In my much younger unusual days, an intriguing true tale from the late 60's

Here’s the old mutant in my much younger unusual days, an intriguing true tale from the late 60’s in Trevose, Pennsylvania, just a skip, hop, and jump over the river at Washington’s Crossing, next to Trenton, New Jersey.

This is late December 1967, a few months before I began living on an island near New Hope, crossing the shallow stream to the highway to get to my job as a mental health worker in a mental hospital for emotionally disturbed teens and children.

But that’s getting a head of a number of unusual stories. Only a brief one today. How did I get such short hair, the only time in my life that I had a crew cut?

How did I end up in a mental hospital in PA, on the opposite coast? Why wasn’t I still at university, at Long Beach State, and before that at the University of Nebraska? Blah, blah, blah:-)

Start at the beginning:-) I grew up, a very fervent Christian, in a moderate fundamentalist family in southeast Nebraska, in Adams, a little town of 250 about 100 miles to Iowa and Kansas. My dad was a Baptist minister; and we were a promilitary very conservative Republican family, against Kennedy for president in 1960 (‘NO, we don’t want to be ruled by the Pope’ fallacious beliefs).

In 1964, when at a Youth for Christ rally in Lincoln, Nebraska, I happened to get in a life-changing discussion with a girl at the rally (imagine that;-). However, I got shocked when I stated my family had been for Goldwater, that we ought to bomb the Vietnamese, she became very serious and said that a Christian shouldn’t want to do that! Why not?! In a number of long discussions, she explained how I ought to study the Sermon on the Mount, etc.

So, I did for over a year, as well as talk in depth to many Christians. Thus came a drastic change—me who earlier that year had had out various military recruiters to our house to decide which branch of the service I would choose after graduation (though, of course, I would probably go Navy like my dad and 2 of my uncles) made a drastic life change, convinced that as a follower of Christ, I ought to oppose the war in Vietnam!

I applied to my Selective Service Board, was interviewed, etc. and classified I-O (conscientious objector). I also had a student deferment as a college student. But, being the fervent believer that I was, I saw the huge hypocrisy of the fact that many students I knew who were safe in their student deferments actually were strongly for the war!

Thus, it was mostly non-college students who were getting shipped to Vietnam to kill. This upset me so much that I wrote my draft board that student deferment ought to be ended! And I refused my own deferment, left Long Beach State for a semester.

The Nebraska draft board promptly drafted me:-) As a conscientious objector I was ordered to do my service at a mental hospital in Pennsylvania beginning in September 1967. I drove my hippie van across country; I was a spiritual hippie, had never tasted even beer when I was 18.

My hair was about Beatles' length; only since it was naturally curly, I looked like a honky Jimi Hendrix;-)

In December, working at the mental hospital, I decided on a lark to cut it off. Voila! The girl I happened to be casually dating, responded when she saw me next—“What did you do to your hair?!”

There you have it.

Well, what about, the Cody fringe jacket? That true tale will have to wait until my next story, including how I was a missions worker on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana in 1966:-).


Dan Wilcox 8/17/22

MOVING toward CARING for the BIOSPHERE as a starting VEGETARIAN

Beginning of a new article I am writing: Moving toward caring for the biosphere as a starting vegetarian

Prologue Disclosure: I am NOT a fundamentalist about this, or anything for that matter.

I’m neither an absolute pacifist nor a warrior for God. Not at all like the Hindus such as a Hindu priest in LA in 1966 who told me I should go to Vietnam and kill because, after all, humans kill insects regularly!

And at that crisis time, almost all Christian leaders, when I asked about whether I should apply for conscientious objector status against all war, told me that God calls all Christians to kill our enemies. Only one Mennonite family and a retired missionary encouraged me to oppose war as a follower of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Nor am I of the passive sort who wouldn’t try to stop an Islamic jihadist from killing civilians or one who is a strident, total vegan.

However, why is it that the vast majority of humans--a somewhat smart species--continue to justify slaughter of other humans in the name of their God, their nation, their religion?

How can such a species as ours justify the intentional slaughter of other intelligent, conscious species such as the pig?

1. Let’s face it, the natural world is many ways “tooth and claw.”

Whether its our cat, Smoke, bringing us a small bird he killed as a present
or the violent deaths of many thousands of animals every year on their massive migration on the plains of southern Africa, the natural world isn’t one of moral truth, but of harsh survival and death.

-- Having said all of that, I do think it is morally and spiritually true that all intelligent, conscious, moral species ought to refuse to kill, to harm, to destroy. We ought to seek to care for all of the biosphere.

To be continued--

In the Light

Dan Wilcox

Becoming Mindful--listen to Thich Nhat Hanh's words of wisdom

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Engaged Buddhist monk. During his difficult life in Vietnam, he endured all sorts of hardships, including the killings of family members and friends by the French, American, and Vietnamese military.

An orphanage that he started was bombed!

And yet, he is a walking example of joy and gratitude, despite the horrors and tragedies.

During the long conflict, he led many thousands of Vietnamese young people in reconciling work among civilians harmed by the fighting.
Martin Luther King nominated Nhat Hanh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize for his work of nonviolence and peacemaking.

In the mid-70’s, he helped rescue Vietnamese escaping from Vietnam.

Even in the worst events, Nhat Hanh would ask himself what he could be thankful for even if it was only the blue sky and brown earth, and that he was still breathing.

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful. How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural—you need to smile at your suffering because you are more than your sorrow.” Thich Nhat Hanh

I Was a Nonviolent S.D.S. Radical: A Beginning Memoir of My Life in the 1960's

Late in 1964, I experienced a spiritual transformation, went from being a gung-ho rightwing individual (like my parents and work boss) who supported the bombing of Vietnam to realizing that such a war stance is contrary to the Way of Jesus as presented in the Sermon on the Mount, etc.

So, instead of joining the Navy Reserves after high school and going to Vietnam to kill communists for Christ, I chose a third way. At the time all of my relatives, friends, everyone I knew in Nebraska supported the war.

But there was a former missionary and a Mennonite family who also opposed war. Thus, I became a conscientious objector.

I applied for that status with my draft board. Even after those 2 witnesses vouched that I was opposed to war including the Vietnam War, our Draft Board in Lincoln, Nebraska still interviewed me, grilled me personally on various specific violent situations, such as what if your family is attacked by killers, etc.

Finally, they gave me the I.O. status, which meant that when drafted, I would be performing nonviolent alternative service, working with poor people in Latin America or with mental patients, etc. instead of killing.

A couple of years later, when I was drafted and taking my physical with many other young men, the friendly Black medical sergeant who was testing me, after seeing my conscientious objector status, started calling me “Brother Love.”

Then in the summer of 1965, after my graduation from Lincoln Southeast High School, a week later, I started attending the University of Nebraska. With in a few weeks, I became involved with the student protestors, those opposed to the War and opposed to segregation and racism.

The first protest I attended was for the latter. It was one against Apartheid in South Africa.

With in a few weeks, I also joined a new social action-civil rights-anti-war organization called Students for a Democratic Society.

Of course, this was long before when S.D.S. turned to hate and violence, arson, attacks on police, etc. like it did with its splinter group, the WeatherUnderground and its bombings, arson, and violence at various universities including Kent State University in 1970.

To make a long complex story brief, by the spring of 1967, I was living as a spiritual hippie in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, but got drafted that summer. BELOW is a picture of me in the spring of 1967.

I was sent to serve my service time at a mental hospital for emotionally disturbed children and teens in Trevose, Pennsyvania, got evicted from my apartment for an anti-war sign on the back of my Greenbriar van, “the Mystical Hippopotamus”:-), etc.

As the nonviolent protests of the 60’s turned to hate and violence, even arson, bombings, and killings, I despaired. Where had the wondrous nonviolent altrusim of Martin Luther King, John Lewis and others gone?

I very strongly rejected the new hatred and violence of the extremists. IInstead, I emphasized more and more the Quaker and MLK way of reconciliation.

Standing in silent Quaker-like vigils against the War, we tried in many conversations to reason with others (both violent and nonviolent), including a soldier who had just come back from Vietnam, where he had been seriously injured in his left leg.

That whole tragic absurd period of history was “the Best of Times, the Worst of Times.”

Still radical after all these years*

Dan Wilcox

*an obvious paraphrase of a famous Paul Simon song title:-)

The Lady in Our Garden

The Lady in Our Garden

A picture-post-card date near the swirling
Serpentine sway of the wide Schuylkill River

Meandering through Central Philly's park garden,
Towered over by leaning elms, while 3 long canoes
Swift by to the paddling of Ivy League collegians.
Gazing at my dear companion in our garden

My Friendly girl, Karen, chestnut-caped round
In waist-length hair like a swaying black ephod,
Vivid in her red chambray shirt and blue jeans,
Is an aspiring concert violinist but converses
Passionately of King's March to D.C. in 3 months.
Listening to my dear companion in the garden

I, the principled drafted objector, work for Uncle Sam
With forsaken kids confined to sterile mental wards
Disturbed by parents' wrong living, but still am
So youthfully focused on my beautiful girlfriend’s
Figured shape than humanity’s ship of state.
Desiring my dear companion in our garden

We sit cross-legged on a wide lush parkway green,
Getting ready to eat our carefully bagged meal
Of 2 peanut butter and grape sandwiches
As we discuss war’s ravages in far-off Nam
And Bob Dylan's 'hard rained' croons.
Loving my dear companion in the garden

But then I inhale a fuming putrid odor;
Twist my neck and see this bagged lady in a filthy rag
Of a dress lunging slowly forward, hanging
Onto her ugly mesh of a shopping bag, her rancid
Stench to high heaven wafts and I pinch my nose.
Focusing instead on my companion in our garden

But lo and hold it! my violinist instead rises
And welcomes that old hag, “Hi Lady, will you join us
For our delicious Sunday snack here in the warm sun?”
The homeless alien sprawls haggardly on our grass,
Her wretched, spotted, shift wrinkling on her scraggly legs.
Karen gazes at this unknown companion in the garden

I am all upside-down in my face as this invader,
This illegal, reaches out a grubby, dirty hand,
Grabs one of our 2 sandwiches, and half crams
It in her narrow jaws, chews open-mouthed and teethed,
Me fuming at this chomping ugly interloper.
Separating my dear companion in our garden

But then awake, remembering almost too late,
The very old story about the least of these, turn,
And finally join my dear musician's psalm,
We a communing 3 of human kind,
Under those verdant swaying trees of compassion.
Sharing, so dear companions in our Garden


--Daniel Wilcox

First pub. in The Oak Bend Review
in different form;
in selah river, a collection of Daniel's
published poetry.



In the Light of Sharing,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: From Baptist Warrior to Friendly Conscientious Objector

My Life Journey TimeLine--
Lifestance, Philosophies, and Spiritual Seeking

Age 17, 1964 Drastic Change #2

(For ages 4? to 17, see Part #1)

Gung-ho for Goldwater for president, promoting the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, Christian warrior-to-be. God and Country.

BUT then the conservative Baptist edifice of ethical and political understanding came crashing down one Saturday evening at Youth for Christ when an avid Christian girl strongly disagreed with my militant support of the war including the bombing of Hai Phong, Vietnam.

I don’t think I had ever considered enemy civilians as real live people like you and me. They were all our communist enemies who needed to be destroyed for God, for Christ.

She demanded, politely, that I face what I was really saying.

She asked, Would Jesus gun down other humans? Would Jesus push the button that dropped napalm and other heavy bombs?

(In Vietnam War, the U.S. would drop more bombs than all of WWII!! At least 1,450,000 (maybe 2 million) civilians would die in the war, and millions more would be wounded. About 1,250,000 Vietnamese soldiers would die, and over 58,000 American soldiers. Also, remember many people died in Laos and Cambodia, too.)

Stunned, I kept dialoguing with her, while she emphasized for me to go back and study the Sermon on the Mount more thoroughly.

Up to age 17, it had been my understanding that in the Matthew text, Jesus was talking about personal enemies, such as a grumpy relative or the malicious next-door neighbor.

But I soon discovered, that on the contrary, Jesus was saying we ought to love the Roman soldiers (or any other enemy soldiers) who’ve invaded our country, abused us, oppressed us, killed us!

Whew! NO one else, not a single other Christian was saying ethical stuff like this. I studied the Sermon on the Mount intensely. Read various opposing views.

And I struggled immensely for months. I had already invited the Navy, Army, and Air Force recruiters out months previously to decide which military branch to join after high school; probably, the Navy like my dad and 2 of my uncles, but wanted to make a wise choice.

Now all of that was shot-to-heaven;-) by the Sermon on the Mount.

Finally at 18, contrary to everyone I knew except this one Christian family, and one former missionary (who seemed to view war similar to Desmond Doss),
I registered for the Draft as a Conscientious Objector.

I was going against my parents, my relatives, our Baptist church, nearly everyone I knew. And I lost my best friend because of my anti-war stance.
Yet, I really did think this was the way of Jesus.

Then I had to go before my draft board and answer their difficult questions about my commitment to Jesus’ ethics, etc.

Before C-O service, I worked one summer as a mission volunteer on the Cheyenne Reservation in southern Montana, near the Little Bighorn Battlefield (Custer's Last Stand).

I did youth work for Mennonite Missions and talked with a new friend, a Friend, one of a Quaker family doing reconciliation work on the reservation.

The town hall, Brent Barksdale Community Center in Lame Deer, had been built years earlier by a young adult Quaker Work-Team.

After I was drafted in the spring of 1967, I got assigned to serve at mental hospital if I continued to refuse military service.

I did the C-O service at Eastern State School and Hospital in Pennsylvania, just a hop and jump of history from Washington’s infamous crossing, escaping from the British.

And also living for weeks in Haight-Asbury as a spiritual hippie who didn’t do drugs, had never tasted alcohol--but will skip all of that--
this is a philosophical timeline, not an autobiography:-)

Age 20, 1967 Here come the Quakers

Working at a mental hospital with schizophrenic, autistic, and sociopathic children and teens, (after driving my van—the Mystical Hippopotamus—across the nation to near Philadelphia).

When I visited a Baptist church there, it was shocking, and disconcerting to hear the minister claim that the King James Bible was the only Bible, etc.!

Having already long ago—when I was about 13—ceased to believe in inerrancy, and knowing that the KJB wasn’t even the most accurate Bible in translation from the Greek and Hebrew, I left early, may have even skipped out before the sermon finished. Delusionary.

Also, most Baptists were very pro-Vietnam War, and Mennonites while against the war, tended to be as literalistic as Baptists when it came to the Bible.
Where could I find liberal theists?

About then, I remembered the Quaker option, the Society of Friends came into view, me remembering the good times I had spent dialoguing with the Quakers on the Cheyenne Reservation a year earlier.

And from my first introduction to Quakerism back in 1960, at about 13, when I saw them on the TV news opposing nuclear weapons. Who were they?
They mystified me, that some Christians weren’t in favor of the atom bomb. But why? How idealistic.

Now I had the opportunity to find out more, maybe become a Friend.

One Sunday, I visited the local Friends Meetinghouse in Newtown, PA. This first experience was incredibly disappointing.

In a huge plain church, there was almost nobody there, maybe a several oldsters, and only one other young adult. I got acquainted with her by walking her part way home (coming back for my van later).

The Baptist church had been packed. Why so few Quakers?

Later I took the L-train into downtown Philly to Backbench Friends Meeting, a young adult gathering (on some of my weekends off; at the mental hospital, we worked a 10-days-on-4 days off schedule).

Then I was kicked out of my apartment because of the anti-war poster on the back window of my van, so I lived during the summer in it on a small island in a campground near Newtown, fording over
the concrete ramp, through the shallow stream morning and evening.

To be continued
ISRAELI KIBBUTZNIK
YOUTH MINISTER
HITCH-HIKER
TEACHER
AI MEMBER
ETC.

If I Could Live Again, What Would I Do, What Would I Skip?

DO

#1 I would, again, major in Creative Writing at university, moving to the glorious California coast (from frigid Nebraska), attending Long Beach State. That was one of the best decisions I made my first time around the sun on the 3rd planet from Sol.

#2 Would sign up, again, as a conscientious objector against the U.S. immoral, unethical Vietnam War
where the U.S. government first supported France’s attempt to take over by war the country of Vietnam, again, after WW ll.

Then beginning in the 1950’s and 1960’s--even though Vietnam hadn’t attacked the U.S.—the U.S. started and fought a long unjust war
where our military and political leaders dropped more bombs on the little country and Laos and Cambodia, than all of bombs used in WW ll!

So many innocent civilians were slaughtered, at least hundreds of thousands.
There are still 80 million U.S. unexploded bombs buried in Laos!

Every year these U.S. bombs still kill or wound 50 people, 40% of them children.

This time I would spend even more time witnessing against the lethal violence, oppression, nationalism, and misguided idealism of the U.S.

#3 I would, again, spend the summer of 1966 volunteering on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, working with teens and children.

(See picture) Me and other mission volunteers (4 girls:-), and missionaries during the Vietnam War, working for the Mennonite Board of Missions in Busby and Lame Deer, Montana on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation in the summer of 1966.

This was before my being drafted and, as a conscientious objector, sent to work in a mental hospital for disturbed teens and children in Trevose, Pennsylvania.

#4 Would, again, become a liberal Friend (with UU leanings) emphasizing the seeking of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful via communal meditation, reason, inclusivism, justice, human rights, compassion, and peacemaking.

#5 Would, again, join Amnesty International and work for human rights, writing many letters to other governments around the world, appealing for the release of "Prisoners of Conscience," especially ones unjustly arrested, incarcerated, and oppressed by Islamic governments such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

#6 And move to Palestine/Israel to work on a kibbutz for at least 7 months as I did back then, though this time, I would stay longer, maybe a couple of years. (An image of AI, and a picture of myself at the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall)

SKIP

#1 Skip the Christian religion, and thus not have to do verbal battle, again, for 55 years with most Christian leaders who claim that God has foreordained every evil event, every natural disaster, every horrific plague, and foreordained billions of humans to eternal damnation for his own “glory” and “good pleasure”.:-(

And that all infants at conception are “stained” with sin, “sinful,” “in essence evil,” etc.

Not have to drag my wife (and kids) through many years of church doctrinal conflict, Christian delusionary claims.

If only at that central crisis point of my life, on the fall day at Long Beach State, when I was at a 50%-50% decision between leaving Christianity or not, I would have left.

Because of all its failings, pro-war actions, doctrinal incredulities, persecutions, anti-science claims, etc.—if only I had skipped doctrinal Christianity, then my life (and that of my family) would have been so much better and happier.

But I fell into the abyss of life-long struggles with organized religion because at that crisis day, because I realized that Atheism was even worse than religion, so I pulled back into the Christian religion. But that was an either/or fallacy.

There were alternatives to the either/or of Christianity (and other horrific religions such as Islam, Hinduism, etc.)
versus Atheism.

This time around, I would make a wiser choice.

#2 Skip dropping out of university (at Long Beach State) in January 1967, which led to me not getting my B.A. in Creative Writing until the spring of 1973.

This time, I would stay in college, get my degree Creative Writing in 1969, along with my teaching credential, and get a good job, instead of working for a number of years in minimum wage jobs.

Because of that bad choice, I didn't start my career until 1982!

TO BE CONTINUED—

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Impressionistic, Psychedelic Sunburst Quilt

My sweetheart created this sunburst quilt of color for me recently. What if I had gotten this quilt from her back when I drove my Chevy van across country in September 1967? On the side of my van I drew a sign which scrolled--The Mystical Hippopotamus.:-)

I got my first draft notice when I was living in Haight-Ashbury in February, had dropped out of Long Beach State where I was working on a degree in Creative Writing.

As a conscientious objector to war, that fall I headed for Philadelphia to work in a mental hospital with emotionally disturbed teens and children.

Long ago, and far away.

Living in the brilliant Light of Beauty,

Daniel Wilcox

"The Past Is Never Dead" and the Great Hope of One Brief Essay

Is “it true that living in the past---to be a kind of…Miss Havisham—can be bad for the mind and the soul, preventing us from engaging in the battles and causes of our own time”?1

Depends on how long we live in the past and for what purpose. According to Jon Meacham, “When we are at our best, history and heroes enable us to look ahead, not backward. We are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves…memory” creates the present and then the future.

First the negative, then the positive, the hope:

“History is bunk. History is myth.”
Henry Ford

“…If you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree…The purpose of history is to explain the present…tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power.”
Michael Crichton, Timeline

“History is a contest of evidence…like archaeology: you need to dig.”
Patrick Lockerby

An historian thinks about the "dead" past in order to reveal our relationship with a past that lives in us.
Anon.

“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
William Faulkner

Then quotes of hope:

“Stories are the center of the human condition. Everybody dreams. Try to dream in nonfiction.”
Jim Trelease

“If you believe the impossible, the incredible can come true.”
Phil Alden Robinson, Field of Dreams

And so forth, maybe…

“The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope.”
Winston Churchill

“…the past should give us hope”? How unlikely.
It’s been my avid vocation, but misfortune, to read hundreds of scholarly books on history, especially about Christianity. From Jesus Wars2 to the Great War to First-Strike Iraq, history of the Christian sort mostly brings tragic sorrow and despair. Not that Islamic or Hindu or secular history is any less horrific.

Another writer wrote that history is HISstory, meaning, of course, that history is God’s story—that God sovereignly ordained/caused/willed/predestined whatever has come to ‘past,’ and what is, and what will be.
3(To see my honest reaction to that statement see footnote.)Unlike what Churchill says ought to be, the more one reads the past, the more one’s hope will often fade, weighed down by millions of gutted bodies, of so many horrific wrong turns.

If it weren’t that “the past is never dead; it’s not even past” but very present, it would probably be better not know the despair of the past.

But, leave all of that in the past:-)

Here's a silver lining, a redemption of actions that show how one single action by one individual human--the writing of a brief essay--can bring great hope and change to the world.

How did Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and many other social reformers of the 20th century come to act as they did for peace, justice, and compassion?

The central past event was one short essay of American literature, "On Civil Disobedience," by Henry David Thoreau. This brief reflection written n 1848 against the U.S. invasion of Mexico, though unknown by most Americans, has had more impact on world history than all other American literature, except for the Declaration of Independence. And the essay continues to influence events and will do so into the future.


Follow the links to see how the essay has changed millions of peoples lives since it was written.

1848, New England
Written against the Mexican War and against slavery
|
1920-1948, India
Used by Gandhi to obtain freedom for India from England
|
1938-1943, Germany
Considered by Bonhoeffer as a way to oppose Hitler
|
1950's, the World
Banned by every U.S. library around the world during McCarthyism
|
1954-1968, USA
Stated by King to be the central factor that moved him to help start the Civil Rights movement

|
1963-1974, USA
Used to oppose the Vietnam War
|
1955-1992, South Africa, USA
Method of opposition to oppose Apartheid of South African Government
|
1960-1990's, California
Adopted by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers to seek just working conditions and pay

|
1960's-1998, USA
Practiced by both pro-abortion and anti-abortion groups
|
1950's-1990's, the World
Used by people to oppose nuclear weapons and chemical weapons

1990-to the Present
Used by protesters against oppression by both Palestinian and Israeli governments, against the Gulf War, First-Strike Invasion of Iraq, immigration deportation, economic disparity, etc.


What historical past has inspired you to live now and to hope for the future?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

1"From The Stories We Tell Ourselves" by Jon Meacham, Newsweek, July 7, 2008
2Jesus Wars by Phillip Jenkins, a history of the twists and killings of early Christianity
3To hell with that. What an obscene joke.

Throwing Stones from the Glass House of Christianity

On the anti-Islamic site, the Religion of Peace, a Christian named Bill Warner states: "The political violence of the Koran is eternal and universal. The political violence of the Bible was for that particular historical time and place. This is the vast difference between Islam and other ideologies. The violence remains a constant threat to all non-Islamic cultures, now and into the future."

Then the unnamed author of R.of P.'s essay adds,
“In an article entitled, ‘Throwing Stones at the Quran from a Glass House,’ The American Muslim claims that the verses of violence and war in the Bible can be misread in ‘exactly the same way as some verses in the Qur’an’…In other words, the on-line magazine alleges that, like the Quran, there are Biblical verses with open-ended commands to violence that are not bound by historical context within the passage itself.

The R.of P. concludes, “Our first clue that this probably isn't true is the scarcity of Christian terrorist groups.”

HUH?!

The 30 Years War where Christians were responsible for between 7 to 11 million dead.


Forget about what Bill Warner asserts; it’s not true.

How could the Christians even dare to claim that?

Christian armies have been slaughtering and terrorizing others for 2,000 years! A tragic book not to be missed on this topic is Jesus Wars by Phillip Jenkins.

Christians intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the 20th century.

Of course, sometimes Christians and Muslims don't have a large army. So they fight individually.
As William Blum so poignantly emphasized, “A terrorist is someone who has a bomb, but doesn't have an air force.”

But usually the terrorists do have an air force and they bomb cities killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians (as the U.S. and other ‘civilized countries’ have done, in which case they claim they are conducting a ‘defensive just war’).

The Christian leader if he strikes first, and uses smart bombs, still isn't considered to be a terrorist but is called a Christian warrior like Joshua and David and Samson of old. Wait a minute! Those Old Testament leaders were terrorists! Think about Samson. He committed suicide so he could slaughter a whole temple full of human beings. Doesn't that sound like a suicide bomber of ISIS or HAMAS or the Taliban?

Then, however, the author at The Religion of Peace website writes, “Not too many people are losing their heads to fanatics screaming praises to Jesus…”

Evidently, he didn't grow up in the 1960’s. Christian leaders told us that we should go and kill Vietnamese. Everyone--EVERYONE--I knew said I should go and fight and kill for Christ! I still remember so vividly our Christian youth leader telling me personally that it was God's will that
I go and kill.:-(

There was only one exception; another teen at Youth for Christ told me they were wrong, that we should follow Jesus' way in the Sermon on the Mount. She was a lightwave in the Christian pro-war ‘ocean of darkness.’

The author of R.of P. and Bill Warner need to consider other examples from Christian history.

For instance,

Jeremiah
48: 10“Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD with slackness, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed.”

This verse was quoted by Christians at the start of the Second Crusade to motivate Christians to make annihilation war in the Holy Land! When Christians reached Jerusalem—let’s not deal with the thousands of civilians they slaughtered on the way there in a number of Crusades, including many Jewish persons and other Christians—when they reached Jerusalem, they murdered thousands.

Then the author of R.of P. claims, “The reason is that no other religion regularly kills members of every other faith explicitly in the name its god.”

WHAT? Hasn’t the author heard of the religious wars of France where the Roman Catholics and Reformed slaughtered each other?

Or the invasion of Christian soldiers to the Americas?

Or the Great War?

Or what many millions of Christians say even today?

Why would a sensitive Christian leader in the 1980’s claim that God’s gift to America was the atom bomb?!


According General Jerry Boykin, Jesus said, “'Now that I am going to leave you and you're going to be here to build my Church now, I say to you if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.' That was not a metaphor. What Jesus was saying was not that you will build my Kingdom, but you will build my Church with the sword….”

Then later R.of P. says, “By contrast, Muhammad was a military leader who killed people in battle, executed captives and enslaved women and children.”

Somehow, R.of P. seems to have forgotten about Joshua and Elijah, etc. Or consider the beloved David: “And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the apparel, and returned, and came to Achish.” 1 Samuel 27: 8-11

Sounds exactly like Muslim terrorists does it not?

And that’s the horrific bad news, “the ocean of darkness.”

How about all humans stop killing each other. Don't kill for Christ or Muhammad, for Jehovah or Allah.

Take a vow of non-violence, justice, and peace, and live in compassion.

Daniel Wilcox

"The Arc of the Moral Universe is LONG...."

Is there an arc to the moral universe like spiritual leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. have stated*?

Growing up in the 1950’s and the early 1960’s, it seemed—
at least for us in a tiny Nebraska village—
that great hope lay in the future,
that we would all grow up to make
a strong moral and spiritual difference in the world.

Like our Sunday School teacher said and all the sermons we heard proclaimed,
God would use us to right the wrong in the world,
would guide us to give out the Good News
and see the lost saved,
the hungry fed,
and the destitute clothed.

We followers of Jesus would be a beacon
of light to the nations.

Unlike most of those religious delinquents and hypocrites of the past...

Of course, we “knew” also that evil was going to increase and wouldn’t be completely
defeated until Christ came again, but we held these 2 opposite truths in tension
(both that the future would get better and that it would get worse), believing both fervently.

Perhaps, we were more idealistic than your average kids. But since we were convinced of the infinite love of God in Jesus, we had great hope.

For instance, in my own family, nightly, my Baptist-pastor father and energetic mother, younger sister and I saw Blacks and Whites on our black and white TV, repeatedly marching nonviolently for integration in the segregated South and--despite millions opposing them--those idealist Blacks won!

God through his followers was moving against racism, against evil, against oppression.
We watched these brave witnesses—we were so starry-eyed--
bring very strong change, real moral development
for the good and the right,
the true and the brave!

We saw freedom win and justice move forward.

True, evil still rampaged--there were the horrific murders of 4 young girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. And then just 2 months later, President Kennedy was assassinated.

And the next summer, racists murdered 3 civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi
(Isn’t that town's name—“brotherly love”--a gross misnomer?)

But even these very evil actions helped lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And, eventually, even an African-American was elected mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi!

But then quickly after the dramatic changes for good through the Civil Right Movement,
injustice and destruction, suddenly got worse, much worse...

Many Blacks turned from non-violence to gun play, intimidation, and riots.
Stokely Carmichael leader of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)
changed to violent rhetoric and made inflamatory statements such as,
"I have never admired a white man,
but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler."

And he admired ruthless revolutionaries including Che Guevara. Of the latter,
Carmichael said in 1967,
"The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries
of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat
of Imperialism.
That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us."

Then he was recognized as the Honorary Prime Minister of the violent Black Panthers.

And around the world wars roared forth in destruction including Arabs against Jews in
the Middle East.

And other evils never slowed, but worsened.

The increasing slaughter of Vietnam burst onto the TV screen with nightly body counts;
at least 2 million Vietnamese were killed and 58,000 Americans.

Then leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated,
and Nixon and other government leaders were caught in criminal actions;
Nixon was impeached,
and the social activist movement turned violent and deadly.

The Students for a Democratic Society
(of which I was an early member at the University of Nebraska),
changed into a negative revolutionary movement, some of its members
even advocating attacks and bombings!


After Roe versus Wade, over 56 million pre-born infants were legally murdered.

Let's not even try and enumerate all the other ethical horrors taking place
around the whole world, the one which John 3:16 claims God loves.

Is there really hope for the future?

Is there really an "arc to the moral universe" like spiritual leaders have stated?

Does God truly care?

“Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross,
but that same Christ arose and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even
the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes,
‘the arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.’

There is something in the universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying,
‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’”

Martin Luther King, Jr.
in The Gospel Messenger, 1958

TO BE CONTINUED




In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

All is not calm, all is not bright...

All is not calm, all is not bright…
One of my favorite hymns from childhood is “Silent Night” by the German priest Josef Mohr written in (or maybe before) 1816.

Needless to say, northern Europe in the early 1800’s was neither calm nor bright, nor holy, nor at peace, nor filled with love’s pure light, nor redeemed by grace.
There was a high infant mortality rate, crop failures, ravaging disease, and horrendous slaughter. Europe had had almost continuous, calamitous war for 25 years! No “calm” there.

Napoleonic troops and anti-French troops had ravaged back and forth. 558,000 French-lead soldiers died during the campaign into Russia. In 1813, over 600,000 soldiers fought in one battle alone at Leipzig, Saxony. As many as 110,000 were killed or wounded.

Approximately 1 million or more civilian died from the war. Total war deaths reached between 3 to 6 million! Then Germany as a confederation was created from parts of the former Holy Roman Empire, however, German nationalists assassinated leaders…

Speaking of assassinations, that takes us back to the time of Jesus’s birth in Roman Palestine under Herod the Great in about 4-3 B.C..

Not a time of love, peace and light either.

Nor was Britain at the birth of the Quaker movement (so dear to my heart). Strangely, not even the early Quakers waged peace, contrary to Friends histories and popular understanding! Many of the Quakers fought in the great slaughter of the English Civil War.

George Fox, who would later emphasize the peaceful way of Jesus, at one point urged the Puritan killer Oliver Cromwell to carry forth his holy war all the way to Rome!! “Let thy soldiers go forth…that thou may rock the nations as a cradle.”

Not at all like the cradled-manger of Jesus.

So much for “silent night, holy night”…

Instead, even with the Friends of Jesus, the Children of Light, we have an "ocean of darkness" at first…

Nor was America peaceful in the time of my own childhood, when in a small Nebraska village, we sang this beautiful carol, shining the God’s light out into the overwhelming darkness of fighting and killing…

Consider this powerful “Silent Night” meditative song by Simon and Garfunkel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZazHqdNeXA

What a paradoxical contrast between the way of Jesus and the, too often, horrific way of us.

May we truly witness of the love and peace of God in this often Christ-less, unholy season.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox