Cut So You Won't Run

I have been agonizing over circumcision every since my son was born almost thirty years ago. To cut or not to cut, that was the question. I decided to cut, not wanting my son to be the first Jewish boy in our family to not bear the sign of the Covenant. Yet there was and is no doubt in my mind that circumcision is a primitive and barbaric act. I do not believe God actually requires the removal of a baby boy’s foreskin; this is about tribe, pure and simple.

As a congregational rabbi I was often called upon to defend circumcision to mothers who just could not get over the brutality of the act. Since neither my congregants nor myself were orthodox believers, I could not hide behind the belief that God commands all Jewish boys to be circumcised. I could not defend circumcision, but neither could I abandon it. So I’d say something inane like, “It’s like getting your hand stamped at a concert. It gets you in the door.” The analogy was weak. And who would want to hear a band that required you to cut off the foreskin of your penis to get into the concert? And the fact that girls get in free, also seemed unfair, and weakened the analogy unless of course the concert was at a gay bar and now girls were allowed.

Today things are different. A new and exhaustive study of circumcised New Zealanders who were snipped at birth and monitored for 25 years to see how things went, proves that boys who are circumcised are less likely to get and transmit HIV and other STDs. Yeah, YHVH! You go, God!

The reason for this is simple: circumcised guys have less sex. No! My mistake. The study showed that the uncircumcised penis is a festering cauldron of infectious disease, while the circumcised penis is a beacon of cleanliness (yes, pun intended). I may be overstating the case a bit, and I have no hands on knowledge (yes, another pun) of how foul the uncircumcised penis may be, but now all us rabbis who are called upon to defend this tribal practice can point to cutting edge (yes, I know, I can’t help myself) science to back them up.

Now what shall we do with all of you still clinging to your foreskin? You could have it surgically removed. Remember Abraham was circumcised in his nineties, so it is never too late. Or you could learn to keep it cleaner. I have no idea is there is such a thing, but someone could make a lot of money marketing a special brush for the uncircumcised penis. I’d suggest calling it Head-On, but that is already taken.

Of course if the New Zealand study proved that circumcision was bad for you, Jews would still do it. After all, God is God, and if he demands a foreskin you’d better give him a foreskin. But it is good to know that membership (stop me!) in God’s club is not just good for the Jews.

(I will be in Israel for the next week or so, and may be unable to post from there. I’ll blog again as soon as I am able.)

December is for Christians

The war is over. It was angry, nasty, and blessedly brief. I am talking of course about the War Against Christmas.

Last year Christmas was besieged by the oh so generic Happy Holiday Warriors for a Politically Correct Winter Debt Fest. These radicals demanded a December that was made all Americans feel welcome. Bowing to these bandits of the bland, Wal-Mart and other retailers instructed their employees to eschew “Merry Christmas” for “Happy Holidays” or the even more universal “Have a Delightful December”. Rising up to defend their heritage, Christian soldiers demanded that Christmas be restored to its proper place as America’s foremost December celebration. They brought Wal-Mart to its knees (figuratively if not literally).

This week Wal-Mart announced that it will celebrate Christmas once again. Linda Blakley, Wal-Mart’s spokeswoman said, “We’re not afraid to use the term ‘Merry Christmas.’ We’ll use it early, and we’ll use it often.” Hoo-rah!

While some of you may not be happy with the Christian focus of Wal-Mart’s November/December marketing, I find it most helpful. According to Ms. Blakley, Wal-Mart will be labeling 60% more merchandise as “Christmas” rather than “Holiday” merchandise. This makes shopping much less stressful for me, as I worry that as a Jew I might inadvertently buy a Christmas items masked by the generic “Holiday” label. Now, like cigarettes marked with the Surgeon General’s Warning, I will know which things are “Christmas” and therefore dangerous to my Jewish health.

Macy’s, too, is jumping on the Christmas sleigh. Promising to fill all its store windows with Christmas themes, Macy’s is making it clear that December belongs to Jesus. Of course how that jibes with the company’s express desire to “make every customer feel welcomed and appreciated, whether they celebrate Christmas or other holidays” is still a mystery to me, but I am sure they will come up with something.

Another victory of the Christmas crowd is the customer greeting. Last year employees were urged to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” in hopes of not offending the nonChristian. This year both Macy’s and Wal-Mart employees are being instructed to tailor their season’s greeting to the person being greeted: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Feliz Navidad being four possible choices.

I worry, however, that employees will have trouble figuring out which greeting to use, and will resort to some variation of racial or ethnic profiling. To avoid both profiling and greeting gaffs, I urge shoppers to wear buttons clearly identifying their holiday preference. Jews, for example, might where a blue and white button that reads, “Kiss Me, I’m Chosen.” Or African Americans might wear a black, red, and green button that reads, “Habari Gani?” And Hispanic people might where the colors of their native land with the words “Spock is an Alien; I live here” printed on it. I’m sure you can come up with your own slogan, and whatever you choose please be gracious to these poor salespeople who are simply trying to get by on an unlivable wage.

Feeling Haggard

This is an open letter to Rev. Ted Haggard, the leader of the 30 million strong National Association of Evangelicals, who has admitted to homosexuality and drug abuse.

Dear Rev. Haggard,

First of all let me assure you that this letter is written with all humility and concern. Pundits are calling you a hypocrite for your anti-homosexual preaching and politics, and you have called yourself a liar and deceiver. Such labeling gets us nowhere, and I won’t indulge in it.

Lots of us who preach do not practice, and if we are sincere and honest with ourselves the mismatch between what we say and what we do causes us great pain. I suspect your use of meth was your way of masking that pain.

Secondly, let me assure you that being gay is no sin, and God will not punish you for it. The sin is hiding your true self, and the punishment is having to live a lie every day of your life. But God has given you an opportunity to redeem yourself, not through self-recrimination, but through self-revelation.

Reverend, you can make a huge difference in people’s lives. You can tell your fellow evangelicals the truth: you didn’t choose to be gay; you were born that way. God made you that way, just as God has done for 10% of humanity.

You can tell your church that you are gay and that God loves you. You can tell your church that you are the way God made you and wants you to be, and that you are entitled to God’s love, and the love of your fellow Christians, and the love of a good man if that is what you choose.

Yes, you owe your wife and children a terrible apology, and they may never forgive you, but the greater tragedy is that you did not have the courage to tell the truth and live out the life God offered you as a loving gay man of God.

This is the gift God is offering you now. Speak to your church and your fellow evangelicals. Tell them that God loves you, and that the only mistake you made was living a lie, a lie demanded by your church’s homophobia, and not by God. It is the lie not the homosexuality that God condemns. Tell them it is time to end the lying. Invite homosexuals to let God love them as God made them. Challenge your church to love them as well.

If you take refuge in self-condemnation you are failing God, your church, and yourself. Ask forgiveness from your family, your church, and your God not only for the mistakes you made, the mistakes so many would make in the same situation, but for not having the courage to be who you are. Be who you are, Reverend. Be who God made you to be.

All We Have To Fear Is...

We live in scary times. At least I thought we did. But the November issue of ODE magazine features a wonderful article by Marco Visscher that debunks five of our fears. Here is what he has to say.

FEAR ONE: There are more wars in the world today than ever before. Not so. The number of conflicts fell at least 40 percent over the past 15 years, and the number of genocides and political assassinations since 1988 has fallen 80 percent. Not only is the number of wars decreasing, but the amount of death they cause is also falling. In 1950 the average war claimed 38,000 lives. Today that number is down 98 percent to 600. I don’t what Mr. Visscher does with the numbers out of Iraq. Take that CNN.

FEAR TWO: Arms proliferation is up. Despite nukes in North Korea and (soon) Iran (and then Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Egypt) international arms trade has fallen 33 percent between 1990 and 2000. I had a feeling it was getting harder to buy that tank I wanted for deer hunting. Thank God for the NRA.

FEAR THREE: Wars kill more civilians than soldiers. While it is true that things are worse than in WWI when only 5 percent of the casualties were civilians, today the number is only somewhere between 30 and 60 percent.

FEAR FOUR: Women and children are the real casualties of war. The fact is that since it is primarily men who wage war, it is men who die most often in them: 90 percent in most wars, and 60 percent in Kosovo and Iraq. Of course if you are a feminist as I am, you long for the day when women and men die equally in war.

FEAR FIVE: I could be the victim of a terror attack at any minute. Unless I live in Iraq this is not really so. I am much more likely to die in a car accident or from eating too many transfats than at the hands of a terrorist. Maybe we should be testing drivers for alcohol before they get behind the wheel the way we test travelers for over three ounces of Coke (not coke, nobody seems to be checking for that).

So it seems all my fears are for naught. So why is everyone trying to scare me? Do they think it will make me more compliant as I stand in long lines to be screened for mouthwash? Or do they imagine that I will vote for the candidate who can out scare the guys who are scaring me? Or maybe they figure if I am scared enough I won’t notice the fact that the middle class is fading, the poor are increasing, the debt is crushing our kids, and the Constitution is falling victim to homophobes and Christian Taliban?

Bread and circus are no longer enough. Now we have to be scared shitless as well. I’d complain if I weren’t afraid that doing so would violate the Patriot Act.

Which God

In her new book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us,” Diana Bass explores a sampling of thousands of mainline Protestant churches thriving in the United States today. Long thought to be going the way of the dodo, mainline churches that focus more on social justice in this life than how to get into the next life, are still going strong. But why? What is it that makes them work?

In this morning’s USA TODAY (Yes, I know, what would I have to talk about without USA TODAY?) Rev. Gary Erdos, a pastor of one of these churches, attributes his success to three things: “orthodox preaching, attention to detail, and hospitality.” The more important, I suspect, is the first. Preaching the Good News that the Kingdom of God is here and now if you are willing to pay the price for living it, is compelling to Christians. I envy them that.

Is there something equivalent to capture the hearts and minds of liberal Jews? Most Jews don’t attend religious services, don’t find the siddur (prayer book) moving or compelling, and don’t love, listen to, or even believe in the God of their fathers. For most Jews Judaism, the religion not the culture, is dry, lifeless, and irrelevant to the lives they lead.

So what’s a rabbi to do? Is there a Judaism for the Rest of Us?

We have tried lots of things: hand clapping, kabbalah-esque guided meditations, rock bands, more Hebrew, less Hebrew, more tradition, less tradition, more talk…. Nothing seems to work. And those synagogues that do thrive often do so for reasons having nothing to do with Judaism and God and everything to do with Jewish singles looking for mates.

The problem is God. We spend so much time reading about and praying to a God we don’t believe in that after a while most of us just don’t bother. And which God are we to follow: The creator/destroyer god of Genesis, the violent warrior god of Exodus, the barbeque-loving priestly god of Leviticus, the genocidal god of Deuteronomy? None of these speak to most Jews anymore. And yet this is what our rabbis are left with, and try as they do to make a nice guy out of an often violent, misogynist, and xenophobic deity, it just rings hollow.

I don’t claim to have THE answer, but if I were still in the synagogue business I think I would drop the standard Torah readings and focus on the Wisdom Books of the Bible— Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Job— and the God who teaches us how to examine life and in so doing discover for ourselves the principles of godliness that we are to live and teach. This is worthy of our study and creative response. It may be too little, too late, but I cannot imagine Judaism with out God. What we have to do is begin to imagine a God worthy of the Jews.

The Devil You Say

Halloween is antiChristian. The Devil you say! No, seriously. It is a ploy of the Devil to get kids so hyped on candy that they engage in wanton Satanic rituals that basically sell their souls to the Dark Lord. So to win them back, many churches are creating alternative Halloween celebrations for their kids. Here are few I find most intriguing.

The Church of the Holy Apostles in McHenry, Ill is holding a “trunk or treat” in the Catholic parish’s parking lot. Kids dress up and have a context for the best martyred saint. I kid you not. If I were a kid at this church I’d have my mother crucify me upside down and come as St. Peter. How could you lose?

And what is the point of trunk in the trunk and treat? Obviously a play on “trick or treat” where those who do not fork over candy are inviting pranks to be played on them or their property. But what is the play? What does trunk have to do with trick? I can only think of one thing: If you fail to give a kid some candy they get to lock you in the trunk of a car. This seems very dangerous to me, and far more risky than having toilet paper tossed on your maple tree. But maybe the Catholics in McHenry know something I don’t.

The House of Prayer in Ellettsville Church in Bloomington, Ind. is sponsoring a Hell House. People pay five dollars to see scenes of domestic violence, a teenage boy committing suicide, and other acts of sinful behavior. Works for me. I would much rather have my little kid witness a suicide than have to share the sidewalk with The Littlest Mermaid. (Mermaids are perhaps a missing link between sea dwelling humans and earthbound ones, hence proving the truth of evolution.)

Hell Houses have the added benefit of causing people to come to Christ. The Hell House at the House of Prayer caught 84 people in the Fisher of Men’s net the first night it opened. While I am troubled that the way to Jesus is through horror rather than compassion, still at 5 bucks a head, this is a good deal.

I personally have no problem with Halloween. When my son was young and had no idea what was in his candy bag, I thought nothing of robbing him of all things Reese. Today I have to go out and buy my own peanut butter cups. Kids grow up too fast.

When I was in rabbinical school, of course, Halloween was a problem. The October Dilemma we called it. You see Halloween is really a Christian holy day. Jews don’t take Satan seriously enough to have a holiday devoted to him. All things Satanic are based on Christianity. They are the inversion of Christianity. That is why Satan is so big in Christian circles, and Christianity is the great evil in Satanic pentagrams.

I doubt that dressing up as Borat is going to weaken by child’s faith in the God who murdered the first born males of Egypt, so I never worried about Halloween. My beef with the holiday is the cost. If I have my numbers right, Americans spend 5 billion dollars on Halloween. Do you know how many days of the Iraq war we could wage for that? American— where are your priorities?

Two Camps

Over the past weeks I have been dealing with two very different constituencies, one conservative, the other liberal. Both call themselves “people of faith,” but the faith of the first is clear and compelling while that of the second appears muddied and confused.

The conservative camp believes their Bible is the inerrant Word of God. The liberal camp is unsure as to what the Bible is, or what to make of it. Because of their passion for the Bible, I found it easier to engage conservatives, challenging those who focus on Leviticus 18:22 and imagine God’s main concern is with homosexuality, not to ignore the 2000 plus verses dealing with the poor and to commit themselves to God’s greater concern with poverty and powerlessness.

While liberals need no encouragement to care for the poor, their call to compassion and action is not based in Scripture. Asked to cite even a single verse of Scripture that guided them, not one of dozens of liberal people of faith did so. When privately pressed many people told me that Scripture and the Bible’s anthropomorphic image of a violent male God who sanctioned genocide, misogyny, and homophobia embarrassed them.

My work with the conservatives was to focus on these violent images of God, and to challenge them to identify and decry what I called the Voice of Fear that comes not from God but from men (literally). While I cannot claim to have made much headway, I was excited about how quickly we could get to the real issue of what Scripture said and why it mattered.

My work with the liberals was to help shape a prophetic politics ala Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis rooted in the Voice of Love. Here too I made little headway, but the problem was more fundamental: there was too little knowledge of and even less trust in Scripture.

I don’t believe God writes books or speaks to people from bushes. I believe that there are rare spiritual geniuses among us who tap into the Divine Reality and are overcome by compassion for self and other. These saints return to their communities and seek to communicate in the language of their time the timeless and ultimately ineffable love they experienced. They speak in the Voice of Love. I also believe that there are many more false prophets who claim to have the same experience, but who are simply imposing their own agenda through the Voice of Fear.

I understand why liberals are reticent about God and Scripture. And I applaud those who boldly reject both and root their call for justice and compassion in other things. But I see myself as a person of faith, a person who more and more surrenders to the One Who Is All, and finds in that surrender a challenge to do justly, love mercy, walk humbly, and to love neighbor, stranger, enemy, and the earth. I had hoped to find other liberals with the same experience. The fact is I am more apt to find like-minded people among the conservatives. Odd. And disturbing.

Humility or Hubris?

Tuesday’s USA TODAY (October 24, 2006) contained a full-page open letter by James Robison called “We Have a Choice.” A challenge to America to change course and align herself with God, my heart raced as I imagined a call to align ourselves with divine justice, compassion, and humility (Micah 6:8), to stop living by the sword lest we die by the sword (Matthew 26:52), and to care for the least among us (Matthew 25:40).

At first I thought this might be so as Mr. Robison affirmed the need to free ourselves from greed, to seek peace inwardly and outwardly, to focus on “love, relationships, family, joy, compassion, and serving others,” and to engage in dialogue with those with whom we differ without the “desire to destroy the opposition.” But this quickly devolved into a passionate invocation of the god of violence who threatens to destroy America because of abortion, Hollywood, and homosexuality.

He tells us that he has seen America broken by terrible violence with “masses of people crying out in fear and panic from destruction and death beyond comprehension.” We will call to God for relief but God will not save us. Indeed, it is God who allows this horror, whatever it is, to come upon us.

Mr. Robison’s god is not my God. Yes, this god can be found in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Revelation, and in the Qur’an, but this god is not the true God of the Hebrew Prophets, or the Father of Jesus, or the All-Merciful Allah of Mohammed (peace be upon him). Robison’s God is not the God of the rabbis who edit Exodus 34 (6-7) to reveal a God of mercy, grace, patience, infinite compassion, truth, and forgiveness. This is the god of violence who sanctions violence on behalf of those whose evil feeds his hunger for destruction. This god is the creation of the human lust for power. This god sanctions genocide, crusades, pogroms, lesser jihad, and terrorism. This is not the God who says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,: or who challenges us love our neighbor, the stranger, and our enemies, and to not study war any more.

I agree with Mr. Robison that we must transform our country by transforming ourselves. I believe we must be pro-life and put an end to violence, abuse, capital punishment, and the valuing of a few cells over the life, health, and well being of girls and women. I believe we should be pro-justice and support a living wage and universal healthcare. I believe we should be pro-family and welcome loving couples both straight and gay. I believe we should out grow the violence that passes for art and entertainment both on the large screen and the game screen. I believe we should heed Jesus and care for the least among us. I believe we should love our neighbors, the stranger, and our enemies, pledging ourselves to ending violence against both person and planet. And I am willing to pay serious taxes to achieve these goals. But I read none of that in We Have a Choice.

The essay’s subtitle is “Humility or Humiliation.” True, this is the choice before us. I doubt we will choose wisely.

Crabbie Cabbies

Some Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis are fighting for the right to refuse to carry passengers who carry alcohol in or on their person. This is just the latest in the ongoing culture war in this country, and I for one love it. I would urge these cabbies to unite with Jewish cab drivers and insist on pork-free taxies as well. In fact I think some enterprising company would invent breathalyzers for both booze and bacon that would warn a cabbie that his or her potential fare is an infidel and not worth driving anywhere.

Not surprisingly, some Minneapolis citizens, especially those who drink responsibly and need taxis to carry them home after a night of binging or who worry that having a BLT for lunch may force them to walk rather than grab a cab, are up in arms. Personally, I think the cabbies are well within their rights to refuse to drive these people. If Christian pharmacists can refuse to sell the morning-after pill to a woman who was raped, I think it only fair that Muslims can refuse to pick up anyone who violates their religious sensibilities. But, more importantly, this culture clash offers the rest of us the chance to capitalize on a unique niche marketing opportunity. Just when you thought the taxi cab business was dominated by huge companies driving out the little guy, we now have an opening for mom and pop taxies to flourish in culturally diverse cities such as Minneapolis.

Here are just some of the options, complete with tag lines for advertising, that an entrepreneurial cab driver might try:

Clean and Sober Cabs (“You Drink, We Drive”) would focus on drunks, offering hot black coffee to inebriated passengers, and supplying then with breath mints when they arrive at their destinations to help them convince others they are not drunk.

Heaven’s Hacks (“Cab Outta Hell”) might focus on people in search of salvation through Jesus Christ. Christian radio would play on the stereo, cabbies would be trained evangelists, and rear seat camcorders would record backseat conversions to mark the rider’s coming to Jesus.

Kosher Kabs (“Have we got a ride for you!”) would feature rabbis who would teach Torah during the ride, and help male passengers learn how to lay tefillin. These cabs would be equipped with mikvahs (ritual baths) in the trunk for women riders who wish to participate in this ritual.

CrossTown Taxi (“Every street is a Cross street”) would be for the saved only, taking them to destinations approved by their denominations and avoiding all family planning clinics, pharmacies that provide the morning after pill, offensive movies, and stores that don’t allow employees to say “Merry Christmas” during the winter solstice.

Without belaboring the point, I would also license Crusader Cabs for Catholics (“Ride with us—God wills it!”), Hurry Krishna for Hindus (“We gita you there fast!”), Buddha Bus for Buddhists (“You’re already there!”), and a fleet of Mazda automobiles called Ahura’s for Zoroastrians (“Get there faster with Zoroaster!”).

You get the idea. As America becomes more diverse and more divisive those with real imagination can make a killing. At least until the real killing starts.

I Behind the I

“We have met the enemy, and they are us.” Pogo’s insight is all the more true today they when he first “uttered” it. At its root, the civil war among the children of Abraham is a religious war. It is no longer simply over whom did Abraham love enough to try and murder (the Hebrew Bible claims it was Isaac, the Koran claims is was Ishmael), but whom does God love best?

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Koran God’s love is linked to God’s violence and punishment. You know God loves you because God kills your enemies. You know God loves you most of all because in the end God makes all others bow down to you as a surrogate for Him.

Torah tells us quite boldly that the suffering and death of thousands of Egyptians prior to and following the exodus was simply to prove God was God (Exodus 7: 1-5). While we Jews like to speak of our god as the liberating god of the enslaved and oppressed, we do so only by ignoring that this liberating god endorses slavery, misogyny, and genocide.

The New Testament is no less rooted in violence. While Jesus’ earliest teachings in Mark seem to be a rejection of violence, later gospels have him continually damning people to eternal hellfire. Further, the very theology of Jesus’ crucifixion is rooted in the idea that God is at heart a violent and destructive deity.

Ask yourself: what does it really mean to say that Jesus died for our sins? It means that God would have killed all of us (as he did in the story of Noah and the Flood), but was placated by the murder of his son. God is not a god of love and justice, but of blood and sacrifice. Read Revelation, the capstone of the New Testament, to see how Jesus is transformed from a nonviolent prophet of love to a violent wrecker of end times havoc.

The Koran simply adapts this violent god for a new age and new people. While filled with great ethical teachings the Koran almost always links these to warnings of eternal damnation for failing to live up to them. It is as if Allah cannot imagine humanity doing anything just, compassionate, or right without being scared into it by threats of violence.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are at war with one another because their respective images of god demand it. The way out is far more challenging than a military victory. We have to take on the very gods themselves, and say “no” to the violence they demand. Yet we created these gods to excuse our violence. So it is our violence that must be defeated. This is what Islam calls for when it speaks of the Greater Jihad, a war against warring.

The paradox notwithstanding, they are on to something. If western religion is to transcend its innate violence, its followers must own that violence and refuse to participate in it. How? Simply by seeing the violence within us allows us to transcend it. If I know I am angry, the “I” that knows is not angry. If I know I am violent, the “I” that knows is not violent. If I act from this “I” I need not do away with violence I simply choose not to act violently. The key is to take refuge in the true self, the “I” behind the I. How? Just look, observe, witness.

Tiptoe Through The TULIP

Just when I had convinced myself that we are on the verge of a great interspiritual reformation, a second turning of the axis of human consciousness, I read in this month’s Christianity Today about the upsurge of Calvinism among the youth of America.

If you’re like me, your first thought was, “So what? Calvinism, Poloism, Levi-ism—why should I care what jeans are hot among Christian kids?” Then comes your second thought, “Calvinism! My God, can you get more depressing that that?”

Calvinism, or Reformed theology, began with John Calvin (1509–1564), and while it has taken many forms over the centuries, the acronym TULIP continues to be a valid statement of what it stands for:

Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints.

Let’s go into these five points and see just what kind of madness is taking hold.

TOTAL DEPRAVITY. You suck. You suck from birth and there is nothing you can do about it. Sin has corrupted your will and leaves you incapable of working out your salvation. You are doomed. Unless…

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION. … God chooses to save you. Since you are totally depraved and hence unworthy of salvation, God’s choice of whom to save and whom to damn is unconditional, that is without conditions, which means it is totally arbitrary. God saves whomever God decides to save, and God decides to do so before you are born so don’t even think about getting on God’s good side now.

LIMITED ATONEMENT. I’ll take “Died for our sins” for $300, Alex. Ah, Who is Jesus? “Oh, sorry boychick, not according to Calvinism.” Calvinism teaches that Jesus died only for the sins of the church, and the only people who are in the church are those God arbitrarily chooses to save.

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE. If you are one of the saved, you cannot resist God’s call to salvation. Don’t try the excuse, “But I’m a Bodhisattva and I promised to forego salvation until all other beings are saved.” The fact is the Club of the Saved is by invitation only, and if you get called there is nothing you can do to stop it.

PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. If you’ve been saved you will lack doubt, and your faith will be strong and unshakable until the end of time. And all we have to do is read the morning headlines to find our where doubt-free religious hubris leads: religious fascism.

So what are we to make of this resurgence of Calvinism? We are going to end up with a lot more arrogant, self-obsessed, and compassionless Christian kids running around.

God save us! Oh, I forgot.

My, My, Mayan

Each January I sit down and imagine where I would like to be in five years. Then I project where I will most likely be in five years. Then I agonize over the discrepancy between the two. But not this year.

As I gathered data for my annual analysis I discovered exactly where I will be in five years— dead. And I won’t be alone. You’ll be dead too.

How do I know? Because the Mayans, those master calendar makers of the ancient world, chose to end their 5,125 year date book in 2012. Why? Could it be that they just couldn’t imagine 2013, or did they know something we don’t know: there won’t be a 2013?

Of course you might think it irrational for someone like myself for whom all things Mayan are essentially irrelevant to suddenly take their calendar seriously. And I would agree if not for the corroborating astronomical evidence.

Once every 26,000 years the sun crosses the galactic equator on the winter solstice. This time around it happens in 2012. So what? So this: According to Belgian scientist Patrick Geryl, this will cause a reversal of the sun’s magnetic fields which will increase the sun’s temperature by 10 to 20 times normal which will turn you and everything else to toast. Literally.

Of course there are dissenting voices. David Carrasco, a Harvard professor of Latin American religions says that while the world collapses in 2012 it then starts over. This may be comforting to Harvard professors who imagine their tenor will survive the end of all life as we who are not yet toast know it, but it sucks if you ask me. Quetzalcoatl knows best. We are doomed.

So, what to do? First of all, no more five¬-year plans. Second, no point in buying winter clothes. Third, since global warming is like a warm fire on a cold winter evening compared to what is coming, no more worrying about greenhouse gases—buy that Hummer 3. Fourth, move to the South Pole, you just might last a few minutes longer than the rest of us. Fifth, pay attention to ads and buy lots of stuff when the retailers advertise “No payments until 2012.” Six, relax.

Relax? Yes, relax. With only five and half years to go, there is no need to worry about running out of oil, Iranians developing nuclear weapons, the solvency of Social Security, the retirement of most Baby Boomers, or an Iraqi exit strategy. We will all be dead before any of this will happen.

I am grateful to the Mayans for tipping us off like this. And I am sorry that they were all wiped out by the Spanish before they had time to either see the end, or publish a new issue of their insanely popular calendar for next 5,125 years.

Armagddon Who?

Knock knock. “Who’s there?” “Armageddon.” “Armageddon who?” “Armageddon tired of waitin' for this war.”

I’m driving to pick up my mail, and listening to G. Gordon Liddy on the AM band. His guest is an “expert” on Islam who is explaining that Islam is a false religion that worships a deity called Allah rather than the true God whose name is, of course, God.

Hearing this, I went ballistic. Allah in Arabic is the same as El in Hebrew, Deus in French, Gott in German, Hananim in Korean, and… wait for it… God in English. I grabbed my cell phone to call the show, but could not get through. I was livid. The ignorance that passes for wisdom in this country is outrageous, and worse— dangerous.

I believe the American people are being primed for a religious war with Islam; not radical Islam, not Islamo-fascists, not Islamic terrorists, but Islam itself. Listen to right wing talk radio, watch almost any news program, read any of the new books on nuclear Iran, or drop by your local Rapture Right church, and you will discover a powerful effort to prepare the American people for a 100 Year Crusade to save God and Country.

Listen to what we are being told: every Muslim is a potential terrorist; every illegal alien is a potential terrorist; every Democrat is a collaborator with terrorists. The drumbeat is incessant and unending. Iraq is only the beginning. We will be at war with Iran before the nation votes in a new president.

No, that is wrong: we are already at war with Iran in Israel and Iraq. And it will only get worse. I fully expect the government to reinstitute the draft, and offer a fast track to American citizenship to any foreigner willing to die for what would be his or her country if he or she is lucky enough to live. In fact I have no trouble imagining the government restricting citizenship only to those who join the crusade. Shades of Starship Troopers.

The keys to the government’s strategy (and here I am speaking not only of our government but all governments fomenting this war) are ignorance and fear. If we hope to thwart this effort, we have to overcome these hurdles. While I am no expert in any of this, I cannot stand idly by, so here are three things I think we can do quickly to begin quelling this madness. The first two are addressed to everyone, the third to my Jewish readers specifically.

1. We must fight ignorance by creating and disseminating free of charge a simple and compelling articulation of the fundamental Abrahamic principles at the root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: justice, compassion, hospitality, love, and trust. This exploration must be state-of-the-art and downloadable on to computers, cell phones, and other digital devices.

2. We must fuel a revolution in religious thinking by reclaiming the power of myth and metaphoric thinking. We need storytellers not clerics, prophets not priests, shamans who can open us to the divine rather than enslave us to their vision of it.

3. As the High Holy Days come to a close and we Jews prepare for Sukkot we must reimagine our sukkah as Abraham’s tent, open on all four sides to welcome loved ones, friends, strangers, and even so-called enemies. Sukkot must become a week for breaking bread and sharing our lives with our Christian and Muslim neighbors. Welcome one another with compassionate curiosity, asking what is it like for you to be a Jew or Christian or Muslim in America today? What are your fears, your hopes, your dreams? How can we support one another in achieving justice, promoting compassion, and building a truly post-tribal global village?

This is a start. Each of these ideas needs careful attention and fleshing out. If I can find the money to make the time, I will work to create the first, design a program for the second, and write a guidebook for the third. If you would like to help, please let me know.

Whatever you can do, you must do it now. If we fail, we will begin the short slide into a long war that can only end in Armageddon.

I Slam, You Slam, We All Slam Islam

“If Islam is a religion of peace, why don’t the imams challenge the murderous rhetoric of the radical Islamists who they claim are highjacking their religion?”

I hear this all the time. The implication of such talk is that if Christianity or Judaism were highjacked, priests, pastors, and rabbis would be out front attacking the radicals and their hate-filled madness. You might have wished it so, but this week has proved otherwise.

When Pope Benedict cited a 14th century Christian emperor saying that anything new taught by Mohammed (Peace be upon him) was evil and inhuman, I didn’t hear any outcry among Christians. What I heard was excuses: “The Pope didn’t say that, he was quoting the emperor.” As I mentioned the other day, this is totally disingenuous. He did not argue against what the emperor said, and by not doing so he was tacitly agreeing with it. Any silence on behalf of Christian clergy suggests that they too are in agreement.

Lest you imagine that Jews are free from such insanity and cowardice, Effi Eitam, a leader of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) aligned with the worldwide Orthodox Zionist movement called for the mass deportations of Arabs from the West Bank and the expulsion of Israeli Arabs from Israeli government.

Admittedly he may have been incensed over Arab members of the Knesset who seemed to side with Hezbollah against Israel, but this is no excuse. He said what he said. Was their widespread condemnation of Eitam? Yes, but only by the secular Jewish world. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress both condemned Eitam’s remarks, as did the political left in Israel. But where were the rabbis?

Rabbi Yosef Blau, president of the Religious Zionists of America, said that Eitam was not mainstream. Ouch. That is a stinging rebuke. Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University, cautioned against sanctioning Eitam, saying that we should understand his frustration over Israeli Arabs who are anti-Israel. Rabbi Basil Herring of the Conservative Rabbinical Council of America said that he could not comment until he had spoken with his board of directors. Such courage. I have not read anything from the Reform or Reconstructionist movements so far, and I hope they will be at least as bold at our secular Jewish leaders, but the fact is that clergy are failing us worldwide.

Personally, I don’t care if Eitam was angry, worried, or had a bad day at the office; calling for the mass expulsion of Arabs from Israeli held territory and government is vicious racist madness that needs to be condemned from every synagogue pulpit in the world. Failure to do so denies rabbis any moral standing in their call to their Muslim counterparts to condemn the racist hatred spewed by their extremist coreligionists.

Religion should be a clarion call for universal justice and compassion, and religious leaders should be prophets of peace. But before I say this maybe I should check with my board of directors.

Running on Chutzpah

On Thursday, September 14, 2006 the Jewish people reached a new milestone in their millennia old contest with fate: three new rabbis will be ordained in Dresden, Germany, the first ordinations in Germany since the Nazi slaughter of Jews beginning 60 years ago.

By all accounts there should be no Jews left on this planet (leaving open of course the possibility of Jews on other planets: see “Wandering Stars Volumes 1 & 2”). Exiles, expulsions, genocide—any other people would have simply called it quits. But not the Jews. Instead we are ordaining new rabbis in the shadow of Hitler. What chutzpah!

In fact I think Jewish survival is based almost solely on chutzpah. We run on audacity, we survive by spitting in the eye of logic and refusing to go the way of the Hittites. And if you don’t know who the Hittites were, you are simply proving my point.

We like to think that it is our educational system that protects us from disappearing in to history, or our devotion to God, or God’s devotion to us, but I think it is sheer chutzpah. We simply refuse to die.

Now I would like to say that we refuse to die because we believe we have some purpose or destiny to fulfill, but most Jews have no idea of what Jews or Judaism is about. They just refuse to stop being Jews. And I can’t even say what “being Jews” means to most Jews since most Jews opt out of behaviors that are traditionally linked with “being Jews”— eating kosher, making Shabbos, marrying Jews, etc.

The best I can come up with is this: being Jewish is a state of mind that refuses to surrender to history.

I am sure I could go on about this, but the real purpose of this blog is to simply wish our three new rabbis— Daniel Alter, Tomas Kucera, and Malcom Matitiani— good luck. I felt a real sense of pride when I learned of their ordination.

I felt something similar in the 1980’s when I visited the Egyptian art exhibit on display at a museum in Dallas, TX. As I wandered among the artifacts I suddenly came upon a huge statue of Ramses, the Pharaoh of Moses’ time. All of a sudden it struck me: he and his people and his people’s religion were long dead (contemporary Egyptians are not the same people as those of ancient Egypt), while me, and my people, and our religion were doing quite well. I thumbed my nose at old Ramses, and gave a thumbs up to Moses.

Well today we can thumb our noses at Hitler and give a thumbs up to those Jewish men and women who just refuse to give up. I hope the Dalai Lama read the article and takes heart.

Bi God!

You probably know about Pastor Fred Phelps and the members of his Westboro Baptist Church. They are the Christian extremists who protest at the funerals and memorial services of our men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, celebrating the death of Americans as God’s punishment for America’s tolerance toward gays and lesbians.

If you are gay and lesbian you may be surprised to learn that America is so tolerant, but for the Phelps’ gang merely suffering a fag to live is enough to bring down God’s vengeance upon our country.

Now there is a new wrinkle in their story. Not only are they protesting homosexuality, they are also protesting rainbows.

Robin and J.R. Knight, owners of the Lakeway Hotel in Meade, Kansas, flew a rainbow flag beneath the American flag in front of their hotel. Their 12-year old son gave it to them because he liked the bright colors. Little did he know that the rainbow was a sign of homosexuality. Not surprisingly, the hotel came under attack by homophobes and the Westboro Baptist Church.

When I read about this attack on the rainbow the first thing that popped into my mind was God’s use of the rainbow to affirm his covenant with humanity after the Flood during the time of Noah.

God, being omniscient, must have known that the rainbow sign would become a symbol of homosexuality. Hence it is not a stretch to believe that God was proclaiming his support of gays and lesbians. Otherwise why pick a symbol that would become so controversial?

Realizing this I went back to the beginning of Genesis to discover what the Bible has to say about God’s sexual preference. While it is true that he placed a man and woman in the Garden of Eden, it is also true that God created male and female in his own image. God is bi! God can be a male or a female!

How then can God hate homosexuals as many say s/he does in Leviticus? Well God would not be the first homosexual to deny his sexual preference and come out vehemently against other homosexuals. But more likely what God is attacking is not homosexuality per se, but temple prostitution. Besides what God says is that a man should not have with a man as he would with a woman. In other words, if you are a gay man do not pretend otherwise and imagine your male lover is a woman.

So God is bi and flies the fag flag of the rainbow. What should we do in response? If you claim to be on God’s side you must join in solidarity with his people (not the Jews, but the homosexual and bi-sexual community), and fly his flag. I’m serious. If you belong to a church or synagogue or mosque that flies flags, purchase God’s flag and urge your community to fly it proudly. And when Pastor Phelps comes by to protest, march boldly with signs that read: “Read Your Bible—God Is Bi!”.

Pope on the Ropes

He didn’t mean it. He had no idea it would be offensive. He has nothing but respect for… in fact some of his best friends are… Aw, face it, the Pope knew what he was doing, and thought is was wise to do it. And maybe he’s right.

Speaking at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI quoted from a book in which 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologos said, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman….”

“Only evil and inhuman?” When challenged on this point, the Pope said he was simply quoting a text, that these were not his own words. Given the fact that he did not quote the text in order to argue against it, however, one can only surmise that he affirms it.

We should not be surprised at this. The fact is that the three Abrahamic religions as conventionally taught are mutually incompatible, and each of them rejects as false anything that is new. The only way the rabbis could claim their Judaism was true was to insist that it was old, that it was given to Moses along with what was then the Written Torah. Any so-called revelation that came after it was by definition false. So much for Christianity and Islam.

Christianity itself follows suit. There is no further revelation after Jesus so anything claiming to be revelation, i.e. the Koran, is by definition false. And Islam makes the same claim for itself: Mohammed is the seal of the prophets, the final prophet, and there is no further revelation after the Koran, and those that came before are corrupt and inoperable.
Simply put, if Torah is true, the Gospels and the Koran are false; if the Gospels are true the Torah is incomplete and the Koran is false; and if the Koran is true, the Torah and Gospels are corrupt and only the Koran is the true revelation. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

The Pope has apologized for the reaction his words have stirred in the Muslim world. He has not apologized for the idea that Islam is evil, nor has he backed down from his challenge to Islam that it publicly and unambiguously denounce all violence in the Name of God. Good for him. I just wish he had called upon all clergy to do so. Coming from the former head of the Inquisition, the Pope’s challenge may have carried some weight.

The truth is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be used to sanction violence, even genocide, in God’s Name. They have all engaged in evil and inhuman acts in God’s Name in the past, and continue to do so in the present. What is needed is a recognition of this fact, and a bold denunciation of ever using God to sanction violence.

Clergy must disassociate themselves from those strands of their respective religions that kill or fantasize about killing in God’s Name.

Let priests and pastors condemn the bombing of women’s health clinics and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. Let them walk away from churches that salivate at the thought of the Tribulation and Armageddon.

Let rabbis refuse to serve synagogues that support the oppression of Palestinians, and openly condemn those Jews who wish to destroy the mosque on the Temple Mount and replace it with an animal slaughterhouse.

Let imams leave mosques that preach and support hatred and violence, and proclaim those who use of the Koran to foster evil infidels.

Let these clergymen and women gather in Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and New York to preach peace. Let them issue a proclamation that they and their religions must outgrow their violent histories, and affirm the best that each has to offer, a best that says in one voice from one God that justice, compassion, humility, and nonviolence are the Way, and that anyone who violates this Way will be arrested along with their families to be publicly humiliated, tortured, burned in this world and the next and… oh. This may be harder than I think.

Poison Pill

“But that’s not Jewish!” I get that complaint all the time. This time it came from a rabbi who had just finished a passionate rant about the need for continuity in Jewish life.

“Continuity,” I said by way of unsolicited comment, “is the death of creativity. A culture built on continuity is one that is devoted to its own doom. Life is change. You either change with it or you die. Continuity is suicide.”

“That is not a Jewish value,” he retorted. “Judaism is about preserving the eternal truths and forms given to us by God on Sinai. Even if life does change, God does not.”

Now, I could have argued this point. For me God is change; not that God changes, but that God is change itself. “I will be what I will be” is how God names himself in Exodus suggesting to me at least that God is not the same moment to moment because is the changing moment itself. I could have argued this, but I didn’t. Instead I said:

“Continuity gives precedence to form. God is formless. Focusing on form is like decorating the eggshell without ever eating the egg. The nourishment is in the egg not the shell, and to get at it you have to break the shell.”

“Breaking the shell, as you call it,” the rabbi said, “is the end of Judaism. Aren’t you concerned about Jewish survival?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not. Jewish survival is up to God. What I am concerned about is God-realization, meeting the One in the many, and seeing Whole manifest in every part. If Judaism can do that, then it will survive. If it is simply a self-reflexive exercise it is useless to me and to God.”

“Well I totally disagree, and thinking as you do is the spell the death knell of Judaism, something I neither wish for nor wish to devote even another moment to. Let’s move on.”

And we did.

I was not happy with myself over this exchange. While I believe what I said to be true, I also believe there was no real need to say it. I wasn’t going to change the mind of the speaker and the audience was inclined to side with him so their minds, too, were set. I should have kept my mouth shut.

After the lecture a woman came over to me and asked politely, “So what criteria do you use when deciding what aspects of Judaism to follow and which to let go?”

“I do what works for me,” I said. “And what works for me are those things that help me experience and live out the ethical implications of my unity with God. If I find something in Orthodoxy that works, I use it. If it comes from Reform, I use that. And I don’t limit myself to Judaism. If I learn something from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, or Christianity that awakens by true Self to God as all then I use that as well.” Labels are meaningless to me. I do what works because it is God and not religion I care about.”

She stared at me for a long, hard moment and then spit out, “The rabbi was right, you are a poison pill for Judaism.” She spun around and walked over to ask a question of our speaker. I looked around and found myself all alone.

As I walked out to my car I grabbed a bottle of cool water to wash down the poison pill I found myself pushing. Not a bad way to go; not a bad way to go at all.

Forgiveness

Today is the first day of the month of Elul, the final month of the Hebrew year. Traditionally Elul is devoted to forgiveness. We arise each morning and, with the exception of Shabbat, we blow the shofar, the ram’s horn, calling ourselves to attend to reality and forgive both self and other for maintaining the illusion that we are self and other.

At the heart of the notion of forgiveness is the idea that we can be hurt, and that somehow we can end this hurt by forgiving the one who hurt us. This may be true, but if it is I have no idea how to do it. When I think about someone who has hurt me I naturally think about the hurt that was done and, rather than let it go, replay it a few times just to maintain the negativity I feel toward the doer.

Every time we tell the story of being hurt, we maintain the story of the hurter and the hurtee, looking for sympathy for the latter (us) and anger toward the former. So one way to forgive is to stop telling and retelling the story.

This is not the same as forgetting. Every time I try to forget something I have to remember what it is I wish to forget which undermines the whole notion of forgetting in the first place. So forget forgetting, and simply catch yourself whenever you are retelling your tale of woe, and say, “Whoa! I don’t have to waste my time with this again.” And stop telling the story.

But there is more to forgiveness than silence. In addition to not retelling the drama, you have to understand the true nature of the actors.

If someone accidently steps on your toe you are in physical pain, but the pain passes, and because you realize there was no intent to cause harm, no lasting suffering accrues. It is otherwise if you imagine that the person stepping on your toe is doing so on purpose. Then all kinds of secondary emotions arise: anger, revenge, fear, etc. But what if no one intentionally sets out to hurt you?

I think that most of the people who hurt me do so mindlessly. They are not concerned with me, and do what they do in pursuit of what they desire. I am just collateral damage. When I remember this, the hurt I feel passes like a that of a stepped-on toe. Of course there are rare cases when someone is out to get you, but even then if I look closely I discover that they are imprisoned in a mindset that makes their actions almost uncontrollable. They are prisoners of their passions and act as one possessed. And what is true of the other is true of you and me as well.

Knowing this is the key to living without lingering emotional baggage. Elul is a month for putting down the baggage of suffering. To help with this I have written and will gladly share my Elul journal. Email me and I will send it to you as a Word doc.

Hopeful Anniversary

Something is terribly wrong in this country, and there is no more clear example of it than Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s comment that critics of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq are morally confused, and modern-day versions of Nazi appeasers.

The very fact that the administration has to go to such extremes to demean their political opponents tells us how frightened and fearful they are. What we need is honest argument on what is happening in the world and how best to address it, and what we are offered is rhetoric of the most dangerous kind.

I am not morally confused. The war in Iraq was wrong from the beginning. Not that war is always wrong, it isn’t. But this war was and is illegal, immoral, and damaging to the United States and freedom worldwide. And to be told that saying so makes me somehow un-American makes plain that many of our leaders have no idea of what America is.

America is rooted in law and not as President Bush seems to believe on the whims of chief executive. Bush sees himself as above the law. He is playing king, and there are few is any behaviors that are less American than that.

Torah is clear on the danger of kings. God’s plan for Israel was to be a loose confederation of tribes without a king. We were ruled by judges whose authroity rested in their ability to do justly. Today judges are pawns in the hands of politicians who long for authoritarian rulers who are kings in all but name. Read your Bible: When Israel insisted on having a king they were told they were violating God’s will, and things went badly for them for centuries.

It is time for us to speak truth to power. To stand up for America and what is American.
This September 11th is the anniversary not only the horror of the Twin Towers, but the hope of Gandhi’s satyagraha movement. Founded on September 11, 1906, satyagraha (soul force) sought to provide a third way between acquiescing to violence and becoming violent ourselves. This September 11th we must honor our murdered dead by reclaiming what is best about us as Americans.

On the campus of MTSU I plan to host a dialogue on Nonviolence in an Age of Global Terror. We will draw from Gandhi and explore if and how his teachings can guide us today. I am using material from a group out of New York. I know this isn’t much, but it is something. I cannot look myself in the mirror if I remain silent. I urge you to visit the website of the satyagraha anniversary people in NY and do something this 9/11 to make a difference. Their url is www.nyc-dop.com/gandhi/index.html/.

I am hurt, outraged, and frightened by what Rumsfeld has been saying this week. I refuse to be silenced by him. I believe that we are at war, but that it must be fought with greater wisdom, compassion, and finesse than this administration is capable of using. Don’t let this anniversary of horror pass without at least trying to give voice to the sound of hope.

Whose Your Enemy?

I received a call this morning from a delightful evangelical Christian hoping to enlist me in a war against “our common enemy”— Islam. While I might ordinarily be inclined to respond to such calls by pretending to be my own answering machine, and thus avoid having to take the call at all, I opted instead to engage in a conversation about something that is very important to me: confronting the real enemy.

Islam is not my enemy. Nor is it yours. Yes, there are elements within Islam that are the enemies of freedom, and they, assuming you are in favor of freedom, are your enemy. But these elements exist in every religion, and labeling such people Islamofascists leads to the false conclusion that all of Islam as your enemy.

While I find the conclusion false, it was exactly the conclusion the caller expected me to make. Islam, because it denies the jingoistic chosenness of the Jews and the spiritual triumphalism of the Christians, must be against God who in fact chose the Jews and sent the world his only begotten son. When I suggested that the Koran and Islam offer a viable alternative to both Jewish and Christian interpretations of God’s will, I was met with the notion that the Koran, because it denies these claims, is by definition a false revelation coming from the Devil. I find such reasoning circular and meaningless.

Yet there is an enemy. The enemy is not Islamo-anything. The enemy is fascism in all its forms: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Secular.

Fascism technically began in Italy under Benito Mussolini and ruled that country from 1922 to 1943. Broadly understood fascism is an extreme authoritarian political ideology in which, according to Mussolini, “the state… governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life… For the fascist, everything is within the state and… neither individuals or groups are outside the state… For fascism the state is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative.” Or, to put it more succinctly in his original Italian: “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato/ Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Statism is my enemy, fascism is my enemy, regardless which religion they choose to hide behind. Any group that seeks to subsume the individual beneath the state, and uses violence, propaganda, and censorship to suppress political and spiritual opposition is the enemy.

The caller was right: we need to band together and support the freedom of the individual to choose her way of life for herself, for only free people can withstand fascism. But that means that the enemy is any movement that seeks to shut down the individual’s right to choose, and the caller was not yet ready to admit that.

In John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience he is careful not to label the Bush regime as fascist, only authoritarian. I am not so sure. Fascism is alive and well in this country, and we must fight it here as well as elsewhere. Until we are ready to do that, when it comes to talk of the enemy, I will defer to Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”

What If Judaism Ruled The World?

I was recently invited to submit a short essay responding to the question: What If My Religion Ruled The World? Here is my essay:

The very question, What If My Religion Ruled The World, is a frightening one. Indeed, the fact that we could even entertain such a thought is scary to me. Theocracy is quite simply an authoritarian government leaning toward if not firmly in the grip of fascism. When God and government mix, it is always at the expense of human dignity, integrity, justice and compassion.

In the Torah God warns the people against having a king. He sees them as a “nation of priests,” and a “holy people.” (Exodus 19:6) who are to be ruled by judges not kings. Judges are concerned with justice, kings with power. In Samuel 10:19 God tells the people that by choosing to be lead by a king they have “rejected your God.” To be aligned with God is to be committed to justice, not power: “justice, and only justice you shall pursue,” (Deuteronomy 16:20).

The Torah is clear that when the people succumb to the quest for power they are capable of great evil— genocide and ethnic cleansing— and they do this evil in the name of God. What we see today is nothing new.

The heart of Judaism is found not in the doings of her kings or the pomp of her priests, but in the principles taught by her prophets. The prophets spoke out against the tyranny of the powerful and the exploitation of the powerless. The prophets offered a view of God very different from that of the ruling elite; a God who cared about the widow and the orphan, a God who is moved by acts of justice and compassion not ritual sacrifice and military might.

Even the rabbis do not live up to the prophetic ideal, focusing instead on adherence to their laws and customs, and insisting that these come not from themselves, but from God. The rabbis no less than their priestly rivals equate God with power and seek to claim both for themselves.

Yet, the question is asked, so let me speak to it more concretely. What if Judaism ruled the world? It is very Jewish to answer a question with a question, so would ask, Which Judaism? The Judaism of the prophets or the Judaism of the rabbis? And if the latter, is it the Judaism of the Orthodox or the Judaism of the liberals? Judaism has never been monolithic.

To keep things simple, let me focus on Orthodoxy. If we want to know what the world would look like if Orthodox Judaism ruled the world, we can look to see how they rule in modern day Israel. While still a democracy, and 90% secular, the private lives of Israeli Jews are ruled by the theocracy of the Orthodox establishment.

It is the Orthodox rabbinate who decides who is a Jew, who is a rabbi, and who can marry whom. It is the Orthodox establishment that denies women the right to initiate divorce, and ties widows who cannot prove their husbands are dead (perhaps they were lost in war, but no body was found, for example) to the dead by refusing to free them from their marriages. It is the Orthodox establishment that refuses to ordain women as rabbis, and disenfranchises any Judaism but their own.

It is easy to see what would happen if Judaism ruled the world: we would all step closer to living in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it is my belief that if they could get away with it, Orthodoxies of every religious type would shape the world into a Taliban-like state.

What the world today so desperately needs is not the power-focused teaching of religious elites, but the justice-focused radicalism of the prophets of all faiths. It is the prophets who speak for God and creation, and who can cross the boundaries established by clerics and kings, seeing all people as God’s people, and all beings as God’s Being.

I Am Extinct

Today I found out I am extinct.

I was talking with a very nice man in his forties about the Bible. I mentioned that I taught Bible at Middle Tennessee State University, and he said joyfully, “Oh, you are a Christian!”

“No,” I said, “I am a Jew.” I expected some response, some well polished piece of evangelism designed to save my soul from eternal damnation for not believing in Jesus just the way this fellow did, but he simply stared at me. He had no idea what I just said.

“You, know,” I prompted him. “I’m Jewish. Like Jesus.” He continued to look at me without any expression at all. And then he said, “I didn’t know there were any Jewish.”

Now I am not a novice when it comes to ignorance about Jews, whether it comes from fellow Jews or Christians, but this is the first time I have actually encountered a person who had no idea that Jews still existed. After all who did he think ran Hollywood? And who would be slaughtered at the Second Coming? And who would be the 144,000 to finally accept Jesus as Christ at the End Times? This guy thought we were extinct. Wishful thinking? Not at all: Christians needed Jews to kill their god and continue to need them to recognize him when he comes back.

“Aren’t Jews Christians?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We came before Christianity, about 4000 years ago. Jesus was a Jew, Christianity comes after Jesus.” I probably should have left this last part out, it only confused him more.

“Jesus is a Christian. His last name is Christ. That wouldn’t make sense if he weren’t a Christian.”

I know when I am licked. “You know you may be right,” I said. “It is like talking about King David. He must have been a king or we wouldn’t call him that. Or Mother Mary, she must be the Mother of God or we wouldn’t call her that. Or the Prophet Mohammed, he must have been God’s prophet or people wouldn’t call him that either.”

For a second I thought he caught my sarcasm. But then he said, “Yeah, like that.”

So there is hope. The key to interfaith dialogue is not seeking truth together, but not making a big deal out of each other’s ignorance.

Two Minds on the War

When it comes to talk of war I am of two minds. Here is what they sound like:

Mind One: First of all, we did not go into Iraq to free the Iraqi people, we went in to make sure that US oil companies would continue to dominate the oil market. This is an old-fashioned war of empire, and I am not necessarily adverse to it. As long as the United States insists on being an oil-based economy we must control the oil markets.

Mind Two: I agree, but I don’t want to minimize the religious element. It is not simply about empire and oil, it is about which god is the True God. Since biblical times there has been only one way to prove which god is the True God, and that is by killing the followers of the other gods. The only way out of this mess is to wake to the fact that all gods are created in the image of those who benefit from them. What we need is a spiritual revolution that no longer allows people to be manipulated by religion.

Mind One: I would welcome that revolution, but we also need to end our dependency on oil. As long as I want to drive and fly and keep my house, car, and office at 72 degrees regardless of the weather, I am consigning myself and my country to war until the last drop of oil is pumped out the ground and we are reduced to fighting over barren sands…

Mind Two: Which we would be all too eager to do if we imagine our god wants us to.

Mind One: Yes, we have to lay down not only our weapons, but our gods as well.

Mind Two: But churches and Hummers are here to stay, so if we want to end the war we must do something else. First, we must reinstitute the draft without any deferments. Until everyone is equally at risk of dying we will not have the political will to stop the rush to empire. Second, we must raise gasoline taxes to fund research and development of new oil independent technologies.

Mind One: Good luck with that! The fact is we are in the early stages of World War Four, a war for God and Oil that will last decades. We will draft tens of thousands of people, and we will make serving in the military a fast-track to American citizenship for thousands of people who wish to come here from other countries.

Mind Two: And I thought I was the pessimist. So I just want to say thank God for global warming. Maybe we will simply drown in melting ice caps and not have to wage war on behalf of middle eastern sky gods.

Mind One: Praise Neptune, Lord of the Sea!

Mind Two: Praise Neptune? No way! Praise Yam, the True Sea God.

Uh-oh.

Sabbath (Ar)Rest

In a USA Today feature “A Call to Honor the Sabbath,” Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian minister from Virginia, offers a fine essay, but one that does what so many essays on biblical themes do: it ignores the truth.

When Pastor Brinton honors the Sabbath, which he does every Wednesday (he works on Sunday which is why he cannot honor the Sabbath on Sunday which makes no sense since God says the Sabbath is Saturday, see Exodus 20:8) he goes for a long run (as opposed to Sunday when many of his parisioners think he runs long).

I have no problem with Pastor Brinton running on Wednesday or running on and on on Sunday. What bothers me is that he thinks God’s commandment (number 4 for those of you who are counting) is so flexible. God is not saying, as this essay seems to suggest: Thou shalt taketh a day off from work that thou might beeth more productiveth during the rest of the week. God is saying that we should cease all work on the Seventh Day because God ceased working on the Seventh Day. When we rest on Saturday we do so in remembrance of God.

God says of the Sabbath what Jesus says of Communion, do this in remembrance of me. If we were as loose with the latter as with the former, we would find millions of Christians skipping the church’s dry wafers or scraps of bread, and heading to Burger King (of Kings) for a Whopper.

God’s Sabbath is not about being more productive or taking long runs. It is about doing nothing. This is what is so hard about it. Doing nothing means the ego is still for a day. And a still ego is no ego at all. “You” exist only in doing. Stop doing and “you” stop being. And when “you” stop being, God is realized (though by whom is unclear). Hence: “Be still and know I am God.”

But what I really don’t get is how people make light of the Sabbath (as opposed to making Sabbath lights) when the Bible so clearly does not. Remember this story: Some people found a guy picking up sticks on a Saturday and dragged him to Moses for punishment (Numbers 15:32). The assumption here is that it is wrong to pick up sticks but ok to drag a person around while you look for Moses. Anyway, Moses didn’t know what to do since God had not yet been confronted by a stick-picker, so he imprisons the man while he goes out to ask God how to handle the situation. God, who might have preferred to rest on the Sabbath, does not blast Moses for bothering him, and rules that the man should be stoned to death by all the people. This proves that while picking up sticks is a capital crime, picking up stones to kill a guy for stick-picking is not.

Here is my point: If we are going to use the Bible to make some point, let’s be honest and use all the Bible to make this point. So Pastor Brinton should have told us why the church feels it can change the Sabbath to Sunday and why he feels he can change it to Wednesday. And at least find a way to work around the stick-picking thing. Otherwise you might as well admit you are making the whole thing up and go for a long run on Wednesday pretending this is the Sabbath and God has so commanded thee.

Religion's Ills

I am reading a book called Orthodox Psychology, a fine exploration of Orthodox Christianity. The book makes the case that Christianity is not a religion but a healing science. In so doing it spills the beans on religion: religion is based not on health but on illness. Before any religion can offer you its cure, it must first infect you with its disease.

The disease for which Christianity is the cure is Original Sin. Original Sin refers not to the creativity of your sinning, but to the First Sin, Eve’s Sin, the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. So before Christianity even makes sense, you have to believe in Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as historical fact, and the inheritance of sin as a metaphysical truth.

I love the story of Adam and Eve. I love the idea that Eve is willing to die for wisdom. She is the Hebrew Prometheus stealing the fire of wisdom from the god of the Garden. She is my role model. I only wish I had her courage. But I do not take the story as history. It is myth, not in the modern sense of falsehood, but in the premodern sense of metaphoric truth. The truth of the story is that wisdom costs you big time.

Christianity isn’t the only religion to sell us disease. They all do. The disease of Judaism and Islam is failing to live up to God’s commandments. The disease of Hinduism is mistaking illusion for reality. The disease of Buddhism is mistaking ignorance for truth, and thereby desiring permanence when none exists.

Now you may believe you have one or more of these diseases. I think I suffer from all of them, which is why I am open to all religions. But I only think this way because I was taught to think this way.

But what if none of these diseases is true? Then none of these religions will help. When someone tells you what religion they follow they are also telling you what disease they prefer.

I prefer to be healthy from the start. I prefer a faith not rooted in illness but in health. Is there such a faith? I don’t think so. But there are hints of this in every religion. To sight but one example, each morning observant Jews say, “God, the soul you place within me is pure.” This is the opposite of Original Sin. Your soul, your true self, is pure. Pure what? Pure Godhead!

So start with that. Whatever else you may do during the day to screw yourself up, remind yourself first thing each morning that your true self is pure, unstained, sinless, wise, and real. Build your faith and that, and see where it takes you.

Who's Your Daddy?

It was only a matter of time. Once we knew that Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene, it was only a matter of time until some of his great, great, great ... grandchildren stepped forward to make their presence known.

The first to do so is Kathleen McGowan whose novel, The Expected One, reveals that she is one of Jesus' descendents. This may be news to many, but not to me. Ever since reading The Da Vinci Code I have been searching out the contemporary line of Jesus and the Mary.

The first one I uncovered was a cousin of mine, fifth removed on my material grandfather's paternal uncle's maternal aunt's side of the family. Like Ms. McGowan, I too have incontrovertible evidence proving this to be so, but, again like her, I am not at liberty to reveal this to the public.

Since finding this cousin, I have stumbled on dozens of Jesus descendents all of whom are related to me. Now I know that this means that I too am related to Jesus and Mary. Ordinarily this would not really mean much to me. After all it is such a tenuous connection. Yet, I found out that not only am I a descendent of Jesus, my next door neighbor, with whom I have never gotten along, is descended from the High Priest who plotted Jesus' death. And not only that, but the guy around the corner is in fact related to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator who actually had Jesus killed. Neither my neighbor nor I get along with him.

And there is more. Knowing my lineage explains so much about my life. Now I know why I feel so persecuted. Now I know why I used to get the hives in high school wood shop. Now I know why thorns frighten me, and why I loved subtraction in elementary school but broke out in a cold sweat every time I had to write the plus sign in addition problems.

Lots of readers will deny Ms. McGowan's claim, seeing it as a crass marketing ploy by her and her publisher. But I haven't written a novel about my ancestors, so I have nothing to gain by disclosing my heritage. Well, maybe not nothing. I am writing to Aunt Kathleen to ask her to help out a starving relative when the millions she will reap from this disclosure start poring in. I am sure she will be delighted to send me a substantial percentage. After all, it is the Christian thing to do.

Leaving on a Jet Plane?

Here is a question that every Jew, somewhere in the recesses of his or her mind, asks on a regular basis: When will I know it is time to leave the country?

I heard this growing up and used to dismiss it out of hand. I am an American. America, from George Washington on, has been built on the principle of inclusion. Jews are part of the fabric of the United States, and while I am not blind to Anti-Semitism it has never been a governmental policy. For Jews America is not like Spain, or Germany, or England where we were summarily exiled or killed. American is more like Amsterdam where we were welcomed, albeit with some trepidation.

But things are changing. The Southern Baptist Convention turned back a move to pull their kids out of the public schools, and have called upon their members to take on the culture of public education with “godly influence.” I don’t know which is worse. The idea of millions of SBC kids freed from any public school influence and indoctrinated in SBC truths— mistaking myth for history, metaphor for fact, and theology for science— can only dim the future hopes of America in the world. But the idea of millions of SBC families applying “godly influence” on the public schools means imposing SBC ideology on the rest of us. Just as the Southern Baptists may worry about activist judges imposing liberalism, I worry about activist school boards imposing the inquisition. Extreme? Maybe. But I read Ann Coulter.

And then there is the move in Kentucky to replace the inclusive BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) with BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Year of Our Lord). Of course the Jews, Chinese, and Muslims have their own calendars, and I have no problem with Christians using BC. and AD among themselves. My problem is that when we use godly influence to go from Common Era to Year of Our Lord we are making it clear that America is for those whose Lord is Jesus.

America is not a Christian country, but it is a country of Christians. There is a difference, but only if the Constitution and the principles of freedom upon which the country was founded remain intact. When people call for a return to Christian values and point to the piety of the early settlers as proof of America’s Christian roots, I shudder. Not because they are wrong to do so, but because the Christian values the early settlers brought to America included the expulsion of Christians whose Christianity differed from their own, an attempt to keep Jews out of the settlements, the Salem Witch Trials, and the killing and exploitation of the Native Peoples, to name but four.

Most Christians I know who want to see America return to its Christian values are right wing Republicans who mistake the Contract With America for the Sermon on the Mount. I can see them creating their own version of the Inquisition in the name of rooting out heresy. And for a Jew that spells trouble with a capital H.

So is it time to leave? Well I’m not packing my bags just yet, but I am keeping my passport up to date. And I sent a donation to the 700 Club just in case.

Which Came First: Allah or the Egg?

This is true: Reuters News Service reported today that a chicken in a Kazakh village (i.e. a village in predominately Sunni Moslem Central Asian state of Kazakhstan) laid an egg with the word “Allah” written in Arabic on its shell.

This is not: The Christian organization, To Hell with Unbelievers (ToHU), immediately issued a statement saying in part:

“The Allah egg is an obvious forgery. First of all God’s Name is God. Second of all, while God does license the images of his Son and his Son’s Mother to appear in a variety of baked goods, pizza slices, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other food stuffs, the Lord of the Universe does not authorize the use of his signature or Name on eggs.”

Intrigued, I contacted the director of the ToHU, Mark Matthews, and asked what God has against eggs.
“It isn’t that God has something against eggs per se,” Mr. Matthews told me. “The problem is having been born of a woman, Himself, God does not choose to license His Name or Image on other birth products. And, before some liberal takes this as a slap at women and other females, God does not allow His Image to appear in pools of semen either.”

That settled, I wondered if Shiite Moslems were offended that the Allah egg came from a Sunni bird.

“No,” said Abdul Kayyam, the twenty-something head of a hip Shiite group out of Manhattan called Shiite Happens. “We are simply glad that Allah decided to get into the food manifestation business. For years it has been an insult to Moslems everywhere that Jesus and Mary dominated the Holy Face in Foodstuffs movement. Of course, neither Allah nor Mohammed, peace be upon him, would ever lend their faces to food, it is good to see that Allah has found a way to let the world know that He is the God.”

Having been reminded of the prohibition of drawing Mohammed’s face, I did some investigation and found that a Dutch newspaper was holding a contest challenging Dutch chickens to lay eggs with Mohammed’s face on them. No word yet as to how this is going.

For the sake of balance I also called Rabbi Moishe Gross of the Image of God in Food Society, which, despite its name, tries to debunk claims that God’s face or signature shows up in food. “This is nonsense,” the rabbis told me. “God would not sign the Ten Commandments, let alone an egg, and a nonkosher egg at that. No, the signature is a forgery. The pizza with Mary is more problematic, seeing as how a slice of pizza stacked diagonally on another slice of pizza actually reveals the Star of David, but since she only appears on one slice, we are not worried.”

Well, then, neither am I.

The Way of the Window Crank

You never know when controversy will strike. I was reading the paper over lunch and came across an article about the future of crank windows in new cars. It seems that in the near future automatic windows will be standard on all makes and models of new cars. OK, that is somewhat interesting I suppose. But then came the shocker.

Toyota spokesman Kim Kwong predicted, and I quote: “You are going to see crank windows go the way of the dinosaurs.” Oh…my…God…! The way of the dinosaurs. This isn’t simply controversy, this is catastrophe.

Why, you might be asking yourself? Because the way of the dinosaurs isn’t pretty.

Basically you have two choices when it comes the way of the dinosaurs: the scientific way and the Creationist way. Neither one is going to make you sleep better tonight.

If you adhere to the theory of Creationism, the dinosaurs coexisted with human beings and both were caught up in the Flood. Noah and his family survived and so did two of every kind of dinosaur, but after the flood the earth just wasn’t same and the dinosaurs couldn’t adapt or, dare we say, “evolve,” fast enough. The last of them died after the flood.

Now let’s apply this to crank windows. If they, too, go the way of the dinosaur, we are in for another Flood— and (at least according to prophet Kwong) soon! Yes, I know God promised not to drown the earth a second time, but there are millions of people who believe in Creationism and the Flood-bath that killed the dinosaurs so I wouldn’t be so sure. A second flood is coming and, unless you are currently building an ark under God’s direction, you are screwed!

But, if you are a pseudo-intellectual sophisticate life me, you can always scoff at the Flood theory and go with more scientific data regarding the way of the dinosaur.

I always thought an asteroid stricking the earth 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous period killed off the beast. (Yes, I know, you thought it was beauty that killed the beast, but that is because you are a hopeless Romantic and not a real scientist.) It turns out, however, that the climate had already turned too cold for them, and the asteroid was simply the final straw (so to speak). The dinosaurs were freezing to death.

Sure, I know we are supposed to worry about global warming, but, if we are to take Kim Kwong and science seriously, the truth is that extreme cold is going to kill off the crank window. And I mean extreme!

Think of it this way: window cranks are made of plastic. Do you know the freezing point of plastic? Neither do I, but I do know that gasoline will still burn at minus 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Since both plastic and gasoline are made from petroleum you can be pretty damn sure that it has to be pretty damn cold for plastic to freeze. Since the scientific way of the dinosaur is freezing to death, and crank windows are going the way of the dinosaur—it is going to get really cold really soon.

So what can we do? Nothing. Religion and science agree: If crank windows are going the way of the dinosaur as Kim Kwong predicts, we are doomed.

Our only hope is that Mr. Kwong is wrong. But when it comes to predicting the future of the automobile, the people at Toyota are rarely wrong. So here is my advice: Roll up your car windows and burn as much fossil fuel as possible to up the greenhouse gas levels. It may keep the floodwaters out and you a little bit warmer. But not for long.

Homorein (with thanks to E)

Do I really care about a Gay-Pride parade in Jerusalem? Do I really feel compelled to comment that in a city where thousands of Jews dress as if they were living in medieval Poland there are Jews who want to make sure that thousands more don’t dress up as the Village People and march down Ben Yehudah Street? Yes I do.

And not because I am gay. I am not even happy most of the time. Nor am I eager to watch Jews with more piercings than Jesus walk along the Via Delarosa. No, I care because I can’t stand it when other unknown rabbis suddenly make the news, while I am condemned to blog about it

The rabbi is question is Rabbi Yehudah Levin of the New York-based Jews for Morality. He is supporting a petition to cancel a Gay-Pride parade in Jerusalem. I’ll tell you about the petition in a moment, but first, I have to say that I never heard of Jews for Morality, though most of the Jews I know are for morality. Why is it when you capitalize a regular noun other than at the beginning of a sentence you suddenly own it? If I am not a member of Jews for Morality, does that make me immoral? And if so, how much does it cost to become a member of Jews for Morality and hence become moral?

I checked out their website to see. First of all these Jews are the circumcised equivalent of the Rapture Right. The only difference, beside the missing foreskin, is that when the Rapture comes, these people will all be left behind. You can be as right as you want, but if you aren’t right with Jesus you are wrong. So there. Second of all, I couldn’t find out how to join. I am hoping that merely clicking on their website is sufficient because that is all I could do.

OK, back to the petition. The petition says, “[s]uch a parade in Jerusalem, of all places, is a great blow at the ages-old Jewish character of the city and its holy values, for the Jewish and non-Jewish public in Israel and around the world. To hold it in Jerusalem is a provocation and a declared mockery of all that is precious and sacred in the Holy city of Jerusalem in the eyes of the entire world."

I know what you are thinking: Why not simply move the parade to Tel Aviv? Rabbi Levin has that covered. Speaking on Israel National Radio he said, "If they think that we will be silent if the parade is moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, they do not understand our entire struggle. The Holy Land in its entirety must not be defiled; the basis for our continued presence in this land is that it remain pure."

Pure means “free of homosexuals.” It probably also means free of women in pants. Does this sound like Nazism? It does to me. Yes, I know it is vile to link anything Jewish to the Nazis, and I am not saying that Rabbi Levin is calling for the extermination of homosexuals, but echoes of Judenrein are still dancing in my head.

Rabbi Levin also said that the newly appointed mufti of Jerusalem, as well as other leading Moslem clerics, have shown great support for his cause. Good for him. These are the kind of moral giants we all wish to follow.

The real problem is not Rabbi Levin or Jews for Morality. The real problem is not that they are misrepresenting Judaism, the way we desperately hope that Muslim extremists are misrepresenting Islam. The real problem is that the Torah hates homosexual acts between men. Read Leviticus 18:22: male homosexuality is an abomination. Torah is very clear about this— clear and wrong. It is wrong on many things, and until we are willing to stand up and say so publicly and reject it when it is wrong without having to play games to pretend it doesn’t mean what it says, or says what it clearly does not say, we will continue to be plagued by the madness that passes for religion.

The Lobby of the Lord

I never heard of Hobby Lobby before moving to Tennessee, and when I did I assumed it was a large crafts store, which it is. But it seems that the true concern of Hobby Lobby is not to lobby for your hobby but to lobby for Jesus and a Christian America. Hence its full-page ad entitled In God We Trust in the July 4th issue of USA Today.

The ad is an anthology of quotes from past presidents, founding fathers, Supreme Court justices, Congress, and others making the case that America is more than a nation of Christians, but a Christian nation. Maybe this shouldn’t upset me. It is just that I love being an American, and I find the Fourth of July truly inspiring. I think we should assemble on the Fourth to read and debate the meaning of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights. I think the Fourth of July should be for Americans what Yom Kippur is for Jews and Easter is for Christians—the day when we consider the deepest truths of who we are.

So when I find an ad that violates the very genius and spirit of America and does so in the name of America, I get upset. No, not upset—sad. Sad and worried. And then a bit more sad.

In addition to being sad, I also find this ad to be a fine example of false advertising. Hobby Lobby does not trust in God. If it did it would relax and let God take care of things. HL wants to impose JC on the rest of us. And if HL can’t turn all Americans into believing Christians, it wants to make sure all are forced to live by Christian values (as they define them) and do away with science, contraception, and homosexuals.

If they really trusted God, they would simply leave these things up to God. If God is willing to allow us to imagine and teach that humans and apes share a family tree, why should HL take offense? And if God created people so that people might create condoms, who are they to interfere? And if God created everything, then God created homosexuals and who is HL to condemn God’s creation?

What bugs me about HL is their hubris. They sift through the teachings of Jesus, focus on what he has to say about homosexuality, stem cell research, evolution, and contraception, and ignore all the rest. (Note: For those who have not read the Gospels, Jesus says nothing about any of these things.) Their Jesus is created in their image, not God’s. He is their son, not His. They did the same with this ad. America was not and is not a Christian nation, and because it isn’t, Christianity flourishes here unlike anywhere else on the planet.

So I call upon America (notice how I assume America reads this blog) to trust in God but not in Hobby Lobby. I, for one, will no longer shop at Hobby Lobby. (OK I never have before, either.) I will not shop at Hobby Lobby not because I have no hobbies (which, sadly, is true) but because I can’t support their lobby. And I hope you won’t either. I am calling for a boycott of Hobby Lobby. Or, if you just have to buy stuff there, buy some stuff to make a sign that tells others not to buy there.

Happy Fourth. And God bless you (or damn you as the case may be).

Knit One, Pearl Two

When most of us think of the creation of humanity in the Bible we think of Genesis. In Chapter One God simply has the idea to create men and women and— whoosh! — there they are. In Chapter Two God creates the male human first by fashioning a clay manikin and then breathing consciousness into it. Both versions of human origins have something to teach us.

We are an idea in the mind of God. We are, as the Hindus say, the dream of God. Or better, we are God dreaming. The creation you and I experience is a cosmic game of hide of seek with God hiding from himself and then finding himself which ends the game for a few millennia until God starts playing all over again. We know this intuitively which is why one of the earliest games babies learn to play is peek-a-boo: now you’re here, now you’re not.

The second creation story reminds us that we are not (as the first story might suggest) alien to the earth, but fully of it. This is just the opposite of the Christian call to be in the world but not of the world. Genesis 2 says we are of the world, literally. We are the clay of the earth made self-conscious. To me this means that we are the way life comes to know itself divine. We are the way nature cares for the poor, the homeless, and the hungry. Unfortunately we are also the way nature produces poverty, homelessness, and starvation. There is nothing we can do about that. We are both the problem and the solution.

But there is a third creation myth in the Bible. In Psalm 139:13 we learn that God knits us together in our mothers’ wombs. I love this image for several reasons. First, the Knitting God just cannot be the angry, imperial, and dysfunctional Lord God running around creating life, drowning life, and proclaiming fatwas and jihads against anyone who crosses the Chosen people. With the exception of Madame Lafarge, knitting is done with love, not malice.

Second, the Knitting God is God as Mother and Grandmother, a welcome alternative to God the Father. In my family women knit, men fart. This image of the Great Mother God knitting me into existence is so loving. I have God’s full attention, and better, I am the result of God’s full attention.

Third, knitting is an image quite different from breathing life into a blow-up doll. When you knit you take different threads and weave them together. The more complex the pattern, the more glorious the piece. Given the excitement around string theory in physics, I can imagine God knitting the strings of existence together in an infinite array of more and less complex patterns eventually knitting a sweater and pants set that thinks and can knit its own socks!

So the next time you hear someone say we ought to teach Biblical creationism in the schools, you should agree with them. Just do it in during home economics.

Kal-El, Son of God

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a gay guy!

Is Superman, the quintessential American superhero, gay? Enquiring minds want to know. Actually not “enquiring” minds but stupid, silly, bored minds with nothing better to do than debate Superman’s sexuality. But, since they started…

Actually I have no idea if Superman is gay or straight. And, since he is a COMIC BOOK CHARACTER, I don’t care. But apparently some people do, but not the people you might think. It isn’t the wacko-Christian fringe that is obsessed with a gay Man of Steel, but the wacko-gay fringe. They can’t imagine that a guy in tights and wearing a cap is straight. What do they think the big “S” on his chest stands for, anyway.

As I investigated the truth behind the gay Ubermensch (UberHomo?) I discovered a more fascinating understanding of the big “S.” It doesn’t stand for “straight” but for “Son,” as in the Son of God. The May/June issue of New Man, a Christian men’s magazine (talk about gay, there isn’t a single photograph of a woman, let alone a scantily dressed woman, in this magazine), the Man of Steel is the Son of God. Here’s the proof:

Superman’s powers come from the sun (Son, get it?).
Superman has X-ray vision; God can see everything.
Superman has super hearing; God hears all prayers before they are spoken (Isaiah 65:24).
Superman has heat vision; Christ’s eyes blaze like fire (Revelation 1:14).
Superman has super speed; Christ is everywhere in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1).
Superman is raised by Martha and Jonathan which sounds like Mary and Joseph. (And, though the magazine didn’t mention this, “Kent” rhymes with Lent.)
Superman’s archenemy is Lex Luthor which sounds a lot like Lucifer, aka, the Devil.

You get the idea. Of course it doesn’t hurt that in the up-coming movie Jor-El, Superman’s dad, says he is sending his only begotten son to save the earth. And it damn well helps to know that Superman’s real name is Kal-El, which the two Jewish creators of Superman, having recently become bar mitzvah, knew is Hebrew for “All-God” (Jor-
El means nothing in particular, though El is Hebrew for God).

So is Superman a gay, Jewish, Christ-figure? Yes, he likes to run around in tights and a cape, but the rest of his wardrobe is kind of boring. Yes, he has a great body, but he never works out. Yes, he trying to save humankind, but he never sacrifices himself, preferring to beat the crap out of his enemies. Yes, his name is Jewish, but he flies on Shabbos.

The truth is, we don’t know. Does it matter? Not to me. Jesus wore robes, hung around with a bunch of guys, never married, remained a virgin (sorry Dan Brown), and seemed to attract a lot of women without himself being attracted to them. Maybe Jesus was…. Nah.