Mr. Sharky

I've successfully launched my personal, private-sector economic stimulus package: A 2008 Toyota Yaris. Like me, it is tall, skinny and frugal. A subcompact with head and legroom, who knew?

Between my unanticipated car-shopping and the two-days-and-counting teacher's strike in my girlfriends' kids' district, time for sleep and/or blogging are a bit hard to come by this week. (Just curious -- is there a rule somewhere that says students can't join the picket line? It seems like a good educational opportunity. Plus a shot at major brownie points.) So anyway, here are some hastily assembled thoughts that might, if nothing else, keep the comment-count in the last LB thread from reaching four figures.

* * *

I do love Netflix, and I was excited to hear they'd be rolling out a "Watch it now on your computer" feature.

Except not so much, it turns out. The new feature only works on a PC running Windows. Windows Vista.

That strikes me as a very Blockbuster-ish thing to do. What's next? Late fees?

No love for Mac users? Thanks for nothin', Netflix.

* * *

Adam Weinstein has a nice rant in Mother Jones about how "As newspapers recruit 'citizen journalists' to fill their pages, flacks and hacks find an opening." Stop the press releases!" He points to a pro-Wal-Mart piece of "citizen journalism" run by the Tallahassee Democrat which was authored by Stacey N. Getz, who works for a PR firm hired by Wal-Mart. That fact wasn't disclosed to readers:

In the same month as Getz's Wal-Mart post, the [Gannett-owned] Democrat published a story by a retirement home's development director about the complex's great new golf course -- without disclosing her job -- and a woman wrote an article about a boy who'd organized a cancer charity event without noting that she's his mom.

The paper (my "the paper") is also part of the nation's largest chain, and we've run stories similar to those Weinstein describes. Forget the old rule against stories based on a single source, the chain is now eagerly posting and printing stories not just based on a single source, but written by that source.

See earlier: "Collaboration."

* * *

I haven't kept up with the entire comment thread for the most recent LB Friday post, but let me try to address one question. Yes, like most Christians, I do believe what Romans 3:10 and Psalm 14 say, "There is none righteous, no not one."

I'm not an admirer of evangelism by formula, it strikes me as too much like a sales script to be an effective or genuine expression of love. And formulas for presenting the good news can be just as much of a trap as the stale tropes and narrative formulas that distort any other reporting of the news. So the "Romans Road" approach strikes me as a wrongheaded attempt to force round people through square holes.

Having said that, though, I do believe in what those passages from the Bible say. Romans 5:8, in particular, is a favorite of mine: "But God commended his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." I consider that very good news indeed.

I appreciate that "There is none righteous" might not speak to your condition, as my Quaker friends might say. I've never understood that passage to mean that no one is better (or worse) than anyone else, but rather something more like no one is perfect, no one is 100-percent good. It's worth noting that the most virtuous people, the sorts of folks we might point to as counter-examples of such a claim, seem to be unanimous in denying such an honor.

My main objection to the way these passages are employed in the "Romans Road," one-size-fits-all evangelism tool has to do with Romans 6:23, which says, "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." That neatly encapsulates one of the major themes in Paul's epistles: the idea that sin becomes both employment and employer, both task and task-master. Odds are, though, if you're listening to someone presenting the Romans Road, that's not what they'll tell you. They will tell you, contra-Paul in this very passage, that your sin makes you deserving of death and that it is God, not sin, who will pay you this deadly wage.

This is another example of where I think you're likely to hear better theology in the church basement than you will upstairs. In those basement meetings, they'll tell you that the disease wants you dead -- not that the disease makes you deserving of death at the hands of your righteously indignant higher power.

* * *

So I'm playing with the iTunes playlists and I come up with the following, which probably doesn't really work since it's a gag based on an extremely unlikely Venn diagram, with A∩B for A="intimate acquaintance with obscure evangelical band" and B="appreciation for dirty jokes."

Then again, what's the point of having a blog if not to have a place to post such things? So ...

Top Ten DA/Swirling Eddies Song Titles and/or Sexual Positions

10. Over Her Shoulder
9. Art Carney's Dream
8. Divine Instant
7. Blowing Smoke
6. The Zoom Daddy
5. Sudden Heaven
4. The Glory Road
3. Angels Tuck You In
2. The Whistler
1. The Unsuccessful Dutch Missionary

Comments

[peatey]

Between my unanticipated car-shopping and the two-days-and-counting teacher's strike in my girlfriends' kids' district...

How many girlfriends and how many kids in that district? :)

[Dave]

I feel like I should point out that the Netflix streaming video service also works with Windows XP.

Of course, it's only compatible with Internet Explorer. No love for Firefox.

[Jesurgislac]

Like me, it is tall, skinny and frugal.

Somehow I'd always pictured you as medium height and comfortably built. With soft brown hair going grey a bit, and glasses with wire frames, and kind brown eyes (possibly blue, but definitely kind).

Hm.

I have no particular picture in my head of most people who blog here (aside from Bugmaster and Rosina, for some reason).

[mmack]

I've successfully launched my personal, private-sector economic stimulus package: A 2008 Toyota Yaris. Like me, it is tall, skinny and frugal. A subcompact with head and legroom, who knew?

Fred,

That offer for the Elvis dashboard bobble doll to "Pimp yer Ride" still stands. Good luck with your new car. May it give you years of trouble free service.

[esd]

"The new feature only works on a PC running Windows. Windows Vista."

Google "Mac OS X bootcamp." If your Mac is running OS X, you can install windows XP on it in such a way that you can boot up in either OS X or XP. When you boot in XP, your computer will look like a PC running XP and do everything a PC running XP can do, including netflix streaming video or, say, MS flight simulator, except that your new "PC" will have a Mac logo on it. It takes a few gigabytes and you need to buy XP.

[MikhailBorg]

The iTunes movie rental deal is trying to tempt me. $2.99 does not seem too bad for something that I will probably only watch once, and it's a simple matter for me to plug the laptop into the TV for a nice evening's viewing.

[Stan Taylor]

I demand a photo of Fred!

[MikhailBorg]

I make mental pictures here of everyone, though I'm sure they are wrong. I picture Jesu as an Anglicized version of a local friend of mine who holds many similar views; I'm sure that's not even close. (And no, I can't describe exactly what I mean by 'an Anglicized version'.)

Some of us are insane enough to post relatively recent pics of ourselves on our blogs; there are a few people here for whom I now have accurate visual referents. They never resemble my mental pictures at all.

[Freshwater]

The screenshot says XP Service Pack 2 will work. Everyone with Windows XP is entitled to Service Pack 2, which in any case includes important security fixes - so that would include practically everyone who bought a PC with Windows in the past five years or so.

[CaDan]

I'm thinking "Shotgun Angel" and "Shedding the Mortal Coil" should be added to the DA/Swirling Eddies list.

[Ron]

I can confirm the Netflix feature works on Windows XP: I watched a movie on it last weekend. The image quality was not great but it did work and played without any interruptions which is a good bit better than my cable company's OnDemand service that routinely gives me a blue screen of death halfway through watching a movie.

[Cuebe]

And no, I can't describe exactly what I mean by 'an Anglicized version'.

Obviously you mean wearing a bowler hat, pale skin, bad teeth, dark hair, slightly miserable looking. I'm sure this is dead on. Jesu ?

I don't even have a mental picture of myself (I avoid looking in a mirror) let alone other people. This is occasionally embarrassing, as for example when I found myself waiting with two other people in a major railway terminus for one of my best friends. "What does she look like?" "Um, I don't know" "But you've known her for years - is she tall? What color hair does she have?" "She's... shorter than me, (they sigh, I am very tall) and um, I don't know?" "But you shared a house with her. You were with her when we called on Friday. How can you not remember what she looks like?" "Um, sorry, I just don't". And of course when she arrived I recognised her and began waving, and they couldn't understand how it's possible that I can recognise her but not describe her. Our brains are weird.

[pratfall]

I can't say what the rules are in your area, but I was on the picket line in the 1987 Chicago teachers' strike at the tender age of 7, and I was far from the only student participating.

[Freshwater]

Just curious -- is there a rule somewhere that says students can't join the picket line? It seems like a good educational opportunity. Plus a shot at major brownie points.

If the kids in question are too young to work then logically they have no place in the strike (unlike a University student's union walking out in support of a teaching strike). They certainly aren't union members. So they wouldn't be covered by any insurance arrangements, e.g if there's a violent attempt to break up the strike. Still, picket lines are usually in public space outside a place of work, and children are permitted in public spaces. When a community centers on a single place of employment (common with coal mines for example) it's not unusual for whole families to be at the picket or nearby.

On the other hand I wouldn't know about brownie points. None of the teaching staff I looked up to respected strikes. If you're not doing it for the money (and really, in teaching it's hard to see how you could be), why would you stop doing it just because of a disagreement about money? It's not as though your disagreement is with the people you're teaching. Any other policies you don't agree with you can just defy. Widespread and organised defiance of a rule or policy makes it practically unenforceable (this is as true for a university as it is for a whole country).

[twig]

1. The Unsuccessful Dutch Missionary

Win.

[Jesurgislac]

Freshwater: If you're not doing it for the money (and really, in teaching it's hard to see how you could be), why would you stop doing it just because of a disagreement about money?

Recently someone asked me (it was a meme) "What was the stupidest thing I'd seen on the Internet?" I didn't have an answer - I mean, the stupid is everywhere - but this definitely falls into the category of things I could have linked to.

[Jesurgislac]

Cuebe: Obviously you mean wearing a bowler hat, pale skin, bad teeth, dark hair, slightly miserable looking. I'm sure this is dead on. Jesu ?

Dead right, aside from the bowler hat: I wear this only when I go bowling. Which I haven't done in seven or eight years, so I don't know where it is. Usually, I wear a top hat with a lavender rose. Obviously.

[Froborr]

esd: Yes, because watching Netflix is worth spending $7,000 or however much Windows costs these days. I do *not* understand software pricing. Any economist can tell you, the rampant software piracy is strong evidence that prices are too high for maximum profitability. I don't know what heavily pirated companies like Microsoft and Adobe are thinking.

Cuebe: I have the exact same problem. I don't know my little sister's hair color, for which I have gotten enormous flack.

On newspapers selling out: Up until my last semester of college, in 2004, I was planning to become a newspaper copy editor, do mostly to my fantastic experiences with student press. But the coverage of the 2004 election and the rampant favoritism of the newspapers, the fact that it was possible to identify the political leanings of every major paper, poisoned me completely. Things have gotten worse since. I don't think it's too extreme to say that journalism in this country is acutely ill, possibly dying.

On Romans: You say that most Christians believe it, but I find that very hard to swallow. I think most people would agree that nobody's perfect, but there is a HUGE difference between "nobody's perfect" and "nobody's righteous." The condition of being righteous is far, far short of being perfect; for starters, righteousness is instantaneous -- one can be righteous at a particular moment and not others -- while perfection is necessarily permanent. Righteousness is a matter of behavior, while perfection is a matter of essence. To say "no one is righteous" is to say that nobody ever does anything good.

I would think most of the world's billion Catholics would say that the saints were pretty righteous. Most Americans, most of them Christian, would point out Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. Sure, they weren't perfect, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone willing to say that MLK's leadership of the civil rights movement was not a righteous act.

Yes, I understand that it's generally read as hyperbole for "nobody's perfect", but the problem I have is that a lot of people don't read it as hyperbole.* They actually think that every single human being is evil, that nothing good can come of human effort, and that only supernatural assistance can transform a filthy, disgusting, sin-stained wretch of a being into something good. Or, worse still, that not even supernatural assistance can make them into something good, but it can achieve the seemingly impossible task (certainly beyond any human) of forgiving them for being disgusting wretches and loving them anyway. That kind of debasement of humanity denies all dignity, sympathy, and brotherhood between people. Small wonder that it produces people like LH&J.

*Given the very strong evidence in his letters that Paul basically just hated everyone, especially families and happy people, I'm not sure it wasn't intended to be taken exactly as written, "everybody's scum". I always imagined him as very tall, very thin, with dark hair and bulging eyes, wearing one of those Pilgrim hats with a buckle and all-black clothes and a perpetual scowl. I can just see him stomping around the Roman Empire, screaming hellfire and damnation at anyone who takes any joy whatsoever in anything that isn't Jesus.

[mike timonin]

Jesu - Americans rarely strike for reasons other than money - the reasons for this are complicated, and have a great deal to do with how unions evolved here, which is different from Europe. Especially since the 1950's, issue based strikes - strikes about working conditions, or safety, or, I don't know, class size (which, frankly, deserves a strike - "I refuse to teach until my class is smaller than 20 students, or I get a class room assistant. Killing off students to meet that ratio is not allowed.") are perishingly rare. Thus, we get debates about "are unions actually doing anything", and there's a strong sense that the problems that caused strikes before WWII (safety, and etc) have largely been resolved. So, yes, Freshwater's views on teachers striking are ... uninformed, perhaps ... but not necessarily the stupidest thing ever. Just really really close.

[Jack Grey]

"Dead right, aside from the bowler hat: I wear this only when I go bowling. Which I haven't done in seven or eight years, so I don't know where it is. Usually, I wear a top hat with a lavender rose. Obviously."

True story: Back when I was in college (some years ago, now) there was a Theater major who - regardless of the rest of his outfit - *always* wore a top hat. In addition to being rather a large piece of apparel, this hat was adorned with a large, yellow sunflower design.

One day, while in the student center, he was accosted by one of the (prim, well-dressed) sorority girls. (This particular university had a surfeit of them.) She asks, in a tone of puzzled incomprehension, "Why are you always wearing that hat?"

He stops, looks down at her, and says: "Because if I take it off, I turn back into a snowman."

[Geds]

Or, worse still, that not even supernatural assistance can make them into something good, but it can achieve the seemingly impossible task (certainly beyond any human) of forgiving them for being disgusting wretches and loving them anyway.

Moreover, and this is something that's been breaking my heart recently, that idea that only a supernatural entity can possibly love people makes humans loving other humans incredibly difficult. I've gotten the feeling that one of my closest friends, who I love dearly, loves me precisely because she's supposed to. She'll openly admit that she doesn't like and trust people too much, but being a good Christian she does her best to love people. I'd long theorized (with a bit of experience) that a certain type of Christian uses concepts like "loving like Christ" as an excuse to actually not love people (um, it works like this: someone says, "I love people like Christ loved," as a way of avoiding saying, "I love people," because they don't actually love people but believe that Jesus told them they have to. Not all people who claim to love like Christ think that, but there are plenty who claim to love who actually can't stand people and I think that the whole "loving like Christ" thing is used to weasel out of having to admit to being horrible misanthropes).

It was bad enough, I suppose, when I was working with an on-campus ministry that was massively unkind while it claimed to teach love. It didn't hurt me to leave them behind. But when its someone who calls me her best friend and she's more interested in letting me know that she's right, but then explains it away by saying, "You know I love you, isn't that enough?"

Um, it really isn't. Especially since I'm starting to wonder what you really mean when you say "love."

[Drew Habits]

The Unsuccessful Dutch Missionary is almost unique among sexual positions - it is one of only a few that can only be properly performed while alone.

[Eric B.]

I'm not so sure what was so dumb about Freshwater's post. The point was simply that most teachers aren't fans of teacher's strikes, since strikes tend to be about money and teacher's are not motivated by such. I think there is some truth to that. It's not that they have no reason to strike, but I think most intrinsicallt motivated people would prefer to not stop working over issues such as these.

[Froborr]

Geds: Exactly what I was trying to say. "Nobody's perfect" is truth. "There is no righteous, no not one" is misanthropy. There's a difference.

It has generally been my experience that dicks are dicks and nice people are nice people, regardless of their religious beliefs. Nice people bring out the best in their faith, and dicks bring out the worst. One can regard "There is no righteous" as hyperbole for "nobody's perfect", and anybody who's not a dick will. Dicks will take it literally, to mean "people are scum." Reading the Bible, it seems to me that Jesus fell mostly into the nice camp, while Paul is a thoroughgoing dick.

[McJulie]

...there is a HUGE difference between "nobody's perfect" and "nobody's righteous." The condition of being righteous is far, far short of being perfect; for starters, righteousness is instantaneous -- one can be righteous at a particular moment and not others -- while perfection is necessarily permanent. Righteousness is a matter of behavior, while perfection is a matter of essence.

I don't think that is quite how the terms are usually understood. I think the distinction you are really trying to make is between the phrases "nobody is righteous" and "nobody ever behaves righteously."

Evaluated that way, the Christian doctrine that "nobody is righteous" -- assuming most Christians actually believed that which I doubt -- is a lot more positive. I see it as expressing that righteousness is not an innate quality of anyone. People behave righteously, sometimes, and that is to be celebrated. But we shouldn't approach our fellow humans assuming that some of us fall into category "righteous" and some fall into category "unrighteous."

In fact, that very approach from the Christian right wing is something our host complains about here a lot.

So, as I see it, the Christian message re: righteousness: 1. Nobody is innately good. 2. Yes, that includes you. 3. #1 is okay because God forgives you. 4. Because God forgives you, you should forgive others. 5. #1 should not in any way be interpreted as giving you an excuse not to try to be a better person.

And I still like that message.

[Angelika]

Froborr: Yes, I understand that it's generally read as hyperbole for "nobody's perfect", but the problem I have is that a lot of people don't read it as hyperbole.*

You, obviously, are one of them hyperbolic challenged people ;-).

Once again, in interpreting Paul's statement in Romans it is helpful to include the rest of the standard Christian teaching as well. The way early Christian's interpreted the term 'righteous' comes pretty close to our modern idea of 'perfect', just look at the letter of James 2:10 ' For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. and at the Sermon of the Mount and the way Jesus interpreted the law.

Of course, if you want to interpret 'righteous' as 'decent' or even as 'usually nice person', then I agree with you, the statement 'nobody is righteous' would be a pretty outrageous claim. However, the context in which the word 'righteous' is used in the New Testament does not use 'righteous' as synonym for 'nice person'.

And then there is one other aspect you have to consider. The letters of Paul were written by a Christian to the benefit of other Christians (in fact the entire New Testament is written with a Christian audience in mind). Thus, statements about e.g. lacking righteousness are statements Christians make about themselves - with the purpose of fostering self-awareness, humility and of stopping the nasty habit of pointing at other people's faults rather than working on one's own. The New Testament is not about condemning people who are not Christians, since for all what the authors knew, a Non-Christian would have fairly little incentive to read the writings at all. - When some people nowadays abuse the scriptures to condemn people outside their faith, don't blame it on Paul.

[Froborr]

Eric: It depends on the nature of the strike. My sister loves teaching *and* does a lot of volunteer work for the teacher's union. She doesn't see these as being incompatible, seeing as currently she has to teach full-time AND house-and-pet-sit fifteen days a month AND serve as an after-school caretaker for an autistic boy, just to afford her third of the rent on a one-bedroom apartment (she sleeps on the couch, so the roomie pays two-thirds of the rent) in an okay-but-not-great area. She is *exhausted*, and it means she's not the best teacher she could be. So yes, she'd be reluctantly willing to miss a few days' work for a strike if it meant she could drop one or both of the other jobs and concentrate fully on teaching.

That's why Fresh's post is ignorant.

[Freshwater]

I don't know, class size (which, frankly, deserves a strike ...

It's childish. If Peter is mean to me and so I steal Mary's ball because I'm frustrated, that's childish - my gripe is with Peter, not Mary. Maybe after a full day of dealing with kids you feel like being childish, but there we are. You have a great many legitimate outlets for your frustration about class sizes that don't threaten the children's education.

We don't value teachers enough in our society. But you don't get more respect by throwing tantrums, as anyone who has looked after children ought to know. To get better class sizes, you need to sell that to the general public. Not empty calls for "Education, education, education" but a specific commitment to train and hire a /lot/ more qualified teachers (noting our mutual objection to simply eliminating the excess children). The commitment needs to be linked to population growth (in the past it's been a popular trick to promise say 100 extra teachers over some period, and not mention that they'll all be needed to deal with normal population growth) and it needs to include retention, which may mean increased salaries. But the recruitment element means it can't happen next week, even if you storm parliament and install a new Teachers First government. If you want a solution for next week, it's either children in the furnace or unqualified staff.

[Dash]

If you're not doing it for the money (and really, in teaching it's hard to see how you could be), why would you stop doing it just because of a disagreement about money?

Distinction between "doing it for the money" and needing to earn a living wage. If your earning power is falling to the point where you may not be able to keep teaching, yeah, you might strike "for the money." This isn't inconsistent with having taken a low-paying job because it's important work and you're not primarily money-driven.

Somehow the idea that teachers (and firefighters and police officers) are supposed to be sworn to poverty or close to it, or that, upon taking their jobs, they swear off all desire for worldly possessions, doesn't sit well with me. They're not monks. So I'm with Jesu and Mike ("really really close") on this one. However, I'm pretty sure I've seen some instances of strikes or "working to the rule," which is a sort of strike, for changes in working conditions, which include class size, prep time, etc.

[M Groesbeck]

I walked the line with my teachers in 10th grade.

It was one of those supposedly-nonexistent strikes over both issues and pay -- the administrators were pushing for class-size increases and refusing to have teachers' salaries even keep up with increases in the cost of living.

My school had a collection of serious, dedicated teachers -- all of whom participated in the strike.

Of course teachers aren't in it for the money. But this doesn't mean we should demand that teachers should barely be able to get by, either -- especially when we already expect them to pay out-of-pocket for most classroom expenses and to be able to pay off student loans...

I do find it fairly ironic that in the U.S., where money is publicly held as the only real sign of success in anything, that people can act with so much disdain towards teachers' demands for a decent salary.

[Froborr]

Explain this to me: How do you reconcile the belief that "there is no righteous, no not one" with the recognition of Big Damn Heroes?

So, as I see it, the Christian message re: righteousness: 1. Nobody is innately good. 2. Yes, that includes you. 3. #1 is okay because God forgives you. 4. Because God forgives you, you should forgive others. 5. #1 should not in any way be interpreted as giving you an excuse not to try to be a better person.

I find 1 obscene. Everybody is innately good. Even habitual perpetrators of the most horrific evils have some capacity for good in them.

[Froborr]

Sorry for the double-post.

The way early Christian's interpreted the term 'righteous' comes pretty close to our modern idea of 'perfect'

If this is the case, then, given that they weren't speaking English anyway, shouldn't it be translated as "there is none perfect, no not one"?

[Dash]

There are two definitions of "righteous" floating around, and that seems to be what's causing the confusion.

The context of Romans 3:10-12 suggests a pretty hyperbolic reading to make the theological point: "As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." (King James version, because, hey, if it was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me.)

This doesn't preclude people being decent or "righteous" in an ordinary way, either in our terms or as the people of the times understood it. Paul is trying to make the point that human goodness is ultimately inadequate. I'd say pretty much all of us have done some things that we're not particularly proud of. It's a very strong (very strong) way of saying "nobody's perfect," without the shrug that normally accompanies that phrase.

You could even argue that "righteous" here is being used almost as a technical term, meaning "entirely without any failures or errors at all--bug-free."

(And a note to our Kind Host: congrats on the Toyota. A very good choice, IMHO.)

[Carl]

Of course, there are churches where the interpretation that sin's wages are a disease not the punishment of the Father is not just an opinion in the basement, but the official position of the church as well. See for example the Orthodox Church. http://www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm

Be forewarned, that essay's a bit polemic, since it's very strongly opposed to the idea that God is our punisher, which it feels to be a vicious slander, which makes our loving God seem quite evil…

[Jeff]

You have a great many legitimate outlets for your frustration about class sizes that don't threaten the children's education.

"Don't you know the cotton will rot if you don't pick it? And what did the cotton ever do to you? So pick that cotton, tote that bale, like the good 'boy' that you are. Won't anyone think of the cottons?"

Your posts are getting ignoranter by the minute.

[daveadams]

Re no Mac love from Netflix, the problem is that there's no DRM solution on Mac that doesn't belong to Apple. Apple won't license their DRM scheme to other people. The movie studios won't let Netflix do movie rentals without DRM. So you can blame the problem on Apple, Microsoft, or the movie studios, but Netflix is the last party that should be blamed.

[Freshwater]

Distinction between "doing it for the money" and needing to earn a living wage.

I'd regard that as a separate and very serious issue. I instinctively think teachers should be paid well, and that firefighters should be getting fair compensation for the fact that their work is inherently dangerous in a way that most modern jobs aren't. But one needn't to agree with that to see that our society just hasn't been very good at ensuring people with any kind of a job earn enough money to do more than just barely survive.

Given the available resources and technology in the Northern industrial societies, it should be possible to have a 40 hour per week job doing something relatively unskilled like cleaning floors, and live well enough on it. Buy nutritious food. Sleep in a warm, dry, safe place at night. Have a child, fall in love, write poetry. All the sort of things People are supposedly free to do. Yet it is often impossible to do this. In my country's capital city, like most, you wouldn't quite starve if you tried this, but you'd certainly have to live somewhere pretty nasty, and forget having a child.

I doubt that a strike (yes strike fans, even a national strike) will fix that. In fact I have no idea where to begin.

[kermode]

As a gay former Eastern College (now Eastern University I'm led to understand) student, I am probably uniquely qualified to appreciate the humor in that last bit -- you gave me a chuckle. Thanks.

[Angelika]

Froborr: If this is the case, then, given that they weren't speaking English anyway, shouldn't it be translated as "there is none perfect, no not one"?

Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea. Better even, if there were a synonym for 'perfect in the relation to God', after all perfect looks or perfect understanding of algebra are not required. Unfortunately, I don't really know a fitting word, but then I can always excuse myself with English not being my first language.

Dash: Somehow the idea that teachers (and firefighters and police officers) are supposed to be sworn to poverty or close to it, or that, upon taking their jobs, they swear off all desire for worldly possessions, doesn't sit well with me. They're not monks.

I couldn't agree more!

I find it surprising that in many societies the people doing the most important jobs get the least reward for their toil. I'd think that people doing essential tasks, like raising and nurturing the next generation, tending the old and sick, growing the food and up-holding order and security should be the most rewarded. But somehow, housewives, farmers, nurses, and the average soldiers tend to end up on the lower end of the social scale everywhere.

[damnedyankee]

I doubt that a strike (yes strike fans, even a national strike) will fix that.

A strike may or may not, but quietly going about your business and hoping you'll eventually be treated well will fix nothing.

[Froborr]

there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

And you wonder where I would get the idea that Paul is saying nobody ever does anything good, that there are no righteous acts? It seems pretty clear to me; Paul is being abhorrently, misanthropically perfectionistic ("nobody except God is perfect, and therefore nobody and nothing is good"), and two millennia of interpretation have (mostly) backed off from that extremist position and shortened it to "nobody except God is perfect."

To me it's quite clear that Paul meant "everybody is unrighteous scum", and interpreters have invented a new definition of "righteous", because the alternative is either to agree with him that everybody is unrighteous scum, or to recognize what a massive dick Paul was (see also Paul's attitudes toward women and familial ties). Like I said, look at Ecclesiastes: the prevalent attitude toward humanity in early Judaism and Christianity was profoundly negative. They did think that being imperfect meant that every single person was scum.

[Toby]

"There is none righteous" is not hyperbole. Absolutely not. If something is maximally bad, if it is as anything could possibly be, if nothing could possibly be worse, then it's not actually possible to be hyperbolic about how bad it is. And this is the case with sin, which is what's at issue here: sin is worse than any earthly danger, worse than anything else imaginable. You can't get hyperbolic about how bad sin is.

[Toby]

Froborr: I would think most of the world's billion Catholics would say that the saints were pretty righteous. Most Americans, most of them Christian, would point out Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.

First of all, the Catholic concept of sainthood is silly.

Second of all, it may be worth reviewing this part of Fred's post: "It's worth noting that the most virtuous people, the sorts of folks we might point to as counter-examples of such a claim, seem to be unanimous in denying such an honor."

That kind of debasement of humanity denies all dignity, sympathy, and brotherhood between people.

Sinners aren't worthless. How far from righteousness a person falls has nothing to do with whether others should accord that person dignity, sympathy or brotherhood. Granted, there are Christians who confuse sinfulness and worthlessness, but that is an additional sin on their part. Fred addressed this pretty clearly in his post, too, so it may be worth reviewing that part also.

[Jason]

What in heck is a 'Yaris'?

[Jeff]

And this is the case with sin, which is what's at issue here

But no-one is a sin (leaving aside that [a] what you call "sin" I might not and [2] not all sins are created equal). Paul didn't say "There are none whose sins are righteous", he said, basicly, that everyone is a sinner, all the time. That's either hyperbole or silly, take your pick.

[Jeff]

What in heck is a 'Yaris'?

This! Behold the power of Teh Google!

[Geds]

the alternative is either to agree with him that everybody is unrighteous scum, or to recognize what a massive dick Paul was (see also Paul's attitudes toward women and familial ties).

False dichotomy, Froborr. Sadly, the appropriate action in this case is probably the one that's most abhorrent to those who are worried about such things in the first place.

Rather than realizing what a massive dick Paul was, it's a much better idea to realize that he was actually relatively socially progressive...for the product of a society that focused everything on a bronze-age religious text subjugated by an iron-age empire interested mostly in preserving order across most of the known world.

On the issue, specifically, of women, Paul acknowledged women as being capable leaders and seemed to consider any number of them (Chloe, Prisca, a couple others that were in Fred's name list last week) as leaders of their local churches/parishes. This was in stark contrast to the Greco-Roman system wherein non-slave/non-priestess women were basically not allowed to leave the house and widows had to get re-married and give their property to their new husbands (I've actually seen a compelling argument that the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire was largely because rich widows used Pauline precepts against re-marriage as an excuse to stay single and basically started churches in their homes to prove their piety), while ancient Judaism wasn't exactly any better.

Today we look at Paul as being horribly bass-ackward, while then he would have been considered scandalously progressive (on some things). The problem comes, then, when you have those people who say that the entire Bible is true, has been true, and will remain true without error or interpretation throughout time. So they insist on Paul's tremendously misogynistic (for us) attitudes as the way things must be if you want to partake in the Christian goodness.

Arguing Paul out of the Bible won't accomplish much. The issue at hand is one of seeing how society has changed in the intervening millennia and try to convince people that the spirit of someone like Paul would live on today in someone like the great suffragists of the last century.

Really, one of the best examples of a more accessible Paul would be Mark Twain. He was infamously misanthropic and had nothing good to say about the human race in general. Yet he was a devilishly clever humorist and inspirational observer of the human condition and was able to use what he had to point out our societal faults and point at examples of a better possible future. Huck Finn's entire, "All right, then, I'll go to hell," realization is a tremendously uplifting call to a better understanding and appreciation of others, even the most downtrodden of all. Yet it came from someone who didn't like people all that much...

[Froborr]

First of all, the Catholic concept of sainthood is silly.
Every belief is regarded as silly by someone. It says more about the person doing the regarding than it does about the belief. Anyway, this doesn't change that more than half the world's Christians are Catholics, and most of those believe in saints. Not to mention the great many Christians who believe the world can be divided into righteous and unrighteous; historically the former category has generally consisted of "members of my tribe" and the latter as "members of the enemy tribe".

Likewise, that MLK and Lincoln might have demurred being called righteous doesn't change that most modern Americans would say it anyway. Again, refutes Fred's claim that "most Christians" believe that there are no righteous people.

Now, you could claim that all real Christians believe it, but then you're falling into the RTC trap.

As for your second, oft-repeated point, worth is goodness and goodness worth. Something has worth because there is something about it which is good. The two cannot be divorced, and to claim that humans are utterly evil and yet somehow also have great worth is pure doublethink, without any actual meaning.

[Jason]

What in heck is a 'Yaris'?

This! Behold the power of Teh Google!

Yes, yes. It's a car. I sussed that. But the word itself ... it looks like a tragic Scrabble hand. It appears auto manufacturers are cutting costs by using castoff names from the pharmaceutical industry.

[Froborr]

Jeff: Actually, I rather suspect that Paul *is* saying people are a sin. Not a pleasant man, Paul.

Geds: And no, I don't think he's all that similar to Twain. Twain was disappointed in a humanity he knew could do better, and was trying to use mockery to point out how much better it could do. Paul, on the other hand, doesn't think humanity can do better. A much better example for a modern-day Paul is H.P. Lovecraft. Only difference is that, in Paul, the gods will come to help us when the stars are right, instead of sweeping us aside without really noticing we were ever here. Otherwise, they both fundamentally agree that humans are pond scum growing on the surface of the world.