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On sharing the “Keys to the Kingdom”

Roman Catholics like to claim theirs is the one-and-only true church, based on Matthew 16:13-19, where Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

The guesses included John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets of old. Then Jesus said, “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. . . I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (E.A.)

So far so good. Jesus gave Peter the “keys to the kingdom,” as shown in the painting-detail above. (Actually a fresco in the Sistine Chapel.) And so – Jesus told Peter – “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (See Power of the Keys – Wikipedia, and CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Power of the Keys – New Advent.)

But note what happened a couple chapters later, in Matthew 18. That chapter began with the disciples – all 12 of them – coming to Jesus and asking, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” That’s when Jesus called a child and “put him in the midst of them” – all 12 of them – and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus spoke on sin and “woe to the man by whom the temptation comes!” He added the metaphor – not to be taken literally – about plucking your eye out if it caused you to sin, because “it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” Later He added this, speaking to all 12 disciples:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Wait. What? Weren’t those the same words that Jesus spoke to only Peter, a chapter or two before? And wasn’t that the same power that Jesus had given only to Peter?

What happened?

One thing that happened came just a few verses later in Matthew 16, beginning at verse 21. That’s where Jesus started to tell His disciples He had to go to Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of “the elders and chief priests and scribes,” and be killed, and on the third day be raised:

And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” (E.A.)

(In the words of the King James Bible – the one God uses – the phrase was “Get thee behind me, Satan.”) As to why Jesus said that, consider Why did Jesus say to Peter, “Get behind me Satan”? But the fact remains that Jesus did say that, and so – not long after saying that – He took the exclusive power He’d given to Peter and made it the power of all 12 disciples.

As to the effect of that change, see for example A Natural Law Manifesto – Right Reason, which indicated in pertinent part that “the statute passed later is presumed to have superseded the law enacted earlier.” See also 7 Modification of Contracts – Shefsky & Froelich, which indicated that an “agreement that is complete on its face supersedes all prior agreements on the same
subject matter.” (Did the Scribe mention that he was a lawyer in his prior life?)

So, in Matthew 16:16 Jesus gave Peter the exclusive power of the “keys to the kingdom.” Then a few verses later Jesus sternly rebuked Peter for becoming “an unwitting spokesperson for Satan.” (See the “Why did” site above.) Later still Jesus either effectively modified His “statute” or His “contract” and – using the same language – changed the power of “binding and loosing” by giving it to all 12 disciples instead of just Peter alone.

The effect of all this is to nullify the strong implication – promoted by the whole “St. Peter and the Keys” thing – that only Roman Catholics will get into heaven. Of course Southern Baptists say pretty much the same thing, on the theory that infant baptism has no practical effect and that in order to get into heaven you have to be baptized as an adult. (See Baptists – Wikipedia.)

But what does the Bible say? For one thing the Apostle Paul said, in Philippians 2:12, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Which is of course perfectly consistent with what he said much earlier, in Romans 10:9, “If you declare that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God brought him back to life, you will be saved.” (Emphases added.)

Maybe that’s why they call it “Good News. . .”

* * * *

As to the keys to the kingdom, see also Delivery of the Keys (Perugino) – Wikipedia, the …, describing a fresco in the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The image at the top of this post is a detail of that fresco.

As to “Roman Catholics.” Here’s the distinction. “Small-c” catholic means universal or comprehensive; “especially : broad in sympathies, tastes, or interests <a catholic taste in music>”. See Catholic – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster. A more earthy example might be: “That guy certainly has catholic tastes in women. He’ll do anybody.”

But see also Cafeteria Catholicism – Wikipedia, which noted in part:

The term cafeteria Catholicism is applied to those who assert their Catholic identity yet dissent from Catholic doctrinal or moral teaching or who are viewed as dissenting by those using the term. Examples include Catholics who are accused of dissenting from Church teachings on human sexuality (the so-called “pelvic issues”). . .

The site also noted that the term “is most often used by conservative Catholics critical of progressive Catholics.” On that note see About this Blog, which said “those who read the Bible strictly, narrowly and/or ‘fundamentally'” – or you could read in conservatively – “are not only cheating themselves, they’re also driving other people away from the Faith of the Bible in droves.”

As to good news and gospel: “The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell ^[5] (rarely godspel), meaning ‘good news’ or ‘glad tidings.’ The word comes from the Greek euangelion, or ‘good news.’ The gospel was considered the ‘good news’ of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death of Jesus, the central Christian message.” Gospel – Wikipedia. The lower image is courtesy of that article, which featured the caption, “The first page of the Gospel of Mark in Armenian, by Sargis Pitsak, 14th century.”

On “what a drag it is…”

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As in, “What a drag it is getting o-o-o-o-o-o-ld!” (With apologies to the Rolling Stones.)

From The Scribe. . .

Keeping in mind that a true Blog is “like a traditional diary, right down to the informal style of writing that characterizes personal communication,” this is my first diary-like blog post.

I graduated from high school in 1969. After graduation I went my way – like so many of that generation – in search of the Good Life of the 1970s. (That usually included the proverbial sex, drugs and/or rock and roll.) One thing that ongoing search did not include was staying in the “Established” or “Establishment Church” that I grew up in.

On the other hand, now that I’m “old and full of years” – I’m 62 – I can clearly see that “getting o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ld” beats the heck out of the alternative.

Getting back to those rockin’ 1970s, Transcendental Meditation was a Big Trend on Campus, and it seemed to offer one road to the Good Life and/or Promised Land. But those people wanted to charge a whole lot more money than I could afford.

So I ended up trying self-hypnosis, Alpha Thinking, yoga, and a host of other Eastern ways of dealing with life’s unpleasantries, my own shortcomings, and the unremitting evil and suffering I saw each day on TV and the news. I read books on karate, aikido, tai chi and other eastern disciplines; books like Zen in the Art of Archery.

I learned about prana, chi, ki, and “the force,” as in “the force be with you.” I was still entranced by Transcendental Meditation – and how easy “they” said it was – but as noted, I balked at the price. (At the time, it was supposed to run a week’s salary, which included a personalized Sanskrit mantra, “all my very own.”) But I couldn’t afford a week’s salary, being the poor, bearded, unemployed and largely unemployable college student that I was. So I kept looking, and the quest seemed to end when I found a book, How to Meditate, by Lawrence LeShan.

LeShan’s book offered all the meditational techniques anyone could ever need, in a book that cost a fraction of the price TMers wanted, for that instruction and my personal Sanskrit mantra.

But eventually – “in the fullness of time,” as a Bible writer might say – I came to see the Christian Faith itself as a kind of Ongoing “Transcendental” Meditation. In other words, like some other people who wrote about the Bible, the Faith and prayer – guys like Thomas Merton – I came to see similarities in those exotic Eastern disciplines I studied in my youth, and the daily practice of Bible-reading. (See DOR Scribe, above.)

To make a long story short, the essence of a mantra meditation is simply repeating a word or phrase, over and over, for a pre-established period of time. (The usual period is 10-20 minutes.) It sounds pretty fruitless, but consider the “Cliff’s-Note” summary given by Jesus:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Those “two great commandments” are in the Book of Common Prayer at page 324, and as with most of the Prayer Book, they come directly from the Bible, Matthew 22:37-40.

Then consider a standard confession that some church-goers repeat every week: “We have not loved you [God] with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

The point is this: Like any meditation the quest to “love God with our whole heart and love our neighbors as ourselves” is literally impossible. On the other hand, the process of meditating – trying “to do the impossible” – usually ends up with you becoming a better person. By taking part in Bible reading on a regular basis – and by trying to love God with all your heart and your neighbors as yourself – you can also develop a zest for living, an ability to cope with everyday frustration, and a soothing sense of serenity that comes from being “one with All.”

Of course there’s a whole lot more to it than that, and that “that” is what this Blog is all about. (In other words, “that ‘that'” will be the subject of a host of future posts.)

In the meantime (like the man said in the 1970s TV ad), the message is: “Try it, you’ll like it!”

The top image is courtesy of The Rolling Stones – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The caption reads: “The Rolling Stones 1965.” See also, Mother’s Little Helper – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with the opening line, “What a drag it is getting old!” The “Little Helper” site added, “The song deals with the sudden popularity of Valium (diazepam), a mild tranquilizer, among housewives and the ease of obtaining it from their GPs.”

The lower image is courtesy of www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qdfMYFl0Ic. See also 11 Advertising Slogans That Became Catch-Phrases: “This 1971 Alka-Seltzer was one of the first created by the then-new Wells, Rich, Greene advertising agency. The tag phrase soon took on a life of its own (how many mothers used it to convince their picky eaters to eat their broccoli?) and helped to get the commercial elected to the Clio Awards Classic Hall of Fame.”

As to the first “diary-like blog post,” the reference is Blogging for Dummies, 4th Edition, Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ (2012), at page 9: “At its most basic level, a blog is a chronologically ordered ordered series of website updates, written and organized much like a traditional diary, right down to the informal style of writing that characterizes personal communication.” (Emphasis added.)

As to “rock and roll,” see Rock and roll – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

As to Transcendental Meditation as a “Big Trend on Campus.” Transcendental Meditation (sometimes shortened to “TM”) is a form of mantra meditation, in which a word or phrase is repeated over and over for 20 minutes or so at a time, to discipline the mind and not think “other thoughts.” Mantra meditation is discussed at length in LeShan’s book. As to the fee, in the U.S. in the 1960s, the “usual fee was one-week’s salary or $35 for a student.” (I didn’t know about that “mere $35 fee,” but it didn’t matter; I couldn’t have afforded the $35 anyway.) In the 1970s the fee was fixed at $125, with discounts for students and families. By 2003, the fee in the U.S. was set at $2,500, and has “since” been reduced to $1,500. See Transcendental Meditation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As to ” How to Meditate, by Lawrence LeShan.” My copy was published by Bantam Books in 1975.

As to “essence of a mantra,” see How to Meditate using a mantra, by Professor Michael Olpin of Weber State University, Ogden, UT. (See also Michael Olpin – Weber State University.)

And a BTW: Thomas Merton – about which much more in future posts – was a Catholic (Trappist) monk (1915-1968) who “pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, the Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and authored books on Zen Buddhism and Taoism.” See Thomas Merton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and also the Thomas Merton Center. His books included (but were not limited to) Praying the Psalms, Mystics and Zen Masters, and Zen and the Birds of Appetite.

On the June 22 readings – Part II

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King David in Prayer, by Pieter de Grebber (c. 1640). . .

“June 22 – Part I” covered Genesis 21, where Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael out in the desert to die. Turning to Psalm 86, the International Bible Commentary (IBC) said the writer kept imploring God “to hear him in his need” in verses 1-10, but with each new plea slowly moved from “self-orientation towards a focus on God Himself.” (Which is usually the way it works. . .)

Another commentator indicated, based on Psalm 86, that the people who wrote the Bible were indeed just like us, which could mean it’s our duty to continue the ongoing story of the Bible “even to this day,” and beyond into the future. . . But we digress. . .

Which makes this as good a time as any to mention the importance of David, shown above in prayer when he was “old and full of years.” Traditionally David is given credit for writing half the 150 psalms listed in the Bible, though he was far from faultless:

He is depicted as a righteous king, although not without faults, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician, and poet, traditionally credited for composing many of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms. . . David is an important figure to members of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. Biblical tradition maintains the Messiah‘s direct descent from the line of David. In Islam, he is considered a prophet.

See David – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Turning again to this Sunday’s Psalm 86, verse 16 has a note of irony: “Turn to me and have mercy upon me; give your strength to your servant; and save the child of your handmaid.” (Which is what God did in the Genesis 21 story, save the child of Abraham-and-Sarah’s “handmaid.”)

In the run-up to Romans 6:1b-11, the IBC said Paul “personified” sin as – for example – a king or a slaveholder, “an external power alien to man’s true nature as God intended it,” an enemy that has invaded man and “occupied his ‘flesh.'” However, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Which is another way of saying that Jesus wants us: 1) to come to Him, 2) to live a life of abundance, and 3) to perform even greater miracles than He did. (See About this Blog.)

In Matthew 10:24-39, Jesus predicted future persecution for the twelve disciples, and said while they needed to “guard against men,” they were (and are) secure in their faith; “So have no fear of them. . . Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Jesus also warned of disunity produced by the Gospel, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Of this one commentator said:

This is taken from Micah 7:6. Christ did not here mean to say that the object of his coming was to produce discord and contention, for he was the Prince of Peace, Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 11:6; Luke 2:14; but he means to say that such would be one of the effects of his coming.

See Matthew 10:34 Commentaries: “Do not think that I came to … (emphasis added).

Micah was a Hebrew prophet of the 8th century “before Jesus,” whose book “reproaches unjust leaders, defends the rights of the poor against the rich and powerful, and preaches social justice; while looking forward to a world at peace. . .” (We’re still working on those.) Note also, Micah used the idea a “covenant lawsuit,” with God suing the Hebrews for breach of contract, in Chapter 6:1-8. (Did I mention that I was a lawyer in my former life?)

In Chapter 7, verse 6, Micah noted the results of such a contractual “breach:”

The godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none upright among men; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts his brother with a net. . . The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge. . . Put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.

So what’s the solution? One answer comes in Micah 6:8 (in the Living Bible), that God “has told you what he wants, and this is all it is: to be fair, just, merciful, and to walk humbly with your God.”

– The Scribe

The upper image is courtesy of Wikipedia. The “seek justice” image is courtesy of http://thefinestkind.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/img_1748.jpg?w=529&h=396.

As always, to see the full readings for the upcoming Sunday, see The Lectionary Page.

As to “Another commentator wrote.” What the commentator wrote was, “We may learn from the present psalm [86] that the great saints of old were accustomed to pray very much in the same fashion as we do.” Treasury of David—Psalm 86 – The Spurgeon Archive. , emphasis added. Which again is a reminder that those who lived in Bible times – and indeed took part in writing the Bible – may not have been that different from us, or “special.”

As to Micah 6:8, Cliff’s Notes on the Old Testament (1965 copyright, 1988 printing) called it “a clear statement of the prophetic religion at its best.” It further noted that Micah understood “that Yahweh desires moral qualities on the part of his worshipers [sic] rather than sacrifices and burnt offerings,” and that he – Micah – had captured “the nature of true religion and the moral qualities it is designed to promote.” (In other words it’s always easier to follow the letter of the law, rather than trying to live that darned-hard-to-implement spirit of the law. See 2d Corinthians 3:6.)

One of the most popular verses among both Jews and Christians promoting social justice is Micah 6:8. . . The message of Micah is still pertinent today. Religious rites, no matter how extravagant, can never compensate for a lack of love (1 Corinthians 13:3). External compliance to rules is not as valuable in God’s eyes as a humble heart that simply does what is right. God’s people today will continue to desire justice, mercy, and humility before the Lord.

Which is pretty much what The Scribe is trying to say. . .

On “Call me Ishmael” – June 22 (Part I)

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“A depiction of Hagar and Ishmael. . .”

The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) has two choices for the first reading and the psalm for June 22, 2014. (See The Lectionary Page.) The second reading and Gospel are “set.”

The readings to be used in The Scribe’s church include Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Page 709-10 BCP), Romans 6:1b-11, and Matthew 10:24-39.

Genesis 21:8-21 tells more about the birth of Isaac (begun in Genesis 21:1), to Abraham and Sarah, when they were “well past their prime.” (As Wikipedia said, “Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah was past 90.” Isaac – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

But this Sunday’s reading is more about Hagar, and Abraham’s other son Ishmael:

Hagar . . . was an Egyptian handmaid of Sarai (Sarah), who gave her to Abram (Abraham) to bear a child. Thus came the firstborn, Ishmael, the patriarch of the Ishmaelites. . . She is revered in the Islamic faith and acknowledged in all Abrahamic faiths. In mainstream Christianity, she is considered a concubine to Abram.

See Hagar – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In other words, for the longest time Abraham’s wife Sarah couldn’t give him a son (to carry on the patriarchal line), so way back in Genesis 16, Sarah “gave” Abraham her slave woman, Hagar. Sarah did this so that her husband wouldn’t be childless (or more accurately, “sonless”).

That is, in Genesis 16:2, Sarah said “go in to my maid,” and Abraham – like a good husband – said, “Okay!” (In the language of the Bible, he “hearkened to the voice of Sarah.” Ah, the good ol’ days.) But when Hagar got pregnant she “looked with contempt” upon Sarah, her boss, which wasn’t very smart. So Sarah kicked Hagar out into the wilderness, but in Genesis 16:7-16 she had a talk with God and decided to return to Abraham.

Then came the story told in this Sunday’s reading, in which Hagar and her son get kicked out again, at the “behest” of Sarah. Sarah saw Hagar’s son Ishmael – who was apparently about 13 at the time – either playing with or mocking the infant Isaac (depending on the translation). So Sarah – who apparently had a pretty short fuse where her competition was concerned – told Abraham to kick out Hagar and her son again. Abraham was “distressed,” but had a talk with God, and God told him it was okay to do what his wife wanted:

So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. . . When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.

In other words, Abraham sent Hagar and his son Ishmael out into the wilderness to die,* and when she thought that they were both going to die, she threw her son under a bush then went away, “about the distance of a bowshot,” so that she wouldn’t have to watch her son die.

But then magically God heard Ishmael crying, and provided a well for them to drink from so they survived. He then fulfilled His promise to “make a great nation” of Ishmael; later on he married a woman from Egypt, and so became the “father of the Ishmaelites.”

As to who these Ishmaelite “wild men” are or have been, answers vary. The Jewish Virtual Library said they were a group of nomadic tribes, “Bedouin who live in the desert,” who were also “desert robbers (cf. Gen. 16:12),” who periodically overran and/or plundered permanent settlements “(Ps. 83:7; Judg. 8:24).” See Ishmaelites – Jewish Virtual Library.

Later on the Bible mentions certain Ishmaelites (or Midianites) who purchased and/or sold Joseph as a slave to Potiphar, “an Egyptian officer of Pharoah.” See Who purchased Joseph, the Ishmaelites or the Midianites …, which noted: “The Midianites were descendants of Midian, a son of Abraham and his concubine Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2).”

At this point the reader may want to type into his or her search engine, “Just how many dang children (or sons) did Abraham have, with his wife Sarah, or his wife’s Sarah’s slave(s), or his concubines?” For one answer, see Why Did the Lord Allow Men to Have Concubines? – UK Apologetics, but at this point we are digressing greatly…

The point could be this: Just as Jacob-turned-into-Israel could be a prototype for anyone who “struggles with the idea of God,” so this Ishmael could be a prototype for anyone among us who has been cast out from “decent society” and still managed to survive, with God’s help (as in – for example – having your ship sunk by a “monstrous big whale”).

The upper image is courtesy of Ishmael – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The full caption: “A depiction of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert by François-Joseph Navez.”

The image just above is courtesy of Moby Dick (1956 film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which added: “Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville‘s Moby-Dick (1851).” Seen as a minor character when the book was first published, later literary criticism “served to establish Ishmael as a central force in the book. By contrast with his namesake Ishmael from Genesis, who is banished into the desert, Ishmael is wandering upon the sea. Each Ishmael, however, experiences a miraculous rescue; one from thirst, the other as the lone surviving crewmember.” (Emphasis added.) “The opening line, ‘Call me Ishmael,’ is one of the most recognizable opening lines in Western literature.”

* As to Abraham sending Hagar and her (and Abraham’s) son out into the wilderness to die, that practice is arguably not unlike the tale of Eskimos sending or leaving their old folk “out to die.” See Senicide – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For another point of view see The Straight Dope: Did Eskimos put their elderly on ice floes …, where – in response to a question whether Eskimos “still did that” – the writer responded (somewhat snippily):

Do Europeans cause rat-borne plagues by killing cats because cats are demon spawn? Sorry for the iciness, but it bugs me when questions about strange Eskimo customs are phrased in the present tense, as if nothing could have changed since the eighteenth century. But yes, in the past some Eskimos did kill old people when circumstances were sufficiently desperate. . . [W]hen food did run short, the old and sick were looked upon as drains on the community’s resources. Sometimes they were killed – thrown into the sea, buried alive, locked out in the cold, or starved to death. Far more commonly they were simply abandoned to die. The victim might be taken out in the wilderness and left there, or the whole village might pick up and move away while the old person slept.

Which may explain why Abraham wasn’t averse to Sarah’s command. Apparently such practices were just not that unusual at that time and place. Which leads to a logical conclusion that God didn’t particularly like that practice, but had to work with the resources available. That is, He – and His spokesman Moses, who had to write down all this stuff – had to speak to His Chosen People using “language and concepts that his relatively-pea-brained contemporary audience could understand,” as noted in On the readings for June 15 – Part I.

Just as Jacob-turned-into-Israel could be a prototype. . . See On arguing with God.

On the Christian repertoire

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“The Dalai Lama with US President Barack Obama at the White House. . .”

According to Wikipedia, “Buddhism is one of the largest religions in the United States behind Christianity, Judaism and nonreligious.” (A BTW: The latter category raises a whole ‘nother set of issues and possibly a future blog-post or two.)

In 2012, the U-T San Diego – a daily paper published in San Diego, California with a circulation of some 250,000 on weekdays and over 400,000 on Sundays – estimated the number of Buddhists in America at some “1.2 million people, of whom 40% are living in Southern California.”

(Which explains a lot. See for example Urban Dictionary: Land of Fruits and Nuts.)

Anyway, Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama – “commonly known as the Buddha” – who lived and taught in the “eastern part of the Indian subcontinent sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE” [using the pointy-headed liberal alternative to “BC,” so as not to offend]. Here’s one thing the Buddha once said that may be of interest here:

Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honor for many generations. . . Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or of priests. After investigation, believe that which you yourself have tested and found reasonable, and which is good for your good and that of others.

But the Apostle Paul said pretty much the same thing in First Thessalonians 5:21: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” See also First John 4:1, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God.” And see also Philippians 2:12, where Paul added, “Work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling.”

That part about “fear and trembling” might strike some nonreligious as the kind of “negative vibe” that is such a turn off about religion in general, and especially Christianity. But if you think about it, such “fear and trembling” makes sense. Consider the stakes; after you die, will you be eternally happy or eternal maggot food? Accordingly, what rational person wouldn’t work toward a possible afterlife with a certain amount of due diligence?

Getting back to the Christian repertoire, consider what Chief Crowfoot once said, “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is as the little shadow that runs across the prairie and loses itself in the sunset.” But again, in the Bible, “James the Just” said pretty much the same thing: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14, in the King James Version (the one God uses.)

The point of all this is pretty simple: there’s nothing in the vast panoply of religious and/or spiritual choices in America and beyond that isn’t already in the the Christian repertoire.

And speaking of Baby-boomers – those of us who came of age in the 1970s when we first started hearing about a host of exotic Eastern alternatives – consider one of the best-selling “me” books in the “me generation,” How to be Your Own Best Friend.

Considered groundbreaking at the time, there’s also nothing in it that isn’t in the “Christian repertoire.” For example, page 22 of The Scribe’s copy said that in trying to find happiness, most people look in the wrong place; “The source is not outside us; it is within.” And later, “We must realize that the kingdom is in us; we already have the key.” But that too was already in the Bible, when Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

Moving right along, one of the primary objectives of yoga, Zen, and those other Eastern disciplines seems first to “kill the ego.” See for example the book How to Meditate, noted previously in Spiritual boot camp. See too How to Meditate at page 55: “I will teach you the best way to say Torah. You must be nothing but an ear which hears what the universe of the word is saying in you. The moment you hear what you yourself are saying, you must stop.”

So maybe reading and studying the Bible “in the proper manner” means pretty much the same thing; losing of your “self” in study. In turn, the goal there is to become “one” with the Original Source, the Universal Mind, or what we Westerners call “God.” That seems to be what Jesus was referring to as He prayed in John 17:20-23, in the Upper Room on the evening before He was crucified, asking God’s help for those who would believe in Him:

“I ask . . . on behalf of those who will believe in me . . . that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one. . .”

And finally, that also seems to be just what one “Common Prayer” meant when it said that Christians – through the sacrament of sharing Holy Communion – are in the process of becoming “very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son.”

So who says Christianity can’t be “mystical?”

“The Appearance of the Holy Spirit before Saint Teresa. . .”

Sources:

Buddhism in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Buddhism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Epistle of James – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Due diligence – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The full cite for How to be Your Own Best Friend, by Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz, “with Jean Owen,” Ballantine Books (1971).

Me generation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

As to the “kill the ego” and “becoming ‘one’” quotes, see Richard Hittleman’s Guide to Yoga Meditation, Bantam Books (1969), at pages 38 et seq.

Re: “becoming one.” See especially John 17:21, John 17:22, John 17:23, and John 17:26.

As to “members incorporate in the mystical body…” See the Book of Common Prayer, at page 339.

The St. Teresa image is courtesy of the article, Mysticism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The full caption reads: “The Appearance of the Holy Spirit before Saint Teresa of Ávila, Peter Paul Rubens.” As noted in some previous posts, the terms “mystic” or “mysticism” seem to throw Southern Baptists and other conservative Christians into apoplexy. (“Try it sometime!!!”) But seriously, the term mysticism originally “referred to the biblical, the liturgical and the spiritual or contemplative dimensions in early and medieval Christianity.” (Talk about “original intent. . .”) Further, an internet search will lead to the definition of “mystic” as “a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute. . .”

See also Teresa of Ávila – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted in pertinent part, “Teresa’s writings, produced for didactic purposes, stand among the most remarkable in the mystical literature of the Catholic Church.” And that’s not to mention Thomas Merton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the “American Catholic writer and mystic” who “authored books on Zen Buddhism and Taoism” such as Zen and the Birds of Appetite.

On St. Barnabas

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Barnabas curing the sick by Paolo Veronese, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.

* * * *

Wednesday, June 11, was the Feast Day for Saint Barnabas:

The apostle and missionary was among Christ’s earliest followers and was responsible for welcoming St. Paul into the Church. Though not one of the 12 apostles . . . he is traditionally regarded as one of the 72 disciples of Christ and [the] most respected man in the first century Church after the Apostles themselves.

See ST. BARNABAS, APOSTLE :: Catholic News Agency (CNA). The first mention of Barnabas came in Acts 4, beginning at verse 36: “Joseph, a Levite, born in Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (son of encouragement), sold a field he owned, brought the money, and turned it over to the apostles.” The site Barnabas the Apostle – Justus added that even after Paul had his Damascus Road experience, “most of the Christians [in Jersusalem] wanted nothing to do with him. They had known him as a persecutor and an enemy of the Church. But Barnabas was willing to give him a second chance.” (Which is pretty much what Jesus is all about. . .)

The “Justus” site above added this, about those “second chances;”

Later, Paul and Barnabas went on a missionary journey together, taking Mark with them. Part way, Mark turned back and went home. When Paul and Barnabas were about to set out on another such journey, Barnabas proposed to take Mark along, and Paul was against it, saying that Mark had shown himself undependable. Barnabas wanted to give Mark a second chance [again] and so he and Mark went off on one journey, while Paul took Silas and went on another. Apparently Mark responded well to the trust given him by the “son of encouragement,” since we find that Paul later speaks of him as a valuable assistant (2 Tim 4:11; see also Col 4:10 and Phil 24) .

So we might just call Barnabas “the Apostle of Second Chances.”

The Collect for his Feast Day asks God to teach us also to “follow the example of your faithful servant Barnabas, who, seeking not his own renown but the well-being of your Church, gave generously of his life and substance for the relief of the poor and the spread of the Gospel.”

The Gospel for the Day is Matthew 10:7-16, which ends with Jesus saying to His disciples, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” And since “serpent” is just another name – or metaphor – for Satan, what Jesus seemed to say was that a good Christian needs to be “wise as the Devil,” or perhaps “wise as hell.”

But that’s just common sense. If you’re to resist something – like “the wiles of the world” – you definitely need to know what you’re trying to resist. If not, you’re much weaker, to the extent you don’t “know your enemy.” So even if you’re a Fundamentalist Christian and think those “exotic Eastern meditations” were simply tools of the devil – those exotic Eastern practices that were all the rage back in the 1970s – you still need to know those exotic disciplines, if you plan to fight them. Which is of course another very good reason to study the Bible.

The ” Archangel Michael slaying Satan. . .”

The upper image is courtesy of the Wikipedia article.

For the full readings for this Feast Day, see The Lectionary Page.

The Wikipedia article added this about Barnabas: “Tertullian [one of the early Church Fathers] named him as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but this and other attributions are conjecture.” Tertullian in turn was famous for saying words to the effect that he believed in the resurrection “because it is absurd.” See Credo quia absurdum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, referring to “a Latin phrase that means ‘I believe because it is absurd.’ It is a paraphrase of a statement in Tertullian‘s work De Carne Christi, ‘prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est,’ which can be translated: ‘it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd…’ The Catholic Tradition, from the outset, rejected the so-called ‘fideism,’ which is the desire to believe against reason. Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd) is not a formula that interprets the Catholic faith.'”

The lower image is courtesy of the Wikipedia article on “Chaos,” included in the article Serpent (Bible) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which noted: “The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in religious and cultural life of ancient Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Greece. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life and healing.” (Fertility?) The image caption in Wikipedia reads: “Depiction of the Christianized Chaoskampf: statue of Archangel Michael slaying Satan, represented as a dragon. Quis ut Deus? is inscribed on his shield.”

“The motif of Chaoskampf (German for “struggle against chaos”) is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon.” Quis ut Deus is translated as “who is like God,” a literal translation of the name “Michael.”

On the readings for June 15 – Part II

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“Moses lifts up the brass serpent. . .”

On the readings for June 15 – Part I noted that “June 15 is the First Sunday after Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday,” and that the readings are Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, Second Corinthians 13:11-13, and Matthew 28:16-20.

The post said June 15 honors “the Trinity” – God in three persons – an idea that even a smart guy like Thomas Jefferson didn’t understand. The post added, “Another thing that’s hard for many people to understand is that the ‘Creation Story’ found at the beginning of the book of Genesis must be taken as literally true, or else you go to hell.”

The post theorized that in writing his Creation Story, Moses had to use “language and concepts that his relatively-pea-brained contemporary audience could understand.” Moses’ ability to get his point across was limited by his audience’s limited powers of comprehension, the same problem God has in talking to us. (And it doesn’t help if you think you’re a “know it all.”)

Which is why you read the Bible: to expand your ability to comprehend the points God may be trying to get across to you. One good way to expand your ability is to see how others in the past expanded their ability to comprehend God.

Which brings us back to the readings for June 15.

As noted, in Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Moses told the story of the creation of the world and the history of that world, with a special emphasis on events impacting how the Hebrew people came to be wandering in the wilderness, after what seemed like a miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt. (But even then some people were prone to complain about “the good old days,” and ask why things had to change. See for example Numbers 14:2-3, and 21:4-5, below.)

A note here: Possibly because the Genesis reading was so long, the second reading and Gospel are extremely short. And by the way, to see the full readings check The Lectionary Page.

The International Bible Commentary characterized Psalm 8 as emphasizing “Man’s Place in God’s World.” The psalm begins and ends with the phrase: “O LORD our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!” And verse 2 – “Out of the mouths of infants” – was of special interest to Jesus, as noted in Matthew 21:14-16:

¹⁴The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. ¹⁵But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry ¹⁶and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?”

Moving along, in 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, the Apostle Paul gave his “Farewell and Benediction,” ending his second letter to the church he founded in Corinth. In the letter he offered a “polemic defense of his apostleship,” which was being attacked by some, while affirming his affection for the church. (See Second Epistle to the Corinthians – Wikipedia, the free …)

Finally, Matthew 28:16-20, told of The Great Commission, “the instruction of the resurrected Jesus Christ to his disciples that they spread his teachings to all the nations of the world:”

The eleven disciples went to Galilee. . . And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, [even] to the end of the age.”

The upper image is courtesy of Moses – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The full caption reads: “Moses lifts up the brass serpent, curing the Israelites from poisonous snake bites in a painting by Benjamin West.” As to some Hebrews whining about “the good old days,” see:

Numbers 14:2-3, “All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?'”

Numbers 21:4-5, “Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.'”

And incidentally, that complaining led God to punish the whiners: “Frustrated and impatient, they complained against Yahweh and Moses (Num. 21:4-5)[,] and God sent ‘fiery serpents’ among them. For the sake of repentant ones, Moses was instructed by God to build a ‘serpent of bronze’ that was used to heal those who looked upon it.” That “serpent of bronze” was the prototype of the Caduceus, symbol of today’s medical profession.

The lower image is courtesy of Great Commission – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

On boasting

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The Scribe just started re-reading his “Centennial edition” of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Steinbeck started the book by describing the Salinas Valley in California where he grew up, and especially the Salinas River. He wrote that the Salinas River in the summer was all dried out, and so “was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it.” He added, “You can boast about anything if that’s all you have.”

Finally he said, “Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast about it.”

* * * *

Maybe the reverse is true. Maybe the more you have, the less you should feel the need to boast.

And you would think that would be especially true of Christians, but apparently “boasting” by some was a problem even in St. Paul’s time. See for example First Corinthians 4:7 (NJB):

Who made you so important? What have you got that was not given to you? And if it was given to you, why are you boasting as though it were your own?

Of course some Conservative Christians even today might respond, “I earned everything I have, with hard work and the sweat of my brow.” But that raises a question: “Who gave you the brow? And who gave you the sweat?” See also 1^st John 1:9-10 (ESV):

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves… If we say we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us.”

In other words, what does a hard-core Christian have that wasn’t ultimately “given?” It could be said that he or she has done nothing but accept a free gift available to all. (Not to mention any “talents” he or she may have developed, talents that were also ultimately a gift from God.)

So maybe now is a good time for a bit less of the “us against them” rhetoric that seems to be the focus of so many Christians these days (at least judging by “that darned liberal media”), and more about the ministry of reconciliation Paul mentioned in 2d Corinthians 5:18.

Another example: Type the words “Christian hypocrite” into your computer search engine and you’ll get “About 3,340,000 results.” That’s over three million, three hundred thousand results, so something is definitely “wrong with this picture.” But Paul may have foreseen that as well, when he wrote in Romans 2:24, in the New International Verson, “As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

So maybe this is a good time for a little less bragging and a little more showing. . .

The “East of Eden” book-cover image is courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/EastOfEden.jpg. The quoted passages are from the John Steinbeck Centennial Edition of East of Eden, Penguin Books, at page 4.

As for the “Christian hypocrite” search-engine type-in, see for example, Why Are Christians So Hypocritical? – Explore God: “Christians are notorious for being hypocritical… A recent study found that among the various perceptions of Christians, the third most common is that they’re hypocritical. Eighty-five percent of respondents between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine voiced this reaction to Christians.” And notwithstanding the website’s thoughtful analysis, this public perception does present a problem that The Scribe and his Blog are trying to alleviate.

The lower image is courtesy of http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/wig/images/wrong_picture.jpg. As to “what’s wrong with the picture,” the site explained, “for one thing, the members of this track team all have the same face. Unless we are paying close attention to facial features, hair plays a big part in forming an image of individuals.”

There’s probably some kind of lesson there too…

Christians are notorious for being hypocritical. Why is that?

A recent study found that among the various perceptions of Christians, the third most common is that they’re hypocritical.¹ Eighty-five percent of respondents between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine voiced this reaction to Christians.

– See more at: http://www.exploregod.com/why-are-christians-so-hypocritical#sthash.UlgvilBz.dpuf

Christians are notorious for being hypocritical. Why is that?

– See more at: http://www.exploregod.com/why-are-christians-so-hypocritical#sthash.UlgvilBz.dpuf

On the readings for June 15 – Part I

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Holy Trinity, fresco by Luca Rossetti da Orta. . .

June 15 is the First Sunday after Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday. The readings for June 15 are Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, and Matthew 28:16-20.

“Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Trinity Sunday – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Sundays following Pentecost, until Advent, are numbered from this day. . . In the Church of England, following the pre-Reformation Sarum use, the following Sunday is the “First Sunday after Trinity”, while the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) now follows the Catholic usage, calling it the Second Sunday after Pentecost.

All of which is another way of saying that from now to the First Sunday of Advent – this year, November 30 – the readings in the church calendar are numbered as a given Sunday after Pentecost, up to the 23d and the Last Sunday after Pentecost, November 16 and 23, respectively.

As Wikipedia also noted, “The Christian doctrine of the Trinity . . . defines God as three consubstantial persons, expressions, or hypostases.” Wikipedia added that according to this “central mystery of most Christian faiths, there is only one God in three persons.”

If you’re really interested in further information, see Trinity – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. On the other hand, if you don’t understand the whole concept, don’t worry. Neither did Thomas Jefferson, so you’re in good company.

Jefferson questioned key parts of Christianity including Mary’s virgin birth, Jesus’ resurrection and Jesus’ teachings of being the messiah long before his death in 1826. “As early as 1788, we have a letter where he said he didn’t understand the trinity, and if he didn’t understand the trinity, how could he possibly agree to it?”

A note: Thomas Jefferson was a very smart guy, but he seems to have fallen into the common error of thinking that he could ever really understand everything there is to know about God. See for example Isaiah 55:8-9 (in The Living Bible translation):

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So Jefferson’s saying he wouldn’t believe anything he couldn’t fully comprehend was a bit like me saying The Force That Created The Universe is no greater than my feeble ability to comprehend “Him” (anthropomorphism), but that’s a subject for another post…

Another thing that’s hard for many people to understand is that the “Creation Story” found at the beginning of the book of Genesis must be taken as literally true, or else you go to hell.

But turning back to the idea of “originalism” – see On “originalism” – it may help to explore what was on Moses’ mind when he wrote this very first book of the Bible. And one thing that he had to keep in mind was that he didn’t want to get burnt at the stake for heresy.

Which brings up the question: Who was Moses writing for? Or the question could be: Who was Moses’ primary audience? The answer: Moses was writing mostly for his fellow Hebrews, but those fellow Hebrews didn’t have the level of educational advantage that he did. (Don’t forget, for the longest time Moses was literally a Prince of Egypt.)

So how would those fellow, primitive, backward Hebrews have reacted to being told things we now take for granted? How would they have reacted to being told, for example:

“You see that big bright round thing in the sky? The thing that disappears when it gets dark, to be replaced by a smaller not-so-bright round thing? Well, it looks like it revolves around us, but really, we live on this other big round thing, which is hurtling though space, and our big round thing actually revolves around that other Big Bright Round Thing In The Sky, not the other way around like we’ve been thinking all these years…”

The point is this: However Moses described the history of the world – for example in Genesis 1:1-2:4, part of the story the Hebrews from “Creation” up to where they were wandering in the wilderness – he had to tell the story using language and concepts that his relatively-pea-brained contemporary audience could understand.

In other words, Moses’ ability to tell the story he wanted was limited to his audience’s ability to comprehend. One other note: There was a guy named Galileo who did tell that “Big Bright Round Thing In The Sky” story almost 3,000 years after Moses, and he was lucky to avoid getting burnt at the stake as a heretic, but we digress…

For more on next Sunday’s readings, see “On the readings for June 15 – Part II,” coming up.

“Cristiano Banti‘s 1857 painting Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition.”

The upper image is courtesy of Wikipedia. The full caption: “Holy Trinity, fresco by Luca Rossetti da Orta, 1738-9 (St. Gaudenzio Church at Ivrea, Torino).”

“Jefferson questioned key parts…” See e.g. Controversial Thomas Jefferson book pulled over complaints of … See also Jefferson Bible – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which said Jefferson’s book titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth begins with an account of Jesus’s birth “without references to angels (at that time), genealogy, or prophecy. Miracles, references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus’ resurrection are also absent from his collection.”

The “Galileo” image is courtesy of the Wikipedia article, Heresy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition for heresy, but abjured his views and was sentenced to house arrest, under which he spent the rest of his life. Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse and detest” those opinions.

So again, imagine how those just-getting-used-to-the-idea-of-fire, desert-cutthroat Hebrews would have reacted if Moses had told that “Big Bright Round Thing In The Sky” story:

A note about timing: Moses was born some 1300 years before Jesus, and Galileo got in trouble for the “Round Thing In The Sky” story about 1600 years after that. See Moses (1393-1273 BCE) – Jewish History – Chabad.org, and the Wikipedia article on Galileo, attached to the article on heresy. (The “angry mob” image is courtesy of

ecantwell.tumblr.com/post/191101250/dear-angry-mob-oak-wood-tr…

http://wordspy.com/graphics/torch-and-pitchfork.jpg.)

On D-Day and confession

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Description of Planes from the 344th Bomb Group, which led the IX Bomber Command formations on D-Day on June 6, 2014. Operations started in March 1944 with attacks on targets in German-occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After the beginning of the Normandy invasion, the Group was active at Cotentin Peninsula, Caen, Saint-Lo and the Falaise Gap. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

“Do you realise that by the time you wake up in the morning 20,000 men may have been killed?”

– Winston Churchill to his wife the night before D-Day

And speaking of June 6th and D-Day…

In World War II – up to and beyond D-Day – some of our fathers, uncles and other relatives flew in bombers (B-17s and the like), from bases in England, with targets in Germany and other European countries.

The flight over the English Channel, then to their target and back was usually pretty harrowing; flak, enemy fighters, seeing fellow fliers shot down or killed before their eyes. But when they got back home, their ordeal was far from over.

The first thing they did was de-brief. They’d been “briefed” before the flight, where they learned their objectives and what they’d be up against. So de-briefings were just interviews after the fact – very probing interviews – at which the fliers got questioned to see how close they came to their objectives. How many and how effective were the enemy fighters? How close to the targets did they come? What did they do wrong? How could they have done better?

At the start of the war the de-briefings were “abysmal.” Fliers were wildly optimistic about how well they’d done, how close to the targets their bombs fell, and how many enemy fighters they’d shot down. And because they believed in the righteousness of their cause, at the start of the bomber offensive these fliers tended to downplay anything negative about their missions.

Part of the problem was that at the start the people who conducted the de-briefings weren’t all that experienced. They didn’t know how to ask the kind of skeptical, probing questions that got accurate feedback. (And at the beginning, such probing questions were no doubt greatly annoying to some fliers). The interviewers didn’t know how to ask, or felt uncomfortable asking, the kind of questions by which the fliers could learn what they did wrong.

But eventually, “Bomber Command” started using aerial-reconnaissance photos and other sophisticated tools of “feedback.” Then the fliers started seeing how wildly optimistic, and wildly inaccurate, those first de-briefings were. So in time. the de-briefings got better, more probing, and so more accurate. Then the missions themselves got more and more efficient.

* * * *

Maybe that’s what the Bible and/or the church concepts of sin and confession are all about. (Or should be about.) When we “sin” we simply fall short of our goals; we “miss the target.” When we “confess,” we simply admit to ourselves how far short of the target we were. And maybe the purpose of all this is not to make people feel guilty all the time, as some seem to imply.

So maybe the concepts of sin, repentance and confession are tools to help us get closer to the target “next time out,” even if we know we can never become “perfect.”

The upper image is courtesy of the Denver Post “Plog,”D–Day in Color, Photographs from the Normandy Invasion. The caption reads: “Planes from the 344th Bomb Group, which led the IX Bomber Command formations on D-Day on June 6, 2014. Operations started in March 1944 with attacks on targets in German-occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After the beginning of the Normandy invasion, the Group was active at Cotentin Peninsula, Caen, Saint-Lo and the Falaise Gap. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) #.”

The Churchill quote is courtesy of The Bombing Offensive | History.co.uk.

Sources include The Air War in Europe, by Ronald Bailey, Time-Life Books (1979), at pages 35-36, and Max Hastings’ Bomber Command, Dial Press/James Wade (1979), at pages 102-103.

As a side-bar, there was a similar bomber offensive against Japan, but not as many books or movies about it. And there were also air bases in Italy, from which the 15^th Air Force bombed Germany and its satellites, but that didn’t get much “ink” either. One exception was the book The Wild Blue, by Stephen Ambrose, about the 15^th Air Force and pilots including 22-year-old George McGovern. He flew 35 missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross, but was later accused by conservatives, in the 1972 presidential election, of being not patriotic or “manly” enough. (On that note, there was the story of McGovern giving a speech in the 1972 campaign, and being heckled by a Nixon fan. McGovern called him over and whispered, “Listen, you son-of-a-bitch, why don’t you kiss my ass?” The remark was widely reported and next night “KMA” buttons appeared at McGovern rallies. Years later, McGovern saw Senator James Eastland (Mississippi) looking across the Senate floor and chuckling. Eastland subsequently approached McGovern and asked, “Did you really tell that guy in ’72 to kiss your ass?” McGovern smiled and nodded, and Eastland said, “That was the best line in the campaign…” See George McGovern presidential campaign, 1972 – Wikipedia, the …)

So anyway, pages 35-36 of The Air War in Europe described the beginning of what came to be the “bomber offensive,” to December 1940. Before then, based on nothing but “rosy reports” from fliers themselves, after-action reports were wildly optimistic. With the advent of photo-reconnaissance (for example), fliers were “shocked” by negative feedback which showed how short of the mark they were falling. Early in the war it was discovered that for every ten air crews who claimed to drop their bombs on target, only one (10%) actually dropped the bomb load within five miles of the target.

And finally, pages 102-103 of Bomber Command described how, at the start of the war, the level and accuracy of de-briefings was “abysmal,” conducted by staff members with no idea how to ask the kind of questions that could evoke accurate answers, and who “invariably overstated crews’ claims.” The passage also noted that with time, both the level of de-briefings and the efficiency of the individual missions improved.

The lower image is courtesy of Combined Bomber Offensive – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The caption reads: “8th Air Force B-17 during raid of October 9, 1943 on the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory at Marienburg.”