Apocalyptic Apoplexy

“T’was the dark of the moon an the sixth of June

In a Kenworth haulin’ logs Cabover Pete with a reefer on

And a Jimmy haulin’ hogs

We’s headin’ for bear on I-one-oh ‘bout a mile outta Shakey Town

I said, ‘callin’ all trucks, this here’s the Duck

And I’m about to put the hammer down…’”

If you are my age or perhaps even a tad younger, you will remember these opening lines from C.W. McCall’s epic country rap song, Convoy. If you did not dismiss the lyrics as outright gibberish and managed to get a little interested, you began a journey of understanding of the long haul trucker sub-culture and their lingua franca on CB, or Citizens Band, radio. McCall’s story song revolves around a group of truckers on a coast-to-coast trip who try to evade the ever present state police by using CB lingo and sheer force of numbers, as they gather other truckers into an unstoppable, solid phalanx of 18-wheelers headed to the promised land, or in this case, the Jersey shore. The story gets more ridiculous as the convoy moves along, until the apocalyptic moment when 85 trucks “crashed the gate doin’ 98, I said let them truckers roll”

An occasion of triumph for the lonely Knights of the Road, who felt beleaguered and oppressed by the law and the callous automobile drivers with whom they supposedly shared the road. It was the one time they came out on top – even if it was a fantasy. The song was short lived, but it was great entertainment for awhile. Many of us even entertained the notion of becoming a trucker, buying a CB for our Volkswagon beetles and practicing our semi-patois, waiting for the time we would be baptized with diesel fuel.

I don’t get much opportunity to lead Bible studies anymore. The current Church thing is laity-led discussions, and most folks don’t have time for pastors who shovel words like “escatology” onto the study pile. But if I did get the chance, and we happened to open our Bibles to Revelation, I would use “Convoy” as a way to introduce the book.

Written in somewhat similar circumstances in the late first century CE, Revelation chronicles the desire of some oppressed Christians of the time to hit back against the Roman Empire for the sporadic but often times deadly persecutions that erupted from time to time. The writer promised that Jesus would return to throw the rascals out, and would look and behave sort of like C.W. McCall’s Rubber Duck in a toga. It was written in code, purportedly by John in exile in order to sneak it past the Roman censors who would have dismissed his missive as the ramblings of a crazy old man. And “John” – God only knows who he/she really was – was playing to the deep seated desire of the human beings who were being persecuted to get revenge, or, in more churchified parlance, to restore all righteousness. They were probably downright titillated by the prospect of the vengeful Jesus coming to may hay out of their oppressors, just as any trucker who got stopped by the police salivated at the prospect of ramming a chicken-coop (toll booth) full of bears (State cops with Smokey hats on).

Revelation is great entertainment, but nothing more. It may have provided some brief pastoral relief to the Christians of the 1^st century who just wanted the pain to stop, but it hardly inspires the modern person to better behavior. There is a serious disjoint between the “love your enemies” injunction of the Gospels and the “kill ‘em all – let God sort ‘em out” philosophy of Revelation. I don’t place the film, “Dirty Harry” on the same plane with the Oscar winning, “Man For All Seasons”, and I don’t think “Convoy” ranks with Mozart’s “Requiem”. For all of it’s value as entertainment and giving vent to people’s pain in undeserved suffering, I do not think Revelation belongs in the New Testament, certainly not as it’s coda.

Even Martin Luther of sainted memory grumbled that Revelation “was not very revealing” and questioned its place in the canon. Revelation is a loose cannon, and should be relegated to the Apocrypha where it belongs, that collection of books that didn’t make the Bible: they were good reading, but hardly qualified as the Word of God.

Besides, Revelation and the other “end of the world” passages in The Book are being used in increasing nasty ways, especially as we approach the end of the Mayan calendar in December of 2012.  ( I didn’t know Jesus was acquainted with the Mayans. Why he would let them set his schedule is a mystery to me.) From the “Left Behind” series to the Aryan Brotherhood, the message seems to be, “you’re gonna get yours (for not agreeing with me)”. The common undercurrent is that faith needs an enemy in order to survive. An enemy we can look forward to watching fry when it is all over. Reminds me of the 4-5 hour hellfire and brimstone sermons of the First and Second Great Awakenings. People loved them, because they were cheap entertainment and they could think of all the bad things the Preacher served up as happening to other people.

But this is hardly the way to close out a tome such as the Bible which began with such promise: God called Abraham and said to him, “I will bless you, so that you will be a blessing, and through you (plural) all the families of the earth will bless themselves.” I realize that there may have been no such person as Abraham: “he” probably was an ideal. In any case, the thrust of the episode in Genesis, re-echoed in the Gospel of John, was that God wants to save and repair the earth and its people, not destroy them.

Human beings wrote the books of the Bible. Human beings decided what was to be included and what was not. Human beings still have that power. Human beings have the capacity to correct their mistakes. I believe that people of good will should start a petition to remove Revelation from Holy writ, it really is an abhorrent book. Admit that the church fathers goofed (they should have listened to the church mothers) and substitute another in its place. I do have a candidate in mind.

In 1963 one of the greatest speeches of the twentieth century was given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the mall in Washington, DC. I refer, of course, to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” oration. Although some of the references he made were to specific American places and situation, the over arching theme was taken directly from the scriptures and was decidedly prophetic in tone. The dreams of the prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Jesus, et al – all hoped for a better day in the midst of difficult times. Dr. King clearly and courageously articulated a timeless and transcultural message, that through our words and actions and the families of the earth will be able to sit at the same table and bless themselves, without having to label anyone an enemy. It was ironic that he did so in front of the monument to Lincoln, who, when told that God wanted him to destroy the enemy, replied, “Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?”

In my opinion that speech would be a far more fitting closing to the canon than Revelation. I hope that this idea will go viral, that we can get the ecclesiastical fat cats to do their duty and make the swap. I realize that is probably a hopeless cause. I am more likely to get shot by some religious nut than to gain an audience with His Holiness to discuss tactics and strategy. Failing that, I would suggest the Thomas Jefferson approach to Holy Writ: simply do a cut and paste job on your personal Bible.

To be honest, I would still like to see those people who have hurt me in my life be thrown into the Lake of Fire. And I do get the itch now and then to drive through those stupid, one-armed-bandit gates at Dulles airport without paying, and watch the bears come out of hibernation to meet the threat to our national security. But that is the child in me. In such moments I can benefit best by hearing a variation of the old hymn, “Love Lifted Me”, not “You’ll be left behind”. Most of the Psalms are lament poems, complaining to Gods about all those nasty folks out there. The Psalms are in the middle of the Bible, ergo, the middle part of the journey of faith. The task is to move on from there to maturity. I do not consider Revelation to be a mature read. Best get rid of it before people who take it seriously and literally really do some damage. Maybe then we’ll hear the real message of the Bible: It is time to grow up.

Hey, I can dream too, can’t I?

Science and Faith

When Pierre-Simon LaPlace responded to the Emperor Napoleon’s observation that nowhere was there a reference to God in the former’s book, Celestial Mechanics, by saying, “I have no need for that hypothesis,” he perhaps said more than even he knew.

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something. In science, the term “phenomenom” replaces the word “something”, and hypotheses are subject to change based on testing. They may even be discarded if they do not adequately explain how facts (stubborn things that they are) hang together.

LaPlace was well aware that religion, in the form of European Christianity, would be attacking his work. Agents of the Church probably hoped that by bringing his omission to the notice of the Emperor, it would nip what they thought was his assault on their primacy in the bud. But Napoleon, who had risen to his position by applying scientific hypotheses to the tactics of warfare, was simply amused by the whole flap.

What is less amusing is that the battles between science and faith continue, with no small amount of vitriol expended and blood  spilled by the latter in order to check the influence of the former. Religious bodies, with the possible exception of Buddhism and medieval Islam, interpret the advances of science via the scientific method as assaults on their version of events. Or, as devotees of science might put it, attacks on or outright dismissals of religion’s hypotheses.

I find this exchange of antipathies disheartening, since even as a metaphysically oriented human being I have been grateful for the beneficence science has brought me, rather more blessing than if I had relied solely on prayer. I am more than a little worried, though, about tinkering with the atom and genetic engineering. I fret that scientists have to endure pressure to spin data to meet political and corporate goals and objectives, which ironically, pastors find they have to do daily in order to keep their jobs. I would hope that, despite the bull headed and atrocious acts of religious people of the past in opposition to people of science, I might be able to converse with my more physics oriented friends in meaningful ways.

A reasonable approach might be to revisit what religion views as doctrine and dogma and reconsider them as hypotheses, and to submit them to rigorous testing to see how they square with the facts of living. One of my favorite hymns, The Church of Christ in Every Age includes a verse which encourages just that: “(The Church) must claim and test its heritage”, later reminding it to do so “in all humility”.

The willingness to learn from scientific method, so far only expressed by religious types in the person of the Dalai Lama, would go a long way to opening up the conversation between scientist and theologian, and end this charade of religion that is all for a cure for cancer but violently opposed to evolution.

Admittedly, some doctrines and dogmas (hypotheses), such as the Virgin Birth, the Atonement and maybe the physical resurrection of Jesus, will lose their charm under scrutiny and will have to be abandoned, or at least modified. Others, such as the Creedal statements, might be loosed of their chains of myopia and engender further questions on the interplay between matter and energy – and spirit. As the scientific community must constantly revise its textbooks to reflect new findings and fresh data, Christians may have to jettison a terrible book such as Revelation from the canon, and replace it with Martin Luther King’s, I Have a Dream speech as more fitting conclusion to the Bible.

We of the faith community might even gain a greater understanding on how a nasty little local desert deity named Yahweh evolved into Great Mystery whose chief aim is to allow the rare phenomenon of love have a chance in a tooth and claw universe. It would be a miracle on a par with the splitting of the atom, or a quantum leap if you will, if religion morphed from being a plague on the planet to an instrument of healing for the earth and its creatures.

Thoughts on Original Sin

I by Original Sin you mean that Adam and Eve "did it" while God wasn't looking, and somehow passed that down to you and I, sorry, I'll have none of it. I don't remember asking to be born, and I'll not apologize for the decisions I have had to make in order to survive.
"We are born in sin, children of a fallen humanity". Hogwash (or worse!) If you want to say we are born self-centered, now I'm listening. If we were not born that way, we would not survive. Evolution has blessed us with this gift of self centeredness in order to be fruitful and multiply.
I am well aware that the task of each human being is to gradually modify their self orientation to include others and their needs. Evolutionists tell us that, ironically, if we don't temper our self centeredness, we will not survive as a species.
It doesn't get to be "sin" (ha-ha-harmartia, you missed) unless one thinks of self  first always, to the exclusion of others and in spite of them.
We had a gentlemen once remark in our church that "children are born evil". NOT! This was his misunderstanding of sin, equating it with evil, which it definitely is not. It's a stretch between wanting your milk and killing the cow when it doesn't deliver on time.
But I am dismayed sometimes, when young children are smacked or scolded for trivial infractions because the parents hold to that unfortunate proverb, "spare the rod and spoil the child". (That is not how the adage goes, really, it is a variant of what is in the Bible). They treat them as if they are, indeed, intent on evil, and need to be violently pulled back. I remember when my father whupped me when I was 3 or 4 for wetting my pants. "I'm doing this for your good" he smiled, as he peeled down the wet cotton. Smack! I've been angry ever since..
Then he shoveled in the Atonement: "this hurts me more than it hurts you." Bullshit. Human hands were all over my sore bottom, and human hands are all over the doctrines and dogma of Christianity, not Gods', and they derive orgiastic satisfaction from keeping people in thrall to guilt. It is humans who have developed the evil doctrine of the Atonement it's sex-slave The Creed,- and twisted Original Sin from a need to gradually let go of all one's attention to self into "Look what I've done for you - you owe me". And that is the voice of a self centered human, not God's. "O Pharoah, Pharoah (Pope, bishop, pastor, Christian CEO) let my people go".

The River

Sarah and I had a wonderful trip on the North Fork of the Shenandoah yesterday. We started at Red banks and went to Narrow Passage, after leaving the van and hoping we would be able to rouse Ernie to pick us up and get us back to the van. All good adventures commence with the headaches of logistics, but I try to minimize these and give the rest to fate.
Azure blue sky; bold, vibrant and virile greens of early summer; the alternating deep gray and shallow tan of the river bottom, punctuated by the dash and dots of carp and walleye. I was pretty rusty in my navigation, so we had a few brushes and bumps till I got my eyes readjusted to the river after two years of absence. Sarah snapped a photo of me after we launched, and I reflected I looked happier than I had in some time. Joyous, even. I much prefer the stained glass of the un-endowed river.
We were not as tired as we would be later in the day, and our paddle strokes silently crisp and rythymic, kyrie eleison, kyrie... BUMP! Sorry dad, didn't see that one. Not a problem sweetie, I shoulda seen it coming. I was looking too far ahead to the next riffle.
We were like two kids, my daughter and I, ages apart but equal in our children enthusiasm for the visual treats of the Shenandoah. A blue winged teal on our left, about 11 o'clock off the bow of the boat, shepherded her small ones into the shadow of the left bank and then made a noisy procession straight across our watery path, seeming to want to take off but beating her wings loudly and obviously on the surface of the water. What is she doing, dad? Drawing our attention away from the little ones, offering herself so that they can stay alive.
I think it's pretty much instinct, although maybe she learned it watching her mother. I suspect it is DNA driven, a kind of biological pay-it-forward thing.
That rotten shelf about 2 miles in was in no mood to give us a break, but we almost made it. I had to get out and push Sarah and the boat over the shelf. Just a half inch more in the water level might have done it. But I never had the pleasure of that, every time we hit that spot there is nothing for it but get out and push. Too bad, because I think in flood stage it would be one hell of a ride!
Osprey eyed us from above, and I suddenly could not get the song, "High Flying Adored" from Evita out of my mind. It stayed with me the whole damn day, and I would break into a line or so now and then, with Sarah looking at me as if I was nuts. Blue Herons stood like sentinels on the shore, waiting until we got about 30 yards and then hunching up and flying downstream. The little green herons, more demonstrative, flew downstream shouting like evangelists that strangers were coming, motive and purpose unknown. Rounding a bend we saw a doe halfway across the stream, fording carefully but sometimes splashily. She knew she was vulnerable and didn't waste time for how-de-do's when she reached shore, but she needn't have worried about any evil from us.
The riffles were pleasant I enjoyed zig-zagging them, but my aim is getting old. Once or twice we got spanked for my miscalculations, which began to make me a little indignant. I made alot of mistakes, and I tried not to repeat them, with mixed success. Sarah just laughed that who cares kind of chortle.
We portaged the damn Edinburg dam, which they have not removed because someday we may need the hydroelectricity that could be resurrected from it. Frankly, I would derive more power from the canyon drowned behind it if it was allowed to run free, but I've never had much feel for politics. Below this point the river widens considerably and runs broadly and smoothly and predictably , very pretty but not much depth. It was then we caught the fleetingest glimpse of a bald eagle. He crossed over the river and hid in the trees. A little later we saw an osprey acting lonesome. Eagles are know to steal fish caught by ospreys. They let the osprey catch the carp or walleye or catfish, then swoop in with shock and awe and badger the osprey into dropping his meal, then bank in to grab the prize and make off with their loot. The osprey scratches his head a little and returns to hunting. High flying adored.
We got to Narrow Passage and found the Narrow Beach crowded with swimmers. I didn't want to disturb them by coming in on the beach and scaring the little ones with a fresh water, aluminum version of Jaws, so we came in discretely a little up stream. We had to haul the canoe up and over a sandbank thickly encrusted with vegetation, and Sarah flatly refused to cross the wilderness. What if there are snakes in there? No snakes. What about poison ivy? No PI. Well, I'm not going. OK honey, just help me get the prow to the top of the sand and I'll drag it from there. Which I did. Through ten yards of stinging nettles.
Connected with Ernie by cell phone and he came by and picked me up in his County Animal Control Vehicle, which he is not supposed to do, but I said I looked enough like a wild animal he had to control and he said that would do. Sarah stayed with the canoe, and when we got back, Ernie took a picture of us with the canoe in the back of the van, like a coffin halfway out of a hearse. We were very reluctant to leave the river. But the picture shows us all smiles. Mine was not as gleaming as the one Sarah to when we started out, and my shoulder were a little more slumped than I remembered, the hair bright not so much blonde but gray. But I remember being unspeakably, serenely, almost tearfully happy. There had been not one hint of the Doctrine of the Atonement all day. It was one of the best days of my life.