Bill's Comments

Paul Greenberg is a commentor that I read daily and often feel like, "OK, it feels good, but what else does it say?" Today he wrote a piece that really grabbed me as TRUE.

But on sober reflection, or even after a drink or two, it occurred that there might be something more worthwhile than political calculation, something even more important than the election results that seemed so all-important at the time. Namely, trying to tell the reader the truth day after day, such as we are dimly allowed to perceive it.

Please read the whole thing. It is eloquent.

Yesterday, on her 53rd birthday, my wife completed her first marathon in 5 hr 21 min. She ran 11 minute miles for the first 21 miles, before slowing down. She said the last four point two miles were like running the whole race again.

As I posted two weeks ago, she ran in the Chicago marathon, but it was stopped when she was at mile 16. Team-in-Training entered her, her running mate, and all the Cincinnati runners that did not complete Chicago in the Columbus, Ohio, marathon. We all thought it humorous that the letter from the marathon to the participants reassured them that there would be plenty of fluids on the course at a total of 19 stations. (Chicago will be a long time living down that fiasco.)

She was allowed to start early with the walkers since she qualified as a slow runner. This also allowed her to finish before the heat of the afternoon.
The temperatures ranged from 50-80 yesterday during the race. Jennifer started at 7:00 AM and completed at 12:21 PM. She had trouble with her T-band muscle and a toe that had been broken, but was determined to finish if she had to crawl across the line. She did not crawl--she ran across the line. She also enjoyed this marathon more than Chicago.

Jennifer is happy and already making noises like she might do the Columbus Marathon again. She says as a walk/run, but we'll see. She is now going to try to mentor for Team-in-Training.

Again thanks to all of you who contributed to TNT for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and for all the thoughts and prayers.

In order to keep her end of the deal, she ran a marathon and a half in two weeks. Phenomenal.

Yet another topic that constantly is chewed over by everybody—so I guess I want to state my position and let it go also.

Most of the time anymore diversity is a political issue used to create preferences for various minorities, a justification for affirmative action policy. Usually it is done with a number—there are such and such percent of this minority in the population, therefore there should be the same percentage in any organization being attacked. Of course there are never calls to reduce the minority membership if they are in a majority in some instance. This view, of course, treats people as tokens rather than individuals, and assumes a homogeneity of the populace and an equivalence of people that simply does not exist. I want to back off from all of this and look at it from a less rigid perspective.

First of all, let’s look at the law and diversity. We have laws making it illegal for private citizens or businesses to make choices based on race, religious affiliation, gender, etc., etc., etc. Yet the government makes these kinds of decisions all the time, giving preference to so-called disadvantaged minorities. These policies have been challenged in recent years and are slowly being dismantled. As far as I am concerned, the concept of equal opportunity is exactly that equal OPPORTUNITY, not equal outcomes. There should be no law that gives any group an advantage over another. Just because different people and different groups have different outcomes from the same opportunity, under law, does not negate the correctness of the law.

There is an important shift in perspective here, the law is absent, not present. There should be no law that dictates opportunity, just the absence of law that restricts opportunity. It is not possible for there to be a law that improves opportunity for some without decreasing it for others. Law is a zero-sum game. A law may take away without giving back, but it cannot give without taking first.

When we look at individuals and business it becomes much messier, because many of us want everything to be right, and some of us think we should make it be right. It is an easily defensible moral stand to say that all people should be taken on their merits and not according to other criteria that have no bearing, such as race, gender, or country of origin. However, that is not always the way people work. The difficulty arises when others think they can force people to behave in a moral manner. In so doing, their efforts when attempted in law, become overt violation of the rights of others. I discussed this in detail in a very early essay in this blog. The essence of the argument is that people express their preferences and choices through the expression of their rights to property and association. Any law designed to force a particular choice, regardless of how morally desirable, must violate one or more of these rights. Additionally, the result, even if the desired one, is no longer a moral result since it is coerced.

What is desired is equal standards. If a particular job is open, all candidates should be judged by the same criteria. If physical strength is necessary, anyone that meets the standard should be qualified for that standard, regardless of any other criteria. If it requires specific mental accomplishment, that should be the standard. The only criteria for advancement are the capabilities of the individual. The truth is that this holds true in many fields today, examples are performing arts, and athletics.

A major confusion, and probably deliberate, is to equate equal representation with equal opportunity. This is patently false. There are differences among individuals and sometimes those differences are innate and due to such things as gender. This leads to individual preferences that may collectively cause different representation in a field than in the population. Such difference is then used as evidence of discrimination when it is not. Attempting to ignore such realities leads to vicious events, such as the pillorying of Larry Summers, when president of Harvard, and the politicizing of equal opportunity.

As hard as it may seem, laws to overcome prejudice and its resultant discrimination can only make things worse. They lead to resentment and backlash. They prevent people’s working things out for themselves. From my own experience, true diversity is much more effective than selectiveness in membership. That is because there is a far richer base of ideas inherent in any diverse group. From this perspective, the value of diversity vs. bigotry will come out if left to its own devices. This is where outside awareness needs to create visibility and publicity. However, it must not attempt to force a solution. It is fine to champion the cause of the oppressed, it is not fine to oppress another group in the name of justice. If the changes are to last they must come voluntarily.

As individuals, it is our moral duty to accept each person as an individual with equal rights and opportunity. Second we should make judgments based on what another person says or does, not who or what they are. As a subtext, we must make judgments and make them honestly. Third we should not endorse acts of bigotry or prejudice. We may not be in a position to actively counter them, physically or verbally, or disapprove openly, but we do not have to approve or endorse. Finally we must be very careful when we champion the oppressed, we do not use it as an excuse to become oppressors in our own right.

Today Al Gore joined such luminaries as Yassar Arafat and Jimmie Carter as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

It is a shame that Dr. Martin Luther King is also a Nobel Laureate--he deserved his.

...The Nobel Peace Prize proves its irrelevancy.

Last May I posted an appeal for donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to sponsor my wife and her running partner, Kate, to go to the Chicago Marathon. Yesterday the marathon was held, and here is the outcome.

Jennifer raised her $2800 for L&LS by July 1, and Kate by September 7. Though they have thanked all their contributors individually, I would also like to express my thanks for the contributions, the links to the appeal, and all of your thoughts and prayers.

The two of them trained with Team in Training (TNT), from May to yesterday. The program was carefully structured to make sure that if they got to the start line, they would get to the finish line. There were coaches, mentors, nutritionists, and physical therapists all available to them. They went through a carefully paced program of individual and group running, working up to the long run two weeks before the race, during which they ran 20 miles. That is the longest of the training runs. If they can run 20, they can run 26. They get through the final 6.2 on guts and adrenalin.

We came to Chicago on the team bus on Friday before the race. The week before it was forecast to be 60’s and overcast. By the time Friday came, the forecast was 86, sunny, and humid. Jennifer started getting nervous about the heat, but the coaches told them to hydrate well the day before, and drink plenty of fluids during the race. By this time Jennifer had worked out a schedule of drinking water and Gatorade, and eating power foods (gummy bears, twizzlers, shot blocks). They both had eaten properly with high carbohydrate diets for the preceding week. Jennifer was worried about her times because of the heat. She knew that she slowed down from a 10-12 minute mile to 14 when it was hot. They had to run the race in 6 hours and 30 minutes to be considered as finishing, though TNT members will finish late by running or walking on the sidewalks to the end of the race if the course is swept. TNT always makes sure every runner is accounted for at the end of the race.

The short run of three miles on Saturday morning left everyone drenched in their own sweat and did not bode well for Sunday. On Sunday morning it was already over 70 degrees when the gun went off. Jennifer and Kate were in the 12-minute mile group and crossed the starting line at 8:20. I saw them at mile 2 and then at the half-way point where they gave me high fives as they went by. Jennifer said at that point that it was brutal, but she and Kate were still running when much of their part of the field and the field ahead of them were walking. They had run out of water at many of the stations, and at one point Jennifer and Kate stopped at Kate’s friend and got orange juice and salt since they couldn’t get water and Gatorade on the course.

After the half-way point, I had started back towards the finish line, when she called and said that they had called the race. She was past mile 16 and was really upset. Needless to say I was ready to commit mayhem after all the effort she had gone to in order to get here. She and Kate were still running when the race was called. I found out later from her, that they were the only two running in their group of people.

That afternoon at the TNT tent, waiting for the two to get back, we learned that anyone that made it past mile 21 was allowed to finish, but had to walk after mile 23. Jennifer and Kate had to walk three miles back from where they were when the race was called. They received their medals (after all what would the organizers do with 11,000 medals if they didn’t hand them out) but it was a participation medal not a completion medal. Jennifer said people were buying water and Gatorade and handing it out to the runners when they found out there was none. I heard later that China-town, the Hispanic district, and the African-American districts in South Chicago had set up their own tables and handed out water when the officials took theirs down because there was no more water.

Reading the paper the next day was horrifying. Over 300 runners had to be treated for heat problems, and one man died. The city had to bring in ambulances from as far as an hour away from Chicago to handle the load, and the hospitals were completely full. The race organizers were already trying to do damage control, but the stories from the runners told something different. Some body screwed up big time. One-fourth of the runners did not show up for the race because of the heat, so there was a 25% improvement in the supply before the race started. By the time ¾ of the racers had been through the first two stations, they were out of water. I was at the finish line when the runners were walking in after the race was called, and there were cases and cases of water. Where was it during the race? The common word to describe it was “brutal”. There will be the usual political finger-pointing, somebody will be sacrificed, and the lawyers will have their field day.

In the meantime Jennifer and Kate will run in the Columbus, Ohio, Marathon in two weeks on Oct. 21. They will both finish, and the weather by that time will be more seasonal.

They raised over $5600 for Leukemia and Lymphoma, ran over 700 miles in training, and were still running during the most brutal conditions in the Chicago Marathon history.

……and my wife and her running partner are heroes.

I have, in the recent past expressed some sympathy for why moderate moslems might not express their condemnation of Jihad and support for their host country. I have also ranted on the spinelessness of the American society in general with respect to the war in Iraq, and I have had some pointed comments along the way about multiculturalism. So I'm feeling like I need to wrap it up and go on to other things.

First of all, here is my take on Islam as a religion. It has the usual mess of contradictions of all religions. In this case they seem to be more severe than most, and as a consequence ripe for cherry-picking to support a position. There are many quotes to support Islam as a religion of peace, and there are just as many to show it is totally intolerant of non-believers. However, one distinction from Judaism and Christianity, it explicitly justifies the killing of the non-believer, and if the non-believer is left to live, he/she must may a tax, Jizyah, and live in a subjugate state. There is no tolerance of other beliefs in the US sense of the word.

Islam also dictates the nature of government and of social behavior in general--i.e., Shari'ia. It is repressive and anti-democratic. It does not espouse the concepts of political freedom. Iran is a consequence of Islam taken relatively literally. The counter example, Turkey, a so-called secular Muslim country, actually is in a very delicate balance and could revert to a version of Iran, fairly easily. Additionally, Islam actually condones and encourages lying to the infidel.

Within Islam is the concept of Jihad. Often pointed to as meaning a spiritual journey of conquest of ones own sole, it has come to mean literal conquest to establish the Caliphate—a political structure ruled by the Caliph or Muslim King. To the end of establishing the Caliphate, anything goes. From within the conflicting verses of the Q’ran has come justification for terrorism and any form of mass murder as long as it is of those who do not believe the same, including other Muslims. [Islam, just as Christianity or Judaism has sectarian divisions, the most notable Shi’ia and Sunni.]

The current expression of Jihad has declared war on the non-Muslim world. As a consequence we see the destruction of the World Trade Center, after an unsuccessful first attempt, the terrorist organizations of Hezbollah and Hamas in the Middle East, and most especially, Al Qaida. It is argued that these are not true expressions of Islam and there have lately been some Imams that have written fatwas against such activities. But because of the claims of being the true faith, despite their being mainly cover for an agenda to rule by force, this is the face of Islam to the rest of the world. And, yes, it is strongly reminiscent of the Christian crusades. And we must keep in mind that unlike Westerners who will forgive and go on, Islam keeps alive the desire for revenge for the Crusades, regardless of the fact that Islam eventually won.

One other thing must be pointed out, in the US, and anywhere in Western Society, the mosques are being run mostly by militant mullahs. As a consequence, the secularized Muslims of Western society are being subjected to indoctrination against the very society and rule of law they want to be part of, and are being coerced by threats, even of death to them and their children, if they do not become more and more isolated. The headscarf or hajib is the symbol, and if the mullahs had their way it would be a burqa or complete covering except for the eyes. To the end of the destruction of Western society, these fanatical people will take on the complete trappings and behavior of the West, justifying it by the end.

As a consequence, my own approach has become, that Islam as expressed by terrorist organizations, has sown a great distrust of the religion and its practitioners. Where I would once live and let live, trust first and question later, with respect to Islam, I question first and trust later, if at all. Women wearing the hajib are a symbol of oppression to me, not a symbol of their faith. Anyone who is to discuss Islam as part of a nominal sharing of religious ideas is to be doubted as to the true motives. It may be an attempt to soften opposition to Muslim ideas by presenting them as more reasonable than they are.

I do not ascribe to multi-culturalism. The fundamental tenants and mores of the US are Judeo-Christian, and it is to our credit we will tolerate others to hold their own ideas. That is not to say we should allow them to hold ideas in conflict with those that form our society. They may hold them; they may even express them—in their own venues, not ours [my take on Columbia University in a nutshell], but they may not demand that they supersede those of our civil society. They may not demand recognition of them as legitimate when they run counter to everything we value and have defended for over two centuries. Since Jihad has declared war on us, we need to answer with the strongest and most powerful answer we can. We need to recognize that war is what it is—the ultimate expression of might makes right, and knowing that we are right by reason, we can then show what true might is. Evil understands only one thing, its own destruction. Evil does not reason, it does not discuss, it does not compromise, except as a subterfuge to gain time. Jihad is evil and must be destroyed.

Love of Riches

Today’s scriptures were concerned with the negative side of riches. The Old Testament lesson was from Amos and described the “worthlessness” of riches. The Psalm was Psalm 1 which was part of the text I used in a sermon last year, only in the context it was less concerned about rewarding faithfulness than punishing worldliness. The Epistle lesson was from Timothy and included the famous line that the love of money was the root of all evil, and the Gospel was the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and that the rich man went to Hell and Lazarus went to Heaven. Pastor did a different take on this than the more common one of condemning riches that many take, but he still came out emphasizing the have/have not issue.

I think the problem is that the Biblical verses and most, if not all pastors, become caught up in the politics of envy and lose sight of the real lesson and the economics involved. It is much like the so-called sin taxes, they are imposed heavily on “sinful” things, tobacco and alcohol, in a hypocritical attempt to look like one is suppressing them but actually carefully adjusting the tax so that the goose keeps on laying the golden eggs of revenue. The condemnation of riches is the same sort of behavior in many cases. By creating guilt from the damning of riches, the church hopes to receive more riches for its purposes, which it considers God’s purposes and therefore OK.

A church is like a government—it creates no wealth, it merely redistributes it. Churches take the money from the offering and spend it on the church and on the missions and programs of the church. It also spends it on the costs of administration and upkeep of the church and its programs. Just a government has an insatiable appetite for money, so to, does a church. There are always more poor, more hungry, and more repairs. There is always another program to start or to expand. There is always a need to improve the facilities. This is not to condemn this; it is a statement of reality.

Where the church fails is it does not encourage the acquisition of riches by its members IN A MORALLY CORRECT WAY. The condemnation of riches in the bible is, because in acquiring the riches, the rich become oriented only towards their own wants. The problem is that nothing can be accomplished without money or riches. Material goods count as long as one is in the physical world. Our church just completed 124 quilts this year to be sent to various relief activities involving the Lutheran Church. This may be motivated by the desire to help others, but it is very material. It required money and time to produce the quilts, and both of those can only be provided by people who are better off than subsistence survival.

Poverty is often presented as great virtue. But poverty does nothing but sustain itself. Giving up everything one has to be impoverished with other poor people accomplishes nothing for anyone in the long run. The image of Sister Theresa has been very cannily exploited by the Roman Catholic Church. It produces huge amounts of cash and material flow that the church then uses to buy and/or create converts. Other than size, however, the Roman Catholic Church is little different from any other organized religion in this regard.

I really don’t want to get off on institutional religion in this note, my concern is with the individual approach to riches in light of scriptural teaching. It is part of human nature to acquire goods. It is a survival trait that in our society can be destructive taken to extremes. It is also part of human nature to be interested first in oneself then in others. Part of the churches teaching, at its best, is to help us to see others as a piece of ourselves. Where the acquisition of riches goes awry is when the person acquires the riches exclusively for his/herself. This the problem with the rich man in the Lazarus story from Luke. He cares not for anyone other than himself. Lazarus is a symbol of those in need.

The problem, however, is that simply giving away money does nothing more than alleviate the immediate need. I am all for conditional giving. The recipient has to make changes in their life and lifestyle in order to receive the charity. This is the secret of the success of IHN, which has an 80% success rate after a two year follow-up. The program requires changes to participate in it.

The correct approach to riches is to have no qualms about acquiring riches, and even rewarding oneself along the way, as long as one meets some conditions:
1. The methods of acquisition are moral, not just legal.
2. One is WILLING to share ones wealth in a reasonable and generous way. The guideline in the bible is a tithe, but in today’s world unless one does it from the start of life, it is rarely accomplished.
3. The sharing of the wealth is not as a handout, but as a hand up to assist in improving the recipients life, not just making it momentarily easier
4. and most of all, the sharing is done quietly, preferably anonymously. To do it for self-aggrandizement is to negate the virtue. To do it to earn a place in Heaven is also to negate the virtue.

To acquire riches is part of being human. The other part is recognizing other humans, especially those in need.

If the building is important, what should be in it?

Two Sundays ago, I presented some ideas concerning the importance of the building in the growth of a church. As both of my commentators pointed out, I really didn’t discuss what should happen inside the building. In addition, my wife also pointed out that a megachurch is not necessarily what everyone, including myself, wants to belong to.

I was a member of a church that was decaying. It was doing some of the right things too late and in the wrong way. It had two traditional services, and early and a late, and a celebration service that was very upbeat, only had the gospel lesson, and a continuous communion using intincture. It ended up not growing because it became three different congregations, none of which would agree with each other. In addition, the celebration choir refused to engage in evangelism considering it a prostituting of their purpose in worshipping. In effect the church became the church of many egos.

I remember shopping for a church in Pennsylvania, and we attended many different flavors of ELCA. There was the hide-bound traditional that used the Red Book with some pasted in edits to make it less male chauvinistic. We attended a fairly large church that had a charismatic pastor, and we attended a very large church that had a fabulous organ, a professional quality choir, and a head pastor that did not know anybody in the congregation, leaving it to his assistant pastors. In other words, it was a church to get lost in.

What this all points out, is that before a church takes on the task of growing, it needs to be clear about what it wants to become. The key to any growth is the youth of the church, both to retain the members of the family and to appeal to their friends. But one also cannot, as the seminar mentioned in the earlier post, cynically say those who are here can be ignored. They can and will leave if their needs are not being met.

When I was growing up, the church I belonged to had adult services that were traditional, and a youth service, RUN BY THE YOUTH, that was traditional but the most abbreviated version of Morning Prayer allowed. The youth group was vibrant and we had some very successful social functions with other congregations of the same faith. In fact, I met a girl that I dated for some time at one of these functions. It may be that a church does not want to grow beyond a certain point, but over time they will. It is a matter of making sure that all needs are met, not just those of growth.

This is probably where most churches fail, defining their goals. The first problem is realizing they only have two choices, grow or die, there is no third choice—stay the same. That equates to die. Many times they do not realize that they must compromise, or they refuse to compromise. The latter was the problem at my former church. All churches have four major groupings, youth, young parents, older parents, and a population of adults with children gone from the home. Each of these groups has distinctive needs and familiarities that are a consequence of the period in which they grew up. There needs to be traditional services for some, blended services for others, and truly contemporary services for the rest. There also needs to be some way to periodically bring them all together in the same service to maintain the sense of community. There also have to be ministries that bring members of disparate groups together—ministries that do not depend on liturgy for their function.

The ultimate result of a successful definition of goals and plan to accomplish them will be the church of the goals that continues to grow and requires the redefinition of the goals as time goes on. Unfortunately, or fortunately, a church is never static, and it is a matter of what change they want to allow and deal with, not maintaining the status quo.