Super Bugs and Weeds

A new scientific study by the National Research Council says that for many farmers the use of genetically modified crops had helped to cut the use of pesticides and herbicides, reduced the need for tilling which leads to soil erosion, and improved yields. The two biggest uses for genetic modification are "Roundup Ready" crops which are resistant to Roundup and its chemical knock-offs which allow farmers to spray the weed killer around the crops without risk of damage to the crops, and "BT" seeds which contain bacterial genes allowing the plants to produce an insecticide.

What is interesting to me, though, is that Roundup ready seeds have been in use for only ten years and already the weeds are adapting:

Overuse of this seductively simple approach to weed control is starting to backfire. Use of Roundup, or its generic equivalent, glyphosate, has skyrocketed to the point that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to the chemical. That is rendering the technology less useful, requiring farmers to start using additional herbicides, some of them more toxic than glyphosate.

You can bet Monsanto, maker of Roundup, and its competitors are working on new formulations. But it sounds just like the stories of over-use of antibiotics and how rapidly bacteria have morphed into antibiotic-resistant super bugs.

Weeds and bacteria and probably real flying bugs are just as "smart" as we are in their own way. They want to survive and multiply too and it is pretty amazing how quickly they are able to adapt and thrive as tougher-to-kill species. Somehow I doubt that this is a battle that we will win in the end. Some super bug will come back to bite us big time eventually.

While I am not opposed in principle to the use of genetically engineered seeds it would be far better if we could find a way to farm and live without going there. The more we grow our own food and the more we support local and organic farming the lighter our environmental footprint. I don't know if we need genetically modified crops to feed the world. I know that I don't need them and neither do you. We have a choice about what we grow and eat.

Big Ben Beef Jerk

It's not easy being a Steeler's fan these days. The face of the franchise is quite possibly a criminal who just got away with rape, or at the very least he's a cad. I can't imagine that the Rooney family is going to stand by and not respond with a suspension if it doesn't come from the NFL first. I see the company that brought us Big Ben Beef Jerky has ended its marketing relationship with Roethlisberger. What they should do is just change the name to Big Ben Beef Jerk and promise to donate the proceeds of each unit sold to a women's sexual abuse awareness organization.

More on Beauty and the Church

Rod Dreher posted part of an interview with Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington, an orthodox Catholic who teaches screen-writing in L.A., where she was asked about the clash of values between Hollywood and the church. I thought she had an interesting take:

Again, not to get myself burned in effigy, but Christians feel as alienated from Hollywood as Hollywood people feel watching EWTN or CBN. Hollywood has a value of excellent production value, of talent, and the pagan world absolutely believes in talent, this mysterious gift that comes from they-know-not-where. We know where it comes from; they don't know where it comes from, but they believe in it.

The Church does not believe in talent anymore. We think the most important thing is that everyone feels welcome. So we sit at church and suffer through Doris and Stan, who can't sing, because we don't want to be mean. They would never get a job in Hollywood, because Hollywood has integrity about the beautiful. Or if it's not "the Beautiful" in the classical sense, at least, they value the non-lame.

So when you speak of a tension of values, well, there is the value of the Beautiful, which Hollywood understands and the Church does not, and then there are the values specifically of what is good for human beings. What is it that leads them to their fulfillment, their ultimate destiny, fulfilling their nature? Those things are missing, content-wise, in what you're seeing in a lot of the media.

But in the end, which is more harmful: true words cast in an ugly frame, or untrue words cast in a beautiful frame? I think Hollywood will get people into heaven faster. Even if they have the message wrong, people in the end will turn off some of that. What will really impact them will be the harmony, the wholeness, the completeness of a work.

I think there needs to be a balance in the life of a church. The message that all are welcome and all are encouraged to share their gifts is the right message. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to sing and read and act in worship even if they aren't great. Everyone needs to feel welcomed and valued.

But the church also needs to care about quality and, yes, beauty. It really makes a difference in worship. I have vivid memories of musical horrors in my first church pastorate. While there was a competent organist she was often traveling. The fill-ins and the special music were often positively atrocious. There was no balance between uplifting music and "non-lame."

When I came to Open Circle I insisted from our beginning that we shell out the money needed to have a professional keyboardist. We got lucky and got one with a great voice as well. To be able to sit in worship on Sundays and experience quality music every Sunday makes worship what is should be - uplifting and inspiring.

Churches don't do themselves any favor when they try to save money by using local talent. Yes there are exceptions but by and large you get what you pay for.

Beauty

My newsletter article this week:

Dostoevsky said that man, in the end, will be saved by beauty -- or nothing. What he meant by that I think is that there is nothing in the world with the power to change hearts and inspire minds like beauty. Music, stories, poetry, film, photography, the natural world - all have the capacity to lift our hearts and inspire our own creativity. They touch us at a deep level; they inspire us to find our own talents and add our own beauty to the world.

I am a political animal. I read and watch and think politics. Occasionally I dive in and get involved. I think politics is important. Politics is about the distribution of power and resources and it matters to me that power and resources not be concentrated in the hands of a few. Good politics levels the playing field, knocks down walls and ceilings of injustice, puts food on the table for families.

But the older I get the more I am convinced of the limit of politics. By itself, the practice of modern politics tends toward the corrosive. It wears people down. Spend a day watching FOX or CNN and I think you will know what I mean.

It is interesting to me to think about how much the church, and here I am thinking specifically about Christianity in America, has come to see so much of its mission as political. That is what the culture wars are all about - fighting over who has the power to decide what values will predominate in the public square. Both conservative and liberal Christians have joined the fight. We often define our Christianity and our faith by our responses to these political battles.

I do not share with my Anabaptist ancestors or even some of my friends the belief that we should not even be participating in politics. Again, I think it is important and I think the church should encourage political involvement. Justice matters.

I think, though, that our passion for justice needs to be balanced by attention to beauty. If it seems strange to think about beauty as a church task, remember that there was a time when the church was considered the chief patron of the arts, in music, literature, architecture, art. Of course they were also often the only game in town, the only institution with the resources to support artists.

But there was something else going on as well. The church placed a high value on beauty because it believed that creativity and beauty were characteristics of God and God's creation. To experience and create beauty brought us closer to God. The experience and creation of beauty are not peripheral to what it means to be Christian or spiritual.

What got me thinking about beauty? The music in church on Sunday and the beauty that is breaking out all around us this spring. Both were and are inspiring. I hope you have a beautiful day.

The Star Came to Rest over Minneapolis

Two intellectual heavy-weights of the Republican Party shared the stage this afternoon in the twin cities. FOX News' Sean Hannity was here covering the event live, lending more gravitas to the celestial event.

Our Brain on Costco

What our brain is doing when we shop at Costco:

Consumers aren't always driven by careful considerations of price and expected utility. We don't look at the electric grill or box of chocolates and perform an explicit cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we outsource much of this calculation to our emotional brain, and rely on relative amounts of pleasure versus pain to tell us what to purchase. (During many of the decisions, the rational prefrontal cortex was largely a spectator, standing silently by while the NAcc pleasure centers and insula secretes aversive feelings argued with each other.) Whichever feeling we feel most intensely tends to dictate our shopping decisions. It's like an emotional tug-of-war.

Retail stores manipulate this cortical setup. They are designed to open our wallets: the frivolous details of the shopping experience are really subtle acts of psychological manipulation. The store is tweaking our brain, trying to soothe the insula and stoke the NAcc. Just look at the interior of a Costco warehouse. It's no accident that the most covetous items are put in the most prominent places. A row of high-definition televisions surrounds the entrance. The fancy jewelry, Rolex watches, iPods and other luxury items are conspicuously placed along the corridors with the heaviest foot traffic. (The fresh food is always located in the back of the store, so that we have to parade past the profitable aisles of temptations.) And then there are the free samples of food, liberally distributed throughout the store. The goal of Costco is to constantly prime the pleasure centers of the brain, to keep us lusting after things we don't need. Even though we probably won't buy the Rolex, just looking at the fancy watch makes us more likely to buy something else, since the coveted item activates the NAcc. We have been conditioned to crave a reward.

But it's not enough to just excite the NAcc: retailers must also inhibit the insula. This is where Costco really excels. When consumers are repeatedly assured that low prices are "guaranteed," or told that a certain item is on sale, the insula stops worrying so much about the price tag. In fact, researchers have found that even when a store puts a promotional sticker next to the price -something like "Bargain Buy!" or "Hot Deal!"-but doesn't actually reduce the price, sales of the item will still dramatically increase. These retail tactics lull our brain into buying more things, since our normal response to price tags is pacified.

Fortunately we don't have a Costco nearby yet, just a Sam's Club and I am betting they haven't figured any of this out yet. I do love the free food samples, though.

When the Economy is Bad...

HT: Christianity Today Blog

If We Approached Slavery Like We Aproached Health Care

Minnesota state Senator John Marty, a candidate for governor, (and son of church historian Martin Marty) isn't thrilled with the new federal health care bill:

If the country had approached slavery like we have approached health care," he says, "we'd still have slavery, but Democrats would be bragging that the slaves only work 40 hours a week now. We haven't fixed the problem. There will still be people dying from lack of health care, and going broke.

Where Has Obedience Gone

This is why I could never be Catholic:

So, we had a trade organization — the Catholic Health Association — which calls itself “Catholic” and we had religious Sisters who call themselves Catholic, saying, “Sorry, bishops, you got it wrong, here is the teaching of the Church.” The Lord Jesus Christ, unworthy though the bishops are, called the bishops to lead the people in faith; He did not call anybody in the Catholic Health Association and he did not call any of the Sisters in Network.

The bishops are called to teach, sanctify, and govern. But, as I said before, with regard to the Holy Father, if people will not recognize authority, then they cannot lay responsibility at the feet of those to whom they are disobedient. The pope and the bishops are only responsible when their authority is accepted. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger himself has said, in our contemporary world, the word “obedience” has disappeared from our vocabulary and the reality of obedience has been anathematized.

This is Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin chastising Catholics who disagreed with the bishops on the health care vote.

HT Andrew Sullivan

On Disbelieving Pastors

I said I was going to respond to this article.

For eight years out of seminary I served a Church of the Brethren congregation in northern Ohio. I still remember the Sunday after worship when a parishioner came up to me and told me that my recent sermons were "undermining the faith of our children." I don't remember what I was preaching on; but I distinctly remember the responses I was getting at the time.

Just out of seminary I spent the first half of my tenure at that church getting my pastoral legs under my feet. I spent the second half of my time there beginning to find my own faith. It was a messy process for me. Looking back on my time there it is not surprising to me that some people sitting in the pews must have been wondering why they were paying this pastor to raise question that might challenge their faith.

To be fair to me in many ways I was just tinkering around the edges, sharing a little bible scholarship about sources and sitz im leben and discrepencies in the Greek text of the NT, etc. My own biblical studies were being re-invigorated by the work of the Jesus Seminar, but I wasn't giving them full doses. And I wasn't sharing anything about my own deeper questions about Jesus and the reality of God.

To be fair to them they were a very traditional Brethren congregation. They were mostly pacifist and service oriented, the best of my tradition. They were also mostly union folks and liberal on economic issues, definitely a plus. But they held very traditional and moderately evangelical views on sin and salvation, the "purpose" of Jesus, and the authority of the Bible. And the issue of homosexuality was a "live" issue in that congregation but the subject was taboo. I didn't preach about it from the pulpit but I was talking about it a lot with individuals and families. From their perspective I am sure it felt like I was messing with their faith.

I began to realize during my last few years that I could not keep doing what I was doing. I couldn't say one thing from the pulpit - the safe thing, the traditional thing - and think something else. I couldn't not talk about some issues because it made some people uncomfortable. I couldn't lead the congregation in prayer to God when I wasn't sure there was anybody up there listening.

So I decided to resign. The fateful moment actually was brought about by a congregational vote to turn down an offer made by a local company to take a piece of the church's large property and build on it a child-care center paid for by that company who would also share the building with the church. It was in my view a huge no vote to mission and to the viability of the congregation. It was time for me to go.

At first I interviewed at several other churches. But in each case I realized that it wasn't going to work. They were asking me questions about biblical authority and the virgin birth and I wasn't going down that road again. So because of my wife's employment and education situation where we were in Ohio, I began to look for other work there.

When I got the call from a denominational representative to consider planting a church in the twin cities I initially said no. He said he was sending me the material anyway. So it came and I began to realize that this might be an opportunity for me to be a pastor and to be honest about my faith. If I started from the very beginning saying "this is what I believe" then those who came would know what they were getting into and those who stayed would stay because they appreciate this way of being a person of faith.

Seventeen years later I am still saying "this is what I believe" on Sunday mornings. Not "this is what the Bible says you should believe" or "this is what you must believe to be a Christian" or "this is what I believe" (but secretly I don't). I have found it to be a recipe for growing a thriving liberal Christian community where some non-Christians also find a spiritual home. I have also found it to be a recipe for sleeping well at night.

I sympathize with pastors who feel trapped because their own faith experience doesn't match the faith experience of the congregations they serve. I was there once. And I don't think there is one right response to being in this situation. Some pastors have the cross-cultural skills to make it work. They love the people they are with for who they are and have the vision and persistence to work at bringing people along little by little over time. (I realize this may sound patronizing and it is certainly true that growth happens in both ways. But I also make no apologies for saying that it is part of the pastor's job to "bring people along," i.e to grow; and bringing people along towards a more open and progressive vision is in my view a good thing.)

Other pastors don't have the temperament or the skill set. Or they simply have lost their faith. For them there is no sleeping well at night. I know some of them. For their own sake and for the sake of their congregations it would probably be better if they found a new career, or better yet started a new church where they could figure out their faith among like-minded people.

Feeding on Fear

I just received a fundraising appeal from a liberal organization that begins its pitch this way:

We knew that power concedes nothing. So did President Obama. So did the members of Congress who courageously voted for reform, knowing that the special interests and the extreme right wing would retaliate swiftly.

The attacks are fierce. Deceptive ads are hitting the airwaves in swing districts. GOP lawmakers are pushing to repeal reform -- and preventing the Senate from performing basic functions. A few Republican attorneys general have launched a baseless attack to overturn the legislation. But that's not even the worst of it.

A conservative blogger posted the home address of Congressman Tom Perriello, urging tea partiers to "drop by." Other members have had death threats. Democratic offices have been vandalized...

This is one of several similar emails I have received in the last few days from liberal groups. I don't like it one bit. I get that this is a proven method for raising money. I get that the right wing does it too. And I am not disputing the veracity of the charges leveled here. The Republicans are pretty much unhinged from reality right now; some of them are treading in dangerous and possibly illegal waters.

But do we have to stoop to the same level? Do we have to ratchet up the rhetoric to a fever pitch so we can meet them mano a mano in the gutter? If we want cooler heads to prevail on the other side shouldn't we model it on ours?

I don't give money to any organization - political or religious - that uses fear as a motivating tool.

Amish Forgiveness

Apparently the Lifetime Movie Network has taken some liberties with the facts of the story of the 2006 Nickel Mines Amish school shooting. The movie Amish Grace, which will air this Sunday, is based on a book by the same name. The movie has an Amish mother showing up at the home of the deceased shooter the day after the killings and confronting the wife of the gunman. The authors of the book say this never happened:

True, Amish people did show up at gunman Charles Roberts' home within hours of the shooting that left five girls dead. They also visited his parents and parents-in-law, all of whom lived within a few miles of the West Nickel Mines School.

But the Amish people didn't go there to express rage or sling blame. They visited the Roberts family because of their compassion for his kin--victims of the tragedy who were also suffering immense emotional pain. One Amish neighbor consoled Charles Roberts' father with a hand on his shoulder and four simple words: "We love you, Roberts." A few days later, at Roberts' burial, parents of some of the Amish girls he had killed showed up and hugged his widow. It was, said one Amish man, "simply the right thing to do."

The authors make a guess that the movie channel chose a different beginning because it more closely mirrors the typical English? reaction to being harmed: first rage and then hopefully forgiveness as time passes. This, say the authors, is not the Amish way. Deeply ingrained teachings and practices of forgiveness as a first response were lived out at Nickel Mines. It apparently made a difference:

The Amish response was "the beginning of the healing process," Ms. Roberts (mother of the gunman) continues. She describes how it compelled her and her husband to visit all the Amish families whose daughters had been shot, and to invite all the mothers and the surviving girls to her home for tea.

Ms. Roberts continues to host teas and swimming parties for the surviving girls, four of whom have resumed relatively normal lives. Her closest relationship, however, exists with Rosanna, the one survivor who doesn't swim because she's seriously disabled. To this day, Ms. Roberts visits with Rosanna for several hours every Thursday evening.

Perhaps the real story of Amish grace is as touching as the Lifetime movie version of it. But as we note in our book, the story of Amish forgiveness is not about remarkable individuals finding "within themselves" the ability to forgive. It's about a community that valued forgiveness and reconciliation so highly before the shooting happened that scapegoating the Roberts family on October 2, 2006, wasn't even thinkable.

That this kind of behavior is taken to be remarkable in our "Christian" nation says something about the nature of our Christianity.

A Pope in Trouble

I am beginning to think that the stories of cover-up of child sex abuse by priests in America, Germany, and Ireland are going to bring down this pope:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

Change We Can Believe In!

Finally we have health care for all. What a great night for our country.

Scores that Matter

Well I had Minnesota as a sentimental pick to upset Xavier in the first round of the NCAA men's tournament. It wasn't to be as the Gophers shooting went stone cold in the second half. My whole bracket is pretty much going up in smoke.

I have the games on and the volume muted so I can watch the scores. But I have also been following two other scores that are much more important heading into this weekend. The second and most important score is the vote on the health care bill which is currently scheduled for Sunday. The odds are for its passage are looking better and better as several wavering Dems have indicating they will vote yes.

Part of the reason for that is because of the first big score on the health care bill that came back yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office. The reporters and analysts have been all over this and I have nothing to add except to say that this process - of writing a bill and getting it scored by the CBO and making it at the very least deficit neutral - is what good government looks like.

Republicans rail against big government and promise to shrink it but never do when they are in power. Our last two Republican presidents vastly expanded the size and scope of the federal government. And I have no problem with that because I think we need a big government to meet the many needs of a big country. But Republicans are proven first-rate hypocrites when it comes to the what they say about the size of government when they are out of power and what they do when they are in power.

But what is even worse, at least under the most recent President, is that while they were expanding the size of government they were hiding the costs. The true cost of military budgets to support two wars were off the books, not included in the regular budget. When they passed the prescription drug benefit they silenced the chief actuary charged with figuring out its cost, threatening to fire him if he told Congress that the price was going to be far higher than what the President said it was going to be. Not a peep of protest was heard from the Republican Congress. Why? Because they didn't really care about the size of the government or the deficit. What they cared about was staying in power.

Now out-of-power Republicans are complaining about the process that is going to bring us this bill's passage, and about secret deals made with some legislators made to get their votes. But the truth is the process has been remarkably visible, straight-forward, and honest. The secret deals have been exposed and removed. Republicans were given every opportunity to participate; remember that the process was dragged out for months to allow the bi-partisan 'gang of six' to see if they could come up with a bill that would get Republican support. (The final bill looks much like what the gang of six came up with but still no Republican support.) Most importantly the bill has been vetted by the CBO and it passes muster as an enormous government expansion that pays for itself. It is possible to be cynical and cast aspersions on the accuracy of the CBO but then who are you going to trust to give an impartial reading on the cost of bills? They are widely recognized as non-partisan and accurate with their forecasts. And imagine what Republicans would be saying if the CBO numbers had come back with big deficit-busting numbers. They would have quoting the CBO report to everyone.

From a progressive's perspective this bill is far from perfect. Single payer or at the very least a robust public option would have been preferable. But the process of getting to this moment, slow and painful as it has been and reaching an end that is not perfect, has been an exercise in good government. The final score matters; I want the bill to pass. But how we get there also matters.

Disbelief in the Pulpit

Via James McGrath I want to call attention to this interesting discussion in the Washington Post based on this article: Preachers who are not Believers. I don't have time today but I plan on commenting on it soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm not Irish and apart from marking the day with a good Irish Stout the holiday kind of passes me by. But there is one very good reason to celebrate this day. In Minnesota the sun rose this morning at 7:21 a.m. and it sets this evening at 7:21 p.m. Spring officially begins in 3 days but by the sun's reckoning up here in the north it has already arrived. And it is a beautiful day to boot.

Make My Day

The Washington Post is reporting that some Republicans are mounting a repeal movement in the face of the increasing likelihood that Dems are going to pass health care legislation:

Can Republicans win election this fall by campaigning to repeal the health-care legislation now nearing passage in Congress?

Even as House Democrats search for the votes to send the bill to President Obama, dozens of Republican lawmakers and candidates have signed a pledge to back an effort to repeal the bill, should the GOP take control of either house of Congress after this fall's elections.

Started by the conservative activist group Club for Growth, the "Repeal It" movement first won the backing in January of some of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, such as "tea party" favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). It has since expanded to include some of the party's Senate candidates in liberal-leaning states such as New Hampshire and Illinois.

I think this is a great idea. I hope every Republican candidate runs on repealing health care. I can imagine the slogans: No insurance for your children with cancer! Bring back the donut hole! If you lose your job you don't deserve health insurance!

Back in the real world there is not a single Republican running in remotely close-contested elections who is going to campaign on repealing health care this fall. It would be political suicide. It is all bluster.

12,000 Calories a Day

If this was your typical daily diet how big would you be:

In a typical day I'll eat four burgers and fries, a loaf of bread with peanut butter and jam, four servings of meatloaf and mashed potato, a large pizza, a chocolate cake with ice cream and cream, 12 cupcakes, two cheesecakes and fizzy drinks.

This is the diet of New Jersey woman who weighs in at over 600 pounds and is trying to get to 1000. She has set up a website where men pay to watch her eat. She is 42 years old and says she is happy and healthy. She also loves sushi and says she can eat 70 big pieces in "one go."

It's a free country, as many say in America. Unfortunately, though, her health care costs are not free. According to the article it will likely be the taxpayers of NJ who will be paying the tab for her gluttony. I have a problem with that. It is one thing to struggle with weight and deal with all of the social and medical consequences. It is another thing entirely to intentionally destroy your body and stick others with the bill for taking care of you.

Rod Dreher is even less charitable.

Rework Takes on Karl Rove

I haven't read Rework which has been on the bestseller NYTimes bestseller list. But Karl Rove's book recently knocked it off the top spot and the author's of Rework have struck back with this amusing video:



I downloaded a sample of the book to my Kindle. Here is the publishers promo:

From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few bucks or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple.That means anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working miserable 80-hour weeks or depleting your life savings. You can start it on the side while your day job provides all the cash flow you need. Forget about business plans, meetings, office space - you don't need them.

With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.

Update: Make that Amazon's top spot, not the NYTimes.

NCLB Supporter Changes Mind

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and once a supporter of No Child Left Behind. She has a new book out on the subject and writes in The New Republic why she has changed her mind:

As I assayed the evidence about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I concluded that it has failed. The testing regime that NCLB installed in every public school has not improved American education. By mandating that scores in reading and math must constantly rise, the federal law has removed any incentive to teach the arts, science, history, literature, foreign languages, geography, civics, or any other non-tested subject.

NCLB requires that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When the legislation was signed in 2002, this goal was wildly unrealistic--and now, it is merely laughable. The target date is only four years away, but no state is remotely close to 100 percent proficiency. Indeed, in 2008, 35,000 of the nation’s schools bore the stigma of "failing" because they weren't making sufficient progress toward that utopian target.

What NCLB has done with its proficiency deadline is set a timetable for the demolition of American public education. In an effort to meet NCLB’s unattainable goal and avoid the "failing" label, most states have dumbed down their standardized tests or their definitions of proficiency. Many states claim that large majorities of their students are “proficient” in reading or math, but their claims are refuted by federal assessments (called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP) that are given to all students in fourth and eighth grades every other year. For example, Texas reported that 85 percent of its students in those grades were proficient readers based on year-end state testing, but, on the NAEP, only 29 percent were. Nationwide, NAEP scores have gone up in math since 2003, but the rate of improvement has been less than before the passage of NCLB. In eighth-grade reading, there was no improvement at all from 1998 to 2007.

She has reached a similar verdict on the charter school movement.

Don't Eat the Viking

I'm reading this article on the pesticides, hormones, and plastics that we may be ingesting in our foods and how it may be contributing to our obesity epidemic. This is how they analogize about eating hormone-laden beef:

To bring this all home, imagine you've been in a terrible plane crash in the Andes, like those poor souls depicted in the movie "Alive." The only way to survive is to pick one of the dead folks to eat. You're given the choice of an obese, grotesquely muscled, man-boob-toting Minnesota Vikings lineman with shrunken testicles who's been injecting himself with hormones for a dozen years, or someone of normal size and body type and hormonal function. (One of the Kardashian sisters, maybe.) Which would you choose?

Well, every time you eat conventionally raised beef, you're choosing the Viking.

Makes you think twice about biting into that hamburger. They are calling these chemicals run amok in our diet obesogens. Interesting article.

Cat Confessions

I was awakened in the middle of last night by a loud noise. One of our cats, Sampson, was in the bed and jumped up at the sound. I sat up, looked out the window, listened a moment, and laid back down. No sooner had I dozed off when cat number two, Sadie, jumped onto my chest and started meowing in my face. I rubbed her head, she started purring and laid down in bed.

I got up this morning to find a plant knocked over and the ceramic pot shattered all over the floor. Apparently Sadie was confessing her sin and felt that by petting her I was granting her absolution.

HT for photo to Thomas Verenna.

Sauteed Chickpeas

Mark Bittman recently featured a sauteed chickpea recipe. I went looking for the Spanish chorizo called for but couldn't find it in local grocers. I will keep looking. In any case he said the chickpeas turned from mealy to crispy in the pan and were great alone. So I rinsed, dried, and sauteed a can up tonight and he was right. They were great. I put them into a salad with Romaine lettuce, avocado, mushrooms, and olive oil and vinegar. That was dinner tonight.

Cheater's Bible

Today I received via UPS a copy of The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's (or cheater's) Edition. It has a translation of all vocabulary words occurring 30 times or less in the NT at the bottom of the page. It's great for someone like me who isn't working in the Greek NT every day but has a decent handle on the vocabulary and grammar. What I don't know or remember is right there on the page.

Senator Judd Gregg Says Use Reconciliation

I hope this video gets played over and over:

Please Rob Me

Do you tell your friends on Twitter or Facebook where you are? If so, you may be telling potential thieves where you are not. Please Rob Me calls attention to all those public posts where people are inviting unwanted guests into their homes. Your tweet might be there.

Is It a Waste of Time if they don't Convert to Christianity?

Here is a question posted today at the Christianity Today blog:

If you aided someone for years and years and they never became a Christian, would you consider your efforts wasted?

The back story for this question is an AP report that appeared out of Haiti regarding tensions between evangelical Christians and practitioners of Voodoo. The story included these comments by Frank Amedia of Touch Heaven Ministries: “We would give food to the needy in the short term but if they refused to give up Voodoo, I'm not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn't want to perpetuate that practice. We equate it with witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel.”

As it turns out the AP report took the comments of Mr. Amedia way out of context and he issued a clarification which you can read on the CT blog post. But he did say that eventually or "long term" as he says, his ministry might stop feeding them if they continued to practice Voodoo.

Hence we get the question from CT about whether our efforts would be "wasted" if we didn't get a conversion. This kind of question is a reminder to me of one of the many reasons I am not an evangelical Christian. I don't even understand the question. If I fed someone who lost everything in an earthquake and they didn't starve to death I would consider my mission accomplished. If I needed to keep feeding them for years in order to keep them from starving I would do it without question and not consider my efforts wasted regardless of whether they ever converted to my faith or not.

I am reminded of going to an evangelism training session many years ago put on by someone in our denomination. The topic was friendship evangelism and they showed a movie where Christians befriended their neighbors in order to get them to convert. Their motives weren't subtle; they - the actors playing Christians in the movie - talked about them in their table conversation as they plotted their strategy with their neighbors. Let's be friends with our neighbors so we can get them to convert. Let's have them over for dinner, go golfing with them, spend as much time as it takes to soften them up and when the moment is right pop the salvation question. I came home from the session feeling like I needed to take a shower.

I am not opposed to sharing my story when someone asks "why are you doing this.?" But the reason I am doing this - feeding the hungry, helping to rebuild homes after floods, sending money or Church World Service kits to Haiti, etc. - is because it is the right thing to do. It is what Christians do; it is what people of other faiths and no faiths do too. With no ulterior motives. I have been blessed. Out of the blessings I have experienced I want to help out others who are in need. It is that simple.

BTW it has been my experience that the AP is a really unreliable source for news, whether it is local, national or international.

She Wore Her Dead Sister's Teeth

I have outsourced watching the health care debate to the progressive bloggers and pundits and have been checking in occasionally to see how it is going. Via Karen Tumulty at Swampland this is the best (worst?) story I have seen. From New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter:

Thank you Mr. President and thanks to my colleagues who are here. I am timely and will not take up a lot of time, but I do have to say some things.

The first is the preexisting conditions have to go. It is cruel and capricious and done only to help the bottom line. This was not even anything we talked about 10 or 15 years ago, but I mentioned that all Americans should be treated the same. Let me give you a history.

Eight states have declared that domestic violence is a preexisting condition on the grounds I assume that if you have been unlucky enough to get yourself beaten up once, you might do it again. Forty-eight percent is the higher cost for women to buy their own insurance. Believe you me that is really discrimination.

In 1991 women were not included in the health trials because we had hormones. It wasn't until we had a critical mass of women here that said this will not do for more than half the population of the United States who pay taxes and we made certain that diseases like osteoporosis and cervical cancer and uterine cancer were looked at. Up to that point, 1991, all research at the institutes of health was done on white males. Think about that a minute, if you will.

We couldn't do that because we said can you stop doing that? It took legislation. Doing this will take legislation. I have been through this before. I was here when we had the Clinton debate. It started some of you will remember by Lee Iacocca who said we cannot export automobiles. There is a $1,000 cost for health care in every one of them. My competitors are way ahead of them. They are eating my lunch. That was one of the main reasons that we decided we had to do something about that. In the 13 to 15 years since that happened, we have done nothing about health care, and don't export so much anymore and the automobile business is basically gone. We have done nothing to encourage entrepreneurs. We need to think about the economic benefits of doing this. They will reduce trade policies and let us make something else in the United States and really want to make sure that it succeeds and this would be a great part of that. I think it's terribly important that we do that.

Also since the Clinton health care plan, we have seen awful things. We saw hospitals abandoned to the streets. Critically ill, elderly, mentally ill persons and there was no great cry out there. Now I understand there is actually a proposal which god knows I hope never sees the light of day that shot down Medicare and turned it into a voucher system. Obviously we were not paid the full cost health care as they go to the public market to try to find something. What are we going to be doing then? Once again abandon our elderly and mentally ill and our seriously ill to the streets. We are better people than that. It would be a good thing for us while we are here in this room together to think about what's important here. Not nitpick, but think about all the people out there every day, the number of people that have excess deaths because they have no health insurance.

I have a constituent that you won't believe and I know you won't, but her sister died, this poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister's teeth which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you believe that in America that's where we would be? This is the last chance as far as I'm concerned on the export business. We have fallen behind and no longer the biggest manufacturer in the world and lost our technological edge. We have an opportunity to do that, but the major part of the success of that is getting this health care bill passed. Thank you very much.

You can watch the video at the link. Another video worth watching is Congressman Anthony Weiner on the floor of the House yesterday calling the Republican Party a "wholly owned subsidiary of insurance companies." Republicans moved to have the language stricken from the record so he came back and repeated it in a different way. Happened again and he came back for a third time and gave it another twist. It was pretty amusing. Video here.

Keeping It Together After a Tragedy

I haven't watched much of the Olympics but upon reading about the performance of Canadian skater Joannie Rochette after her mom unexpectedly died of a heart attack two days earlier, I watched the performance online. I found it to be moving.

It's Great to be One of the Chosen Ones

Amusing quote from my reading today:

As a general proposition, of course, it remains true that the majority of humankind is destined for damnation, and that the minority of the saved are very lucky; but in practice, we are confident that we belong in this minority; and that the universe is unfolding as it should. (From A Secular Age by Charles Taylor)

Taylor is talking about the unfolding Protestant reformation, especially the Calvinist variety, as it grew increasingly confident in its own ability to do the inner personal work of salvation and order society for the common good. So the next sentence after this quote is: "The declarations that we are helpless sinners become more and more pro forma."

But I am proof-texting here because the quote made me laugh. And... because lot's of Christians still believe it to be true that the vast majority of the world is going to hell but they are not.

Hometown Skier Wins Gold

If I wasn't so lazy I would walk up the street and take a picture of Buck Hill which is not far from my house. It is just a little ski hill. But somehow it turns out Olympic caliber skiers. Lindsey Vonn, who just won the Gold Medal in the Alpine Skiing Womens Downhill at British Colombia, grew up here in Burnsville and learned to ski at Buck Hill. The 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, saw two Buck Hill skiers on the US Olympic Team. Both Kristina Koznick and Tasha Nelson started their skiing careers as members of the Buck Hill Ski Racing Team. Ski Magazine calls Buck the "Legendary capital of American ski racing."

It's just a little hill. Pretty amazing. Congratulations to Vonn.

There is No Global Warming - NOT

Global warming deniers, including one in my denomination, have been all over the news that a prominent expert scientist on global warming supposedly says there has been no warming since 1995. Not surprisingly, it turns out the scientist was quoted out of context:

The scientist in question is Professor Phil Jones, who is the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Suffice to say, this has made quite a hubbub around the blogosphere. The article is based on an interview that Jones gave to the BBC. Of course, delving into the article itself, it’s clear that Professor Jones did not say that there is no global warming since 1995. He says that there is no ’statistically significant’ global warming since 1995. Which still sounds bad.

Unless, of course, you actually read the interview.

B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

That’s hardly the same as “no global warming since 1995″ and certainly does not represent a “retreat” or a “U-turn.” (For a good primer on statistical significance and what that means, check out this link).

There are several other flagrant misinterpretations of Jones’ statements in the Daily Mail article, as well, but they’re pretty easy to spot simply by comparing the article to the interview and its companion piece.

Heck, reading the Daily Mail, one might come away with the impression that Jones was renouncing the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change. To correct that impression, let me just quote one more part of the interview:

E – How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

This is what happens when you get your news from FOX and Drudge. Facts are fungible. Scientists are only quoted if a portion of their quote can be twisted to match a preconceived ideology.

God's Presence in a Good Cigar

Norman Lear on where he finds God:

I consider myself deeply religious. I was born a Jew and I love my people and our culture. I could not be prouder of what, in our long history, we have brought to the world. But that is not what makes me religious.

What makes me religious is the way I experience life and the way I try to live it. In his book "Edith the Good," Spencer Marsh's thesis was that, although she never spoke of it per se, Edith Bunker's every reflexive reaction to any situation was what the writers thought Jesus' reaction would be. Marsh had it right; that is the way Edith was conceived. I'm not in that league by any means - Lyn and our children will certify that - but everything tells me that the world would be an exquisite place to live if we were all able to respond to life as Jesus did.

That is "mamaloshen," a Yiddish word describing the understanding that comes when one's common sense derives as much from the soul as the mind. The Sermon on the Mount is simple mama-loshen. And anything that ain't mama-loshen doesn't square with my religious sensibilities.

Of course, to most religionists these observations are dismissible. To them my words lack scriptural, theological and ecclesiastical weight. Still, ever since my early 20s when I smoked my first good cigar, I have felt that if there was no other reason to believe in God, Havana leaf would suffice. I've had similar epiphanies while biting into a ripe peach, a just-ready piece of Crenshaw melon or a great ear of corn.

Smart Cat Owners

Via Kevin Drum

And in other news, we have this:

A poll of 2,524 households found that 47.2% of those with a cat had at least one person educated to degree level, compared with 38.4% of homes with dogs.

"We don't know why there is this discrepancy," [said Dr Jane Murray, a lecturer in feline epidemiology at Bristol University]...."Our best guess is that it's to do with working hours and perhaps commuting to work, meaning people have a less suitable lifestyle for a dog."

Pshaw. It's because people of discriminating taste prefer cats. Let's not sugar coat this in order to be politically correct.

Amen.

It's Getting Harder and Harder to Hate Walmart

So says Michelle Harvey, who is in charge of working with Walmart on agriculture programs at the local Environmental Defense Fund office. This article in the new edition of The Atlantic tells the story of Wal-Mart's big move into supporting local farmers to bring fresh and local produce to its stores:

I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

As the article points out it remains to be seen what affect this will have on local economies and other grocers but if there is any business with the heft and the skill to make bringing local farm produce to grocer work on a massive scale it is Walmart. And if they do it will be good for the farmers and for our health and wallets. It is getting harder and harder to hate Walmart.

Egg in Plastic

I read the blog of Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein for his political commentary, but a couple of days ago he posted this video of how to poach an egg in plastic wrap. I tried it this morning. I learned that it is important to drop the egg into the middle of the pan of water without letting the plastic touch the side of the pan because when I wasn't careful about this the plastic melted against the pan and the egg slipped out into the water. It is amazing to me that the plastic doesn't melt in the boiling water. I will try it again tomorrow morning.

Snow Days

Heavy snow in the east makes the evening news, but here in the north snow is a minor nuisance for driving when it is falling and otherwise a part of everyday life. I love the snow. I can't imagine living in warm climates where there is none. This is my idea of a white sandy beach:















I was out snow-shoeing at Ritter Farm yesterday. The temperature was 15 degrees. The sun was out. There is nothing quite like the feel of cold weather. You know you are alive when you feel the cold air on your face and in your lungs as you inhale. And you also know that without proper clothing and protection you could pretty quickly not be alive. My hands were numbed in just the few minutes it took me to get my snow shoes on. It didn't take long walking to warm them up and by the end of my walk I was wet with sweat and carrying my gloves.

Our snow of a couple days ago had freshened everything up. I should have had my camera along the day before when there were no other tracks and when the groomed trail had just been refreshed.















I spooked a deer out of its bed but couldn't get the camera on it before it was out of sight. I apparently missed an angel touch down as well.

What Does CBS Stand For?

Let's hear it for the raging grannies:



HT: TPM

Caucus Lite

Two years ago I was a precinct organizer at my local caucuses and there was no parking available at the high school and it was standing room only in the classroom where members of my precinct gathered. Last night in the same classroom I was joined by 6 others from my precinct. I guess it can't be Easter Sunday every week.

It's Not All About Us

One of the bloggers I read is Drew Tatusko. Yesterday he had a post on the subject of original sin, raising the question of how Christian theology frames the doctrine of original sin when we no longer believe as the ancients did that sin was in some way biologically passed from generation to generation.

I am not much interested in arguing about original sin. What caught my attention was this part of Drew's post:

Time to get rid of total depravity and listen to the restoration movement and the teaching of John Cassian which offer a more elegantly simple and rational explanation for why we are so mean to each other sometimes and why animals have to survive by eating other animals and having lots of sex. Simply put, only God is perfect and so, the world and all that is in it was never perfect.

I am not familiar with the teaching of John Cassian. But I am interested in thinking about the question why if God is perfect the world is not perfect? Why if God is perfect, did this imperfect world happen? Why did God let it happen? I asked this question in comments on Drew's blog:

What I am missing here - and I am probably just dense - is how we get from a perfect God to an imperfect world? Not just fallen humanity, but earthquakes in Haiti. Did God just light the spark to start it all and then sit back and watch for humanity to get here billions of years later? Letting us evolve with the freedom to not be who we were created to be is somewhat troubling but workable. We at least have some choice in the matter. But what for God is the joy, point, purpose of being perfect and allowing or creating a universe to go on for billions of years that is so unpredictable and that involves so much suffering for all God's creatures.

Or is the perfect God just a metaphorical opposite of all the world is not?

There was no response to this question; the comments focused on the question of original sin, which was after all what Drew had posted about. The issue of original sin is important in Christian history and theology. Sometimes when I read these discussions, though, I think back to having toddlers in the house and those moments when they act and think as if they are the center of the universe even though they have only been on the planet for two years.

The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The first reptiles appeared 300 million years ago; mammals 75 million years ago; apes 35 million years ago and apelike humans 10 million years ago; homo sapiens a mere 200,000 years ago. Sometime in what seems like our distant past modern humans became aware of our mortality, our propensity to do harm to ourselves and others, and the idea that there might be a God up there who made us. And we began to wonder why God made us this way and whether we did something wrong somewhere along the way to screw things up.

But long before we were here - and I mean long in the sense that if you are thinking of the passing of a 24 hour day and at one minute before midnight we showed up thinking of ourselves as if the world revolves around us - there were plants and animals and there has been one very long history of life and death and suffering in our world. That predates us and our johny-come-lately worries by millions of years. Why? If God is perfect and God created it all, why?

By focusing on the question of original sin and what part we might play in our own suffering, I think we too easily let God off the hook. God gave us a choice and we made a mess of things, and so in some cosmic scheme of justice it makes sense that we are getting what we deserve. Or so the thinking goes. Even this idea is problematic but at least we can understand the kind of thinking that suggests that our suffering is somehow the result of our own bad choices. It is not God's fault; it is ours. God doesn't want to punish us, but has to be fair. It is for our own good, but God really loves us. That is why he sent us Jesus. And so it goes on and on and it is all about us.

What about the suffering of animals? What about that lamb that experiences a moment of fear and then intense pain when the lion bites into its neck? Did the lamb do something to deserve this fate? Why must it suffer? Where is God in this suffering?

To me this is a much more profound line of questioning to pose to and about God than why we humans are so nasty to each other. Why would a perfect God create a world where for millions of years on end all God's creatures endure pain and suffering? What is the joy in that? Is it really all for the glory of God?

In any case, it's not all about us.

Final Season of Lost Promises To Make Lost Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Beer and Healthcare Reform

I like beer; I support health care reform; this commercial combines them and nicely captures my sentiments:



Hat tip Andrew Sullivan

A Pact with the Devil

Pat Robertson has taken a widely deserved verbal pounding for his comments that the residents live in perpetual misery because they made a pact with the devil in order to gain their freedom from the French.

I actually think there is a grain of truth in Robertson's statement. I would suggest that there was in fact a "pact with the devil" made that sealed Haiti's future in perpetual suffering. That pact wasn't made by the residents of Haiti, though, but by the French and the British and the United States in a devil's deal that brought black slaves and their "free" labor from Africa to Haiti and the rest of the America's in exchange for white people's wealth.

The residents of Haiti who kicked out the French in 1804 were slaves. The native Americans on the island that now is divided into the Dominican Republic and Haiti had long ago been killed off by colonists or the diseases brought to the island by the colonists. The French gained control of the western half of the island from Spain in 1697 and named it Saint-Dominique. The French immediately began importing African slaves to the island to work the sugar fields. By the 1740's Saint-Dominique and Jamaica were the world's top suppliers of sugar. Saint-Dominique was making France very rich.

On the back of slaves. By 1789 twenty nine thousand African slaves were arriving each year in Saint-Dominique. One in three would be dead within three years. So the slaves kept pouring in. Slaves outnumbered natives and Europeans 8 to 1. In 1791 they revolted.:"The signal to begin the revolt was given by Dutty Boukman, a high priest of vodou and leader of the Maroon slaves, during a religious ceremony at Bois Caïman on the night of August 14." Robertson's pact with the devil.

It took more than a decade of rebellion and the continuing weakening of France on the world stage, but in 1804 the independent country of Haiti was born. The French, though, exacted a terrible price for giving up this prized sugar fix. They posted warships off the island and isolated Haiti for 21 years. They were aided by the Americans and British who were aghast at the dangerous idea of a successful revolt of slaves. Finally in 1825 the government of Haiti agreed to take out a loan with a French bank to compensate France for the loss of its sugar and its slaves. The amount of the loan was enormous and crippling. It was twice what the United States government had just paid France for the Louisiana Purchase. Paying off that debt impoverished Haiti for more than 100 years; in some years Haiti was paying 80% of its annual revenues to service its debt. It wasn't paid in full until 1947.

That was just the beginning of Haiti's debt woes which continue up to this day. And it only tells part of the story of Haiti's misery that also includes repeated invasion and occupation by the US, corrupt and cruel dictatorships, and natural disasters.

The people of Haiti are a resilient people. And they remain proud of their legacy of being the only country in history born of a successful slave revolt. With aid pouring in from around the world there is hope this time that the country can get a clean start, with new infrastructure, new jobs, and, for once, no debt. The nations of the western world owe it to Haiti to forgive it its debt and help it rebuild.

Let's not forget who it really was that made a pact with the devil that put Haiti on the path to perpetual misery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/186/34476.html

Free Market Disaster Relief

Our congregation is responding to the disaster in Haiti by turning our Souper Bowl day into a day of making health kits for Church World Service. The Church of the Brethren is one of the founding denominations of CWS and like many congregations in many denominations we channel much of our disaster relief response through CWS.

Meanwhile many individuals are donating through the Red Cross text-messaging appeal. Mennonite Central Committee is on the ground in Haiti, as is Food for the Hungry. Global Aid Network and Samaritan's Purse are there for those who wish to channel their giving through more evangelical outlets. And I am sure this is just the tip of the ice berg of agencies working in Haiti.

What I wonder is how it all works logistically? Do these agencies coordinate with each other? Do they work in their respective niches? Do they compete? Would there be a better way of doing it? Maybe there is so much need that it doesn't matter; anywhere you put up a tent with food or medicine you will be overwhelmed. But with all the email appeals I am getting from various organizations and all the media appeals it makes me wonder how it all works on the ground.

Meanwhile there is a certain irony that none of it works very well until this other organization arrives on the scene to coordinate logistics.

After Massachusetts

Ezra Klein speaks my sentiments:

For now, it's worth observing that a Democratic Party that would abandon their central initiative this quickly isn't a Democratic Party that deserves to hold power. If they don't believe in the importance of their policies, why should anyone who's skeptical change their mind? If they're not interested in actually passing their agenda, why should voters who agree with Democrats on the issues work to elect them? A commitment provisional on Ted Kennedy not dying and Martha Coakley not running a terrible campaign is not much of a commitment at all.

A whole year has been spent (lost?) getting us closer than we have ever been on health care overhaul. The House needs to pass the Senate bill as it is and then make changes through the reconciliation process. If they let a special election kill their signature issue when they are this close to getting it done, they don't deserve to be running the country.

Where is God in Haiti?

In religious communities disasters on the magnitude of Haiti inevitably bring up questions about God and suffering. Why does God allow suffering to happen? What kind of God would allow suffering like this to happen? Some people look at the stories of miraculous rescues coming out of Haiti and see the hand of God; others look at the enormous magnitude of the suffering and question if there even is a God. The great disparity of responses was illustrated by two neighbors in Haiti as reported in a USA article:

"It's a miracle," said Anne-Marie Morel, raising her arms to the sky after a neighbor was found alive in the rubble of a home. If one person could be resuscitated from the utter destruction of this street, there remained hope that many other could still be found alive, she said.

"Nonsense, there is no God and no miracle," shouted back Remi Polevard, another neighbor, who said his five children were somewhere under the nearby debris.

"How could he do this to us?" Polevard yelled.

I think spontaneous expressions of gratitude for miraculous rescues and cures is perfectly understandable. It is problematic, though, to raise this kind of emotional response to the level of universal principle. Does God really spare one person's family member and take another? What kind of God would that be?

In the face of great tragedy we each have to find our own answers to these deep questions that haunt our thinking about God and our faith. For me, it was precisely my inability to find a satisfactory answer to the God and suffering question that led me to believe that there is no all-powerful God with his or her hands on the levers of our lives. What kind of all-powerful God would allow suffering like this to happen - not the kind of suffering we bring on ourselves by our own poor choices but the kind of suffering that falls on innocent people? And if there was such an all-powerful God who is allowing, or causing, this kind of misery on the planet, this God would not be worthy of our worship. Or so I believe.

What I see when undeserved suffering washes over people is the absence of God. There is no one out there or up there. We are alone in the universe.

Or not quite. We have each other. We suffer together and we flourish together. And it seems that when we throw our hearts and minds into tending to the suffering and nurturing ourselves to health and wellness we experience the joys and sorrows of life together and this makes us feel the presence of hope and love and… God.

I do not think there is any satisfactory philosophical answer to the question of why more than 200,000 have died in Haiti and where in the name of God is God. The only satisfactory answer is found in doing something about the suffering, becoming the hands and heart of God.

Take that America's Team

This Steeler's fan is happy for the hometown Vikings.

Lost Supper

Over at GetReligion Terry Mattingly isn't too happy with the folks at Entertainment Weekly for their take on this last season promotional picture for Lost. Here is the quote from Entertainment Weekly:

FUN FACT! The Last Supper — Jesus’ final meal with his disciples before his crucifixion — is commemorated by Christians through the sacrament of Communion, the eating of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection. Some Christians believe that when you eat the bread and drink the wine, the stuff actually converts into the body and blood of Jesus during digestion, although their appearances remain the same. (Which explains the weird carpentry aftertaste.) This miraculous conversion is known by a fancy term: Transubstantiation, ”the conversion of one substance into another.” Example sentence: ”If Jack’s ”Jughead” plans works, he and the castaways will be transubstantiated into a new reality.”

Here is Terry Mattingly's response:

After reading this, please express your opinion on the following: The entertainment-magazine journalists who wrote and edited this tidbit were:

(a) Ignorant.

(b) Unprofessional.

(c) Silly and childish.

(d) Intentionally setting out to blaspheme a doctrine of ancient Christianity and, thus, to insult millions of believers.

(e) Counting on the fact that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox believers and Anglo-Catholics would not blow up their building.

(f) All of the above.

Thank you for your time. Many GetReligion readers will now want to go outside and scream.

Are there really Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglo-Catholics who would blow up a building because someone is making fun of their religious beliefs?

My guess is that the writers at Entertainment Weekly are irreligious and ignorant about not only the content of specific beliefs but about the dead(ly?) seriousness with which some believers take their religion here in America. They probably grew up watching Monti Python's Life of Brian and thought it was funny. And thought it was OK to poke fun at religion in our part of the world.

I think it really isn't OK for writers, even of fluffy entertainment magazines, to be ignorant about the subjects they write about. If they are going to write about transubstantiation they should at least make an effort to know what it means.

But I don't have any problem poking fun at anyone's religion or politics, mine included. If we can't take a little ribbing about our beliefs, which don't make always seem logical or make sense, then we have a pretty shallow kind of faith.

And we shouldn't be outraged or offended or surprised by mockery and humor about religion in this post-Christian age. It's actually good for us. Why do we believe what we believe? How can we explain it to people who don't understand? It helps us think more deeply about what our faith. No more mindless repeating of creeds or doctrines without knowing what they mean and without being able to explain them to someone who has no idea what you are talking about.

And if they don't want to understand, well we can rest in the comfort that they are going to burn in hell. Just kidding; I don't believe in any hell that is not of our own making here on earth.

Lighten up people! Or Get Lost!

Satan Offended by Pat Robertson

The best letter to the editor in the Star Tribune in response to Pat Robertson's inanity:

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll. You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan

Lily Coyle is identified as the letter writer.

Pot Calling Kettle

Dunker Journal links approvingly to these comments by Peter J. Leithart in Touchstone Magazine:

Gender-neutral names for God look so innocuous. What could be wrong with baptizing in the name of “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier”?

As Paul would say, much in every way. To name the First Person as “Creator” is to name him in relation to the world, and so too with “Redeemer” and “Sanctifier” for the Second and Third Person. But God isn’t defined by the creation. He’s defined by himself, which is why the First Person must be named in relation to One who is also God.

Gender-neutral names deny the freedom of God; they attack the God-ness of God, and as such, they are idolatrous.

Huh?

The Birth of a New Religion

David Pogue writes a widely read technology column for the New York Times. Recently he reviewed Google's new smart phone, the Nexus One. His review was mostly positive but he did offer a few criticisms. His column today is about the feedback he got from readers about his review:

Reader feedback about my review of Google's new cellphone yesterday was unusually voluminous and, in some sectors, vitriolic. Where I had written, "The Nexus One is an excellent app phone, fast and powerful but marred by some glitches," some readers seemed to read, "You are a pathetic loser, your religion is bogus and your mother wears Army boots."

He notes that he hasn't seen this kind of response to a technology column since the Apple/Microsoft wars. But now:

But guess what, gang? There's a new religion in these holy wars. And it's Google...And yet here is this new army of Google defenders, raising their spears and chanting as though you've insulted….Apple.

New religion. Holy Wars with an army raising their spears and chanting. Interesting use of religious association.

The Anchors of our Faith

James McGrath links to an interesting post by Ricky Carvel where Mr. Carvel talks about his struggle to reconcile his faith in God with his growing skepticism about whether the Bible actually "describes" that God. This prompts Jim to reflect on his own "life-transforming" experience of God that was more important in his faith formation than his belief in the Bible. This experiential "anchor" freed him to do critical study of the Bible and that critical study did not lead to the loss of faith. He wonders if those who resist critical study of the Bible do so because the Bible as the revelation of God is their anchor, more so than experience. Interesting question.

I never believed in the Bible as "the Word" of God. I was a sceptic about miracle stories and resurrections from the dead from childhood on. I also never had any kind of "saving relationship with Jesus Christ." In fact the two worst experiences of Christianity that I ever had growing up were going to a Billy Graham movie with a youth group and participating (by virtue of being in church on those Sundays) in a Lay Witness Renewal where the goal was to bring us to a saving relationship with Jesus and where I felt totally manipulated.

What "saved" me in church was the community made up of caring Sunday School teachers and youth group leaders and just lots of good people. With a very few exceptions I enjoyed church and was encouraged by pastors and other leaders who took an interest in me to raise the questions I was raising, and who embodied the way of Jesus in the way they lived their lives.

My "God" experiences growing up were mystical experiences in nature, in reading and thinking, and in relationships that I didn't think of as God experiences because I wasn't given the language to connect my experiences with God. They certainly were nothing like the God I heard talked about in church or read about in the Bible. It wasn't until I began reading about mystics and I learned that there was such a thing as an apophatic tradition within Christianity that I realized that my own spiritual experiences had a place in the big tent of historic Christianity. That helped keep my in the fold, so to speak, and eventually gave me a passion for reaching out to others who might have the same kind of non-traditional experiences.

What also helped was doing critical study of the Bible which had the seemingly curious effect of strengthening my faith. I learned that there wasn't just one understanding of God or one picture of Jesus in the Bible. The Bible itself was full of diversity and not only diversity but disagreement about Jesus and God and Truth. Furthermore the various authors weren't just channeling God or singing in harmony but were vigorously arguing a position with their contemporaries, and correcting the positions of those who came before. Learning a little church history and discovering the non-canonical gospels only confirmed this truth for me. There was never a golden age of unified belief and there has never been one correct picture of God, Jesus, or the Truth. Learning to read the Bible as an ongoing conversation or argument helped me re-engage the Bible as a beginning place for reflection about my faith.

Anyway, for me it wasn't believing in the Bible or having a life-transforming Jesus experience (language not used by Jim) that kept me within the fold of Christianity. It was community - not perfect community, but real community made up of imperfect but good-hearted people, which in its own way was a life-transforming anchor.

Lost Generation

A friend sent along this palindrome. It was created by a 20 year old for a contest by AARP titled "u @ 50". This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. It is very good.