Right On!

Gratitude is generally welcomed as a positive interaction between people.  Sometimes it carries an unintended edge.

It's become recently popular, especially among businessmen wanting to sell more products, to say "Thank You for your service" to veterans or Americans in uniform. I've seen people say it as a Pavlovian response when they see soldiers. I sometimes get the impression it's more for them to portray themselves as noble American patriots than it is to express heart-felt gratitude.

Consider this:  The US Army is experiencing its highest rate of suicide in its 234 year history.  Soldiers are seeing things others will never experience, and many veterans live with the plaguing guilt that they should not have survived when others did not.

The latest U.S. Census lists Veterans as 11% of the U.S. population, but are 25% of homeless Americans.

There are veterans who still resent having been drafted and forced into combat. 

Society dictates that "gratitude expressed" cannot be criticized. Saying "Thank You for your service" to someone who has suffered, seen suffering, perhaps even caused suffering, may very well isolate them further, creating the precise opposite effect of the well-intentioned patriot.

This Veterans Day be more respectful and less reactive towards Veterans. "Think before you thank" and accept that gratitude is sometimes felt even when it's not spoken.

November 7^th.

1938

To call world attention to the deprivation of Jews in Germany, the 17 year old Polish-Jew Herschel Grynzspan from Germany, walked into his nation’s embassy in Paris and shot the deputy ambassador.

Fifteen years earlier November 9^th 1923.

Hitler fomented the famous “Bierhall Putsch” in Munich, the official start of the Nazi movement, its birthday, celebrated by Nazis every year.

November 9^th 1938

The deputy ambassador died and Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, returned to the Bierhall in Munich to give a rallying speech that Germany should not go after Jews, but if Jews were to be terrorized as a result, the government would not intervene to stop the vigilantism.

Taking their cue, the Sturm Abteilung (SA Nazis) destroyed Jewish synagogues, Jewish businesses and homes across all of Germany.  Known today as Kristallnacht.

This wasn’t just the work of the Sturm Abteilung Nazis. 

Did you know that in March 1938, before these events, Poland passed a law that robbed Polish citizens of their nationality if they lived abroad for 5 years or more, intended to prevent 70,000 Polish Jews in Germany from returning home?

Germany cancelled all foreign resident permits months later, in August. 

Poland said no Jews of Polish ancestry will be allowed back in to Poland after the end of October that year.  Five days before that deadline the Gestapo was ordered to arrest and deport 12,000 Polish Jews, which included Herschel’s family.

Thank God for the life of the American woman, journalist Dorothy Parker, who told a national radio audience:

“They are holding every Jew in Germany as a hostage. Therefore, we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard. This boy has become a symbol, and the responsibility for his deed must be shared by those who caused it.”

There are lessons here.  We can play the role of each nation, Germany, Poland, and the U.S.  As Germany, who in America do you want to deport?  As Poland who in America do you want to block entry?  As America for which oppressed group do you speak? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Grynszpan

OK, so yeah, I have problems with prayer, especially the “granting our desires” kind of prayer.  Either God wants your particular desire satisfied or He doesn’t.  If He doesn’t, then guess what?  It won’t be.  Your desire might be changed, it may go away, but you ain’t getting your way.  Now consider this:  What is the benefit of praying for something God does not want for you?  Does it irritate Him?  Is it sinful to pray for something God is opposed to?

The Apostle Paul tells us to pray incessantly.  “Don’t Stop!” 

I bought new pedals and shoes for my bicycle.  Straps keep my feet in the shoes, while cleats clip my shoes to the pedals.  I am attached to the bike, and it to me; man and machine become one vehicle. 

Not one to generally pray as Paul advises, this time I did so.  “Lord, grant that my body be strong and this ride be safe.” 

As I pedaled away I realized I forgot to lock my car.  I turned around and unclipped my right shoe.  The bottom of the shoes is shiny, slick, coated plastic.  As I slowed, my right shoe slipped off the pedal and I couldn’t unclip my left shoe.  Over I fell, with the bicycle on top of me.  I got up, retrieved my keys, locked the car and reconnected shoes to pedals.

With bruised hip, and bleeding elbow I started over, chuckling at the power of prayer.  God can indeed be funny at times!   Whether it was prayer, or God, or just my slick shoes that slapped me to the ground, is unknown.   However, my prayer preceded my fall! 

I wondered several things as I rode.  Did I pray for something I shouldn’t have bothered God about?  Adam fell without praying, was this a symbolic lesson linking my prayer and my fall?  Did my fall prevent something worse from happening further down the road, or was it just a funny coincidence?  Was my successful and longer than usual ride God’s response to my prayer?

The answer to these questions is the same:  I don’t know.  And that’s my problem with prayer.  I just don’t know.

One thing is certain.  I now lock my car before I clip on!

Pax vobiscum

At an after-work happy-hour I sat with my good friend, an atheist, and his girlfriend, also an atheist.  In accordance with common wisdom we hadn't discussed religion before, but we did that evening, Coors Lite and Bud participating.

His girlfriend protested that Christianity was a religion that approved slavery.  My insight that it was Old Testament and not New Testament missed the mark.  They both remained unsatisifed and she changed the subject to our common interest in biking.

Her point was valid.  What changed from the Old to the New? 

The New Testament does not replace the Old Testament.  One cannot, rationally, be a "New Testament Christian" and ignore the Old Testament, anymore than a patriot can claim to be a "Bill of Rights American", while minimizing the original Constitution. 

Several days later, I listened to Fr. Corapi preach on TV about servitude.
He clarified that servant, "doulos" in New Testament Greek actually means "slave".  My curiosity stoked, I pursued further discovery.

In Romans 1:1 (NIV)  "Paul, a servant of Christ,..." Using Bible Gateway dot com, I then pulled up the Greek version and saw the word doulos. In Romans 6:20 doulos is accurately translated to give us: "When you were slaves to sin..."

The KJV consistently translates doulos as servant in both verses and never renders doulos as slave in the Pauline letters, however, scholars agree: doulos means slave.  Doulos in some contexts might mean "bonded-servant." , but I am unsure how commonly employers used bonded-servants during that era. 

There are other words in Greek that mean servant, one willing to serve, but retaining the right to leave.  Why didn't Paul use those words?  Certainly "slave" to an American has its own connotations that may not have existed in Roman society.  We are loathe to be slaves, preferring the kinder status of "servant" and all that is noble with serving.  However, servant implies one can quit, leave the employ of his master.  Contrary to the Arminian heresy, one cannot quit God. 

One can work without being appreciated and that defines slavery more than service. 

So the next time I am asked how I can adopt a religion that embraces slavery I can correctly tell them.  Christ freed us from the slavery of sin and called us to be his slaves.

In his memoirs of WWII Winston Churchill called the 2^nd World War “the Unnecessary War”. Unnecessary, not that fascism was acceptable, but that the war was preventable; its roots traced not to the evils of Nazism, but rather to “The Follies of the Victors” as he titled chapter 1.

“Gone were the days... when aristocratic statesmen and diplomats, victor and vanquished alike, met in polite courtly disputation, and, free from the clatter and babel of democracy could reshape systems upon the fundamentals of which they were all agreed.”

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, like Churchill, carried little respect for democracy, calling it mob rule, where passions supplant laws as codes of conduct.

Indeed Churchill declares democracy guilty as the underlying cause of the 2^nd World War. The Allies, inspired by their victory, their people hurting, sought compensation for their suffering and enacted repayment plans from Germany which Churchill called ignorant and silly. The victory of democracy over common-sense, of politics over right, is captured eloquently in his sentence: “The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance of the simplest economic facts, and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them.”

Mob rule.

We’ve seen Japanese segregated to camps. We’ve seen Americans agree to secret prisons, the expansion of “investigative techniques”, all fueled by passion let loose, willingly unchecked by established law. Today, fearful passions spark the fury of “mob rule” to support partial government control of manufacturers and banks. We see otherwise reasonable Americans upset that Exxon made a 5% profit, while the government, voting itself raises, takes 15% at the gas pump. Now Congress insists on using “Reconciliation”, the process to limit Senate debate to 20 hours, and quickly force wide programs on narrow majorities.

One of the lessons from the end of WWI is that when ignorance combines with passion, as it has with the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the ill-advised stimulus bills, you can be sure a backlash is coming.

On this Memorial Day every American owes an answer of humility to the soldiers beneath the graves who might well ask the question posed by W.H. Auden:

“To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?”

The backlash has the answer.