The Good, the Bad, and the Baleful

Starting in reverse with the baleful and the bad, saving the best, the Good until after: We’ve already discussed how humans (men are the focus since I am a man) use their Brains, Beliefs, Brawn, and Boasting to enlarge their own ethnocentric lives, destroy other nation’s men, women, and children, and how they see women as booty either in the sense of possession or sexual conquest and subservience.

“Equal but subservient” isn’t equal, as we learned during the past era of Segregation and the Civil Right Movement in the United States.

And anyone can understand this--except orthodox Muslims--by observing Sharia Law and how it is implemented in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Whenever men, whether for secular or religious reasons subjugate women, no matter how much they claim they are honoring women, we know otherwise and can see the discrimination and the harm and the cruelty.

A very bad example is 1 Timothy 2:9-15. Think of the millions of women over 2,000 years who have suffered from the infliction of these verses.


Here's one horrific example from conservative Christianity:
"Alford draws our attention to the fact that in Genesis 3:16, after the Fall, when God was appointing the devil and woman and man to their distinctive experiences of the curse, “bearing children” was the very point where God’s curse lands on the woman. “To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.’”

"Pause and feel the weight of this for women in the centuries before modern medicine. No hygiene, no spinal blocks, no episiotomies, no sutures, no caesarians, no antibiotics, no pain killers, and often, no recovery. Untold numbers of women died in childbirth and countless more suffered the rest of their lives from wounds that prevented childbirth, or any kind of normal sexual life."
from Christian Theologian John Piper

So according to such conservative Christian leaders, millions of women through the ages had to suffer and die excruciating deaths because of a curse by God against one woman, Eve, in the Garden!

Again, one can see why so many humans rightly reject this abusive version of Christianity which follows the literal and worst verses in Scripture. Very baleful!

Next on the bad list comes Betting.

But since this is an unethical action I’ve not been tempted with, my comments will be short and to the point. Only once, many years ago when I was about 10, was I ever attracted to the “quick money” grasping of betting. And that occasion was more likely peer pressure, since I don’t remember really wanting to take marbles from my friends. It was they who wanted me to bet my own marbles. Somehow my parent found out and showed me betting wasn’t the way to follow Jesus.

As an adult, I've stopped a number of times in Las Vegas and other gambling towns. Once for about an hour I watched men and women gambling.

What's strange is that they didn't look happy at all, not like the advertisements showing young people laughing and rejoicing--not at all. These were older individuals, smoking constantly, and drinking, were hunched over with worry or tension or depression etched in their faces.

So here’s it plain and simple: Betting is wrong because if one wins one takes money or valuables from others—those who ought to be using their funds for their family or the lost and hurting and malnourished of the world.

If one loses, there is the temptation to keep gambling to win, but everyone else in your family loses.

If one simply can’t really enjoy gaming without the costly risk of valuables being exchanged, maybe, consider some form of charity gambling where no one loses except to benefit the needy and the lost and the suffering.

All bets are on, on that kind of betting. It’s like taking all of your money to buy the field where the buried treasure (the Realm of God) is.

Bet-gambling's the bad of it.

--


Now for the baleful—the Boozing: “Wine is a mocker and strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.”
Proverbs 20:1 ESV

Scripture doesn’t say you can’t have a glass of wine with supper or a beer with your buddies. Jesus even made gallons of wine for a wedding celebration at Cana, after many at the festival had already had plenty to drink!

What is unwise, what leads one astray is when wine is a mocker and strong drink is a brawler—i.e. when one’s drinking leads to wrong-doing, to fighting, to abusing, to carousing, to immoral actions. And we know when that happens, unless our conscience has been seared.

In my time I have seen in my own extended family, and in some friends, and in the families of students much destruction come from the use and abuse of alcohol.
How tragic and destructive alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs are.

Besides, think of all the men who have harmed their bodies and been caught in the endless cycle of alcoholism. Of famous humans, the list seems very long--Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, etc.

Better is the way of praise in the Spirit of holiness, not the spirit of intoxication. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.”
Ephesians 5:18 ESV

I am of the opinion (though more devout followers of Jesus than me disagree) that followers of the Good, disciples of the Way, seekers of the Truth should not use controlled substances.

Instead live filled up in the Ocean of Light.

Consider this true narrative in a poem from an actual experience:

The Last Libation

JimTown, across the county line
Where many a poor Cheyenne
Emptied his dim future
In the short, sotted glass;

Nothing new of this watery fire,
The forked-tongue libation
Passed from the pallid men
Down to generations of the lost,

To those hunched at the rail--
Descendants of red men who
Counted coup with shining valor--
But these instead pour out their ‘souled’

Lives to Chief Bacchus of the bottle;
Restricted to behind the dark bars,
They shuffle the time worn cards,
Then slump, no longer ruling the plains.

But the Rez's young girl, his cousin,
Only 12, copper-templed and kind,
With glorious raven hair, now
In the gathering Montana dusk

Tips on the dirt walk, sour breathed,
Staggers on the 'warn' path
Through Lame Deer town,
And passes down, then gone.

Says another tribe's brave,
A leader in translation,
My heart is sick…

I will drink no more forever.


In the Light of Divine Love,

Daniel Wilcox

The Bad of Boasting

Check out Hannity's America where the TV news commentator Sean Hannity claims "the U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth.

President Barack Obama claims,
"The entire world is watching. So let's seize this moment to show why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on Earth."

And Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president, claims American is “the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”

Huh? What happened to moderation, humility, unselfishness, and focusing on others?

Group egotism is the worst form of pride, the very worst form of boasting, and all too often the most destructive.

Nationalism is rotten to the core.

What about focusing on asking God to bless others, to bless the needy, the impoverished, the persecuted, the lonely?

May God bless everyone!

A cautionary note: There is a huge difference between nationalism--"America is the best, the greatest...God bless US!
versus
genuine patriotism, moderate love of one's country.

Sometimes when a leader claims his country is great, he means 'I love my country in a widened extension of love for my ken, my family and my spouse.'

In its best expression, love of country is like love of one's wife, a husband loves his wife like no other human.

He means he and his sweetheart's love is special, but he isn't claiming that his wife is better than all other women in history! He's not claiming that she is better than other men's sweethearts. Each guy loves his beloved for herself, not because he compares her to others!

See how obnoxious and absurdly arrogant that sounds, if he claimed the latter. No, he is speaking of being a loving couple. When we see such love the result is uplifting and a blessing.

I felt such love for the United States when as a young teen I earned my God and Country Award for Boy Scouts. The award wasn't a negative comparison award where I was vaunting my country over all other countries, but a genuine love of our people and our government.

Our love of our country can be genuine while we are still fully aware that multi-millions of other people elsewhere love their countries, too.

Tragically, most human political speech usually means the opposite--that my country is 'better' than all other people's countries.

Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon (one of the only two senators to vote at the start against the Vietnam War) warned against such boasting. He wrote two books about his time in American government, and in each one he warned against the insidious temptations of American politics (Crisis and Conscience and Between a Rock and Hard Place).

According to Senator Hatfield it is nigh impossible to escape from the pride which inhabits all political involvement in our government in Washington D.C.

Notice how Hannity, Obama, and many other political and religious leaders are continuing this tendency for human group pride. They claim the United States is better than all other nations, even all other nations in history!

This is an arrogant-spirited American IDOL, in the worst sense of the wor, where only one nation gets to claim its top dog--or is it 'top god?' (sarcasm intended!).

Of course, Americans aren't the only humans to get sucked into this virulent boasting. Try reading a few statements by the British leadership for more than two hundred years when the sun never sat on the British Empire, which was far larger and had a much greater control of the world than the U.S. ever has.

And don't forget the late 19th-early 20th century German belief that their nation, Deutschland, was uniquely called and indwelt by the World Spirit, called to lead the world.

Or consider the vast French claims during the Napoleonic Era, the Russian Empire, the Muslim Conquest, or the Roman Empire, the Persian...blah, blah...

There is seemingly no doubt that pride (boasting) is the worst human evil. What is baffling and tragic is how many modern Christians of a variety of stripes still seem to obsess on this temptation, to exalt THEIR nation as being better than all other people's nations.

And the true historic tragedy is that while individual pride constantly hurts a few humans, national pride and boasting has killed literally millions of people, and is the worst of worst when it comes to human evil.

Nationalistic boasting is the worst part of the ocean of darkness.

Let the OCEAN OF LIGHT overwhelm our tendency to pride.

In the Light

Daniel Wilcox

Against 7 Bad B's: Part 2 The Battle Axe of the Heart

So what is The Battle Axe of the Heart?


It is the wonder of meaning-centered transcendence.

Awaking to the awareness that all humans have inherent value, that everyone is of worth, that human rights and justice and truth are real.

The wonder that we conflicted and ethically mixed-up humans with our 7 Bad B's, can find hope.

I used to greatly admire the famous evangelist Billy Graham of the Christian religion because he emphasized the inherent worth of every single human being.I didn't agree with some of Graham's social views in the 1950's, but Graham grew in his understanding of what the love of God meant for social and political situations. And thank God for his witness for integration and racial equality

Graham strongly insisted on the equality of all people even during the 1950's during Segregation in the U.S. Furthermore, when other religious leaders were supporting Apartheid in South Africa, he stood up strongly against that racism, too.

And he was willing to dialog with every one, including humans totally opposed to his views, even dictators such as the leaders of the Soviet Union.

In many of his famous speeches, Graham stated, "God loves you. You may be at the very gate of hell itself, but God loves you with an everlasting love."

He often quoted the good news verse of the Bible:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
John 3:16 NKJV

Of course the huge irony and tragedy now is that while Graham still walks such a talk, his huge religious organization denies his central message!

The leaders promote the exact opposite of what Graham preached for many years. According to the BGA, God only loves a limited number of humans; their leaders say Jesus came for only a "limited atonement"!

NO WAY!

Eliminate such horrific theology.

Cut it down with the heart of kindness toward all.

If you remember (and especially if you don't;-), last time, we discussed the fixated tendency of religious humans to treat women as things, one bad action of the Seven Bad B's.

Destroy sexism and abuse with the "battle axe of the heart."

What about the other Bad B's--brawn, brains, and belief?

How we men use their best--their best mind, best skills, best physical strength, best values--to commit the worst acts of war and other injustices.

For now, let's just say no, NO to 'unjust' wars and even 'just' wars.

Cut them down with the axe of compassion!

What country has ever gone to war that didn't think its own cause was 'just'?

Instead, let us commit to the Lamb's War where Christ's love is the only armament--

The ARMS OF HUGGING!

The "mouthed-sword" of the Good News the only weapon--

Sharing, giving, empathizing, helping, caring!

The battle axe of the heart--

That is the only destroying agent!

It seeks to destroy wrong-doing, selfishness, abuse, injustice and war.

By witnessing to the heart of ever person.

But what about police? What about defense?

Like Quakers of old in the government in Pennsylvania, I would separate the atrocity of war from the defensive and protective action of policing.

Good police officers (which on occasion include soldiers who are assigned to peacekeeping, not invasion killing) focus on protecting not attacking.

For instance, I knew an officer who worked in one of the major cities of the United States who in many years of law enforcement only needed to draw his gun several times!

Instead, in most criminal situations, he used commanding authority, persuasion, and non-lethal force to stop criminal actions and to protect the innocent.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Seven Bad B's

For years now we’ve heard of the subjugation (and often abuse, mutilation, “honor” killings, etc.) of women by the Saudis, the Afghans, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Egyptians, the Somalis, etc.—based on Islam.

Most of the subjugation, mistreatment, and inequality comes from Islam's Sharia Law.

Also, the Qur'an states a husband is allowed to beat his wife.

Because nearly all Muslims think that the Qur'an is eternal and perfect, most Muslims believe this. And many men thus feel justified in mistreating their wives.

Furthermore, Muhammad was a polygamist, even married a 6-year-old little girl when he was 50 (consummated the relationship when she was 9). And he married the recently divorced wife of his adopted son, etc.

Because of this, most Muslims believe in polygamy. And those wealthy enough practice the barbaric custom.

In many cases, like Muhammad, wealthy older men marry very young girls:-(.

Sometimes forgotten, however, are the negative views of women in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, indeed, in nearly all religions. For instance, according to most of Buddhism there can never be a woman Buddha.

In Buddhism, in order for a woman to advance to enlightenment, she must be reborn as a male!

Talk about negativity.

In early Judaism women were property. “In Jewish law a woman was considered property rather than a person. She either belonged to her father or husband."

"She was not allowed to study the Law."

"In the synagogue women were shut apart from the men so they could not be seen."

"Nor could a woman actively participate in the synagogue services; she had to passively sit and listen. Nor could she teach the children in any formal manner."

"One Jewish morning prayer said by free Jewish men was to thank God that they had not been born a Gentile, a slave, or a woman."

"One Rabbi is quoted as saying not to talk much with women because, 'Every one that talks much with a woman causes evil to himself, and desists from the works of the Law, and his end is that he inherits Gehenna.’"

"A strict Jewish Rabbi would not greet a woman on the street, not even his wife, daughter, mother, or sister."
(William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, rev. ed. pp. 66-67)

Furthermore, read the verses in Numbers from the Jewish Bible. (See a few paragraphs below.) Very disturbing!

Even today, among some Jewish religious groups, women must be separated from the men by a partition in synagogue worship, etc.

When I lived in Israel and we visited the synagogue in Bet Shean, it was surprising and disconcerting to see the synagogue's main room filled with only men.

Women were restricted to a side room separated by a latticework wall. We could see them back behind that screen.

And other strong discrimination is happening right now in Israel:
"Taiseer and Lana Khatib will be forced to live apart under a ruling by the Israel high court, which upheld a 2003 law banning many Palestinians who marry Israelis from living in the Jewish state."

"..the husband, an Israeli citizen, will be forbidden legally from living with his Palestinian wife."
NBC News

Even when women win awards in science, there is discrimination:
"JERUSALEM — January 14, 2012 A few months ago, the Israeli Health Ministry awarded Channa Maayan, a pediatrics professor at Hebrew University, a prize for a book she had co-written on hereditary diseases common among Jews."

"For the ceremony, Maayan wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt in deference to the acting health minister, Yakov Litzman, who is ultra-Orthodox, and the other religious people attending. But that was hardly enough."

"Not only did Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, because men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage."

Then there are the abusive cases:
"...ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed;"

"the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined
to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers
from attending events where female singers perform."
Ethan Bronner, The New York Times

In orthodox Judaism and conservative Christianity, women are required to cover their hair.

In Christianity, while the situation for women was sometimes better than among other human groups, women still weren’t allowed to preach, to own property, to vote in government, to make decisions, and so forthl

In fact, even now many churches still don’t let women lead in church including the largest denominations—Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Southern Baptist.

What is the basis for this subjugation in religion in all its negative shades from ancient times to the present?

Why are we men so negative toward women, either secularly emphasizing the vulgar or religiously emphasizing their inferior status and imposing restrictions on them?

Much of the problem would seem to be because of men’s 7 Bad B’s:
Brawn, Brains, Boasting, Boozing, Bets, Bucks, Booty

Booty (from the Jewish Bible):
“The men of war had taken booty, every man for himself...61,000 donkeys and...of women who had not known man intimately...32,000.
Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately."

"But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves."

"You and Eleazar the priest and the heads of the fathers’ households of the congregation take a count of the booty that was captured

...and divide the booty between the warriors who went out to battle and all the congregation.’”
Numbers 31:17-35, 53 NASB

booty: plunder taken from an enemy in time of war
slang: buttocks, vagina, sexual intercourse
The Free Dictionary


Thank God, this ocean of men’s darkness isn’t the final statement in secularism or religion.

To be continued--

What is your perspective on this?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Praying Like Jesus

Prayed the Lord’s Prayer when I woke this morning.*

“Our Father”: Jesus teaches a way of prayer that emphasizes God is OUR's, not mainly the Father of ME, but OUR communion.

“Father” emphasizes in contrast to the non-theists—whether militant secularists or religious humanists—that the Ultimate Reality of the Cosmos is personal, loving, guiding, disciplining, and generating.

“in Heaven” seems a strong contradiction to the theologizing of so many who now emphasize the omnipresence of God. My understanding of this difficulty is Jesus thinks of God as mainly transcendent, beyond this present physical reality.

How then is God immanent? By his Spirit. For instance, in John 14:20, Jesus says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” And in Luke 3:22, Scripture states, “and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”

Here, again, God speaks from heaven (as in Jesus’ Prayer), but his Spirit is pictured metaphorically like a dove coming “down” into this immanent world. And in Luke 4:14, the text says, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee…”

We see this reference to “spirit” on the human level as well when Paul writes to the Colossians at 2:5, “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit…”

The Bible in John 4:24 states, “God is Spirit." So I suppose, if we want to get into abstract theorizing, then God in his transcendence is “in heaven,” God in his immanence “descends on earth,” and God incarnates into humankind, present in "the Chosen One," Jesus.

But, remember, there has been 2,000 years of tempestuous, violent Christian-infighting over theological theorizing, so to me as a Friend, it seems better to speak experientially and pictorially. Besides, the abstractions almost always make Jewish and Islamic people think we are talking about 3 gods, weakening the central truth of monotheism.

Is it not better to stay with the descriptive focus of Scripture such as in the last book? Revelation speaks of “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him…and from the seven spirits (“seven-fold Spirit”).”

In most of the Bible, Ultimate Reality is described this way:

__________________________Transcendent Eternal God_______________________________






God’s Spirit
Descending

To
Creation

/ \

/ \

/ \

Then in the “fullness of kairos (the right or opportune time)

|
|
|



Into Humanity
Through Jesus
(“The Chosen One”)


/ \

/ \


By God’s Spirit into each of us,
and into our communities of individuals

This is just a pictorial of the New Testament descriptions, not any claim to ultimate invisible Truth. But it seems to make more sense than the Trinitarian creedal explanations which were esoterically theoretical and didn’t use biblical language but argued over abstract points such as whether Jesus had two natures, etc. All of that gets so complicated, confusing, and contradictory, and makes no sense in human terms.

Besides, of what practical ethical difference did it (does it) make whether Jesus was (is) essentially one Greek term or another, terms most people can’t even pronounce, let alone understand?!

Terms that many scholars can't even agree as to what they originally meant. And for which Christians in the past slaughtered other Christians! And for which Christians still verbally attack each other. Terms so confusing that Jewish and Islamic people think we aren’t monotheistic. Terms at the popular level of Christianity that have led to superstition contrary to Scriptural descriptions.

Back to Jesus’ model prayer:-)

Isn’t it odd that Jesus hasn’t taught his committed followers to pray? Instead one of them speaks up when Jesus himself finishes praying and asks to be taught to pray like John the Baptist has already taught his committed followers.

Why didn't Jesus start out at the very beginning to teach his disciples how to pray? Did he assume they already knew how? Or was he intentionally waiting for them to ask?

Or did he want their prayers to God to be made spontaneously like his own? Maybe he intentionally, at first, modeled how to pray.

* Meaningful in a way that openness praying and meditation haven’t been in the past few months, and definitely more meaningful than my daily, nearly, constant petitionary crying out to God. I admit I feel much more like the Psalmist in Psalms 88 than George Fox or John Woolman or John Wesley…though such leaders, also, had their “dark nights of the soul.”

Fox spoke of “an ocean of darkness” that covered him. At one point in his life he lay in bed for days, oppressed! And late in his life, during a despairing time, Wesley wrote in a private letter that he had never truly loved God!!

But God loves us even in our doubts and our despairing…

In the Light of God,

Daniel Wilcox

The Nature of God's Glory versus Some Protestant Theologies

Not that this brief reflection on God's glory summarizes the whole nature of God (What finite being could do that except some theologians?), but surely this meditation brings out the heart of God as our father, our friend, our lover, our savior…*

God is patient, is kind; God is not jealous; God does not brag and is not puffed up, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek God’s own, is not provoked, does not take into account wrong suffered, rejoices not over wrong, but rejoices as the Truth—covers, trusts, endures:

God never falls.



*A welcome alternative to the wrong emphasis by many famous Christians proclaiming that all human evil actions, natural disasters, sickness and suffering are all planned for the glory and pleasure of God, etc., as if God is a self-centered, jealous tyrant.

Nothing could be further from the Truth.

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