Genesis 1:1, Einstein, and Godel

Genesis 1:1

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

(That's Hebrew for: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.)

The notes below relate to the perennial question posed by the skeptic: Can you give scientific proof of God? To be sure, a skeptic has nothing to fear here that these notes should prove scientifically some feature of God, as though God, Creator of sky and earth, should be reducible to human measurement. Nevertheless, we do note the term "science" simply means knowledge without any particular restrictions, of course. But when we speak of science in its more common use in recent centuries, we mean that particular knowledge of the material cosmos that arises by the use of human senses and measuring instruments, by the processes of observation. The instruments themselves can be simple devices like rulers, scales, magnets, lenses, and clocks used in the smartest ways humans can muster to measure things and events. People improve the instruments to detect ever finer distinctions, so, for example, space telescopes, electronic sensors, cesium clocks, or particle detectors in hadron colliders. But this essay is not about that.

Two comments here reflect on the perennial question. The first (A, below) couples the opening line of the Hebrew Bible with what likely is (currently) a most fundamental mathematical relation describing the natural world, E = mc^2 (advanced by Einstein in 1906). The second comment (B, below) couples the biblical witness for Creator with a most revolutionary logic-mathematical development in the 20th century: Godel's incompleteness theorems (published in 1931).

A. Einstein. The physics borne theory of relativity equation, E = mc^2, contains within itself four basic measurable aspects of the observable world, including some of the rules describing the fundamental physical constants. These are energy, mass, length, and time. The equation seeks to describe the relationship among them all, affirming energy and mass are equivalent. Energy is the ability to do work. Mass measures the stuff of the universe. Length is the distance or displacement between one point and another; in three dimensions it describes space. Time is about change. The equation holds length and time within the symbol "c", the speed of light; light travels such and such a length in so much time. Human convention expresses these dimensionally as E = energy; T = time; L = length (or displacement); M = mass.

Now, here's an interesting fact. The opening verse of the Hebrew Bible (noted above) says this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The following table shows the verse in the three columns: Hebrew transliteration, English translation, and Science concepts.

Hebrew                  English                     Science

bereshith              In the beginning of      time
bara                      created                         energy
elohim                                   God
eth hashamaim    the skies                      space
weth haaretz         and the earth               matter

The first term or phrase, "in the beginning," in the Hebrew language is a so-called construct case, a genitive of sorts, that would typically translate as, "in the beginning of (something)". It does not explicitly address what that something is. So thoughtful translators yield what we usually read as given above. Occasionally one may find a line like, "When God began to create ..." or "In the beginning of creation ..." or something like that. In any case, the phrase, "in the beginning" is an adverbial phrase of time. It sets the start of time for the events of interest, namely, creation. (We'll skip the "God" part of the verse and return to it later in part B.) Next the verse says, "created," a verb whose subject/actor is God. "To create" is the same as "to work"; it simply specifies the kind of work involved.

We note that the two nouns, work and energy (in physics), share precisely the same values and dimensions; the work done on an object is exactly the amount of energy put into it. So the work done in creation is precisely the amount of energy put into it. (That's the amazing puzzler of the Big Bang theory; where'd all the energy that was put into the singularity come from?) The next phrases in the verse, two direct objects, tell what was created. First is the skies, a noun. Skies is space, it contains length in three dimensions. The second is the earth, also a noun. The earth is matter, measured by its mass. (Oh! And one more puzzle about the Big Bang: The initial energy of creation was so immeasurably hot that it destroyed anything observable before it, so how can a human see what the cosmos was made out of before the singularity?)

So, the first verse of the Bible presents time (T), energy (E), length (L, in three dimensions), and mass (M), the fundamental building blocks of the observable universe, noted above in the relativity equation analyzed however briefly.

B. Godel. Until almost a century ago, humans tried to find a comprehensive and self-consistent system that could be expressed beautifully through mathematical logic. The thinking was that you could build a really smart project or program that could answer any proper true-false question posed to it correctly. In 1931 Kurt Godel, a young man right out of college, proved mathematically that such a system is impossible. The best you could do is to build a system that might give true answers ... or not.

It's kind of like the statement, "This is not a true sentence." Our question then is: Is that sentence true? Well, we consider whether the sentence follows the grammatical rules for making a sentence. Yes, it does. So, we would be tempted to answer, True: It is a true sentence. But the meaning of the sentence itself denies it is a sentence. So, we would be tempted to answer, False, it is not a true sentence. Either way, we are stumped by the thing. We need more insight (rules) to solve the question.

In a similar but far smarter way, Godel showed that when you develop a complex enough system, you can always ask it a valid question that it cannot answer correctly. You have to invent a new rule from outside the system to make the system yield righteous answers. But adding a new outside rule changes the whole project so as to interject a new, different unsolvable question. This process of adding new rules to fix lower level problems would just go on forever, giving yet ever newer, still unsolvable problems. Of course, that's just math, right? So what's the real problem? It's this: The cosmos is a system, and the rules (that is, the laws of nature) its humans have discovered/developed can never explain the cosmos true. The cosmos is not sufficient of itself to answer all human questions completely. (And, anyway: How does a system evolve an entity within it that can ask a question about something outside that the system can't even know about? but we'll leave that for other discussions.)

This state of affairs does not bring us inexorably to God. It does, of course, point to some other rule outside the system to help explain -- a new rule that becomes part of a new paradigm, and which will need another new rule to continue the explanations. And so on ad infinitum. But to what? At this point people just start making up stuff for which there can never be scientific proof throughout all those infinite recursions/regressions.

Rather, this state of affairs brings us inexorably to faith. That is, it points to something reasonable perhaps, but unprovable scientifically because it cannot ever be measured (and thus, properly observed) by human sense or instrument.

So now. The oldest known Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of Genesis 1:1 were written no later than twenty-one centuries ago. And most folks interested in them recognize their earlier sources were written through a millennium before that. How did the author of that first verse present so succinctly, so pithily, what human beings identified as scientifically fundamental factors of the universe two thousand years later?

The biblical witness is straightforward: God did it. God himself forced energy into the system's singularity initially creating time, space, matter, and the specific rules by which they operate: all the universal constants. The biblical witness further asserts: by faith we know that the worlds were created by the word of God so that things that can be seen came from things that cannot be seen. In other words, the observable things arose from unobservable things, the measurable from the unmeasurable. That same witness affirms further the same God continually sustains the cosmos by his deliberate and intentional underpinning. God has designed the cosmological system to point an observer of the cosmos to something beyond its finite self into the infinite, pointing inexorably to faith, because without faith it is impossible to please God.

Bells of Tinnitus

Ah, yes. The famous tower of Pisa. Opposite to the baptistery building, it serves as bell tower for the duomo cathedral, Santa Maria Assunta, on the same campus.

Christmas, 1964, three or four missionary families collected in Pisa for an annual fellowship celebration. Little Drummer Boy, Silver Bells among songs to be sung. Participants included ten (or so) kids, ages 9 to 17 (or so). What do you do in the morning after breakfast, before the big dinner that afternoon? Mainly, you send all the kids on mission: Go somewhere for a walk, and don't come back any time real soon. Thus, we wandered hither and yon for a while, empty streets (holidays, right?), closed stores (no tourist mementos, no pasticci to be had!), cold, overcast skies. Then Joe Mike said, Let's go to the tower. So we went, cousins, friends, brothers, sisters, little brothers and little sisters in tow. Finally there at Piazza del Duomo, we did the obligatory running on the deserted lawns. Tiring of that, we found the door open at the base of the tower, so we stepped inside. (I mean, this was half a century ago. Little more than. Nobody to stop anybody, holidays, remember?)

Unlike others' experiences, perhaps, our assumption was the circular staircase's invitation to rise. The moment of truth came almost to the top when, for reasons that escape me now, you had to leave the inside staircase to the outside colonnaded catwalk way up there, and circle your way around to the other side. From that other side you could get back inside to continue the final ascent. But at critical junctures on that catwalk there was no railing. It was you, worn sloping-away-from-building catwalk, and not very thick air. Mother earth's arms 170 ft. below held no warm welcome to us. Don't worry: Nobody fell off or died, either direction, not even a little kid, so it was OK in the end. (Did worry at the time. Not sure if parents ever found out details of the mission.)

Continuing.

At the next-to-last level, huge bells hung, one each in an archway (can see them from the greens below). You could stoop under a bell and go to the outside railing once again, you could also take the last set of steps up the topmost columns and enjoy the view. Which we did, of course. But the wild thing was this: as we ducked under the bells, it struck noon. Christmas Day. And believe it, noon's fury struck with all bells. They clanged on and on, joined by bell towers throughout the town. Clamping hands over ears, you could only barely reduce the peals impelling through your core. We laughed, or maybe even cried, as surprised as dismayed by the relentless drumming. Short story, we made it back home mostly safe after being gone long enough, in time for the feast.

Now, in my seventies, sometimes it seems that, indeed, I picked up a memento of that Christmas past - a little, silver ringing ever in the background of an old brain's wakefulness.

The Red Letters

The very same folks who brought us the red letters also brought us each of the black ones. And the one Great Spirit breathed out into every one of them, red or black.

Word.

Earliest Remembrances

The twenty-something mother sits bedside as she shushes the two-year old on her lap and the baby in a crib beside. A dim, flickering, reddish glow breaks and splays through a balcony and window onto the wall. Ominously quiet, half a dozen friends crowd the small balcony's wrought iron railing overlooking the street below, but not so much as to draw attention. She moves quietly from bed to balcony, and back, hoping the disquieted child would mind to stay on the bed. The baby sleeps, thankfully. But the boy knows a big deal is up. He sees the shifting shadows on familiar big people faces at the balcony. He hears an outside growing rumble of shouts and other cacophonies overwhelming earlier sounds of the evening's silence. (How could you miss it?) He slips between legs and peeks through the railing. Just there to the right, where the road in front of the country house bends a strong left turn -- you see the little shrine sitting in the bend? -- as roaring a bonfire as you would ever want throws masses of sparks into the air to rival stars in the sky opposite. He sees its hot light bouncing off a jostling mass of unknown faces that fade back into the darkness. Torches punctuate the size of the mob, rods and banners wave about in the air. Right over there he sees the statue borne by a now bestilled cart that had led the advance. A figure stands on a makeshift dais, he gesticulates violently, bellows over the shouts of his ad hoc congregation. The big people at the balcony and window agonize. Will they survive a conflagration tonight? The boy's face burns only with the flush of agitation.

The year: 1949/1950. A large two-story country house just outside Rome, Italy, sits off a two lane road. Looking out from the house, following the road along the front to the right, one sees the road make an abrupt left turn directing travelers from the rural outskirts immediately into the Eternal City. As was common throughout Italy, a small shrine figuring Madonna and Child blessed said travelers as they made their way through the countryside. The house served as an unsecured compound for a small band of missionaries with the Churches of Christ who had moved lately from Texas to Italy. Their intent was to bring the gospel of Christ to a war-ravaged land perceived to have lost the essential message. One of the mission members had served in the U.S. army as allied forces in World War II fought Nazi troops occupying Italy. After war's end, and overwhelmed by the despair and devastation he witnessed, that soldier had decided to return to the nation with a message of hope, then under a different command and with vastly different weapons: the kingdom of God and the Spirit's panoply.

Now in the States, he spoke tirelessly among the congregations eventually convicting a team of young men and women to move to Italy to preach Christ. With toddler in tow (the only child to make the inbound journey), his bride traveled with him to the land foreign to her as light to darkness. When one considers present-day Italy (indeed, present-day Europe) as an idyllic tourist destination, one has no notion of that country seventy years ago. The rubble of destroyed civilization behind war's end served as nobody's tourist destination then.

These young people settled in the environs of Rome thinking early on that in a few years, as the wisdom of their simple gospel message should be received well, they would return to their homes in the United States, thence to "regular" life. The scene indicated above, and many others of like portent, gave opportunity for reassessment of early expectations.

In our twenty-first century enlightenment, by which all persons become their own laissez-faire gods (providing lesser gods stay out of the way), their mission seems laughable in its scope and a mild embarrassment to a weak Protestant heritage. Nonetheless, the little mission group created quite a stir among the state-sponsored hierarchy such that various authorities sought to remove them from the country. One of the mission team, eventually designated "persona non grata," had to leave Italy, never to return. Others of them ended up giving a lifetime of ministry in that mission.

Their cause, having developed political overtones related to the exercise of religious freedom, in 1956 occasioned the first case ever heard by the recently established Italian Constitutional Court. The court affirmed the right of persons to disseminate written religious (and other) information without prior governmental approval, in keeping with the new Italian constitution. Even so, the Lateran Pact of 1929, developed by Mussolini and the Roman Catholic Church in fascist Italy, yet dominated to give that religious entity official and privileged status. The Pact held until 1984 when the Italian government and the Roman Church signed a new agreement greatly constraining, but not eliminating altogether, its privilege.

My dad was the soldier mentioned earlier, serving as a ski trooper in the 87th Infantry, 10th Mountain Division. It's interesting how certain seminal events in a person's life can take place, and though the memory of them barely fades, they're never really talked about much, if any, at all. An event becomes integral to life's tapestry without seeming to be part of it. Just so, it was about half a century later that I first asked him what the thing was all about. He explained.

An association called the Catholic Action served as a loosely organized political action group. Its composition consisted mostly of lay Roman Catholic people whose agenda promoted the advance and defense of Roman Catholicism. In the early years of that mission of the Churches of Christ, the Catholic Action in the varied communities often opposed evangelistic meetings held in those cities, sometimes with physical violence, but always with verbal abuse and interruptions during the meetings. Sometimes such opposition sought to take legal action against the mission congregations because the mission might have placed a sign over a meeting place without first gaining governmental approval for the sign, or for handing out unapproved informational leaflets and brochures, or for other similar reasons. They sought to discourage the mission and, through the free exercise of intimidation, to stop conversion. (The last notable of violent actions took place in Aprilia, in 1957, on the outskirts of Rome: the Action packed the meeting hall rented by the mission, destroyed the furniture, and drove out native and foreign preachers who feared for their lives.)

On the occasion indicated at the start of this writing, a mob had formed by instigation of Catholic Action, and it had evolved into a procession of sorts. Leading the throng, a cart carried a statue of the Virgin Mary considered to have much mystical power. There had been concern that the roadside shrine of Madonna and Child adjacent to the mission house, though efficacious enough for travelers, remained unequal to her present task. So, delivery of the Virgin Mary statue from its sanctuary in Rome to the roadside shrine, and by means of the throng's special pleadings, cajolings, warnings, imprecations, and intercessions -- the kidnapped statue should impart great power to the besieged shrine. The shrine thus emboldened might then drive out the heretics from the midst.

The families witnessing the events from the balcony learned of these details later. But in the moment, they feared the mob would surround the house and burn them up in it. Prayer came easy, but not the night.

--------------

Other childhood memories of that idyll, distinct from that event, include sun-bathed dalliances in the grassy yard behind the country house, wanderings through flowering, maturing vegetable gardens, chickens pecking at little things on the ground, frightfully toothed geese behind the fence, meanderings by the bench at the side yard gravel path, and Mom, with baby in arms, overseeing each step.

Respect

Want to be old enough.

Turns out my old geezerliness is not old enough.

And here I thought it was.

But the other day heard a poem from a guy that was really old. 80s. He said you're not really old until you get there. Then, in a chance visit only yesterday, another octogenarian said much the same. (Seems to me a pride thing going on here.)

I, a mere septuagenarian ... and didn't even know how to spell it til just now. (You'd think after more than seven decades on the planet you'd have the rudiments of English spelling down - on what forgotten isle was this contrary language invented?!)

You spend your whole life trying to get old enough, and then you discover the centenarian, mid-stride in a vocation, married with kids, 30 years old when your mama was still changing your diapers.

Just never get no respect.

A Thought

Just leaving no thought unpublished.

Fading Flowers

(Note: The reader should feel free to replace all hes with shes, and hims with hers. Not that it will be particularly comforting, but there you have it if it helps bring more inclusive meaning.)

1. "Oh, you didn't know? He passed some time ago."

Passed? Like, what? Passed his exams? A kidney stone? The bus stop? The car in third place? His mentor? The moon? Gas?

He went from here to there -- that's what it sounds like. He went too far down the street but perhaps makes course corrections even now to return. He's just a door or two further down, making his way back. May we yet visit with him soon?

But, No. He died.

He didn't "passed" to anywhere. Well, except to the grave. Or crematorium. His heart stopped. His brain synapses collapsed. His breath returned to the atmosphere. His body rots. The four winds caught his scattered ashes. He is not.

What's with this euphemism thing, "passed"? Afraid to say "die"? Is the word "death" too crass? Too vulgar? Too common? Too final?

Ah, that's it, isn't it? Too ... too ... well, too dead.

2. "He's in a better place."

Oh, really? Says who? What makes it a better place? Who says it's a place at all?

Here's what the ancient Hebrews said about the realm of the dead:
Sheol. The Grave. The Pit. The Abyss. Death.

And, here's what most said about the state of the thing:
-No rising to praise God
-Deep darkness
-No joy
-No hope
-No memory
-No knowledge
-Forgotten by God
- ...
-Silence.

Well. That's pretty depressing.

Don't want to talk about death or dying so will talk about travel from here to ... well, not real sure to where, but travel away from here. A voyage allows the implicit deceit of inferred return.

3. "He's in heaven now."

Now? Ever visited with anybody who died and went to heaven and came back to tell you all about it? The only one I know of who died planning to go there and promising to return - we're still waiting.

Clinically dead isn't dead. That's why it's called "clinically dead." Dead dead is dead. Nobody's been "clinically dead" longer than a few hours without becoming dead dead. Near death experience is almost (but not quite) dying, and then reviving. The reviving part is critical for the notion, otherwise it's no longer near death experience, but is just death.

A few folks with near-death experiences report the warm glow where everything was peace and love. Others didn't feel the love, they report terrors never felt before. Most who "die clinically" when revived have no particular memory to tell.

And nobody, nobody, who stayed dead ever told anybody anything about it.

4. "He's cryogenically preserved."

Oh, yeah. Right. Sure.

He is dead.

Not preserved. Is not near death. Is not clinically dead. Is dead dead.

So for those of us who say here is all there is, that there is no there ... what, pray tell, are we talking about to say he passed? There's no there there to pass to! There's just here. And he's not here. He's dead.

He will fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Like the flower in scorching heat.

It's just what happens at the end.

5. Resurrection.

Resurrection happens when you're dead dead and something outside nature vivifies inorganic matter, the atoms reconnect just so, and you come back to life, body and consciousness and memories and experiences and life systems intact. And you are here once again.

It happens after the end. After the end end.

Still waiting for it.

They Keep Leaving

People keep going away.

They're here for a while, and then they leave. Usually they're old.

But sometimes they're moms or dads.

And sometimes they're kids.

But they keep on leaving, never to be seen again. If we didn't know them, it wouldn't be such a deal.

But we do.

And it is.

And I don't like it.

I guess I will leave some day.

I don't like that either.

Psalm 88

Silence.

The Right Way To Answer

"Are you for or against innigeration?" asked Junior. A cold autumn in '59 wasn't it, overnighting at my friend's in rural Texas?

Junior's parents worked as tenant cotton farmers, some called them poor white trash. They lived in an uninsulated house on the farm for nominal rent, got shares from the sale of cotton. The rest of the shares went to the land owner.

Stepping onto a weather-worn front porch, you watched for missing planks. No plumbing, you got water from an outside well, and used an outhouse. The kitchen stove doubled as heater. On waking up you dreaded putting on frozen jeans. Stove-heated water sufficed for weekly baths for two girls and two boys, one at a time in a "number 3 tub." Somebody held a towel strategically when it was your turn. A low watt bulb cast dim shadows from the rafters.

It was classic Alaskan bush life-style ... except for electricity and cotton farming.

Junior had a TV (we did not). He got to watch Gunsmoke and 77 Sunset Strip, he was up on the news, too. The perennial clash of American racial cultures featured occasionally.

Now, I was a preacher kid. We lived in a cottage in town and, upscale to Junior, lived lower middle class. My folks both had enrolled in graduate school, commuting distantly from where dad preached. After their masters', they planned to enter foreign missions to open a school.

This night they went to college, farming out their kids among families in the congregation. After a day of Grade 8 schooling, afternoon farm chores, and playing kick-the-can following supper, Junior and I bedded down talking until sleep won.

He was pretty smart in math; a big kid, too, good at football. I, however, youngest in the class and third smallest, did average work, and did OK enough in baseball for peer acceptance. We talked about cars and sports, and lately, girls. Well, he did. Mostly I listened.

Things got quiet. That's when he posed the question.

Not understanding, I responded, "Am I for what?"

"Are you for innigeration?" As though I were slow of understanding (indeed!), "You know," he emphasized, "innigeration?"

Oh! Did I mention that if you went to that town, you'd find rigidly partitioned zones, one where black people lived and went to school, and the other where whites lived and went to school? Racial segregation held in schools and living arrangements: separate but equal education was the idea. And separate most everything else, too. But virtually nothing equal.

Anyway, no idea what Junior was talking about. Racked the old brain. Nothing.

You know when somebody asks and you just know from the posing what the right way to answer is? Whatever "innigeration" was, clearly, I shouldn't favor it. Besides, any human being with half a lick of sense ought to know what he was talking about. Thus, no call for elucidation.

So I didn't. Astutely I said, "Against."

He said, "Good."

Then he added skeptically, "But, you know, your parents are for it; are you sure you're against it?"

My heart froze. I did not know they were for it. I did not know they worked against the prevailing order and for the integration of all the kids. (I learned that much later.)

Betrayer of family honor, dignity, and reputation, I felt Judas' remorse … still conflicted unwittingly by this mystery. Didn't know why they should be for it and didn't know why I should be against it, just knowing the right way to answer.

"Yep, against," said I, remorse redoubling against my weak soul.

Some six decades since passed, the justice of integration long recognized. No lofty ideal: it's just plain human decency - liberty, an unalienable right with which their Creator endowed humans.

Then I look to Jesus: betrayed by weaklings, outcast by insiders, sacrificed by the powerful. Through these insults he builds a forever community of deep integration, a mending of all things in heaven and on earth, to the glory of God, Creator of it all.

(Published elsewhere, July, 2018)

Time's Short

"Churches that pray publicly for individual persons don't grow to be big churches." That's the way I took the line to say, anyway. I guess the idea is that if you take the time, in the general assembly, to pray for everybody requesting it, you spend way more time in prayer than we have time for.

Rather, pray for specific persons during small group meeting times.

Good idea.

It's like the trolley operator who drove past several stops, though riders were wanting off. "Because," said the operator, "I couldn't keep the schedule if I had to make all the stops."

Time's short so we'll sing only one verse of "Take Time To Be Holy."

So, Where Exactly Is The Church Headed?

"The church is going to hell in a handbasket." That's what he said some three or more decades ago, right here in our Juneau home town. No atheist he, no agnostic, no sloppy liberal religionist, no militant weird faith follower; rather, a dyed-in-the-wool Bible believer, a Bible thumper indeed, by some reckoning. (Well, could be a weird faith follower, I suppose.)

His point ... maybe ... that certain practices he deplored in churchly affairs were bringing it to utter, certain, and quick ruination. Still, it seems such a curious turn of phrase, doesn't it?

Curious, especially when the reported words on its founder's lips had been, "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." So odd to assert the community that Jesus, its founder, promised to save from hell was itself the very entity that nonetheless was bound for it. So to speak.

I guess we like to speak in hyperbole. Or at any rate we like to exaggerate so as to emphasize the passion felt about the topic at hand. So, we're really talking about the depth of feeling and not really about the outcome of the subject matter itself. Even so, we suspect both the extent of emotion and risked outcome hold inexorable links.

And then.

Another saying has these words from Jesus, "I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent" - the metaphorical lampstand to be the church, and its metaphorical place to shine victoriously in the presence of the Risen Christ. This does sound somewhat sobering, not quite the church militant let alone triumphant, instead, potentially doomed.

Repentance conditions Jesus' removal of the church from his presence in the heavens to the abyss. It seems Jesus expects the community called by his name to reflect something of his character. And if it does not, then it stands to lose his endorsement. It may be a church, but not his.

So Jesus calls for repentance, that is, for a change of mind, heart, and action. And to repent toward what end? He expects his people to love and do acts of love.

And in this love the church triumphs: God raised the Lord Jesus; and God, by his power alone, will also raise the church with Jesus and bring the whole into his glorious presence.

Our Country, 'Tis Of Thee

(A brief note to Christ-followers)

After the flood
Before the fire
You'll find me in time
And you might find me tired
I've been on the move
I'm just passing through
To a city that's fairer
And I mean to get there
Someday
-Jesus Music, Dogwood (1975)-

So, here's the deal.

You know that long list of names that opens up the New Testament? The begats one? The one that starts with Abraham and ends with Jesus? Yeah, that one.

Abraham, father of all the faithful, Sarah, mother of nations: Wanderers and nomads all over the Fertile Crescent of four thousand years ago. (Where portions of modern Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gaza strip, Egypt sit.) Of whom the world was not worthy.

In the middle of the list see David, King of Israel? In the strength of youth hiding in the back country and in foreign territories, running from oppressive despots. And again, as an old man on the run from a rebel king.

At list's end, Jesus ... born to migrants, no room at the inn in which to deliver a baby. Then on the run to Egypt, refugees in a foreign land. Foxes have dens, birds have nests, said Jesus, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

Displaced people. Wanderers. Sojourners. Exiles. Aliens. Migrants. Foreigners. Refugees. And when at home, not really home.

I mean, here's the deal.

Our father in faith, Abraham, with bride Sarah, sets our agenda: They sought a homeland, they acknowledged to be strangers and exiles on the earth. For this reason God is not ashamed to be called their God. Indeed, he builds for them a city in the sky.

And thus we: Strangers and exiles in this world. This country. This land. Seeking a city made without hands, in a set beyond this land that was not made for you and me.

By witness of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, lays it out clearly: My kingdom is not of this world. I go to prepare a place for you. In my father's home is plenty of space. And I will come back and bring you with me.

And so we: Seekers of the land that indeed was made for you and me. The homeland of our God, in the skies. Our country, 'tis of thee, O God.

But what to do in the meantime?

By further witnesses of the New Testament:

Honor everyone.
Love the brotherhood.
Respect God.
Honor the emperor.

And by witness of the Hebrew Bible:

You shall treat the
stranger who
sojourns with you as the
native among you, and you shall
love him as yourself, for you were
strangers in the
land of Egypt:
I am Jehovah, your God.

So as strangers in the land, we join with all the alien wanderers on a planet overwhelmed with labor pains, recognizing in each other respectively the yearning for communion with the Great Spirit, with God and his Christ.

This world is not my home

I'm just a-passing through

My treasures are laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from
   heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in
   this world anymore

-Gospel Hymn (1939)-

Increasing Clarity

Memory of earlier mental acuity is sharper than it was.

The Hard, Hard Work

Fifty years ago this spring, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered. A jury convicted a white racist of the crime. Almost a year later, in late winter of 1969, a white, shotgun-wielding campus security guard shot and killed a black teenager at a small college where I studied. Though most of its students were white, the college campus sat as an island in an extensive, black community surrounding the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Racial tensions, already sensitized by King’s assassination and by riots of four years earlier, arose immediately among students and faculty, and in the neighborhood beyond. The college shut down for several days. Media outlets from all over the city detailed the event and carried the subsequent stories of the teen’s funeral and security guard’s trial.

Racial recriminations, demands for justice and recompense drew lines among students, families, and the college administration. The administration responded with what seemed to be, if not the right things, surely expedient things with a view to reduce tensions in the tragedy. Students eventually filtered back to complete semester classes, somewhat warier of the larger community among whom they lived.

Now, the liberal arts college’s financial support found its base in philanthropic endeavors and in student tuitions, but not in the Christian church. That said, almost all faculty and a great minority of students easily defined themselves followers of Christ.

Some such Christian students, black and white, with occasional Asians and Latinos, started evening meet-and-talk events in a nearby basement where a local church of Christ met. A few older leaders from faculty and congregation also participated. For a goodly number it was the first time to have had a meaningful conversation outside one’s own race identity. Some told, others heard, stories of crass, racist meanness perpetrated by “Christians” of opposing races toward each other. As conversations continued, students began talking about ways to tear down prejudices and misconceptions once for all, and about means to affirm the way of Christ as incompatible with rank bigotry and racism.

Indeed, a spirit of deeper fellowship developed in the group. A sense of unity and joy prevailed, despite tears and hardship. Another spirit also developed incipiently: self-righteousness and, ironically, exclusivity. The sense presented that people who claimed Christianity, but who did racist actions, were not, in fact, Christians, worthless infidels, perhaps.

One evening, a teacher at the college and elder of the local congregation, a gentle, middle aged man, stood and told his story.

American born and bred, he lived in California. At the onset of World War II, government authorities rounded up the 18-year-old, his brother, and his parents with countless others and summarily dispatched them to internment camp in Colorado. There they remained imprisoned till war’s end. They lost home, business, and possessions. Michio Nagai, as one might suspect, was Nisei, a first-generation American born to Japanese immigrants. They were Christians.

In due course, Mr. Nagai entered Christian college. The dean of students instructed him not to date white girls. He confessed to the group that evening, but not to the dean, that he had no intention of doing so – his mother had warned him sternly not to stoop below his station. He further confessed: he had held great anger against America and against God.

Having established “credentials” with the gathered crew, he moved to his point.

Here, the hard, hard work: The way of love, a no-matter-what love, a fiery love of Christ, undoes racism and its vile actions. Christ’s way of love recognizes and confesses bigotry within one’s own self first, a bigotry exempting no human heart. Christ’s way of love recognizes and welcomes in every human being a measureless, God-emplaced, inherent value. And Christ’s way of love generously extends and receives forgiveness.

And lastly. He noted that the only foundation on which Christians correct each other in love requires recognizing in them all a common ground of faith, the common ground of the Word of God; it requires recognition that the other person who claims Christ remains worthy thereby of the correction arising from the truth in that common faith. Else, nothing remains to say.

(Published elsewhere, April, 2018)

The Demise of Social Christianity

As biblically-based Christianity becomes more irrelevant to the evolving American experiment, what heady freedom comes to the people of God!

Freedom from:
* "church" as a tired synonym for "religion"
* the burden of carrying an entire national culture on its back
* the burden of making the world "safe" for Christianity (so-called) through military might
* the burden of subscribing to party politics with consequent alignment to ungodly practices

and

Freedom to:
* live out the kingdom of God as @alt.culture
* testify the meaning of Christ's lordship as @alt.life-style
* proclaim in communion the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God, until he comes

Teaching With Minerals

The following parenthetical note may be read.

[Oh, yes, children, despite its name the board was not chalk - it really was a sliver of a different rock, a thin slate piece covering a goodly part of a wall. (The board could also consist of other stuff made to look and act like the dark gray slate.) The other piece of technology that made the whole thing work synergistically was another mined rock formed into a stylus of sorts; we called this manipulative "chalk," after the rock from which it mostly arose, whitish in color. Usually. As the softer chalk stylus was pressed onto and moved across the harder slate board by hand, it left a trail of chalk dust particles, noticeable white marks against the dark gray board. The particles stuck to the slate semi-permanently so that the marks held, but then they could be dislodged easily by wiping the slate with a piece of cloth, thus cleaning the board and rendering it ready for more such dusty marks. This system may yet be witnessed in some classrooms and other historical places.]

The Most Important Election -- Ev-ver!

Election cycles highlight the urgency of the mess we're in. In each cycle we hear claims the present election is the most critical that ever has been, and that the outcome will herald either the demise of the republic or its resurrected glory.

People of faith often find in political parties a home for their hopes, and, therefore, a home for the Divine agenda. For many of the faithful, supporting and ultimately voting for a particular candidate becomes an exercise of religious fervor, indeed, a test for soundness.

All stuff and nonsense, of course.

A political election stands as the will to power: the attempt of one party to gain and exercise power over opposing parties.

"The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your slave." -Jesus, to his followers

Now.

There is one election that counts for something. God elects. God, indeed, elected an eternity ago. God elects to immortality whom he qualifies. God qualifies through Christ. There is one party to which Jesus, the Christ, calls: a party to deny self, to take up one's cross, and to follow him. There is one Divine agenda: to bridle one's tongue, to care for orphans and widows, to keep oneself stain-free from the world.

[Originally posted mostly elsewhere, October 19, 2016]

When The Center of the Universe Shifted

In ages past, and in the not so distant past, people held Earth as the unchallenged center of the universe. How foolish! Modern people hold that it is not. Earth flies about the Sun. The Sun in turn, among numberless other stars situated toward the edge of the Milky Way, flies around the center of the galaxy. That galaxy is itself but one of a countless horde of other galaxies all flying hither and yon, mostly yon. We live in an increasingly expanding universe.

Here we were in a class called analytical geometry, excitement unbound. Grids, curves, lines, numbers, letters, and mostly, lots of math equations remained the order of the day. Our instructor presented the famous graph grid consisting of two lines perpendicular to each other, the x line going left and right, and the y line going up and down, toward four different infinities right there on the chalk board. The Cartesian coordinate system, he called it.

Anyway, the lines crossed each other in the middle, their cross hairs aimed right where the Big Zero was. The Origin. On the grid, but well off center, was a noticeable dot, its location described by some proper x and y values. Not Zero. Not the origin.

Holding us with bated breath, the instructor discussed passionately that as you do certain mathematical calculations, you can shift the x and y cross hairs so that they move right over the off-center dot, all the while keeping careful notice where the old crossing used to be, and where everything else was, too. The Big Zero changed place! By such marvelous manipulation, a purportedly useful, new Origin of the whole system took place. The same kind of thing could be done in three dimensional notation, apparently. Or in any number of dimensions for that matter.

In an infinite system, that is, in the kind that math people like to think about, any place can be the center of the system. Pick any origin and you can describe anywhere else in terms of that center. Pick another, and you can still keep track of everywhere just as easily. So, the "center" can be be any place you want it to be in that infinite world ...

Huh ...
Well ...
Oh ...

But, wait! What if the system were not merely in the mathematical chalk board mind, but were the world "out there," the real universe? (Revelation dawns way late.)

Now, they tell us there is no "edge" to the real universe. All things holding equal (which never they do, of course), if you start outbound from here in one lightning push as fast and furious for as far as you can, you just go from here to there (and back to here) traveling the universe in a (straight!) cosmic loop, never approaching an edge. I confess not to get it, but that's the way it works. They say. Not that anybody's ever gone and done it.

So, here's the deal: In an unimaginably huge space-time universe such as ours, Earth might as well be the center of that universe as anywhere else. Math models just don't care what arbitrary points are chosen as their respective origins. Everywhere else can be described in terms of some referred starting point. Indeed, people who study these things tell us that anywhere you may stand in the real universe, if you look out very carefully in any direction into the skies, you will notice that the mass of galaxies is moving away from you at an increasingly great rate of speed. You are the center away from which that mass exodus takes place, no matter whence you gaze into the cosmos!

Those old fools through the past archaic centuries who stupidly thought Earth was the center of the universe ... 

Well, now, they were righter than moderns who said it wasn't.

Readier Than Ever To Teach Yesterday

As I continue studying to teach the Word, I feel ever better prepared and more solidly equipped to address all comers and to engage any controversy intelligently back in the heady 1960s.

Wherefore Constants?

Pay attention to this: Most anything in this note is subject to change.

Yet.

Not everything is relative. Some things never, ever change.

Fundamental physical constants are dimensionless ratios among "dimension-ful" observations of real events in the world. These constants, as the term implies, never change. They do not come from theoretical mathematical models. No math myths, here, like string theory. The constants arise from actual measurements of physical events such as the measured distance between two things, the measured speed of light, the measured gravitational strength between two objects, the measured magnetic strength of an electrical current in a field.

It's odd to think that something constant describes something that continually changes. Yet it does. Even the famous relativity equation, E=mc^2, has within its symbols a constant, namely, the speed of light (well, the number 2 is also a constant, but that's a special constant aside). Now, the speed of light is not dimensionless, but it illustrates the thought nicely. The speed of light (in a vacuum) never changes. The very constancy of the speed of light describes the relativity of the other factors in the equation, energy and mass. As energy changes so does mass likewise, but always relative to the speed of light, a constant. As the speed of light never, ever changes, the proportion of energy to mass never, ever changes.

If the fundamental constants had values other than they actually have, then the universe would not exist (certainly not as we think to know it). But the constants in fact have their known, unchangeable values. For example, the so called "fine structure constant" concerns the measured electromagnetic strength of interactions between electrons and photons. Its value is very close to 1/137. It never changes. Yet it is constants like this one that provide for all the changes and evolution of what appears in the universe whether we speak of star formation or of genetic mutations.

So the constants are not relative. They describe, yes, other factors that are relative and changeable, but the constants themselves just are: fixed values by which the universe holds together and about which the universe (r)evolves.

And so. The constants, those persistent unchanging values, describe the universe as it's understood, and provide for all the apparent diversity and continual change seen in the universe. Without those particular constants, there would be no universe in particular.

No constants, no change, no universe.

(All things holding by His word of power. Hebrews 1:3.)

An Address To The Slacker Faithful-Of-The-Correct-Way-To-Do-It Who Criticize Those Who Do It Incorrectly

I like the way they're doing it wrong better than the way we're not doing it right.

Original Sin

"Have you ever read b.d. napier's Come Sweet Death?" she asked.

That was my younger sister querying me; I had been a preacher for some half dozen years or so. She always read religious stuff with far greater frequency than I, and always stepped two moves ahead despite the age difference. I mean, besides hard core things, like readings in Hebrew or Greek, she had read all of the Chronicles of Narnia long before this writer even knew why Narnia might have written her chronicles.

"Never heard of the guy," said I.

"You should," said she.

The duly admonished older brother eventually caught up with the little tome in question, a used, somewhat unimposing paperback. And as he read, he recognized turns of phrase and concepts which he, the erstwhile preacher, himself had used from time to time in the writing of sermons. Finally, the now remembered rhythms imposed full force their truth into his consciousness. Indeed, he had read the epic poem years earlier; it left him so affected not only as to forget the source, but even to appropriate its cadences as though originally his own.

Self-deception stands in wonderful relief against the truth.

That's when I realized things real to the deepest me, are not even mine. So, I don't give attributions to self, and certainly not to forgotten others, all the more especially when the ideas seem most original with me. Truly, all attributions belong only to Somebody not deceived.

So I conclude that there is nothing new under the sun. But somebody else likely already said that.

A Christian Nation

People commonly speak of nations in terms of their apparent religious heritage. Thus, people may speak of Greece as a Christian nation because of the prevalence of Christian Orthodoxy, or of its neighbor, Turkey, as a Muslim nation for equivalent reasons. Or Myanmar as Buddhist. This religious identification ostensibly comes from either the perception that a majority of a nation's citizens adheres to particular religious sensibilities, or perhaps that a nation's foundation documents subscribe explicitly to a specific religion's tenets, Iran an outstanding example of such.

The United States has been perceived as a Christian nation both because the majority of its citizens at least claims to follow some form of Christianity and because much of the political rhetoric makes claims to the fundamental document of Christianity, the Bible. Indeed, much of the myth of America, invoked through the Pilgrims' experience, speaks of this nation "under God" to embody principles and laws that draw from the Ten Commandments. How much more Christian can a nation get than that? (Now, discussion in some quarters lately concerns America's fall from grace, but such discussion only serves to underscore the nation's failure to meet its perceived Christian standard.)

Though we humans may define nations along religious lines, the matter posed here concerns biblical teaching itself: Does the Bible speak of any such nation at all being a Christian nation? The answer resounds, No!

First, the Ten Commandments, for all their commendation, do not stand as a fundamentally Christian document. The biblical witness without intelligent question, rather, shows the Ten Commandments to have root and soul in the formation of the ancient Hebrew nation, Israel, some millenium and a half before Jesus, the founder of the church of Christ, was born.

Second, by witness of the collection of writings usually called the New Testament, Jesus spoke clearly of a people he planned to engender by means of their faith in him as a savior from the ravages of rotten experiences and as the master of their lives. He would earn their respect and devotion through his evidenced deep love for them and his remarkable obedience to God. He planned to foster a people characterized by his teachings, exemplified notably in the so-called Beatitudes.

Third, this was a community without borders. He directed his earliest followers to proclaim his message of good news from where they were to the farthest reaches of the earth, to make followers in every ethnicity/culture/nation.

And indeed, there is a people without geographical boundaries on Earth, without political agenda on Earth, without a capital on Earth, without a ruler on Earth. In this sense only may one find a nation beyond nations, comprised of persons from every nation, every tribe, every cultural group, every language. That "nation" is chosen from some Iranians, from some Israelis, from some Maori, from some Chinese, from some Filipinos, from some Africans, from some Europeans, from some Americans, from some Argentinians, from some Uzbekistanis, from some Tibetans, from some Mexicans, from some Tlingit, from some Koreans, from some etc., ad infinitum, clear to the ends of Earth. These gather, joyfully bound together in a communion belonging to the one who created them and loves them for ever, world without end.

High Tide

A group of older fellows meets at McDonald's for breakfast. Informal, the group is quite regular in its presence, though individuals may ebb and flow with seasons and vagaries of life ... and with the tides, their common ground; they have been, or yet are, fishermen. The group's conversation surges around the state of the economy, opportunities for fishing, politics, the Seahawks, who's had to go Down South for medical issues, and the like.

One morning, sitting at table, coffee cups in hand, waiting for the rest to stream in, two of the fellows chatted.
Then, out of the deep blue, the one says to the other, "You know, I've become completely convinced that the Bible, all of it, is inspired."
The other says, "Really. Have you read the whole Bible?"
The first says, "No. But the whole thing's inspired."
The other says, "Well, I tell you, I've read it and the Old Testament makes all sorts of sense. But the New Testament is a mess. And don't even try to read and understand Revelations. Don't get me started on that."
The first says, "It's still totally inspired."
Carried by that current for a while, they then gravitated to topics of more comfortable depth.

Free Speech

Speech is free to anyone willing to live with its consequences.

Between Yet And Not Yet

Someone noted we live in the "in-between" age: an age that straddles past and future eras. In this "in-between" age we experience elements of a passing age, and we also sense new elements of an age yet to be fully manifest. Perhaps the "in-between" age has always marked human perception of things. Still, I mean an age characterized by a world yet here but in processes of passing away and of yielding reluctantly to a world quite not yet here. An "in-between" age of passing and yielding.

Clearly, movement from past through present to future arises from multiple, internal, inexorable forces of nature (themselves, so it seems, unchanging ... oddly enough). This movement, also clearly, arises from countless human decisions - whether determined or willfully free. But I mean not so much to speak to that "in-between" age, namely, of finding oneself in the midst of nature's processes. Rather, I speak here to an "in-between" age whose movement away from the passing system toward a world not yet here arises by force outside creation's cosmological system, which very force yet sustains the passing system.

This, the age within which I live: Between yet and not yet.

P.S. So, these notes, while open to those who may find them (but how would they? ... and if they did, why stay long enough to muse?), stand much more a mildly narcissistic repository of personal reflections and thinkings while life prevails "in-between", than they do as a soapbox -- though soapboxes aplenty likely will be. Musings in the sections ahead, consequently, may deal with most any notion.

P.P.S. Oh, and, as attributed to Solomon the wise, "there is nothing new under the sun" ... just so, nothing will be original, there yet will be no attributions.