Category Archives: religion

Dr. Crane on Chaos and Confusion

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(After an awful weekend of disorder and disaster in a tragic time of worldwide sickness and death, we are absorbed in our own uncertainties. What can go wrong next? Where are we headed, personally, politiclaly, and nationally? Some of us watched Saturday for a few brief minutes a small rising symbol of hope and future adventure with the launch of the Dragon space capsule. But with night came more consuming gloom and despair that continued yesterday. The Young Men’s Christian Association national magazine, Association Men, in its October, 1923 issue published Dr. Frank Crane’s reflection on rising above despair, reflecting on a post-World War I world with words that fit our times.

He advised us to—-)

CAST YOUR ANCHOR and WAIT for DAYLIGHT

AFTER some fourteen days of violent driving to and fro before the wind, the ship upon which St. Paul was a passenger was found, by soundings, to be approaching an unknown shore. Then upon the advice of Paul the sailors cast anchor and waited for day.

The world today seems to be in a confusion resembling the case of the ship which held the apostle. Conditions are swirling. There is chaos in politics and confusion in men’s minds. Nature adds its touch of tragedy in the Japanese earthquake, one of the greatest natural disasters in history.

During the war America and the World in spite of the horrors of the time were elevated by a great moral purpose. The very seriousness of the threatened disaster aroused the idealism of the people. When the war was over America and the world had a great slump. Since then we have been wallowing in pessimism and petulance. The effort to make rational arrangement which would avert another such cataclysm by means of the League of Nations was defeated by partisanship. Since that time the forces of reaction have been strong and continuous.

France in the Ruhr and Italy with Greece look very much as though they were adopting the tactics of old Germany.

Rather universally the song of the birds has been succeeded by the croaking of frogs. The only way to get and maintain our poise is by grasping clearly the fundamentals of religious faith.

The very purpose of religion is to steady and sustain life. What the world needs is an intelligent faith. Let us think a bit about what this implies.

An intelligent faith is not a silly optimism. It does not consist of absurd denial of evil and pain. Any faith which ignores facts can hardly be called intelligent. An optimism that says all is good is false. The only true optimism is that which recognizes evil and at same time recognizes the responsibility for correcting evil. The right kind of optimist is one who tries to find the will of God and cooperate with it and who believes that that will is pure and perfect. And the law of God is growth. And there can be no growth that does not pass through imperfection to perfection. We are yet in the transition stage. We are co-workers with God with the great task before us of bringing order out of chaos. Optimism consists in believing we shall succeed and not in deluding ourselves that we have succeeded.

An intelligent faith faces the deeper facts. Pessimism sees only the superficial facts. There are many who say that faith is a delusion because they see evil rampant, but the man of faith looks deeper than this, knowing that the great facts of life and destiny are not upon the surface but hidden. That is why those who merely see the apparent facts are often discouraged and swept away into despair. But the mind of him who has faith in God is like the still deeps of the ocean, while the mind of the godless is like its storm-tossed surface.

Intelligent faith rests upon the great cosmic laws. These are the laws of righteousness and justice and of the fixed benevolent will of God. These are eternal. Vice, and violence, evil and despair flourish for a time but they are as the falling leaves. Goodness is the tree trunk that time nor seasons nor the defections of men cause to decay.

An intelligent faith is no blind belief in totems. It is not superstition. It has nothing to do with mysterious hocus pocus of any sort. It is based upon a knowledge of history, a knowledge of the human heart, and a knowledge of the great unfolding law of evolution in the world.

An intelligent faith is not a seed of fanaticism. It is courage. It makes a man keep on fighting when the battle goes against him. It is the strong conviction that no matter how dark the night the sun will rise in due season. It is the implicit belief in the truth that it always stops raining. It lends to a man something of the fixity of Nature herself because it is a belief in Nature’s law and in Nature’s god.

An intelligent faith does the constructive work of the world. It builds, it plants, it creates. It is the source of the best functions of human energy. It is the backbone of the mind. It not only keeps the mind strong but it keeps the body healthy, the eye clear and the soul undisturbed.

An intelligent faith begins with faith in oneself. That he is a child of God, that he has been put into this world for a purpose and cannot be removed from it until that purpose is fulfilled. It is a faith in one’s potential goodness because it is a faith in one’s sonship toward the Eternal.

An intelligent faith is a belief in men, in one’s neighbors in the world. Almost all the troubles that have arisen from human contact have been caused by the failure of faith. If men would only believe in each other, that all men are fair and all women good, the world might lift itself into the millennium. This would be no lifting of oneself by the boot straps, it would rather be lifting of oneself by allowing the greatest force in the universe to operate through him.

An intelligent faith is also one of the instincts. It is from the instincts a human being derives all his force. Faith is one of the latest products of evolution, an instinct developed by the long struggles of the race, the finest flower in God’s garden of Souls.

An intelligent faith is faith in God. That does not mean in some mysterious charm to avoid disaster, nor in some medieval monarch sitting on the throne of heaven, nor in some fantastic heathenish deity to be propitiated by sacrifice and incense, but it means faith in the Mighty Father who broods ever upon his world of men, bringing order out of confusion, goodness out of evil, and love and holiness out of mankind, even as He brings the white lily out of the muck, even as he conducts His own universe upon the vast dim voyage from chaos to the stars.

Let us cast our anchor of an intelligent faith in God and wait for day.

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

Dr. Crane on growing old but still growing

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(Just because you have lived through a lot doesn’t mean you are old. Don’t say, “Why, in my day…,” because today is your day, too. Doctor Frank Crane never caught—–)

THE OLD-AGE DISEASE

Boston, said the funny man, is not a locality; Boston is a state of mind. To those who have experienced Boston this is a truth that needs not be proved.

With equal accuracy it may be said that Old Age is not a number of years, it is a state of mind.

It has been observed that a woman is as old as she looks, and a man is as old as he feels; as a matter of fact, both are as old as they think.

There is no need of anybody growing old. For age is entirely a disease of the soul, a condition of ill health, which with reasonable caution may be avoided. It is no more necessary than measles, which the world once thought every one ought to have; now we know better.

The human being begins existence as a vigorous animal, whose body naturally weakens with time and finally perishes. The body runs its course, “ripes and ripes, and rots and rots,” like an apple, or any other organized growth of matter. Hence of course there is a decrepitude of one’s frame.

But this is not at all true of the mind. All things in nature, from mushrooms to oaks, from insects to elephants, and even mountains and suns and systems, have their periods of growth, maturity, and decay. The mind, however, has no such law. It is the “one exception” as Mark Hopkins called it.

And the mind is the real man. And the mind can be as young at ninety as it is at twenty-one.

In asking ourselves what is it that makes youthfulness, we discover the answer to be that it consists in three things.

Work, Growth, and Faith. So long as life functions in these three ways it is young. When any or more of these elements fall off, we are old.

By work is meant an active participation in the interests of human kind. Notice how the boy cannot be idle, he wants to be at something, he burns to play the game.

Idleness or aloofness is the essence of growing old. The business man who “retires” and devotes himself to doing nothing is committing suicide.

John Bigelow recently died at the age of ninety-five, and up to the last retained his interest in affairs.

It is work that keeps men young, more than play. No man should give up selling dry-goods if that is his life business, unless he has found some other business equally congenial and interesting.

I know a woman of eighty, mother of eleven grown children, who is as young as any of them, for she declines to be shelved.

The way to stay young is to keep in that game.

Secondly, growth. That is to say, mind-growth. Let the mind be always learning, alert for new truth, eager for new accomplishments.

It is when one’s intellect closes, ceases to learn, and becomes an onlooker that old age sets in. How many old people impress you as beyond teachableness? They have settled everything, religion, politics, philosophy.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but because he will not learn new tricks is exactly why the dog is old.

It is when one takes up the study of Greek at seventy or at eighty begins to investigate psychology, that his mind breathes Spring air.

As long as a mind is teachable, open and inquiring, it is young.

There ought to be special schools for people of sixty and over. Who goes to school keeps young.

Lastly, faith, not intellectual assent to any statement (which operation is no more to do with faith than sole-leather), but a general belief in man and things; confidence; settled, abiding courage and cheer.

Faith in one’s self, in one’s destiny, in mankind, in the universe and in Him who manages it, this is youth’s peculiar liquor.

Doubt is the very juice of senility. Cynicism, pessimism, and despair are the dust that blows from a dried-up soul.

And faith is not something over which you have no control, it is a cultivable thing, it is a habit.

So long as one keeps at work, continues to learn, and has faith he is young.

Whoever does not work, does not learn, and has no faith is old even at thirty. Old age is a state of mind.

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(John Bigelow was an author and diplomat, one of the founders of the Republican Party, was described by the New York Times on his 94th birthday as “a marvel of good health and strength for a man nearly a century old. He still takes the liveliest interest in affairs, both in America and abroad, and no one is much better posted than he on existing conditions the world over.” He died three weeks later, December 19, 1911. Actually he was 94, not 95.)

 

Dr. Crane on: The impossible

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(There are people who do not believe good or great things are unattainable, even in the face of great opposing power or circumstance. Where would we be as a society or a nation or an economy if there only such people? Dr. Crane has the same questions. And some answers. Although his list of accomplished impossibilities is a century old, our lifetime’s experiences validate what he wrote.)

IT CAN’T BE DONE

If you’re looking about for something to do, something big, something that will bring you fame and money, find something that can’t be done, and do it.

Whoever is at work that can be done is not indispensable. If he quits, seven others are in line to take his job.

But the man who can do what can’t be done is not to be dispensed with. The business cannot get along without him.

Advertise for applicants for a job in your store…a job any industrious person can hold, and next morning the street will be black with the crowd of seekers.

Advertise for a man who will tell you in a day how to increase your net profits or decrease your expenses ten percent, and all you will need at your door is a policeman to handle the cranks.

Particularly in the higher realm of endeavor, in the domain of thought and of morals, it is the impossible that is essential, dominant, needed.

Conscience always points to what is beyond our capacity.

Reason invariably demonstrates that what should be done is the impractical.

The world progresses only as mankind does what can’t be done.

The eight-hour day, says Mr. Forbes, was socialistic, anarchistic, and absurd when first advocated. Nothing could be more impossible. Still, it lay on the conscience of the humane employer as well as upon the desire of the worker; and it was realized, and without any tremendous upheaval of the industries concerned.

It was once said that seven-day work could not be done away with in the steel industry. The nature of the business demanded continuous labor. Give steel workers a Sabbath rest? It can’t be done. Yet it was done…

Against every demand of humanity it has been objected, “It can’t be done.”

You can’t treat prisoners like human beings, they said, and for centuries the vile birds of horror and cruelty befouled every penitentiary. Today militant reformers are doing the impossible, and the cursed ramparts of humanity are crumbling.

Men could not spread religion without quarrelings, torture, force. But is being done.

Plagues could not be prevented, the ignorant common people could not be educated, little children could not be spared from stunting labor, sweatshops could not be abolished, corporal punishment and trial by torture could not be brought to pass, slavery, dueling, and gladiatorial games could not be abated. At some time or another practical men held all these things impossible.

And now they sagely tell us that war cannot be evaded; nations must have war; to expect to abolish war is ideal, fanatical, theoretical, impossible.

Very well. If it’s impossible, let’s do it.

Dr. Crane goes outdoors

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(We have come to appreciate going for a walk. In these days of social distancing with brief dashes to the grocery store to restock the pantry and the refrigerator, the thirty or forty or sixty minutes we spend taking brisk or semi-brisk walks in various parts of our neighborhood provide a welcome break from seeing the same walls, sitting in the same chairs, and occupying ourselves indoors. Dr. Crane nails it with the first line of this essay. We’re not so sure about the third line, however.)

OUTDOORS

A good dose of Outdoors would cure almost anything.

Quit wearing a hat and let your hair Outdoors for that bald spot.

Go barefoot and your feet will slip back ten years…

Go Outdoors and get rid of Nerves. They live in the house.

Other rats and mice that infest houses are Dyspepsia, Constipation, Liver Complaint, Peplessness, and Insomnia.

Not only Bodily Ailments, but all other kinds of plagues and nuisances are house creatures.

Creeds were all made in stuffy rooms. Religion, faith, hope, love, and courage inhabit the woods and meadows, sail the seas, and seek wind and sun.

Jesus taught Outdoors. Ecclesiastical Council are held behind closed doors. The decline of religion is traceable from the Sermon on the Mount to the Sermon in the asphyxiating Meeting- House.

Education ought to be Outdoors. My favorite dream is The University of Outdoors, where pupils go shoeless and hatless and learn under the starts.

This University would teach the child how to be as healthy as a panther. And healthy bodies would obviate most neurasthenic intellectual vagaries.

Where but the Outdoors can you learn Botany, Geology, Astronomy, and the like? Real Science lives Outdoors, as much as Leap-frog.

Play Outdoors.

Even Kissing is better Outdoors…When you chase a girl a half a mile to kiss her you realize what real Kissing is.

Eating is better Outdoors. A horse is healthier than a man because a horse has to walk after every bite of grass he gets…

Children thrive Outdoors and pine in the house.

Outdoors is cheap and plenty.

God made outdoors; man made Indoors.

And God lives Outdoors; in man-made edifices are—Idols.

Dr. Crane on truth

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(We normally reserve any political observations for our Wednesday posting but an event a few days ago has led us to bend that standard for this Monday. Last week, President Trump held a conference call with the nation’s governors to discuss the pandemic. When some governors questioned the federal help their states could get from Washington, the President said Washington was serving only as a “backup” to their efforts. That prompted Washington’s governor to respond that the nation doesn’t need a backup, it needs a Tom Brady—a reference to the great quarterback of the New England Patriots. At a news conference, the President seemed to miss the point entirely when he told reporters, “They think Tom Brady should be leading the effort. That’s only fake news, and I like Tom Brady, spoke to him the other day, he’s a great guy.” Our strong personal attitude on the President’s accusations that the mainstream media is nothing but liars aside, there is nothing fake about the news of the COVID-10 pandemic as it envelops our world ever more tragically. Truth, consistent truth, is badly needed in these circumstances. So we turn to Dr. Frank Crane and his thoughts just after the Great War on—

THE UPROAR

Violence is the gesture of Impotence.

Brutality is the outward sign of inward Cowardice.

The persecutor is not quite sure of himself. It’s the half-doubt lights the fagot.

When the boy passes the graveyard at night he whistles, because he is afgraid of being afraid. It’s the same with all who vociferate.

Only those who believe with their whole hearts can keep still.

The screaming reformers do not believe their cause—wholly.

If the Germans had been sure of the superiority of their Kultur they would have left it alone, to conquer the world by its inherent excellence. Because they were not sure, they went to war.

“Defenders of the Faith!” Ludicrous title! For real faith needs no defense. It is a defense.

You don’t need to stand up for the Truth, and to fight for it, and to preserve it against the enemy. When you talk that way it shows you don’t understand the quality of Truth.

Truth is the one indestructible, ever-green, eternally persistent thing on earth.

All we have to do is to see it, to believe in it, to adjust our lives, thought, and speech to it, and wait. By and by, it always wins.

Hence genuine believers in the Truth do not “strive nor cry, neither is their voice heard in the street.” They are quiet, calm, glad. They have hold of the one thing that cannot fail.

They lean against the pillars of the universe.

The Infinite flows through them, and they smile at the contortions of the Finite.

Whoever is sure is undisturbed.

All fret, worry, apprehension, and morbidity arise from uncertainty. Those who fight are not quite sure.

Only those who are sure can afford to turn the other cheek.

Only the sure can afford to forgive their enemies.

Few reach the dizzy height of Jesus, who saw the Truth so clearly, and believed so utterly inits triumph, that He refused to struggle for it.

The most amazing thing about Him was His leisureliness.

So true it is that “he that believeth shall not make haste.”

Most of us have only caught up with Joshua; we are miles from Jesus.

We juggle His texts, but have no idea of His vast, calm spirit.

Let us find the Truth, even if it be only the Truth about wood, or metal, or mathematics, just any little piece of the Truth, and believe it, and adjust ourselves to it, and be happy; for out of Truth flows peace.

 

Dr. Crane on fearful times

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(Several years before President Franklin Roosevelt told Depression America, “The only thing we have to fear….is Fear itself,” Dr. Frank Crane had the same message in his nationally-syndicated newspaper column. In these fearful times of 2020, his message is renewed).

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST FEAR

The campaign against Fear is the greatest movement of the race. Fear is not bred of ignorance. It is the child of half-knowledge. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” What we don’t know at all we are not afraid of; as a sheep is happy, ignorant of the slaughter-house.

What we half-know scares us. Men used to be afraid of electricity, seeing it only in lightning; now they know it, and the motor-man whistles as he regulates the power of ten thunderstorms.

All along, humanity has been walking up to bugaboos and finding out they were absurd.

Stranger! Men have thought fear helped morality. They tortured, imprisoned, killed, to cure criminals. They beat children. They burned heretics. Gradually they saw their folly. They are learning that crime is essentially fear, the fear of the consequences of doing right, and that you cannot put out fire with kerosene; that is, you cannot cure the fear of doing right by the fear of punishment.

The Romans build a temple to Fear. Fear has played a malign part in the history of religion. The most amazing creation of the human imagination is hell.

There are still those who are afraid to walk under a ladder, to carry a spade through the house, and to start on a journey on a Friday.

Business once was based on fear. Men thought the only way to get work done was by slaves, and by keeping them frightened. The capitalist and the laborer still appeal to fear. But little by little, the futility of it all is appearing.

Employers and employed are learning to appeal to the free co-operation of beach other.

When men half-know gods they trembled at them. Timor fecit deos—fear made the gods. The race today fears and dreads God less because we are nearer Him than in the past.

Dr. Crane on thinking

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(Dr. Frank Crane left the pulpit as a Methodist minister after 28 years to become a writer and newspaper columnist. The New York Times wrote in his 1928 obituary, “His message always was one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” We could use a few doses of that sort of thing these days of division and derision, so we have been sharing some of his thoughts at the start of each week.)

SLOVENLY THOUGHTS

Clean up your thoughts.

Don’t have your mind looking like the dining-table after a banquet, or the floor after a political meeting. Sweep it and dust it and put the ideas away where they belong.

Don’t have a waste-basket mind.

Or a top-bureau-drawer mind.

It doesn’t do you much good to have a grand idea, or a wonderful impression, or a strong passion, if you don’t know where to put it.

I notice when I talk to you that you have a good many interesting notions. The trouble is they are all higgledy-piggledy; they have no unity, coherence, order, organization.

You think, but you don’t think anything out. Your wheat is full of chaff.

Perhaps I can help you if you will lend me your ear for a space.

  1. Don’t pick up some opinion you hear and make it your own because it sounds fine, and go to passing it out, without carefully examining it, scrutinizing, cross-questioning and testing it.
  2. One of the best tests of any opinion (not an infallible, but very valuable, test) is “Will it work?” If it won’t something’s wrong with it, nine times out of ten. That last brilliant notion of yours—hundreds of sensible people have had it, and discarded it, because it wouldn’t work.
  3. Don’t let anybody make you think you owe a certain amount of belief in a thing simply because you can’t disprove it. Nor be deceived by the argument, “If that doesn’t account for it, what does?” You don’t have to account for it at all. Some of the most pestiferous bunk has got itself established by this kind of reasoning. You don’t have to believe or disbelieve everything that comes along; most things you must hang up and wait.
  4. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s a sign that you know what you do know.
  5. Ask questions. Don’t be ashamed of appearing ignorant. What you ought to be ashamed of is seeming to understand when you don’t.
  6. Classify. Education is nothing but the art of classification. Keep a scrap-book. Keep an index rerum. And classify.
  7. Waste no time in acquiring “general information.” Always read and study with a purpose. Look up subjects; don’t just read books. Books are to be referred to, consulted, not to be read through—that is, as a rule.
  8. Be a friend and daily companion to the dictionary and encyclopedia. Look things up.
  9. Define. Practise defining. Practise telling what a thing is not, as well as what it is.
  10. Get clear ideas of what you don’t know. Then you can see better what you do know.
  11. Write. Not for publication, necessarily, but for yourself. Writing accustoms you to choose just the right words. Beware of adjectives, especially two of them. Favor nouns. Use simple, short words. They mean more and carry further.
  12. And never hurry or worry.

Notes from a quiet street—New Year’s edition

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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.

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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.

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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:

https://theologycorner.net/blog/blogs/idioglossolalia/the-death-of-truth-both-sides-dont-deserve-our-consideration/

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. Crane: The meaning of Christmas

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(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. This entry is from a later book of essays, Christmas and the Year Round, published the year before his death.)

Christmas means the indestructibility of joy

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing neither time nor force can suppress is instinct.

In days past, religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.

When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes Instinct, and to use the words of Bennett*, blandly remarks:

“Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own convenience and no one but nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”

In the Fourth Century, the Christian World was pretty dismal. This world was considered a dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the girls and boys were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.

Then the church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.

In 342 A.D., the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

This time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Saturnalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysus. In Egypt of this period the population bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus of India sang their songs to Vishnu.

Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.

The wisest things the Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to a child.

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.

It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes, it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.

Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.

It is the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for this orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”

Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail or hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.

The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied by laughter.

*Dr. Crane is referring to English novelist essayist, and journalist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). The quote comes from his book, Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays, published in 1921.