The oven: a dream

I am not in this dream. I am merely observing from the outside. I can sense the emotions of the men in this dream, but none of them is me.

There are three men dragging a sort of cart out from the desert towards a large steel building. The cart is something like a tricycle or a tripod with wheels. It is made of a sturdy metal with three arched legs that end in wheels. In the center of the cart is a depression filled with ashes and bits of charcoal; a heavy chain comes out of the ashes and hangs down the side.

The cart is very heavy, and does not move easily, but the men are very determined to get it to the building quickly. Something is about to happen, and they need to be ready.

Inside the building there is a large heavy iron door leading into a large chamber that takes up most of the building. The chamber is as large as perhaps a football field, with a ceiling at least forty feet high. The walls are charred concrete, and the floor is covered with mostly sand and bits of burnt debris. Something else is covering the floor in flowing lines all about. I realize that they are some sort of eggs, slightly larger than a human head. They are black and made of a soft material like reptile eggs.

The men push the cart carefully towards the center of the room. Their feeling of unease intensifies. Under the ashes in the cart, there is something alive, now sleeping, but just starting to come awake. When it is fully awake, it will be angry and hungry. They position the cart carefully in the right place. One of the men takes a quick tug on the chain, and there is a groaning sound that fills the room.

The other two men pull out machetes, and proceed to walk around, slashing at the eggs and opening them, three or four at a slice. A squealing, chittering sound issues out of the opened eggs, along with a dark purplish goo.

Satisfied that everything is in order, the men scurry out of the room and push the iron door shut, locking it in place with a large wheel.

The men wait and watch. There are thick glass windows in the wall, where they can see things beginning to stir.

From out of the opened eggs, small creatures emerge. They are humanoid in form, but are clearly not human; they actually look rather like Muppets. They let out high-pitched squeaks and seem to be exploring the room.

And then, it happens.

The thing in the cart emerges. I don’t know if I can’t see its true form, or if what I am seeing is, in fact, its true form, but all there is is a plume of fire that emerges from the ashes in the cart, arcs down to the floor, and splits into multiple smaller plumes of fire that spread about the room. There is nothing but this roaring fire pouring out, arcing and splitting over and over, chaotically filling the room. Where it hits the small creatures, they are consumed in pieces. They shriek and try to flee, but there is nowhere to go.

Eventually, the creatures are gone, and the fire disappears. There is no smoke, just charred pieces and slience.

About my father

My father married my mother in the late 1960s; she was 17 and he was 34. She was a Unitarian Universalist and he was a Jew. My mother doesn't say so, largely because of her love for her children, but it was probably one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

My sister was born nine months to the day after the wedding, one day after my mother's 18th birthday. I was born about two and a half years later. Sometime between, my mother converted to Judaism, and in the process became probably more knowledgeable about the religion than my father was. I'm pretty sure my father had a very secular Jewish upbringing; he hardly spoke any Hebrew, and didn't seem to understand kosher rules. (My mother told me one time my father asked for a ham sandwich for lunch, but he wanted it on matzoh because it was Passover.)

My parents divorced when I was two. I actually have two faint memories of them being together; in both of them, they are fighting. My mother didn't tell me until years later that the reason she left was because he was physically abusive. She took us kids and went back to her parents. On the first day of my sister's first grade, my father showed up and took her from school. He hid her away somewhere and came to take me; I also dimly remember this happening, and my grandfather blocking him from coming in the house. Eventually, the court gave my father custody of my sister and my mother custody of me. There was a joint custody arrangement that focused on Jewish holidays; if Passover fell on school's spring break, we would spend that week with my dad, and if Hannukah fell on the winter break, the same. I took a lot of flights as a child, as my father lived in Silicon Valley, and my mother lived in the greater Los Angeles area.

My father was abusive, mainly emotionally and not physically to us. (He actually spanked me just one time, but I honestly feel it was appropriate and I respected him for it.) My sister told me one time she forgot to take out the trash the day before her birthday, and that next morning, dad dumped the trash on her bed and told her that her party was canceled. Most of my fights with my dad were over food, as I was a picky eater, and he wouldn't accept it. If I didn't clear off my plate, he would often save my leftovers to serve to me at the next meal, refusing to give me any other food. This was a battle we both lost, as he wouldn't get me to eat it, and I would starve until my visit was over. One time, I remember completely finishing everything on my plate and he loaded me up with seconds I didn't ask for; when I didn't finish, he refused to give me dessert. This happened to be at my aunt's house, and everyone in the family told him he was being unreasonable, but I got no dessert anyway.

While my father worked as a disk jockey in the early years of his marriage to my mother, eventually, he got a nursing license. He seemed to really love the job, and took a lot of pride in his work. He worked in the emergency room most of the time, I think, as he often had stories of people coming into the hospital in very bad shape. Something that my father managed to drill into me effectively was a fear of motorcycles. He somehow found out that my stepfather had a motorcycle, and he always told me that he wanted to take me on a tour of the ICU to see all the mangled bodies of people who had been in motorcycle accidents. I would always turn him down and assure him I didn't need to be convinced, and I really didn't. I've only been on a motorcycle once in my life, and I was terrified.

While I tend to say a lot of bad stuff about my father, because I think it's the traumatic stuff that sticks in your head, I think the majority of the time I spent with him was positive. He had a great sense of humor and was always trying to find fun things to do with us. I really loved my dad and looked forward to visiting him, despite knowing there were bound to be unpleasant parts to every trip. He knew I liked visiting (and I think my sister did too after my mother regained custody years later) but wouldn't want to live with him year-round.

Most of the family was convinced he had undiagnosed mental illness of some sort. Part of that problem was his apparent inability to understand that love wasn't like pie where he had to compete with my mother for his share of our love. I truly loved him as much as I loved my mother, but could never convince him of that. He spent far too much time trying to convince me that my mother was a terrible person, something my mother never did in return. The fact that I preferred to live with her convinced him that I didn't love him enough, and his insecurity showed. One time, he actually offered to buy me an Apple II computer if I agreed to live with him. I was dismayed that he would stoop to bribing me for choosing him; although I knew what bribery was, I couldn't put into words what I felt, as I didn't want to put it that bluntly.

We went to synagogue with my father, and as a child, I was just as curious about religion as I am today. I would often ask him questions about Judaism, to which he would usually tell me not to question. I thought you weren't supposed to ask questions as a Jew, which was very unsatisfying for me. I really believe that if my questions had been answered, I'd very likely still be an observant Jew today. I realized as an adult that it was just my dad's ignorance that stopped my questions, and Jews are actually generally encouraged to question. My father should have directed me to ask the Rabbi instead of shutting me up, or maybe supplied me with books about Judaism. I actually believe I learned far more about the Jewish religion after I became a Christian than before. Knowing so little was a big part of why I left Judaism.

When I was twelve, my father called me on the phone and told me he had just returned from a trip to Israel. He had decided that in order to be a good, observant Jew, he had to go and live there. He asked me if I was coming with him. My mind reeled at this question. Leave everything I had ever known behind? I'd never been outside California, much less the country. Do they even speak English in Israel? My Hebrew was very meager. Except for apparently my dad now, all of my family was here in America. I told him no. "You don't love me then," he said, and hung up. Nobody in my life has ever approached saying anything that hurt me as much as those five words. It was like being stabbed in the heart.

I canceled my bar mitzvah, and walked away from Judaism. I realized that everything Jewish I was doing in my life was to please my dad, and not to please God, so why bother? For years, I called myself an atheist, although it wasn't that I didn't beilieve in God, I just didn't believe in religion.

Somewhere around 25 years later, my sister informed me that she had discovered that my father had moved back to the US, and had lost his nursing license. There was a legal document describing an incident when he was working at a nursing home, and after an elderly patient soiled himself, my father beat him with his fists. We didn't attempt to reconnect.

At about 30 years, he wrote my sister and me letters expressing a desire to catch up with us. It didn't seem particularly sincere (he said he had been searching for us for years, but my mother had the same mailing address she had when I was twelve), and both of us forgave him for the hurt he had inflicted on us 30 years previously (which he claimed to not recall, perhaps sincerely, perhaps not) and told him we were only interested in reconnecting if he truly wanted it. He didn't write back.

Now at about 40 years on, this week my sister received a letter informing her that a reading of my father's will is taking place in mid-January, so it seems he is dead. I didn't know how I would feel about this until now. It seems I feel nothing. I loved my father very much, but perhaps he died to me when I was twelve years old, and he hung up that phone on me. I wish I could have told him that he was being unreasonable, and we didn't have to end our relationship because he was leaving the country. I wish I could have told him that if my mother had gone crazy and decided she needed to join her ancestors in England, I would have moved in with him. I wish he had known that I loved him as much as I loved my mother, and in the time he was in my life, one of the driving emotional needs in my life was to have him approve of me and be proud of me, and it was sad that that never seemed to happen.

.נוח על משכבך בשלום, אבא

The Third-Party Guru

So yesterday was our so-called "Super Tuesday" here in America, the day that most of the country has its preliminary round of voting before the official election. Often, it's a day that campaigns make final decisions as to how far they are going to be run, and candidates can either make a definitive statement that they fully expect to be the official candidate for their party, or they drop out and declare their work to be done. I suppose sometimes a losing candidate can be happy to simply have made it through a lengthy campaign without any major scandals. Although you may have not heard it on the news in the midst of talk about, there was another campaign afoot that had a major contender who dropped out of the race yesterday. I am of course talking about the death of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

It's a fascinating thing to me that to a great extent, religion and politics have a lot in common. Despite the efforts of various interest groups here in the U.S. such as the so-called "Moral Majority" (I say "so-called" as some have pointed out that this is a phrase like "Christian Science" in which two words are used to describe something in which neither word describes it at all.) there is not an easy mix between religion and political ideology, the now-defunct Natural Law Party notwithstanding. Even in ancient societies, we see struggle between religious movements and political movements: In the New Testament, Jesus, the Pharisees and the Sadducees represented differing religious viewpoints, but struggled not just against one another, but against political powers such as the Romans and the Herodians. Today, even in a country that supposedly supports freedom of religion, we argue about whether a Mormon or a (falsely-rumored) Muslim is fit to hold national office. Many have chided the silliness of the notion that somehow putting one's hand on a Bible while taking a vow makes that vow somehow more unbreakable. While the Bible is of supreme importance to a Christian, physically, it's just a pile of paper, and the moral law within a politician's heart is infinitely more important than the moral law under his or her hand.

But what of the Maharishi? Why do I bring him up, other than the fact that he has recently passed the way of all humanity? Well, although I don't really know so very much about the man, there was a comment made about him in the news report of his death I heard this morning that struck me as fascinating. It is very rare among either politicians or religious leaders to go through their entire career without being plagued by scandals, but the Maharishi is one of those rare individuals who seems to have done it. Other than an alleged sexual advance on Mia Farrow that seems to be unproven (and considerably less of a scandal than it would be for a Christian political leader, as Hindu sexual standards are somewhat different), his life and the Transcendental Meditation movement he founded seem to have a pretty clean record.

I remember that there was a TM center near the place where I grew up, and there was a teacher I had in junior high school who often passed on rumors to her students that these weirdos were somehow dragging off young impressionable souls and brainwashing them. I always found the stories rather improbable, myself, and whereas another Christian teacher I had in high school later was definitely part of what inspired me to look into Christianity, this particular Christian teacher was the sort that made me say, "If that's what Christians are like, I don't think I need to have anything to do with it, thank you." There's no doubt to me that as a Christian, there is a certain disdain one must have for all that is not of Christ, but choosing to see the deepest evil in any religious activity outside of your own narrow views isn't so much Christianity as paranoia. Later in high school, I had a friend who had a part-time job as a janitor at the TM center. His view on these people was that they were a bit odd, but mostly friendly and honest, and they never tried to push their views on him, an atheist.

I think that honesty and good-natured kindness that seems to have always been very present in the Maharishi and his followers is admirable. Sure, we may disagree with their spiritual beliefs, but when we look at their aims as a group, I can't find anything to criticize. The Maharishi believed that his methods brought not just peace to the practitioner, but also to the world around the practitioner. The Maharishi and his followers, although surprisingly influential for such a small group, don't seem to have been self-seeking, living modestly and quietly.

As a Christian, I suppose I am obligated to call the Maharishi a "cultist" or an "infidel", and technically, either or both descriptions fit. Still, on a personal level, as someone who tries to look at the world both from within and without my religious belief system, I'd have to say that if all cultists and infidels--and even many Christians--were more like the Maharishi, this world would be a much better place for it.

Elizabeth: "The Oath of God"

I had a few other topics I was considering blogging on, including the lovely but somewhat unusual seder I went to last night, the death of Anna Nicole Smith (which ought to be old news by now, but you'd hardly tell it by watching television) and actually something strange I recently saw at McDonald's; but I had something that really touched my heart in a surprisingly special way in the last 24 hours, and I intend to write on that.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, has recently had a remission of her cancer, for those who didn't manage to pick up that tidbit of information from between reports of Anna Nicole's death. Back in 2004, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and while it seemed for some time that she had managed to beat it, it seems that the cancer had spread to her bones, and this time, there is nothing that can be done about it.

The latest issue of Newsweek features a short interview with Edwards on the topic of her coping with cancer, and in reading it, I found a lot of truly inspirational stuff. The one thing that really jumped out at me was that the interviewer asked her essentially about how it had affected her faith. Years before, Edwards had lost her 16-year-old son in a car accident, and she started to speak about her reflections on God's treatment of her and her family.

I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy.

This is the sort of thing that I hear so many people struggle with when they talk about faith. I've blogged on it several times. It seems so often that I hear people who come to this issue, and they don't so much "struggle" with the idea, it seems, but come to a quick conclusion: There must be no God. (Not that I want to cheapen the power of that conclusion; some people may not have jumped to it so easily, and yet still arrived there. Faith (or lack thereof) is a personal thing.)

Philosophers discuss it. Pastors preach on it. Complex theological concepts are batted around by both professionals and laymen like myself. However, there is something simple and profound that perhaps is typified in the book of Job.

Most of you are probably somewhat familiar, but let's review the basics of that book of the Bible, considered by many scholars to probably be the oldest book of the Bible, and one of the oldest philosophical discussions of the problem of suffering. (You may read it here, if you want to, but the book is rather long; you can get the gist of it by reading the first three and last three chapters.) There's this guy Job, and he's an exceedingly good man. God is discussing him with Satan, and Satan claims that Job is only good because he gets rewarded for his goodness by God, and if he had nothing, he wouldn't be such a great guy. So God allows Satan to take away everything Job has, and leave him in poverty. Job's response?

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21)

This alone is pretty impressive. Most of us wouldn't be so complacent. Satan is not satisfied, however. He claims that so long as a man has his health, he hardly is suffering. So God allows Satan to make Job break out in "painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head." Now Job has really sunk to a low point, and most people would expect him to give up his faith. Indeed,

His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"

He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:9-10)

To me, that is real faith, deep faith. Faith that doesn't just expect God to be like a genie that grants your every wish, but knows that God is good and righteous even when you can't see His justice in action. Faith that says,

"Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him..." (Job 13:15)

And that's really the point of the book of Job in many ways: that we have to accept God on His own terms, even if that means suffering for our faith. People will make accusations against people of faith (as Job's friends do, later in the book) and against God because they want and expect God to behave a particular way. But God does not live by our rules, if indeed He lives by any rules at all. Should we expect the Creator of the universe to live up to our expectations, or should we only expect Him to be who He claims to be?

What did Edwards come to believe as a result of her personal losses?

...I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all.

This is what touched my heart. It sometimes made me seem like a pessimist to my fellow Christians, but in times past, when I had gone through suffering and loss, there were people who told me that I should expect things to improve, because God was looking out for me. My response? "God was looking out for Job, too, wasn't He?"

But for me, this wasn't pessimism, it was realism. If I take God and say that He's a powerful being who exists to take care of my problems, I don't think I'm being Biblical. Jesus Himself promised that we would have trouble (John 16:33), and who am I to say that Jesus is wrong? This isn't bad. Sure I should hope for the best, but just as I'm not going to limit God by saying that He can't fix all of my problems, on the flipside of that, I'm not going to limit Him by saying that He will fix them. Sure, it takes great faith to expect miracles, but doesn't it also take great faith, to say, like Edwards:

I'm not praying for God to save me from cancer. I'm not. God will enlighten me when the time comes. And if I've done the right thing, I will be enlightened. And if I believe, I'll be saved. And that's all he promises me.

I pray that for so many of us unsure in our faith through hard times, that will be enough.

Moralists Anonymous

I have another post I've been working on, but I put it aside for this. This post is dedicated to one of my biggest fans, who posts quite often on my other blog, and even occasionally here: Anonymous. This guy is great, not so much that he's always the kindest comment poster or deepest thinker, but I am flattered that he takes time out from all his poetry writing, clever quipping and police informant work to drop in on my blog and give me his opinion. Lately, he had a lot to say in response to my post on slavery (scroll to the comments), but in the end, it apparently boiled down to an issue that I haven't addressed there, and probably never will, due to the nature of the blog.

The issue is the moral nature of God. Anonymous claimed, as many before him have done, that there is good reason to question whether or not God is morally right in His actions and overall interaction with humanity. For many people, this issue is raised as part of the Problem of Evil. Short version: (A) God is good. (B) God is all-powerful. (C) Evil exists. It is claimed that all three of these cannot be true, and if this is so, and rational people cannot reject (C), then (A) and/or (B) must be false, and Christianity cannot be based on truth. This is also related very closely to the problem of suffering, which is essentially the same, but with "evil" replaced by "suffering". Anyway, the point is that the nature of God becomes questionable in this light, and one must wonder what Bible believer can say about it.

I'm pretty sure I have addressed elsewhere the issue of questioning (B), but due to Anonymous' questioning, I think it might be time to shed some light on (A). Why does it sometimes appear to some that God is immoral, and how do Christians reconcile this? Why does God allow evil that seems like it would be simple enough for an all-powerful God to stop, and on top of that, why does the Bible condone things like slavery and capital punishment that many of us find morally distasteful? I'm not going to pretend to have the answer, although I may highlight my favorite theory before I wrap this up.

One of the very common ways to respond to the issue is to simply say "We have no right to judge God." This actually comes in a number of different forms, some of which blur the boundaries with other types of responses that I plan to discuss here. One form is that of the defaulted reverential approach to God, where one has simply been taught that God is Holy and wonderful and that one should never question God's goodness because...well, just because! What are you, some sort of heretic? A more abstract but actually in a way more reasoned approach is to simply point out that since God created the universe and the living creatures in it, they belong to Him, and he gets to do whatever He wants with them, and if you don't like it, go make your own universe! Maybe that's alright for some people in their own minds to take a position like this, but for someone who is not a believer to begin with, this approach will be sadly lacking in weight. Furthermore for those of us that are believers that want to have any sort of serious discussions of theology, there is a need for a reasoned approach. This isn't it.

As I said, there is a blurring of the boundaries between these different types of responses, and it may not be really clear why this is different, but another approach is to claim that morality is actually a creation of God, and since God made it, He has a certain amount of control over it. This is a strange and many-faceted idea that sometimes is approached from the other direction in a manner of speaking, when someone tries to argue that without God, there is no morality, period. The idea in such an approach is to suggest that the fact we can make moral judgments somehow verifies the existence of a higher moral standard, and that that standard can only be the almighty creator of the universe. Perhaps somebody can suggest to me a good book or essay to read on the subject because I frankly have never understood this position, and every time I've heard it, it seems to be stated as though it's self-evident. Putting that aside and getting back to the subect of God's "control" over morality, a good metaphor is that life is like a game where the rules exist in God's head. Whatever God does, He can bend the rules to fit his actions, or, more to the point due to God's omniscence, God has created the rules with loopholes for Himself. (That's an over-simplification, but I'm really convinced that the argument boils down to that in essence.) Those who don't like this argument seem to feel that it's a matter of hypocrisy that God doesn't have to obey moral law while His creation does, and there might be something to that. One thing that Christians in particular have claimed is that in the person of Jesus, God lived the life of a mortal, and in the thirty-odd years He spent on earth, He willingly subjected Himself to those laws. Whether that helps the argument or is even plausible to those who read the Gospels with a skeptical eye, who can say?

Similarly, but with some deeper theological implications, there are those who claim that God, a being of a higher order and quite different from us in many ways, does obey moral law, but has a completely different set of moral laws that apply to Him. Generally, this is hard to explain in the particular case of God, but perhaps can be illustrated in a different way. Let's talk fleas. Most people would not think it immoral of a person to buy a flea collar for their pet. The flea collar kills fleas, but we recognize that the fleas are detrimental to the health of the pet, and for the pet's sake, should be eliminated. If the pet chose to wear it or managed to remove it, either way, most people would not think such an action on the part of the pet would be immoral. Now despite the fact that the pet and the owner are unhappy with the flea, nobody would particularly feel that the flea was immoral for biting the pet (or the owner, for that matter) since that is the way it survives, and cannot be expected to do otherwise. Also, the flea has no comprehension of why it is unwanted (if indeed it is aware of it at all!)

So, as the difference between fleas, pets, and pet owners implies different moralities not just in degree, but in kind, so God exists in a state where His morality is perhaps as unrecognizable to us as ours is to a flea. And the comparison is perhaps appropriate, as many have wondered about the morality of God creating fleas in the first place. It may be that God has created fleas (and evil and suffering in many other forms) for reasons that we simply cannot fathom, not being God. I think a likely objection to this view is that if God's morality is of a kind that is not related to ours in such a fantastic manner, how can one even know that God is moral? Really, we'd just be guessing and/or taking God's word for it. While that objection is basically true, this may nonetheless be the case, like it or not.

Now, my preferred manner of viewing the morality of God is that God's morality is of a higher order than ours, but not so much of a different type. The distinction between this position and the last one is that while we often do not understand the moral aim of any choice God makes, it is not because it is intrinsically unknowable. The issue for God is that God sees the big picture. My children don't understand why it's not good to eat nothing but candy all the time. They're too young to understand nutrition. Frankly, I don't understand nutrition either, but I'm mature enough to recognize that there is a right and wrong way to choose foods, even if I don't always do it. My kids could grow up to become nutritionists or doctors, and have a much better grasp on the concept, the potential is there. Now while we can't "grow up" and become God, I think that God has knowledge that leads Him to do things that is often beyond our current grasp.

One of the biggest things that I feel that God understands better than any person alive is the concept of death. There's a bit of a trend I've seen lately, perhaps started by Steve Wells in his blog Dwindling In Unbelief, to point out that if one goes through the Bible, we see God killing more people than Satan. I am personally of the belief that when God (and perhaps Satan as well?) kills a person, it is a different matter than when a human kills another. This is not a matter of God having the right to kill because He created life (a fairly popular response), but God having the right to kill because He and He alone, being omniscient, knows the full implications of ending any particular life at any particular time. One of these days, I'm going to have to do a post on my view of the spiritual aspect of murder, I have what I think is an interesting personal take on the matter. Why do I take away my kids' candy before dinner? Because I know something that they don't. Why does God take away a life or allow some other form of suffering? Because God knows something we don't. People can complain that God allowed a man like Hitler to exist, and then turn around and complain the He allowed a baby to die. We may not be aware that had that baby grown to adulthood, he would have become a man far worse than Hitler, and it was better that he died before setting off down the path that led to that end. Wildly theoretical, I know, but not at all impossible.

A person might object to this sort of speculation as being the same sort of grasping at straws that "blind faith" breeds, and heck, they might be right. However, I have met many atheists that have a similar view of materialistic science. If we only knew more about the universe, they assure us, then we'd have no need for God or miracles or an afterlife. Well, how do they know that? The same way that I know that God is moral. The more I investigate, the more I understand, and as yet, nothing has given me strong reason to think otherwise. And anyway, I do have faith in science in that way as well (well, short the part about not needing God), and I don't think it's wrong. I think science can tell us everything we will ever need to know about the physical universe, if we only investigate carefully. I simply feel that the physical universe is not all there is. There is God, there is the spiritual aspect of our world, and there is a morality, both of man and God that shapes it all in ways that we only partly understand.

Whys and wherefores without wherewithal

What happened five years ago on September 11, 2001 means something different to everyone, but for just about every American, it was a life-changing moment in time.

The people of my generation were told that we would remember 9/11 vividly the way a previous generation would remember the assassination of President Kennedy. I do actually remember fairly vividly many of the details of that morning. I remember sleeping in on that morning, as I had already decided to take the day off of work for personal reasons, and the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law, who urged me and my wife to turn on the television. "Somebody's bombed New York or something!" We turned it on in time to see the first building collapse.

For me though, there was an eerie quality to the whole first half of September that I occasionally play over in my mind. For me personally, the events of 9/11/2001 were one tragedy in the midst of a string of several that happened in my life. In my life, but not directly to me, I suppose, tragedy is a strange thing. Tragedies come with a factor of distance and severity. The other tragedies were closer to me but of course less severe than a pair of 100-story buildings collapsing to kill several thousand people. Still, the exchange in those factors made them all seem fairly even to me in a fashion; does that make sense?

Many of the things that happened were too personal to discuss here, but I will speak of the first and the last of them all. First, a beloved family member passed away. There had just been a funeral, right at the start of the month. He had gone to the doctor complaining of some problems, and the doctor had told him nothing was wrong, he should go home and rest. So he did. A couple days later, he was dead.

Why did the doctor miss his diagnosis? Why did this man accept the diagnosis without question, even as his symptoms grew worse? Why did he have to die? Why does it hurt for those of us left behind even though all of us who were believers in Christ were certain of this man's salvation, and felt it safe to assume he was in heaven? None of those are questions that are easy to answer.

The last thing that happened, to me anyway, was that I received notice of a friend and co-worker from a couple years back having committed suicide. She was an intelligent, beautiful, fun person that everybody liked, and she seemed to have a lot going for her as far as anybody knew. But apparently on the 9th of September, she hung herself in her apartment, and wasn't discovered until nearly a week after. She left no note.

Why did she kill herself? What was it that was causing her enough suffering that dying seemed like an improvement over her situation? Was there anything that I myself could have done, either at the time or back years previously when I had known her better, to change her mind? Does suicide really relieve one of suffering if there is an afterlife? Might she have suffered worse or found a reason to live if she had waited a few more days and seen the horror in New York? These are questions that are virtually impossible to answer.

But while I had never been to New York, while I had never seen the towers in person, while I didn't know any of the people who died on *that* day, some of the most nagging questions linger on that central event. When two planes crashed into towers in New York and two tried (one unsuccessfully) to crash into buildings in Washington, DC, we were left with a lot of questions that I sometimes wonder who is asking.

Why? Don't we want to know why? This isn't about 72 houris awaiting each hijacker in paradise, not to Osama bin Laden. This isn't about "Islamofascists" who "hate freedom". I don't buy that. Osama bin Laden wanted to send a message to the world. Even if we refuse to respect that message, even if we condemn that message for the brutal manner in which it was sent, doesn't the severity of that make us want to sit up and at least hear what it was he was trying to say? If only to respond intelligently?

It's an odd thing about myself. My religious beliefs lead me to hold the view that human beings are, at their heart, evil. Yet at the same time, I believe that there also exists a drive in people that makes them desire to do what they think is the right thing. Bin Laden and his cohorts who planned out and executed the attacks of 9/11 may appear to be evil, and indeed, they most likely are. Isn't it not just possible, but likely that they believed that what they were doing was the right thing to do? The 19 hijackers were willing to give their lives for it. The al-Qaeda organization, while maybe weaker than it once was, still exists, so I assume its members didn't look at 9/11 and say, "My, that was a bit too brutal for my tastes!"

The majority of the people of the world heard about what had happened to our country on 9/11, and their sympathy and support went out to us as a nation. That is a good thing. However, there exists a minority of the world's population who, upon hearing the news, celebrated. Some of these people are in fact so elated by this attack, that if they had the chance to be a part of another attack like it in the future, they wouldn't hesitate. This is a phenomenon that makes me want to ask "Why?" but unlike the other things that make me want to ask "Why?" there are people who are willing, able, and probably eager to answer it. Shouldn't more of us be asking?

Don't fear the reaper

"If I were an atheist, I don't know why I wouldn't just kill myself," the speaker declared. People in the crowd shouted back incredulous responses, and the tone of the whole open-air discussion made a poor turn. It was years back when I was in college, and the speaker was a professional evangelist/apologeticist who at the time had a great deal to do with myself eventually becoming a Christian, despite a number of things he said that day that were offensive to many in the crowd, even myself.

The thing is, though, that particular statement did not offend me. In a way, it was something that I had contemplated myself at times. The odd thing about so many religions (and I'm including atheism under that umbrella for the sake of this discussion, whether proper to do so or not) is that from a certain perspective, it seems like suicide is the ultimate logical expression of faith. Nonetheless, as a subject that is sort of a subset of the ideas in my previous post on practical religion, it is interesting that people of just about all religions are, contrary to this, far from likely to commit suicide.

While far from the first time the concept was presented to me, the example from Buddhism may be the best. See, the central idea behind Buddhism (of the standard non-Tibetan variety) is actually a very atheistic one. An enlightened Buddhist will come to realize that God does not exist, material possessions are not important, and in fact, their own sense of self is essentially an illusion. The true goal then, is to realize that this world is nothing but illusory suffering, and to become released from it by denying its existence. The logical question that is often asked by non-Buddhists is, if the goal is to release yourself from the illusory suffering of this imagined material plane of existence, wouldn't the easy thing be to just kill yourself? After all, (non-Tibetan) Buddhists don't believe in reincarnation, so suffering would simply cease, right?

Well, the enlightened person realizes that this is false. If your material and mental self is but an illusion, then aren't you kowtowing to the power of that illusion to solve the problem by material means? Maybe if you could simply cease to live that might be acceptable, but to, say, take an illusory knife and slit your illusory throat? It's not the terminology a Buddhist would use, but that would be admitting defeat. In fact, the true Buddhas that have been enlightened realized that leaving the physical plane was not as great a thing to do as to stay and teach others that have not yet found enlightenment! Oddly enough, although this seems self-sacrificing, I wonder if an enlightened Buddhist would agree, since there is no "self" to sacrifice.

Which hints at the state of affairs for a Christian, both on an individual scale, and on a grander one. If going to Heaven to be with Jesus is the greatest thing a Christian can attain, then why not kill yourself after you give your life to Him? In the Bible, Paul addresses the matter (although the passage is not discussing suicide, but execution):

"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me." -Philippians 1:21-26

Yes, while it seems a Christian might desire to die, the fact is, we remain because there is still work to be done here on earth, and it wouldn't be right to take the "easy" way out. Some religious leaders have claimed that a suicide cannot go to Heaven, since that would be a type of murder, and one that can't be repented of. I don't think this is true, but one can see a certain arrogance in the idea of claiming to be a follower of Christ and deciding on God's behalf when it's your time to go to Heaven.

And as I said, this is also perhaps a reason for the long delay before the "second coming" of Christ. I've heard many a pastor say that every day Jesus delays His return, many, many more people have a chance to turn to Him and be saved. (It may beg the question that if indeed this is so good, why would Christ ever return? No matter for this discussion.)

A Hindu, or member of some other religion that does believe in reincarnation might also be tempted to leave a life of suffering to re-enter with a blank slate, but most belief systems that include reincarnation don't include the idea of being born with a blank slate, but must reap the rewards of your past life, so ending one life with a selfish and violent act is not likely to put you in a better place.

So, back to the atheist, the one that started the discussion. Why is it that I (and the speaker) say an atheist might desire suicide? Well, the world is full of suffering and strife (a belief common to all the religions mentioned here) and one of the main things we strive for in this life is to escape from this (ditto here). If you truly believe there is nothing, absolutely nothing in store for us after this life, then why not simply go to oblivion? I've always thought, why would an atheist be afraid of dying? Ceasing to exist couldn't possibly hurt, right?

The counter-argument that I think would be the most popular is that since there is no afterlife, then this life is all we have. Why give up everything for nothing? There seems to be some reason in this, certainly, but then, well... Maybe it's a bit of a linguistic problem rather than a real problem, but if you cease to exist, then there is no "you" to have lost any "life". Really, you can't lose your life, can you? You can only stop being you in a very final manner by cutting off your life. You don't cut it off from yourself, but from everyone else, because you're not there after life exists. So is life what you have, or what you are? Either way, is anything really lost to you?

So why do atheists not long for death? Do atheists, like Buddhists, want to keep living to spread the atheistic Gospel to the masses? Or is it merely a biological directive built into us by evolution that tells us to keep existing as long as we can, so that we can keep the chance to propagate our genetic materials in one way or another? Maybe the atheists are the right ones, and it's more straightforward to them. The rest of us need to invent reasons why we want to live, while they simply know that we want to live just because it's human nature.

You know, there's a big part of me that doesn't want to publish this post. It's probably vain conceit on my part, but I fear I may drive some atheist somewhere to kill themselves, which I certainly don't want to do. Most likely, any atheists that read this will either laugh at it, or be somewhat offended, or maybe they'll give me better answers to my questions and make me feel like an idiot (it's not hard to do, and I wish more people would tell me I'm full of it--and why--just so I know people are reading this). But whatever people do in response to this or any other blog, I hope they find a reason to live, whatever it may be.

But also, don't be afraid.

What's up with the youth in Asia?

So, I got official word yesterday. Turns out it wasn't a bruise after all. The lump on my cat's shoulder, which grew rather than shrinking away, is in fact a serious tumor.

It's serious enough that I very likely am going to have to consider having her put down. She's already clearly in some discomfort, no longer walking on that leg, but you never know... If our cat could talk and understand the situation, would she rather be dead than struggle through pain that is probably slowly increasing day after day? Or is that even a question that should be asked?

One of the hard things for some people to understand is that morality isn't often about what someone wants so much as what is right, independent of desires. I hear it come up in various discussions of numerous moral issues that it would be unloving to not let a person do {fill in the blank} if they really wanted to do it. If my cat really wants to die, does that mean it's right to have her put down?

Of course, for most people, this issue is easier with animals than fellow humans, where the issue nonetheless comes up. What I end up deciding about my cat and her treatment is likely to be largely based on affordability. The vet has suggested that the oncological surgeon would most likely charge over $1,000 for the removal of the tumor, and it's unlikely that I could justify that expense. On the other hand, if it were my wife or one of my kids with the tumor, I wouldn't be deterred by a price tag of $1 million. But what if it was my wife, and she just wanted me to let her go?

This sort of thing enters not just muddied waters morally, but legally. I don't know what the legal status of human euthanasia is here, but there is probably a difference between choosing to not treat a deadly tumor because the patient doesn't want treatment, and giving a cancer patient a lethal dose of pain medication. Generally, the former is not considered murder, while it's much more likely the latter is. But then, whatever individuals think of it, most likely the real issue is that morality trumps legality anyway, even though morality is less often as clear-cut.

Oh it is clear-cut, people will assure you. The value of human life is without measure. You don't have the right to choose who will live and who will die. Maybe, but then, by that standard, perhaps choosing no treatment at all is the only moral choice, since you leave the fate of the person with the tumor entirely in the hands of God, rather than anything else, right? Some people probably actually have this view, but I'd suspect it's a rare one. More likely, people claim that anything that one can do to preserve human life simply must be done, and no price tag is too high. Fight that tumor with everything you can throw at it, and extend the life of the patient in any way possible. Furthermore, of course one should never assume people in comas or folks like Terri Schiavo are actually dead unless their bodies finally refuse to function. And on top of that, of course, no abortions.

But do we really believe that as a society? Do we really think human life has value without limit? Would you do anything you could within your power to avoid letting people die? You know, lots of people die in car crashes every year. Lots and lots of them. Souldn't you stop driving a car? That would also cut down on pollution, which would reduce cancer rates, and now to think of it, utilizing fossil fuels in any way increases pollution as well, so you probably should not do anything that directly or indirectly uses them. After all, you could save a life! No, we as a society place a finite value on human life, and really, we should, because if we're making mental calculations as to the value of our actions, you know that throwing in a value like "infinity" makes things difficult to factor out. What if you have to choose between one life or another? How do you choose that?

Getting back to what started this, there is still a question that I think can be asked. If life (and human life in particular) has such a high value, isn't it possible that we can be dishonoring that value by letting it exist at times? In the case of my cat, her value to herself is the value to run and play and eat and climb into people's laps. To us, her value is our enjoyment of seeing her happy, and letting her be an active part of our lives. If the time comes that she can no longer enjoy these things, and we can no longer bear to see her suffering bringing no joy to anyone, doesn't it cheapen the value of her life as it existed before to let it continue as it is now? I don't know, but it's something that shakes me at times.

Personally, I find euthanasia distasteful, but I wonder if it's what we sometimes conveniently call a "necessary evil". I don't want my cat to die. But I wonder if not only the humane thing to do is to have her put down, but maybe even to do it myself rather than a stranger in a lab coat in a scary place far from home. Does a loved one wasting away on her death bed in pain and suffering have value? Her life essentially over with no hope of recovery, and nothing but pain and loneliness, what value is that? Yes, we as Christians believe there is value in a human soul, but what good does it do the soul to keep it trapped in a decaying body?

Years after my grandmother died after a painful bout with cancer, I heard a rumor that some of my relatives brought it upon themselves to inject her with morphine in her sleep, ensuring she wouldn't wake up to another day of suffering. It shocked me. While I don't know if it's true, I do wonder if it may have been morally right. It's too big of a question for me.