Morality, Religion & Philosophy: September 2004 Archives

I'm curious about the Jewish approach to war and I've been trying to find information on whether Jews refrain from fighting on the Sabbath. I can't find a resource online that directly addresses the question, but this passage from the Bible touches on the issue:

2 Kings 11:4-8

In the seventh year Jehoiada sent for the commanders of units of a hundred, the Carites and the guards and had them brought to him at the temple of the LORD . He made a covenant with them and put them under oath at the temple of the LORD . Then he showed them the king's son. He commanded them, saying, "This is what you are to do: You who are in the three companies that are going on duty on the Sabbath-a third of you guarding the royal palace, a third at the Sur Gate, and a third at the gate behind the guard, who take turns guarding the temple- and you who are in the other two companies that normally go off Sabbath duty are all to guard the temple for the king. Station yourselves around the king, each man with his weapon in his hand. Anyone who approaches your ranks must be put to death. Stay close to the king wherever he goes."

Standing guard is apparently ok on the Sabbath, and that's essentially a defensive military action.

I'm not a Catholic, but I wholeheartedly agree with Archibishop John J. Myers' voter's guide with regards to pro-choice candidates.

Cardinal Ratzinger stated that a "Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of a candidate's permissive stand on abortion." But the question of the moment is whether a Catholic may vote for a pro-abortion candidate for other reasons. The cardinal's next sentence answered that question: A Catholic may vote for a pro-abortion Catholic politician only "in the presence of proportionate reasons."

What are "proportionate reasons"? To consider that question, we must first repeat the teaching of the church: The direct killing of innocent human beings at any stage of development, including the embryonic and fetal, is homicidal, gravely sinful and always profoundly wrong. Then we must consider the scope of the evil of abortion today in our country. America suffers 1.3 million abortions each year--a tragedy of epic proportions. Moreover, many supporters of abortion propose making the situation even worse by creating a publicly funded industry in which tens of thousands of human lives are produced each year for the purpose of being "sacrificed" in biomedical research.

Thus for a Catholic citizen to vote for a candidate who supports abortion and embryo-destructive research, one of the following circumstances would have to obtain: either (a) both candidates would have to be in favor of embryo killing on roughly an equal scale or (b) the candidate with the superior position on abortion and embryo-destructive research would have to be a supporter of objective evils of a gravity and magnitude beyond that of 1.3 million yearly abortions plus the killing that would take place if public funds were made available for embryo-destructive research.

Frankly, it is hard to imagine circumstance (b) in a society such as ours. No candidate advocating the removal of legal protection against killing for any vulnerable group of innocent people other than unborn children would have a chance of winning a major office in our country. Even those who support the death penalty for first-degree murderers are not advocating policies that result in more than a million killings annually.

I also made the connection between ritual child sacrifice and abortion. After all, why did ancient civilizations sacrifice their children to their gods if not to provide impetus to their prayers for wealth, long life, and happiness? Precisely the same as modern embryonic research and abortion.

I could spend all day posting ridiculous stuff from Democratic Underground... how about this? God and pot don't mix.

I was born into and raised by a blue-collar Lutheran family. My father was a union heavy-equipment operator(mostly cranes), and my mother worked part-time at the local library.born in 1961I was the second, by 4 years, of two children...the little brother to my big sister growing up in a far northwest suburb of chicago. we both attended the parochial elementary school attatched to our church, in which our family was fairly active.
I was a believer. all the way thru my teens, active in the youth league, and attending the new Lutheran High School in the Fox Valley.

Looking back, it was about the same time that i discovered pot(which i enjoy to this to day) that it all stopped "making sense", and i really began to question, and ultimately lose my faith.

Apparently the only debate surrouding abortion these days is that it costs too much.

"Vera Drake," Mike Leigh's tough tale of a working-class mother who is caught performing illegal abortions in 1950s England, scooped up the prizes at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, including the coveted Golden Lion.

Its star, acclaimed British stage and film actress Imelda Staunton, also won the best actress award for her portrayal of a back-street abortionist who acts not for financial gain but out of concern for girls and women in trouble. ...

The film raises difficult questions about abortion in a world where the wealthy have access to discreet and legal abortions and the poor throw themselves on the mercy of practitioners like Drake.

"The audience must walk away with a debate and struggle with it. These things are not black and white," Leigh said.

No word yet on whether babies prefer "discreet and legal" or "back-street".

David Remnick has a piece in The New Yorker about Al Gore, and it's pretty intentionally depressing in some ways.

Gore, along with no small part of the country, is convinced that had things turned out differently in Florida in 2000, had the conservatives on the Supreme Court not outnumbered the liberals by a single vote, the United States would not be in the condition it’s in: the front page would not be describing chaos in Iraq, record budget deficits, the rollback of numerous environmental initiatives, a diminishment of civil liberties, a curtailment of stem-cell research, an erosion of American prestige abroad. Gore does not admit to any bitterness, but it is plain in nearly every speech he gives; and while the feeling may be partly personal—who could blame him?—it runs to a deeper, more public-minded sentiment than the disappointment of his own, or his father’s, ambitions.

"Here you have a guy who worked all his life to achieve the one thing he wanted—to be President of the United States, and it was there, in his grasp," Tony Coelho, Gore’s campaign chairman in 2000, said. "He felt Clinton hurt him, but nevertheless he worked his butt off and brought it off. He won the most votes, by half a million, but then the Supreme Court steps in and it’s gone. It is hard for any of us to understand what that means or how it feels. The truth is that Gore is really a policy guy, not a political guy, and for him to feel that he was on the cusp of the ultimate policy job, that he could affect policy and the world like no one else, and then nothing—well, imagine that!"

I'm sure that's how Mr. Gore sees the situation, and were I him I'd be pretty disgruntled about it too.

The lesson to be learned, if there is one, is that wanting something and working hard for it doesn't entitle you to actually get it. It's a sad, disappointing fact of life. Is it fair? Well, yeah, I think so. The only alternative would be to compel people to give you what you want when you want it enough, and that certainly wouldn't be just.

There are lots of things I want, that I work hard for, that I may never get. For example, I'm waiting to hear back from some publishers about a manuscript I sent out a couple of months ago. I worked really hard on it, and I think it's pretty good. Does that mean they have to buy it? Of course not.

Now, working your whole life for the presidency and then losing it is probably much worse than possibly not getting a book published, but it's the same general principle. Mr. Gore worked hard and did his best, but in the end the country didn't want him. So it goes.

Even Jesus faced disappointment and sadness in his life, so how can we expect any different?

Isaiah 53:3

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

So when people reject you, just remember, you're not alone in that.

There's a world of difference between Christianity and Islam, and I think the "Hollywood Hell House" provides an excellent example.

"Hollywood Hell House," which opened Aug. 28 and stars Bill Maher as Satan, Andy Richter as Jesus and a rotating cast of other celebrity comics, is based on the Hell House Outreach kits sold by Keenan Roberts, an Assemblies of God minister in suburban Denver. Religious haunted houses have been around since at least the early 1970s. But Mr. Roberts's version, which he first staged 10 years ago, has proved especially popular: Church groups have produced it some 3,000 times, in most states and more than a dozen countries. ...

"We're not upset this is happening," Mr. Roberts said. "I'm out here to affirm what Hell House is all about--that sin always leads to a devastating and destructive end, but that hope is found in Jesus Christ. In the heart of the entertainment capital, something that is important to us is being presented. It's an honor. Even if they don't agree with our message, they realize we've got something here." ...

"But I'm not here because of what they're doing with it," Mr. Roberts added. "I'm here because of what God is doing with it--and that's much bigger than what you see here on Hollywood Boulevard."

Ms. Soloway walked up at that moment. "What did you think?" she asked.

"Interesting," Mr. Roberts said.

"Well, thank you for coming," she replied.

Try to imagine for a minute this exchange occurring after a show parodying the tenets of radical Islam, which certainly has its own share of kitsch. You can't, because even if Hollywood hipsters got past worrying about seeming like Muslim-bashers, their own fears of a fatwa would shut the thing down before it even began. There are some forms of hell that even Bill Maher can't joke about.

Mocking Christianity is apparently just edgy enough to entertain these folks without upsetting anyone important.