30 thoughts on “Russian Orthodox Christians pray for the victims of Beslan”
If there is any reason for hope following the horrific events in Beslan, it is the comforting role the Orthodox Church aapears to be playing and the large number of Russians who seem to be seeking out the church for spiriual healing.
The resurgence of the Orthodox Church in Russia after seventy years of harsh communist persecution is something I would like to hear more about. I have often thought that Orthodox churches in the United States might each consider “adopting” an Orthodox church in Russia and sending them a little assistance each year to help them get back on their feet.
Wow, Dean. Another well-written, constructive comment. Good for you.
In these troubled times, the Church will have (as it had in the past) the responsibility of providing the unique comfort and strength of the Gospel to those torn by terrorism. May the Lord give us clarity of mind and heart so that we can offer that comfort.
Dean is right when he asserts that disarming evil with love is the only real answer, however, I’m not sure he realizes what that means. IMO, it means the willingness and probability of crucifixion, i.e., cruel suffering, pain, and death all the while holding on to the love of God in one’s heart. Further, such love must not just be general in nature but specifically for the person who is inflicting such pain and death upon you. Ironically, if reports are correct, those among the Beslan terrorists who died because they did not want to kill the children may have saved themselves and who knows how many others.
Short of the authentic Christian solution, we are faced with the choice of confronting evil while being, to some extent or another, tainted by evil; OR allowing evil to be victorious. In a fallen creation, all of our actions, even if we are saints, are tainted with evil. That does not absolve us of the responsibility to confront evil while being as consistent as we can. We must endeavor to hold our political leaders to as high a standard as possible, realizing that they are as imperfect as we, realizing that the temptations to power for power’s sake will, at times, be irresistible for them. The reality of such temptations is why we pray for our leaders and our soldiers.
IMO, allowing the evil to destroy more and more lives, is not an option. We must be on guard that our military response does not succumb entirely to the same evil we are fighting. We must not allow our hearts to be further hardened against those we are fighting, but pray for them always. Remember, they too are created in the image and likeness of God and it is their own souls they are destroying as they seek to destroy us. “Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Defense of innocence should always be a worthy goal. We must pray for peace and love our enemies , but Christian men must be ready and willing to act to prevent evil whenever possible. Love does not mean “embrace unconditionally and excuse away evil behavior.” Love may mean killing a terrorist as he or she is about to slaughter innocent and defensless children. Unfortunately, I have never heard our church leaders take a strong stand on these very serious issues in our times. Far too many seem to completely shy away from such “strong” statements or anything even remotely “judgemental.” With so much confusion out there, I believe it needs to be said and clarified.
It’s important to LOVE, but how do we love, whom do we love more, and how Christian is that love. Is it a secular “love” that says accept and embrace anything and anyone, or is it the LOVE that Christ talked about: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13) I believe those that fight terrorism and destroy evil to protect innocence are showing forth precisely that kind of love. They are more Christian than many of us sinners. That’s why the hatred and disdain directed at our military from liberals in the Democratic party, academia, media, and other left-wing organizations (seen parading all over New York during the GOP convention) is misguided, wrong, and downright evil. They claim they want “peace”, but such “peace” would mean letting innocence pay the price. That is NOT Christian.
Very well said, Christian. We are commanded to love our neighbor. Does this mean that we “love” our violent, murderous neighbor who kills the innocent? Or does it mean that we love the innocent by defending them, while deferring ultimate judgment over the murderer to God? Perhaps the latter course is not perfectly righteous; OTOH, the former course is far less righteous.
Fighting evil with love doesn’t mean we wait until the terrorists literally have their guns pointed at our heads before we sit up and take notice of what is going on around us.
If we are following the teachings of Jesus Christ to help the poor and work for peace and justice then we are already working to minimize the conditions that breed terrorism before it even has a chance to develop. The Christian approach towards ending terrorism directed against Israel by Palestinian groups is not to kill a lot of Palestinians, but to address the issues of economic strangulation and geographic dispossesion before any more Palestinians are driven to the point of anger, hopelessness and desperation that lead to violent lashing out.
Father Jacobse said that if the Palestinians would only abandon resistance to the Israeli occupation and embrace peace, then they might be able to realize their dreams of an independent state. Isn’t that like saying to the Palestinians, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
By the way Christian, I have never seen or heard any “liberals in the Democratic party, academia, media, and other left-wing organizations (seen parading all over New York during the GOP convention)” disparage our brave and heroic US military servicemen and women. I have heard those groups criticize the abysmal and disasterous policy decisions of their commander-in-chief. One thousand Americans are dead and eight thousand gravely wounded because of the faulty assumptions and poor planning of the Bush administration. For you to mispresent the legitimate policy criticisms of loyal Americans like myself as unpatriotic and an attack on our troops is both deceitful and dishonest. Shame on you.
Dean, your assumptions are incorrect. Poverty, etc in and of themselves never have and never will breed crime, terrorism, etc. At best those conditions give a convienient rationalisation for giving into the passions that lead to depravity. Plus as has been noted often in other posts, the evagels of terrorism are not the poor and disadvantaged, it is those who have a certain degree of wealth and power already
Once again, your assumptions put all of the responsibility on the shoulders of U.S. government policy. It just is not so.
The Palestinians and indeed the entire Middle East could long ago come out of their poverty, but they prefer to hold onto their irrational hatred of Israel.
The precursors of terrorism are dependency and hatred. Both of those conditions have been created, fostered, and maintained by Arab Muslim governments so they will have plenty of cannon fodder to use against Israel. It is ironic that said cannon fodder is now being turned against those very same governements.
For a very poignant letter from a Marine in Iraq who gives those like me who have serious doubts about the war something to think about, click here .
Dean,
Shame on me? For speaking the truth? Oh well, I’ll take it as a sign that I have touched a nerve. If you have not said anything to besmirch and slander the US military you can calm down. However, if you would like, I would be more than happy to post quotes from members of all those groups that have insulted both America and our military. There are thousands of comments to choose from.
Lest we forget, wasn’t 9/11 the result of a billionaire Radical Islamic Terrorist that funded a group of middle-class Extremist Islamic murderers, who slaughtered and destroyed approximately 3,000 innocent men, women and children out of an insane, rabid, unjustified, and misdirected hate? Poverty and justice had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. By this standard there should be over 2 billion potential terrorists in the world. Illogical!
Dean, the Bush administration has promised to work for a Palestinian state if Arafat would renounce terrorism. He won’t. The only hope is if the Palestinians themselves resist the PLO, something he does not allow. Are you at all aware of what the PLO does to other Palestinians who they think betray their cause?
The suicide bombings are eroding the moral capital the Palestinians once held. Ask yourself why they would allow this. These people are not stupid. Ask yourself why the suicide bombers don’t come from the ranks of the dispossessed (The Myth That Poverty Breeds Terrorism) as you seem to think. Ask yourself why no children of Hamas are ever recruited as suicide bombers, and why Hamas leadership all educate their children in Europe. Ask yourself why recent spates of suicide bombings target Arab Christians.
Your assumption that terror arises from a poverty imposed by the policies of America is wrong. The poverty and oppression these people endure is largely by the hand of their own leadership. And accomodating their demands doesn’t change their tactics one bit, as the kidnapping and threatened beheading of the two French journalists prove.
You need to reread my criticism of OPF. Your notion of how the Gospel is applied is really no more than a rehash of Viet Nam peace activism (which has its intellectual origins in the appeasement movements of WWII) dressed in Christian terminology. The problem with it is that it ultimately leads to more killing and death, as the boat people and the killing fields of Cambodia proved.
Dean,
Why is justice so important to you and what do you really mean by that term? I, for one, don’t really want justice as “In the course of justice, none of us shall see salvation.” Mercy, I require.
In today’s worldly terms, justice all too often means that no one man or country shall have any more wealth than any other man or country. If such an inequity exisits the offending
“rich” man or country is obligated to give the “excess” wealth away.
That’s not Christian, its socialist
Michael: Justice need not mean socialism, just that a nation be mindful of the plight of its least fortunate members and take action to alleviate their suffering and prevent their exploitation. Economic justice can mean that all citizens have the opportunity to participate in our capitalist economy. Lack of access to higher education, health care and jobs result in de facto barriers to that participation and create injustice.
From a purely selfish, capitalist point of view you want to increase the numbers of middle class consumers with job skills and cash to spend because a strong middle class means more profit for everyone in the long run. Crony capitalism, widening economic disparities between rich and poor and reductions in government programs that help expand economic opportunity take us in the opposite direction, away from justice and towards injustice.
Sometimes employers will take money from their profits to train workers and improve their opportunities and skills. Do those employers feel robbed, cheated, pressurred into forced income redistribution? No, they realizes that it is in their best long term interest to invest in their human resources. Similarly, taxing the wealthy so that our nation can expand economic opportunity for those in the economic strata beneath them is not theft or “redistribution”, it is investment. The wealthy will be even wealthier in the long run if their companies they own or invest in can enjoy greatwer productivity and sales.
What does justice mean in a more theological sense? It means that we are not allowed to grind our neighbors into the dust in order to make ourselves richer. In the book of Amos the prophet warns Israel that it will be punished precisely for “grinding the poor into the dust.” The Sermon on the Mount certainly makes clear that God is mindful of the needs of the poor and blesses the poor and those who assist them. Lastly Matthew 25 (NOT a call for socialism, I’m not saying that) reminds us that Christ identifies with society’s losers so we must do all we can to address their needs.
Father Jacobse: There are obviously bad actors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and any description that focuses on the villians from one side but not the other provides an unbalanced view of events, my earlier comments included.
First the Arabs: There has always been a radical core in the Arab world who see the world through the prism of fundamentalism and jihad and are unwilling to accept the existence of the State of Israel. They are certainly the enemy of peace.
In making the case against the Palestinians you should also have cited Yasser Arafat’s refusal to accept the very generous settlement terms obtained by President Clinton at Camp David in 2000 from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. This rejection by Arafat must rank as one of the principle causes of the present conflict. It was a tragic decsion of historic proportions by a petty, narrow, small-minded man and thousands have paid for it with their lives. I don’t like Ariel Sharon, but no one did more to get him elected Israeli Prime Minister then Yasser Arafat.
Now for the Israelis: It is undeniable that there exists in the right-wing Likud Party a large segment that believe that the West Bank belongs to the land of Israel, and that the Palestinians should be made to abandon the land their families have lived on for twelve centuries and move to Jordan. “There is a Palestinian homeland, it’s called Jordan.” We hear this excuse for ethnic cleansing all the time, even from many Americans. I imagine that many in the Israeli right, who never wanted a Palestinian state to begin with, breathed a sigh of relief when Arafat stupidly rejected Baraks offer.
Although there is was a core of fundamentalist Palestinian rejectionists I personally believe that the great majority of Palestinians were more moderate and would have been happy to live in peace with the Israeelis as long as they could enjoy a measure of economic and physical security and political self-determination. The ham-handed, aggressive tactics of the Israelis have made sure this was not to be the case. The aggressive tactics of the Israelis have tended to discredit the Palsetinian moderates and bolster the case of the radicals.
Palestinians are subjected to humiliating treatment from Israelis at every turn, their towns are turned into defacto concentration camps, they are economically isolated forcing the population into unemployment and poverty, and innocent Palestinians are frequently made the target of indiscriminate gunfire by Israeli soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later. The murder of 23-year old American peace activist Rachel Corrie, an unarmed woman wearing a bright florecent vest, provides just a glimpse of the total disregard the Israelis have for the lives of Palestinians.
The Israeli policy of targeted assasination makes a mockery out of the rule of law and any pretence of a judicial system.
Even though the Israelis insisted that the Palestinians restore civil order before peace negotiations could resume one of the first Israeli actions at the onset of the intfada was to destroy Palestinian police stations and attack Palestinian policemen, the very people responsible for keeping order. If you insist on civil order as a condition for negotiating with your adversary, then provoke him into further acts of disorder, you create a self-perpetuating state of unrest that allows you to never have to come to terms. This was clearly Israel’s plan.
The continued Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements and the building of the infamous security wall (ruled to be illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Hague) deep within Palestinian land represent a deliberate effort by Israel to make the creation of a Palestinian state practically impossible. If the Israeli land grab continues much longer there won’t be enough contiguous territory left for a sovereign Palestian state to be viable. You can’t make a sovereign state out of a patch of land here and a patch of land there.
The statement by the Bush administration that it desires a independent Palestinian state is widely and correctly seen as cynical and insincere. Key members of the Bush foreign policy team, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglans Feith have close ties to the right-wing Israeli Likud party. They are currently being investigated by the FBI for giving US secrets to AIPAC (the American Israeli Political Action Committee) to pass on to Israeli intellegence. If Bush was serious about the creation of a Palestinian state he would call for an immediate halt to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and a halt to construction of the illegal Israeli security wall on Palestinian land.
Thanks for the primer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it doesn’t address the points about Palestinian terror toward Israeli civilians raised earlier.
What actually counts as a terrorist attack?
It seems to me that attacks by Palestinians on civilians in Israel are clearly terrorist attacks, but that attacks on the Israeli military, either inside or outside of Israel would not be. Also, it seems that attacks on Israeli settlers would not really be terrorist attacks either. In other words, it seems to me that civilians have a right to expel both military and civilian personnel occupying their turf. Unless I’m missing something, these would be more akin to self-defense than to terrorism. In other words, if the Cubans invaded and occupied Florida, what actions would Floridians be justified in doing in order to end the occupation?
Legitimate resistance in war time has always viewed the occupying military force and to some extent collaborators as appropriate targets. Civilian targets have been considered out of bounds. For instance, kibutz since they are armed, fortified outposts may indeed be legitimate targets of a true resistance, while cafes and civilian buses would not be.
Of course the real issue in Israel is whether or not the Palestinians are a legitimate people and whether Israel is an occupying force or is just defending itself from illegitimate aggression by hoodlums prepared and nurtured as cannon fodder by hostile governments who are intent on the total destruction of the nation of Israel. In any case, IMO the Palestinians have never once back off offically from their stated desire to “drive the Jews into the sea”.
It is interesting that those who now most adamantly urge us to submit all or a portion of our own sovereignty to the UN are frequently the first to question the legitimacy of the nation of Israel–a creation of the United Nations, an organization now rife with anti-semitism.
Dean,
I’ve been pondering your last post on justice. You seem to use the word to connote fairness and it can certainly mean that. However, the word itself also carries the unmistakable connotation of wrongdoing, judgement, and punishment. In the socio-political applications the assumption is consonant with my earlier post, i.e., those who have wealth, power, etc. should be force to give up their “excess” because having “excess” is wrong.
IMO, the Scriptures are not much concerned with justice, in fact they command us to go beyond justice, to transcend it. The predominant scriptural theme is mercy, compassion and voluntary self-sacrifice for the good of others. There is the strong suggestion that followers of Jesus should voluntarily impoverish themselves and not even be concerned with the normal day to day physical needs and requirements. Many saints and monastics follow that suggestion. Certainly, we are commanded to care for our brothers and sisters materially as well as spiritually, even if we do not take the path of voluntary poverty.
The real problem with justice in a cultural, socio-political context is that it often seeks to achieve absolute equity between all people, not just in terms of wealth, but social status, power, and even creativity. Aside from the fact that such perfect equity is not achievable, it ignores the hierarchical nature of creation and the entropy necessary to allow anything to grow and develop.
On a personal note, while it is tempting for me to think that if life were just (fair), I’d be far better off than I am, happier, etc., when I really look at it, I’d probably be an unemployed, homeless bum, if I were still alive.
From a Christian standpoint, many of the modern day “justice mongers” are infected with the Marxist oriented “liberation theology” and the heresy of the self-perfectibility of man in our earthly life. Such infection makes adhering to the justice tenets dangerous for us, no matter how superficially attractive the rhetoric is. Justice in reality is a legal term, not a social term. The attempt to transfer the legalistic concept of justice to the social sphere is certainly not Orthodox in content. In fact, it probably has its theological root in the Protestant concept of salvation, which is problematic for we Orthodox.
On a broader scale, most of the modern social movements have such unacceptable philosophical and theological foundations that they make it impossible for Orthodox Christians of true worship to participate–at least this Orthodox Christian. A dilemma
Note 15: Jim Holman:
If Arabs have the right to expel Israelis settlers who are living on what you call Palestinian “turf.” Do the Israelis have a complimentary right to expel Arabs from Israel? Isn’t it true that Arabs are not barred from citizenship in Israel? Why is is wrong for a Jew to live in the West Bank but legitimate for an Arab to live in Israel?
Are we going along with the idea that non-Muslims are acting in an immoral manner if they exclude Muslims, but that Muslims have the moral right to discriminate against non-Muslims. Isn’t it correct that under sharia law, no non-Muslims may hold authority over a Muslim. Isn’t discrimination against non-Muslims part of the so-called “religious” beliefs of Islam?
In the end are we supposed to tolerate intolerance?
Michael Baumann: We can understand why the concept of Justice is so central and intrinsic to our faith when we consider the theological dilemma of the Jews in the last few centuries before Christ. The Jews struggled with the question of why good people are made to suffer while the wicked often enjoy lives of comfort and ease. They realized that the answer to their question was that in the Afterlife a Just God will reward the good and righteous and punish the evil and disobedient. In other words God identifies with the good people who are made to suffer during their earthly existence and will be their avenger and redeemer in the afterlife
God did not desire that good people be made to suffer on earth, as a condition of their heavenly reward, but expected all good people to ease the suffering of their neighbors. From books of the Old Testament the Jews identified 613 religious duties, or Mitzvot, that people obedient to God must observe. Prominent among these Mitzvot, or duties, is “Tzedekah”.
“Tzedakah” is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call “charity” in English: giving aid, assistance and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. However, the nature of tzedakah is very different from the idea of charity. The word “charity” suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. The word “tzedakah” is derived from the Hebrew root Tzade-Dalet-Qof, meaning righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.
The teachings of Jesus Christ are entirely consistent with the concept of Tzadekah. In the Beatitudes Christ reaffirms that God will be the champion of the suffering and downtrodden and that He expect those who are not among the sufferring and downtrodden to be his agents in assisting their less fortunate neighbors. Blessed are those who suffer (the poor of spirit, the hungry, those who mourn) and blessed are those who help them (the merciful, the peacemakers, those who who hunger and thirst for justice, those who who suffer persecution for justice sake). It is up to us to make sure that “God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Helping the poor is not something we do for extra credit, it is something we must do to even pass the test.
Because we desire justice for the poor in accordance with God’s will, expressed to us clearly and directly by His prophets and His Son, we want to construct a society that delivers that justice. This doesn’t mean equality of outcome or result, as some suggest, but equality of opportunity. We are not asking the fast in the race to halt for the slow, but for everyone to begin the race at the same starting line, wearing the same pair of running shoes, beginning at the sound of same starting gun.
Clearly in America today everyone is not starting the race at the same starting line. Those who do not have access to a good education are pushed back, those who do not have access to health care are pushed back, those who cannot find jobs that pay a living wage are being pushed back.
For those who want to see God’s Justice triumph the economic trends are disturbing. Poverty rates are climbing, the number of Americans without health care are increasing, the cost of higher education is soaring and the gulf between rich and poor widening. The elderly who worked hard their whole lives have seen greater and greater portions of their meager fixed incomes going to pay for Medicare and expensive prescription drugs. We are robbing the social security trust fund to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest one percent. We’ve taken 100,000 policemen off the streets and armed the criminals with semi-automatic weapons. The poor and those without economic opportunity are lured into the military and sent to fight and die for the greater profit of Halliburton and Exxon.
I believe that the policies of the Republican party have moved us much farther away from the establishment of God’s justice in our nation, which is why I will be voting out of religious conviction for John Kerry this November.
Whenever I hear the words “construct a society”, I see a battalion of self-assured ideologues ready to hammer their vision of social justice into the heads of everyone else. Watch out.
The standard talking points (poverty, welfare, insurance) are hot button issues but need more analysis before we jump on the reconstructionist bandwagon, and certainly before we declare that such reconstruction is “God’s will.”
Michael Novak writes about the progress made by Blacks during the Reagan era in Reagan and the Poor. Drawing from census data Novak writes in part:
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Altogether, Reaganomics created some 19 million new jobs. Between the end of 1980 and the end of 1988, black Americans alone got 2.4 million of these new jobs. The numbers of the black employed jumped from 9 million to 11.4 million in that short period — a jump of more than 25 percent.
Black income jumped, too. In constant 1988 dollars, the total annual income earned by all 30 million U.S. blacks together rose from $191 billion at the end of 1980, to $259 billion by the end of 1988. That sum was larger than the GDP of all but ten nations in the world.
The number of black families earning more than $50,000 per year much more than doubled, from 392,000 in 1982 to 936,000 in 1988. The median salary/wage of black males increased from $9,678 in 1980 to $14,537 in 1988 (in current dollars). Median means half earned more than that, half less, so more than half of all black males improved their income by more than 50 percent.
The bad news during the Reagan years was that the number of single-parent black families continued rising, as it had since 1960, this time from 1.9 million to 2.2 million families. Government, of course, does not mandate this most personal of choices, and except indirectly can do little to affect it. Nonetheless, single female-headed households have long been the fastest growing cause of poverty. In these years, they caused the measure of income inequality (the gini coefficient) to soar far higher (.450) among blacks than among whites (.382).
Correcting this growth of female-headed households awaited the next burst of progressive politics, once again on the part of Republicans. Democrats strove mightily to protect the status quo on this front until Bill Clinton, to his credit, at last supported Welfare Reform in 1996.
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Father Jacobse: Thank you for your reply. I would agree that some government programs designed to help lift people out of poverty have not always been successful and that statistical measures of economic conditions require constant fine-tuning. But it is a unsustainable leap of logic to infer that because some government programs are unsuccessful, they are all unsuccesful, or because one measure hasn’t been updated to include some new aspect of the economy, all economic measures are untrustworthy and without value.
I would agree with you that some of the tax reductions made by the Reagan administration were helpful to the economy because they lowered taxes from very high levels to moderate levels. Again it is an untenable leap of logic to suggest that reducing tax levels from moderate to very low will produce the same economic effect. (Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is currently at its lowest level since 1959). The economic utility and wisdom of tax cuts may be called into question when they impair the ability to nation to make needed investments in it’s people and infrastructure and lead to rising, unsustainable debt levels that burden future generations.
I would like to hear your thoughts on the Bush tax cuts for the rich in the context of our responsibility as Christians to care for our neighbors. These tax cuts for the very wealthy represent for me one of the most egregious examples of theologically and fiscally irresponsible policy by the Bush administration and the Republican party.
Taking into account the record budget deficits, the expensive war in Iraq and costs of homeland security, sluggish job growth, increasing lack of access to health care do you think providing tax cuts for people with annual incomes of over a million dollars was the best uses of this nation’s tax revenue?
Do the teachings of Christ dictate that it a greater priority for us to make sure billionaires like Bill Gates get a tax cut, or to fund programs that help lift people out of poverty?
Note 19: Dean, the first half of your post is really quite good. Your discussion of SDQ is a good one, and you reminded me of Jurgen Moltmann’s assertion (I’m paraphrasing slightly) that “The poor exist to give the rich a chance to be saved.”
However, and unfortunately, your perspective is still limited by your modern liberal ideals, which you are uncritically reading into the Bible (the technical term for this is “eisegesis”). A truly exegetical approach (one which reads “out of” the Bible) seeks to discern the Bible’s own logic, without reference to extra-Biblical ideas no matter how attractive or seemingly obvious. You go wrong precisely at the point Fr. Hans mentioned, when you connect God’s injunction that we help the poor with the modern idea that to do this we must reengineer society. The Bible in no way claims that mankind can establish a truly righteous society. It claims, rather, the opposite, that mankind is sinful (see Romans 1) and that only God can make righteous. The true focus, therefore, is hearing God’s will and doing it, not imagining that the Bible is a mandate for a particular political and economical approach. The truly righteous society, as expressed clearly and directly by His prophets and His Son, is the New Jerusalem of God (see Isaiah and Galatians), called in the Gospels the “Kingdom of God,” which is established by God, not by man. To attempt to replace God’s kingdom with a “righteous kingdom of man” is not only impossible according to the Bible’s perspective, but idolatrous. Rather, we wait and hope and work for the day when God establishes His own Kingdom.
Your error is in trying to claim that your ideology is in line with God’s, that God supports it. This is simply not true. God supports his own ideology. You need to alter your perspective so that your ideology is not on the same level as God’s will as expressed in Scripture, just as much as conservatives who make the same mistake of equating their ideologies with God’s will need as well to correct their perspective.
There’s nothing wrong with our holding political beliefs of various kinds, but if we are faithful Christians we must submit those beliefs to God’s Word, not vice-versa. I am afraid that the “religious conviction” according which you want to cast your vote is in fact an idolatrous one, since it depends as much on your belief in the liberal idea of “building God’s Kingdom for Him” as it does on your authentic faith.
Fr. Hans writes: “Between the end of 1980 and the end of 1988, black Americans alone got 2.4 million of these new jobs. The numbers of the black employed jumped from 9 million to 11.4 million in that short period — a jump of more than 25 percent.”
Sure, but you have to remember that the population is growing during that period as well. So just the raw number of employed in only one aspect. If look at the unemployment rate for blacks during that time period, here’s what you get:
These figures are from the BLS web site, which looks like where Novak was getting his employment figures as well. Overall, there was a drop in black unemployment of a little more than 1 percent during the period in question, with much higher unemployment mid-term. Under “Clintonomics” the unemployment rate for blacks went from 14.1 percent to 8.3 percent — a drop of almost 5 percent, with a high of only 14.7 percent in 1993.
Here too the raw numbers need more precision. Are the unemployed the same people, or do different people move into unemployment while others move out? Is there a lag time between recovery in black areas of the country (did blacks during the Clinton era benefit by the Reagan recovery albeit later?)? Do the figures also include people already covered by welfare? Is there a correlation between black unemployed and the rise in single parent households?
Obviously the rate is way too high, which leads me to ask why, when so many blacks benefited from the Reagan recovery, others did not. Perhaps the answers include social dimensions rather than exclusively economic.
Dean,
Bill explained it very well. I don’t equate the commandment to care for the neighbor with the liberal social vision.
Dean,
I congratulate you on your most cogent, logical post to date. Thank you. Your post is the type of that can be the basis for genuine discussion. However, I disagree with the majority of your assumptions.
The Jewish solution to the “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” is not and cannot be normative for Christians. In the ancient formulation, the Incarnation had not occurred, and in the modern formulation, it ignores the Incarnation and the Fall. It therefore becomes a legalistic ethical system, not a profound and true theological morality.
Nor is the Jewish concept you quote about the after life at all relevant to Christians. The prevalent Orthodox teaching is that God does not punish or reward, He showers love on all. To the extent that we have sin, we can or cannot accept His love. At a certain point, His love (a consuming fire) burns the sinner so much, he can no longer stand anywhere near Our Lord. As Paul points out, we will all face that fire in which our sin and dross will be burned away. If we have built well (even a little bit) the part that is well built will withstand the flames.
IMO, God is profoundly and happily unjust as many of the parables point out. Therefore, I find your assertion that Jesus and the Gospel writers command us to “construct a society that delivers justice” is unsupportable. I have never read or heard the version of the Beatitude you quote as, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after justice”. I have always seen and heard righteousness (not justice); and “persecuted for righteousness sake.” Righteousness is far different than justice. Righteousness is more encompassing, more personal, and connotes a standard of conduct that is in submission to God which justice does not necessarily.
The ultimate problem with the “justice path” is that one always has to have people, institutions, or countries that are unjust. Since, in fact, all of us are unjust in a sinful way, who decides who is the really unjust? Further, despite the fact that the United States offers more economic opportunity, educational access, and upward social mobility than any other country in the world, we are always the “unjust” country. We have more wealth, power and prestige precisely because we are more just–that allows us to reap the combined benefits of political and economic freedom.
I could produce a laundry list similar to yours that would cast the Republicans in the same position as you place the Democrats, beginning with the crowning injustice in our country—abortion. However, we would then both be falling into the same trap, i.e., interpreting the Gospel in political terms rather than allowing it to teach us a higher truth.
As Christians we are called to form a merciful, forgiving community centered in the sharing of Our Lord’s Body and Blood. The transformation that results from submission to God’s love within such a community spills over into the rest of the culture.
In the end, justice is a man made concept founded primarily on a materialistic and legalistic understanding of man and society. Justice can never be the final goal for Christians. True justice is a by-product of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and the love of God.
Great post, Michael, and just to back you up with the original text, Matthew 5:6 does indeed bless “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (in Greek, dikaiosini) (transliterated). Also, this is the word consistently used in the Septuagint to translate SDQ, so we may be sure that our equation of the two words is consistent.
Michael and Bill: Thank you for your excellent responses. Michael’s explanation of God’s love as a consuming fire, makes a phrase I’ve spoken during the Communion prayer for years, but never quite understood correctly, clear for the first time. I agree with you that the most hellish aspect of hell will probably be the realization that one has arrrived there of their own free choice.
I think the discussion of Jewish theological concepts such as “tzedakah”, are appropriate because it is the from this tradition that Jesus emerged and within this context that he preached. Christ did not see himslf breaking from the teachings of Judaism but completeing them. (Matthew 5:17). While I would agree with Michael that Justice is an indirect result of lives lived in Chrisr, I would disagree that the Bible does not explicitly call for Justice. In Deuteronomy 24:17-21 farmers are instructed to leave the leftovers missed during the harvest for the poor. In Amos 2:7 Israel is warned that it will be punished because “they trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way..”
At your prompting I checked the wording of the Beatitudes in my Bible and it does say “righteousness” not “justice”, which is what the the on-line source I checked at work said. Some sources use the two words interchangeably, but as you suggest, that interchangeability is a matter for debate..
Much of my understanding of Christianity and Justice comes from the book “The Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus” by Thomas Cahill. Have you read it? Some of it is pretty basic, but his chapters on the history precceding the birth of Christ and the life of Saint Paul are really excellent and worth the price of the book. Cahill’s orientation is that of a liberal to moderate Catholic.
Perhaps it was wrong of me to meld a theological discussion with a diatribe against President Bush, but those are my feelings. It fills me with alarm, anger and disappointment to see America abandoning it’s committment to be a caring and compassionate nation and gradually yielding to the cold, cruel dictates of Social Darwinism. I don’t think a caring and compassionate society “just happens”. We have to make it happen. Entropy and drift are the enemies of goodness and order. Christianity is proactive, and our society should be as well.
For the record, the sources I use for technical Biblical discussions are the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the Nestle-Aland edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, all of which are part of BibleWorks 6, the most complete and useful (and certainly expensive!) Bible software in English. I refer to the RSV for English. It’s usually accurate, although it always bears comparision with the original. BTW, what was that online edition you mentioned?
You are entirely right in pointing out that God does call for justice. The book of Amos is the supreme example. Again, the question becomes “What does the Bible mean by justice?” not “What do we think the Bible means by justice?”
Haven’t read the Cahill book, although I’ve heard of him. Anyone else?
The first sentence of your last paragraph contains much wisdom. We all have strong feelings about things, but we must discuss issues in their proper contexts: political in a political context, religious in a religious context, and so on. Once we understand them on their own, THEN we can start looking at how they relate to each other. Trying to address them all at once leads only to confusion.
There are tendencies in America towards Social Darwinism, as I think there always will be in a free capitalist society. This doesn’t mean that all conservatives are greedy and selfish. Personally, I cherish the opportunity to do well for myself and my family, while remembering that I must use the prosperity that comes my way to help others as well as myself. Note that I do NOT think this means having the government do it for me (although certainly the government can have the potential to handle certain matters better than others can). A poor man can be just as greedy and selfish as a rich man. The difference lies in one’s reverence towards the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Or, to borrow from Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil runs not between men but down the middle of every man’s heart.
Excellent further reading on this subject can be found in the essays by Jay Budzizewski (sp?), “The Problem with Liberalism” and “The Problem with Conservatism,” and an essay on private property by… is it Wiegel, Fr. Hans? Or Kirk Russell? I can’t remember.
If there is any reason for hope following the horrific events in Beslan, it is the comforting role the Orthodox Church aapears to be playing and the large number of Russians who seem to be seeking out the church for spiriual healing.
The resurgence of the Orthodox Church in Russia after seventy years of harsh communist persecution is something I would like to hear more about. I have often thought that Orthodox churches in the United States might each consider “adopting” an Orthodox church in Russia and sending them a little assistance each year to help them get back on their feet.
Wow, Dean. Another well-written, constructive comment. Good for you.
In these troubled times, the Church will have (as it had in the past) the responsibility of providing the unique comfort and strength of the Gospel to those torn by terrorism. May the Lord give us clarity of mind and heart so that we can offer that comfort.
Dean is right when he asserts that disarming evil with love is the only real answer, however, I’m not sure he realizes what that means. IMO, it means the willingness and probability of crucifixion, i.e., cruel suffering, pain, and death all the while holding on to the love of God in one’s heart. Further, such love must not just be general in nature but specifically for the person who is inflicting such pain and death upon you. Ironically, if reports are correct, those among the Beslan terrorists who died because they did not want to kill the children may have saved themselves and who knows how many others.
Short of the authentic Christian solution, we are faced with the choice of confronting evil while being, to some extent or another, tainted by evil; OR allowing evil to be victorious. In a fallen creation, all of our actions, even if we are saints, are tainted with evil. That does not absolve us of the responsibility to confront evil while being as consistent as we can. We must endeavor to hold our political leaders to as high a standard as possible, realizing that they are as imperfect as we, realizing that the temptations to power for power’s sake will, at times, be irresistible for them. The reality of such temptations is why we pray for our leaders and our soldiers.
IMO, allowing the evil to destroy more and more lives, is not an option. We must be on guard that our military response does not succumb entirely to the same evil we are fighting. We must not allow our hearts to be further hardened against those we are fighting, but pray for them always. Remember, they too are created in the image and likeness of God and it is their own souls they are destroying as they seek to destroy us. “Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Defense of innocence should always be a worthy goal. We must pray for peace and love our enemies , but Christian men must be ready and willing to act to prevent evil whenever possible. Love does not mean “embrace unconditionally and excuse away evil behavior.” Love may mean killing a terrorist as he or she is about to slaughter innocent and defensless children. Unfortunately, I have never heard our church leaders take a strong stand on these very serious issues in our times. Far too many seem to completely shy away from such “strong” statements or anything even remotely “judgemental.” With so much confusion out there, I believe it needs to be said and clarified.
It’s important to LOVE, but how do we love, whom do we love more, and how Christian is that love. Is it a secular “love” that says accept and embrace anything and anyone, or is it the LOVE that Christ talked about: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13) I believe those that fight terrorism and destroy evil to protect innocence are showing forth precisely that kind of love. They are more Christian than many of us sinners. That’s why the hatred and disdain directed at our military from liberals in the Democratic party, academia, media, and other left-wing organizations (seen parading all over New York during the GOP convention) is misguided, wrong, and downright evil. They claim they want “peace”, but such “peace” would mean letting innocence pay the price. That is NOT Christian.
Very well said, Christian. We are commanded to love our neighbor. Does this mean that we “love” our violent, murderous neighbor who kills the innocent? Or does it mean that we love the innocent by defending them, while deferring ultimate judgment over the murderer to God? Perhaps the latter course is not perfectly righteous; OTOH, the former course is far less righteous.
Fighting evil with love doesn’t mean we wait until the terrorists literally have their guns pointed at our heads before we sit up and take notice of what is going on around us.
If we are following the teachings of Jesus Christ to help the poor and work for peace and justice then we are already working to minimize the conditions that breed terrorism before it even has a chance to develop. The Christian approach towards ending terrorism directed against Israel by Palestinian groups is not to kill a lot of Palestinians, but to address the issues of economic strangulation and geographic dispossesion before any more Palestinians are driven to the point of anger, hopelessness and desperation that lead to violent lashing out.
Father Jacobse said that if the Palestinians would only abandon resistance to the Israeli occupation and embrace peace, then they might be able to realize their dreams of an independent state. Isn’t that like saying to the Palestinians, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
By the way Christian, I have never seen or heard any “liberals in the Democratic party, academia, media, and other left-wing organizations (seen parading all over New York during the GOP convention)” disparage our brave and heroic US military servicemen and women. I have heard those groups criticize the abysmal and disasterous policy decisions of their commander-in-chief. One thousand Americans are dead and eight thousand gravely wounded because of the faulty assumptions and poor planning of the Bush administration. For you to mispresent the legitimate policy criticisms of loyal Americans like myself as unpatriotic and an attack on our troops is both deceitful and dishonest. Shame on you.
Dean, your assumptions are incorrect. Poverty, etc in and of themselves never have and never will breed crime, terrorism, etc. At best those conditions give a convienient rationalisation for giving into the passions that lead to depravity. Plus as has been noted often in other posts, the evagels of terrorism are not the poor and disadvantaged, it is those who have a certain degree of wealth and power already
Once again, your assumptions put all of the responsibility on the shoulders of U.S. government policy. It just is not so.
The Palestinians and indeed the entire Middle East could long ago come out of their poverty, but they prefer to hold onto their irrational hatred of Israel.
The precursors of terrorism are dependency and hatred. Both of those conditions have been created, fostered, and maintained by Arab Muslim governments so they will have plenty of cannon fodder to use against Israel. It is ironic that said cannon fodder is now being turned against those very same governements.
For a very poignant letter from a Marine in Iraq who gives those like me who have serious doubts about the war something to think about, click here .
Dean,
Shame on me? For speaking the truth? Oh well, I’ll take it as a sign that I have touched a nerve. If you have not said anything to besmirch and slander the US military you can calm down. However, if you would like, I would be more than happy to post quotes from members of all those groups that have insulted both America and our military. There are thousands of comments to choose from.
Lest we forget, wasn’t 9/11 the result of a billionaire Radical Islamic Terrorist that funded a group of middle-class Extremist Islamic murderers, who slaughtered and destroyed approximately 3,000 innocent men, women and children out of an insane, rabid, unjustified, and misdirected hate? Poverty and justice had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. By this standard there should be over 2 billion potential terrorists in the world. Illogical!
Dean, the Bush administration has promised to work for a Palestinian state if Arafat would renounce terrorism. He won’t. The only hope is if the Palestinians themselves resist the PLO, something he does not allow. Are you at all aware of what the PLO does to other Palestinians who they think betray their cause?
The suicide bombings are eroding the moral capital the Palestinians once held. Ask yourself why they would allow this. These people are not stupid. Ask yourself why the suicide bombers don’t come from the ranks of the dispossessed (The Myth That Poverty Breeds Terrorism) as you seem to think. Ask yourself why no children of Hamas are ever recruited as suicide bombers, and why Hamas leadership all educate their children in Europe. Ask yourself why recent spates of suicide bombings target Arab Christians.
Your assumption that terror arises from a poverty imposed by the policies of America is wrong. The poverty and oppression these people endure is largely by the hand of their own leadership. And accomodating their demands doesn’t change their tactics one bit, as the kidnapping and threatened beheading of the two French journalists prove.
You need to reread my criticism of OPF. Your notion of how the Gospel is applied is really no more than a rehash of Viet Nam peace activism (which has its intellectual origins in the appeasement movements of WWII) dressed in Christian terminology. The problem with it is that it ultimately leads to more killing and death, as the boat people and the killing fields of Cambodia proved.
Dean,
Why is justice so important to you and what do you really mean by that term? I, for one, don’t really want justice as “In the course of justice, none of us shall see salvation.” Mercy, I require.
In today’s worldly terms, justice all too often means that no one man or country shall have any more wealth than any other man or country. If such an inequity exisits the offending
“rich” man or country is obligated to give the “excess” wealth away.
That’s not Christian, its socialist
Michael: Justice need not mean socialism, just that a nation be mindful of the plight of its least fortunate members and take action to alleviate their suffering and prevent their exploitation. Economic justice can mean that all citizens have the opportunity to participate in our capitalist economy. Lack of access to higher education, health care and jobs result in de facto barriers to that participation and create injustice.
From a purely selfish, capitalist point of view you want to increase the numbers of middle class consumers with job skills and cash to spend because a strong middle class means more profit for everyone in the long run. Crony capitalism, widening economic disparities between rich and poor and reductions in government programs that help expand economic opportunity take us in the opposite direction, away from justice and towards injustice.
Sometimes employers will take money from their profits to train workers and improve their opportunities and skills. Do those employers feel robbed, cheated, pressurred into forced income redistribution? No, they realizes that it is in their best long term interest to invest in their human resources. Similarly, taxing the wealthy so that our nation can expand economic opportunity for those in the economic strata beneath them is not theft or “redistribution”, it is investment. The wealthy will be even wealthier in the long run if their companies they own or invest in can enjoy greatwer productivity and sales.
What does justice mean in a more theological sense? It means that we are not allowed to grind our neighbors into the dust in order to make ourselves richer. In the book of Amos the prophet warns Israel that it will be punished precisely for “grinding the poor into the dust.” The Sermon on the Mount certainly makes clear that God is mindful of the needs of the poor and blesses the poor and those who assist them. Lastly Matthew 25 (NOT a call for socialism, I’m not saying that) reminds us that Christ identifies with society’s losers so we must do all we can to address their needs.
Father Jacobse: There are obviously bad actors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and any description that focuses on the villians from one side but not the other provides an unbalanced view of events, my earlier comments included.
First the Arabs: There has always been a radical core in the Arab world who see the world through the prism of fundamentalism and jihad and are unwilling to accept the existence of the State of Israel. They are certainly the enemy of peace.
In making the case against the Palestinians you should also have cited Yasser Arafat’s refusal to accept the very generous settlement terms obtained by President Clinton at Camp David in 2000 from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. This rejection by Arafat must rank as one of the principle causes of the present conflict. It was a tragic decsion of historic proportions by a petty, narrow, small-minded man and thousands have paid for it with their lives. I don’t like Ariel Sharon, but no one did more to get him elected Israeli Prime Minister then Yasser Arafat.
Now for the Israelis: It is undeniable that there exists in the right-wing Likud Party a large segment that believe that the West Bank belongs to the land of Israel, and that the Palestinians should be made to abandon the land their families have lived on for twelve centuries and move to Jordan. “There is a Palestinian homeland, it’s called Jordan.” We hear this excuse for ethnic cleansing all the time, even from many Americans. I imagine that many in the Israeli right, who never wanted a Palestinian state to begin with, breathed a sigh of relief when Arafat stupidly rejected Baraks offer.
Although there is was a core of fundamentalist Palestinian rejectionists I personally believe that the great majority of Palestinians were more moderate and would have been happy to live in peace with the Israeelis as long as they could enjoy a measure of economic and physical security and political self-determination. The ham-handed, aggressive tactics of the Israelis have made sure this was not to be the case. The aggressive tactics of the Israelis have tended to discredit the Palsetinian moderates and bolster the case of the radicals.
Palestinians are subjected to humiliating treatment from Israelis at every turn, their towns are turned into defacto concentration camps, they are economically isolated forcing the population into unemployment and poverty, and innocent Palestinians are frequently made the target of indiscriminate gunfire by Israeli soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later. The murder of 23-year old American peace activist Rachel Corrie, an unarmed woman wearing a bright florecent vest, provides just a glimpse of the total disregard the Israelis have for the lives of Palestinians.
The Israeli policy of targeted assasination makes a mockery out of the rule of law and any pretence of a judicial system.
Even though the Israelis insisted that the Palestinians restore civil order before peace negotiations could resume one of the first Israeli actions at the onset of the intfada was to destroy Palestinian police stations and attack Palestinian policemen, the very people responsible for keeping order. If you insist on civil order as a condition for negotiating with your adversary, then provoke him into further acts of disorder, you create a self-perpetuating state of unrest that allows you to never have to come to terms. This was clearly Israel’s plan.
The continued Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements and the building of the infamous security wall (ruled to be illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Hague) deep within Palestinian land represent a deliberate effort by Israel to make the creation of a Palestinian state practically impossible. If the Israeli land grab continues much longer there won’t be enough contiguous territory left for a sovereign Palestian state to be viable. You can’t make a sovereign state out of a patch of land here and a patch of land there.
The statement by the Bush administration that it desires a independent Palestinian state is widely and correctly seen as cynical and insincere. Key members of the Bush foreign policy team, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglans Feith have close ties to the right-wing Israeli Likud party. They are currently being investigated by the FBI for giving US secrets to AIPAC (the American Israeli Political Action Committee) to pass on to Israeli intellegence. If Bush was serious about the creation of a Palestinian state he would call for an immediate halt to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and a halt to construction of the illegal Israeli security wall on Palestinian land.
Thanks for the primer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it doesn’t address the points about Palestinian terror toward Israeli civilians raised earlier.
What actually counts as a terrorist attack?
It seems to me that attacks by Palestinians on civilians in Israel are clearly terrorist attacks, but that attacks on the Israeli military, either inside or outside of Israel would not be. Also, it seems that attacks on Israeli settlers would not really be terrorist attacks either. In other words, it seems to me that civilians have a right to expel both military and civilian personnel occupying their turf. Unless I’m missing something, these would be more akin to self-defense than to terrorism. In other words, if the Cubans invaded and occupied Florida, what actions would Floridians be justified in doing in order to end the occupation?
Legitimate resistance in war time has always viewed the occupying military force and to some extent collaborators as appropriate targets. Civilian targets have been considered out of bounds. For instance, kibutz since they are armed, fortified outposts may indeed be legitimate targets of a true resistance, while cafes and civilian buses would not be.
Of course the real issue in Israel is whether or not the Palestinians are a legitimate people and whether Israel is an occupying force or is just defending itself from illegitimate aggression by hoodlums prepared and nurtured as cannon fodder by hostile governments who are intent on the total destruction of the nation of Israel. In any case, IMO the Palestinians have never once back off offically from their stated desire to “drive the Jews into the sea”.
It is interesting that those who now most adamantly urge us to submit all or a portion of our own sovereignty to the UN are frequently the first to question the legitimacy of the nation of Israel–a creation of the United Nations, an organization now rife with anti-semitism.
Dean,
I’ve been pondering your last post on justice. You seem to use the word to connote fairness and it can certainly mean that. However, the word itself also carries the unmistakable connotation of wrongdoing, judgement, and punishment. In the socio-political applications the assumption is consonant with my earlier post, i.e., those who have wealth, power, etc. should be force to give up their “excess” because having “excess” is wrong.
IMO, the Scriptures are not much concerned with justice, in fact they command us to go beyond justice, to transcend it. The predominant scriptural theme is mercy, compassion and voluntary self-sacrifice for the good of others. There is the strong suggestion that followers of Jesus should voluntarily impoverish themselves and not even be concerned with the normal day to day physical needs and requirements. Many saints and monastics follow that suggestion. Certainly, we are commanded to care for our brothers and sisters materially as well as spiritually, even if we do not take the path of voluntary poverty.
The real problem with justice in a cultural, socio-political context is that it often seeks to achieve absolute equity between all people, not just in terms of wealth, but social status, power, and even creativity. Aside from the fact that such perfect equity is not achievable, it ignores the hierarchical nature of creation and the entropy necessary to allow anything to grow and develop.
On a personal note, while it is tempting for me to think that if life were just (fair), I’d be far better off than I am, happier, etc., when I really look at it, I’d probably be an unemployed, homeless bum, if I were still alive.
From a Christian standpoint, many of the modern day “justice mongers” are infected with the Marxist oriented “liberation theology” and the heresy of the self-perfectibility of man in our earthly life. Such infection makes adhering to the justice tenets dangerous for us, no matter how superficially attractive the rhetoric is. Justice in reality is a legal term, not a social term. The attempt to transfer the legalistic concept of justice to the social sphere is certainly not Orthodox in content. In fact, it probably has its theological root in the Protestant concept of salvation, which is problematic for we Orthodox.
On a broader scale, most of the modern social movements have such unacceptable philosophical and theological foundations that they make it impossible for Orthodox Christians of true worship to participate–at least this Orthodox Christian. A dilemma
Note 15: Jim Holman:
If Arabs have the right to expel Israelis settlers who are living on what you call Palestinian “turf.” Do the Israelis have a complimentary right to expel Arabs from Israel? Isn’t it true that Arabs are not barred from citizenship in Israel? Why is is wrong for a Jew to live in the West Bank but legitimate for an Arab to live in Israel?
Are we going along with the idea that non-Muslims are acting in an immoral manner if they exclude Muslims, but that Muslims have the moral right to discriminate against non-Muslims. Isn’t it correct that under sharia law, no non-Muslims may hold authority over a Muslim. Isn’t discrimination against non-Muslims part of the so-called “religious” beliefs of Islam?
In the end are we supposed to tolerate intolerance?
Michael Baumann: We can understand why the concept of Justice is so central and intrinsic to our faith when we consider the theological dilemma of the Jews in the last few centuries before Christ. The Jews struggled with the question of why good people are made to suffer while the wicked often enjoy lives of comfort and ease. They realized that the answer to their question was that in the Afterlife a Just God will reward the good and righteous and punish the evil and disobedient. In other words God identifies with the good people who are made to suffer during their earthly existence and will be their avenger and redeemer in the afterlife
God did not desire that good people be made to suffer on earth, as a condition of their heavenly reward, but expected all good people to ease the suffering of their neighbors. From books of the Old Testament the Jews identified 613 religious duties, or Mitzvot, that people obedient to God must observe. Prominent among these Mitzvot, or duties, is “Tzedekah”.
“Tzedakah” is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call “charity” in English: giving aid, assistance and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. However, the nature of tzedakah is very different from the idea of charity. The word “charity” suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. The word “tzedakah” is derived from the Hebrew root Tzade-Dalet-Qof, meaning righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.
Source Judaism 101: http://www.jewfaq.org/tzedakah.htm
The teachings of Jesus Christ are entirely consistent with the concept of Tzadekah. In the Beatitudes Christ reaffirms that God will be the champion of the suffering and downtrodden and that He expect those who are not among the sufferring and downtrodden to be his agents in assisting their less fortunate neighbors. Blessed are those who suffer (the poor of spirit, the hungry, those who mourn) and blessed are those who help them (the merciful, the peacemakers, those who who hunger and thirst for justice, those who who suffer persecution for justice sake). It is up to us to make sure that “God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Helping the poor is not something we do for extra credit, it is something we must do to even pass the test.
Because we desire justice for the poor in accordance with God’s will, expressed to us clearly and directly by His prophets and His Son, we want to construct a society that delivers that justice. This doesn’t mean equality of outcome or result, as some suggest, but equality of opportunity. We are not asking the fast in the race to halt for the slow, but for everyone to begin the race at the same starting line, wearing the same pair of running shoes, beginning at the sound of same starting gun.
Clearly in America today everyone is not starting the race at the same starting line. Those who do not have access to a good education are pushed back, those who do not have access to health care are pushed back, those who cannot find jobs that pay a living wage are being pushed back.
For those who want to see God’s Justice triumph the economic trends are disturbing. Poverty rates are climbing, the number of Americans without health care are increasing, the cost of higher education is soaring and the gulf between rich and poor widening. The elderly who worked hard their whole lives have seen greater and greater portions of their meager fixed incomes going to pay for Medicare and expensive prescription drugs. We are robbing the social security trust fund to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest one percent. We’ve taken 100,000 policemen off the streets and armed the criminals with semi-automatic weapons. The poor and those without economic opportunity are lured into the military and sent to fight and die for the greater profit of Halliburton and Exxon.
I believe that the policies of the Republican party have moved us much farther away from the establishment of God’s justice in our nation, which is why I will be voting out of religious conviction for John Kerry this November.
Whenever I hear the words “construct a society”, I see a battalion of self-assured ideologues ready to hammer their vision of social justice into the heads of everyone else. Watch out.
The standard talking points (poverty, welfare, insurance) are hot button issues but need more analysis before we jump on the reconstructionist bandwagon, and certainly before we declare that such reconstruction is “God’s will.”
Here are two essays:
The Data on Poverty and Health Insurance You’re Not Reading, and:
Understanding Poverty and Economic Inequality in the United States.
Michael Novak writes about the progress made by Blacks during the Reagan era in Reagan and the Poor. Drawing from census data Novak writes in part:
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Altogether, Reaganomics created some 19 million new jobs. Between the end of 1980 and the end of 1988, black Americans alone got 2.4 million of these new jobs. The numbers of the black employed jumped from 9 million to 11.4 million in that short period — a jump of more than 25 percent.
Black income jumped, too. In constant 1988 dollars, the total annual income earned by all 30 million U.S. blacks together rose from $191 billion at the end of 1980, to $259 billion by the end of 1988. That sum was larger than the GDP of all but ten nations in the world.
The number of black families earning more than $50,000 per year much more than doubled, from 392,000 in 1982 to 936,000 in 1988. The median salary/wage of black males increased from $9,678 in 1980 to $14,537 in 1988 (in current dollars). Median means half earned more than that, half less, so more than half of all black males improved their income by more than 50 percent.
The bad news during the Reagan years was that the number of single-parent black families continued rising, as it had since 1960, this time from 1.9 million to 2.2 million families. Government, of course, does not mandate this most personal of choices, and except indirectly can do little to affect it. Nonetheless, single female-headed households have long been the fastest growing cause of poverty. In these years, they caused the measure of income inequality (the gini coefficient) to soar far higher (.450) among blacks than among whites (.382).
Correcting this growth of female-headed households awaited the next burst of progressive politics, once again on the part of Republicans. Democrats strove mightily to protect the status quo on this front until Bill Clinton, to his credit, at last supported Welfare Reform in 1996.
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Father Jacobse: Thank you for your reply. I would agree that some government programs designed to help lift people out of poverty have not always been successful and that statistical measures of economic conditions require constant fine-tuning. But it is a unsustainable leap of logic to infer that because some government programs are unsuccessful, they are all unsuccesful, or because one measure hasn’t been updated to include some new aspect of the economy, all economic measures are untrustworthy and without value.
I would agree with you that some of the tax reductions made by the Reagan administration were helpful to the economy because they lowered taxes from very high levels to moderate levels. Again it is an untenable leap of logic to suggest that reducing tax levels from moderate to very low will produce the same economic effect. (Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is currently at its lowest level since 1959). The economic utility and wisdom of tax cuts may be called into question when they impair the ability to nation to make needed investments in it’s people and infrastructure and lead to rising, unsustainable debt levels that burden future generations.
I would like to hear your thoughts on the Bush tax cuts for the rich in the context of our responsibility as Christians to care for our neighbors. These tax cuts for the very wealthy represent for me one of the most egregious examples of theologically and fiscally irresponsible policy by the Bush administration and the Republican party.
Taking into account the record budget deficits, the expensive war in Iraq and costs of homeland security, sluggish job growth, increasing lack of access to health care do you think providing tax cuts for people with annual incomes of over a million dollars was the best uses of this nation’s tax revenue?
Do the teachings of Christ dictate that it a greater priority for us to make sure billionaires like Bill Gates get a tax cut, or to fund programs that help lift people out of poverty?
Note 19: Dean, the first half of your post is really quite good. Your discussion of SDQ is a good one, and you reminded me of Jurgen Moltmann’s assertion (I’m paraphrasing slightly) that “The poor exist to give the rich a chance to be saved.”
However, and unfortunately, your perspective is still limited by your modern liberal ideals, which you are uncritically reading into the Bible (the technical term for this is “eisegesis”). A truly exegetical approach (one which reads “out of” the Bible) seeks to discern the Bible’s own logic, without reference to extra-Biblical ideas no matter how attractive or seemingly obvious. You go wrong precisely at the point Fr. Hans mentioned, when you connect God’s injunction that we help the poor with the modern idea that to do this we must reengineer society. The Bible in no way claims that mankind can establish a truly righteous society. It claims, rather, the opposite, that mankind is sinful (see Romans 1) and that only God can make righteous. The true focus, therefore, is hearing God’s will and doing it, not imagining that the Bible is a mandate for a particular political and economical approach. The truly righteous society, as expressed clearly and directly by His prophets and His Son, is the New Jerusalem of God (see Isaiah and Galatians), called in the Gospels the “Kingdom of God,” which is established by God, not by man. To attempt to replace God’s kingdom with a “righteous kingdom of man” is not only impossible according to the Bible’s perspective, but idolatrous. Rather, we wait and hope and work for the day when God establishes His own Kingdom.
Your error is in trying to claim that your ideology is in line with God’s, that God supports it. This is simply not true. God supports his own ideology. You need to alter your perspective so that your ideology is not on the same level as God’s will as expressed in Scripture, just as much as conservatives who make the same mistake of equating their ideologies with God’s will need as well to correct their perspective.
There’s nothing wrong with our holding political beliefs of various kinds, but if we are faithful Christians we must submit those beliefs to God’s Word, not vice-versa. I am afraid that the “religious conviction” according which you want to cast your vote is in fact an idolatrous one, since it depends as much on your belief in the liberal idea of “building God’s Kingdom for Him” as it does on your authentic faith.
Fr. Hans writes: “Between the end of 1980 and the end of 1988, black Americans alone got 2.4 million of these new jobs. The numbers of the black employed jumped from 9 million to 11.4 million in that short period — a jump of more than 25 percent.”
Sure, but you have to remember that the population is growing during that period as well. So just the raw number of employed in only one aspect. If look at the unemployment rate for blacks during that time period, here’s what you get:
1980 – 13.2
1981 – 14.6
1982 – 17.3
1983 – 21.3
1984 – 17.1
1985 – 15.0
1986 – 14.4
1987 – 13.9
1988 – 12.0
These figures are from the BLS web site, which looks like where Novak was getting his employment figures as well. Overall, there was a drop in black unemployment of a little more than 1 percent during the period in question, with much higher unemployment mid-term. Under “Clintonomics” the unemployment rate for blacks went from 14.1 percent to 8.3 percent — a drop of almost 5 percent, with a high of only 14.7 percent in 1993.
Here too the raw numbers need more precision. Are the unemployed the same people, or do different people move into unemployment while others move out? Is there a lag time between recovery in black areas of the country (did blacks during the Clinton era benefit by the Reagan recovery albeit later?)? Do the figures also include people already covered by welfare? Is there a correlation between black unemployed and the rise in single parent households?
Obviously the rate is way too high, which leads me to ask why, when so many blacks benefited from the Reagan recovery, others did not. Perhaps the answers include social dimensions rather than exclusively economic.
Dean,
Bill explained it very well. I don’t equate the commandment to care for the neighbor with the liberal social vision.
Dean,
I congratulate you on your most cogent, logical post to date. Thank you. Your post is the type of that can be the basis for genuine discussion. However, I disagree with the majority of your assumptions.
The Jewish solution to the “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” is not and cannot be normative for Christians. In the ancient formulation, the Incarnation had not occurred, and in the modern formulation, it ignores the Incarnation and the Fall. It therefore becomes a legalistic ethical system, not a profound and true theological morality.
Nor is the Jewish concept you quote about the after life at all relevant to Christians. The prevalent Orthodox teaching is that God does not punish or reward, He showers love on all. To the extent that we have sin, we can or cannot accept His love. At a certain point, His love (a consuming fire) burns the sinner so much, he can no longer stand anywhere near Our Lord. As Paul points out, we will all face that fire in which our sin and dross will be burned away. If we have built well (even a little bit) the part that is well built will withstand the flames.
IMO, God is profoundly and happily unjust as many of the parables point out. Therefore, I find your assertion that Jesus and the Gospel writers command us to “construct a society that delivers justice” is unsupportable. I have never read or heard the version of the Beatitude you quote as, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after justice”. I have always seen and heard righteousness (not justice); and “persecuted for righteousness sake.” Righteousness is far different than justice. Righteousness is more encompassing, more personal, and connotes a standard of conduct that is in submission to God which justice does not necessarily.
The ultimate problem with the “justice path” is that one always has to have people, institutions, or countries that are unjust. Since, in fact, all of us are unjust in a sinful way, who decides who is the really unjust? Further, despite the fact that the United States offers more economic opportunity, educational access, and upward social mobility than any other country in the world, we are always the “unjust” country. We have more wealth, power and prestige precisely because we are more just–that allows us to reap the combined benefits of political and economic freedom.
I could produce a laundry list similar to yours that would cast the Republicans in the same position as you place the Democrats, beginning with the crowning injustice in our country—abortion. However, we would then both be falling into the same trap, i.e., interpreting the Gospel in political terms rather than allowing it to teach us a higher truth.
As Christians we are called to form a merciful, forgiving community centered in the sharing of Our Lord’s Body and Blood. The transformation that results from submission to God’s love within such a community spills over into the rest of the culture.
In the end, justice is a man made concept founded primarily on a materialistic and legalistic understanding of man and society. Justice can never be the final goal for Christians. True justice is a by-product of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and the love of God.
Great post, Michael, and just to back you up with the original text, Matthew 5:6 does indeed bless “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (in Greek, dikaiosini) (transliterated). Also, this is the word consistently used in the Septuagint to translate SDQ, so we may be sure that our equation of the two words is consistent.
Michael and Bill: Thank you for your excellent responses. Michael’s explanation of God’s love as a consuming fire, makes a phrase I’ve spoken during the Communion prayer for years, but never quite understood correctly, clear for the first time. I agree with you that the most hellish aspect of hell will probably be the realization that one has arrrived there of their own free choice.
I think the discussion of Jewish theological concepts such as “tzedakah”, are appropriate because it is the from this tradition that Jesus emerged and within this context that he preached. Christ did not see himslf breaking from the teachings of Judaism but completeing them. (Matthew 5:17). While I would agree with Michael that Justice is an indirect result of lives lived in Chrisr, I would disagree that the Bible does not explicitly call for Justice. In Deuteronomy 24:17-21 farmers are instructed to leave the leftovers missed during the harvest for the poor. In Amos 2:7 Israel is warned that it will be punished because “they trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way..”
At your prompting I checked the wording of the Beatitudes in my Bible and it does say “righteousness” not “justice”, which is what the the on-line source I checked at work said. Some sources use the two words interchangeably, but as you suggest, that interchangeability is a matter for debate..
Much of my understanding of Christianity and Justice comes from the book “The Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus” by Thomas Cahill. Have you read it? Some of it is pretty basic, but his chapters on the history precceding the birth of Christ and the life of Saint Paul are really excellent and worth the price of the book. Cahill’s orientation is that of a liberal to moderate Catholic.
Perhaps it was wrong of me to meld a theological discussion with a diatribe against President Bush, but those are my feelings. It fills me with alarm, anger and disappointment to see America abandoning it’s committment to be a caring and compassionate nation and gradually yielding to the cold, cruel dictates of Social Darwinism. I don’t think a caring and compassionate society “just happens”. We have to make it happen. Entropy and drift are the enemies of goodness and order. Christianity is proactive, and our society should be as well.
For the record, the sources I use for technical Biblical discussions are the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the Nestle-Aland edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, all of which are part of BibleWorks 6, the most complete and useful (and certainly expensive!) Bible software in English. I refer to the RSV for English. It’s usually accurate, although it always bears comparision with the original. BTW, what was that online edition you mentioned?
You are entirely right in pointing out that God does call for justice. The book of Amos is the supreme example. Again, the question becomes “What does the Bible mean by justice?” not “What do we think the Bible means by justice?”
Haven’t read the Cahill book, although I’ve heard of him. Anyone else?
The first sentence of your last paragraph contains much wisdom. We all have strong feelings about things, but we must discuss issues in their proper contexts: political in a political context, religious in a religious context, and so on. Once we understand them on their own, THEN we can start looking at how they relate to each other. Trying to address them all at once leads only to confusion.
There are tendencies in America towards Social Darwinism, as I think there always will be in a free capitalist society. This doesn’t mean that all conservatives are greedy and selfish. Personally, I cherish the opportunity to do well for myself and my family, while remembering that I must use the prosperity that comes my way to help others as well as myself. Note that I do NOT think this means having the government do it for me (although certainly the government can have the potential to handle certain matters better than others can). A poor man can be just as greedy and selfish as a rich man. The difference lies in one’s reverence towards the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Or, to borrow from Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil runs not between men but down the middle of every man’s heart.
Excellent further reading on this subject can be found in the essays by Jay Budzizewski (sp?), “The Problem with Liberalism” and “The Problem with Conservatism,” and an essay on private property by… is it Wiegel, Fr. Hans? Or Kirk Russell? I can’t remember.
Ten Conservative Principles by Russel Kirk.
China’s Break from Serfdom by Kate Zhou.
The Problem with Conservatism by J. Budziszewski.
The Problem with Liberalism by J. Budziszewski