7.27.2007 | Big Love

Have you seen the HBO original series, "Big Love?" If not, you're missing something. This is likely the show that Mormons, most especially Mormons running for national office, would prefer to disappear down the memory hole.

The show's premise? An ostensibly normal and successful businessman, Bill Henrickson (played superbly by Bill Paxton), attempts to balance his polygamous life with the demands of his community that he at least give lip service to not committing bigamy.

Bill fails at this task, and the dramatic tension among and between his three "sister wives" makes the show worth watching. Not to mention Bill's dealings with a cult-like compound of polygamists headed by a seriously power-mad creature named Roman Grant (played, also superbly, by Harry Dean Stanton).

So, why would this show be the show that Mitt Romney loves to hate? Simple. Because it shows how thin the veneer is between Mormons who sign on, in public, to be monogamous. In private, the sense is, hey, we're Mormons. We can have more than one wife -- it's biblical, you know. As in, the Hebrew prophets had multiple wives, didn't they?

Well, Mormons (or anyone else for that matter) may believe anything they want, but that does not make it so. Or moral. Why one wife, if there is clear evidence that ancient Israelites had multiple wives? Two things.

One, we are not living in the Near East of three thousand years ago. Different time and place; different cultural norms. Two, most important, Genesis, chapter 2. God created a woman, that's a, as in one, woman, Eve, to be Adam's wife:

2:24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

This is clearly the template for humanity; one man, one woman, with a charge, in Genesis 1:28, to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth."

Is this an oversimplification of God's plan? Perhaps. But God's power is made manifest in the first two chapters of Genesis. It's creation, after all...and I have to assume that if God intended us to have more than one wife, He'd have made some mention of this to Adam.

That Mormons, and Muslims, and others, don't adhere to this basic tenet is no reason to ignore what appears to be God's clear direction to us: one man; one woman. Complementing each other, both needed to fulfill God's plan for us. My close reading of Genesis reveals nothing as to whether God, somehow, believes men should dominate women. Or vice versa.

And, common sense dictates that when a man has more than one wife, they're all going to be short-changed. Treated, in a word, as inferiors. Polygamy is, simply, wrong. It denies the equality of men and women. Not that we are the same. That we are equal in human dignity in the eyes of God.

For mere men to make rules that denigrates the dignity of women is, also, simply wrong. In the case of having more than one wife, since it violates God's first template for our kind, it is also properly called an abomination.

6.11.2007 | God's judgment to come?

What this video shows is Jay Leno on a tear about the all-Paris Hilton, all the time news feeding frenzy. Now Jay is hardly a member of the Latter-Day Crusaders (that's us evangelicals, just itching to put on that ol' chain mail and sword and create a theocracy just like the Taliban. At least according to many liberalati.) And if he's noticed the absurdity of the media attention on Paris, well, it's surely come to pass that our nation is not doing too well on the culture front.

As for Paris herself, at first I deigned not to notice. But, like a car wreck on the side of the road, complete with bloody corpses, it's awfully hard to look away. And, the more I looked, the more I could pray for her.

Many so-called Christians, including at least one of our deacons yesterday, opined that she deserved no pity; none. And yet, here is a young woman who may play the twit in public, but who apparently has quite the grasp on marketing and, also, a keen sense of business.

Neither of these things should be important to a Christian, but, hey, we've all got to make it in this world before we get to sit beside the throne. Or in some warmer place...

As for Paris, the attention paid to her is a symptom of how shallow our nation's "culture" has become. Also, the fact that we are at war with Islamic jihadis who wish nothing more than to outlaw Christianity and convert or kill us all, should provide some context.

God bless Paris Hilton; may she grow in humility. God bless America, may she resist the siren call of the twit culture. May we all remember that we are here on this earth -- America, Iraq, Russia, Mexico, wherever -- under God's judgment.

5.30.2007 | "Christian nation"

Here we go again; grist for those who think we're heading straight for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. As reported by the Washington Times, we get the wholly unsurprising "news" that a large majority of Americans (67 percent) think the United States is a "Christian nation."

There is also an interesting polling result on the Bible. From the Times story:

More than three-quarters of Americans believe the Bible is literally the word of God or inspired by the word of God, according to a trio of Gallup surveys, with 19 percent saying the Good Book is a compendium of myth and legend.

The Bible being asked about would be, of course, some version of both the Old and New Testaments. It is hardly a surprise that such a large majority (75 percent) who believe in the truth of the New Testament would consider their faith to be normative, and hence, the conclusion for two-thirds of Americans: the United States is a "Christian nation."

We are, and are not such a nation. We are certainly a nation whose majority states that they are Christian. And yet, if measured by what passes for popular culture, not to mention our failure to do for the least of our brethren around the world, we fall far short of the goals that Jesus himself set for us.

I prefer to think of America as a nation with great potential and one whose works are mighty, but fall short. A nation that should start acting not as though we were a "Christian nation," but, rather, a nation that knows its shortcomings and acknowledges that we are under God's judgment.

In short, a little humility. Make not claims about being a Christian, pilgrim, until you've passed before the Throne in judgment...

5.27.2007 | "heaven's ambassadors"

There is a moving story on the front page of the Washington Post about a previously institutionalized, blind, gospel singer, Brian Slaughter.

Mr. Slaughter can, apparently, sing up a storm; he's got the gift of the Holy Spirit. The story of how he was "discovered?" From the WaPo story:

Margaret Dickinson first met Brian Slaughter nearly 30 years ago, in the forgotten world that was Forest Haven. She was a graduate student, about to start work at the District's facility for the mentally retarded. He was one of the residents, a young man who had lived there since the age of 10.

As Dickinson took in the conditions that day -- the toilet overflowing into the day room, the two attendants engrossed in TV, the 60 idle men -- she wondered how she could ever work at such a place. Shaking her head, she half-sang a line from an old hymn, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."

A deep voice sang back, "Nobody knows but Jesus."

It was one of the men sitting on the bench along the wall.

"He was holding his trousers with his left hand because he didn't have a belt," she said, "and he had three big safety pins in the place where the zipper was. Most of the day's menu was all over his T-shirt, and he had shoes with no shoelaces and no socks."

There was one more thing: He was blind.

"Hi, I'm Brian," he said, extending his hand. "And I'm a gospel singer."

The conditions under which Mr. Slaughter was living are all-too-typical of how "liberal" governments, such as the District of Columbia, deal with the least of our brethren. Jesus, of course, set the much higher standard (Mt 25:45).

Brian Slaughter has a gift of the Spirit, and appears to believe with a clean heart that Jesus is his savior. I sometimes envy people like him; except that we all have our talents and our cross to bear, and envy is wrong.

Brian Slaughter does set a standard we would all do well to emulate. In the words of Ms. Dickinson, speaking of Mr. Slaughter:

I believe these people are heaven's ambassadors. They're highly evolved, special beings. They are our teachers.

Amen.

5.12.2007 | Form over Function

I admit it -- I'm a Yankee. Born and bred in New York, so at least in the Civil War sense I'm a Yankee, as opposed to a Southerner. But I'm a Yankee in the earlier, and broader sense: an American who is a spiritual and political descendant of the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Puritans of Massachusetts could not have been more different than the bulk of the founders of Jamestown, whose 400th anniversary we celebrate this weekend. Not that Jamestown is not worthy of our greatest admiration and respect. Rather, to believe, or, worse, proclaim loudly, that "Jamestown is America" is to lapse into an all-too-common modern malady: that of Form over Function.

Jamestown was a settlement of, by, and for the Establishment of early 17th century England. High Church of England; landed gentry; men of position and leisure. Again, not that they did not suffer and die, in great numbers, after they founded Jamestown in 1607 and discovered that the natives were restless...and armed to the teeth.

Jamestown ultimately prevailed, and those who survived quickly learned to adapt to a harsh new land. But these were, in a word, Cavaliers (almost 40 years ahead of the English Civil War of 1642-51, but of that party). The Puritans of Massachusetts, by contrast, were, at least, spiritual antecedents of the pro-parliament Roundheads who would form the true spirit of what would become the United States of America.

Function? Freedom of conscience, independence from a royal, hierarchical Catholic-in-all-but-name church, all working for the common good while retaining their basic sense of self. Discipline, and a simpler life, freed of much of what passed for Form in the 17th century.

Form? the pompous frippery that the Virginia gentlemen would have shown had they had the luxury of not being killed by Indians and disease.

In the end, both the hierarchical, high-church Virginia, and the Protestants of Massachusetts were both essential for the successful creation of the United States some 150 years after the landing at Plymouth. But our national character is best reflected in the Puritan ethic of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not the class-bound founders of Jamestown.

4.18.2007 | No evidence of Jesus

The culture wars continue, albeit sometimes beneath the radar. As an example, consider this from Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus today:

Finally, a story about NPR. I haven’t listened to it for years — since the 1980s? — but I happened to hear it a couple of weeks ago. I was with someone who had it on. And I listened with wondering ears.

They were doing a segment on a man who had been a Christian missionary deep in the Amazon jungle. It seemed a warm, positive story. “Huh — this is interesting,” I thought. “Maybe I should rethink NPR.”

The narrator recounted that the man had learned the language of the tribesmen, a remarkable feat. But his “proselytizing” — NPR’s word — wasn’t going so well. The ex-missionary said (and I paraphrase), “I told them there had been this man, Jesus, who was killed, and then came back to life. They said to me, ‘Did you see this?’ I said no. They said, ‘Do you know anyone who saw this?’ I again had to say no.”

Long story short: The missionary discarded his religious beliefs; the natives, as NPR said, wound up “converting him.”

So, a happy ending! A perfect, happy, NPR ending! It was just beautiful.

But here’s the kicker: This segment was broadcast Easter morning. It was the perfect Easter gift to the American people from their public radio.

Great story, and so typical. It's one reason that I, too, don't listen to NPR talk radio. Too predictable. But Jay's vignette got me thinking about an analogy, about how we commonly have faith in many things that we neither have seen nor done.

Example: you drive a car, and you know that the car has brakes that will stop you when you need to. Well, at least most of us do; some of us have had cars where one's faith in the brakes would have been misplaced...

But getting back to most of us and the brakes on our cars, how many of us can design and build those brakes? Or really know how they work? Or, for that matter, know any person, friend, relative, or acquaintance, who does? And yet, we all assume that those brakes will work.

It's called faith, albeit of a different sort, but still, it is an informed belief: we think we know, we hope we know, we have faith that we know. Know that brakes are designed by engineers and built by craftsmen who know what they're doing. In the absence of actually seeing those designers and craftsmen, we still believe.

So, too, do we take the divinity of Jesus Christ, and his atoning death, and his resurrection as being true.