BFF Electronically

Fax machines became popular about the time I served in my first working assignment overseas in the early 1990’s for the U.S. Department of State. My family, friends, and I enthusiastically embraced the ability to communicate without the necessity for waiting on physical mail.

Before I left my last overseas assignment, we delighted in email and cheaper long distance telephone service. Cell phones were coming into popular use. We shopped “online” with our credit cards, eliminating time-consuming orders of clothes and other merchandise by mail and check (though we still had to wait for the packages to arrive in the traditional way).

Social networking appeared after I returned to the U.S., but I’m well aware of its potential to enhance long distance relationships. Instant communication with the whole family? Close friends that you only see every year or so? Marvelous!

Further additions to the electronic menu multiply so fast that spell checkers can’t keep up with them. Texting and blogs allow for instant communication with like-minded individuals. We interact and let the world know our opinions.

I do have one concern. What if our electronic networking becomes a substitute rather than an enhancement of face-to-face interaction? The word “friends” has become corrupted. Facebook and Twitter are often used as tools for advertising rather than sharing.

Anything I write on the “walls” of my “friends” I sift through a filter: How much of my inner self should be broadcast to the world? Communicating the depths of my soul? Maybe not.

Social networking allows us instant interaction with multitudes. Like many blessings, if used wisely, it serves us well. It has the potential to dilute our relationships, however, if it becomes a substitute for the intimacy of face-to-face sharing.

 

God’s On Our Side, Right? Well, Maybe Not.

The question for the TV panel, a collection of famous Americans, including one religious leader, was: “Whose side is God on if the different religions all say God is on their side?”

The panel members stumbled to answer, but I think the question is invalid because it assumes we have a “side” and God comes at our beck and call to join us.

The question, it seems to me, should be “Who is on God’s side?”

We don’t set up our own little worlds and invite God to bless them. It’s God who sets up the universe and we either choose or don’t choose to go along with his way of doing things.

So what is his way of doing things?

As a Christian, I’d say we’re headed in the right direction if we judge a society by how well it takes care of the widow and the orphan, that is, those on the margins, those with little power.

Amos is one of many prophets of the Old Testament who castigate a society where the rich loll in luxury and slant the rules their way so the poor don’t have a chance.

Jesus appears to be concerned about the vulnerable as well. Remember his story of the rich man and the poor beggar, Lazarus? The rich man ignored Lazarus’ needs and was condemned for it.

Another rich man thought only of building bigger barns to store his wealth. God called him a fool.

In Jesus’ parable of the last judgement, justice is meted out on the basis of whether one
has fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, given clothes to the naked, and visited the sick and imprisoned.

I see nothing wrong with material success for work well done, for new ideas and entrepreneurship.  But what do you do with your wealth? Is it just the wealth and what it can buy, ad infinitum? Once you have food, clothing, shelter, and a few toys for fun (nothing wrong with an occasional banquet), why more? Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (senior and junior) have the right idea, I think. Once you reach a certain level, use the wealth for the good of society, for our fellow creatures.

How well do we take care of the vulnerable, those with little power? If we’re concerned that our society be on God’s side, that’s a good place to start.

 

Oil Gushers and Community

I just looked at the news to find that the Gulf Coast oil gusher still pours its ooze into the water.

While blaming British Petroleum for the catastrophe, one person suggested that Americans also might consider curbing their oil addiction. Lots of luck. I’m not sure black-gummed marine animals, despoiled beaches, and destroyed livelihoods will do the trick. So far, the only thing that caused us to drive less was when gasoline sold for four dollars a gallon. I’m sorry for those who suffered as a result of our changed habits, such as gas station and motel owners, but is less driving in itself a reason to mourn?

When I worked overseas, I would come home and marvel at the increasingly clogged freeways, the new malls, where before cows had chewed their cud in pastures, and, of course, more housing developments further and further out in the hinterlands. To my mind, the automobile had morphed from symbol of independent individualism to enslaver.

That which made us independent now constricts our choices. Children no longer can walk safely to school, to a friend’s house, or to a movie. They must be driven. The elderly must sit home alone or be warehoused into senior citizen dwellings of varying degrees of comfort when they lose the ability to drive even to the store for groceries. The less well-off, not being able to give up limited resources to buy and maintain a car, must content themselves with whatever jobs are accessible by walking or mass transit.

If the economic downturn ends, shall we return to building another super highway, another mall, swap another farm for development? More than the environment is at stake. We don’t know our neighbors. How could we? We have no time. Our commutes grow ever longer. A car in the shop for repairs is a nightmare. We can’t even buy a loaf of bread without it, let alone pick up the children from after school daycare.

In some of the other countries where I lived, walking was the main form of transportation, supplemented perhaps by a bus. I noticed people out and about, however, children on the way to school, the elderly sitting and keeping an eye on things. Small businesses catered to their walking customers.

We might think about it. Have we given up a precious commodity for the luxury of stewing in traffic jams? Or have we decided that community is optional, but the car is not?

 

The Tension Between Jamestown and Plymouth

The earliest permanent English settlements in what was to become the United States gave us two skeins that twist together throughout our history. The settlers of Jamestown, begun in 1607, by and large wanted to reap the riches of the new world. The Plymouth colonists, settling in 1620, for the most part hoped for a more spiritual harvest. Both included the wise and the foolish, the selfish and the generous.

The Jamestown settlers found that one did not reap riches as automatically as they envisioned. They went through a starving time as the wilderness taught its own brutal lessons. Eventually, the colonists began importing slaves, a practice that haunts us to this day. One can see the seeds of slavery—the desire to want wealth so much as to enslave fellow humans to obtain it for their masters—in the Jamestown settlement. Tobacco would became a cash crop, a crop which has no real value in meeting human need but requires intense labor.

This early settlement became Virginia and gave us founding fathers like George Washington, who courageously led us to victory in the war for American independence, and Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. This document declared that all men were created equal, but both Washington and Jefferson owned slaves.

The Plymouth story has been told so many times that it has become a caricature of its original. We have gone from hero worship of the sober pilgrims to outright scorn, reminded today of the white man’s selfish exploitation of the native American. The New England Puritans have a bad reputation: forbidding games, requiring a tedious Sabbath, finally, burning women they claimed were witches.

Neither Jamestown nor Plymouth was an Eden on earth, but the coming to America of religious refugees, which the pilgrims were, foretold a nation which would grow strong by accepting “the wretched refuse” of the old world and giving these castoffs opportunity. New England, with all its faults, developed some of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the world. New England also was a seed bed for the movement to abolish slavery.

The strands of Jamestown and Plymouth are woven together in our history, from the hurts of raw greed  to the altruistic impulses that guide our attempts to help others.

We still make those choices today

 

Taxation with Representation

The young George Washington led a troop of American colonists to war in the mid 1750’s.  No, this was not the American Revolution. The Revolution would be fought more than twenty years later. The Americans weren’t fighting against the British but with them. They supported British operations to defeat the French for control of North America in the conflict known as the French and Indian War. Americans, many of British descent, preferred British rule rather than French. The British/American efforts were successful, and the American colonists remained under the British, as was their wish.

Wars must be paid for. Protecting an empire doesn’t come cheap. At the end of the war, the British empire was one of the largest in the world, but also had one of the largest debts, about half of which was incurred in defense of the American colonies. The British government passed certain measures to raise taxes and pay off the debt, including a tax on tea. Certain American leaders pointed out that Americans had no representation in the British Parliament that decided on those taxes. Differences led to the American Revolution, with its rallying cry “no taxation without representation.”

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Americans, through their representatives in Congress, voted to reduce taxes. Shortly afterward, terrorists launched the World Trade Center attacks. Americans strongly supported military action to deal with the terrorists.

The time arrived to pay for the actions against terrorists, as well as for programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the replacement of the country’s aging bridges and highways. Americans made their displeasure felt against any restoration of taxes. It seems we don’t like taxation with representation anymore than we do taxation without representation. This appears to be true even if the taxes are for the support of programs we have voted for through our elected representatives and that are quite popular.

 

Religion and Conflict

The belief is common that religion is the main cause of wars and conflicts. Didn’t religion cause 9/11, leading to the Afghan and Iraqi wars? What about the Crusades? The Palestinian/Israeli conflict? Strife between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland?

Studying history, I doubt religion has been the main cause of conflicts. I don’t think the Romans conquered the Mediterranean basin to spread the religion of Jupiter. Surely the movement of the Germanic peoples against the Roman Empire wasn’t any desire to inflict Woden on others nor the appearance of the Huns an attempt to spread their religious beliefs.

Most struggles throughout history, from Asia to Africa to South America and Europe had to do with the desire for territory and wealth and control. In World Wars I and II, coalitions fought over land and empire. Even recent and current conflicts in the Middle East continue more for reasons of security, ethnicity, and control for one’s tribal space than for actual religious beliefs, couched though the conflicts might be in religious terms.

The Crusades of the Middle Ages are often cited as Christianity against Islam. Religious elements certainly were involved, and some did join the Crusades from religious zeal. However, the desire for wealth and power probably propelled more of the participants. Likewise the spread of Islam throughout formerly “Christian” lands.

Certainly the Crusades would be judged evil by the founder of Christianity. Jesus would not allow his disciples to take swords in his defense. Would such a person approve the Crusades?

The enlightenment era of early modern times often is cited as rationalism overcoming religious superstition. Its advocates say scientific advances have benefited humankind more than any movement before it.

That science has benefited us surely no one denies. Yet, the Holocaust happened in Germany, a nation that accepted the enlightenment as deeply as any nation. Britain spawned Methodism and influenced the western world to abolish slavery.

 

Ruins and Renewal

Tunisia, where I lived for three years, is full of Roman ruins. A small country in North Africa, Tunisia is home to the site of ancient Carthage. Throughout millennia, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, and French arrived, conquered for a while, and left their imprint. One gains the impression that every stone in the country has been used many times over for the buildings of each civilization. The Roman ones, however, are especially impressive.

Many of the church fathers, Augustine among them, at one time lived in Carthage and other parts of North Africa. Augustine wrote his famous City of God while serving as bishop of Hippo in what is now Algeria, a neighbor to Tunisia. He died there as barbarian Vandals besieged his city, harbinger of yet another conqueror.

Tunisia has a long history both of Rome’s rule and early Christian communities. Drive up into the hills of northern Tunisia and you will see the ruins of both. Visit Dugga, a Roman town. You can wander on the paved streets, study mosaics still visible in villas of rich Romans, and marvel at the still magnificent walls of temples to various Roman deities. On a little hillside of the town are the ruins of an early Christian church.

Neither the Roman temples nor the Christian church have adherents today. Shepherds herd their sheep through the ruins. Wind whistles around the fallen stones of temples and church alike.

Wandering through the site, I wondered when the last Christian had worshiped in the little church. Christianity disappeared from North Africa, except for Egypt, sometime during Europe’s Middle Ages. As one author put it, the descendants of the Christians now are Muslims.

At its beginning, Christianity passed from Jerusalem to the rest of the Roman Empire, to Europe and Russia, even China, finally to North and South America and Australia and the uttermost parts of the earth. Along the way, however, it receded in some regions, including the region which birthed it.

Christendom’s long reign in Europe appears to be over. Though the great cathedrals are not yet ruins, they no longer appear centers of a vibrant faith.

In North America, Christianity has lost much of its influence. The nonreligious segment of the population appears to be the fastest growing. The center of Christianity heads southward to Africa and South America and eastward to Asia.

Over time, the cultural Christians of North Africa left the religion of their ancestors and joined the dominant Muslim religion. So, too, may the cultural Christians of North America join the dominant religion of the “nonreligious,” unless Christians create true resurrection communities. True Christians are subversives in any culture of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

 

Reaping from our Economic Sowing

Our semi-rural, island community of a few thousand has been hit hard by the recession. A few stores have shut their doors, and our drugstore, here for decades, consolidated with a branch in another town.

Only a couple of years ago, modest homes sold quickly for half a million dollars. Now, For Sale signs fade in the weather.

Some say the slowdown is not all bad. The development that threatened to pave over the remaining farms and forests of our island with second homes has all but halted. I enjoy knowing that the farm up the road probably won’t be sold anytime soon, and I can continue to walk by and watch the cows and lambs grazing.

I’m concerned, however, for construction workers and others laid off because of the downturn. What can we do to overcome the cycles of boom and bust?

We rejoice when the economy expands and good jobs are available. New housing appears as a sign of a healthy economy.

But arable land to build on is not infinite, and much of the new building erases valuable farm land. Are we expecting the economy to spiral upward forever? To always sell more goods and services?

Can’t someone come up with an economic model that sustains a comfortable economic level without constantly producing more and more and building more and bigger houses?

As I understand it, the last economic boom was fueled by a lot of us buying things we couldn’t afford. Most of that buying was on credit.

Tragedies and unforseen events can force any of us into debt. We’re all vulnerable to such possibilities.

But much of the past credit splurge was for things we could easily have done without, at least until we had saved money to buy them. Perhaps it’s part of the current mentality that infects us. A mistaken notion that because we want it, we should have it and have it right now.

We were blessed in the past few decades in this country to have wealth that had no precedent in human history, spread over a large percentage of the population.

We could have used the vast wealth that accrued to us since the Second World War to eliminate hunger, to build the best school system in the world, and to build liveable cities. We chose to spend our patrimony on three-car-garage houses, Hummers, big screen TV’s, the latest gadgets, and more super highways.

Now we’re paying the price. We bought on credit, and we’re paying huge interest, beyond the value of the initial purchases.

We could change, though. We could learn things like self-discipline, responsibility, and sharing. Perhaps. If we are willing to leave the days of glut behind us. Forever.