The Internet Monk Archives

lent 3 — is time running out?

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

• Luke 13:1-9

•

is time running out?

this world’s full of danger, that’s for sure
blood even flows through temples in these days
as self-appointed judges take up arms against the helpless
and have no fear of sacrilege nor wrath against their ways

imagining the “good” should be exempt
that “sinners” are the ones who suffer so
we see no need to change or alter any course we’re fixed on
it’s someone else’s problem, don’t you know…

time there is, but is it running out?
how long before the fruitless tree must go?
one more season? one more chance to feed and tend the garden?
kind caretaker, in patience, make it so.

Lent with John Prine: Paradise

Lent with John Prine
Paradise

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

•

The 1960s and 70s was a time of ecological awakening in the United States. When John Prine’s breakthrough eponymous album was released in 1971, the environmental movement was taking off. Incidents such as the Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland raised a new sense of alarm about the environmental threats the country was facing. By then Congress had passed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which required an environmental impact assessment before government and corporate development projects could be approved, and also allowed citizens and environmental groups to sue polluters. The first Earth Day (April 22) was commemorated in 1970, the same year the Clean Air Act was enacted.

That environmental movement and its successive iterations have often been viewed primarily as part of the liberal political agenda in the U.S., due to its association with the various protest movements of that era. However, concerns about the impact of industrialization upon the environment are as old as the industrial revolution itself, and in America the first “environmentalists” were deeply conservative and committed to preserving wilderness areas and the natural beauty of the country. This led to the creation of the natural parks and groups like the Sierra Club a century before the modern “environmental movement.”

In recent years, Christians have become increasingly aware and vocal concerning their God-given and biblically supported responsibility to care for creation (Genesis 1:28). Lent is a good season in which to lament the often devastating impact we as humans have had on our earthly home. John Prine’s song Paradise is a reminder that what we often call “human progress” can lead to a multitude of unintended consequences, causing God’s good creation to groan in painful bondage — paradise lost.

•

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn

And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’
Just five miles away from wherever I am

Quotable Quotes: Women in the Church

Welcome to a new occasional series of mine: “Quotable quotes”. I will from time to time pass on some interesting quotes that have been brought to my attention, often as a result of the sermon I watch and hear each week.

An argument commonly used by Complementarians is that the church has 2000 years of tradition of men being in leadership.

To which the Egalitarian replies dryly, “Yeah, look how good that has worked out.”

Indeed when we look at church history, we see a history of division. Perhaps if there had been a few more collaborative types in leadership along the way it may have been quite different. Instead we have gotten smaller and smaller islands of “doctrinal purity” where minor issues become elevated to salvation issues as to who is in and who is out. As the joke goes: “As far as I can tell, the only people who are getting into heaven are me and my wife – and I’m not so sure about her.” Not sure if this joke is funny or sad, because it is so close to true.

In fact the church, to its own detriment, has had a long history of disparaging women which continues to this day. For those who think they stand on the side of tradition, here is what tradition has brought us (quotations come compiled via my church’s recent sermon series):

“Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman” – Clement of Alexandria (2nd Century)

“Women are the Devil’s gateway” – Tertullian (2nd Century)

“God maintained the order of each sex by dividing the business of life into two parts, and assigned the more beneficial and necessary aspects to the man, and the less important, inferior matter to the women” – Chrysostom (4th and 5th Centuries)

“The woman together with her own husband is the image of God, but when she is referred separately, which regards the woman alone, then she is not the image of God.” – Augustine (4th and 5th Centuries)

“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex, while the production of woman comes from a defect.” – Thomas Aquinas (13th Century)

“Because the female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men; because being formed from a man’s rib, they are only imperfect animals and crooked whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.” – Malleus Maleficarum (15th Century)

“Girls begin and to talk and stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up quicker than good crops.” – Martin Luther (16th Century)

“Since God was thinking of the man, it certainly follows that the woman is only an accessory. And why? Because she was only created for the sake of man, and she must therefore direct her whole life toward him.” – John Calvin (16th Century)

“Nature I say, paints woman further to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish: and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking in the spirit of counsel and leadership.” – John Knox (16th Century)

“A woman ought not to teach because she is more easily deceived, and more easily deceives.” – John Wesley (18th Century)

“God has made Christianity to have a masculine feel. He has ordained for the church a masculine ministry.” – John Piper

“I would have given my Church my head, my hand, my heart. She would not have them. She did not know what to do with them. She told me to go back and do crochet in my mother’s drawing room; or if I was tired of that, to marry and look well at the head of my husband’s table… ‘You may go to the Sunday School if you like it,’ she said. But she gave me no training even for that. She gave me neither work to do for her, nor education for it.” – Florence Nightingale.

How do you respond when you read these quotes. Women, especially those who might not usually comment much or at all, I am especially interested in hearing from you.

Scrupulosity: Where OCD Meets Religion, Faith, and Belief

Scrupulosity: Where OCD Meets Religion, Faith, and Belief

Please take a minute and read the following article from the OCD Center of Los Angeles. Many people probably have the notion that Obsessive Compulsion Disorder (OCD) is a somewhat harmless psychological problem that involves nothing worse than washing your hands a lot. A somewhat more debilitating version of OCD was featured on the show “Monk” that starred Tony Shalhoub as the eponymous title character. In the show, Adrian Monk is a brilliant San Francisco detective, whose obsessive compulsive disorder just happens to get in the way of his solving crime and living his life. It was broadly played for comedic effect, although, to be fair, there were some poignant moments as well.

However, the real OCD variation known as “Scrupulosity” is not funny—at all. Typical symptoms, according to the article, include:

· Repetitive thoughts about having committed a sin

· Exaggerated concern with the possibility of having committed blasphemy

· Excessive fear of having offended God

· Inordinate focus on religious, moral, and/or ethical perfection

· Excessive fear of failing to show proper devotion to God

· Repeated fears of going to hell / eternal damnation

· Concern that one’s behaviors will doom a loved one to hell

· Unwanted sexual thoughts about God, Jesus, or a religious figure such as a priest

· Unwanted mental images such as Satan, 666, hell, sex with Christ, etc.

· Excessive fear of having acted counter to one’s personal morals, values, or ethics

These thoughts torment the person suffering from the disorder to the point that they can’t hardly live their life at all. They literally can think of nothing else. It is not uncommon for the loved one in our family suffering this disorder to remain in bed all day and all night for days at time. Other compulsions include:

· Repeated and ritualized confessing (to religious figures such as pastors, church elders, and/or to friends and family)

· Excessive, ritualized praying and/or reading of the bible or other religious texts

· Repeating specific verses from the bible or other religious texts (either out loud or silently)

· Mentally reviewing past acts and/or thoughts in an effort to prove to one’s self that one has not committed a sin or acted in a manner thy construe to be immoral or unethical or counter to one’s faith

· Ritualized “undoing” behaviors to counteract perceived sins and transgressions

· Excessive acts of self-sacrifice (i.e., giving away relatively large amounts of money or earthly possessions)

We have got our loved one into one treatment program, but they weren’t satisfied with it and quit. We are trying to get them into another one. I have commented before that the mental health system in this country is in bad shape. There are not a lot of places that offer treatment and insurance coverage varies widely. Unfortunately, the quality of therapist also varies widely. In these situations it is very important that patient and therapist are compatible.

I’ve been meaning to post on this topic for a while, especially after Klasie Kraalogies shared his experience with mental illness in a loved one. The intersection of faith/religion and mental illness is difficult terrain to traverse and is made much more difficult by many misconceptions that exist in church circles, especially charismatic and evangelical churches. Far too many people still think that depression is a moral failing. I’ve also lost count on the number of “deliverance” sessions my loved one has been to where demons are cast out. I used to be somewhat tolerant of well-meaning fellow Christians, but no longer—because such “ministry” exacerbates the problem instead of relieving it. Especially when so called well-meaning fellow Christians discourage the loved one from taking medicine prescribed for the condition.

One bright spot is the local conservative evangelical mega-church that we often attend. They have some very sensitive ministry staff that don’t hesitate to recommend qualified medical professional help for mental health issues in their congregants, and encourage them to remain on prescribed meds.

The last issue I wanted to raise on this subject might be a little more controversial. Some of you reading the article probably thought that the symptoms described as OCD Scrupulosity were mighty close to how you might describe some people you’re acquainted with at church. Maybe not to the extreme in the article, but, still… uncomfortably familiar. The bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:16 (NIV): Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself? Then there is this quote from the article:

Also, allow us to note that, before beginning the process of therapy, both the client and therapist should be aware that the result of engaging in CBT for religious Scrupulosity may not be limited to a reduction in distorted thoughts. An additional result may be that the individual begins to challenge their global interpretation, experience, and practice of their faith. While this does not necessarily mean a loss of faith, it may mean that the individual transitions away from an excessively dogmatic view and practice of faith, and towards a less rigid interpretation. It may also mean that the individual will develop a lifestyle without some of the specific practices that they previously found so vital to their faith, or even an entirely new perspective towards their faith.

I’m just going to come out and say it. Maybe, just maybe, getting shed of your fundamentalist mindset is part of getting mentally healthy. Excessively scrupulous, dogmatic, rigid interpretations of scripture, over reliance on proof-texting, inability to reason outside of black-white thinking, inability to understand nuance, maybe these are not just a temperament, but they are indicative of a dysfunctional mind. Wait… so Mike… are you saying if I’m a fundamentalist I’m mentally ill? Well… not exactly (*). What I am saying is there is a continuum or a spectrum from the dysfunctional severe mental illness of Scrupulosity OCD to a healthy and fulfilling religious life. Where do you place yourself on that spectrum? Maybe more importantly, where do those around you place you on that spectrum?

Rather than get mad at me, if you need help, get help. Of course, the first step is recognizing you need help.

*Just to be clear, and for the record; the article makes it plain that the OCD behavior occurs not just in Christianity: “It is worth noting that Scrupulosity is not partial to any one religion, but rather custom fits its message of doubt to the specific beliefs and practices of the sufferer.” Also Scrupulosity OCD gets its own category of diagnosis expressly because the compulsion fixates on the religious components of the sufferer’s life. But other aspects of one’s life can be subject to the dysfunctional compulsion that seems to afflict humans. Ever run into a monomaniacal meat-is-murder vegan? How about a constantly-virtue-signaling SJW? Trekkies? Ask HUG to give you a discourse on Fanatical Furries sometime. My point is it’s a human condition.

How the Bible Actually Works (3)

How the Bible Actually Works (3)

Today we continue blogging through Pete Enns’s new book on the Bible.

As I’ve said in our recent posts on The Bible and the Believer, one of my tasks this year will be to work on answering two questions that Pete raises regularly in his writings and podcasts:

What is the Bible?
What is the Bible for?

Last time we discussed Enns’s point that the Bible is designed to lead us to wisdom. It is not designed to give us “answers” or to be a “rulebook” or “instruction manual’ for life. As Pete summarizes:

Rather than providing us with information to be downloaded, the Bible holds out for us an invitation to join an ancient, well-traveled, and sacred quest to know God, the world we live in, and our place in it. Not abstractly, but intimately and experientially. (p. 10)

In subsequent sections Pete Enns talks about the ambiguous nature of much of the Bible’s teaching, even in parts that we might think of as “clear instructions” — such as the book of Proverbs or the Law. Just a moment’s closer thought reminds us that even legal statutes must be interpreted and applied, and that this is the task of wisdom. When the Ten Commandments say, “Honor your father and mother,” or “Keep the sabbath,” the inevitable question is “How do we do that?” Turns out these “clear instructions” aren’t so clear and simple after all.

Then Pete takes up the idea that the Bible is a diverse book. He suggests that this is a key to understanding how to approach the Bible’s teaching and instructions.

The Bible’s diversity is the key to uncovering the Bible’s true purpose for us.

…The diversity we see in the Bible reflects the inevitably changing circumstances of the biblical writers across the centuries as they grappled with their sacred yet ancient and ambiguous tradition.

…The Bible (both Old and New Testaments) exhibits this same characteristic of the sacred past being changed, adapted, rethought, and rewritten by people of faith, not because they disrespected the past, but because they respected it so much they had to tie it to their present.

…The Bible isn’t a book that reflects one point of view. It is a collection of books that records a conversation—even a debate—over time.

When I began to see that for myself, a lot of things fell into place about the Bible’s purpose and what it means to read it with the eyes of faith. When we accept the Bible as the moving, changing, adaptive organism it is, we will more readily accept our own sacred responsibility to engage the ancient biblical story with wisdom, to converse with the past rather than mimic it—which is to follow the very pattern laid out in the Bible itself.

• pp. 76-78

This is the understanding of scripture that Michael Spencer wrote about in his classic essay, “A Conversation in God’s Kitchen.” He likens the Bible to the “Great Books,” which brought together significant writings from the history of the Western world in a set that allowed for a “conversation” to occur between the diverse voices across history yet also present an overall metanarrative we call “Western Civilization.”

The authors suggested we approach these books not as a single narrative, or as an education by installment, but as a great, roaring, unruly conversation across the ages. Greek dramatists debating with English scientists. Russian novelists sparring with German psychologists. Gibbon debating Homer. Augustine versus Tolstoy. It was a conversation that never occurred, but was allowed to occur by bringing all these writings together, and then studying them to hear what each writer had to say.

This idea, of a great conversation taking place over time and culture, and then selected and presented for my benefit, has become my dominant idea of what is the Bible. It has proven increasingly helpful in a number of ways.

The great conversation model has allowed me to jettison any defense of the Bible as single book whose human origins and methodologies present significant difficulties that must be explained. For instance, I view the Bible as a selection of purely human literary creations. I may lay aside my faith, as many critics do, and study the Biblical material purely in their historical and cultural settings. This eliminates the need to force the Bible to be divine in origin, and gives me the freedom to hear each Biblical writer saying what he/she had to say in the way he/she chose to say it.

Or I may read the Bible with my eyes, mind and heart alive to the faith that is at the center of the Biblical conversation. The humanity of the conversation is not an obstacle, but an invitation to understand the Bible even as we understand ourselves and our histories, experiences and cultures.

The rich diversity of the Bible is frequently lost in our fear that seeing a book as exactly what it appears to be will ruin the inspiration and divine authority of the book. Is God so small that the humanity of a text matters to His use of it? Further, the particular “voice” or style the text uses to talk about God may come to us in ways that are strange and uncomfortable to modern ideas of reality and truth. But if we are listening to a conversation and not predetermining what it must be, these factors are almost meaningless.

The Bible is “timeless,” not because it is characterized by propositions and teachings that transcend the various times, places, and circumstances in which its different parts were written (“timeless truths”), but precisely because of what Pete Enns calls “its unwavering commitment to adaptation over time” (p. 80). The Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us and for people in all generations and cultures. In order for the Bible to speak to us, we must take words written for others in vastly different circumstances and seek God’s wisdom to know how to walk with God faithfully in our own day.

The Bible shows us that obedience to God is not about cutting and pasting the Bible over our lives, but seeking the path of wisdom—holding the sacred book in one hand and ourselves, our communities of faith, and our world in the other in order to discern how the God of old is present here and now. We respect the Bible best when we take that process seriously enough to own it for ourselves… (p. 82)

Tuesday with Michael Spencer: Is This the “Better World” You Were Talking About?

Note from CM: A piece by Michael from 2009. Some of the cultural references are dated, but in the light of yesterday’s post and discussion, I thought it might be a good reminder that we here at IM have always seen the online life as something which needs constant monitoring because it incessantly challenges our calling to stay grounded in earthy and human reality.

• • •

Is This the “Better World” You Were Talking About?

I grew up as television was growing up. I was born in 1956 and lived through the “Golden Age” of network television.

Television was part of my childhood and teenage years, but I had no reference point before television. Captain Kangaroo had always been there on the black and white television in the corner of our modest house.

My parents also lived through the “Golden Age” of television, but they had many years of life without television. They had grown up in rural America in the first quarter of the 20th century. Nether had education beyond high school. They grew up around the birth of radio, but television was something new to them.

I remember the many experiences we shared together around the television. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Kennedy and King assassinations. The Space program. Sporting events. Vietnam.

Every evening, the news with Walter Conkrite was the touchstone for my family’s view of the world. Yes, we had a local newspaper, but the immediacy and authority of television worked its way into our lives as it did the lives of so many Americans.

I never thought much about what television meant in our family until years later.

My dad had many anxieties, and one of his worst was the weather. He was extremely afraid of storms and he was devoted to the local television weather reports, the weather warnings on local radio and the information from his weather radio.

All of this before the Weather Channel and the endless hype about weather on every television channel.

When storms were coming, my dad was terrified, and the weather media helped him stay agitated and frightened for hours.

If my dad had lived to see the Doppler Warnings on today’s weather reports and the endless focus on weather disasters on 24 weather channels, I’m pretty sure it would have caused strokes, heart attack or a complete nervous breakdown.

But that’s how the world has changed. My dad didn’t know all kinds of things that I know, whether I want to- or need to- know them or not. And that seems to be a good thing.

I now have media telling me about every disaster, every danger, every warning, every piece of research, every scary statistic and every threat to world peace imaginable. If I don’t imbibe the media kool-aid myself, I’ll meet ten people every day at work who have information bombs to explode.

(Christians are so susceptible to media gullibility that it’s frightening. When I sit down to lunch in the cafeteria and hear the sentence, “I’ve been researching his on the internet,” I know I’m very likely about to hear 1) complete distortions and untruths 2) swallowed whole, digested and now spit back up with authority that would make any scientist blush.)

Last week, one of the major internet news outlets did a front page piece on 5 ways the world might end. Have a nice day America. Here’s your water cooler topic. For a whole day, we learned how a solar storm would take us back to the Neanderthal age. (If you believe in that sort of thing.)

I’m glad my dad didn’t have to deal with that amount of information. Or the story just below it: Oprah Gushes Over Winslet’s Breasts. Or the next day’s proclamation that the national debt won’t be paid off unless Jesus gives us the money.

My dad didn’t have Bill O’Reilley or Keith Obermann ranting five nights a week about all the terrible things the ordinary person can’t get by without knowing and getting furious over. C’mon, ordinary Americans. Are you pissd off yet? Well WHY NOT!!) Of course, the irony is that most people get by without knowing those things quite easily, but if you watch the media flamethrowers, western civilization and the existence of God are all up for grabs every night .

The farmers, illegal immigrants, working Joes and people in the nursing homes seem to get by just fine without knowing there is a desperate crisis every ten minutes.

The whole world is now drowning in undifferentiated information; everything is a panic and a crisis. Everything must be heard, everyone must pay attention. All the bad news that has happened and could happen must be paraded out for panic drills. All the unsolvable and uncontrollable situations must be heard about so we can demand the governments solve the problem.

Contemporary life must be lived with maximum information and maximum hype. It’s a crisis!! All the time!!! But first….ANOTHER CRISIS!!! AFTER THE COMMERCIALS!!!!!!

My mom and dad lived through the onset of the television era when we still had some sanity regarding the amount of information a person needed to live. The Cuban missile crisis really was more important than……I’m actually afraid to write anything ridiculous here because some of you will go nuts no matter what I mention.

The world is the world as its always been. But now we know about our carbon footprint. Now we know there’s a war on Christmas. Now we know what President Obama’s pastor once said in a sermon somewhere. Now we know what Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews consider to be worth writing a book about. Now we know how many pets were displaced by Hurricane Katrina and how big Paris Hilton’s lips are after the injections.

This isn’t a better world than the world of my parents. Oh sure, there’s better health information in there somewhere amidst all the hype, spin, ads and unadulterated crap. I guess we can all be grateful that we’re able to see the problems in the world we can each solve with a small monthly check, just before we learn if Tom Cruise really has Katie locked up in a tool shed on a Scientology ranch.

The information age is the ultimate double-edged sword. It’s brought to you by the same technology and information pipeline that brings you this blog. (A blog where, by the way, posts on egg nog are right next to the ones on starving children in the Sudan.)

My parents grew up in a world where a crisis was the ’37 flood taking away the farm or a world war taking away your brothers. They grew up in a world where television entertained and only occasionally sought to tell you what was important.

For my parents, what was important happened in your family, your neighborhood or maybe your county. Events in Washington or around there world were distant, and when they touched you, it was for reasons of obvious importance.

Were they ignorant? Were they under informed? Would their lives have been better if they could set in front of Fox News or CNN and watch the stock market’s every move?

I don’t think so.

They trusted a few sources of information. They believed that what they heard in church and Sunday School was what was really important. (And that came from their own pastor! Not a religious channel!!)

They believed in talking to their neighbors and family about what was going on in the community. Perhaps they needed to be overwhelmed by information, so they would know they couldn’t be happy without the stock market at 14,000 or a flat screen television. Perhaps they needed to be wired into the world-wide information superhighway, where “friends” are tiny pictures on facebook that may never say a word to you and “neighborhood” is the a collection of property belonging to other strangers you never talk to.

No…I think their world was better. And I say that with full knowledge that I never saw my parents read a book or listen to music that wasn’t on the radio. They were deprived of a lot, but their world wasn’t utter and complete chaos.

They didn’t believe the nonsense we believe. They weren’t enslaved to the consumer religion. They didn’t judge their children in comparison to anyone other than Wally and the Beaver. They didn’t judge their lives in comparison to the houses on the Better Homes Channel. They didn’t judge a meal by Rachel Ray or a church by Joel Osteen.

Media occupied its place in their world. They didn’t serve as pawns in the world of media.

And that’s what many of us have become. Pawns in a game where we hardly exist except as an audience for the information, consumer and entertainment establishment.

Shall we talk about pornography? The entertainment addicted personality? The damage to American health by the couch potato lifestyle? The philosophical relativism that lies at the heart of this construction of reality? The loss of our souls? The loss of simplicity and blissful ignorance?

For another day. For now, I’m just remembering the lives of my parents, and wondering if anyone has lived through the same sad revolution in the quality of our lives?

Would you consider anyone who lives submerged into today’s media culture to have much of a dependable idea of what it means to be a normal human being?

Yeah, me neither.

Goodbye Facebook

Goodbye Facebook

I made a decision today that’s been a long time coming. I’m quitting Facebook.

It was not an easy decision, hence my hesitation and delay over the past couple of years. But last week the balance tipped, the straw broke the camel’s back, and I arrived at the end of my rope when Facebook was used by a white anti-immigrant terrorist to broadcast a live streamed video of mass murder in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The horror was designed specifically for an era that has married social media and racism — a massacre apparently motivated by white extremist hatred, streamed live on Facebook and calculated to go viral.

The shooting represented a staggering corruption of a form of communication, used innocently by millions, that promised to draw people together but has also helped pry them apart into warring camps. (Richard Pérez-Peña, New York Times)

I can no longer support or participate on a platform that is incapable of stopping the dissemination of such evil. And this is not the first occasion social media has been in the spotlight for its inability to police their platform, though it certainly marks a new and alarming low in graphic possibility.

Despite the horror of the New Zealand mass shooting spread through social media, it would be disingenuous for any social media outlet to describe it as unexpected. According to a 2017 BuzzFeed analysis, at least 45 instances of live-stream violence have occurred on Facebook Live since its debut in 2015. These include beatings, murders, rape and suicide. And just as the New Zealand gunman allegedly used social media to encourage more violence and spread racist propaganda, ISIS is far more sophisticated in its well-documented use of social media platforms as a successful tool of radicalization and recruitment. (Helen A.S. Popkin, Forbes)

So, amid privacy concerns, the propagation of fake news and misleading and deceptive content, the use of social media to unfairly influence political discourse and even elections, as well as the mind-boggling amount of sheer foolishness, narcissistic blather, and time-wasting distractions, now we are treated to the possibility that our eyes will not, cannot be shielded from gunmen with helmet cams mowing down people in cold blood.

I know, I know. This is not the whole story. There are many ways that I have benefited from social media. I have reconnected with old friends in meaningful ways. I keep up to date with my family. I get notified about events. I share and enjoy photography. I’ve been introduced to new articles, music, books, and products. I have had respectful discussions as well as fun banter with interesting people I don’t have the chance to engage face to face.

But something has to be done. And I cannot ignore this. One article described the Christchurch shooter as a person who “traveled the world, but lived on the internet.” Social media platforms like Facebook are responsible for providing refuge for people and groups like this who spread their hate and violence around the world.

I’ve decided to move out of the neighborhood.

It would be unfair to blame the internet for this. Motives are complex, lives are complicated, and we don’t yet know all the details about the shooting. Anti-Muslim violence is not an online phenomenon, and white nationalist hatred long predates 4Chan and Reddit.

But we do know that the design of internet platforms can create and reinforce extremist beliefs. Their recommendation algorithms often steer users toward edgier content, a loop that results in more time spent on the app, and more advertising revenue for the company. Their hate speech policies are weakly enforced. And their practices for removing graphic videos — like the ones that circulated on social media for hours after the Christchurch shooting, despite the companies’ attempts to remove them — are inconsistent at best. (Kevin Roose, New York Times)

• • •

Note from CM: This leaving will be a process. I currently administrate an IM Facebook Group that is designed to give people a chance to interact outside the blog. I am working on a way to keep that available for the many people who may not share the decision I’m making and who want to continue the forum. Stay posted.

lent 2 — foxes and hens

Woodcut from *The Black Aunt: Stories & Legends for Children* (1848)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’

• Luke 13:31-35

•

foxes and hens

foxes and hens
foxes and hens
the world is made up
of foxes and hens

slyly conspiring
or serving instead
teeth bared and threat’ning
or loving wings spread

one sneaks ‘round the palace
one heals and makes sound
clinging to power
or laying life down

predator fox
guardian hen
the struggle’s continued
since way back then

crowns and crosses
foxes and hens
the struggle continues
’til who knows when

Lent with John Prine: Hello in There

Lent with John Prine
Hello in There

We are listening to iconic American folksinger John Prine during Lent this year, choosing songs that highlight themes of the season.

Of course, in Lent we think of change as well as our mortality — themes artists have always and will ever address. I can’t think of a song that better captures the sadness, alienation, and loneliness that aging in this life can bring than Prine’s exquisite Hello in There.

•

We had an apartment in the city
Me and Loretta liked living there
Well, it’s been years since the kids have grown
A life of their own — left us alone
John and Linda live in Omaha
And Joe is somewhere on the road
We lost Davey in the Korean war
And I still don’t know what for, it don’t matter anymore

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”

Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if he asks “What’s new?”
“Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do”

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”

So if you’re out walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care. Say, “Hello in there, hello”

Klasie Kraalogies: Rhythm — An Atheist Contemplates Lent

Rhythm – An Atheist Contemplates Lent
By Klasie Kraalogies

At the heart of the cosmos is rhythm, movement, cycles. Existence is a near-infinite superposition of Ptolemaic epicycles, seasons and ice ages and aeons of move and counter-move.

A few days ago someone in the comment section talked about panentheism. Popularized, if that is the right word, by Baruch Spinoza – that sage who can be read with profit by atheist and theist alike. Of course, the roots of these thoughts lie in earlier history – Democritus’s atoms, the words of Zeno etc. It is also reflected in the thoughts of the Buddha. As well as the great author, Douglas Adams, who has his “holistic detective” Dirk Gently constantly holding forth on the “Interconnectedness of all things”.

So how does this connect to Lent? The religious calendar is a reflection on the rhythms of existence – of life-giving death, of pain leading to glory. While there seems to be a tendency to think of belief and unbelief as two absolutist categories, perpetually at war, this is simplistic. All of existence, dances in ecstasy, only to succumb to life-giving agony. As an atheist, hellfire etc. holds no sway – but our cyclical struggles, our painful struggles to not succumb to evil, to not die in vain but to sow the seeds of new life – these are powerful realities.

The previous Doctor in the BBC’s Dr Who had this as a main theme – the agony over the question – “Am I a good man?”. He then answers it himself:

“…I am not a good man! And I’m not a bad man either. I’m not a hero. I’m definitely not a president, and no, I’m not an officer. You know who I am? I… am… an idiot! With a box and a screwdriver. Passing through. Helping out. Learning. I don’t need an army. I never have. Because I’ve got them, always them, because love is not an emotion. Love is a promise..”

A promise. We are idiots – but the lesson we learn, and the promise we hold on to, which enables us to endure the rhythms of the Cosmos, to ride the waves of existence, is Love. Lent is the promise of love – love through pain, life through death. This is reality. This is rhythm. And rhythm, my friends, is music. We are the daughters and sons of supernovae – and our music is the music of the spheres.