Category: Thoughts for the Day

Some Interesting Comments on My Blog Postings

Friends have been so generous in not only reading what I post here, but in taking time to comment on the postings. In case you may have missed them, here are some comments of particular interest:

Jim Cashman sent me this video by way of comment on “Unconditional Support for Israel: Not even God would pass that test!”

Tzanchan 77 commented on “’Unconditional Support for Israel: Not even God would pass that test!”

Ah yes, Christians who butchered us for centuries now preaching to us about morality and how to defend ourselves. Perhaps you might do a review of the story of the town of Jedwabne in Poland during World War 2 when the good Catholics of that town brutalized their Jewish neighbours and then shoved them all into a barn and burned them alive. Not that long ago, Now, we have our tiny slice of land and you won’t even allow us that. My Mother and her family got quietly onto the cattlle cars. She survived if you can call it that, the rest of the family didn’t. Now we say, the hell with you, we will no longer go quietly.

BRS commented on “Lincoln:” A first-rate second-rate film”:

This seems like a pretty tough review of one of the best movies of
the year and an unfair critique an individual universally recognized
as one of the great presidents in American history. Who says it’s one
of the best movies of the year? The people who review movies. Who says
Abraham Lincoln is one of the best Presidents of all time? Anyone who
knows anything about American history.

You’re quite right that Lincoln’s priority was preserving the Union
and I think Spielberg was pretty explicit about communicating that in
his film. What was also clear, to me at least, was that Lincoln was a
really gifted and savvy politician who didn’t have to push for an end
to slavery but chose to when he saw an opportunity. Now, you’ve argued
that the main explanations for this were political and economic. That
northern industrialists to whom he was beholden figured out that
sweatshop labor was cheaper than owning slaves. That the future of the
economy was in low-wage labor and industrial production, railroads and
mining. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not. What I do know is that
Lincoln made the push to end slavery after being re-elected, which
suggests there was little to be had in terms of political gain. Did
ending slavery make economic sense too? It probably did. I don’t know
why any of that matters though. It didn’t change the result. The war
ended and so too did slavery. Now, if you were to read Doris
Kearns-Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, from which the movie Lincoln
was adapted, you’d learn that, for Lincoln, ending slavery was as much
about principle as politics and as much about morality as the economy.
Of course preserving the Union was his priority. And, of course,
ending slavery was a secondary consideration driven by moral, economic
and yes, political, imperatives. What’s news about that though? And
what movie did you watch in which that wasn’t clear?

Your argument then, seems to be, Okay, President Lincoln preserved the
Union and ended slavery in America for all time. But, because there
were not entirely noble political and economic considerations and
factors at work (in addition to moral and human ones which you don’t
address) that makes Lincoln a second rate president? I just don’t
follow that.

Second rate means mediocre or inferior in quality or value. It is not
a term to be used lightly and certainly not one you would expect to be
associated with a great –and very human– President like Abraham
Lincoln or an award winning film maker like Steven Spielberg.
Having said all of that, it was fun to read your review of this film. I do hope you will keep submitting topical movie reviews –in addition to your other entries– for all of your readers and followers to enjoy and discuss.

Bill Wilson commented on “The Trouble with Prophets”

There is an additional tragedy about prophets in addition to the fact that we either demonize or ignore them. We pervert their message with terrible consequences. The perversion of the original message Moses mediated to the Hebrews gave us the annihilation of whole communities, if the Torah and the Judges are to be believed. The perversion of Jesus’ message gave us the slaughter of Jews, Moors, native Americans and dissenting Christians, and a residual caste system that co-opts the Gospel and brooks no dissent. The perversion of Marx gave us Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Cousescou, et al. It’s almost as if the divine call to justice, mercy and compassion has a built-in self-destruct mechanism.

I think it was Peguy who said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Sometimes I think God is using mirror writing of a type that is ultimately indecipherable to us…Paul’s “mirror” on steroids, the reverse side of the tapestry, which will ultimately prove unintelligible on either side. Pardon the cynicism, but I was just rejoicing that Mahoney, however belatedly, has been barred from ministry only to learn from folks far less naive than I, that this move probably contains a major act of revenge by the Opus Dei gang against the cardinal’s liberal record on social issues.

Winston Leyland commented on “Marx and Jesus: The trouble with prophets”

Good article on prophets, Mike. To those mentioned can be added the names of Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton (especially in his anti war writings), Oscar Wilde, Harvey Milk and many others. And what a prophetic and catalytic young man was Aaron Swartz.

Be Like Jesus: Break the Commandments!

Since last Sunday and a sermon I heard about Ezra reading “the law” to the people for hours, I’ve been thinking about Jesus and the law. Chief among my reflections is the one that sees Jesus as anything but the stickler for the law that Christians have made him out to be. Neither is God primarily concerned with “keeping the commandments.” Rather, as God’s Symbol, Jesus revealed a God of compassion, not the angry punisher we’ve been schooled to believe in. Let me explain.

To begin with, we often confuse the Jewish meaning of The Law with laws. “The Law” refers to the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Jewish Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those books tell the story of Israel’s foundation with the focus on the account of the liberation from Egypt under the leadership of the rebel hero, Moses. Those readings reveal a God whose main interest is in liberating an enslaved people from oppression by the rich and powerful.

So when the priest-scribe, Ezra, read the Law to the people in last Sunday’s selection from Nehemiah (8:2-6, 8-10), he was telling them the basic story of Israel’s foundation – something they had apparently become foggy about during their more than fifty years of exile in Babylon (586-531 BCE). He was reminding them that they had been enslaved much more cruelly in Egypt than they had in Babylon.

Their oppression in both instances should have reminded them of The Law’s basic thrust – viz. Do not forget where you came from! As a result of such memory, the inheritors of the Mosaic tradition were to take care of slaves, widows, orphans, resident aliens, and “the poor” in general – people like themselves. “The Law” was a call to freedom and compassion – not to guilt, shame and judgment of others.

Over the years, however, especially under the tutelage of the priestly classes, understanding of “The Law” shifted from the myth of Israel’s origins to strict rules and regulations. These were also contained in the first five books of the Jewish Testament, but were not as central as the Exodus story. The regulations had multiplied over the more than a thousand years between their supposed formulation and the life of Jesus.

And by Jesus’ time the professional religious classes of priests, scribes, and lawyers had virtually identified being a good Jew with observance of the legal codes of the lawyers and priests. If you kept the laws, you were a good Jew and “clean.” If you did not (or could not) you were “unclean” and excommunicated. People were considered unclean because of their occupations (e.g. tax collectors, shepherds, and prostitutes). They could also become “unclean” for touching a corpse or, in the case of women, by simply experiencing their menstrual periods.

What I’m saying is that by Jesus’ time, Jewish laws had become burdensome and oppressive. They had assumed disproportionate importance over the story of Israel’s beginnings. They were interpreted as calling community members to invidious judgments rather than to compassion.

This is where “the Prophets” came in. Together “The Law and the Prophets” comprised the Jewish Testament I’ve been referring to. The prophets were people like Elias, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, John the Baptist – and Jesus. They represented a counterbalance to legalistic interpretations of scripture.

When the prophets spoke of the Law, they were referring more than anything to the story of God’s compassion for oppressed people. That’s what Jesus meant when he said “I have come not to abolish the Law or the prophets but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17). In fact, the prophetic task by and large was to call Israel back to its origins. The prophets (and Jesus in particular) harshly criticized the priestly classes and their legalist allies for giving too much import to the laws as opposed to Israel’s great Myth of Origin — the The Law.

So Jesus got into great trouble with the lawyers and priests for breaking the laws in the name of The Law. Especially galling to the religious leaders of his day was Jesus’ willingness to put compassion ahead of the Law of Laws, Sabbath observance. He even put that law in its place by giving it a completely humanist interpretation: “The Sabbath was made for human beings; human beings were not made for the Sabbath” (Mk. 2: 27).

That’s what I mean by urging “Be like Jesus: break the Commandments!” I mean we should be humanistic and put compassion above the legalisms we’ve come to identify as Christianity.