Donald Andrew Henson II

Archive for 2012|Yearly archive page

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Which Economy?

In 2012 Election, American Economy, Current events on October 10, 2012 at 12:59 am

English: Stop sign in Quebec Français : Pannea...

I know I’m waxing political the last couple of weeks, and neglecting my sworn duty to blog the entire New Testament this year; it is election season here in the US, after all, and it’s hard to escape the noise of it coming from every direction. I promise I’ll be back to my secular rants about the NT soon.

I’ve written about the apparent confusion of the language here in the US between conservatives and liberals, commented on how the word ‘entitled’ has been transformed from a criticism of the upper classes to a pejorative for the working poor, and lamented that some accept lies as facts simply because they have heard them hundreds of times. But in all of this confusion, there is one idea that is so muddy and unclear that one hardly knows what it means – or whether it means anything at all. In fact, I think we may all have quite a different idea in our heads when we hear the words ‘the economy’.

Studies of bi-lingual children have shown that the same word spoken in different languages can produce very different images in the mind. One study involved French-Canadian children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old who had one English-speaking parent at home and one French-speaking one, and could use both languages with equal skill. The children were given a piece of paper and some crayons and were asked by an instructor, in English, to “draw a dog for me, please.” The children happily complied. The drawings all looked very similar, as do most drawings done by children of this age. No surprises.

The next day, the same children were given the exact same instruction, but this time, the whole event was conducted in French instead of English, so the children were told to “dessinez un chien pour moi, s’il vous plait.” Again, all of the drawings looked very similar to each other – but to the astonishment of the instructors, they all looked decidedly different from the drawings of the previous day. The study was repeated with a variety of different objects and creatures school children might be familiar with – every time with the same surprising result.

It seemed that when the children were communicating in French, they were actually thinking differently than when they were speaking in English. Is it possible that ‘un chien’ produces one image in the mind, while ‘a dog’ conjures another? Can it be that not only do different cultures have different ideas kicking around in their brains, but also different ideals?

Or, that what one person means when he says ‘the economy’ isn’t the meaning I get when I hear him say it? This might explain why we are in so much disagreement about how to fix our ‘economy’.

I’ve never been rich, so I have a decidedly middle-class idea of what a good economy might look like. To me, a good economy means that everyone who wants to work can find a job, and that those jobs pay enough to provide the necessities of life. With a bit of hard work, other opportunities to obtain better jobs with better pay become available, and some of the niceties of life, such as a house or car, can be afforded as well. Over time, not only can one afford a few comforts and modest luxuries, but a modicum of financial security. Professionals and successful entrepreneurs can scale to even greater financial heights, but pretty much everyone can expect to exchange his or her labor for a typical American lifestyle. Government assistance is for those who have temporarily fallen upon hard times or who legitimately can not work.

The availability and quality of work is an integral part, in my mind, of a good economy. But what about for those who don’t work for a living, but instead depend on the accumulation of wealth and a positive return on investments? I’m guessing that ‘a good economy’ means something altogether different for them than it does for me.

Notice that how well Wall Street is doing doesn’t factor into my thinking about the economy, but it would be perhaps the single most important factor for someone with a huge accumulation of wealth. For me, I’d like to do something I enjoy doing, and pay the bills doing it. For a person who doesn’t need to work, doing what he wants to do and paying the bills while doing it is a foregone conclusion; what he wants is something completely different from what I want – and thus his idea of what is ‘good for the economy’ probably doesn’t line up with mine.

He wants a good return on his investment. I want a good return for my labor. He might be able to win some, lose some; I cannot afford to work at something that doesn’t pay.

So, when Mitt Romney and other conservatives tell us that tax cuts for the rich are good for the economy, we need to ask, “Which economy?” When the rich have more cash, they invariably invest more into the stock market. As more money pours in, stock prices rise – whether the companies selling shares perform better or not, more buyers than sellers creates an influx of cash for a finite number of shares, causing  prices to rise. Therefore, tax cuts are good for the stock market and those who invest in it. If this is your measure of ‘a good economy’, then saying that cutting taxes for the rich is good for the economy is true.

However, if your idea of a good economy looks like mine, then tax cuts are counter-productive. Teachers, policeman, firemen, and other government employees get axed when taxes are cut, which sends most communities into a downward spiral. Those who lose their jobs can no longer shop or buy, meaning that local businesses lose income as well, meaning they may have to lay off employees as well. All those folks without jobs means lower tax revenues next year, which necessitates even further job cuts.

Depending on how it’s managed, this can still be good news for shareholders. Those redundant employees might be forced to take lower-paying jobs than they had before, and low wages increase the bottom line for big business.

But notice the big difference – the investor class can do well in either type of ‘good economy’, when companies are expanding and adding employees or when they are cutting costs by letting them go. If he’s savvy, the investor can make even more money when stock prices go down.

The man who depends on his labor for his living is not in the same predicament. When the economy is bad, he suffers. Some may find a way to start a new business in bad times, but most end up making less money than they did before. There’s no upside to a downturn for the working man.

I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy for what ails the rich, nor am I concerned about what benefits that class without benefiting others. Mitt Romney pays 15% or less on his millions, which grow while he sleeps, while I pay 30% on what I earn by the sweat of my brow. He can adjust his investment strategy to incorporate a downturn; I’m left with the ultimate tax break – I get to pay 0% if I have no income at all.

When you go to the polls in the next few weeks or drop of your ballot before election day, you’ve got to ask yourself  - which economy are you interested in?

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Where Is The Evidence That Cutting Taxes For The Wealthy Creates Jobs?

In 2012 Election, American Economy, American Society on October 8, 2012 at 12:49 am

Before my conservative friends get all in a frenzy, remember that this is not a liberal website, but a secular one. Secularism, as defined by the man who coined the term, is ”a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life.” In other words, one of the chief goals of secularism is to separate dogma from the debate; if you want to establish that something is true, repeating it hundreds of times might persuade the weak-minded, but has no effect whatsoever on those accustomed to basing beliefs on evidence.

Since Ronald Reagan, the conservative solution to every single problem has been to cut taxes. Known as ‘trickle-down’ economics in the ’80s (or ‘voodoo’ economics to George H.W. Bush, when he ran against Reagan in the 1980 Republican primaries), the assumption goes something like this:

Taxing those individuals who have realized the greatest financial success in our country is counter-productive, if not downright immoral. They are the movers and shakers, the job creators that keep the American economic system purring along like the finest luxury car. If we lighten their tax load, they will use that extra cash to do wonderful things, like build factories, hire employees, give to worthy charities, etc. This will, in turn, crank up the economy, and those new employees of those new factories will sing the praises of the ‘creators’ as they toil away for their weekly paycheck. Everybody wins – the rich benevolently bestow upon the lesser classes all the good things they have not the industry nor morality to produce for themselves.

Except – there’s absolutely no evidence that it actually works this way.

While every conservative politician will say ‘raising taxes hurts the economy’ or ‘cutting taxes creates jobs’, you’d be hard pressed to find a single study that supports this point of view – and hundreds graphs, charts, and studies that refute the idea.

Go ahead and do a Google search yourself – I’ll wait right here for a moment.

If you’re a conservative, you will obviously discount anything from the liberal sites like HuffPost or MSNBC.  But my search, “Do low tax rates create jobs?” turned up a great big ‘NO’ from pretty much every site I could find – at Forbes, here, and here; at US News and World Report; Business Insider; and a number of other sites not particularly noted for their liberal bias, all supported by data. In fact, the only ‘Yes’ answers I found were in the Wall Street Journal,  editorial commentary from conservative newspapers and blogs, and quotes from Mitt Romney. Not particularly in-depth economic analysis.

Take a look at these charts from the Center for American Progress:

This one shows that there is no correlation between the top marginal tax rate – what the richest Americans hypothetically pay – and the GDP. It does seem that lower tax rates flattened out the volatility in GDP, but didn’t cause it to spike upward. As a strong output generally indicates good employment conditions, it would appear from this chart that the effect of taxation on the economy was negligible.

This bar graph is astounding. It appears that when the top individual tax rate is ABOVE 39%, the number of jobs has grown around 2 to 2.5 percent. When the tax rate is lower than 39%, job growth has been minimal. How do conservatives account for this gap between what they preach and what the data shows?

And finally, a graph that shows growth rates rising when taxes are increased, plummeting when taxes are cut.

Now I’m not suggesting that raising taxes will automatically increase the number of jobs in this country – that’s something for honest, hard-working economists to decide. But a 5th-grader could look a these charts and see that the conservative mantra just simply isn’t true. Employment is a complicated thing, based on a lot of parameters. But one thing we do know is that when the economy is good, jobs are created. Raising taxes or cutting them may have a variety of effects, but creating or destroying jobs doesn’t seem to be one of them. Yet politicians are saying it hundreds of times a day.

Perhaps the idea of trickle-down or supply side economics would have been a valid economic theory in the 1950s. Back then, a successful man with excess cash on his hands had few investment choices. He could reinvest in his own business, help to start up another one, or invest in a stock market chock-full of good old-fashioned American companies. Any of those choices might have helped to improve the American economy, create jobs, etc.

But today, the world of finance and investment is radically different. So many financial vehicles today involve moving money around more than actually ‘investing’ it in to one place, and brokers and hedge fund managers often see a far better return in developing markets such as China or Russia. So the rich may still be job creators in a sense – it’s simply that the factories they are building and the jobs they are creating aren’t necessarily American. That money that wasn’t collected in the form of taxes, because of the idea that it would hurt investment, ends up building an Indian factory or collecting interest in a Swiss bank account.

One last thing that we know for sure about cutting the tax rates for the nation’s wealthiest (especially while fighting a couple of ill-conceived wars), is that it creates huge deficits:

I’ll admit that spending needs to be tackled as well – but there’s no question that if you take in less money, you’ll end up with more debt. What happens when governments face deficits? The have to fire policemen, teachers, firemen, and other government employees, meaning that unemployment rises.

So, as a secularist, I have to say that I’m still waiting for some evidence that cutting taxes for the richest Americans will help the economy. So far, that claim doesn’t make the cut. Got a chart or data to back up your claim? Share it with me.

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I am a job creator: A manifesto for the entitled – Steven Pearlstein

In 2012 Election, American Economy, American Society on October 2, 2012 at 12:48 pm
IMG_0273 PAY

Photo credit: changsterdam

Steven Pearlstein, writing for the Washington Post, has really hit the nail on the head. While the rest of us are supposed to be grateful for a job that might pay the bills if we can get a bit of overtime, the rich think we’re just lazy sloths looking for handouts – the 47%. They, on the other hand are what keeps the country going.

When did ‘entitled’ become an adjective used to describe the working poor? Pearlstein puts the word back into its proper context with this post. I was so impressed that I’ve copied it in it’s entirety – or you can link to the original at WaPo.

I am a job creator: A manifesto for the entitled – The Washington Post.

I am a corporate chief executive.

I am a business owner.

I am a private-equity fund manager.

I am the misunderstood superhero of American capitalism, single-handedly creating wealth and prosperity despite all the obstacles put in my way by employees, government and the media.

I am a job creator and I am entitled.

I am entitled to complain about the economy even when my stock price, my portfolio and my profits are at record levels.

I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.

I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.

I am entitled to a judicial system that efficiently enforces contracts and legal obligations on customers, suppliers and employees but does not afford them the same right in return.

I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.

I am entitled to a compensation package that is above average for my company’s size and industry, reflecting the company’s aspirations if not its performance.

I am entitled to have the company pay for breakfasts and lunches, a luxury car and private jet travel, my country club dues and home security systems, box seats to all major sporting events, a pension equal to my current salary and a full package of insurance — life, health, dental, disability and long-term care — through retirement.

I am entitled to have my earned income taxed as capital gains and my investment income taxed at the lowest rate anywhere in the world — or not at all.

I am entitled to inside information and favorable investment opportunities not available to ordinary investors. I am entitled to brag about my investment returns.

I am entitled to pass on my accumulated wealth tax-free to heirs, who in turn, are entitled to claim that they earned everything they have.

I am entitled to use unlimited amounts of my own or company funds to buy elections without disclosing such expenditures to shareholders or the public.

I am entitled to use company funds to burnish my own charitable reputation.

I am entitled to provide political support to radical, uncompromising politicians and then complain about how dysfunctional Washington has become.

Although I have no clue how government works, I am entitled to be consulted on public policy by politicians and bureaucrats who have no clue about how business works.

I am entitled to publicly criticize the president and members of Congress, who are not entitled to criticize me.

I am entitled to fire any worker who tries to organize a union. I am entitled to break any existing union by moving, or threatening to move, operations to a union-hostile environment.

I am entitled to a duty of care and loyalty from employees and investors who are owed no such duty in return.

I am entitled to operate my business free of all government regulations other than those written or approved by my industry.

I am entitled to load companies up with debt in order to pay myself and investors big dividends — and then blame any bankruptcy on over-compensated workers.

I am entitled to contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, loans and even bailouts from government, even as I complain about job-killing government budget deficits.

I am entitled to federal entitlement reform.

I am entitled to take credit for all the jobs I create while ignoring any jobs I destroy.

I am entitled to claim credit for all the profits made during a booming economy while blaming losses or setbacks on adverse market or economic conditions.

I am entitled to deny knowledge or responsibility for any controversial decisions made after my departure from the company, even while profiting from such decisions if they enhance shareholder value.

I am entitled to all the rights and privileges of running an American company, but owe no loyalty to American workers or taxpayers.

I am entitled to confidential information about my employees and customers while refusing even to list the company’s phone number on its Web site.

I am entitled to be treated with deference and respect by investors I mislead, customers I bamboozle, directors I manipulate and employees I view as expendable.

I am entitled to be lionized in the media without answering any questions from reporters.

I am entitled to the VIP entrance.

I am entitled to everything I have and more that I still deserve.

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American Babel

In 2012 Election, American Society, Current events, Religion and Society on October 1, 2012 at 12:34 am

Just a short post today about why I started thinking about the Tower of Babel to begin with.

I was amused to find out that the name ‘Babylon’ – ‘Babilli’ in the language of the Akkadians, the builders of the city – means ‘Gate of God’ – but to the Hebrews, it sounded almost exactly like the word for ‘confusion’. This set up a nice little play on words – basically, that your God doesn’t make sense to me.  I put this in the same category as the word ‘barbarian’, the ancient Greek word for those not conversant in Greek. ‘Barbarian’ is an onomatopoeic word – like ‘buzz’ or ‘sizzle’, it is a word that comes from how it sounds. To the Greeks, the Persian language sounded like ‘ba ba, ba ba ba’, so the people who spoke in such a manner became known as ‘barbaros’. The Romans thought the Germans and Celts uncivilized, and called them ‘barbarius’ – pretty close to our English ‘barbarian’.

So it seems there is a pattern of thought established since ancient times – my ideas encapsulate the essence of civilization; your ideas are incoherent drivel. My ideas protect civilization; your ideas will destroy it. My arguments are beautifully constructed and clearly understandable to anyone willing to understand; I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.

When you travel the world, you begin to realize that there is a natural, mutual dislike between many neighboring countries. The English and French can hardly stand each other. Thailand and Cambodia both consider themselves the cultural heirs of Angkor, and each thinks the other is trying to steal their heritage. Japan and China are nearly always on the brink of coming to blows. Russia hates pretty much every former satellite country on her border – and the feeling is mutual.

But how many times has this hatred, distrust, and lack of understanding existed within the same country – as it does in America today?

I’ve traveled through more than two dozen countries, but I’ve never seen anyplace so divided as we are here in the US today. We’ve become a red state / blue state nation. In fact, something appears to be confounding our common language so that we can’t even converse with one another.

If I say ‘anti-abortion’ in one of my posts, someone will let me know that there is no such word – ‘pro-life’ is the correct verbiage. I say ‘expanded Medicare’ or ‘single-payer option’, you say ‘Obamacare’ or ‘socialism’. I say ‘a woman should have a choice’, someone from the other side calls me a ‘baby killer’.

It’s Babel, version 2012.

I’m worried that Americans don’t even speak the same language anymore, and that the fight for what words mean, the rush to define the other side before they can define themselves, these seem to be the only things that matters now in our political discourse. Words are twisted around to mean what they didn’t intend, they are bent to accommodate a certain point of view, or they are coined anew to sugarcoat something that used to be repulsive – much like that ‘Chilean seabass’ that you enjoy at your favorite trendy restaurant is actually known as ‘Patagonian toothfish’ in Chile.

When Paul Ryan says he wants to ‘save’ Medicare, he actually means that he wants to phase it out. Ending a temporary tax break is known as ‘creating a new tax’. Wars are known as ‘incursions’, despicable prisons are called ‘detention camps’. We have entered the Orwellian world of ‘doublespeak’ where whatever we say really means something altogether different from how it sounds.

I’m not sure how we can begin to solve the problems that our country faces if we refuse to even speak the same language.

Steven Pinker, in his book The Stuff of Thought, writes about a parlor game that Bertrand Russell and his friends used to play involving emotive conjugations. It illustrates how we use words to paint ourselves in the best light possible, while tarring those who disagree with us as best we can.  Russell’s examples:

I am firm; you are obstinate; he’s a pig-headed fool. I have reconsidered; you have changed your mind; he’s gone back on his word.

Or, in Pinker’s more humorous example:

I’m exploring my sexuality; you are promiscuous; she is a slut.

This is the sort of Babel that poses for debate in America today. The media, with its insatiable 24-hour demand for content, turns everything into a he-said-she-said circus sideshow, and Americans eat it up as if it were real political discourse.

I thought we Americans were working together in this grand experiment called democracy, building a ‘city on a hill’ a beacon of liberty to the world, a brighter future.

Perhaps God has confused our language?

 

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Let Us Make God in Our Image

In American Society, Blogging the Bible, Religion and Society on September 30, 2012 at 3:44 am

Earlier in the week, while writing my Tower of Babel post, I stumbled across a number of images that I found quite interesting. It seems the story has captured the imagination of many artists over the centuries, each artist with his own interpretation of what the Tower may have looked like.

Here’s an illustration from Germany, around 1370:

This artist’s rendition is very simple, almost childlike. The Tower resembles a kind of watchtower, which would be the best interpretation of the original Hebrew word used in the story. Notice the lack of any kind of background detail or lack of historical cues. Ropes a pulleys are the method of construction.

Here’s a work by a French illustrator in 1425:

Notice that the artist’s time and culture constrain his imagination; everything in the picture looks like 15th century France, while nothing at all resembles Mesopotamia or 5000 BC – except perhaps that lone camel. The tower is modest, almost delicate, a mere five stories tall, the materials, technology, manner of dress – all decidedly medieval France. I’m no expert, but I get the feeling that this artist had access to the work of the prior one, and made his version look more ‘authentic’. Still using ropes and pulleys, and the work-shed has been moved to the other side of the frame. Striking illustration, but no one could consider it an accurate representation.

By the 16th century, there are several paintings of the Tower that bear a striking resemblance in style to the Coliseum of Rome, including one of the more famous works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder:

Of course we know that by this time, Europe was leaving the Middle Ages behind, and artists were beginning to paint with greater realism. A great age of travel and commerce was beginning, meaning that artists and others were able to actually see other countries, with architectural styles much different from their own. They were able to paint or draw more convincingly due to a greater knowledge of the world and better access to technology. The Tower is much more imposing – but is still perhaps only 15 to 20 stories high.

By the 19th century, Europeans were ‘discovering’ the remotest parts of the Earth, and were by this time familiar with the Pyramids of Giza, pre-Giza ‘step-pyramids’, and Mesopotamian ziggurats. They had learned that the ancients were able to build on a scale much larger than had previously been imagined. They found that the Bible story of Babel had not previously created the right images and ideas in their minds – nor had they realized that the ancients had possessed better technology than medieval Europe. It was now possible for artists like Gustave Dore to render a much more imposing structure:

I’ve gone to the trouble of posting all these pictures to make a simple point about our perception of God. Many believers contend that the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts and makes the scriptures ‘real’ to us, explaining exactly what it is that God meant when he inspired their writing. These paintings and drawings of the Tower of Babel would seem to suggest otherwise. The artists that created these images, inspired though they may have been, were not able to see outside the confines of their own space and time, were not able to grasp exactly what the Bible was describing – probably Etemenanki, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar just before the Judean captivity.

When we read something in the Bible that was written hundreds of year ago, we look at it through the prism our own culture, technology, and understanding of the world around us – we simply cannot help ourselves. There is simply no evidence of a supernatural substance that reveals God’s mind to us. When we read the Bible, we interpret what we read based upon the knowledge and assumptions of our particular society. It is not God’s mind that alters our perception, it is our own minds that alter our perception of God. The images in our minds of what happens in the Bible are not controlled by God, but rather, our minds control what God does or says.

In other words, God did not create man in his image, man created God in man’s image. We make gods that fit into our culture and conform to our pre-conceived ideas about how the world should work.

Ever notice how when angry preachers talk about God, he’s angry? When laid-back guys like Joel Osteen try to explain what God is saying, God sounds positive, cheery, motivational? To the mystic, God is transcendent; to the guilty, he is merciful, to the terrorist, he is vengeful. God is, in fact, pretty much whatever we need him to be when we need him to be. He is our handiwork, not vice-versa. Those who say that God is no longer necessary to explain the world are only doing what men have always done, which is to understand the divine through the bias of culture and technology; it just so happens that 21st technology has advanced to the point that not even the ‘prime mover’ of Deism is necessary.

Travelling around Asia, I could always tell what kind of Buddhist temple I was in by what the Buddha images looked like. Fat and happy? Chinese Buddha. Intense, languid eyed – Indian Buddha. Serene, calm – Thai Buddha. In fact, each culture creates images of the Buddha that very much look like their idealized cultural self. And if Buddhists make Buddhas that reflect the notions of their societies, you can bet that American Christians do the same thing.

God helps those who help themselves. Jesus may have appeared poor, but he was secretly rich. God wants you to live the American dream. We’ve made God in our own image.

One of the best images I ran across last week was M.C. Escher’s version of the Tower of Babel:

His rendition is completely modern. A tower can be a hundred stories high with today’s technology; you need only walk the downtown of a major metropolis to feel the awe of  dozens of such structures towering above your head. And Escher’s point of view is modern as well – his perspective is not that of a man on the ground looking up, but from the sky looking downward.

Modern man has become God’s equal – perhaps his better. He can look down upon the Earth from space and see all things, big and small, as they happen. And unlike the Genesis god who had to ‘come down’ to see the Tower, we don’t even have to leave the comfort of our own homes.

Too bad God didn’t have Google Earth back then.

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Tower of Babel

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the Old Testament, Religion and Society on September 24, 2012 at 1:48 am

English: The Construction of the Tower of Babe...

Read Genesis 11.

I know I’m supposed to be blogging the New Testament, not the Old, but indulge me if you will. As a student of several languages and the acquisition of language in general, this Biblical story is obviously of interest to me.

You don’t have to look at this Tower of Babel too closely to realize that it’s a complete and total myth, an etiology told to explain why the peoples inhabiting different regions spoke languages that were unintelligible to one another. The story was supposedly written by Moses, but context cues place it more probably in the time of the Babylonian captivity, in the 6th century BC, perhaps a thousand years after Moses’ death. It most likely incorporates the image of the Babylonian ziggurat, Etemenanki, which had been rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar, with a traditional oral story about how the languages were separated. The impressive, foreboding ziggurats – erected in worship to the god Marduk, were meant to inspire awe; the captive Jews would have seen them as a trespass against the one true God.

Placing the imposing towers into a story about rebellion against God wouldn’t have been much of a stretch – to worship any God but Yahweh was rebellion. Babel, or confusion, would have been a nice play on words; Babylon, a place of confusion, not only of language, but of belief. Any city that shakes its fist at God in such an audacious way will certainly face retribution.

But if you don’t buy into this modern, secular explanation of the story – have a look at the scriptures themselves. I think you’ll find a lot of information that doesn’t quite fit together.

A few generations after God had flooded the Earth, some of Noah’s descendants have headed east to the Plains of Shinar, which is usually a reference to Mesopotamia / Tigris and Euphrates region / Babylon in the Old Testament. Once they got there, they decided to bake bricks – in the OT narrative, they decide to bake bricks first, then to build a city with them, but we’ll assume that the intention was to build a city and a tower all along. Why the focus on bricks? Since important Judean structures were made of stone, the Babylonian custom of building with brick would have been novel – if you admit that the narrative as we have it today were composed during the captivity. If not, it seems a rather strange detail.

These descendants, led by Nimrod, according to tradition, get the idea that they should ‘make a name for themselves’ by building a tower that would reach to the heavens. When I was in Sunday school, my teacher seemed to think that they were literally trying to build a stairway to heaven; later, other Bible teachers seemed to think that they were trying to build some kind of astrological tower, to ‘reach heaven’ in a metaphysical sense, not literally. This second rendering does seem to be more consistent with what we now know of Babylonian ziggurats in general, that they were places of divination and worship.

Now, let’s set aside for a moment the fact that the Bible only counts four generations between this event and the catastrophic, worldwide flood that nearly wiped out humanity. It would seem that such an act of defiance so soon would be unthinkable on the part of Noah’s descendants. What’s really astounding is God’s response.

First of all, the scripture says that God ‘came down’ to see the tower that Nimrod had built. Where was he in the first place? Why did he have to move to get a better view? If Earth is God’s ballpark, why was he sitting in the cheap seats? This sentence gives credence to the idea that whoever wrote the original story did not see God as omnipresent; he was instead an anthropomorphic god who shared some of the same limitations of other Semitic gods – including Marduk. If you believe that every single word of the scripture is inspired – you can’t write off the moving of a supposedly omnipresent God from one place to another as some kind of grammatical error.

Secondly, why was God so concerned about what they were doing? Because they had learned how to build a tower, God decides that “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” Is this a bad thing? Humans working together to do what seems to be impossible? And furthermore, confusing their languages didn’t stop them from building other towers – as evidenced by the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and other ancient cultures. And building a tower? Where’s the threat? It’s not like they split the atom – which, incidentally, God did not prevent either. So you’re telling me that God miraculously confuses language because people are building a tower, but stands by in silence while they actually do split the atom? It doesn’t make sense.

If they were trying to build a literal stairway to heaven, no intervention would have been required; they’d have all passed out due to lack of oxygen at around a mile. Actually God should have known that they’d have never made it this far with bricks anyway; kiln-baked bricks would have disintegrated under the weight of the structure long before the mile marker. If they were building an astrological tower, a way of ‘reaching heaven’ through divining the stars – why do the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and myriad other structures still stand?

And why any need for such sudden intervention? Surely God is aware of the fact that as groups of people are separated by time and distance, their languages become unintelligible to each other without divine intervention. The US and the UK have been separate social and political entities for only a couple of hundred years, and we still technically speak the same language, but you try understanding a Glaswegian or a Yorkshireman with a scotch or two in his gullet – impossible.

Even the Apostle Paul casts doubt on the validity of he story, when he writes in 1 Corinthians 14 that “God is not the author of confusion.”

If this story isn’t literally true – which it certainly cannot be, no matter how you approach it – then it must be some kind of analogy or metaphor, a story with a moral. If the OT contains stories that aren’t intended to be taken as objective truths – who gets to decide which ones are allegory and which ones are literal?

Of even greater significance, to me at least, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that God does anything to intervene – for good or ill – in our lives today. Thousands of innocents die daily while God looks the other way. But a tower made of tar and brick – a tower that had absolutely no chance of succeeding at whatever purpose it was being built for – required God’s immediate attention?

Quite literally – unbelievable.

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Who Is America’s Only Protestant Leader?

In American Society, Religion and Government, Religion and Society on September 22, 2012 at 3:05 am

I’m feeling a little mischievous today, so I thought I might beat a horse / bang a drum / stir up a race in which I have no dog entered – or whatever colloquialism you might have for one of my favorite pastimes – getting people all fired up about something that I don’t really care about one way or another.

There’s been a lot of talk about the 47% Americans this week – here are a few other percentages that might interest you.

I’m guessing that the vast majority of American readers who stumble upon this blog are Christians; maybe that’s why my subscriptions inch up at a rate of only a couple a month. Statistics would predict that this is the case. Out of all adult Americans (I don’t like to count children as religious adherents), a little more than 75% claim a belief in the Christian faith. This makes us a ‘Christian nation’ in the eyes of many, especially conservatives, Republicans, tea-partiers, and others on the right of the political spectrum.

I’m also guessing – from what I see on the news, and from what I am unfortunately subjected to from Facebook friends – that many Christians feel that their religious beliefs should play a key role in their political decisions. This is something that I am adamantly against, as the title of this blog should intimate; I think folks should believe whatever they want to believe in their personal lives, but concerning those areas that affect society as a whole, they should rely on empirical evidence and fact, not feeling.

However, in this conservative way of thinking, it would follow that 75% of our leaders should be Christian too, if they are to accurately reflect our beliefs. I mean, if I spend several hours a week at the local Methodist church, I’d really like the guys and gals who are making the rules of the country to be Methodists too, wouldn’t I?

Of the 75-80% of American adults who claim to be Christians, about a third are Catholic, and two-thirds are Protestant – with the remaining quarter being everything else, from Jewish (5%) to Mormon (2%) to Muslim (.5%). So, about half of our leaders should be Protestant, a quarter Catholic, and a quarter drawn from all other beliefs.

While just over half of Americans today claim beliefs born of the Reformation, our American heritage is undoubtedly Protestant – one might say extremely so. If you look at the religious affiliation of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, you’ll find 55 Protestants and 1 Catholic – although perhaps 4 of these Protestants were not what you might call ‘traditional’ Protestants; 2 publicly espoused Unitarianism, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, despite being affiliated with the Episcopalian or American Anglican church were thought to be Deists. Nonetheless, according to adherents.com, 203 of the 204 men who could be considered Founding Fathers were Protestant. Half were Anglican, a third were Presbyterian or Congregationalist.

Do you believe that our country should be run according to the religious ideas of the Founding Fathers? Then I’m guessing you’d want most of our leaders to come from those three Protestant groups; unfortunately, followers of those faiths account for a very small percentage of the population today. So when you hear someone like Pat Robertson, Rick Warren, or Charles Stanley talk about the beliefs of creators of our American democracy, keep in mind that they would all have pretty serious theological differences with those men were they alive today.

What is the religious affiliation of the leaders of our country today? It might surprise you. Now, remember, I’m a secularist – I think religion should play less of a role in our politics, not more. I don’t really think of a candidate’s religious beliefs when I go to the polls, unless he believes in something so ridiculous, so fantastical that I think it warps his sense of reality. I’d like to think that a leader, even if he went to church on Sunday, would spend the other six days trying to improve the welfare of the country. But if you want the government to reflect your Protestant religious beliefs, you may be disappointed in the following facts.

The Supreme Court consists of nine justices: 6 Catholic, 3 Jewish. (The last Protestant, John Paul Stephens, retired in 2010).

Vice President of the US, Joe Biden – the person who breaks ties in the Senate: Catholic

Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid – the person who sets the Senate’s agenda: Mormon

Speaker of the House, John Boehner – responsible for deciding what the House votes on: Catholic

Now I’m thinking, if you’re an evangelical Christian, you can’t be too happy with those statistics – 8 Roman Catholics, 3 Jews, and a Mormon have a pretty good lock on the positions of real power in the US. Who’s representing your interests if you are a Protestant?

A lot of Americans would like to have a president who more closely reflects their own values, those of the evangelical Christian church. If you’d like to make that change right away – sorry, but the Republicans have given you a Mormon / Catholic ticket, Romney and Ryan. Personally, there’s no way I could vote for a guy who believes in Joseph Smith’s hogwash – not now, not back when I was a fundamentalist. See the above about a warped sense of reality.

Are you unhappy yet, Mr. Evangelical? You wouldn’t go to the same church with most of the people in charge of the country – perhaps someone in your pulpit has even openly criticized Judaism, Catholicism or Mormonism. But there they are, deciding what’s best for you, me and the rest of the country. And if you thought you might get to get someone in the next election that believes like you do – wrong again.

Oh, wait a minute. I just remembered. There is one Protestant choice. There is one man who belongs to the long, proud line of Protestant leaders our country has produced. One man who believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God, but doesn’t believe that the Virgin will help get you in to heaven. One man whose faith was nurtured by the King James Version of the Bible – not the Torah, the Book of Mormon, or the Catholic Bible.

Yes, Mr. Evangelical, if you want to vote according to your faith, the choice is clear:

Official photographic portrait of US President...

While he grew up in a home that was decidedly un-Christian, he decided, as an adult, to join the Trinity United Church of Christ. Want to vote for someone who’s beliefs are most similar to yours? Barack Obama’s church is similar to the Southern Baptist denomination when it comes to theology. Want someone who espouses the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers? Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams were members of the United Church of Christ.

Maybe your pastor is telling you to vote for Romney / Ryan – but if you told him that, after much prayer and thought, that you were going to join the Roman Catholic Church, or the Church of Latter Day Saints – he’d have a cow.

Tell him instead that you’re voting for the only Protestant / Evangelical choice available this election year, Barack Obama. He doesn’t believe in magic underwear or that only 144,000 people are going to heaven. He isn’t part of a religion that’s spent hundreds of years stealing from the poor to give to the rich, and he isn’t interested in seeing that system become the basis for American fiscal policy.

He isn’t a Muslim, a Socialist, or the Anti-Christ. He’s more like the guy sitting in the pew next to you than any other candidate or current leader.

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Why Pro-Lifers Should Be Anti-War

In American Society, Current events, Religion and Society on September 19, 2012 at 1:38 am

I’m having a difficult time forgetting this CNN video of 4 year-old Rena. She was playing on the balcony of her family’s apartment in Aleppo, Syria, when a bullet – not a stray, but one fired at random by a sniper – smashed through the window and into her face, dislodging one of her teeth as it pierced her cheek. The last hours of her short life were spent crying out in pain and fear, the blood gurgling in her throat as she called for her mother.

This is the real story of any modern war – the horrific suffering and death of thousands of innocents. Best estimates so far of civilian casualties in Syria are somewhere around 20,000 men, women, and children in the last year or so. The US is not involved in this war – yet – but we’re responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths in other wars since the start of this century – at least 100,000 in Iraq alone. Rena’s tragedy was captured on film, but thousands of others have gone un-reported, un-mourned, forgotten.

I don’t understand why the so-called Moral Majority in this country have been in favor of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it hasn’t always been this way. The denomination I grew up in, the Assemblies of God, officially opposed participation of its members in any war until 1967. Now it seems that most Pentecostal / Charismatic churches somehow connect God, guns, patriotism, and warmongering as part of our grand American Christian tradition.

I remember a Christian music video I saw when the war in Afghanistan had just got underway.  I can’t remember the particular singer – she was a young, busty girl, with big hair and tiny cut-off shorts, dancing in front of tanks and American flags. Her rendition of Our God is an Awesome God was interspersed with sound bytes of George W. Bush saying things like “our cause is just”. The British phrase ‘gob-smacked’ is the only phrase that comes close to how I felt watching that video.

When did getting behind the war effort become a Christian virtue? And why is it that pacifism is viewed as un-American, un-patriotic, and somewhat socialist?

What does it mean to be pro-life? In Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he promised to “protect the sanctity of life” yet he clearly thinks that it’s a mistake to scale back our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and would certainly side with his good friend Benjamin Netanyahu should Israel decide to start a war with Iran – or perhaps even involve American troops in such folly. When Christians talk of the sanctity of human life, is that simply code for an anti-abortion stance?

Let’s face it – many Christians get all riled up about the rights of an unborn child – but don’t seem to care much about what happens to that child after it is already born. The hypocrisy is breath-taking. According to what I hear from pulpits across the nation, the current Christian ‘pro-life’ stance goes something like this:

If you get pregnant, you must carry the baby to term, because the life of that unborn child is sacred to God. The Bible makes it clear that God forms a child in the womb, and God’s plan for that child’s life is already drawn at conception – both Samuel and John the Baptist were destined to do God’s work when they were still unborn. The fact that you can’t afford a baby is inconsequential – it’s a sin to end the pregnancy. Once that baby is born, however, you should expect no help whatsoever from society or government in feeding, clothing, housing, or educating God’s little gift; that would make you some kind of pariah, one of Romney’s 47 percent of Americans who see themselves as victims, and are dependent on government. In fact, most Christians seem to be in favor or Paul Ryan’s plan to eviscerate government programs for the weak and poor – not while they might need them, of course, but for those others who refuse to take responsibility for themselves.

It seems that being pro-life is limited to being pro-fetus only, not to believing in the sanctity of any life that manages to emerge from its mother’s womb.

A century ago, most church buildings were simple structures, and much of the tithes brought in were distributed to the needy. Now, Christians busily build cathedrals, gymnasiums, and television studios, contributing very little to the community as a whole. So, while the church has become more miserly in their contributions to society’s most vulnerable, they have also grown dogmatic in their belief that government shouldn’t assist them either.

And in reality, pro-lifers seem to be mostly concerned about Caucasian fetuses, not so much about other varieties. The Far Right wants to make abortion illegal – but worries about Black women having more babies so they can get bigger welfare checks, or Mexican women having babies on Americans soil so they can avail themselves of government handouts. They fear that Muslims and Hindus are trying to out-breed White Americans and Europeans.

If you claim to be pro-life, then you have to be for the sanctity of all human life, not just the unborn. You must do something about the 30,000 children who die every day due to malnutrition and preventable disease. You must do whatever you can to end wars that cause the suffering of untold thousands of innocents. You must be concerned about the sky-rocketing suicide rates among enlisted American soldiers. You must insist that every child in America get at least one decent meal every day, and an education that will allow him one day to improve his lot. If you can’t do these things, you need to call yourself ‘pro-fetus’ or ‘pro-zygote’ or something else; you can’t call yourself pro-life.

So many of us cannot envision a world without war. We think that wars are inevitable, part of human nature – even necessary, perhaps valiant. Doesn’t the Bible say we will always have wars until Jesus comes back? Didn’t Jesus himself say that there would always be poor people?

It’s this kind of thinking that keeps us from changing the world for the better. It’s this kind of thinking that killed Rena.

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Medieval Mind, Modern Mayhem

In American Enlightenment Tradition, American Society, Current events, Religion and Society on September 16, 2012 at 9:00 pm

An Egyptian Coptic Christian makes a movie that pokes fun at the Prophet Mohammed, so Libyans attack the American consul in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, a man who helped save their collective asses from annihilation only last year. This is how the Medieval Mind solves modern problems.

As the craziness continues in the Muslim world this week with unrest in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Australia, and God knows where else, it will be difficult for many to keep from joining in on the criticism of Islam and the role that it plays in so much of the trouble in today’s world. Mostly Christian commentators in this country will point out, once again, that Islam, as opposed to Christianity, is inherently violent. And of course, President Obama will be faulted for apologizing to Muslims.

To be fair, adherents of Islam – some of them at least – appear to be more willing to inflict pain and suffering on others than followers of other religions are. I know there are child abuse issues in Catholic churches, and that Christianity played a role in the violence that occurred in the Balkans in the 1990s and in Lebanon and Northern Ireland as well. And perhaps it is cultural bias for someone from a Western nation to view Islam as dangerous, in much the same way that some white guys might feel some apprehension at seeing a black guy walking around the neighborhood. But you have to admit that there is a certain kind of Muslim that refuses to accept the world as it is, and is willing to use violence to change it, and that this particular group far outnumbers similar groups that might exist in other religions.

When was the last time you heard of a Sikh suicide bomber or a Tibetan Buddhist terrorist?

But the truth is that this is just another example of medieval thinking in a modern world. The reason Christians don’t become suicide bombers has less to do with the inherent goodness of Christianity or the pacifism of the scriptures, and a lot more to do with the influence the Enlightenment has had on our societies. In other words, the Islamic world is simply operating according to its medieval principles in a way that Christianity is not – and when Christians say that America should operate by Biblical precepts, they are talking about a return to the Dark Ages.

Christianity is not the moral framework on which our society precariously hangs – Enlightenment thought is. If you follow the teachings of Christianity to their logical conclusions – as Sam Harris does in this fantastic video – you find that there’s no firm basis there for what I think of as morality. Take an unbiased view of what Christianity preaches – you can be a mass murderer or serial killer and still go to heaven, but if you are a devout Hindu, perhaps even covering your mouth so that you don’t inadvertently inhale and kill an insect, you will certainly spend eternity burning in hell.

Think about that for a minute, and the weight of medieval thinking will nearly crush you. Mohandas Gandhi, a man of peace, a proponent of non-violence, has been burning in hell for decades, with nothing to look forward to but thousands upon thousands of year more of the same. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, on the other hand, whose crimes included murder, rape, necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism, is, at least in the view of some Christians, in heaven with Jesus.

Islam

Photo credit: rogiro

One point Brian Flemming made in his documentary is that a moderate approach to religion is nonsensical. If our everlasting souls are in danger of perishing, what is there to be moderate about? In the West, like it or not, (I tend to like it) our religious beliefs have been softened by modern thought – most of us don’t think that diseases are caused by demons or that angels are in charge of keeping us safe from traffic accidents (although, unfortunately, some still do). We understand the difference between allowing for Freedom of Speech and being in agreement with said speech. We understand that some will denigrate our deity, and we are upset about it, but we don’t throw a rocket launcher over our shoulder and head over to the nearest consulate.

But those who really believe, who have truly embraced the medieval mindset, are ready and willing to act upon their beliefs. We’ve become complacent through comfort and capitalism; they have not. Enlightenment thinkers have shown us that human life is precious and valuable; people of the Book have learned no such thing. What separates you and I from those who flew planes into the World Trade Towers a decade ago is not so much the gospel of Luke as the essays of Locke, not Jesus so much as Jefferson.

What’s happening in the Middle East today is an example of the ineptitude of medieval thinking in today’s world. The answer to our problems will not be found in believing in one kind of medieval myth as opposed to another. Believing in the Easter Bunny more fervently because a belief in Santa Claus isn’t working would be madness. No, instead, we need to abandon ancient ways of thought in order to secure any kind of livable future.

When a modern mind like Michelangelo or Mozart or Joseph Campbell contemplates ancient human beliefs, some of our best art and understanding result. If, on the other hand, the medieval mind tries to understand the modern – we are left to witness the carnage on the evening news. Anyone who tells you that a return to pre-Enlightenment thought will make for a better society – that person is a danger to us all.

A return to faith will only make things worse, not better.

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And We Hid Our Faces From Him

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the Old Testament, Nostalgia for God on September 11, 2012 at 1:00 am

In my last post, I discussed the documentary The God Who Wasn’t There, a fairly pedestrian movie promoting an idea which is much more prevalent than I knew – the idea that Jesus never existed. I suppose, coming from a fundamentalist background, that I always thought that almost everyone believed that Jesus was a historical character, but that unbelievers thought he was just a good guy, an unorthodox teacher, and Christians worshiped him as the Son of God. I wasn’t really aware of the fact that some intellectuals considered the life of Jesus to be entirely mythical.

That documentary showed a few scenes from another, much more powerful movie, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Brian Flemming, the narrator and director of the documentary, said that Gibson’s movie is far and away the most popular Christian movie of all time, and he criticizes Christians for their love of blood – if you’ve never seen The Passion, it is definitely not for the faint of heart. Seeing these scenes again stirred up a lot of old feelings in me, and I just wanted to think aloud about some of them. I once read a quote, something to the extent that agnostics are atheists with a nostalgia for God – if you know who said it, please drop me a line.

I saw The Passion of the Christ at a movie theater in Bangkok, Thailand, where I was living at the time, and I’m sure it was a very different experience from what viewers in the US might have enjoyed.  99% of the population of Thailand is Buddhist, and many have no understanding whatsoever of our Christian beliefs. I once had a Thai student ask me, at Christmas time, if Christmas was a distinctly American holiday. I replied that Christmas was a holiday that celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ, and that most countries with a Christian heritage enjoyed celebrating Christmas. The Thai student smiled and nodded her head, which is the Thai way of saying that I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about, but I don’t want to look like an idiot by asking another question. So, I asked whether the student had ever heard of Jesus before. She replied that she had not, but she had read of other famous Americans, such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Needless to say, when I arrived at the movie theater to see The Passion, I was surprised to see a full auditorium. I didn’t think all those Buddhists would give one whit about the life of Christ. But Thais love all things American, especially Hollywood movies, so they had come out in droves. They had no idea what the movie was about. I’m sure you think I’m kidding, but the same Thai student who can tell you every single aspect of the story of the Ramayana (Ramakien in Thai) couldn’t place WWII in the proper century, and couldn’t tell you if Washington, Lincoln, Plato, and Hitler all lived at the same time or in different centuries. Western Civilization is not taught in high school nor is it a mandatory course in college – why would it be? I could never be too critical as a teacher there – most American students couldn’t tell you how many years there are between Plato, Washington, and Hitler either – and wouldn’t know what the hell you were talking about if you said ‘Ramakien”.

Many Buddhists are vegetarian, as they can’t stomach the idea of taking the life of any sentient being, not even a fish or a bird. Imagine watching such a brutal movie with this group of people. They were totally unprepared for what transpired on the screen. I knew that Jesus would be beaten and spit upon, that by the time he reached Golgotha that he’d be nearly unrecognizable as a human being. But the gentle Thais had never heard of such a gory hero as Jesus. They flinched when the Roman soldiers slapped him, moaned when the cat-o-nine-tails dug into his back, shrieked when the crown of thorns was thrust upon his head, and wept as Mary kissed his feet as he hung on the cross.

This was powerful stuff, this passion story. I remember my sister, one year older than me, watching horror films, covering her eyes at the scary parts. The Thais did the same thing – they were so appalled at the gristly nature of the film, that they covered their eyes with their hands, hiding behind one another and the high-rise seats. I couldn’t help but think of Isaiah 53 -

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Isaiah describes the natural response to such human misery; yet, we are so accustomed to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion that we can tell it to our children, perhaps with a smile on our faces. Yet, agnostic that I am, I still can’t watch such a graphic portrayal without choking up.

Isaiah 53 was always a favorite scripture of mine.  I thought of it as tragic poetry – real history, but expressed in beautifully painful language. That the Son of God could appear on Earth, and receive such vile treatment – it was finer tragedy than Oedipus Rex. Today, scholars attribute the writing to someone other than the Isaiah who wrote the first 50 chapters of the book named after him, some anonymous prophet who had been carried off by the Assyrian captivity. And Orthodox Jews contend that this scripture in no way, shape or form refers to an individual person, let alone the Christian Messiah. Nevertheless, for Christians, it resonates deep within the heart.

Amy Grant once recorded a rendition of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded  that I would listen to over and over again for hours. It seemed at the time to epitomize Christ’s sacrifice for us. Perhaps looming even larger in my childhood was a collection of songs recorded by Jimmy Swaggart; two albums named Worship and Healing. Each track of the albums featured a traditional composition of an old hymn, and Swaggart read a portion of scripture as the music played. With his Bill Clinton-esque ability to convey emotion in his voice, the combination of music and scripture was quite powerful.

My favorite was a song called ‘The Healer’. It was an old hymn that I had grown up hearing in church, one that I can remember my Dad trying to sing, and his mother as well – neither of them had any talent at singing, but they loved the old songs.

On the cross, crucified, in great sorrow he died; the giver of life, was he.

While this beautiful hymn was sung, Swaggart read from Isaiah, with emphasis:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

I stopped believing in this sort of thing a long time ago, but it still has the ability to tug at my heartstrings. When my mother was so sick with cancer, she posted pieces of paper with scriptures on them all around her bedroom – scriptures that promised healing. I searched everywhere for a copy of the old Swaggart album she had once loved so much. I thought that listening to it would comfort her. I finally found a CD version online and ordered it – it arrived a couple of days after her doctor told us that she had only a few weeks to live. I tossed it in the trash.

The story of Jesus’ crucifixion is sad, but there’s no way to know if it’s true or not. A Tale of Two Cities is a sad story too, and O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi will make you well up every time you read it. But the difference is that these stories don’t promise something that they can’t deliver, they don’t give dying people false hope, nor do they try to persuade people that a man died for them a couple thousand years ago. My mother spent her whole life believing in the gospels, but she fought death off until the end – there was no “looking forward to being with Jesus” for her – something inside her knew.

I don’t really have any conclusion. I love the old gospel songs, and they can still move me. I appreciate the poetry and tragedy of some of the scriptures. I wish I could believe in some kind of afterlife where I might be able to meet up with loved ones again. But just because I choke up watching Toy Story 3 doesn’t mean I think it’s a true story; just because a scripture like Isaiah 53 is beautifully tragic doesn’t make it any more real than the movie Somewhere in Time.

I once cried to think that humankind would hide its face from God’s son; if there is a God, it’s obvious he turned his face from us long ago.

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