliness.”    They assumed this world was passing away and the Kingdom of God would be the same as Israel restored as a Kingdom.   But Christ’s answer to them is “get your heads out of the clouds!”   “Don’t worry about restoration and future times and heavenly places.  You have work to do on earth and the Holy Spirit is going to empower you to do it!”  Christ tells the apostles the time of the restoration is not their concern – their real concern is how to witness to Christ’s resurrection.  The place of the apostles is on earth as Christ’s witnesses and their work is with the people of earth to bring them to a knowledge of God’s truth.

Jesus tells them (and us) that we are to be witnesses to the very ends of the earth.  Notice He doesn’t mention anything about getting to heaven.  Our work is on earth, throughout the earth, to the ends of the earth.   Christ’s Great Commission in Matthew 28, also tells us to make disciples of all nations.  Our work is on earth and this is what we must focus on.  It doesn’t matter when Christ may come again, that doesn’t change what we must be doing every day while we still have time on earth.

On the very day Christ ascended into heaven, even the angels tell the apostles (and us) to quit gawking into heaven as their and our work is on earth.   What we need is not Heaven but the Holy Spirit because Jesus is coming back!    Our role is to do on earth God’s will as it is done in heaven, which is not the same as saying we need to do God’s will in heaven.  We cannot skip the earth or our life here, but rather are to do His work and will on this planet: to be His witnesses, to talk not only about Christ’s death but also about His resurrection.  We have to get our heads out of the clouds of heaven and castles in the sky in order to carry out Christ’s mission on earth.   The Feast of the Ascension is very much a call to all of us to be ministers of the Gospel, to be the Church, to make disciples of all nations by being witnesses to what God has done in and through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Feast of the Ascension (2009)

  The  Ascension of our Lord          Acts 1:1-12        

“As the Gospel tells us, after the Lord’s Ascension the Apostles returned (to Jerusalem) ‘with great joy.’ (Luke 24:52)  The Lord knows what joy He gave them: and their souls experienced this joy. That they had known the true Lord Jesus Christ was their first joy.  Their second joy – that they loved Him.  Their third joy – that they had known life eternal in heaven.  And their fourth joy – that they desired salvation for the world, as for themselves. And later on they rejoiced because they came to know the Holy Spirit, and witnessed the workings of the Holy Spirit in themselves.  (St. Silouan the Athonite, d. 1938)

I want to wish each of you a blessed Feast of the Ascension of our Lord.   Christ is the way to heaven.  Heaven is where He dwells, and it is what dwells in Him.

Fr. Ted

A Foreign but Friendly Critique of America (2)

This is Part 2 and the conclusion of my blog A Foreign but Friendly Critique of America.

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, wrote what he considered to be a friendly and loving critique of American government policies,  Can America Fail?  in  THE WILSON QUARTERLY Spring 2009.   I briefly commented what he listed as the first two American policy failures in the first blog.   Mahbubani continued: 

The third systemic failure of American society is its failure to see how the abuse of American power has created many of the problems the United States now confronts abroad. The best example is 9/11. Americans believe they were innocent victims of an evil attack by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. And there can be no doubt that the victims of 9/11 were innocent. Yet Americans tend to forget the fact that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were essentially created by U.S. policies. In short, a force launched by the United States came back to bite ­it.

Mahbubani believes ill conceived U. S. foreign policies have pushed some Islamic people to see America as their enemy, not ally.   The world can see America’s blindness on this issue, but it is a fault Americans cannot see about themselves.   He thinks Americans totally fail to see how the suffering of the Palestinian people does win them the sympathy of the Islamic world which in turns blames America for the suffering of Palestinians.  He thinks this will also continue to feed an anti-Israeli hatred among Muslims, which cannot be good for Israel.   Americans seem unable or unwilling to see how their own policy causes Islamic anger toward Israel.   He feels instead of America blaming the Muslim world, we should look at how our own policies exacerbate Mideast tensions and end up threatening Israel, our ally.

Because, according to Mahbubani,  Americans tend to think that all of her own problems come from outside of America, they rarely think about how what they are doing as a nation impacts themselves or the world.   Americans also are so often focused on the immediate, and favor instant solutions and instant benefits, that they do not think about the long term impact of their current policy decisions.   This is just another form of entitlement – we are entitled to good things now, we can’t worry about how these will be paid for in the future or what the price will be.   This too is an American blind spot regarding itself.

In democracies, the role of government is to serve the public interest. Americans believe that they have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The reality is more complex. It looks more like a government “of the people, by special-interest groups, and for special-interest groups.” In the theory of democracy, corrupt and ineffective politicians are thrown out by elections. Yet the fact that more than 90 percent of incumbents who seek reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives are ­re­elected provides a clear warning that all is not well.

How is it that incumbants become so protected that they rarely get voted out of office?   To some extent it is because special interests prefer it that way and they pay to keep current office holders in power.   Special interests rather than public interests have become protected by U. S. policy and they use congressional redistricting as a way to keep their favorite politicians in power.    President Obama noted:  “These days, almost every congressional district is drawn by the ruling party with ­computer-­driven precision to ensure that a clear majority of Democrats or Republicans reside within its borders. Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.”

 Mahbubani points out other issues which the rest of the readily sees about America but which Americans fail to notice or discuss.   According to him studies show that the ability to be upwardly social mobile in America has been declining and in many nations in Europe it is far more likely that someone born into the lower class might move to the middle class than it is in America.   Additionally the gap between the wealthiest Americans and poorest Americans continues to widen.  The top 20% of Americans, who complain that they bear too much of the tax burden, earn 15 times what the poorest 20% earn –  “$168,170 versus $11,352.”   And the wealthiest 20% expect the poor not only to live on their meager incomes but to shoulder a tax burden which goes to fund programs that protect the wealth of the top 20%.

The U.S. education system produces children who in the world “ranked 24th in mathematics and 17th in science. It should come as no surprise that though the United States ranks second among 177 countries in per capita income, it ranks only 12th in terms of human development.”   Does our prosperity blind us to these national shortcomings?  We are the wealthiest and military-wise the most powerful nation on earth.   Does this cause us to ignore our domestic troubles and make us blind to the future in which other nations might overtake us because they focused on education and equality?

We may neither like nor agree with Mahbubani’s analysis of America nor with his offered solutions for us.  However, friendly criticism is not “friendly fire” – it is not deadly.  It gives us opportunity to see something about ourselves that we may not be able to see.   Mahbubani feels the one word American politicians always want to avoid is “sacrifice.”  He optimistically feels there are solutions to our nation’s problems, but Americans, especially in the realm of economics, must abandon entitlements and accept sacrifice to solve some of our economic, health care and retirement problems.   He thinks Americans are creative enough to come up with solutions for these problems, but it will require a willingness to make personal sacrifice for the common good.

A Foreign but Friendly Critique of America

“Primum non nocere.”   (First, not to harm.)

Nonmaleficence, as Wikipedia notes, is a fundamental principle in medical treatment reminding “the physician and other health care providers that they must consider the possible harm that any intervention might do.”   It is an idea that American foreign policy makers ought to consider as well since they tend to see America as the medical interventionist curing the world’s ills.  Unfortunately it seems as if our nation’s political leaders sometimes replace “do no harm” with the mythological belief that “we can do no wrong” resulting in the world watching with great unease what America might do in foreign policy.

 I found the article Can America Fail?  by Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in  THE WILSON QUARTERLY Spring 2009 to be an interesting critique of American foreign and domestic policy.   Mahbubani describes himself as being pro-American and wanting America to succeed as he does believe America has done more good for the world than any other nation on earth.    He is however also a critic of America, though he sees himself as a friendly critic not a hostile one.  As a self proclaimed “loving critic” he writes that one blindspot of Americans is that we do not think we can fail, and consequently we are ill prepared when things don’t go our way.  Mahbubani thinks we need a bit more realism – failure is a possibility in this world – and we should awaken to that reality.  He believes many friends of America around the world can imagine and foresee America’s failings in domestic and foreign policies and these supporters of America are constantly stunned that American’s can’t see this themselves.  He offers this observation:

The first systemic failure America has suffered is groupthink. Looking back at the origins of the current financial crisis, it is amazing that American society accepted the incredible assumptions of economic gurus such as Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin that unregulated financial markets would naturally deliver economic growth and serve the public good. …  In short, the financial players would regulate ­themselves.

This is manifest nonsense. The goal of these financial professionals was always to enhance their personal wealth, not to serve the public interest. So why was Greenspan’s nonsense accepted by American society? The simple and amazing answer is that most Americans assumed that their country has a rich and vibrant “marketplace of ideas” in which all ideas are challenged. Certainly, America has the freest media in the world. No subject is taboo. No sacred cow is immune from criticism. But the paradox here is that the belief that American society allows every idea to be challenged has led Americans to assume that every idea is challenged. They have failed to notice when their minds have been enveloped in groupthink. Again, failure occurs when you do not conceive of ­failure.

The second systemic failure has been the erosion of the notion of individual responsibility. Here, too, an illusion is at work. Because they so firmly believe that their society rests on a culture of individual ­respon­sibility—­rather than a culture of entitlement, like the social welfare states of ­Europe—­Americans cannot see how their individual actions have undermined, rather than strengthened, their society. In their heart of hearts, many Americans believe that they are living up to the famous challenge of President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for ­you—­ask what you can do for your country.” They believe that they give more than they take back from their own ­society.

There is a simple empirical test to see whether this is true: Do Americans pay more in taxes to the government than they receive in government services? The answer is clear. Apart from a few years during the Clinton administration, the United States has had many more federal budget deficits than ­surpluses…

Mahbubani feels part of what has happened in America is that Americans have undermined individual responsibility by demonizing taxes.  Making taxes to be an evil erodes the basis for personal responsibility as America cannot deliver on all its growing commitments and promises while simultaneously cutting taxes.   The endless drive to demonize taxes means the government is forced into deficit spending (since Americans want – feel entitled to – what the government is currently delivering) which discourages personal responsibility and encourages personal irresponsibility.

Entitlement thinking is found not just in those favoring a welfare state.  Americans on every social level tend to believe they are entitled to what they have and what they receive.  Americans often tend to think all the resources of the world and of the country are theirs for the taking.

Next:  A Foreign but Friendly Critique of America (2)

The Unity of the Church

The recent discussions regarding the Church in America and Canon 28 of the 451AD Council of Chalcedon are no doubt essential to the eventual normalization in organizing the Orthodox jurisdictions in America.  I have not yet had the chance to completely read the comments of historian and canonical interpreter Fr. John Erickson, Chalcedon Canon 28: Yesterday and Today, former dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary.   I did read Nick Katich’s insightful “Chalcedon Canon 28: Historic Truth or Greek Mythology?”   which also made me realize how far we need yet to travel to bring about “normalcy” to Orthodoxy in America in terms of ecclesiological structure.

This morning as I was doing my daily devotions and scripture reading I read Joshua 22 which contains the story of Joshua finally giving the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh permission to occupy the territories east of the Jordan River which they had requested at the beginning of the Jewish invasion of Palestine, but which they had to delay until all the tribes had secured for themselves a homeland in the territories west of the River Jordan.  Joshua recognizes that the River Jordan which forms a natural boundary also represents a potential permanent division between the tribes.  He instructs those minority 2 and 1/2 tribes living east of the Jordan to maintain unity with the rest of the Israelites by carefully following the rule of faith: “to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to adhere to Him, and to serve Him with all your mind and with all your soul” (22:5, OSB). 

Tribalism like jurisdictionalism or ethnicism always poses a threat to the unity of God’s people.   Human conventions are strong enough to break apart the unity which God wishes His people would choose, maintain and build up.

What transpires in Joshua 22 is that the 2 and 1/2 Eastern tribes proceed to build an altar to God on their side of the River Jordan.  Immediately an alarm is set off among the other 10 tribes that the Eastern tribes have broken unity with the Western tribes by setting up their own altar.  A call to arms goes out and the 10 tribes prepare for war against their brethren.  The 2 and 1/2 tribes then explain themselves:  they are not setting up an altar in opposition to the altar of the tabernacle, but rather they want to have an altar to remind future generations that they worship the one true God of Israel and as a witness to their unity with the other tribes.   Their fear is that in the future the majority tribes on the Eastern side of the Jordan will eventually declare that they are not really part of Israel.   Each “side” in the conflict had a different need and a different fear – they were separated by tribe, by geography, and now by altar and custom.  Despite all these differences they were still able to see and reaffirm their unity.   They didn’t need monolithic administration and thought about every custom or practice, they didn’t need conformity and uniformity in practice to preserve their basic unity in faith.  What binds them together was “that the Lord is their God” (22:34).

Such too will have to be the nature of unity for the Orthodox in America when it comes.  It will not be external law and canons that will bind us together, for Orthodoxy in America is multicutural and abounds in diverse practice and customs.   The true unifying principle must be the Spirit of God working within us.   As Nicholas Afanasiev wrote in THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, in primitive Christianity the increase in the number of local communities did not disturb the unity of the faith for each community could not separate itself from Christ – the only foundation they had.  The unifying principle – one Lord and one Spirit – were central to each community, were at the heart of each community, were internal to each community long before there were any hierarchs or canons to impose unity on the Church.    It was and is the Holy Spirit and not human law or convention that serves as both the organizing and unifying principle of the Church.

While the canons, and Chalcedon 28, are part of the Tradition of the Church, their purpose is to help maintain the unity of the Spirit which resides in all Christians because of their having received the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Chrismation.   The main purpose of the Church is not to promulgate and uphold canons, but rather to use the canons when necessary as a tool to maintain the God-given unity of the Holy Spirit among all Christians.

The Gift of Light and the Allure of Darkness

The Man born blind       (John 9)

St. John Chrysostom wrote regarding the Gospel lesson of the man born blind:

“‘Now this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, yet men have loved the darkness rather than the light.’ He meant, that is: ‘They are punished because of this: that they have not been willing to shun darkness and run to the light.’ Here at last He took away their last line of defense. ‘For, if I had come,’ He said, ‘inflicting punishment and demanding an accounting of men’s deeds, they would have had this to say: “We ran away because of that.” But now, I have come to drive away darkness and bring them to the Light.’ Who, then, would pity the man who does not wish to go from darkness to the Light? ‘For, though they can lodge no charge against Me, but rather have received countless blessings,’ He said, ‘they run away from me.’ And elsewhere, too, He accused them of this and said: ‘They have hated me without cause,’ And again: ‘If I had not come and    spoken to them, they would have no sin.’ (Jn 15:25,22) He who, in the absence of light, sits in darkness may perhaps receive pardon; but he who, after the light has come, remains in the darkness gives evidence against himself of a perverted and contentious will. Next, since what He said would seem to be incredible to most men (surely, no one would prefer darkness to light), He also assigned the reason why they had this affliction. What, then, is this? ‘For their works were evil,’ He said. ‘For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, that his deeds may not be exposed.’ ”