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I was thinking. I usually arrive at new theological insights when I write my sermons. I always pray for God to help me discover a little more truth. Last year preaching for Resurrection Lutheran in Oakland, I realized that because of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, if we all received a new birth because of the love of God, then we become children of God in a continuous incarnation even while God is at work in the continuous creation. You can check out this sermon here. In the many flowers of the beautiful Christmas plant, the poinsettia, I used to see the Nativity of Jesus Christ, giving each one of us believers a Christmas birth of our own represented by each blossom.

It then follows that theology does become anthropology in the marvelous exchange, where we receive God’s attributes as heirs, who receive the last will and testament of Christ. Although Jesus died on the cross sharing the fate of humanity, God the Father raised him from the dead, and thus the love of God overcome death.

In saying that theology becomes anthropology, I am not following Feuerbach, who called theology illusion and projection. I say it as an increase in faith, meaning that God is not finished with us yet, but is still about the great transformation that entails our salvation.

Saying that theology becomes transformed into anthropology from our human point of view, however, makes me realize how far conceptuality can surpass reality, because we humans still tear each other up, the way wolves won’t even do.

I just heard that a controversy has developed over Lawrence Krauss and his book A Universe from Nothing. My article in Scholardarity called “Science should not Step out of Bounds” engages his atheism. Click on it. I hope it helps.  peter krey

In today’s New York Times, I was reading T.M. Luhrmann’s piece about Evangelicals in relation with the government. Luhrmann quotes Rick Santorum: “Go into the neighborhoods in America where there is a lack of virtue and what will you find? Two things. You will find no families, no mothers and fathers living together in marriage. And you will find government everywhere: police, social service agencies. Because without faith, family, and virtue, government takes over.” Luhrmann continues: “This perspective emphasizes developing individual virtue from within – not changing social conditions from without.” [1]

The problem that we face is that an individualist ideology only perceives a half of reality, the way a collectivist ideology only takes in the other half. We need to “develop individual virtue from within” – and “change social conditions from without.”  Becoming more mature and moral is definitely part of reality, but there is more to reality, which lies beyond our direct personal relationships.

According to Reinhold Niebuhr, there are an infinite variety of structures and systems in which people seek to organize their common life in terms of some kind of justice. And higher approximations of justice are possible. All these mechanisms are to help people fulfill their obligations to their neighbors beyond the possibilities offered in direct personal relationships. [1]

For example, I once asked a capitalist, who was opening a factory in a third world country, how he would get workers if they all worked on farms and the society had never industrialized. “You have to manipulate the monetary policy,” he said, “in order to make the prices of farm produce lower so that farmers had to lay off workers, who would come to the city and work in his factory.”[2]

Another example: When the steel mills closed all around Pittsburgh, PA and 30,000 workers were suddenly unemployed a commentator in a newspaper article said that they would have jobs if unemployed workers were not so lazy.

Another: Getting a car gives you an incredible sense of individual freedom. You can now drive anywhere. You experience a different reality, a collective one, when you are stuck in a traffic jam, where a “freeway” seems to have become a parking lot.

How can people pay doctor and hospital bills, when they are priced for insurance companies with balances that the average individual cannot afford? In our day giant corporations walk the earth and as legal persons they are far more powerful than individual persons.

Social and economic forces are sometimes even insurmountable in the face of individual heroism. It did not matter how virtuous the worker when companies down-sized, out-sourced, and closed down whole factories to reopen them over in countries where labor could be hired for 20 cents an hour rather than $20 an hour.

The Great Recession we are still experiencing unleashed social and economic forces as real as the natural forces of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Fewer houses were lost in the floods there, while the recession has put many more houses across the country “under water.” A friend of ours first lost her job because of cut-backs, then she lost her home when her mortgage suddenly doubled. She moved her family into a rented home and her landlord lost his house to a bank foreclosure. She had to move again.

Now I take offense at Santorum’s blaming the victims. Some neighborhoods lack virtue? Many lives are wrecked because of the social disasters that have ruined many of our inner cities. There is much higher unemployment. Many also just consider the people there “unemployable.” The social forces in this country benefit one group and another has to contend with continual disadvantages and negative set-backs.

So the government is responsible for social, economic, and political policies that shape more humane social conditions from without and all people are called to become more mature and moral from within. But what is Santorum missing? He only sees the failing student, he ignores the fact that the student might be in a failing school. A renewal is required for the student and the school.

To get to the bottom of the issue, I need to use biblical language. The law (government)  encroaches upon people, when their faith and the Gospel has not issued into a new life in Christ. But the problem is not the law, it is not the government. A renewal is required for the individual as well as in the economic and political systems. Jesus came to proclaim that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand. We forget about the new system he launched. We tend to believe in him as the individual, Jesus Christ, and strip him of his reign in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said that you cannot pour new wine into old wine skins – you have to pour new wine into new wine skins.

Thus it is not merely a matter of faith, family, and virtue, but a government that brings about a greater approximation of justice so that some neighborhoods are not ruined by the injustice of the many systems in our society that fail us. There is no law or government given whereby we must be saved, but they can certainly destroy our lives. When government is true to its purpose, the morality of people will gain traction. Even the best system counts on creative individuals, who face the moral challenge and breakthrough to the new life.

What am I saying? I think that by pontificating about “faith, family, and virtue,”  Santorum is oblivious to the powerful, negative social and economic forces that are also involved in destroying families and marriages. I’m not ruling our morality, but he should become aware of these forces, even unjust legal and police forces (with the pun intended) that require good government to correct. Those forces will even cause more social havoc, if government is merely presented as the problem and not as part of the solution.

[1]New York Times Op-Ed page (May 7, 2012, page A21)

[2] This was a brother-in-law of mine, who opened overseas factories for the mother company here in the U.S.A.

[3] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1943), page 192.

How can violence be extracted from religious fervor?  A Florida pastor burns Korans and an image of Muhammad, because an Iranian pastor, who had converted to Christianity, was originally charged in Iran with apostasy and evangelization. A Shiite cleric, a member of the Iranian parliament called the Florida pastor “evil and apostate” and said that he must be executed. (New York Times, May 1, 2012, page A8)

To burn books is violent. There is no attempt at persuasion, no attempt to argue with reason, nor any reaching out with mutual friendship and acceptance in order to bring about the transformation of enemies into friends. Jesus bids us to love also our enemies. Like Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend!” That is love that knows the suffering of the cross.

To put the death penalty on apostasy, that is, someone converting to another religion, uses the threat of violence against the adherents of one’s own faith, making them un-free. Consequently, they are held in a faith without being there with their whole hearts. Then some people could participate in their faith heartlessly, ruthlessly. A religion should have the high standard of using persuasion alone, stirring and moving people’s hearts, and all coercion should be beneath it.

Thirdly, to call for the execution of the book-burner is religious fervor that has gone a long way out of bounds. It was back before 1520 that Luther was named a heretic for claiming that burning a heretic at the stake was against the will of the spirit – among other statements.  (See Pope Leo X bull Exsurge Domine, assertion #33.) It took about three centuries before inquisitions ended in Portugal (1821) and Spain (1834). (The last auto-da-fe, that is, burning at the stake, took place in Mexico in 1850.) (Of course, Protestants were still hanging “witches” in Salem in 1692!)

Religious fervor needs to be separated from coercion. It follows from the separation of church and state, faith of the religion and reason and law of the state. Neither should our faith or church instigate the state to impose our faith on others, to impose laws on the behalf of a particular faith, and shed blood in a crusade or war on behalf of a faith. That makes religious violence more subtle, but just as real.

Taking violence out of faith, precedes taking it out of nationalism and patriotism, precedes taking it our of economics, taking it out of the government in the form of abolishing capital punishment, to taking it out of our society, out of our families, to a withering away of violence and coercion for the sake of a genuine faith, steadfast love, and good government.

I sent this letter to President Obama today:

I just read the article in today’s New York Times (4/12/12, A14 and 18) about the alcoholism in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota, where alcohol is banned only to have their Native Americans go across the state border – which is interstate commerce – to Whiteclay, Nebraska to purchase 12 ounce high-alcohol malt liquor beer. The population of Whiteclay is 10, while the four stores generated $360,000 this year and $414,000 last year in – shameful – state and federal excise taxes according to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. There’s a blatant conflict of interest, when the state governor accepts $40,000 and the attorney general accepts $10,000 from Anheuser-Busch.
With more than 90% of the Native Americans there born in poverty, 90% of the violent crime related to alcohol, and 25% of the infants born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, posterity is going to deem this situation another case of small pox blankets delivered to the indigenous people of our great nation.
Couldn’t you mobilize a social response, an AA hospital, for example, and also have Attorney General Erich Holder look into the situation. How can God bless us, if we allow such a shameful social wound to fester in our country.
Sincerely,   Pastor Peter Krey, Ph.D.

In a discussion with my son Joshua later, we thought that Europeans have had centuries, even a thousand years to integrate alcohol and we still have a minor percentage of our populations – perhaps excluding our students – abusing the substance of alcohol. The Native American has not had those centuries and alcohol seems to decimate their population.  It is also a problem that Native American attachment to the land has been broken and their whole life-style disjointed in our detached commercial private property existence. Recently some land in the Amazon was taken over by the government and destroyed, where an Amazon tribe had lived. The chief cried and knelt down, saying that now his life was pointless. It is more than attachment to the land. Their ancestors arose out of a particular stream. Their stories all revolve around the rocks, valleys, mountains, and streams. There is no hope to bridge them over into a life that is not connected to the land, except as private property. I’m trying to understand the inability to face bitter realities. It is really shameful that in this great nation, which is so generous when it comes to disasters, we do not mobilize to rescue our own indigenous people from a social disaster.

Blogging my thoughts:

Have you seen Les Mis?  It is a story about the law and gospel. Jean Valjean is a convict with the number 24601, imprisoned and doing 19 years of hard labor for having stolen a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving children. (Five years for theft, the others for escape attempts.) Javert is the lawman, who has Valjean’s number and who notices Jean Valjean’s great strength.

Upon his release, Valjean finds shelter in the home of a bishop, and now really having become a criminal, he steals all the silverware during the night, only to be brought back to the bishop by the gendarmes in the morning. To Valjean’s surprise, the bishop tells the gendarmes that he had given him the silverware as a gift and wondered why he had not also taken the golden candlesticks, which he then put into Valjean’s sack!

When the gendarmes leave, the bishop tells Valjean that he has purchased his soul for Christ and that he now belonged to Jesus. The experience of this amazing grace, melts Valjean’s heart and he becomes a new man. He becomes a factory owner and then the mayor of a town giving jobs and a livelihood to thousands. But in the process he has broken parole and Javert is ever out to recapture him.

The mayor gives himself away to Javert by lifting a heavy cart that had fallen on a man and was crushing him. Seeing his strength Javert recognizes him. Then Valjean does not allow a mistaken man to be convicted in his place. As the mayor he confesses in court that he is the real Valjean, saving the man. He escapes in order to keep his promise to a poor dying woman that he will bring up her daughter.

In Paris years later, a revolution is taking place. Valjean’s “daughter” falls in love with a fellow behind the barricade. To save all their tomorrows, Valjean goes behind the barricade himself. There Javert has been captured as a spy and Valjean is ordered to shoot him. Instead he shoots in the air and allows Javert to escape, saving his life! Then after all the young fighters are killed and wounded, he carries the wounded fellow his daughter loves through the Paris sewers back to her without their knowing that he did it.

Thus Victor Hugo’s character, Jean Valjean, saved many lives, even the life of the lawman, Javert, who however, cannot believe that a criminal can change and representing the law, commits suicide. Valjean represents the Gospel, whose life ransomed and redeemed so many, even Javert’s, who represents the law.

Les Mis is the story of the Gospel, in the lovely melodies of which our lives are being purchased for Christ, where the law is cancelled, and God’s completely undeserved grace saves us, making our lives unfold and blossom even here, as well as there, when Christ wakes us up in heaven.

Blogging my thoughts:

This blog has been moved to Scholadarity. Please click on the title!

Science should not Step Out of Bounds

(in the light of Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge)

Blogging my thoughts: Peter Krey, January 26, 2012

Outsourcing Labor to China

For outsourcing labor to China, companies should have to pay a certain fee, like a tariff for each worker, or a certain substantial amount for each foreign factory contract that could have been an American one. If workers here were paid $2,000 a month and over there they receive $200, then a profit for the company of $1,800 a month accrues for each American worker. Why not have one quarter of that amount go toward profit or reduced prices, but have three quarters of that amount become divided between the American and Chinese workers? This incredible sum of money, $1,350 per worker per month could be used for worker training and retooling in community colleges and in China for improving the quality of workers’ lives.

As stated in the New York Times (01/26/2012) “What’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that” (pages A2 and B10).

Workers here languish in unemployment while workers there are committing suicide, dying in aluminum dust explosions, and rioting “under the often harsh and dangerous conditions that laborers endure in Chinese factories where iPhones, iPads, and other high-tech devices are assembled” (A2).

The advantage of fast technological innovation and low prices for ourselves as consumers is offset by atrocious levels of human social and personal cost. Steve Jobs, as much as we admire and praise him, made $200 billion and the workers there are squeezed for $22 a day, if they work 12 hour shifts, mostly six days a week or more, with 20 workers living in a three room apartments in dormitories. They cannot even live with their families! Without any power, these workers are at the mercy of a system which has none.

Apple is trying to audit factories and improve safety conditions there. (Where is the Chinese government? Don’t they care about their people?) But then Apple, a very demanding client, requires another ten percent cut in cost from the supplying factory, so what concern do they really have for safety? Safety will be the first thing discarded in order to achieve the ten percent cut in cost required from the Chinese company.

Companies that destroy nature are called to task. Why not charge them when they flee workers who have some say-so and some rights, for those poor workers that have none? Shouldn’t companies also be called to task for the social and personal suffering that they cause?

Does an economic system have to be so radical that it nails so many poor workers on a cross for the sake of the incredible wealth of a few and our luxury of having such low prices?

Keely Garfield describes a myth in which humans are changed into trees:

“The inhabitants of ‘Twin Pines’ wrangle through twisted branches of human ecology, foraging a middle path around root causes of desire and dread. Seedling thoughts grow into monstrous reflections and are cut down to size. Like a tree entrenched in earth, ‘Twin Pines’ strives toward heaven with overarching limbs trembling for contact.” (from today’s NY Times 1/13/12, p. C19)

How do you like that for an extended metaphor!?

Josh tells me that we are all exaggerated trees. But we synthesize photos while trees do photosynthesis and we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while trees use carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Now that’s a difference!

Some thoughts I had while taking a shower:

The universe is incomprehensibly large and not only our geographical distances on earth have become smaller, but our whole planet, Earth, has become smaller in comparison.  With our human capacity for measurement and for science and technology,  the enhancement of human activity has sky-rocketed. Our human capacity for activity has magnified many times over on our small planet, because of the expansion of industry with products  placed into overdrive by science and technology for the sake of profit. Thus we could well be responsible for the drastic rate of increase in climate change on our planet with its delicate atmosphere. We now know that our whole planet has become a Noah’s ark – floating in space as it circles around the sun, upon which we have to save the animals, as well as ourselves from extinction.