(Ir)religiosity

Two things up front: 1.) I believe quality health care is a fundamental right that should be afforded to all persons regardless of _________, 2.) I believe governments have a moral responsibility to ensure that said care is provided to its citizens.  For me, these are non-negotiable.  Period.

Our country is the closest it has ever been to ensuring the most of its citizens have access to quality health care.  I will be outraged, not to mention deeply disappointed, if we fail to push it through.  At this point we’re our own worst enemy.  As Jon Stewart pointed out in a recent episode of The Daily Show, it wouldn’t be all the surprising if President Obama’s approval rating of the American people has plummeted over the last month or so.  The lack of civility and reasonableness in our public discourse on this issue would be disappointing if it weren’t so pathetic.

I’m continually perplexed at the various ways in which people either hear or see what they want to or intentionally caricature what is said by resorting to scare tactics (I’m looking at you Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck).  Most people simply aren’t working with the facts and if they are the choose to sideline them in favor of something that sounds controversial and may gain some shock value or media attention.¹

Health care is too important of an issue for us to play games.  I’m afraid if we keep screwing around we’re going to miss our chance.  Then we will be responsible for the lack of care and ensuring that the uninsured remain uninsured.  There won’t be any passing the buck.  The blame will rest squarely on our shoulders.

Yesterday President Obama published an op-ed in the New York Times that clearly and carefully articulates his position yet again.  You should stop right now and read the whole thing.  Here’s what I think is the nucleus.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

I read that and I simply don’t understand what the great end-of-the-world, apocalypse inaugurating problem is that I keep hearing about.  What is so wrong with providing a public option for those who can’t afford it?  Please tell me.  Or better yet, let’s tell those who currently can’t afford care why it is that they were just dealt the wrong hand and don’t have the right to the same quality care that the rest of us enjoy.

It is deeply disturbing, I think, when this idea is met with such anger and hate by people (mostly white people who can afford health care, by the way) at town hall meetings and not accepted with a sense of great urgency.  Perhaps the health care debate is what racism and classism looks like in the 21st century.  It looks more and more like Gordon Marino was right when he wrote that “the fact that a significant number of Americans do not feel any urgency to revamp a system that leaves millions of our sick without care is symptomatic of the fact that we must be suffering from a hardening of more than our arteries.”  Indeed, our irrational and childish behavior is demonstrative not only our compassion deficiency but our collective moral bankruptcy.

Perhaps the recent recession extends to more than our economy.

1. One of the best places to keep up with what is fact and what is fiction is http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ [↩]

Regardless of your position on abortion and your opinion of Notre Dame’s controversial decision to allow President Obama to speak at their commencement, you have to admit that his speech was compelling.  I absolutely love this quotation:

“[R]emember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.” (ht)

This sort of epistemological humility is something I admire and a quality that is becoming for a President (especially given the last eight years).  Not only that, it is a quality that is inherent in Christianity regardless of the trajectory of Church history over the last 200 hundred years.  Faith, by its very nature, welcomes this sort of tension between belief and doubt and resides in a position beyond certainty and absolutes — a position that trusts in the absurdity and welcomes the impossible when it ruptures the predictable, mundane monotony of mere possibility.

Ok, I can’t help it:  Obama sounds very postmodern in that quotation, I daresay very emergent.  I know, that’s probably not a fair assessment but the sentiment is strikingly similar.  It jettisons the smug certainty endemic on both poles (call them whatever you want) and opts not for a via media — no that would be to play by the rules dictated by modernity, allowing the them to limit and colonize the imagination — but a supra media that transcends the old boring binaries and bifurcations, completely rethinking our conceptual framework altogether and continually pushing the creative envelope.  That is exciting to me.  And whether or not our current system allows him to completely succeed, I’m glad that Obama understands that and is willing to put it out there.

Although it doesn’t directly flow with everything else (or does it?) I can’t help but draw attention to a final quotation:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth. (ht)

If there is anything that I can claim to be certain of it is that I have a divine mandate to love, to do justice, to hope, and to participate in a reality that is not merely my own, a reality that binds us all together as human beings and bearers of the divine image.  Beyond that, I live with inherent doubts.  I embrace them and find them beautiful because they remind me of my finitude and that I am part of something larger than myself.

To say that the economy has become the dominant political issue over the last several months would be to state the obvious.  But even still there wasn’t a single mention — at least not that I know of — of an ‘anniversary’ that came and past last week.  Six years ago this month the long, arduous and costly (both in lives and money) war in Iraq began.  While the media pretended to be infuriated over the AIG bonuses and the rest of us marked our NCAA brackets the United States’ occupation of Iraq entered it’s seventh year.  Not a mention on the 24 hour news channels.  Even the blogosphere was silent.  I hope we haven’t forgotten.  I hope we haven’t moved on to the next trendy justice issue or the next big government mishap and neglected that one of the biggest justice issues and the worst government mishaps in recent memory continues on our watch.

I have hope that under President Obama this will end.  We shall see, but I have hope nonetheless. And until then I will — I hope we all will — continue to push and pressure my government to sever the tentacles of imperialism and put to death the attitude of exceptionalism.

Last year I organized and participated in war protest/peace demonstration in Oklahoma City and gave one of the speeches.  I’m re-posting it unedited (some of the language and statistics are now inflated) today as way of remembering that even in the midst of our economic crisis the war continues. Read the rest of this entry »

Hmmmm. Not so much.

I was watching this video of the 2004 Emergent Conversation the other day and I was immediately struck by a quote from Walter Brueggemann about the violence attributed to God in the Hebrew bible.

“God is a recovering practitioner of violence.”

If you watch the video, the quote comes at about 29:00.  For some of the context behind what he is saying and the question he is responding to start at about 25:00.  Or watch the whole thing.  It’s definitely worth it.  There’s also a part two here.

But I want to return to that quote.  The problem of God and violence, be it in the Hebrew Bible or in the atonement, is not new.  And I am by no means have the answer, or an answer at all really.

I have to admit that I was put off by that quote when I first heard.  But I’ve been thinking about it since then and it has grown on me.  This of course questions the traditional view that God is static and completely unchanged.  I know that.  To be honest,  I don’t really have much vested interest in defending that claim that God is wholly static.  But I want to set that and any knee-jerk reactions we might of God being disrespected aside here if we can.

The main rebuttal of any suggestion that God might be participating in violence is that an text that attributes violence to God is simply the projection of human desire onto God.  So, the x group of people wants to kill and dominate y group of people.  So x group imagines that God commands them to kill y group.  That may make sense, but I don’t know that I am satisfied with that answer.  Neither is Brueggemann.  He thinks, and I tend to agree with him, that such an argument is a very slippery slope.  So, at what point do actions/virtues attributed to God in scripture cease to be human projections?  Or, are all attributes to God projected?  That may very well be true.  But we still have to deal with the violent projections.  What makes a projection of love better than a projection of violence?  The answer to that seems obvious, but it must be dealt with.

Things start to get really hairy really quick.

What do you think of Brueggemann’s quote?  Do you think that God might be “a recovering practitioner of violence?”  Is there any truth to that?  If so, what does what are the ramifications?  If not, why not?

Yesterday was indeed a day of tremendous rejoicing.  Barack Hussein Obama — a man whose father was a poor immigrant from Kenya, a man who not long ago wouldn’t have been able to sit across the table from a white man in a restaurant, and a man who only 4 years ago many Americans, upon seeing his name in writing might label as a ‘terrorist’ — took the oath of office and was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America.  Truly a historic moment and a historic day.

I look forward to someday in the future telling my children and grandchildren where I was on the day that we the people chose to officially ratify the words written on that document so long ago, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” For many these ‘self-evident truths’ became a very visceral reality on January 20, 2009, the dawn of a new era in the American story.  That day will live on in the pages of history as a moment when America set aside its partisanship and differences and embraced the hope and inspiration that lies within us all.

But that was yesterday.  And today is, well, today is the beginning of tomorrow.  The beginning of the continued tomorrow that is the world after Obama’s inauguration.  A world where Guantanamo Bay still exists as an aberration of human rights; a world where the United States is still fighting two wars and occupying at least one country; a world where the violence and turmoil in the Middle East — whichever ‘side’ you may choose — are almost unbearable; a world where the global economy and world markets are tanking and taking the poorest among us as their first victims; a world were the twin monsters of classism and yes, racism still very much exist; and a world where the choices of past and present are undeniably threatening the existence of the future.  This is the world in which Obama, and all of us, live, move, and have our being.

My relationship with President Obama has changed. Because of his position and responsibility as President, and because of my position and responsibility as a citizen, I must raise my voice in either dissent and criticism as the time arises; I must maintain prophetic distance, not because I dislike President Obama, but because he is now the representative and leader of the American empire, the largest, most powerful nation on earth — and he, like those before him, must be held to account.  It is my responsibility as one on the margins to aid in ensuring that that happens.  For what it’s worth, I think it may be happening a lot less these next four years than in recent memory, but it must happen.  And when the time arises to criticize, those of us with that vocation must not fail to speak out.

Watching him during the inaugural ceremonies yesterday, I get the very real sense that President Obama truly feels the gravity of his office — especially now — and the very real urgency of our situation.  I have a sense of hope — not messianic hope mind you! — in his presidency that I have never felt for a political leader.  I have faith that this feeling of hope will deliver.  And I am willing to place my trust in President Obama for a while.  We will see what happens.  If he holds true to his word and remains transparent and honest, then we may very well be in for a ride.  In a good way.

So yesterday I celebrated, I raised my glass to President Obama and the history that his inauguration symbolizes.  But today. . .today I begin the work of the continued tomorrow, not because I don’t like President Obama I really do, but because I have committed myself to always remain on the side of justice.  And that commitment will at times place me against President Obama simply by virtue of his office.

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That’s the title of one of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s most underrated and least well known speeches.  A speech that he gave in 1967 opposing the war in Vietnam and voicing dissent toward American tolerance of economic injustice.  I hope very much that we will remember, especially as we enter the age of Obama, that the egregious realities of classism and racism still exist today.  Simply electing a black man president is no magic bullet to change the status quo nor does it warrant the convenient dismissal of our dark history.  It is grounds for exuberant rejoicing, yes, but let us continue to remain vigilant in our pursuit justice and truth.

In honor of King’s full dream and legacy, here are a few exerpts of that speech we have sadly forgotten.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. … A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

“Waterboarding is torture.”

– Attorney General-designate Eric Holder

From The Prophetic Imagination:

“The alternative [prophetic] consciousness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness.  To the extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done, engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things.  On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move.  To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, it live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give”

“In thinking this way, the key word is alternative, and every prophetic minister and prophetic community must engage in a struggle with that notion….[The] urging is that every act of a minister who would be prophetic is part of a way of evoking, forming, and reforming an alternative community.”

“The functional qualifiers, Read the rest of this entry »

Walter Brueggemann on Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Word. This guy knows his stuff and is arguably the definite scholar on the OT, especially the prophets.