Reading notes

Azindy’s History of Rapture Doctrine is a nicely done historical/information essay that illustrates my contention that Rapture “theology” is only one step removed from just making shit up.

Most striking theological quote (from David B. Currie):

“This theology is appealing only as long as the pain is someone else’s. … Quite simply, the rapturist system contains no Cross.”

Given its fruit[s] of hubris and destruction, I assess that Rapture “theology” is one of the most effective strategies for leading people astray that the Enemy has ever come up with.

This last sentence chills me:

The case Gore makes is worthy of sleepless nights: Our Earth is in extremis. It’s not just that polar bears are drowning because they cannot reach receding ice flows or that “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” will exist someday only as a Hemingway short story — we can all live with that. It’s rather that Hurricane Katrina is not past but prologue.

Then Cohen writes on what matters to me most. Yes, I’m deeply disturbed by the spiritual killing and maiming rendered by BushCo these past 5+ years as they and their supporters misrepresent the Prince of Peace as Lord of War, as the dragons that inhabit them seek to subvert the Church that was designed to stand against them. But truth is, Cohen here pinpoints what has offended and pissed me off the most:

But it is the thought that matters — the application of intellect to an intellectual problem. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. [His insistence on abstinence as preferred birth control] is similar to Bush’s initial approach to global warming and his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol — ideology trumping science.

I want smart leaders whose fruit comes not from a corrupt tree.

Thomas Friedman reawakens my on-again, off-again vision-and-hope machinery:

If Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he’ll have to do his own Nixon-to-China turnaround, reframe the debate and recast the priorities of his presidency. … And what should be the centerpiece of a policy of American renewal is blindingly obvious: making a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation.

Yes. What have we done instead? Consumed at a record pace, destroyed God’s creation — human and nature — at a record pace. Indebted ourselves at a record pace. Borne false witness, sown strife, division, rancor, violence, death. Queued up deadly consequences for years to come. For what?

What if instead, as Tom imagines —

Imagine — I know it is a stretch — that the president announced tomorrow that he wanted an immediate 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax — the “American Renewal Tax,” to be used to rebuild New Orleans, pay down the deficit, fund tax breaks for Americans to convert their cars to hybrid technology or biofuels, fund a Manhattan Project to develop energy independence, and subsidize mass transit systems for our major cities.

I used to dream like this. I used to expect our elevating people of character to important public offices like president, people of integrity, maturity, wisdom, judgment, and above all, people of vision.

And imagine if he tied this to an appeal to young people to go into science, math and engineering for the great national purpose of making us the greenest nation on the planet, to help liberate us from dependence on the worst regimes in the world for our oil and to help ease the global warming that is heating up the oceans, making our hurricanes more intense and our lowlands more vulnerable. America’s kids are hungry to be challenged for some larger purpose, which has been utterly absent in this presidency. …

A most precious commodity is hope for the future, the knowing we can recover, that we can get better again. If you have this hope, this knowing, even a tiny flickering flame of it, you are a vessel of extreme value. Nurture yourself, protect yourself, keep the pilot light lit.

Heroic deeds of community like evacuating children and the elderly from hospitals, rescuing people stranded on rooftops, distributing food and water to hungry and thirsty people and animals, like first responders of any stripe to an emergency, like doctors and firefighters and utility linemen and carpenters and care workers and volunteers and givers of all kinds — all these kinds of commitment and action are important, crucial, vital.

And alongside — because “where there is no vision, the people perish“ — keeping hope alive, keeping the vision, is important, crucial, vital, too.

I can do that. We can do that.

(Not all of us all the time, of course. I imagine all goes dark with the death of a child in war, or the destruction of a coastal community around you. But at any given moment, surely there’s a critical mass of us who can step up to the plate.)

Man, revisiting Proverbs 29 (the source of “where there is no vision”) is a revealing exercise:

A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes
will suddenly be destroyed — without remedy.

When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice;
when the wicked rule, the people groan. …

By justice a king gives a country stability,
but one who is greedy for bribes tears it down. …

The righteous care about justice for the poor,
but the wicked have no such concern. …

If a ruler listens to lies,
all his officials become wicked. …

When the wicked thrive, so does sin,
but the righteous will see their downfall.

A man’s pride brings him low,
but a man of lowly spirit gains honor. …

What jumps out at me is these verses define “righteous” by example, and the examples turn the prevailing [Religious Right] understanding of “Who is righteous? Who is wicked?” upside down.

The righteous detest the dishonest;
the wicked detest the upright.

Bill Moyers writes concerning the theological quicksand on which rests the ecological future of Earth, quoting Shakespeare —

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: “How do you see the world?” And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: “I see it feelingly.’”

I see it feelingly.

Why don’t we feel the world enough to save it — for our kin to come?

I see it feelingly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

These may be the most accurate words describing my own condition I’ve ever read. When I read King Lear in high school, I didn’t notice. Whoa, now I do.

Not only does this aptly reflect my general INFP approach to life, it’s also my specific MO, of necessity, because my physical eyes have never worked very well. (Although toric contacts have recently wrought a miracle even there.)

Almost everything I write, say, and do springs from seeing the world feelingly. Sometimes faultily, but always feelingly.

[Insert: Note that “feelingly” does not preclude “thinkingly” and “informedly.” I aim for the sweet spot combining all three — as, dare I say it, should we all. Delusion can’t easily set up residence in people who feel and think and learn.]

What this seeing tells me, above almost all else, is that God requires of us that we steward this earth he has entrusted us with, care for it, nurture it, love it (and those on it) as his good creation. “Well done, good and faithful servant!” will be music in our ears on doing so. But should we destroy it in the service of an arrogant, exploitive misunderstanding of the word dominion, I expect what we’ll hear is more along the lines of “throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness.”

What kind of creator would delight in seeing one part of his creation destroy another part? If destruction is required (see Flood), it’s always the creator’s call. Such action is never the call of the created.

Reminds me of the wicked tenants in Jesus’ parable who sought to forcibly take possession of a vineyard that wasn’t theirs. Jesus tells the story to illustrate the people’s soon-to-come rejection and killing of him as “the vineyard owner’s son.” I think it bears an interpretation that focuses on the outcome for the tenants, too: If we — who are, after all, tenants here — continue our “we can do anything we want” disregard for, and abuse of, this planet-size vineyard, we can reasonably expect a comparable outcome: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”

[via DHinMI]

George W. Bush may not know it, but one influential part of his government is finally taking global climate change seriously. An extraordinary new report by an elite Pentagon planning unit has declared that climate change is a national security threat of the greatest urgency and demands an immediate response.

Directly contradicting Bush and other right-wingers, the Pentagon report maintains that climate change is not only real, it could strike sooner and with much deadlier effect than is usually thought. By 2020, when babies born today will be in high school, climate change could unleash a series of interlocking catastrophes including mega-droughts, mass starvation and nuclear war, as countries like China, India and Pakistan battle over river valleys and other sources of scarce food and water.

Thank God. It’s enough to have to face this monumental issue head on; to have to kick people’s asses to get their heads out of the sand to even begin is ridiculous. Note that nation-state pecking order means squat when facing a problem that’s global. The worth of rah-rah U.S. patriotism becomes clear as it pales in the face of global climate change.

The Fortune article cited is here, but reading the whole thing requires a subscription:

Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world’s climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade — like a canoe that’s gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don’t know how close the system is to a critical threshold.

Every poll shows that both Republicans and Democrats want strong environmental laws, up around 75 percent of the public, and there’s almost no difference between the parties. …

In most Americans’ hearts, the investment in our environmental infrastructure is well worth making. They want our children to have clean air and clean water to drink, and they want to preserve the wild places that make America special, the places that are sacred to Americans. …

Some of the most passionate ground troops for the anti-environment backlash have come from the Christian right. How do you make sense of that — that these people are also inspired by religious conviction?

I would say what the fundamentalists call “dominion theology” is a Christian heresy. …

Dominion Christians believe that the Apocalypse is coming soon, the planet was put here for us to exploit, to liquidate for cash, and we have a duty to do that — even if we destroy nature in the process. Reagan’s EPA chief James Watt was a radical dominion fundamentalist — he believed it was sinful for us to protect the earth for future generations.

I’m not a hellfire-and-brimstone guy, but I’m pretty sure this is heresy that will indeed keep you eternally apart from God.

My reasoning is simple:

If you value the Creator, you value his creation.
If you devalue his creation, you do not truly value the Creator, no matter how much you profess to. (“By their fruit you will recognize them.”)

If God is just, he will treat you, his creation, in a manner consistent with the way you treat the rest of his creation.