Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Southland in the Springtime

I've been reflecting on a comment I heard some time back, and I think it's worthy of reflection. I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of it was that the speaker didn't think much of Christianity, because if it was such a good idea, how do you explain the backwardness of the southern United States? Hmmn, now that's food for thought isn't it? He had continued to comment that in a culture where everyone (or almost everyone) read the Bible, went to church, had prayer in schools and the ten commandments in the courtroom, and yet...and yet...(sigh).

I'm not from the south (I'm Canadian), and I've only ever been there once, so perhaps I'm not the best person to be responding to a comment such as the above, but I've known a few southerners in my time. I walked away from a southern affiliated Baptist church as a teenager because it supported racial segregation (at the time). They were from the south. I was fifteen, and I remember bursting into tears, in trying to explain what was so wrong about a system that exploited people, to a minister who was trying to say that he thought the churches in the south had been blamed for something that had been part of the culture, that people had grown up with. At the time what he said pretty much went in one ear and out the door with me, but I find myself wondering years later, did he have a point?

No. I don't think so. Even now I can't accept it, because the church is supposed to be a leader, isn't it? The preachers are supposed to be the practicers. I've been thinking lately though, that the reason that we Christians often end up looking so bad, is because Jesus looked so good, if you know what I mean. We're no better than anyone else, and sometimes we're undoubtedly worse, but I think our image problem as Christians is that so often we fail to reflect the image of the set of footprints that is carrying us towards a higher ground.Yet, people recognize an authenticity and moral standard in Jesus. In other words, we're not there yet, but we do have a vision of something greater, that despite our failings many of us are trying to do good. With that said may I ask, the next time you hear someone talk about all those hypocrites in the church, just remember the humble carpenter, whose words they are echoing. Jesus had the same complaint. 

So, I would never try to justify oppression, but whenever I hear people attack Christians or Christianity I always come back to the same conclusion. Namely, you cannot ground the intrinsic worth and equality of all human beings in an ever-shifting purely naturalistic process of material selection, you simply cannot. So, in this instance we can argue, and I can emphasize the Christians who fought against slavery, and an atheist would probably emphasize the church going KKK members who fought against reforms with strange fruit and burning crosses.(sigh) But at the end of the day, it was still a Judeo-Christian concept of equality that Martin Luther King knew he was appealing to when he stood up to speak.God bless his resting soul, but King was just living out who he knew he was in Christ, a man created in the image of God, a little lower than the angels. And it's still that Judeo-Christian foundation, my friends, when the UN talks about promoting human rights around the world, or Amnesty International or any other secular organization presents the same expectation. They are drawing water from the same inspirational well as Moses or Isiah or Jeremiah or Jesus. Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream" -Amos 5:24  That's all I claim, that it's a Biblical foundation, through the grit, the good and the ugly.

But maybe that's the reason why if you look at slavery rates around the world today (despite the fact that the south dragged it's feet in the process), the historically Christian west tends to have the lowest rates of slavery in the world. That's the point I had wanted to make when I started this, that as much as secular commentators love to talk about the U.S., and compare the agricultural south to the industrial north, they fail to look at the issue on a global scale, the recognition that slavery is still an ongoing problem in much of the world. In fact there are more slaves today than at any time in history. Something that I think is also fair to mention, is that human trafficking appears to be increasing as secular influence in the west is increasing, shown in the slim minority of people who advocate for their right to work in the sex trade, while arguably putting at risk the majority who are finding that it's hard to prosecute human trafficking when prostitution is legal. That's just something that I'd like to put out there as food for thought.  How far can we take this "I want to do what I want when I want to do it" attitude, before it begins to affect the next person?

So that's where I was when I started writing this, trying to strike a balance between acknowledging the wrongs of history, while widening the lens to gain a broader, more global perspective on the issue of slavery or inequality. That's what I often try to do, to open up the discussion a bit. But you know, I think my own perspective may be changing, even in the last while as I've been thinking about this, and I'm beginning to realize that regardless of the often false dichotomy between secular and Christian in the west, I wonder to what degree do we have a shared responsibility in what remains an ongoing problem. I'll explain.

                                                                         ***

I'm a muddler. That is, I often think about this kind of stuff while I'm sorting laundry or doing dishes, taking out the garbage etc. The other day I was out shopping and I had all this in the back of my mind, while I was placing things in the shopping cart. So I was muddling while I was puttering through the isles of bargains that I was trying to find myself. I'll let you in on a few of my stream of conscious thoughts. "What a great deal on really big chocolate bars, mmmn, I love chocolate. Oh, my soon to be adopted son's birthday is coming up, those are nice little trucks for a pretty reasonable price, he loves trucks. He has trucks, but he does love trucks. Oh and yeah, My husband's birthday is coming up too, those are nice shirts, not sure where I'll put them, but I think he would really like that one, and that one..."  I'm a woman, what can I say. I find it very easy to spend money in stores haha, that's a confession of sorts. And then later that night in researching this, still muddling, I came across some of the links below, and that's when it hit me.

I say that with a warning to the sensitive because I've been haunted by some of those links, since reading or watching them. Teenage boys being beaten on cocoa farms after trying to run away in the Ivory Coast. Chinese factory workers putting in dehumanizingly long hours for a little more of not enough to live on outside of the factory farm they call home. Under-privileged girls being entrapped and sold into sexual slavery. People working back-breaking hours breaking up rock, people working with toxic products...for what? At that point I had to turn it off and go to bed but the thoughts have not left me. The images that impacted me the most were the eyes and the faces of the workers in a Chinese toy factory. Ghost-like empty vacuous stares on the faces of people who quite literally never left work except to eat and sleep, if they ate or slept.

I don't want to be a stick in the mud here, but the question I'm left with is, how much of this is the blame of the west? Is that a fair question? I mean, if 20 percent of the world's population is plundering 86 percent of the world's resources, how much can we expect the remaining 80% to have? Is it the poverty that they then find themselves in, that makes them so vulnerable to exploitation? I know it's not simple, and I know corruption plays a role and the actions of the people who are doing this, but...

A number of years ago (I would have been in my early twenties), an Indian friend was visiting Canada. At the time, she was telling me about how strange it felt to be living in Canada, with all these luxuries that she knew would not be there when she returned home. And then she started to name those luxuries: stoves, televisions, fridges, and that was what blew my mind. The things she thought of as luxuries, to me were literally part of the furniture. I'd never thought about it because I'd grown up with it, it was part of the culture. Sound familiar?

So what was that minister trying to say, that there was a need for labor in an agricultural society, where there was too much work to do, and not enough hands to do it. It created a demand for cheap labor, much like our western consumer based culture does now. So one man's cotton lot becomes another man's lot in cotton, but how will history judge us? Will our critics be kind to us, while they're sorting through our garbage, and trying to separate it from their drinking water? What will we say? What will our children say? But we grew up with it, it was part of the culture, toys at Christmastime, sales everywhere we went, the neighborly barbeque and beer peer pressure while there's always another credit card company wanting to give us their brand of plastic. But we rarely stop to think, because we never meet those foreign workers with their haunting eyes and their scarred backs. So we never have to ask ourselves, how on earth do people survive on a dollar a day?

I don't know. All I know is that it's humbling, and as much as I know I'm part of the problem, I also feel trapped by the culture I live in, the pressures, the expectations as a parent especially. And people think we're getting rid of religion? Laughable, isn't it, while we bow to our green god and beg the oracle sages called stock markets what our futures will hold. So were they guilty (in the south)? Surely they were. They were guilty as all get out, but how much more guilty were they than you or I are now, when we shop at our favorite box stores and carry out consumption in a plastic bag?  I'm as guilty as anyone, for the record. But maybe someone, looking back on our time, will say you know they made mistakes, but they were reaching for a good, they were trying to promote human rights around the world. They were trying to make a difference. There were people who saw the problem and were trying to make changes.

I don't know if it's true but at some point in my research I came across a site where someone suggested that the south was trying to make changes too, or at least some people were. Surely it's true that not everyone in the south would have owned slaves any more than everyone in the north was an abolitionist. And to be fair, there would have been people who had a lot to lose...I just wonder how we would respond if we knew that we were going to wake up one day and all of a sudden start paying the difference of everyone in China earning a liveable wage. Would we fight it, knowing it would have very direct effects on our lifestyle and habits?

So, with all of that said, I honestly don't know if it's appropriate to show kindness or understanding to the south. Were they a society in transition? Are we? Is it fair to say that we shouldn't judge history by where we are now? But if we never judged, how would we ever change, and how would we change, if we didn't keep reaching for a higher good? And perhaps that would be a positive note to end on, that we're still reaching...that maybe we too are a culture in transition, and like the south, we can remember some of the good, a people and a place with all the potential of a changing season, a southland in the springtime.

thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey


Here's the Indigo Girls,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlNN1luA1q8


Some related links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/audio/2013/apr/18/global-development-podcast-modern-day-slavery

https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx?pid=375

http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_111.html

http://www.historynet.com/abolitionist-movement

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/19/modern-day-slavery-on-the-rise/

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/the-rise-and-fall-the-slave-trade

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19984615

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-trafficking-in-persons.html

http://www.unric.org/en/human-trafficking/27458-child-trafficking-and-labour-trafficking-cases-rising-iom

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/le/cmbt-trffkng-eng.aspx

http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000243

http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/574

http://www.globalissues.org/article/238/effects-of-consumerism

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/santas-workshop/

http://www.viewzone2.com/chocolarte.html

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ideas/2013/04/modern-slavery-why-dehumanizing-the-other-concerns-all-of-us/

http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/global_issues/slavery.pdf

















Friday, April 19, 2013

Talking to the television

Way back when, I remember somebody I knew commenting that her teenage daughter didn't like to watch TV with her because she was always talking back to the television. She had continued to say, when you have some life experience, you can't allow a one sided conversation with a television.

I guess I've gotten to a point in my own life where I feel the same way. My husband has said to me numerous times that I am an unusually open minded person, and I do try to consider other people's perspectives on things, or to look at things from different angles, I really do. But I've also gotten to a point in life, nearing middle age, where I feel I have some life experience, and like that mother so aptly said, it leads me to a lot of questions when I see television images or turn on the radio.

The other night I was tidying up the mudroom before bed. Geoff was upstairs working on school assignments so I just decided to try to get a few things done rather than disturb him. The late night news was on the radio and I heard a snippet of Oprah's talk. She was in town this week. I don't watch Oprah (or TV for that matter); I haven't seen her show in years. I know she's gone on to other things, but continues as an influential media figure. She was talking to her audience about each of them finding their calling, and I thought what? What calling? lol. Who's calling? From her authoritative tone and choice of words it struck me as an interesting blend of her black Baptist roots with...well you tell me what Oprah believes. I have no idea, but she sounded like a black Baptist preacher (and that's no insult to black Baptist preachers). Seriously, but I don't get the sense that she's teaching redemption through the blood of Jesus. All I'm asking, is what is she preaching? And most importantly, what is it grounded in, other than Oprah's opinion, some supposed secret, but maybe isn't anymore. lol. But may I just add, even in the bit of research I've done this morning, Oprah comes from humble beginnings and she's done a lot of good. At the end of the day whatever she believes is between her and God; I'm not meaning to pass judgment here.

So I don't want to attack Oprah, or anyone else here for that matter. I want to try to get beyond that below the belt stuff that we see so much of in our culture. I don't think she has bad intentions, in short. I'm just inclined to think that what she is saying lacks depth, and I am concerned that our traditionally Judeo-Christian culture is abandoning a rich spiritual and intellectual heritage in favor of  just about anything else on the horizon, but what are we running to? Where are we going as a culture? Who says that eastern or secular is better? If they are, then why are eastern people scrambling to move to the west (and I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about human rights and quality of life). Or, why are we not scrambling to move to communist or formerly communist countries now? They tried the instituted secular thing for a while didn't they? How did that work out? But may I also ask, why is it that people ask such intensely difficult questions of what I believe, and yet when it comes to everything else, it's like they turn their brains off.

But maybe it doesn't matter what we believe, maybe all paths diverge and I'm a crank, but I do have my reasons for thinking as I do. Namely, for being concerned that Oprah (and the larger politically correct culture) may be teaching people to be a little too open minded and if you'll allow me, I'll explain why I think that. Here's where I'm coming from, so you'll understand my concern. See, I've been a Christian for twenty-five plus years. I don't come from a charismatic background. I come from more of a Catholic/ Baptist background, where the supernatural doesn't get talked about all that much. So, by the time I found my way into a charismatic denomination, where there is more of an emphasis on the supernatural, I was already experiencing things in prayer that I didn't understand and frankly I was bewildered by. So I didn't understand the things I was experiencing, but as time has gone by I've experienced many of the same things over and over again. In the last number of years, I've managed to put the pieces together, and in talking to people who've had more experience in Christian ministry, I've realized that the puzzle picture looks a lot like Christian theology has always told me it would. Namely, there is a supernatural realm. No one can convince me otherwise at this point, because I've experienced too much of it. There is good and a very real, very persistent evil in all of this, an ongoing battle beneath the surface of the material world. It's there, it's real, whether you choose to believe it's there or not- it's there. There's an old joke in ministry circles, if you don't believe in the devil, try opposing him.

So, I don't usually talk about this kind of thing, but If you want an accurate picture of the supernatural realm, Bob Dylan got it right in the seventies, "you gotta' serve someone."  That's how it is. We just pick our side, and any thought of trying to manipulate or have control in the spiritual realm outside of God...Well, let me put it like this, I think some people think they are the cat, and isn't this fun, dabbling in the occult, etc., but really they are the mouse, and I suspect many of them don't know it, but they are the one who's being toyed with. I had a friend (while you're all thinking I'm crazy here), a number of years back, who painfully recalled her experience growing up in a family where there had been generational involvement in the occult. It was very interesting for me to realize that she had come to many of the same conclusions as I had through prayer, as she had in seances. It was very affirming for me to talk to her actually, as I was trying to sort out what I was experiencing but was plagued by uncertainties, wondering myself if I was crazy. She knew what I knew, that it's real, good vs. evil, that we just pick our side, that people who dabble in the occult are playing with fire whether they realize it or not, and that Jesus was who he claimed to be. And it was the power that she had found in that name, that led her to Christ, and out of a very painful family background, which in some ways resembled my own.

But it was interesting how she said that we're not meant to play God in all this as human beings, and you see, that's what worries me about our culture. That on some level, both a denial of the spiritual altogether (when I know it's very real), and people believing that they themselves are divine, have a lot of work ahead of themselves in replacing God, and a lot of questions to answer, frankly. Those are big sandals to fill, and waking up this morning to the news of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, I think this humanist ideal that some people just need to be better educated is lacking. It's overly optimistic and it fails to ask the hard questions. How do we account as human beings that some people are not above blowing people's legs off while they're crossing a finish line- in the prime of life? Is it just about good or bad choices? What makes those choices good or bad? Humanism lacks depth, in explaining the world as people experience it, good vs. evil, often up close and personal. And to anyone who thinks I'm crazy for seeing it, pick up a newspaper. My heart grieves for those families, who will be repairing their lives, if they're lucky enough to still be alive, for years to come.

Over the years I've been thankful to the friends who have challenged me. They made me ask questions, hard questions. And they made my faith stronger, given me more depth, in asking me those questions, as hard as it was at the time. But this is what I see, that while we live in a society with a rich tradition in critical thinking, people still demand answers from Christianity. But at the same time, while they're abandoning Christianity, they're turning to just about anything else they come across and often turning off their critical faculties in embracing eastern influenced spirituality or secular ideologies. So, here's a few hard questions from the dark side haha. Where are we going? Where is this culture taking us? What do we believe? Do we believe anything? What is that belief grounded in? Says who?  How do you know they're right? The eastern world believes in the supernatural, that we have in common, but they also believe that there is no right or wrong, no boundaries in the spiritual realm, at bottom no good or evil. Does that fit your experience? It doesn't fit mine.

So as much as I don't expect people to agree with me or even believe me when I talk about my personal, more mystical experiences in prayer, can you at least see why I would be concerned that people seem to be so willing to suspend their critical judgement, or jump into untested waters so readily? All I'm asking, dear friends, is don't stop asking questions. Never stop talking back to the television. It concerns me when people's big defense is to blame "western rationalism," and that our new goal should be to suspend our critical judgment. Now why would we want to do that? If you believe in the supernatural, as eastern philosophies largely would, what's going on when you're turning off and tuning in? What are you tuning in to?  Where's your map? Where's your compass?  Where's your flashlight?  Where's is your sword? I reserve the right to be wrong here, and I'm open to hearing different perspectives, but in my experience I've needed all of the above and more, the flashlight, the sword, the anchor, the armour, the helmet and the shield, and I know his name. My God is big enough to handle a few questions, and anyone or anything that can't or doesn't, isn't worth your time.

take care,

Marg


On Oprah's secret:

http://www.alternet.org/story/49591/oprah%27s_%27secret%27_could_be_your_downfall

Article: Belief in the paranormal increases as belief in Christianity decreases.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html

And here's Bob Dylan: "Serve Somebody" -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHn3EI48vTI
(A funked up version).











Monday, April 15, 2013

Sin from the other side

Some images stay with you. A woman carrying a dead child, what appeared to be a natural disaster. The woman was wailing, the child was silent. Deafening silence. The caption read something to the effect, that "even if there was a God, I would never worship him." I worry sometimes as an amateur Christian apologist; I have a smart alec streak that I have to watch in hopes that it doesn't get the better of me. I also have a tendency to think a bit more than is good for me sometimes. I've learned over the years though, that regardless of who has the best arguments, often it's how we treat people that speaks the loudest. I find I have to continually remind myself of that. There are no easy answers, and I find it so humbling, how fortunate we are in the western world, that we even have time to argue about this kind of stuff, when so many people around the world are just trying to get by. 

So I don't want to give any pat answers here, but I just want to let you in on a few things I'm thinking about, in response to the opening caption. I'm no expert on world religions and very honestly, I'm still trying to understand worldviews that counter my own, especially eastern worldviews which I find hard to understand to be quite honest. But I've heard it said that in a very general sense, you can think of most worldviews as fitting into one of three categories: all is spirit, all is matter, or monotheism. In other words, eastern worldviews, non-religious worldviews, or the three Abrahamic faiths. In eastern religions, often the overarching belief tends to be that all is one, the universe and everything in it has a spark of the ultimate divine reality. Accordingly, we as people are part of that universal divinity and as such are moving, along with everything else towards an integrated universal consciousness. All apparent separation of life or nature is seen as an illusion. On this view though, in the face of tragedy or suffering the question becomes, how do you draw a distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, if all is one? Well, apparently you don't. I have a hard time believing that frankly, but apparently that's an accurate synopsis of eastern faiths in that regard, that there is no ultimate distinction between good and evil. The kicker for me personally that illustrated this   (as mentioned in the videos on eastern religions below, I believe it's in the last five minutes of the first video), was in hearing a reference to a question that was put to a Buddhist monk about tolerance and Hitler. Namely, how do you tolerate Hitler? The response given by the monk was apparently, after stating that evil was a Christian concept, that Hitler was "silly." That's right, not evil, as we in the west commonly assume, millions upon millions of dead people later, that Hitler was "silly." (sigh). I can't wrap my head around that.

On the flip side of eastern worldviews, to the non-religious, all reality is material. But on this view, again, if all there is is the material world, then it's the same problem upside down isn't it? How can raw materials, carbon, water, fire, rain, the periodic table at the end of the day, be right or wrong? Matter just is, it's elemental, reacting with the natural environment based on it's composition, but it's certainly not motivated to join a twelve step recovery program for the ethically challenged. Regardless of whether stuff is conscious or not, or of levels of consciousness, it still comes down to the lowest common denominator, stuff, doesn't it? And why should stuff care, or think accurately about other stuff? Consciousness would delineate to more random base haphazard stuff, including our sense of right and wrong, would be illusory on a purely naturalistic deterministic worldview. How can plain ol' material stuff be good or bad, or make necessarily accurate decisions about anything that -matters? Why would it matter? It all ends up the same, oblivion in space. Sorry if I'm getting y'all depressed. 

This is the part where "dust in the wind" starts playing in my head, complete with violins. But there is one other family of worldviews that says that there is a personal agency in all of this. Monotheism would assert that both the material and the spiritual exist, that creation is good, but that God is separate from It's creation. Morality and purpose would then be grounded in this eternal fixed point of reference, and would therefore give our lives objective meaning, specifically because there's an intelligent mind that started it all, purposefully. So where am I going with all this? See, I've noticed this sort of contradiction for some time. People who while dismissing Christianity, use a Judeo-Christian cultural sense of morality to condemn Christianity in favor of all is spirit, or all is matter. Do you see it?  Let's return to my opening image. On a materialistic worldview, why is an earthquake wrong? Why is death wrong?  It happens all the time, it's part of the naturalistic observable order of things. There's nothing out of the ordinary about death. Things live, things die.What's wrong with that? But when I talk to secular minded people, I inevitably hear about colonialism or the crusades, can't forget those inquisitions, and while they dismiss Christianity, they embrace anything eastern or materialistic without question, while clinging to a western Judeo-Christian sense of moral justice and rationality. (sigh). But why would Imperialism be wrong on an eastern worldview, or a materialistic worldview in the first place, that's the question that never gets asked. It's the natural evolution of things, the strong get stronger. Or, it's Shiva at work or it's Karma, the universe bringing it all back to right and wrong together at last, yin and yang, a balancing of opposites.
It seems in the last number of months there's been a number of prominent stories about rape in the news, both domestically and internationally. I don't want to trivialize anyone's personal beliefs here, please forgive me if that's your impression, but may I honestly ask, if you're a woman who has recently been raped in an eastern culture, is it your fault?  It's a serious question. Am I misunderstanding something here?  If suffering is caused by karma, and we're all paying our debts from previous lifetimes, how is that different from blaming the victim? What other option is there on an eastern worldview? The only thing I can think of would be to say, well the guy will get what's coming to him too, but what comfort is that in the present when it's assumed that you must have done something to deserve it? But more than that, if there is no ultimate right or wrong in the end, but both are interdependent and balance out, then why would rape or any other perceived transgression be intrinsically wrong in the first place? You might also ask, why would karma be necessary even, if  there is no ultimate  right or wrong, on an eastern worldview. Or, on a naturalistic worldview, if rape resulted in the perpetrator's very strong genes getting passed on, then where is the difference between ends, and means to an end on a naturalistic worldview? Most importantly, why would people necessarily be ends in themselves?

But just so you know, I'm not interested in making Christians or traditionally Christian societies look better than anyone else, because we're not. The other day I stumbled on a site that stated a list of Christian atrocities throughout history, or at least started to, but then the list ended, because the writer said she was sick to her stomach. Could some of that have been more complex than she was seeing? Maybe. I'm inclined to think that the politics and economics of greed and thirst for power is more likely to be at work than necessarily Christian ideas historically, because I think that if people were really reflecting on the life or teachings or Jesus, they'd have a harder time justifying their actions. Yet, it's hard to excuse quotes from "puritan" ministers about the death of thousands of aboriginals due to smallpox as divine providence,"a giving over of the land by a divine hand,"or the thousands following thousands of Jews massacred, again and again. Massacred! It doesn't make me proud. So there are reasons, surely there are, for people being bitter with the church. Or the current sex abuse scandals, where's infallible Papal authority when you need it? It's not like we have to go back very far is it? That doesn't make me proud either. Or the heartache that follows aboriginal communities, family breakdown from family breakdown, a bottle in hand because at least it's something, but I can relate to that one at least on a human level. 

So what do you do at the end of the day, when you know that some things aren't intellectual as much as they are experience? A lot of people have been hurt, both in and by the church. And though I argue, at the end of the day I pray and ask for forgiveness. When I know I'm not being kind enough, caring enough, giving enough, when I see that sarcasm creeping in, when I'm not nearly as patient with my kids as I should be...It's been said that as much as people discount the Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of human beings, that's it's probably the theological concept that's the most empirically verifiable. Could it be that despite the failings of the church historically, despite our personal failings as Christians, that there really is something to this idea of looking inward, of personal responsibility, of turning in the other direction, of breaking down and freely admitting our desperate need for redemption.

In concluding, I thought this was interesting. It's a graph showing degrees of corruption around the world. I had been curious to check out such a graph to see how historically Judeo-Christian countries fared compared to other parts of the world. It appeared to me at first glance that there seems to be some truth to my thought that we in the west would have lower percentages of corruption, but my second thought was immediately that it's not at all simple. Corruption seems to be a big problem in many parts of the world. But it does make me wonder if people need to be told, "thou shalt not." Otherwise, it's very easy to pale in shades of grey, might being right, victims being guilty, and reason leading to rationalization. Contrary to this idea that the concept of sin as a degradation of human beings, quite arguably it represents accountability and standards of conduct that make for a more livable society, a more human way to live, to breathe, to travel and to be.

Feel free to share your thoughts,

take care,

M.A. Harvey

http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/

And here's a couple of lectures as well, that do a much more thorough job of explaining the contrast of ideas that I was outlining, if anyone's interested.

Atheism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cDBZXZgYRU&feature=player_detailpage


Eastern influenced:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hosxktYozlI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXabsCi4tF4

Comparing eastern and western religions (chart): 

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/east_west.html









Monday, April 8, 2013

How secular is secular Europe?

How secular is secular Europe? After a week or two of asking myself that question repeatedly, and listening to other people answer related questions, I feel a lot like that line in Bob Dylan's old song. "I got a head full of ideas, they're driving me insane."  Maggie's farm seems to have my name on it, a farm of my own making maybe, and it's a shame the way I make me scrub the floor...but let's be honest, sometimes trying to separate ideas is like trying to strip away layers of wallpaper from a stairway, while sliding down the banister at arms length backwards. People learn from each other, in short, cultures learn from interactions with other cultures. I have no trouble seeing or accepting that there could have been a fusion of Christian ideas with other cultures that it interacted with along the way. Common cultural expressions or universals (or reference points to explain concepts to another culture perhaps) do not de-legitimize the basics tenets of my faith. Put simply, if Jesus still lived and suffered death by execution, and was observed days later, asking for a fine fried fish...that's all I need. With that said the following is an interesting essay, if you care to share my pain of marginalization. I say that because here's what I don't get, why does it appear to be so easy for secularists to acknowledge the contributions of pagans, of the Greeks and Romans, of other religions even (they were mostly all religious after all), and yet so hard for secularists to acknowledge the contributions of Christianity? That would be my question to Kenan Malik, after reading the following. http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/humanist_christian_europe.html

Yes, there were the Greeks and the Romans, they had ideas, yes they did, and some of their ideas are with us still, because they were good ideas. Yes, there were the noteworthy pagans and yes there were secularists emerging long before anyone gives them any credit for existing. And of course the east influenced the west, lest we forget that too. Have I missed anyone? This must be what it feels like to give an acceptance speech, but how secular is "secular" Europe? What do people mean when they advocate for secularism even? Quite arguably the concept of separation of church and state was itself a Christian idea, if that alone is what they're advocating for; notice it's not separation of mosque and state, or separation of Caesar and state, etc. Am I the only one who laughs when I hear secularists and theists arguing about which is better, "secular" Europe or religious USA?  A cultural expose of the US and Europe? Not the US and Pakistan? Not Europe verses Cambodia? Do they not see the larger cultural reality that both countries are historically Judeo-Christian?  I wonder sometimes if secular advocates have ever come across one of these? Note the blue and red on both sides of the North Atlantic. Yes, that is quite the contrast.




But now I should not be hasty, maybe they're talking about this.


Europe religiosity[2][3][4]





Catholicism
  
35%

Orthodoxy
  
26.7%

No religion
  
18%

Protestantism
  
13.7%

Islam
  
5.2%

Others


  
1.4%





vs: Religious affiliation in the U.S. (2012)[82]
Affiliation% of U.S. population

Christian73
Protestant48
Evangelical Protestant19
Mainline Protestant15
Black church8
Catholic22
Mormon2
Eastern Orthodox1
Other Faith6
Unaffiliated19.6
Nothing in particular13.9
Agnostic3.3
Atheist2.4
Don't know/refused answer2
Total100

75.4 percent compared to 73 percent Christian. Did I get that right? Am I missing something here? Let me check some more sources.
christian population by region 1910 and 2010





























                             
http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-exec.aspx  ***


Maybe what they're getting at is this:

No religious affiliation in America has grown to 19.6%


The grand entrance of the nones, but even then, two thirds of nones say they believe in God, 20% say they pray every day, so what am I missing? Honestly, I'm still trying to figure that out, and though I've been so thoroughly confused, I was listening to Peter Berger on the weekend, well esteemed author and academic. He insists that there are indeed cultural religious differences between secular Europe and religious America. So, I'm just going to have to take his word for it, seeing how it is that my feeble mind can't seem to grasp how a society that is 76.2 percent Christian as of three years ago gets classified as secular. The one thing I have gathered though, is that Europe is the anomaly (and this is according to Berger), not the US, because most people around the world, especially historically, have been religious of one sort or another. The US doesn't present as a strange curiosity in that way, Europe does, because secularism is not at all typical. So it appears that even if you have a distinct minority of the population that is secular, it becomes noteworthy. Hmmn. Well that's something to think about.  Here's the Q and A Berger presentation for anyone who's interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hea3zf7lSNQ

Continuing, I'd like to ask a few questions because I always like to dig beneath the surface a bit if you'll allow me. See, I don't buy this idea that Europe is secular, because regardless of whether of not people are going to church, the benchmarks of the culture are still Judeo-Christian. As much as I acknowledged in opening that yes, there were contributions from many sources in the development of western culture, that is undoubtedly true. Christians don't have a monopoly on being human, in short. I'm sympathetic to secularists when they say that religious people take things that everyone experiences and claim them for their own little group. Of course we all share many of the same basic experiences as human beings. We fall in love, we have children, we enjoy open spaces and sunsets, we create, of course we do. I would say that's because we bear the image of a common creator. So Christians were certainly not the first to do many things, but I think we did offer something that was unique or uncommon, namely egalitarianism. The Greeks may have given us democracy, but it wasn't for everyone. In fact it was Aristotle that believed that some people were born masters and some people were born slaves. Not surprisingly half of people at that time were slaves, and one of the greatest minds in history believed that was the natural order of things.

And that's what I want to get at here, try pulling out a UN report of the most livable countries in the world and ask yourself how many of those countries have a Judeo-Christian heritage? And then ask yourself, where were those cultures before Christianity began to rebuild western civilization after the fall of Rome? We've come a long way since the dark ages baby, and it was arguably monotheism that lead to an emphasis on reason (that advanced western society) as opposed to intuition that characterized so many pagan cultures that went before. So again my question to Malik would be, if western values are so intrinsic to so many cultures, why is it that they seem to be adopting these egalitarian principles only now, while kicking and lamenting, and often only through social pressure that follows ideological exposure to the west? Why did Islam and eastern cultures fall so far behind the west, if they were our ideological predecessors? Debates about colonialism aside, why do women and minorities continue to be treated as second class citizens in so many cultures around the world? And why is it that the height of Islam, the oft cited Cordoba happened to be a western city that included minority cultures, namely Judaism and Christianity? Could it be that we weren't the only ones engaging in a cultural exchange?

The arts, sciences, technology, literature, architecture, navigation, mapmaking, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and art that flourished in Medieval Spain are often credited to Islam but this is a distortion of the role played by adherents of all three religions. The United Visigothic kingdom of Spain prior to the Muslim invasions had inherited five centuries of Roman civilization and had made use of the achievements of the Greeks and earlier Carthaginians as well as the Assyrians in agriculture, irrigation, mathematics, time keeping, the calender, mining, architecture, road building, mosaic art, pottery, jewelry, law and civic responsibility. The Muslim conquerors who arrived in 711 had inherited these same arts and sciences on their path of conquest across the Byzantine empire, the Near East and Christian-Roman North Africa. Christian and Jewish artisans and scholars made major contributions enabling the Muslim conquerors to make use of these achievements. The Schools of Translation established in Granada and Toledo by Muslim and Christian rulers respectively relied heavily on Jewish scholarship. http://www.newenglishreview.org/Norman_Berdichevsky/The_Myth_of_the_Golden_Age_of_Tolerance_in_Medieval_Muslim_Spain/  But I'm not seeking to get into all that here. I just wonder if the romance of Cordoba is as simple or envious as is often presented. http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2010/08/24/jihad-dhimmitude-and-muslim-spain/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain

The thing I do wish to emphasize however, is the thing that western culture values so much on a human level, and that is the equal worth and dignity of all people. It's this emphasis on the downtrodden in Judaism and Christianity, the concern for the least of these, which is most of us in the face of oppression. The value of each human person as having intrinsic unending worth, as opposed to an emphasis on social hierarchy, that shaped the western world for the better. That's my sense of things. And so I would challenge critics such as my opening source to ask honestly, how well do unfortunates on the bottom fare in other cultures, historically or present day, who have not been influenced by Jesus to the same degree as the western world? As for all these things coming out of the Enlightenment, how can the 18th century claim concepts that were there with the church fathers and with Judaism for centuries before that? As for the differences between Europe and the US, I'm inclined to think offhand that could largely have to do with the many bloody conflicts of religious sectarianism in Europe historically, and state-imposed often corrupt religious institutions, as opposed to official policy of separation of church and state in which religion in the US has flourished. The other thing that I would wish to assert, is that I think secularists would be hard pressed to explain western foundational concepts on their own naturalistic worldview, the concern for the weak, and the moral equality of all human beings. Such is the cornerstone of the western world, and reason will not take you there.

In closing, for Europe to be truly secular, one must ask the question, when did it become truly secular?  When did they take the glory of God and His holy church from the Magna Carta? When did they quit Locke and Newton, Copernicus and Galileo of their celestial orbitations, shake their earthy foundations? When did the courts become a bell curve of disintegrating moral consensus, the ten commandments Moses' antiquated opinion? When did we begin to swear an oath to nothing greater, with human love loss found in Darwin, ill-inspired quotes on doorways of higher learning? When did the red cross raise a blackened red flag?  When did we blot cathedrals from all postcard town horizons, rummage stones from sure foundations, to stone hospitaller saints, charities without mission, no statement equal concept taken from our constitution, the stain glass stories no longer seemed to draw them. When did we start to forage for the hidden common answers, disconnect from our assumptions, questions they don't dare to ask the seller, for fear that when they really do become a truly secular city, that we won't recognize our own graven image. When they rebuild and repaint the Sistine chapel, crack the voices of Messiah, political correct the English Bard. When they empty the cathedrals, quell the voices of 1000 choirs, will we see it? When we've cut all mention of equality or expectation of ethics because it is determined that such subjective inferences cannot be empirically verified and are not observed in nature... when selflessness is seen as a form of irrationality and commodified by market assurances. Then and only then, when the kids no longer call it Christmas, they just go to sleep, and the grownups go to work, it's just another day. But for the few, so careful not to wear a cross, the danger, the stigma, the conviction of uncounted unspoken minds. When all such myths no longer exist even in our memories, we will have our secular city, but will we recognize it? Will we want to? Will we recognize ourselves when that time comes, and will we see enough, to know where to begin to light a match?

thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey

Quotations:

Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk   Jurgen Harbermas
 

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?  Neitschze: The parable of the madman: 1882

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

AAA

Well, you knew it was going to be about cars or drinking but not both, cause' cars and drinking don't mix kids. I came across this article a short while back, and I find it intriguing (see below 1). For me it follows a blog post I had stumbled across some time before that, where an atheist was complaining about the spiritual dimension of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, I wasn't surprised to hear that non-religious inclusivity is being discussed within AA, that is, questions of how inclusive the organization can become without losing it's spiritual roots.

I too wonder if AA would be the same without it's spiritual foundation. My understanding is that AA came out it's founders' struggle with addictions, realizing that he couldn't do it on his own (see below 2).  I haven't struggled with substance abuse personally, but I do come from a background of alcohol abuse and I remember a friend saying to me, "you know Marg, it didn't have to be your faith that made the difference, it could have been something else." Personally, I don't think so, because I ask too many questions in short, and so soccer or tea or tiddly winks, would never have been enough for me. I need to know that my faith is grounded in something bigger, something unchanging. But could it be enough for some, whatever that something might be?

I remember a friend of mine who was an atheist or agnostic or something like that, saying that he went into AA with this idea that (I forget what it was, something funny, cupcakes maybe) something would be his higher power and he too came to the conclusion that cupcakes would not be enough to sustain him haha.  Gradually my friend became a theist, or so last I heard, haha, he may have even hinted to me that he'd become a Christian, somewhat to my surprise. But it was very interesting to see the transformation, when he needed something to rely on when the chips were down.

AAA, Alcoholics Anonymous for Agnostics, apparently there are chapters springing up, and I wish them the best. Sincerely, I do. Good friends, good conversations, meaningful existential experiences, however you choose to define them.  I'll be interested in seeing how they do...

Thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey

1). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/alcoholics-anonymous-wrestles-with-its-spiritual-roots_n_2921797.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

2). http://www.treatmentsolutions.com/the-history-of-alcoholics-anonymous/

True Brit

Apparently there is no such thing, or so I've heard, as a true Brit. Of course the Brits are all British now, and we're all Irish of course. But I remember one time I was hanging out with some friends and a British friend had another British friend visiting and they were talking about British history and how this tribe had conquered this tribe and how nobody could really say that they were a true Britain at this point, presumably because they've been conquering and marrying each other for so long... And I remember noticing at one point that they actually celebrated the Norman conquest with a parade. Can you imagine? I though huh, that's interesting, especially in that we North Americans of European descent feel pretty guilty about being here at all. How is it that the Normans managed to get themselves a parade?

Sometimes I've wondered about the reserve system in Canada, I know there are historical reasons, treaties, why things are set up the way they are, but I just wonder, this idea of separating peoples, as opposed to everyone just intermarrying and having a big party, if that would have been a better idea. The other night I was flipping stations and I don't usually listen to aboriginal programming, but I stumbled on an interview where an aboriginal gentleman (I don't even know who he was) was suggesting that aboriginal people should assimilate. Well I wouldn't have said it, lol, but I have thought it, if you'll excuse my saying, but maybe we'd have fewer problems if we just scrapped a system that separates people from each other. Throw out the aboriginal identification cards too, that's another bad idea. I'm no authority on any of this, just thinking out loud really, and inviting comments from potentially more informed sources. I know some people would say this is all aboriginal people have left, and I'm sensitive to that too.

But interestingly, I am a bit Acadian on my mother's side. Apparently my great-grandmother was from Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, and was a direct descendant of the Acadians. The Acadians were part aboriginal as well as French Canadian, the early French settlers having intermarried with the aboriginal people from the region. Consequently, they saw themselves as their own people, having lived in the area for generations, though torn between domestic European rivalries. In 1755 the British began to expel a good percentage of Acadians from Nova Scotia (where I'm originally from), over concerns of loyalty to the British Crown in war time. I was just thinking that the Acadians may be an example in Canadian history where this sort of integration has worked. Well, the British may not have thought so, haha, but the Acadians didn't think of themselves as French, having stronger ties to the New World through the local aboriginal people. Of course the British expelled them anyway, but regardless the Acadians continued to see themselves as having their own culture and identity, distinct from mid-18th century European entanglements. Hmmm. It's tragic now to think of current divisions in our own culture, that seem to be so entrenched, issues regarding reserves and conditions on reserves that seem to be so difficult to resolve. Forgive me if this seems simplistic or idealistic. I just thought it was interesting, to hear an aboriginal person suggest something that I would probably be afraid to suggest myself but hey, he and I agree that we may all be on our way to becoming Chinese. How about that? How's your Mandarin?

thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey


A couple of related links:

http://www.cbc.ca/acadian/timeline.html

http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100014597/1100100014637