Blue Cord

Right now, we are covering digital photography in the graphic design classes that I am taking. In the process of this, I came across an interesting company web site that takes religious observances to a new level. The company is B&H Foto and Electronics. It is located in New York City, but also does business on the web.

The owners of the company are Jewish, so naturally they observe Jewish holidays. As one would expect, the store is closed on those holidays, including extended holidays. But not only are their physical stores closed; their website will not take orders either. Right now if you go to their site, you may browse, but they have a pop-up that notes that the site will not take orders until this Saturday at 8:00 pm.

The seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, nor thy web server in thy midst. (Exod.20:10 for the 21st century).

Last week, Barry Bonds hit his 756th* career home run, passing Hank Aaron as the all time leader. The asterisk, of course, represents the fact that this record is somewhat tainted, due to Bonds’s use of performance enhancing drugs.

I don’t particularly like Bonds. He is a very arrogant player. This is especially evident when he hits a home run. He - like many others - stands at the plate, nonchalantly admiring his work as if to say, “Of course I hit a home run. What did you expect?”, before beginning to trot down to first base. This does not mean I don’t respect him as a player, though. No matter how many drugs you take, you still have to manage to put the bat on the ball. In this regard, Bonds is like Ty Cobb. Cobb was one of the meanest SOBs to ever play the game, but he was still a great player.

Bonds’s milestone got me thinking about performance enhancing drugs, especially because I spent ten years taking such drugs. I never took anything like steroids or human growth hormones, but I never needed to. I am not an athlete. But I did take antidepressants, and these certainly enhanced my performance as a scholar.

One of the primary symptoms that finally got me to go to a psychologist was the loss of short term memory, something that is often associated with depression. While I was a student, I would be translating some Hebrew or hieroglyphics the night before a class. I would look at the word I needed to translate and then turn to my lexicon. By the time I had turned two or three pages in the lexicon, the letters of the word had rearranged themselves in my head and I no longer had any idea what word I was trying to find. It would take several attempts before I retained the word long enough to find the definition.

For a philologist, such a problem is fairly severe, but it would create difficulty for any scholar. When things are not retained in short-term memory, they never get transferred to long-term memory and therefore do not become a part of our working knowledge. Since knowledge is our stock in trade as scholars, depression makes scholarship difficult.

Once I was prescribed antidepressants, however, the problem went away. This means I am able to do my job better because of antidepressants. That would seem to me to be the very definition of performance enhancing drugs.

It could be argued, of course, that the drugs Bonds took were banned by baseball, while scholarship has never banned antidepressants. (And given the number of scholars I know who take them, this is probably a good thing.) But this points to the fact that rules in baseball and scholarship must be based on something. If merely making you perform better makes a drug illegal, then surely antidepressants would be banned.

Another difference between steroids and antidepressants is that steroids are supposed to make you perform at levels above that of a normal human, while antidepressants simply make your body functional normally. The unstated assumption in this, however, is that we know how a body functions normally, that there is some sort of baseline human against which we can measure ourselves. Such a human is supposedly perfectly healthy, with no physical or psychological problems.

I have never met such a person. This is not surprising, since this person exists only as an abstraction. Everyone has problems of some sort. Theologically we call this our fallen nature. One thing that the Calvinists have right is that sin corrupts everything. It does not remove all goodness, but it does infect every aspect of our being, including our bodies and our minds.

And so, I freely admit that any success I have had as a scholar is due in part to performance enhancing drugs. Antidepressants may not have given me the ability to function as a Hall-of-Fame scholar, but they have allowed me to play the game. Without them, I would never have even made it into the minor leagues.

I was listening to the Mike Gallagher show on Monday and heard something I could not believe.  That is rare, because listening to talk radio means you build up an immunity to all the ridiculous ideas that are espoused there.  Mike had a guest host that day, but I didn’t catch his name.  His first name was Mike and he was a talk show host from Ohio.  If anyone knows who this was, I would appreciate knowing.

The host was discussing Guantanamo Bay and the proposal that the prisoners there should be moved to prisons on American soil.  He referred to the prisoners as “vermin” and “scum” and said the Geneva Convention didn’t apply to them.  All very common on conservative talk radio.

Then he said something that almost made me drive into a tree.  He said that although he was a Christian, he had no problem with the US torturing prisoners.  I have heard talk show host say that torture was acceptable, but to directly imply that the teachings of Jesus Christ allow for the torture of our enemies is nothing short of vile.

Such a statement could only be made by someone who is woefully ignorant of the Bible and Christian doctrine.  It would be sad if such a statement were made about Christianity by a non-Christian, but for a person who calls himself a Christian to make this statement is inconceivable.

In Matthew 5:44, Jesus said to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Torturing seems more like hating our enemies and persecuting them.  Jesus expands on this in Luke 6:27, saying that we should do good to our enemies.  How can it possibly be said that torture amounts to “doing good to our enemies”?

The argument that the host made came down to the ends justifying the means.  If we torture the prisoners, they will give us information that could save American lives.  Therefore, torture is acceptable.

The problem for this argument is that Christianity is a religion based on redemptive suffering.   Christ died for the sins of others in order to redeem them.  And he called upon us to take up our cross and do the same.  His redemption of the world is manifest through our suffering for others.  Jesus said “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for others”  (John 15:13).  This cannot be read to mean that we can torture people if it saves lives.  We accept suffering at the hands of others in order that Christ can be seen.  When we, as Christians, condone or even advocate torture, it effectively blocks the witness of the cross.

There are a few examples of torture in the Bible.  None of them approve of it.  The most striking example is the torture of Christ Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities.  The Romans considered Jesus to be a rebel, a rabble-rouser, an insurgent who resisted their occupation of Palestine.  So they tortured him.  They thought that by torturing him they could prevent violence against Roman citizens.  How can we, who follow him, condone such a practice by our own government?

By the way, I went to Mike Gallagher’s web page to send a version of this post as a letter to Mr. Gallagher asking him to disavow the comments of his guest host, but the only way to contact him was in a form that limited e-mail to four sentences.  Limiting your listener feedback in such a way certainly prevents Mr. Gallagher from having to deal with complex arguments.  Apparently if your idea can’t be expressed in fewer than 750 characters, it is too complex for him to deal with.

The New York Times reports today that the primates of the Anglican church have given the Episcopal church eight months to ban all same-sex unions.

This is an interesting and unfortunate move for several reasons. For one thing, it changes the idea of what it means to be a member of the Anglican Communion. This is the first time that the primates have dictated to a province what it can and cannot do. When churches in Africa were dealing with the question of polygamous priests, other provinces let them work it out themselves. And in those areas where polygamy is still being practices (despite official claims to the contrary), those churches are being allowed to make the decision on how to proceed by themselves.

It is also telling that this decision focused on same-sex unions. Up until now, the argument has been that it was the consecration of an openly gay man as bishop that caused problems for the communion. After all, they said, a bishop is a bishop for the whole church, and other provinces have to interact with bishops from the US. They had a point about that. But now they are saying that they have the right to dictate our practice on same-sex unions. This is something they have been upset about, but it affects them only in the most minuscule way. It is something that is internal to the Episcopal church. We are not asking them to accept unions performed here, nor are we asking them to perform such unions. But they felt free to legislate on this anyway.

It seems that the Anglican Communion is becoming more of a top down organization, which is what some conservatives have been wanting, except, of course, when the top disagrees with them and tried to get them to change. Then the hierarchy is corrupt, they say. In their view, the Anglican Communion can legislate on internal matters to stop same-sex unions, but they won’t obey the communion when they say that bishops should stop crossing jurisdictions. When tho communion agrees with them, they go along with it, but when it disagrees with their approach, they feel free to ignore them. Of course, there are some liberals who do the same thing. These two are making it very difficult for those of us in the center.

This past week, two parishes in the Diocese of Virginian voted to leave the Episcopal church because of the issue of homosexuality. Jim West (on his blog of a thousand names) reported this fact and applauded those congregations for being willing to “stand up for what is right against the wrong spirited political correctness of their own denominational authorities.” He goes on to ask:

How can there be “godly union and concord” when one segment of the denomination has abandoned scripture?

Because I agree with Steve Cook that this is indeed a sad day for Episcopalians, I wanted to take the chance to respond to Jim.

The reason that there can be godly union and concord between two sides that disagree is based on Anglican polity, which goes back to the Elizabethan Settlement. Queen Elizabeth inherited an Anglican church that was split between a number of factions, including those who wanted to return the country to the Roman Catholic church. No one agreed on theology. Her solution, simply put, was that the church’s unity was based on its worship, not on its agreement on doctrinal matters. This was the idea championed by Richard Hooker, who is certainly foundational to any understanding of what it means to be Anglican. We are a church that lives and dies by its worship, not by its theology. Our unity consists in the one Lord we serve, not in our ideas about that Lord.

To me, those who are leaving the church over the issue of homosexuality should heed the words of Christ:

“You tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” (Matt 23:23-24)

As Steve has pointed out, there are things that are much more central to the Christian message than homosexuality.

This is not to say that doctrine is unimportant. Far from it! But the doctrines that are central are defined by the historic creeds of the church, not by the pet issue of the day. If the Episcopal church ever abandons the Nicene Creed, I will be at the front of the line to get out or lead the reformation. I have little doubt that Steve would be there as well (although I don’t want to presume to speak for him).

Part of the rhetoric that has made things so difficult in the current debate is that one side consistently accuses the other of abandoning the Scripture. It does not matter how many seminars I give in churches on homosexuality and the Bible. It does not matter how faithful I am to the doctrines of Scripture. It does not matter that I have devoted my life to the study of God’s word. The moment my stance on homosexuality is known, some people immediately say that I and others have abandoned Scripture.

The issue that is dividing the church right now is polity, not theology. Some cannot accept a polity where people who disagree on theology can still work and worship together. If that is the case, then they should join a church that holds to such a polity. There is nothing wrong with such a polity, but it is simply not Anglican.

How can there be godly union and concord between those who do not agree? Simple. The unity of the church is not something that is created by humans through their agreement on doctrine. The unity of the church is a gift of God. God has made us one. Our job is to live into that unity by living and worshiping together, seeking to reify the unity that is ours through the one Lord, Christ Jesus, whom we serve.

This does not mean that we paper over differences. There has been and will continue to be a lively debate within the Anglican Communion. But in true Anglican spirit, we should not cut the Gordian knot by ending debate and going off to be with those with whom we agree. We are a family, and families should not walk away just because they disagree. We need to find a way forward together.