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Women have fared badly in all religions. If someone tries to convince you that somewhere goddess-worshippers or witches were exceptions, they are making that up: Stories of these date mainly from the 20th century and only pretend to be archaic.
Religious leaders should make concern for the environment one of the two or three top issues. If we do not survive, we do not do anything else, either. And "we," our descendants, will not survive on our present course.
"Our tradition," Christian "of the Lutheran persuasion," if it is true to Luther and the originating documents refuses even to try to answer the "why" the killing happened--except in respone to what can be known about the warped mind of the killer. That is, we cannot answer "why" one student was spared and another hit.
Taking off from Max Scheler, on whom Pope John Paul II wrote his doctoral dissertation: the "offender" has to ask not "what did I do?" or "what kind of person am I that I could do that?" but "what kind of person am I now that I am capable of doing that?"
An aggrieved party (e.g. the Rutgers team) has to feel that the offender has asked himself that, and can then take him or her seriously. Christians (and I try to be one) live between "unforgivingness" and "cheap grace."
Unforgiving? Jesus has parables denouncing the forgiven who can't forgive others. They have not caught on.
We are not to be interested in casual, public relations-related apologies. All onlookers can spot a phony who uses them.
Forgiving is great: neither party has to keep on keeping score. So it is liberating. But the forgiver has to be aware that after the mouthing of the "I'm sorry" phrase, we do not always or even often see amended lives.
One always hopes, and, therefore, takes risks.
On this question I suppose I should declare "I have an interest," because I am a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and, to pile it on, an ordained minister in it. Further, I am a friend and fan--dare one call one's self that?--of the Presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, and the local bishop, Paul Landahl, was my pastor for twenty-two years and remains a cherished friend. With only one exception (heading the committee that drafted a "concordat" between ELCA and the Episcopal Church), I've not been directly involved in ELCA affairs, and feel free to pick and choose my issues.
The gay ordinations theme has not been central in my thinking and work, but circumstances push it ever closer to the center. I often observe in editorials and lectures that every Christian church body in the world is torn apart over issues that one can grasp in two terms, "sex" and "authority."
Sex means the whole biological range, with controversies over in vitro fertilization, contraception, abortion, stem cell research, sexual interactions. Authority means who decides issues in the modern world where we all have so much freedom. The ELCA is far along in what appears to me to be a comprehensive and searching study of "sex-and-your-faith," and is due to report in 2009.
"Atheism is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." Oops! That first word was supposed to be "Religion."
Never mind. The two cancel each other out. But since "religion" came up as a topic, we can play with "atheism" as a substitution.
Most societies and polities throughout history were shaped or influenced by some form or other of religion: Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Native American, etc. They were all mixed bags, since everything human is some sort of mixed bag.
Can the use of torture ever by justified?
Yes, by anti-human beasts.
No, by those with humane, humanitarian, humanist impules.
Never, by Jew and Christians and other religious people who believe that the "human is made in the image of God."
You don't torture someone "made in the image of God," no matter how despicable he or she has become.
You must forgive if:
- your enemy pleads for forgiveness
- gives any signs of sincerity
- especially if she or her shows resolve to make amends or to change
You cannot FORCE forgiveness on anyone, and it is meaningless if it is only "pro forma" and generic. The forgiver-to-be must look at the other as someone who has been made in the image of God, though there are no signs of that in him or her when committing atrocity.
It is hard to measure degrees of atrociousness: all war wounds on the innocents are atrocities, so we have committed many when we bomb cities, yet we do not repent and ask for forgiveness. Yet a nation can shows signs of regard for others made in the image of
God and can seek to restore the enemy to a positive place in world society.
For the Christian, this question is most intense, since in the gospels and the New Testament letters, disciples and others are constantly asked to forgive - and not to claim innocence.
"Jewish identity"---like all ethnic/racial/religious/class identities--was an is easiest to appreciate and fortify where a group is in the minority, preferably a minority that it subject to prejudice by outsiders. It is easy to keep when there is spatial separation, as with the Amish, or in the shtetls of the Pale in Europe the Lower East Side in New York a century ago.
The problems for retaining identity come for some of the following reasons: the environment turns at least neutral and at best friendly; there is assimilation to the surrounding culture; entrance to and exit from the group is more casual and easier to obtain; where intermarriage diffuses the identity of second and third generations.
All these factors are creating problems for the American Jewish communities. Many Jews do not care much about identity, but those who do work to fortify what is left of group coherence. Here again, there are problems: in "the Old Country" one attracting and defining element was Torah, and with it, regular synagogue attendance, or belief in God. I read widely in the Jewish press and find that these three elements are weakening or not even retrievable. For thousands of Jews, Israel and the modern state of Israel served and, for many, they still do. Every opinion survey one friends will make clear that Israel is "it." Yet, again, critics and editorialists from within note considerable decline in support of Israel among younger Jews and exogamous Jews
Moral ambiguity about Israeli policies in respect to Palestinians also causes some stepping back by many Jews, with resultant agony over identity.
Whether Israel can bear all the wait it has been asked to by American Jews is a tough issue. Devotion to broader Jewish history, scriptures, and the like, might reverse some tides, but the tides still flow strongly.
"Pride" has suffered a fall since we began to learn in 2003 that boasting of our being the dominant power in the world and the most powerful in history did not help us in recent wars and now we even go running to little countries with big banks to stay alive financially. So it's bruised, but it'll be back.
"Sloth," which does not mean laziness-sloth, is always a candidate. It means, in Thomas Aquinas' concept, sadness in the face of spiritual good, the inability to "get up" for anything. It is benumbing, and indulging in it may be helpful in our quest to forget that we are in a war--"which no one noticed" at the mall.
"Lust" is colorful and gets tabloid attention but has its limits.
I vote for greed, which shows up on all pages of domestic coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, etc. We Jesus-people have heard that we cannot serve God and Mammon, the god of material things like money, but we don't pay too much attention to that accent of Jesus, and devote energies to satisfying our greedy impulses which, by definition, cannot be satisfied. "Envy" goes with this one.
That takes care most of the seven "capital" (head of a column, not "deadly" originally) sins, leaving "gluttony," which is good for the diet industry and "anger," which readers may well show those of us who have not spoken of their favorite.
The Question: What does the Eliot Spitzer scandal say about our public and private morality? Should he have resigned?
Yes, Governor Spitzer should have resigned. New York government would have been paralyzed and the media would have remained paroxysmal in its obsession with the story of one person, while six billion others also have lives to live.
What does his fall tell us about the state of morals in the United States? Ethicists urge that one should not make full-blown generalizations on the basis of single extreme cases. This is an extreme case. Step back from it and survey the scene, and you will find plenty of moral lapses and human faults and falls to inspire immeasurable whining, finger-pointing, and judging.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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