Order vs. Anarchy: The Ten Commandments (Part 1)

The Ten Commandments are summarized as follows (with broader understanding in parentheses):
1. You will not worship other gods.
2. You will not make any idols.
3. You will not make wrongful use of the Name of God.
4. You will observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
5. You will honor your father and mother (and all lawful authority).
6. Do not murder (or hurt anybody).
7. Do not commit adultery (or commit any sexual sin).
8. Do not steal (or cheat).
9. Do not bear false witness (or lie, gossip, or misrepresent).
10. Do not covet anything that belongs to someone else.

There are two parts to this list:
Commandments 1-4 have to do with our relationship with God.
Commandments 5-10 have to do with our relationships with others.

If our relationship with God is good, our relationship with others should be good. If we have little or no relationship with God so we are not following the first four commandments, then our relationship with others won’t be as it should be and we will end up breaking most of the last six commandments.

God put into place the Ten Commandments so that we would be able to live the kind of life God intended for us: having the right relationship with God and one another. God wants us to have an orderly and caring society rather than anarchy and chaos. Because Europe and the Americas have a Judeo-Christian heritage, we see there a respect for life and a more humane society than is typically found elsewhere.

More on this topic in a future post.

The Royal Baby

I am fascinated by the attention being paid in the United States to the royal baby and the royals in general. We broke from England and established a nation that had no king or queen, only elected citizens who were supposed to serve for limited periods and then go home to resume their lives. Yet there seems to be this inborn desire for a king.

Over in Newburgh, NY during the Revolutionary War, one of George Washington’s officers suggested that he be made king once the new nation was established. Washington not only rejected this suggestion but was angry with the officer for even suggesting such a thing. Sadly, we’ve turned the presidency into a sort of royal office with special music played when the president enters the room (“Ruffles and Flourishes” and “Hail to the Chief”). Is that really necessary?

Because of this natural tendency to want a king or queen, we Americans follow the British royals as if they were our own. However, we have our eyes on the wrong king. We should remember the words of Psalms 47:6-8
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the king of all the earth;
sing praises with a psalm.
God is king over the nations;
God sits on his holy throne.

Let us follow what we read in Psalms 145:1-3
I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you,
and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.

God is above all earthly powers. Let’s keep that in mind and turn our eyes toward God, the creator and sustainer of life.

Classism in America

With the recent verdict declaring George Zimmerman not guilty of murder in the killing of Trevon Martin, there’s been a lot of talk about racism in America. These are good discussions to have, but missing from much of rhetoric is another “ism”, classism. Let me give you a few examples of classism:

Suppose you were walking down a city street late at night, and a young black guy in a hoodie and jeans approaches you. Would you be apprehensive? Most likely you would.

Now, suppose you are on the same street late at night and a well-dressed young black man approaches you. Would you be apprehensive? Most likely you would not.

What’s the difference? The well-dressed young man is perceived to be of a better class and therefore less likely to rob you than the supposedly lower class guy. We trust better dressed clean-cut people of any race.

My guess is that if Trevon hadn’t been wearing a hoodie, he might not have been followed by Zimmerman. Wearing a hoodie that hides your face automatically makes you suspect in some people’s minds.

But dress isn’t everything. As we saw, we’d be apprehensive if a black guy in hoodie and jeans approached us late at night on a city street. Now suppose we noticed that he’s carrying a Bible. Would we be less apprehensive? I suspect we would.

While racism in various forms certainly does exist, so do other “isms” that are just as pernicious. Why do we have such persistent prejudices? It’s the fallen human condition. If you had a society in which the inhabitants were homogeneous except for the color of their eyes, do you think there would be no prejudice? My guess is that the brown-eyed people would hate the blue-eyed people, and vice-versa.

As long as we keep our eyes (no matter what color) on people and not on God, we’ll fall short. As long as we ignore God’s command (found in various forms in most religions) to “love your neighbor” and “do unto others” then we’ll have prejudice, persecution, tribalism, and war.

Let’s keep our eyes on God, who created heaven and earth (and it was good), and made human beings in his image.

The Zimmerman Verdict

A lot has been written recently about the verdict of “not guilty” for George Zimmerman. Nevertheless, I would like to add my two cents’ worth concerning the case.

First of all, I do believe Zimmerman was profiling Martin. The young man was wearing a hoodie, which automatically makes him suspect in some people’s eyes. Second, of course, he was black. As Martin’s father stated in an interview, if Martin hadn’t been black this whole thing would not have occurred.

Second, I believe that Zimmerman was the aggressor in that he followed Martin when he was told not to do so by the 911 operator. Who ended up on top of whom is almost immaterial, because Zimmerman continued to pursue the young man for no reason except, in Zimmerman’s eyes, Martin didn’t belong there.

So I believe that the verdict should have been manslaughter, but the jury saw it differently. Sadly, this will set back race relations in this country. Blacks will feel frustrated and will believe that there is no justice for African Americans. There are no winners in all this, just losers. Martin’s parents have lost a son, and Zimmerman’s life will never be the same.

So where do we go from here? Hopefully, this sad affair will get us thinking about our own prejudices, subtle though they may be. While we might not go out and shoot somebody, we do harbor biases that may, at least to some extent, influence our behavior and attitudes. By the way, I’m referring to biases on both sides, not just on the part of whites. Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “cracker” may not be the equivalent of the “N” word, but it does reveal some prejudice on his part as well.

I'm Back!

After a prolonged absence, I am back to blogging. I know I haven’t submitted a post for quite some time, but the last six months have been very busy. As of July 1, 2013, I retired from full-time parish ministry. Since I was no longer pastor of the church I had been serving for 11 years, my wife and I had to move out of the parsonage. Since we were downsizing, the move required a lot of decision-making as to what to keep and what to discard. So the whole preparation and packing operation took several months. By the time we moved into our new place and got settled, we were exhausted.

Now that I have more time on my hands, I would like to resume blogging, hopefully providing you with helpful insights about religion and other topics. I also have a number of projects that I want to accomplish in my retirement, and we hope to take some nice trips. So I think we will both be pretty busy for the foreseeable future. Moreover, I believe God will reveal to us what ministries he would like us to participate in. I doubt if we will be involved in any full-time ministry – after all, we are retired. But I also don’t believe God’s going to put us on the shelf. It will be interesting to see what God has in mind for the two of us. But I think now is the time to focus on getting settled in our new home as well as getting into our new routine.

Although we are not from Dutchess County originally, we like it here and decided to stay in the area. I’m looking forward to communicating with you through the blog, and hopefully providing you with some thought-provoking opinions. You may not always agree with me, and that’s fine, but I hope to provide you with some insights that you might not get anywhere else.

Tragedy in Newtown – Part 2

This latest mass murder in Newtown, Connecticut, is the latest in a series of shootings that goes back many years. I addressed some of the issues surrounding these mass shootings in a previous post. In this post, I just want to give a few personal reflections on this particular tragedy.

As I look back over my 60 some years, I can think of many high profile tragedies that I lived through. Many of them involved guns. Probably the first one of any significance was the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963. I remember it vividly. Probably the next series of tragedies that I recall happened in that terrible year of 1968, when both Bobby Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. And we had the Challenger explosion and more recently we experienced 9/11. The events of September 11, 2001, were personal to me for a number of reasons. First, I knew people who worked in the towers who were killed. Also, I witnessed it from my office window as well as on television.

The killings in Newtown were also personal to me. I don’t think I know anybody involved in this tragedy, but I can very much relate to it. We used to live in New Fairfield, Connecticut, a town not unlike Newtown. As a matter of fact, New Fairfield isn’t all that far from Newtown. We have driven through Newtown any number of times, so we know it well. In addition, our two grandchildren attend schools in Danbury, not all that far from Newtown. The Danbury schools were locked down during the crisis.

These killings and superstorm Sandy were events that took place very close to home. Usually it is “other people” in other parts of the country or the world who experience these terrible tragedies. I’m thinking of New Orleans; Joplin, Missouri; Aurora, Colorado; and other parts of the country. But this year, between Sandy and Newtown, we have had devastation and death much closer to home than we are used to.

With Sandy, I believe we are reaping the results of the seeds of destruction we have sown by polluting the atmosphere to the point where we have climate change. With Newtown, we are reaping the results of the seeds of destruction we have sown with respect to filling our children’s minds with violence and garbage. We can’t just keep going on the way we have been. 9/11 resulted in significant changes in our systems of airport and other kinds of security. Sandy will hopefully result in building codes or zoning laws that will prevent people from building in places where it is just too dangerous. Newtown will hopefully result in changes to the way we treat the mentally ill, improvements to gun laws, and perhaps some restraints on what we allow the media to portray.

Pray for this country, because we are confusing freedom with license. Pray that our leaders will do something to address the issues I’ve mentioned. Most importantly, we need God back in public discourse. How do we expect people to behave when we’ve eliminated the transcendent moral compass provided by religious faith?

Tragedy in Newtown – Part 1

The governor of the State of Connecticut made a profound statement in one of his press conferences on Friday afternoon. He said, “Evil visited Newtown today.” Sadly, this is the latest in a series of senseless shootings that have happened in the United States over the past few years. They seem to be coming with increasing frequency. What made this shooting especially evil was not only the number of people killed, 26, but the fact that most of them were six or seven years of age. What kind of person kills little children?

Obviously the shooter is deranged, and I’m sure we’ll find out more about him over the next few days. As with each shooting, there is a lot of handwringing and talk of better gun control. However nothing ever comes of it. While tightening the requirements to own a gun, and limiting the type of weapons that people can purchase (such as assault rifles) at the federal level, would perhaps reduce the number of these shootings, they would not totally prevent them.

How can we stop the killing? I see three problems that need to be addressed in order to protect our citizens adequately. The first problem has to do with gun control. The problem with gun control is that you can never completely control anything by making it illegal. We tried to eliminate liquor and that was a colossal failure. We’ve tried to eliminate all kinds of narcotics, and that has been a failure. We’ve tried to limit guns with stricter gun control laws, and have not been successful. So we can never totally keep guns out of the hands of those that should not have them. But what we can do, is make it more difficult for certain people to acquire a gun, particularly a pistol. That can be done at the federal level by requiring background checks, waiting periods, and other ways to try to prevent the wrong people from acquiring weapons.

The second problem we have is the culture of violence that is prevalent in this country. We see violence in many television programs, movies, games, and books. When a child is immersed in such a culture, I believe they become hardened and do not see violence as particularly wrong. Games and the media have legitimized violence, so somebody who is mentally ill might see slaughtering innocent people as a reasonable thing to do. How else do you explain the senseless murder of 20 little children in their classrooms? I’m not sure what the answer is concerning this culture of violence, but I think there should be much less of it, particularly the gruesome kind of stuff you find in horror movies. From what I understand, games are terribly violent. What are we doing to our kids’ minds?

The third problem we have in this country, that really should be dealt with soon, is the fact that the mentally ill are not properly cared for. Years ago, we emptied out the psychiatric hospitals, turning these people loose with little or no supervision. Not only is that not fair to people who have mental issues, but it’s not fair to the general population, especially when some of these patients may be dangerous. Unfortunately, it’s usually difficult to determine who might be dangerous. You can’t put everyone who acts a little strangely away in an institution. However, there should be evaluations made for those who appear to be mentally ill, and based on what those tests reveal take the appropriate action.

For a so-called advanced, or progressive, country, we are not doing a very good job of protecting our citizens from random violence, caring for our mentally ill, and controlling what our young people see in the media. Unless we as a country address some of these issues, I believe we will have to have armed guards at every school and perhaps in every mall. While that might help provide employment for many people, it is a sad commentary on our society.