Facebook Jail for citing the Bible

 I left the following as a comment on a FB friend's post. He is a somewhat progressive Methodist minister whose post was about how the Bible does or does not inform us on our obligations regarding immigrants illegally entering the United States. (That the same obligations would apply regarding those entering legally is not ever brought up, of course.) 

Below was my sole comment, which FB deleted because it "violated" Facebook's nebulous, never-public and ever-changing "community standards," which means it somehow presented a point of view that FB does not want to permit. 

See what you think. This is the verbatim, unedited comment except that I have deleted the name of the FB friend who posted it, nothing else. 

I am not disagreeing with you. But I am going to point out what a quite progressive pastor of my conference said at a ministers' meeting some years ago, I do not recall the context but I do recall her response. It was, "We are all biblical fundamentalists; it just depends on the topic."

There are definitely teachings, requirements, and admonitions in the Tanak about how the people of Israel were to interact with resident aliens. Should we adopt ALL of them as in force for our modern day and time? For example, there are clear, unambiguous mandates that marriages of Jews to foreigners is strictly prohibited. Can we go all fundamentalist with that today?

Then there are modern-day Jewish scholars of biblical Hebrew who say that the term "resident alien" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word "toshav."

And finally, to close this comment, this article: "The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Immigration Debate."

Here is the link to the article about the toshav by Joram Mayshar  of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. 

So what exactly are the "community standards" that this violates? What are the biblical-interpretation credentials of the FB "fact checker" who yanked the comment (or more likely, what algorithm of FB's scanning software got triggered)? 

There is no logic or rationality to how or why of Facebook's cancel culture. 

Military snipe hunts

Originally posted in 2014

Got to admit that in my military career I never personally knew a private who was sent on a military snipe hunt for turn blinker lubricant. Junior enlisted soldiers - and airmen, sailors and Marines - are sent off on such snipe hunts by slightly more senior and experienced troops. Some of the non-existent items they are sent to retrieve are tent locks, range fans to blow the fog off the rifle range, 50 feet of chow line, left-threaded kanootin valves, a can of radio squelch, bayonet extensions and the like. It's a sort of rite-of-passage thing for noobs. So Pvt. Snuffy is told to see the supply clerk for the item. 

The supply sergeant has been around and he immediately understands what's happening, so he says, "I just issued my last propellant regenerator to base piece, try them." So off Snuffy goes to base piece, where he is informed they gave it to the mess section to clean. And the mess section had it just an hour ago, but they sent it to the maintenance section for repair. And around and around and around he goes, never, of course, finding such an item.

Of course, some clever young troops figure out the score pretty quick and realize that they can take a whole day just walking around uselessly while the rest of their section are up to their elbows in grease working on some truck or tracked vehicle. 

A perennial-favorite snipe hunt is to send Snuffy off for a box of grid squares. Now, a grid square is a real thing. Military maps are printed with terrain features overlaid with thin lines forming boxes, representing to scale one kilometer squares. The squares are numbered by their easting and northing, so it makes perfect sense to refer to grid square 1436. Even new privates know this, so when some authority figure - a soldier of a rank or two higher - invents a need for a box of grid squares and sends him off to get it, then he does. But the grid squares are printed on the maps; they are not separate items. So there is no such thing as a "box of grid squares."

Usually. But in the artillery . . .

When I was a second lieutenant in Korea, I was an artillery battery fire direction officer when my battery took duty at fire base Four Papa One at the DMZ. One day Pvt. Snuffy, a mechanic, comes to our bunker and says that the Chief of Smoke (an E7, Sgt. 1st Class, whose duty position was Chief of Firing Battery) had sent him to get a box of grid squares. 

Now an E7 has no business starting this nonsense. These kinds of practical jokes are played by E4's on E2s, not on E2s by E7s. I looked at the buck sergeant who was the fire direction chief, he looked at me, and we both said almost simultaneously, "Wait right here." 

In those days, artillery ballistics computation was not much computerized. We computed firing data manually, using "charts and darts," as we said. We had two large, inclined tables. On one we mounted a large map of the potential targets areas. To keep the map clean we laid over it a sheet of unmarked, transparent plastic that was manufactured gridded in the same scale as the map. We would notate targets and other pertinent data on the plastic overlay and derive terrain information from the map. The other inclined table had no map, just the overlay plastic over white paper. This chart was used only to compute direction data for firing. All the targets were marked on it as well. 

The plastic overlays got scuffed and worn from constantly being written on, erased, and written on again. After about three days they had to be replaced. So we had a bountiful supply of used overlays. We'd keep them for several days then burn them all together. And all the overlays were gridded into squares. 

So my sergeant and I went to the back of the bunker and retrieved a used overlay. Using scissors, we carefully cut out 12-15 of the grid squares from an unused section. We put them in an empty pencil box, marked it "Grid Squares" with a Magic Marker, and gave it to Snuffy without the slightest hint of irony. He thanked me profusely, since he had been sent from the motor pool to the mess hall to the CP section to the base howitzer to the ammo section and finally to us, all with the stern admonition from the Smoke, "Don't come back here without the grid squares." Now, he had them. He was a happy young man. 

I was told by another NCO the next day that Snuffy, innocent as a lamb, went back to Smoke and gave him the box, saying, "Lieutenant Sensing said he can give you all the grid squares you want." And that the look on the Smoke's face when he opened the box to find - sure darn enough, grid squares - was worth taking a burst of six to see.

Groundhog Day, Heaven, and Hell

Yesterday while taking my daily deck break, I paged through what was available on the Fire TV we use out there. I spotted Groundhog Day, a cult classic movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, now acclaimed as one of the best films of the 1990s. The movie was about one-fourth done and even though I have it in my collection and have watched it a fair number of times, I clicked it on. 

And it struck me powerfully that this movie is about its lead character, Bill M. as TV weatherman Phil Connors, living in Hell every day and not even knowing it - until he does. 

He and his producer, Rita (Andi McDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) are sent to Punxsutawney, Penn., on Feb. 2 to cover the annual appearance of the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, and its prediction of six more weeks, or not, of winter. Phil Connors (not coincidentally having the same name as the groundhog) considers the assignment beneath him. He is a jerk from beginning to end and deliberately delivers a sarcastic report of "six more weeks of winter." 

Leaving town, they are unexpectedly forced to return to Punxsutawney because of a snowstorm. But the next day he awakens to his radio alarm clock playing exactly the same song, "I Got You Babe," with exactly the same dialog by the announcer duo as the day before. When he hears them say it is Groundhog Day, he looks out the window to see there is no snow on the ground. 

Henceforth, Phil awakens every morning to discover it is Feb.2, Groundhog Day once again, the very same day it was when he woke up the last morning, and the same Feb.2 it will be the next time. Apparently forever. 

For the first several of relived days, Phil decides to hit on women, steal from an armored car to buy a Mercedes, and generally sate his fleshly desires. He even hits on his producer, Rita. But she tells him he is a jerk and rebuffs him. 

This where is struck me that Phil is in Hell. An apparent eternity of repeated Feb.2s, all identical, stretch before him. Nothing he does changes that. He comes to realize he can do anything he wants and no matter how criminal or virtuous he is, the alarm will awaken him again to yet another same old Feb. 2. 

Driven finally to despair, Phil commits suicide - day after day after day, only to wake up afterward on Feb. 2 all over again. He is living in damnation: sure, certain, and unending. 

Or, as Lewis pointed out as well, "Hell is getting your own way - forever." 

Finally, with no purpose in living one day repeated eternally, but knowing he will, Phil begins to do good things for other people. And, knowing that Rita never knows what a jerk Phil was to her on the previous repeated Feb. 2, he sets about trying to seduce her by appearing genuinely caring and compassionate. 

In that he almost succeeds. He does convince her to come to bed, though both are lying on it still fully clothed, and he tells her to go to sleep, promising, "I won't touch you - much." She does sleep, but when the radio alarm blares at 6 a.m. the next morning, Rita is not there. It is Feb. 2 once again.

Finally, Phil devotes his repeated days to living for others and not for himself. He becomes a beloved figure of the town - at least on that endlessly-repeated day. Moreover, he intentionally sets about becoming literally a different man so that Rita might come to love him as much as he has come to love her. 

But how many years of repeated Feb. 2s does it take for him to do that? According to National Post, 

The screenwriter’s initial plan was to have Connors trapped in the time loop for several millennia. The original script contains a final confession by Connors to his love interest Rita that “I’ve been waiting for you every day for ten thousand years.”

However, director Harold Ramis years later told The New York Times that Phil spent 33 or 34 years of repeated days, and people who worry about such things have generally accepted that. 

Finally he succeeds in romancing Rita. She finally does love him and willingly returns with him to his hotel room. She had been there before, several thousand days ago in Phil's reference, when Phil's manner became so revolting she had slapped him hard and walked right out. But on this trip, Phil makes no advances at all.  He yields control of his love to the one whom he loves. 

She goes to bed with him, but importantly, they are both fully clothed just as they had been decades before. This time, though, Phil has not merely suppressed his fleshly desires. He has discarded them as he became filled with other-centered love. And so the night passes.

As usual, Phil is awakened by the  radio alarm clock blaring the same tune it has blared for 34 years worth of Feb. 2s. But the announcers' dialog afterward is different. Phil opens his eyes and suddenly realizes the radio is not playing the same old thing. And then he sees Rita still lying next to him. 

Phil has escaped Hell and entered Heaven. If, as Lewis said, the gates of Hell are locked only on the inside, Phil discovered that the key to the gates are his heart, mind, body and spirit, and how they all are embodied in love. 

Can we really believe in Hell? 

One thing to realize is that Hell is not a future abode of the damned. Human beings are born damned to begin with. Jesus himself said so in John 3, beginning with verse 16, which we usually recite by itself, thus omitting the basic rhetorical point. Here is the whole quote (italics added):

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

If Groundhog Day can be seen as a metaphor for Hell and Heaven, neither of them is an afterlife. Phil's damnation is not that he dies and goes to Hell. He is in Hell on earth, in this life. His Hell is that even when he dies he is resuscitated to live that same day all over again. Phil's Hell is in this life, but so is the Heaven to which being filled with a pure love of others and of Rita brings him. 

The producers, writers, and director of Groundhog Day did not set out to make a Christian analog. In fact, IIRC, director Ramis professed and practiced Buddhism and saw the cycles of repeated days as an analog to reincarnation. One can also see Hindu overtones in such reincarnation - it is Phil's karma for being such a jerk, for which it takes countless repetitions for whim to work his way to Nirvana. For sure, there is no external Savior in the movie as there is in Christianity. Phil does, finally, save himself, which we Christians have always held is literally impossible. 

Yet to say there is no precise correspondence between the movie and Christian faith is not to say there is none at all. Most cogently, Phil's damnation does not begin later, it is already in place when the movie begins. 

Hence, Pope John Paul II stood on solid Scriptural ground when he wrote that hell “is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life. The very dimension of unhappiness which this obscure condition brings can in a certain way be sensed in the light of some of the terrible experiences we have suffered which, as is commonly said, make life ‘hell.’” Hell “is the ultimate consequence of sin itself, which turns against the person who committed it. It is the state of those who definitively reject” God’s mercy.

The Kingdom of Heaven is among us now

If Hell is a real thing in this world - not a place but a state of being - then is Heaven also? Jesus thought so: 

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” Luke 17.20-21

The Greek of the final sentence may also be translated as "... the kingdom of God is within you," which I think is the better phrasing.

But what is the kingdom of God? What is it that is among or within us? Nothing more (but certainly nothing less) than what transformed Phil Collins from living hellishly to heavenly. And what was that?

Once, Jesus was talking with some Pharisees, "...  and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him." 

36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Quite simply, the difference between living in Hell and living in Heaven is love. When Groundhog Day opens, Phil is clearly an unlovely man. And he stays that way for countless years of repeated days. Every day an impoverished, homeless man asks him for help, and every day Phil scorns and rejects him. He is a jerk to Rita and to cameraman Larry. He mocks the townspeople and ridicules their way of living. 

Yet viewers can discern his scorn and hatred is really self directed. He does not love others because he does not even like himself. As for Rita, the future altar of his servanthood love, he tries for many years to seduce her in bed for his own pleasure. Only when he discerns that there is literally nothing but eternal misery in hating  and using others does he start to crawl, slowly and uncertainly, out of Hell toward Kingdom living. 

He has learned the hard way that to discover who he is, he must deny himself. He has to face the abyss looming before the Self, or, as David Hart put it, 

And so, at the end of modernity, each of us who is true to the times stands facing not God, or the gods, or the Good beyond beings, but an abyss, over which presides the empty, inviolable authority of the individual will, whose impulses and decisions are their own moral index.

Yet to believe in nothing greater than oneself is destructive of mind and spirit and ultimately of body and soul. That is why first the Jews and later Christians emphasized self denial. For denying the Self is to renew Identity, to discover who one actually is.

Not that this is easy, though, nor perfectly achieved even by the most devoted. As Herman Melville's fictional Preacher Mapple put it in Moby Dick,

Then over time and not without difficulty, we may arrive at the fullness of love, when the Self is dethroned and we then come to know and live what we have come to be - someone whose heart is daily renewed in love because in the love of God, we fall into love every day with those whom God loves.  

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

 

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. 1 John 4.15-21

Love is the key to the gate out of Hell. It is locked only on our side. 

Where is the cross in violence?

As the dust settled twenty years ago and rescuers began clearing the wreckage in New York, they came upon a startling scene. Amid the ruins, rescuers came upon a perfectly formed Roman cross, made of the iron of I-beams of World Trade Center building six when it collapsed. 

Word quickly spread. Within a day, work teams entering the wreckage started going to the cross first, praying before it or leaving notes on it. 

On October 3 it was moved to a pedestal on the WTC plaza on Church Street.  In October 2006 the cross was moved the St. Peter's church, which faces WTC plaza, bearing a plaque which read, "The Cross at Ground Zero ‑ Found September 13, 2001; Blessed October 4, 2001; Temporarily Relocated October 15, 2006. Will return to WTC Museum, a sign of comfort for all."

On July 23, 2011, the cross was blessed by Rev. Brian Jordan during a short ceremony and then was taken by a flatbed truck back to the scene of the attacks, where it was emplaced in the National September 11th Memorial and Museum.  

Twenty years - and it is still not over

I made this YouTube video for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But it is not tied to 2011.

Two must reads

 

Click here.

“There has never been any unitary organisation of Western culture apart from that of the Christian Church,” explained the medieval historian Christopher Dawson in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, written shortly after World War Two. “Behind the ever-changing pattern of Western culture there was a living faith which gave Europe a certain sense of spiritual community, in spite of all the conflicts and divisions and social schisms that marked its history.”

The West, in short, was Christendom. But Christendom died. If you live in the West now, you are living among its ruins. Many of them are still beautiful — intact cathedrals, Bach concertos — but they are ruins nonetheless. And when an old culture built around a sacred order dies, there will be lasting upheaval at every level of society, from the level of politics to the level of the soul. The shape of everything — family, work, moral attitudes, the very existence of morals at all, notions of good and evil, sexual mores, perspectives on everything from money to rest to work to nature to the body to kin to duty — all of it will be up for grabs. Welcome to 2021.

 

Click here.

Nothing but a new Great Awakening can save America. Sadly, we have had an awakening of sorts, but in the form of an immanentized apocalypse—climate change—and the substitution of Woke cultishness for the old awareness of sin and redemption. Mr. Johnston has done a great service with his comprehensive survey of our follies and their consequences. His indictment of America’s national decline and its causes in economics, culture, and politics is incisive and convincing, and his overreach in history and philosophy is a minor distraction in the construction of his case. His belief that America has the wherewithal to restore itself shines through, especially in his concluding chapters. During the 1930s we sank into Depression and isolationism, but emerged as the most powerful nation on earth and the leader of the Free World in the 1940s. We languished in what Jimmy Carter called a national malaise during the 1970s but came roaring back with the Reagan Revolution. We have yet to see which spirit will move us.

Litany of remembrance for Sunday, September 12

Remembrance for the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001

Leader: Gracious God, in humility we ask your blessings as we remember a day of great violence twenty years ago.

People: You are the everlasting God, whose love extends to all generations. Blessed be the name of the Lord!

We remember with sadness the thousands who died on September 11, 2001, men and women of wealth, blue-collar workers, military members, government employees, airline passengers and crew - all the people who perished in flames and pain.

We are thankful for the bravery of police officers, firefighters and others who selflessly went into danger to rescue the stricken, and lost their lives or suffered injury in their service.

Continue, O Lord, to give comfort to the families of those who died, grace to those who still struggle with anguished memories or the effects of injuries.

May your Spirit rest upon each one who endured that day, and let the assurance of your presence be strong with them always.

We pray for the people of our land and lands far away, who have suffered or died in the wars of the last twenty years.

We pray for our military and their families, who have lost their lives, endured separation and hardship and for many of whom the war will never truly end.

We pray for our enemies as you commanded us to do. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ fall upon everyone who wishes us harm. May we never take your favor for granted, but strive always to abide humbly in your service.

Help us Lord, to love our enemies and do good to them.

Guide us, O Holy One, to be a nation of holy people. We confess we are not at peace among ourselves or with many peoples across the globe. Lead us of your Churches to move on to Christian perfection in this life. 

We renew our commitment to live as faithful disciples of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, and we renew our obligation to you to lead others to do so also. 

We repent of our sins and pledge to devote ourselves to your Kingdom above all. 

Let there be peace on the earth, O Lord, and let it begin within us and by us starting this day.

Hear us now as we pray together the prayer that our Savior taught us:

Our Father, who are in heaven ... .

Karl Marx on the fundamental error of the $15 minimum wage

Consider:

What Ms. Cash is saying is that she thinks that the amount of work she does must determine the wage she is paid. But not even Karl Marx thought that! In Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production, Marx gave this explanation:

Karl Marx

Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. ... 

... The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. 

[Following is the key point:] 

The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

What Marx was saying is that as efficiencies of production increase per unit of time, the value of the labor of the "old" production correspondingly decreases. When powered looms in England doubled the rate of production, the labor value of the prior manual production decreased by half.  

What Ms. Cash and her allies need to understand is what needs to be be said over and over: the actual, real-world minimum wage is $0.00. 

When she gets a raise to $15 per hour she will not increase her production of product. When McDonalds figures out that her work can be automated - as has already happened with electronic ordering kiosks replacing human order takers - the wage value of her work will go down, not up. And she should not be surprised when her wage then drops to zero because her old job is being done by a smart machine for an amortized "wage" of less than $15 per hour.