Month: June 2024

In a recent lectionary study group and weekly public issues group, history, allegory, metaphor and truth have been kicked around. Both groups questioned scripture: is any of it historically and factually true, can it be understood both literally and metaphorically, is it mostly historical fiction, as profound as it may be, in what way is it divinely inspired, does it reveal truth that can be relied on to never change?

These are the same questions that have been asked in every generation since the beginning of human reason and the subject of books beyond number trying to answer them.   Has no one come up with definitive answers?  Why do we have to keep reinventing the wheel by asking the same questions time and again as if they’d never before been asked?  The problem in each generation is that the answers  turn out to be both yes and no, which drives people nuts. 

Fundamentalists attempt shutting down the cycle by declaring their particular version of scripture was divinely inspired, historically and factually true in every word.  But then they go on to interpret it according to their own prejudices, which keep changing as social conditions change. Religious history is dotted with their many dead ends, but I will give them this; they want to take scripture seriously, and well it should be. 

I think the reason we attempt to reinvent the wheel, in every generation by asking the same questions over again as if for the first time, is that political, social, economic, and environmental conditions change.  Answers that seemed to make sense in prior ages no longer do, but what answers for today can remain faithful to godly truth revealed in scripture?  To paraphrase Peter Gomes, the truth of holy scripture remains the same but our  ability to understand it doesn’t. With that in mind, it might be useful to take a look at each individual question.

Before we do, a note about the Bible itself.  It’s not a book.  It’s a collection of books written over thousands of years containing myth, history, proverbs, poetry, fables, prophecy, and testimony.  It tells the story of God’s progressive self revelation to humanity, a self revelation that continues to this very day.   Divinely inspired though it is, it was written by people who were limited by the conditions of their time and sometime made errors.  Nevertheless, Holy Scripture can be trusted to contain, reveal and illuminate God’s eternal truth.  Let’s move on.

History relates the chronological unfolding of events and the people in them based on as much verifiable data as can be gathered.  But a recitation alone is not enough.  A narrative has to be crafted to tell the story of what the events mean and the effects they had on people involved in them.  It’s a narrative written through the lens of the author with all the limitations that implies.  It’s why, for instance, that all the books about Washington and Lincoln never add up to the whole of either man.  It’s why a truthful history of the American War of Independence written by the British is a far different story from the equally truthful version written by America.  Historical narratives in the Bible compiled oral stories of past events that have proven remarkably accurate when measured against archeological records from the ancient Near East.  Like every narrative, it took an author to tell a story about events and people, and that story  can be no more than mostly true in its details. 

It should not be necessary to say that the Bible’s myths, proverbs, poetry and fables (parables) have deep allegorical and metaphorical meaning. They were never meant to be taken literally.  They have symbolic meaning that bears divine truth.  It’s the kind of eternal truth that speaks something new to every people in every place and every time. I may say with confidence that this is the eternal truth it reveals right now, but wait, there will be more and it will never end. Historical metaphors can be more difficult to explain. I’ve been asked if there really was a man named Abraham.  Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t.  There is no verifiable record one way or the other. But about 2000 years before Christ there was a movement of some body into the land of Canaan who did worship an invisible God with whom they had a personal relationship.  So whether Abraham was real or not, he remains a truthful metaphor for the moment when God’s self revelation began. 

Christians believe and trust that there is nothing mythological or metaphorical about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  The Christ event is literally and historically true.  The gospel narratives about his life are as true as divinely inspired human memory can make them.  What they record as his words and deeds are not the wisdom of a prophet or guru, they are the words and deeds of the Word of God made flesh.  There is no greater authority on earth or in heaven. They reveal eternal truth.  But, as Dr. Gomes said, we are only infants in our ability to understand them.  The apostle Paul said we can see God’s truth only as through a dark glass, but it will become clear in our eternal life.  Jesus said the eternal unchanging truth is this: love God with everything you have, love yourself, love your neighbor, love as Jesus showed what love is.  There is nothing provisional about that.  From God’s mouth to our ears, it’s as simple as that.  Making it a way of life in our fault prone human limitations is another matter.  It’s a life long exercise in being provisionally right a decent amount of the time, deeply relieved that by God’s grace and the redeeming power of Christ, it is enough. 

The reality of living in a world of provisional truth is upsetting to many people. They don’t want provisional truth, they want absolute truth that has always been true, always will be true. They want truth expressed in simple concrete terms that separate good from bad, right from wrong, with no middle ground.  I sympathize with their desire, but it is not the world we live in. Human efforts to make it otherwise, to make the world, black and white, will always be wrong. It is the lesson of the story of the people who journey for 40 years in the wilderness. They were unable to live into the provisional truce. God gave them, they wanted something more sure and certain like the life of slavery they left behind in Egypt. It is what misled the early Christians of Galatia, and it is what misleads us today when we try to dictate what is right and wrong and claiming it is from God.

Louisiana’s latest gambit to gain the news spotlight is  to require the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public classroom. The State’s mandate inspired me to look at them and to write this article.

I prefer to examine the commandments’ meaning, not just the words. First, the commandments acknowledge one God.  If you claim to be an atheist, at least be an honest one and don’t delude yourself by manufacturing little gods of your own design such as money, status, self-esteem, and possessions. The same goes for conjuring up various spirits that appeal to your imagination. Be an honest atheist.  God appreciates atheistic honesty and honors its unending arguing with the God it doesn’t believe in.

Honor mother and father might mean mom and dad, but it has more to do with knowing history and honoring the hard work and wisdom of our ancestors. Flawed as they were, they nevertheless offered godly counsel that lead us into a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in the way of love.

Don’t murder sounds simple enough, but our gun happy culture gives license to kill on the flimsiest of rationalizations.  Maybe we should just stop killing each other and remember there are other ways of committing murder.  Physical and psychological abuse kills one’s soul a little at a time.

Adultery is the betrayal of a relationship.  Of course it means cheating on one’s spouse, but it also means betraying the integrity of any relationship: friends, customers, employers, employees, every relationship that relies on mutual trust. To betray is to break trust. Oddly enough, it seems Jesus was more understanding of sexual adultery than other kinds of betrayal. 

Same with stealing.  It’s more than refraining from robbery or burglary.  It means don’t acquire for yourself anything whatsoever that you do not have a moral right to, remembering that what is legal may still be immoral. 

Do not bear false witness may be the most violated of them all.  Every tidbit of juicy gossip, slanderous insult, unverified rumor and crackpot conspiracy story is a form of false witness. False witness kills and destroys.  It’s part of what has corrupted our democracy. 

What about all the thou shalt not covet commandments? To covet is a strong emotion, a passionate desire to have what someone else has.  Not something like it, but the thing itself.  It leads to murder, theft, and adultery.  Passions exist but they’re not to control our lives.

Students learn their most important lessons from what they see their  elders say and do.  When you get right down to it, there are only two commandments.  Love the Lord your God and be a person of integrity in everything you do and say.  Make it a way of life..  Start with the church, then legislatures and courts, news organizations, corporate advertising, and the local gathering place.  Then don’t worry about posters in classrooms.  The kids will be OK..

Justice Alito is on record having said he would like our nation to be more godly.  I would too, although I suspect my idea of what that means may not be the same idea as his.  A more godly America would place godly virtues above all other measures of national success in public, private and political life. But what are the characteristics of godly virtues and do they require a particular religious faith if they are to be attained?

As a Christian, I am convinced that in Christ Jesus the way of godly virtues is made clear and that it fulfills all the laws and prophets of Hebrew Scripture. At the same time I am deeply suspicious that some people proclaiming to be Christians have something different in mind.  It seems that they mean adherence to a particular definition of Christianity that centers on adherence to imagined social norms of the mid 20th century which they call biblical. The first two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans suggest there is something of the more godly way that has been known and followed by some pagans.  By reason and common thought they contemplated nature including human nature. I imagine Paul was thinking of Plato and the Stoics, and maybe even peasants who discerned something of the godly way in the cycles of agriculture.  

God’s Spirit can make herself known to whomever she likes and in whatever way she chooses.  We who know and follow God incarnate in Christ Jesus are confident that what is known only in part by non-believers who live in godly ways is made more fully known to us directly by God Almighty as we know God in Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. Jesus declared the fundamental, incontrovertible principles of what it means to live godly lives.  But he left it to us to discern how to apply them in places and among the people where we are.  He left it to us to become disciples, to be life long learners, to examine how to live our own lives more closely following in his way.  He declared that God’s Spirit would be with us always and everywhere to guide and guard us, but not dictate or coerce.  He declared that our eternal life in God’s presence is not a reward for being good, but our destiny as we pass through the valley of the shadow of death that is life. On the way we are to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors as Jesus taught and demonstrated.   It is love that fulfills the terms of virtues God delivered through the prophets and interpreted for us by Jesus, They are grounded in healing, restoration, reconciliation, and living in peaceful harmony with others.  It is a peaceful harmony that doesn’t require unanimity, nor can it be imposed on others by those in power.  Godly virtues may be without number, but Paul suggests they include: “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (Gal. 5)

There is something to be learned from Plato and Stoics about what that means for the Christian way of life.  They emphasized the need for mature adults to become the masters of their passions, subordinating them to reason and reflection on what is good and right.  They were suspicious of emotions having control over behavior.  Passions like lust, anger, egoism, self righteousness, and such destroyed a good life.  Paul said the same thing. Passions exist.  They are part of who we are.  They are not bad in themselves but destructive when we allow them to control us. 

It brings me back to Alito and what the way of a more godly nation might be.  Yes, we need to become a more godly nation.  But that does not mean imposing a rather corrupted brand of Christianity on the public through legislation, schools and courts. It does mean Christians, especially their leaders, must be bolder in public proclamations of classical virtues explored through two thousand years of prayerful discernment leading ever closer to godly justice.  Today we must be bolder in displaying respect for other religious traditions, especially when we share understanding about civic virtues that are the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  

A more godly nation is one where godly virtues are taught, known, practiced by Christians who do not confuse them with social norms, which may or may not be virtuous. It’s a nation where history is taught honestly without embarrassment. It’s a nation where civics and classical virtues are taught in well funded public schools. It is a nation where the health and well being of the community goes hand in hand with preserving individual rights, and every individual understands thier obligation to the common welfare. In the United States more than any other nation, it means living in peaceful harmony and mutual respect for and between people of diverse cultures and ethnicities.  

Finally we in the classical tradition of Christianity must turn our attention away from defending the church and toward a more vigorous proclamation of the Good News, inviting all to join us as followers of Jesus Christ without condemning those who take other paths. We need more public theologians and preachers who communicate effectively with the people in the language of the people.  What is proclaimed in the pulpit must be practiced in public.  I think we talk too much to ourselves and too little to others.  We put worthy effort into speaking truth to power, and little effort into speaking hope to to those who need it most.

What follows below are comments by Prof. Davis, and old friend who has been a valued conversaiton partner of over twenty years.

I want to comment on these concluding sentences:

“We need more public theologians and preachers who communicate effectively with the people in the language of the people.  What is proclaimed in the pulpit must be practiced in public.  I think we talk too much to ourselves and too little to others.  We put worthy effort into speaking truth to power, and little effort into speaking hope to those who need it most.”

First, does the phrase “the language of the people” assume that “We, the people” in today’s America all share a common language? One way to answer would be to ask, Is there a shared sense of the “common good” in today’s America?

The absence of a confident “Yes, and it is…” is rooted in the growing substitution of zealous tribal outrage for genuine self-confidence. Zealous tribal outrage compensates for despair at heart. Whereas genuine self-confidence follows from being faithful at heart to something more important than yourself. The pervasive mistake today is to think that zealous loyalty to this or that sectarian tribe can be that “something more important” rather than itself being despair at heart.

So if we ask, “Who are those most in need of hope?”, look first to the zealous outrage of those “speaking truth to power.” 

For what the children of the elite proclaiming their loyalty to Hamas to free Palestine and the millions of Americans who fervently believe that only Donald Trump can save America from itself share is a fantastical “hope” meant to save them from their own despair at heart.

Can the Episcopal Church learn how to speak out to such shared despair from the confident depth of Jesus’s own day-by-day faithfulness? Is there a “language of the people” today that can inspire turning to hearken to the hope at the heart of Jesus’s everyday faithfulness?

I had a friend, now deceased, who eagerly fell for every screwball rumor heard on talk radio or published in the National Enquirer.  A perfectly ordinary person in every other way, the affinity for rumors, the more apocalyptic the better, seemed to be a big blind spot.  Where did that come from? It was a little extreme, but something like it seems to infect a lot of people.  

We, I mean you and me, are prone to make categorical assertions for which we have little evidence nor have made the slightest effort to verify. Two popular books make the point.  The 1970 book “The Late Great Planet Earth” set off months of conversation among my friends.  They were captivated by its assurance that biblical prophecy predicted the end of this age in the decade of the 80s.  The argument seemed too rational.  How could it be otherwise?  Apparently God had not read the book so nothing happened. The second was the 2003  “The DaVinci Code.”  It caused enough of a stir for me to hold a class devoted to debunking it.   It was, it seems, another book God had not read.   Both books were made into movies and featured on television, demonstrating how easy it is for ordinary, reasonably rational people to be seduced down alleys of fictional reality.

The MAGA crowd, led by a skilled huckster, is at the end of one of those alleys and have a loud enough voice to have thrown the nation into divisive turmoil.  Established media have aided and abetted the turmoil through non stop color commentary.  The unrestrained ubiquity of free-for-all social media platforms has created even more dangerous avenues for the blatantly false to be marketed as the only truth. Sadly, it has sold well.

Taken together they present an image of a divided, chaotic American public in a nation incapable of coherent government. What better opportunity for unfriendly nations and opportunistic agents to add fuel to the fire?  It’s easily done through provocative misinformation fed into the social media mix parading as legitimate opinions of real Americans. The hope of unfriendly nations is to hasten the collapse of the U.S.A. as a global leader, while the intent of opportunistic agents is to gain political power and at the same time make a lot of money.

So, is it working?  Consider the U.S. House of Representatives, the MAGA political machine, cable news and the polls they report, the answer you’ll no doubt find is yes.  But I have my doubts. A scattering of in depth examinations of national conditions suggest that a majority of individuals are optimistic about their own prospects for a comfortable life.  It seems that consumers are more price conscious than big business expected and are starting to lower retail prices, albeit unevenly.  Even their own purchasing managers are pressuring other big businesses to lower prices for production materials. The strength and resilience of an economy energized by reversing forty years of trickle down supply side policies is gaining public appreciation in the face of the flood of misinformation thrown at it. Biden’s poll numbers aside, his achievements and most policies are broadly appreciated

I admit that my take on this is more intuitive than analytically data driven.  Of course the MAGA crowd will continue to yell and scream to get attention.  But how much good will it do them when the public is exposed daily to the incoherent ranting of their leader’s erratic thinking, disassociation from reality, and increasingly frequent spoken gibberish? 

Don’t get me wrong.  We have real problems demanding real solutions.  Aside from well publicized domestic issues, the U.S. has to learn how to succeed as one leading nation among a global  community of leading nations and other nations asserting their intent to be heard and respected in the global decision making process. Perhaps our most difficult problem will be to establish a new social equilibrium of multi-ethnic respect and harmony.  The end of white hegemony will not come easily.   It’s long overdue but fear of losing control and place in society inspires a vigorous rear guard resistance.

My hope and intuition tell me that the American people, most of them, treasure the constitutional promises of our liberal democracy.  I hope and trust that the apparent surge toward authoritarian Fascist style rule will once again crumble against an electorate not tricked by its false promises.  True conservatives, if there are any left, will rediscover that conserving our liberal democracy is the most conservative thing they can do.  They need to do what they do best: restrain liberal enthusiasm that has a tendency to reach for more than can be achieved.  It’s a symbiotic relationship of cooperative tension that has, and can again, imbue our democracy with enduring strength and stability.

Paul railed against gentile attempts to adhere to Torah laws calling them disciplinary boundaries to keep children from straying too far.  But the freedom in Jesus Christ that Paul preached bound Christians to a more difficult law, one harder to follow.  

We are free to do as we will as long as it reflects in every word and deed love of God, loving respect for self, and loving respect for the other, whomever the other might be.  It’s a far higher standard than anything in Torah.  Without Torah’s well defined guidelines, it requires virtuous self discipline and reflective consideration of answers to questions about good and bad, right and wrong. In a complicated world of uncertainty Paul put it this way, you have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil.2) He did not mean that you are the source of your salvation but that you have to work out how to live into the salvation that is yours through Christ Jesus. 

We are not without guidance.  The gospel records show how Jesus is our example.  We aren’t perfect but we are able to follow Him with confidence because Jesus is God incarnate in whose word and deeds the way is made known to us. Scripture, Hebrew and Christian, tells the story of humanity’s introduction to God Almighty and the slow process of absorbing God’s way of living into daily life. Stiff necked people that we are, we share strengths and weaknesses like our ancestors. Yet, we are aided by the tradition of the church bequeathed to us by centuries of saints and scholars.  Each generation must take its turn, learning from the past, discovering how to live as faithful Christians in today’s society, and preparing the way for future generations.

Frustrating as it is, there is no single way to understand the truth for all times. God’s truth may be eternal and unchanging but our ability to understand it is not.  It changes from time to time and place to place, leaving us always seeking a deeper understanding yet never reaching a final conclusion because there is always more. That does not satisfy people who demand black and white answers in social settings that they believe should not change. Truth is that the only unchanging, solid policy to stand is trust in Jesus.  Everything else, as the hymn says, is shifting sand. Society does not stay the same, nor can it.  It’s always shifting and the church is always adjusting to influence it in a more godly direction while prayerfully listening with discerning hearts to what God is yet unveiling.  I am sympathetic.  Following Jesus into tomorrow’s  unpredictable changes and chances is risky, uncertain, and exhausting.  The good news in the Good News is that those who say this is it, I can go no farther, are not left behind. God’s grace will carry them.  As for those who fearlessly forge ahead, they are prone to wander down blind alleys.  God’s grace pursues them to bring them back.  The rest of us are in the middle, walking in hope.

I would like to edit Paul’s admonition to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, to say work out your understanding of salvation with fear and trembling. Share the good news with others and help them work out their own understanding, which will not be your understanding.  You and others will be more mostly right than you were before but not as much as you will become. The way forward is filled with hope and doubt anchored in trust in Jesus.

Country Parson has a relatively small subscriber base, yet gets a  considerable number of casual readers who find it somewhere on the internet. My analytics tell me that the country from which they read C.P.  most frequently are the Commonwealth nations. Oddly enough there are a number of readers from places one would not expect: India, Pakistan, Taiwan, China, Oman, Poland, etc.  Of course they are not readers of C.P. at all, they are computers searching the web for key words and syphoning off snippets for their controllers to sift through for intelligence of one kind or another.  The process that Country Parson hopes for is the human conversation between writer and reader – real persons interested in religion and politics. 

It brings me to reflections on the recent book by George Stephanopoulos, The Situation Room.  The purpose of the White House Situation Room is to sift incoming information from all sources to produce briefings needed by the President and presidential staff. Toward the end of the book Stephanopoulos reported an observation from Google’s CEO that dozens of analysts looking through data was a waste of human talent when computers could be programmed to do it faster and cheaper.  All it would take is the right algorithm to pick up on unusual deviations from routine background chatter.  Today’s advances in AI would enable the computer to learn and adjust on its own faster and more accurately than error prone humans. Google may not be the most reliable source of expert advice given their current problems with publicly available AI tools, but it’s worth thinking about anyway.

What the idea fails to consider, at least for me, is that much of what the analysts do is based on intuition, a feeling that something is different, a hunch, and knowledge of history and conditions not included in information coming into the Situation Room.  As an added factor, analysts check each other through conversation about what they think and why they think it.  They are also able to adjust quickly to new requests from White House staff that are often far outside the norm.   It’s an organic process, analog if you will, that involves constructive relationships between independent persons in a way that computers cannot: at least not now. 

Is the organic human approach less accurate and efficient than a computer based AI approach?  I don’t think it’s one against the other.  AI can sift through enormous amounts of data in a short time looking for relatively obvious anomalies.  The slower organic process of human analysts will ferret out nuances outside the realm of algorithms and the limitations of machine learning.  Moreover, what’s true for the Situation Room is true for everyday life in every organization: public sector, private sector, non-profit, and social. 

Artificial Intelligence, for all its potential for good, cannot replace human wisdom, creativity, imagination, and intuitive problem solving.  I have spent years teaching and preaching that you cannot answer a question that has not been asked.  What humans can do, and have done for millennia, is to imagine the unasked question and postulate possible answers. That, I suspect, is a unique property of humanity that computers can only imitate superficially.

I don’t want to dismiss the potential value of AI.  In time it will be able to do routine data processing and instruct actions that will replace laborious and error proof work now done by computer assisted humans.  AI currently available to the public appears to be used more for entertainment or like a toy than anything else. As with any toy or entertainment gizmo the public can manipulate, people are messing with it to produce silly, outlandish and sometimes dangerous outcomes.  Hackers have learned how to fool around with its internal algorithms to produce mutations no one expected or wanted.  It will take some time for AI to become a reliable, useful tool for the public.  In the meantime, governments and corporations are exploring how to use it in ways not available to the public.  With fingers crossed we can hope for the best and remain skeptically vigilant. 

It is not a time to gloat.  It is a time to pause prayerfully and reflectively to ask a few serious questions.  How could so many be so easily misled to allow a person like Trump to become president even once and candidate for the presidency again? What makes it possible for people like Trump get through life swindling, lying, whining and assaulting others without facing accountability or suffering consequences? How did we end up with legislatures with a small number of right wing extremists able to make moral cowards of a majority in their own party?

Before casting self righteous aspersions far and wide, it would be better to examine the logs in  our own eyes.  We who are stalwart defenders of liberal democracy, we who hover left and right around the center, what have we done and not done, said and not said that has contributed to the current state of American democracy?  I think these are questions we need to ask ourselves if the nation is to recover its sense of moral duty, to work on living ever further into the American Promise and to provide the reality of the American Dream for all persons.  They are questions that should be addressed in private conversations, social gatherings, and business and academic settings.  They should be put to every potential candidate exploring whether to run for public office. 

These are among the  questions that public thought and opinion leaders most especially should be asking of themselves.  They have pandered too long to the forces of civic disorder with enthusiasm for “let’s you and him fight” as a way to keep the presses humming. There is a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer that I commend to all of us who write on public policy for the public’s consumption.

“Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct in our time we pray, those who speak where many listen, and write what many read’ that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 827)

With that said, I want to make two points reflecting on Trump’s convictions.  First, he and his supporters have gone on a P.R. campaign to convince the public that the trial was a political stunt to harm a presidential candidacy, a show trial rigged from the first, and a hint of what the future holds if Biden is elected.  It’s a curious claim because it rejects the obvious, transparent reality of the trial’s meticulous adherence to the rule of law and because the abuses they imagine are the very ones they have promised to inflict on their political enemies if and when they get the chance.  It’s a bold move right out of Goebbels’s playbook, and it works alarmingly well. 

The second point is that MAGA leadership has redoubled its narrative that they alone love America, which is in a horrible state of decline and will be destroyed if those favoring liberal democracy continue to have control.  The trial, according too them, was a ploy of misdirection to hide the terrible state of issues from the public.  They never say what is horrible, terrible, in decline, or threatening to the future of the American way.  They talk over questions put to them and change the subject – a classic move at misdirection in its own right. It often leads to interlocutors stumbling for control of interviews.

Major media sources who speak where many listen and write what many read have a moral obligation to confront the lies and real time threats to liberty and justice for all, to call them out for what they are.  It’s true that they need to hold the forces of liberal democracy accountable as well, but they would be wrong to imply any kind of equivalency.  The same is true for those of us who speak where few listen and write what few read.  Whatever limited influence we have is still influence. 

We have only a few weeks to get it right.