Month: March 2010

Reciprocity and Atonement

Steven Woolley8 Comments
The principle of reciprocity is a powerful tool in our culture.  It is the principle of the quid pro quo: I’ll do this for you if you’ll do that for me.  As Robert Cialdini pointed out over twenty-five years ago in his little book “Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion.,”  it is a principle constantly at work in our daily lives.  In its best guise it is simply an exchange of more or less equal things.  For instance, when good friends invite us to their house for dinner, we make a mental note of our obligation to reciprocate at an early date.  We like to keep things even.  We feel uncomfortable when things get too far out of balance, as when a well meaning person always pays for our coffee and never let’s us do the same in return.  It puts us in a subordinate position.  It makes us wonder what he or she wants or will ask for at another time.  Obviously some kind of exchange is required, and we dislike not knowing what it will be.
Oddly enough it is not a principle in which equality of exchange is required.  The reciprocal act is essential, but it can satisfy social expectations and our consciences without being an equal exchange.  That’s what makes it so easy for it to become a principle in which significant advantage of one over the other is sought.  Accomplished sales people use it to full advantage.  They may well have a very find product or service to sell, and it may be one that you or I want or need.  But the deal can be closed solid by employing the principle of reciprocity.  In exchange for lunch at a fine restaurant, we give our life savings into the hands of a broker.  In exchange for feigned friendship and manufactured personal connections, we fork over thousands of dollars for a new car.  At its worst, it is the underlying principle of every con and scam.  We live in a culture driven by the principle of reciprocity, both fair and unfair.
We even try to work that principle into our religious faith, and we have since the beginning of time.  The psalmists are constantly imploring God to punish their enemies and in return receive unending praise.  The disciples compete for who will get the most in God’s kingdom in exchange for the quality of their discipleship.  On television a few nights ago, a well known cleric said that in exchange for being a Christian you get eternal life.  Prayers are constantly offered to God asking “What did I do to deserve this?” and “If you will do me this favor, I will do thus and so for the Church.”  It’s all about reciprocity.  Even the theories of atonement are based on some aspect of reciprocity.
My friend Tom, who teaches philosophy at a local college, wonders what it would be like to understand God in Christ as the one who refuses to live by the principle of reciprocity and invites his followers to do the same.  He suggests that through Jesus we are able to see something of what the superabundance of God’s generosity looks like when it is poured out as gift with no quid pro quo attached.  Those upon whom the gift is poured, and who are willing to receive it, find themselves impelled to respond with praise and thanksgiving, yet not in the context of reciprocity.  They may become followers of Jesus, true disciples, not as a way of paying back, but more in the sense of being swept along in God’s superabundant river of generosity.  
How would that play out in the events of Holy Week, the Cross, the grave and the Resurrection?   How would that make sense as a foundational argument for a theory of atonement?  To continue the metaphor, what if one chooses not to be swept along by that river of generosity?  What if one is content to sit on the bank and just watch?  What if one denies that there even is such a river?  Where does judgment fit in with that?  Scripture offers a tantalizing clue in Peter’s first letter where it is said that Jesus preached to the spirits who had perished in Noah’s flood (1 Peter 3.19, 4.6).  Were all those spirits now swept along in a new flood of redeeming, superabundant generosity?  Was Jesus “harrowing hell” to raise up the good and leave the bad behind?  In the 5th chapter of John’s gospel, will all the evil dead who are raised to the resurrection of judgment discover that as condemnation, or an invitation to be swept along in the new flood of superabundant generosity?
What would a theory of atonement founded on the idea of an outpouring of God’s superabundant generosity in which there is no place for reciprocity do to our usual ways of thinking about what it means to be Christian?

Get Christ back into Christianity

Steven Woolley4 Comments
It saddens me that the Hutaree militia group has prominently identified itself as a Christian militia, that the media has gone along with that in almost every headline on air and in print, and that there are many other militia groups that also adopt the name of Christian.  There is nothing Christian about any of them.
At best they have taken a few passages of scripture, stripped them of their context and distorted their meaning beyond all recognition.  A case in point: apparently the Hutaree group took sentences from Matthew 16:34 where Jesus said that he came not to bring peace but a sword, and Luke 22:36 where he advised the disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords, as a literal call to arms to combat the antichrist, whoever that might be in their twisted minds.  The context of these passages speaks more of Jesus’ great sadness that his message of peace and reconciliation would be met with violence, and his bitterness that his disciples did not understand the irony of taking up the sword.  Indeed, his response to its use in the Garden of Olives was to heal the injury caused.  
One problem is that militia groups like these are egged on by some Christians who obsess about the last days, Armageddon, and other heavenly battles described in the Revelation to John, anticipating them soon to be literally experienced in earthly time.  Apparently there are apocalyptic fundamentalists who believe that we are yet to experience the final battle between God and the devil, that the outcome is not at all certain, and that unless good Christians enlist as warriors in God’s army, he may well lose.  Such thinking does a terrible disservice to Holy Scripture, and in the face of Holy Week it simply crumbles into dust as utter nonsense.  Just the same, it has captured the imagination of more than a few.
Militia groups who dare to take the name Christian teeter on the brink of fanatical Jihadism as it is.  It doesn’t take much to push them over, and, in my opinion, the apocalyptic fundamentalists do just that.
Every year we hear a few nuts demanding to get Christ back into Christmas.  Maybe what we need more is to get Christ back into Christianity.

Some Practical Ways to Limit Government and Get It Out of Our Lives

Steven Woolley6 Comments
I’ve been thinking about friends who want a very limited federal government that gets out of their personal lives, and I have some suggestions.
First, very few want to get rid of Social Security but it needs more financial support, so I suggest eliminating the current $106,800 limit to income subject to FICA taxes.  But that would accomplish nothing to limit government and get it out of personal lives.  So let’s go forth.
  • Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid altogether
  • Eliminate all federal regulation of food processing and distribution 
  • Eliminate all federal regulation of pharmacology
  • Eliminate all agriculture support programs and payments
  • Eliminate all scientific and cultural support programs
  • Privatize crop insurance
  • Privatize air traffic control and eliminate all airport and rural air service subsidies and grants
  • Eliminate federal gas taxes and return all road and highway responsibilities to the states
  • Eliminate all consumer protection and transportation safety programs
  • Eliminate environmental protection agencies
  • Eliminate OSHA
  • Auction off national parks to the states or reliable theme park companies
  • Eliminate national forests and the BLM.  Auction off the land
  • Eliminate the SEC
  • Contract with Morgan-Chase to assume basic Federal Reserve functions
  • Eliminate the Department of Commerce and all of it’s programs
  • Eliminate all programs of the Corps of Engineers not directly related to combat missions of the Army
  • Eliminate NASA
I realize that this is not nearly enough, but it’s a reasonable start.

Bending Spoons, Waiting for Summer, Doing Work

Steven Woolley5 Comments
Anyone around my age watched Uri Geller use the power of his mind to bend a spoon right on television, probably the Ed Sullivan Show.  Then we spent hours, or a few brief moments, holding our own spoons intently staring at them, mentally willing them to bend.  They never did.  
The same feeling comes over me in the spring.  Many of the fruit trees are in full bloom.  The willows are showing some green, and other trees are heavy with buds.  Tired of bare branches and gloomy weather, I find myself intently staring at them, mentally willing them to leaf out NOW!  They never do.  
The only thing that works is to patiently wait for what will happen to happen.  Something like that is what Lent and Holy Week are all about.  They provide a short lesson in life, and it raises an important question.  If we cannot hurry up the opening of our own lives to the life in Christ that is already ours in the faint budding of green, but not yet fully here, what are we to do in the meantime.  I suppose we could just sit and wait in fearful self-complacency like the steward who buried his talents.  But Lent and Holy Week call us to something different.  To continue mixing metaphors, they call us to a life of spring cleaning and yard work to prepare the way.  They call us to a life of getting out of the house and into the world to continue the ministry of Christ, which is the ministry of preparation.    

Sealing the Covenant with Sacrificial Blood

Steven Woolley7 Comments
I’m not sure whether we are sneaking up to Holy Week or it is thundering toward us.  In either case, many of us will hear the reading of the passion narrative on Palm Sunday.  In it is one very brief sentence from which we take a significant part of our understanding of Holy Communion: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”  At least that’s Luke’s version. 
I imagine that the disciples had an almost instantaneous, instinctive grasp of what Jesus meant because they were familiar with scripture’s promise of a new covenant and the importance of sealing it with a blood sacrifice.  That is not to say that they would have been able to formulate a sophisticated theological argument, but only that, in the context of their religious lives and beliefs, it made perfect sense. 
That is not true for most contemporary Christians.  They hear it, or something like it, every time Holy Communion is celebrated.  Some believe it.  Others accept it without much thought.  Others never pay the slightest bit of attention, and still others reject it as barbaric.  Almost none of them connect it with the promise in Jeremiah 31 of a new covenant, nor to the explanation in Leviticus 17 that the (God given) life of the flesh is in the blood, nor, and this is important, to the description in Exodus 24 of the sealing of God’s covenant with the Israelites by sprinkling sacrificial blood on them.
The disciples knew all of that.  The symbolism of the post dinner cup of wine would have been very clear.  If Jesus really is who he says he is, then the life of the flesh that flows within him is not simply God given but God’s actual presence in a way that cannot be replicated in any other creature.  If the sprinkling of sacrificial blood on the people of Israel sealed their covenant with God, how much more would the holy blood of Christ seal the new covenant, especially when it is not sprinkled on but taken in.  No longer was God’s seal on them, it was in them.   They would not fully understand that for days, and perhaps years, to come, but the significance of it would become an essential piece of what it meant to be a Christian. 
No doubt someone will observe that the wine is not sacrificial blood, it’s just wine, and besides, Jesus had not yet been crucified when he uttered those words.  My only response is to cite what was once attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:
“Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.”
That aside, I believe that we who are called to teach must be more diligent in helping today’s followers of Christ understand these kinds of connections because, without them, we loose too much of what is essential.  Finally, and for what it’s worth, I have tried to teach these connections for many years with only marginal success.

Miscellaneous Qestions on a Monday

Steven Woolley3 Comments
Whatever happened to Moses’ wife and sons?  They disappear from the narrative, but their presence is implied by the visit of Jethro to Moses after the exodus.  It can’t be just because they are not wholly descendants of Israel.  Neither are the two sons of Joseph who go on to become half tribes of Israel, nor are several of Jesus’ ancestors.
Has anyone ever done a study of the Midianites and their role as a catalyst (inspired by God?) in the history of Israel?
Scripture and our own daily prayers often offer blessings to God.  How can God’s creatures bless the one who is the source of all blessings?
As human beings we are able to offer blessings of a limited nature to one another through gifts of substance, encouragement, special honors and wishes for good fortune.  Do we sometimes, perhaps too often, confuse our limited human blessings for Godly blessings and then take unwarranted credit as if we were agents of God?  When we are authentic conduits of God’s blessings into the life of another, how do we know that or do we need to know that?
Jesus told his disciples that whoever is not against us is for us.  But he also said that whoever is not with me is against me.  What an interesting set of statements.  Logically it reduces Jesus’ true opponents to a very limited number.  Consider, for instance, the Dali Lama, a non-Christian who has gone out of his way to encourage Christians in their faith.  Where do you think he fits in from the point of view of Jesus?

Understanding the Self Executing Rule

Steven Woolley8 Comments
My member of Congress, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, has sent out a video explaining why she will vote against the health care legislation.  
She calls it radical.  To be radical it would have to dig down to the root of the problems with our health care system.  At its best, this bill is mere pruning and offers only a promise of more comprehensive reform in the future. 
She claims it will raise premiums, which could be true if by that one assumes that more people will opt for greater coverage than they now have because of overall lower costs.  We are standing the midst of a tidal wave of premium increases as it is, and have been for years, so I’m not sure what point she is trying to make.
She says it will increase taxes.  On whom, considering that it contains a number of tax breaks and cuts, especially for small businesses?  In the long run it will uncap the limit on the earnings tax you and I pay for Medicare so that very high income people will also pay their full share.  It will put a modest tax on currently tax free health care plans that provide for breadth and depth of coverage unknown to most of us – what is essentially tax free socialized medicine without limitation available only to the corporate elite.
She says it will cut Medicare.  It will cut Medicare costs, not benefits, by aiming at known waste and fraud. By the way, the waste and fraud appear to be mostly on the private side of the ledger.  The government’s share of Meidcare overhead is said to be around 2 or 3% as opposed to the 10 to 15% or more on the private side, and that’s for well run plans.
She says it will increase spending, which is true, and yet the CBO also says it will set into motion billions in deficit reduction rather than add to it. 
Most of all she claims that the Democrats have “invented” the “Slaughter Amendment” process to permit passage of the bill without even a vote.  That is just plain wrong, and she knows it.  She’s just hoping her constituents don’t.  She is referring to a self executing House rule that has been around for twenty-five or thirty years.  When used, the entire House votes on a special rule, up or down, that deems the bill enclosed within it (the Senate health bill) to have been passed, which, in this case will allow the House to get on with amending the newly passed legislation in total and sending it back to the Senate for agreement under reconciliation.  Whatever else happens, the Senate bill would become law, but the intention is to improve it through supplementary legislation originating in the House and going to the Senate for an up or down vote via reconciliation.  Everyone gets to vote.
What doesn’t happen under the self executing rule, as I understand it, is that the bill (the Senate bill in this case) cannot be referred back to committee or amended by the entire House acting as the committee of the whole.  
The self executing rule has been around for a long time.  Under Republican Speaker Gingrich it was used 90 times.  Under Republican Speaker Hastert it was used 112 times.  So much for unprecedented legislative tactics. 
Ms. McMorris Rodgers wants to stop and start over again, which is Republican for doing nothing at all ever.  She, along with Mr. Boehner, claims to have a simple plan based entirely in the private market that will work just fine.  Neither one has ever said what that plan is. 

Stephen, Antony and Jesus

Steven Woolley1 Comment
My companions in morning prayer are icons of St. Stephen the Martyr, St. Antony of the Desert and a crucifix.  This morning I was reflecting about the incompleteness of Stephen and Antony.  One was an intemperate youth on fire with his new faith in Jesus but lacking in mature wisdom or practical judgment.  The other grew into an old man who had spent a life time exorcising his own demons until, at last, he was able to offer wisdom that would guide centuries of Christian thinking.  Each of them had important truths to offer, but only in part.  Turning then to Jesus on the cross, it’s hard not to think of him as an older and almost ageless man.  His was the wisdom of eternity embodied in a man normally deemed too young to have acquired the wisdom of the elders.  Young persons are expected to be more like Stephen.  Wise persons are expected to be more well aged like Antony.  Stephen and Antony we can understand.  They accurately represent parts of the reality of being human.  Jesus?  Not so easy to understand.
I think that is part of what John intended us to ponder when he wrote that, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him…[he was] full of grace and truth.”  Or, as in the Letter to the Colossians, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”   Among the many reasons that he was, and always will be, crucified is that we are simply too discomfited by such a person.  His mere presence among us was and is an unbearable indictment of our limitations and selfishness.   The thing is, he won’t go away.  He keeps getting resurrected.  He keeps confronting us with both indictment and reconciliation, both truth and forgiveness.  We can dismiss Stephen as an immature kid and Antony as a certified nut case, but Jesus defies all our attempts to dismiss him.  I guess that’s why Paul said that once he thought of Jesus in human terms, but no longer.
I’m not sure where these thoughts will lead but suspect they will end up in my Good Friday meditation.

I Do Not Understand

Steven Woolley3 Comments
I’ve tried, but I do not understand the hysteria of those opposed to health care reform.  The terror of a mad dash toward Socialism, the assertions of a federal government intent on intruding into and controlling private lives, the solid belief that government is bad and wasteful while private industry is good and efficient make no sense to me.  
The simple fact that health care costs 17% of GDP and is the most inefficient and unjust health care system in the entire industrialized world is not just ignored, it’s disbelieved.  Anger at the economic meltdown does not translate into understanding why we need to re-regulate the financial industry.   Daily reports of shootings in malls, offices and factories simply heightens the demand that every person have the right to be armed at all times with any weapon of their choice.
Where were these people when domestic spying, warrantless wiretapping, illegal wars and secretive energy deals were the staples of government policy?  Where were they when No Child Left Behind unhelpfully inserted its unfunded self into every classroom in America?  Where were they when previous administrations exploded the national debt through unwise tax policy and spending programs?  I know they were out there.  They are the descendants of those who opposed government inspection of food supplies, elimination of child labor, establishment of minimum wages, introduction of Social Security and, of course, Medicare.  
Oddly enough, their strength appears to be in the farm belts of the nation that are the beneficiaries of the most socialized industry in America (apart from defense).  If it was not for the periodic renewal of the giant farm bill, a huge portion of farming as we now know it would simply collapse.  The ultra-conservatives in our part of the country are especially fond of their rights to the dams, power, irrigation water and roads provided by that most hated of all “Socialists”, FDR.
Don’t get me wrong.  Government, especially the federal government, needs to be carefully watched.  It only has one power, and that is the power of coercion.  It must be granted with care and conservative judgment because once granted it cannot be reclaimed.  It is equally foolish to believe in the myth of free enterprise only to be entrapped by petty corporate dictatorships resembling nothing more than medieval baronies and dukedoms.  I say this as one whose retirement lifestyle is tied to the performance of the stock market.   
I wish I knew what the answer is, but I don’t.  One thing I’m pretty sure of: it’s not about electing better members of congress.  We’ve gone down that road from time to time with no discernible results.  All we got last time was Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.  I think the answer probably has more to do with abandoning unreflective national hubris, gaining broader faith in the rule of law, having the corporate maturity to ignore hate and fear mongers.  How likely is that?