Stories of violence between Israel and Hamas dominate the news these days. How should we look at this violence and what does it have to teach us about our own national policies?

It is generally agreed that one of the basic responsibilities of nations is to take all reasonable and moral actions available to protect their citizens from harm. We see this principle in practice in the actions of police forces, homeland security officers at airports and may other ways.

The Israeli government has used this principle to justify its air attacks on targets in Gaza. Israel’s claims of regular rocket bombardment from Gaza directed at southern Israel are no doubt true. Based on the generally agreed upon principle of self defense, Israel has an obligation to do what is reasonable and moral to protect its citizens from random rocket attacks.

Unfortunately, the protection principle requires a measure of proportionality that is missing in this conflict. It’s moral base is in the old principle of “an eye for an eye.” Yesterday’s counts indicated that over the past two weeks there were four deaths in Israel caused by rocket attacks launched from Gaza. The count of the dead from three days of Israeli bombing in Gaza is about 350. The argument is that Israel seeks to make any attacks on its citizens so very costly to Hamas that Hamas will suspend the attacks. A 4 to 350 ratio of dead is hardly “an eye for an eye” and loses the moral high ground for Israel.

Further, this policy is profoundly flawed from a pragmatic perspective. While it may intimidate Hamas into a short term reduction of violence, its longer term results will be to harden the rage in Gaza and to multiply the number of persons who are ready to attack Israel. For every enemy the policy kills, it creates ten new enemies. Short of wholesale genocide of the entire population of Gaza, Israel is not going to reduce the numbers of its enemies by killing folks, many of whom are civilians.

In an age of terrorism, this is a lesson we must learn. Policies that increase anger and resentment among people who have grievances will not decrease terrorism. Policies that further victimize the desperate increase the desperation. It is people who feel a high degree of desperation, either for themselves or for their group, who resort to terrorism. Military action against a people who have little capacity to resist worsens the problem rather than making things better.

Peace in the Middle East cannot come until there is a sense of economic, political and even spiritual hope in the hearts and lives of all the groups who live there. With unemployment running at nearly 50% in Gaza and bombs raining from the skies there will be no peace.

Ethics | 2 Comments »

What shall we call him, child of the manger?
What name is given in Bethlehem?

His name is Jesus, God ever with us,
God given for us in Bethlehem.

How can he save us, how can he help us,
Born here among us in Bethlehem?

Gift of the Father, to human mother,
Makes him our brother of Bethlehem.

One with the Father, he is our Savior,
Heaven-sent helper of Bethlehem.

Gladly we praise him, love and adore him,
Give ourselves to him of Bethlehem.

Tom Colvin, 1969

Religion | No Comments »

For many people, the Christmas season is mostly marked by spending. Gift giving is a big part of that spending, but party expenses, meals out, travel, and other non essential items are also frequently on the Christmas list. It is common for much or all of this spending to be based on credit rather than on use of current income or accumulated resources.

The November 5, 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune reports that the average American household has $5,100 of credit card debt. Based on ordinary interest and minimum payment schedules, it would take 46 years to pay off this debt by making the minimum monthly payments. That, of course, assumes that no additional spending is made on the card. Finally, the Tribune reports, 48 percent of American credit card holders only make the minimum monthly payments.

Taken together these things are not the makings of a merry Christmas. Our entire society is awash in debt that we cannot pay. Mortgages slide to default. Credit card debt accumulates with little or no realistic hope of escape. Student loans saddle adults well into middle age.

What is the obsession we have with living beyond our means? Some weeks ago, I wrote about the “dummy next door” and my view that the housing/mortgage crisis has a major component of greed at its base. Some readers reacted negatively to that suggestion comparing the expectation of making money from housing appreciation as comparable to investing in common stocks or mutual funds. The difference is that the average individual does not invest in mutual funds with borrowed money. Our society is driven to consume at a level beyond which we can sustain. We see this in individual credit card dept that could take decades to repay. We also see this habit in mortgages larger than we can afford.

In the middle of this holiday spending season these are truths we don’t want to hear, but they are truths none-the-less. We want more stuff, we desire more wealth and we spend more money than we can realistically support. Holiday gift giving is one small symptom of this dis-ease. The global environmental crisis is a large symptom.

I hold that this is at least in part a spiritual matter. We seek personal worth, status and a feeling of pride through consumption. We find that we never quite arrive at the desired goal. Everyone wants more. Debt mounts. Foreclosures threaten. Anxiety multiplies. We are not better off. We are not more satisfied with our lives or at peace with ourselves. Will we ever learn that less is more?

American Emipre | 7 Comments »

A good read over the holidays would be John Stauffer’s new book Giants: the parallel lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Stauffer adds to a number of new looks at Lincoln with this analysis of the relationship between Lincoln and the other great orator of his generation, Frederick Douglass.

The lives of the two men have striking things in common. Both rose from extreme poverty (in Douglass’ case from slavery) to considerable financial success. Both were largely self educated. Both grew up speaking dialects and became exceptional practitioners of the English language.

They certainly had their differences, also.

Toward the end of the Civil War they came to admire and respect each other deeply. As American’s prepare to inaugurate the first African-American president, Stauffer’s look at Lincoln and Douglass becomes particularly timely. Happy reading.

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Last week’s terrorist attacks in India reawaken a partially slumbering fear in our hearts. That fear had not all together gone to sleep, but in the years since 2001 it had receded.

There are a number of things to re-learn from the Mumbai attacks.

1. Terrorism is international, but it is not monolithic. There is a tendency of many Americans to see terrorism as one large force directed at the west. While it is true that western cultural values are anathema to fundamentalist Islamic groups, terrorism is a much broader problem. The attack in India seems to be primarily related to the tensions between India and Pakistan and only secondarily, at most, related to the western world. We sometimes see terrorism as our problem or see terrorism as mostly aimed at us. Certainly we are a target for some terrorists, but it really isn’t all about us.

2. Terrorism is a tactic that often has no real strategy. Terror is deadly and disruptive, but is does not constitute a strategy and many terrorist organizations have no clear desired outcome in mind beyond inflicting pain on those they dislike. It is often unclear what, exactly, the terrorist wants.

3. Terrorism is essentially the tactic of the weak. When diplomatic, economic or military approaches to conflict are beyond the capacity of an extremist group, terror is the hammer of last resort. The odds of terrorism actually accomplishing anything constructive for the terrorist are very low. If they had a more effective weapon, they would use it. It is precisely because they are so weak and impotent that terror becomes the only weapon available.

4. It’s hard to win a “war” on a tactic. The bomber in Northern Ireland, the suicide bomber in Bagdad, and the para-military attack team in India have very different interests and desires. Terror is not the real problem, it is only a tactic. The larger problem is how to deal with people who are very angry, powerless, poor (though they may have access to weapons), desperate and inflexible. This problem is particularly vexing when military force on the fringe tends to make them martyrs in the eyes of less radical persons with similar sympathies. Sometimes attacking the people on the fringes increases rather than decreases their numbers.

Terrorism is a serious problem on our time, but it is probably not the greatest hazard facing us. Energy, ecology, economic development and other issues will have a far greater impact on our future than terrorism.

American Emipre | 2 Comments »

Is this Thanksgiving or Halloween? We are not accustomed to being frightened at Thanksgiving. That feeling is usually associated with Halloween.

The economic troubles faced not just by the U.S., but world wide worry everyone. They put a unfamiliar crimp on Thanksgiving. People are not traveling as much as usual despite the lowest gas prices in over two years. Tomorrow’s Black Friday is not expected to be a good day for retailers. So, for what are we to be thankful?

Well, the answer is obvious, but not so easy to put into practice. This is a great year for a rant about the trouble with materialism and putting our priorities in the right place. The point is valid. We are far too eager to be focused on our material and economic blessings and not as attentive to the simple blessings of daily bread, shelter and the people we love.

But how do we make that shift? Not easily I expect. The culture around us has not changed. The Thanksgiving advertising during today’s football games is all about tomorrow’s sales. The next few days news reports will be centered on the good or bad news about retail sales on Friday. And we worry. Will we lose our jobs? Have our retirement accounts lost still more? Thankful? Not so easy these days.

Perhaps the best thing we can learn from this nervous Thanksgiving is how much we have to learn and to what an extent we have bought into the values of our culture. We have many reasons to give thanks, but if we feel more worried than blessed perhaps we can give thanks for one more chance to learn what is really important.

American Emipre | No Comments »

The new President and Congress, along with all the other powers that be, are facing a huge conundrum in the intersecting challenges of energy, global warming, and international politics. All the responsible science seems to be saying that the global warming problem is worse than earlier thought and the need for fast and far reaching strategies to address the problem are essential. Couple this need with the huge boatloads of cash that are being shipped overseas to buy oil and the unhealthy dependance we have on overseas suppliers of oil. Taken together these realities put great pressure on us to find ways to alternative energy.

The challenge is that there are no clear technological solutions. Both of the major presidential candidates talked often about “clean coal,” but burning coal to produce electricity in ways that do not release carbon dioxide into the air is far from technologically possible today. Will technology find a fix that bails us out? Its worth the investment of research money to be sure, but we cannot stake the future of the planet on this technological fix.

Millions, probably billions, have already been invested in wind and solar energy technologies with some results. Wind farms are springing up across the great plains and in other places across the country/world. But both wind and solar are intermittent sources and there is no solution on the horizon to the problem of this intermittent nature. Also, the total power produced would have to grow in scale far beyond what most could imagine to bring these renewal sources on line in a way that makes a major impact either on global warming or dependence on foreign oil.

Nuclear generation of electricity is something we already know how to do. Today we probably could design nuclear plants that would be even safer than the ones already operating. With nuclear we have both a technological and an emotional challenge. Safe storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuels is a subject upon which there is no political/emotional consensus and a lack to total scientific certainly.

All of the alternative power sources mentioned above produce electricity. Currently, none of them nor any combination of them will address the twin demons of energy and environment. In addition, we do not have a technologically practical way to power cars with electricity. Hybrid cars are a small step in that direction, but only a small step. The electric cars that are on the horizon are severely limited in their range and again our technology simply cannot, at this time, produce practical electric vehicles for a broad range of uses.

The prospects of significant use of nitrogen based transportation systems are far away. Not only do we lack the infrastructure to produce and transport nitrogen in an economical way, current nitrogen producing technologies require significant inputs of energy to produce the nitrogen.

Bio-fuels are attractive, but of questionable utility. Corn based ethanol requires almost as much energy to produce as it supplies and uses a vital food stuff for fuel. The technologies to use other bio mass sources for ethanol and/or the existence of sufficient quantity of the bio mass are both in question.

Finally, we have conservation. Americans are notorious for being wasteful of energy. While rising prices will have some effect to reduce consumption, this alone will not wean us from imported oil. Further, we do not have the technology to create conservation of the size that is needed to reduce our carbon footprint.

The common themes in all this discussion is the need for technology to save us. Its one thing to produce technologies that create cell phones that help us shop (see proceeding post). It is quite another thing to create technologies that are equal to the energy/environmental challenges we face. The very human enterprise that developed the industrial and technological societies in which we live will now have to develop new technologies to fix the huge problems our technologies have created. Cars, power plants, etc. have caused our energy and environmental issues. Can the same science and technology invent the cure? In a very real sense, technology, while it has given us much, has also stolen our clean air, stable planet and shipped our dollars to oil producing countries. Now the thief must save us.

We are caught in a tougher corner than we may realize. We cannot live without our technology and we may not be able to live with it. Only time will tell if we human beings are clever enough to invent ourselves out of the corner in which we find ourselves. It is more than a little unnerving to be asking the processes that created the mess to fix the mess. Yet, we have no real alterative.

If we can invent and technologize ourselves out of this problem, we would do well to thank God that we have the capacities to do so. If the whole industrial and technological enterprise collapses as it could, those who survive will be again forced back to the ancient theological question of hope and whether we are ever safe depending upon the work of our own hands to save us.

American Emipre | No Comments »

I have felt strangely at a loss for things to talk about now that the pressure cooker of the presidential race is behind us. Like most everyone else, I am glad to have the tidal wave of advertisements off the air, but there is a stimulation that goes with campaigns that is missed. There will be plenty of policy issues that call for theological reflection to come, but today I want to think out loud about technology.

While I am not very technologically schooled, I like technology and I marvel at the inventiveness and creativity that goes into the development of new technology. Today I will reflect on technology at a rather silly level and in a few days I will go on to questions relate to technology and the energy/environment crisis.

A few days ago I learned of a new application that can be added to some of the most advanced cell phones. Now, I am not a cell phone fan. I get too many messages already and don’t particularly want to carry around a device that gives everyone I know and many I don’t know instant access to me at every moment.

But today cell phones are so much more than phones. For some time, they have operated as simple cameras. Text messaging adds the ability to communicate non-verbally over the phone. Then exotic capabilities like GPS location and navigation were added to phones. Email on the phone was another step. Next was the internet on a phone.

Now a new application allows high end cell phones to search for bargains in the marketplace. With the right software a cell phone can take a picture of the bar codes on retail products, go on line and look up the price offered for that product by various venders and let the potential buyer know if the product can be bought at a better price and, if so, where. In many cases, after finding a better price, the cell can order the product and buy it at the better price instantly.

I’ve been wondering…..could a person use such a phone to price itself?

A somewhat similar technology allows a cell phone to recognize music that is being played within its range of hearing, identify the exact recording from which the music is coming and to purchase that exact music and download it to the phone.

I find all this incredible. The people who imagine such applications and who create the capabilities of implementing those ideas amaze me.

I end with two theological observations.

First, the imagination, creativity and ingenuity of humanity is breathtaking, but these electronic instruments are child’s play when compared to creation itself. I will come a lot closer to understanding these complex cell phones than I will ever come to understanding the universe, the bio-chemical processes of life, the complex web of living things in an ecology that works and a countless other examples from creation. I am left thinking, “So you humans think you are pretty smart do you? Try this….”

Second, these technologies are feeding our frenzy of consumption. I have to buy a new phone to keep up with my boastful friends who are showing off theirs. And then when I get this fancy phone, I will find myself using its features which encourage me to buy stuff I probably don’t need.

Thoughtful people of faith would do well to continue the never ending consideration of the good and the often very bad consequences of our consumer culture. With the arrival of phones that shop for us the technology is further driving the consuming.

American Emipre, Religion | 4 Comments »

Tuesday evening we saw the two presidential candidates at their best.

Senator McCain was more than gracious in his concession speech. Not only did he congratulate Senator Obama, but he pledged his support and reminded his hearers that Mr. Obama would be president of all Americans. Mr. McCain went even further to acknowledge and, to a degree, celebrate the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s election.

Senator McCain’s speech revealed more of the man than we had seen in the campaign. The campaigner McCain used his love of country as a wedge suggesting not so subtly that he loved country more than his opponent. This not so veiled effort to suggest that his opponent with the odd sounding name was not truly American was not becoming in candidate McCain. But on election night we saw a humbler and gentler McCain showing the profound way that his core meaning in life was organized around service to country. Tuesday this was no effort to diminish anyone else’s love of country, but a moving and deeply personal witness to his own values. This passionate desire to serve and the meaning that service gave his life poured from him with dignity and without any implied criticism of others. In this speech, Senator McCain was a very open and touching man.

Senator Obama is much more in his element in public speaking. He has long had a gift for words and phrases and that gift was clear to all on Tuesday night. His tone also had changed from candidate Obama. Gone was the necessary self promotion of the campaign. Gone also was the focus on Senator McCain in ways that sought to diminish Mr. McCain and his viewpoint on national policy. Instead we saw a sobered young man who was taking the weight of a world of problems on his shoulders. His words echoed Lincoln and King without being maudlin. He spoke of the common challenges and aspirations that we face collectively in ways that sought to pull the nation together.

It has been a long campaign. Both candidates were not always their best selves during that campaign. But on Tuesday night, we saw two deeply appealing men of great stature. I, for one, liked them both better Tuesday night than I had during many moments of the campaign and I am pleased to share citizenship with them both.

American Emipre | 2 Comments »

Missouri voters once again have a gambling measure on the ballot in the November 4 election. It seems in almost every election cycle the gambling industry is seeking to expand its penetration into the fiber of our society. Proposition A is another of a long list of deceptive and insidious efforts to prey on human weaknesses.

The core of Proposition A is the removal of loss limits and limiting Missouri casinos to those already in operation or under construction. A good name for Proposition A would be the “Maximizing Profits for Casinos Act.” What could be better for the profits of the current casinos than a cap on competition? Only the elimination of the loss limits. Current Missouri Law limits the amount of money a person can lose per visit to a casino to $500. This is a perfectly sensible restriction preventing a person from literally losing his/her shirt during a casino visit. The casino industry, eager to empty the pocketbooks of their customers, has long sought to eliminate the loss limit. Passage of Proposition A would do just that. What could be a greater boon to the existing casinos than eliminating both the loss limit and competition in one act?

Yet, in the advertisements supporting Proposition A the public is being told that it is all about school funding. In a cynical attempt to cover its tracks, the casino industry seeks to dupe the public into seeing it as an education funding mechanism. Pro Prop A advertising features grandparent figures speaking about how important education is to their grandchildren and teachers pleading for increased school funding. Nothing is ever said about the real motives for the proposition which is maximizing profits for the casino industry.

Our state has long been tricked into the lie that education funding can and should be placed on the backs of gamblers. The mood has been, “Let the chumps pay.” The truth is that gambling revenues have not significantly increased school funding. If these grandparents and teachers believe in increased school funding then they ought to be honest enough to share the burden equally through a sane tax structure rather than trying to pass off the bill to a few gamblers.

The notion that gambling revenue can or should fund schools is the victory of the inherent lie of the gambling culture: You can get something for nothing. Gamblers think they can make a buck at the casino. Voters think they can fund schools without paying for them. Both are lies advanced by the casinos. The gambling industry has hit upon the logical absurdity of its own game. It is attempting once again to fool the voters into thinking everyone will be a winner when the only real winner will be the gambling industry.

Ethics, American Emipre | 4 Comments »