Decoding the Bible

I've been thinking about how Christians often seem to have a tendency to pick out passages of the Bible to defend positions that can ultimately be debunked by history.  For example - you won't find very many people in America today condoning slavery.  But go back to the 1800's and look through some of the literature and you might find that some Christians felt that the Bible fully condoned slavery.  In fact, they felt it was those who were against slavery who were quite mistaken, and even saw them as heretical, questioning the authority of God.  These pro-slavery Christians would point to passages such as Deuteronomy 15:12-15, Ephesians 6:9, and Colossians 4:1, which all deal with the treatment of slaves.  As is pointed out by Pastor Henry Brinton of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia (from this article):

In the 1860s, Southern preachers defending slavery also took the Bible literally. They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, "slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5), or "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect" (Titus 2:9). Christians who wanted to preserve slavery had the words of the Bible to back them up.

Today, you'll find few Christians taking this position.  History has given us new perspective, and we've left this particular debate behind.  But there are other examples where Christians have used the Bible to support arguments we have now left behind, such as (but not limited to): the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, and Segregation.  So the disturbing question we are faced with, in light of our history of using the Bible to support arguments that are ultimately debunked by history, is this: are we currently using the Bible to defend arguments which will be seen in the future as having been soundly debunked and shameful positions?  And the question that should follow it is this: how can we avoid using the Bible to support positions which may ultimately be seen to have been harmful to the cause of Christ?

To illustrate how difficult approaching the Bible can be, let's look at how the Bible deals with enemies.  Jesus tells us in Mathew 5:44 to love them.  Paul tells us in Romans 12:17-21 not to repay evil with evil (and he doubles down on the rhetoric by telling us not to seek revenge), but to repay evil with good and seek to live in peace with everyone.  But then in Psalm 137:9 the writer speaks about taking joy in the fact that Israel's enemies have had their babies dashed against the rocks.  In Psalm 139:19, the writer prays for God to destroy the wicked.  In Deuteronomy 7:1-6, it seems that God, Himself, has commanded the Israelites to completely destroy their enemies and show no mercy. 

There are a number of other arguments we could have, using the Bible to justify two contradictory positions, as well as ways we could use the Bible to justify positions that are not acceptable in modern society.  So how do we avoid taking up these kinds of positions?  How can we assure ourselves that we haven't already taken positions which will one day be seen as unacceptable even in Christian societies?  As I've thought about this problem, I came up with an analogy that I'd like to share.  I am aware that it is not a perfect analogy, but it helps me to deal with this problem and I hope it helps some of you as well.

I am a computer programmer.  Computer programs are often written in a way that involves building layers upon layers - writing code that can be re-used for multiple purposes.  One piece of code can inherit the properties of another piece of code and then expand upon it in order to serve another purpose.  Sometimes, in a particular business, programmers will write a set of libraries that can then be re-used in multiple projects, so that if they want to apply the same security rules for all of their projects, for example, they simply need to import the security library and declare that set of rules to apply to their new project.  But then, sometimes when they do this, they will have a project that is a bit of a special case, and they will apply the security library rules, but add to or modify them in order to serve the needs of this special case. 

With this in mind, it is often difficult to enter a support role where a programmer was not involved in the original design of the code.  It can be quite tricky to decode these layers upon layers of code and understand how they function.  One trick that has helped me in doing this is to keep in sight the end result.  Often I will be asked to fix a "bug" in a program, and the very first thing I will do is to make sure I can reproduce these results.  I want to see how the code actually functions, and what the result is.  Once I've seen this, I know for certain that this result exists and can be reproduced.  If I see code that doesn't seem as if it would produce these results, I know there must be something I'm missing - some other piece of code that changes the result somehow.  If I know the result is true, then it doesn't matter if I'm reading a particular piece of code that doesn't seem to end in this result.  So when I'm faced with this situation, I know that I have to keep looking.

So, if we carry this analogy to the Bible, you can imagine it like the "code" for how we are supposed to live our lives.  This code is quite complex, and multi-layered.  The Jews had a couple of terms they liked to use for referring to what we now call the "Old Testament" - the Law, and the Word of God.  I think God left us a profound clue for understanding what the result of his code is.  In John 1:1-5, John tells us that Jesus is the embodiment of the Word of God:

In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created,
The Word gave life to everything,
and his life brought light to everyone.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

So, when I think about this passage like a Programmer, I think that maybe Jesus is like the executable that results from compiling the code of the Bible.  If we want to understand how all of the code of the Bible works when practiced perfectly in real life, we have no further to look than the way Jesus lived his life on earth.  And when Jesus was on earth, he often faced disagreements from the religious leaders of his day, who would accuse him of not following certain commands of the law.  For example, in Mark 2:22-28, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath.  But Jesus illustrates for them that they have misunderstood this law, and tells them that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."  And in Matthew 5, Jesus makes a series of very powerful statements starting with this: "Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose."  He then goes on to make a series of "you have heard that it was said" statements, where he illustrates that though many of the religious leaders of his day have observed the letter of the law, they have not accomplished a life that embodies the spirit of the law. 

All too often, we take the Bible in the same way a lawyer would, and pick out statements and cases that support the purpose we have, and then use it to beat down our opposition.  But Jesus illustrated how mistaken this approach is through his life.  If you believe that he embodied a life that perfectly accomplished the purpose of the law, you may start to understand that perhaps the limitations of the words used to express the law could not accomplish the task of fully illustrating what its purpose was, but Jesus' life succeeded where words fail.  Perhaps looking at Jesus' life as the result of the execution of the code will help us to decode the Bible.

Are Christians Persecuted in America?

I was recently involved in a conversation where I made a point which implied that Christian persecution was not the issue we need to be worried about, and was asked [to paraphrase] "you don't think Christians are persecuted in America?"  I would like to answer this, and I didn't want to waste keystrokes as I think this is a valuable discussion to have with anyone who calls themselves a Christian. 

First, let's start with some facts that I'd like you to chew on: a recent Gallup poll conducted in 2011 concluded that 78% of American adults identify with a form of Christianity.  Furthermore, it found that out of those who identified themselves in the poll with some form of religion, 95% of them identify themselves as Christians.

Now, while you chew on that, I'd like to tell you about a hero of mine.  This hero lived approximately 2,000 years ago in a land known as Israel, whose people were known as Jews.  During the time that he lived in, his people lived in a state where their land had been invaded and taken over violently by an oppressive regime.  The government of this regime believed, quite literally, that their emperor was a son of a god and thus was to be worshipped as a god himself.  The Jews believed there was only one God, and only He was the only one they should worship.  Another one of their sacred beliefs held that it was wrong to eat pork.  So the enforcers of this oppressive regime, in order to flush out "Judaizers", would often force the Jews to sacrifice or even eat the meat of pigs publicly - and if they did not, they would be killed.  This government was clearly oppressive, and its beliefs were clearly in conflict with the beliefs of the Jews.

So the question was - how would they respond to this situation?  There were three main responses that the Jews had to their situation.  The Zealots' response was to revolt.  They believed in resisting the government, and even overthrowing it by any means, including violence.  The Essenes' response was to withdraw.  They believed that the world they lived in had become so corrupt that the only response was to withdraw completely and devote themselves to a life of purity.  And the Sadducees decided to assimilate.  They often worked as tax collectors and paid allegiance to the emperor.

Now, the hero in my story had some radical teachings that were strange and unusual to...well, everyone in his time.  He taught that humility was a virtue, and that his followers were to act as servants to those they encountered - this was strange and unusual as in his day, as one of the marks of the heroes of legend was their pride and another was the strength exhibited in how they vanquished their enemies.  My hero taught to love your neighbors as yourself, and when asked what the definition of "neighbor" was, he told a story where a man whose religion rivaled the Jewish religion helped a Jewish man who had been robbed, beaten, and left to die, and then this hero posed the question "which man acted as a neighbor?" right back to those who had questioned him.  To put it in today's terms, imagine the man who had been beaten and robbed was a Southern Baptist and the man who helped him was Muslim.

This hero even went so far as to teach the Jews to love their enemies, something which was unheard of. He demonstrated his teaching on loving enemies in a way that frightened the Jews - at one point, a crowd so big had gathered to hear this hero speak that he had to get in a boat and have his companions row him out into a lake to teach.  And after he was finished teaching, he said "take me to the other side."  The other side was a land that Israel had been in many battles and wars with.  They practiced a religion that involved using prostitutes as an act of worship towards their gods, drunken orgies, and even child sacrifices.  One of the men in the boat with this hero was so afraid that he begged to be allowed to go home and get his affairs in order before they crossed over.  On the other side was a man who was an outcast because of his insane rages - he had been possessed by an evil spirit.  The hero asked the spirit's name, and it identified itself as "Legion", which was a loaded name, as the oppressive regime that Israel was subject to called their groups of soldiers by the same name.  The hero commanded the spirit to leave the man and go into a herd of pigs - also somewhat loaded imagery.  This hero's authority had been demonstrated in this event, as the spirit listened and obeyed.  Later on, some of the other people of this enemy territory saw the hero talking to this man, and that the formerly possessed man was coherent.  When they heard the story, they begged the hero to leave because they were afraid of his power.  The formerly possessed man asked to be allowed to accompany the hero.  But the hero told the formerly possessed man to stay and tell his people the story of what happened to him.  Later on, this hero returned to this enemy territory and was greeted by one of the largest crowds that had ever greeted him, and it was a dramatic event as many people were healed by his power that day, many just from touching him.

This hero addressed all three of the main responses to the oppressive regime that I outlined.  At one point, one of the commanders in the army of the oppressive regime asked this hero for help with a sick servant who was like a son to him.  The hero told the commander to lead the way to his home, but the commander replied:
"Say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." 
After hearing this, the hero's reply was that he had "not found anyone in Israel with such great faith."  Imagine the Zealots' reaction to this - the hero just implied that none of them had faith like this man who was one of their sworn enemies.  The hero taught that "if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles" - this directly referenced a practice by the oppressive regime where their soldiers had the right to force citizens to carry their heavy packs for a mile.  This was not a popular teaching for the Zealots.

This hero healed lepers and socialized with prostitutes, people of other religions, tax collectors, and all manner of sinners.  He ignored common conceptions of purity.  This was not popular with the Essenes.

One day, someone tried to entrap the hero and make him say something that would enrage those he taught by asking a loaded question: "we know how honest you are. You are impartial and don’t play favorites. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us—is it right to pay taxes to [the emperor] or not?"  When this hero was a boy, a man named Judas of Galilee had led a revolt about this various issue, and had been executed with about two thousand of his followers.  Also, it should be noted that on the face of the coins of the oppressive regime was a phrase that is translated "[the emperor] is lord".  If the hero had responded "yes" to this question, it would outrage many Jews.  If he answered "no", he would likely be executed by the oppressive regime.  But the hero said "show me the coin used to pay this tax."  He did not carry one of his own.  He did not assimilate like the Sadducees.  Then the hero asked "Whose picture and title are stamped on [this coin]?"  They had to reply that it was the emperor's.  So the hero said "give back to [the emperor] what is [the emperor's], and to God what is God's."  This not only reinforced the hero's disagreement with the Zealots, but it introduced a new idea - there are some things which do not belong to the governmental leaders.

This hero also had a group of close friends known as his disciples.  Among his disciples was a man named Simon, who was known as Simon the Zealot: he despised the oppressive regime and anyone who collaborated with them, such as tax collectors.  Another one of the disciples was Matthew, who was a tax collector.  This hero had a new strategy that none of the three groups had thought of.  It was to love everyone, regardless of their social status, position, politics, race, or vocation.  His response to those who oppressed his people was to say "I love you and I'm inviting you to join me in loving others."  One of the hero's disciples picked up on the fact that the instruction to love your enemies meant that you had to forgive them.  This disciple asked the hero "how many times should I forgive?  7 times?"  He thought 7 was generous.  The hero answered "not 7 times.  70 times 7."  The hero knew that no one was going to count that high.

The unnamed hero in my story is Jesus, and he is the One that I follow.  He was called Christ, and this is where the moniker "Christian" came from.  And somehow, with all I've just laid out for you in mind, I feel like the question "are Christians persecuted in America?" is irrelevant.  Somehow, I feel like it's not even the right question to ask, and if one is asking it they are distracting, and are distracted from, the message of my hero.  And, strangely enough, it seems that often the people who constantly shout about Christian persecution seem to be persecuting others.  But I want to move on - I don't feel it necessary to pose this question because there are so many more important questions I'd like to ask.  Because I believe that the one I follow taught a different way of dealing with the troubles of this world.  I believe he taught me that if I am being persecuted, I ought to respond with love, and love does not demand its own way, and it keeps no record of wrong.

Now, for a more humorous take on the answer to this question....

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In the Name of the Fodder
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Some interesting thoughts on Jōdo Shinshū

Introduction
I have been reading a book called "Who Is This Man?" by a man named John Ortberg.  The book seeks to explore how the teachings of Jesus have left a mark on history, and there are some astounding revelations and challenging ideas within.  One of the interesting observations that Mr. Ortberg makes is that Jesus changed a very important and well-known Jewish teaching - in Deuteronomy 6:5 the commandment was to "love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength", but in the gospels we see that Jesus changed the word "strength" to "mind" - though in the version of the story told by Mark we see that "all your mind" was inserted and "all your strength" followed.  But the point was that Jesus added this idea of loving God with your mind.  And as Mr. Ortberg explores how this affected history, he makes some very interesting and challenging observations.  He notes how, before Jesus, the common practice of invading nations was to destroy the works of the nation that they invaded in order to wipe that culture out and insert themselves as the new dominant culture.  But this seems to have stopped after Jesus.  As Jaroslav Pelikan says:
"One may perhaps begin to comprehend how completely Christ the Monk conquered the scholarly world of the Middle Ages by checking, in the standard modern editions, how many works of antiquity even exist for us today only because they were copied by monks in some medieval scriptorium... [works of] not only Christian saints but of classical and pagan authors." 
The idea, as it is proposed by Mr. Ortberg in his book and now paraphrased by me, is that we are not to reject all that comes from those who are not members of our faith without examination, but are to engage their ideas without fear, as (to paraphrase Augustine) "all truth is God's truth".  To put it another way, as Mr. Ortberg says:
"To love God with all my mind means following truth ruthlessly wherever it leads.  It means cherishing truth whether it comes from the Bible or from science or from an atheist.  It means anti-intellectualism is anti-Christian." 
Later on, Mr. Ortberg says:
"Loving God with all your mind means answering the works of people you disagree with, rather than burning the works.  Loving God with all your mind means you don't have to be nervous about where a book might lead if its reader is sincerely seeking truth." 
It is in this spirit that I went on the intellectual journey I am about to relay to my readers in the hopes that it causes some interesting thoughts and inspiration for others as well.

Searching for Truth in Jōdo Shinshū
I have a friend from Japan.  We'll call him "Kenny" to protect his identity.  I met him at Prog Power USA, a music festival that is located in Atlanta, GA, which I have repeatedly attended with two very good friends of mine.  We were standing in line this year waiting to get into the festival on the first day and "Kenny" was in front of us wearing a Dream Theater shirt.  I complimented his shirt, and that led to more discussions of music, and we found out he was visiting from Japan and was in America for the first time.  We ended up sitting with him during some parts of the festival, standing with him on the main floor for some other parts, and we even offered him a ride to his hotel both nights.  I am very glad to have had the pleasure of meeting "Kenny" as he has a very pleasant personality, and after the festival we ended up connecting through Facebook and email, and have had a few online interactions since.

Recently I had posted an anti-fear quote on my Facebook and mentioned a Christian teaching that was on my mind the other day.  "Kenny" commented on this, expressing his appreciation of the teaching I had mentioned and made some mention of the state of religion in Japan.  So, out of curiosity I messaged him a couple days later asking him about his own religion.  He mentioned Jōdo Shinshū, which is a form of Budhism.  So, continuing in my curiosity I read a few things about Jōdo Shinshū.  I will not claim to be an expert at all, and I hope I do not butcher the teachings I am about to relay, but I found some things I read about it to be interesting.  In particular I found a teaching known as "shinjin" to be interesting - a couple sources I read about this teaching mentioned its similarity to what Christians call "faith", but went a little further by saying that this does not capture the nuances of the teaching.  You see, shinjin has a certain concept to it that has been described in English as being "egoless" - the concept being that you cannot attain shinjin (or faith) without renouncing or releasing your own ego.  Furthermore, the teaching of shinjin is that it can only be attained by renouncing self effort and taking refuge in Tariki, which is translated in English by some as meaning "other power". 

I find this nuanced understanding of faith to be quite interesting as I see some similarities to Christianity that members of the Christian faith may actually miss.  The word "ego" does not appear anywhere in the Bible...however the idea of losing one's ego is actually a familiar idea to me, as I find it very similar to the Bible's teachings about humility.  In the Bible, the first sin occurred when Adam and Eve were told that they could "be like God" if they were to eat a certain fruit - a fruit which comes from a tree we often refer to as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So as I thought about the similarities of the Jōdo Shinshū teaching on shinjin to Christianity, I had the following thoughts on the original sin:
- Man wanted to be like God.  I'm not sure the desire to be like God is necessarily, in and of itself, evil.  For example, in Ephesians 5:1, it says to "imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children."
- So what was the real problem?  Perhaps the real problem was not that man wanted to be like God, but that he - rather than seeking God in response to this desire - tried to attain this goal through his own means.  He tried to attain this goal through an attempt to gain knowledge through his own power, from other sources than God.

So then I was thinking about the idea of needing to become "egoless" in order to attain shinjin, and its similarity to the teachings of the Bible on humility.  For example, Matthew 23:12 says:
"Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." 
And in I Cor. 4:7 Paul asks the question: 
"What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
And the most profound example of humility and its results are in the person of Jesus - as described in Philippians 2:6-9:
"Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.  Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.  When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.  Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names."

Perhaps the most similar Christian teaching to shinjin is found in Ephesians 2:8-9:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

So the question that entered my mind as I pondered the Jōdo Shinshū teaching of shinjin in relation to my own faith is this:
What if we began to see faith as being unattainable through our own understanding, and saw pride (or lack of humility) as a faith killer?  How could we go about loving God with our mind and searching for truth, while maintaining humility and not relying on our own understanding?  What would that look like?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these musings!

We are at war?

In the wake of the Newtown, CT shooting, there have been many, many opinions that have surfaced.  This is most likely frustrating for many, and they would possibly wish for people to stop talking about the issue altogether.  And in the days that followed the shooting, when some called for action this upset others.  But everything happens for a reason, and events call us to action.  When a light-bulb burns out in your house, you are called to an appropriate action.  When your car breaks down, you are called to an appropriate action.  And when society breaks down, you are called to an appropriate action.

Let's examine some of the analyses and proposed causes of the problem:

God has been pushed out of Schools (see here for an elegant contention to this argument)

Not enough guns in schools

Teacher's unions

Not enough manly men in schools and too many womenfolk in schools

Too many children in schools

Mental illness and self-esteem movement

Autism / Asperger's syndrome

Goths

Video Games

Fisher Price Toys

Hollywood

The media!

LIBOR Scandal and the Hunger Games movie

Jon Stewart (side note: when his show returns, I hope for a hilarious reply from him)

The OBAMA Regime Brainwashed him!

Abortion pills

Gay Marriage

Atheists

Schools teach "junk about evolution" and "how to be a homo"

The 1968 Democratic Convention

Now, some of these are obviously (should be, at least) insane.  And it should be noted that I feel some of these may have a point - such as the reasoning that video games have become too violent.  That might be a discussion we need to have, to some extent or other.  But why is it that so many people seem to want to distract us from any direct reasoning towards the obvious sources of the problem?  It is very, very hard for me to make a connection between some of the "reasons" people have offered and the actions that occurred at Newtown, CT.  So how can we come up with a solution to this problem?  Yes, this is a complex issue, and the answer will not be simple.  But why is it that so many reasonable people simply will not touch the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS?  I'd like to offer my opinion (yeah, I'm so closed about it, I know) and my proposals (the latter of which I recognize are not complete), and as being a Christian is a large part of my life and a source of identity, this will include some Christian perspective.  But let's start with the most glaringly obvious problem and the simplest solution:

GUN CONTROL, DUH!
As in the example I provided in the beginning of this post - if your light-bulb burns out, you get to the direct source of your problem, and you replace it!  So, DUH, why are so many people so afraid to talk about gun control?  Yeah, if you take away "their" guns, they can still kill.  With, say, a car.  But in order to get a car, you need a license, which needs to be renewed periodically.  And in order to get this license you need to go through the proper education, and you need to take a written test proving your knowledge in the subject, and you need to take a physical driving exam as well, proving that you are competent.   And every so often you need to take your car in to get it inspected to make sure it is still in proper condition.  And if you are involved in certain illegal activities, or if you develop certain medical conditions, you lose your license and need to go through the process of proving you are competent all over again.  So why don't we go through a similar process for guns?  Cars don't just kill people - they get us from point A to point B.  They serve a purpose.  The only purpose of a gun is to kill.  So why are guns regulated less strictly than cars?  (Hint: there i$ an an$wer to that que$tion.)

Now as I said, I recognize this is a more complex issue - as in my "light-bulb" analogy, if your light-bulb burns out repeatedly in a short span of time, there may be a deeper issue.  But you still replace the bulb, right?  But what else is a problem here?  Let's stay with the direct approach for a minute here - the shooter in the Newtown incident, it seems, had mental issues, so....

Mental Health
Yeah, we need to make mental health care more easily available.  We need to treat mental health issues as if they were of the same importance as other forms of health issues, and health insurance ought to pay for mental health care with the same sense of urgency and importance as they do for other health issues.  We need to make education on the subject of mental health more readily available to parents who may have children with mental health issues.  And we need to figure out how to be more sensitive and remove the stigmas that hold people with mental traumas back from coming out and admitting their problems and asking for help.

Ok, I've given two very direct proposals to the problem.  And I said that the issue was complex, so what else do I think is contributing to this problem?

Fear
The Newtown CT shooting, and proposed solutions to it have been hashed and re-hashed so many times that my readers might be wondering why I'm even bothering to chime in.  I, myself, did not intend to write any of my own opinions (it was easier to just link to other people's articles when they said things that resonated with me - there was an abundance of them).  That was until I saw a link on a friend's Facebook to a Christian blogger who seemed to believe that the reason for the shooting was spiritual warfare aimed at banishing Christianity from our culture.  When I saw him using the phrase "we are at war", combined with the sense that he was blaming culture for the shooting, it just didn't sit right with me.  Over the past few years I have come to believe that there is a war on Christianity, and that the reason it has been so successful is that there are too many Christians fighting on the wrong side of that war - I believe the problem is not that culture is trying to banish Christianity, but that Christians are fighting an ugly battle to call more attention to themselves and their piety and in so doing are banishing themselves. 

Ok, let me unpack that - what is a Christian?  A Christian is a follower of Christ - a person who seeks to emulate Christ.  What does that mean?  Jesus gave us a good definition, himself, in John 13:34-35: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  When I hear Christians talking about the war on Christianity, somehow it doesn't sound right in context with this statement.  Somehow, I think we stopped furthering Christ and started fighting a war that is actually damaging our own cause.  As we've given in to fear, we've lost sight of love.  Jesus said to love "as I have loved you" - he gave us a perfect example of how to be a Christian in his own life.  He showed us how he wants us to live when he reached out to the marginalized in his day.  Jesus began his ministry in love - he met people's needs.  And then, after he had earned the right to speak to them this way, he preached.  Too often we preach first and never ask how we can meet needs.  Too often, we fight to make sure our voice is heard above all others, never realizing that if you follow Jesus' example and meet the needs of those around you, you won't need to fight to be heard: they might just ask you why you are doing the things you do.

I believe that in today's political culture, we have an epidemic of fear.  So many ridiculous conspiracy theories have popped up in the last few years that I think people have started to become used to this type of rhetoric, and to accept the fear before ever questioning it.  And perhaps one of the best examples of the ugliness of this paranoia is the very same group that promotes gun ownership (each word goes to a different article) - and this group actually profits every time there is a shooting in our nation!  Fear gives birth to more fear, and the epidemic only grows.  And it is a sickness that results in devastating symptoms - when we allow fear to take root in our hearts, that fear begins to justify irrational paths in our minds.  We begin to manufacture reasons as to why our fears are rational, and we protect this line of reasoning at all costs. 

There is a term in psychology known as cognitive dissonance - a theory proposed by Leon Festinger in 1954 to describe “the feeling of psychological discomfort produced by the combined presence of two thoughts that do not follow from one another. Festinger proposed that the greater the discomfort, the greater the desire to reduce the dissonance of the two cognitive elements” (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999).  Before the Newtown shootings occurred, the NRA preached fear of the government taking away their constituents' guns, even when the gun control laws have actually relaxed over recent years, and yet they kept preaching their fearful prophecies and profited big time.  And now that deadly shootings are becoming a rampant occurrence in our society, rather than face the uncomfortable truth that the push to make destructive weapons more available to people, and filling those people with fear may have caused this situation, more twisted conspiracy theories are surfacing in order to reduce the discomfort.

Believe me, this is not the only example of cognitive dissonance (each word goes to a different article, and that's just skimming the surface) in today's discourse.  Fear has infected our nation like a cancer, and what really bothers me is how it has infected the church.  Logic has been discarded for ideology, and love has been traded in for fear and hatred.  Idols have been made in the form of guns and rich people, and McCarthyist style witch hunts have been conducted to distract us from the real problems our nation faces.  And I pray for our nation, and especially for the church, that we would turn from fear and battle it with love.  Yes - we are at war.  But the reason we are losing is that we are trying to fight this war with conventional means, rather than following the radical example of Jesus who fought his battles with love.

Time for an episode of "Fear and Paranoia"!

And now it's time to play "Fear and Paranoia"!  Let's remind our contestants how to play: just blame some random person or group you don't like for all the problems in our world!  For example, you might use the following structure: I blame (group or person you hate here) because they (action you don't like) so we should (your political goal here)!  The political action part is really just for bonus points, though - you don't even need to provide a solution, just get people scared.  Today's subject is the Newtown Shootings. 

Ok, who's first?  Oh sheesh...it's Westboro Baptist...let me guess, you blame Homosexuals for the Newtown Shootings because they called down God's judgement?  Sorry, it's been done before - you're not allowed to use the same play in multiple rounds!  You are disqualified.  Next - National Review?  Ok, go.

"It's the feminists' fault!"

Oooooh!  Good one!  National Review blamed women for the shooting because they're weak, and proposes that we put more macho men in schools!  What an overly simplistic and naive solution, full of factual errors, and it's sexist too!  1,000 points!  Who's next?  Rosenberg?

"It's John Stewart's fault!"

Oh my, this is complete genius - Jon Stewart has made fun of the mythical war on Christmas we made up in one of our earlier rounds, so what did Rosenberg do?  He blamed Stewart for the Newtown shootings because he's waging a war on Christmas!  Bonus points for tying in a previous myth!  5,000 points on the board for Rosenberg!  Next up?  Oh, we have a teamup of the Daily Caller, Fox News, Breitbart, and Glenn Beck.  This is going to be good.  What's your play?

"It's the government's fault for profiling white men!"

OH MY GOODNESS!!!!  WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!  They have ingeniously turned around a statement that pointed out the imbalance and ineffectiveness of racial profiling into racism against white people!  10,000 points!!!!!

Thank you for tuning in this week for "Fear and Paranoia", and remember - be afraid!  Be very, very afraid!

A Sleuthing Exercise (Oh What Fun!)

I wanted to share the results of an activity I engaged in today, to make a point.  But please stick with me, because it's not the point I think you're going to think I think you...er...lemme start that again - it's not the point I believe you're going to think I'm making.  So please read to the end.  And please don't take this too seriously - I am speaking a little tongue in cheek in my conclusion, so please don't take this personally.  Also note that I do not have ANYONE specifically in mind as a target - I'm not trying to make ANYONE specific whom I know feel guilty, I'm just making a point to whomever cares.  My purpose in writing this is mostly to entertain, but I hope it is educational as well.

Today, I saw this headline from July of this year in a feed I follow (Fark, in case you wanted to know):

Bill Moyers calls NRA "Enabler of Death"

He says that "in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined."  I thought "no way, really?  He's got to be exaggerating."  Now EVERYONE knows that pundits lie (right?).  So I had a choice: I could assume he's lying, or assume he's not...and if I assume, am I basing that assumption on what I, personally, WANT to be true?  So I thought...well, let's see what 5 minutes and some googling can come up with for deaths in my own lifetime.  (Note that the exercise took just a bit longer, but writing this post took more time.)  Here's one of the first things I found:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/08/guns-in-america-a-statistical-look/

That article says that between 2006 and 2010: 47,856 were murdered in U.S. by firearms.  So that's a small chunk of my life - let's look some more.  Next I found this:

http://college.cengage.com/english/resources/research_guide/2e/resources/case_study.html

Hmm, 30,708 killed in 1998 by firearms, but 17,605 were suicides.  Well...let's be generous and subtract them out, which brings us to 60,959 total between 2006-2010, added to the number of gun related deaths in 1998 I found.  I still need some more data, since that's only 6 years out of my life.  Well, I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Not much here I can use (though there is a lot of eye opening information in that one), but I do see some years I don't have yet: 2005 (10,100), 1999 (6,500).  That brings my total up to 77,559.  I have 8 years out of my lifetime now.  Hmm, I still need more, so I changed my terms a bit, and then I found the motherload:

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate9.html

This page is like a calculator that will show you deaths and injuries related to what you want to see, though it only seems to cover certain years.  So I set the answer to question number one (intent) to all, and cause or mechanism (question 2) to firearm.  I set the years to 1980-1998, and left the other options as the default: census region/state was set to United States, race to "All Races", sex to "Both Sexes", hispanic Origin to "All", and output options to "Standard Output".  The number of deaths it gave back to me was 620,525. 
Now, I'm still missing 1980, 2000-2004, and 2011-2012 (aw dang, I just gave away how old I am).  But I've been searching for a little over 5 minutes now, so let's add what I've got and see what the comparison is to wars - I have  698,084 total deaths for PART of my lifetime from the 5 minutes of searching I did.  Now Mr. Moyers has been alive for a bit longer, so let's just start by looking to see how the number of U.S Military casualties from the wars in his lifetime (I'm guessing which wars were during his lifetime) compare:
(NOTE: I found this info using wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war)
WWII:     405,399
Greek Civil War:   6
Chinese Civil War:  164
Korean War:   36,516
Vietnam:   58,209
1958 Lebanon crisis:  6
Bay of Pigs Invasion:  4
Dominican Republic:  47
Iran:    8
El Salvador Civil War:  37
Beirut Deployment:  266
Persian Gulf escorts:  39
Invasion of Grenada:  19
1986 Bombinb of Libya:  2
Invasion of Panama:  40
Gulf War:   258
Operation Provide Comfort: 19
Somalia:   43
Haiti:    4
Columbia:   8
Bosnia-Herzegovina:  12
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: 20
Afghanistan:   2,031
Iraq War:   4,487
War on Terror:   6,518

Let's pull out the calculator, and I get: 514,162 (someone wanna check my math?)

HOLY CRAP.  There are DEFINITELY more domestic gun-related deaths during his lifetime (and mine) than the deaths in the wars of our lifetimes!  The 698,084 I came up with isn't even the full span of his life!  Now, he said that "in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined" - so let's pretend we can guess how many total domestic gun-related deaths there were in his lifetime, and add ALL the wars the U.S. has EVER been engaged in, which this page says is a total of 1,326,612.  So if you assume (I know, I'm assuming and it makes a something out of u and me, but I'm not a professional, and I said I was going to do 5 minutes of searching, which I have surpassed now) that you can double the 698,084 deaths I came up with for the years of his lifetime (I believe this is generous, since he's more than twice my age, and I didn't even get the full statistics of all the years of my life), and you come up with 1,396,168.  Which implies.. that it's quite possible (come on, I was generous in the way I did my math) that the number of gun related domestic violence deaths in his lifetime is more than the number of deaths in all the wars the U.S. has ever been a part of!

NOW, for my conclusion (which is not what you're probably expecting it's going to be): I saw a statement by a pundit (which may or may not have supported an opinion I may or may not have already had), and a little alarm went off in my head and I thought "could this be exaggeration?"  So, I went to google, spent just a few minutes of my time researching, and found that it is very possible that he was telling the truth.  I did a fact check!  See how easy that is?  I didn't spend a ridiculous amount of time on it, and when I found numbers that supported his statement, I didn't question them (well, the media is so [blank] biased, so therefore I can't trust anything THEY say), but I accepted that given the research I have done it is quite possible that he was making a truthful statement.  And that's all that can be asked of me, right?  I'm just a regular dude, and I put a reasonable amount of effort into finding out if a statement I suspected was true or not.  Now the question is: how far are you willing to go in order to fact check suspicious statements that politicians and pundits make?  If you go to one of those fact-checker websites to check a statement, and their conclusion doesn't match what you wanted, are you willing to put the work into it?  Or are you just going to say "well, this site is [blank] biased, so I can throw out everything they say!"

Again, I hope you found some humor in the way I presented this exercise, and found it educational, and hopefully I got my point across that it is VERY easy to fact check in this day and age - so please do so!

Open Letter to my Children, on Fear and Love

To my dear children:

A while back I wrote a letter to you, with the hope that one day you would read it when you are older.  I have been thinking lately that this is something I should do more of, and perhaps one day it will be good for me, as well, to look back and see how things have changed.  A lot has been on my mind lately as life changes – the most obvious of changes in our family’s life being related to the birth of Evelyn.  And this brings up the first lesson I hope to impart to you in this letter, and I hope that I can word this eloquently and clearly as it will be tricky:

As you face difficulties, remember the blessings of the past, and look forward to the blessings to come

Your mother’s pregnancy with Evelyn was…difficult.  She was sick and uncomfortable; I was frustrated from seeing her that way, frustrated with having to take up additional responsibilities, frustrated by the worries of how life would change and how difficult that would be.  But all that melted away the moment I met Evelyn – the love that filled my heart trumped all worries and all the frustration of the last 9 months were all but forgotten.  I wish I could’ve kept a sound mind during the pregnancy and realized this is how things would be, remembering that this is how it was with Logan and Lilly, but my mind invented new worries, such as “how are we going to manage when we (your parents) are now outnumbered?”  Your mother was much better at dealing with this and repeatedly stated how much she was looking forward to meeting Evelyn, and you could hear the expectation and eagerness in her voice as she said it.  Well, I hope you will take more of her optimistic view than my often pessimistic viewpoint.  But I came around.

Now, to move on to the other lessons I am pondering and hoping to impart to you, I need to give you a little background.  We have just finished a presidential election, one in which President Barack Obama was re-elected.  I have to admit that I really don’t remember many details of the elections that happened when I was growing up beyond who the candidates were and bits and pieces of what I was told by the people around me.  And this is only the fourth presidential election for which I was old enough to vote, and thus had a personal interest in.  But it seems to me that the politics of this election were especially negative – more so than other elections I remember – and it seems that many people I knew have been very afraid of what the outcome of this election would be.  Not only that, but I saw a lot of despair after the results of this election, and it was disheartening to see how afraid people were.  There is a quote from a man named Henry Louis Mencken I like, which applies to this election:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” 

Mr. Mencken lived from 1880 to 1956, so it is quite apparent that fear in politics is nothing new.  But it is surprising, to some extent, that in this day and age where the common man can easily direct their computer to certain websites, type in a word or phrase to search for, and find a wealth of information, that people would be so filled with fear over so many things which are so easily disproven.  How is this possible?  There is a psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias, according to which people will sympathetically interpret evidence that supports their beliefs and be highly critical of evidence that does not.  In one study, participants were shown fictional studies about the deterrent effect of the death penalty.  Those who supported the death penalty were quick to be skeptical of the studies that challenged the deterrent effect, while being quick to accept the studies that supported it.  Likewise, those who opposed the death penalty were quick to judge the studies that supported the deterrent effect.  What does this mean for us?  How can we be sure of anything, knowing our tendency to hold fast to bias?  Fortunately for us, as Christians, we have a guide to help us sort things out – the Bible.  So how does the Bible say we should conduct ourselves in this world?  Well, this brings us to the next lesson I’d like to impart:

Be suspicious of anything that comes from fear

Now, how can I be sure that we ought to be suspicious of anything that comes from fear?  Aren’t there times for which fear is a proper response?  Well, to be sure there are often valid reasons to be afraid.  But the Bible tells us in 2 Tim. 1:7 that “God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”  Notice here that the Bible contrasts the characteristics we should not possess with the characteristics we should, and pay especially close attention to the fact that it mentions love as one of these characteristics – the Bible is so full of references to love being the chief characteristic of God and, consequently, being the chief characteristic that those who follow him should strive for.  And in 1 John 4, we are given detailed instructions on loving one another, an explanation of how God mapped out for us what love is, and then we are told in verse 18 that “love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.”  The implications of this are that, even if our reasons for fearing are valid and reasonable (let’s be clear: most often they are not), we still should not fear!  God knows we are not perfect, and may fall to fear, and this is why he has very liberally sprinkled throughout the Bible verses like Isaiah 41:10, which says “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.  Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”  Now, as I mentioned before, politicians and pundits will try to convince us of a myriad of fearful, apocalyptic scenarios that will inevitably be brought about by the evil agendas of their opponents.  But I would encourage you to be immediately skeptical of any such logic that is based on fear.  As Yoda said, “fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.”  There is a lot of truth in that statement, and as I pointed out before, the Bible shows us that our primary goal is to characterize love, and there is no fear in love.  History is full of examples where fearful stories have been told to cloud people’s judgment: outrageous stories have been told of various mysterious groups and their immense power in order to convince people that laws meant to prevent discrimination and hate crimes were actually part of an evil agenda to wipe Christianity out.  Why is this?  The answer is somewhat simple: it is too obvious of a lie to hate our fellow man outwardly – in order to convince us to hate our fellow man, we must first be convinced to fear him.  And then we convince ourselves that he hates us, which, therefore, justifies our own hatred.  Are there forces out there that are trying to harm Christians?  Absolutely!  But we know that often, these forces do not resort to the most obvious means, but - rather than attacking Christians directly - will instead try to convince Christians themselves of lies in order to lead us away from God, and anything not rooted in love ought to be immediately suspect.  I believe that our goal in life ought to be to love fearlessly and freely, to extend that love to all we come near, regardless of race, orientation, or class; without preconditions, accepting the individuals we come into contact with, with all their faults included.

Now, inevitably, you will yourself fall prey to a lie – don’t fool yourself into believing that you know all truth.  So this brings us to my next lesson:

Don’t be afraid of disagreements, but face them fearlessly with love in your heart

Too often, I think, we have a tendency to avoid anyone who disagrees with us – we run away before ever engaging our imagined adversaries.  But this attitude does not lend itself to making progress, but instead affords us the luxury of never having to face the possibility that we might be wrong.  And this is a prideful attitude, and one which will cause us to be held captive to the lies we believe at the worst, or at best - if we are the ones in the right - it means that we are selfishly allowing those around us to be held captive by the lies they believe.  So I believe we should not be afraid to confront each other and have difficult discussions.  However, we need to be very careful in how we go about conducting these confrontations.  As I said, we need to face our disagreements with love in our hearts.  One of the ways to do this is:

Do not define your opponent, but give them a chance to define themselves – or the Rocky and Bullwinkle title would be: don’t name call

If we come with love in our hearts to face those we disagree with, the first thing we will strive to do is to understand their side of the story – where they are coming from.  What this means is that we cannot fall into the trap of name calling.  There has been so much of this in the last two presidential elections – calling people socialists, and traitors who want to destroy our country, idiots, and secret conspirators with evil groups who have terrible agendas. But this is not productive! 

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with someone who I had overheard bashing President Obama with much zeal before the election.  I asked him if Romney was such a great alternative, and his answer was “no, but Romney doesn’t want to kill babies.”  Now, I must stop here and point out that at this point in my life, I consider myself “Pro-Life”.  However, I must also ponder this: abortion has been legal in our nation for quite a while, as Roe V. Wade happened in 1973, and there have been Pro-Life presidents in office since then.  So why is it that we’ve been losing this battle for so long?  I would propose that one of the reasons we have been is because of the offensive way we’ve fought the battle.  We’ve turned anyone who is Pro-Choice into a monster, and when you do that - rather than striving to understand why those you disagree with feel the way they do, and being diplomatic about finding a solution to the problem – you turn those you disagree with into your enemies and a war ensues, rather than a productive discussion.

In order to solve the problems we face, we cannot resort to the rhetoric of persecution, but instead we need to realize that often those we disagree with have the same goals, but have different methods for achieving them.  And when we realize this, maybe we will be able to solve some of the problems we face together.  But along with name calling, there is one other tactic we must be very wary of, and steer far clear of:

Do not become trapped in “The Blame Game”

There is a disturbing trend that has been very visible in the political environment of today where the persecuted have been painted as the persecutors.  Perhaps the best example of this comes in the form of the Matthew Shepard Act.  On October 7, 1998, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, and tortured, tied to a fence post and left for dead.  He was not dead, however, but was in a coma, which was a result of the injuries he had sustained in the attack.  He was left tied to the fence post for 18 hours before he was discovered by a biker who initially mistook him for a scarecrow, most likely due to the fact that he had been so brutally beaten that he was no longer recognizable as human from a distance.  This was largely publicized because of Shepard’s sexual orientation – he was homosexual – and because the defense employed what has become known as a gay panic defense: they proposed that the murderers had been in a state of panic because Shepard had propositioned them, and thus were in a state of temporary insanity.  The previously mentioned act sought to expand the hate-crimes prevention act to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.  Now, it is hard for me to imagine a world in which this would be a bad thing – clearly what was done to Shepard was awful, and we should be moved to want to prevent such things from happening.  The purpose of the bill was to allow the government to track such crimes, and fund investigations of them, but somehow it was twisted in the minds of many as being part of a “Gay Agenda” to "muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality."  How does such a bill become twisted in this way?  I think, to find the answer, we can go back to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden: the first sign of the fall was that Adam and Eve engaged in “The Blame Game.”  Rather than accepting their own blame, Adam and Eve looked for scapegoats to justify their sin.  So how is it that I believe this applies to the Matthew Shepard Act?  There is a Freudian theory of Psychology by which people, rather than face the uncomfortable fact that they harbor undesirable and ugly feelings, will displace their feelings and project them upon those towards whom they harbor these feelings.  Thus, when faced with the fact that they harbor discriminatory feelings towards homosexuals, rather than facing this uncomfortable fact, opponents of the bill would spin an elaborate conspiracy theory of a “Gay Agenda” to take over America and outlaw Christianity – this removed any guilt they had, because they felt that they were then justified in hating Homosexuals: after all, the Homosexuals hated them first, according to the subconscious dialogue.  But this is not the only example of such psychology at work – the persecuted becomes the persecutor in many dialogues involving race, class, nationality, and political stance.  There are many stories of secret agendas and plots to discriminate, and often when you look at the evidence and know your history you will find that the ones supposedly involved in such plots are actually the ones who have been persecuted.  Therein lies the awful power of playing “The Blame Game” – we use it to justify our own sinful feelings, and the horrifying result of this is that often when we play this game our feelings are then translated into actions.  We justify those feelings we are uncomfortable with using “The Blame Game” and then act on them out of the fear we have manufactured for ourselves.  We turn ourselves into the holy soldiers fighting a righteous war against those who would discriminate against ourselves and those like us.  But this is not what Jesus taught!  Jesus exemplified and extorted us to live a life based on love that reaches out towards the least, the lost, and the lonely in a way that placed no preconditions on such love and showed no limits to how far he would go to display it.  Fighting secret agendas was not how Jesus showed us to live our lives – he taught us to love unconditionally! 

There is a movie, based on a book, called “I Am Legend”.  It is a terrible movie, in my opinion, because it changed the original ending of the book and lost the entire point.  The story is about a post zombie apocalyptic world, and follows the main character as he lives his life, hunting down and killing zombies along the way.  At the end of the book, he comes to a realization that is horrifying to him as he witnesses one of the zombies caring for a young zombie, and realizes that these are not mindless creatures without emotions – they have thought processes and emotions, and what’s more: none of them have ever harmed him.  He realizes that the whole time he was hunting them, they were afraid of him and that is the meaning of the title “I Am Legend” – he realizes that he is their legend, their Dracula, their mythical monster that has been hunting down the innocent and helpless of their society.  The danger in painting those we disagree with as being fearful beings who are trying to destroy our way of life is that we may inevitably become Legend, and we need to avoid such language in our discourse.  I believe that Jesus modeled being a peacemaker in the way he reasoned – he made his points carefully and thoughtfully, and did not paint those who disagreed with him as being monsters who were trying to destroy his way of life.  We need to reason as Jesus did: out of a spirit of love, we need to be peacemakers; reasoning with people diplomatically and calmly.  The purpose of the Christian life is not to fight Holy Wars against those who oppress us, but if we do have oppressors (and we do, but often they are not the people we think are our oppressors – too often they come in the form of those who pretend to be “on our side”), we need to face them with love.  Because that is the goal of the Christian life: to love God, and love people.

There is one final lesson I’d like to impart:

Hold your treasures with an open hand

In Matthew 19:16-29, there is a story of a rich man who asks Jesus what deed he should do in order to have eternal life.  Jesus lays out some of the basic commandments, and when the rich man responds that he has followed these perfectly, Jesus finally tells him that he must sell everything he has and give the money to the poor.  Now the moral of the story is not that we can get into heaven by doing this – on the contrary, if you keep reading, Jesus says, when his disciples ask who can be saved: “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”  But there is another moral to this story, and I believe that it is this: what you hold onto with a tight fist is what makes you a prisoner.  The rich man in the story believes that he can gain access to heaven through his deeds.  And I think that the way Jesus responds to him points out two mistakes this man is making:

1)    The rich man in the story believes that he has followed the commandments perfectly.  Jesus tells the man that he must not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, he must honor his father and mother (or, those who are in authority to him), and love his neighbor as himself.  The rich man’s reply?  “Oh yeah, I’ve done all that.”  But if you know anything about the teachings of Jesus, you should know how silly this response is – Jesus repeatedly points out that it is not the letter of the law that matters, but the spirit.  He extends the law against murder by pointing out that if you call someone an insulting name in anger you have murdered them in spirit.  If you lust after a woman who is not your wife, you have committed adultery, and so on.  This should make it painfully obvious to us that we can never obey the law perfectly as long as we inhabit this earth – our only hope is in the redemption provided by the only one who ever has.

2)    When Jesus tells the man to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, I think that this statement does more than point out the dangers of treasuring money.  Jesus is pointing out that there is a commandment the man has not obeyed – the commandment to have no other gods before God, and to make no idols.  I think that in the context of the whole story, this could be extended to the preceding section of the conversation to imply that if you treasure legalism, you have made the same mistake of creating an idol out of it. 

The point I’m trying to make is that our legal system is not perfect – it never will be, because our world is imperfect!  No matter what laws we impose, there will be suffering and pain and hatred and warfare.  Should this stop us from trying to improve our legal system?  By all means: no!  But if we fight these battles in such a way that we are making an idol out of legality, we have already lost!  That which you treasure most is what makes you a prisoner.  But if you open your hand, and let God decide what happens with those things, you will be free, because He is the only ruler who rules justly – He is the only “Good Shepherd”.  And I would ask those who fight these battles to “protect our rights as Christians” a serious question: are these battles making us free, or are they rather making us prisoners to fear and hatred in the way that we are fighting them? 

In conclusion, my dear children, I will admit that I am a horrible example of how to live by the lessons I have just outlined.  I know this full well, but I hope that by remembering these lessons and seeking to live by them, I will come closer to becoming the child of God that I ought to be.  And I hope that you will do better than I have – I hope you will be able to avoid the traps we so often fall into, and will live in love, the way Jesus taught us to do.  But no matter what happens, know that our God is a God of redemption – he can redeem the worst of the worst, and nothing we do can separate us from His love.  Likewise, know that I will always love you.

Your Daddy