slacktivist

Nobel theology

Listening to an interview with Elinor Ostrom on NPR's Planet Money podcast, I was delighted to learn that one can, in a way, be awarded a Nobel Prize for theology.

Technically, Ostrom was awarded the prize in economics "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." But the gist of that work, it turns out, is an affirmation of the principle of subsidiarity.

This is the idea, developed over the centuries since St. Thomas Aquinas, that decision-making ought to take place as close as possible to those directly affected by and responsible for the decision. Formally, subsidiarity is described as the principle that "a community of higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

That higher and lower business in the official Catholic phrasing reflects the origins of this idea from a more hierarchical time. That formulation troubled later Protestant thinkers who reworked subsidiarity into the idea of "sphere sovereignty" -- restating the notion without reference to higher and lower, but rather in terms of "spheres" of sovereignty closer to or further from the decisions in question. Think of it kind of like a 3-D Venn diagram.

The implication of subsidiarity and/or sphere sovereignty is that responsibility is pervasive and complementary -- that it is shared by every sphere, or by all levels or orders of society. No order or sphere or actor is irresponsible, but the form and the priority of responsibility varies depending on each level/order/actor's relation to the matter at hand.

I've written a good bit about this on this blog -- see, for example, "More on subsidiarity" and "Who is You?". The latter post there offers a look at how this principle can be seen at work in the way society seeks to care for orphans. Since that discussion was from more than five years ago, it might be worth running through that again briefly.

Parents have the primary responsibility for caring for, feeding, sheltering and nurturing children. Orphans, by definition, have lost their parents, so this primary responsibility moves farther out to the next-best option and the next order or sphere. The primary responsibility for those orphans next falls, in other words, to other relatives or close friends. Those heroic grandmothers we often hear about raising their grandchildren on behalf of their dead, absent, addicted or incarcerated parents are subsidiarity in action. These grandparents may have previously played only a subsidiary role in raising these children, but when the parents are out of the picture, they step up to play the primary role.

If no such relatives are willing or able to care for our hypothetical orphans we turn to the next-best, next-closest alternative -- to foster parents who had previously been only distantly, tangentially subsidiary to the lives of these children but who would be next in line to take over as primarily responsible for their care. In the absence of any such capable foster parents, the care of these children would fall to some actors or agencies even more distant or higher-order, until ultimately -- should all such subsidiary actors fail -- we would reach the final, most distant, highest-order actor, the federal government.

The failure to appreciate subsidiarity results in a great deal of the thudding stupidity that infects our political discourse. Almost every topic is addressed as though the world consisted of two and only two actors -- the individual and the federal government. And those two actors are regarded as mutually exclusive, having no shared or complementary responsibilities. This creates a world in which our hypothetical orphans above can only be imagined to exist in either an intact, two-parent nuclear family or else as wards of some monolithic centralized federal orphanage.

This either/or absurdity shapes arguments about everything from health care to education to employment. Either the individual is solely responsible for X or else the federal government is. This form of argument allows for and imagines no other agencies, levels, spheres, orders, communities or possibilities. Nor does it allow for the underlying, fundamental reality, which is that none of these various responsibilities are exclusive or even competing. No one is ever irresponsible.

The illustration with our hypothetical orphans above shows how each higher or more distant actor has the responsibility to step in and take a greater responsibility when the lower/closer actors fail, but before that happens, these more-distant actors first have the responsibility to support and sustain the closer, "lower-order" actors and thereby to prevent them from failing. The federal government is not only responsible for providing a last-desperate-measure National Home for Unwanted Children -- it's responsible for supporting Grandma so that she will be able, in turn, to care for her grandchildren. This is better for the children and cheaper for the government. It can and should support Grandma both directly and indirectly, by helping to create a context and climate in which she is better able to meet her new responsibilities to these orphaned children.

So -- sticking with the more Catholic hierarchical approach, just because it's easier to visualize -- the higher orders have a responsibility not just to step in when the lower orders fail, but to bolster and support those lower orders so that they do not fail, and to ensure a broader context that makes their failure less likely. The lower orders, in turn, have to meet their responsibilities so as not to bog down the higher orders with having to take a greater role in what ought to be, for them, subsidiary, distant and tangential functions.

This is true not just for the very highest and the very lowest, but for every level in between. The dual role of direct support and improved context applies not just to the federal government as the agent of last resort, but to every other actor at every other level or sphere as well.

What I found most endearing and admirable about Elinor Ostrom in that interview with Planet Money was her fierce anger and frustration with the blunt stupidity that tries to take her work on subsidiarity and cram it into their pre-existing arguments against "Big Government," as though the cooperative, local governance she describes among Swiss farmers were some sort of Randian libertarian utopia.

I share that same anger and frustration. Particularly with the obtuse Randian types whose own agenda can only lead, perversely, to the very kind of Very Big Government they're always going on about. If everyone adopted their way of thinking, then the very thing they claim to oppose would inexorably come to pass. By advocating a form of radical individualism that denies all mutual, interdependent and differentiated responsibility, they guarantee the failure of every level/sphere/agency other than the agent of last resort. They create a world in which only that agent of last resort -- the federal government -- has any responsibility, and therefore a world in which it must have every responsibility.

A world of irresponsibly detached individuals, families, neighbors, neighborhoods, charities, clubs, associations, corporations, unions and congregations can only result in those farthest from the situation being forced to take up the responsibilities those other agents have abandoned. If people will not accept the responsibility of being citizens and neighbors, then the government will be forced to act in their stead.

My greatest frustration with the alleged opponents (and unwitting advocates) of "Big Government" is that they have it backwards. Government is not expanding because its usurping the responsibilities of those other, nearer actors. It is getting bigger because those other, nearer actors are abdicating their responsibilities, foisting them off onto the actor of last resort.

When there exists a healthy civil society -- which is to say, a responsible one -- it is unnecessary and nearly impossible for the government to take over the rightful functions of all these other spheres and agencies. But if they refuse to play their role it becomes nearly impossible for the government not to do so. If we refuse to be our brother's keepers, we're inviting Big Brother to take over the job instead.

Evangelicals and immigration

On the one hand, you've got your religious evangelicals. They're born-again Christians who go to church twice every Sunday, read their daily devotions, try not to say "geez" because that's almost just as bad as swearing, feel guilty that they haven't done more to witness to you because they genuinely don't want you to go to Hell, and they just really Lord they just really just pray, Lord, all the time that, Lord, Jesus would just really just guide their daily lives.

We're talking about Ned Flanders. Nice folks. I like them a lot. I mean, I wouldn't want them designing the science curriculum for my kids' school, and I almost never vote for the same people they vote for, but those things aren't these folks' main focus. They're mainly about serving Jesus as their personal Lord and savior and trying to get others to do the same.

On the other hand, you've got your political evangelicals. On paper, these people look very similar to the Ned Flanders types. The difference is what they regard as paramount, as most important. For your political evangelicals, who you vote for and what is taught in science class is all that really matters. They may go to the same church as Ned, and they may attend just as often, but when push comes to shove that religious stuff isn't nearly as important to them as the pride and power of politics.

For a quick and easy illustration of the difference between these two groups, ask either one about immigration policy.

For religious evangelicals, immigration is looked at through the lens of two centuries of the missionary movement. Immigration, they believe, brings the mission field home. The categories of documented and undocumented are irrelevant in this view. The only categories that matter are saved and unsaved. Unsaved immigrants are a field white unto harvest. And saved immigrants are brothers and sisters in Christ. The former should be considered the focus of evangelism, the latter of fellowship.

Hence the existence, dating back to the 19th century, of evangelical "home mission societies" which have long helped to settle refugees and newly arrived immigrants, helping them find housing and learn the language and customs of their new home. And the existence, also, of ethnic immigrant congregations -- often called "missionary" churches -- sharing facilities with established English-speaking congregations.

This piece in today's Chicago Tribune nicely captures the attitude toward immigration that arises from a primarily religious evangelicalism.

The discussion within Wheaton Chinese Alliance Church reflects a shift among the nation's evangelical community as more pastors push for comprehensive immigration reform. In recent years, many influential evangelical leaders have moved from silent opposition to outspoken support for immigration reform, citing biblical foundations and Christian duty to care for strangers.

Last month, the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents about 45,000 U.S. churches, called on the Obama administration to establish a process by which undocumented immigrants could earn legal status. NAE President Leith Anderson said the group recognized the surging number of immigrants, mainly Latino and Asian, filling evangelical churches. ...

Matthew Soerens, immigration counselor at World Relief DuPage and co-author of the book Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, said the stronger support for reform is due to the realization that immigrants are changing the face of the American evangelical church.

"We see this as a biblical issue grounded in the Scriptures, and primary to what we believe," Soerens said. "But what is also true is the demographics of our country is changing with immigration, and evangelical leaders realize that the fastest growth they are experiencing is among immigrant congregations."

Two of the largest evangelical churches in the area, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington and Wheaton Bible Church in West Chicago, now have Spanish-speaking congregations and support immigration reform. ...

That's interesting. Here in America, "evangelical Christian" almost unfailingly also means "Republican," and the Republican Party is adamantly opposed to the sort of liberalized immigration reform being endorsed by these religious evangelicals.

That conflict hasn't gone unnoticed by the political evangelicals. Professional douchebag Mark Tooley -- whose job as president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy is to politicize American Christianity for the benefit of the right-wing foundations that fund IRD -- denounced the religious evangelicals at the NAE and elsewhere for failing to adhere to a strict Lou-Dobbs, xenophobic, Tea Party chauvinist, barbarians-at-the-gate party line scapegoating of immigrants.

"Several NAE members have denied endorsing the immigration resolution. Did the stance actually emerge from NAE's constituency? Or was it simply 'handed down from on-high' by NAE elites?

"This controversy is not only about immigration policy ... It is also about NAE's increasing politicization and elitism, a dangerous trajectory veering towards irrelevancy and pioneered by the National Council of Churches."

The NAE's position on immigration arises directly and organically from its religious perspective. Tooley's position on immigration arises directly and inevitably from his partisan politics. How they each respond is a function of what each regards as most important -- what drives them and shapes their identity.

For the Ned-Flanders types, that essential identity has to do with their Christian piety. That's why religious evangelicals are such nice people and why they make excellent next-door neighbors.

For the Mark-Tooley types, that essential identity has to do with their anything-to-win grasping after partisan power. That's why political evangelicals are such despicable assholes.

TF: Showdown let-down

Tribulation Force, pp. 108-113

Buck Williams is hogging the spotlight.

So far in Tribulation Force, the Buck pages are outnumbering the Rayford pages by more than 2-to-1. And even when we do check in briefly with Buck's co-star here it's mainly in order to eavesdrop on Chloe's side of Buck's romantic subplot, in which Rayford plays the role of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

This imbalance isn't surprising, given the way our dual protagonists function as fantasy stand-ins for our dual authors and that Jerry Jenkins does all of the actual typing for these books. Writing about someone else's Mary Sue just isn't as much fun. So over the next 24 pages, we get 22 pages of Buck and two pages of Rayford talking to Chloe about Buck.

Eventually -- whether out of a sense of fair-play or from a fear of angering his boss -- Jenkins begins to correct this imbalance by conspiring to have Rayford hired as the civilian pilot of Nicolae's personal Air Force plane. Until then, though, Tim LaHaye's surrogate in these pages is reduced to the role of the hero's girlfriend's dad.

Rayford calls Chloe from his car phone:

"Wondered if you wanted to go out with your old man tonight," he suggested, thinking she needed to be cheered up.

That's astute fatherly intuition, given that the last time he spoke with her she was sobbing over the mistaken identity business with spiky Alice. She's a bit more composed now, but she's dreading their 8 p.m. prophecy study group with Bruce, knowing that Buck will be there.

"I'm just afraid of what I'll say, Dad. No wonder he's been cool toward me with that, whatever-you-call-her in his life. But the flowers! What was that all about?"

"You don't even know they were from him."

"Oh, Dad! Unless they were from you, they were from Buck."

Rayford laughed, "I wish I'd thought of it."

"So do I."

If you're thinking that a romantic bouquet of flowers from your father would be more disturbing than consoling, that's probably because you're not the sort of person who would also indignantly stammer "that, whatever-you-call-her" when trying to describe someone's POSSLQ.* The Victorian prudishness that renders someone inarticulate with horror at the thought of such cohabitation is directly proportionate to the creepy sort of attitude that would make a 20-year-old woman wish that the bouquet of flowers she just received came from her father. (See also, Purity Balls.)

Speaking of creepy -- those flowers turn out later to have been sent by Bruce Barnes, who thus serves as an even starker example than Buck of the sort of awkward, passive-aggressive fumbling that LaHaye-style evangelicals refer to as "courtship." Bruce, whose wife disappeared less than a month ago, doesn't see anything inappropriate about sending anonymous flowers to a much-younger woman over whom he wields a kind of spiritual authority.

Having fulfilled his obligation to check in with Tim's character every once in a while, Jenkins quickly returns to Buck Williams, who is being led into Nicolae Carpathia's U.N. office by Hattie Durham.

Hattie works for Nicolae because Buck introduced the two of them. And she knows that Steve Plank is Buck's oldest and closest friend. Yet she ushers Buck into the room like she's the sergeant-at-arms for a joint session of Congress and they're all strangers:

"Mr. Secretary-General and Mr. Plank, Cameron Williams of Global Weekly."

Nicolae greets Buck with a bit less pomp and circumstance, reaching to shake his hand:

"Buck!" he said. "May I call you Buck?"

"You always have," Buck said.

After not even bothering to grunt in response to greetings from Chaim and Hattie, Buck here at least has the courtesy to express out loud the scarcely hidden disdain he shows whenever he encounters anyone outside of Bruce's inner-inner-circle. Just like with Hattie, Buck is too busy checking out Steve's outfit to say hello to him:

Steve, despite his position as executive editor of one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, had not always dressed the way you might expect a journalist to dress. He had always worn the obligatory suspenders and long-sleeved shirts, of course, but he was usually seen with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, looking like a middle-aged yuppie or an Ivy League student.

This takes me back to the day I was hired at the newspaper, when I first received my obligatory suspenders along with a stern reminder than I must never, ever loosen my tie or roll up my sleeves, because we're journalists and we can't go around looking like  a bunch of undergrads from Yale.

Today, however, Steve looked like a clone of Carpathia. He carried a thin, black-leather portfolio and from head to toe looked as if he had come off the cover of a Fortune 500 edition of GQ. Even his hairstyle had a European flair -- razor cut, blow-dried, styled and moussed. He wore new, designer-frame glasses, a charcoal suit just this side of pitch-black, a white shirt with a collar pin and tie that probably cost what he used to pay for a sports coat. The shoes were soft leather and looked Italian, and if Buck wasn't mistaken, there was a new diamond ring on Steve's right hand.

I've complained repeatedly that Jenkins almost never provides physical descriptions in these books. Now that he has, I wish he hadn't. Apart from getting the clothing details wrong, note that here, as with Hattie last week, we've been given a detailed picture of what Steve is wearing, but we still have no idea what Steve himself looks like. We know that his outfit is straight off the cover of the Esquire edition of Vanity Fair, but what does he look like? Tall or short? Fat or thin? And what color is his 1980s hair? We still have no idea.

Carpathia pulled an extra chair from his conference table, added it to the two before his desk, and sat with Buck and Steve. Right out of a management book, Buck thought. Break down the barrier between the superior and the subordinate.

Treating subordinates decently sets off Antichrist alarm-bells for Buck. Because, apparently, people who don't lord it over their supposed inferiors must be viewed with the same suspicion as he has for peacemakers and those who want to feed the hungry.

And now, some red meat for all of you Nicky/Buck shippers out there (you know who you are):

Every time Buck looked at Carpathia's strong, angular features and quick, seemingly genuine disarming smile, he wished with everything in him that the man was who he appeared to be ...

In between those yearning glances at Nicolae, Buck looks on Steve with a measure of pity. Here is yet another friend, the third on this trip, from whom he will have to keep secret the knowledge that would save his soul:

Buck felt for Steve, and yet he had not been consulted when Steve had left Global Weekly for Carpathia's staff. Now, much as Buck wanted to tell him about his newfound faith, he could trust no one.

So just like with Chaim, Hattie and everyone who eventually reads his deliberately obscure cover story on the disappearances, Buck withholds the truth he knows from Steve. But he feels really bad about it.

Unless Carpathia had the supernatural ability to know everything, Buck hoped and prayed he would not detect that Buck was an enemy agent within his camp. "Let me begin with a humorous idiom," Carpathia said, "and then we will excuse Steve and have a heart-to-heart, just you and me, hmm?"

Wait -- weren't we told that this guy speaks flawless English?

"Something I have heard only since coming to this country is the phrase 'the elephant in the room.' Have you heard that phrase, Buck?"

OK, I suppose that is a "humorous idiom." But the thing about idioms is that you're supposed to use them as idioms and not ...

Anyway, you can see where this is going. Nicolae is preparing to confront Buck directly about what he does or doesn't remember after the whole Stonagal-shooting, mass-brainwashing incident.

The set-up for this scene suggested that Buck would be struggling here with a moral dilemma involving whether or not to lie to Nicolae.

That might seem like a no-brainer. Nicolae is the Antichrist, the ultimate evil, a man destined to become a global tyrant who is already responsible for the murder of four people Buck knew personally. If Buck fails to deceive Nicolae, it likely means that he, Chloe, Rayford, Bruce and everyone else at New Hope Village Church will be killed. But Buck, as a good RTC, believes in moral absolutes,** and he cannot tell a lie because lies make baby Jesus cry.

In addition to that potential moral conflict, there's also a more pressing practical question: Even if Buck does decide to lie, he still can't possibly know what it is he should say to convince Nicolae that he isn't a threat. The trick here for Buck is to figure out what it is that Nicolae wants to hear him say and then to figure out a way of saying it that doesn't involve explicitly lying.

That almost seems promising -- not a bad set-up for what ought to be a tense, suspenseful scene.

This being Tribulation Force, of course, such a scene never unfolds. The confrontation begins:

"I confess I was confused and a little hurt that you did not attend the private meeting where I installed the new ambassadors. However, as it turned out, it would have been as traumatic for you as it was for the rest of us."

Can it be that simple?

Nicolae seems to be asking only for an apology. Here is Buck's opening, his escape. He can save his own life and that of his beloved Chloe and the lives of the rest of the Tribulation Force just by saying, "I'm so sorry. Please accept my apology, I did not mean to insult you." He can say that without lying, and if he does so Nicolae will apparently be satisfied without seeking any further unknowable details about the false memories he tried to brainwash Buck into believing.

All Buck has to do is apologize and Nicolae will be convinced that the brainwashing succeeded, that Buck is not "an enemy agent within his camp," not a threat that needs to be eliminated.

But this is Buck Williams we're talking about:

It was all Buck could do to keep from being sarcastic. One thing he could not and would not do was apologize. How could he say he was sorry for missing a meeting he had not missed?

Buck's refusal to apologize has nothing to do with his qualms about the moral necessity of not telling a lie. It has to do with his injured pride at being falsely accused.

"I wanted to be there and wouldn't have missed it for anything," Buck said. Carpathia seemed to look right through him and sat as if waiting for the rest of the thought. "Frankly," Buck added, "that whole day seems a blur to me now."

Carpathia ... looked from Buck to Steve and back. He looked peeved. "So, all right," he said, "apparently there is no excuse, no apology, no explanation."

Buck glanced at Steve, who seemed to be trying to communicate with his eyes and a slight nod, as if to say, Say something, Buck! Apologize! Explain!

"What can I say?" Buck said. "I feel badly about that day." That was as close as he would come to saying what they wanted him to say.

After all that build-up leading to this confrontation, this is what it comes down to -- to Buck acting like he's a moody teenager and Nicolae is some cheery adult asking, "So, how was school today?" He responds to Nicolae's questions with a sullen hostility and the mistaken belief that he is keeping his sarcasm in check, sounding for all the world like Napoleon Dynamite.

The crux of this scene was whether or not Buck would be able to figure out "what they wanted him to say" and to say it in time to save himself. It ends with Buck realizing exactly what it is he needs to say, but refusing to do so because, "One thing he could not and would not do was apologize."

And just like that Buck's big showdown with the Antichrist fizzles into nothing. It doesn't matter whether or not Nicolae is convinced by anything he's said because this scene winds up following the same pattern as every other conversation between these two in these books. Neither character is allowed to do the thing they ought to have done right away -- in Buck's case, flee for his life, in Nicolae's case, kill Buck really hard -- because they're doomed to work together keeping Buck both alive and in proximity to Nicolae so that Jenkins' can use him to tell us what's going on there at Antichrist central. So the conflict between them isn't resolved here. It doesn't come to an end, but just kind of stops.

"All right," Nicolae says, abruptly and inexplicably switching gears. "Now, Buck, I want to talk to you as a journalist, and we will excuse our friend Mr. Plank."

And it's over. Buck stays here, in Nicolae's office, for another 45 pages, but from here on out it's all exposition, with the Antichrist reciting items from LaHaye's End Times check list out of his day-planner.

Is Buck safe now? Has Nicolae been convinced he was successfully brainwashed even though he refused to offer the requested and required apology?

Who knows? It doesn't matter. Nicolae's got a peace treaty with Israel to sign, a One World Government to arrange and a Whore of Babylon to impregnate. He's swamped.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* A Census Bureau acronym for "persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters," immortalized in Charles Osgood's poem, "There's nothing that I wouldn't do / If you would be my POSSLQ."

** A thriving cottage industry in the evangelical subculture involves intellectual-ish author/speakers whose primary theme is railing against the loss of "moral absolutes." Their sermon -- it's the same spiel for all of them -- consists of half-understood snippets of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer cobbled together to arrive at the conclusion that what they call "situational ethics" (which is not the same thing as what ethicists mean by that phrase) and what they call "moral relativism" (ditto) are leading us down a slippery slope toward legal abortion, gay marriage and universal health care. This is the theme, for example, of every third column published under Charles Colson's byline, of every fourth column written by Cal Thomas and of at least one article in any given issue of First Things.

Thanks to the popularity of this garbled deontology, "moral absolutes" has become, for most American evangelicals, a buzzword meaning, roughly, "opposed to legal abortion." The upshot of all of that is that for many American evangelicals, the idea of that it might be necessary in a given situation to tell a righteous lie -- such as by lying to the Antichrist himself to prevent his slaughtering your entire community -- is tied up with the collapse of all morality, all truth, all meaning. Any concession that rules might sometimes need to be broken could, in their minds, lead directly to a slippery slide down the slope to gay abortionist indoctrination camps for preschoolers. Man was made for the sabbath, after all.

Evangelicals haven't always been this way. Corrie ten Boom's Holocaust memoir The Hiding Place was an enormously popular and beloved book among American evangelicals in the early 1980s. That book tells the story of her devout Dutch Reformed and piously evangelical family and how they became righteous gentiles in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, hiding Jewish neighbors in a secret room of their home. The ten Booms never hesitated to lie, lie, lie when they had to in order to protect those they were sheltering. They forged identity papers and ration cards, and never paused to agonize over whether such deceptions conflicted with their "moral absolutes." Corrie's father, Casper ten Boom, was a good Calvinist who would have said that such necessary lies were an example of what it means to live dependent on grace in a fallen world.

For the politicized proponents of "moral absolutes," talk like that just proves that Calvin was totally depraved and will burn in Hell with all the other moral relativists.

Easy Living to Edit

I don't remember last night but they took my picture

"Easy Living," Billie Holiday
"Easy to Ignore," Sixpence None the Richer
"Easy to Remember," Billie Holiday
"Eat for Two," 10,000 Maniacs
"Echo Wars," Peter Case
"Eclipse," Steve Hindalong
"Ed Again," Swirling Eddies
"Ed Takes a Vacation," Swirling Eddies
"Eddie's Ragga," Spoon
"Edge of the World," Josh Ritter
"Edge of the World," Sam Phillips
"The Edge of the World," Sonia Dada
"Edit," Regina Spektor

Sinister suffrage

The Associated Press reports:

SAN FRANCISCO — Stunned and angry, national left-handed leaders Wednesday blamed scare-mongering ads — and President Barack Obama's lack of engagement — for a bitter election setback in Maine that could alter the dynamics for both sides in the southpaw-franchise debate.

Conservatives, in contrast, celebrated Maine voters' rejection of a law that would have allowed left-handed people to vote, depicting it as a warning shot that should deter politicians in other states from pushing for sinister suffrage.

"Every time the citizens have voted on the rights of minorities, they have always sided with the majority," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based Christian legal group. "Maine dramatically illustrates the will of the people, and politicians should wake up and listen."

Left-handed activists were frustrated that Obama, who insists he staunchly supports their overall civil rights agenda, didn't speak out forcefully in defense of Maine's voting law before Tuesday's referendum. The law was repealed in a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent.

"President Obama missed an opportunity to state his position against these discriminatory attacks with the clarity and moral imperative that would have helped in this close fight," said Evan Wolfson of the national advocacy group Freedom to Vote. "The anti-lefty forces are throwing millions of dollars into various unsubtle ads aimed at scaring people, so subtle statements from the White House are not enough."

The White House, asked about the criticism, had no immediate comment.

The left-handed voting debate is simmering in at least a half-dozen states where a bill is pending or where a court ruling or existing law is being eyed by conservatives for possible challenge.

Had Maine's law been upheld by voters, it would have become the sixth state to legalize voting rights for the left-handed — and the first to affirm it by popular vote. In Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Iowa, southpaw suffrage resulted from court decisions or legislation.

California is sure to be a major battleground over the next several years. Last year, conservatives succeeded in winning public approval of Proposition 8, which overturned a state court ruling allowing lefties to vote. Left-handed rights groups want to take the issue back to the voters but are divided on a timetable.

In the aftermath of the Maine vote, some California activists appealed to their supporters for money to help them put a measure on the 2010 ballot. Other activist leaders want to wait until 2012.

"It's never too early to go back to right a fundamental wrong," said Chaz Lowe of Yes! on Equality, who favors shooting for 2010. "A lot of people are angry, a lot of people are upset. It at least has the potential to be a mobilization for the grass roots."

Some California activists said the outcome in Maine strengthened their belief that it will fall to the U.S. Supreme Court — not to right-handed voters — to make the left-handed franchise legal. A federal lawsuit challenging Prop. 8 is scheduled to go to trial in January, the first step in a legal journey that is expected to reach the high court in a few years.

"The results in Maine underscore exactly why we are challenging California's left-handed voting ban," said Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the Los Angeles group spearheading the lawsuit. "The U.S. Constitution guarantees equal rights to every American, and when those rights are violated, it is the role of our courts to protect us, regardless of what the polls say."

Meanwhile, Maine voters will return to the polls next month to consider another series of referenda regarding the privilege of rights for minority groups. Proposition 13 considers whether redheads might be allowed to own property, Prop. 42 would permit Mormons to obtain a driver's license. and Prop. 57 would overturn a court ruling allowing Libertarians to dine in public restaurants.

Innocence and experience

I made this recently, but I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.

Playing off of Jesus' charge to his disciples to "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" we can construct the following grid of wisdom and innocence, charting four possible outcomes when you encounter someone purporting to be in need of your help:

As you can see, one of these outcomes is a Very Good Thing, one is a Very Bad Thing, and the other two are more or less indifferent. That lower right square is, of course, the inbreaking of the kingdom of God. The lower left square, on the other hand, is a little slice of Hell on earth.

So our little model here would seem to suggest that it might be wisest to avoid the wisdom of serpents altogether and stick to a dovish innocence. Assume that everyone you encounter is genuinely in need and you'll never find yourself participating in the hellish neglect of that lower left square. The worst that could happen would be that you'd get taken advantage of, which is sub-optimal but, morally speaking, no big whoop. Such deliberate naivete would also seem in line with some of the other things Jesus told his disciples, such as telling them to give freely to anyone who asks and to lend without the expectation of repayment.

But there are at least three problems with the holy foolishness of that approach.

The first problem, obviously, is that it contradicts the original statement. Jesus didn't say, "Forget about being wise as serpents, just get out there and be as innocent as doves." He seemed to think there was some merit or necessity to serpentine wisdom, so it's probably worth exploring what that might be.

The second problem is that a strict adherence to an unqualified dovish innocence offers no way of knowing or ensuring that our actions are effective -- that we're making the best use of our finite time and resources. When the question is "Should I help this person?" then an undiluted innocence may provide an answer. But when the question is more complicated -- "Should I help this person or that person?" -- it seems a measure of wisdom is called for.

The third problem with the dovishness suggested by the grid above is that this abstract model doesn't account very well for the actual facts of the actual people we're likely to meet here in the actual world.

Take for example the routine ethical dilemma posed by panhandlers. "Ignore him -- he just wants money for drugs," is one form of the usual dismissal given to any obligation we have when confronted by this purported need. That dismissal is sometimes despicably self-serving, but it's also usually accurate. The vast majority of people in need do not panhandle, and the vast majority of panhandlers are not in need -- or, rather, they have real and desperate needs, but not of the sort that a fleeting exchange or a few small bills can hope to address. Nine times out of 10, giving money to a panhandler is enabling, not empowering.

Given this data set, then, in which most panhandlers are addicts or scammers or both, we might conclude the opposite of what the model above suggests -- that we should completely avoid dovish innocence and treat all panhandlers with a suspicious, reptilian wisdom.

That approach seems troubling, in that it leaves open the likelihood of the hellish scenario in the lower left square while shutting off the possibility for the kind of blessed community described in the lower right square. Plus, again, it contradicts what Jesus actually said. His charge to his disciples indicates that he also saw something worthy and necessary in maintaining the innocence of doves. He wanted his followers to have both wisdom and innocence, so that they wouldn't lose their shirts or their souls.

Anyway, that chart above was originally part of a weird attempt to spoof the use of PowerPoint in church services, which I eventually abandoned because it seemed too much work for something silly. The chart itself is also silly, but I thought it was silly in a somewhat interesting way -- a silly way of approaching some interesting and maybe important things.

But I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. Hence this rather feeble conclusion.

TF: Saving Hattie Durham

Tribulation Force, pp. 108-109

Buck Williams is sitting just outside of the Antichrist's office.

He imagines he can feel the supernatural evil emanating from the next room. He desperately prays for divine protection, for deliverance, because he knows he's in extreme danger. Nicolae Carpathia has power over the minds of men and unless Buck is somehow able to convince him that he, too, is under his spell, that office may be the last room that Buck ever sees.

Buck has taken a terrible chance coming here, accepting this invitation to New York for a rendezvous with pure evil. But he had to come. For Hattie.

She had come to him for help and in return he had, unwittingly, put her immortal soul in danger. Buck had introduced her to Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist himself. He may as well have sold her into slavery.

Buck feels responsible for Hattie. He is responsible for the perilous new life she has begun. He talked about this endlessly with Rayford Steele and with Bruce Barnes, agonizing over how "every day" it gnaws at him that he put Hattie into harm's way and then just left her behind. In several long and repetitive conversations, both Bruce and Rayford warned him of the dangers of coming here, but he knew this was his only chance -- the only way he might perhaps reach Hattie, find some way to take her to somewhere it was safe to talk so that he could tell her about the truth he had found and that truth could set her free.

That was the reason he was here, the only reason. He was here in New York, in the dragon's lair, to rescue the damsel in distress. He was here to save Hattie Durham.

Hattie Durham approached Buck and Chaim Rosenzweig, and they both stood. "Mr. Williams!" she said, embracing him. "I haven't seen you since I took this job."

Yes you have, Buck thought, you just don't remember.

"The secretary-general and Mr. Plank will see you now," she told Buck.

And that's it.

That is the entire extent of Buck's conversation with Hattie Durham during this trip to New York. She greets him warmly and he responds, as he did when greeted by Rosenzweig, without saying anything, absorbed in thoughts of how cool it is that they've been deceived and he hasn't. (He does the same thing yet again when Steve greets him on the next page.)

Hattie leads Buck down a long hall, but he doesn't say a word to her, taking the opportunity instead to check out her outfit:

... he realized he had never seen her out of uniform. Today she wore a tailored suit that made her look like a classy, wealthy, sophisticated woman. The look only enhanced her stunning beauty. Even her speech seemed more cultured than he remembered. Her exposure to Nicolae Carpathia seemed to have improved her presence.

Buck spends the rest of the afternoon there in the same set of offices as Hattie, but he never speaks to her again before flying back to Chicago. He never even tries to speak to her.

Take a moment to savor this marvelously weird fumble here by Jerry Jenkins. He spent several chapters setting this up, with three separate conversations in which Buck agonized over whether or not to make this trip, weighing the immense danger against his overriding sense of obligation to undo the damage he had done to Hattie.

And then, abruptly, Buck and Jenkins both just forget all about it. Once Mr. McGillicuddy gets on the plane for New York, he abandons every thought of trying to save Hattie Durham.

Hattie does have one long conversation during Buck's visit to her new workplace, but that conversation is on the phone, with Rayford. And Rayford -- who also has spent pages and pages agonizing over his regrets and responsibilities regarding Hattie -- doesn't try to rescue her either. Instead, he lets her recruit him to come work for the Antichrist too.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of this book recount Buck's brave, heroic trip to New York to rescue Hattie who has been lured into working for the Antichrist. He doesn't do that, or even try to do that, but by the end of these chapters both Buck and Rayford will also wind up as part of the Antichrist's entourage.

If you're keeping score at home, that would be: Antichrist 2, Tribulation Force 0.

This doesn't happen due to Nicolae's Redfordian charisma or to his mind-control mojo. It's not his doing at all. This is Jerry Jenkins' doing.

Back in Book 1, Jenkins decided that he was going to be telling this story exclusively through the eyes of his two main characters. The inevitable result of that decision is that Buck and Rayford are doomed to find themselves in Nicolae's posse. That's where the action's at, so that's where our bystander-narrators need to be.

This really isn't the best narrative approach to a story attempting to present a comprehensive look at the End of the World. It means, among other things, that nothing significant can happen anywhere unless either Buck Williams or Rayford Steele is there to see it. If an apocalyptic prophecy falls in the forest and neither of our heroes is there to hear it, the prophecy can't be fulfilled.

The result of that choice in Tribulation Force is vast chunks of the book in which nothing much happens other than Jenkins' implausible maneuvering to get his bystanders into position. Most of this book doesn't have anything to do with Tim LaHaye's End Times check list at all, but only with the elaborate machinations involved in getting Buck and Rayford into front-row seats for the Nicolae Carpathia Show.

Apart from the generally dull pointlessness of these chapters, there's a larger problem with Jenkins' devotion to the idea that one or the other of our heroes must always be standing by when Nicolae does something Antichrist-ish. This problem is that it means our heroes will always and only be doing just exactly that -- standing by. The Tribulation Force can never become any legitimate kind of resistance or underground because that might interfere with their ordained narrative function of being bystanders. And that means, in turn, that our heroes can never be heroes. There's no such thing as a heroic bystander.

This poor structural choice by Jenkins winds up influencing the plot of these books and the character of its characters. In the Big Finale of the last book, Nicolae points a gun at Stonagal and we read:

Buck considered a suicidal dive across the table for the gun ...

But he didn't make that dive. Jenkins couldn't risk it. If something had happened to Buck, then who would be left to tell us this story?

This becomes a pattern in these books. Buck and Rayford are consistently portrayed as the kinds of heroes who never, ever make a dive for the gun. Jenkins places them right at the center of the action -- or, rather, right next to the center of action. But he never dares to put them in the action. They can't act and narrate at the same time. Ultimately, whether this is due to Jenkins' timidity or to that of his characters really doesn't matter -- either way Buck and Rayford come across as inert, self-absorbed cowards, as timid bystanders who think of themselves as the most important person in everyone else's story.

The publisher's blurb on the back cover of Tribulation Force promised something different:

Rayford Steele, Buck Williams, Bruce Barnes and Chloe Steele band together to form the Tribulation Force. Their task is clear, and their goal is nothing less than to stand and fight the enemies of God during the seven most chaotic years the planet will ever see.

But not really, no. That's not this book. The Tribulation Force can't "stand and fight," they can only stand by, doing nothing as the world crumbles around them.

But of course even if this book had tried to live up to the publisher's blurb it would still have been immensely difficult to reconcile that idea -- "stand and fight the enemies of God" -- with, you know, the whole gospel of Christ crucified. thing. The distinction between God's friends and God's "enemies" isn't compatible with that gospel. We're not talking about some esoteric aspect of theology here, but about something as elementary as John 3:16. Even if it were possible, or permissible, to identify some separate class of people who constitute "the enemies of God," I have to wonder what the point would be. Why waste time making lists of friends and enemies when you're told to respond to both the same way?

This whole Onward Christian Soldiers kick is probably an unfortunate side effect of St. Paul's use of some martial metaphors to illustrate what he called the "ministry of reconciliation." Twisting those metaphors into some kind of "literal" call to "stand and fight the enemies of God" makes about as much sense as interpreting Gandhi's idea of "satyagraha" as advocating violence since he said it describes "the Force which is born of Truth."

I'm repeating myself here, but that publisher's blurb is another reminder of how the Left Behind series warps that great old gospel song:

He could have called ten thousand angels
To destroy the world and set him free
He could have called ten thousand angels
But he died alone, for you and me

The way LaHaye and Jenkins sing that song it goes something more like this:

He should have called ten thousand angels
To destroy the world and set him free
He's coming back with ten thousand angels
To destroy the world, except for me

I like the original better, and not just because it's more orthodox.

Oops

And then, suddenly, Fred remembered he had a blog. ...

TF: Tim LaHaye's Cherokee grandmother

Tribulation Force, pp. 105-108

Before we proceed to our first glimpse of the appalling Tsion Ben-Judah, let me first take a moment to commend Jerry Jenkins for what is, for him, a minor achievement here:

At a few minutes after two in New York, Buck waited with Chaim Rosenzweig in the opulent waiting room outside the office of the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Here we are at the U.N. without having to trace every step of the journey from the table at the Manhattan Yacht Club to this room. See how much easier that can be for reader and writer alike? This is an utterly standard device in almost any other work of fiction, but in these books it's a pleasant surprise on these rare occasions to be spared the logistical details of any journey Buck makes from Point A to Point B.

This new setting hasn't changed the dynamic we saw between Buck and Chaim during lunch. Chaim remains full of enthusiastic affection for his friend and Buck is still seething with scarcely contained scorn.

Chaim was merrily going on about something, and Buck pretended to pay attention. He was praying silently, not knowing if his foreboding sense of evil was psychological because he knew Nicolae Carpathia was nearby, or if the man truly emitted some sort of demonic aura detectable to followers of Christ.

Buck is praying with a zeal that he hopes makes up for his utter lack of forethought or preparation for his impending encounter with Nicolae. I recognize this behavior. I grew up attending a fundamentalist Christian school, so I know all about last-second desperate prayer as a substitute for having done one's homework.

Then again I also recognize this behavior from having played a lot of AD&D growing up. Buck is in the antechamber to the lair of the evil boss. He casts Detect Evil. He casts Protection from Evil. ...

Buck was warmed by the knowledge that Bruce was praying for him right then.

Good move. Get the cleric to cast Bless before heading in to the lair. Buck is so preoccupied in trying to decide whether to use his Potion of Haste now or to save it for a lower level of the U.N. that he still isn't listening to Chaim:

"Anyway, I was saying. My dear friend Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah has finished his three-year study, and it wouldn't surprise me if he wins a Nobel Prize for it."

"His three-year study?"

"You weren't listening at all, were you, my friend?"

"I'm sorry."

Another pleasant surprise: an actual apology from Buck. He and Rayford don't usually apologize for anything. They seem to view it as a sign of weakness.

"It's all right. But listen, Rabbi Ben-Judah was commissioned by the Hebrew Institute of Biblical Research to do a three-year study."

"A study of what?"

"Something about the prophecies relating to the Messiah so we Jews will recognize him when he comes."

For this, Chaim expects his friend the rabbi to receive a Nobel Prize. This isn't as strange as it sounds. If Chaim can win one for botany, there's no reason Ben-Judah shouldn't get one for Tanakh studies.

Buck was stunned. The Messiah had come, and the Jews left behind had missed him. When he had come the first time most did not recognize him. What should Buck say to his friend? If he declared himself a "Tribulation saint," as Bruce liked to refer to new believers since the Rapture, what might he be doing to himself? Rosenzweig was a confidant of Carpathia's. Buck wanted to say that a legitimate study of messianic prophecies could lead only to Jesus. But he said only, "What are the prophecies pointing to the Messiah?"

The stunning thing here is that Buck assumes his friend has never encountered the Christian idea that Jesus is the Messiah. He thus wrestles with whether or not he should risk exposing himself as a Christian in order to let Chaim in on this big secret.

I'm not being facetious here. This is really what Buck -- and, by extension, the authors -- seems to think. He believes that Jews like Rosenzweig are simply unaware that Christians believe Jesus was the Christ. As though our use of that name wasn't a pretty big hint.

Buck (like the authors) further believes that if he were to explain this to his friend -- "Well, Chaim, we Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah" -- then his friend would have no choice but to kick himself for not having realized that sooner while kneeling to convert.

Seriously, read that paragraph again and note the two key words: "Legitimate" and "only."

A legitimate study of messianic prophecies could lead only to Jesus.

"Messianic prophecies" is, for LaHaye and Jenkins, a synonym for the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures, or what we Christians call the Old Testament. It's not quite true that LaHaye thinks these scriptures are exclusively composed of prophecies about the Messiah. There are also lots of prophecies about the Antichrist, of course. But the whole thing, in LaHaye's mind, is mainly a list of prophecies. Just like the New Testament.

Chaim -- who is portrayed in this book as relentlessly dim -- doesn't guess at what the reader sees coming a mile away. TBJ's three-year study will of course conclude that the "messianic prophecies" of the Hebrew scriptures can "lead only to Jesus." TBJ's study will thus reach the same conclusion Buck has reached after his extensive two weeks of second-hand research and the same conclusion that the authors started out with.

Note what it means here that TBJ is credited with "legitimate" study of the Hebrew scriptures. That means -- explicitly in this book -- that every other Jew who has ever studied the Tanakh without thereafter converting to Christianity was engaged in illegitimate study.

We'll have plenty of opportunity in the chapters ahead, after TBJ arrives in person in our story, to explore the theological assumptions at work here. But for now I want to touch on how this tale of the scholar-convert compares to Penthouse Forum.

The introduction of Tsion Ben-Judah in this story might as well have started: "Dear Jews for Jesus, I never believed these stories were true until one day ..."

What I mean is that we're dealing here with the authors' fantasy, with a pipe dream of their idea of the Ideal Jew. It's a fantasy that, like those infamous Penthouse letters, purports to express the writers' affection for its object but which actually, by treating them as objects for their own gratification, displays instead their contempt.

TBJ is what the authors imagine to be an Honest Jew. Any Honest Jew, in their view, is one who rejects Judaism. The implication, of course, is that any Jewish person who fails to do this is a Dishonest Jew.

Now, sure, that sounds awfully anti-Semitic. But in partial defense of L&J, we should note that this attitude of theirs toward Jews isn't wholly different from their attitude toward everyone else in this regard. In their view, anyone who fails to embrace what they see as the obviously self-evident truth of their brand of rapture-obsessed Real, True Christianity can only be acting out of a deliberate perversity. You and me and every other atheist, agnostic, pagan, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Roman Catholic, Quaker, Anglican and amillennialist can't have given any legitimate consideration of their views. If we had, then we'd have been forced to concede that they were right and we were wrong. So either our studies have been illegitimate, or else we're just pretending we're not convinced or, perhaps, we've deliberately chosen falsehood over truth because we're all evil like that.

So, yes, L&J believe that all devout Jews are disingenuous and perverse deniers of the truth, but they believe the same thing about most Christians, too.

Tsion Ben-Judah is a remarkable character because he embodies in these books that weird admixture of Judeo-philia and anti-Semitism that baffles and infuriates just about every observer of the prophecy-maniac fringe of American Christianity. We don't need to exhaust that topic here before TBJ even arrives in person in our story, but let me make one more comparison: Tsion Ben-Judah is Tim LaHaye's Cherokee great-grandmother.

"I thought all white people had a Cherokee great-grandmother," the old AIM guy told me, sublimely deadpan. The barb in that joke is a deadly serious complaint having to do with wannabes and the misappropriation of culture.

Tim LaHaye loves Israel the way wealthy hippies love turquoise jewelry and dream catchers. He loves Jews the way James Arthur Ray loves Native American spirituality. Which is to say he appropriates Judaism for his own ends, disrespecting it by usurping for himself the respect it is due, twisting it into what he wants it to be rather than what it is.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Chaim's second-hand introduction doesn't really do justice to the full effect of TBJ in person and that will have to wait.

Chaim sidesteps Buck's catechistic question ("What are the major prophecies pointing to the Messiah?")

"I was not a religious Jew until God destroyed the Russian air force, and I can't say I'm devout now. I always took the messianic prophecies the way I took the rest of the Torah. Symbolic. The rabbi at the temple I attended occasionally in Tel Aviv said himself that it was not important whether we believed that God was a literal being or just a concept. That fit with my humanist view of the world."

L&J really have no idea how anyone who isn't an RTC actually talks.

"Dr. Ben-Judah was a student of mine 25 years ago. He was always an unabashed religious Jew, Orthodox but short of a fundamentalist. Of course he became a rabbi, but certainly not because of anything I taught him."

L&J also don't seem to have any idea how scholarship works. It's as though they think all pointy-headed intellectual types work together in one big laboratory. Secular botanists teach at the Yeshiva. Rabbinical students attend Tel Aviv A&M. And they're all eligible for Nobel Prizes in Smartness.

Defying gravity

I need help from people who know more than I do about science -- in particular about gravity and what we do or don't know about how it works.

What I'm trying to do is to find another angle for breaking through the protective shell that makes communication with "creationists" almost impossible. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, are creationists, and it isn't good for them. It warps their faith and it puts them on the wrong side of a dangerous anti-science trend that affects a wide range of very important things, from climate change to vaccination* to the insane notion that the middle of a global recession is a smart time to start aggressively worrying about budget deficits.

When people stop finding science persuasive, when they distrust it precisely because it is science, then they become vulnerable to all sorts of Really Bad Ideas.

But anyway, I'm pretty well-equipped to engage my creationist friends and relatives on some of the other layers of their anti-science belief system. I can articulate a capable critique of their illiteralist hermeneutic and the way it vivisects the opening chapters of Genesis and transforms them into something unintended and antibiblical. And I'm pretty good at addressing their notion that Christian faith rests entirely on the basis of a modernistic "literal" interpretation of every verse of scripture, meaning that their world will crumble if Noah's Ark can't be found on Ararat because that would mean that Jesus doesn't really love us.

On the biblical and theological side, in other words, I can speak their language. I'm fluent in the idioms, allusions, connotations and quirks of evangelicalese.

But when I'm addressing the "science" aspects of "scientific creationism" I find I'm unable to communicate with them -- not just because I'm less fluent in the language of science, but because when they start talking about science then words no longer seem to mean what they mean for the rest of us. They use familiar-sounding words, but you quickly realize that they're using these familiar words in unfamiliar ways, using them to communicate vastly, irreconcilably different things.

The most common and frustrating example of this is probably the way creationists talk about a "scientific theory." This seems to mean, for creationists, something like, "a wild, uneducated guess unsupported by evidence that can be dismissed and ignored without consequence," with additional overtones of "a conspiracy to deceive and corrupt the youth of America."

I heard these words used this way a few nights ago in a BBC radio story following a group of fundamentalist Christian middle school students as they toured a museum of natural history, itching for a fight with the evolutionist scientists running the place. "Why won't you admit that evolution is just a theory?" their teacher said to the scientist leading the tour.

And then, to hammer the point home, he added, "It's not like gravity."

Aha. So here we come to where I need some help from actual science types. Because it strikes me that the teacher is sort of right about that, but just not in the way he thinks. Gravity is also "just" a theory -- but if I understand these things properly, it's a theory with some serious problems. Like that it doesn't work at the atomic level and that it gets a bit wibbly wobbly when trying to explain the behavior of astronomically large things as well.

The comparison with gravity, it seems to me, underscores the comparative strength of evolution. I think it might be helpful to point that out when our creationist friends, inevitably, start going on about the alleged shortcomings and flaws of the justatheory of evolution.

So what I'd like to be able to say to them would be something like this:

Well, OK then, but gravity is justatheory too, the way you're using that word. And gravity, as justatheory, has much bigger unresolved problems than the justatheory of evolution does. If we took your standards for evaluating the justatheory of evolution and applied those standards to gravity, then we'd have to conclude that the justatheory of gravity is even more wrong.

So, a little help from you science types, please. Does that work? Is it a fair/accurate line of argument? Does it need to be qualified? Amended? Embellished? Abandoned? Please let me know.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Yeah, I'm talking about you, Bill Maher (via). The Real Time comic has become a self-appointed advocate for the spread of H1N1 and of seasonal flu.

Here I would remind us, again, of Wendell Berry's distinction between religion and superstition. Religion, Berry said, is belief in something which cannot be disproved. Superstition, on the other hand, is belief in something that has been disproved. The former can be reasonable, the latter cannot. For all of Bill Maher's railing against religion as "mere superstition," it seems he doesn't understand either of those ideas. His latest anti-vaccine, anti-medicine, anti-science crusade is superstitious nonsense. It's religulous.

Kindness and necessity

An article in the paper this weekend quoted a religious leader from New Jersey describing the basic message of his faith. "People should have high morals and be kind to each other," he said.

That seems hard to argue with.

So let's argue with it. Because actually this religious leader's formulation bothers me. What troubles me is the way he presents what seem to be two separate, distinct ideas: "high morals" and "kindness."

This doesn't seem to be a matter of repetition for emphasis. The religious leader isn't saying, "People should have high morals by being kind to each other," or "People should have high morals by which we mean be kind to each other." He is suggesting, instead, that there is something called "high morals" that exists and matters beyond the separate something of being kind to each other.

I'll somewhat grudgingly concede that this might be true in some technical sense, but I still don't like the distinction.

Before we get into that, I should note that kindness is a bit of an awkward term here. It tends to convey more an idea of niceness than of goodness -- and as Little Red Riding Hood sings in Into the Woods, "nice is different than good."

Kindness seems less robust than, say, a word like justice. But while it may seem to mean less, it can also mean more. It's possible to treat someone justly without also treating them kindly, but if one is to be kind, one must also be just. There's no such thing, after all, as a kindly injustice. Nor is it possible to accept or allow injustice while still being, in any meaningful way, kind. (Stonewall Jackson, the eighth-grader's history book says, was "kind" to his slaves. No. No he wasn't. If he had been kind to them, then they would not have remained his slaves.)

So while kindness may be less comprehensive than love, which is the word I would have preferred to use here, it still seems adequate for the question I'm trying to get at, which is whether it is helpful to speak of a duty to "have high morals" as something that is or can be distinct from the duty to be kind to each other.

To justify the religious leader's formula above, all we really have to do is to find some examples of morality that aren't directly related to the obligation to "be kind to each other."

The most obvious examples of that sort of thing are the sorts of religious duties that I tend to think of as matters of piety rather than of morality (which is not to say that such matters are necessarily lesser just that they are something else). Sabbath-keeping, for example, is regarded as a moral matter for Jews and Christians, but it doesn't seem to be obviously related to or derived from the obligation to be kind to one another.

We can also find plenty of non-sectarian examples of what seem to be moral obligations that have little to do with being kind. Imagine, for example, a lone individual stranded on the proverbial jungle island, living on a diet of fruit, nuts and vegetables and thus, seemingly, freed from any relationship that might require this island dweller to exercise kindness. It still seems possible for such an isolated individual to behave morally or immorally. This hypothetical island-dweller will need to do work -- to build a shelter, for example -- and that work can be done with care or it can be done carelessly. That care or lack thereof involves a moral component. Care and craft would seem to be another realm of morality that can be considered distinct from being kind to each other.

So technically at least, it would seem that the religious leader's formula is valid. And yet I'm still not happy with it.

Here's why: It is true, as this formula suggests, that "be kind to each other" is not wholly sufficient as an expression of all that morality entails. But while kindness may not be sufficient, it is necessary. If kindness is not quite the whole of "high morals," such high morals cannot exist without it. Kindness -- well, here let's use that better word -- love may not quite be the only moral duty, but it trumps all others.

Talk of "high morals" as distinct from "be kind to each other" may be technically true, but it opens the door to the danger of allowing those other matters to override that essential duty of kindness.

And we do this all the time. We latch onto the pietistic duties of religion or the secular pieties of craft as thought they somehow exempted us from the obligation of kindness. We use them as excuses for our failure to be kind to each other. Given the choice, or when the need to choose inevitably arises, we opt for "high morals" rather than kindness. That's backwards.

"The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath." Apart from "be kind to each other," high morals really aren't.

TF: My Lunch With Chaim

Tribulation Force, pp. 97-104

Yes, as those page numbers indicate, we're flipping back a bit this week to review a bit more of Buck and Chaim Rosenzweig's conversation over lunch at the Manhattan Yacht Club. There are a few things we missed the first time through, including a bit of that discussion that lays the foundation for their next conversation in the pages we'll turn to next week.

Much of this lunchtime conversation is taken up with Chaim Rosenzweig's breathless praise of his new boss and patron, Nicolae Carpathia. Including a notable discussion of Nicolae's humility.

Here the authors approach the edge of something sensible, but can't quite manage to step across into it. Nicolae's humility is the one quality of his that the authors seem to appreciate is bogus. Their Antichrist, they realize, must pretend to be humble, but cannot be portrayed as genuinely humble.

Thus we get three pages of Chaim lavishly extolling Carpathia's vast humility while Buck -- unbelievably unnoticed -- rolls his eyes and sighs and thinks to himself things like "I'll bet."

The authors at least appreciate that Nicolae might be a lethally ambitious man who pretends to be humble. Yet they can't imagine such duplicity when it comes to his other seeming virtues. They can't imagine that his dedication to world peace or to feeding the hungry might also be disingenuous. Those aspects of Nicolae's character, they assume, are the genuine article and therefore these other virtues, in the authors' eyes, must be perceived as vices.

This is, again, the sheep-in-wolf's-clothing problem. The authors are convinced that the Antichrist will be so disguised, so every sheep is suspect and anyone who speaks of feeding the hungry or of working for peace (or who, say, is given a Peace Prize) is regarded by them as nothing more than a candidate for Antichrist.

It's interesting that the one exception to this is Nicolae's humility. In Rosenzweig's description, the Antichrist is:

"Probably as humble as any leader I have ever met, Cameron. Of course, I know many public servants and private people who are humble and have a right to be! But most politicians, heads of state, world leaders, they are full of themselves. Many of them have much to be proud of and in many ways it is their egos that allow them to accomplish what they accomplish. But never have I seen a man like this. ...

"Think about it Cameron, he has not sought these positions. He rose from a low position in the Romanian government to become president of the nation when an election was not even scheduled. He resisted it! ...

"And when he was invited to speak at the United Nations not a month ago, he was so intimidated and felt so unworthy, he almost declined. ..."

What I find most interesting here is the way Nicolae's ersatz humility is almost presented as a subversion of the myth of Cincinnatus, because that myth -- not the story or the man himself, but the aura of meaning it conveys -- is immensely important among the evangelical American readers who make up these books' intended audience.

Cincinnatus was a Roman general who retired to work and live on his farm. When invaders threatened Rome, he was summoned to serve as dictator, a post he accepted reluctantly. He conquered Rome's enemies, resigned from the role of dictator and returned to his farm.

This is, for many American social conservatives, a portrait of the ideal leader. Cincinnatus' humility was proof of his virtue, and the people have nothing to fear from a virtuous dictator.*

By portraying Nicolae's humility and reluctance to accept power as a sham -- a pose to deceive the masses -- the authors tip-toe right up to the line of recognizing that they, too, might be so deceived by such a ruler, and that the idea of trusting a ruler checked only by his own virtue is itself not to be trusted. But they can't quite bring themselves to grasp this. Buck's smug superiority (a surrogate for the authors' own) reasserts itself in the scene and Chaim is ultimately portrayed as a fool not for naively supposing that a humble dictator can be trusted, but only for failing to realize that this particular virtuous dictator isn't truly virtuous. Buck listens to Chaim's ode to Nicolae the Humble and rolls his eyes because he knows better. He agrees with Chaim's premise that a virtuous dictator is a Good Thing, but he realizes that Nicolae is only pretending to be virtuous.

Rosenzweig segues from his praise of Nicolae's humility into praise of the Antichrist's other virtues -- virtues the authors don't portray as mere pretense:

"Cameron, he has ideas upon ideas! He is the consummate diplomat. He speaks so many languages that he hardly ever needs an interpreter, even for the chiefs of some of the remote tribes in South America and Africa! The other day he shared a few phrases understood only by an Australian Aborigine!"

This is all intended to be perceived by readers as evidence of Carpathia's true nature as the epitome of evil. Diplomats are presumed guilty. Polyglots doubly so. A knowledge of other languages and cultures, after all, is something that would only be sought by some fuzzy-headed relativist unconvinced by the self-evident cultural superiority of English-speaking Christendom. And learning to communicate with others is just too suspiciously irenic -- why learn their languages when you might, instead, "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Plus, learning languages is too intellectual. Intellectual is bad.

It might be that we're meant to understand Nicolae's preternatural knack for languages as a super-natural gift -- a kind of infernal miracle. It makes sense in a way that such a skill would go along with his brainwashing and mindreading powers. To read someone's thoughts, you'd need to understand the language of those thoughts. To implant thoughts in another's mind, you'd need that person to be able to understand those thoughts in their own language.

If that's what's supposed to be going on here with Nicolae then it's an odd super-power for an Antichrist. I'd expect the Antichrist to be something like an End Times Jannes or Jambres -- able to imitate or counterfeit the miracles associated with Christ. But this bit with languages instead seems to mimic the miracle of Pentecost -- more the sort of thing one might associate with an Antichurch than an Antichrist.**

This is yet another reminder of the road not traveled in these books, the missed opportunity to explore the character of Christ through the character of the Antichrist. By portraying Nicolae Carpathia as an explicit opposite of Jesus Christ, the authors might have used him as a kind of mirror reflection, allowing us to picture Jesus more clearly.

For example, Nicolae has been granted a Satanic rule over all the kingdoms of the earth. It would have been a simple matter to portray his use of Rosenzweig's miracle formula as a version of turning stones into bread and then to show him demonstrating his miraculous specialness by some equivalent of leaping, unharmed, from the highest point of the Temple. Those were the temptations Jesus faced, and rejected, during his 40 days in the wilderness. Seeing Nicolae grapple with those same temptations, succumbing to each in turn, would have been a potentially fruitful way of exploring their meaning from a different angle.

Denys Arcand's wonderful film Jesus de Montreal offers such a reimagining of that account of Jesus' temptation. Arcand's movie explores the role of the artist through the story of Jesus (and vice versa). His Christ-figure confronts each of Jesus' temptations in turn, with an oily show-biz lawyer standing in for Satan.

But Left Behind isn't interested in exploring the character of Jesus. The authors are not at all concerned with how their portrayal of Jesus' opposite might be a means to explore the meaning of Jesus' own character, actions, words, ministry or mission. They're not terribly concerned with Jesus at all.

And in any case, LaHaye & Jenkins' Antichrist isn't really presented as the opposite of Christ. They think of him more as a cheap, pirated copy. That is seen most clearly when Christ himself arrives in their books several volumes from now. That LB-Jesus doesn't act like Nicolae's opposite, but rather like a better, stronger, faster version of the same character -- a superior, more powerful Antichrist.

And the authors' account of Christ's return offers what they neglect here in their introduction of Nicolae Carpathia -- an explicit, if unintended, retelling of the Gospel story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. LB-Jesus flings himself from the sky and lands miraculously unharmed. He forces all the nations of the world to bow down before him and immediately sets about turning stones into steaming piles of produce. The authors' Jesus, in other words, corrects what they perceive as the errors of the Jesus of the Gospels. Jesus 1.0 rejected the temptation of power. Jesus 2.0, they say, will return to seize power with relish. He will arrive as a conqueror bent on conquest -- but with an even bigger bow and more impressive white horse than the one Nicolae rides.

Rosenzweig's paean to Nicolae moves on to touch on the Antichrist's admirable pacifism. Admirable to Rosenzweig, that is, but the authors and Buck know better. Nicolae's pacifism, unlike his humility, is the real deal. There's no point for him to pretend he's a pacifist since all pacifism is itself, in the authors' view, nothing more than a form of pretense. Thus Rosenzweig explains that Nicolae's pacifist disarmament scheme will be enforced with the threat of nuclear annihilation:

"Knowing full well that some nations may hoard or hide weapons or produce new ones, the full agreement between the sovereign state of Israel and Security Council of the United Nations -- with the personal signature of Nicolae Carpathia -- makes a solemn promise. Any nation that threatens Israel will suffer immediate extinction, using the full complement of weaponry available to the U.N. With every country donating 10 percent, you can imagine the firepower."

"What I cannot imagine, Chaim, is an avowed pacifist, a rabid global-disarmament proponent for his entire political career, threatening to blow countries off the face of the earth."

"It's only semantics, Cameron," Rosenzweig said.

Not to get bogged down in semantics, but I'm trying to understand how Rosenzweig's use of that term here makes any sense at all.

Buck sees the hypocrisy here of a pacifist issuing nuclear ultimatums, but the authors ultimately conclude that such hypocrisy is intrinsic to pacifism and shared by all supposed pacifists. This is what they think all pacifists are really like, deep-down. Here again Tim LaHaye's John Birch Society roots are showing. To LaHaye, "pacifist" always means "crypto-Stalinist." (Even the Amish? I'm not sure, but clearly they're Up To Something.)

Nicolae's nuclear ultimatum is somehow tied up with his soon-to-be-signed seven-year peace treaty with Israel, the prospect of which is really what has Rosenzweig so bewitched.

Buck asks his friend why Israel would want to sign such a treaty, what's in it for them?

"What has Israel prayed for since the beginning of her existence, Cameron? And I am not talking about her rebirth in 1948. From the beginning of time as the chosen people of God, what have we prayed for?"

Buck's blood ran cold, and he could only sit there and nod resignedly. Rosenzweig answered his own question. "Shalom. Peace. 'Pray for the peace of Israel.'"

The authors seem to forget here that they've already told us that Israel has peace, stability and security. Here's a bit from page 8 of the previous book:

The prosperity brought about by the miracle formula changed the course of history for Israel. Flush with cash and resources, Israel made peace with her neighbors.

And by "her neighbors" there, the authors mean Iran and Turkey, since the Israel of the Left Behind novels is a vastly larger nation than the one that exists today, peacefully swallowing up the territory of what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and much of Iraq to encompass everything "from the Nile to the Euphrates."

Plus that book described an attack on Israel -- a full-scale nuclear assault -- that was swatted away by the hand of the Almighty. You'd think that experience would have helped the nation feel a bit more secure. But Rosenzweig says no:

"We know God Almighty supernaturally protected us from the onslaught of the Russians. Do you know that there was so much death among their troops that the bodies had to be buried in a common grave, a crater gouged from our precious soil by one of their bombs, which God rendered harmless? We had to burn some of their bodies and bones. And the debris from their weapons of destruction was so massive that we have used it as a raw resource and are refabricating it into marketable goods. Cameron," he added ominously, "so many of their planes crashed -- well, all of them, of course. They still had burnable fuel, enough that we estimate we will be able to use if for five to eight more years. Can you see why peace is so attractive to us?"

This awkwardly catalogued array of weird detail is meant to parallel the specifics of the biblical "prophecy" that this whole Russo-Ethiopian invasion was concocted to "fulfill." It's LaHaye's imagined explanation of the "Gog and Magog" passages in Ezekiel 38 and 39. Those chapters say things like:

I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee ... And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years: So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them ...

So all of Rosenzweig's rambling here is LaHaye's attempt to reimagine a "literal" fulfillment of Ezekiel's hyperbolic description of that supposed future conflict. (If by "literal" you mean that these two chapters of Ezekiel are meant to be literally divorced from the context of the rest of that book and literally spliced somewhere into the beginning of John's apocalypse, wherein "shields and bucklers" might be regarded as an acceptably "literal" representation of jet fuel.)

But anyway that brings us, finally, to the main reason we needed to flip back to this conversation. In the following pages, Rosenzweig will introduce us to the character of Tsion Ben-Judah, who will quickly come to supplant Bruce Barnes in the role of Mr. Exposition while leading a worldwide network of Jews Against Judaism. And to really appreciate that character when we meet him, we first need to read Chaim Rosenzweig's description of the meaning of Jewishness:

"Cameron, Cameron," Rosenzweig said wearily, "history has shown our God to be capricious when it comes to our welfare. From the children of Israel wandering 40 years in the desert to the Six-Day War to the Russian invasion to now, we do not understand him. He lends us his favor when it suits his eternal plan, which we cannot comprehend. We pray, we seek him, we try to curry his favor. But in the meantime we believe that God helps those who help themselves."

This isn't just Rosenzweig's description, of course, it's also the authors' idea of Judaism. The bottom line being that Jews simply "do not understand" God. Tim LaHaye, on the other hand, understands God perfectly. Alas, if only the Jews would recognize his superior knowledge and his superior superiority, he would be happy to respond by condescending to explain it all to them.

Playing out that fantasy is, more or less, the role of Tsion Ben-Judah in the remainder of this volume.

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* This is another division distinguishing the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party from it's libertarian, free-market faction. The myth of Cincinnatus illustrates social conservatives' comfort with unchecked power and unlimited authority. That contradicts the Madisonian concern for limited government that's central to conservatives of a more libertarian bent.

It also helps to explain why the partisan hypocrisy often demonstrated by this kind of social conservative isn't only partisan hypocrisy. President George W. Bush was, in their view, a virtuous man with Jesus in his heart. That virtue, they believed, was sufficient as a check and balance against any potential misuse of power. President Barack Obama, they believe, is an evil man and therefore must not be trusted with even the constitutionally constrained, limited, checked-and-balanced power of his office. This is why former Vice President Dick Cheney belongs with the social conservatives even though he was, at best, unenthusiastic about their dual obsessions of criminalizing abortion and homosexuality. Cheney believes that virtue and virtue alone is a sufficient constraint on the use of power, and that power ought to be wielded unfettered by any other limit in pursuit of that virtue.

** In Luke's account, the Apostle Peter stands to preach the gospel at Pentecost and those from every tribe and nation hear him speak in their own languages (while others think he sounds like a babbling drunk). That story presents the young church as a redemptive community -- an expanding, inclusive body through which the divisions of Babel and the curses of our fallen world are being restored. That entails a very different ecclesiology and eschatology that what they authors present in the Left Behind books -- a different vision of the nature and purpose of the church and its role in the destiny of human history. Given their vastly different take on those ideas, the authors don't do themselves any favors by alluding, even slightly, to Pentecost.