Church & State

So I've been thinking, it's easy conclude that the “church” and the “state” have independent spheres to operate in, and one does not control the other. This is true to the extent that there is no state sponsored church, nor is there a papal state. But what of the idea that when there is a disagreement between the “church” and the “state” we ought to keep in mind who holds the advantage in the tie-breaker: the state. Is this a reality - an insightful description of a society we ought not desire, but society as it stands nonetheless?
But should we even seek for the balance of power in government to be different? It would seem on face that Christians should disagree with the premise that the government ought to have last say on such disputes, because it would de facto translate into a weaker church. However, I believe the real issue goes much deeper.
Churches left to their own devices have historically followed society’s discriminatory practices - such as discrimination against the deaf and hearing impaired, migrant workers, and blacks and slaves, and the poor - and have often been among the last social institutions to jump on the bandwagon of tolerance and civil rights. So just because the state does not control the church doesn’t mean society does not influence the church. At the same time, our current political system makes allowances for special interest groups and individual voting across party lines. Within the current balance of power, if the state decides a dispute between it and the church in a manner that does not satisfy a congregation’s or a denomination’s expectations, the state does not close off other avenues within the political system for the group or individual to respond. There still remain the options of lobbying, voting, and protesting. But if we make the church the final arbitrator of these disputes, then we close off due process to individual members.
The “church” need not be viewed as just its own communal entity, but also as an aggregate of individual members. While the Supreme Court has already made clear that the separation of church and state prevents them from deciding doctrinal issues, it does not prevent them from preserving social norms of safety general public welfare. And even then, the state is really not the final decision maker on any novel dispute, because it is only requiring the church to be as safe as secular buildings. What happens when the church refuses to make its parking lot handicap accessible or to follow the Fire Marshal’s mandate for fire extinguishers? Due process is shut off to the victimized if the state cannot be the final decision-maker. While it is true one individual may move to a different church, a whole America full of people cannot be expected to endure sub-human treatment or to burn alive in a church that didn’t want to pay for smoke alarms.

Cell Phone vs. Bible

I wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like
we treat our cell phones?
What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?
What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?
What if we flipped through it several times a day?
What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
What if we treated it like we couldn't live without it?
What if we gave it to kids as gifts?
What if we used it as we traveled?
What if we used it in case of an emergency?
This is something to make you go ...hmm...where is my Bible?

Oh, and one more thing. Unlike our cell phone, we don't ever have
to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already
paid the bill!

All For You

All For You
Sister Hazel

Finally I figured out,
But it took a long long time
Now there's a turnabout,
Maybe cause I'm tryin'
There's been times, I'm so confused
Down my road, will it lead to you?
Just can't turn and walk away

It's hard to say what it is I see in you
Wonder if I'll always be with you
Words can't say it, I can't do
Enough to prove, it's all for you

And I'd thought I seen it all,
Cause it's been a long long time
Oh bothered that we'll trip and fall,
Wonderin' if I'm alive
There's been times, I'm so confused
Down my road, will it lead to you?
I just can't turn, you walk away

Its hard to say what it is I see in you
Wonder if I'll always be with you
Words can't say, and I can't do
Enough to prove it's all for you

Rain comes pourin' down,
Fallin' from blue skies
Words give out a sound,
comin' from your eyes

Finally I figured out,
But it took a long long time
Oh now there's a turnabout,
Maybe cause I'm tryin'
There's been times, I'm so confused
Down my road, will it lead to you?
Just can't turn, you walk away

Its hard to say what it is I see in you
Wonder if I'll always be with you
Words can't say, I can't do
Enough to prove it's all for you

Well it's hard to say what it is I see in you
Wonder if I'll always be with you
Words can't say, I can't do
Enough to prove, it's all for you

Hard to say
Hard to say, it's all for you

Holocaust

I've never read something that so succinctly explained what I feel about the Holocaust, and why it just represents the extent to which men can be evil.

"One of the most important outcomes of the experience of World War II is the scale of human atrocity. The most visible, if not morally paralyzing, aspect of the atrocities of this period is capsulated in the term 'the Holocast.' The Holocaust, seen in the context of the World War II experience, provoked serious reappraisal of the adequacy and morality of the forms of human governance on a global basis. The Holocaust was an event involving a self-conscious policy on the part of the Nazi Herrenvolk to use the apparatus of state power to systematically extinguish whole groups of human beings on the basis of group labels of identity. It was a process facilitated by the technological capacity of an industrial state waging an industrial form of total war. Hidden under the veil of political and judicial sovereignty, the Holocaust represented complete denial of people's right to existence, subject to Nazi dominance. A form of governance based on apparently limitless sovereignty it raised a profound question about the fundamental rights of persons caught in the web of sovereign omnipotence."

-Winston P. Nagan & Vivile F. Rodin
Racism, Genocide, and Mass Murder: Toward a Legal Theory About Group Deprivations

It's About Time!

So this is my preacher back in Abilene. This video is HILARIOUS for those of you who get the CoC jokes :-)

What Would A Human RIghts Theorist Do?

In God and the Constitution I read that politics is actually far more entrenched in a Christian ethic now than we realize, and that there is a place for a human rights theology within that ethic. This leads me to wonder, what exactly a foreign policy guided by this ethic would look like.
The analysis is made, when discussing the Cain & Able story, that all injustices that go unanswered appeal directly to God. However, as an intermediate step to this appeal, after the covenant with Noah and all creation, men were to exercise a judicial function and to protect rights. So what happens when the judicial system of a state fails? What exactly does the role of the Christian government to intervene and protect look like? Is this theology mean to imply that the existence of a judicial system of any kind, no matter how ill-equipped, represents the human responsibility to maintain justice? So for example, if a country like say the Philippines, is incapable of providing a higher level of justice then their current infrastructure allows, do we just chalk that up to human development and allow their justice system to develop as it will? Do we, in other words, accept this lacking justice system as a good faith effort toward intervening on behalf of the oppressed? Or, do we assume that it is our duty to ENSURE that all cries of oppression are met with justice?
Or, do we say that the unsuccessful efforts of other nations to fight injustice represent an example of a cry to God, and that God’s intervention and answer is the use of human servants to carry the day [much like the people in Egypt cried out, God speaks to Moses, Moses and Aaron go with God’s protection]?
And if we decide that we must intervene when justice systems fail to meet a specific standard of justice, how do we determine what standard will govern our interventions? Do all justice systems which persecute Christians require intervention? What about those which persecute women? Homosexuals? Are all justice systems which allow detention without access to a lawyer to be condemned, unless they are American military tribunals? From what text shall we draw this standard?
Additionally, if we have an obligation to fight back against unrighteous treatment, where does that belong in a hierarchy of rights? Do we intervene to provide justice as a foreign policy? Can that be allowed to trump other foreign policy objectives?
What about a situation like the Darfur or the situation in Northern Uganda? If I am a Christian subscribing to a human rights ethic somewhat like the one we’ve discussed in this class [as for instance seen in God and the Constitution] what do I do about the Darfur? Do I say, for instance, that I have a duty as a Christian to use the resources at my disposal to answer cries of injustice? Does this obligation trump, for instance any domestic obligations I may have to my constituents?

Eyah asher Eyah

Moses then said to God, `Look, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The god of your ancestors has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is his name?” what am I to tell them?

God said to Moses, `I am who I am’.
-Exodus 3:13-14

Is a human rights framework an inherently religious creation, or can it be conceived absent Christianity? This question does not, I believe, evoke a need for an intense discussion of complicated cosmologies. Instead, it simply leads us backwards, watching a flower bloom in reverse to the original question of life on earth [and everywhere else]: is God the beginning and end of all? Is Yahweh the Alpha and the Omega?
The Psalmists tell us that God is known by His justice. And we are given the responsibility as humans, to live a life of stewardship, as it says in Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’”
When the Queen of Sheba hears of the fame of King Solomon and comes to see him with her own eyes she says to him: “Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in your and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness.” I Kings 10:9. And what might this justice - the Lord’s justice - look like? In Psalm 72, the writer asks God to “Endow the king with your justice, O God,...He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.” Psalm 72:1,4.
What is it exactly that God is rescuing his children from? The terror from who’s hands God will snatch his children is not unlike modern Human Rights litigation. Job 5:4 says “His children are far from safety, crushed in court without defenders.” Ecclesiastes chapter 1 notes that nothing is happening now that has not been happening, or has not happened before. And the Old Testament would seem to confirm that such horrors have been plaguing man for quite some time. Psalms 10:2 says “[i]n his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.” Ezekiel 22:29 observes “[t]he people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.” Joel 3:3 says “[t]hey cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine that they might drink.” Isaiah tells of worker abuse, and slavery, Amos tells of merchants cheating the poor, and Psalms further tells us about trafficking of persons - weaving tales of the wicked who lay in wait and capture the innocent and drag them from the village.
These cries, much like those from the abandoned villages in Northern Uganda or Burma or Guatemla that we hear today magnified through the megaphone of Human Rights NGOs like Restore International or the International Justice Mission, are lonely and loud, but do not escape God’s ears:
“Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will protect them from those who malign them.” Psalm 12:5
Interestingly enough, God is not adding to the pool of rights or entitlements of the poor or the down-trodden. Rather, he is in the business of restoration - he is restoring them to the state they were in, a state of human dignity. God is in the business of returning the dignity of human beings, made and crafted in His image, to its condition before oppression. He is making right the wrong done in their name, “For he who avenges blood remembers; he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.” Pslam 9:12.
But what is the justice he is bestowing upon them? Where does the inherent dignity come from? The answer to that question, I believe, lays squarely within the debate on the existence of God himself. When Moses asked God “Whom shall I say sent me?” God responded “Eyah asher Eyah,” a biblical play on words if you will. God responded I Am he who is called I Am. For the Christian who truly believes God is El Shaddai, the Lord must be the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. If the justice and dignity the Lord were restoring to his people was not originally derivative of His being, than justice would be a concept existing outside of God. It would be a value or value cosmology if you will, which exists outside God that God may and ought to be judged against.
The explanation for the Christian cannot be that God can be judged against a standard of justice which man has created. It is God who is the justifier. At the end of the book of Job, after God has heard Job complain for what will be the last time, it is written:
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm: “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s and can your voice thunder like his? Then...unleash the fury of your wrath,...crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together; shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.” Job 40:6-14
Either the Lord is right all the time, or we are. Either we can save ourselves, or we cannot. And if we can, then we are the justifiers and the dignity of all human beings comes from what we award ourselves. If not, then he is the Justifier, the King, El Shaddai and the source of justice forever, amen.