From Bach to Hitler

 

I just finished reading In The Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. It’s the story of an American family in Germany during the 1930’s as Hitler came to power.

Any reader of this story or student of this time in history asks why a civilized nation like Germany allowed such a depraved group of leaders to take over their country. How did the country that produced  Bach and Beethoven produce Hitler and the Holocaust?

One senses that citizens, weary of war and economic hardship (as a result of World War I), allowed this charismatic speaker to hypnotize them into believing that he could lead them out of their difficulties. And if he told them that a particular group (the Jews) was responsible for those difficulties, how easy to believe this simple lie. As the losers in World War I, the Germans chafed at their humiliation. When Hitler appealed to their pride by suggesting they were, in fact, a superior people, they wanted to believe him.

A reasonable people surrendered their reason to anger and pride.

Titanic, Where Victorians Meet the Age of Aquarius

 

We’re much more realistic about racism and class prejudice these days, as the finely-crafted epic Titanic shows. Revived for the 100th anniversary of the big ship’s sinking, the 1997 movie appalls us with its portrayal of the disdain the upper class showed for  the working class. Yet we take in stride the liaison between the Victorian heroine with a working class man she has just met. Granted, the woman’s fiancé was a stuffy jerk, and she was being forced into a marriage she didn’t want, and the other man had saved her life. Still, the affair was straight out of our current age, totally alien to the atmosphere the movie successfully portrayed elsewhere.

Other current films have followed the same pattern, sometimes indulging our current taste for gore and violence.

A movie where romantic attraction stays out of the bedroom is so quaint as to be almost counter-cultural. A few movies have won high acclaim with little violence or permissiveness, often based on classic novels with strong characters. Apparently, if the characters are intriguing enough, such movies can be profitable. Violence and permissiveness don’t have to be as common as movie popcorn.

In past decades, it was typical for the U.S. Calvary to be heroes and Indians the villains. Today we’re more realistic about that era, just as the Titanic portrayed a more realistic class prejudice.

The bar is higher. Mediocre movies can succeed if they incorporate a certain amount of R-rated scenes, but a movie without them must be superior.

Waiting for the Alleluias

 

We did not clap during the Good Friday concert at my church last night. It was a somber concert, about grief over the loss of loved ones, but with a tinge of hope that wove a few colors though the black tapestry. We left silently and went home.

Tomorrow morning, God willing, we will enter the sanctuary, black gauze veiling the windows, as quietly as we left it on Good Friday. We will sit as the children gather around the one light in front, and the pastor will begin the story about Jesus and his death. Then suddenly (I never remember quite how), will come the cry, “He is risen!”

 

We will pull the black from the windows, the lights will come on, and the brass instruments and the violins and the organ will blaze the message, “He is risen!” and we will sing our alleluias for the first time in forty days.

For two thousand years, men and women and children have celebrated this event. It is for us, as Cardinal Donald Wuerl said yesterday on the Morning Joe television program, based on fact, the fact of redemption and sacrifice and the conquest of death and our own propensity to sin and harm our fellows.

We need Easter this year, in the midst of hate and doubt and secular power. But then, we have always needed it.

Living in a Connected World

In this connected world, when Arab revolutions threaten, gas prices in the United States rise because of uncertainty. An actual disruption of oil shipments from the Middle East would cause an even steeper rise in prices.

If the Euro currency collapses, American banks will be affected, and so will American exporters and American jobs.

As China’s middle classes increase, they will demand the same living standards as American middle classes, raising the price for oil and other commodities.

If drought causes famine in Somalia, the possibility grows that militant Islamists will take over the country, with the potential for bases that could foment terrorism elsewhere, including in the United States.

If corruption persists in Middle Eastern countries, the likelihood increases that citizens will bring in governments, either by revolution or election, directed by Islamists. Islamists often have a reputation of concern for the less well off, as well as less susceptibility to corruption. The new governments may or may not be friendly to U.S. interests.

What happens in distant places affects us, yet Americans remain woefully ignorant of other countries and cultures. A 2006 poll of young adult Americans conducted for the National Geographic Education Foundation, for example, found that six in ten respondents couldn’t find Iraq on a map, even though Americans had been fighting in the country since 2003.

Our elected officials make decisions based in large part on the expressed opinions of voters. If those opinions are not well-informed, the decisions probably won’t be, either.

Distant Thunder: When Religions Compete

 

One of the underlying themes of my latest novel, Distant Thunder, as in my other stories, is the place of faith in a world where religious views are either abandoned or seized with fervor. It is a time when religions increasingly compete and sometimes cause suffering.

Distant Thunder can be read as a love story between two people no longer young who carry baggage from past choices. On another level, the characters, of varying shades of religious conviction, deal with other issues. They struggle to define faith, or even to accept faith, within a time that asks if faith does more harm than good.

Though Americans, they see domestic issues of their country through a global lens. The main protagonists are Christian, because I know more about Christians, being one myself. Yet they are interested in other religions, foreign affairs, and current events, areas not usually a subject of this type of fiction. Like characters from my previous novels, they are rooted in time and place because their struggles are the struggles of a particular  time and place: American Christians since the end of World War II to the post 9/11 era.

It is against this background that the characters change and mature in ways they would not in a purely domestic setting. Christianity is, after all, a world religion.

Established versus Servant

 

The young United States struggled with an experiment. The first change (amendment) to the new Constitution forbade Congress to make laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Some feared the nation would become godless. Almost every European nation (from which the country had its beginnings)  recognized one religion as the only valid one, some branch of the Christian faith. Other parts of the world also tended to respect one religious tradition above others, Hinduism or Islam or Confucianism or Shintoism.

To the surprise of many, Christians grew in number in the new nation and influenced its culture. Many thought of the country as”Christian,” almost as though the nation had produced an established religion, as in Europe. The Christian way became blurred, civil religion often equated with God’s spiritual kingdom.

Christians are called to be a prophetic voice. Sometimes people will listen, as in the early years in this country, and sometimes not. The Old Testament prophet Jonah fought God’s call to preach to Ninevah, his enemy. Amazingly, when Jonah finally carried out his calling and preached, the enemy listened and repented.

James, an early disciple of Jesus, also was called. Many listened to him, but he made enemies, too, and became the first Christian martyr. Interesting that James should be the first martyr. His mother had wanted her son to have a special place in Jesus’ kingdom, probably expecting it to be a political kingdom. Jesus pointed out to James and the other disciples how the Gentiles lord it over their subjects. His disciples, however, were to be different. They were to be servants.

Always, we are called to be a remnant voice, to value servanthood, not become entangled and ensnared by a quest after power “as the Gentiles do.”

Religion: As American as Apple Pie

 

The first religious controversies in the new United States erupted between the “established” churches and the more spontaneous religious persuasions: Methodists, Baptists, and others. If the colony or the state didn’t have an established church, many religious citizens supposed, a godless society would result.

Out of the controversy came the First Amendment to the Constitution which forbade Congress to  set up an established religion. Americans were free to choose, without coercion. No persuasion was to be favored by the government.

Amazingly, the citizens of this country with no government-sponsored church, knowing a hodgepodge of differing persuasions, became more religious than Europe with its established churches.

A few Jews were present in America from early days. The first synagogue was established in Rhode Island in 1763.  Discrimination existed against Jewish groups in certain times and places, but the country never suffered the pogroms and organized persecution of the Old World. More Jews fled to North America for freedom and safety and founded thriving communities.

Catholics began coming in large numbers in the nineteenth century, eventually becoming the largest individual religious denomination in the U.S. Irish Catholics, particularly, were discriminated against at first but soon became part of the mainstream, as evidenced by the election of John Kennedy as the first Catholic president in 1960.

Now Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus have come. Atheists, agnostics, and those with no religious persuasion grow in numbers also. (See previous blog, Religious Freedom: Going Deeper.)

If past history is any indication, competition sharpens religious conviction over the long haul. Though some drop away, others rediscover the core of their faith and with it, renewal.

The Downside of Literacy

 

Most Americans can read, can understand the written word. This ability is so commonplace that we forget how revolutionary it is. For most of humankind’s history, people knew only what they heard. Information was passed by word of mouth, was not easily verified, and was not retained in any permanent form. Most information was local.

The ability to share information by pieces of paper (and now electronically) meant that ideas could spread, could cross miles and even continents. Written words could be retained indefinitely and studied years later. Knowledge could be accumulated.

Along with such a blessing comes responsibility. We need wisdom as we read, watch TV, or study computer content. In our entertainment-driven society, the purpose of advertisements and political debates can appear as amusing pleasures, like a comedy sound bite or a  sitcom. The fact that much of our information now comes as a performance reinforces the idea of entertainment.

Geoffrey Crowther, writing in 1944 towards the end of World II, said: “The enormous development in the technique of propaganda and advertising, in the power to sway the minds of people in the mass, plays straight into the hands of the would-be dictator or any other manipulator who, for large ends or small, seeks to muddy the waters of democracy.” (Reprinted in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2012, page 38.)

The only defense against manipulation, whether for purposes of selling a product or selling a political candidate or selling an idea, is to read and listen responsibly, with reason overriding emotion.

Literacy without responsibility is dangerous.

 

Religion and Government

How much should religion and government interact? This issue plays out in the small North African country of Tunisia, a majority Islamic country where I lived from 1997 to 2000.

Tunisians began the “Arab spring” by ousting their secularist dictator little more than a year ago. In January they held their first fair election in years. A mildly Islamist party won the majority of the vote.

The leader of the new government, Hamadi Jebali, spent years in prison for his opposition to the government of dictator Ben Ali, much of it in harsh solitary confinement. Now he’s the popularly elected head of the Tunisian government.

Tunisia has a large, educated middle class, many of whom have made plain that they do not want repressive religious laws. Jebali has indicated his understanding of their apprehension. His party has formed the current government with two secularist parties.

The results in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, and other countries of North Africa and the Middle East follow the ouster of regimes which were secular but often brutal against their opponents. Now that more power is assumed by the people, how will democracy and religion play their roles?

Some American Christians desire more religion in their government. How will church and state in this country compare to mosque and state in Tunisia?

Thoughts On Themes As My Latest Book Is Published

The main protagonists in my stories suffer the death of loved ones, marriage breakups, career stress, romantic relationships, and challenges to childhood dreams. Deeper conflicts underlie these issues. Usually the characters are Americans of the Christian persuasion. But their conventional Christianity often is jarred by sojourns in countries influenced by other religions.

After the characters experience their faith as a minority religion, they can no longer accept it simply because it was a part of their upbringing. When they understand the unique message of Christianity, they return home stronger in this faith than when they left.

However, they remain, in a sense, in exile. Their conventional religion has become more subversive, standing in contrast to the materialism and self-centeredness they perceive “at  home.”

In both Singing in Babylon and Searching for Home, the protagonists live for a time in countries where another faith is predominant. In Quiet Deception, the background is the relentless change in the United States during the decades following World War II. This change is noted by one of the characters, a Vietnam veteran.

Distant Thunder, just released, happens in contemporary America, much of it in that iconic American experience of a journey west. But three of the characters have foreign experiences which contrast with those of the fourth, who’s never been out of the United States. One character recounts her experiences in the North African country of Algeria, once the domain of early church leaders like Augustine, but bereft of all but a few Christians today. “Nothing’s left but ruins,” another character agrees, referring to the ruins of ancient churches. Not persecution someone points out, “more like the Christian community just faded away.”

Perhaps by living “subversively,” not in violent subversion, but in the subversive life of love, they will be part of a renewal and prevent a similar fading away of their own faith communities.

Merely Chance Or A Work in Progress?

 

Does our universe operate on chance only? One sperm out of millions finds an egg. A tornado devastates one town and spares another a few miles away. Yet we have something called the laws of probability. We can’t predict certain things for an individual, but we can predict them for whole populations.

Some cancers, which a generation or so ago appeared to operate on blind chance, we now find are influenced by whether we smoke or by what we eat. The genes we inherit, presumably by “chance” exert influence, but we have some power to mitigate them. As we have more knowledge, we may push back “chance” even further. We may find that we have more responsibility than we supposed to make right choices.

Suppose a purposeful love is the reason we’re here? A love the Greeks called agape love, not confused with romantic love or friendship love or the attraction someone expresses when they say “I love chocolate.”

It’s a love that begins when we’re loved and thus able to respond with love to the one who values us, then we’re able to love others. We don’t love others better than ourselves; we love them as we love ourselves.

But we can’t begin it without being loved first. Something happens, something that begins with love. Our societies and our personal lives seem created to function through love. When we don’t have love, our societies and our individual lives crash.

Cultural Competition

Ethnic, political, and religious differences divide much of the world today, including the United States.  Global travel and instant communication force local lifestyles and centuries-old beliefs to compete with other lifestyles and beliefs.

Travelers before the modern era took months to travel from one area to another. Most people did not travel at all or know anyone except from their local villages and most could not read. When Americans began trekking across their continent, they traveled for weeks and sometimes months. First trains and then paved roads cut the time to days. Then planes shortened trips to hours.

Today, electronic communication means that Americans can instantly touch base with others all over the world. What happens in Mumbai, India, is available immediately on a computer or a cell phone in Chicago.

We are bombarded with other cultures and belief systems. Our own local group no longer shields us. The Iron Curtain, barricading the Soviet world from the West, fell with the advent of modern communication. Radio signals could penetrate it. Now the Internet, despite the efforts of some governments to block it, reaches savvy young people in most countries of the world.

American Christians no longer inhabit a culture influenced mostly by Christian beliefs. We share space with Hinduism, Islam, atheism, and a host of other world views. How do we react to this new world where we must again compete, as the early Christians did in the days of the Roman Empire?

How did those Christians operate? They traveled the Roman world from Arabia to the British Isles, but they did not force their views. They debated in the marketplaces, and they lived as examples that drew others to their faith.

 

Mayhem, Gore, and Torture

What does our current appetite for violence-laden entertainment do to our society? Well-adjusted individuals may leave the theater or put down the book and go on with their lives and enjoy their roles as spouse, friend, parent, employee, or whatever.

But what of those of us who are not well adjusted? What of children living in dysfunctional families? Teenagers facing a world of confusing values?  Veterans returning from serving in a war zone and struggling to deal with horrors they knew there? Civilians, such as the emergency rescuer I read about, who needed counseling after witnessing a terrible accident?

The atmosphere of the present day leads to a revisionist portrayal even of literature written in the past. Take Sherlock Holmes as an example. A presenter at a conference that I attended introduced us to Conan Doyle’s sleuth as the cerebral detective. Readers are enticed into the story world, the speaker suggested. Violence is seldom used. The pace is not hyperactive. Relationships draw us in.

I thought I would find these qualities in a current movie resurrecting the Sherlock Holmes story. The movie, however, portrayed Holmes as a ruffian upholder of justice. Violence, gore, and torture impregnated the plot, as well as adrenaline-laced chase scenes. (One wonders how our current appetite for such movies affects veterans with post traumatic stress disorder.) Though the relationship between Holmes and his sidekick, John Watson, was portrayed, it took back stage to the frenetic action scenes.

We do not, like the ancient Romans, stage gladiatorial contests where combatants face life or death situations to entertain the masses. Wonder where those reality TV shows are headed?

Literature’s Divorce Between Secular and Religious

 

Today’s literature tends to be divided, like much of our culture, between secular and religious. The two types usually are marketed to different audiences. Religious fiction may be Jewish or Buddhist or from another religion, of course, but the Christian market has grown remarkably over the past few decades.

In a desire to reach secular readers, writers for the Christian market now explore “crossover” fiction, fiction that may appeal to both audiences. Crossover novels often suggest Christian themes but lack overt references to Christian practices or mention them only in a general way.

As both a writer and a Christian, how much Christian flavor should I impart to my novels? The answer for me is that it’s not an issue. I simply write the story, present the characters as they come to me, and attempt an honest telling of the story.

The conflict in my stories, as in my novel Searching for Home, emerges as the characters work out their salvation in an America becoming less religious and a non-Western world becoming more religious. The stories place the characters in a global context. The characters see their lives as related to the larger world, often away from a domestic church-related venue.  They doubt, sometimes are cynical, and may discover less than full answers to their questions.

I am drawn to novels of authors like Marilynne Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her moving story about a Christian pastor. Though my writing in no way approaches her wonderful prose, authors such as Robinson give me hope that novels with Christian characters can join the secular literary world. My market, I believe, is the Christian aware of a level beyond strict domestic issues and perhaps a few seekers searching for hints of God beyond the secular.

Brush Your Teeth, Eat Your Vegetables, and Other Quaint Sayings

 

No cavities, Mom, I wanted to shout as I rose from the dentist chair after my six-month checkup. In raising me, my parents stressed the old admonitions: brush your teeth, eat your vegetables, look both ways before crossing the street, share with others, and so on. Only now do I realize how much I owe them for my current health and happiness.

I realized how fortunate I was when I read a New York Times article with the new statistic: More than half of babies born to women younger than thirty now are born to unmarried parents. In many cases, to two young people who don’t even plan to be married, at least to each other. Are these parents dedicated to raising their children as mine were, or are the children simply an afterthought? (See a previous blog, The Parent Divide.)

Some of the unmarried parents express disillusionment with their own parents’ marriages, but it appears marriage, perfect or not, gives a child advantages. The article states: “Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.”

Children are a nation’s most precious resource. No country can succeed if it wastes the lives of its children.

 

Boxing Up Our Alleluias

Many in the Christian faith begin the observance of Lent this week. Lent commemorates the forty days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. Lent was not part of my childhood church tradition, so I’m still learning about it. This past Sunday, during the children’s time in the worship service, we “boxed up” our alleluias. In our church we will not sing any songs with that praise word in it until the glorious Easter morning.

I thought about the periods of “boxing up” that have occurred in the Christian faith from the time of the first Easter. The influence of Christians in the world has waxed and waned throughout the centuries, depending on how well those who called themselves by Christ’s name lived up to his teachings. At the present time, in the countries that made up the old Christendom, we are in a period of retreat. We have lost influence. Our alleluias are boxed up for a time.

How long will it be until we can let our alleluias out of the box again?  That depends on how Christlike we choose to be in this present time.

 

Man: The Measure of ALL Things?

 

If man is the measure of all things, as the Greek philosopher Protagoras said, we may be measuring “things” by a very small measure, something like using a yardstick to measure the distance from Chicago to Moscow.

Take our brains. Neuroscientists study the activities of the brain and the nervous system. Studies have focused on the functioning of the parts of the brain, such as how they interact and specialize. Some studies have looked at the reactions of the human brain to other humans. These social activities appear to occur on another level, a more complex one. It includes the parts of the brain, but is more than the sum of the parts, this interaction between two humans.

We can prove that humans exist in the scientific sense, but God cannot be seen or studied the way a human brain can. So what of the claims of those of us who are Christian that we can interact with God? We might look at this idea as one that leads us to yet another level, beyond human interaction, one that faith opens to us.

Social interaction moves a person’s focus from self to another. Faith changes the perspective even further, from examining the inhabitants of a thin atmosphere on a small planet to—what? Perhaps to a spiritual level that cannot be quantified but can be experienced.

The Joys of How and Why

A washing machine cleans clothes by the actions of the soap, water, agitator, spin, and other mechanical features. (The how.) An engineer wishing to invent a better machine or a householder looking for a newer model may profitably study these features. The ultimate reason that the machine cleans clothes, however, is because someone wants clean clothes, loads dirty clothes and soap into the machine, and turns it on. (The why.)

A computer math course taught me that we can have other number systems than the one based on ten. Computer systems, at least when I was studying them, are based on the binary system, the on/off properties of two. You go on up to four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on. Presumably you can have a system based on threes or thirteens or three thousand and sevens, if you want to. In other words, the possibilities are endless.

A previous blog discussed systems that we, as yet, have no way to predict. The usual example given is the weather, which we still can’t accurately predict beyond two or three days.(In the Puget Sound region, even the prediction of a few hours can be in error.) The author theorized that these systems we can’t predict aren’t really chaotic, but we lack the knowledge to unlock them. And when we answer one question, we find a thousand more waiting.

The universe amazes us with its complexity. Humankind is equally marvelous. The study of both leaves us in awe and provides useful knowledge, but the ultimate why for these marvelous works is beyond science. That journey begins with faith that sends us in another direction.

The Rest of the Story

Critics of Christianity often criticize its followers for their failings: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the religious wars of the 1600’s and so on. What often is missed is the rest of the story, that is, what happens to the Christians when they fail so tragically to live the Christ way.

Before the spread of Islam, most Egyptians were Christians. Today, only about ten percent of the population call themselves Christians. Why did so many leave the Christian faith when Islam appeared? No doubt many reasons underlay the change. Some historians point to the Christian schisms that afflicted that part of the world before the Muslim conquest. Christianity lost its good name. The new religion may have struck many as more genuine than the old one.

The shoving aside of religion to the sidelines that began in the 1700’s was caused partly by the appalling religious conflicts of the century before. Pure reason seemed a better way, perhaps, than religious passion, than the killing and torturing of those who disagreed with you.

And for those of us today who call ourselves Christians? If we fail to live up to Christ’s teachings, should we expect any different judgement on us?