I am not sure if it was because of the conversation I had with Farmer Geoff or if it was the realization of what happened that morning but I felt it hit me like a ton of bricks as I drove home this morning. Why do we feel a sense of dread when we find ourselves in the presence of death? Farmer Geoff and I processed four turkeys this Sunday morning. I am not easily disgusted nor am I easily abhorred the repugnance of entrails and blood, so when he asked me whether I felt a sense of remorse for having slit an animal’s throat, my answer was a confident ‘no’. The situation made perfect philosophical sense to me. Geoff was more invested with the turkeys’ lives. To him, they were not only animals bred for poultry, they were symbols of how it is to be naturally human(e). I, on the other hand, was just the guy he called to help process them. I care and believe in what Geoff’s farm is about, but this morning, I am just a cold hearted butcher. But just when I began to be confident in my savage masculinity, it dawned on me that I have slaughtered living things. I eventually felt remorse.
If you consider it from a purely naturalistic stance, the fear one feels when he is in a cemetery is completely absurd. For one, dead creatures are not capable of inflicting physical harm and secondly, most of the time cemeteries are very private venues where one can be in solitude far from any threat or danger. But for some reason, most people are afraid of cemeteries. Processing meat for food has been a permanent fixture in human affairs since known history but why do we feel dread, remorse, even sadness when we are confronted with death? It seems to me that these feelings of dread and remorse are necessary to human life. If the evolutionary theory of natural selection is true, then these feelings are to be taken to be essential to the preservation of the species and survival of the fittest. If creationism, on the other hand is true, one can ask the question “How can a loving and just God inflict this feelings of remorse and dread to human beings by making them omnivores?” If the proposition is so however, that there exists a loving and just omnipotent God the only sensible reconciliation to the query is “these feelings of dread and remorse are benevolent gifts from a compassionate God.” To deduce the non-existence of God from this premise would be quite absurd. It would be like saying “My barber does not exist because I don’t like the haircut he gave me.” It may seem paradoxical but it is definitely not that farfetched.
I personally fall under the Christian camp and what intrigues me is the fact that animal sacrifice was an essential part of the Old Testament religious life, so much so that it became the basis of the New Testament teaching on Jesus’ substitutionary death. In fact, if my thinking is correct that someone who is more invested in a particular animal is more emotionally attached to it, just like Geoff would be to his turkeys, then God’s command to slay the priced cow or the firstborn lamb carries more emotional weight to him who is about to make the sacrifice. Also, if a work oriented butcher such as I, carry such remorse after the processing, I could only imagine what psychological burden priests have to deal with after fulfilling their temple duties. Then Jesus comes along and says “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” I have been always fine with Jesus taking my sin with him to the cross and dying in my place but I have never faced the remorse that goes along with the understanding that it is I who slaughtered the God I love and spilt his blood so that I may partake of the nourishment and life that was his. Geoff told me that if we were to cook one of the turkeys that night for dinner, he could not partake of the meal.
The beauty of life is so underrated in our day and age. We have become so callous to death that the act of slaughter has become natural to us. It is convenient to drive through a fastfood store and order a cheap hamburger but we never really stop to think what that sandwich is really worth. A cow had to die so that we can have something to eat with our french fries. The problem about not having remorse or dread is that we have quite frankly been incapable of gratitude. Just from partaking in the processing of thanksgiving turkeys I have grown to be thankful for people like Geoff who are willing to invest not only their money but more so their lives so that people can have a proper meal. I became grateful for those who are willing to process meat for me so that I don’t have to carry the weight and pain of suffering myself. I became more thankful to Jesus for dying for me. I became even more thankful to God for allowing me to share in his life by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. I have come to the realization that the reason why a loving God would ask people to partake of life is to teach them, with the understanding of how beautiful life is, how it is to be grateful.
Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. I think he’s right. We have mastered the art of delegation and we have been shameless in our use of it. Just by taking time off and driving to meet my friend this Sunday, I have learned valuable life lessons. The most profound things in life are disguised with simplicity and are easy to miss. What we need to do is to stop more often and ask, “What am I holding in my hand?” or “Why does it do that?” Life is such a beautiful thing to miss. It is God’s greatest invention and it would be such a shame to miss it. It is nice out, let’s go get some sunshine.
I have been for the past few months on a mystical spiritual odyssey in my readings. I climbed aboard the Dawn Treader and embarked on this voyage largely because of a growing dissatisfaction I felt within my soul with how I’ve been approaching Scripture, Theology, and God. There must be something more than Systematic Theology, I thought. There must be something more than logic and reason. I thought to myself, if it was indeed possible to fully comprehend the grandeur that is God by means of these disciplines of study I’ve been addicted to, then will there be a time when I’ve figured him enough so that he is no longer bigger than I am? Dissatisfaction turned into a profound sense of emptiness as I contemplated the possibility of finding everything I knew about God untrue. I shuddered at the proposition. But for the first time in my spiritual life, instead of resorting to the comfort of more knowledge, I looked into the void of my soul and saw for myself the beast that plagues my heart. I’ve found, as I gazed, that my comfort came from a tumor formed by my theological frameworks that has calloused my heart. I’ve found that my comfort was with what I know about God and not God himself.
I decided to quit theology. I put an end to looking at life within the frame work of Calvin’s TULIP and started to appreciate God’s colorful tulips blossoming in his garden of earth. I, with the help of my good friends, learned how it is to sing and make music, a music not made of practiced notes formed by meticulous practice but a music that is conversation, one that is fresh and new, a music for the moment, one that may not be repeated again, one that is to be savored with your eyes closed. I started to have conversations with the people who serve me coffee at the coffee shops I lounge in. I discovered intricate things about the nature of what I drink, how beans are grown, processed, bought, roasted, brewed and served. I befriended a farmer and learned how it is to be humane.
I found life to be beautiful and it became even more beautiful when I started to see Jesus afresh. The stories I’ve heard before I began to hear in a new tone. I saw how God could enjoy a song that David played and how at the sight of the Ark of the Covenant, David threw off his clothes and danced a dance for the moment. I imagined how perfect that wine in Cana would taste like. With what berries and grapes did Jesus create that wine with? How long would he have aged it inside those barrels? When Jesus created with wood in his carpenter’s shop would he be meticulous in his art? What craftsmanship would a chair carved out from wood by the creator of the universe possess?
A question was raised as we were having a conversation at iMMERGENT as to how to balance theoretical learning and practical learning about God. My answer was something like “I’ve found in my life that what I’ve learned in experience gave meaning to what I knew through study; and what I know from study gave delight to what I learn through experience.” I have since tried to to rebuild my theology from the ashes of deconstruction with the aid of life experiences and good books. For those of you who are interested, here are some of the books I’m reading:
I am still far from figuring everything out, and truth be told, I don’t think I can figure everything out because that is not my goal in the first place. But I cast myself out into troubled seas because I know that there is great joy in the journey and joy greater still when I finally come home to the house Jesus built beyond the seas. There is no final period to this entry just an ellipsis till next time. Matisyahu, a musician I admire has started posting about his spiritual journey as well, I close with some of his words…
Try to touch the simplicity in you. If today it came out too hard or forced, don’t punish yourself. Walk away without regrets, and come back tomorrow. One day you will meet. Allow yourself to simply become aware of the thought of this day. Don’t “think” it, don’t impose it on yourself, don’t try to “understand.” Listen to it as if it was a song you knew your entire life. Feel it in your breath, in your blood, in your bones. I don’t have a planned out route. We learn together as we go. My hope is that every day you will feel a little more of this simple sense of being, like an old sage who feels that he wasn’t born yet. Don’t expect any major breakthroughs or amazing revelations. Only simple thoughts, feelings, sensations. And an almost imperceptible sense of waking up, in presence of a simple, laughing God…
Love is like beauty, it does not make any sense unless it is in relation to a concrete entity. We always say things like, “that little garden cottage on top of a that snow glazed hill is beautiful” or “It is beautiful how she strokes her hair as her face brightens up with a smile that melts even the coldest heart,” or even “how that lowly man selflessly dived into that icy lake to save a drowning child is beautiful.” We do not say “I’ve seen a triangular square today and it was beautiful”. The same is true with love. It is meaningless to say “I love you” to a person one knows nothing about, let alone care about. Sadly this is the only way most of us know how to communicate this difficult four letter word. And, of all people, Christians such as myself are the worst in this.
We Christians have taken the saying, “speak the truth in love” and have founded the way we live our lives on it. Take for example, after we finish having our post-service lunch at a local Olive Garden, we, instead of leaving a generous tip to our server leave behind a gospel tract that looks like a hundred dollar bill. We, out of love, use our superb training in arts and crafts from Children’s Church to make colorful picket signs that says “Homosexuals Will Go To Hell” and “October 21 is Judgment Day.” The truth is, we cannot love the things we don’t consider beautiful and most of us believe that “there is nothing good in man, in his essence and nature”. This is the reason most of us give out dollar bill tracts and hold picket signs. We want people to know God and become lovely so that we in turn can try to love them.
Jesus did not think of human beings in this fashion, in fact, for him it was the other way around. He saw us as people who are worth loving. He saw in people the beauty of imago dei (the image of God) and felt in himself soul crushing sorrow at the sight of us destroying who we are and us choosing to live a life that is ugly because we do not know any better. The fact that we say that “there is nothing in us to make God loves us” makes God’s love even more amazing, because his love transcends what we see, in that while we see nothing good, he finds a reason to love.
We know what love is because God showed himself to us. Jesus’ other name is Immanuel -God with us, and it is sad that the only day we remember this is the 25th of December. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” If Jesus is God and God is love then the way is love, the truth is love, and the life is love. Why do we get the statement “speak the truth in love” wrong as if truth and love are different things. Where truth deals with knowledge and love with emotion. Truth is love and love is truth because Jesus is both love and truth. In our relationships we fail because we give out either theory or emotion when what we should give is Jesus: he is truth and love, the life and the way.
Giving out Jesus is a lot simpler than studying Systematic Theology just to give a theoretically sound answer to what we believe. Truth of the matter is, at the end of the day what we believe is summed up in one word: Jesus. Giving out the love of Jesus can be as simple as handing out a cold bottle of water on a hot Texas day in a gay pride parade and answering whenever asked “why do you do this,” this reply: “I do this in behalf of Jesus because he cares for you, and he doesn’t want you to get dehydrated.” Love is like beauty, it does not make sense unless it is given in relation to something concrete. Love requires a lover and a loved one. Two questions remain, “Are you loved?” and “Do you love.”
Holy Cow and Hog Heaven by Joel Salatin: My impression (A blog post from Farmer Geoff of the Barry Farm.)
“In typical Salatin fashion he cleans up his own home first by describing for those that produce farmed products how we should conduct ourselves. Descriptors like, trustworthy, open, honest, transparent,neighborly and portion. This is the secret to a real farm that a community can be proud of. Imagine a farm that is an asset to its community in every sense of the word. Why isn’t living next to a farm desirable? The smells the view the noise? Do farms really have to work that way? I dream of an urban farm that is invaluable to it’s community. A farm that is educational, inspirational and hospitable is my kind of farm. “
-I find this true not just in the context of farming but with regards to community life in general. Follow the link below to read more.
10 Fascinating Facts About Christmas (via Listverse)
Christmas is always fascinating and trivia shines the fascination brighter still. Here’s a great collection of Christmas trivia. And oh, there’s a hidden trivia here: after reading through the article can you tell me who the first Grinch(es) is (are)? Enjoy.
via Listverse
When Ceasar Augustus decreed that a census should be taken of the entire Roman World, God came down to earth to be counted as one of us! The incarnate Word, who Himself is light, came down on the darkest night to be bring warmth to a wintry world. Winter has ended, Immanuel is here.
As we celebrate this season let us remember that Christ came to make us a people. He came to break down the walls of isolation and mend the joints of community. Through Him, we are adopted into a family. We are meld together into a tapestry of different colors and hue. We shine in the sun like Joseph’s coat in the land of Canaan. In Christ, we cease to be ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘You’, and ‘They’ for we have now become ‘We’, ‘Us’, and ‘Our’.
So in this season when we expect to receive, remember we have already received. We have received the person sitting by us under the Christmas Tree as well as the Neighbor we refuse to see. They are all gifts from the one who is Father Christmas, Immanuel – God with us. So open up your doors, step into the street, meet people, love on people. Jesus came for us all!
Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel has come to thee!
The Abortion of Christian Doctrine, or Here’s Me Trying to Get Excommunicated, or Dude Just Pick One! or Hey Amanda, Here’s the Blog!
Since Anne Rice’s big ‘goodbye Christianity’ spiel I’ve started following her fan page on facebook, and I must say she posts the good stuff. Now I must say, I’ve yet to meet a person of whom I agree with 100%. I’d like to think Jesus is that guy but the reality is, in my sinfulness I don’t agree with all of his methods but the thing about him is, he wins every single argument we have. That being said, here are somethings you need to know about my thinking before reading on: (1) I think death is an unfortunate thing and if God had his way, we’ll all live eternally. (2) I’d like to think that I believe more on the sovereignty of God than any reformed person I know. Such that, he does not need me, my argumentative prowess, and my systematic theology (or lack thereof) to prove his existence and/or explain his mind. I believe he’s a big boy and that he can handle those stuff better than I can. And (3) I think we should own up to our stupidity and stop pinning every single evil on God, if God was to completely eradicate evil, I would be the first one to be extinguished (and you should think the same about yourself). That being said, let’s talk abortion.
What All The Fuzz Is About
Anne Rice has been posting these past few days a thread of articles regarding the ‘excommunication’ of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix AZ. Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Archdiocese of Phoenix revoked his consent of the of Hospital’s utilization of the ‘Catholic’ this past Tuesday (Dec. 21, 2010) stating,
“The reason for this decision is based upon the fact that, as Bishop of Phoenix, I cannot verify that this health organization will provide health care consistent with authentic Catholic moral teaching as interpreted by me in exercising my legitimate Episcopal authority to interpret the moral law.”
The Arizona Republic, a local newspaper reported, “The case involved a terminally ill woman suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Her condition was worsened by her pregnancy, to the point where her death was imminent.” The New York Times, furthermore reports, “In November 2009, a 27-year-old mother of four in her third month of pregnancy arrived at St. Joseph’s. She was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a serious complication that might well have killed her if she had continued the pregnancy.”
According to the Hospital’s official statement, this is how they responded to the case:
“Consistent with our values of dignity and justice, if we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a human life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case.” Furthermore, “We continue to stand by the decision, which was made in collaboration with the patient, her family, her caregivers, and our Ethics Committee. Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”
What A Pickle!
Yes its a pickle and what a sour pickle it is. On the one hand here we have a very ill 27-year old mother of four who is in the brink of loosing her child, on the other, here we have our solid belief system that says the fetus is a human being and his (or her) life is hanging on the next decision, and to make it interesting we have this principal of a priest that says, “hey, I say killing the baby is excommunication worthy.” Let’s say, you are the attending doctor, what would you do? Here are your options: (1) you could try to save the baby by performing an emergency C-section and loose the mother and also, probably the child because he is just 11 weeks old. If you do this you will find favor in the eyes of your local church for not performing an abortion but you’d probably live with the haunting truth that you have just killed the mother and and quite possibly, if not, killed the child as well. (2) You could just go ahead and kill the baby and save the mom without even stopping to contemplate about it. You can damn what the church says and just go ahead and save the mom. Or (3) you can go into that surgery room, sweat your brow off trying to save both mother and child and after all has been exhausted to save both, and having found no hope of saving both, just try and save one, whoever that is living the rest to God.
The Hospital chose the third option. Their stand on the nature of the fetus is clear in their statement, “if we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a human life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible we will always save the life we can save…” There is no question in this regard, the baby and the mother are both ‘patients’, they are both ‘lives’ – in fact, they are both lives that are worth saving.
What I Think About All This
Abortion being the termination of a pregnancy resulting in the death of an embryo or a fetus is always a tragic procedure. There is, however in my estimation a difference between an intentional willful abortion and an abortion that is an unwanted yet inevitable procedure to save a life. The mother in this scenario is not a knocked up teenage girl in search of quick relief from the consequences of pre-marital sex. She, on the contrary, is a mother of four. She is a woman who wants to be a mother. Her personal history is not disclosed but from the information about her children, it can be deduced that she is not one who is wanting an abortion. She was in the hospital to have a baby, she was not there to loose one. It just so happened that she has a life threatening disease, a sickness that threatens not just her own life but the life of her child.
It is an understatement to say that to be the attending physician of this case is difficult, but more so when the fear of God is added to the equation. There is only so much a human being can do to save a life. At the end of the day, this is not a matter of philosophical, ethical, and theological discussion, in that dark operation room, the goal is singular: to save a life.
People who call on the name of God should be the first to recognize human depravity. Not in the sense of the salvific formula but in the most simplistic way: the truth that man is not God. It is God who gives life and it is him who takes it away, just like the old Christian mantra that says, “God is Sovereign.” We have the duty to preserve the sanctity of life because we are made in God’s image. Abortion should never be an option but there is only so much a God-fearing doctor can do. They tried to save both but ended up saving just the mother. We should thank them for trying and leave the unborn child in the loving arms of the God who said, “let the little children come to me for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
I am not a Roman Catholic so I will hold my sentiments regarding the Bishop’s decision to excommunicate St. Joseph’s Hospital to myself. But I will say this to my Protestant Brethren, it is in times like this that we are needed by people the most. When there is a loss, when there is grief, when there is sorrow and death, people need the love of God the most. We Christians represent this love. In times like this let us be with people, let us save the philosophical conversation for another day. Let us be ready to be vessels of joy, the one the Church Fathers once called “Eucharist.” May we not abandon those people Jesus gave his life for so that they may have life. Come to think about it, if God the Father was like us and thought that Christ’s death was an abortion he would excommunicate all of us for reaping the benefits of his Son’s death.
Here are my two cents, do with it as you may. Just saying…
Instead of me linking every quote to the original source, I’m listing all the sources I used here:
The Arizona Republic – PDF versions of official statements are available on this link.
With the rise of iPads, Kindles, and Nooks one has to wonder what will ever become of bound paper books. I myself, am a fan of real books and will never trade the smell of my old Victor Hugo Collection or my Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (I’m not trying to be geeky at all, but I bought this volume form Amazon, and man, its aroma was sipping through that brown box it came in) but at the same time technology is a delightful force to be reckoned with. What do we do? Here’s a random blog post I stumbled upon that in some way conveys my sentiments but in a more eloquent way.
The Cotton Fields of Houston Texas, or Traffic in I10, or What Happens in Vegas Happens More in Houston.
The greatest lie about the issue of slavery is the belief that it is dead. Slavery is as alive today as a new born baby. Nothing about it has changed, it still is a deathly concoction of fraud, force, and coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation and forced labor. In fact, according to a huge number of anti-human trafficking agencies, “we are now faced with the most vast and global slave trade ever known to the human race and that there are more people enslaved today than at any point in history”. Slavery only has taken a new name, ‘Human Trafficking’ and has become a $ 32 Billion industry.
Human Trafficking is so alive today that it happens right in our own backyard. In 2006, The Department of Justice identified Houston as one of the most intense jurisdictions for trafficking in the country. It has been reported that Houston has more sexually oriented business per square mile than Las Vegas. According to the Office of The Attorney General, Report to 81st Legislature, “the I-10 corridor is one of the main routes for human traffickers in the United States” and “it is estimated that 1 of 5 U.S. trafficking victims will travel through Texas along the I-10 corridor.” Houston is a huge hub for human trafficking because of its proximity to the border, international airports, seaports, and the interstate.
Human Trafficking is so blatant, it happens in daylight. Steven Goff, project director for the Houston Rescue and Restore Coalition explains, “A lot of people think that trafficking just occurs in seedy places, you know in dark alleys or something like that. And while it does, it also occurs in plain sight. There are places that people in Houston pass by on a daily basis where there’s possibly human trafficking — modern-day slaves — inside those places, that are housed there for two to three weeks at a time and then rotated somewhere else.” Common Human Trafficking hotspots in Houston include: spas, brothels, nail salons, construction sites, and modeling studios.
According to the Polaris Project, about 800,000 people are trafficked in the United States every year, of which half are children whose average age is 12-13. It is a common misunderstanding that all trafficked people are smuggled in from another country, in fact in year 2000, 244,000 American children and youth were estimated to be at risk for commercial sexual exploitation. The average lifespan of a trafficked individual is about 3 – 4 years, in that timespan, they die either from sexually contracted diseases, brutality, torture, and starvation.
How Could This Happen
Human Trafficking has always been a business and just like any other business, its success lies in its ability to recognize its cliental and deliver to them what they want. Human Trafficking exists because there is a demand for it and considering the fact that its a 32 Billion Dollar industry, it is safe to say there’s a big demand for it. The truth of the matter is this: this heinous crime exists because we want it to.
Literature about human trafficking unanimously say that “awareness is the best tool to fight this problem.” I agree that awareness is a powerful tool to fight Human Trafficking but it is not the best. It is one thing to know that it exists, to sign up for a credit card that would donate proceeds from your debt to agencies, to shop for fair trade goods, and to sign up for a 5k marathon for Human Trafficking and another to be bothered by this disease to the core of our being, to be bothered by pornography, brothels, prostitution and slave labor. Part of the problem is that we think its just enough to know about this and feel sad about it.
A huge percentage of trafficked children are run away children, they run away because they feel unloved and unaccepted in their own home. It has been reported that pimps target school children who exhibit the signs of low-self esteem and those who are isolated from friends. Sunitha Krishnan, a human rights advocate, in her speech in the TED conference says, women coming out of a Trafficking background are never really accepted back into society. It is no wonder a lot of trafficked women loves their pimp because even for perverted reasons, he demonstrate to them a hint of love and concern.
…And Justice for All
These modern day slaves deserve justice and there are people fighting hard to legislate justice for them. God bless them. But justice is not legislated, laws are, justice is something that is lived and practiced. Justice begins from the heart, the core of the human being. It begins from oneself. It begins with a decision to temper the common human urges: to temper the sexual drive with love, to temper the urge to succeed with prudence and faith, to temper fear with courage and hope.
Legislature will help to abolish human trafficking and we ought to support those who push for this but we have a big role to play here. We can start in our homes. We can start caring for each member of our families so no one would have to look for love elsewhere. We can give generous compliments to people around us and make them feel loved. We can befriend an immigrant, we can try learning their language and not force them to learn ours. There is so many things we can do, all we have to do is to start thinking and start doing.
May this Christmas Season remind us to not only look only to our own benefit but also for the benefit of others.
For more information on Human Trafficking in Houston, here are some websites:
http://www.humantrafficking.org/organizations/337
