tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54934388316533721982024-03-01T00:41:00.774-05:00Stanton's SpaceJDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.comBlogger751125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-15019594705763938682023-07-04T09:38:00.000-04:002023-07-04T09:38:18.744-04:00Mankind's Greatest Hour<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6LjHYHUpu43Vgn7G2J6lKS70Mrjvgv0NWxLYmGUqSqAHtFxPviBOiX68LnL3GkyDFJuPMc2i1N95JqrgQKCLPlI1cxGyaD1cp6WSeW9TZFFbngSnKYZ-JnCeeAO2nMWEytbnZUxMbwpyUFDhFbHi3tRTumsld5ebte7wzLMMmD-4a94E55KP39OLf2E/s2457/20180806_200602_HDR_Original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2457" data-original-width="1525" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6LjHYHUpu43Vgn7G2J6lKS70Mrjvgv0NWxLYmGUqSqAHtFxPviBOiX68LnL3GkyDFJuPMc2i1N95JqrgQKCLPlI1cxGyaD1cp6WSeW9TZFFbngSnKYZ-JnCeeAO2nMWEytbnZUxMbwpyUFDhFbHi3tRTumsld5ebte7wzLMMmD-4a94E55KP39OLf2E/s320/20180806_200602_HDR_Original.jpg" width="199" /></a></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Today, as we fire up our grills and crack open our beers, let us remember why we even have a July 4th holiday: To commemorate the greatest act of shared, selfless courage the world has ever seen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Everybody should know that Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence. Most people know the names of a handful of the 56 men who signed it, such as John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and of course Jefferson himself. But few people seem to realize that when those men signed their names, they were committing what was considered an act of treason against the British crown, punishable by death. Those men were property owners who were successful in their lives and businesses. Their lives were comfortable and they stood to lose everything by signing the Declaration -- yet they chose to sign it anyway, because they knew that casting off the crown and forming a new government based on individual liberty was the right thing to do, not only for their own descendants but for all of humanity. And here is what happened to some of those men after they signed the Declaration:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five of them became prisoners of war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nearly one-sixth of them died before the war ended.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">British forces burned, and/or looted, the homes and properties of nearly one-third of them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When the British did that to the property of William Floyd, he and his family fled and spent the next seven years living as refugees without income. His wife died two years before the war ended.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After being forced into the wilderness by British forces, John Hart struggled to make his way home. When he finally got there, he found that his wife was dead and his 13 children were missing. He died without ever seeing them again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Richard Stockton was dragged from his bed and sent to prison while his property was ravaged. From the day of his release from prison until the day he died, he had to rely on charity from others to feed his family.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Francis Lewis’s wife was imprisoned and beaten. Meanwhile, his wealth was plundered. His last years were spent as a widower living in poverty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thomas Nelson Jr.’s home was captured and occupied by British General Cornwallis, who used it as what we would now call an operations center. Therefore, Nelson ordered his troops to destroy his own home with cannon fire during the Battle of Yorktown. To assist in funding the war, he used his own credit to borrow 2 million dollars, which today would equal more than 25 <i>billion</i> dollars. Repaying that debt bankrupted him, and when he died he was buried in an unmarked grave.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a safe bet that fewer than one percent of our citizens have ever heard of these people, much less know anything about the devastating sacrifices they made so that future generations could have the freedom necessary to build the kind of upwardly-mobile, always-progressing society we would come to take for granted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a wonderful gift called America, and we owe it to our children to make sure we don’t allow that gift to be destroyed. We should never hear the words “Fourth of July” without feeling a skip in our heart and a tear in our eye.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><i style="font-family: "times new roman";">Much thanks to Jeff Jacoby, the late Paul Harvey, and all the others who have written and spoken about the fates of the signers, to keep their story alive.</i> </p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-86675715109268812442023-04-07T22:55:00.019-04:002023-07-04T10:01:39.310-04:00About "The" Book, Part 11<p style="text-align: center;"> <span> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMax5LxLBN1ld6f6JeuaZAlE2ZdEfCsEXqONOwy4phtN5hz4ghN07tqQLekkFS6zCV2AIZnjDcNtJI8FixzJTWt1Yx8R2gVpYB0MjCNp5KuI05U_YnomtLGX5OiwNJnL7wJj6pG808OAZHhybN7y0kcXXFkdF1DxLIoelGdMKvmyklBIojP30clmR/s320/bible%20stack.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="320" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCMax5LxLBN1ld6f6JeuaZAlE2ZdEfCsEXqONOwy4phtN5hz4ghN07tqQLekkFS6zCV2AIZnjDcNtJI8FixzJTWt1Yx8R2gVpYB0MjCNp5KuI05U_YnomtLGX5OiwNJnL7wJj6pG808OAZHhybN7y0kcXXFkdF1DxLIoelGdMKvmyklBIojP30clmR/s1600/bible%20stack.jpg" width="320" /></a><span><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pontius Pilate is one of the most intriguing figures in history. Many people place him squarely in the villain category, but he also happens to be one of the most quintessentially human figures in the Bible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pilate played a pivotal role in human history and is mentioned in all four gospels, yet the only day of his life that gets biblical ink is the one morning that Jerusalem's religious leaders caught him off guard by bringing him a prisoner and demanding he sentence him to death.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">That morning is the only reason anyone still knows about him today. Since it was destined to be commemorated as Good Friday and today happens to be Good Friday 2023, it seems like an ideal time to think about this man who appeared and vanished in a flash from the pages of history.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The thumbnail sketch of Pilate's role in the Bible is that he was the Roman Empire's governor of the province of Judaea; was therefore powerful; presided over the final trial of Jesus; and had doubts as to whether Jesus was guilty, yet ultimately agreed to consign him to death.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">That is all true, but of course it only scratches the surface.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The average term of office for provincial governors was two years. The fact that Pilate held that office in Judaea for a full decade (26 to 36 A.D.) tells us he was strong, effective, and trusted by Caesar's cronies as well as Caesar himself.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">When it came to Rome's interests in Judaea, Passover was the tensest time of year. It was when Jewish pilgrims from far and wide descended on the capital city of Jerusalem to memorialize an event that evoked both religious and nationalist passions. With upwards of 100,000 celebrants gathered on the Temple Mount to honor their ancestors' liberation from Egypt, might they become inspired to focus some ire on their present Roman occupiers who were in their very midst, and might their celebration suddenly transform into a revolt?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">To project its authority, each Passover Rome stationed additional troops in Jerusalem while Pilate took up residence in the Antonia Fortress. A military edifice on the Temple Mount itself, overlooking the temple's open, bustling, outermost area, the so-called Court of the Gentiles, this fortress is where Pilate was when the chief priests and elders arrived in the early morning with Jesus in shackles. (For ease of communication, from here on out I will use the word "Pharisees" to describe those priests and elders, even though there might have been some particular individuals for whom that word did not technically apply.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We know from all four gospels that Jesus was arrested at night and taken to the high priest Caiaphas, either at his own house or at that of his father-in-law Annas. There, he was questioned by Caiaphas and whichever other religious officials were able to hastily and sneakily assemble in the dead of night.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The questioning was largely for show. They already wanted him dead in order to protect their prestige, and Caiaphas had already given them cover when he declared it "better that one man should die" rather than "the whole nation" (John 11:50), so when they accused Jesus of claiming to be divine and he not only didn't deny it, but flatly affirmed it, they instantly considered him worthy of death according to the Levitical rules of their faith. They figured <i>that </i>would squash his movement in its tracks by dramatically demonstrating he was no Messiah. Surely <i>that</i> would send his followers fleeing to the hills in fear.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Their plan faced a major obstacble, however: Judaea was ruled by Rome, and Roman law forbade anybody but Romans from imposing a death sentence. One of the ways Rome managed to keep <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5493438831653372198/8667571510926881244?hl=en#" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Pax Romana</span></a> going for 200 years was by giving people in its provinces some degree of latitude to practice their own religions and follow their own customs, so long as it didn't interfere with the empire's ability to control the big things and collect its taxes. As such, Rome was happy to let Jews adhere to their weird rules about things like not eating pork and not wearing a garment made of two fabrics. The death penalty, on the other hand, was a bridge way, way too far -- allowing Jews to wield that kind of power within Rome's official borders would undermine the empire's authority, especially if Jewish leaders got too big for their britches and started executing the wrong people.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The only way for Caiaphas & Co. to have Jesus executed without brining Rome's fury down on themselves was to convince the Romans to do the executing <i>them</i>selves. And they needed to move fast because the sun had yet to rise and the execution needed to be underway before news of Jesus's captivity could get out and trigger a riot. This is why the Pharisees arrived at the Antonia Frotress seeking to see Pilate so early. According to John 18:28 "it was early morning," and according to Mark 15:1 they met "as soon as it was morning" and "led him away and delivered him over to Pilate."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The governor awoke that Friday having no idea what was going to happen. Little did he know that so many nuances of human nature were about to be tweaked and manifested that folks like me would be sitting around 2,000 years later referring to him as "one of the most quintessentially human figures" in something we call "the Bible."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Passover was to begin at sunset and Pilate's Jewish subjects, their numbers swollen by pilgrims, were to eat the sacred Seder feast when it did. The few hours prior to sunset were to be consumed by the obligatory slaughtering of countless paschal lambs (one for each family) in the Temple's court.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It was the busiest day of the entire year in Jerusalem, especially on the Temple Mount where Pilate needed everything to go off off without a hitch. Surely he wasn't pleased to have religious authorities show up at dawn demanding he kill a holy man who, according to them, was becoming dangerously popular among the commoners.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pilate was a powerful man who dealt with powerful men, with men whose egos needed managing. He knew how to read a room and his shrewdness for doing so came to the fore that morning. Two of the gospels explicitly state that he realized what the Pharisees' <i>real</i> reason was for hauling Jesus in: According to Matthew 27:18 "he knew that it was out of envy," and according to Mark 15:10 "he perceived that it was out of envy."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Knowing he couldn't send a man to death simply because the holy hoity toity wanted him to, and keenly aware that sending a man to death could inflame the streets if he was beloved by a large following, Pilate demanded to know the charges against Jesus and why they warranted death under Roman law. The Pharisees, apparently having expected Pilate to simply do what they wished, were caught by surpise and had no good answer to give.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This caused the red flags in Pilate's mind to flap even harder, and he pushed back. All four gospels are clear that Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of violating any Roman law, and that he strongly suspected Jesus was not even guilty of violating Jewish law. On three occasions (once in Luke, twice in Matthew) Pilate is recorded as speaking the words "I find no guilt in this man" or "I find no guilt in him."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Wanting to get to the bottom of things, he questioned Jesus directly, and those conversations show him to be genuinely curious. Yes he wanted to keep the local populace at bay and maintain Rome's power and prestige, but that was not <i>all</i> he wanted. Yes he played for the bad team, but we're all sinners and, at his core, was he any more of a bad guy than your average Joe?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pilate was used to seeing defendants feverishly proclaim their innocence in order to avoid conviction and escape punishment. But Jesus, faced with a litany of serious charges and knowing his accusers wanted him killed, responded with tranquility. He either said nothing, or spoke in ways that seemed riddling and showed no urgency to avoid death. Matthew and Mark tell us this caused Pilate to be "amazed," with Matthew beefing it up by saying "greatly amazed." I find myself wondering how many different wrinkles of amazement we're talking about and how deep they run. I wonder if the Koine Greek word rendered here as "amazed" might be one of those words that doesn't have an exact counterpart in another language?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Many people today don't realize that in ancient times it was almost unheard of to doubt or deny the <i>existence</i> of other people's gods. Nation X worshipped certain gods because it believed it had been assigned those gods, while Nation Y worshipped others it believed had been assigned to it. Maybe each nation thought its<i> </i>gods could whip yours if ever the twain should meet, but it still presumed your gods were as real as its. I believe this is why Pilate responded fearfully, not angrily, when finally told that Jesus claimed to be divine. He believed in supernatural beings and knew they were not for humans to trifle with; and now, suddenly, he was in the presence of someone who claimed to <i>be</i> supernatural and behaved like no human he'd ever seen, and he was being asked to pass judgment on him.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Also, ancient people placed great importance on dreams and believed the gods communicated to them in dreams. This probably explains why Matthew informs us that Pilate, while in the middle of adjuctaing Jesus's trial, received word sent by his wife that warned him to "have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The wives of Roman officials weren't wont to send them urgent messages in the middle of them performing official duties. That a courier bearing a message showed up, ostensibly out of the blue, must have felt strange to Pilate in the first place; and it must have felt indescribably stranger when the message conveyed that his wife had dreamt of the man he was currently being asked to judge. Pilate himself had not even heard of him before. What kind of thoughts rippled through his mind when the message came?</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">For my money, the most intense indicator of his humanity is how he responded "late in the game" when chips started falling in ways he didn't like. That is when his actions reflected the influence of two instincts that weigh most heavily on human beings: fear and self-preservation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pilate knew the Pharisees were envious of Jesus, that they wanted his followers to be shown he was not who he claimed to be. He could live easily with that, but <i>killing </i>Jesus was a step he did not want to take.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pilate was not a scrupulous, ahead-of-his-time proponent of modern due process. But he <i>was</i> a man of law who knew the importance of evidence and rules, of staying within guardrails and holding to standards. With all that in mind, he knew Jesus was not accused of breaking any Roman laws (especially any that called for capital punishment) -- and he sensed it would not go over well with his superiors for him to use Rome's imprimatur to sentence an innocent man to death in a province where that man was popular among the non-Roman locals.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Yet, here he was being asked to do just that. Early on the morning of the most important day of the locals' year. By the locals' own religious leaders, whose alliance he needed if he was to maintain Pax Romana and keep his bosses happy. In his mind, Pilate sought escape hatches and thought he found some.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Surely if Jesus were to be beaten, bloodied, and pilloried, in public view, without being able to stop it, that would show his followers he wasn't divine. Right? Surely that would sate the Pharisees without him having to impose the death penalty. Right? Surely that would shame Jesus's followers into stumped silence, without running the risk of turning him into a martyr around whose memory they might rally. Right?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It was Pilate, not the Pharisees, who came up with the idea of beating and mocking Jesus <i>in lieu </i>of killing him (Luke 15:16, John 19:1-4) but the Pharisees were not mollified. They liked the beating/mocking idea, of course, but wanted that <i>plus</i> death. If they couldn't have both, they wanted death alone. Anything short of death was not on their agenda.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And the Pharisees specifically wanted Jesus's death to be by crucifixion. Crucifixion was considered the most disgraceful way for a person to die. Its purpose was not "merely" to kill, but to shame and humiliate a man in such a way that his reputation would be permanently destroyed through the end of time. Only the absolute worst of the worst were subject to crucifixion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Both the Jews and Romans had an honor/shame culture, and like Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou has explained, "honor and glory were so highly valued that preserving personal honor and avoiding shame were considered more important than money and even more important than life itself...The humiliation that accompanied crucifixion was one of the primary reasons it served as a deterrent -- people did not fear the pain alone...[a crucified man] is isolated, displayed without the dignity of clothing, as one who has violated the law and is now literally exposed as a wrongdoer for all to see. Therefore, obviously (in the Jewish mind), all crucifixion victims were cursed by God himself...Nothing surpassed crucifixion as a statement of culpability and rejection by God."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Undeterred by Pilate's unambiguous determination to bludgeon but not crucify, the Pharisees entrenched themselves and kept demanding crucifixion. Even when Pilate broached the Passover custom of releasing to the Jews "any one prisoner whom they wanted" and assumed they would choose the peaceful Jesus over the only other option, a violent criminal named Barabbas, the Pharisees shocked him by demanding that Barabbas be the one set free. According to Mark 15:9 Pilate did not even mention a choice between the two, but rather said simply "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" only to have them respond by asking him to release "Barabbas instead."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because in some passages English translations of the Bible refer to the audience before Pilate as a "crowd," modern readers often picture a large mob consisting of normal Jews as well as Pharisees. However, historical and linguistic context are important and they tell us this picture is not correct. Jesus was brought to Pilate very early, before people were up and about, precisely because the Pharisees wanted his crucifixion to be a <i>fait accompli</i> before the hoi polloi could get wind of it and try to stop it. Also, it is exceedingly doubtful that the Romans would allow a rabble of common folk to gather in front of the governor, especially during a compressed time of religious fervor. Thus the crowd in question would have consisted only of men who had cause to be present, namely religious officials and political figures.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's almost certain that English phrasing like "the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus" (Matthew 27:20) would have been understood, by the original culture speaking the original language, to mean that the strongest people in Caiaphas & Co. used their power to convince any of their uncertain brethren not to go wobbly.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It was a delicate and precarious position in which Pilate found himself as the sun rose higher that morning. But he represented the rulers, not the ruled, and could not let the Pharisees forget that. Plus, he had that little "what if?" birdie singing in his brain and reminding him that Jesus might very well be divine, so he kept refusing to grant the Pharisees their wish.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Luke 23:5-16 even recounts that Pilate, upon detecting Jesus hailed not from Jerusalem but from Galilee, attested that he had no jurisdiction over Galilee. Therefore he sent him over to Herod, the Jewish ruler of Galilee who happened to be rignt there in Jerusalem that morning because of Passover. Unfortunatey for Pilate, however, Herod found him innocent even of violating Jewish law and sent him right back to Pilate, making the horns of his dilemma even sharper.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Ultimately the Pharisees broke the stalemate by playing their trump card: Seeing that Pilate would not yield to their demands, they resorted to human politics and "cried out, 'If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend'."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Roman Caesar at the time was Tiberius, and, like all dictators, he had trust issues. People he suspected of not being his friend saw their life expectancies plummet, and one of those people, a man named Sejanus, happened to have been the man who appointed Pilate governor of Judeea in 26 A.D. Sejanus was considered Tiberius's closest friend back <i>then</i>, but things had since changed. Reportedly tipped off that Sejanus wanted to take his place on the throne, Tiberius had him arrested and executed for treason, then had his corpse thrown down the <a href="https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/gemonian-stairs" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Gemonian Stairs</span></a> and paraded through the streets.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Naturally, anyone appointed to office by Sejanus had to assume his actions were now under the microscope; and although a half-decade passed between Pilate's appointment and Sejanus's execution, the association was still there. Pilate knew he could not afford to be fingered as "not Caesar's friend," so when the Pharisees used that phrase he would have understood it as a threat: It meant they would tell Rome he was "not Caesar's friend" if he failed to do what they wanted.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">He knew the threat was not idle, and that it would put his life in jeopardy if the Pharisees carried it out, so the impulse to save his own skin kicked into overdrive and he acceeded to their demands. But the "what if?" birdie must still have been singing, for the Bible tells us Pilate still tried to portray himself as innocent. Luke records that on three occasions he refused to give the death sentence before ultimately delivering Jesus "over to <i>their</i> will," while John says he "delivered him over <i>to them</i>" at the end of the proceedings, and Matthew affirms that he "washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it<i> yourselves</i>'." (emphases mine)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We all know verbal sleights of hand like these cannot slip past the Almighty. Nevertheless, we have all tried them at one time or another.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Pointius Pilate, human to the core, tried them too. He was pagan, but he knew divinity is out there and he responded accordingly.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Every human responds to divinity, even if many humans refuse to admit it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #1</u>: Since I have now quoted Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou's book <a href="https://store.ancientfaith.com/the-crucifixion-of-the-king-of-glory/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The Crucfixion of the KIng of Glory</span></a> in back-to-back posts, I might as well go ahead and recommend you read it. I think it's one of the best books I have ever read.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #2</u>: </i><i>If you care to read the previous installments in this series, they are as follows:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">1. introduction</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">2. needless translation hang-up</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">3. Genesis hyper-literalists</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">4. mindset, interpretation</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">5. truth, contemporary culture, abortion</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-six.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">6. universality of God</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-seven.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">7. thoughts on Luke</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="and" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">8. thoughts on Titus</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="https://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2023/02/about-book-part-nine.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">9. thoughts on Psalm 40</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="https://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2023/04/palm-sunday-gets-lots-of-attention.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">10. Lazarus</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> <span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span></i></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-22550839988275856852023-04-01T19:57:00.009-04:002023-04-12T08:47:35.080-04:00About "The" Book, Part 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSEZ1TMG6q_5ueOW5AxCpTAYXJQpKpzyyPiYndfSLgb2yMcyb6I0gFjOxZbw9nlaSmYEcQsR-MUcOD9AgVAUdzhH9-DOqsoPt7_7vfhXoRiQGvk1-iiJ2srO-ujQ3E5YmFDB83vKrLPMRjMcwKR8PZ4em3Dlxtvgk5R5w6M7-85oQSe5GohAuS4ATr/s320/bible%20stack.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="320" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSEZ1TMG6q_5ueOW5AxCpTAYXJQpKpzyyPiYndfSLgb2yMcyb6I0gFjOxZbw9nlaSmYEcQsR-MUcOD9AgVAUdzhH9-DOqsoPt7_7vfhXoRiQGvk1-iiJ2srO-ujQ3E5YmFDB83vKrLPMRjMcwKR8PZ4em3Dlxtvgk5R5w6M7-85oQSe5GohAuS4ATr/s1600/bible%20stack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;">Palm Sunday gets lots of attention every spring. Which makes sense, seeing as how it is the first day of Holy Week and the image of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, with throngs of people laying down fronds to herald his arrival, imprints itself strongly on the mind's eye.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Between that and the subsequent images of his passion, betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection, what often gets overlooked is the event that took place right before Palm Sunday: His raising of Lazarus.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because Lazarus's story has been told so many times and usually in a cursory way, people tend to give it little thought, but make no mistake: It was a seismic event in real time. By happening a scant two miles from the Holy City as pilgrims were flooding in for Passover, it functioned as the match that lit the kindling and became the most effective curtain-raising in history. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Lazarus we're talking about -- Lazarus of Bethany -- is discussed only in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John. Within the first two sentences we are informed that one of his sisters is the same Mary who will eventually annoint Jesus's feet. Remember that John was writing to a contemporary audience of early believers, at a time when living memories of Jesus existed and many (probably most) Christians had been taught by eyewitnesses who put their own lives at risk. It tells us something that John identifies this Mary as being <i>that</i> Mary the moment he first mentions her, before the anointing chronologically occurs.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Lazarus is struck with a life-threatening illness. Aware that Jesus is on the road, Mary and Martha (Lazarus's other sister) send messengers to intercept him and encourage him to come cure their brother, identified as "whom you love." However, by the time Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, "Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Leaving Mary behind, Martha hurried from the house upon hearing that Jesus was approaching. The first words she is recorded as saying when she got to him him are "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." There is disappointment in those words, a tinge of wondering whether God even cares.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Martha returned to the house and told Mary "in private" that Christ wanted to see her, and Verse 31 tells us Mary reacted without hesitation: "When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there." When she reached Jesus she fell in front of him and repeated her sister's plea verbatim: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Being "deeply moved" by the mourning he witnessed, Jesus inquires about the location of the tomb and is invited to "come and see." This brings us to the shortest verse in all the Bible, John 11:35, which consists of just two words: "Jesus wept." His weeping was such that no adverbs have ever been needed to convey its depth.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Once at the tomb, Jesus asks those who are with him to open it by moving the stone that sealed its entrance. This makes them participants in a miracle, not simply observers of it -- a repeated habit of his that receives little commentary despite being evident ever since the wedding at Cana.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">At first Martha responds to his request by protesting that "there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." This drives home another point, namely that Lazarus wasn't only merely dead but really most sincerely dead. More dead than a doornail. Sure, Jesus had previously raised Jairus's daughter and the unnamed young man, but each of those resurrections happened within hours of death. By the time day four rolls around, a corpse's decomposition is underway and even a hyper-dreamer with the rosiest spectatcles would know there's no chance of the deceased coming back to life.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Jesus, however, brushed all that aside and proved everyone wrong. People answered his call to move the stone after he replied to Martha by asking "did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" Then, looking skyward, he thanked the Father for "always hear(ing) me" and said he was speaking aloud "on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Finally he called directly to the dead man by saying three words: "Lazarus, come out" -- which Lazarus did, still completely bound in his burial wrappings, and once again Jesus summoned others to participate in a miracle by saying "unbind him, and let him go."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Something like that can't help but rock the countryside, even way back in those ancient days before electricity and mass communication.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">When dinner was served that evening at Lazarus's house, a "large crowd" came because news of the miracle had already spread. The buzz was so loud "the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This all happened the day before what we now call Palm Sunday. It was in this setting, pregnant with excitement and anticipation, and intensified by the influx of pilgrims, that Jesus arose the next morning and made the two-mile walk to Jerusalem. A donkey and colt were waiting there unsuspectingly, destined to encompany him into the city through the Gate of Mercy.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Talk of Lazarus's resurrection undoubtedly reached Jerusalem ahead of Jesus's arrival, and its pitch could only be compounded by the pilgrims. Lazarus's resurrection unleashed the downstream flow that would reach Class Five rapids with overturned tables and cat-and-mouse questioning... before plunging over the deadly brink of crucifixion, to find calm in the lush valley of resurrection.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Holy Week would have happened without Lazarus and it would have been just as glorious, but it would not have been the same.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Tomorrow is Palm Sunday 2023, marking the approximate 1,990th anniversary of Jesus's triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Throughout the Christian world it will be celebrated and observed as such.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This means today marks the approximate 1,990th anniversary of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, but throughout the Christian world it will be celebrated and observed as such only in Orthdox circles.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Orthodox Church officially celebrates the Saturday of Lazarus and considers <i>it</i> to be the start of Holy Week. I feel like Catholics, Protestants, and "mere Christians" (I count myself among the latter) are somewhat missing the boat today, and failing to appreciate the full significance of this episode from that great collection of opuses we call the Bible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">According to Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou's masterful book <i>The Crucifixion of the King of Glory</i>, "the <i>apolytikion</i> (primary hymn) of both the Saturday of Lazarus and Palm Sunday explains, 'When you raised Lazarus from the dead before your Passion, you confirmed the common resurrection of us all, Christ God'."</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://stnicholastarpon.org/who-we-are" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This</span></a> cathedral is 15 miles from where I sit. Maybe one day I'll go to a service there in person, even though I might be the only one in sight without Greek blood in my veins. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u><br /></u></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #1</u>: </i><i>Many thanks to <a href="https://www.bayhope.church/about-us#matthew" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Matthew Hartsfield</span></a> for pointing out, during a sermon some years ago, that Jesus invited people to participate in his miracles. I was listening!</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #2</u>: </i><i>If you care to read the previous installments in this series, they are as follows:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">1. introduction</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">2. needless translation hang-up</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">3. Genesis hyper-literalists</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">4. mindset, interpretation</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">5. truth, contemporary culture, abortion</span></a></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-six.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">6. universality of God</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-seven.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">7. thoughts on Luke</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="and" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">8. thoughts on Titus</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="https://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2023/02/about-book-part-nine.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">9. thoughts on Psalm 40</span></a></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> <span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span></i></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-82232804423084281862023-03-28T17:58:00.001-04:002023-03-28T17:58:13.651-04:00Resurrection<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIsGro_6eQ4NiTC4OnrtdIZrVVKqJW7LiV8sprzKrpyb6PjuyaIdcCtTYMwLqezD8_WyV8EIJrMf0br5sjT3g4XeRCJQ6uwRyAceD61FS678y1uJ_nZptpK9GSE3wgg-wJmozuRyhPjK8/s320/IMG_2497.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIsGro_6eQ4NiTC4OnrtdIZrVVKqJW7LiV8sprzKrpyb6PjuyaIdcCtTYMwLqezD8_WyV8EIJrMf0br5sjT3g4XeRCJQ6uwRyAceD61FS678y1uJ_nZptpK9GSE3wgg-wJmozuRyhPjK8/s0/IMG_2497.JPG" /></a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Since I plan to publish at least one more post (hopefully more) in my "Bible series" between now and Easter, but have only published two of them in the last thirteen months, I figured now is an ideal time to explain why I take the Bible seriously in the first place. Therefore, today I am re-publishing this post from 2021:</i></div><p style="text-align: justify;">Today is Palm Sunday, designated to memorialize a particular day almost 2,000 years ago (specific date unknown) that an itinerant, 33-year-old, rabble-rousing, street rabbi from Nazareth rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We often hear the phrase "according to Christians" or "according to Christian tradition" grafted onto the beginning of articles which go on to state that during the fifth through seventh days after his arrival in Jerusalem, this street rabbi was arrested, sentenced to death, killed by crucifixion, then rose from the dead... and that he then proceeded to spend 40 days walking around, sermonizing to people and instructing his disciples to become apostles by spending the rest of their lives teaching the world about him... and that after those 40 days were up, he departed Earth not by dying but by ascending (being supernaturally teleported, if you will) into Heaven... and that although he was fully human on Earth, he was also God Himself, having chosen to become flesh and bone and to enter the material world in order to engage in a supreme act of spiritual warfare that transcended the material world and reverberated through the supernatural one.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We cannot blame people for using "according to" language when discussing this account. It is not the kind of account that even sounds possible, much less plausible, at first blush -- especially in our modern age here in the Western world.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Even among believers, many (most?) Christians accept the resurrection account with a faith that is divorced from historical evidence. It is fair for critics to refer to such faith as "blind."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But what if there is historical evidence? (There is.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And what if the evidence is so strong that an overwhelming majority of historians, <i>including</i> <i>those who are atheists and skeptics,</i> concede to it? (It is.)</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are six things about which experts in ancient history agree. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I am going to re-emphasize what I said just one paragraph above: Even the experts who are atheists and skeptics agree on the six things, and they do so in overwhelming numbers. The six things are as follows:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>One</u>:</b> Jesus was an actual person.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Two</u>:</b> Jesus died by crucifixion during the governance of Pontius Pilate.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Three</u>:</b> Jesus's body was buried in a tomb.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Four</u>:</b> After his body was buried, both friends <i>and enemies</i> of Jesus claimed to have seen him alive again in the flesh... and their belief about what they saw was so strong and sincere that their behavior was radically and permanently changed, and there is no record of a single one of them ever recanting despite being violently persecuted and some of them even being put to death for their claims.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Five</u>:</b> Resurrection claims were made extraordinarily soon after Jesus's death and were opposed by the entire power structure of Jerusalem, both Roman and Jewish.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Six</u>:</b> Despite that resistance by the power structure, Jesus's corpse was never removed from the tomb and presented as evidence that he had not risen, although that should have been exceedingly easy to do. (In other words, the tomb was empty.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I hope you don't mind hearing my broken record skip yet again, but now I'm going to repeat that these six things are agreed upon even by atheists and skeptics who are experts in the field of ancient history. They are accepted as being true even by professionals who doubt the overall accuracy of the Bible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Of course this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, not in the conventional sense that to "prove" something means to confirm it with absolute, one hundred percent certainty. But then again, <i>nothing</i> can be proved to that degree of certainty.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">People earnestly and fairly disagree about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, and it's not like there are no reasons to question it. Dead bodies are known to stay dead, after all. But in my <strike>humble</strike> opinion, if anybody wants to engage in a serious and objective discussion about this topic, he <strike>must</strike> should acknowledge and account for all six of the above points. I find it noteworthy that after 2,000 years of discussion, debate, disagreement, scholarship, scientific advances, technological advances, archaeological research, and so on, literally <i>no</i> theory other than resurrection has been offered that can account for all six.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The lack of "sufficient alternative" theories is certainly not for lack of trying.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Plenty of alternate theories have been proposed, including the swoon theory, hallucination theory, and stolen body theory, to give just three examples. But while all of the alternates account for some of the six points mentioned above, <i>none</i> of them account for <i>all</i> <i>six</i>. The resurrection theory stands alone.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Resurrection alone accounts for all of the accepted historical evidence. Resurrection alone does so without simply rejecting other theories out of hand. Resurrection alone does so without the luxury of merely ignoring alternate theories.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's easy to blame Western culture in general, and American culture specifically, for the fact that so few people are aware that the case for the resurrection is based on evidence and logic rather than gullibility and superstition, and it is not inaccurate to cast such blame. However, we must blame the church -- i.e., ourselves -- for the fact that Western and American culture has come to this pass.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The reason millions of people, including millions of believers, are clueless about the strong case for the resurrection is that they have never heard it. And the reason they've never heard it is that churches don't teach it to their own congregations.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This is not merely shameful, it is scandalous. It results in people being told from youth to "believe in Jesus" but never being educated as to <i>why</i> they should believe. And so, when they inevitably have questions or doubts and when they inevitably encounter atheist arguments and competing religious claims, their faith often crumbles. They have been set up to fail, sent into battle without armor, tossed into the ocean without a lifejacket, or any other long-odds analogy you want to use.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Why should parents who fail to educate their own children about this topic turn around and criticize "America" for "removing God from the schools"? Why should pastors who fail to educate their own parishioners about this topic turn around and criticize "the culture" for not understanding Christianity or not respecting it?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">If you choose to spend the night naked in the snow, you should not be surprised to find yourself with hypothermia come dawn.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The week that begins today is called Holy Week. Good Friday is on the horizon and Easter is just beyond, ready to send up its rays next Sunday morning.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I think those of us who believe in God -- and especially those of us who believe Jesus rose from the dead twenty centuries ago -- should treat this week as a call to carry ourselves with confidence and without timidity, but also without arrogance.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Like clockwork, Holy Week brings an abundance of documentaries and magazines that superficially acknowledge Easter while unsubtly casting doubt on whether it commemorates an actual event. Christians often respond to these "mainstream media" provocations with irritation or defensiveness, or by withdrawing from the "secular" conversation. But we should not. Instead we should relish these provocations and relish this week, for they present us with a golden opportunity to explain the rational foundations of our faith.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We should take this opportunity and offer an explanation respectfully and cheerfully. It's an almost ironclad guarantee that any explanation other than "I feel it in my heart" will fall upon ears that have never heard it before; and thus it will be heard by people who currently have no idea there is any evidence-based reason for believing in Christianity. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">At the end of the day, when people reject the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, their logical reasoning usually hinges solely on the pre-supposition that nothing supernatural can be real. But if that one pre-supposition gets removed and a person admits that "supernatural" does not equal "impossible," the philosophical ground on which he stands will, by definition, shift beneath his feet. That is a game-changer because it means the historical evidence for the resurrection must be dealt with in order to continue any investigation -- and the historical evidence itself is an aggregate doozy of a game-changer.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">At all times, however, we believers need to remember that very few human beings are wired to remain calm, cool, collected, and accepting when game-changers arrive on the scene and challenge their worldview. If we mention something and somebody reacts negatively, we need to remember that we would probably react the same way if the roles were reversed. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are of course other questions non-believers can raise about Christianity. Why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children sometimes get cancer? Why do natural disasters occur?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Such questions are valid. Believers have them too, and they are troublesome. But they all fall under a single category that C.S. Lewis dubbed "the problem of pain," and they have <i>nothing whatsoever</i> <i>to do with whether or not God is real, whether or not God is Yahweh as identified in the Bible, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, et al.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The problem of pain is a serious one, but it happens to be the only one that believers must wrestle with in the great question of theism versus atheism -- as indicated by the fact that even atheists like Richard Dawkins have recently been reduced to uttering phrases like "the universe has the <i>appearance</i> of design" when they are confronted with evidence. (emphasis mine)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And the problem of pain happens to be one that every religion must grapple with.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Christianity is unique in that it builds its foundation on the singular event of Jesus rising from the dead... and has built its foundation on that event since the early days when it could have been easily disproved... and yet it grew into the world's largest and most far-reaching religion, and remains so to this day.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As Holy Week unfolds we should be gracious, and should not be in anyone's face, but at the same time we should be transparent and unafraid and unashamed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We must not allow anyone to get away with suggesting that we are playing with a weak hand, for nothing could be further from the truth.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note</u>: For the sake of time and space, I did not use this post to specifically tackle each alternate theory that has been offered to address "the six points." Instead I simply (and correctly) stated that none of them explain all six points. If you want to learn more about the alternate theories and why they don't suffice, good resources include writings and/or lectures by Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Nabeel Qureshi, and many others. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KR8S0ShxDE" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This</span></a> one by Peter Kreeft is especially good for being both succinct and thorough.</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-32594744706273675772023-03-25T12:21:00.005-04:002023-03-27T07:58:53.054-04:00Credit When It's Due<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5o0OyPNveOumkiSrBos2WKfWqifi5JvuJ1olDQ_MfvHVfR5Y9dGyeAadrP_BGJA-ewUz5SVkYFgaB4oZyzkGxkf48mYnZjOYzbkAaXPnzrHVodQop35euiK3ygxnI3K9OCBJhXOP-DshxPTIPqe6hLn5ryI9PxE6CHBX4T88zlKuulql3-0c0IMHb/s3955/IMG_7529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3955" data-original-width="2744" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5o0OyPNveOumkiSrBos2WKfWqifi5JvuJ1olDQ_MfvHVfR5Y9dGyeAadrP_BGJA-ewUz5SVkYFgaB4oZyzkGxkf48mYnZjOYzbkAaXPnzrHVodQop35euiK3ygxnI3K9OCBJhXOP-DshxPTIPqe6hLn5ryI9PxE6CHBX4T88zlKuulql3-0c0IMHb/s320/IMG_7529.jpg" width="222" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;">In this era of hyperpartisan conclusion-jumping, we need to acknowledge when a person does something good that our assumptions weren't expecting.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Of course I have known about Bianca Jagger for years. Who my age hasn't? But if I am being honest, all I have <i>really</i> known about her could be summed up in three bullet points:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><ol><li>She once was married to Mick;<br /><br /></li><li>She has lent her name to a number of trendy causes; and<br /><br /></li><li>She and Mick once spent an evening with Billy Joel, during which her behavior inspired a hit song about a woman with Dom Perignon in her hand and a spoon up her nose waking up the next morning with her head on fire and her eyes too bloody to see.</li></ol><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">As knowledge goes, that is very, very little -- yet it was enough for me to assume she's probably nothing more than a dime-a-dozen limousine liberal with more money than morals and more self-absorption than self-awareness. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Until this week rolled around and I learned that the 77-year-old native of Nicaragua has named names.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Technically speaking, Jagger took aim at <i>one</i> name, not names, but her aim is notable because it is focused on a notoriously wicked man. It's focused on a man who has been free to wreak havoc for many years because the First World stopped paying attention to him three decades ago: Daniel Ortega.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Ortega is the Sandanista strongman who ruled Nicaragua with an iron fist throughout the 1980's (behind a fig leaf of dubious elections).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Ortega returned to power in 2007 and has been strangling civil and religious liberty ever since. One of his bravest critics in Nicaragua is 56-year-old cleric Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos, who was appointed Bishop of Matagalpa 12 years ago by Pope Benedict XVI.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">On August 4th of last year, government forces arrived at Lagos's house and prevented him from leaving to attend mass at the city's <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/388435536582857987/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Catedral San Pedro</span></a>. They kept him trapped within his home from that day forward, and on December 13th the government charged him with "undermining national integrity and propogation of false news...to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">He was schedued to be tried last month, but on February 10th the government stripped his citizenship and sentenced him to 26 years in prison without trial.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Lagos has not been seen or even accounted for since. Although he is rumored to be at the infamous La Modelo Prison, Ortega's regime has not confirmed this and has given his family no indication of his whereabouts.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Eight days ago Jagger released a <a href="https://twitter.com/BiancaJagger/status/1636839519436546048?s=20" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">video</span></a> in which she directly addresses Ortega and asks him to provide "proof" that Lagos "is alive and in good health," and "to allow me to come to Nicaragua to visit Monsignor Alvarez Lagos."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">She ups the ante by recollecting a time she went to Nicaragua while working for the British Red Cross and "asked the then-dictator Anastasio Somoza to allow me to visit La Modelo, the same prison where Monsignor Alvarez Lagos is supposed to be -- and he did," and also by recollecting an interview in which Ortega claimed "that the person you most admire was Jesus Christ."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Transitioning to referring to Lagos by first name, Jagger says to Ortega: "So now I'm asking you: Will you please let me come to Nicaragua to visit Monsignor Rolando Alvarez? It would be a wonderful action on your part, especially during this Easter season...In the name of Jesus Christ, let me see Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, and let him free. He is an innocent man whose only crime is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Materially speaking, Bianca Jagger has nothing to gain by this.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">She is not doing it to gain points with the in crowd, or to get applause from the media.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">She is calling out a tyrant nobody else in the West is paying attention to, and is putting her own neck on the line by offering to go behind enemy lines, so to speak.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">She is doing this in explicit defense of a Christian believer, at a point in history when defending Christian believers is very much out of fashion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And she is unapologetically grounding her request in Christ's name, at a time when doing anything in his name is monumentally out of fashion in chic circles.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos deserves his freedom. And Bianca Jagger deserves recognition for having convictions, and, more importantly, for having the gumption to stand behind them.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Many thanks to Jay Nordlinger for highlighting Jagger's video in his March 20th Impromptus <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/03/bianca-appeals-c/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">column</span></a>.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-38623989961241860362023-02-26T16:45:00.006-05:002023-03-17T10:48:30.455-04:00About "The" Book, Part Nine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It has been a <i>long</i> time -- one year minus a day -- since I published anything in this series, and frankly <a href="https://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2022/02/about-book-part-eight.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">that</span></a> post wasn't very strong. Which means it is past time to get back in the saddle, especially with Ash Wednesday having come and gone.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I was recently asked to speak online about the Bible to some villagers from Pakisan, and happily said yes. When subsequently asked which Bible passage I would discuss, I felt a bit pushed and rushed (yup, that's one of my character flaws) and hurriedly said "Psalm 40."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I wish I could say I chose that psalm because it's always spoken to me, but that would be a lie. Instead, it popped into my head because at that moment one of my brain cells happened to remember that U2 often closes their concerts by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axEyeurOMxw" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">performing</span></a> an abbreviated version of it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Who am I to ignore a voice that enters my head at a time like that? It could be the "low whisper" mentioned in 1 Kings 19:12, or the "word behind" mentioned in Isaiah 30:21, right? Probably not, but maybe so. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It has been said that "the Bible is meant to be studied, not read," and Psalm 40 provides a good example of why this is true. Only 17 verses long, it fits onto a single page of most Bibes and can be finished in a breeze if you are merely reading the words. I just timed myself and was done in 85 seconds.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We should not merely read words, however. We should pay close attention to what those words are, the context in which they were written, and what they meant at the time the text was composed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Psalm 40 is attributed to King David, who reigned 3,000 years ago and whose native language was probably a nascent form of Hebrew that fizzled out of use even before Jesus was born. But the oldest surviving copy of Psalm 40 is a <i>Greek</i> translation written down centuries after David died. The oldest surviving Hebrew copy was not written down until circa 1,005 A.D., and is actually a translation <i>back into</i> Hebrew from Greek.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the modern English translation I consider my "go-to," the ESV, the psalm's first four verses read as follows:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>I waited patiently for the <span style="font-size: medium;">L</span>ORD;<br /> <span> </span> he inclined to me and heard my cry.<br /></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>He drew me up from the pit of desctruction,<br /><span> </span> out of the miry bog,<br /><span> </span>and set my feet upon a rock,<br /> <span> </span> making my steps secure.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>He put a new song in my mouth,<br /><span> </span> a song of praise to our God.<br /><span> </span>Many will see and fear,<br /> <span> </span> and put their trust in the <span style="font-size: medium;">L</span>ORD.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><span> </span>Blessed is the man who makes<br /><span> </span> the <span style="font-size: medium;">L</span>ORD his trust,<br /><span> </span>who does not turn to the proud,<br /> <span> </span>to those who go astray after a lie!</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is tempting to traipse through these words and pay only slight attention to the adjectives and adverbs, but if you slow down and marinate in them and take each one seriously, you will find there is lots of meat on the bone.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Verse One talks not just about waiting for God but waiting <i>patiently</i> for him, and man oh man isn't that distinction an important one in today's world of short fuses and shrunken attention spans? We should never forget that God freed the Hebrews from Egypt and guided them to the Promised Land <i>after</i> four centuries of enslavement.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Verse Two talks of God not only coming to the rescue, but coming with a rescue far greater than a promotion at work or good score on a test. Rather, he pulls the psalmist from a pit <i>of destruction </i>then gives him a lasting, life-changing gift by <i>securing</i> his steps on a rock (rock was, and in many places still is, the world's foremost symbol of stability and permanence).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Verse Three credits God not with helping the psalmist to sing but with flat-out <i>putting</i> a whole new song in his mouth. And before you perceive something negative from the word "fear" being used, please recall that many words do not transfer directly from one language to another; it is no secret that when ancient Hebrews spoke about fear of God, they were speaking not about being scared but about being in awe, often to the point of trembling.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is not perchance that Verse Three flows directly from referencing fear to referencing trust, with Verse Four then grabbing the baton and proclaiming that those who trust God will be "blessed." We must pay attention to both words, for what this psalm affirms is that God blesses those who <i>trust</i> him.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Now is not the time for my personal testimony, but I do have to mention that for many years trust was a major missing ingedient in my relationship with Christ. When I finally trusted him (and approached him without ulterior motives) he answered my plea by pulling me out of a pit that felt bottomless. It was a pit I had filled with alcohol by drinking sneakily, and heavily, almost every day for years. Had I not come to <i>trust</i> Jesus, I probably would have have died at the bottom of that pit several years ago.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Anyway, the word "trust" is not hidden in the psalm. It's sitting right there in the open. But we are apt to overlook it when we read casually rather than intently.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In June 2020 a professor at Trinity College Queensland, John Frederick, wrote of the Old and New Testaments that "without the Old, we cannot understand the New, and without the New, we have an incomplete understanding of the Old...the New Covenant is incomprehensible apart from what preceded it. The Old is in the New Revealed, the New is in the Old Concealed."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As Psalm 40 progresses, it offers glimpses of what Frederick meant.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In Verses Nine and Ten the psalmist says "I have told the glad news...I have not restrained my lips...I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation." Such lines here in the Old Testament sure seem to foreshadow the importance of carrying out the Great Commission, even though the Great Commission would not be given until after the resurrection of Christ, do they not?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Psalms can't help but be psalmy, of course, so a lament rears its head in Verse Twelve when we read that the psalmist has been "encompassed" by "evils" and "overtaken" by "inquities" more numerous "than the hairs of my head." Nevertheless faithful, he appeals to God for deliverance and the psalm closes with a pair of verses that yet again remind me of foreshadowing: Verse 16 speaks of "all who seek" being able to "rejoice and be glad," while Verse 17 sees the psalmist refer to himself as "poor and needy" without expressing even a scintilla of doubt that deliverance is coming... These sentiments will echo resoundingly much later in history, specifically in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus declares "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3) and promises "seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I had read Psalm 40 before, but for some reason I didn't think of those connections until I perused it again a couple weeks ago. I guess that's a good example of why we should read the Bible more than once and pay studious attention when we do. You never know what it is you're going to glean from it today compared to yesterday. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note</u>: </i><i>If you care to read the previous installments in this series, they can be found here: Parts <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Three</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Four</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Five</span></a>,</span> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-six.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Six,</span></a> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-seven.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Seven,</span></a> and <a href="https://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2022/02/about-book-part-eight.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Eight.</span></a> <span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span></i></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-62740695834733756972022-07-04T11:57:00.002-04:002022-07-04T12:01:42.857-04:00Mankind's Greatest Hour<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3ZSm1Gx1gP0kB7SEF5dQpBlflsXxWzRtjTrqFEJARJyivQ4_JjP8DliIARO-SQ6HdN-k3rOk1pLOsZPk6bC21b7IhALyMwEwQjhWAlTKSdp9oMpglQIh23fZANnX53VO8uZkeR-8bAuKu4RHSoyS_cAMO0p8AQLrDeONTs2M3AzJNEYomn5f98Kj/s1600/DSCF1622.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3ZSm1Gx1gP0kB7SEF5dQpBlflsXxWzRtjTrqFEJARJyivQ4_JjP8DliIARO-SQ6HdN-k3rOk1pLOsZPk6bC21b7IhALyMwEwQjhWAlTKSdp9oMpglQIh23fZANnX53VO8uZkeR-8bAuKu4RHSoyS_cAMO0p8AQLrDeONTs2M3AzJNEYomn5f98Kj/s320/DSCF1622.JPG" width="320" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Today, as we fire up our grills and crack open our beers, let us remember why we even have a July 4th holiday: To commemorate the greatest act of shared, selfless courage the world has ever seen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Everybody should know that Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence. Most people know the names of a handful of the 56 men who signed it, such as John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and of course Jefferson himself. But few people seem to realize that when those men signed their names, they were committing what was considered an act of treason against the British crown, punishable by death. Those men were property owners who were successful in their lives and businesses. Their lives were comfortable and they stood to lose everything by signing the Declaration -- yet they chose to sign it anyway, because they knew that casting off the crown and forming a new government based on individual liberty was the right thing to do, not only for their own descendants but for all of humanity. And here is what happened to some of those men after they signed the Declaration:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five of them became prisoners of war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nearly one-sixth of them died before the war ended.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">British forces burned, and/or looted, the homes and properties of nearly one-third of them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When the British did that to the property of William Floyd, he and his family fled and spent the next seven years living as refugees without income. His wife died two years before the war ended.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After being forced into the wilderness by British forces, John Hart struggled to make his way home. When he finally got there, he found that his wife was dead and his 13 children were missing. He died without ever seeing them again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Richard Stockton was dragged from his bed and sent to prison while his property was ravaged. From the day of his release from prison until the day he died, he had to rely on charity from others to feed his family.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Francis Lewis’s wife was imprisoned and beaten. Meanwhile, his wealth was plundered. His last years were spent as a widower living in poverty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thomas Nelson Jr.’s home was captured and occupied by British General Cornwallis, who used it as what we would now call an operations center. Therefore, Nelson ordered his troops to destroy his own home with cannon fire during the Battle of Yorktown. To assist in funding the war, he used his own credit to borrow 2 million dollars, which today would equal more than 25 <i>billion</i> dollars. Repaying that debt bankrupted him, and when he died he was buried in an unmarked grave.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a safe bet that fewer than one percent of our citizens have ever heard of these people, much less know anything about the devastating sacrifices they made so that future generations could have the freedom necessary to build the kind of upwardly-mobile, always-progressing society we would come to take for granted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a wonderful gift called America, and we owe it to our children to make sure we don’t allow that gift to be destroyed. We should never hear the words “Fourth of July” without feeling a skip in our heart and a tear in our eye.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><i style="font-family: "times new roman";">Much thanks to Jeff Jacoby, the late Paul Harvey, and all the others who have written and spoken about the fates of the signers, to keep their story alive.</i> </p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-24653114254119165512022-05-30T10:43:00.000-04:002022-05-30T10:43:19.474-04:00Memorial Day<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XRdrTTRFB20SXDsh5VPC-wt5KxaXbZcsvpWrawTFSspwdPrrtphYxSfjJDF9r7j8mTqQ16NPcpJGa9EKQRMrlzJbQxKuU_h9GdP4JapAVf0eVWdFJCmoR5V1kqBc9xfWPBdpVkkcJXE/s1600/FNC1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="957" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-XRdrTTRFB20SXDsh5VPC-wt5KxaXbZcsvpWrawTFSspwdPrrtphYxSfjJDF9r7j8mTqQ16NPcpJGa9EKQRMrlzJbQxKuU_h9GdP4JapAVf0eVWdFJCmoR5V1kqBc9xfWPBdpVkkcJXE/w191-h278/FNC1.JPG" width="191" /></a></p><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">Today is Memorial Day -- a day set aside not so we can grill burgers and toss back beers while the kids swim in the pool. It is set aside for the solemn purpose of honoring our servicemen who died while defending America's citizens from the myriad enemies who have sought to drive freedom from our shores.</p><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;">From the first person who perished on Lexington’s village green in 1775, up to the most recent fatality in the Middle East, the list of the fallen is long. Each person on that list made a sacrifice that was ultimate in its earthly finality. We should resolve to do everything in our power to defend America's founding principles against all foes -- domestic in addition to foreign, orators in addition to terrorists -- to ensure that those people did not die in vain.<br /><br />To observe past Memorial Days, I have published a couple letters that were written by soldiers during wartime. Here they are again.</div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This first one was from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, to his wife. He was killed in the Battle of First Bull Run one week after writing it:</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>July 14, 1861<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><i><br /></i></st1:city></st1:place></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><i>Camp Clark</i></st1:city><i>, <st1:state st="on">Washington</st1:state></i></st1:place><i><o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>My very dear Sarah:<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing – perfectly willing – to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And it is hard for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me – perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly I would wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be near you, in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights…always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.<o:p></o:p></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Sullivan Ballou</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i><i>* * * * *</i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This next letter was written by Arnold Rahe, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, with instructions that it be delivered to his parents if he did not survive. He was killed in action shortly thereafter:</div></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Dear Mom and Dad,</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Strange thing about this letter; if I am alive a month from now you will not receive it, for its coming to you will mean that after my twenty-sixth birthday God has decided I’ve been on earth long enough and He wants me to come up and take the examination for permanent service with Him. It’s hard to write a letter like this; there are a million and one things I want to say;<b> </b>there are so many I ought to say if this is the last letter I ever write to you. I’m telling you that I love you two so very much; not one better than the other but absolutely equally. Some things a man can never thank his parents enough for; they come to be taken for granted through the years; care when you are a child, and countless favors as he grows up. I am recalling now all your prayers, your watchfulness -- all the sacrifices that were made for me when sacrifice was a real thing and not just a word to be used in speeches.</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>For any and all grief I caused you in this 26 years, I’m most heartily sorry. I know that I can never make up for those little hurts and real wounds, but maybe if God permits me to be with Him above, I can help out there. It’s a funny thing about this mission, but I don’t think I’ll come back alive. Call it an Irishman’s hunch or a pre-sentiment or whatever you will. I believe it is Our Lord and His Blessed Mother giving me a tip to be prepared. In the event that I am killed you can have the consolation of knowing that it was in the “line of duty” to my country. I am saddened because I shall not be with you in your life’s later years, but until we meet I want you to know that I die as I tried to live, the way you taught me. Life has turned out different from the way we planned it, and at 26 I die with many things to live for, but the loss of the few remaining years unlived together is as nothing compared to the eternity to which we go.</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>As I prepare for this last mission, I am a bit homesick. I have been at other times when I thought of you, when I lost a friend, when I wondered when and how this war would end. But, the whole world is homesick! I have never written like this before, even though I have been through the “valley of the shadows” many times, but this night, Mother and Dad, you are so very close to me and I long so to talk to you. I think of you and of home. America has asked much of our generation, but I am glad to give her all I have because she has given me so much.</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Goodnight, dear Mother and Dad. God love you.</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Your loving son,</i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>(Bud) <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Arnold</st1:place></st1:city> Rahe</i></div><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i>* * * * *</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">God bless them all, and may they never be forgotten.</div></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-74771745692927447672022-04-23T09:01:00.000-04:002022-04-23T09:01:31.193-04:00The Reality<p><span style="text-align: justify;"><i>This post was first published in 2015.</i></span></p><p><span style="text-align: justify;">"Word deflation" has become almost epidemic in our society. For example, above-average sports performances are so often called "great" that the word has lost its meaning.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;">In sports, the word "great" was once worthy of being capitalized. It is supposed to refer to things so extraordinary that they are exceedingly rare, like Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in front of Hitler or Don Larsen pitching a perfect game in the World Series. Instead, it now gets used to refer to an NBA power forward scoring 31 points against a losing team in a regular season game. You can't blame a Millennial Generation sports fan for not finding it strange that Patrick Kane gets described with the same adjective that is synonymous with Wayne Gretzky.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Obviously, there are far more serious examples of word deflation. Those who argue for any military action, regardless of how limited or for what reason, are accused of "warmongering." Those who argue for major tax increases are called "Marxists" even if they've never said the government should control the country's means of production (admittedly, I myself have probably deflated the definition of "Marxist" a few times).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps the most pernicious example, however, is the cavalier use of the word "lynching." When people go public with their passionate opinions and others respond by passionately disagreeing, they often liken the response to "a public lynching." I know someone who said she experienced something "like a public lynching" when a whopping eleven individuals on a private Facebook timeline agreed with a blog post that did not even identify her but did disagree with one of her positions -- never mind that her name was not brought up on the timeline until the ninth of the eleven chimed in, and never mind that two of the eleven had then posted comments saying they would never criticize her by name in a public forum (full disclosure: The "lynch"-inducing <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2015/02/defending-fifty-shades.html"><span style="color: blue;">blog post</span></a> was written by me).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In any event, lynching has an actual definition. It means something specific in the English language, and even more specific in this country. Using it as an analogy for common and unremarkable human behavior (have you ever shared an opinion with five of your closest friends and had all of them agree with you?) is worse than bad form, and these days it happens so much we barely notice it. The problem is, this overuse numbs us to the reality of what lynching actually was and what it still could be. I suspect that when an actual historical lynching gets mentioned, most Americans barely pay attention because they've heard the word so much they've become inoculated against its horror.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I subscribe to the Faulkner school of thought which holds that "the past is never dead," and the Santayana school of thought which holds that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Knowledge of history is necessary for us to appreciate our blessings; to understand how easy it would have been for us to not receive them in the first place; and to realize that there is no guarantee we will continue to have them if we don't bother to defend them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With that in mind, there is no better time than today -- the 116th anniversary of a particular man's death -- to think about what it really means to be lynched.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Newnan, Georgia is roughly 30 minutes from Atlanta and 90 minutes from my college town of Auburn, Alabama. As the seat of Coweta County, it features a handsome downtown and <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Coweta_County_Courthouse.jpg/220px-Coweta_County_Courthouse.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnan,_Georgia&h=234&w=176&tbnid=ymRqBoQzmPy9rM:&zoom=1&tbnh=160&tbnw=120&usg=__0cJd2qt_98kraxV8ozWdGzknU_Y=&docid=NQUq0lk8vMn7IM&itg=1"><span style="color: blue;">attractive courthouse.</span></a> It is the birthplace of gold-hearted country singer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvj6zdWLUuk"><span style="color: blue;">Alan Jackson</span></a> and the current home of a friend of mine from college. The people who live in Newnan are salt-of-the-earth types who treat individuals with respect, and they are that kind of people because their parents taught them to be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But on April 23, 1899, something inhumane happened at Troutman Field just north of town, between Newnan and the smaller burg of Palmetto; and even though the incident garnered national attention at the time, it has been so forgotten in the interim that many of Coweta County's residents, even those from long-established families, have never heard of it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the 1870's a black baby was born in Macon County and given the name Tom Wilkes. At some point in his late teens or early twenties, he adopted the same Sam Hose and moved to Coweta County, where he was employed as a farmhand by Alfred and Mattie Cranford.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On April 12, 1899, Alfred Cranford was murdered in his home when somebody split his head with an axe. Authorities quickly suspected Hose, and in addition to accusing him of murdering Alfred, they also accused him of raping Mattie. The fact that he was fairly new to the area and lacked a local network of friends to vouch for him may have contributed to him being so quickly fingered.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Reports from the time described Mattie as being either "deranged" or "crazed" or "unbalanced" or "unconscious for two days" after the incident. Regardless of whether any of those words were accurate, it does not appear that she ever identified Hose as being either her husband's killer or her own rapist. Nonetheless, a number of prominent people and entities -- namely, the <i>Atlanta Constitution</i>, Governor Allen Candler, the Coweta County government, the town of Pametto, and Capital City National Bank President Jacob Haas -- together offered $1,600 in reward money, which would equal about $46,000 today.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At some point close to when the incident occurred, Hose left Coweta County to visit his mother, who was ill, in Macon County. Some contemporaneous reports indicated that on the day Cranford was killed, Hose requested time off to visit his mother and Cranford denied the request, leading to an argument in which Cranford brandished a gun and Hose used his axe (which he was holding because he had come inside from working) to defend himself. Other reports claim that Hose had already left by the time Cranford was killed, and others of course claim that Hose killed him in cold blood. The bottom line is that nobody knows which is true.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Several days later, J.B. and J.L. Jones, who owned the farm on which Hose's mother worked, were informed by another worker that Hose was on the property at his mother's cabin. Aware of the reward money and seeing dollar signs in their eyes, they conspired with the other worker to lure Hose into a nighttime trap, and thus they captured and bound him on April 22nd.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because they had to personally deliver him to the authorities in Atlanta to receive the reward -- and knew that vigilantes were out to get him, and that newspaper pictures had made his face known to the general public -- the Jones brothers felt the need to disguise him en route to Atlanta. Therefore they covered him with a raincoat to hide his shackles and powdered his skin to make him appear a shade darker. However, their plan didn't work because when the train stopped at Griffin, the last stop before Atlanta, a passenger eyed the trio and alerted railroad workers. Reportedly, someone yelled: "The Palmetto killer! The nigger's here in the cars!"<br /><br />Within moments, vengeance-minded people swept through the train and carried Hose off at gunpoint. A separate train, consisting of only one coach car in addition to the locomotive and coal car, was quickly assembled to transport him to Newnan. Roughly 150 "escorts," most if not all of whom were armed, crammed into it to make sure he did not escape en route. When the train arrived, mob justice was waiting.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sam Hose received no trial. Humans denied him the very rights that the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution assert were given to him by God. Those hallowed documents assert that humans may not deprive their fellow humans of God-given rights, but on April 23, 1899, humans did precisely that to Sam Hose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When we think of lynching, we tend to think... actually, we tend not to think. Instead, we abstractly realize that people died but shrug their deaths off as happening long ago and far away, even though they weren't long ago and definitely weren't far way. We tend to minimize the fact that the deceased were human beings just like ourselves. We don't ponder the sad prospect that at some point in the future, people might consider our lives and experiences to be distant and irrelevant to theirs -- the same way that too many of us consider the lives and experiences of human beings in the 1890's to be distant and irrelevant to our own. Too many of us fail to comprehend that history is a loop in which we are all players, that the actions of people in one generation create circumstances that affect the next; and that for precisely that reason, we must never forget what happened before we took life's stage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When we hear the word "lynching," we tend to think that a person died many years ago but the world has progressed. We tend to think that they were hanged, and in so doing we tend to think that they suffered several seconds of breath-gasping but quickly blacked out and never woke up. We can unwittingly trick our minds into thinking their deaths were fast and not too painful, and the next thing you know, we never get around to contemplating the horror they must have experienced.<br /><br />But here is what really happened to people back when lynching was stunningly commonplace in this ethically conceived nation, and you need not take my word for it -- instead, take the words of articles that were written at the time, like this one from the <i>Springfield Republican</i> of Springfield, Massachusetts, reporting on Sam Hose's death:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body... Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits... (His) heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver... Small pieces of bones went for 25 cents, and a bit of liver crisply cooked sold for 10 cents.</i></div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Notice the nonchalant nature of the words, how the murder of a human being is described as antiseptically as the dissection of a fish in a high school science class... Notice the use of the word "negro" instead of "man"... And keep in mind that Hose being "deprived of" his ears, fingers and genitals (i.e., having them cut off with knives) occurred while he was still alive and very much awake.<br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/At-Hands-Persons-Unknown-Paperbacks/dp/0375754458"><span style="color: blue;">this</span></a> thoroughly researched book by Phillip Dray, Hose kept his fear hidden until he saw sunlight reflect off the blade of someone's knife, after which he pleaded that the mob kill him quickly. Of course, his plea was denied because "the mob's act of retribution would be considered something of a failure if Hose did not die a prolonged, painful death."<br /><br />He was stripped of his clothes and tied to a pine trunk atop a pyre, which had been built of lumber, limbs, fence posts, and railroad ties. Dray provides the following account of the lynching:<br /><br /><i>The torture of the victim lasted almost half an hour. It began when a man stepped forward and very matter-of-factly sliced off Hose's ears. Then several men grabbed Hose's arms and held them forward so his fingers could be severed one by one and shown to the crowd. Finally, a blade was passed between his thighs. Hose cried in agony, and a moment later his genitals were held aloft.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>From the crude incisions he'd suffered, the bound, naked man was soon covered with bright crimson blood from head to foot, and must have appeared at last to be the "black devil" the newspapers had made him out to be all along. It was the last clear glimpse the crowd had of him, for with the command "Come on with the oil!" three men lifted the large can of kerosene and dumped its contents over Sam Hose's head, and the pyre was set ablaze.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>"Sweet Jesus!" Hose was heard to exclaim, and these were believed to be his last words. As the flames began licking at his legs and smoke entered his nose, eyes, and mouth he turned his head desperately from side to side. To the crowd's astonishment he somehow managed to reach back and, pushing with all his might against the tree to which he was chained, snapped the bonds around his chest, bursting a blood vessel in his neck with the strain of his exertions. For a moment it appeared this writhing, half-dead apparition might break free and stagger into the crowd, but the whites rushed forward and, using several large, heavy pieces of wood, pushed him back into the fire and pinned him down. One of these logs was near his head, and with a last desperate effort Hose grimaced and sank his teeth into it, then died.</i><br /><i><br /></i>Word of Hose's capture reached Atlanta before the lynching was carried out. So, too, did word that the lynching was planned, and trains were hastily chartered to transport people to Newnan so they could watch it like spectators at a sporting event. Therefore, when the sun climbed into the sky on April 24th, W.E.B. Du Bois was very much aware of what had happened outside of Newnan the day before.<br /><br />31 years old at the time and already a renowned author, Du Bois had been living in Atlanta for two years. Troubled by what he had already learned while researching lynching, and by the fact that Sam Hose had just been lynched not far from where he lived, Du Bois decided to do something about it. He donned his best clothes, grabbed his walking cane, left his home, and began walking through downtown. He carried with him a letter of introduction to Joe Harris, an editorial writer for the <i>Atlanta Constitution</i> who openly supported black rights and condemned lynching.<br /><br />Du Bois's intention, as he later told it, was to speak with Harris and "try to put before the South what happened in cases of this sort, and try to see if I couldn't start some sort of movement." As he made his way down Mitchell Street, however, he heard that Sam Hose's knuckles had been brought to Atlanta and were on sale at a grocery store mere blocks away. This news delivered a shock that Du Bois said "pulled me off my feet," and likely drove him to fear. It prodded him to turn around and head back home, and his hoped-for meeting with Harris never happened.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><br />That, my friends, is what it means to be lynched. And the victims of every lynching include more than the person who was actually lynched.<br /><br />Consider the case of Sam Hose. He was of course the primary victim, but when you read about the horrors of his final hour, it becomes easy to forget that Alfred Cranford also died a horrific death when the blade of an axe was smashed into his skull eleven days earlier.<br /><br />Then there was Mattie Cranford, who, at best, witnessed the killing of her husband; or, at worst, witnessed his killing and was then immediately and violently raped while his corpse laid nearby. Mattie was only 24 at the time and died just 23 years later, after moving inside of Newnan's town limits and living a sullen life, sewing to support her family and rarely leaving the house<br /><br />Which brings us to the matter of her and Alfred's children. Obviously, they were left fatherless by the events of 1899, but what I did not mention above is that they were also injured during the attack that left their father dead. The youngest son, Clifford, was blinded in his left eye.<br /><br />All black residents in the area were victims, in that they must have lived the remainder of their lives on a razor's edge of fear, knowing what fate could befall them if somebody decided to accuse them of a crime.<br /><br />Hose's mother was a victim, left ill and frail and without her son.<br /><br />The consciences of white people in the area -- those who were sickened by the wickedness of the lynching yet had to keep living amid those who did it -- were also victims<br /><br />Honor was a victim because the Newnan residents who tried to stop the lynching -- one of whom was a former governor, William Yates Atkinson -- never got the recognition they deserved.<br /><br />Truth was a victim because there is no way to know if Hose was innocent or guilty of killing Alfred and raping Mattie.<br /><br />Justice was a victim because Hose was killed without proof of wrongdoing, without even being allowed to defend himself... and justice was also a victim because if Hose was in fact innocent, then it means the killer walked free and remained able to harm others.<br /><br />W.E.B. Du Bois's faith in humanity and the United States were victims, for he lost them both and understandably so. Although he went on to have a long and decent life, often advocating for civil rights and not dying until the age of 95, it is a stain on our history that one of our most brilliant minds wound up feeling compelled to flee into the arms of Communist sympathizing; and I can't help but wonder if the lynching of San Hose was a major reason that happened.<br /><br />And, though it is easy not to think about them, the souls of some of the people who participated in the lynching were victims, as were the souls of some of the people who watched and enjoyed it. It has been said that several perpetrators struggled with emotional problems for the remainder of their days. In 2006, a Coweta County retiree said that an older relative once confessed to having participated in the lynching and to spending the rest of his life struggling to come to terms with his actions that night. The anguish of the guilty in this case was as nothing compared to the anguish of the innocent -- and I suspect it was no different than the anguish of Marley's ghost, who declared "I wear the chain I forged in life" -- yet I do believe that for some of them, it was just as sincere as it was deserved.<br /><div><br /></div><div>But here is the ultimate kicker: The lynching of Sam Hose was not even remotely unique. According to the <a href="http://www.chesnuttarchive.org/classroom/lynchingstat.html"><span style="color: blue;">Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive,</span></a> there were 4,743 <i>documented</i> lynchings in this country between 1882 and 1968, with the victims being black in almost three-fourths of them. This equates to 55 per year, which is an average of more than one per week. That average was certainly higher during the early decades of the period in question, and would probably be higher still if statistics were known for the years between 1865 (when the Civil War ended) and 1882.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lynching was a real phenomenon and was not confined to the distant past. We should never forget that. And when somebody claims that they feel like they were lynched because they were the subject of criticism or jokes, we should tell them we understand that the experience had to hurt -- and then we should gently explain to them what it really means to be lynched.</div><br /><br /><i><u>Addendum</u>: There is an interesting side note regarding Joe Harris, the editorial writer that W.E.B. Du Bois intended to meet with. Although he went by Joe Harris as a journalist, people today are more likely to know him by his full given name, Joel Chandler Harris, under which he wrote the Uncle Remus stories when he was younger.</i><br /></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-1317316378629722362022-04-18T10:06:00.003-04:002022-04-18T10:21:15.104-04:00247 years ago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSdshj19cnKa1UX2FM6iIBIpUpuHz8xL92A0BVNTtbDOou4g3cB8ivNumHmNlasz3BcSPkC4n8at_ZHyvE65Mw8IytPblZvNX4EMfrlGe8nkQ-A27Wn3eE1M0NZPDOIm7P0as6fFo9EPzyMR2N3y7UP739fl5Rth6uGCKlT2PdUUBx-aQJxxSLxHD2/s1680/old%20north%20church.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1680" data-original-width="1120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSdshj19cnKa1UX2FM6iIBIpUpuHz8xL92A0BVNTtbDOou4g3cB8ivNumHmNlasz3BcSPkC4n8at_ZHyvE65Mw8IytPblZvNX4EMfrlGe8nkQ-A27Wn3eE1M0NZPDOIm7P0as6fFo9EPzyMR2N3y7UP739fl5Rth6uGCKlT2PdUUBx-aQJxxSLxHD2/s320/old%20north%20church.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">The hours from tonight through tomorrow morning mark the 247th anniversary of Paul Revere's "midnight ride" and the battles that ensued. It is one of the most significant anniversaries in American history -- perhaps <i>the</i> most significant, because it can be argued that if not for the events that took place on April 18th and 19th, 1775, the United States might never have come to be.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">Tensions between colonists and the royal rulers from the other side of the Atlantic were running high in those days. Though this was true in all of the colonies that would become our first 13 states, it was especially true in <st1:state st="on">Massachusetts, where the monarchy </st1:state>had effectively shut <st1:city st="on">Boston</st1:city> off from the world by blockading its port and quartering large numbers of soldiers within the city.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">It was believed that <st1:country-region st="on">government forces (officially called "Regulars" and derisively called "redcoats")</st1:country-region> would invade the colony en masse, so residents in surrounding towns had been stockpiling munitions to defend themselves. The redcoats targeted <st1:city st="on">Lexington</st1:city> and Concord, the former because revolutionaries John Hancock and Samuel Adams were thought to be there, and the latter because it hosted the <a href="http://www.wpi.edu/academics/Depts/MilSci/Resources/abspro.html"><span style="color: blue;">Provincial Congress</span></a> and was rumored to have a huge stash of munitions the government wanted to confiscate.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">When redcoat forces were detected sneaking from <st1:city st="on">Boston</st1:city> under cover of darkness on April 18th, Paul Revere and William Dawes mounted their horses and galloped into the countryside to warn their fellow citizens. <st1:city st="on">Revere</st1:city> departed from <st1:city st="on">Charlestown</st1:city>, across the Charles River from <st1:place st="on">Boston </st1:place>proper, while Dawes left directly from the city. <st1:city st="on">Revere</st1:city>’s route was the shortest to <st1:city st="on">Lexington</st1:city> and <st1:city st="on">Concord</st1:city>, and thus he was the first to warn their occupants of what was coming.<br /><br /><div class="MsoBodyText2">The next morning, <st1:city st="on">Lexington</st1:city>’s village green was the site of the first skirmish between government forces and the citizen militia known as minutemen. The latter took the worst of it, with eight dead and ten wounded compared to just a single wounded redcoat.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2">The redcoats then marched on to their primary goal of <st1:city st="on">Concord</st1:city>. After arriving and crossing the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">North</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place>, nearly half of them went about securing the bridge while the rest searched for weapons. When wooden cannon mounts were found, they were set afire and before long the flames engulfed a church.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2">Positioned on Punkatasset Hill some 300 yards from the bridge, <st1:city st="on">Concord</st1:city>’s minutemen had been joined by minutemen from neighboring towns, giving them a numerical advantage the redcoats did not anticipate. When they saw the rising smoke, they believed their homes were being destroyed and responded by advancing.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2">Seeing them approach in such numbers, the redcoats retreated back across the bridge. A shot soon rang out, though no one knows who fired it, and within minutes a full-blown battle had transpired in which half of the officers from the government troops were wounded. Disoriented, they fled back toward <st1:city st="on">Boston and a</st1:city>long the way fell under fire from minutemen who had arrived from elsewhere and were hiding behind fences and walls. By the time they made it back to the city, they had sustained more than 200 casualties.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoBodyText2"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2">It was an indisputable defeat for the world’s most powerful military, delivered by ordinary people seeking simply to defend themselves against oppression. The example set by those people ignited the fuse of the American Revolution in such a way that it would not be extinguished.<br /><br />But as with all mass "remembrances" of things that happened long ago, some of the things people assume to be true are not. In the case of Paul Revere's ride, the inaccuracies cut both ways and are of differing levels of importance.<br /><br />Generations upon generations of American schoolchildren have been told that Revere warned farmers and villagers that "the British are coming!" Those schoolchildren have grown up and passed along that telling to their own kids. In reality, however, what Revere said that night was "the Regulars are coming out." That quote is from his own subsequent account, and from accounts of those he warned. It would never have occurred to him to say "the British are coming!" because he himself was British and so was everyone else in the 13 colonies.<br /><br />For Revere to have warned people that "the British are coming" would be like me telling my neighbors that state troopers are entering the neighborhood by saying "the Floridians are coming." It would not have made sense. But by keeping the "British are coming" narrative alive for so long, and casually saying that the subsequent Revolutionary War was against "the British," we citizens of the United States have unwittingly distorted something important about our nation's genesis. Specifically, we have abetted a myth which holds that the idea of individual human beings having rights upon which government may not infringe was born on these shores, in the brains of our Founding Fathers. In reality, that idea -- which I fervently believe and which I do indeed "hold to be self-evident" -- was born not in American colonies of the 1700's but in southern England of the 1200's.<br /><br />A full 558 years before the Boston Tea Party, 560 before Paul Revere's ride, and 561 before the Declaration of Independence, the outline of individual rights that would later serve as the basis for the United States was laid out in <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/magna_carta/"><span style="color: blue;">the Magna Carta,</span></a> in the year 1215. Because human nature is human nature and political power abhors a vacuum, the British government infringed on those rights as the centuries passed, but the Magna Carta did not disappear from the British public conscience. In the 1500's an upsurge of interest in that document was kindled; and in the 1600's, Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke argued in favor of the freedom that was enshrined in it.<br /><br />When our Founding Fathers pushed back against the monarchy of the 1700's, they did not do so with the belief that they were sailing uncharted philosophical waters. They did so because they believed, accurately, that their rights as British citizens had been violated by a British government that was acting counter to British ideals. They considered themselves the true Britons and the rulers from London the false Britons. The notion of a separate American identity decoupled from any British identity probably never entered their minds, yet a separate identity is what came to be. Most Americans living today wrongly believe that a separate identity was part of the plan.<br /><br />I am not sure exactly how to build the bridge between the inaccuracy I just noted and the one I am about to note, so I won't even attempt to build it. However, the inaccuracy is worth noting and there may be no better time to do it than when talking about Paul Revere's ride, so here I go -- and it is related to, of all things, race.<br /><br />I am a history buff who grew up in a house where history was frequently discussed, and I always did good in school, always taking advanced classes, so it says something bad about American schools that I never heard of Crispus Attucks or Peter Salem until I was grown. Rather than learn their names when I studied AP American History, I learned them by reading the text of <a href="http://www.tnj.com/departments/final-word/born-usa"><span style="color: blue;">a speech that was given by Duke Ellington in 1941, </span></a>in which he passionately made the case that black Americans are historically loyal to and historically integral to the United States.<br /><br />Opining that "although numerically but ten percent of the mammoth chorus that today, with an eye overseas, sings 'America' with fervor and thanksgiving, I say our ten percent is the very heart of the chorus," Ellington mentioned that "America is reminded of the feats of Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, black armies in the Revolution..." Realizing that those names had been mentioned with the assumption that listeners knew them (in the era of Jim Crow, no less) got me to researching, and I learned things that most Americans would have a hard time believing.<br /><br />Crispus Attucks was born a slave, circa 1723 in the vicinity of Framingham, Massachusetts, which tells you that slavery was not just a Southern thing. Attucks was the son of a black man and Natick Indian woman, and at some point in his adult life became either a free man or a runaway slave who was not seriously pursued. What is known for sure is that he became a productive rope-maker, seaman, and goods-trader who was known and respected on the Boston docks.<br /><br />On March 2, 1770, five years before Paul Revere's ride, a fight erupted between redcoats and Boston rope-makers. Three nights later, the dispute escalated when five Bostonians were killed by redcoats in an event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre. Many historians consider the massacre to be the first violent act that started history's train chugging toward the Revolutionary War, and because Attucks was the first colonist to die in the massacre, he -- a biracial man born a slave, hailing from the only two races that have experienced systemic legal racism in America -- is considered by many to be the first fatality of the American Revolution. Today you can visit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispus_Attucks#/media/File:Boston_Massacre_victims_grave.jpg"><span style="color: blue;">his final resting place</span></a> in Beantown's third-oldest cemetery.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Peter Salem was also born a slave in the vicinity of Framingham. His original slave master, Jeremiah Belknap, at some point sold him to Lawson Buckminster. In 1775, when Salem was believed to be 25 years old, Buckminster granted him freedom and he enlisted in the Continental Army to combat the redcoats.<br /><br />Salem was literally involved in Paul Revere's ride because he fought as a minuteman during the skirmish in Concord. One week later he enlisted with the 5th Massachusetts Regiment and went on to fight at the famous Battles of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Stony Point.<br /><br />One of the colonists' main achievements at Bunker Hill was the killing of British Major John Pitcairn as the battle unfolded. It is known that Salem was one of the soldiers who shot Pitcairn, and generally believed that his shot was the first to strike him. Salem's role was publicly acknowledged as far back as 1786, when a famous painting by John Trumbull depicted him holding a musket as Pitcairn fell. In 1968, that portion of the painting (excluding the image of Pitcairn on the ground) was reproduced as <a href="http://arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&tid=2034264"><span style="color: blue;">this</span></a> U.S. postage stamp.<br /><br />After the war Salem built a cabin near Leicester, Massachusetts, where he lived most of his remaining days subsisting as a gardener and cane-weaver. He was reportedly well-liked by the townspeople and enjoyed regaling children by telling them stories of the war. Upon his death in 1816, he was laid to rest <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=7339458&PIpi=450539"><span style="color: blue;">at the Old Burying Ground</span></a> in his birth town of Framingham. In 1882 Framingham established an annual Peter Salem Day, and the town still observes his birthday each October 1st.<br /><br />None of which is to deny that slavery was America's Original Sin, or that racial inequality in non-slave areas was American's Original Sin Part 1(b). These historical facts do, however, show that the racial jumble which existed at America's founding was not as cut-and-dry as most people assume. They show that the Revolution was supported by more people than just the rich and "lily white." These things need to be understood and taught in order for future generations to have a true, balanced understanding (and appreciation) of how America got to where it is.<br /><br />The train of history does not follow an inevitable track. It changes direction over and over again based on the actions and inactions of men and women. If a bunch of ticked-off English property owners had not precipitated the drafting of the Magna Carta in 1215... if later encroachments by the British monarchy had not incited people to hold the Magna Carta dear to their hearts... if the likes of John Locke had not later written clearly about the ideals of liberty that were at its heart... if, later still, Adam Smith had not written about how those ideals apply to economics and lead to mutually beneficial free trade... if the Founding Fathers had not read the likes of Locke and Smith, and not sought to re-assert individual rights against the monarchy's despotic aims... if Crispus Attucks, by being murdered along with four other Bostonians in 1770, had not helped make commoners feel antipathy to the crown... if Paul Revere had not chosen to warn colonists with his midnight ride, so that the colonists could prevent the British Regulars from stealing their arms... if Peter Salem had not been at Bunker Hill to shoot Major Pitcairn and deprive the British military of one of its most creative leaders... if America's early abolitionists were not able to point to heroic actions by the likes of Peter Salem, in order to give some of their uncertain countrymen pause and thereby keep their movement alive... well, who knows what would have happened? Those are a lot of ifs, and every one of them was an important link in a very long chain that eventually led to freedom expanding its reach and slavery being abolished in North America.<br /><br />Today is a day for reflection on our shared past, and a time for figuring out how we can learn from that past to decide what course we should take in today's extremely dangerous world. We must take pains to ensure that our national memory first gets strengthened, and that it then gets preserved, if we have any hope of being confident and self-assured as we face the future.</div></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-21250119730022558112022-04-15T06:30:00.003-04:002022-04-15T06:30:56.594-04:00Good Friday<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5lIQvBnTMQW5S-5mdS_4F1hllvWhXXyZBfUcp8M1pnGUH0etJqWj-P-IjLETWK2a2TcjL30jFT_NJNwHWdOK5g8cRteF9izSSM4yN4rJlyBgIgKO9qVv-yAFBMuQY8ETn28NFfIazLK0L-PmFbCoF5fFzDo2H8mUumlN_wHQslYMgWMHwzpvoNiMb/s4032/IMG_0785.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5lIQvBnTMQW5S-5mdS_4F1hllvWhXXyZBfUcp8M1pnGUH0etJqWj-P-IjLETWK2a2TcjL30jFT_NJNwHWdOK5g8cRteF9izSSM4yN4rJlyBgIgKO9qVv-yAFBMuQY8ETn28NFfIazLK0L-PmFbCoF5fFzDo2H8mUumlN_wHQslYMgWMHwzpvoNiMb/s320/IMG_0785.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>This post was first published in 2021.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">My <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/03/resurrection.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">most recent post</span></a> highlighted logical reasons for believing that the resurrection of Jesus actually occurred, and why Christians should not be sheepish about saying so.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Yesterday was Holy Thursday (sometimes called Maundy Thursday) which commemorates the Last Supper, and today is Good Friday which commemorates Jesus's trial, scourging, and crucifixion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The specific year in which those events took place is up for debate, seeing as how the BC/AD delineation (or BCE/CE, if you prefer) was not yet devised, but it's almost certain that it was sometime between 30 and 38 AD. Regardless of the year, the overlapping nighttime hours between the events are when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and Judas betrayed him in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There have been several times I've been in conversation about the importance of prayer and have pointed to a scene from the Gospel of Luke in which, the day before Jesus chose his twelve disciples, he "went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God." I've basically said "he's <i>Jesus,</i> if even <i>he</i> needs to pray, and pray <i>all night,</i> then surely we need to pray too." But as important as that example of praying is, I don't know why I usually cite it instead of the example in Gethsemane -- for the latter is probably the most poignant moment in the entire Bible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because we get so hung up on the idea of Jesus being divine, we tend to forget that he was also fully human while he was here on Earth. He was trapped, as it were, in a human body with all of its limitations and frailties, and therefore with much of the trepidation that can result from those limitations and frailties.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Jesus felt pain just like us, and needed rest just like us. His bones could be broken, his skin torn, his arteries ruptured, etc.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is significant that he did not sin, but the reason that's significant is that he pulled it off while still subject to the lures of temptation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because Jesus was born a baby and had to grow up, he was not born with a brain that already knew his divine nature. That was something he would need to learn as he grew, and it is not clear if he had learned it before he was 12 and Mary and Joseph found him in the temple.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">He felt joy and sadness -- John 11:35 famously records that upon the death of Lazarus, "Jesus wept" -- and, yes, he even felt fear, which fueled his prayer in Gethsemane. Knowing the unthinkably terrifying pain that awaited him the following day, Jesus described himself as "overwhelmed" and asked his disciples to "stay here and keep watch with me." Then he walked "a little farther" and "fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'"</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Thus he asked to be spared from crucifixion, despite knowing full well that crucifixion was the whole reason he was sent here and born of Mary. In fact he asked three times that night to be spared, yet concluded his praying with resignation by saying: "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It is a moment unlike any other in history. In our modern age, it is best captured by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=1Rmv1PmL6q0" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">this</span></a> scene from <i>The Passion of the Christ. </i>It's too easy for us to forget about the fact of Jesus's humanity, and sometimes it's difficult to force ourselves to think about just what his humanity meant; but when you watch that movie, especially the scene I just linked to and <a href="https://vimeo.com/36452854" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">this</span></a> scene of him being whipped, there is no way to avoid thinking about his humanity and suffering.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">On this Good Friday (and frankly, on every other day as well) we should remember Jesus's torment and the reason he willingly endured it. We should appreciate that gift and indulge in it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And as I was getting at earlier, we should remember that prayer is also a divine gift, one that Jesus himself saw need to use, so we should appreciate that gift and indulge in it too.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I have recently been reading <i>Meditations on the Passion and Death of Christ,</i> which was written in the 1860's by somebody I had not heard of until a few weeks ago: Father Ignazio del Costato di Gesu. I don't know if it's the Catholicism or the 1860's authorship that makes its reading seem more slow and its wording more flowery than I am accustomed to -- it's probably both -- but it is definitely worth the read, and on page 17 it contains a sentence that strikes me as something every human being needs to read and commit to memory: "The slightest trouble, or the most unimportant business, distracts you from prayer, and the consequences of neglecting to strengthen your soul with that heavenly food is that you become weak and languid, sink down, and fall into sin."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I can't say it in any better than that, so I won't try.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Have a happy, reflective, and thankful Easter weekend everyone.</p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-91641344622186120162022-04-10T08:46:00.006-04:002022-04-11T22:24:27.433-04:00Resurrection<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIsGro_6eQ4NiTC4OnrtdIZrVVKqJW7LiV8sprzKrpyb6PjuyaIdcCtTYMwLqezD8_WyV8EIJrMf0br5sjT3g4XeRCJQ6uwRyAceD61FS678y1uJ_nZptpK9GSE3wgg-wJmozuRyhPjK8/s320/IMG_2497.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIsGro_6eQ4NiTC4OnrtdIZrVVKqJW7LiV8sprzKrpyb6PjuyaIdcCtTYMwLqezD8_WyV8EIJrMf0br5sjT3g4XeRCJQ6uwRyAceD61FS678y1uJ_nZptpK9GSE3wgg-wJmozuRyhPjK8/s0/IMG_2497.JPG" /></a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>This post was first published in 2021.</i></div><p style="text-align: justify;">Today is Palm Sunday, designated to memorialize a particular day almost 2,000 years ago (specific date unknown) that an itinerant, 33-year-old, rabble-rousing, street rabbi from Nazareth rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We often hear the phrase "according to Christians" or "according to Christian tradition" grafted onto the beginning of articles which go on to state that during the fifth through seventh days after his arrival in Jerusalem, this street rabbi was arrested, sentenced to death, killed by crucifixion, then rose from the dead... and that he then proceeded to spend 40 days walking around, sermonizing to people and instructing his disciples to become apostles by spending the rest of their lives teaching the world about him... and that after those 40 days were up, he departed Earth not by dying but by ascending (being supernaturally teleported, if you will) into Heaven... and that although he was fully human on Earth, he was also God Himself, having chosen to become flesh and bone and to enter the material world in order to engage in a supreme act of spiritual warfare that transcended the material world and reverberated through the supernatural one.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We cannot blame people for using "according to" language when discussing this account. It is not the kind of account that even sounds possible, much less plausible, at first blush -- especially in our modern age here in the Western world.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Even among believers, many (most?) Christians accept the resurrection account with a faith that is divorced from historical evidence. It is fair for critics to refer to such faith as "blind."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But what if there is historical evidence? (There is.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And what if the evidence is so strong that an overwhelming majority of historians, <i>including</i> <i>those who are atheists and skeptics,</i> concede to it? (It is.)</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are six things about which experts in ancient history agree. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I am going to re-emphasize what I said just one paragraph above: Even the experts who are atheists and skeptics agree on the six things, and they do so in overwhelming numbers. The six things are as follows:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>One</u>:</b> Jesus was an actual person.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Two</u>:</b> Jesus died by crucifixion during the governance of Pontius Pilate.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Three</u>:</b> Jesus's body was buried in a tomb.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Four</u>:</b> After his body was buried, both friends <i>and enemies</i> of Jesus claimed to have seen him alive again in the flesh... and their belief about what they saw was so strong and sincere that their behavior was radically and permanently changed, and there is no record of a single one of them ever recanting despite being violently persecuted and some of them even being put to death for their claims.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Five</u>:</b> Resurrection claims were made extraordinarily soon after Jesus's death and were opposed by the entire power structure of Jerusalem, both Roman and Jewish.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Six</u>:</b> Despite that resistance by the power structure, Jesus's corpse was never removed from the tomb and presented as evidence that he had not risen, although that should have been exceedingly easy to do. (In other words, the tomb was empty.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I hope you don't mind hearing my broken record skip yet again, but now I'm going to repeat that these six things are agreed upon even by atheists and skeptics who are experts in the field of ancient history. They are accepted as being true even by professionals who doubt the overall accuracy of the Bible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Of course this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, not in the conventional sense that to "prove" something means to confirm it with absolute, one hundred percent certainty. But then again, <i>nothing</i> can be proved to that degree of certainty.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">People earnestly and fairly disagree about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, and it's not like there are no reasons to question it. Dead bodies are known to stay dead, after all. But in my <strike>humble</strike> opinion, if anybody wants to engage in a serious and objective discussion about this topic, he <strike>must</strike> should acknowledge and account for all six of the above points. I find it noteworthy that after 2,000 years of discussion, debate, disagreement, scholarship, scientific advances, technological advances, archaeological research, and so on, literally <i>no</i> theory other than resurrection has been offered that can account for all six.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The lack of "sufficient alternative" theories is certainly not for lack of trying.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Plenty of alternate theories have been proposed, including the swoon theory, hallucination theory, and stolen body theory, to give just three examples. But while all of the alternates account for some of the six points mentioned above, <i>none</i> of them account for <i>all</i> <i>six</i>. The resurrection theory stands alone.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Resurrection alone accounts for all of the accepted historical evidence. Resurrection alone does so without simply rejecting other theories out of hand. Resurrection alone does so without the luxury of merely ignoring alternate theories.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's easy to blame Western culture in general, and American culture specifically, for the fact that so few people are aware that the case for the resurrection is based on evidence and logic rather than gullibility and superstition, and it is not inaccurate to cast such blame. However, we must blame the church -- i.e., ourselves -- for the fact that Western and American culture has come to this pass.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The reason millions of people, including millions of believers, are clueless about the strong case for the resurrection is that they have never heard it. And the reason they've never heard it is that churches don't teach it to their own congregations.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This is not merely shameful, it is scandalous. It results in people being told from youth to "believe in Jesus" but never being educated as to <i>why</i> they should believe. And so, when they inevitably have questions or doubts and when they inevitably encounter atheist arguments and competing religious claims, their faith often crumbles. They have been set up to fail, sent into battle without armor, tossed into the ocean without a lifejacket, or any other long-odds analogy you want to use.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Why should parents who fail to educate their own children about this topic turn around and criticize "America" for "removing God from the schools"? Why should pastors who fail to educate their own parishioners about this topic turn around and criticize "the culture" for not understanding Christianity or not respecting it?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">If you choose to spend the night naked in the snow, you should not be surprised to find yourself with hypothermia come dawn.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The week that begins today is called Holy Week. Good Friday is on the horizon and Easter is just beyond, ready to send up its rays next Sunday morning.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I think those of us who believe in God -- and especially those of us who believe Jesus rose from the dead twenty centuries ago -- should treat this week as a call to carry ourselves with confidence and without timidity, but also without arrogance.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Like clockwork, Holy Week brings an abundance of documentaries and magazines that superficially acknowledge Easter while unsubtly casting doubt on whether it commemorates an actual event. Christians often respond to these "mainstream media" provocations with irritation or defensiveness, or by withdrawing from the "secular" conversation. But we should not. Instead we should relish these provocations and relish this week, for they present us with a golden opportunity to explain the rational foundations of our faith.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We should take this opportunity and offer an explanation respectfully and cheerfully. It's an almost ironclad guarantee that any explanation other than "I feel it in my heart" will fall upon ears that have never heard it before; and thus it will be heard by people who currently have no idea there is any evidence-based reason for believing in Christianity. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">At the end of the day, when people reject the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, their logical reasoning usually hinges solely on the pre-supposition that nothing supernatural can be real. But if that one pre-supposition gets removed and a person admits that "supernatural" does not equal "impossible," the philosophical ground on which he stands will, by definition, shift beneath his feet. That is a game-changer because it means the historical evidence for the resurrection must be dealt with in order to continue any investigation -- and the historical evidence itself is an aggregate doozy of a game-changer.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">At all times, however, we believers need to remember that very few human beings are wired to remain calm, cool, collected, and accepting when game-changers arrive on the scene and challenge their worldview. If we mention something and somebody reacts negatively, we need to remember that we would probably react the same way if the roles were reversed. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are of course other questions non-believers can raise about Christianity. Why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children sometimes get cancer? Why do natural disasters occur?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Such questions are valid. Believers have them too, and they are troublesome. But they all fall under a single category that C.S. Lewis dubbed "the problem of pain," and they have <i>nothing whatsoever</i> <i>to do with whether or not God is real, whether or not God is Yahweh as identified in the Bible, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, et al.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The problem of pain is a serious one, but it happens to be the only one that believers must wrestle with in the great question of theism versus atheism -- as indicated by the fact that even atheists like Richard Dawkins have recently been reduced to uttering phrases like "the universe has the <i>appearance</i> of design" when they are confronted with evidence. (emphasis mine)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And the problem of pain happens to be one that every religion must grapple with.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Christianity is unique in that it builds its foundation on the singular event of Jesus rising from the dead... and has built its foundation on that event since the early days when it could have been easily disproved... and yet it grew into the world's largest and most far-reaching religion, and remains so to this day.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As Holy Week unfolds we should be gracious, and should not be in anyone's face, but at the same time we should be transparent and unafraid and unashamed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We must not allow anyone to get away with suggesting that we are playing with a weak hand, for nothing could be further from the truth.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note</u>: For the sake of time and space, I did not use this post to specifically tackle each alternate theory that has been offered to address "the six points." Instead I simply (and correctly) stated that none of them explain all six points. If you want to learn more about the alternate theories and why they don't suffice, good resources include writings and/or lectures by Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Nabeel Qureshi, and many others. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KR8S0ShxDE" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">This</span></a> one by Peter Kreeft is especially good for being both succinct and thorough.</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-2337928366931588702022-03-20T19:00:00.003-04:002022-03-20T19:02:58.057-04:00Spring Equinox<div style="text-align: center;"><img height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaLJzvjByOWmkP-1Fnd_rZUuZTHvn78LjCIWkEdaIV2pHisEnppYUGZwc01KL_hZBfl7ejah8WR13o7U2Y8PL5_Zprnz1C9KH98TyzLW3FF4xAf4SZ4L7gSXOhWFnvU8KTvnFCtdV2gJo/s320/running+in+flowers.jpg" width="320" /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><i>Here in the Eastern Time Zone, the vernal equinox occurred this morning at 11:33 -- so here are some thoughts about spring, on its first day</i>:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love how it is often warm and rarely humid.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love that bright, shimmering shade of green that new leaves give to old trees.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love how wildflowers turn ordinary roadsides into vivid profusions of color and life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love going swimming with my kids again, and seeing how Parker runs through the outdoors (see above!).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love sitting outside in the afternoon (and, before I quit drinking, sucking down a margarita) beneath a cloudless blue sky.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love spring training baseball.</div></div><p style="text-align: justify;">And finally, I am riveted by the most intense pursuit in all of sports: the NHL playoffs.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-44016723952102946812022-03-17T17:59:00.005-04:002022-03-17T18:03:05.882-04:00St. Paddy's Day<p style="text-align: justify;"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJSDpELgaoyDoNVnifv4omWwDtp3vy_G61dYFOUXxZQZpAfMZvKAN5npQuZEX7ycgR3YY3gg7SZrkfsYNhYPGU6SHj6lZxXGv4RvZhKQhgJLtk57YE11GScZBsOSZtD7DZjJkVkjAYxZySFNyxkkRrCVxbPjtzoU_aKbRGaYbCDJiIryoVIPEnapxZ=s509" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="509" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJSDpELgaoyDoNVnifv4omWwDtp3vy_G61dYFOUXxZQZpAfMZvKAN5npQuZEX7ycgR3YY3gg7SZrkfsYNhYPGU6SHj6lZxXGv4RvZhKQhgJLtk57YE11GScZBsOSZtD7DZjJkVkjAYxZySFNyxkkRrCVxbPjtzoU_aKbRGaYbCDJiIryoVIPEnapxZ=s320" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></i><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>My drinking days are now behind me but I still enjoy the quirkiness of St.Patrick's Day, so I decided to re-post this piece from eight years ago:</i></p><div style="text-align: justify;">As a child growing up in the U.S., you are told that St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland (true) and that he drove the snakes out of Ireland (false). You are also told that wearing green is the main point of the holiday that bears his name, with failure to do so resulting in you getting pinched.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />As you grow up you see the snakes story for the crock it is, and based on your observations (and eventually on your experiences) you come to believe that the main point of St. Patrick's Day is <strike>pounding</strike> sipping Guinness before and after <strike>stuffing yourself with</strike> dining on shepherd's pie.<br /><br />In many ways, St. Patrick's Day is one oddity of a holiday. It celebrates a genuine Catholic saint, but few of us know anything about him other than the fact that people celebrate him by getting drunk every March 17th... And most of us who celebrate him in the U.S. are <i>not</i> Catholic, instead identifying ourselves as Protestant or even agnostic... And although the holiday is specifically tied to an island with a population smaller than New York City's, it is celebrated around the entire friggin' globe.<br /><br />Jaded, fortysomething Americans such as myself like to say (while consuming a pint of Murphy's Stout and ordering a round of green Bud Light) that St. Patrick's Day is an American construct gussied up in Irish drag. We like to say that it has no real ties to religion, that it goes unobserved in "the old country," and that it is nothing more than an excuse for our alcoholic countrymen to get falling down drunk and chalk it up as "tradition." But we are wrong -- wrong! -- because the Vatican made it an official holiday way back in the 1600's. Even the gluttony/drunkenness thing has some churchy basis when you consider that on March 17th the Vatican lifts the Lenten restrictions on drinking alcohol and eating.<br /><br />Perhaps the diaspora of Irish people explains part of St. Patrick's Day's wide appeal, since the sheer size and extent of their dispersal makes the scattering of Jews from the Holy Land seem trifling.<br /><br />Long ago I remember hearing that there were 4 million people living in Ireland and 44 million Irish people living in the United States... Huge percentages of the populations in Canada's Atlantic provinces, especially Newfoundland and Labrador, are made up of people from Irish stock... An estimated one million people of Irish ancestry reside in Argentina...Ireland accounts for the second largest ancestry group in Australia... etc. etc.<br /><br />When you consider the outsize influence Ireland's diaspora has had on the world, you really start to appreciate the role Irish genealogy plays in our affairs. We know the Beatles as an English band, but all of them except Ringo trace their ancestry to Ireland, not Liverpool...Oscar Wilde made his mark as London's biggest playwright, but was born in Dublin...John Wayne came from Irish stock and so did Maureen O'Hara, the smoking-hot redhead who often starred alongside him and is still alive and kicking at the age of 93.<br /><br />In the decisive decade of the Cold War, America's president was Ronald Reagan and Canada's prime minister was Brian Mulroney. Both were Irish by blood, and together they helped hasten the end of the Soviet Union. In the following decade, Irish-by-blood Tony Blair became the most influential British Prime Minister of the post-Thatcher era.<br /><br />In the sports world, seemingly white-as-can-be boxing champ Jack Dempsey was an American of Irish descent -- and so was seemingly black-as-can-be boxing champ Muhammad Ali, whose great-grandfather was born in County Clare, on Ireland's west coast, before moving to America.<br /><br />Still, genealogy and diaspora can't completely explain the global reach of St. Patrick's Day. Not when Japan (yes, Japan!) celebrates it not just on March 17th but all month long. Not when Russia's notoriously xenophobic government plays a part in staging an annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Moscow. And not when prickly French Montreal also hosts a parade.<br /><br />Some things just can't be explained. And it's often better that way.<br /><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-75313656795942219492022-02-27T13:04:00.005-05:002023-02-20T17:44:29.184-05:00About "The" Book, Part Eight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Some of the Bible's books are so famous that knowledge of them is almost universal. Others, not so much.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">People who have never opened a Bible and never intend to are nonetheless aware that its first book is Genesis. They are also aware that its second book, Exodus, describes the Hebrews' escape from Egypt and 40-year journey to the Promised Land. They are so aware of these books that most of them have properly used their titles as nouns in casual conversation, referring to something's beginning as its genesis and to some long journey or transformation as an exodus.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Then there are books like Habakkuk and Philemon. If those two don't ring a bell, don't feel ashamed. They're in the Bible but many believers probably wouldn't recognize their titles if you mentioned them in passing.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Which brings me to Titus. Over the years I have seen it sitting there in the table of contents, and several times I've seen its actual text fleet across my field of vision while rifling through the New Testament looking for something else. Titus is easy to miss, partly because it doesn't get quoted on tee-shirts and coffee mugs but mostly because it is extraordinarily short:</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXeyGO3E26kfbEFNuS6m7x4wu67ToeNOIAC2F9iAbuPmh6En9p8il_hnP1SKQufdtqxmq7N3BA1Eax85xfFhcLA74FyqQ9FLvySvap3mDx8LWuWkTn8xgZ9vHRSP-D92VEp8Gywct2osFWFYkAdHIuqZJxX-ucujRLie83S6b2QADrJ_Bxx_Wm4iNa" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2949" data-original-width="3459" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXeyGO3E26kfbEFNuS6m7x4wu67ToeNOIAC2F9iAbuPmh6En9p8il_hnP1SKQufdtqxmq7N3BA1Eax85xfFhcLA74FyqQ9FLvySvap3mDx8LWuWkTn8xgZ9vHRSP-D92VEp8Gywct2osFWFYkAdHIuqZJxX-ucujRLie83S6b2QADrJ_Bxx_Wm4iNa" width="282" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The above photo is from a pew bible, which is bareboned by definition, but even my ESV Archaeology Study Bible can't get Titus's text to occupy more than three pages despite fattening it up with large font, study notes, and a pair of sidebar mini-articles.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I read Titus for the first time last Saturday for the simple reason that I thought: <i>Why not? I wonder what it says</i>. And I can tell you that it scores high on the bang-for-buck-o-meter.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As with every book in the Bible, it is important to understand Titus's historical context.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Verse Ten of Chapter One opens with a warning that can be applied to every social or work setting -- "For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers" -- and then it careens into six words that will sound exceedingly strange if you are unfamiliar with history: "especially those of the circumcision party."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Because Jewish males have been circumcised as infants going back to time immemorial, circumcised genitalia was a visual indicator that a man was a Jew in ancient times. Because Christianity involves a fulfillment of the Judaic faith by bringing Gentiles to God in order to fulfill God's plan for humanity, the early days of the Christian church featured some debate about whether Gentile men should get circumcised when they commit their lives to God. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">The biblical book called Titus is one of Paul's epistles (letters) that he addressed to specific leaders of new churches in various parts of the Greco-Roman world. Composed about 30 years after Jesus's crucifixion, it was sent to a man named Titus who was charged with evangelizing the inhabitants of Crete. Titus needed to be aware of false teachings that opponents of the faith might try to spread, and thus "the circumcision party" refers not to some weird event at which converts were subjected to a torturous initiation rite, but rather to people who claimed that converts should be required to get circumcised. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Those people's insistence on convert circumcision was not the big problem, however. That was merely a symptom. The big problem was their overarching demand that Gentiles under the new covenant be subjected to the same pharisaical laws that were applied (and often abused) to ethnic Jews under the old one. Paul considered those people's demand to be heretical, having previously referred to it in Galatians as "a different gospel" that is "contrary to the one you received" and whose teachers should "be accursed." Knowing this makes it clear why he advises in Titus 1:13-14 to "rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">(Twenty-first century disclaimer: Paul himself was Jewish and was not being an ethnocentric bigot when he said "Jewish myths." He was referring not to Judaic <i>people</i> but to certain aspects of the Judaic <i>religion</i>, and his contemporary audience knew that. So if you are currently a college student or member of America's politically correct white intelligentsia, you may now arise from your fainting couch and resume reading.)</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">A reader with an emotional, pre-existing devotion to certain denominational beliefs might easily veer off course if he were to read Titus without paying close attention.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Stressing the importance of good church leadership, Paul instructs Titus to "appoint elders in every town" and then qualifies that by saying "if<i> </i>anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife..." Sadly, some people are always itching for a Protestant-Catholic cat fight and might take the phrase "husband of one wife" and use it to start claiming that today's Roman Catholic Church engages in heresy when it requires its priests to be celibate. Such people should be asked to raise the topic of priestly celibacy another time, since Paul here was referring not to parish-specific priests but to town-specific "elders" and made no mention whatsoever of sex.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Many of those same people will react to Chapter Three like an alley cat who just ingested a few mouthfuls of catnip. One of the great misunderstandings between overzealous Protestants and overzealous Catholics is the former's (false) claim that Catholics teach "works-based" salvation and the latter's (false) claim that Protestants "ignore the importance of works." People from the latter camp might be prone to believe they've found <strike>confirmation of</strike> support for their claim when they read in Titus 3:1 that we are "to be ready for every good work," and also in 3:8 when they read that "those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In between, however, people from the former camp might be prone to believe they've found <strike>confirmation of</strike> support for <i>their</i> claim when they read in 3:5 that God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy..." And of course, overzealous <i>Calvinist</i> Protestants are likely to find a way to construe 3:5 as <strike>confirmation of</strike> support for <i>their</i> belief that God predestines everybody to salvation or damnation before they are even born.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">All of which goes to show why it's so important when studying an ancient text to remove your filters and pay attention to every word... while remembering the context in which it was written... and also remembering to whom, and by whom, it was written.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Which is very, very, very hard to do. We are all predisposed to certain conclusions, and we are all tempted to leapfrog straight to them when we perceive a fitting opportunity to do so.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But leapfrogging springs you up in the air for a bit, and while you're up there you might not see a beautiful flower on the ground that you were supposed to stop and smell.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I think the dichotomy between faith and works is a false one, not a real one, but many people strongly disagree with me about that. Those whose theological ears are highly tuned to the "real dichotomy pitch" might overlook the importance of some other lessons interwoven into Chapter Three, such as when Paul counsels in 3:2 to "speak evil of no one" and "show <i>perfect</i> courtesy to <i>all</i> people" (emphasis added); and when he stresses in 3:3 that "we ourselves were once foolish...slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy"; and especially when he admonishes in 3:9 to "avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There is a lot going on in Titus.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The college kids and white intelligentsia I chided earlier <strike>will</strike> might instinctively and wrongly reach for smelling salts when they encounter the word "submissive" in Chapter Two.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As somebody who enjoyed reading <i>Bartlett's</i> even as a kid, I have a fondness for great quotes and therefore was thrilled to come across this pearl from 1:15: "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure..."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">On a lighter note, I found it amusing that Titus bluntly says a man must not be "a drunkard" (1:7) yet takes a more nuanced approach when it comes to women by saying they must not be "<i>slaves</i> to <i>much</i> wine" (2:3, emphasis added).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are a couple other things in The Epistle of Paul to Titus that I would like to elaborate on... but I am not skilled at keeping things brief, and this blog post already contains more paragraphs than the epistle itself, so for now I think I'll just call it a day!</p><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #1</u>: Since I mentioned priestly celibacy I feel like I should say that I'm Methodist, not Catholic, and have spent no time at all thinking about whether priestly celibacy is biblical, unbiblical, smart, stupid, or neutral.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><u>Note #2</u>: If you care to read the previous installments in this series, they are here: Parts <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Three</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Four</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Five</span></a>,</span> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-six.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Six,</span></a> and <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-seven.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Seven</span></a><span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-42579260945977290742022-01-15T10:30:00.000-05:002022-01-15T10:30:00.240-05:00MLK, Born Today<p><span style="text-align: justify;">Next Monday is set aside as Martin Luther King Day. But today is his real birthday, and he would be turning 93 had he not been met by an assassin's bullet on that "early morning April 4" (though with apologies to Bono, it was actually in the evening when the shot rang out in the Memphis sky).</span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But I digress. Rather than wait until the generic third-Monday government-declared day of recognition, here are some of MLK's best quotes:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law…This would lead to anarchy…I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Anyone who lives in the <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place> can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i><i>...I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo…If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. The note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>…we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br />A man can’t sit on your back unless it’s bent.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>…right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>…I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Birmingham</st1:city></st1:place>, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in <st1:city st="on">Birmingham</st1:city> and all over the nation, because the goal of <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place> is freedom…If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.</i><br /></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-29161873948181964082021-12-30T09:52:00.012-05:002022-01-06T08:05:43.525-05:00About "The" Book, Part Seven<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDksjM9SUl9ly2-m5cZjLd1l0Vgb5N5K0PLGsgUQUniN_hT0ul4MeqQVw1r5HECEAQjcC4WssCOlzBML1GKG9gxQ2Xz6Rq2pR55yoD_XFEQVXqJJ3fawS-5yg6IsbusP4B3RD7drMqKU/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDksjM9SUl9ly2-m5cZjLd1l0Vgb5N5K0PLGsgUQUniN_hT0ul4MeqQVw1r5HECEAQjcC4WssCOlzBML1GKG9gxQ2Xz6Rq2pR55yoD_XFEQVXqJJ3fawS-5yg6IsbusP4B3RD7drMqKU/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Earlier this year, a lifelong friend of mine commented on Facebook that "the Bible is meant to be studied, not read."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Being acutely aware that brevity is not my strength, I felt a bit jealous that she was able to summarize such a profound truth in so few words!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And this month I was reminded of her comment while reading (yes, only reading) the Gospel of Luke.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The books of the Bible contain many passages that seem odd, counter-intuitive, and headache-inducing when you're reading them in English and wondering exactly what point the author was trying to make to his original audience. Luke 16 offers up a sterling example with the parable of the dishonest manager (or as it is sometimes called, with a dash more poetry, the parable of the unjust steward).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you're not familiar with the parable, the gist is that a rich man is told that a manager who works for him is "wasting his possessions," so he fires him and tells him to "turn in the account of your management." With unemployment looming and him being too weak "to dig" and too proud "to beg," the manager devises a scheme to get into people's good graces so that they might "receive" him in his hour of need -- specifically, he conspires with each of his master's debtors and cooks the books to make it appear that they owe far less than they really do.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As stories go, that is straightforward. But some of the words Jesus speaks immediately after telling it are puzzling, starting with his statement that "the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness." While that makes sense from the perspective of grudging admiration, it seems more than a little strange to hear Jesus talk about a "dishonest manager" being "commended" for a specific dishonesty and <i>not</i> talk about him suffering any consequences for it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As he continues, he says "I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Come again? To modern ears, this sounds like the savior of the world is telling us to engage in underhanded behavior in order to be rewarded in Heaven. But if you are even modestly familiar with his overall teachings, you instinctively know he <i>can't</i> be telling us that. So what gives?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It could be that "unrighteous wealth" (which is sometimes rendered as "worldly wealth") was a contemporaneous term for any assets that were material rather than spiritual. Since material assets are what get used in human commerce, Jesus might be telling us to use them to create relationships that can be cultivated to seek God and achieve something greater.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Or as explained <a href="https://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Christian_Political_Economy/unrighteous_wealth.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> it could be that "unrighteous wealth" (<i>mammona adikia</i> in the original Greek) really was intended to mean assets unfairly obtained -- with Jesus wanting us to make things right by giving those assets away (if possible, to those from whom they were taken) with the understanding that we will be honored with heavenly rewards.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Or, it could be that "unrighteous wealth" was at that time intended to mean something else I haven't thought of.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The thing is, most people have no (or little) experience reading the Bible and little knowledge of actual Christian teaching, so if they were to read this passage they might come away thinking it means the very opposite of what it means -- and you can be confident that opponents of the Christian faith will use this passage to claim that God condones immoral behavior.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The same gospel serves up another seemingly unclear sequence a bit later, in chapters 22 and 23.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After Jesus is arrested, he gets taken before the Jewish religious leaders and Luke 22:70 tells us: <i>And they all said, "Are you the Son of God, then?" And he said to them, 'You say that I am."</i> To our ears that answer is neither yes nor no... but to their first century Jewish ears it was an unambiguous "yes," so they hauled him off to be tried by Pontius Pilate.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then Luke 23:3 tells us: <i>And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so."</i> Once again, to our ears Jesus is giving an answer that is neither yes nor no... but to Pilate's first century Roman ears, it was a "no."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So the Jews and Pilate listened to the same approximate phrase coming from the exact same lips and interpreted it oppositely. The "chief priests and scribes" heard it as a confession to a capital crime, whereas Pilate heard it and, according to Luke 23:4, "said to the chief priests and the crowds, 'I find no guilt in this man.'"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although most Americans know that Jesus's arrest and trial resulted in him being executed, most of them haven't actually read the Gospel of Luke. So if they were to open it up and peruse it for the first time, they would probably think something along the lines of "What? I don't get it, that doesn't make any sense" -- and you can be confident that opponents of the Christian faith will use those verses to claim that biblical stories don't add up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After reading Luke 23:3, most Americans probably wouldn't spend much time pondering why Pilate interpreted Jesus's words as a non-confession to a crime that doesn't seem to warrant execution anyway. But after reading Luke 22:70, most of them probably <i>would</i> wonder why the religious leaders interpreted Jesus saying "you say that I am" identically to him saying "yes I am."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The answer lies in the fact that Jesus was a rabbi who in Luke 22:70 was speaking to rabbis. Therefore he responded to them in the rabbinic style, by which, according to <a href="https://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/luke/22.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">these</span></a> pulpit commentaries at biblehub.com, "such an answer (means) the one interrogated accepts <b>as his own affirmation</b> the question put to him in its entirety."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But to learn that you must (gasp!) look outside of the Bible, and this is just one drop in a sea full of examples that require you to look outside of its text to understand what is being communicated inside its text.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, yes, the Bible is meant to be studied not read.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And unless you're some kind of prodigy, studying it is going to involve looking beyond its pages.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is why I think telling people to "read the Bible" is not always good advice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>If you care to read the previous installments in this post, they are here: Parts <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Three</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Four</span></a>, <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Five</span></a>,</span> and <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/12/about-book-part-six.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Six</span></a><span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-20181583492828441722021-12-24T18:14:00.000-05:002021-12-24T18:14:28.024-05:00A Christmas Miracle<p> <i style="text-align: justify;">I published this post 13 years ago and i</i><i style="text-align: justify;">t feels right to do it again:</i></p><div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">My grandfather passed away two months ago. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I have wanted to write a post about him ever since, and there are a thousand things I want to say in that post, yet it remains unwritten for one very unmovable reason: I have no idea where or how to start saying those thousand things. When a man lives 81 years, has 39 direct descendants, and impacts not only his family but countless other people as well, how can you sum up his life in a handful of paragraphs? You can’t. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But I do not have that problem when it comes to writing about Granddaddy and Christmas, after the way they converged three years ago. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Granddaddy’s love of God, family, and country; his zeal when talking about those things to anybody with whom he came into contact; his faith in the perfectibility of man; his irrepressible Scotch-Irish mischief; his unsurpassed diligence in everything to which he set his mind or his hands – those qualities will all be written about in time, but for the purposes of this post, suffice it to say that in the last few years of his life they were cruelly stolen by Alzheimer’s disease. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His mental sharpness started to dull about five years ago. In 2005 his memory faded as well, and the fading was fast. He carried on conversations with Nana without realizing it was her. Remembering how she looked in their youth but not in the here and now, he said things like “I wonder when Peggy’s going to come home” while looking into her very eyes. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When he and Nana arrived at our family’s 2005 Christmas Eve party, nobody expected to be recognized by him. Because I did not want to confuse him by addressing him in a way that would suggest he was speaking to his grandson, and because I knew his recollections of battling the Nazis remained vivid, that night I simply called him “Corporal.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He asked if I was in the Army like he had been, and I told him I was not because of my diabetes. I told him that we nonetheless had some similarities, because just like him, my last name was <st1:city st="on">Stanton</st1:city> and my blood carried Scotch-Irish genes. He nodded and said it was good to meet me. He said I should come around again sometime. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Everyone at the party walked a tightrope, balancing holiday cheer on one hand with the sadness of loss on the other. The man we loved, who had known each of us by name just a year earlier, had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But as the night started to grow long, something sparked inside Granddaddy’s mind. When most of us were assembled in and around the kitchen, he “addressed the room” and said it was great that we were there. He did not specifically acknowledge that we were all family; however, when he looked at my Aunt Sharon, the third of his five children, a glint appeared in his eyes and he spoke the word “daughter.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He and Nana stood on the driveway as the party wound down. I stood there too, as did several others, hoping to give Nana some sense of normalcy. But it turned out that our presence was not needed, for while Venus shone brightly like the Star of Bethlehem, Granddaddy came back as if by magic. Looking up at the Milky Way, he spoke to Nana by name and said: “Peggy, I’m trying to remember the night we got married.” Some minutes later, when he said goodbye to each of us, his face bore a look of recognition and for that moment it no longer seemed that there was a stranger trapped in his body. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As his wife of 59 years drove him back to the house they had called home for 53 years, they talked about their life and their family and it was as if the dementia had never been. After finishing that 45-mile excursion from rural <st1:placename st="on">Hernando</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">County</st1:placetype> to urban <st1:city st="on">Tampa</st1:city>, they sat up late into the night conversing and reminiscing and sharing life’s small but inimitable joys. They lay down in bed like they had done so many times through the years, and for that one holy night Granddaddy was Granddaddy again: John Stanton, Jr., child of the Great Depression, survivor of the <st1:city st="on">Battle</st1:city> of the Bulge, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, pastor, proud but humble, flawed but good.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When the sun rose, the dementia was back and my grandmother's husband, as she knew him, never returned. But they had gotten that one last night together on Christmas Eve, and had gotten it after everyone assumed it was not possible. As Nana said: “That was my Christmas miracle.”</div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-63312347751296881492021-12-23T20:11:00.000-05:002021-12-23T20:11:23.517-05:00A Carol Born<div style="text-align: justify;">When it comes to carols, I have always found “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” to be especially poignant (if you're not familiar with it, you can listen to it <a href="http://www.actionext.com/names_c/carpenters_lyrics/i_heard_the_bells_on_christmas_day.html"><span style="color: #3333ff;">here.)</span></a></div><div align="justify"><br />It did not begin as a song, but as a poem written on Christmas morning by America’s greatest poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, more than 150 Christmases ago. At that moment in time America was torn apart and battling itself in the Civil War – a war that still stands as the one in which more Americans died than in any other.<br /><br />When dawn broke that morning, Longfellow was despondent. During the war his son Charles had been horrifically wounded when a bullet passed through part of his spine, leading to a long and excruciating recovery. And as if that wasn’t dark enough, his wife Frances had died as a result of burns sustained when her clothes were set on fire by dripping sealing wax, which she was melting with the intention of using it to preserve some of their daughter’s trimmed curls.<br /><br />But despite that sorrowful backdrop, as Longfellow sat in his Massachusetts home on Christmas and heard the ringing of local church bells, his faith in divine promise started to stir and he was moved to put pen to paper. The resulting poem was transformed into a hymn nine years later, when John Baptiste Calkin composed the music to which it was set.<br /><br />The poem’s words absolutely speak for themselves. Since some of them are excluded from the carol we normally hear this time of year, here they are in their entirety:<br /><br /><em></em><br /></div><div align="justify"><em>I heard the bells on Christmas Day<br />Their old, familiar carols play,<br />And wild and sweet<br />The words repeat<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<br /><br />And thought how, as the day had come,<br />The belfries of all Christendom<br />Had rolled along<br />The unbroken song<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<br /><br />Till ringing, singing on its way,<br />The world revolved from night to day,<br />A voice, a chime,<br />A chant sublime<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<br /><br />Then from each black, accursed mouth<br />The cannon thundered in the South,<br />And with the sound<br />The carols drowned<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<br /><br />It was as if an earthquake rent<br />The hearth-stones of a continent,<br />And made forlorn<br />The households born<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!<br /><br />And in despair I bowed my head;<br />“There is no peace on earth,” I said;<br />“For hate is strong,<br />And mocks the song<br />Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”<br /><br />Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:<br />“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;<br />The Wrong shall fail,<br />The Right prevail,<br />With peace on earth, good-will to men.”</em></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-42108496881354284802021-12-22T08:38:00.001-05:002021-12-22T14:17:39.623-05:00The Real Saint Nick<p style="text-align: justify;">History provides many examples of actual people who have, over time, become so melded into the popular imagination that we tend to forget they were real. Saint Nicholas is one of them.</p><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">Born sometime around 280 A.D. in the town of <st1:city st="on">Patara</st1:city>, in what was then part of <st1:country-region st="on">Greece</st1:country-region> but is now part of <st1:country-region st="on">Turkey</st1:country-region>, Nicholas was the son of wealthy parents who died when he was young. Having been raised as a devoted Christian, he spent his life using his inheritance to help those in need, and in addition to his charity he became known for harboring great concern for children and sailors.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">Down through history, one particular story about his generosity has persisted. In those days, women whose families could not pay a dowry were more likely to die as spinsters than to get married. It is said that when Nicholas learned of a poor man who was worried about his daughters’ fates because he lacked money for their dowries, Nicholas surreptitiously tossed gold into the man’s home through an open window, and the gold landed in stockings that were drying by the fire. Much later, this 1,700-year-old story inspired the modern tradition of hanging stockings by the chimney to receive gifts from Santa on Christmas Eve.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">Nicholas became Bishop of Myra and was imprisoned during the anti-Christian persecutions carried out by the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Based on the stories of his life, Catholic tradition considers him a patron saint of children, orphans, sailors, travelers, the wrongly imprisoned, and many other categories of people. Churches were constructed in his honor as early as the sixth century A.D. Today, his remains are buried in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bari</st1:city>, <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region></st1:place>.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify;">For generations now, kids and adults alike have used the names Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, and Saint Nick interchangeably, without giving it a second thought. But there was an actual Saint Nicholas, a decent man who is obscured by commercial renderings of Christmas. We should not allow that fact to be forgotten, regardless of whether or not we are Catholic (and for the record, I am not).</div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-10137626223662717362021-12-21T20:50:00.000-05:002021-12-21T20:50:02.164-05:00Winter Solstice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHVmOus6efxVQuQvyttDueo-Bot6oV1zukuD9VcEo4PdA8cq9l208-oywAz225Hku8Ly6TsENhOpI6x-n77q9uD5kpTP_byrmTS1KYphQL4sV_1lMXkJOJn6ajjqL-BBoRhaem_PEt1I8/s1600-h/paradecontest17.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282205985926684098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHVmOus6efxVQuQvyttDueo-Bot6oV1zukuD9VcEo4PdA8cq9l208-oywAz225Hku8Ly6TsENhOpI6x-n77q9uD5kpTP_byrmTS1KYphQL4sV_1lMXkJOJn6ajjqL-BBoRhaem_PEt1I8/s320/paradecontest17.JPG" style="display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 239px;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Here are some thoughts about the year’s coldest season on this, its first day:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love how it begins with evergreen boughs on mantles, lighted trees in village squares, carols on the radio, and people knowing that life’s greatest joys come from giving rather than receiving.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love its chilly mornings when fog clings to the surfaces of ponds.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love sitting outside on those mornings drinking hot black coffee.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love watching Sarah try to catch snowflakes on her tongue during our winter vacation.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love driving across <st1:state st="on">California</st1:state>’s High Sierra between snow drifts so deep they soar above cars and turn roadways into tunnels of white.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love walking through Appalachian forests that are barren of leaves but laden with snow, and therefore have the appearance of black-and-white photos come to life.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And finally, I love that I can spend a whole day outside in <st1:state st="on">Florida</st1:state> without feeling the need to shower every hour.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="text-align: justify;">So for those who curse the cold: Remember that every season brings beauty, so long as we stop to notice it.</span><div><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-5041298722724399752021-12-08T06:38:00.004-05:002021-12-08T16:26:28.880-05:00About "The" Book, Part Six<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDksjM9SUl9ly2-m5cZjLd1l0Vgb5N5K0PLGsgUQUniN_hT0ul4MeqQVw1r5HECEAQjcC4WssCOlzBML1GKG9gxQ2Xz6Rq2pR55yoD_XFEQVXqJJ3fawS-5yg6IsbusP4B3RD7drMqKU/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDksjM9SUl9ly2-m5cZjLd1l0Vgb5N5K0PLGsgUQUniN_hT0ul4MeqQVw1r5HECEAQjcC4WssCOlzBML1GKG9gxQ2Xz6Rq2pR55yoD_XFEQVXqJJ3fawS-5yg6IsbusP4B3RD7drMqKU/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." (Matthew 2:1-2)</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p>When you look at those two verses, you will see that they are contained within what is really just one sentence -- a sentence that evokes some of the largest and most important mysteries in all of history.</p><p>We are accustomed to nativity scenes showing the Magi as three wise men positioned near Mary and Joseph, gazing down upon the infant Jesus. A famous carol describes them in the first person: "We three kings of Orient are / bearing gifts we traverse afar / field and fountain, moor and mountain / following yonder star."</p><p>But nowhere in the Bible does it say there were three of them. What it says is that when the Magi arrived where Jesus was, they "presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh." This mention of three gifts apparently gave rise to the notion that they must have been three men.</p><p>The image of the Magi seeing Jesus as an infant is almost certainly wrong, for the Bible says "the star went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the<i> child</i> was." (emphasis mine)</p><p>A fair reading of the biblical text is that the Star of Bethlehem, whatever is was, appeared in the sky when Mary gave birth to Jesus; that some men in "the east" saw it and were aware of what it signified; that they then traveled a great distance, using the star as a kind of celestial guidepost; and they finally arrived to see Jesus after so much time had passed that the word "baby" no longer applied.</p><p>However, the specific number of Magi and specific age of the young Jesus are but piddling curiosities compared to the larger mysteries.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p><i>Who</i> were the Magi and <i>where</i> did they come from?</p><p>They were obviously wise, for they knew the meaning of the star. But how did they know it?</p><p>They were evidently not Jewish, so why did they grasp the meaning of the star and actual Jews did not?</p><p>Was the star even visible to anyone else, or was it revealed only to the eyes of the Magi? And if it was revealed only to them, we are back to asking: Why them?</p><p>And where exactly in "the east" were the Magi's homes, for it seems like they came not from just on the other side of the Dead Sea, but from <i>way</i> to the east. Many scholars believe the Magi hailed from Persia (approximately 850 miles away) and many believe that at least one of them hailed from Piravom, India (more than 4,000 miles away). Doesn't this make the question loom even larger: <i>How did they know what the Star of Bethlehem was, and why were they looking for it?</i></p><p>And by the way, what exactly <i>was</i> the Star of Bethlehem? Was it a comet? A supernova? An alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, or Jupiter and Venus? None of the above?</p><p>I get the impression that most people think it was some sort of heavenly body whose position in the sky shifted somewhat from night to night -- as is the case with all heavenly bodies other than the North Star -- however my take is different. To my ears, a "star" appearing at an appointed time and going "ahead" of the Magi to guide them sounds like a carbon copy (if not an outright recurrence) of the pillar of fire from Exodus 13:21, which had previously led the Hebrews by night during their long journey from Egypt 1,300 years before. I am shocked that I never hear this speculated about, but surely I'm not the only person to notice the parallel.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p>Judaism and Christianity both hold that the god of the Bible, aka the god of Israel, is the one true god. His name was revealed to Moses as four ancient Hebrew consonants, YHWH, and its pronunciation/spelling in English has been handed down as Yahweh.</p><p>Belief in a Messiah flows from multiple Old Testament verses. Intriguingly, a similar belief is also visible if you glimpse through the lenses of Hinduism (which talks of a final avatar descending to the material world) and Buddhism (which talks of various bodhisattvahs opting to reincarnate in the material world until they have accomplished their goal of helping others attain nirvana).</p><p>Christianity holds that Yahweh is a trinity, meaning he is one deity who acts through three distinct personas: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son is manifested by Yahweh entering the material world in human form, which he did 2,000 years ago when he took the name Jesus and presented himself as the promised Messiah.</p><p>Christianity further claims that Jesus's appearance as the Messiah cemented God's offer of salvation to all of humankind, and that Jesus will return again at some point in the future.</p><p>Christianity affirms that Jesus's divinity was proved by him accepting the most excruciating punishment imaginable, that of death by scourging and crucifixion -- the very word "excruciating" is derived from "cruc," which is Latin for cross -- and coming back to life in the same human body three days later.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p>Based on reason combined with historical evidence, I believe that the resurrection of Jesus did take place. But opining about that topic is not the purpose of <i>this</i> post, so for right now I am simply going to toss out the name Dennis Prager and then turn to some interesting passages from the Bible.</p><p>Prager is a devout Jew. Although he does not believe in the divinity of Jesus, he is a big fan of Christianity and describes it as "a divinely inspired religion to lead people to the god of Israel." I am an American mutt who does believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I wholeheartedly agree with Prager's assessment of my faith.</p><p>It is true that, in Deuteronomy, God tells the Hebrews they are "chosen" by him from among "all the peoples on the face of the earth." </p><p>It is also true that in Genesis, when speaking to Noah, God refers to "the covenant I have established between me and <i>all</i> <i>life on earth</i>." Also in Genesis, he tells Abraham that "<i>all peoples</i> <i>on earth</i> <i>will be blessed</i>." (emphasis mine)</p><p>Much later in history, in Isaiah, God tells the Hebrews that they are to be "a light <i>for the Gentiles</i>" and that "my house will be called a house of prayer for <i>all nations</i>."</p><p>Although the Egyptians enslave the Hebrews, that does not stop God from assisting the Egyptians in Genesis by warning Pharaoh of the coming famine, so that they can prepare for it during the preceding years of plenty. Nor does it stop God, in Isaiah, from calling the Egyptians "my people" and vowing to "bless" them.</p><p>God refers to Cyrus II, the pagan king of Persia, as his "anointed."</p><p>The Assyrians of Nineveh were behaving wickedly, and God was so concerned for them that he ordered Jonah to travel there and minister to them.</p><p>In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the disciples: "I am the good shepherd...I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen."</p><p>And that passage about different sheep from different pens seems all the more tantalizing when you consider another account, one which appears in the gospels of both Mark and Luke. In that account, the disciples are troubled to see a stranger performing exorcisms in Jesus's name. That must have seemed sacrilegious to them, so they attempted to stop him; but when they reported this to Jesus himself, they were surprised to hear him respond by saying "do not stop him." Jesus proceeded to explain that "whoever is not against us is for us," and "anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will surely not lose their reward."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p>No, God is not an ethnocentrist. He is not some petty bureaucrat dispensing benefits based on demographic bean-counting. He does not bestow favors on any group(s) of humans at the expense of any other group(s) of humans.</p><p>God's hand is always outstretched to all, waiting for us to accept it by extending our own and putting our fears aside.</p><p>Many twenty-first century ears automatically and unthinkingly misinterpret such terms as "chosen," "saved," and "damned." They misinterpret them by filtering them though the cracked prism of contemporary Western culture. That prism is blemished by suffocating self-focus and superficial identity politics. It fails to place words in the proper contexts of when they were written and spoken, and to whom they were immediately addressed. Filtering everything through this cracked prism is, shall we say, not always a positive.</p><p>Christmas is a season of hope and promise for everybody. That is just as true in 2021 -- when so many people remain addled by anxiety over politics and Covid, whether rightly or wrongly -- as it has been ever since Jesus was born in Bethlehem two millennia ago.</p><p>My prayer is that we reflect on the true meaning and basis for this season and that do it openly and lovingly, with neither embarrassment nor shame.</p><p>Merry Christmas.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><u>Note</u>: While I am publishing this post today because it fits right into my "About 'The' Book" series that I started in August, I must admit that it is a tweaked and very slightly revised copy-and-paste of one I published last year under the headline "Yuletide Wonderings." Lately I have had very little time to write, but the "About 'The' Book" series will resume soon, probably in January. If you have any interest in reading it, the first five posts are <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a></span> </span>and <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-book-part-five.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> respectively.</i></p><p><br /></p></div></div>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-89223142958260400542021-12-07T07:02:00.001-05:002021-12-07T08:27:21.751-05:00Never Forget<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5oBAw5ZOMWBxO8-WvvMuR6dEUUephcPMClffZb2qv1WvMhcci-3qnfJSH8F0SjMZCTOKd1ojohB64oqrKqUeR21xdfkz-DTopmPbhpgBc6DZnD0QcMGX-N1KZNei5EIkTtSAyCZPWHnI/s2508/20181111_124257.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="2508" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5oBAw5ZOMWBxO8-WvvMuR6dEUUephcPMClffZb2qv1WvMhcci-3qnfJSH8F0SjMZCTOKd1ojohB64oqrKqUeR21xdfkz-DTopmPbhpgBc6DZnD0QcMGX-N1KZNei5EIkTtSAyCZPWHnI/s320/20181111_124257.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">Today is the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, so let us all pause and recall what happened eight decades ago.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The day after the bombing, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed Congress on December 8, 1941, to request a formal declaration of war. His speech was simulcast to the country at large via the radio. In it, he said:</p><div align="justify"><br /><em>Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.<br /><br />The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack…<br /><br />Yesterday the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.<br /><br />Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.<br /><br />Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.<br /><br />Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.<br /><br />Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.<br /><br />And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island…<br /><br />Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves…<br /><br />Always will be remembered the character of this onslaught against us.<br /><br />No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory…<br /><br />With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.</em><br /><br /><br /></div><div align="justify">Pearl Harbor was attacked because it was where the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet was headquartered. The bombing, which killed more than 2,400 people, began shortly before 8:00 on a Sunday morning.<br /><br />Five of our eight battleships were sunk, the other three were badly damaged, and multiple other naval vessels were destroyed.<br /><br />The majority of the American war planes based in Hawaii were destroyed as they sat on the ground.<br /><br />In addition, most of the American air forces based in the Philippines were destroyed during the nighttime attack on that nation, which FDR also mentioned in his speech.<br /><br />By crippling our Pacific defenses, the December 7th attack left us extremely vulnerable in the face of an aggressive enemy to our West – an enemy that had signaled its intent to rule the entire Pacific basin by subjugating other nations to its will.<br /><br />This came at a time when we had not responded to the fact that Nazi Germany to our East had already declared war against us, had already brought most of Europe under its thumb, and had signaled its own intention to rule the world by way of an Aryan resurrection of the old Roman Empire.<br /><br />Such circumstances would have spelled doom for the vast majority of countries throughout the course of history. With their foundations based on the accidents of ethnicity and geography, most countries would have simply surrendered; or, in a distinction without a difference, entered into “peace” negotiations under which they would have to accept the aggressor’s terms and after which the lives of their citizens would most certainly change for the worst.<br /><br />But the United States is a nation based on ideals. Our foundation springs from the knowledge that there are things greater than us, things which are greater than the transient circumstances which exist on any given day. We have always found strength in the conviction that our nation exists to support and advance those greater things, to the benefit of people all over the world, and this sets the United States apart from all other nations in all other times.<br /><br />Taking heed from FDR’s appeal to “righteous might,” reflecting what Abraham Lincoln earlier referred to as the “faith that right makes might,” the American people of 1941 summoned the invincible courage to rebuild and fight at the same time they were under fearsome siege. They did this despite the fact they were still suffering through an unprecedented economic depression that had started more than a decade before.<br /><br />Let us pray that those qualities – that will to power and that unwavering belief in the sanctity of human freedom – have not been lost as new generations of Americans take the baton from the great ones which came before. For as has been said, those who forget the past will be forced to repeat it.<br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">It would be shameful if history were to record that we squandered what was handed down to us by people like Larry Perry, and as a result we failed to transfer freedom’s blessings to our </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" style="text-align: left;">descendants</span><span style="text-align: left;">... And since you probably don't know who Larry Perry is, I recommend you look </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/rememberthosewhoserved/photos/a.660950880620836.1073741826.139265659456030/741176412598282/?type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a><span style="text-align: left;"> and find out.</span> </p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-47419927294168940132021-10-09T23:13:00.007-04:002023-02-27T07:51:38.657-05:00About "The" Book, Part Five<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">All of us who have kids have told them over and over again, and then over and over yet again, how important it is for them to be truthful even when the truth hurts. We try our hardest to impress on them that they should live by truth and not by lies. We remember our parents saying these things to us when we were kids.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So it should go without saying that the Bible -- aka the Good Book, heavenly guidebook, word of God, last word, holy writ, et al -- speaks highly of the truth.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I love history and have always been into quotes and aphorisms. A couple decades ago, when thinking more in terms of quotes<i> from history</i> than <i>from the Bible</i>, one of the lines I came across that immediately left an impression was straight from the New Testament, specifically 3 John 1:4: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in truth."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Just about everybody has heard the phrase "you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," but most people don't realize it comes from the Gospel of John.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Proverbs 12 says "truthful lips endure forever," while warning that "lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In 1 Corinthians, Paul famously penned a lengthy explanation of love in which he declared that it "rejoices with the truth."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But the Bible goes way beyond quotes like those... way, way beyond... for in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to a fretful Thomas and affirms "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Note that he does not say "tell the truth," he says "I <i>am</i> the truth." That casts things in an entirely different light and makes me think of 2 Thessalonians, which, when talking about "those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus," says "they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." Therein lies the biblical basis for the common belief that Hell means separation from God.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And seeing as how I'm something of a history buff and quotes geek, these lines prompt my brain to fast-forward 17 centuries to one of America's Founding Fathers: John Adams. When he defended redcoats (!) who acted in self-defense during the Boston Massacre, Adams tapped into something previously written by French novelist Alain-René Lesage and stressed that, popular sentiment be damned, "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There is a sense right now, at least here in the Western world, that "the culture" has gone insane and is rapidly pushing civilization to the edge of a cliff, eager to hurl it over and watch it shatter on the rocks.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">One needn't be Christian or conservative to get this sense, as there are atheists (e.g. Charles C. W. Cooke) and prominent liberals (e.g. Jonathan Chait) who get it and are bloody well disturbed by it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The culture is defined as that which monopolizes entertainment and mainstream media and thereby wields outsize power in public discourse: Namely political correctness and its steroidal offspring that aims to "cancel" whoever and whatever it has decided to dislike in the last three seconds. Denial of truth is the common denominator from one end of the culture to the other.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The most prominent denial of truth at this instant involves gender. We are being told (not asked) to believe (not merely pretend) that human beings come in genders other than male and female, and can literally hop from one to another based on however he or she feels -- although I might get in trouble for saying "he or she," since the culture is currently advising that we replace those words with "they" until we get clarification from whoever we're talking about.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We are being told (not asked) to believe (not merely pretend) that a man is a woman if he (sorry, they) claims to "identify as" a woman, never mind the genitalia, testosterone, pelvic structure, muscle mass, and other (ahem) scientific facts. If he/they says he/they is a female, we must refer to he/they as either "she" or "they" and never consider uttering the abhorrent pronoun "he" unless we are granted permission.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Apparently we are also supposed to ignore the fact that "they" is plural and thus cannot be used to refer to individuals. Because after all, what are facts? Facts are proof that truth exists regardless of what we want, outside of what John Adams referred to as wishes and inclinations and passions. But the culture will not tolerate the idea of anything, including truth, declining to obey its commands.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">We are being told non-satirically that men must be permitted to participate in women's sports if they "identify as" women... which triggers obviously satirical headlines, like one from the obviously satirical <i>Babylon Bee</i> that read "Female Weightlifter Suffers Tragic Testicle Injury Just Weeks Before Tokyo Olympics"... which in turn trigger respected voices from the culture to non-satirically publish fact-checks of the satire in order to "disprove" it, as if it was ever meant to be taken as anything other than satire.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Snopes has literally (not figuratively) published more than 30 fact-checks of <i>Babylon Bee</i> articles, including one that was headlined "California Considering a Tax on Breathing." In 2018, Facebook, citing these fact-checks by Snopes, threatened to de-platform and de-monetize the <i>Bee</i>, and this March an article in the <i>New York Times</i> described the <i>Bee</i> not as the satirical site it obviously is but rather as a "far-right misinformation site."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Attacks like these are not outliers. They are common, they are deliberate, they have become the norm, and no, they are not limited to just one wing of our political divide.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Do you think it's coincidence that this kind of truthless poppycock has come to dominate Western culture right as Western culture <strike>races</strike> drifts farther away from biblical precepts than it ever dreamed of in the past?</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The denial of God/truth has not happened suddenly, however. It is the logical continuation of a trend that has been ongoing throughout my life. It's worth noting that I am 50 years old and much of the foundation for our denial was poured 48 years ago, in 1973, when the Big Lie was officiously stamped onto American law by a Supreme Court that twisted itself like a circus balloon to avoid acknowleding the obvious.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Big Lie was delivered in the package of a federal case officially called <i>Jane Doe, et. al. v. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas</i>, and better known simply as <i>Roe v. Wade</i>. If I begin to go into the <strike>lies</strike> legal absurdities that were invoked in that case, this post will last forever -- so in order to try to stay on point, I'll just say that the Big Lie itself was the claim that a human being is not a human being.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">That claim is what the culture needed to sell in order for abortion to gain just enough support -- and attract little enough outrage -- for Roe to be decided in such a way that abortion became sacrosanct and its victims became afterthoughts. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">15 years after Roe, when I was in my teens, it was still common to hear supposed authorities (who knew they were lying) claim that a human fetus or embryo is "just a clump of cells" or "not yet human." The culture amplified those lies and caricatured anybody who dared dissent.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The culture got its way by burrowing into young minds, averting young eyes from the preciousness of life, and painting a propagandized portrait of parenthood as being droll and oppressive. Under the sway of the culture infants were often talked about as impediments rather than fulfillments, and teenagers who became pregnant were often described as "ruining" or "jeopardizing" their futures.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">By the time it became patently absurd to continue denying that life is human as soon as a human sperm fertilizes a human egg, the culture had already inoculated itself against reason by elevating the word "choice" to the level of religious sacrament.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">When a favored figure of the culture publicly proclaims his or her devotion to "the right to choose," you can rest assured that he or she is not talking about your right to choose to build something on your own property; or your right to choose where your children go to school; or your right to choose to draw a picture of Mohammad; or your right to choose to protect your family by using your own money to purchase a gun to defend against attackers who are 50 pounds heavier and 20 years younger than you (despite the fact that the right of "the people" to own guns, unlike the right to procure an abortion, actually <i>is </i>mentioned in the U.S. Constitution).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nope. When favored figures of the culture publicly proclaim their devotion to "choice," they are talking about one thing and one thing only, and they go out of their way to avoid describing that thing or even saying its name. Usually they allude to it by way of euphemism and obfuscation.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In every fundamental way, the culture's fierce commitment to The Choice is a commitment to untruth. It is a commitment that places one's self (as long as one is female [even if one does not "identify as" female]) in the role of God. The mindset fueling this commitment to The Choice devalues life in the abstract; and inexorably, the actual lives of every person who is persuaded to make The Choice winds up being damaged by it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The culture says it wants to protect women, and it claims that before 1973 women often died in "back alley abortions," yet the culture does not want abortion clinics to be subject to health and safety regulations.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The culture says it wants women to make "fully informed decisions," yet it opposes any requirements that women considering an abortion be provided with any information about any alternatives.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The culture says those who disagree with it about abortion are "men making laws governing women's bodies," yet it never bothers to acknowledge: 1) that women oppose abortion in far greater numbers than men, 2) that women have authored much of the anti-abortion legislation the culture hates, and 3) that, most importantly, the bodies in question are <i>not</i> the women's but rather the babies'.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And it has to be stressed that while the culture supports a mother's absolute right to end a baby's life for any reason she chooses, at any stage of pregnancy right up to delivery, it does not support giving that baby's very own father any right to take any legal action that might save the baby's life. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's hard to imagine anything more onerous that what I've already said, but consider this: Although the culture claims it wants to protect women and girls, it protests whenever a person who disagrees with it about abortion attempts to actually protect women and girls by talking to them about the emotional trauma they might experience as a result of having an abortion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And later, when a woman or girl <i>has</i> had an abortion and <i>is</i> looking back on it feeling depressed and lonely and insecure, the <strike>only</strike> first people to reach out to her with love and support and understanding are the same ones who speak out against abortion. Almost without exception, they are people who believe biblical precepts and strive to follow them rather than mock them. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">This post is about the Bible, not abortion. When I started typing it I did not anticipate the latter being so prominent, but sometimes pieces of writing reveal themselves to the author as they are being written.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Abortion does belong here and I'm not done quite yet.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I feel compelled to say that I know women who have had abortions, most of whom were young and terrified when they made The Choice. They are friends of mine, some are even closer than friends, and one is somebody I treasure in ways that words cannot describe.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I also know a man who talked his girlfriend into having an abortion when they were young.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Those people were all harmed by The Choice, not helped by it. The effect it had on their lives was not the effect they sought.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I do not believe any of those people purchased a one-way ticket to Hell when they made their decision. Because I know God's love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness are theirs for the taking, if they are willing to accept it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps you're thinking I should point to the Bible for some evidence of that, since this post is about the Bible? Well, Psalm 103 says of God that "as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us," and 1 John 1:9 asserts "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Hebrews 8:12 quotes Jesus himself saying "I will remember their sins no more."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Right now I am thinking of a woman I do not know but once saw in the flesh. She is one one of my favorite singers and has been in the public eye as long as I can recall. I am thinking of Stevie Nicks.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nicks wrote and of course sang the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYgL97H04T4" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">"Sara,"</span></a> which was released in 1979 and went Top 10 and gets played almost as much now as it did then. Nicks has acknowledged that "Sara" is, in part, about her aborted daughter, which makes the lyrics especially haunting: "Wait a minute baby / Stay with me a while ... Sara, you're the poet in my heart ... Now it's gone ... There's a heartbeat / And it never really died."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I do not know what thoughts go through Stevie Nicks's mind, what feelings ripple through her heart, or whether she has any relationship with God... but she has spoken several times about her choice (<i>choices</i> actually, for she's had more than one abortion) and when she speaks about it she never seems like a person who is at peace.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nicks is in her 74th year and I can't shake the feeling that her soul is lost somewhere in that wasteland of "spiritual but not religious" confusion, not seeing the open and welcoming hand of God that is right in front her.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">She is a denizen of the culture, one of its own, and I can't shake the feeling that the culture doesn't really care what will become of her soul after her days on Earth run out.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Maybe I'm reading her wrong. Hopefully she isn't lost. She doesn't need to be. And neither do we, no matter what we are struggling with or afflicted by. For as it says in Isaiah: "He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you."</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>If you want to read the previous installments in this series, here they are: Parts <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">One,</span></a> <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two,</span></a> </span></span><a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Three</span>,</a></span> and <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-four.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Four</span></a><span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5493438831653372198.post-79831252817965787832021-09-25T22:47:00.011-04:002021-11-20T08:49:53.140-05:00About "The" Book, Part Four<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s2048/IMG_3568.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1780" data-original-width="2048" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivi33mYzFRVIZ1o3DW8nc0W91v_PN1UV3Os1FRcoK9aM4lDf_tFV-iE9pJjftQM1Us0ecYzHC8vVkaerJeCC4_JfhqErtP7P45nFkRXHmdIejuyk5qOPdl44i5AUXJhrt8SpziCFLjHAA/s320/IMG_3568.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br style="text-align: left;" /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This planet has been rotating on its axis and orbiting the sun for a very long time, during which Lower Egypt really has experienced devastating swarms of frogs and locusts, and really has seen its livestock eradicated by pestilence.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Cities really have been incinerated by volcanic eruptions (fire) suffused with sulfur (aka brimstone).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">A layer of archaeological ruin beneath modern Jerusalem provides overwhelming evidence that there really was a major earthquake there in the eighth century B.C., which really was when Uzziah was king.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Every September the sun passes through Virgo (which means "virgin" and is the only constellation that represents a woman) on the elipitical line.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">3 B.C. was right within that narrow window of years that historians say Jesus was born, and at that time astrology was the rage across many cultures, very much including Jewish culture. On one particular September night in that one particular year, everything across the universe's vastness of space and time really was aligned in just such a way that, for a period of about 80 minutes, someone gazing up at Virgo from Earth would have seen: 1) twelve bright stars above its head; 2) the moon near its feet; 3) the two constellations we now call Scorpius and Libra below it, though in ancient times the latter was considered to be part of the former and in combination they were sometimes referred to as a dragon; 4) the constellation Leo (aka lion) above Virgo; and 5) within Leo, a conjunction of Jupiter (aka the king planet) and Regulus (aka the king star).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Book of Revelation was composed after Jesus died and its twelfth chapter is in the past tense, self-evidently referring back to something that took place before John of Patmos ever put pen to papyrus. It states that a "great sign appeared in heaven" (stock language for the sky) as "a woman clothed with the sun" (stock astrology verbiage for times when the sun passes through a constellation on the eliptical line)... and it describes the woman as having "the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars"... and it says "the dragon stood before" her "so that when she bore her child he might devour it."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And it's tantalizing to remember that: 1) Jesus was born in Judah, a nation whose symbol was a lion; and 2) one of the celestial signs visible above Virgo during that 80-minute sliver of time in 3 B.C. was a conjunction of the king planet and king star -- inside the constellation that represents a lion.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In other words, when talking with somebody who denies or doubts the Bible's veracity, it's often valid to defend it by citing proven natural phenomena.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's also valid to cite things that are accepted as true from the historical record. If you ask historians, even those who are ardent atheists acknowledge that Jesus was real; that he was crucified and buried in a tomb; that claims of him rising from the dead were made soon after the crucifixion; that those making the claims were so sincere in their belief that their behavior was radically and permanently altered; and that the authorities never brought Jesus's corpse out from the tomb to disprove the rumors, despite their keen desire to keep the fledgling church from spreading and threatening to overturn their apple cart.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But it is important to remember that X corroborating or being consistent with Y is not the same thing as X proving Y. Not in the "beyond a shadow of a doubt" way that many <strike>cynics</strike> skeptics like to demand.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Some people who question the Bible's veracity <i>want</i> to believe it, but struggle with rational doubts. Others are simply indifferent and don't care. Then there are those who <i>do</i> <i>not want</i> to believe, and therefore <i>will</i> <i>not</i> believe no matter what.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">People from the latter camp often claim that lack of evidence is the reason for their unbelief, but that's a bluff. They say that because they fancy themselves among the smart set (don't we all?) and know it sounds better to say "there's no evidence" than to say "I won't consider that evidence."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Like the example of atheist historians and Jesus's crucifixion illustrates, people are supremely capable of ignoring evidence when it points in a direction they're not comfortable with. It has been almost 2,000 years since the crucifixion, and so far nobody (literally nobody) has offered a single explanation (not even one) besides resurrection that can explain all of the accepted facts from the historical record.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Regardless of what they say, those who deny the resurrection don't do so because there is no evidence. They do so because their worldview precludes the supernatural and thus prompts them to dismiss supernatural explanations out of hand -- or because they have an intense philosophical disagreement with their perception of Christianity, and that disagreement compels them to dig in their heels and refuse to concede an inch even on non-philosophical matters.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">While writing this post I came to a fork in the road, and so far have tried to take both of them even though I know better.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The previous section saw me motoring down an apologetics path but this series is supposed to be primarily about the Bible itself, so pardon me while I turn the steering wheel and try to cut across to the path I should be on.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Where was I going when I started? Okay, I remember: Citing the natural record is good but acting as if it can always provide proof of specific ancient events is not, for that puts eggs in baskets where they don't belong.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Bible is primarily about the <i>supernatural</i>, not the natural, and while the former can leave physical marks on the latter, it does not have to. By definition, it often won't. When we seek physical marks in the natural world, we must not forget that the natural world is neither permanent nor stagnant. Erosion, decomposition, desertification, forestation, drifting continents, rising and falling water levels, etc. Tiny needles in immense hay stacks are occasionally found, but sometimes those needles disappear because animals swallow them while burrowing through and gobbling up insects.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Putting eggs in the wrong baskets can falsely weaken faith if people come to feel that there must be physical confirmation for most of what is described in the Bible's 66/73 books. Note what happened in 2014, when Ken Ham wavered (!) during Q&A after the over-hyped debate with Bill Nye. He was asked: "Hypothetically, if evidence existed that caused you to have to admit that the universe was older than 10,000 years and creation did not occur over six days, would you still believe in God, and the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and that Jesus was the son of God?" The always cocksure Ham responded by talking for more than a minute and a half without saying "yes" (if you care to watch that exchange, it is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here</span></a> at the 2:18:00 mark).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I find it striking that Ham <strike>could not</strike> would not bring himself to admit that Christians who aren't him might be right when they interpret Genesis less hyper-literally than him... or when they point out that perhaps we should remember Genesis wasn't written in modern English to an audience of Western Civ kindergarteners, so perhaps there is more depth to it than what gets talked about in Sunday School.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The Bible refers multiple times to three specific creatures that sound like they come straight from J. K. Rowling's Potterverse guide book <i>Fantastic Beasts</i>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I am talking, of course, about dragons, Leviathan, and Behemoth, and for some reason I think I need to say that none of these appear in Genesis.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">There are variances in translations, but without even doing all that deep a dive I can tell you that the Bible explicitly mentions dragons no less than 25 times across eight different books (Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Malachi, Revelation); depicts Leviathan in a trio of books (Job, Psalms, Isaiah); and offers up a detailed description of Behemoth in Job 40.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Nobody living today knows exactly what the authors were writing about when they used those terms, but it's fun to speculate and there has been lots of intelligent and logical speculation about it over the years.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">You can find strong cases being made that Behemoth was referring to the hippopotamus or elephant, and Leviathan to the crocodile or whale.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Some people (Ken Ham being one of them) argue that the words Behemoth, Leviathan, and dragon were all referring to dinosaurs. They specifically claim that Behemoth was a sauropod dinosaur, seeing as how sauropods had long tails and Job 40:17 says Behemoth "makes his tail stiff like a cedar." Cedar trees, you see, are very big.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">However the hippo/elephant crowd makes sure to point out that Job 40:17 does not say Behemoth's tail was "<i>big</i> like a cedar," but rather that Behemoth "<i>makes</i> his tail <i>stiff</i> like a cedar" -- and the elephant half of the hippo/elephant crowd is quick to point out that elephants hold their tails stiff and erect when they're on alert.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Everybody agrees that at least some of the Bible's many uses of the word dragon are metaphoric references to Satan. The dinosaur crowd also believes that some uses of the word dragon are literal references to dinosaurs and/or pterodactyls.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">People suggest that Job's description of Leviathan is hyperbolic and not meant to be taken at face value, seeing as how it says "His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth," to which other people retort that there's no reason to doubt whether an animal species might have been able to breathe fire. Those who make that retort invariably (and accurately) note that bombardier beetles right now defend themselves by spewing acid whose temperature is the boiling point of water.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Who knows? Nobody does! I am not in the dinosaur crowd, but I'm man enough to admit that those who are in that crowd do make their point.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I think it's obvious that some uses of dragon, especially in Revelation, are referring to the devil, and I believe others uses of it are referring to other demonic spirits.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I strongly suspect that Behemoth and Leviathan refer to supernatural entities, not to animals from the natural world. And I suspect they refer to individual entities, seeing as how they are used in the singular and capitalized, but again I don't know.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I do find it odd that so many Bible-believers are bent on giving naturalistic explanations for the appearance of these three words in Scripture. Why strip the supernatural out?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Dragons. Leviathan. Behemoth. For me, the first word that springs to mind when I hear those words is "mythological." I think many Christians are afraid to use that word when discussing the Bible because in their minds "myth" is synonymous with "fake" -- but that ain't exactly so, especially when you look back at how the word was used earlier in history.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Since I speak English and I presume you do too, I just hopped east across the Atlantic (over the web, of course) to consult dictionaries from England itself. And I see that even today, in anno Domini 2021, Cambridge defines myth as "an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts," while Oxford Reference defines it as "a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events."</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Note that neither of them says "fictitious" or "false" or "made up" or anything of the sort, even if there's often an inference or implication that such terms apply.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I think we should reflect on what C.S. Lewis wrote in 1931: "Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths..." </p><p style="text-align: justify;">If you believe God created the material world but resides in another, that he cast his spiritual enemies out of one realm and into this one, that he consigns the souls of the dead either to eternal torment in Hell or eternal paradise in Heaven, that he is omnipresent and exists outside of time, that he made a donkey talk, that he parted the sea, that he caused the deaf to hear and the paralyzed to walk, that he brought Lazarus back from the dead, that he willingly trapped himself inside a mortal human body that died a gruesome death and then came back to life three days later... how far-fetched does it sound to say that dragons, Behemoth, and Leviathan might be something other than hippos, elephants, crocodiles, velociraptors, and brontosauruses?</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>To be continued...</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>The first three posts in this series can be read <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-one.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/08/about-book-part-two.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> and <a href="http://stantonsspace.blogspot.com/2021/09/about-book-part-three.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here,</span></a> respectively.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>If the astronomical and astrological coincidences of September 11, 3 B.C. sound interesting to you, you can read all about them in a book by Ernest L. Martin. It's available in paperback for a cool 250 bucks <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Star-That-Astonished-World/dp/0945657870" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">on Amazon,</span></a> or, hey, you can read it online for free by going <a href="https://www.askelm.com/star/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">here</span></a><span style="color: #2b00fe;">!</span></i> <i>Or you can just watch Michael Heiser discuss the topic on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS9252nS5IU" target="_blank"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">this</span></a> episode of SkyWatch TV.</i></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>JDShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05360470068860788678noreply@blogger.com0