"Thank You"

I work at a Christian bookstore (no, I won't tell you which one).  Last night, a customer came in (like they do).  One of my co-workers answered all her questions, was very polite and helpful, and in doing so was even staying after her shift should have ended to help us get ready for closing.  The lady made her purchases, and then asked my co-worker "Now what do you say?"  There were several of us behind the counter, and we didn't understand what the woman wanted.  With all of us having failed her little test, she proceeded to launch into a vicious and angry tirade about how no one says thank you, questioning my co-worker's decency as a human being for failing to do so, and saying that "God wants you to say it." 

Rarely in my life do I feel the desire to slap little old ladies, but I felt it pretty strongly last night.  I know retail is a tough place to work, and these sorts of things happen all the time (with Christian businesses and non-Christian businesses alike).  But they shouldn't.  Being in a position of power over someone doesn't give you the right to treat them like they're less than human, and I wish that as a society we could understand that.

The Social Network & 2 Samuel 12: Reinterpreting History

A few weeks ago, I finally saw the social network, the story of how Mark Zuckerburg founded facebook, screwing over many friends in the process. An interesting movie, to be sure, but not an entirely true account of how things really happened.

There is a lot of truth in the story, however, and it ties into something that has been happening with the lives of the rich and powerful, be they internet company CEOs or ancient Hebrew kings: the reinterpreting of history to create an understanding of events that is more favorable to they way you want things to be understood. Watching the movie reminded about reading I had done in Word Biblical Commentary when I was researching a paper about 2 Samuel 12.

2 Samuel 11-12 is the account of King David's adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, a women he saw bathing, slept with, and got pregnant. To try and cover this up, David brought Bathsheba's husband home from the battlefield, but when he refused to go into his house and spend the night with his wife as long as the battle continued, David had him killed and took Bathsheba as his wife. Because God was angry with David, the child died, but then God bless David & Bathsheba's second son, Solomon, who succeeded David as king.

The interesting thing about this section of scripture in regards to the social network takes place in 2 Samuel 11:27b-12:15a (the section Nathan Condemns David in the link). In this section, God sends a prophet named Nathan to David who tells him a story about a rich man and a poor man who loses a prized lamb because of the rich man's greed and selfishness. David is outraged, and then Nathan tells him that he's the rich man. David is mortified and repents, so Nathan tells him that God has spared his life, but the child is still going to die.

So what does any of this have to do with the social network? Well, click on that link in the last paragraph again, and you'll notice that if you skip the section Nathan Condemns David, the story still makes sense without it. Some scholars (including the author of the commentary I mentioned) think that this is because this section is a later addition to the story:

"It is possible that the narrative contained in chaps. 11-12 was part of the Solomonic apologia or propaganda. To be possible it did not have to lie or distort facts; rather it had to appeal to what was already known or believed. At the same time, it had to reshape and supplement the shared information, beliefs and hopes. Thus the inherently detrimental David-Bathsheba-Uriah story could not be disregarded for it would not go away. However, it could be retold in less critical manner and it could be rendered innocuous by the addition of David's repentance, Yahweh's forgiveness and the punishment imposed. Thus the way was open for a future reversal of fortunes. Vv 24-25, in particular, contain an implicit promise of better things to come: Yahweh loved Solomon!" (Word Biblical Commentary vol. 11, pg. 166, emphasis my own)

Those in support of Solomon's kingship couldn't change the fact that David's mistakes were public knowledge. However, they could add to how those mistakes played out the story of David's repentance and the knowledge that God has forgiven the line of David for the sins committed.

Making a movie about a quiet nerd who worked hard to develop a website and then left friends who weren't making the best decision or all that invested in the company's future (as well as paying out a few hefty settlements here and there) would be kind of boring. And it wouldn't do much for Mark Zuckerburg's image.

But, if you make a movie about an underdog nerd billionaire with a sharp wit that hides a sensitive soul that just wants a girl back, you've done something: you've reinterpreted everything: he's not a guy who can be a jerk who just happened to nurture great idea into a billionaire dollar website; he's a tortured soul fighting the pretentious snobs who just wants to be loved.

Shameless Self-Promotion, Part Deux

In my continuing effort to conquer the internets, I did some more guest blogging for those misogynists over at Rules to Date Girls By. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out!

Do NOT Eat the KFC Double Down

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, he obviously did not live in a world where an acceptable substitute for bread in a bacon and cheese sandwich is fried chicken. Today, I had such a monstrosity for lunch. Motivated by morbid curiosity and reckless abandon with the natural flow of my arteries, I went to KFC and ordered this so-called "sandwich".

My Double Down "sandwich" alone was a whopping 540 calories, 32 grams of fat, and 1380 milligrams of sodium. But, since I ordered the combo meal, I also received some potato wedges and a medium Dr. Pepper, for a grand total of 1080 calories, 45 grams of fat, and 2190 milligrams of sodium, which is more than half the daily recommended amount of calories, about 2/3 of the daily recommended amount of fat, and 210 milligrams shy of an entire day's recommended serving of sodium (values taken, respectively, from KFC's website and from the USDA website).

I cannot remember the last time I had a meal as gross as my Double Down combo meal. I was somewhat disappointed not to immediately drop dead of a heart attack by merely gazing upon its grim visage, and equal surprised my heart didn't stop after the first bite. In fact, my heart was much less disturbed by the experience than my stomach, and, when it comes to the stomach, the KFC Double Down is the gift that keeps on giving.

For the rest of the afternoon, my stomach was a quivering mass of unrest, with constant burping reminding me of the fowl abomination I had ingested as it attempted to escape its acidic tomb. As a personal apology to my stomach, for dinner I ate merely steamed rice and boiled vegetables, hoping that this peace offering would be enough to appease my stomach into making the Double Down's passage into the watery beyond as easy as possible.

Do NOT eat the KFC Double Down. There is no need to challenge yourself against this ghoulish hellbeast. This is no challenge to your masculinity or some childish dare to tempt you into making the same mistake I have. For your sake, I beg you: eat something else.

Unlearning the Half-Truths of Sunday School, Pt. 1

There are a lot of stories in the Bible, that, when we talk about them in church, we seem to entirely change their meaning and intended message. In an attempt to undo some of this damage, I'd like to take a look at some of these stories, and talk about what they're actually trying to say, beginning with Jonah.

Jonah is one of my absolute favorite stories in the entire bible. However, if you think the story of Jonah is about a fish (or a whale), then you are sorely mistaken.

Usually, when people hear the story of Jonah, they only hear about the first two out of four chapters. The first two chapters cover the part of the story that most people are familiar with: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah runs in the opposite direction, God makes a storm, Jonah convinces the sailors he is with to throw him overboard, and a fish swallows him. After spending three days in the fish, it coughs him up on the shore, and Jonah goes to do what God tells him.

If the story were to stop here, then you would probably say that the story of Jonah is about having the courage to do what God tells us. And, while this is part of the message of Jonah, this is by no means what the story of Jonah is really about. To figure that out, we have to look at the last two chapters.

In chapter three, Jonah goes and tells the people of Nineveh that in forty days God will destroy Nineveh. Without any sort of call to repentance or assurance that this will stop God's wrath, Nineveh repents, and God decides not to destroy the city. Again, if it were to stop here, you might say that this is a story about how obedience to the will of God brings about good things. however, the real meat of the story of Jonah is in chapter four.

At the beginning of chapter four, Jonah is furious. He prays this prayer to God, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

At this point, we could probably uses some context to explain why Jonah is so upset. To understand his rage, you need to understand who Jonah is, and who the Assyrians are. The Assyrians (whose capital city was Nineveh) were some of the most brutal, vicious, and violent conquerors to ever rule the Middle East. Some common practices of the Assyrians to inflict upon their captives were to skin their prisoners alive, cut off various body parts to inspire terror in their enemies, pull out tongues, and display mounds of human skulls. And, in the eight century BCE, The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So, in all likelihood, they skinned Israelites alive, maimed and dismembered them, and proudly displayed their skulls for all to see before dragging them off to the four corners of their empire, never to return. The Assyrians are solely responsible for the decimation of ten of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now, one would think that the opportunity to bring tidings of destruction and wrath against the city responsible for the deaths of countless Hebrews would be a joyful task for Jonah. However, Jonah runs away because he knows God. He knows that if he goes and delivers this message, the people will have a chance to repent and be saved. The fact that this is the absolute last thing that Jonah wants is the exact reason he runs in the first place.

After Jonah tells God how he feels, God asks him if he has any right to be angry. Jonah (conspicuously lacking a response to God's question) leaves the city and goes to see what will happen to it, probably hoping that God will change his mind again and Sodom and Gomorrah it to the ground. While he waits, God provides a vine for shade. However, a worm eats the vine, it gets hot, and Jonah is again furious. So furious, in fact, that he states death would be preferable to his current situation.

And then, in verses 9-11, the last verses of the last chapter of the book, we find the true meaning of the book of Jonah. "But God said to Jonah, 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?' 'I do', he said. 'I am angry enough to die.' But the LORD said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?'"

This is the heart of the message of the story of Jonah: forgiveness, even to the point of being able to forgive those who have wrong us in unspeakable ways. I hope you understand how profound Jonah's ability to forgive in order to forgive the Assyrians would have to be. Jonah forgive the Assyrians would be like Jews forgiving Nazis. It would be like the Tutsis forgiving the Hutu. Forgiveness on that level is rarely seen in our world.

The book of Jonah ends unresolved. We don't know from this book if Jonah ever forgave the Assyrians; we don't know from this book how long Nineveh's repentance lasted. All we do know is that God cares about all peoples, even those we might call monsters, and that God is willing to forgive all peoples, even those we might not think deserve forgiveness.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Sometimes Truth Isn't Good Enough

"Because sometimes truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

The first time I saw The Dark Knight, I couldn't stop thinking about these words Batman says right before he runs away to bear the brunt of the people's anger at the actions committed by Harvey Dent that they believe were committed by Batman. And as I read them again, I wonder: do I actually believe they are true? Do I believe that we should lie to people and reward their faith even if what they believe is wrong?

And the answer is that I'm not sure. I don't really like to lie. I was a rambunctious child once, so I learned how to lie and do it moderately well, but I've never felt good about lying to people. Yet, at the same time, if people have faith and that faith is proven true far less often than it appears to fail them, then they will lose hope. And, if people have lost hope, there is little chance of motivating them to make the world around them a better place. I definitely don't want people to lose hope, which means I want people to have faith. The only question is whether the desired outcome of faith is worth the occasional lie or half-truth to motivate people in certain ways so that they will want to make the world a better place.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Pop Philosophy vis-à-vis Watchmen

I wanted to put this youtube video in as my picture for this post, but I couldn't figure out how, so enjoy it here.

So, after seeing Watchmen for the second time, I thought I might follow up my one-word review of the movie with some philosophical assessment of the characters which comprise this gripping and psychologically conflicting movie. The way I see it, there are three main schools of ethical philosophical thought espoused by the costumed heroes that are the focal points of the Watchmen story: utilitarianism, moral absolutism, and nihilism. WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

The character at the forefront of the utilitarian "camp", for a lack of a better word, in this story is the retired hero turned media mogul Ozymandias. Ozzy sees a problem with the basic nature of humanity, one which he shares in common with The Comedian: people are essentially savage beings, and sooner or later without outside intervention we are going to destroy each other. Ozymandias therefore creates the ultimate utilitarian problem: the entire world is about to destroy itself, so, in order to save the lives of billions, he kills millions. Then, the other heroes who have discovered his plot (Silk Spectre II, Nite Owl II, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan) have to decide whether they do the so-called "right" thing and make Ozymandias pay for the murder of millions, or simply let him get away without in order to help ensure his new global peace. So, as in the philosophical ethic of utilitarianism, "the good" is seen not as that which we might find most morally pleasing, but that which ultimately is best for the greatest percentage of people, forcing us to ask ourselves if we could live with the deaths of millions if it were for the sake of world peace.

Then, in contrast to the utilitarianism of Ozymandias, we have the moral absolutism of Rorschach. Rorschach, psychologically disturbed though he might be, sees ethics in absolute categories of right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. To quote Rorschach, "Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon." Matters of expediancy don't factor into his moral decisions, and there is no letting lesser evils go unpunished in order to bring in those who commit greater evils. Criminals are evil; therefore, criminals die. It's just as simple as that. And yet, within Rorschach increasing mental instability and paranoia, the reason the character is so compelling is that there is a little Rorschach in all of us. Whenever we see great injustices, or evil men hurting women and children, or people taking advantage of the weak and defenseless, there is a part of us that says "to hell with the system; this person should be dead." As human beings, we want justice, occasionally in extreme and violent ways.

Finally, we have the nihilists of the Watchmen universe: The Comedian & Dr. Manhattan. The interesting thing about these two is that they react to their belief that life is ultimately meaningless in entirely different ways. The Comedian sees all of human existence as one big joke. And, as a result, he becomes a parody of the darkness he sees in the heart of humanity. He lives a life seemingly composed of equal parts hedonism and pragmatism. He does what he wants, when he wants to do it as long as the personal risk is minimal and he can gain from the results. Dr. Manhattan, on the other hand, sees life to be a "highly overrated phenomenon", and as a result becomes increasingly detached from and unconcerned for human beings, to the point of leaving the planet to go live on Mars. Seeing his past, present, and future as one singular quantum moment, Dr. Manhattan becomes increasingly bored and depressed by human interaction, becoming in some cases little more than a passive observer, such as in the case of The Comedian and the Vietnamese woman who scars his face.

If you were to ask me what Watchmen was about, I'm honestly not sure I could give you an answer. The graphic novel is so indepth and has so many layers that it is difficult to sum up into a singular concept. Ultimately, I guess Watchmen is about life: the ways in which we live, we make the world a better place, and who we choose to become as we experience the world.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I am finding it hard to express verbally (or in type) just how excited I am for the new Watchmen movie coming out this week. This story raises all kinds of interesting questions about morality, God, and human nature. I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't read the comic, but if the ending is anything like it is in the book, you will leave the theater unsure of what would have been the right thing to do, and those are some of the best stories I ever read/seen. For now, I'll leave you with this logical argument:

1. Rorschach is morally committed to the proposition "murder is wrong".
2. If something is wrong, then it should be punished.
3. Rorschach has committed murder in the past.
:. Rorschach should turn himself in.

Champion of the Oppressed

If you've ever met me, and we've talked for more than a few minutes, superheroes probably came up somehow in the conversation. And, if we discussed it further, the conversation probably led (as conversations with me on superheroes invariably tend to lead) to Superman.

Now, I know that most people who like comic books are into to Marvel. That's fine. They make great comic books, and I'm all for people supporting the industry regardless of which companies titles they read. Personally, I find Marvel's superheroes to be lacking that certain something that makes them heroic. A lot of people enjoy Marvel characters because they can relate to their failures and shortcomings. That's fine. Sometimes, it's even great. But, I want something more from my heroes. If my heroes are just like me, then I don't really have any reason to look to them as examples of how I ought to live my life.

That's why I've always been a fan of Big Blue. Say what you want about him, I've heard it all: he's too powerful to be interesting, he's just a boring boyscout, he's a total loser without his superpowers, he's a crude caricature of America, etc. But, at the end of the day, I think there's a reason that Superman has been around for 70 years: because people want hope. If our heroes don't inspire us to become better than we have been, if our heroes are no better than we are, then hero worship is merely just a matter of empathy.

Lots of things have changed about Superman over the years: his relationship with Lois Lane, just how powerful he is, whether or not he can age, his supporting characters and the villains he battles, etc. The main constant in the Superman mythos is this: Superman always does what he believes to be the right thing. His rigid moral character, his indomitable will, his love for humanity: these are things that make Superman a hero, not heat vision or super strength.

Now, to maybe help you have an idea of what I'm talking about, here are some examples of why I love Superman from a couple of my favorite Superman stories. The first is Red Sun, a what if story where Superman grows up in the USSR in the 50's instead of America. The context of this soliloquy is that a satellite is falling toward Metropolis, threatening to destroy the city.

"They called me a soldier, but that just wasn't true. I was never a soldier. A soldier always follows orders. A soldier knows and hates his enemy. A soldier only fights and dies for his own people. I just fought for what was right... A cluster of support cables groaned and snapped. People screamed for someone to save them. Not my people, but I never refuse a cry for help. All the lies they spread about me. The propaganda they engineered at the height of the Cold War. None of it mattered for a while on that bright afternoon. Just for a single moment. They realized I was here to save them."

These are not Superman's people. But, at the same time, they are. Superman does not belong to a single state or principality. Superman belongs to the world, and we are all his people, regardless of our personal philosophies, skin colors, sexual orientation, or the crimes we have committed. We are all his people.

The second and third examples are from Kingdom Come, a story set in the future where the new generation of superheroes have become petty and corrupt, and our heroes come out of retirement to show them the way that heroes are supposed to behave. The first story deals with why Superman retired, and the second deals with what happens when things get out of control in the rehabilitation of the new generation.

This quote is in the context of Magog, the "hero" who replaced Superman addressing him in the middle of a nuclear explosion decimated Kansas, a result of Magog's recklessness:

Magog: "They were calling you old-fashioned when I was a teenager. World's oldest boy scout...but you wouldn't change. You wouldn't get in step. You wouldn't flex with the times. Remember? The Daily Planet asked if that's why the Joker got so many notches on his belt when he blew into our town. How many did he take out just that last time? Ninety-two men?..."

Superman: "And one woman."

Magog: "Hell. We both tore up the city looking for that bastard. I really thought you or Batman would get to him first. Even I almost missed him. Almost. I will never forget the look on your face when you saw me standing over that smoking creep. All the way to Jail, I thought, what a sap. What an old woman. Blue boy's dragging me in for having stones he doesn't. 'Times are tough. Joker'd been deserving worse than 'cuffs for years. So I took it upon myself to lay him down. I can't be judged for that.' And I was right. I was a hero. But you just wouldn't roll with it. You had to get in a last shot and piss me off. I wanted that torch passed. I wanted to cement my claim as Metropolis' new number one. I asked for a title bout between you and me, and I won by default when you flew off with your cape between your legs... I always thought you were afraid of me. A lot of people did. But that wasn't it. You were afraid that I was the man of tomorrow. You were afraid of the future I represented. Well, look around you. This is what I represent."

Superman: "You must be proud."

Magog: "Proud? PROUD? GOD DAMN YOU! Pround of being the man of tomorrow? Your fault...you bastard. The world changed...but you wouldn't. So they chose me. They chose the man who would kill over the man who wouldn't... and now they're dead."

In case you couldn't tell without the pictures, this recounts Joker killing everyone in the Daily Planet building (including Lois) and in turn being killed by Magog after he had turned himself in to the police. Superman's response? Put him on trial for murder. Murder of the man who just killed everyone Superman ever cared about. Superman lost the trial and went into self-imposed exile, incapable of dealing with a world that would condone murder, even murder of a psychopath with the blood of thousands on his hands, including Superman's friends and wife. Because that's how much Superman values the lives of people, even scum like the Joker.

The second excerpt from Kingdom Come is Superman addressing his followers after the "heroes" they are attempting to rehabilitate are refusing to cooperate and have started a riot in their gulag.

Wonder Woman: "So...your world's finally turned completely topsy-turvy. How do we handle this?"

Superman: "I...don't know."

Wonder Woman: "Then I do. We're going to confront the prisoners and give them an ultimatum. They must surrender."

Superman: "And if they refuse?"

Wonder Woman: "Then it's war."

Superman: "But you can't have a war without people dying."

At this point in the story, everyone looks at Superman as though he's lost his mind, then walks away to go and have their war. It's true that Superman's moral code doesn't always work out neatly in his stories. People have been dying all this time as a result of his refusal to take the lives of truly evil people. But, agree or not, you have to admire his refusal to compromise.

I could go on and on about Superman and superheroes in general for hours and days, but I just thought I might give a rough, somewhat preliminary explanation of why I'll always love the Man of Steel as I wander through life.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Concerning Doctrine

In my wanderings across this vast wasteland known as the internet, I stumbled across something attacking not only my denomination's beliefs on Scripture, but personally naming my university as responsible for what he deemed to be a "seed of heresy". You can read this "Open Letter Concerning the Authority of Scriptures" in its entirety here, but the basis of his argument is a problem with the Nazarene Manual's doctrine on Scripture:

"We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith."

This basically means that while we believe that entirety of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired word of God, that inspiration was interpreted by human beings, and as such is possibly subject to some degree of fallibility, except in the matter of salvation. So, to make a long statement short: If it will save your soul, then it's infallible. Otherwise, it need not be necessarily 100% accurate.

Mr. McDonald (the writer of this letter) believes that this position on scripture is not strong enough, and that scripture (supported in his letter by quoting scripture) is entirely infallible. After all, "God is perfect in all His works, in regards to anything. He did not even allow a man's interpretation, will, or opinion to enter His Word."

As a solution to the problem of our scriptural heresy, MacDonald offers this as alternative to our current doctrine: "Scripture, being found as eternally inerrent and inspired of God, is veracious and authoritative concerning every aspect of physical and spiritual existence. The Bible has been provided as our only completely truthful standard of theology, ethics, science, history, and every other realm into which its limitless grasp extends."

Ethics:

"O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." (Psalm 137:8-9)

"When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it." (Joshua 8:24)

"While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses." (Numbers 15:32-36)

Science:

"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (Psalm 104:5)

"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?" (Job 38:22-23)

"What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?" (Job 38:24)

"Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?" (Job 38:35)

So, I leave the choice to you, dear reader, as to whether you want to be believe that scripture might be wrong in the areas of science, and that the bloodlust of the Israelites may have occasionally taken things too far, or whether you want to believe that God condones baby crushing, snow is kept in storehouses in the sky, the earth has a foundation, and God talks to lightning bolts. Your choice.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

The Paradox of Relativism and Nihilism

Relativism and Nihilism are two philosophical systems that seem to have at least some prevalence in our postmodern world. Although I'm sure not all would agree with how I will be defining them since they are words that contain a plethora of meaning for various individuals, I use the word "relativism" as a philosophical system in which there are no absolutes and criteria is assessed by means of cultural and situational factors. I will use the word "nihilism" as a philosophical system in which all values are baseless and nothing can be known or communicated. These two systems fascinate me in their ability to absolutely deny the existence of absolutes.

Take relativism, for example. Relativists deny the existence of absolutes. But, think about this claim for a moment. In the denial of absolutes, you have created an absolute, for you have claimed that there are absolutely no absolutes. In less, of course, you meant that there are only no absolutes in certain contexts, which makes even less sense.

Then, of course, there's nihilism. Nihilists deny the existence of values and our ability to communicate with one another. As for the first claim (the denial of the existence of values), I wonder what sort of value Nihilists assess nihilism as being, for they certainly seem to hold the value of the denial of values, and the value of the denial of our ability to communicate with one another. Then there is the second claim (the denial of our ability to communicate with one another). Nihilism is a belief commonly held and expressed by multiple individuals. I'm not sure how the first nihilist communicated their nihilism to the second, but they apparently did, proving nihilism to be false. If we weren't able to communicate with one another, then I would not be able to even know what nihilism is. Since I have heard of nihilism, nihilism proves itself to be false.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Children Are a Superstitious and Cowardly Lot

I was working in children's church this morning, and it made me think about the nature of morality. I wondered whether or not our morality is a decision in which we choose to do the right thing, or whether we simply conform to the standards of society out of fear of retribution.

For some children, it is obvious that they are simply as "good" as they have to be not to get in trouble. They don't particularly care to listen to what I have to say, and they are constantly trying to undermine my authority.

For instance, a common occurrence this morning were several variances of the same exchange: Me: "Don't do X". (Let X be some activity which the children are not supposed to do) The children then proceed to do X. Me: "What did I just say?" Them: "Don't do X." Me: "What are you doing?" Them: "X".

It is not, in this case, a matter of not knowing the good and therefore committing a sin of omission or ignorance. This is willful transgression of a known law. But, there are others who are content to follow my instructions and behave as I have requested. And I wonder as I wander whether those who behave have committed themselves to do good, or whether they simply fear whatever retribution I might bring down upon them.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

All Sects Are Different, Because They Come From Men; Morality is Everywhere the Same, Because It Comes from God

In my wanderings today, I would like to address an issue of morality. I follow a blog entitled Flying in Circles (even though I don't typically agree with their viewpoints), and they have a problem with a morality where we help others not on the basis of the fact that they are our fellow human beings, but only because Jesus wants us to help others. She makes the following statement:

"Can we not simply work to redeem this world in the name of morality? Organizations like Compassion and World Vision are primarily supported by churchgoing, Bible-toting Christians who feel that by donating a small amount of their paycheck to a needy child, whom they will never meet, every month they have done their duty to "feed [his] sheep." [John 21:17 NIV] [Oh my God, look! Daedalus just quoted scripture!?] I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with trying to do some good in Jesus' name [Lord knows the world could stand to have a few more people doing such], but why must we summon Jesus to the scene every time there is a situation that needs attention? Why can one person not help another, without summoning forth the divine, based entirely on the fact that they breathe the same air you do? I know this is a tangential issue, but come on people! We're humans first."

However, there is a problem with this line of thinking. If morality does not come from something outside of ourselves, then there is no basis for judging one system of morality over another. We can dismiss things because we disagree, we can urge others to cohere to our particular system of morality, but we cannot ultimately declare acts to be "right" or "wrong", because apart from some sort of higher power, morality becomes merely a conglomeration of issues of aesthetics, anthropology, and pragmatism.

Even if I wanted to make the claim that the Holocaust was absolutely morally wrong, I could not do so if there were not some means by which morality was decided apart from individual preference. A Nazi ethic would certainly declare the Holocaust to be just and good. If the moral values of tolerance and acceptance could not be shown to be in some way superior to the Nazi "virtues" of ethnic purity and destruction of the Jewish people, then there is no basis for judging the Holocaust to be either good or bad. The only way this can be achieved is with an appeal to a higher power.

p.s. Bonus points if you can tell me who is quoted in the title of this blog.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”