A recent study by British researchers found yet another significant difference between your typical woman (British, at least) and your typical man. Women have more nightmares than men, and men dream about sex more often than women. And even when women do dream about sex, they are less likely to dream of actual intercourse and more likely to dream about kissing and less favorable sexual encounters than men. Great.
Add this to the fact that women, regardless of nationality, cry more often than men, and you've got yet more evidence that being female is potentially way less fun than being male. American women, in particular, cry more than their brothers, a whopping 47.8 times per year compared to 6.5 times for men. And don't forget that women get more headaches, and more migraines and severe headaches than their male counterparts. I suppose this would explain why I often wake up crying and with a headache. Maybe it's my body's way of getting it all over in one shot.
And as if we didn't have it bad enough, we end up living longer on average. Maybe this is to make sure that we truly appreciate the pain of our lot. ::sigh:: That said, men tend to be killed in war more often than women (as I reported in an earlier post), but women tend to be the victims of war more often than men (e.g. rape, torture, disfigurement). So I suppose that makes it fair.
I'm sure there's some advantage to being female, but a cursory exploration of the scientific data doesn't suggest to me what it may be. More nightmares, more tears, more headaches and rapes...hmm. Sometimes I really wish I were a boy.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
A just and sustainable peace
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes that he is fed up with the
In his letter, King challenges the moderates to look beyond simply establishing order and to immersing themselves in justice. Implicit in his juxtaposition is the idea that justice is not orderly and that peace must be more than just the absence of war. Peace is an active, messy process of building ties, seeking justice, and extending active, stubborn mercy. Sometimes in order to strengthen those who have been denied access, those of privileged have to live with a bit of chaos and relinquish a tinge of control. Sometimes we must invite a bit of disorder in to break free of institutionalized and fossilized inequalities.
In doing so, in opening ourselves up to change, we must never forget the purpose of our mission. If we seek only negative peace, i.e. the absence of destruction, then our efforts will ultimately not be sustainable nor satisfying. But if we seek positive peace, i.e. the creation of a new order based in mutual justice and cooperation, then a self-perpetuating peace can be established and nurtured. To tend to the garden, we can mow down the weeds. But they will simply grow back. We can tear the weeds out by the roots. But the seeds have already been spread. Or we can change the nature of the soil, make it inhospitable to weeds. Plant new flowers and grasses to crowd out the weeds. Ultimately, the choice is not either-or. It is through some combination of these that the garden is ultimately sustained: remove the threats and change the context.
Gordon Bennet writes that positive peace-building "involves helping nations develop more just and democratic systems in which poverty, illiteracy, and other root causes of terrorism and conflict are eliminated and the poorer nations are given a 'hand up' the ladders of economic development." This path is more complex, time consuming, and (seemingly) more prone to failure than negative peace. Negative peace is relatively easier - take away the bombs, the guns, the knives and presto change-o, we have peace!
But true peace is not the absence of struggle. Rather it is the presence of perpetual struggle, struggle to join with others, to lift up and be lifted up, to prosper and grow, and there's no better time to get our hands dirty and to start planting the seeds and irrigating our minds and hearts than now.
- ...white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
In his letter, King challenges the moderates to look beyond simply establishing order and to immersing themselves in justice. Implicit in his juxtaposition is the idea that justice is not orderly and that peace must be more than just the absence of war. Peace is an active, messy process of building ties, seeking justice, and extending active, stubborn mercy. Sometimes in order to strengthen those who have been denied access, those of privileged have to live with a bit of chaos and relinquish a tinge of control. Sometimes we must invite a bit of disorder in to break free of institutionalized and fossilized inequalities.
In doing so, in opening ourselves up to change, we must never forget the purpose of our mission. If we seek only negative peace, i.e. the absence of destruction, then our efforts will ultimately not be sustainable nor satisfying. But if we seek positive peace, i.e. the creation of a new order based in mutual justice and cooperation, then a self-perpetuating peace can be established and nurtured. To tend to the garden, we can mow down the weeds. But they will simply grow back. We can tear the weeds out by the roots. But the seeds have already been spread. Or we can change the nature of the soil, make it inhospitable to weeds. Plant new flowers and grasses to crowd out the weeds. Ultimately, the choice is not either-or. It is through some combination of these that the garden is ultimately sustained: remove the threats and change the context.
Gordon Bennet writes that positive peace-building "involves helping nations develop more just and democratic systems in which poverty, illiteracy, and other root causes of terrorism and conflict are eliminated and the poorer nations are given a 'hand up' the ladders of economic development." This path is more complex, time consuming, and (seemingly) more prone to failure than negative peace. Negative peace is relatively easier - take away the bombs, the guns, the knives and presto change-o, we have peace!
But true peace is not the absence of struggle. Rather it is the presence of perpetual struggle, struggle to join with others, to lift up and be lifted up, to prosper and grow, and there's no better time to get our hands dirty and to start planting the seeds and irrigating our minds and hearts than now.
For the record
Probably one of my greatest language pet peeves is the misuse of sayings and idioms. As a linguist and grammar maven, I feel it is incumbent on me to clarify these misuses from time to time, so may I begin…
having your cake and eating it too
The correct expression, if you wish to be truthful or at least make some sense, is “You cannot EAT your cake and HAVE it too”, not the other way around.
Why? Good question.
For the semantics among us, the two expressions are propositionally equivalent. If we follow propositional logic, the ordering of phrases should not matter. “You cannot X & Y” is logically the same as “you cannot Y & X.” But we are not talking about semantic or propositional equivalence. We are talking about functional equivalence. If we take the interpretation of and to mean “and then” (and there’s psycholinguistic work to suggest that this is a ‘default’ interpretation of and), then the two expressions “you cannot have your cake and then eat it too” and “you cannot eat your cake and then have it too” are not describing the same series of events or possible worlds. Thus, they do not mean the same things.
The first assertion is just false. Of course you can have your cake and then eat it. How else could you eat something if you didn’t first have it? However, you cannot eat something and then ‘have’ it, where have means something along the lines of ‘holding’ or ‘possessing’, unless you want to count digested form as ‘possession’. So for the love of truth and function, let’s get it right: You cannot eat your cake and have it too!
having your cake and eating it too
The correct expression, if you wish to be truthful or at least make some sense, is “You cannot EAT your cake and HAVE it too”, not the other way around.
Why? Good question.
For the semantics among us, the two expressions are propositionally equivalent. If we follow propositional logic, the ordering of phrases should not matter. “You cannot X & Y” is logically the same as “you cannot Y & X.” But we are not talking about semantic or propositional equivalence. We are talking about functional equivalence. If we take the interpretation of and to mean “and then” (and there’s psycholinguistic work to suggest that this is a ‘default’ interpretation of and), then the two expressions “you cannot have your cake and then eat it too” and “you cannot eat your cake and then have it too” are not describing the same series of events or possible worlds. Thus, they do not mean the same things.
The first assertion is just false. Of course you can have your cake and then eat it. How else could you eat something if you didn’t first have it? However, you cannot eat something and then ‘have’ it, where have means something along the lines of ‘holding’ or ‘possessing’, unless you want to count digested form as ‘possession’. So for the love of truth and function, let’s get it right: You cannot eat your cake and have it too!
Monday, January 26, 2009
The American Taliban
The more I read about the Christian Right, especially the far right movements, the more sick I feel. From Joel's Army to plain-old Dominionism, the use of religion as a justification for aggression and bigotry disgusts me. In future posts, I will try to explain the beliefs of such groups, but as a foretaste, here are some of the highlights.
The "Christian" Dominionist movement contends that they have a mandate from God to prepare the world for Christ's return and that Christ will return only when the world is Christian. To make sure we are making progress on this point, good God-fearing Christians must prepare themselves politically, militaristically, and economically to wage war against non-believers. They want to establish Hebrew law in the US by using the very institution of democracy to set up a theocracy.
Hard-line Dominionists see the role of all Christian men as being the establishment of a Christian world order in which all non-Christians and all Christians who don't conform to their interpretation of scripture would be second-class citizens, at best. Some fear an even worse fate:
Like other fundamentalist religious groups, this movement contends that they are the elect, that they are wholly correct, and that those who don't agree with them must move out of the way, by force if necessary. And as we saw in the Christian Zionist's anti-peace agenda outlined in yesterday's post, war and genocide are quite likely a necessary condition for salvation.
There's a (corny) saying that whenever you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you. (Look at your hand while pointing your finger, and you'll see why.) I'm personally covering my mouth so as not to vomit more so than I am pointing my finger, but I bring this saying up as a way to bridge to our condemnation of certain groups that have co-opted the West's understanding of Islam and made it seem as though Islam promotes violent, repressive, or bigoted actions. However, we allow our crazy, fundamentalist Christian cousins to go around terrorizing clinics, denying gays rights, espousing religious hate, etc. etc. etc., making Christianity look as though it promotes intolerance and violence.
The truth is that no religion has a corner on peace or violence. Sadly, all the major world religions have been both victims and aggressors. Thus, we cannot say that any one religion -- or even being religious for that matter -- leads us toward or away from hate. The enemy isn't Christians/Jews/Muslims/Atheists/etc. The enemy, if it can be called such, is fear and the human tendency toward authoritarianism.
When Americans, specifically non-Muslim Americans, wag their finger at men like Osama Bin Laden, we confuse our disdain for a certain mentality and pattern of behavior with a religion. Bin Laden speaks for all of Islam (I think) no more so then Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell (among others) speak for all of Christianity. In my opinion, these people are just branches of the same tree. This tree is based not on religion, per se, but on a personality type that Theodor Adorno marked as having the following the characteristics:
It is not any one religion or religion itself that we need to be wary of. It is the authoritarian personality that we all share elements of.
The "Christian" Dominionist movement contends that they have a mandate from God to prepare the world for Christ's return and that Christ will return only when the world is Christian. To make sure we are making progress on this point, good God-fearing Christians must prepare themselves politically, militaristically, and economically to wage war against non-believers. They want to establish Hebrew law in the US by using the very institution of democracy to set up a theocracy.
Hard-line Dominionists see the role of all Christian men as being the establishment of a Christian world order in which all non-Christians and all Christians who don't conform to their interpretation of scripture would be second-class citizens, at best. Some fear an even worse fate:
- Any person who advocated or practiced other religious beliefs outside of their home would be tried for idolatry and executed. Blasphemy, adultery and homosexual behavior would be criminalized; those found guilty would also be executed. At that time that this essay was originally written, this was the only religious movement in North America of which we were aware which advocates genocide for followers of minority religions and non-conforming members of their own religion.
Like other fundamentalist religious groups, this movement contends that they are the elect, that they are wholly correct, and that those who don't agree with them must move out of the way, by force if necessary. And as we saw in the Christian Zionist's anti-peace agenda outlined in yesterday's post, war and genocide are quite likely a necessary condition for salvation.
There's a (corny) saying that whenever you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you. (Look at your hand while pointing your finger, and you'll see why.) I'm personally covering my mouth so as not to vomit more so than I am pointing my finger, but I bring this saying up as a way to bridge to our condemnation of certain groups that have co-opted the West's understanding of Islam and made it seem as though Islam promotes violent, repressive, or bigoted actions. However, we allow our crazy, fundamentalist Christian cousins to go around terrorizing clinics, denying gays rights, espousing religious hate, etc. etc. etc., making Christianity look as though it promotes intolerance and violence.
The truth is that no religion has a corner on peace or violence. Sadly, all the major world religions have been both victims and aggressors. Thus, we cannot say that any one religion -- or even being religious for that matter -- leads us toward or away from hate. The enemy isn't Christians/Jews/Muslims/Atheists/etc. The enemy, if it can be called such, is fear and the human tendency toward authoritarianism.
When Americans, specifically non-Muslim Americans, wag their finger at men like Osama Bin Laden, we confuse our disdain for a certain mentality and pattern of behavior with a religion. Bin Laden speaks for all of Islam (I think) no more so then Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell (among others) speak for all of Christianity. In my opinion, these people are just branches of the same tree. This tree is based not on religion, per se, but on a personality type that Theodor Adorno marked as having the following the characteristics:
- Blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong
- Respect for submission to acknowledged authority
- Belief in aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking, or who are different
- A negative view of people in general - i.e. the belief that people would all lie, cheat or steal if given the opportunity
- A need for strong leadership which displays uncompromising power
- A belief in simple answers and polemics - i.e. The media controls us all or The source of all our problems is the loss of morals these days.
- Resistance to creative, dangerous ideas. A black and white worldview
- A tendency to project one's own feelings of inadequacy, rage and fear onto a scapegoated group
- A preoccupation with violence and sex
It is not any one religion or religion itself that we need to be wary of. It is the authoritarian personality that we all share elements of.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday Edition
Back in the early 90s, my mother had a sticker that read "The Christian Right is Neither." Thoroughly confused, I asked her about it, and she said, "The Christian Right is neither Christian nor right." The older I get and the more I learn about the Christian Right, specifically the Zionists –i.e. those in the Christian Right who are obsessed with Rapture, the End of Days, and Israel—the more convinced I am that she was right: They're not Christians; they’re a f---ing crazy death cult that's going to start WW III.
I find the Christian Zionist (and by extension the political arm of the Christian Right) movement enormously troubling, especially as a religious person and baptized/confirmed Christian. It's as though someone stole my identity and is going around town kicking children in the back, punching old ladies in the gut, and crapping on faces of cancer patients.
Below is my initial attempt and figuring out what in heaven's name is going on. If I find out I am incorrect, I will update this, but for now this is the truth as I know it.
The people in your neighborhood
The USA is a religious country, to be sure, with over 80% of Americans never doubting the existence of (a) God. Though overwhelming Christian, Protestant specifically, we have our Catholics, Mormons, and non-Christians to boot. However, the Christian Right/Zionists and branches of the evangelical movement are worth particular attention, as the total number of evangelicals comprise about 1/3 of the American population. The majority of evangelicals are made up of African Americans, who tend to be the more liberal evangelicals, and white, southern conservatives. A 2003 report from Pew Research stated that nearly 50% of African Americans describe themselves as evangelicals and 28% of whites do.
Before I go any further, let me state unequivocally: being evangelical does not entail being a Christian Zionist, though being a Christian Zionist almost assuredly means being evangelical. The two terms should not be thought of as wholly interchangeable. Zionists and other evangelicals can differ drastically on their assumptions about Christianity and in their political/social agendas. The important thing to remember is that as the evangelical movement is growing so is the Christian Right and the Christian Zionist movements.
So why should we take the time to learn about these growing groups? Mainly because they have a great deal of political influence. They are overwhelmingly Republican, nearly 2-to-1 for the white evangelicals and have had the ear of D.C. and one of their own in the White House for eight years (i.e. George W. Bush). Furthermore, they are one of the fastest-growing religious voting blocks, increasing by 3% between the 2004 and 2008 elections while many other groups decreased. The Christian Right agenda has permeated all aspects of American life, leading some to compare its fundamentalist influence on the USA to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While the Christian Right has influenced domestic policy (same-sex marriage rights, abortion rights, etc), it has distorted and warped foreign policy, in particular Middle Eastern policy, to suit its needs. With groups such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joining forces and pressing policies that undermine peace efforts in the Middle East, we must attend to this segment, lest we walk blindly into WW III. And WW III is what Christian Zionists are hoping for. More precisely, they’re hoping for Armageddon. The Christian Zionist movement has its eyes set steadily on Israel usually at the expense of Palestinians. They are over three-times as likely to support Israeli aggression than moderate Americans, mostly because they see the state of Israel as necessary for the second coming of Christ.
However, they are not alone in their sentiments about Israel or their disdain for Palestine. Around 36% of Americans see the formation of Israel as a sign of the impending return of Jesus, and most Americans, regardless of political or religious affiliation, tend to lack support for Palestine or Palestinians, though one assumes this does not apply to Palestinian-Americans and the majority of Muslim-Americans. Charles E. Carlson recently wrote:
With this level of religious motivation to demonize one group and blindly support another plus the proliferation of weapons added to an extreme amount of political influence…indeed, Christian Zionists are worth our attention.
This they believe
Full disclosure: While I consider myself Christian, I debate the basic tenants of even mainstream Protestantism, so when I try to wrap my mind around the belief system of the Christian Zionists, I feel like I’m trapped in some psychic debate about characters from a demonic Dr. Suess story. I can barely recognize anything that I would define as Christian, save the use of certain names and references to scripture. It’s like they took my toothpaste, band-aids, and down comforter and made an A-bomb with them. I find it difficult to see how we could look at the same raw materials and come up with such radically different interpretations. That said, I will try to explain the differences between Zionist-bending evangelicals and your more mainstream evangelicals.
The first thing to keep in mind about Christianity (especially if you weren’t raised by a Christian theologian or aren’t one yourself) is that Christianity is based on this idea that human beings are fallen and that we broke our covenant with God. Jesus is seen as coming to address the rift between God and humanity and the status of the covenant. However, this is where things start to break down between Catholics/mainstream-Protestants and the Christian Right/Zionists.
Was Jesus the fulfillment of prophecy? Did Jesus’s life and death mark the beginning of a new covenant? Are we in an age of progression in which God’s revelation is continually unfolding or is God’s promise currently being suspended? If you agree with the former and with the idea that we are age of a new covenant, you’re a “conventionalist.” If you believe we are not and that the old covenant still applies (at least to the Jews), then you’re a “dispensationalist.” The dispensationalist view holds that there are two aspects: the church and Israel. The latter is still subject to the old covenant, which they broke, and the former is, basically evangelical Christians. Because the old covenant still holds and the world is still being tested by God (and failing), dispensationalists look toward Israel for clues of God's intentions for the world. Conventionalists, as I understand them, believe God has already made God's intentions clear and that we were given our marching orders thousands of years ago.
So how does this relate to Israel? For those dispensationalist waiting for God's final test, the story goes like this:
The end of days is upon us. Soon there will be Rapture, during which the faithful Christians will ascend directly to heaven, where they will get new immortal bodies while the rest of the world burns for seven years until the end of human history. Rapture will come when Jesus returns, but he won’t just come unannounced. No-no, there will be signs, and there are necessary conditions, and this is where Israel comes in. As good Christians in waiting, Christian Zionists believe they should work towards achieving these conditions, and here's the game plan:
The Christian Zionist movement has a vested interest in avoiding peace in the Middle East and in establishing a purely Jewish state in Israel at the expense of all other groups, Muslims, Christians, etc. This end-of-days interest gives an ominous tone to Thomas Ice’s conjecture that
That lingering feeling of doom
As a Christian, I assumed we were supposed to put loving our neighbor before inciting war, and I assumed that God was present here and now, and not waiting for the burning of some red cow before taking action on Earth. But alas, Christian Zionist have co-opted the dialog and have changed the Middle East (Israel/Palestine in particular) into the theater of some self-directed play between good and evil to bring about the end of days on their timetable. Sadly, Palestinians and Israelis are suffering as is what I consider to be the soul of Christianity.
So how do we end this insanity? How can someone fight a world view that is so damaging and so devoid of logic, that has so much sway over the political reality of the US? How do we uproot a preposterous mandate that has permeated both major parties and the very core of US foreign policy? Good question. Stephen Zunes is probably at least partially right when he states:
I find the Christian Zionist (and by extension the political arm of the Christian Right) movement enormously troubling, especially as a religious person and baptized/confirmed Christian. It's as though someone stole my identity and is going around town kicking children in the back, punching old ladies in the gut, and crapping on faces of cancer patients.
Below is my initial attempt and figuring out what in heaven's name is going on. If I find out I am incorrect, I will update this, but for now this is the truth as I know it.
The people in your neighborhood
The USA is a religious country, to be sure, with over 80% of Americans never doubting the existence of (a) God. Though overwhelming Christian, Protestant specifically, we have our Catholics, Mormons, and non-Christians to boot. However, the Christian Right/Zionists and branches of the evangelical movement are worth particular attention, as the total number of evangelicals comprise about 1/3 of the American population. The majority of evangelicals are made up of African Americans, who tend to be the more liberal evangelicals, and white, southern conservatives. A 2003 report from Pew Research stated that nearly 50% of African Americans describe themselves as evangelicals and 28% of whites do.
Before I go any further, let me state unequivocally: being evangelical does not entail being a Christian Zionist, though being a Christian Zionist almost assuredly means being evangelical. The two terms should not be thought of as wholly interchangeable. Zionists and other evangelicals can differ drastically on their assumptions about Christianity and in their political/social agendas. The important thing to remember is that as the evangelical movement is growing so is the Christian Right and the Christian Zionist movements.
So why should we take the time to learn about these growing groups? Mainly because they have a great deal of political influence. They are overwhelmingly Republican, nearly 2-to-1 for the white evangelicals and have had the ear of D.C. and one of their own in the White House for eight years (i.e. George W. Bush). Furthermore, they are one of the fastest-growing religious voting blocks, increasing by 3% between the 2004 and 2008 elections while many other groups decreased. The Christian Right agenda has permeated all aspects of American life, leading some to compare its fundamentalist influence on the USA to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While the Christian Right has influenced domestic policy (same-sex marriage rights, abortion rights, etc), it has distorted and warped foreign policy, in particular Middle Eastern policy, to suit its needs. With groups such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joining forces and pressing policies that undermine peace efforts in the Middle East, we must attend to this segment, lest we walk blindly into WW III. And WW III is what Christian Zionists are hoping for. More precisely, they’re hoping for Armageddon. The Christian Zionist movement has its eyes set steadily on Israel usually at the expense of Palestinians. They are over three-times as likely to support Israeli aggression than moderate Americans, mostly because they see the state of Israel as necessary for the second coming of Christ.
However, they are not alone in their sentiments about Israel or their disdain for Palestine. Around 36% of Americans see the formation of Israel as a sign of the impending return of Jesus, and most Americans, regardless of political or religious affiliation, tend to lack support for Palestine or Palestinians, though one assumes this does not apply to Palestinian-Americans and the majority of Muslim-Americans. Charles E. Carlson recently wrote:
- The Judeo-Christians remain the only political faction driven directly by religious beliefs that war and the support of the state of Israel is right, that distrust, even hatred, of Israel’s perceived enemy Islam, is a necessity and prophetic.
With this level of religious motivation to demonize one group and blindly support another plus the proliferation of weapons added to an extreme amount of political influence…indeed, Christian Zionists are worth our attention.
This they believe
Full disclosure: While I consider myself Christian, I debate the basic tenants of even mainstream Protestantism, so when I try to wrap my mind around the belief system of the Christian Zionists, I feel like I’m trapped in some psychic debate about characters from a demonic Dr. Suess story. I can barely recognize anything that I would define as Christian, save the use of certain names and references to scripture. It’s like they took my toothpaste, band-aids, and down comforter and made an A-bomb with them. I find it difficult to see how we could look at the same raw materials and come up with such radically different interpretations. That said, I will try to explain the differences between Zionist-bending evangelicals and your more mainstream evangelicals.
The first thing to keep in mind about Christianity (especially if you weren’t raised by a Christian theologian or aren’t one yourself) is that Christianity is based on this idea that human beings are fallen and that we broke our covenant with God. Jesus is seen as coming to address the rift between God and humanity and the status of the covenant. However, this is where things start to break down between Catholics/mainstream-Protestants and the Christian Right/Zionists.
Was Jesus the fulfillment of prophecy? Did Jesus’s life and death mark the beginning of a new covenant? Are we in an age of progression in which God’s revelation is continually unfolding or is God’s promise currently being suspended? If you agree with the former and with the idea that we are age of a new covenant, you’re a “conventionalist.” If you believe we are not and that the old covenant still applies (at least to the Jews), then you’re a “dispensationalist.” The dispensationalist view holds that there are two aspects: the church and Israel. The latter is still subject to the old covenant, which they broke, and the former is, basically evangelical Christians. Because the old covenant still holds and the world is still being tested by God (and failing), dispensationalists look toward Israel for clues of God's intentions for the world. Conventionalists, as I understand them, believe God has already made God's intentions clear and that we were given our marching orders thousands of years ago.
So how does this relate to Israel? For those dispensationalist waiting for God's final test, the story goes like this:
The end of days is upon us. Soon there will be Rapture, during which the faithful Christians will ascend directly to heaven, where they will get new immortal bodies while the rest of the world burns for seven years until the end of human history. Rapture will come when Jesus returns, but he won’t just come unannounced. No-no, there will be signs, and there are necessary conditions, and this is where Israel comes in. As good Christians in waiting, Christian Zionists believe they should work towards achieving these conditions, and here's the game plan:
- Establish a (purely) Jewish state in the biblical, Holy Land.
- Reconstruct the Jewish temple. [This must be built on the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites of Muslims and the reported site of the former Jewish temple.]
- Then, the Antichrist must desecrate the temple.
- Horrible disasters, as detailed in the Book of Revelation, will ravage the planet.
- Jesus will return, and any Jews that convert can ascend to heaven. [I assume everyone else goes to hell.]
The Christian Zionist movement has a vested interest in avoiding peace in the Middle East and in establishing a purely Jewish state in Israel at the expense of all other groups, Muslims, Christians, etc. This end-of-days interest gives an ominous tone to Thomas Ice’s conjecture that
- [It] is safe to say that there has not been a group of Christians who have cared more for the Jewish people and their destiny than dispensationalists in the 2,000-year history of the church. Previous to the rise of dispensationalism, Christians did not seem to be able to acknowledge that God had a future plan of glory for national Israel, without at the same time making the church subordinate to Judaism.
That lingering feeling of doom
As a Christian, I assumed we were supposed to put loving our neighbor before inciting war, and I assumed that God was present here and now, and not waiting for the burning of some red cow before taking action on Earth. But alas, Christian Zionist have co-opted the dialog and have changed the Middle East (Israel/Palestine in particular) into the theater of some self-directed play between good and evil to bring about the end of days on their timetable. Sadly, Palestinians and Israelis are suffering as is what I consider to be the soul of Christianity.
So how do we end this insanity? How can someone fight a world view that is so damaging and so devoid of logic, that has so much sway over the political reality of the US? How do we uproot a preposterous mandate that has permeated both major parties and the very core of US foreign policy? Good question. Stephen Zunes is probably at least partially right when he states:
- It is unlikely that [American politicians] will change, however, until liberal-to-mainline churches mobilize their resources toward demanding justice as strongly as right-wing fundamentalists have mobilized their resources in support of repression.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Et tu, Chomsky?
Now, Noam Chomsky's copyin' my style. DAMN YOU NOAM! Ok, so neither one of us was the first to contend that perhaps the US-Israel marriage is based on common, weapon interests, but come on Chomsky, syntactician to syntactican, can't you leave me some small sense of originality?
And did you have to state the position better than me? Couldn't you have at least been less informative? Ok, I'll cite the master:
- The huge flow of arms to Israel serves many subsidiary purposes. Middle East policy analyst Mouin Rabbani observes that Israel can test newly developed weapons systems against defenseless targets. This is of value to Israel and the US "twice over, in fact, because less effective versions of these same weapons systems are subsequently sold at hugely inflated prices to Arab states, which effectively subsidizes the U.S. weapons industry and U.S. military grants to Israel." These are additional functions of Israel in the US-dominated Middle East system, and among the reasons why Israel is so favored by the state authorities, along with a wide range of US high-tech corporations, and of course military industry and intelligence.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
I was down with the Titanic DAYS ago
::BONUS UPDATE::
I just want to say that the BBC and other news agencies are totally ripping me off. Granted, they're talking about how nice the Brits are and how bossy Americans are, and I was talking about statistics during war and diminishing the suffering of men, but seriously, people, come up with your own topics. Stop stealin' my style. I don't have that much to spread around. Hello - "women and children first" was sooooo last week. Get with the program people!
I just want to say that the BBC and other news agencies are totally ripping me off. Granted, they're talking about how nice the Brits are and how bossy Americans are, and I was talking about statistics during war and diminishing the suffering of men, but seriously, people, come up with your own topics. Stop stealin' my style. I don't have that much to spread around. Hello - "women and children first" was sooooo last week. Get with the program people!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
