(How many crises can we have at once? It seems as if the Four Horsemen are galloping through our land—Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. The economy has driven thousands to our food banks. A pandemic continues to spread in our world. There is disorder, death, and destruction in our streets. The headlines of yesterday’s crisis are pushed aside by the one of today. Dr. Frank Crane wrote of how each of us might deal with crisis in the January, 1920 issue of Hearst’s: A Magazine with a Mission. In a time of crisis, he said, it is Principles that will be to us—-)
AS ANCHOR TO THE SHIP
It is not what you can do ordinarily, but what you can do in a crisis, that counts. The crisis is the swift fire that tries men, as gold is tried, revealing the fine metal and the dross. You never know what is in a soul until you see it pass through a supreme moment.
That unmasks the hero, uncovers the god. He may have seemed a tramp, a shiftless loafer, a ne’er-do-well, but when the factory takes fire and all are paralyzed with fear, it is he that plunges into the burning building and rescues the boy at the cost of his own life.
She may have been a most drab and commonplace woman, ignorant and low, but when her hour strikes she moves towards it with the majesty of a queen, and cares for those stricken with the pest in fine carelessness for her own life.
The question is, what will you do in a pinch? Will you measure up? Or will you muff?
The fierce rays of responsibility all focused into one white hot moment have a curious effect on souls. One person will be melted to panic. Another will be steeled to unusual strength.
The merciless searchlight of danger moves over the city, lighting upon this one and that.
How will you act when it rests upon you?
What reserves of power have you? What hidden store of resources? Your final efficiency will depend upon this.
Does danger, responsibility, the sense of the fatefulness of the moment, key you up, cheer your brain to think quickly and accurately, and steady your hand to its highest skill?
All your life you are preparing for the crisis. When it comes you will see your naked soul as it is—clean and strong, or cringing and deformed. It is your Day of Judgment.
When it comes, a lot of things will not matter: your money, for one thing, and your station in life, for another. All that will matter will be, whether you are a man or a mouse.
In the crisis you suddenly become aware of the vital importance of principles. For it is these, the great, deep, subconscious convictions, the sleepers under the house of life, that decide whether you are to stand the storm or be swept away.
Your opinions may be upset, your power to think may be unloosed; but if your principles hold, you shall not fall.
Principles are to the soul what the great tap-root is to the tree, what the anchor and the cable arc to the ship, what the gold reserve is to the bank. Have you any?
Are there some things you believe in and will risk your life upon, things that lie too firmly imbedded in you for argument, too fundamental even to be taken up and examined?
Policy and cleverness, alertness and shiftiness arc very useful in everyday weather, but the man that has these only, and no fixed principles, “shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house.
(A combination of two issues that seem to be part of today’s national dialogue—plus a recent comment from the Texas Lieutenant Governor suggesting old people should be prepared to die so the economy could be reopened—attracted us to this reflection by Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote these thoughts during World War I and just before Adolf Hitler emerged to lift Aryan perfection as a prelude to a greater war and a holocaust. Keep in mind, however, when this was written. Some attitudes that seem prescient in that time might not be fair today. On the other hand, his basic point at the end remains valid.)
HALF SCIENCE
There is a kind of bastard science which is very dangerous.
It gets a glimpse of the great law of “The Survival of the Fittest.” It explains many things. And the apprentice mind in its enthusiasm imagines it explains everything.
It does not. The Survival of the Fittest, the Struggle for Existence, and the whole law that the physically weak are exterminated and the physically strong survive, all this is true only up to a certain point.
It is true of tigers and tomcats; it is not true of human beings.
When Man first appeared in the history of evolution, he brought another element into the arena, the Moral element.
Not to reckon with this Moral power is not to be a scientist, but a half-scientist.
The German mind is half-scientific. That is what ails it. It conceives that the final triumph will rest with “the big blond beast.” With the men of muscle and ferocity, with those who thrust aside all motives of pity and gentleness and concentrate on material force.
The saying that “God is on the side of the strongest battalions,” is a sample of this half-reasoning.
God is on the side of truth, honor, humaneness, and love; and in the end these gentle powers shall overcome. That is what Jesus meant when He said that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” And that is what the half-baked mind sneers at, neither indeed can believe.
But just the same, Civilization means the superiority of the Moral forces and the eventual subjugation of all Brute force.
…Civilization is not a working out of materialistic laws; it is the mastery and direction of those laws by a spiritual, non-material something called Man.
(If the forecasts are true, doctors are going to be coming under incredible pressure. And so will the rest of us, healthy or sick. Although Dr. Frank Crane wrote this prayer for doctors, the medical kind, it seems adaptable to a lot of other people these days, with only a few changes.)
THE PRAYER OF THE PHYSICIAN
O God, I pray that I may have absolute intellectual honesty. Let others fumble, shuffle, and evade, but let me, the physician, cleave to the clean truth, assume no knowledge I have not and claim no skill I do not possess.
Cleanse me from all credulities, all fatuous enthusiasms, all stubbornness, vanities, egotism, prejudices, and whatever else may clog the sound process of my mind. These be dirt; make my personality as aseptic as my instruments.
Give me heart, but let my feelings be such as shall come over me as an investment of power, to make my thoughts clear and cold as stars, and my hand skillful—strong as steel.
Deliver me from professionalism, so that I may be always human, and thus minister to sickly minds as well as to ailing bodies.
Give me a constant realization of my responsibility. People believe in me. Into my hands they lay their lives. Let me, of all men, be sober and walk in the far of eternal justice. Let no culpable ignorance of mine, no neglect nor love of ease, spoil the worth of my high calling.
Make my discretion strong as religion, that the necessary secrets of souls confided in me may be as it told to the priests.
Give me the joy of healing. I know how far short I am of being a good man; but make me a good doctor.
Give me that love and eagerness and pride in my work without which the practice of my profession will be fatal to me and to them under my care.
Give me a due and decent self-esteem, that I may regard no man’s occupation higher than mine, envying not the king upon his throne so long as I am prime minister to the suffering.
Deliver me from playing at precedence, from the hankering for praise and prominence, from sensitiveness, and all like forms of toxic selfishness.
Give me money; not so little that I cannot have the leisure I need to put quality into my service; not so much that I shall grow fat in head and leaden in heart, and sell my sense of ministry for the flesh-pots of indulgence.
Give me courage, but hold me back from over-confidence.
Let me so discharge the duties of my office that I shall not be ashamed to look any man or woman in the face, and that when at death I lay down my task I shall go to what judgment awaits me strong in the consciousness that I have done something toward alleviating the incurable tragedy of life.
We thought we had posted this entry last week but we must have been more befuddled than usual.
(The cynical observation that “you can tell when a politician is lying; his lips move” is easy to make in these times but it also is unfair to the large majority of people we elect to serve us. After decades of watching our political processes, your observer likes to think good people are elected to work in a badly-flawed system where they find their principles challenged daily. Make no mistake: there are liars abroad which is why we have extensive fact-checking after each presidential debate or presidential rally, news availability, or statement. It is comforting to think, no matter how realistic such thoughts are, that the more honest person will emerge victorious. The real world doesn’t always work that way but we cannot abandon hope. Here’s Dr. Crane on
THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Listen, young man! The cleverest man in the world is the man that tells the truth, and tells it all the time, not occasionally.
Sometimes you can profit by a lie, but it is like dodging bullets; you never know when you are going to get hurt.
Lying is a game. Sometimes it is a very exciting game. But it is essentially gambling. And gambling, any sort of gambling, is not business.
The fundamental laws of business are just as accurate and as well established as the principles of geometry.
It is hard to see this, for our visual range is limited. Most us can see the crooked dollar coming today, but not the ten straight dollars it is going to lose us tomorrow.
Real business success is cumulative. It grows like a snowball. And the one thing that makes it keeps us growing, even while we sleep, is our persistent truthfulness and dependableness.
If you put an advertisement in the paper announcing goods worth five dollars for sale at two dollars, and if the people come and buy, and find out the stuff is not worth ten cents, you may make a one day’s gain, but you have alienated a lot of indignant customers and have started to saw away the posts that sustain your reputation.
If you have a store rented for a week only and propose to conduct a sacrifice sale of goods that will make everybody disgusted who buys then, then perhaps you may lie with a high hand and stretched-out arm.
But if you are in the town to stay, and want regular, returning, increasing, satisfied and friendly customers, it will pay you to stick to the old-fashioned truth.
Exaggeration is lying. It does not take long for the people in the community to get the habit of discounting twenty-five percent of all you say.
If you continually overstate and vociferate you must keep on getting louder, until you soon become incoherent.
But if you habitually state only what is soberly, honestly true, by and by everything you say will be away above par.
A man’s repute for truthfulness is as much a part of his capital as are his store and stock; so much so that he can raise money on it.
As civilization progresses, business becomes more and more an affair of credit, of trust. The very foundation of big business is trustworthiness. Therefore if you are ever going to get beyond the peanut-stand and push-cart stage of merchandise you must establish a basis of dependableness.
There is not one thing in this world, young man, that can be of as much value to you as building up a reputation such that men will say, “your word is as good as your bond.”
It is well to be clever and keen and Johnny-on-the-spot, it is well to look out for number one and to know a good bargain, but best of all is to have the world say of you:
“Whatever that man says can absolutely be relied upon.”
We got a message from Eric Greitens last week proclaiming, “We’ve been exonerated.”
—as in not guilty of criminal charges.
As we discussed last week, “not guilty” does not mean “innocent.” But the Greitens news release said the Missouri Ethics Commission found “no evidence of any wrongdoing” by Greitens.
Well, except for that little finding that his campaign has been fined $178,000 because a political action committee supposedly independent of Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign violated laws requiring independence. The commission says the failure to disclose that A New Missouri, the non-profit set up to support the Greitens agenda, paid for a poll that was given to the Greitens campaign—a violation of rules requiring the reporting of gifts.
Greitens told his faithful followers in his emails that the ruling “makes it clear…our justice system was abused. Lies were told and bribes were paid in a criminal effort to overturn the 2016 election.” He points out that “some of the people” who lied about him face criminal charges for lying under oath and evidence tampering.
Frankly, we‘ve heard just about enough of this “overturning an election” business. Getting elected is a gift, not a license. And one thing government does from time to time is take away the license of someone who misbehaves behind the wheel, in a profession, or even misuses the gift of public office.
Some of the people” actually is one person, William Tisaby, who was hired to investigate the Greitens sex scandal is scheduled for trial next month on six charges of perjury and one of tampering. Greitens resigned as governor in a plea deal with Tisaby’s boss, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, that she would drop criminal charges connected to the sexual affair if he quit.
Greitens’ email message to the faithful quickly becomes a pity plea. He cites “constant harassment and vitriol, the lies—repeated and magnified over and over again—the vicious attack on family and personal finances.” The months since he left office, he says, have been “the hardest of my life” with “plenty of dark days.” But he’s been uplifted by “how compassionate, strong, and loving most regular people are.”
Greitens is not the first political figure to experience “dark days” because he or she fumbled the big chance to be significant.
But he’s right, you know. History shows that even disgraced politicians remain human beings. To go farther, if you get a politician out of his or her theatre of operations, they’re just regular folks (most of them, in our experience). And if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the face we wear while practicing our profession often is not the face that our friends outside the profession recognize. The ruthless politician, the toughest lawyer, the matter-of-fact doctor, the hard-bargaining car dealer, the flinty-eyed reporter are different people when they’re barbecuing hamburgers with friends or coaching their child’s sports team.
Greitens’ email shows the kind of magnanimity that people in his position eventually realize regardless of how much they maintain they have been persecuted. Dwelling on the hurt and resentment gets one nowhere. “Hang on, keep faith, and have courage—life comes back around and it offers a lot of joy, and purpose, and love.”
Sounds like the roots for another book. “A friend” told the Washington Examiner, a conservative monthly political publication, that Greitens is writing one. The same person said Greitens is preparing to launch a new service organization. The Mission Continues, the veterans services organization Greitens founded in 2007, became embroiled in the Greitens investigation when it was revealed he had used the organization’s mailing list to solicit campaign donations. The Missouri Ethics Commission fined the Greitens campaign $1,000 for that little episode (The campaign paid $100 of the fine and promised not to sin like that again with that organization). The Mission Continues continues, by the way.
However, his comment that, “The deepest possible tragedy in all of this would come if we let them change who we are” indicates an inability to grow beyond what he was. And what he was was a not-very-good-governor. He was arrogant. He was secretive. He tried to control the message although that didn’t go well in the end. He believed he could force some members of his own party to support ideas that weren’t going to fly by divulging their personal phone numbers on the internet. He was derogatory toward the legislature and saw no need to patch things up after he was in office for his critical but publicly-popular comments during the campaign.
And we shouldn’t forget that he quit when a legislative investigation headed toward likely impeachment had cornered him on possible serious campaign finance violations. The special investigative committee basically gave him a choice of revealing intertwined big-money links between various committees providing financial fuel for his political ambitions, or leaving town. So he announced his resignation, took no questions, and got out of Dodge.
It’s not altogether helpful for Greitens to suggest he’s not going to change his spots.
There have been rumors that Greitens would emerge and run for the governorship this year as an Independent; the Republican Party could hardly be expected to welcome him back. But the “friend” who spoke to the Examiner said he does not expect to seek political office this year although his options remain open for the future.
Greitens’ email says he’s not thinking of revenge, which is “about the past,” he said. “Justice is about the future…the future is bright.”
There is light at the end of the tunnel for Eric Greitens. “The future is bright.”
Unless, of course, that’s the headlight of a locomotive.
That House investigation shut down after the resignation before all the questions were asked or answered. He would prefer those efforts not be resumed in his future public life.
Eric Greitens will have a political shadow over him for a long time. He still has a core group of believers of seeming Trumpian loyalty that he was speaking to with his emailed statement. But it will take more than commercials showing him blowing up stuff and claiming he was wrongly persecuted to convince the general public it can trust him again.
(Dr. Frank Crane, who died 92 years ago, had words in his early Twentieth Century newspaper columns that resonate in today’s events. In this one, he wrote of the dangers of tolerating intolerable behavior.)
WHEN TO INSURGE
It’s all right to be resigned, to take things as they come, and not to complain; but there are things which we ought not to accept smilingly, against which we ought to kick strenuously, and protest loudly.
“When it rains,” says James Whitcomb Riley, “why, rain’s my choice.”; and this is a sample of intelligent resignation. To the thermometer and the barometer you should adjust yourself. When you accidentally break your leg, there is nothing to do better than to look pleasant and try to think it is all for the best.
When death separates us from our beloved, when the market goes down at the moment that we expect it to go up, when old age comes, when the hour-hand on the clock moves, and when the sun goes down, we are face to face with the inevitable.
But there is a world of other conditions in the presence of which cheerful adjustment is little less than a crime. There are certain events of which to say, “The Lord’s will be done!” is blasphemy, when it is not cowardice; for it would be much more honest to say, “The devil’s will be done!”
For instance, to begin at home, the unruly, spoiled, petulant, self-willed and selfish child who rules the house by sheer force of disagreeableness. This is no case for pious resignation.
There are the bullying husband and the nagging wife and the mischief-making neighbor. Here what you need is spunk, not sweetness and forbearance.
When you climb; over the end-seat hog in the street car, the righteous thing to do is not to move softly and apologize, but, quite by accident, of course, to drive your heel right into his pet corn.
When your city is owned and run by a gang of grafters it is time to arise and smite.
When shrewd thieves manipulate the world of business so that stock that is pure water is made to pay 16 per cent dividend, while the workers’ wages are reduced, that is no time to be praying to be content in the position in which Providence has placed you. You have not been placed by Providence, you have been flim-flammed by rascals.
When streets are unswept an backyards are unclean and alleys vile with rubbish, and the pest comes along and begins work upon the children, that is no time for fasting and prayer, or for kissing the rod. It is time to blow the horn and summon the trouble-makers to battle.
Submission to the unavoidable is good, but submission to the devices of wrong, crafty, cruel, or lazy people is contemptible.
“We make the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are placed,” said Southey*, “and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by a process of degradation.”
A man who is always satisfied, calm, and equable, who does nothing but smile and smile in this world where villainy is far from extinct, is either a fool or a knave. Every decent man ought to get angry about once in so often, just to maintain his self-respect.
(The cynical observation that “you can tell when a politician is lying; his lips move” is easy to make in these times but it also is unfair to the large majority of people we elect to serve us. We like to think good people are elected to work in a badly-flawed system where they find their principles challenged daily. Make no mistake: there are liars abroad which is why we have extensive fact-checking after each presidential debate or presidential rally, news availability, or statement. It is comforting to think, no matter how realistic such thoughts are, that the more honest person will emerge victorious. The real world doesn’t always work that way but we cannot abandon hope. Here’s Dr. Crane on
THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Listen, young man! The cleverest man in the world is the man that tells the truth, and tells it all the time, not occasionally.
Sometimes you can profit by a lie, but it is like dodging bullets; you never know when you are going to get hurt.
Lying is a game. Sometimes it is a very exciting game. But it is essentially gambling. And gambling, any sort of gambling, is not business.
The fundamental laws of business are just as accurate and as well established as the principles of geometry.
It is hard to see this, for our visual range is limited. Most us can see the crooked dollar coming today, but not the ten straight dollars it is going to lose us tomorrow.
Real business success is cumulative. It grows like a snowball. And the one thing that makes it keeps us growing, even while we sleep, is our persistent truthfulness and dependableness.
If you put an advertisement in the paper announcing goods worth five dollars for sale at two dollars, and if the people come and buy, and find out the stuff is not worth ten cents, you may make a one day’s gain, but you have alienated a lot of indignant customers and have started to saw away the posts that sustain your reputation.
If you have a store rented for a week only and propose to conduct a sacrifice sale of goods that will make everybody disgusted who buys then, then perhaps you may lie with a high hand and stretched-out arm.
But if you are in the town to stay, and want regular, returning, increasing, satisfied and friendly customers, it will pay you to stick to the old-fashioned truth.
Exaggeration is lying. It does not take long for the people in the community to get the habit of discounting twenty-five percent of all you say.
If you continually overstate and vociferate you must keep on getting louder, until you soon become incoherent.
But if you habitually state only what is soberly, honestly true, by and by everything you say will be away above par.
A man’s repute for truthfulness is as much a part of his capital as are his store and stock; so much so that he can raise money on it.
As civilization progresses, business becomes more and more an affair of credit, of trust. The very foundation of big business is trustworthiness. Therefore if you are ever going to get beyond the peanut-stand and push-cart stage of merchandise you must establish a basis of dependableness.
There is not one thing in this world, young man, that can be of as much value to you as building up a reputation such that men will say, “your word is as good as your bond.”
It is well to be clever and keen and Johnny-on-the-spot, it is well to look out for number one and to know a good bargain, but best of all is to have the world say of you:
“Whatever that man says can absolutely be relied upon.”
It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth. But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.
-0-
Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000. And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.
We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.
Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.
By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.
When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?
Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)
To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?
When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with? If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.
When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10. If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.
So the decade has another year to go.
Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it. A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.
So what the heck are we arguing about? Let’s move on.
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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned). As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.” Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.
One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing. Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.
-0-
Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth. A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:
The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration
Ruben Rosario Rodriguez December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia
As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.
Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:
“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”
One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”
Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”
Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,”“Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.
This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.
In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.
Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.
Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:
“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”
—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.
(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. As the time approaches for the return of the Missouri General Assembly, we offer these thoughts.):
FUNDAMENTALS IN DEMOCRACY
These are axioms of democracy. Think on these things.
The whole people is wiser than any group of men in it. Its judgment is sounder, surer. As Lincoln put it, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rules; it is a spirit.
Remember what Mazzzini* said, that some day a man would arise to whom democracy would be a religion. He would be the Great Man (I quote from memory, and may be inexact.)
Democracy is run for the benefit of the people in it; autocracy for the benefit of the people upon it.
Autocracy is most concerned about efficiency; democracy about welfare. Autocracy is eager to build the house; Democracy, that the builders be happy.
Autocracy is a White Passion; Democracy is a Red Passion.
Autocracy thinks of the State; Democracy of the people that compose the State.
Autocracy is abstract; Democracy concrete. The former exults impersonal aims; the latter aims constantly at men.
Autocracy’s efficiency is quick, specious, and temporary; Democracy’s efficiency is cumulative; every success means another.
Democracy is natural; Autocracy is artificial.
Democracy is its own remedy. The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It carries within itself its own recuperation. Autocracy prepares its own ruin.
Democracy has in it the seed of evolution; Autocracy has in it the seed of revolution.
The strength of democracy is education; the strength of autocracy is obedience.
The God of democracy is the same God the individual has; the God of autocracy has a different moral code from that of the individual. The Kaiser’s God, for instance, approved of the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania.**
The method of democracy is light; of autocracy, darkness. Democracy created the free press; Autocracy the censor.
It is complained of democracy that it debates too much, but only by free debate can the right be winnowed out.
Democracy “washes its dirty linen in public.” True, but it gets it clean.
Democracy is dangerous. And there is no progress without danger.
Democracy is called vulgar, common, cheap. The real truth is that Autocracy is more so, only its defects are concealed and fester, while democracy’s are open and are healed.
Democracy is capable of a more perfect organization and unity than autocracy.
Autocracy is built upon caste; Democracy upon humanity.
“The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,” is only possible in a world of democratic nations. So long as there are kings, emperors, and dynasties there can be no world unity.
Militarism is a function of autocracy; democracy functions in law.
Art, science, and literature will do better under democracy than under any protection and patronage they may get from autocracy, just as plants and people grow better in the air and sunshine than in a closed room.
*Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was an Italian politician and writer who was influential in the Italian Revolutionary Movement that argued for a unified Italy
**This column appeared during World War I and was published in one of his books in 1919.
We’re going to start something today and see how it goes.
In prowling through old newspapers seeking out tidbits of Missouri Capitol history I have frequently run across columns called “Four Minute Essays” by Dr. Frank Crane, a long-time Methodist minister who died in 1928. He was a believer in positive thinking long before native Missourian Dale Carnegie started writing about How to Win Friends and Influence People.
One hundred years ago he compiled many of his columns into ten small volumes. Although there will be instances where some of the syntax is antiquated, his thoughts seem worthy of being put back into circulation in our times. We’re going to try to offer one of his essays each Monday with our regular entries later in the week. Here’s the first one.
PRINCIPLES
Principles are the deep laws underlying life.
Just as gravitation runs through every particle of matter from sun to sand grain, just as electricity pervades all things, and chemical affinity works always and everywhere, so there are certain laws that eternally operate in events and in men’s minds.
That honesty is the best policy, that courage is power, that practice brings efficiency, and that truth eventually prevails over error, are just as evergreen and exceptionless as the forces in dead stones and planets.
The first business of one who would succeed is to find out these principles, his second business is to believe in them, and his final business is to entrust his whole career in them.
A fool believes in a principle when he sees it works for his good. A man of sense believes in principle when he cannot see. The very essence of faith-power is that it works in the dark.
The real man believes most of all in honesty when it is plain that to lie would profit him; believes most of all in cleanliness when the allurements of uncleanliness make their strongest appeal; believes most of all in the power of good to overcome evil when men most clamor for the false remedy of cruel retaliation.
The man of principle steers his course by the north star; in storm and fog he goes straight on; he is an ocean-goer. The man of shrewdness and expediency is a coaster and explores the deeps at his peril.
One gets the good out of a principle only when he is convinced that it is invariable. Behind it is the eternal will of the university, which cannot be fooled, tricked, or dodged.
Rooted in principles life grows stronger and more majestic every day; the years harden it; failures fructify it; the windy blasts toughen it; Junes fill it with flowers and Octobers load it with fruit.
Take stock of yourself. Are there some big things you utterly believe in, and by them govern your days? Out of those things shall grow your happiness and your usefulness at the last.
Do you think everything has exceptions? Are you straight or crooked as occasion dictates? Do you say, “It all depends?” Are you an opportunist? Do you simply act as your judgment decides in each case? Do you think the end justifies the means; that is, that your little mind is clearer than the omniscient mind?
So you do that which is EXPEDIENT or do you do which is RIGHT?
If you have no principles you are but the chaff which the wind driveth away.
