Month: January 2019

Class Warfare in the United States.  All Hail American Empire!

(This post is part two in a series discussing America’s class war and its bearing upon Christian ethics and the church).

During the 1980 presidential primary race, George H. W. Bush famously described candidate Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic proposal as “voodoo economics.”  (See post #1).

Check out the video below:

If the first ingredient in Reagan’s cauldron of economic voodoo was tax cuts for the wealthiest who needed them the least, the second ingredient was a huge expansion in the nation’s military budget.  Check out this article by Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone for more on our current military spending.

More than half of the nation’s discretionary spending goes to the military-industrial-surveillance complex.  The following pie chart depicts the 2015 budget allowances.  Over half, 54% to be precise, went to the military:

The United States spends as much money on its military as the world’s next ten nations in line.  President Trump approved a $717 billion defense bill, increasing U.S. military spending by over $200 billion in 2017.

 

Remember all of this money is going to an institution that recently failed its first ever audit and is unable to account for $21 trillion.  That’s right:  $21 trillion unaccounted for by our military-industrial complex!  Haven’t heard this fact discussed much on network news, have you?

That the American public allows this kind of abuse to continue is not only a classic example of throwing good money after bad, it is the ultimate illustration of something called the Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnapping victims are gradually brainwashed into sympathizing with, and even assisting, the very criminals holding them hostage.

Similarly, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Department and U.S. arms manufacturers all conspire to hold this country hostage.

They concoct imaginary threats (like Iran), bilk the American tax-payer for hundreds of billions of dollars in ransom money every year, and then watch approvingly as the masses dig deep to hand over the military’s blood money while standing to salute the flag and sing “God Bless America.”

The entire scenario is obscene.  Especially because the spending is not motivated by the requirements of national defense, regardless of the political rhetoric used to assuage any (rare) objections or questions from the public.

The only reason standing behind our massive military budgets is the continued expansion of the American Empire, an Empire that enriches our billionaire class.

Do we really need 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world?  No.

Is it necessary for us to conduct secret drone bombing campaigns in 8 different countries?  No.

Don’t worry.  The carnage is bi-partisan.  In 2016 President Obama dropped nearly 31,000 bombs in seven countries.  President Trump, “the most hawkish president in modern history,” topped that by 9,000, dropping nearly 40,00 bombs in 2017.

At the end of the day,  all of these bombs and wars boil down to war-profiteers making more and more money.  Listen to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson lambaste the unfettered greed laying at the heart of American war-making.

Yes, American warfare boils down to billionaires making more and more money; retired generals and admirals becoming CEOs, sitting on more and more boards of directors for more weapons manufacturers; or signing six figure contracts for their “consulting work” (otherwise known as lobbying) on behalf of armaments companies like Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Check out the Ten Companies Profiting Most From War.

In 1935, Marine Corp General Smedley Butler wrote the anti-war classic, War is a Racket.  He would know.  I encourage you to read the general’s short book, if you haven’t already.  Below is an excerpt:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”

General Smedley’s words are as true today, perhaps more so, than they were 80 years ago.

Nearly 1/4 of every tax dollars goes to the military budget

Once again, feeding the war machine results in a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans.  First, our tax dollars justify increased, military expansion.  Second, that expansion funnels hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the CEOs and shareholders who run the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.

The rich get richer while everyone else bears the burden.

Of course, the greatest burden is the cost of war in human lives.

Rarely do the rich sign up to go to war (though a few legislators tried to change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education.  And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.

But, don’t worry, American tax-payer.  Every bomb dropped, every missile launched is just more money in the bank for another U.S. corporation perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.

The final injustice of our obscene “defense” budgets (we really ought to call it an “offensive” budget) is the neglect of the American people and the social needs of our society.

In 2017, the U.S. budgeted $623 billion on national defense.  Many budget analysts argue that by reducing our defense budget down to European levels, we would have the money needed to do such things as:

  • Provide free, universal, early childhood development programs to all our children
  • Debt-free college for anyone attending a state university
  • Student loan forgiveness
  • Dramatic reductions in our rates of homeless and childhood-poverty
  • Reduce the nation’s deficit
  • Provide free health care to every American

Everything discussed here are humanitarian concerns that ought to animate every disciple of Jesus Christ.

What could be a more pungent expression of “loving your neighbor” through social engagement than working to starve the war-mongering beast of American Empire for the good of everyone, at home and around the world?

Caitlin Johnstone on the Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

The journalist Caitlin Johnstone has posted a good discussion, entitled “If America Stopped Destroying the World, the Bad Guts Might Win,” about the

Caitlin Johnstone

rank hypocrisy of American foreign policy, a policy that continues to work at toppling any foreign government we don’t like (which typically means that they won’t cooperate with American demands) and promulgating wars of strategic convenience when and where we choose.

She specifically addresses U.S. aggression in Venezuela and the Middle East.

This American Empire is an evil beast that no right-thinking Christian can possibly support, much less cheer onward.

No, Jesus may not have explicitly condemned Caesar or the Roman Empire, but he left us plenty of explicit ethical instruction which, when taken seriously, makes it impossible for his disciples to endorse or to approve of Caesar or to support the Empire’s bloody exercise of raw power for its own interests.

Below is an excerpt.  You can read the entire post here.

“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Saturday that the government under Venezuela’s recently re-inaugurated president Nicolas Maduro is ‘illegitimate’, and that ‘the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.’

“Pompeo’s remarks, which were echoed by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, are interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is because Venezuela’s presidential election in May of last year (which incidentally was found to have been perfectly legitimate by the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) was actively and aggressively meddled in by the US and its allies. The second is that while the US government is openly broadcasting its intention to continue interfering in Venezuela’s political system, it continues to scream bloody murder about alleged Russian interference in its own democratic process two years ago.

“What is the difference between the behavior of the United States, which remains far and away the single worst offender in foreign election meddling on the

Woolsey lets the cat out of the bag on Fox News. The US meddles wherever it bloody well pleases

planet, and what Russia is accused of having done in 2016? According to a comment made by former CIA Director James Woolsey last year, it’s that the US interferes in foreign democracies ‘for a very good cause.’

“And that’s really the only argument that empire loyalists have going for them on this subject. The US is different because the US has moral authority. It’s okay for the US to continue to interfere in the political affairs of foreign nations while it would be an unforgivable and outrageous ‘act of war’ for a nation like Russia to do the exact same thing, because the US is countering the interests of the Bad Guys while Russia is countering the interests of the Good Guys. Who decided who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are in this argument? The US.”

Kierkegaard on Becoming an Individual, Seriously

Here are two excerpts from Kierkegaard’s 1847 journal, written when he was 34 years old.

Kierkegaard is sometimes criticized for placing too much emphasis upon “the individual,” promoting a brand of individualism that places little if any value in social connections or community relationships.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sadly, Kierkegaard’s philosopher MIS-interpreters have encouraged this common misunderstanding of the melancholy Dane by ignoring, or willfully remaining ignorant of, the centrality of Jesus Christ in Kierkegaard’s thinking.

Here is an example:

“Everyone would like to have lived at the same time as great men and great events.  God knows how many really live at the same time as themselves.  To do that (and so neither in hope nor fear of the future, nor in the past) is to understand oneself and be at peace, and that is only possible through one’s relation to God, or it is one’s relation to God.

“Christianity is certainly not melancholy, it is, on the contrary, good news – for the melancholy; to the frivolous it is certainly not good news, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.”

In other words, no one becomes the person, the unique individual, they were created to become until he/she stands submissively, and lives obediently, before the savior, Jesus Christ.  Only that authentic individual existing before God, who is who she is, who does what she does, who behaves as she behaves and decides as she decides because she lives to serve Jesus faithfully with all that she has to offer Him, will experience the joy of being her genuine, God-intended self.

That is authentic individualism, and it is only attained through the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Only these kinds of authentic individuals can compose a genuine Christian community where brothers and sisters in Christ serve each other freely and sacrificially.

In the American pursuit of secular individualism, constantly affirming the innate wisdom buried somewhere inside our inner rebel, that solitary soul fleeing God’s influence, we foolishly refuse to take ourselves seriously as sinners.

This is the Gospel’s first task:  to make us serious; serious about ourselves; serious about God.

It is the only route out of banal frivolity into eternal joy.

In this light, I suspect that the United States may be the least serious “Christian” nation on earth, nurturing a populous sucking at the teats of the most frivolous media culture – including the supposedly Christian media – ever devised.

Don’t live like the typical American consumer.  Set your sights on becoming an authentic Individual, please, before it is too late.

“Cheney Was Evil,” Says Former Bush Administration Official, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

I have not seen the new movie “Vice,” but plan on watching it soon.  I have, however, watched a conversation with retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked with Vice-President Cheney during the Bush administration.

Wilkerson was the chief of staff to General Colin Powell while the general was George W. Bush’s Secretary of State.  He is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary college where he teaches courses on national security.

To my knowledge, Col. Wilkerson is the only official involved in president Bush’s selling of the Iraq war who has publicly admitted how wrong he was in helping the president lead this nation into that illegal catastrophe.

He is a Republican and a strong critic of the ever-expanding American empire fueled by our perpetual aggression abroad and our oppressive surveillance-security state at home.

Below is part 1 of Col. Wilkerson’s discussion of the movie “Vice,” his appraisal of Dick Cheney, and his lament over the fact that our government

Lawrence Wilkerson

now operates for the rich, by the rich who very intentionally “make a killing” (pun intended) from America’s endless lust for war.

Col. Wilkerson does not mince words, “Cheney was evil.”

Click here to watch.

Class Warfare in America. Whose Side Is the Church On?

(This is the first in a three-part series on class warfare in the U.S.)

Americans have been fighting a serious class war for at least the past 30+ years, and the lower classes, especially the poor, are getting the stuffing beaten out of them.  Few people want to talk openly about America’s class war, but it’s a fact.

The church needs to get to grips with it.

Instead of siding with the rich time after time, the people of God must stand up for the poor.  We need to recognize that our current tax policy, which serve as a major offensive weapon in the billionaires’ arsenal against the poor, is a moral catastrophe.

Trump signs the 2017 Republican tax plan

Did you agree with President Trump’s tax-cut plan passed by Congress last year?  Did you cheer for his budget with its massive increases for the nation’s military-industrial-surveillance complex?

If you said Yes to either of those questions, then you supported a HUGE transfer of wealth that was taken away from the poor and the middle-class, and handed over to the rich and that new class of “people” called corporations.

THAT, my friends, is class warfare waged through the utterly undemocratic processes of Washington D.C., where the majority of our politicians are bought and paid for by millionaires, billionaires and corporate lobbyists.  They don’t represent you and me.  They represent big money.

We all need to get over the long out-of-date Cold War fear of saying anything that might sound even slightly Marxist (oooohhh, the big, bad boogy man…) and recognize that our society has been viciously twisted by a brutal 30+ year, class war being waged from the top down.

That war has empowered America’s richest families and biggest corporations to stomp the needy into the ground – not only in this country, but around the world.  (Read John Perkin’s book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; The Inside Story of How American Really Took Over the World, to learn about just one example of the international scope of America’s economic war against the poor).

As I demonstrate in my book, I Pledge Allegiance (see pages 155 – 157), it was not Karl Marx but Jesus Christ who insisted on building a just society – beginning with the Christian church – where everyone’s needs could be met, and no one need go without.  Ages before Karl M. was even a glimmer in his father’s eye, Jesus’ church was living by a definite code: “from each according to your ability; to each according to your need.”

That’s right.  Marx was ripping off Jesus.

Recently, the newly elected Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggested raising the upper tax bracket to 70%.  Naturally, like robotic guard dogs hardwired for mindless assaults against anything that threatens their gold-plated, private communities and the corporate powers-that-be, the usual conservative, Republican and DINO (Democrats in name only) suspects have uniformly attacked this young, bright politician.

Paul Krugman (a Nobel Prize winning economist) is absolutely correct in applauding Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s view of taxation.  Take a look at his latest editorial, “The Economics of Soaking the Rich.”  Below is a brief excerpt, but you should read the entire piece:

“I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves…

 “The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance…And it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.”

Did you know that during the post-war period Krugman refers to, the upper

Professor Paul Krugman

tax bracket in this country was 90%?  That’s right.  The richest Americans paid 90% in taxes on a portion of their income.

Many people fail to understand this point, and the pundits who feign moral outrage at such suggestions will never explain this point in public.  After all, they are not trying to inform; they are working to protect their own financial interests.

When someone like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez suggests implementing a 70% tax rate, it does not mean that every American would pay a 70% tax on every dollar earned.  Not at all.

It means that the wealthiest Americans (and corporations) in the highest tax

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

brackets would pay a 70% tax on a portion of their total income.  What portion would be decided in negotiations over the subsequent budget changes.

That’s called “from each according to your ability.”  I also call it good sense.

If Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president, could smile on a 90% tax bracket fueling a healthy post-war economy, then why can’t today’s Congress embrace a 70% tax bracket; especially when we are repeatedly told that our current economy is booming?

Simple.

First, far too many of our elected representatives are millionaires or richer!  The typical member of Congress is 12x wealthier than the typical American family.  Time Magazine referred to Congress as the millionaires’ club.  How enthusiastic will these people be at the thought of raising their own taxes?

Second, Washington D.C., and the American public, continue to be mesmerized by the dark enchantment of a mythical, fire-breathing monster called “trickle-down economics.” This farcical tax policy was conjured up from the pit by President Ronald Reagan, the national bamboozler-extraordinaire.  Others have relabeled it supply-side economics or Reaganomics.  But call it what you will, it remains the same destructive strategy for continually enriching the rich while further impoverishing the poor.

Only one thing “trickles down” from the powerful billionaires standing on top of you in this class battle.  Take a guess at what it is.  (I’ll give you a hint:  it ain’t well paid jobs or affordable health care.)

Here is some more analysis from a real economist, Paul Krugman.  Also, please look at the impressive graph included in this part of his article:

“You see, Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy [the supposed ‘trickle-down’ effect]. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas…[emphasis mine]

“Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious.

“And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the party prefers ‘economists’ who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their numbers effectively.”

Yes, the multi-millionaire, Ronald Reagan (worth $10.6 million in 1981 dollars when he took the president’s office) launched a new, immoral class war against the poor and the middle-class.  Reagan whipped up irrational – even racist – hostilities against “big government” and supposedly ghetto dwelling “welfare queens” in order to sell his political snake oil dressed up as a tax plan.  However, the real goal was producing a vast economic benefit for Reagan’s friends and campaign donors, members of an exclusive club I call the Triple-Bs:  Billionaires and Big Business.

The working poor, the needy, the destitute, and even the middle-class, have been losing ground ever since.  That lost ground includes their homes, jobs, savings accounts, educational opportunities, health care and government assistance.

It is long past time for the conservative church, all those who consistently vote Republican, to wake up and smell the coffee.

You have been naïve (perhaps) but not guiltless co-conspirators in the heartless exploitation of America’s poor and needy, our children, our sick, and our elderly.  It is time to rip off the cruel partisan blinders, repent of our selfishness and confess, “Yes, we need the politics of Jesus!”

From each according to your abilities.  To each according to your needs.

Congress Should Not Be Criminalizing My Right, And Yours, to Boycott Apartheid Israel

Below is the most recent Action Alert from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

Please digest this explanation of the first Congressional vote scheduled for tomorrow (1/8/19) and call your  elected officials.  Explain to them that no foreign government, including Israel, can nullify your right to participate in BDS campaigns in your own country.

“Last Thursday, the Senate’s first bill of the new Congress – S.1 – was introduced

Marco Rubio is another senator receiving large contributions from AIPAC

by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and it encourages states to punish people for boycotting for Palestinian rights.

To make matters worse, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill tomorrow.

Friend, please click here to get a sample script and phone numbers for your Senators.

Then please pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and tell your Senators to vote NO on S.1.

Sen. Rubio’s new bill incorporates language from the Combating BDS Act, his unconstitutional bill which we defeated in the last Congress. 

The Combating BDS Act calls upon states and cities to enact laws that curtail our constitutional freedoms by denying government contracts to people who boycott for Palestinian rights. In response to lawsuits filed by the ACLU, these types of laws have already been stopped by federal judges in Kansas and Arizona on constitutional grounds, and there are three additional lawsuits currently challenging similar laws in Texas and Arkansas.

Even though courts are siding with us and reaffirming our constitutional right to boycott for Palestinian rights, Sen. Rubio is still trying to pass legislation to deny our First Amendment rights.

That’s why it’s so important for you to call your Senators today to oppose S.1.

Thank you for taking action.”

The Intercept has been following this story closely for some time (see here and here).

The headline of their most recent article is “The U.S. Senate’s First Bill, In the Midst of the Shutdown, Is a Bipartisan Defense of the Israeli Government from Boycotts.”

The title captures the ludicrous nature of this bill and the corruption generated by the pro-Zionist lobby, especially AIPAC, in the US Congress.

Senator Chuck Shumer is also on the AIPAC gravy train

Here is an excerpt:

“…in the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered — S.1 — is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or address the various debates over border security and immigration. It’s not a bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of foreign policy-related measures, the main one of which is a provision — with Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor — to defend the Israeli government. The bill is a top legislative priority for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”

Who do your senators and congressional representatives really represent?  You or Israel?

Has Jerry Falwell Jr. Embraced His Inner Dispensationalist Cult-Member?

Perhaps you have already heard about the latest brouhaha generated by Jerry Falwell Jr.’s interview with the Washington Post.  Aside from the

Jerry Falwell Jr.

political hypocrisy strewn throughout the entire piece, two points, in particular, have gained significant public attention.

If you have been following this controversy, you may want to skip down and begin reading at part two of this post.  Otherwise, beginning with part one will catch you up on the issues involved.

Part. One:

First, when asked, “Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?”  Falwell flatly answered, “No.”

Falwell’s response unveils his cult-follower mentality when it comes to all things Trump.  Ruth Graham at Slate Magazine explains the ridiculous, idolatrous illogic of Falwell’s answer:

“His explanation was a textbook piece of circular reasoning: Trump wants what’s best for the country, therefore anything he does is good for the country. There’s

Ruth Graham, journalist

something almost sad about seeing this kind of idolatry articulated so clearly. In a kind of backhanded insult to his supporters, Trump himself once said that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing his base. It’s rare to see a prominent supporter essentially admit that this was true.”

I will go one step further and suggest that not even Jesus Christ himself demands such blind, a-moral loyalty.  At least, the apostle Paul admitted that he stopped short of offering that brand of devil-may-care devotion to Jesus Christ himself!

In 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, Paul seems to suggest that there is at least one thing the man from Nazareth could have done that would have caused Paul not to believe in him.

Jesus could have stayed dead.

For Paul insists:

“…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.   For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.   And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…”

Not even the Lord and Savior of the universe demands the type of undiscerning, a-moral devotion that Falwell has placed in Donald Trump.

Folks, Falwell expresses a truly idolatrous brand of politics.

Yes, I realize that sorting out this issue requires a conversation about the relationship between faith and historical evidence, but we don’t have time for that discussion here.  I suggestion that you take a look at my book, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture and then follow up on its bibliography.

The second point of controversy was Falwell’s defense of his position by referring to his “two kingdoms” theology.  He explained:

“There’s two kingdoms. There’s the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country.”

I won’t bother to address the problems created by Falwell’s two kingdoms theology – though I have serious doubts about Falwell’s ability to express an informed opinion on Lutheran theology — since I have critiqued Luther’s own application of his two kingdoms theology, its dangerous uses in 20th century history, and explained what I understand to be the New Testament’s teaching about God’s kingdom in my book, I Pledge Allegiance.

Part Two:

So…this brings me to the thoughts motivating me to add something further to the conversation surrounding Falwell’s interview.  Others, like Professor John Fea (here and here), have covered the issues well, but I suspect there may be another suggestion yet to be explored:  the possible influence of dispensational theology in the age of Trump.  If this term is new to you, start with this Wikipedia page and Google on from there.

Not long ago I came across a separate interview with Jerry Falwell Jr. where he said that he “did not look to Jesus” for guidance in his politics, but was directed instead by his concerns for “a law and order candidate.”  (Unfortunately, I have not been able to relocate the source for that interview.  Any help out there???).

Here are the two interesting puzzle pieces that got me thinking.

 One, Jesus’ life and teaching, items such as Jesus’ own pacifism, the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of our Lord’s ethical instruction, have no role in forming Falwell’s view of Christian politics.

 Two, he believes that Christian values in this “earthly kingdom” are separate and distinct from God’s values in the heavenly kingdom.

Well, it just so happens that those two positions were (are?) identifying characteristics of the earliest, die-hard advocates of American dispensational theology — a stream in which I suspect Liberty University is squarely planted.  Though I can’t cite a scientific poll to prove it, I am reasonably certain that dispensationalism (in one or another of its various forms) is the most commonly embraced “theology” in North America, especially among those who are theologically unaware.

American dispensationalism is the fuel that feeds the raging fire of U.S. Christian Zionism.  That alone is enough to make it highly suspect, as far as I am concerned.  It is also one of the several reasons I abandoned my youthful dispensationalism long ago.

Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), the founding president of Dallas Theological Seminary, which remains the Mecca of dispensational thinking to this day, was the first American systematician of dispensational thought.  His 8-volume work of Systematic Theology, first printed in 1947, remains in print today.  (My father gave me a complete set as a college graduation present.  Yes, I was, and probably still am, a nerd).

An important feature of Chafer’s dispensationalism was his emphasis on the postponement of Jesus’ ethics.  He taught that when Jesus said the kinds of “irrational” things we find in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, he was speaking solely to the Jewish people who were supposed to receive him as their messiah.

But since the majority of Jesus’ contemporaries rejected his messiahship, the implementation of that ethical teaching was deferred, postponed until the future arrival of the “millennial kingdom” when all of Israel will finally recognized Jesus as the One they have been awaiting.  (For more detail, check out this page published by someone called The GospelPedlar.  It has a good summary with citations explaining Chafer’s theology of “Postponed Ethics.”

So, for old-time dispensationalists like Chafer and his modern devotees, Jerry Falwell Jr. is reflecting sound dispensational, theological conviction when he ignores Jesus’ ethics while deciding his politics.  For this frame of mind, the church does not now inhabit the proper kingdom age for the application of Jesus’ teaching to the Christian life, certainly not to a Christian’s politics.

This earthly kingdom is not the correct kingdom for Jesus’ ethics to be seriously applied, across the board, to all of Christian living.  Although Chafer’s dispensationalism has nothing to do with Martin Luther’s two kingdoms theology, we can see an important convergence of ideas at this point.

Arriving at the same place by different routes, both groups (Lutherans and dispensationalists) endorse the idea of different kingdoms in different spheres with different behavioral expectations for God’s people.

I admit that I have not called Jerry Falwell Jr. and asked him whether his political thinking has been self-consciously shaped by Chaferian dispensationalism.  After all, he is a lawyer with a B.A. in religious studies from, you guessed it, Liberty University.  Are my prejudices showing?

Maybe I should give him a call someday, but he probably wouldn’t talk to me. (See his refusal to talk with people like Shane Clairbone here, here, here and here.)

What I DO know is that ideas matter.  They matter a great deal.  Theological ideas matter supremely to God’s church.  (Any believer who is anti-theology doesn’t understand what he/she is saying.)  We don’t have to know their source or history.  We don’t even have to be able to articulate them clearly, much less expound upon their ramifications, whether intellectual or behavioral.

We simple breath in the lingering aroma of influential ideas, assimilating

Liberty University

them unwittingly from our (church) environment.  And the American church offers an environment seeped in the aroma of old-time dispensationalism.

As I continue to ponder the damning conundrum of America’s conservative/ evangelical/fundamentalist  church offering up its overwhelming support to Donald Trump, I can’t help but wonder if this is another part of the dispensational legacy fallen like poisoned fruit from the American tree of unbiblical theology.

Haaretz Magazine Explains Another Lost Opportunity in Israel’s History

Adam Raz has a good article in the most recent Haaretz news magazine investigating the debate that raged among Zionism’s leadership immediately after the 1948-49 War, when Israel declared its “independence,” over the future status of Palestinians remaining within the borders of the new state.

I have excerpted selected paragraphs below to give you a sense of the attitudes held by these men. If you want to know more, you can find the entire article here.

There were early Zionist leaders who possessed the remnant of a

Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second Prime Minister

humanitarian conscience.  Men such as Moshe Sharett.

Although, frankly, any leader who failed vociferously to protest against the ethnic cleansing committed by Israel’s military forces in that war – which includes all of the men mentioned here — has abdicated any right to be respected, in my book.

Nevertheless, the article does a good job of showing that Israel did not have to end up where it is today: an oppressive apartheid state.  There were alternatives on the table at the time.  There were men advocating for a multi-ethnic state where Palestinians would have been fully integrated into Israeli society.

Sadly, those humane voices were a minority, and they lost the argument.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister

The iron-fisted racism of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and their equally savage ilk won the day, dooming both Palestinians and Israelis to the catastrophe that is Israel/Palestine today.

For those who are interested, I highly recommend a book by the Jewish, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale, 2011).

Pinhas Lavon, Minister of Defense

“(Pinhas Lavon, minister of Defense,) insisted, ‘The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means, he stated, adding, Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews…’

 “’It is impossible to work among them if the policy is to oppress Arabs – that prevents concrete action. What is being carried out is a dramatic and brutal suppression of the Arabs in Israel…’

 “(Moshe) Sharett maintained that Ben-Gurion had not given consideration to the root of the problem. ‘Terrible things were being done against Arabs in the country,’ he warned. ‘Until a Jew is hanged for murdering an Arab for no reason, in cold blood, the Jews will not

David Hacohen, Knesset member

understand that Arabs are not dogs but human beings…’

Zalman Aharon, Knesset member

 “(Knesset member David Hocohen argued), ‘These laws that we are coming up with in regard to Israel’s Arab residents cannot even be likened to the laws that were promulgated against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they were deprived of all rights. After all, this is a total contrast between our declarations and our deeds.’..

 “’Zalman Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries. I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want

Moshe Dayan, military commander and politician

to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying…we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world…

 “He (David Ben Gurion) added, ‘We view them [Palestinian Arabs] like donkeys. They don’t care. They accept it [their subjugation] with love… To loosen the reins on the Arabs would be a great danger,’ he added: ‘You and your ilk – those who support the abolition of the military government or making it less stringent – will be responsible for the perdition of Israel.’”

Let me make two observations on these citations.

First, the hard-line, political Zionists like Ben-Gurion make it very clear from the beginning that they envisioned a nation for Jews only.  There was no room for anyone else to have equal rights in Zionist Israel.

Here we see the essentially racist heart of political Zionism, the strain of Zionism that won these early contests and has controlled Israeli political life ever since.  For nearly twenty years Israel enforced two different sets of laws for its citizens.  Jews were governed by the state’s normal, civil legislation.  Palestinians, on the other hand, were governed by draconian military law stripping them of their civil rights.

When the United Nations passed Resolution 3379 in 1975 declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” they were absolutely correct insofar as “Zionism” was represented on the world stage exclusively by Israel.

Second, notice that drawing comparisons between Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and Zionist Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has a very long history.  Many Jewish critics of political Zionism have made the comparison, as you can see in this article.  It is not, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic slur, but a simple, fair-minded observation of “facts on the ground,” as Israeli politicians like to say.

What is Christian Worship? Part 5  Dispelling Two Common Errors

We have come to the end of this study in New Testament worship vocabulary, but I cannot close without taking note of two common obstacles that frequently hamper leaders who wish to act on the theology we have discovered by putting our theological conclusions into practice.  Perhaps you would like to review that theology in parts one, two, three and four.

 The key theological issue at stake is the New Testament’s elimination of the Old Testament distinction between the sacred and the profane (recall, especially, part four in this series).

Jesus Christ has made the Old Testament/Covenant idea of special/sacred space (a temple), personnel (priests), and activities (ritual offerings) obsolete.  The New Testament even goes so far as never to identify baptism or the Lord’s Supper as acts of “liturgy” or “worship,” as surprising as that may be.

But, for some odd reason, many churchgoers prefer living in a quasi-Old Testament world. Here is where we encounter the first obstacle.

Perhaps many churchgoers secretly prefer the idea of living life day-to-day as a truly profane existence.  After all, stepping in and out of God’s presence, spending the majority of our time free from the presence of God, seems preferable for those who don’t want to deal with Christ’s Lordship.

In any case, humanity’s predilection for an obsolete manner of religious thinking appears in our need to invent new ways of importing Old Testament structures into the New Testament church.  It happens all the time in every tradition.  Think of the many ways we reinstall the

Cathedral of St. Mary

sacred/profane distinction into the Christian life.

We create uniquely sacred people with ordination ceremonies.  We even call them “priests,” as opposed to all of the other Christians who become the “laity.”

We Christianize sacred spaces via grand cathedral/church architecture, and we then refer to these places as “God’s house.”

We elaborate uniquely sacred acts through sacramental liturgies that may only be performed by the appropriately sacred personnel (i.e. the ordained) inside the proper sacred space.

All of this, every last bit of it, is absolutely wrong as far as the New Testament is concerned.  All I can say is, thank God that the grace of Jesus Christ is so bloomin’ big that it extends even to wrong-headed people like us.

The second obstacle issues from the first.  It becomes the rational justification for the ecclesiastical mistakes described above.

One of my former colleagues loved to repeat this standard rationale, imagining that he had slain his opponent (usually me) with a single thrust, “If everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred!”  Have you heard that one?

In other words, by this logic we’ve got to create ‘special’ moments/places/personnel in order to preserve some sense of the divine majesty.  Otherwise, familiarity will breed contempt, and it’s only a matter of time before any sense of awe before God is melted away into the mundane mix of inattentive daily living.

Right?  If so, let’s reintroduce Old Covenant thought and its priestly structures from stage-right.

No.  This is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Let’s think about it for a moment.

The first flaw in my friend’s argument is a matter of simple logic.

Notice that my colleague’s objection to the New Testament perspective on worship must assume the continuing validity of the sacred/profane distinction in order to make its point.

In other words, it ignores the very assertion it pretends to refute.  To put it another way, it tries to dismiss New Testament teaching (i.e. there is no more sacred/profane distinction for those who know Jesus) by keeping its feet firmly planted in the Old Testament framework (i.e. we must observe the sacred/profane distinction if we want to truly worship God).

The next time you hear someone using this invalid claim calmly inform them that you reject the premise of their conclusion.  Ha!  Not really.  They probably won’t know what you mean.

At the end of the day, this “sophisticated” sounding refutation of New Testament teaching is really nothing more than a stubborn refusal to come to grips with the newly redeemed creation awash with God’s unfettered grace now available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While I certainly understand the pragmatic concerns that lead people to cling to Old Covenant distinctions, I remain convinced that any practical decision contrary to biblical teaching, no matter how “helpful,” will ultimately prove crippling to God’s people.

It is better to wrestle with the difficult implications of sound theology than it is to ease the burden of church leadership by choosing expediency.
Yes, the innate limits of the human attention span may well require that we demarcate certain times and places for special events, i.e. a designated place…at a designated time…to gather together…for particular events and practices…as a community of faith.
BUT let’s never confuse the pragmatic needs born of human limitations with the proper theology of the New Covenant.  We do such things to accommodate human weakness, NOT because there are any real differences between different times, special places, or specially ordained people.

Christian worship, New Testament worship, is an obedient lifestyle where every day is received as the gift of God’s holy presence, personally indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, conforming us to the perfect image of His one and only eternal Son as we sacrifice ourselves in following His call.

Live out THAT life and you will worship and glorify our holy God all day every day without fail.