"I stand with Ukraine" means what, exactly?

Ukraine has only two choices

I am not going to dwell on the now-infamous, televised meeting that Ukraine's President V. Zelensky had with President Trump last Friday in the Oval Office. It is the outcome of the meeting that matters now. Why the meeting went the way it did does matter, but it is not my subject here. 

There are now only two paths forward for Ukraine, and therefore for the United States, NATO, and the EU nations who have supported Ukraine. I note that very quickly after the Oval office meeting adjourned, many progressives and Democrat figures posted memes like this one. 

Yet no one who posted this meme explained what exactly it means. As I asked at one such post, "If a Ukrainian in the war zone read your post, 'I stand with Ukraine,' what exactly would you want her to think you mean? How would you describe the ways her life and future will be better?" 

So let's take a look at the two - and only two things "I Stand With Ukraine" can mean. There are no other choices. 

First, though, I want to explain my creds in what I will write. I am a retired Army artillery officer with command and war-planning experience and responsibilities from battalion level to corps level and at the Pentagon, including at the Army Operations Center there. I have written operation plans and planning documents for actual shooting wars. I had the highest security clearances, including for nuclear and chemical target analysis, custodianship of actual atomic weapons, and decryption of Nuclear Control Orders. I am a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College. During part of my Pentagon tour I served on the personal staff of the Secretary of the Army. Now to continue:

Here are the only two things "I Stand With Ukraine" can mean:

ONE. I want the Ukraine war to continue on indefinitely in the same way it is going now. That means that I want more and more Ukrainian military and civilian personnel to die, more Ukrainian infrastructure to be destroyed, and countless more Ukrainians to refugee out of their country. 

TWO. I want the combat and killing to end and an enduring peace to be achieved, even if it means the status quo antebellum is not reestablished. 

The first thing operations and strategy planners do when going to work is to ask one simple question: "What is the status quo?" That is, what are the realties that exist now that we have to take into account? What is the situation and its implications? Regarding the Ukraine war, here are the important realities:

First, Russian forces have taken control of considerable Ukrainian territory (map source: BBC):

Zelensky has said - over and over since the war began - that he will accept no end of the war that does not include ejection of Russians from the territories they occupy in eastern UKR. In fact, he stated that point strongly in the now-infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump

Putin, however, insists that those territories are Russian home soil, not Ukrainian. In fact, it is true that they are large majority, ethnically Russian. Putin either does not know or does not care that the reason for that is that Stalin ejected and murdered Ukrainians living there and moved Russians in. Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons to keep possession of those territories (although he has not repeated the threat very recently). 

Both sides have lost enormous numbers of personnel and military equipment. I would say that if Putin and co. are both willing and able to suffer even more such losses, they could push westward enough to set the terms for an armistice. That is a big if, though.

As for UKR, it simply does not have the human resources to recover the occupied territories, no matter how well armed they may be in the attempt. They did attempt it in 2023, when their military was much better manned (and womaned) and they failed miserably. After four months of a weak offense against Russian positions, UKR's army was on pace to recover the occupied territories - in 16 more years. Even Time magazine reported that UKR insiders near Zelensky said they all knew this, but that talking to Zelensky about it was a waste of time. 

That is the status quo, meaning both sides will continue to attack each other, but with no real changes on the map resulting. Again: this is what Zelensky stated very specifically he wanted to continue. And that is what Trump was trying to end and what Democrats also want to continue, apparently forever.

What was the reaction from Europe? Occupy Democrats posted this on Feb. 28:

Note that most of the Euro leaders simply said, "We stand with Ukraine," without saying exactly what that means. By default, it means they are choosing Option One: continuing, inconclusive warfare with more death and destruction and no end in sight. The relatively few nations that stated they wanted peace did not define what steps are necessary to achieve it or what acceptable terms are for peace. For example, Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dick Schoof: "... We want a lasting peace and an end to the war of aggression started by Russia." 

Well, duh. We all want peace, even Zelensky has said that. It is worth noting, however, that Zelensky demands peace with "security guarantees," but he has never addressed what those guarantees would be, how they would be accomplished, or who would guarantee them. 

I wonder, though, how aware these national leaders are of their own populations' attitude toward supporting Ukraine, which is both (a) Ukraine needs more support, but (b) not from my country:

So, to those who insist they "stand with Ukraine," please choose which option you mean. Do you mean you want the war to continue indefinitely? If so, why? Is there a time limit for supporting the status quo that once expired would turn you to wanting an end to the war? Or is there a limit to how many more Ukrainians may be violently killed that would change your mind? Or do you just want the combat to continue with no end? 

Or do you want the war to end as soon as possible? If yes, how? What would be your plan to end it? I echo what the Army Chief of Staff used to remind us at the Pentagon when we made plans: "Hope is not a method and wishes are not plans." What actions would Ukraine, the US, and Euro/NATO nations need to take to bring UKR and Russia to at least an armistice/ceasefire, even with more permanent details to be worked out afterward? President Trump did at least state them while no one else has. 

Finally, hating Trump is merely cheap virtue signaling. It is neither a method nor a plan. But if you feel better about hating Trump than you feel bad about Ukrainians getting killed with no end in sight, then you are morally bankrupt and God forbid you have any say in what happens. 

Links and pertinent info:

NATO's empty promise to Ukraine

Ukraine: Zelensky is a true hero, but does he have a clue?

What if Putin nukes Ukraine?

Ukraine on Fire documentary

 From Oliver Stone in 2016, so obviously not including recent events. But it does explain that no one's hands are clean, including America's. As for its sub-head, "Russian Aggression or American Interference?" well, as the saying goes, embrace the power of "and."

NATO RIP - Ukraine, Europe etc. Ukraine is probably going to RIP NATO into bits

10 Hard Facts About Ukraine and NATO, by retired Colonel and Army War College graduate Kurt Schlichter. 

Ten bad takeaways from the Zelenskyy blow-up, by renowned historian Victor Davis Hanson.

A view by the German editor-in-chief of Asia Times: Europe’s dangerous delusion of defense without the US - Europe can dream about strategic autonomy but the reality is it wholly lacks the military means to defy Trump’s Ukraine peace plan

Transfiguration Sunday

 Moses led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt to a Promised Land in the east. They were pursued to the sea by Pharaoh’s army. But God rescued them across the sea. The people went to Sinai where Moses ascended the mountain to receive from God the Sinai covenant and the Ten Commandments, inscribed on stone tablets.

While waiting for Moses to come down from Sinai, the people decided to worship idols. They persuaded Moses’ brother, Aaron, to make golden calves for them. He caved in and did what they demanded. You may remember this scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston as Moses.

In the movie, when Moses returned with the Commandments and saw the people’s idolatry, he threw the tablets at the people. The tablets exploded and made a huge sinkhole that sucked down all the unfaithful people but spared the faithful ones. It was great cinema, but what the Bible says actually happened was that a civil war broke out that claimed the lives of three thousand people. Moses’ side prevailed.

Then God told the people to leave Sinai and go to the promised land, but he, God, would not go with them. “If I were to go with you even for a moment,” God said, “I might destroy you.” Moses asked God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’” (Exod 33:13-14).

Moses asked God to show him his glory. God did, but only a partial glimpse. Showing Moses a place to stand, God said, “When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Exod 33:21‑23 NIV).

God then required Moses to chisel out stone tablets like the first ones that Moses had broken when he had seen the golden calf. Moses was to bring the tablets to the top of Sinai where God would restore the Commandments on them. Moses did so.

   29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.

   30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them.

  32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exod 34:29-35).

It is not wholly clear what the Scriptures mean by saying that Moses’ face was shining. We use expressions like that ourselves, metaphorically. Remember the children’s song, “We’re all in our places with bright shining faces”? Brides are sometimes said to be “radiant” on their wedding days. An old country expression for being attracted to someone romantically was that you “took a shine” to the other. So perhaps that’s what Aaron and the others saw in Moses’ face, just a special look. Perhaps.

But perhaps not. A close, personal encounter with the creator of the cosmos is simply an experience of a different quality than anything else. Besides, Moses’ own brother and the others were afraid of him when they saw his shining face. Something unique must have been going on.

Moses had gone deeply into the presence of God with all its dangers. “Show me your glory,” Moses asked of God. “No one may see my face and live,” God told him. Narratively, the glory of the Lord had been on Sinai until then. But God had just promised to send his own presence to go with the people. In making Moses’ face to shine, the glory of God is narratively brought from Sinai to the tabernacle built by the Hebrews. “Moses’ descent from the mountain” with shining face “is a [narrative] device for the awesome coming of heavenly glory to dwell in the midst of Israel” (NIB).

The most important events in stories of Jews and Christians alike concern the awe-inspiring entry of God into human history. The Bible struggles to find ways to speak about this awesome entry, and one of its preferred ways is “glory.” The apostle Paul used this story of Moses to buttress his own claim that the glory of God has become visible on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of John is clear that the glory of God is found in Jesus. God’s glory is located most precisely in the cross. As the events unfolded that led to his death Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). In the shameful, shattering instrument of the cross, God’s glory shines as an instrument for Christ’s resurrection. In the cross and the empty tomb, the so-called glory that was Rome and all earthly powers became minutely dim. Here indeed is the real transfiguration: that by the body of the one crucified and risen, the glory of God is seen by his suffering, death, and resurrection. And for the church, the present body of Christ in the world, God’s glory can be seen in nothing else but the way we live together as the physical body of Christ in the world today.

I have often wondered how Moses coped with his singular experience of beholding God’s glory so intimately. It was no life of sweetness and light to lead the children of Israel. Moses and the Lord alike frequently observed that the people were “stiff-necked,” obstinate and stuck in their ways. It turned out to be so apt that they called themselves the children of Israel. They were not mature, as a group, in the ways of the Lord.

They complained a lot, starting barely after they reached the sea. They saw Pharaoh’s army coming after them and yelled at Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone?” (Exod. 14:11-12a). How quickly the days of slavery became treasured as the “good ole days!”

They complained about lacking water. When they got good water, they complained about not having enough to eat: “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron,” Exodus 16 relates. “The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’” (Exod 16:2‑3 NIV). So God sent the people manna in the morning and quail in the evening. They still weren’t happy.

It was rough being Moses. He occupied an office political as well as religious, but none of the people he attempted to lead had elected him. Moses was called by God and appointed as their leader. He was often fiercely opposed. He suffered all the criticism, rumormongering, hostility, and opposition that today’s elected officials know. Even after God gave the people bread and meat, it didn’t let up. At one place things got so heated Moses told God that he feared for his life (Exod 17:4). Just to be fair, Moses was not very diplomatic in his speech; people never had a problem knowing where he stood. He seemed to have had a demanding edge about him that irritated people. Well, so did Jesus. Just read Matthew 23, where Jesus called some people “sons of hell,” not something calculated to win their admiration.

Quite clearly, most Israelites didn’t want Moses at all. His standards were too strict, perhaps. After all, Moses gave them Law, but what they really wanted was license – anything goes. Eugene Peterson wrote that the people really wanted Aaron, not Moses, because Aaron was compliant. He gave in to their demands. If you wanted a golden calf, Aaron’s your man. Just wait until Moses isn’t around, then see Aaron. Golden calves abound in religious life, Peterson wrote, in times both ancient and modern. He cautioned religious leaders against yielding to the pressure to become “quality-control supervisors in a golden calf factory.”

I wonder whether Moses ever sent out his resume to neighboring nations instead of putting up with all the petty backbiting and outright hostility that he got for trying to do his job. It must have been tempting. He’d had a professional life before he saw the burning bush. He was unusually qualified for positions in civil government or business. Job offers there would have been. But he stayed. Why?

It could only have been because Moses had been to the mountaintop. It can only be because he had beheld in some special way the glory of God. And that experience never let him go. At the end of the day Moses must have understood that neither complaints nor compliments of others could primarily determine his course. He could only do his best to do what God wanted. No doubt Moses often felt severely incapable of doing so; in fact, he tried very hard to argue God out of his call. I don’t see how Moses ever actually felt adequate to his vocation. But he had been to the mountaintop and that experience had changed him for good. “What was it like?” people must have asked him, then waited while Moses groped for words. Finally, he might have managed only to say, “It was glorious.”

Walter Brueggemann wrote that the glory from God is carried by odd, strange persons, Moses and Jesus being two prime examples. (Remember that when Jesus returned to his hometown and declared that the messianic prophecies were fulfilled by him, the people exclaimed, unbelievingly, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”)

So, Brueggemann wrote, “This [fact] is not [so much] a summons that all should be ‘carriers,’ for those carriers are chosen only in God’s inscrutable power and freedom. It is, rather, an invitation . . . to notice the glory of God in those who refuse the golden calf, who stand in the breach to see the glory, and who bring the tablets and let life begin again. God’s glory is never far from God’s command, which authorizes the revamping of all of life. There is dread in the coming of this glory, but there is also inordinate, practical possibility. For all of his shining, Moses’ work is on earth,” with his people (NIB).

“If you are pleased with me,” Moses prayed, “teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that these people are your people.”

Transfiguration Sunday is about the glory of God and asks us individually and collectively a pointed question: Does we shine with the glory of God? When the world sees us does it know that the presence of God is with us, imperfect as we are?

Epiphanies may come, and then they go. Rarely does God slap us upside the head with flashes of lightning and voices like thunder. Usually, God quietly simply beckons us, tantalizes us, and sometimes God pulls back the curtain between heaven and earth just barely enough to give us a peek, and then only fleetingly. If ever such a such a glimpse is given to you, cherish it but don't try to capture it. It’s a snapshot gift, just a glimpse, an intuitive grasp of reality through an illuminating discovery.

We treasure our glimpses of glory. But afterward we must go back to the valley to follow Christ, because we can’t build shelters for Christ’s glory, we have to live it out. Glimpses of glory do not answer all our doubts or tell us what to do next. We can’t build our whole faith on sporadic glimpses any more than we could compose a symphony from notes picked at random. There is more to Jesus’ story than that transfiguring night on the mountain. But it does make a difference to have seen, even for a moment, the future, to have heard the confirming, reassuring voice out of the silence.

This week is the beginning of Lent, the season of the cross. We shall begin a Lenten walk with Jesus down the narrow way of obedience, a way which leads on Good Friday to pain and death. Leave here today and you are on your way to that cruciform valley.

But as you go to be a disciple wherever you make your home in the valley, know this: In Jesus Christ, God's past has come to fruition, the law and the prophets are fulfilled in him, God's Beloved. When we walk out those doors, it will be an ordinary March day, with nothing visibly different from when we came in.

But we should be different. We might tell no one, though our faces may be shining since we have, in a manner of speaking, come from the mountain. You will be different, having seen God's future, having heard the words that keeps you going as you take up your cross and follow Christ: “This is my son, my chosen; listen to him!” 

Let us pray:

Lord of life and light,

before your humiliation and shame, on your way to the cross, you were transfigured before us, the veil was lifted, and we saw your glory.

In all the dark, difficult places of our lives, show us your glory. Give us the grace to see you walking beside us, comforting us in our struggles, encouraging us in our sadness. Take us to the mountaintop, help us to see.

With you beside us, we are able to face evil and injustice with courage. With you walking ahead of us, we are able to walk with confidence. Show us your glory,

....in our sickness and pain,

....in our bereavement and loss,

....in our confusion and doubt,

....in our loneliness and solitude,

....in our temptation and weakness,

This we pray in the confidence that you are indeed God's only begotten Son, the light of our lives, the one to whom we are to listen and follow in all the moments of our lives. Amen.

The aftermath of Hamas murdering children

On Feb. 20, Hamas handed over to Israel the corpses of four dead Israeli hostages, including two small children, but only after using them for propaganda. 

Before handing over the remains, Hamas staged a parade of the bodies through streets of Gaza, proudly and cruelly displaying them  to cheering Gazan crowds. As the Wall Street Journal observed, 

Hamas put their coffins on a stage in front of a huge propaganda poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A crowd looked on and milled around, and “triumphant music” played, according to one news report. Mr. Netanyahu was depicted with fangs, dripping blood above the faces of the four dead hostages, smiling in photographs from happier times. “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes,” the poster claimed.

The coffin propaganda underlines the challenge of deradicalization for any postwar plan for Gaza.

Israeli medical staff conducted autopsies on the returned hostages. One was Oded Lifshitz, 84. The other three were Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their mother, Shiri. The Israeli government then announced: 

A. The bodies of the two children, one taken hostage at 4 years old and the other at 9 months, are injured in ways completely consistent with being brutally murdered, mainly by manual strangulation, and inconsistent with being killed by an air strike, as Hamas claims. 

Update: It is also confirmed that after the two boys were strangled, their bodies were pounded with rocks to make them appear to have been killed by an air raid. Details here, if you can stomach them.

B. The body of Shiri is in fact not Shiri at all. Hamas gave a corpse to Israel of a dead woman whose identity is unknown. 

Update: Hamas has now returned the actual remains of Shiri, whose identity has been so confirmed by Israel. 

What Hamas did drew sharp rebukes from very senior Arab Muslim authorities. 

And in yesterday's WSJ, author Bernard-Henri Lévy had this and other things to say about Hamas. 

Once, children were gassed as they descended from the trains. Hamas waited. Damn those who try to drag us into the false game of moral equivalency. These two breaths cut short, this double death of innocence, is Hamas’s abomination alone—and it is unforgivable.

Were the two muftis sincere in their condemnations? I think so. The muftis know very well that Muhammed specifically forbade the intentional killing of children, even in warfare. (That is no doubt why Hamas lied about Kfir and Ariel being killed by an Israeli airstrike. Hamas openly celebrated that they were dead but lied about how they died. Why one and not the other?)

Islam holds that there are two inarguable sources of commandments that must be obeyed with no exceptions. One of course is the Koran. The other is the Hadith, which is a collection of sayings of Muhammed. The Hadith is equal in status to the Koran. 

In a well-known hadith, Muhammed instructed his companions during military expeditions, "Do not kill children, women, or the elderly, and do not attack those who are not fighting." (Reported in Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abu Dawud, and other collections)

Another narration states, "Do not kill a child, nor a woman, nor an old man, nor destroy crops, nor kill those who are in their places of worship." (Sunan Abu Dawud)

Islamic jurisprudence distinguishes between combatants (those actively engaged in fighting) and non-combatants (those who are not involved in hostilities). Children, by their very nature, are considered non-combatants and are protected under Islamic law.

The deliberate targeting of children, whether in warfare or otherwise, is considered a grave sin and a violation of Islamic law.

The looming question now is, "In light of these Hamas atrocities, what happens (eventually) to Hamas and the future of Gaza and its people?" 

On Feb. 4, President Trump raised a lot of eyebrows by declaring that Gaza should become an American protectorate, the Gazan people should be resettled elsewhere, and then the US would rebuild Gaza as a sort of "Middle East Riviera." Political and media commentators scornfully denounced the idea right away. On Feb. 6, I commented on Facebook:

When the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in (IIRC) 2004-2005, they actually offered to do much the same thing as Trump said, although on a smaller scale. Hamas seized power shortly afterward and killed every Gazan who got in their way.

But could it happen now? I think this is less a real proposal than Trump's way of signaling to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states that the status quo antebellum must not be restored. Trump's real message, I think, is, "The perpetual warfare between Israel and Hamas stops now." And yes, it has been perpetual; I visited the southern Israeli town of Sederot in 2007 on the same day it received a rocket bombardment from Gaza.

What Trump did was describe a wealthier, peaceful future for Gaza and the next step is to simply ask, "If not that, then what? Because more years of war is not on the table."

The Wall Street Journal's editorialists said much the same thing, but with more historical context and detail. 

President Trump’s idea that the U.S. might remove and relocate some two million Palestinians from Gaza and then “own” and rebuild the strip isn’t going to happen soon, if ever. But the idea, however preposterous, does have the virtue of forcing the world to confront its hypocrisy over the fate of the Palestinian people.

What was the Arab powers' reaction? It was that they got Trump's message, at least in part. 

Egypt led the response, probably because Hamas was a child of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist, insurrectionist movement dating to the 1920s. Egypt's government finally defeated the Brotherhood only in 2013, although the Brotherhood cannot be said to be fully neutralized yet. That Hamas and the Brotherhood are so closely linked is doubtless the reason that when the present war between Gaza and Israel began, Egypt publicly announced it was sending a tank battalion to its border with Gaza with orders to shoot on sight anyone crossing the border without prior permission. Egypt also strongly reinforced its border wall.

So it is no wonder that Egypt's immediate response to Trump's declaration was that it would refuse to resettle any Gazans, even temporarily, and that Hamas must have no role governing postwar Gaza. 

And now the rest of the Arab world understands that Hamas has committed atrocities that directly violate the commandments of Muhammed. Of course, the Arab elites already knew that, but Hamas handled the return of the dead hostages, especially the two dead children, so stupidly that it could not be ignored or shrugged away. 

I think a corner has been turned. If, as I wrote at the time, Trump's real message was "this is the last war Hamas will fight, ever," then I think the Arab powers are taking it seriously, regardless of the rest of what Trump said. The stupid parading of the four dead hostages to celebrate their deaths and the obvious lie that Hamas did not kill the children have forced Arab elites and rulers to take Trump's declaration seriously, even if not literally. 

So has a corner been turned? We can hope so, but at this point only the steering wheel has moved. The war is not over. But at least the Arab powers are finally confronting the fact that when it ends, the ending must be permanent this time. And that is progress. 

Jesus was raised from the dead. So what?

The apostle Paul had founded the church in Corinth, Greece, and discovered after he left that over time some problems had arisen in the church. One of these problems was a profound misunderstanding of the meaning of resurrection.

Paul explained to the Corinthians at the beginning of the letter that teaching Christ was raised from the dead would seem like foolishness to people who thought themselves well educated and full of wisdom, but that for those being saved it is the power of God.

But here’s the problem: the Corinthians did not understand resurrection conceptually. They seemed to think that the whole point of Christian faith was the resurrection of Jesus and only Jesus. They had made Jesus’ resurrection the stopping point of their faith. Paul knew that Jesus’ resurrection is beginning point, not the ending point, of Christian faith.

Jesus's tomb was empty. So what?

So Paul ends his letter to answer the “So what?” of Jesus’ resurrection, to correct the misunderstanding that Easter, by itself, is all that Christian faith is about. There were a lot of other issues Paul covered in the letter, this one was central. Here is what Paul wrote:

1 Cor. 15:12-20

12It is proclaimed that Christ has been raised from the dead, so how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ was not raised, either. 14And if Christ was not raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15Moreover, we are liars about God, for we have staked our reputations that God raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if all the dead are not raised. 16For if all the dead are not raised, then neither has Christ been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith does you no good because you’re still in your sins. 18That means that those who died believing in Christ are gone forever. 19If Christ matters only for this life, we are more pitiful than anyone else. 20But Christ really has been raised from the dead; he was the first to be raised of all the dead.

Let’s remember that the concept of resurrection from death was alien to the pagan world, where stories of a mythical or divine figure dying and living again would not even appear for at least 150 years after Jesus lived. That the Corinthian Christians did not quite grasp the concept is understandable.

But what about us? For most of my life I was taught and believed that the Christian faith stands or falls based on the resurrection of Jesus. And in fact it does – as Paul emphasizes, if Christ has not been raised then we Christians are pathetic people because what we profess to believe would be false and we are still unredeemed of our sins and we just lie to each other at funerals because even “those who died believing in Christ are gone forever.”

Yet that is just the beginning point of what “resurrection” means. So, Paul teaches what the resurrection of Jesus means in the grander scheme of things. Jesus’s resurrection is the guarantee of a promise.

The resurrection that matters most of all, says Paul, is the general resurrection, yet to come, of all the dead. In this letter and in others, Paul is very clear that just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so will all of us. And that resurrection is really what is at the center of Christian faith.

The people in Corinth made a basic mistake: they did indeed profess that Christ was raised, but they dismissed the whole notion that all the dead would be raised. Paul explains that you can’t have one without the other. "How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" Paul asked. "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ was not raised, either."

Paul was trying to explain that resurrection of the dead is a general category into which the resurrection of Jesus was a specific example. The Corinthians accepted the specific example but rejected the category.

It would be like saying, "I know that every October 31 kids go trick or treating, but there is no such thing as Halloween."

Or, "I have a basset hound, but there is no such thing in general as dogs."

Or "I watch the Daytona 500, but there is no such thing as NASCAR racing."

You can’t have the one without the other.

That Christ was raised was a real event, Paul wants to make that clear. But if Jesus’ resurrection is ripped away from its context of the general resurrection of all the dead, then Paul knows we are professing Christ for "this life only," and that’s just pitiful. Divorced from the resurrection of all the dead, the meaning and power of Jesus’ resurrection is lost, Paul says. Simply affirming Jesus’ resurrection cannot bring us to God, anyway. As Paul’s co-apostle James wrote, even the demons know that Jesus was raised.

Paul concludes this passage this way:

1.    Jesus really has been raised from the dead. He does not linger on that point because the Corinthians already believed it. But he restates it to set the grounds for what that means, which is:

2.    Jesus was the first to be raised of all the dead.

In the resurrection of Christ, Paul says, the general resurrection of the dead has already begun. That’s why the Corinthians were so profoundly in error about what Christ’s resurrection meant and why they were at risk of still being lost in their sins.

The fundamental promise of God is that he will bring human beings into reconciliation with himself and preserve the redeemed to live with him forever. The dead will be raised to a new life as the way God accomplishes this when, as the Scriptures put it, "Christ puts all things under his feet."

The book of Hebrews says, "And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that comes judgment ..." (v. 9.7). Which is to say that each of us dies and that afterward we are the judged by a wholly righteous God for how we lived this physical life and what we did. The passages emphasizing this point are so numerous that I hardly feel compelled to point them out. Start with Matthew 25, for example.

But how do we know that any of this is true? The whole idea of even a single dead person living again is so preposterous on the face of it that it begs credulity to proclaim it. Can we grasp scaling that up to every person who has ever lived? Paul could, and later he explained that it is not the physical body of the dead that is raised, but the spiritual body. This body of flesh and blood is like a seed. And just as seeds planted in the ground disappear as the plant grows, so does this physical body disappear but the resurrected body appears later of a different kind.

This body perishes, says Paul, but the raised body cannot.

This body is ordinary and unimpressive, but the resurrected body is glorious.

This body is weak, but the resurrected body shows the power of God.

This body is physical, but the resurrected body is spiritual.

But again, how do we know that we will be raised from the dead? We know because God has already raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection is how God has proved he will keep his promise to raise everyone the dead at the end of the age. In fact, Paul sees Jesus’ resurrection as the actual inaugural event of the general resurrection.

Now, I must be careful here because the near-universal belief among us Methodists – and American Christians generally – is that when Christians die, their souls are liberated from the physical body and fly immediately to heaven. This is actual doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, with a pit stop in purgatory along the way to work off unremitted sins.

But that is only one understanding. In Jesus’ day most Jews believed that the dead awaited the resurrection in a state of neither heaven nor hell, but basically are just “warehoused” until the general resurrection. And this is the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I think there is good reason from Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels that he affirmed this idea.

Another understanding is found in Lutheran and some other protestant teaching called “soul sleep” that the souls or spirits of the dead await the resurrection of the dead in a sort of spiritual deep coma. It was only after Luther’s movement succeeded that the RCC made its teaching dogma, about 450 years ago.

And another understanding is that the Bible does not teach the idea of life after death in which a disembodied soul floats out of the body into heaven or survives at all. This says that we do not exist as souls contained in bodies, but we exist as bodies of unified flesh and soul. The death of the body is therefore the destruction of the person altogether. Paul explains elsewhere that death is the most powerful enemy of God, so powerful, in fact, that it is the last enemy of God to be destroyed. So, the Bible does not promise us "life after death," it instead promises that we will live again after we die. After all, if we simply go straight to Heaven when we die, what is the point of the resurrection of the dead?

There is a story of a man leaving a bar after having a rousing time there. He decided to take a shortcut home at midnight by walking through a cemetery. He didn’t see an opened grave and plunged into it. The impact stunned him just enough to enable his whiskey-laden mind and body to go straight asleep.

At daylight he awoke, seeing the blue sky above and the walls of earth all around him. With a sudden fright, he leaped to his feet, stuck his head up and saw hundreds of tombstones and graves all about him. “How about that?” he exclaimed. “Here it is Judgment Day and I’m the first one up!”

That’s what Paul means: Jesus was the first one up. That’s why Paul calls Jesus "the first fruits of those who have died." Your resurrection and mine into eternal life have already begun. Jesus has showed the way. As Hebrews 12 puts it, Jesus is the pioneer of our faith.

Jesus’ resurrection, simply as an historical event, would be a mere curiosity unless it signified something greater than one day in the life of some women who went to a graveyard. The power of Jesus’ resurrection is about what it means for us now.

·        It means that the promises of God are true, that what God says and what God delivers are the one and the same.

·        It means that when God says we will be called to account for how we live out lives, we better take that to heart.

·        It means that when Jesus said and the apostles proclaimed that in him is the remission of our sins, then it is so.

·        It means that we can trust someone who died for us and whose promises of a more abundant life now can be realized now.

·        It means we really can live in love with God and one another. We really can live in peace, filled with joy, in habits of kindness and gentleness and self-control.

The resurrection of Jesus proves that destruction of the physical body is no impediment to God’s saving power, and so our own resurrection is a sure promise of God, also. Hence, we can say with certainty, as Paul later wrote, "If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8). 

The only thing of eternal significance

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do

not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.

7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;

10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

 

Ah, love! Moonlit nights and soft violins! Autumn walks in the park with your one and only. The first time he took your hand, or the first time she didn’t pull her hand away. Your first kiss! Love makes poets of lovers. Samuel Rogers wrote an ode to his sweetheart Jacqueline:

“She was good as she was fair, “None – none on earth above her!

“As pure in thought as angels are:

“To know her was to love her.”

Shakespeare observed that lovers can be oblivious to the obvious. In The Merchant of Venice he wrote,

“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

“The pretty follies that themselves commit” (Act ii. Sc. 6.)

The praises of love are found in literature reaching back into far antiquity. Socrates philosophized about it, Virgil wrote about it, Jesus commanded it.

Watching soap operas or listening to pop music reveals that as a culture we are very confused about love. It’s easy to get the idea that modern Americans think that love is sex. We are very careful about to whom we say, “I love you.” Grownups can say it to their children innocently, and to parents, but cousins are probably off limits. Even in a church we make sure that when we tell each other of our love, it won’t be taken the wrong way.

Obviously, Paul isn’t talking about sex or romance in this passage. He’s not talking even about the profound thankfulness parents have when they consider their children, although that is probably pretty close.

We are called to love one another as Christ loved us. The love we are to have for one another and neighbor is a holy love that displays us in the image of God. God’s love for humanity is not based on the fact that we are lovable because, let’s face it, often we aren’t. God’s love springs from the nature of God’s own being; that’s just how God is. As disciples of Christ, we are commanded to love that way. We are to love one another and neighbor as an act of the will, not because the object of love can benefit us in some way.

There was a small boy who asked his mother, “How old is God?” His mother answered, “Well, no one can say, but he must be at least billions and billions of years old.”

“Wow,” the boy replied, “I wonder whether God ever gets tired of being God!” That stumped Mom until she remembered that the Bible says, “God is love.” So she answered, “No, God never gets tired because God is love and love never gets tired.”

Love, wrote Paul, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Let me propose that godly love is the predisposition to desire the best for another, and to act accordingly. Thus, God’s will and God’s love can’t be pulled apart. The love of God for creation is found in God’s creative acts to lure each event toward its best possible outcome. I would say that God cannot will anything apart from his love, nor can he love anything apart from his will.

The supremely best thing for humanity is that we exist for all time in the presence of the one God who brought us into being. It is the best possible outcome for human life and has nothing to do with our own character; it has everything to do with God’s character. If that is God’s will – the Scriptures are explicit that it is – then it must be possible for God to bring it about. (If not, then God is merely a dreamer rather than true deity.) God so loved the world that he gave his only son that we might have eternal life. God’s desire for the best for us and God’s actions to bring it about are indistinguishable. God gave God’s own self to reconcile us with him. God’s love and God’s will are the one and the same.

A teacher examined the school enrollment forms of two brothers one day. The first brother had written his birth date as May 10, 1986. The second brother had written his birth date as May 22, 1986. “That’s impossible!” the teacher declared. “No, it’s not,” said one of the brothers, “because one of us is adopted.” “Which one?” asked the teacher. “We don’t know,” said the other brother. “Mom and Dad have never told us. They said it doesn’t matter.”

That’s how God’s love is. Paul wrote in Romans, “. . . we are God's children [and] heirs of God and co‑heirs with Christ,” (Rom 8:16‑17) and in Ephesians that we are “to be adopted as [God’s] children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his delight and will” (Eph. 1:5). And it just doesn’t get any better than that for you and me!

We are not God and what comes naturally to God doesn’t come so easily for us. We continually ask, “What’s in it for us?” or “Does the other person deserve it?” We are finite and limited while God isn’t. And so we have to realize that the best we can do for another is also going to be finite and limited. We will rarely know what is truly best for another. We will often fail to act on what we do know. Sometimes the simple perversities of the human spirit will overcome even the strongest predisposition to give of ourselves. Even so, the fact that we cannot do everything must never hinder us from doing something. Love in the name of Christ is a verb, not a noun.

One month a woman in my congregation named Maxine had foot surgery and was fairly immobile for some time afterward. I took her communion one first Sunday. Maxine and her husband and I shared the Lord’s table together in her upstairs room. I visited for awhile and it was just a wonderful time. We joked and laughed and talked about the church and what her recovery would be like, and we prayed together before I left.

As I pulled out onto Murfreesboro Road to head for the nursing homes I had a sort of epiphany. It suddenly struck me what keeps me doing this pastor thing. I answered God’s call out of fear – I was afraid to say no to God. I began the ministry from duty – I had made a promise and had to keep it. But soon after I left Maxine that day, I had a revelation that I am staying in this vocation from neither fear nor duty. I suddenly understood what my job description is: It is to fall in love every day with Christ’s friends in Christ’s name. That’s it.

My only real job as pastor is to fall in love with God’s people every day. And that’s why I do what I do – because love never tires and every day someone needs whatever of Christ’s love I can share. Being in love in Christ’s name is the best thing about being his disciple; in fact, I guess it’s the only thing about it that matters.

Years ago, every Thanksgiving my family and I joined my brother, Will, and his wife at my parents’ home for dinner, altogether nine gathered around the table. My older brother and his family live in Delaware, too far to come for such a short time. Will and I had a running joke one of us always told Dad whenever we gathered with him and Mother for such celebrations, whether Thanksgiving or birthdays or something else. Sometime during Thanksgiving dinner either Will or I said to Dad, “Of course, you know that all your children who truly love you came home for Thanksgiving.” And Dad responded, “Oh, sure, I know that.” We all laughed because we know it isn’t true.

But at such times, if you looked closely, you could see fleeting sorrow flicker across Dad’s face, and a wisp of wistfulness in his eyes. For the breath of one sentence, Dad’s heart was in Delaware because while the table was crowded, it was not full. Not everyone was there who belongs there.

That moment lingered with me when I read something author Bob Benson wrote in Come Share the Being. He and his wife had three children, and he told of how they grew up and went away to college and then got married and made their own homes. They were proud of their children, he wrote, but after their youngest son moved away, “our minds were filled with memories from tricycles to commencements [and] deep down inside we just ached with loneliness and pain.

“And I was thinking about God,” Benson wrote. “He sure has plenty of children – plenty of artists, plenty of singers, and carpenters and candlestick makers, and preachers, plenty of everybody . . . except you, and all of them together can never take your place. And there will always be an empty spot in his heart and a vacant chair at his table when you’re not home.

“And if once in awhile it seems he’s crowding you a bit, try to forgive him. It may be one of those nights when he misses you so much, he can hardly stand it.”

At the end, says Revelation, there is a family reunion. All God’s children are there, seated at the banquet table.

“And yet,” writes David Lowes Watson, in this day “our joy remains guarded . . . for the homecoming celebration has not yet begun in earnest. There are still empty places at the table. There are sinners who still need to come to their senses. There are millions of God’s family still without enough to eat. There are countless of God’s little ones who are still being sinned against with all the demonic ingenuity” of the human race. “We must help invite them home. We must help Christ dry their tears and heal their wounds” – everyone. Should there be even one empty place at the table, even one person whom we have neglected to invite to the banquet as our brother or sister in Christ, “then God’s cry of anguish will rend the cosmos, and the heavenly feast will be eaten in terrible, terrible silence.”

I think the love we are called to have is a love that gives Christ away and invites people to God’s table, to prepare the reunion of God’s children, to leave no vacancies at the heavenly banquet.

Do we dare to say to each other, “I love you”?

I love you.

SecDef Hegseth and his pointless name game

NBC affiliate WFMY in Greensboro, N.C., reports:

NORTH CAROLINA, USA — The controversy surrounding the name of North Carolina’s Fort Liberty is back in the spotlight following remarks by the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

In 2022, the U.S. military spent over $2 million to rename Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, distancing itself from Confederate ties as Fort Bragg was originally named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg. However, during his first day on the job Monday, Hegseth referred to the base by its former name.

“Every moment that I’m here, I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, Fort Benning, and Fort Bragg, on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers,” Hegseth told reporters as he entered the Pentagon.

The mention of Fort Benning also stood out, as the Georgia base was renamed Fort Moore in 2023, another step in the Pentagon’s efforts to remove Confederate associations from military assets.

Hegseth’s remarks align with a promise President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail in Fayetteville, North Carolina three months ago. “Should we change the name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg?” Trump asked a crowd of supporters, receiving loud cheers. “So here’s what we do: we get elected, I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”

I am a retired Army artillery officer. I served a tour at Ft Bragg in the latter 1980s. I am very definitely a political conservative, but I cannot agree with reverting the name back to Bragg. Here is why:

Confederate General Braxton Bragg

1. Ft Bragg was founded in Sept. 1918 as an artillery training center. Called Camp Bragg at first (because it was considered a temporary installation), it was named for North Carolina native Gen. Braxton Bragg for his artillery actions during the Mexican-American War in 1847. 

So far, so good. Bragg's record as a mid-grade US Army officer was in fact stellar. But another important reason the camp was named after him was, frankly, to appease Southerners while the US was at war in Europe. In 1918, there was still a large number of Civil War veterans, Union and Confederate, still living, and to their children and grandchildren, that war was not old history, far removed in time or space. So, the camp was named after a CSA general who conveniently was an NC native and Army artillery officer. 

Please note that there are no military installations outside the old CSA that were named after CSA figures. I will also note that Gen. Bragg was a truly dismal battlefield general, which IMO is another reason not to revert to using his name. 

I also think, however, that Fort Liberty is a nitwit name. Find a post-Civil War American military hero or renowned wartime commander and use that. 

2. There are some hard truths about the CSA. I was born and raised in the Deep South. My family's roots in Middle Tenn. go back to just after the Revolutionary War. I have ancestral family members who fought (and some died) for the CSA on both my mom's and dad's side (also for the Union on my dad's). Alexander Stephens, vice president of the CSA, was my wife's great-great grandfather's brother.

I take no back seat to anyone for Southern heritage and upbringing.

Like probably most native Southerners of my generation, I was raised being taught that the real reasons for the Southern states' secession was to preserve states’ rights and that the northern economic lobby was choking the South's economy with high tariffs on Southern goods.

Slavery? Well, it was in the mix somewhere, but slavery was not the real reason for secession. 

It is a lie, pure and simple. 

The states’ rights and tariffs arguments are entirely absent from Southern apologia until after the Civil War. In 1860 and before, no one in the South was using those topics to justify secession. Furthermore, in 1860 federal tariffs on Southern goods were lower than they had been since 1816. 

Why did the Southern states secede? To protect slavery, period.

Read the 11 seceded states' actual acts of secession, beginning with South Carolina's, and you will see that slavery was the sole reason for secession. South Carolina's act makes this very unambiguous: protection of slavery was the only topic presented as driving secession. Same with Mississippi. And the others.

The Confederate States of America was founded to do one thing only: to preserve the power of one class of people to literally own as chattel property another class of people. There is no other reason the CSA existed.

We are long, long past the time where any figure of the CSA should be honored with naming any federal property after him.  

I wrote  at greater length upon the CSA's secession and raison d'etre here: "Confederate monuments: So what? Now What?"

14th Amendment and "birthright citizenship"

I wrote this on another web site in 2010, so the issue of birthright American citizenship has been contentious for a long time. But the main points are still relevant, so here you go:

----------------------------------------

Many pixels are being lit up by some Republicans' commentary that the 14th Amendment to the 
Constitution "is in need of review."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Hill on Monday that Congress “ought to take a look at” changing the 14th Amendment, which gives the children of illegal immigrants a right to U.S. citizenship.

McConnell’s statement signals growing support within the GOP for the controversial idea, which has also recently been touted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

In an interview, McConnell said the 14th Amendment provision should be reconsidered in light of the country’s immigration problem.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Its intention was to ensure that slaves freed by the Civil War could not be denied citizenship. The part of the amendment for that purpose simply states,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This has been interpreted in the almost 150 years since as meaning that anyone born inside the US or its territories is automatically a citizen.

The 14th Amendment's crafter never imagined "anchor babies."

Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency. (Jackpot babies is another term).

The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Thus there were, by definition, no illegal immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in violation of the law was nonexistent. Granting of automatic citizenship to children of illegal alien mothers is a recent and totally inadvertent and unforeseen result of the amendment and the Reconstructionist period in which it was ratified.

For decades after the amendment took effect, American Indians were ruled by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, not to be covered by the 14th Amendment because they were not fully under the jurisdiction of the United States. (The Tribes were then and still are in a treaty relationship with the federal government.) It took a special act of Congress in 1924 to confer citizenship upon American Indians.

In fact, there has never been a federal court that held the 14th Amendment conferred citizenship upon infants born to parents inside the country illegally. It is being done despite that fact.

So at a minimum, Congressional legislation clarifying what birthright citizenship is, within the context of the 14th Amendment, is not only appropriate, it is long overdue. I myself would support a Constitutional amendment to that effect. It would not require repealing or modifying the 14th Amendment. My draft reads:

Amendment 33 - Citizenship by Right of Birth Clarified

1. A person shall be a citizen of the United States by right of birth provided that the person is:

a. born in the United States to parents of whom at least one is, at the time of the birth, both a citizen of the United States and a de jure parent of the newborn, or,

b. born in the United States to parents who, though not citizens of the United States, are legally in the United States at the time of the birth, and who are de jure parents of the newborn, or,

c. born outside the United States to a de jure parent who is citizen of the United States at the time of the birth, provided that the birth occurs outside the United States because of United States diplomatic mission or military orders of a parent, or,

d. born outside the United States to a de jure parent who is citizen of the United States at the time of the birth, provided that the birth and identifying information of the newborn are registered within six months from the date of the birth with a United States diplomatic mission to the jurisdiction wherein the birth occurred.

2. Persons born in the United States and who do not meet a criterion citizenship by right of birth shall not be deprived of due process of law; nor shall any such persons within the jurisdiction of the United States be denied the equal protection of the laws by the United States nor by any State.

3. Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation.

So there you are.

Update: Here are three more links relevant to this topic. First is an article by George Mason law Prof. Ilya Somin, with whom I have corresponded now and then for going on 20 years, though I have never met him in person. I would say he is, overall, a centrist. he says that Trump cannot simply order it. Click here. 

Next is George Washington University law Prof. Jonathan Turley, one of the most respected legal scholars in the country. His article is from 2019, "No, It Is Not Racist To Oppose Birthright Citizenship," in which he points out, 

... that one of the outcomes was the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 to guarantee the rights of citizenship to protect the status of freed American slaves. That much is clear. The problem is that little else is. Since the 14th Amendment was ratified, many leaders have opposed claims of birthright citizenship, including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Moreover, most countries reject such claims of citizenship. One can be entirely on board with the outcome of the Civil War, not be a racist, and still oppose birthright citizenship.

Finally, here is today's BBC's article, "Trump has vowed to end birthright citizenship. Can he do it?" I read the BBC because in covering American topics, I find it often more balanced and non-partisan than US media. Also, though the article does not say this, foreign nationals enjoy no birthright citizenship in the UK.