Five Confounding Facts About Jesus' Resurrection

What would the church be like today if Jesus had died an old man in bed?

A.   It would look almost the same as it does now. Sunday schools, worship, hymns and ministries would be much the same. 

B.   We’d all be Unitarians. Except that even Unitarians discuss Jesus's resurrection stories. If Jesus died in bed, those stories wouldn’t have been told. So perhaps we’d be Unitarians-Lite. 

C.   What church? We’d all be either pagans, Jews or Muslims.

This was actually a discussion topic in a theology class when I was at Vanderbilt. My answer was C: “What church? Without the shock and discontinuity of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection there would be no church at all.”

This frankly did not much impress the TA leading the session, who scoffed at the whole idea of Jesus’s bodily resurrection and who thought that Jesus’s teachings were an excellent vehicle to promote  Marxism – she said this  – and so my insistence on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus garnered me only a B in the class. It was the proudest B I ever got (except seventh-grade algebra).

But I still insist that without Jesus’s resurrection, “we got nuthin.” That Jesus’s teachings are excellent hardly need be said, but they are all found in the Jewish Scriptures. If you built a religion only on Jesus’s teachings you would wind up with a variant of orthodox Judaism, differing only in perhaps having comparatively lax dietary laws and lacking the ideological rigidity of Jesus’s day, a rigidity that is not much found among Orthodox Jews of today, by the way.

Some Orthodox Jews I have spoken with admire Jesus’s teachings and interpretation of the Torah. Jesus broke no new ground there. Jesus simply expressed God’s previously-revealed truths in a compelling manner. So a religious movement based just on Jesus’s ethical and moral teachings would be definitively Jewish, not very different from the Judaism of his time, and certainly nothing to motivate twelve men to give their lives evangelizing the whole world in Jesus’s name. I mean, why bother?
But the TA’s discussion highlights one of the most confounding historical facts about Jesus and the resurrection story: The Church came into being suddenly and with an enormous fervor that finally brokered regime change of the Roman empire itself. 
If Christianity started as nothing but a minority Jewish movement centered on an executed and still-dead messianic leader, why did it succeed when all the other messianic movements of the day failed? No one has ever explained that.

There are at least five historical facts that must be accounted for either to affirm the resurrection or to deny it. These facts are not dependent upon the Scriptures being inspired by the Holy Spirit. These are objective facts that can be independently verified by anyone taking the time to do so.

The first fact I just talked about. It is the sudden and immediate founding of the Church following the death of the man called Jesus of Nazareth. We don’t even have to bring up the Day of Pentecost. That the church began with the power and beliefs that it did has never been explained on any basis that leaves Jesus, like John Brown, “a molderin’ in his grave,” especially since absent Jesus's resurrection, there is nothing left but ordinary Judaism. 

What must be explained is not why the first Christ-followers were Jews (who else would they be?), but why they were Jews who insisted their Messiah had been executed and then raised by God from the dead. 

The reason this is critical is because the long existing Jewish concept of the Messiah had never included his execution and resurrection. The Messiah was conceived of as a political figure and deliverer from foreign occupation and domination, first by the Greeks from about 250 BC and then by the Romans, after which the Messiah would re-establish the throne and lineage of King David.

That many people hoped Jesus would be this kind of Messiah is seen in his joyous greeting as he entered Jerusalem on the day Christians call Palm Sunday. They lay their cloaks on the road in front of him, a sign of highest respect and honor. They waved palm branches, a symbol of Judean nationalism, as Jesus entered the city riding in on a colt (Matthew says a young donkey). This was seen as fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, which said, 

"Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

As a member of the line of King David, Jesus had a rightful claim to the throne of Judea. The throne was occupied by Herod Antipas, a Roman vassal who was not even really Jewish. The people despised Herod almost as much as Pilate. They wanted to be free of him as well as of the Romans.
The Jews wanted a Jewish King with a legitimate claim to the throne who would rule justly. They thought that Jesus was their man. His works of mercy and compassion were well known, as was the amazing power with which Jesus did them. Luke says that "the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen."

Nor was Jesus's potential Messiah-ship missed by the Jewish high council, the Temple/Priestly Sanhedrin, headed by the High Priest, Caiaphas. John 11-12 record that he certainly saw Jesus as a potential leader of insurrection against Rome, which caused him great concern that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, would lay waste to Judea when Jesus made his move. This was not at all an unjustified fear, except that Jesus never intended to lead such a revolt. 

All of this is to emphasize that when Jesus was executed, his appeal to the people would have died along with his body. There had been other would-be Messiahs before who fared as badly at it as Jesus did and whose followers promptly and permanently dissipated, fearing for their own lives - and Jesus never tried to be such a Messiah in the first place. (Now we see that when Jesus's disciples fled and hid when Jesus was arrested, they were just playing to type, for they knew that Jesus was a goner for sure and they would be next if they didn't get out of Dodge.) 

In fact, the Gospels record that by the day of Jesus's execution, public sentiment was swinging heavily against him. Even if the priests did hand pick a crowd to yell to Pilate to crucify Jesus, they had no difficulty finding people willing to do it. 

So why would the Jesus movement not merely survive his death but actually accelerate afterward? Jesus was an abject failure in every aspect of Messiah-ship as conventionally conceived. And yet, almost instantly after his death, not only were more and more people, quickly numbering thousands in fact, counting themselves as Christ followers, they also completely re-wrote what "Messiah" meant at all. 

Donald Juel discusses the challenge of a crucified Messiah:

The idea of a crucified Messiah is not only unprecedented within Jewish tradition; it is so contrary to the whole nation of a deliverer from the line of David, so out of harmony with the constellation of biblical texts we can identify from various Jewish sources that catalyzed around the royal figure later known as the “the Christ” that terms like “scandal” and “foolishness” are the only appropriate responses. Irony is the only means of telling such a story, because it is so counterintuitive. 

Even Paul commented about the challenge of proclaiming an executed Messiah to other Jews: 

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor.1:21‑22). 

Non-Christian historian Bart Ehrman wrote, 

Christians who wanted to proclaim Jesus as messiah would not have invented the notion that he was crucified because his crucifixion created such a scandal. Indeed, the apostle Paul calls it the chief “stumbling block” for Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Where did the tradition come from? It must have actually happened.

There is no historically-grounded explanation for this sudden and enormous change that leaves Jesus dead after Good Friday. The only explanation that has evidence behind it is that Jesus was crucified, died and was raised from death, was then seen risen by numerous people who had known him in life, and these facts impelled a wrenching re-evaluation of what being Jewish actually meant at all.

There are at least four other historical facts that either to affirm or reject Jesus's resurrection must account for. The question is not whether these historical facts are actually facts. The question is what explanation actually explains, actually accounts for all of them?

Two– Jesus’s tomb was discovered empty on the Sunday after he died on the cross.

Three – The first person to claim that Jesus rose from the dead was a woman.

Four – Many other people also said they saw Jesus risen from the dead, especially Paul and James the brother of Jesus, called James the Just.

Five – The apostles who proclaimed Jesus’s resurrection were killed for doing so, except John, who died in exile. None recanted even when it would have saved their lives.

Note that none of these facts rely on supernatural authority. They are historical facts documented as well or better than accounts of other ancient figures or events. Let’s take a closer at each.

Fact Two: Jesus's tomb was found to be empty on the Sunday after his crucifixion.

All accounts of the day include this fact. Since multiple attestation is a bedrock principle of historical inquiry, historians, and not only Christian ones, consider this fact to be solidly established.

This fact was so confounding to the apostles’ opponents that the Gospels record that within days or sooner of the first Easter, those opponents admitted they could not explain the empty tomb nor could they produce Jesus's body themselves, so they spread the story that the disciples stole the body. Yet there is not a scintilla of evidence that the disciples did so.

But let us stipulate for argument’s sake that somehow three or four disciples managed to sneak undetected past an armed guard of soldiers at the tomb, roll away a one-ton stone without making noise, enter the tomb without being noticed, and trundle away Jesus’s corpse without being seen, leaving the stone rolled away without the soldiers subsequently noticing. (Sure, let’s say that is exactly what happened.)

That leaves us with the inexplicable fact that the disciples did exactly nothing afterward. They did not start telling people that the tomb was empty and they had seen Jesus alive again. The disciples did not originate the Easter story at all. Instead, we butt against historical fact number three:

Fact three: The original testimony of Jesus's resurrection was given by a woman, Mary Magdalene.

When Mary discovered the tomb was open and empty, she thought someone had taken the body, not that Jesus was risen. So she asked a man she assumed to be a groundskeeper where Jesus’ body was. The man identified himself as Jesus. If Jesus was still dead, why did this man say he was Jesus? There is absolutely no reason for it. If Jesus was still dead, then this conversation is almost as vexing to explain as the resurrection itself. And if the disciples had stolen the body as they were accused of doing, when Mary told them, “I have seen the Lord,” would not they have simply replied, “Um, no, we have Jesus in the back room here”?

Instead, at least two of the disciples rushed to the tomb to confirm her claim. Soon, all the disciples told the world that the empty tomb and Jesus's resurrection were first discovered and proclaimed by women. However, women were universally considered by both first-century Jews and Romans alike to be unreliable witnesses of anything, resurrection or not. Dr. William Lane Craig explained it this way:

When you understand the role of women in first-century Jewish society, what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place. Women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first-century Palestine. There are old rabbinical sayings that said, 'Let the words of Law be burned rather than delivered to women' and 'blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.' Women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of Law. In light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women... Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb - Peter or John, for example. The fact that women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly explained by the reality that - like it or not - they were the discoverers of the empty tomb! This shows that the Gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing. This bespeaks the historicity of this tradition rather than its legendary status.

If you were going to make up a story in the first century to change the world, you would not say that the original announcers of your claim were women.

Fact four – Many other people also said they saw Jesus risen from the dead. 

These accounts are dated to very soon after Jesus’s death. In First Corinthians, Paul wrote that he was taught about Jesus's resurrection from others (1 Corinthians 15:1-8), acknowledged today to be Peter and James. Paul says specifically in 1 Cor. 15.11 that all the apostles agreed that Jesus appeared to them after his death. Jesus’s own brother, James, never followed Christ until after Jesus’s death and then James became the first bishop of the Jerusalem church.

Because Paul first persecuted Christians, he knew they were proclaiming Jesus as risen long before he converted. We don’t know how long except that it was long enough for Paul to have developed a fearsome reputation among Christians; Acts 9 says he “breathed murderous threats” against them. Historians agree that after Paul’s conversion, Peter and James tutored Paul about Jesus and his resurrection only about five years after the crucifixion. But since they taught Paul, their knowledge must be much earlier. One of today’s most highly-regarded historians of the era is non-Christian Professor Bart Ehrman, who dates such Christian teachings to practically the same date as the date of Jesus’s death. Skeptics have never explained these facts in a way that leaves Jesus dead.

Fact five – The apostles who proclaimed Jesus’s resurrection were all killed for doing so, except John, who died in exile. None recanted even when it would have saved their lives. We know recantation would have saved them because Roman officials’ letters of the day say so.

Several of the accounts of the deaths of the apostles date to several decades after they would have died of old age anyway, so historians today do not give equal weight to all the accounts of their martyrdom. But the martyrdom of these apostles is historically sound:

James was the first apostle to be killed. He was slain by Herod Agrippa in either 44 or 45.

Peter was sentenced to crucifixion. He told the Romans he was unworthy of dying the same death as the Lord, so he was crucified upside down in Rome in 64.

Paul was beheaded by order of Nero outside Rome in 67.

Here are the apostles whose martyrdoms are not quite as well attested but still reliably so: Andrew and Thomas, both executed in 70; Matthew, beheaded in the 60s; James the Lesser, cast down from the Temple’s heights in 63; Simon the Zealot, crucified in 74.

Now we know that people will die for all kinds of crazy reasons, but consider that these apostles did not die for something they had been indoctrinated in since infancy, as, say, Japanese kamikaze pilots were. Another important distinction is that the apostles devoted their life work to Christ but did not give up their lives for Christ: their lives were taken from them by force. The apostles suffered death rather than recant their testimony of what they had seen with their own eyes.

Furthermore, what was their payoff? They didn’t personally profit in any way from their preaching. Indeed, their lives were made very difficult by it. The apostles were already faithful Jews. If Jesus was not actually raised, saying that he was raised would have added nothing to their faith and would have benefited them in no way in this life or the next. So what’s the point? Have fun explaining that in a way that leaves Jesus's body lying in the tomb. Jesus dead and still buried would have been entirely useless to the apostles to found any kind of religious movement.

What compelled the apostles to evangelize the ancient world was one thing and one thing only: Jesus Christ “was crucified, dead, and buried; The third day he rose from the dead.” None of the apostles ever stopped being Jewish but they came to understand that the fullness of God and God’s salvation-righteousness was revealed in the person, work, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I have also written as fairly as I am able about the skeptics’ explanations. They fall into four main categories:

• The main players on Good Friday and Easter botched the job.
• Science proves Jesus’s resurrection is impossible.
• The accounts of Jesus’s resurrection are mythical of a kind common in the ancient world.
• The apostles were either deluded or they mounted a deliberate conspiracy of falsehoods.

Update: An excellent discussion of the criteria used by historians to assess reliability: "Surprising Scholarly Agreement on Facts That Support Jesus’ Resurrection"

Social justice and churches

WHY SOCIAL JUSTICE IS KILLING SYNAGOGUES AND CHURCHES
Data suggests that the more a religious movement is concerned with progressive causes, the more likely it is to rapidly lose members

The mainstream Protestant churches are not exactly filling the sanctuaries either. Some, like the internally conflicted Methodists have seen their number of North American congregants drop from 15 million in 1970 to barely half that today. Since 2007 alone, America’s mainstream churches have lost 5 million members, and even the once vibrant evangelical movement is losing adherents outside of the developing world. Ever more churches, particularly in urban areas, are being abandoned, turned into bars, restaurants, and luxury condos. And nothing augurs worse for the future than the fact that American millennials are leaving religious institutions at a rate four times that of their counterparts three decades ago; almost 40 percent of people 18 to 29 are not unaffiliated.

Read the whole thing.

After General Conference

Post Conference – One More Year

One day Jesus was speaking to a large crowd. He told told a parable or two of the coming of God’s judgment, then warned the crowd to understand the signs of the times and to be faithful. Luke 13 opens this way.

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

These five verses tell of Pilate sending his soldier to kill some Galileans making sacrifices. Rather than ask the circumstances, which is what you and I would probably do, Jesus challenges his listeners to rethink their own assumptions. By the way, he adds, don’t forget the eighteen people who were just standing around, minding their own business when a tower collapsed on them. Were they guiltier of sin than the other people of Jerusalem? No! Jesus is warning those who think themselves righteous: unless you repent you will nonetheless perish.

Then Jesus told a parable:

A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil? "Sir," the man replied, "leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down."

There are three characters in the parable: the man who owned the vineyard, the gardener, and the fig tree. Of course, the fig tree is a character because this is not a story about trees. It’s a story about you and me and the world we live in. It’s a story about condemnation and grace, of dismissal and reconsideration. It’s a story about repentance, mercy and judgment.

There is a man who owns a vineyard and in the vineyard, he had a fig tree. For three years the owner looked for fruit to be produced by the tree but there was none. So, the owner tells his gardener, "Cut it down!"

The gardener begs the owner to let it stand. Give it one more year, the gardener pleads. He promises to turn the soil around the tree and take special care of it. Then if it doesn’t bear fruit, he says, you can cut it down.

And that’s the end of the parable. Did the owner agree or did he insist on immediate destruction? And if he agreed to the gardener’s plea, what happened after a year? Was there fruit or not? And if not, what then? More importantly, what happened during the year? Did the gardener keep his promise of care or did he just let the tree succeed or fail on its own?

Jesus doesn’t say. These are blanks he left us to fill in.

Some of you know that before General Conference began, I said that it was really just a warm-up for the regular General Conference in May of next year. 

What happened this week was not a good outcome. 

If the One Church Plan had passed, that would not have been a good outcome. 

If no plan had passed and the status quo had been maintained, that would not have been a good outcome. 

This General Conference could have been scripted by a Greek tragedian. It was a three-act play with no possible happy ending. To anyone who rejoices in the outcome, heed Jesus’ word: "unless you repent, you too will perish." And to anyone who despairs or is angered at the outcome: "unless you repent, you too will perish."

What this conference shows me more than anything was that we, as a denomination, must repent. We are more like Washington than New Jerusalem, God forbid! But we have a year, do we not, until May of 2020? Even one more year is God’s gift. While we are living, God is working with us and for us, trying to get us the bear fruit for the strengthening of his kingdom. One more year to get right with God. 

But we do not have forever to decide about forever. The ax can still fall. So, there is a particular urgency to start producing fruit pretty quick. A "lesson of the fig tree is a challenge to live each day as a gift from God. Live each day in such a way that you will have no fear of giving an account for how you have used God’s gift" (NIB).

It’s also an instruction for us to examine the way we treat one another. The parable invokes each of us to ask whether we are more eager to cut than to cultivate. It was easy to watch or listen to the Conference over the internet and announce how the delegates, the bishops, or the presiding elders were all screwing it up, and how this delegate or that one was either bigoted or godless. Then I remembered the words of Saint Augustine:

We are hopeless creatures, and the less we concentrate on our own sins, the more interested we become in the sins of others. We seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse ourselves, we are ready to accuse others.

There will be no better Methodism until there are better Methodists. One more year of care and cultivation is before us. God is merciful. Are we? If the gardener represents that God is slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, how well are we doing in that department? The sad fact is we are more likely to swing the ax than cultivate one another to be fruitful.

Why is that? It’s not the example Christ gives us. Here’s a tree that isn’t producing fruit. What is the solution? Cut it down? Not at all! The solution is so unexpected – so foolish, really – that it could not occur to anyone but God. The answer is to give it more water, more nutrition, more nurturing and more care. In the coming year, this tree can bear fruit. It is the year of the Lord’s favor.

Paul wrote, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Cor 9:8). That is a gardening God. Where there is barrenness of spirit or service, barrenness of love or discipleship, there you will find God, humbly kneeling, turning the soil of our lives and cultivating with care. What else can God do with us? It’s in his interest for us to bear fruit, too.

But we cannot be passive. We have to respond to being cultivated by the Holy Spirit and by the godly people of our church. We have to accept cultivation, to listen, to learn, to serve, to pray, to repent of barrenness, and then bear righteous fruits of faith and godly works. God, like a gardener, patiently works the soil of our lives. Bad things happen and we are sinners anyway, but God’s grace abounds all the more.

One more year. What is the fruit you will produce, or I? Will we cultivate godliness and fruitfulness in one another or just swing the ax? That part of the story we will write ourselves.

"What's Jesus Got To Do With It?"

Nashville Public Radio interviews Vanderbilt Divinity School New Testament Prof. Amy-Jill Levine, who was my main NT professor there during my M.Div. studies. Web page here.

The imminent Methodist issue

How ISIS drove Muslims to Christian Faith

NBC News: Life under ISIS led these Muslims to Christianity "If heaven is made for ISIS and their belief," said one convert, "I would choose hell for myself instead of being again with them in the same place, even if it’s paradise."

While residents are still dealing with the emotional scars left by the brutality of ISIS, Omar says many people in Kobani have been open-minded about Christianity.

Omar reads the Bible at the Church of the Brethren in Kobani, Syria.  NBC News

“Most of the brothers here converted or come to church as a result of what ISIS did to them and to their families,” he added. “No one is forced to convert. Our weapon is the prayer, the spreading of spirit of love, brotherhood and tolerance.”

Over the edge of evil

Serving Democrat politicians want laws to allow the deliberate, pre-meditated killing of infants outside the womb. How else to explain the words of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who openly ...

endorsed infanticide and tried to make it sound as harmless as he could. When asked by a radio host if he supported Virginia legislator Kathy Tran’s proposed law to permit abortion while a woman was in labor, Northam replied:

This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother. (italics added)

Here is the video:


Please note that Northam thinks this is perfectly okay because, after all, "The infant would be kept comfortable" right up until it is destroyed. Maybe the SS should have taken that tack at Auschwitz because, "We will be nice to you right up until we brutally kill you" can't possibly be wrong.

The Federalist points out that the bill being discussed here was presented by Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran, who said this during a subcommittee hearing:

“How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?” [subcommittee chairman Todd] Gilbert asked.

“Through the third trimester,” responded Tran. “The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.”

“Where it’s obvious that a woman is about to give birth, that she has physical signs that she is about to give birth, would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?” Gilbert asked.

“She’s dilating,” he continued, using the term for a woman’s cervix naturally opening to allow a baby to exit his mother during birth. “I’m asking if your bill allows that.”

“My bill would allow that, yes,” she said.

Which is to say, Tran wants the law to allow the mother to tell the doctor to kill the being-born or newborn (Northam: "the infant would be delivered") infant. While Northam said that more than one physician needs to be consulted, Tran insisted that only one be permitted for the go-ahead.

I do not know words nearly harsh enough to condemn the overt, public murderousness of today's progressivism. And on the same day that Gov. Northam, considered a rising star in the Democrat party, said that just-born babies should be killed on the mother's whim, the extraordinary hypocrisy of his party was on full display by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D.-Ohio, who said, talking about President Trump,

"Real populists don’t engage in hate speech and don’t rip babies from families at the border."

But the law already allows babies to be literally ripped - as in ripped apart - inside the womb and now Democrats want to allow living, delivered infants to be ripped from life itself.

I used to listen attentively to by left-of-center friends and ministerial colleagues on the matter of public policy, even though I hardly ever found that I could agree with their positions. But I did try to understand their point of view and how they justified it, whether on secular or biblical bases.

That door is now slammed shut. After Tran/Northam/Brown, There is no "understanding" possible that stays on this side of insanity. From now on, I absolutely refuse to tolerate any lecturing by a "progressive" on the subject of morality on any issue, and this is now my number one reason why.

That abortion, inc., in America today is openly racist does not matter to its advocates, whose most vocal and public members are white women. Why do I say that? because according to the Guttmacher Institute (2014 data), of women who had an abortion,

Thirty-nine percent were white, 28% were black, 25% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3% were of some other race or ethnicity. ...

... three-fourths of abortion patients were low income—49% living at less than the federal poverty level, and 26% living at 100–199% of the poverty level.

Which means that minority infants were killed in the womb far out of proportion to the share of those demographics in the general population. Same with income levels - the "low income" demographic described as obtaining three-fourths of abortions are minorities to a very high degree.

In New York City, for example, more black babies are killed in the womb than are born alive, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Office of Vital Statistics.

But progressives won't talk about that because shut up.

Doctor Anthony Levantino performed 1,400 abortions until he abandoned that practice. Here is part of his testimony to Congress on how second-trimester abortions are done. For third-trimester abortions, the baby is chemically killed in the womb and two or three days later the mother's body ejects the dead infant through the birth canal, usually with inducing drugs' assistance.

When someone demands that a woman must have "the right to choose," remember that this is what that choice means:


As Lincoln said about slavery, "If this is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." But "wrong" is far too wimpy a word to describe this. This is over the edge of evil.

Digital heroin addiction worsening

I have used, though did not invent, the term "digital heroin" to refer to people's addiction the glowing-screen devices, especially smart phone and tablets, and especially by children. Comes now further, abject confirmation. From the Daily Mail, "Generation of child web addicts: Youngsters are becoming so obsessed with the internet they spend more time on YouTube than with friends as parents struggle to keep control of their online usage."

Children have become such screen addicts they are abandoning their friends and hobbies, a major report warns today. Researchers found under-fives spend an hour and 16 minutes a day online. Their screen time rises to four hours and 16 minutes when gaming and television are included. Youngsters aged 12 to 15 average nearly three hours a day on the web – plus two more hours watching TV. The study said YouTube was ‘a near permanent feature’ of many young lives, and seven in ten of those aged 12 to 15 took smartphones to bed. It concluded: ‘Children were watching people on YouTube pursuing hobbies that they did not do themselves or had recently given up offline.’ A growing number of parents admitted to researchers that they had lost control of their children’s online habits.

Next is a report on Nashville's local Fox affiliate, "Study: Increased screen time in young children associated with developmental delays."

A new study from psychologists and doctors in Canada found increased screen time in young children can cause issues with children reaching developmental milestones. Researchers studied 2,441 mothers and children with higher levels of screen time for children aged 24 and 36-months-old. Researchers then examined developmental milestone test results in the same children at 36 and 60-months-old. The study found on average, 24-month-old children were watching 17 hours of television per week, 36-month-olds watched 25 hours per week, and 36-month-olds watched 11 hours per week. The totals reflect findings children on average in the U.S. watch to 2 hours and 19 minutes of screen time each day. For each age group, children with increased screen times showed poorer performances on developmental testing when they reached the next age group. Developmental evaluations included communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social skills. The totals are well above the recommended 1 hour per day of screen time watching high-quality programs. Researchers say about one quarter of children are not developmentally ready for school entry and the trend parallels an increase in screen time use by children.

Many parents use glowing screens as a sedative to pacify their children I have seen this in public too many times to count. But people, these thing are literally addictive, and when children (a) learn they will be given a screen to stop pitching a fit, and (b) they cannot help pitching the fit anyway because they literally are suffering from withdrawal symptoms, then the parent-child-screen interface becomes a self-reinforcing do loop. My kids escaped this, fortunately. Our youngest was 14 when the first smart phone came out and none of them got a smart phone until they were in college (if then). But I have, no kidding, seen infants who cannot even walk yet with their very own smart phones - and now you can buy those phones especially built for small kids (more accurately, for parents of small kids who visually identify those phones with toys, as the makers intend them to do).

Yes, this is sadly real - just click here.

What is the tie-in to these kids' futures? Well, consider that researchers both in the US and Europe have discovered that IQ scores are getting lower, and the younger one is, the greater likelihood his/her IQ is lower than a generation before. And while glowing screens do not seem to explain all the fall, they are absolutely part of it.

Falling IQ scores may explain why politics has turned so nasty

Western IQ scores are falling. Is it computers or something else? Parents, take this seriously!

The Best Party Ever! Jesus, a wedding, and some wine

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

We have long known and studied dignity cultures and honor-shame cultures. Now sociology professors Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning say there has emerged a new kind of social-interaction dynamic: victimhood culture, explaining an incident at Oberlin University.

The Oberlin student [who took offense at an email] took a different approach: After initially emailing the student who offended her, she decided to publicly air the encounter that provoked her and their subsequent exchange in the community at large, hoping to provoke sympathy and antagonism toward the emailer by advertising her status as an aggrieved party.   

 But she was met from the original emailer with even more strident claims that she had victimized him even more. And it went downhill from there - "There is no end to conflict in a victimhood culture."

What's distinguishes this culture from honor-shame or dignity cultures? The professors explain:

It isn’t honor culture. “Honorable people are sensitive to insult, and so they would understand that microaggressions, even if unintentional, are severe offenses that demand a serious response,” they write. “But honor cultures value unilateral aggression and disparage appeals for help. Public complaints that advertise or even exaggerate one’s own victimization and need for sympathy would be anathema to a person of honor.” 

But neither is it dignity culture: 

“Members of a dignity culture, on the other hand, would see no shame in appealing to third parties, but they would not approve of such appeals for minor and merely verbal offenses. Instead they would likely counsel either confronting the offender directly to discuss the issue, or better yet, ignoring the remarks altogether.”

The culture on display on many college and university campuses, by way of contrast, is “characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties. People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large. Domination is the main form of deviance, and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization.” 

It is, they say, “a victimhood culture.”

Read the whole thing, "The Rise of Victimhood Culture" in The Atlantic.

Now I have two responses. The first is that victimhood culture is literally childish. It is a dynamic that resides at elementary-grade level, although, as the professors explain, college students today are far more adept and energetic in it than small kids. It is taking personal disagreements or conflicts to well, this level:


Remember one of the first rules of economics: That which is subsidized increases. When posting one's latest "I'm being repressed!" event across social media or public forums become routine, it will become rewarding. Posters become affirmed in their grievances and over time (not a long time!) want that affirmation again and again. So their level of "I'm offended" get lower and lower, their sprint to public revelation becomes quicker and sooner, and their claims of harm become ever-more insistent and exaggerated.

In short, victimhood culture is not about justice or peacemaking or conflict resolution. Quite the opposite: it is about domination and conflict creation and lengthening the fight, all the better to be affirmed. Victimhood culture is at bottom selfish, self-centered, and ultimately self-defeating.

My second response is that victimhood culture is very specifically contrary to the teachings of Christ, so anyone who thinks him/herself a Christian who engages in it very seriously needs to get a new understanding. Let me start with a referral to my essay of how Jesus rebutted the honor-shame dynamic that was firmly entrenched in first-century Judea, "How Jesus invented individual liberty."

Then how to get even with others the right way.

More urgently than ever, this is what we must teach our children.

Why is Christmas on December 25?

Whatever date Jesus was born, it almost definitely was not December 25. So why do we date Christmas on it?

One of the ways we know that Jesus' birth birth almost certainly did not take place on Dec. 25 is because the Gospel of Luke states that when Jesus was born, "there were shepherds in the fields keeping watch over the flocks by night." But Dec. 25 is in winter, of course, and Israel gets cold. Flocks would not be herded in the fields overnight, but brought into protective shelter, probably by the end of October and almost certainly by mid-November.

Just why Christmas Day falls on Dec. 25 was originally only a question for the Western (Latinate) Church because Christmas fell on Jan. 6 for the Eastern Orthodox Church, which later adopted the Dec. 25 date. Even so, Jan. 6,

... is still the date of the celebration for the Armenian Apostolic Church and in Armenia, where it is a public holiday. As of 2012, there is a difference of 13 days between the modern Gregorian calendar and the older Julian calendar. Those who continue to use the Julian calendar or its equivalents thus celebrate December 25 and January 6 on what for the majority of the world is January 7 and January 19. For this reason, Ethiopia, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, and the Republic of Moldova celebrate Christmas on what in the Gregorian calendar is January 7; the Church of Greece celebrates Christmas on December 25.

Christ's Mass (hence, Christmas) did not become an official festival day on the Roman Church's calendar until 300 years or so after Jesus. There was not much debate about placing it on Dec. 25. Modern historians used to argue that the Pope selected the date in order the Christianize a still-practiced Roman holiday celebrating the lengthening of daylight hours just after the winter solstice had passed. This idea has come under increasingly skeptical scrutiny, however, As Slate explains, (Why is Christmas in December?): 

The reasoning goes that the growing church, recognizing the popularity of the winter festivals, attached its own Christmas celebration to encourage the spread of Christianity. Business historian John Steele Gordon has described the December dating of the Nativity as a kind of ancient-world marketing ploy.  ...

This alternative explanation is sometimes deployed to dismiss the notion that the holiday had pagan roots. In a 2003 article in the journal Touchstone, for example, historian William Tighe called the pagan origin of Christmas “a myth without historical substance.” He argued at least one pagan festival, the Roman Natalis Solis Invictus, instituted by Emperor Aurelian on Dec. 25, 274, was introduced in response to the Christian observance. The pagan festival “was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.” According to Tighe, the pagans co-opted the Christian holiday, not the other way around.

In fact, an early Christian Carthaginian scholar named Tertullian reported the calculation that the 14th of the Jewish month of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation, or the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, like important martyrs before him, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same date of the year, March 25, meaning that exactly nine months after the date of his conception, Dec. 25, Jesus was born. 

So, ascription of Dec. 25 to Jesus' birth took place 74 years before Emperor Aurelian instituted a Roman, pagan celebration of the winter solstice. So we can cast aside the idea that Christmas' dating was to take over an existing pagan holiday. There was, at the time, no pagan holiday to take over.

But wait! as they say on TV. There's more! Further complicating the debate is that there seem to be mathematical reasons for the Dec. 25 date that rest upon modern computational science, not legend.

A fascinating analysis of just what was the star that led the wise men to Bethlehem is given at Bethlehemstar.net. Here is my summary.

After Jesus was born, wise men, or Magi, from the east made their way to Judea. Being astronomers, they had read the stars and concluded that a new king had been born to the Jews. This is related in Matthew chapter 2.

No historian today claims that there nothing happened in the sky that corresponds, somehow, to what the wise men saw. Just what it was has been a scientific quest for about 400 years, since Johannes Kepler developed the first mathematical description of how the heavens worked. Kepler, whose equations are still used by NASA and astronomers around the world, himself spent may laborious hours trying to calculate the position of the planets and stars above the ancient Near East in the year of Jesus’ presumed birth, 6 BC. But he found nothing.

Since Kepler, many others have suggested that the star Matthew describes might have been a comet or a supernova, but there are no records of such events at this time anywhere in the ancient world, especially in China, whose astronomers were detailed, meticulous record keepers.

Jesus was presumed to have been born in 6 BC based on a book by the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, whose book, Antiquities, says that Herod died in 4 BC. Since clearly Jesus was born in the time of Herod, Jesus had to have been born before 4 BC, a year or two before.

But in fact, Herod did not die until 1 BC. This date is in fact what Josephus wrote, and is so stated in manuscripts of his book dated earlier than 1544. It was in 1544 that Antiquities was first set to the printing press. In that first edition, the typesetter erroneously set the wrong year of Herod’s death, and this edition became the standard from which all subsequent editions were made, including the one Kepler used.

Computers today solve Kepler’s equations in a snap. And what astronomers now know is that in September, 3 BC, the planet Jupiter came into conjunction with the star Regulus. That is, when viewed from the earth, Jupiter and Regulus appeared to touch or come very close together.

Jupiter is the largest planet. The ancients called it the king of planets. Regulus was called Rex by the Romans, Latin for king. In Persian its name was Sharu, which also meant king. To an ancient astronomer, for the king of planets and the king of stars to come together would have been weighted with portents. But Jupiter and Regulus did this not merely once, but three times over the course of the next year.

After appearing to touch Regulus, Jupiter’s path moved beyond. But after a few months, earth caught up with and passed Jupiter in its orbit. Jupiter then appeared to move backwards in the sky. This movement is called retrograde. All planets’ paths retrograde when seen from earth, that’s why they are called planets, which is Greek for “wanderer.” So Jupiter went back and touched Regulus again. Then the earth moved on and by September of 2 BC, Jupiter had retrograded once more and had touched Regulus a third time.

To astronomers as skilled as those of Babylonia heritage and learning, which the wise men almost certainly were, this three-time conjunction of the king of planets with the king of stars would have started them packing. But why did they decide that the Jews had anything to do with it?

All three conjunctions took place within the backdrop of the constellation Leo, the lion. The lion is the symbol of the Jewish tribe of Judah, which takes it name from a son of Jacob named Judah. In Genesis chapter 49, Jacob gives his son, Judah, the lion as his symbol and then dictates that only Judah’s descendants shall provide the rulers for subsequent generations. King David was a member of the tribe of Judah and so was Jesus’ father, Joseph, according to Matthew chapter one.

The wise men were obviously conversant with the relationship of lions with the tribe of Judah and Judah’s parentage of all the kings of Israel. The wise men may well have been (though probably weren't) Jews themselves, since a thriving Jewish colony remained in Iraq until a generation ago even though the Jews’ captivity in Babylon was ended in 538 BC. The kingly conjunctions of Jupiter and Regulus within the constellation of the lion were all the wise men needed to start heading toward the Roman province of Judea, which we know as Israel.

But what they did not know was just where the new king was born. So they stopped at the palace of the Roman vassal, King Herod, to inquire. Herod’s counselors quoted a prophecy from Micah that said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

At Herod’s deceitful urging, the wise men went to Bethlehem, only five miles from Jerusalem. In the sky, Jupiter had just begun a third retrograde, this one, however, not to be followed by a conjunction. The thing about planetary retrogrades is this: just as a planet appears to reverse direction, it seems to stand still in the sky.

Here is what computers using Kepler’s equations show. Jupiter’s full stop for this retrograde took place on December 25, 2 BC. If you had been in Jerusalem on that evening, you would have seen the kingly planet Jupiter motionless in the sky almost due south, directly above Bethlehem. And better yet, its stationary position was in the middle of the Constellation Virgo, the Virgin.

However, many of the detailed explanations of these planetary and stellar phenomena, such as this one, do not seem to account for the fact that Dec. 25 on our calendar today is an altogether different date in the ancient world, as I briefly referenced above. December 25 on our calendar is 13 days further along than on the Roman Julian calendar used at the time the Pope officially designated Dec. 25 as Christmas Day. The original Dec. 25 date then corresponds (as above) to Jan. 7 on our calendar. So to be historically picky about it, the Russian church, for example is celebrating the date correctly on Jan. 7.

But wait! There's more! When modern astronomers say that Jupiter's "full stop" occurred on Dec. 25, 2 BC, which Dec. 25 do they mean, Gregorian (modern) or Julian (ancient)? They mean modern. If Jupiter's progression/retrogression transition was in process on Dec. 25 Gregorian, that means that the Magi arrived in Bethlehem on Dec. 12 Julian.

They did not get there the day Jesus was born. We know from Matthew that Jesus was born in a barn and laid by his parents in a manger, or feeding trough, after birth. Yet Matthew 2 clearly states, "On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, .. ."

How old was Jesus by then? We have insufficient information to know. Presumably, Joseph, Mary and Jesus could have moved from the barn to the house the day after Jesus was born. It's not far fetched to imagine that room for a newborn and parents was made somehow. One clue, however, lies in that Herod directed the Magi to come back and report to him once they found the one whom the Magi had referred to as the "one who has been born king of the Jews."

The Magi did not go back to Herod. Herod, never one to countenance potential rivals to his throne (he had even executed his own sons), ordered soldiers to Bethlehem:

[H]e was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

In my view, the best interpretation of this narrative is that the Magi had no idea specifically when Jesus was born, but based on the sequence of astronomical observations, above, concluded it had to have been within the two years prior to their arrival at Herod's court. Another key may be that Matthew quotes the Magi as referring to Jesus as "born king of the Jews," not "newborn" king of the Jews. Hence, Herod's order to slaughter boys up to the age of two.

It is important, from an historical and biblical perspective, though not necessarily from a practical one for the Church, to confirm Dec. 25 (Julian, anyway) as the date the Wise Men got to Bethlehem, not the date Jesus was born. That date, I'm afraid, will likely forever remain unknown.

End note: David A Weintraub, Professor of Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, explains how Matthew's account makes use of some ancient astronomical and astrological (not very separate disciplines back then) terms that help us understand what the star narrative means; "Can astronomy explain the biblical Star of Bethlehem?"

Advent Downsizing

I am learning anew that transition times can be very hard. During the first week of December, my brother and I moved our dad from the independent-living section of Blakeford retirement center to the nursing-home wing. Dad has no use of his legs any more and is wholly dependent on someone else even to get up from a chair.

I know many readers have dealt with such transitions already. And I cannot overlook that since last Advent, some families of our church coped with transitions more severe than that as they have committed loved ones to God's eternity.

I have learned that these kinds of transitions mean “downsizing.” When mom and dad moved from their house to a Blakeford apartment in 2009, they downsized. When we moved dad from the apartment to a single room, downsizing again. But not only of things. When my mother died in 2015, it was a different, but very real, kind of downsizing also.

And you know what? Downsizing is not appealing. It is not fun. It means saying goodbye to things and sometimes persons loved.

And yet . . .

Downsizing can also make us focus on essentials. Downsizing can bring clarity. When our eldest, a U.S. Marine lance corporal, spent 2005’s Christmas in combat service in Iraq, Cathy and I had a clear picture of what Christmas meant for us. It was not the stuff. Of course, we gave and received gifts and celebrated with our other two children and family, but it was crystal clear to us — and has remained so 13 years hence — that all we really have in this life is one another, not things.

The book of Job tells of his fabulous wealth — all lost, his children killed, even his health ruined, his body wracked with pain. Yet he merely says, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.” It took me years to see that Job was only half right. Naked we are born, but we die clothed in the love we gave away.

To move on to Christian perfection in this life is to downsize. Downsize habits that block us from holiness. Downsize that which inhibits our love of God and our neighbors. Downsize our egos to make room for God. Downsize the falsehood that getting our way is all it takes to make us happy.

Thankfully, the upsizing is greater than the down. We upsize in gratitude. We upsize in meaningfulness. We upsize in patience, in peacefulness, in joyfulness, in kindness, self-control, gentleness, and so many other ways.

But first comes the downsizing, so let Advent be a time to downsize for the sake of the Gospel!

Merry Christmas to all, and God bless us, every one!

Can we endure the refinery?

Malachi 3.1-4, a passage for the second Sunday of Advent

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Are we willing to take the refining?
 

And silver, while we are at it.


To move on to Christian perfection in this life, to attain holiness of life, is not painless or easy.
Malachi uses the metaphor of refining because it illustrates the process of moving on to perfection and righteousness: the dross (impurities in the raw material) must be removed, but it takes intention, planning, and effort. We have to yield to the process. And as even Jesus himself found out, some number of people will try it out and just say no -- see, for example, John 6.66, "After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him."

While the process of spiritual refinement is important, it is only a means to an end, not the end itself. As Paul said, we should keep our eyes upon the goal: "... forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3.13b-14).

Yes, it is worth it!

2009 U.S. Mint Ultra High Relief, $20 Double Eagle,
.9999 fine gold coin, Saint-Gaudens design.

Can we imagine the discipleship equivalent to such a work?