This will be short and to the point, but it is the "great unspoken," so I will once again speak and say it.
Another year has gone by, capping another decade that has gone by, without genuine justice, truth telling and peace in the Middle East.
I have found myself wondering often, as I see the evidence most clearly before me, if many humans have been so deluded that they genuinely prefer to see Armageddon type so called "signs" in the Middle East, rather than roll up their sleeves and achieve genuine and honorable peace and justice. You know who I mean.
The angels proclaimed their declarations from God upon the birth of Jesus of peace to men (people) of "good will." There will be no peace in the Middle East until people get back to work on it in the transparent and fresh air of truthfulness and genuine good will. Again, this comes down to living righteously, not self proclaimed self-righteousness.
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Brave Israeli navy kills a fisherman
Why?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gS5v_75qBNk3V3Ua2K7XLVTUiW_A
snip
GAZA CITY — A Gaza fisherman was killed on Thursday by a shell fired by Israel's navy, Palestinian medics said.
Mohammed Attar, 25, was hit by shrapnel, according to Muawiha Hassanein, who heads the territory's emergency medical services. He had apparently been in his boat just off northern Gaza's shore when he was hit.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Navy vessels enforcing Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory regularly fire at Palestinian fishermen to prevent them from venturing more than a few kilometers (miles) from shore.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=221967
Gaza – Ma’an – A Palestinian man was killed on Thursday when the Israeli navy shelled a fishing boat just off the coast of the northern Gaza Strip.The director of Emergency Services and Ambulances Dr Mu’awiyah Hassanein said that Israeli shells took 25-year-old Muhammad Nady Al-Attar’s life when his head was severed from his body. One other fisherman was injured in the attack, which occurred while they were fishing. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.Al-Attar was buried later on Thursday after a funeral procession in his home town of Beit Lahiya.
If you do a news search for articles, you'll notice something interesting. Often the Jewish news reporters bundle in the same article the killing of this fisherman with other "bad" Palestinian activities, such as a recent shelling or tunnel digging, to make it look like killing this fisherman was "justified," even before the Israeli military responds with their, um, investigation!
How familiar and sad this sounds. Always a "reason" for the inexplicable.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gS5v_75qBNk3V3Ua2K7XLVTUiW_A
snip
GAZA CITY — A Gaza fisherman was killed on Thursday by a shell fired by Israel's navy, Palestinian medics said.
Mohammed Attar, 25, was hit by shrapnel, according to Muawiha Hassanein, who heads the territory's emergency medical services. He had apparently been in his boat just off northern Gaza's shore when he was hit.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Navy vessels enforcing Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory regularly fire at Palestinian fishermen to prevent them from venturing more than a few kilometers (miles) from shore.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=221967
Gaza – Ma’an – A Palestinian man was killed on Thursday when the Israeli navy shelled a fishing boat just off the coast of the northern Gaza Strip.The director of Emergency Services and Ambulances Dr Mu’awiyah Hassanein said that Israeli shells took 25-year-old Muhammad Nady Al-Attar’s life when his head was severed from his body. One other fisherman was injured in the attack, which occurred while they were fishing. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.Al-Attar was buried later on Thursday after a funeral procession in his home town of Beit Lahiya.
If you do a news search for articles, you'll notice something interesting. Often the Jewish news reporters bundle in the same article the killing of this fisherman with other "bad" Palestinian activities, such as a recent shelling or tunnel digging, to make it look like killing this fisherman was "justified," even before the Israeli military responds with their, um, investigation!
How familiar and sad this sounds. Always a "reason" for the inexplicable.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Understanding the prophets and saints
As I've blogged before, I have been very concerned that modern people do not really understand the characteristics or motivations of genuine, truly genuine, prophets and saints. You know what I mean? Many think of prophets and saints as being like "super heroes," with "super powers." That is totally wrong. First of all, the prophets and saints do not have "super powers." All that is done, even the miracles performed by Jesus Christ himself, is the power of God and God alone acting through the Savior, as through the prophets and also the saints.
But many modern people, especially those who fall into error, heresy and occult practices, think of prophets and saints as magicians, seers, "gifted," and of heroic tendency. By heroic I mean the type of secular, fantasy, science fiction type of "heroic," rather than the heroism that yes, indeed, many did exhibit.
So I found a wonderful verse from Jeremia when I first opened the Bible tonight (determined to do at least one useful blog as it has been several days since I've last posted). Jeremia was a prophet, called to God's service at a very young age (a role model, my young readers, reference what I wrote before, that while the average lifespan of most people was not beyond forty years old, at thirty one is able to be considered an "elder," and thus Jeremia is known to have been younger than thirty!) He was born around 650 BC in a priestly family, and he supported the pious King Josia who was trying to reform the Israelites and bring them back to a closer, purer relationship with God. Thus Jeremia had to battle against many false prophets and idolaters who were corrupting the people, destroying the truth of the faith, and also drawing God's growing wrath upon themselves. He lived on in the ruins of Jerusalem after Israel was destroyed by the Babylonians, until he was exiled by those who still clung to the very errors that had alienated God from Israel in the first place, and he probably died as a result of foul play during exile.
This passage gives you insight into what a real prophet or saint feels about a people who have gone astray, violently, profanely astray, from the purity and truth of their relationship with God.
Jeremia 8:18-23
My grief is incurable, my heart within me is faint. Listen! the cry of the daughter of my people, far and wide in the land! Is the Lord no longer in Sion, is her King no longer in her midst? [Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?] "The harvest has passed, the summer is at an end, and yet we are not safe!" I am broken by the ruin of the daughter of my people. I am disconsolate; horror has seized me. Is there no balm in Galaad, no physician there? Why grows not new flesh over the wound of the daughter of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water, my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night over the slain of the daughter of my people!
Before I comment and explain more about what he is so movingly feeling and saying, let me remind you of one thing, and tell many of you who have not studied this book of the Bible something else. The first thing to remind you is that as an Old Testament prophet, Jeremia had direct conversation with God himself. True prophets are saddened and alarmed by what they learn from God, not puffed up with their own self importance and "calling" or "mission." That is because when one sees through God's eyes, and hears from God's own lips to one's own ears, one realizes how very terribly wrong much of what humans have done has become. One is alarmed and freaked out, not writing books about "what heaven is 'really'" like or bragging about how one is a "seer" who "channels" the "universe" or whatever. When one hears directly from God it's not because it is report card time and God is handing out A+ on people's term papers. It is because things have really gotten out of hand and the people are in danger of their mortality, their health, their well being, their lives, and their very souls and salvation. So Jeremia is sad and in grief because he knows exactly the terrible continual self inflicted fix that the nation AND the individual people are in, and how God's wrath and judgment is inevitable.
The second thing that I want to point out to those who don't know this about the Book of Jeremia is that the famous statement by God about the sanctity of the preborn human being, the fetus, the embryo, is stated herein:
Jeremia 1:5
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
As I have explained before in my blogging and in conversations with people, God states here (and alludes to it elsewhere in the scriptures) that God himself creates the soul of each person before the embryo starts to form in the womb. In other words, God knows each soul, creating it individually and sending it at the moment of conception and implantation in the womb, as it grows its first cells but is not yet formed (the shape of the person to be.) So, yes, that "blob" is a person with a soul. Now, because this scripture is from the statement by God when he first calls Jeremia to serve him as prophet, God goes a step further and tells Jeremia that at that time God dedicated Jeremia's new born soul (dedicates him to serving God) AND appointed him specifically to this great task of being a prophet to the nations. Notice the "to the nations." This means not only that Jeremia dealt with several kingdoms during his time alive, but that God is foretelling to Jeremia that his words of prophecy will live on to "the nations."
So this explains to you the anguish that Jeremia feels as a prophet on behalf of his people, in Jeremia 8-18-23. He compares the people who are ruining themselves and their relationship to God with the image of a daughter crying. At this point Jeremia has already gone through much effort to fight the corruption and the rampant idolatry and worship of pagan gods, and is definitely suffering. No matter how much Jeremia warns the people with the most dire and most stern prophecies of the evil and woe to come, the people defy him, and the King, and others who may have been trying to reform and purify the Israelites.
The first and foremost characteristic of genuine, true prophets is agony and panic over disobedient people, because they know full well the measure of God's disappointment with their faithlessness (and how much it grieves the Holy Spirit of God) AND the wrath to come. Genuine prophets feel grief as a broken heartedness, far worse than being jilted by a lover or betrayal by a family member. This is why he says that his "grief is incurable" and his heart is "faint." It is difficult to describe seeing individuals and an entire nation be not only bent on their own self destruction, but individually hell bent.
Because he has been at work for a long time already at trying to convert the people back to God, he views his prophetic assignment as being like a year with four seasons, and the spring and summer have already passed. "The harvest has passed, the summer is at an end, and yet we are not safe!" By this he means that people have waited too long, have waited too much time, and have not repented, reformed and converted back to God, and the harvest, both good and bad, has passed (normally a time of joy as good things are collected).
Again, Jeremia shows what genuine horror and anguish is within a true prophet of God who sees most clearly through God's eyes and God's voice how far everyone has strayed and the terrible price they will bring upon their own heads. He says "I am broken by the ruin," "I am disconsolate" and "Horror has seized me." True prophets are flabbergasted when people ignore God's very own interventions and warnings.
He then asks, rhetorically, why traditional ways of medicine and healing do not work. He does not mean this literally; he means that nothing that should work to turn the people from their evil deeds seems to work. He alludes to a city, Galaad, that is famous for it's healing balm, asking if they have run out of balm. He asks if there are no doctors to be found. He asks why a wound does not heal the way it normally does on a body, when new flesh grows in the place of the wound and the scar. So he is using three analogies of healing a bodily wound, describing a place where there is no salve (what they used for pills at the time), no doctors, and wounds will not heal, to describe how nothing that the righteous, such as himself, do to warn and convert the people to repentance and change works as it should. Jeremia of course knows the reason: the people have gone too far and have become too arrogant and hard hearted. But he describes with wonderful clarity the topsy turvey situation where God's own direct word to his own people is ignored repeatedly, and their behavior only worsens.
Jeremia then uses the vivid and so sad image where he wishes that his entire head were turned into a stream of water so that he could do nothing but shed tears and weep over the people.
THAT, my friends, is the sign of the inner thoughts and feelings of a genuine, true prophet of God, and of saints that are also of similar assignment.
By the way, notice that God interjects a thought to Jeremia while Jeremia is writing or dictating these words! When Jeremia asks, again, rhetorically, because he knows the answer, if God, as God and King, has left the people, God asks him, rhetorically at the same time, "Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?" You are reading here a snapshot, an x-ray, an electrocardiogram of what it is like to be in the head and heart of a true, grieving prophet AND then also witnessing how God interjects conversation and thoughts right in the midst of the prophet's own thoughts!
How can anyone think that they, despite what the Bible states, which is that there are no further prophets being sent by God, and that there is one life, one soul, per person, that they "might" be some reincarnated "foreign entity," "saint," "prophet," etc. when the entire focus of such a person is antagonistic to the instincts, thoughts and feelings of true prophets, which is to frantically herd people back CLOSER to the true God, before disaster befalls them? I am astonished at how antagonistic modern deluded people who think they are "messengers" or "gifted" are to God, thinking that they are super heroes on their own mission. Yeah, for Satan maybe, LOL, since that's the results of false prophets.
My friends, the information and the truth is repeatedly found, no matter what the question or the situation, in the Bible. People did not write things such as Jeremia did to "push a religion," or to be "an expert," since those concepts simply did not exist at the time. Jeremia was dutifully recording all that God told him and all that he tried to do in his assignment as prophet, at the time when the hammer was about to fall on Israel, in punishment, resulting in its destruction and taking of the people in captivity to Babylon. What a time to be a prophet! But see, that is the whole point of being a prophet. A prophet, a true Old Testament prophet, is the last life line, the last chance to repent and convert and return to God. It's not some "gifting" of ESP or whatever so that people can be false prophets who march others away from God and toward their own cults and mistaken beliefs.
I really recommend that you read the Book of Jeremia with this insight because it will give you an entire freshness in your understanding of both God, his patience and his mercy, and how it will run out as judgment becomes the only option, AND what it is actually "like" to be a genuine Old Testament prophet.
In closing, be sure to note Jeremia 9:22-25. Read the whole Book but if you only have time in the near term, read those three passages. In them God states first of all where true glory is found, and how people who find that true glory will receive his mercy and do please him very much. He then warns that he will soon demand a complete accounting. Now, remember, rather than have "rolls of church membership" as we have today, when God alludes to the entire body of the faithful, he calls them the circumcised (even though, of course, women are not circumcised), but it is the visible sign of following the Law and identifying the body of the "church," so to speak, of the time. God warns then that both Israel and the pagan nations are alike because they are "uncircumcised in heart."
This needs to be studied by those who wonder how they can 'believe' yet still find themselves in a lot of trouble when they die and are judged by God. The Israelites were circumcised, but God warns against those who outwardly seem faithful but are "uncircumcised in heart" Jeremia 9:25.
I hope that you have found this helpful, encouraging if you are genuinely seeking to draw closer to the true God, and disquieting if you have taken too much upon your own self in regard to determining what is "enough" or is "right" "quantities" of faith, belief or works. Don't be circumcised in the body, even calling upon the name of Jesus, yet be uncircumcised in the heart, and thus calling upon Jesus with hypocrisy and deliberate falseness.
Young people.... as always I hope this helps to guide to you understanding what is printed there in black and white, but is so misunderstood in these times.
But many modern people, especially those who fall into error, heresy and occult practices, think of prophets and saints as magicians, seers, "gifted," and of heroic tendency. By heroic I mean the type of secular, fantasy, science fiction type of "heroic," rather than the heroism that yes, indeed, many did exhibit.
So I found a wonderful verse from Jeremia when I first opened the Bible tonight (determined to do at least one useful blog as it has been several days since I've last posted). Jeremia was a prophet, called to God's service at a very young age (a role model, my young readers, reference what I wrote before, that while the average lifespan of most people was not beyond forty years old, at thirty one is able to be considered an "elder," and thus Jeremia is known to have been younger than thirty!) He was born around 650 BC in a priestly family, and he supported the pious King Josia who was trying to reform the Israelites and bring them back to a closer, purer relationship with God. Thus Jeremia had to battle against many false prophets and idolaters who were corrupting the people, destroying the truth of the faith, and also drawing God's growing wrath upon themselves. He lived on in the ruins of Jerusalem after Israel was destroyed by the Babylonians, until he was exiled by those who still clung to the very errors that had alienated God from Israel in the first place, and he probably died as a result of foul play during exile.
This passage gives you insight into what a real prophet or saint feels about a people who have gone astray, violently, profanely astray, from the purity and truth of their relationship with God.
Jeremia 8:18-23
My grief is incurable, my heart within me is faint. Listen! the cry of the daughter of my people, far and wide in the land! Is the Lord no longer in Sion, is her King no longer in her midst? [Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?] "The harvest has passed, the summer is at an end, and yet we are not safe!" I am broken by the ruin of the daughter of my people. I am disconsolate; horror has seized me. Is there no balm in Galaad, no physician there? Why grows not new flesh over the wound of the daughter of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water, my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night over the slain of the daughter of my people!
Before I comment and explain more about what he is so movingly feeling and saying, let me remind you of one thing, and tell many of you who have not studied this book of the Bible something else. The first thing to remind you is that as an Old Testament prophet, Jeremia had direct conversation with God himself. True prophets are saddened and alarmed by what they learn from God, not puffed up with their own self importance and "calling" or "mission." That is because when one sees through God's eyes, and hears from God's own lips to one's own ears, one realizes how very terribly wrong much of what humans have done has become. One is alarmed and freaked out, not writing books about "what heaven is 'really'" like or bragging about how one is a "seer" who "channels" the "universe" or whatever. When one hears directly from God it's not because it is report card time and God is handing out A+ on people's term papers. It is because things have really gotten out of hand and the people are in danger of their mortality, their health, their well being, their lives, and their very souls and salvation. So Jeremia is sad and in grief because he knows exactly the terrible continual self inflicted fix that the nation AND the individual people are in, and how God's wrath and judgment is inevitable.
The second thing that I want to point out to those who don't know this about the Book of Jeremia is that the famous statement by God about the sanctity of the preborn human being, the fetus, the embryo, is stated herein:
Jeremia 1:5
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
As I have explained before in my blogging and in conversations with people, God states here (and alludes to it elsewhere in the scriptures) that God himself creates the soul of each person before the embryo starts to form in the womb. In other words, God knows each soul, creating it individually and sending it at the moment of conception and implantation in the womb, as it grows its first cells but is not yet formed (the shape of the person to be.) So, yes, that "blob" is a person with a soul. Now, because this scripture is from the statement by God when he first calls Jeremia to serve him as prophet, God goes a step further and tells Jeremia that at that time God dedicated Jeremia's new born soul (dedicates him to serving God) AND appointed him specifically to this great task of being a prophet to the nations. Notice the "to the nations." This means not only that Jeremia dealt with several kingdoms during his time alive, but that God is foretelling to Jeremia that his words of prophecy will live on to "the nations."
So this explains to you the anguish that Jeremia feels as a prophet on behalf of his people, in Jeremia 8-18-23. He compares the people who are ruining themselves and their relationship to God with the image of a daughter crying. At this point Jeremia has already gone through much effort to fight the corruption and the rampant idolatry and worship of pagan gods, and is definitely suffering. No matter how much Jeremia warns the people with the most dire and most stern prophecies of the evil and woe to come, the people defy him, and the King, and others who may have been trying to reform and purify the Israelites.
The first and foremost characteristic of genuine, true prophets is agony and panic over disobedient people, because they know full well the measure of God's disappointment with their faithlessness (and how much it grieves the Holy Spirit of God) AND the wrath to come. Genuine prophets feel grief as a broken heartedness, far worse than being jilted by a lover or betrayal by a family member. This is why he says that his "grief is incurable" and his heart is "faint." It is difficult to describe seeing individuals and an entire nation be not only bent on their own self destruction, but individually hell bent.
Because he has been at work for a long time already at trying to convert the people back to God, he views his prophetic assignment as being like a year with four seasons, and the spring and summer have already passed. "The harvest has passed, the summer is at an end, and yet we are not safe!" By this he means that people have waited too long, have waited too much time, and have not repented, reformed and converted back to God, and the harvest, both good and bad, has passed (normally a time of joy as good things are collected).
Again, Jeremia shows what genuine horror and anguish is within a true prophet of God who sees most clearly through God's eyes and God's voice how far everyone has strayed and the terrible price they will bring upon their own heads. He says "I am broken by the ruin," "I am disconsolate" and "Horror has seized me." True prophets are flabbergasted when people ignore God's very own interventions and warnings.
He then asks, rhetorically, why traditional ways of medicine and healing do not work. He does not mean this literally; he means that nothing that should work to turn the people from their evil deeds seems to work. He alludes to a city, Galaad, that is famous for it's healing balm, asking if they have run out of balm. He asks if there are no doctors to be found. He asks why a wound does not heal the way it normally does on a body, when new flesh grows in the place of the wound and the scar. So he is using three analogies of healing a bodily wound, describing a place where there is no salve (what they used for pills at the time), no doctors, and wounds will not heal, to describe how nothing that the righteous, such as himself, do to warn and convert the people to repentance and change works as it should. Jeremia of course knows the reason: the people have gone too far and have become too arrogant and hard hearted. But he describes with wonderful clarity the topsy turvey situation where God's own direct word to his own people is ignored repeatedly, and their behavior only worsens.
Jeremia then uses the vivid and so sad image where he wishes that his entire head were turned into a stream of water so that he could do nothing but shed tears and weep over the people.
THAT, my friends, is the sign of the inner thoughts and feelings of a genuine, true prophet of God, and of saints that are also of similar assignment.
By the way, notice that God interjects a thought to Jeremia while Jeremia is writing or dictating these words! When Jeremia asks, again, rhetorically, because he knows the answer, if God, as God and King, has left the people, God asks him, rhetorically at the same time, "Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?" You are reading here a snapshot, an x-ray, an electrocardiogram of what it is like to be in the head and heart of a true, grieving prophet AND then also witnessing how God interjects conversation and thoughts right in the midst of the prophet's own thoughts!
How can anyone think that they, despite what the Bible states, which is that there are no further prophets being sent by God, and that there is one life, one soul, per person, that they "might" be some reincarnated "foreign entity," "saint," "prophet," etc. when the entire focus of such a person is antagonistic to the instincts, thoughts and feelings of true prophets, which is to frantically herd people back CLOSER to the true God, before disaster befalls them? I am astonished at how antagonistic modern deluded people who think they are "messengers" or "gifted" are to God, thinking that they are super heroes on their own mission. Yeah, for Satan maybe, LOL, since that's the results of false prophets.
My friends, the information and the truth is repeatedly found, no matter what the question or the situation, in the Bible. People did not write things such as Jeremia did to "push a religion," or to be "an expert," since those concepts simply did not exist at the time. Jeremia was dutifully recording all that God told him and all that he tried to do in his assignment as prophet, at the time when the hammer was about to fall on Israel, in punishment, resulting in its destruction and taking of the people in captivity to Babylon. What a time to be a prophet! But see, that is the whole point of being a prophet. A prophet, a true Old Testament prophet, is the last life line, the last chance to repent and convert and return to God. It's not some "gifting" of ESP or whatever so that people can be false prophets who march others away from God and toward their own cults and mistaken beliefs.
I really recommend that you read the Book of Jeremia with this insight because it will give you an entire freshness in your understanding of both God, his patience and his mercy, and how it will run out as judgment becomes the only option, AND what it is actually "like" to be a genuine Old Testament prophet.
In closing, be sure to note Jeremia 9:22-25. Read the whole Book but if you only have time in the near term, read those three passages. In them God states first of all where true glory is found, and how people who find that true glory will receive his mercy and do please him very much. He then warns that he will soon demand a complete accounting. Now, remember, rather than have "rolls of church membership" as we have today, when God alludes to the entire body of the faithful, he calls them the circumcised (even though, of course, women are not circumcised), but it is the visible sign of following the Law and identifying the body of the "church," so to speak, of the time. God warns then that both Israel and the pagan nations are alike because they are "uncircumcised in heart."
This needs to be studied by those who wonder how they can 'believe' yet still find themselves in a lot of trouble when they die and are judged by God. The Israelites were circumcised, but God warns against those who outwardly seem faithful but are "uncircumcised in heart" Jeremia 9:25.
I hope that you have found this helpful, encouraging if you are genuinely seeking to draw closer to the true God, and disquieting if you have taken too much upon your own self in regard to determining what is "enough" or is "right" "quantities" of faith, belief or works. Don't be circumcised in the body, even calling upon the name of Jesus, yet be uncircumcised in the heart, and thus calling upon Jesus with hypocrisy and deliberate falseness.
Young people.... as always I hope this helps to guide to you understanding what is printed there in black and white, but is so misunderstood in these times.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Understanding sin and biblical viewpoints
I've been writing quite a bit about how to read the Bible and truly understand what is being said. There are two problems with modern readers, 1) they have an incomplete approach to the scriptures, where they are just seeking validation of their opinion and not genuine overall enlightenment and 2) modern society has blotted out much of people's understanding of the context of times during the life of the Biblical authors, and thus they don't even understand what would have been obvious to the previous generations (who were agricultural, for example). So here is another "context setting" explanation regarding the vast topic of sin.
I want to make a simple point in this particular posting, since it is such a huge topic, yet their is a fundamental modern mindset problem that is a barrier to understanding much of what is written about sin in the Bible. Modern people forget that the Israelites were a theocracy, that is to say, a religious government. Not a government comprised of a bunch of people who happened to be religious, but their religion WAS their government. This was true throughout the Bible, even when there were no kings, when they were in exile, when they were ruled by Romans, etc. Israelites as a whole in the Old Testament, and Jews individually throughout the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus, viewed themselves as one entity in front of God, not a bunch of individuals. Thus there are times that the Bible is referring to individual sin (a specific person does a bad thing), but there are also times that the Bible says "sin" but means collective sin, of the entire people being in a sinful state.
You need to understand that there are kind of three layers of sin. The first layer is the one that everyone thinks of today, it seems, which is "individual" sin and "personal" responsibility. While this is obviously a fact, I must caution you that it is a delusion to think of sin ONLY as being individual. I'll give you a specific example in a moment.
The second layer of sin is the realization that every single human being is a sinner. Jesus Christ, obviously, is the only one who was totally without sin. Furthermore, the Catholic Church asserts that when Gabriel addressed Mary by the name "filled with grace," that Mary, in order to be the perfect vessel for Jesus Christ, was preserved from sin throughout her life. My point is, however, that modern people do not think enough of the God given truth recorded in the Bible that everyone is sinful. I don't mean the modern translation, said with a shrug, that "No one is perfect." I mean that humans, if you want to really be "reality based," must be constantly aware that there is a shared commonality among all people of being sinful and in a state of sin.
Romans 3:19-20 ...and the whole world stand accountable to God, since no human being will be justified in his sight by observing the law; for through the law comes consciousness of sin.
I am certain that very few modern people understand what St. Paul is saying. Much of the reason they miss the point is that people scour St. Paul's writings for "instructions" about how to run a church, how to be "saved," and what of the previous Law given to Moses can now be disregarded. So they are thrilled at the "no human being will be justified in his sight by observing the law," but, oops, they miss two equally important points in the same sentence.
The first point is that "the whole world" stands accountable to God. NO ONE has a "free pass" and is not accountable to God regarding sin. St. Paul is saying the whole world and he means the whole world, so he means Jews, non-Jews, people in the known world, and people who have yet to be contacted in the far reaches of the world in those times (yes, pagans). So St. Paul sets the stage for this very important scripture by pointing out that everyone is accountable to God because obviously everyone is flawed and has something to be accountable about! Sure, yes, St. Paul is referring to Jews when he immediately follows with the statement about the Law, which applies to Jews (and converts who followed the Law). But you have to slow down when you read this to understand it with the same eyes and ears that a reader of the time would have understood what he or she was hearing. Let's use the deductive reasoning approach that I have been introducing to you.
1. The whole world is accountable to God.
2. Thus we know that everyone has something to be accountable for.
3. How do we know this? "We know what the Law says" (3:19).
4. Reading the Torah and the Law it is obvious that it is filled with Do's and Don'ts.
5. The Law, therefore, even if no longer followed, is proof by God to humans that all humans sin.
6. This is why St. Paul concludes "for through the law comes consciousness of sin."
Pause to marvel what a brilliant scholar and logician St. Paul was, someone who really came out of nowhere and yet, not having been a follower of Jesus Christ when Jesus actually lived, but only later when confronted by the Resurrected Christ from heaven, is able to articulate a holistic understanding of God as the faith transitions in two generations from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant!
You know what it's like? Here's an analogy. It's like suppose that human beings drank regular fresh water and then suddenly after Jesus Christ they all drank salt water. It's still water, given by God, but suddenly everything changes YET nothing changes about God himself. St. Paul navigated that awesome and life changing "sea change" of "before Jesus" and "after Jesus," without ever taking his eye off of the unchanging true nature of God himself, and the reality of human nature in life.
Why is this point, so important, so "subtle" to modern eyes and ears in this passage? Two reasons, my friends. One is that they are asides to him making the main point in his letter, which is to guide Christianized Jews into understanding what of the Law to retain and what has changed. But my point to you at this time is the second reason, which is that the shared accountability and sinfulness of the entire world of all humans was hardly a news flash to either the ancient Israelites or the Jews and Christians of the time when St. Paul talked and wrote! This is what I mean, that modern humans have "individualized" their understanding of sin so much that they have forgotten the God given "layer of sin" that encompasses ALL who live, continually. God would not have to forgive sins if people were not riddled with sin and constantly in a state of sin and committing sins, I mean, duh!
St. Paul was not writing a "sin primer" or admonishment in this passage since he, obviously, was focused on instructing about being justified. But you must share with him the background understanding that all people had (including recent generations, before modern times) that there is still the human condition of being sinful and everyone guilty of sinfulness on a very frequent basis. Here's another analogy. Suppose years from now someone read an ancient preserved IPOD manual and since they found only one copy of it they assumed that only one human being had an IPOD! They would totally not understand that millions of people had IPODS, and just because these future archaeologists discovered just one copy doesn't mean that only one person had one! Likewise, modern people tend to, erroneously, think that sin is a singular thing.... that a few people do a few sins and that it's an individual matter and that is that. They have forgotten the God given Biblical understanding that human beings are fraught with sin and that sin is universal.
1 John 8-10 If we say, "We are without sin," we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
St. John was one of the Twelve Apostles and lived to be one hundred years old, and thus kept the word and the teaching of Jesus Christ accurate and fresh as several new generations came to become Christians. Thus you must understand by this statement that the Apostles knew and transmitted that just because Jesus Christ came to save, the basic human sinful nature of human beings as a whole had not changed one iota.
1 Peter 2:21-25 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." [Peter is quoting Isaiah]. When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you have gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
Here is where moderns have created for themselves a huge understanding with their "individual" view of sin AND their lack of understanding of shepherding and other real life imagery of the time, which is needed for full understanding.
First, St. Peter is writing this to comfort those who are being persecuted for being Christians, and that is his primary focus of the writing. Once again I'm going to show you not only the purpose of the writing, but the backdrop against which it takes place. St. Peter is not writing this to explain that Jesus alone was without sin, he is writing 2:21 to comfort people by saying, "Hey, if the only one who ever was without sin was persecuted and suffered like Jesus did, can you not carry the burden of your own persecutions by following his example?" Here is my point: by citing that passage of Isaiah St. Peter was saying a huge amount in a short sentence to those of the times who understood. Peter was packing into this sentence "We know because Isaiah told us that the only one who will be without sin will be the Messiah who will be persecuted...Jesus was that Messiah and just as Isaiah said he was without sin and persecuted..." All Jews would have understood that with great clarity. Citing from Isaiah during those times was like code words, or a text shorthand or acronym, for speaking about the Messiah. So St. Peter's first purpose was to comfort the persecuted new Christians, most of whom were Jewish converts.
Now, many moderns are eager to point to "He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness" as some sort of statement that Jesus' dying on the cross forgave all individual "layer one" sins! Goodness, NO! This is an example where St. Peter, like other references in both the Old and New Testament, are referring to the state of collective sin, the group of sinfulness that humans occupy due to original sin of Adam and Eve and the falling away of the Israelites, NOT individual sins, such as murder, theft, blasphemy, etc.
How do we know this? What you ought to be asking me is how did the listeners at the time understand that this is what St. Peter is saying? They knew because he used the analogy of, yes, the shepherd, sheep and guardian: "For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls."
Friends, you need to understand that Jesus and the Apostles used agricultural and pastoral analogies not because they lacked better words, because they were poetic or quaint, or for "dummies" to understand. Jesus and the Apostles used agricultural and pastoral examples because they were a perfect match for total accuracy of what they were trying to convey.
Suppose that St. Peter was trying to say what too many moderns misunderstand, which is that Jesus provided "advance forgiveness" for all "individual sins." St. Peter would have said something like this, "When Jesus died on the cross and you found him, it's like you found in a mine a hunk of gold that is so big and so long lasting that you never have to work another day in your life since you can just live off of that hunk of gold." People sure would have understood that! They would have viewed, then, forgiveness of individual sins (one's own individual hunk of gold) as being, yeah, sure "once for all" and applying to their past, present and future "individual" sins!
But St. Peter did not use that analogy or any like it because it simply is not fully true and correct! Instead, St. Peter says (and let's use our deductive reasoning model here):
1. "You have been healed".... one wonders, of what?
2. Answer: "For you had gone astray like sheep."
3. The problem with being astray is not only that one's food is lost in the hills somewhere, but also that sheep easily are hurt or killed by predators.
4. People therefore understood that there is a continual living being (sheep) with continual peril (danger that comes from being astray and in unsafe places).
5. "But you have now returned to the shepherd"... the people are both safe and under the command of Jesus, who knows what to do, like the good shepherd.
6. "And guardian of your souls" where Jesus is on guard, vigilant, watching over the safety of each sheep/person's soul.
Hey, but wait a minute. If Jesus makes all sins forgiven in advance, what is this ongoing shepherd and guardian image about? If people are forgiven in advance, what exactly does St. Peter mean by using an analogy that all listeners would have understood as being "constant maintenance?" It is extremely obvious through the use of the sheep analogy that Jesus' death brought people (the sheep) back to the safety of the shepherd, but this means that they are placed in correct circumstances, not that the reality of sheep, danger, life spans, temptations, sin have gone away! If they had gone away then what the heck is a "guardian" of "your soul?"
Those of you with burglar alarms. The first time your alarm goes off for a genuine security breach, the police have come, and you have taken care of your first burglary or home invasion incident, which of the following do you do? Do you 1) have the burglar alarm company remove your security system because it "did its job the one time it was needed?" Or do you 2) be grateful that the alarm system is there, you dutifully reset the alarm, maybe even using it a bit more faithfully, and/or adding more protective features? That is how it is with sin. What kind of logic says that Jesus dying on the cross forgave "in advance" all (individual) sins? That is such a distortion that it would be silly if it were not so awful an error.
The blog of the man who brought a gun to a dance class this past week, killing three women and himself, in a town outside Pittsburgh, has his thoughts on the subject. He explains that he has been taught IN CHURCH (not Catholic by the way) that if he believes in Jesus, then even after he commits mass murder, he will be forgiven and in heaven because Jesus died for all sins. No, this misunderstanding is not funny.
So you need to understand the third layer of sin (and relax, I'm using analogies with the word 'layer') which is the sinning of the entire body of the faithful. In the ancient days the Israelites understood that they sinned 'as a people' when they did things like worship false gods. As I've explained before, it does not matter on this level of sin if a few people were not actually dancing around the gold calf while it was those "other people" who did the "sinning." God treated the Israelites as a whole when the body of the faithful sinned. Why is this? So that people understand quite clearly that there should not be (as, unfortunately there is so much today) an acceptance of sinfulness as a whole. This is different than shunning or "tsk, tsk" directed by those lovely church goers against individual "sinners." This means the weaseling of God's word into accepted levels of group body of the faithful behavior that is, actually, not acceptable.
Here is the classic presentation of that problem.
Isaiah 53:6 We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.
Now do you see? It is the collective guilt of the body of the faithful that will be (as Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus Christ) laid upon Jesus. The sins are the body of the faithful going their own way and not heeding God as a whole. You cannot read this Messianic prophetic scripture of Isaiah and truthfully think that Isaiah meant, "Well, Freddy stole some sheep and Jesus will die to erase that theft, and Moishe fooled around with another man's wife and Jesus will die to erase that adultery, and Susanne worshipped a carved idol for a few years, and Jesus will die to erase that idolatry" etc.
You must understand that God views humans both as loved and intimately known individuals AND also as a group, as in "you all." Likewise sin attaches itself individually and collectively. Jesus did not die on the cross so that people can have a "sin and then get forgiven" card. The Messiah suffered and died because humans, specifically the body of the Jewish faithful, had "all gone astray."
So you need to understand sin in, to use my words, "layers."
1. Individual people perform individual sins.
2. Groups of people/society create sinful enterprises or cultures that guilty and innocent must share.
3. Bodies of the faithful (the church of God) perform sin collectively (false doctrine and hypocrisy being obvious examples).
I promised an example for simplicity, so here it is regarding the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
1. A man kills another man for the purpose of robbing him.
2. A company or society that advocates the taking of life in "certain circumstances." I don't mean the death penalty here. I mean immoral approaches that cheapen life and allow some to take life in the course of "doing their job." This is also not a hit on soldiers, but I am implying that unjustified war has to be considered advocating killing. I am also implying all sorts of things like drug trafficking, glorification of violence, putting weapons in the hands of children, etc, all of which are company and society sins.
3. Churches who twist scripture to imply that the killing of some sorts of people (the unborn, unbelievers, people of "opposing sects," etc) is somehow justified.
Does anyone seriously think that Jesus died on the cross so that any of the above is forgiven "in advance" and OK with God? No. Jesus died to bring the body of the faithful (layer 3 if you will) back to God and forgiven that they had strayed from God, and to put the mechanism in place for the forgiveness of sins, and also for being saved, despite being a sinner by nature.
No less than Isaiah, one of the greatest of God's prophets, considered himself a sinner because he lived among a sinful body of the faithful (the Jews) and their society at the time.
Isaiah 6:1,2,3, 5 ...I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above..."Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" they cried to one other...Then I said, "Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"
Notice, as I've pointed out in previous blog postings, that God didn't reassure Isaiah, that he, a holy temple priest, was separate from the sinners around him. Instead God sends a seraphim to touch the mouth of Isaiah to purify it with a burning ember from the altar. "Your wickedness is removed, your sin purged" Isaiah 6:7. Isaiah knew that even though he kept himself from individual sin, that he was part of the prevailing wickedness of speech and deed of the community and the body of the faithful.
Another great prophet, Ezekiel, gets directly from God such an explanation.
Ezekiel 9:8-10 ...I fell prone, crying out, "Alas, Lord God! Will you destroy all that is left of Israel when you pour out your fury on Jerusalem?" He answered me: The sins of the house of Israel are great beyond measure; the land is filled with bloodshed, the city with lawlessness. They think that the Lord has forsaken the land, that he does not see them. I, however, will not look upon them with pity, nor show any mercy. I will bring down their conduct upon their heads."
It's not that God is being "mean" by "punishing those who don't sin along with the sinners." You have to understand that when society is filled with lawlessness, that is an example of cultural and societal sin that drags everyone down, including those who don't sin but certainly receive paychecks from those who do, AND the body of the faithful "the house" has sinned, that this universal, church wide, societal or otherwise collective sin is what the Bible means in such passages, not Joe robbing Bob or Sue giving false witness against Tiffany, or Moische dancing in front of his own false idol.
You are totally leading yourself astray if when you read about "sin" in the Bible you do not understand when God, through the Bible authors, is referring to individual sinfulness, or the universal ongoing sinful nature of humanity, or the sin of the house or other body of the faithful, or the sin of the society at large.
I hope that this has been helpful, because it's very important to be clear about, and the Bible can only be properly understood and followed with such a context of the times and of what God speaks.
I want to make a simple point in this particular posting, since it is such a huge topic, yet their is a fundamental modern mindset problem that is a barrier to understanding much of what is written about sin in the Bible. Modern people forget that the Israelites were a theocracy, that is to say, a religious government. Not a government comprised of a bunch of people who happened to be religious, but their religion WAS their government. This was true throughout the Bible, even when there were no kings, when they were in exile, when they were ruled by Romans, etc. Israelites as a whole in the Old Testament, and Jews individually throughout the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus, viewed themselves as one entity in front of God, not a bunch of individuals. Thus there are times that the Bible is referring to individual sin (a specific person does a bad thing), but there are also times that the Bible says "sin" but means collective sin, of the entire people being in a sinful state.
You need to understand that there are kind of three layers of sin. The first layer is the one that everyone thinks of today, it seems, which is "individual" sin and "personal" responsibility. While this is obviously a fact, I must caution you that it is a delusion to think of sin ONLY as being individual. I'll give you a specific example in a moment.
The second layer of sin is the realization that every single human being is a sinner. Jesus Christ, obviously, is the only one who was totally without sin. Furthermore, the Catholic Church asserts that when Gabriel addressed Mary by the name "filled with grace," that Mary, in order to be the perfect vessel for Jesus Christ, was preserved from sin throughout her life. My point is, however, that modern people do not think enough of the God given truth recorded in the Bible that everyone is sinful. I don't mean the modern translation, said with a shrug, that "No one is perfect." I mean that humans, if you want to really be "reality based," must be constantly aware that there is a shared commonality among all people of being sinful and in a state of sin.
Romans 3:19-20 ...and the whole world stand accountable to God, since no human being will be justified in his sight by observing the law; for through the law comes consciousness of sin.
I am certain that very few modern people understand what St. Paul is saying. Much of the reason they miss the point is that people scour St. Paul's writings for "instructions" about how to run a church, how to be "saved," and what of the previous Law given to Moses can now be disregarded. So they are thrilled at the "no human being will be justified in his sight by observing the law," but, oops, they miss two equally important points in the same sentence.
The first point is that "the whole world" stands accountable to God. NO ONE has a "free pass" and is not accountable to God regarding sin. St. Paul is saying the whole world and he means the whole world, so he means Jews, non-Jews, people in the known world, and people who have yet to be contacted in the far reaches of the world in those times (yes, pagans). So St. Paul sets the stage for this very important scripture by pointing out that everyone is accountable to God because obviously everyone is flawed and has something to be accountable about! Sure, yes, St. Paul is referring to Jews when he immediately follows with the statement about the Law, which applies to Jews (and converts who followed the Law). But you have to slow down when you read this to understand it with the same eyes and ears that a reader of the time would have understood what he or she was hearing. Let's use the deductive reasoning approach that I have been introducing to you.
1. The whole world is accountable to God.
2. Thus we know that everyone has something to be accountable for.
3. How do we know this? "We know what the Law says" (3:19).
4. Reading the Torah and the Law it is obvious that it is filled with Do's and Don'ts.
5. The Law, therefore, even if no longer followed, is proof by God to humans that all humans sin.
6. This is why St. Paul concludes "for through the law comes consciousness of sin."
Pause to marvel what a brilliant scholar and logician St. Paul was, someone who really came out of nowhere and yet, not having been a follower of Jesus Christ when Jesus actually lived, but only later when confronted by the Resurrected Christ from heaven, is able to articulate a holistic understanding of God as the faith transitions in two generations from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant!
You know what it's like? Here's an analogy. It's like suppose that human beings drank regular fresh water and then suddenly after Jesus Christ they all drank salt water. It's still water, given by God, but suddenly everything changes YET nothing changes about God himself. St. Paul navigated that awesome and life changing "sea change" of "before Jesus" and "after Jesus," without ever taking his eye off of the unchanging true nature of God himself, and the reality of human nature in life.
Why is this point, so important, so "subtle" to modern eyes and ears in this passage? Two reasons, my friends. One is that they are asides to him making the main point in his letter, which is to guide Christianized Jews into understanding what of the Law to retain and what has changed. But my point to you at this time is the second reason, which is that the shared accountability and sinfulness of the entire world of all humans was hardly a news flash to either the ancient Israelites or the Jews and Christians of the time when St. Paul talked and wrote! This is what I mean, that modern humans have "individualized" their understanding of sin so much that they have forgotten the God given "layer of sin" that encompasses ALL who live, continually. God would not have to forgive sins if people were not riddled with sin and constantly in a state of sin and committing sins, I mean, duh!
St. Paul was not writing a "sin primer" or admonishment in this passage since he, obviously, was focused on instructing about being justified. But you must share with him the background understanding that all people had (including recent generations, before modern times) that there is still the human condition of being sinful and everyone guilty of sinfulness on a very frequent basis. Here's another analogy. Suppose years from now someone read an ancient preserved IPOD manual and since they found only one copy of it they assumed that only one human being had an IPOD! They would totally not understand that millions of people had IPODS, and just because these future archaeologists discovered just one copy doesn't mean that only one person had one! Likewise, modern people tend to, erroneously, think that sin is a singular thing.... that a few people do a few sins and that it's an individual matter and that is that. They have forgotten the God given Biblical understanding that human beings are fraught with sin and that sin is universal.
1 John 8-10 If we say, "We are without sin," we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
St. John was one of the Twelve Apostles and lived to be one hundred years old, and thus kept the word and the teaching of Jesus Christ accurate and fresh as several new generations came to become Christians. Thus you must understand by this statement that the Apostles knew and transmitted that just because Jesus Christ came to save, the basic human sinful nature of human beings as a whole had not changed one iota.
1 Peter 2:21-25 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." [Peter is quoting Isaiah]. When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you have gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
Here is where moderns have created for themselves a huge understanding with their "individual" view of sin AND their lack of understanding of shepherding and other real life imagery of the time, which is needed for full understanding.
First, St. Peter is writing this to comfort those who are being persecuted for being Christians, and that is his primary focus of the writing. Once again I'm going to show you not only the purpose of the writing, but the backdrop against which it takes place. St. Peter is not writing this to explain that Jesus alone was without sin, he is writing 2:21 to comfort people by saying, "Hey, if the only one who ever was without sin was persecuted and suffered like Jesus did, can you not carry the burden of your own persecutions by following his example?" Here is my point: by citing that passage of Isaiah St. Peter was saying a huge amount in a short sentence to those of the times who understood. Peter was packing into this sentence "We know because Isaiah told us that the only one who will be without sin will be the Messiah who will be persecuted...Jesus was that Messiah and just as Isaiah said he was without sin and persecuted..." All Jews would have understood that with great clarity. Citing from Isaiah during those times was like code words, or a text shorthand or acronym, for speaking about the Messiah. So St. Peter's first purpose was to comfort the persecuted new Christians, most of whom were Jewish converts.
Now, many moderns are eager to point to "He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness" as some sort of statement that Jesus' dying on the cross forgave all individual "layer one" sins! Goodness, NO! This is an example where St. Peter, like other references in both the Old and New Testament, are referring to the state of collective sin, the group of sinfulness that humans occupy due to original sin of Adam and Eve and the falling away of the Israelites, NOT individual sins, such as murder, theft, blasphemy, etc.
How do we know this? What you ought to be asking me is how did the listeners at the time understand that this is what St. Peter is saying? They knew because he used the analogy of, yes, the shepherd, sheep and guardian: "For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls."
Friends, you need to understand that Jesus and the Apostles used agricultural and pastoral analogies not because they lacked better words, because they were poetic or quaint, or for "dummies" to understand. Jesus and the Apostles used agricultural and pastoral examples because they were a perfect match for total accuracy of what they were trying to convey.
Suppose that St. Peter was trying to say what too many moderns misunderstand, which is that Jesus provided "advance forgiveness" for all "individual sins." St. Peter would have said something like this, "When Jesus died on the cross and you found him, it's like you found in a mine a hunk of gold that is so big and so long lasting that you never have to work another day in your life since you can just live off of that hunk of gold." People sure would have understood that! They would have viewed, then, forgiveness of individual sins (one's own individual hunk of gold) as being, yeah, sure "once for all" and applying to their past, present and future "individual" sins!
But St. Peter did not use that analogy or any like it because it simply is not fully true and correct! Instead, St. Peter says (and let's use our deductive reasoning model here):
1. "You have been healed".... one wonders, of what?
2. Answer: "For you had gone astray like sheep."
3. The problem with being astray is not only that one's food is lost in the hills somewhere, but also that sheep easily are hurt or killed by predators.
4. People therefore understood that there is a continual living being (sheep) with continual peril (danger that comes from being astray and in unsafe places).
5. "But you have now returned to the shepherd"... the people are both safe and under the command of Jesus, who knows what to do, like the good shepherd.
6. "And guardian of your souls" where Jesus is on guard, vigilant, watching over the safety of each sheep/person's soul.
Hey, but wait a minute. If Jesus makes all sins forgiven in advance, what is this ongoing shepherd and guardian image about? If people are forgiven in advance, what exactly does St. Peter mean by using an analogy that all listeners would have understood as being "constant maintenance?" It is extremely obvious through the use of the sheep analogy that Jesus' death brought people (the sheep) back to the safety of the shepherd, but this means that they are placed in correct circumstances, not that the reality of sheep, danger, life spans, temptations, sin have gone away! If they had gone away then what the heck is a "guardian" of "your soul?"
Those of you with burglar alarms. The first time your alarm goes off for a genuine security breach, the police have come, and you have taken care of your first burglary or home invasion incident, which of the following do you do? Do you 1) have the burglar alarm company remove your security system because it "did its job the one time it was needed?" Or do you 2) be grateful that the alarm system is there, you dutifully reset the alarm, maybe even using it a bit more faithfully, and/or adding more protective features? That is how it is with sin. What kind of logic says that Jesus dying on the cross forgave "in advance" all (individual) sins? That is such a distortion that it would be silly if it were not so awful an error.
The blog of the man who brought a gun to a dance class this past week, killing three women and himself, in a town outside Pittsburgh, has his thoughts on the subject. He explains that he has been taught IN CHURCH (not Catholic by the way) that if he believes in Jesus, then even after he commits mass murder, he will be forgiven and in heaven because Jesus died for all sins. No, this misunderstanding is not funny.
So you need to understand the third layer of sin (and relax, I'm using analogies with the word 'layer') which is the sinning of the entire body of the faithful. In the ancient days the Israelites understood that they sinned 'as a people' when they did things like worship false gods. As I've explained before, it does not matter on this level of sin if a few people were not actually dancing around the gold calf while it was those "other people" who did the "sinning." God treated the Israelites as a whole when the body of the faithful sinned. Why is this? So that people understand quite clearly that there should not be (as, unfortunately there is so much today) an acceptance of sinfulness as a whole. This is different than shunning or "tsk, tsk" directed by those lovely church goers against individual "sinners." This means the weaseling of God's word into accepted levels of group body of the faithful behavior that is, actually, not acceptable.
Here is the classic presentation of that problem.
Isaiah 53:6 We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.
Now do you see? It is the collective guilt of the body of the faithful that will be (as Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus Christ) laid upon Jesus. The sins are the body of the faithful going their own way and not heeding God as a whole. You cannot read this Messianic prophetic scripture of Isaiah and truthfully think that Isaiah meant, "Well, Freddy stole some sheep and Jesus will die to erase that theft, and Moishe fooled around with another man's wife and Jesus will die to erase that adultery, and Susanne worshipped a carved idol for a few years, and Jesus will die to erase that idolatry" etc.
You must understand that God views humans both as loved and intimately known individuals AND also as a group, as in "you all." Likewise sin attaches itself individually and collectively. Jesus did not die on the cross so that people can have a "sin and then get forgiven" card. The Messiah suffered and died because humans, specifically the body of the Jewish faithful, had "all gone astray."
So you need to understand sin in, to use my words, "layers."
1. Individual people perform individual sins.
2. Groups of people/society create sinful enterprises or cultures that guilty and innocent must share.
3. Bodies of the faithful (the church of God) perform sin collectively (false doctrine and hypocrisy being obvious examples).
I promised an example for simplicity, so here it is regarding the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
1. A man kills another man for the purpose of robbing him.
2. A company or society that advocates the taking of life in "certain circumstances." I don't mean the death penalty here. I mean immoral approaches that cheapen life and allow some to take life in the course of "doing their job." This is also not a hit on soldiers, but I am implying that unjustified war has to be considered advocating killing. I am also implying all sorts of things like drug trafficking, glorification of violence, putting weapons in the hands of children, etc, all of which are company and society sins.
3. Churches who twist scripture to imply that the killing of some sorts of people (the unborn, unbelievers, people of "opposing sects," etc) is somehow justified.
Does anyone seriously think that Jesus died on the cross so that any of the above is forgiven "in advance" and OK with God? No. Jesus died to bring the body of the faithful (layer 3 if you will) back to God and forgiven that they had strayed from God, and to put the mechanism in place for the forgiveness of sins, and also for being saved, despite being a sinner by nature.
No less than Isaiah, one of the greatest of God's prophets, considered himself a sinner because he lived among a sinful body of the faithful (the Jews) and their society at the time.
Isaiah 6:1,2,3, 5 ...I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above..."Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" they cried to one other...Then I said, "Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"
Notice, as I've pointed out in previous blog postings, that God didn't reassure Isaiah, that he, a holy temple priest, was separate from the sinners around him. Instead God sends a seraphim to touch the mouth of Isaiah to purify it with a burning ember from the altar. "Your wickedness is removed, your sin purged" Isaiah 6:7. Isaiah knew that even though he kept himself from individual sin, that he was part of the prevailing wickedness of speech and deed of the community and the body of the faithful.
Another great prophet, Ezekiel, gets directly from God such an explanation.
Ezekiel 9:8-10 ...I fell prone, crying out, "Alas, Lord God! Will you destroy all that is left of Israel when you pour out your fury on Jerusalem?" He answered me: The sins of the house of Israel are great beyond measure; the land is filled with bloodshed, the city with lawlessness. They think that the Lord has forsaken the land, that he does not see them. I, however, will not look upon them with pity, nor show any mercy. I will bring down their conduct upon their heads."
It's not that God is being "mean" by "punishing those who don't sin along with the sinners." You have to understand that when society is filled with lawlessness, that is an example of cultural and societal sin that drags everyone down, including those who don't sin but certainly receive paychecks from those who do, AND the body of the faithful "the house" has sinned, that this universal, church wide, societal or otherwise collective sin is what the Bible means in such passages, not Joe robbing Bob or Sue giving false witness against Tiffany, or Moische dancing in front of his own false idol.
You are totally leading yourself astray if when you read about "sin" in the Bible you do not understand when God, through the Bible authors, is referring to individual sinfulness, or the universal ongoing sinful nature of humanity, or the sin of the house or other body of the faithful, or the sin of the society at large.
I hope that this has been helpful, because it's very important to be clear about, and the Bible can only be properly understood and followed with such a context of the times and of what God speaks.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
More regarding the Pope's visit
I was very happy at the warm reception given to the Holy Father at the Aida Palestinian refugee camp yesterday. Unlike cynics, I do not feel that Palestinians "exploited" the Pope's visit at all. Rather, as I know all too well, when a group is marginalized, and then has a chance to have some moments to speak on the world stage, it is wise, not exploitative, to seize the opportunity, especially when they are speaking their truths from their hearts.
Today was also a good day, I believe, with such a warm welcome given to the Pope in Nazareth. The Church of the Annunciation, by the way, is one of my favorites. The meaning of what happened there is unmistakable and supported, not suppressed, by the architecture.
I was also glad at the tone of the meeting with the Prime Minister. At last, a meeting that does not include nagging about the Pope's choice of words regarding the history of Israel. Maybe with a few more meetings like that, people can look to solving the problems of the present and the future, yes? I am not saying this without sympathy. As I've blogged before, people need to understand the indelible scar on the Jewish psyche caused by the Shoah, and I know it well.
But sometimes the Jews act like this with the Pope. They keep trying to press into his hands a list of groceries to buy, thinking he is a greengrocer, while he is actually a carpenter. Being mad when he does not accept the grocery list, but constructs a structure of mutual dialogue and support, is illogical and a problem of being stuck in an inaccurate, but understandable, mindset. Stop nagging the carpenter to be a greengrocer who is given a list of "essentials" to fill. Accept, instead, the greater essential that he offers.
Today was also a good day, I believe, with such a warm welcome given to the Pope in Nazareth. The Church of the Annunciation, by the way, is one of my favorites. The meaning of what happened there is unmistakable and supported, not suppressed, by the architecture.
I was also glad at the tone of the meeting with the Prime Minister. At last, a meeting that does not include nagging about the Pope's choice of words regarding the history of Israel. Maybe with a few more meetings like that, people can look to solving the problems of the present and the future, yes? I am not saying this without sympathy. As I've blogged before, people need to understand the indelible scar on the Jewish psyche caused by the Shoah, and I know it well.
But sometimes the Jews act like this with the Pope. They keep trying to press into his hands a list of groceries to buy, thinking he is a greengrocer, while he is actually a carpenter. Being mad when he does not accept the grocery list, but constructs a structure of mutual dialogue and support, is illogical and a problem of being stuck in an inaccurate, but understandable, mindset. Stop nagging the carpenter to be a greengrocer who is given a list of "essentials" to fill. Accept, instead, the greater essential that he offers.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
More about the Pope's Israel trip
I'm just curious, never having been to Israel as a tourist or anything. Do any of the Israeli rabbis actually quote scripture? Every speech I hear (criticizing the Pope, who preaches not speeches) could have been spoken by any politician. The rabbis seem to be politicians rather than religious leaders.
I've heard rabbis speak in the United States, of course, and there's no confusion that they are religious leaders who know and speak their scripture, and who look to God for guidance in all. Is that something that just doesn't happen in Israel? Just curious.
Maybe people are so disappointed with the Pope in Israel because they just don't have role models of religious leaders anymore... everyone over there seems to be a politician and a warrior.
King David would certainly be disappointed, he whose focus never left God.
This, my friends, is one reason that people are so hesitant to use the word "Israel." If you are going to be a "religious state," why do the religious leaders never cite scripture in their speeches, nor look to God for their secular and political guidance? The ancient Israelites, for all their sins and faults, constantly looked toward God. I doubt that any priest or politician during the time of King David or Solomon would "give a speech" without citing scripture and keeping the focus on God. They'd be shocked, believe you me, to read the secular speeches of the rabbis today.
I've heard rabbis speak in the United States, of course, and there's no confusion that they are religious leaders who know and speak their scripture, and who look to God for guidance in all. Is that something that just doesn't happen in Israel? Just curious.
Maybe people are so disappointed with the Pope in Israel because they just don't have role models of religious leaders anymore... everyone over there seems to be a politician and a warrior.
King David would certainly be disappointed, he whose focus never left God.
This, my friends, is one reason that people are so hesitant to use the word "Israel." If you are going to be a "religious state," why do the religious leaders never cite scripture in their speeches, nor look to God for their secular and political guidance? The ancient Israelites, for all their sins and faults, constantly looked toward God. I doubt that any priest or politician during the time of King David or Solomon would "give a speech" without citing scripture and keeping the focus on God. They'd be shocked, believe you me, to read the secular speeches of the rabbis today.
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Pope's visit to Jordan and Israel
I was so pleased, but not at all surprised, at the generous hospitality of the King and Queen of Jordan, as they served as welcoming hosts to Pope Benedict XVI.
It is not at all surprising that much of the Common Word Initiative flows from Jordan, and I can only praise them and pray for even further harmonious results.
Today I was able to watch the TV coverage, thanks to EWTN, of the Pope's first day in Israel.
I have not been at all delighted with the attitudes of some (actually, of many), and the resultant media focus, in the days leading up to the Pope's visit. To call it anticipatory qvetching would be giving it a humorous tolerance that it does not merit. To say that many sought to be wet blankets, putting a damper of gloom over a visit that is potent in potential for progress and grace would also be an understatement. The griping and misplaced expectations about the Holy Father only underscores that it seems that very few people understand who or what a religious leader is anymore, whether Jew or Christian.
Um, here's a news flash. A religious leader, a proper one, as the Pope most certainly is, teaches people about God. God is his focus, not whether he uses the "correct" words to describe secular and historic events. A religious leader is a preacher, a minister, and an evangelist, wearing one or more of those hats as appropriate to the occasion.
The Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Bishop of Rome, the Heir to Saint Peter. He points always to God, the one God that Jews, Christians and Muslims share. When a man becomes Pope his place of birth, his schooling, what his father did, etc means absolutely nothing. He now becomes entirely belonging to God.
Now, having said this, I was totally delighted at President Peres' warm hospitality, his thoughtful remarks, and most of all, how he obviously comprehends what I just wrote here about the Pope. I could see in Mr Peres' face how he appreciated the deeply scriptural statements by the Pope, as Pope Benedict continually placed the focus of his listeners upon God and God alone.
Ironically, it seems that one of the Rabbis, one I respect (don't get me wrong on this) was less appreciative of the scriptural focus of the Holy Father and instead looked for personal apologies, secular orientation and wanting the Holy Father to be more of the Vicar of Word Smithing.
Yes, let's be honest. Pope John Paul II was more of a politician on such occasions, and that, I think, while seeming to fill a hungry belly for the audience ultimately was one of the times that he was the least manifesting of his preaching and ministering responsibility. So I understand that many pine for the personal and secular words that JPII used. But in my opinion, and I loved JPII dearly, I believe that too often his temptation to be communications maven overtook his Vicar of Jesus Christ focus, and so he would use a personal tact, a political tact, to please the audience and to be loved in return. That's not the job of the Pope, my friends, and Pope Benedict will never make that mistake.
Instead, Pope Benedict consoles through God, the ultimate consoler, if only people actually listen to what he is saying. I was very moved at how I could see that Mr Peres, with some surprise, understood that the Pope was connecting the listeners to the Consoler in Chief, God, instead of trying to select personal or political verbiage to meet some criterion.
I hope that when the Prime Minister, who greeted the Pope at the airport, but who had other important tasks in Egypt, reads the text of what the Pope said, he recognizes this too.
To the critics of the Pope: My friends, how can you be disappointed by a speech by the Pope that is rooted in our shared scripture, focused on God? Think about what that is saying about your preferences. You would rather that the Pope echo words that you have selected, rather than provide thoughtful unity as we all look to God for our unity, our consolation, and our answers? That seems a poor choice, my friends. I would think that anyone expects genuine religious leaders to continually illuminate God upon human's problems, not echo scripts and verbiage expectations on a personal level. Too often religious leaders travel the world to act like chiefs of state, or the head of the "grievance department," rather than focus on their first role of faith formation with continual emphasis on God and God's scripture.
It is not at all surprising that much of the Common Word Initiative flows from Jordan, and I can only praise them and pray for even further harmonious results.
Today I was able to watch the TV coverage, thanks to EWTN, of the Pope's first day in Israel.
I have not been at all delighted with the attitudes of some (actually, of many), and the resultant media focus, in the days leading up to the Pope's visit. To call it anticipatory qvetching would be giving it a humorous tolerance that it does not merit. To say that many sought to be wet blankets, putting a damper of gloom over a visit that is potent in potential for progress and grace would also be an understatement. The griping and misplaced expectations about the Holy Father only underscores that it seems that very few people understand who or what a religious leader is anymore, whether Jew or Christian.
Um, here's a news flash. A religious leader, a proper one, as the Pope most certainly is, teaches people about God. God is his focus, not whether he uses the "correct" words to describe secular and historic events. A religious leader is a preacher, a minister, and an evangelist, wearing one or more of those hats as appropriate to the occasion.
The Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Bishop of Rome, the Heir to Saint Peter. He points always to God, the one God that Jews, Christians and Muslims share. When a man becomes Pope his place of birth, his schooling, what his father did, etc means absolutely nothing. He now becomes entirely belonging to God.
Now, having said this, I was totally delighted at President Peres' warm hospitality, his thoughtful remarks, and most of all, how he obviously comprehends what I just wrote here about the Pope. I could see in Mr Peres' face how he appreciated the deeply scriptural statements by the Pope, as Pope Benedict continually placed the focus of his listeners upon God and God alone.
Ironically, it seems that one of the Rabbis, one I respect (don't get me wrong on this) was less appreciative of the scriptural focus of the Holy Father and instead looked for personal apologies, secular orientation and wanting the Holy Father to be more of the Vicar of Word Smithing.
Yes, let's be honest. Pope John Paul II was more of a politician on such occasions, and that, I think, while seeming to fill a hungry belly for the audience ultimately was one of the times that he was the least manifesting of his preaching and ministering responsibility. So I understand that many pine for the personal and secular words that JPII used. But in my opinion, and I loved JPII dearly, I believe that too often his temptation to be communications maven overtook his Vicar of Jesus Christ focus, and so he would use a personal tact, a political tact, to please the audience and to be loved in return. That's not the job of the Pope, my friends, and Pope Benedict will never make that mistake.
Instead, Pope Benedict consoles through God, the ultimate consoler, if only people actually listen to what he is saying. I was very moved at how I could see that Mr Peres, with some surprise, understood that the Pope was connecting the listeners to the Consoler in Chief, God, instead of trying to select personal or political verbiage to meet some criterion.
I hope that when the Prime Minister, who greeted the Pope at the airport, but who had other important tasks in Egypt, reads the text of what the Pope said, he recognizes this too.
To the critics of the Pope: My friends, how can you be disappointed by a speech by the Pope that is rooted in our shared scripture, focused on God? Think about what that is saying about your preferences. You would rather that the Pope echo words that you have selected, rather than provide thoughtful unity as we all look to God for our unity, our consolation, and our answers? That seems a poor choice, my friends. I would think that anyone expects genuine religious leaders to continually illuminate God upon human's problems, not echo scripts and verbiage expectations on a personal level. Too often religious leaders travel the world to act like chiefs of state, or the head of the "grievance department," rather than focus on their first role of faith formation with continual emphasis on God and God's scripture.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Diplomacy case study: political parties
I want to use the occasion of President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (congratulations by the way!) meeting with career diplomats at the State Department to offer another, hopefully helpful, case study. This case study, I think, is essential to speedy and fruitful progress in the Middle East, especially regarding Israel and Palestine, but also the Taliban in Afghanistan and all the groups, including Al Qaida, in Pakistan.
By the way, I remember watching George Mitchell’s great work as diplomatic envoy during The Troubles in Ireland and am glad to see him, and Richard Holbrook, back in the saddle again!
This case study is to help you to have clearer and more productive vision, and thus dialogue, with civilian populations who support radical organizations who regularly or occasionally engage in terrorism.
When an organization, such as Hamas, engages in terrorist activities, such as shooting rockets into civilian parts of Israel, it is natural that a certain skewing of viewpoint takes place by even the most seasoned diplomats. However, this skewing has become entirely too unconscious and routine and thus brings an error into the logical and the feelings that are brought to the diplomatic table. This case study is to help you to eliminate the skewing in perception that takes place when one contemplates or dialogues with an organization that is civilian based but conducts some or many terrorist activities. When you eliminate that skewing of perception, which is based on error, you can make greater progress in your objectives, including the halting of the terroristic component of their activities.
Let’s use some silly examples first. Suppose you are speaking to someone who is just wonderful but has bad breath. Doesn’t the bad breath totally mess up your encounter with them, and doesn’t it ruin your appreciation of their finer qualities? The person with the bad breath could be a beauty queen, or a young Einstein, or the holiest person you know, but you can’t appreciate any of those qualities so long as you are suffering from their bad breath!
This is what a civilian population who supports an organization with a terroristic component is like. Just because they have bad breath in their encounter, this does not mean they are not worthy and wonderful people. Thus, the people of Gaza, by having elected Hamas, are being treated as if they are nothing but gas bags of bad breath. That is unjust, incorrect and unfair.
Let us return to the bad breath example. Coffee, a wonderful beverage, is the cause of much bad breath. So there is an example of a great gift to humanity-coffee-having an unfortunate and often unconscious side effect in many, bad breath. I could not stand the breath of my ex- after he had drunk coffee; it was actually worse than how he smelled after smoking cigarettes. But that does not mean that he was no longer an intelligent person, or one who could look nice, or one that could be kind. He was all of those things, but with bad breath after drinking coffee. So coffee, a genuine gift to humanity and a beneficial thing, can, if not monitored, have an unpleasant side effect that masks all the other good, for those moments, in the person. We can also list other foods like this, such as onions and garlic, feta cheese and so forth.
However, bad breath can also be a warning sign of a health problem. Every mindful and caring parent of a small child knows this. When your child suddenly has bad breath, they are not doing it to annoy you or to be “dirty.” A child with bad breath usually has a nasal drip or an allergy, thus a respiratory health matter. Bad breath is a sign that is supposed to be helpful, to alert someone to a problematic health condition. So you don’t want to be angry at the small infant with bad breath, or just “cover it up,” but look as to why they have the bad breath so that the health matter can be attended to.
Thus the Gaza people with Hamas can be viewed as being like a person with bad breath, and one must see if it is an unconscious side effect of a good thing (coffee) or the sign of a health problem (respiratory distress). By the way, I am not saying Hamas is the bad breath, LOL! I am saying their terroristic actions are the bad breath. Separate from the terroristic acts Hamas members are the same as Gaza civilians, the good that is being masked by the bad breath.
So the first job of the diplomat is to recognize that the terroristic acts that one observes, whether by Hamas or any other group, is like “bad breath.” It has a disproportionate effect of masking the vast majority of normalcy and goodness, with common aspirations, of the people “underneath” the bad breath. Too often diplomats, to say nothing of the reactionary governments, not only just focus on the bad breath but they seem to have entire conversations (mostly threats) with the bad breath (the acts of terrorism) rather than the lips, mouths, brains and hearts of the people behind the terrorism bad breath. I’m faintly amazed that I have to explain this to so many people who think they are otherwise so intelligent.
This is one of the things that the diplomats of, in particular the British Empire, for all their faults well understood. These foreign servants lived among the local people so much that many were accused of “going native” or “going bush,” which is that they embrace the local culture. Thus they were not reactionary when there were “bad breath” incidents, because they maintained their 80 percent to 20 percent understanding of the people who are behind the bad breath and the bad breath acts itself. This was one of the great attributes of the golden age of diplomacy, this ability to maintain vision on not only the “bad breath,” but keep the majority of one’s understanding on the people and the underlying reasons for the bad breath acts.
Now, here is another analogy to help you to understand. There are certain things that the Republican party tends to do that makes me just vomit in disgust, just as there are certain things that the Democrat party does that also makes me vomit. But I do not reduce all the millions of people who agree in each party with those particular positions into thinking of them as just barf making sub-humans, LOL. I know that behind the party platforms and individual heinous viewpoints are, in general, a bunch of individual people who share aspirations and are trying to do the best that they can.
Here is a related analogy. Let’s look at the political party affiliation of the ten Presidents after our first, George Washington.
John Adams: Federalist
Thomas Jefferson: Democratic-Republican
James Madison: Democratic-Republican
James Monroe: Democratic-Republican
John Quincy Adams: Federalist until 1808, Democratic-Republican until 1825, National Republican (Whig) thereafter
Andrew Jackson: Democratic
Martin Van Buren: Democratic (during Presidency); Free Soil (from 1848)
William Henry Harrison: Whig
John Tyler: Whig
James Knox Polk: Democratic
Now, from this list you can observe without reading a “too long” dissertation that political parties came into being and evolved at a rapid rate. Democratic-Republican used to be one party, and they evolved and split. Federalists were the party of our country’s founding, yet even though they were the “original” they did not maintain a mandate once the country was well established. Other parties such as “Free Soil” sprang up in response to current conditions, yet they are forgotten today. Political parties and affiliations are a living and vibrant thing. Likewise people like the Palestinians have an evolving attempt to organize around “parties,” for lack of a better word, that reflect their aspirations and their current reality. Yet countries such as the United States and Israel act like they should be frozen in time.
It is a diplomatic error to think that, “Well, the Palestinians had the PLO, which we denounced since they were terrorists, but they gave up terrorism to become Fatah and thus they are ‘OK’ and we will ‘allow’ the Palestinians to ‘have’ Fatah and Fatah alone.” Huh? What if the United States was forced to only have the Federalist party, one party, the “first and only” alone? After all, the USA was formed by the Federalists. Shouldn’t the USA be forced to have only one party, the Federalists? Are not the Democratic and Republican parties invalid?
When Gaza people voted Hamas into power they were doing so because they were frustrated with the shortcomings, including financial corruption, of Fatah. Yet to this day western diplomats are mouthing off that Hamas is not “legitimate?” Well, I don’t think that any USA political party since the Federalists is valid. I’m not joking. If you are going to tell me that people halfway around the world do not live like the rest of us, having evolving needs and evolving responses in affiliation (and yes, some of them have some bad breath) then I think we should live by the same “rules,” else we are shameless hypocrites. So I am quite serious that I believe that all political parties since the Federalist Party are invalid.
If a diplomat cannot look at a people, such as the Palestinians in Gaza, and have the most fundamental understanding that despite the terroristic actions that are the bad breath of the party in power that this is part of normal democracy and the urges of the people, then one can neither achieve peace nor even have correct vision of the problems, challenges and opportunities. You are punishing the Gaza people for trying to self correct what they thought was a problem with the ruling party, Fatah. You are enabling Israel, by focusing only on the bad breath terrorism, to bomb the hell out of people to punish them for trying to “kick the bums out of office and elect new people,” which was just what they did. It is one of the democratic hypocrisies of the century, in my opinion.
So to wrap up this case study, the point I am trying to make is that politicians, most especially diplomats, must learn to recognize normal democratic process in the natural form that it takes place in other countries and cultures, such as the forming and electing of new parties. Second one must recognize if the bad breath of terrorism of those parties are due to systemic health problems which must be addressed, rather than punching the teeth and gums of innocent men, women and children out of their mouths to “cure the bad breath” and then blame them for it to boot. Third, one must look at the diplomatic challenge and see the parallels in our own history (the British thought we were terrorists, by the way) and respond with a resonance and firm guidance in more fruitful channels rather than denial. Fourth, we need to invest in people’s political interest and participation, not discourage it when we don’t like the results. Fifth we must not have dialogue with the bad breath acts and, instead, go back to having dialogue with the people, friend and foe alike. Sixth, just as the USA would resent being told we must go back to Federalist party alone, so too we must not expect people to have “one size fit all” political parties that meet our (or Israel’s) approval.
I hope that you have found this helpful. I have a lot more to say about how to get going in productive diplomacy but I don't want to make this "tl/dr" (too long; didn't read).
By the way, I remember watching George Mitchell’s great work as diplomatic envoy during The Troubles in Ireland and am glad to see him, and Richard Holbrook, back in the saddle again!
This case study is to help you to have clearer and more productive vision, and thus dialogue, with civilian populations who support radical organizations who regularly or occasionally engage in terrorism.
When an organization, such as Hamas, engages in terrorist activities, such as shooting rockets into civilian parts of Israel, it is natural that a certain skewing of viewpoint takes place by even the most seasoned diplomats. However, this skewing has become entirely too unconscious and routine and thus brings an error into the logical and the feelings that are brought to the diplomatic table. This case study is to help you to eliminate the skewing in perception that takes place when one contemplates or dialogues with an organization that is civilian based but conducts some or many terrorist activities. When you eliminate that skewing of perception, which is based on error, you can make greater progress in your objectives, including the halting of the terroristic component of their activities.
Let’s use some silly examples first. Suppose you are speaking to someone who is just wonderful but has bad breath. Doesn’t the bad breath totally mess up your encounter with them, and doesn’t it ruin your appreciation of their finer qualities? The person with the bad breath could be a beauty queen, or a young Einstein, or the holiest person you know, but you can’t appreciate any of those qualities so long as you are suffering from their bad breath!
This is what a civilian population who supports an organization with a terroristic component is like. Just because they have bad breath in their encounter, this does not mean they are not worthy and wonderful people. Thus, the people of Gaza, by having elected Hamas, are being treated as if they are nothing but gas bags of bad breath. That is unjust, incorrect and unfair.
Let us return to the bad breath example. Coffee, a wonderful beverage, is the cause of much bad breath. So there is an example of a great gift to humanity-coffee-having an unfortunate and often unconscious side effect in many, bad breath. I could not stand the breath of my ex- after he had drunk coffee; it was actually worse than how he smelled after smoking cigarettes. But that does not mean that he was no longer an intelligent person, or one who could look nice, or one that could be kind. He was all of those things, but with bad breath after drinking coffee. So coffee, a genuine gift to humanity and a beneficial thing, can, if not monitored, have an unpleasant side effect that masks all the other good, for those moments, in the person. We can also list other foods like this, such as onions and garlic, feta cheese and so forth.
However, bad breath can also be a warning sign of a health problem. Every mindful and caring parent of a small child knows this. When your child suddenly has bad breath, they are not doing it to annoy you or to be “dirty.” A child with bad breath usually has a nasal drip or an allergy, thus a respiratory health matter. Bad breath is a sign that is supposed to be helpful, to alert someone to a problematic health condition. So you don’t want to be angry at the small infant with bad breath, or just “cover it up,” but look as to why they have the bad breath so that the health matter can be attended to.
Thus the Gaza people with Hamas can be viewed as being like a person with bad breath, and one must see if it is an unconscious side effect of a good thing (coffee) or the sign of a health problem (respiratory distress). By the way, I am not saying Hamas is the bad breath, LOL! I am saying their terroristic actions are the bad breath. Separate from the terroristic acts Hamas members are the same as Gaza civilians, the good that is being masked by the bad breath.
So the first job of the diplomat is to recognize that the terroristic acts that one observes, whether by Hamas or any other group, is like “bad breath.” It has a disproportionate effect of masking the vast majority of normalcy and goodness, with common aspirations, of the people “underneath” the bad breath. Too often diplomats, to say nothing of the reactionary governments, not only just focus on the bad breath but they seem to have entire conversations (mostly threats) with the bad breath (the acts of terrorism) rather than the lips, mouths, brains and hearts of the people behind the terrorism bad breath. I’m faintly amazed that I have to explain this to so many people who think they are otherwise so intelligent.
This is one of the things that the diplomats of, in particular the British Empire, for all their faults well understood. These foreign servants lived among the local people so much that many were accused of “going native” or “going bush,” which is that they embrace the local culture. Thus they were not reactionary when there were “bad breath” incidents, because they maintained their 80 percent to 20 percent understanding of the people who are behind the bad breath and the bad breath acts itself. This was one of the great attributes of the golden age of diplomacy, this ability to maintain vision on not only the “bad breath,” but keep the majority of one’s understanding on the people and the underlying reasons for the bad breath acts.
Now, here is another analogy to help you to understand. There are certain things that the Republican party tends to do that makes me just vomit in disgust, just as there are certain things that the Democrat party does that also makes me vomit. But I do not reduce all the millions of people who agree in each party with those particular positions into thinking of them as just barf making sub-humans, LOL. I know that behind the party platforms and individual heinous viewpoints are, in general, a bunch of individual people who share aspirations and are trying to do the best that they can.
Here is a related analogy. Let’s look at the political party affiliation of the ten Presidents after our first, George Washington.
John Adams: Federalist
Thomas Jefferson: Democratic-Republican
James Madison: Democratic-Republican
James Monroe: Democratic-Republican
John Quincy Adams: Federalist until 1808, Democratic-Republican until 1825, National Republican (Whig) thereafter
Andrew Jackson: Democratic
Martin Van Buren: Democratic (during Presidency); Free Soil (from 1848)
William Henry Harrison: Whig
John Tyler: Whig
James Knox Polk: Democratic
Now, from this list you can observe without reading a “too long” dissertation that political parties came into being and evolved at a rapid rate. Democratic-Republican used to be one party, and they evolved and split. Federalists were the party of our country’s founding, yet even though they were the “original” they did not maintain a mandate once the country was well established. Other parties such as “Free Soil” sprang up in response to current conditions, yet they are forgotten today. Political parties and affiliations are a living and vibrant thing. Likewise people like the Palestinians have an evolving attempt to organize around “parties,” for lack of a better word, that reflect their aspirations and their current reality. Yet countries such as the United States and Israel act like they should be frozen in time.
It is a diplomatic error to think that, “Well, the Palestinians had the PLO, which we denounced since they were terrorists, but they gave up terrorism to become Fatah and thus they are ‘OK’ and we will ‘allow’ the Palestinians to ‘have’ Fatah and Fatah alone.” Huh? What if the United States was forced to only have the Federalist party, one party, the “first and only” alone? After all, the USA was formed by the Federalists. Shouldn’t the USA be forced to have only one party, the Federalists? Are not the Democratic and Republican parties invalid?
When Gaza people voted Hamas into power they were doing so because they were frustrated with the shortcomings, including financial corruption, of Fatah. Yet to this day western diplomats are mouthing off that Hamas is not “legitimate?” Well, I don’t think that any USA political party since the Federalists is valid. I’m not joking. If you are going to tell me that people halfway around the world do not live like the rest of us, having evolving needs and evolving responses in affiliation (and yes, some of them have some bad breath) then I think we should live by the same “rules,” else we are shameless hypocrites. So I am quite serious that I believe that all political parties since the Federalist Party are invalid.
If a diplomat cannot look at a people, such as the Palestinians in Gaza, and have the most fundamental understanding that despite the terroristic actions that are the bad breath of the party in power that this is part of normal democracy and the urges of the people, then one can neither achieve peace nor even have correct vision of the problems, challenges and opportunities. You are punishing the Gaza people for trying to self correct what they thought was a problem with the ruling party, Fatah. You are enabling Israel, by focusing only on the bad breath terrorism, to bomb the hell out of people to punish them for trying to “kick the bums out of office and elect new people,” which was just what they did. It is one of the democratic hypocrisies of the century, in my opinion.
So to wrap up this case study, the point I am trying to make is that politicians, most especially diplomats, must learn to recognize normal democratic process in the natural form that it takes place in other countries and cultures, such as the forming and electing of new parties. Second one must recognize if the bad breath of terrorism of those parties are due to systemic health problems which must be addressed, rather than punching the teeth and gums of innocent men, women and children out of their mouths to “cure the bad breath” and then blame them for it to boot. Third, one must look at the diplomatic challenge and see the parallels in our own history (the British thought we were terrorists, by the way) and respond with a resonance and firm guidance in more fruitful channels rather than denial. Fourth, we need to invest in people’s political interest and participation, not discourage it when we don’t like the results. Fifth we must not have dialogue with the bad breath acts and, instead, go back to having dialogue with the people, friend and foe alike. Sixth, just as the USA would resent being told we must go back to Federalist party alone, so too we must not expect people to have “one size fit all” political parties that meet our (or Israel’s) approval.
I hope that you have found this helpful. I have a lot more to say about how to get going in productive diplomacy but I don't want to make this "tl/dr" (too long; didn't read).
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Gaza death toll makes me retch
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/world/middleeast/19gaza.html
snip
More than 20 of them were from the Samouni family, whose younger members were digging with shovels and hands for relatives stuck in rooms inside. Faris Samouni, 59, sat alone, watching them. He had lost his wife, daughter-in-law, grandson and nephew, and he was heartbroken.
“Twenty-one are down there,” he said, starting to cry. “One is my wife. Her name is Rizka.”
snip
“They killed the elders, the children, the women, the animals, the chickens,” said Subhi, 55, Rizka’s brother. “It’s a nightmare. I never thought I would lose all of them.”
snip
The house had a special meaning. The family had lived for generations in a refugee camp, and six years ago had saved enough money to build it. This morning they came to find it in shambles, a crushing discovery.
“It was my dream and now it is erased,” said Hadija Saker, 55, who ticked off the evidence, as she saw it, of Israel’s unjust actions. She said Hamas lacked influence in the area. A teacher at a United Nations school lived on one side. A journalist on the other. Most painful, she said, were her lemon trees, which she had nurtured for years and now lay crushed under the sandy soil crisscrossed with the marks of tank treads.
snip
More than 20 of them were from the Samouni family, whose younger members were digging with shovels and hands for relatives stuck in rooms inside. Faris Samouni, 59, sat alone, watching them. He had lost his wife, daughter-in-law, grandson and nephew, and he was heartbroken.
“Twenty-one are down there,” he said, starting to cry. “One is my wife. Her name is Rizka.”
snip
“They killed the elders, the children, the women, the animals, the chickens,” said Subhi, 55, Rizka’s brother. “It’s a nightmare. I never thought I would lose all of them.”
snip
The house had a special meaning. The family had lived for generations in a refugee camp, and six years ago had saved enough money to build it. This morning they came to find it in shambles, a crushing discovery.
“It was my dream and now it is erased,” said Hadija Saker, 55, who ticked off the evidence, as she saw it, of Israel’s unjust actions. She said Hamas lacked influence in the area. A teacher at a United Nations school lived on one side. A journalist on the other. Most painful, she said, were her lemon trees, which she had nurtured for years and now lay crushed under the sandy soil crisscrossed with the marks of tank treads.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Gaza doctor's three daughters killed
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50F6ML20090116
snip
The deaths of more than 1,150 Palestinians, some 700 of them civilians by one independent count, have left the Israeli public largely unmoved.
snip
The deaths of more than 1,150 Palestinians, some 700 of them civilians by one independent count, have left the Israeli public largely unmoved.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel bombs Gaza Catholic med clinic, no surprise
Is anyone surprised by anything that is coming out of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza? I'm not, anymore.
I have to admit, the pregnant woman being shot on her way to the clinic to give birth is kind of a unique low that raises an eyebrow or two. As you can read in the article, mother and baby are dead. But then again, a "military operation" that nods and winks at 900+ dead with a third of them children and women just keeps "delighting" us with how low they can go "But we cannot allow those missiles!"
And then there is the burning phosphorous, but that's in other news coverage.
How can the Israeli government and military sleep at night? I honestly wonder how they could have such hard hearts.
http://www.zenit.org/article-24760?l=english
snip
Israeli Bomb Destroys Caritas Medical Clinic
Aid Group Launches $2M Appeal
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, JAN. 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Caritas Internationalis is launching an emergency appeal for the suffering people of Gaza after a bomb on Friday destroyed one of the aid organization's medical clinics.
The clinic, in the Al Maghazi district of Central Gaza, was completely destroyed in a bombing that also flattened four homes. At least another 20 homes sustained heavy damage in the blast. Families had already fled the area, so Caritas reported no injuries.
The aid organization has five other medical clinics in Gaza. With their appeal, they are hoping to raise more than $2 million for a seven-month program.
Close to 900 Palestinians have died after two weeks of fighting, and U.N. officials say that 40% of the dead are women and children.
Meanwhile, the priest of Gaza's Catholic parish, Father Manuel Musallam, spoke of the "extreme fear" of the Gazans.
He told Caritas by telephone from Beit Hanoun in Gaza today, "There is extreme fear everywhere here. The bombs the Israelis are dropping are literally cutting through people and through homes. Night and day the sound of children crying is everywhere. The people here don't sleep. They have lost everything.
"70,000 people are living in schools and they are very cold. The ones who haven't gone to schools are living in their bathrooms or stairwells because they are afraid of being injured by shattering glass from bombs. There is no water here. We are almost out of diesel for our generator that we have allowed people to come and cook from. When the diesel runs out, we will have nothing. [...]
"There are dead bodies lying on the streets. The clinics are carrying out operations on the floor.
Women have no place to give birth. One pregnant woman was shot on her way to a clinic to give birth. They tried to save the baby but he, too, was dead.
"Life and death for people in Gaza is the same."
I have to admit, the pregnant woman being shot on her way to the clinic to give birth is kind of a unique low that raises an eyebrow or two. As you can read in the article, mother and baby are dead. But then again, a "military operation" that nods and winks at 900+ dead with a third of them children and women just keeps "delighting" us with how low they can go "But we cannot allow those missiles!"
And then there is the burning phosphorous, but that's in other news coverage.
How can the Israeli government and military sleep at night? I honestly wonder how they could have such hard hearts.
http://www.zenit.org/article-24760?l=english
snip
Israeli Bomb Destroys Caritas Medical Clinic
Aid Group Launches $2M Appeal
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, JAN. 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Caritas Internationalis is launching an emergency appeal for the suffering people of Gaza after a bomb on Friday destroyed one of the aid organization's medical clinics.
The clinic, in the Al Maghazi district of Central Gaza, was completely destroyed in a bombing that also flattened four homes. At least another 20 homes sustained heavy damage in the blast. Families had already fled the area, so Caritas reported no injuries.
The aid organization has five other medical clinics in Gaza. With their appeal, they are hoping to raise more than $2 million for a seven-month program.
Close to 900 Palestinians have died after two weeks of fighting, and U.N. officials say that 40% of the dead are women and children.
Meanwhile, the priest of Gaza's Catholic parish, Father Manuel Musallam, spoke of the "extreme fear" of the Gazans.
He told Caritas by telephone from Beit Hanoun in Gaza today, "There is extreme fear everywhere here. The bombs the Israelis are dropping are literally cutting through people and through homes. Night and day the sound of children crying is everywhere. The people here don't sleep. They have lost everything.
"70,000 people are living in schools and they are very cold. The ones who haven't gone to schools are living in their bathrooms or stairwells because they are afraid of being injured by shattering glass from bombs. There is no water here. We are almost out of diesel for our generator that we have allowed people to come and cook from. When the diesel runs out, we will have nothing. [...]
"There are dead bodies lying on the streets. The clinics are carrying out operations on the floor.
Women have no place to give birth. One pregnant woman was shot on her way to a clinic to give birth. They tried to save the baby but he, too, was dead.
"Life and death for people in Gaza is the same."
Friday, January 9, 2009
Maybe a new political party in Israel?
Maybe Mr Mubarak and Ms Rice are planning to run together in Israel's upcoming elections.
Just a thought based on their mind boggling lack of conscience regarding Gaza.
((((((((((((((((((What would they call their new party, I wonder?)))))))))))))))))))))))
PUCG? (Party United to Crush Gazans?)
HNH? (Ham Not Hamas?)
SIG (Silence Is Golden?)
DONJ? (Decades Of No Justice?)
NMNRNP? (No Mercy: No Rockets, No Problem?)
Just a thought based on their mind boggling lack of conscience regarding Gaza.
((((((((((((((((((What would they call their new party, I wonder?)))))))))))))))))))))))
PUCG? (Party United to Crush Gazans?)
HNH? (Ham Not Hamas?)
SIG (Silence Is Golden?)
DONJ? (Decades Of No Justice?)
NMNRNP? (No Mercy: No Rockets, No Problem?)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Reflections on my father's prophesy re: Israel
I want to tell you about the one and only time that my father prophesied. First of all, do understand that prophesying is not “fortune telling” or being a “psychic,” and it is not the use of human extra-sensory perception (ESP). To prophesy means that one is uttering a truth that is provided to you directly by God. Thus the prophets were speaking something on behalf of God, not on behalf of their own wisdom or from supposed arcane sources.
To prophesy only once is not unusual. Most of the Biblical prophets lived years of average pious lives and then receive their calling from God, and sometimes it is only once that they are called upon to prophesy. Prophets do not, in other words, establish themselves in the “prophecy” business. People who needed consistent guidance did not go to prophets, who only spoke on God’s behest, but they went to what the Bible calls “wise” men or women. Among the Israelites wise men or women were pious and steeped in the faith; they were not “smart” due to arcane or secular studies.
Anyway, my dad was a totally average guy of his times, though he was what some might call “deep.” My cousin said that my dad had a genius IQ, but in keeping with his times he dropped out of school in the eighth grade in order to work and help support the family (this would be when he was thirteen years old and would have been in the early part of the 1900’s). So even though he had a smart mind and a keen interest in the world, and fought in the American army in World War II (where he met the woman who would become my mother) the one time he prophesied really stands out. My mother and I were reminiscing about this a few years ago while we watched the news one evening.
Around sixty years ago when the UN made their determination to partition Palestine and establish the state of Israel, my father turned to my mother (who as a war refugee was still learning English and was not much on politics). He pointed out to her what was going on and said to her, “Do you see what is happening? Remember this day. What is happening is going to be a great sorrow and how they are doing this is a great mistake. In the future remember what I said.”
My mother says how after my dad died in the 1960’s, she has watched what has happened and marveled how he prophesied this, telling her to think on that day, just as he said. And so a few years ago we watched the news and she recalled once again what he had said.
My father who has enormous street credibility as he put his life on the line-and was wounded-fighting the Nazis he was certainly not being anti-Jewish. He prophesied the disaster that would come from the approach that was taken sixty years ago and how it would only create woe and destroy the peace. This is one reason I am so angry and irate about what is going on in Gaza. My family, through my dad’s prophesy, has seen this coming for sixty years and I cannot believe that rather than thoughtful re-examining of what has worked well with Israel and Palestine and what obviously has not worked, there is only greater hardening of hearts and narrow mindedness. There are people who have been refugees now for as long as it has been since my father prophesied. It’s like there has been a competition about who can care less about the millions, both Jewish and Palestinian, who have suffered. Yet there has been a mind blowing resistance toward contemplating even the most minor of errors that have been made, particularly by Israel. I have never seen a group of people who deny ever making any sort of error as the Israeli institutions. This has now translated into a petty tyrant cruelty that is truly shameful.
Anyway, I thought that I’d share this perspective that has been understood in my family for sixty years now, as we’ve just watched the continual dismal countdown to fulfillment of my father’s prophecy. Cultists have been so nosy and weird about my father that I figured I might as well blog, since it’s certainly not a secret, what is true about my father and what is not. He was just an interesting and average guy with intriguing hidden depths, but the only “supernatural” claim that anyone can make about him is that he uttered that one prophecy regarding the continual sorrow of Palestine and Israel due to errors made in its creation sixty years ago. Ah well.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Lowest of King David's soldiers would be ashamed
If we told the lowest of the foot soldiers in the army of King David about how their descendants are conducting themselves, they would be in disbelief and in shame.
It's not like they would have dropped a bomb or a shell on a gathering place of frightened refugees at a school even if there were enemy firing on them from behind. I guess the only place that honorable hand to hand combat exists is in your filthy video games.
The lowest of the lowest soldier of King David or Solomon's time would spit on all of you today.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Cultural diplomacy and friendship
Cultural diplomacy and “friendship”
Of course the vast majority of diplomacy is routine and takes place among friendly or at least neutral nations. Yet all nations have a circle of fellow nations who they consider friends. Despite what I said about the USA being biased on behalf of Israel and against the Palestinians, and thus not valid in terms of calling themselves diplomatic peace makers, there is nothing wrong with friendly nations and the taking of sides. But there is a big caution that must be realized that among nations, even as among individuals, there are two types of friends.
Listening to the political talk shows today I heard various American politicians be referred to as “friends of Israel.” My children, it is not difficult to be a ‘friend’ to Israel if you are of the one type of friend and not the other type of friend. Here is an analogy.
Suppose that you are a woman who has a dear friend who is a drug addict. You love him very much and what do you do to ‘keep’ his friendship? You buy him drugs. That is what American diplomats who are ‘friends’ with Israel are like.
Here is the type of friend that Israel needs. Israel needs a woman who loves Israel very much, but tells Israel “You cannot keep taking drugs. It is destroying your soul and it puts blinders on you so that you only see one ‘answer’ to every problem.”
What will happen to that true friend? She will be called an old, stupid, ugly fat bitch, and a whore. She will be dragged through the mud and Israel will tell everyone that she is a Nazi, a Jew hater, an anti-Semite and an ignorant cow. Just to teach that true friend ‘a lesson’ Israel will take even more drugs, and parade around posing for photographs with Israel’s ‘best friend friends’ who supply the drugs that you refuse to do.
Well, gosh, who would want to go through that? No one really wants to go through that, and so American diplomats have all chosen to be the enabling first type of ‘friend.’ If one even questions the drug use of Israel one has seen how the wrath of people who cannot agree about anything except how much they now hate you fall upon you like an anvil. And so when you see what happens to genuine friends who even raise an eyebrow of questioning toward Israel, you keep your mouth shut and you ask Israel, “How much do you want and when do you want it?” You then also join with them in bashing the bad Palestinians who “drive Israel to drugs” and who “make us the way we are.”
Yes, it sure is not difficult to be an enabling friend of Israel, one who does not care about its health or soul. It sure is difficult and, thus far, impossible to be a genuine friend of Israel.
Of course the vast majority of diplomacy is routine and takes place among friendly or at least neutral nations. Yet all nations have a circle of fellow nations who they consider friends. Despite what I said about the USA being biased on behalf of Israel and against the Palestinians, and thus not valid in terms of calling themselves diplomatic peace makers, there is nothing wrong with friendly nations and the taking of sides. But there is a big caution that must be realized that among nations, even as among individuals, there are two types of friends.
Listening to the political talk shows today I heard various American politicians be referred to as “friends of Israel.” My children, it is not difficult to be a ‘friend’ to Israel if you are of the one type of friend and not the other type of friend. Here is an analogy.
Suppose that you are a woman who has a dear friend who is a drug addict. You love him very much and what do you do to ‘keep’ his friendship? You buy him drugs. That is what American diplomats who are ‘friends’ with Israel are like.
Here is the type of friend that Israel needs. Israel needs a woman who loves Israel very much, but tells Israel “You cannot keep taking drugs. It is destroying your soul and it puts blinders on you so that you only see one ‘answer’ to every problem.”
What will happen to that true friend? She will be called an old, stupid, ugly fat bitch, and a whore. She will be dragged through the mud and Israel will tell everyone that she is a Nazi, a Jew hater, an anti-Semite and an ignorant cow. Just to teach that true friend ‘a lesson’ Israel will take even more drugs, and parade around posing for photographs with Israel’s ‘best friend friends’ who supply the drugs that you refuse to do.
Well, gosh, who would want to go through that? No one really wants to go through that, and so American diplomats have all chosen to be the enabling first type of ‘friend.’ If one even questions the drug use of Israel one has seen how the wrath of people who cannot agree about anything except how much they now hate you fall upon you like an anvil. And so when you see what happens to genuine friends who even raise an eyebrow of questioning toward Israel, you keep your mouth shut and you ask Israel, “How much do you want and when do you want it?” You then also join with them in bashing the bad Palestinians who “drive Israel to drugs” and who “make us the way we are.”
Yes, it sure is not difficult to be an enabling friend of Israel, one who does not care about its health or soul. It sure is difficult and, thus far, impossible to be a genuine friend of Israel.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Cultural diplomacy tutorial and RANT
This is another in my series regarding how to understand and achieve successful cultural diplomacy. Here I will explain to you things you must understand about how resistance, subversive and even “terroristic” organizations arise and important characteristics to keep in mind to achieve peace. I have Hamas in the Gaza strip in my mind as the specific case study, but will reference the wide range of groups in history who have been in a revolutionary or uprising role. The only group I want to reserve for separate consideration because they are totally unique is Al Qaeda.
The main point of this tutorial and case study will be to refute the modern assumptions by many, especially those in the western world, that a resistance, subversive or terrorist organization is a separate entity from the civilian population. All resistance, subversive and terrorist organizations arise from the populace; they are not “imposed” on an unwilling population nor are they “side by side” with the populace. Thus Israel and the United States are being deliberately dishonest to imply that Hamas is an organization that can be “rooted out” of the populace, like weeds being pulled from among good corn. Think of Hamas as corn with guns. The same is true of Hezbollah in Lebanon and of course the PLO, now Fatah, the legitimate government, before Fatah lost credibility. One would be more accurate to understand such organizations, with the exception of Al Qaeda, as being violent political parties that non-violent people also support or they would not be on the “ballot” of public opinion.
Look at the two historical examples of the American Revolution and the overthrow of the Czars by the Communists. It’s not like a bunch of people in what would become the United States imposed their will to revolt against England on top of the citizen populace. The delegates to the Congress from the states and then the men who fought in the armies all were drawn from and empowered by the people. Imagine if England thought that the Revolutionaries were a distinct group that they could “kill off” and then the desire for freedom would just die out in America. That would have been a huge military error one that, obviously, they did not make. The English understood very well that the civilian populace fueled and supported the revolution and were part of it, not a separate entity. Those of the civilians who disagreed with the Revolution either remained in place silently and accepted the tide of change, or left for England or Canada. Likewise in the former USSR, one must understand that the populace was behind and part of the Communists who overthrew the monarchy. The problem is that they didn’t know what they were bargaining for, how ruinous Communism would be for body and soul. But the excesses of the monarchy and their ignoring of the extreme and dire poverty of the people allowed the Bolsheviks to arise from among the populace, not as a superimposed force.
Another example is “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the conflict between paramilitary Protestant Irish and paramilitary Catholic Irish. Again, right or wrong, it’s not like these groups fell out of the sky and imposed their will on the people. They were members of the populace who felt the need for resistance (Catholic minorities) and counter resistance (the ruling Protestants). That is why one simply could not “go in” and “jail or kill” every paramilitary IRA member, for example, without at the same time pursuing genuine diplomacy. Because these extremist organizations arise from and belong to the populace, one cannot EVER pursue a “sequential” process where “step one” is “stop the violence” and then step two as the “reward” is the diplomacy.
The United States is guilty of naïve and even stupid beliefs such as that. I cannot remember the last time we had “diplomats” who were actually even adequate in understanding the principles of diplomacy and the origins of revolutionary, subversive or terrorist movements. Israel knows darn well the difference but they have made a cultural decision to have a “backs against the wall” stance that insists on total “peace” before social injustice is addressed. Thus Israel is delighted at the naiveté of the past several generations of US “diplomats” who they view as public relations mouthpieces and “defensive” weapons suppliers. I mean, give me a break. Any diplomat worth his or her salt realizes that one cannot “wait” for a total “cease fire” before diplomacy while at the same time one side is turning up the heat of the social injustice that, genuine or perceived, is the result of the valid or invalid violence. It is like expecting a pit bull to stop biting while you are still hitting it with a stick. Israel knows full well that they have tightened the screws on the Palestinians to make their day to day economic life a misery and, in fact, a gulag and thus they continue to poke the pit bull while loudly screaming with feigned senses of grievance that “total peace” is needed before “diplomacy can begin.”
President Bush and his “expert on Russia,” Condoleezza Rice, have not earned one penny of their paychecks regarding the Middle East. What an embarrassment they have been.
Notice I have mixed examples of what people could say are “justifiable” revolution, subversion and while terrorism is never justified one must acknowledge that obviously someone thinks it is or they’d be home planting grape vines, with examples that obviously came to very unhappy fruition, such as the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Communism to power. You don’t “agree” with the people you are engaging in diplomacy with, for cripes sake. Golda Meir (the last Israeli leader that I think understood diplomacy) herself said that you negotiate with your enemies, not your friends. Diplomats should not be “step and fetch its” for one side in the diplomatic endeavor.
I mean, think about this slowly and carefully. In resolving a dispute, how reasonable and fair can that diplomat be if they are supplying one side with the weaponry? The idea of the USA being a diplomat in the Middle East problem is a joke and always has been. All the USA does is supply Israel with weapons and pats on the back. That’s fine if that is the foreign policy stance of the USA but what nerve they have to call themselves “partners in a peace process” and “diplomats.”
Europeans used to be very savvy about diplomacy, having centuries of genuine experience, and they used to laugh at Americans being clods and naïve. In turn, in fairness, Americans spotted the mote in the Europeans’ own diplomatic eye with their soft stance toward the grave and mortal dangers of Communism. But because the Americans were right about Communism, the Europeans shut up and just let it slide as the Americans make a mess of the Middle East. In turn the Americans think that they are foreign policy geniuses (for recognizing that Communism is bad, duh) and as a result have missed cultivating at least three generations of genuine diplomats.
There is another cultural problem with Americans. Because they have experienced over the past forty years the freakish forming of cults and criminal individuals or groups that are terrorists, they have done an unconscious and totally invalid pattern matching in their minds. Thus when America had domestic terrorists such as the SLA (the folks who kidnapped Patty Hearst back in the 60's) who are a few nuts who united for havoc, the lack of diplomatic savvy in the government resulted in Americans just assuming that all terrorists throughout the world are a loose coalition of "nuts" "imposing” terrorism on the populace. In other words, Americans have become so simplistic that they have only two models of understanding of armed resistance: a group of criminal nuts like the SLA from the 60's, or Al Qaeda from 2001. Americans seem to understand absolutely nothing in between which is where all the conflicts in the world actually reside, in that space in between.
Therefore, to summarize my points:
The main point of this tutorial and case study will be to refute the modern assumptions by many, especially those in the western world, that a resistance, subversive or terrorist organization is a separate entity from the civilian population. All resistance, subversive and terrorist organizations arise from the populace; they are not “imposed” on an unwilling population nor are they “side by side” with the populace. Thus Israel and the United States are being deliberately dishonest to imply that Hamas is an organization that can be “rooted out” of the populace, like weeds being pulled from among good corn. Think of Hamas as corn with guns. The same is true of Hezbollah in Lebanon and of course the PLO, now Fatah, the legitimate government, before Fatah lost credibility. One would be more accurate to understand such organizations, with the exception of Al Qaeda, as being violent political parties that non-violent people also support or they would not be on the “ballot” of public opinion.
Look at the two historical examples of the American Revolution and the overthrow of the Czars by the Communists. It’s not like a bunch of people in what would become the United States imposed their will to revolt against England on top of the citizen populace. The delegates to the Congress from the states and then the men who fought in the armies all were drawn from and empowered by the people. Imagine if England thought that the Revolutionaries were a distinct group that they could “kill off” and then the desire for freedom would just die out in America. That would have been a huge military error one that, obviously, they did not make. The English understood very well that the civilian populace fueled and supported the revolution and were part of it, not a separate entity. Those of the civilians who disagreed with the Revolution either remained in place silently and accepted the tide of change, or left for England or Canada. Likewise in the former USSR, one must understand that the populace was behind and part of the Communists who overthrew the monarchy. The problem is that they didn’t know what they were bargaining for, how ruinous Communism would be for body and soul. But the excesses of the monarchy and their ignoring of the extreme and dire poverty of the people allowed the Bolsheviks to arise from among the populace, not as a superimposed force.
Another example is “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the conflict between paramilitary Protestant Irish and paramilitary Catholic Irish. Again, right or wrong, it’s not like these groups fell out of the sky and imposed their will on the people. They were members of the populace who felt the need for resistance (Catholic minorities) and counter resistance (the ruling Protestants). That is why one simply could not “go in” and “jail or kill” every paramilitary IRA member, for example, without at the same time pursuing genuine diplomacy. Because these extremist organizations arise from and belong to the populace, one cannot EVER pursue a “sequential” process where “step one” is “stop the violence” and then step two as the “reward” is the diplomacy.
The United States is guilty of naïve and even stupid beliefs such as that. I cannot remember the last time we had “diplomats” who were actually even adequate in understanding the principles of diplomacy and the origins of revolutionary, subversive or terrorist movements. Israel knows darn well the difference but they have made a cultural decision to have a “backs against the wall” stance that insists on total “peace” before social injustice is addressed. Thus Israel is delighted at the naiveté of the past several generations of US “diplomats” who they view as public relations mouthpieces and “defensive” weapons suppliers. I mean, give me a break. Any diplomat worth his or her salt realizes that one cannot “wait” for a total “cease fire” before diplomacy while at the same time one side is turning up the heat of the social injustice that, genuine or perceived, is the result of the valid or invalid violence. It is like expecting a pit bull to stop biting while you are still hitting it with a stick. Israel knows full well that they have tightened the screws on the Palestinians to make their day to day economic life a misery and, in fact, a gulag and thus they continue to poke the pit bull while loudly screaming with feigned senses of grievance that “total peace” is needed before “diplomacy can begin.”
President Bush and his “expert on Russia,” Condoleezza Rice, have not earned one penny of their paychecks regarding the Middle East. What an embarrassment they have been.
Notice I have mixed examples of what people could say are “justifiable” revolution, subversion and while terrorism is never justified one must acknowledge that obviously someone thinks it is or they’d be home planting grape vines, with examples that obviously came to very unhappy fruition, such as the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Communism to power. You don’t “agree” with the people you are engaging in diplomacy with, for cripes sake. Golda Meir (the last Israeli leader that I think understood diplomacy) herself said that you negotiate with your enemies, not your friends. Diplomats should not be “step and fetch its” for one side in the diplomatic endeavor.
I mean, think about this slowly and carefully. In resolving a dispute, how reasonable and fair can that diplomat be if they are supplying one side with the weaponry? The idea of the USA being a diplomat in the Middle East problem is a joke and always has been. All the USA does is supply Israel with weapons and pats on the back. That’s fine if that is the foreign policy stance of the USA but what nerve they have to call themselves “partners in a peace process” and “diplomats.”
Europeans used to be very savvy about diplomacy, having centuries of genuine experience, and they used to laugh at Americans being clods and naïve. In turn, in fairness, Americans spotted the mote in the Europeans’ own diplomatic eye with their soft stance toward the grave and mortal dangers of Communism. But because the Americans were right about Communism, the Europeans shut up and just let it slide as the Americans make a mess of the Middle East. In turn the Americans think that they are foreign policy geniuses (for recognizing that Communism is bad, duh) and as a result have missed cultivating at least three generations of genuine diplomats.
There is another cultural problem with Americans. Because they have experienced over the past forty years the freakish forming of cults and criminal individuals or groups that are terrorists, they have done an unconscious and totally invalid pattern matching in their minds. Thus when America had domestic terrorists such as the SLA (the folks who kidnapped Patty Hearst back in the 60's) who are a few nuts who united for havoc, the lack of diplomatic savvy in the government resulted in Americans just assuming that all terrorists throughout the world are a loose coalition of "nuts" "imposing” terrorism on the populace. In other words, Americans have become so simplistic that they have only two models of understanding of armed resistance: a group of criminal nuts like the SLA from the 60's, or Al Qaeda from 2001. Americans seem to understand absolutely nothing in between which is where all the conflicts in the world actually reside, in that space in between.
Therefore, to summarize my points:
1) You cannot have a valid diplomatic role if you are supplying weaponry to one side, period. I mean, duh, how difficult is that to understand? Step aside and let real genuine neutral diplomats take over your "role."
2) We need genuine diplomats who understand cultural and historical contexts and who understand the actual diplomatic process and are not just “advocates with agendas for one side.”
3) All enduring organizations that are based on armed resistance are not separate from the populace and cannot be extracted from the populace.
4) There is no example of diplomacy where negotiation “waits” until “after” violence has “completely stopped,” particularly if the aggrieved side experiences continual pressure and provocation.
5) Do not say you are for “democracy” and “free elections” and then declare the winners “terrorists.” Hamas was elected into office, deal with it, not whine and try to kill them off while calling yourselves "pillars of democracy."
The diplomatic ignorance and willful collusion of the Americans in injustice in many forums around the world has been a source of excruciating embarrassment for me for decades now. We don’t have diplomats; we have empty suits with big egos who fly around like celebrities. It’s embarrassing.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Read this editorial about Israel Gaza crisis
I agree with every word of it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/27/israelandthepalestinians-terrorism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/27/israelandthepalestinians-terrorism
Israeli government/military have lost their minds
Pray for them. They have completely lost their way.
I would thought that had been obvious after Lebanon, but the defensive killing mentality just keeps rolling on, aided and abetted by deliberately unseeing Western governments.
Logic, decency, justice and humanitarianism is not working with the Israelis.
Only God can change their hearts.
Pray, pray, pray.
I would thought that had been obvious after Lebanon, but the defensive killing mentality just keeps rolling on, aided and abetted by deliberately unseeing Western governments.
Logic, decency, justice and humanitarianism is not working with the Israelis.
Only God can change their hearts.
How has Israel gotten to this point where those in the government who still believe in God at all think that God approves a mindless, vengeful killing machine?
Pray, pray, pray.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Cultural diplomacy: Case study, Libya
I'm impressed. Read this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gadhafis-Son.html
snip
This week's events -- including an unprecedented phone call between Bush and Moammar Gadhafi -- capped a halting, five-year rapprochement between the two countries that began in 2003 when the Libyan leader renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The process gained traction in August when the U.S. and Libya agreed on the compensation deal.
The younger Gadhafi, who also met with human rights and environmental groups, said his main message was: ''We are good people, and nice. We'll make business. We'll invest, and we have friends here in the states and we have a new chapter in the relations.''
He said Libya's new sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned investment fund with almost $100 billion, ''wants to invest here in America'' despite the current financial crisis.
I'm not going to write a long tutorial on cultural diplomacy, and instead point this topic out to my readers to do whatever behind the scenes background reading that you like about Libya-USA relationships. However, I want to make some points that genuine diplomats should always keep in mind that they can learn from this success.
1) If both sides have a genuine desire to resolve differences, even the most impossible situation can be resolved, often with a success that never could have been anticipated.
If you think that there is incredible misery weighing down the Israel-Palestinian problem, with decades of horror on both sides that damage diplomatic good intentions, let me assure you, especially you younger readers, that the situation between Libya and the USA seemed just as doomed to never overcoming the past. With time and determination on both sides, incredibly we have reached this unforeseen good outcome.
So never "write off" the possibility of genuine cultural diplomacy brokering a shining break through in even the worse of situations.
2) Regardless of provocations, while it is allowable to make forceful responses to situations, never attempt to corner the other party so that they have no dignity.
As rough as the conflict was between Libya and the USA a healthy respect for each other was maintained throughout. This was, in part, because the main conflict between Libya and the USA took place years before a kind of personally demeaning "taunting" has become part of both the official governmental and political discourse and the public "talk radio" and other circuits. Again, contrast that with the Israel-Palestinian conflict, where both sides have used language seeking to mock and strip the dignity of their "opponent." Thus no genuine diplomacy results.
3) Set timetables for actions and stick to them, but let the process of normalization run a natural course of time.
Genuine diplomacy recognizes that two things take place. One is the negotiation and completion of specific actions. The other is allowing all parties to adjust (even to the point of the next generation coming of age and participating) at a pace that is natural to human nature and as a response to new perspective gained from each specific action step.
Once again, compare this to the Israel-Palestinian problem. It has become a ridiculous knot that cannot be untied because people refuse to set timetables for actions and stick to them, and allow normalization to, like a river "flow alongside." The Israelis in particular do not understand that one changes mindset on both sides alongside the honorable carrying out of specific diplomatic tasks and agreements. You can think of it like this, it is like the Israelis say, "Well, we will like and understand you only if you sign these agreements." If the Libya-USA relationship had followed the terrible example in the Middle East, we would not be reading the sincere words of mutual relationship and amiability on both sides that we see in this news article today.
Here is another analogy. If you are offered a job in a company, what if you said before you accepted the job "Well, before I agree, I want a guarantee that every company employee will like me when they meet me, and they will never do anything wrong against me." How likely is that? (Even Jesus certainly did not have that happen, hmm?) If one ties what one thinks of the other party and, further, refuses all natural forms of relationship building to develop until one or the other agreement is signed, that is damming up the natural development of genuine relationship, just as the employee who won't sign on without unreasonable conditions being met first. Thus Israel will not follow UN mandates because they envision first receiving some sort of emotional guarantee of the future, and as a result, they dam up that exact flow of goodwill (or at least fearsome respect) that they desire to have from the Palestinians and the Islamic countries that support them.
The Libya-USA relationship progress demonstrates that hard decisions and agreements on specific actions must be made and carried out, while then, alongside, the natural development of mutual understanding and progress in respect, and even liking, are allowed to develop without conditions.
Congratulations to all who have been involved in reaching the success of the Libya-USA relationship and one that I hope will only improve and benefit both sides (and not just for the investment money, ha). I hope that our future Secretary of State will follow these suggestions ;-)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gadhafis-Son.html
snip
This week's events -- including an unprecedented phone call between Bush and Moammar Gadhafi -- capped a halting, five-year rapprochement between the two countries that began in 2003 when the Libyan leader renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The process gained traction in August when the U.S. and Libya agreed on the compensation deal.
The younger Gadhafi, who also met with human rights and environmental groups, said his main message was: ''We are good people, and nice. We'll make business. We'll invest, and we have friends here in the states and we have a new chapter in the relations.''
He said Libya's new sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned investment fund with almost $100 billion, ''wants to invest here in America'' despite the current financial crisis.
I'm not going to write a long tutorial on cultural diplomacy, and instead point this topic out to my readers to do whatever behind the scenes background reading that you like about Libya-USA relationships. However, I want to make some points that genuine diplomats should always keep in mind that they can learn from this success.
1) If both sides have a genuine desire to resolve differences, even the most impossible situation can be resolved, often with a success that never could have been anticipated.
If you think that there is incredible misery weighing down the Israel-Palestinian problem, with decades of horror on both sides that damage diplomatic good intentions, let me assure you, especially you younger readers, that the situation between Libya and the USA seemed just as doomed to never overcoming the past. With time and determination on both sides, incredibly we have reached this unforeseen good outcome.
So never "write off" the possibility of genuine cultural diplomacy brokering a shining break through in even the worse of situations.
2) Regardless of provocations, while it is allowable to make forceful responses to situations, never attempt to corner the other party so that they have no dignity.
As rough as the conflict was between Libya and the USA a healthy respect for each other was maintained throughout. This was, in part, because the main conflict between Libya and the USA took place years before a kind of personally demeaning "taunting" has become part of both the official governmental and political discourse and the public "talk radio" and other circuits. Again, contrast that with the Israel-Palestinian conflict, where both sides have used language seeking to mock and strip the dignity of their "opponent." Thus no genuine diplomacy results.
3) Set timetables for actions and stick to them, but let the process of normalization run a natural course of time.
Genuine diplomacy recognizes that two things take place. One is the negotiation and completion of specific actions. The other is allowing all parties to adjust (even to the point of the next generation coming of age and participating) at a pace that is natural to human nature and as a response to new perspective gained from each specific action step.
Once again, compare this to the Israel-Palestinian problem. It has become a ridiculous knot that cannot be untied because people refuse to set timetables for actions and stick to them, and allow normalization to, like a river "flow alongside." The Israelis in particular do not understand that one changes mindset on both sides alongside the honorable carrying out of specific diplomatic tasks and agreements. You can think of it like this, it is like the Israelis say, "Well, we will like and understand you only if you sign these agreements." If the Libya-USA relationship had followed the terrible example in the Middle East, we would not be reading the sincere words of mutual relationship and amiability on both sides that we see in this news article today.
Here is another analogy. If you are offered a job in a company, what if you said before you accepted the job "Well, before I agree, I want a guarantee that every company employee will like me when they meet me, and they will never do anything wrong against me." How likely is that? (Even Jesus certainly did not have that happen, hmm?) If one ties what one thinks of the other party and, further, refuses all natural forms of relationship building to develop until one or the other agreement is signed, that is damming up the natural development of genuine relationship, just as the employee who won't sign on without unreasonable conditions being met first. Thus Israel will not follow UN mandates because they envision first receiving some sort of emotional guarantee of the future, and as a result, they dam up that exact flow of goodwill (or at least fearsome respect) that they desire to have from the Palestinians and the Islamic countries that support them.
The Libya-USA relationship progress demonstrates that hard decisions and agreements on specific actions must be made and carried out, while then, alongside, the natural development of mutual understanding and progress in respect, and even liking, are allowed to develop without conditions.
Congratulations to all who have been involved in reaching the success of the Libya-USA relationship and one that I hope will only improve and benefit both sides (and not just for the investment money, ha). I hope that our future Secretary of State will follow these suggestions ;-)
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