What Are The Extremes When They Become More Common

 We seem to be seeing a growing number of extremes and Climate Change is producing more than its fair share. Droughts, downpours, Category-5 Hurricanes, wildfires (Climate Change lengthens the wildfire season), groups of tornados, and disappearing ice seem to be happening both more intensely and with greater frequency. An old saying aptly metaphorically describes what we have been seeing in the 21st century: 'When it rains, it pours.'

We now have to start adjusting to these Climate Change caused extremes if we wish to keep some semblance of order in our world. Unfortunate, adjusting, or change, is not the strong suit for many of the world's privileged--and that includes me too.

But if only Climate Change was the only cause of the extremes we witness or experience today. We are now facing extremes in human behavior. 

In his Black To The Future comedy routine, Lewis Black complained truthfully in jest that his job as a comedian was over. That was because his niche of being crazier that what is in the world has now been outsourced to reality. Unfortunately, he said that in 2016. And by today's standards, 2016 was mild .

The year 2020 had its own mild start. But despite that start, 2020 was the craziest  years with the pandemic and the extreme, but necessary, measures used by many nations in the world. Then there was the election and the challenges to the election. There was a President and his followers who could not seem to grasp multiple realities from Climate Change to Covid to the existence of systemic racism to to the results of the Presidential election. And they took the whole nation along for the ride that claimed to be headed toward the reality but it always managed to skirt it.

As for 2021, it was somewhat like the month of March to 2020 in that 2021 came in like a lion. However, we can't say that it is going out like a lamb. Rather, it seems to be exiting like a bear in a restless hibernation. World leaders flirting with world war as they seem to threaten takeovers of other nations, a relatively high percentage of people refusing to receive a vaccine that would give good, though not perfect, protection to the virus, gangs participating in smash and grab robberies, increases in certain kinds of violent crime, the ongoing denial of systemic racism, international hackers causing great damage supply chains, hospitals, police depts and so on with ransomware. And we still have quite a few too many working politicians who have refused to believe reality.  It seems like a growing number of people are losing almost all self-control over their actions.

Of course why we describe 2021 as having come in like a lion is the January 6 insurrection. A President who was out of control inspired a significant number of his followers to go out of control in order to stop the Constitutional process of counting the electoral ballots.

And with all that craziness around us, we must ask ourselves what we can do to reverse what's happening. Well, there is not much we can do to  change the actions of other nations, but we can try to address the problems that are in our own nation. But to do that, we must be willing to critically look at the status quo to see what needs to change. And there is that word 'change' again.

See, if we are not willing to change, then we will hampered by a conflict of interest when looking at both the past and the present. We will be hampered because if we are not willing to change, we will have harder time acknowledging that the American way of life has significantly contributed to many of the out of control actions we see, hear or read about today. The only responsible response to such an acknowledgment is to change. But if one has already refused to change, one is more resistant to changing what must be changed about the American way of life.

And so for as long as we are not willing to change, we are stuck in kind of a stalemate except there is one difference. In chess, a stalemate produces no winners or losers. In real life, when a stalemate prevents us from making necessary changes, then our world becomes like a ticking time bomb. We don't know when the bomb will explode, but for as long as nothing is done to defuse the bomb, we know that it will eventually explode. And when that happens, all of us will be put in the same boat as having lost. Some will lose more than others, but all will lose.

No Change, No Survival

If one blogs long enough, one eventually runs into the problem of continually repeating oneself. And that is what I feel like I am doing now. The world, by that I mean the people of the world, is pursuing self-destruction in two ways. One way is the new nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Russia and the desire of others to obtain WMDs. The second way is that our way of life is so damaging the environment that we are condemning even our immediate descendants to more difficult lives if not the inability to survive. And it looks like too many of the world's leaders are not willing to do enough to arrest that destruction until it is too late--which might happen soon.

If you listen to the Noam Chomsky lecture included in this post (click here for the lecture and proceed to the 10:12 mark of the video), one of the solutions to these problems is to obey the law. Here he is referring to the U.N. Charter which was ratified by our government and thus, because of The Constitution, is the law of the land. And that Charter prohibits the use of force or even the threat of force to resolve conflicts.

In addition Chomsky also notes that the proliferation of nuclear weapons could advance if the U.S. does not follow U.N. resolutions that it sponsored. 

As for the environment, Chomsky notes that many other nations have taken significant efforts to stop the destruction of the environment. He gave an example of how Saudi Arabia is trying to reduce its impact on the environment while the U.S. almost stands alone by not taking significant steps address climate change. And we need to do that because of all of the observable signs that point to how man-caused climate change is closer to us than just appearing on the horizon.

In the end, there is one reason why the Americans are allowing their nation to participate in activities that both make the use of nuclear weapons more likely and destroying the environment. That reason is the reluctance to change. We don't want to change from feeding the military industrial complex with more and more contracts. We don't want to change from America's imperial role in controlling the parts of the world that it can. And we don't want to change from a way of life that is destroying the environment.

Especially regarding the last reluctance to change, we have, for a long time, lived in what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "thing-oriented" society (click here for the reference). In such a society, gadgets, profit motives, and property rights are counted as being more important than people. And King went on to say that for as long as we are such a society, we will suffer from racism, materialism, and militarism. And here is the point, we have really never converted to a person-oriented society in order to eradicate racism, materialism, and militarism. 

So if we haven't changed in order to eliminate those three problems, do we see any hope that we will change in order to avoid self-destruction? And if we continue stay the course, who will we blame when we come closer and closer to our self-destruction?

If we are not going to change, then what is the point of life? Is it to live for our own pleasures until the end while denying the harm such living does to others? Our reluctance to change seems to be at odds with how we prefer to see ourselves. For we prefer to see ourselves as the 'land of the free and the home of the brave.' And despite that self-image and the fact that freedom implies the ability to change, we are very reluctant to change. And now that our survival depends on changing, our willingness to change will determine our fate.



 

Conservative Christianity's Three-Front War

It seems that we have multiple wars inside the United States. The  War on Christmas and the War on Women are two of the most well known wars that "exist." Of course they are not official wars, they are simply descriptions of cultural conflicts in society. However, I would like to add one more to the list of wars in American society. That war is the religiously conservative Christian War Against Change. Considering that many of us religiously conservative Christians (a.k.a., flaming fundamentalists with flaming referring to being passionate about the tenets of Christian Fundamentalism) view America as very our own special homeland. It is our homeland because we view America as starting as a Christian nation being built on biblical principles. And what we have seen is a spiritual societal coup by secularism so that many of us feel that we have lost our rightful place in society. That place is that of being privileged in exercising some degree of control over society's laws and its culture. But in the words of a famous piece of Jazz music, 'things ain't what they use to be.'

From my experiences on the Christian blogfront, my fellow religiously conservative Christians understandably see current changes as threats and are fighting a three front war against change. I should note here my political views differ quite a bit from most of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. I am a socialist and they tend to be either Republicans or Conservative Libertarians. Because of the differences in our politics, I can't agree with their war against change. And that tells us something right there. That perhaps, this war against change is more naturally driven than spiritually driven.

The fronts on which many of my fellow flaming fundamentalists are the Modernism front, the Post Modernism front, and a historical front where the historical subject of front is our nation's past.

What are meant by Modernism and Post Modernism? One way of understanding human time periods is to break them up by what metanarratives are predominantly used by people to understand the world around them. Metanarratives themselves refer to beliefs and stories people used to interpret the world. There are three time periods using the predominant metanarrative of the time to distinguish each division of time. They are Pre Modern, Modern, and Post Modern. With Pre Modernism, people used some kind of faith or belief in the supernatural to interpret the world around them. In other words, one's faith or belief in the supernatural served the metanarrative that most people relied on. With Modernism, people rely mostly on science and reason to interpret the world around them. Thus here, science and reason served as the metanarrative for most people. Post Modernism is the odd child of the three. For with Post Modernism, the metanarratives of both Pre Modernism and Post Modernism are rejected. What serves as a basis for truth then? It is kind of a mixture between relativity and an outcome-based truth system. With the latter, the truth of a belief or set of beliefs depends on whether they have produced oppression or exploitation, Since history is replete with many examples of people using their faith or science as a justification for dominating over others, both are rejected as having any ability to provide a metanarrative. Thus, Post Modernism is the most reactionary of the three time periods.

So now we can discuss the first front on the Christians War Against Change: the fight against Modernism. Now what will be said here are general statements that apply to the majority of religiously conservative Christians I have encountered or observed. They are not absolute statements applying to all religiously conservative Christians.

Now it isn't the case that religiously conservative Christians who are fighting against Modernism reject all that science and reason have to offer. Rather, there are two specific areas where these Christians see themselves in a battle. These areas are climate change and the social sciences. What is the Christian beef against the science of climate change? It is that if the claims made by climate change scientists are true, then we Christians must make changes to our way of life here in America. In addition, many businesses which serve America must also make changes.

In other words, there isn't anything about climate change science that directly challenges Christian belief. And yet, climate change science has spurred a tribal response from many religiously conservative Christians. And by tribal response, I mean that Christians tend not to accept what unbelieving climate change scientists say about what is happening and our future. They will sometimes listen to fellow believers who talk about climate change. But outside of that, there is real skepticism experienced by my fellow religiously conservative Christians toward climate change science. 

And this tells us something that perhaps we Christians may not want to admit. That the reason why we are skeptical is because of what we have so tightly associated with our Christian faith: our nation's status quo and business interests. Of course, there is another factor involved in the Christian opposition to climate change science. That other factor is that of a turf war. Who can best describe the world around us? Is is secular science with its rejection of Creation and belief in evolution, or is it the Bible with its Creation account?

Psychology is another battle front where religiously conservative Christianity is fighting against Modernism. And though the battle lines are not as sharply defined as they are in Christianity's fight against climate change science, what we see is still a turf battle for who can best describe the world around us. What we do see here is more intermixing between Christianity and psychology than we see with climate change. But the more conservative the Christian, the more suspicious they are toward what can be learned from psychologists.

The second front religiously conservative Christians are fighting on is the one against Post Modernism. And the particular battle where most of the fighting takes place centers on LGBT issues. The current battle over same-sex marriage served as the Waterloo for Christian control over culture according to many of the religiously conservative Christians I have read. And when we add transgenderism to the mix, what many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians have concluded is that American society has rejected belief in absolutes and objective truth.

But why did so many religiously conservative Christians feel the need to oppose the legalization of practices like Same-Sex Marriage (SSM)? Many of the Christians bloggers I have read felt that it was an attack on marriage and that society's future revolves on the health of marriage. But such doesn't provide a complete answer because the state of marriage without SSM was not good anyway. Divorce rates and the number of single parents were way too high to say that marriage was doing well. My intuition says that much of the religiously conservative opposition to SSM was a look at who is moving into the neighborhood argument. Basically, this refers to neighborhoods in the past whose property values might have fallen once minorities moved into homes. Unfortunately, such reveals just a sliver of nation's deep historical problem with racism.

So here, many religiously conservative Christians argued that marriage would no longer be valued as it was if same sex couples were allowed to be married too. This in-your-face cultural change of having to see same sex couples' marriages being put on an equal status with heterosexual marriages signaled a 'sky is falling' response by many a Christian. Rod Dreher's Benedict Option was in response to changing sexual mores, especially the acceptance of homosexuality in society, such as seen in SSM.

The final front is more historic in nature. It is the belief, despite the rampant racism in our nation's history, that this nation was founded on biblical principles and thus was created as a Christian nation. And that nation was not only Christian, it believed in limited government. And thus the belief in limited government has become strongly associated with religiously conservative Christianity. So here we see the political front of the War Against Change. And many religiously conservative Christians seem to believe that conservative political ideology, especially when it emphasizes limited government, is wedded to their faith.

But why would this be the case? The only answer I can come up with revolves around tribalism and the resulting turf battles between secular liberals when they are in charge of government and the Church over who knows what is best for the American people. Many religiously conservative Christians who believe in limited government believe so because they see the Church as being solely responsible for helping those in need. Of course for that to happen, government would have to support the Church and that would give the Church a privileged position in society. While for others, they simply want as little interference by the government as possible.
 
But the tribalism itself is another key to understanding why many religiously conservative Christians believe in limited government. For that tribalism tells many of us religiously conservative Christians that we have everything to teach these secular liberals and nothing to learn from them.

It is unfortunate that many of us religiously conservative Christians are fighting on any of these 3 fronts, let alone all of them. It is totally unnecessary. For many of us, the fear of compromising or even losing our faith by benefiting from unbelievers drives us to fight this war. Ironically, this doesn't stop many of us religiously conservative Christians from wedding our faith to conservative political ideology. In addition, intolerance and fear of those who are different is also a contributing factor. In the end, our War Against Change not only hurts us and not only hurts those around us who would benefit from change, it dishonors the Gospel which has been sent by God to save those who believe.

Between The Rock Of History And The Hard Place Of The Future

Robert Jensen is one of my favorite activists to listen to and read. Though he is a member of a Presbyterian Church (St Andrews Presbyterian Church, which is a church in the PCUSA denomination), we really don't come from the same religious tradition. He does not believe in Jesus as being God's Son (click here) while I do. But Jensen says he believes in the "core principles" that Christ taught. So in a way, Jensen's Christianity resembles that of many people including Thomas Jefferson.

If at this point, my fine fellow flaming fundamentalist friends and family have found reason to ignore what he has said and written, they would be missing out on a buried treasure of convicting messages. For, in his work as an activist, Jensen can challenge us with the best of them to follow a certain set of principles taught by Christ. And so us Christians would do ourselves a favor to learn what we can even it is from confessing nonbelievers.

The article being reviewed here is about the failure of American intellectuals to stand up to wealth and power (click here for the article). The role of the intellectual as people like Chomsky sees it is to act as a rational prophet, a prophet who warns the people about the direction in which society is going but does so using logic and science rather than inspiration and divine revelation. According to Cornel West, our religious institutions from all faiths have already lost prophetic voices. And as a result, we see society racing towards a self-annihilation while the alarm bells are too faint to wake us from our dreamworld.

We could get into the specifics of the article on why intellectuals are content to comfort people in being satisfied with the status quo,  but you can garner that for yourself by reading the article. It is Jensen's train illustration that we are here to first understand and then use to learn how to respond to the many crises that jepardously threatens our collective futures. 

In this illustration, one sees that the train one is riding on is about to derail. So one suggests that rather than continuing the ride, the train should stop and all who are on the train should disembark and continue the trip on foot. The response of all others to this suggestion is to refuse to believe the danger because the people are not only too comfortable, they have grown accustomed to their surroundings. So, to expect all others to follow the suggestion to leave the train is to be unrealistic.

This metaphor applies to how most of us respond to the two main threats that act as the sword of Damocles which hang over the collective heads of all mankind: war and environmental catastrophe. For when leftists, like myself, repeat the warnings of Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King about how war will eventually cause the extinction of mankind, we are told to get real.  We are told that because war is almost as old as sin and thus it is only from an idealistic "pie in the sky" attitude that thinks we could change now. In other words, the reality of history tells us that we will never change and so why waste one's breathe on asking for it. Since people have always relied on wars in the past, they always will do so in the future. That is reality.

This reality of history narrative reduces all reality to the past in order to give us permission to not change course despite the evidence that tells us that we are racing to certain doom. Why? Because to change course, to depart from the train, would result in participating in a disruption of our normal way of living and doing things, a change that would introduce too much immediate discomfort. And so the desire to avoid this discomfort enables us to deny the second reality, that is the reality of our coming destruction, the reality of our future. For how can we ever escape extinction when we inevitably arrive in an age of the proliferation of WMDs while still relying on war and force to resolve our most basic conflicts?

At this point, some will be tempted to ask, what comfort can possibly come from relying on war to solve our problems? To the victors, go the comforts. War brings us the comforts of the acquisition of conquest and control. But here, even History tells us that no one is on top for ever. Every great nation and empire has fallen from its victorious perch.

The same point can be applied to our coming environmental apocalypse. Despite the rising amount of CO2 in the atmostphere and the environmental changes that have already taken place, not only have we refused to change, we are doing worse. So not only are we not cutting down on our use of fossil fuels, we are extracting these fuels in ways that are more and more harmful to the environment. From mountaintop removal to fracking to tarsands extraction to deep sea drilling, we are increasing our econoligcal footprint rather than minimizing it. 

And it isn't just our lifestyles that are attacking the environment, it's China's as well since it has surpassed us in the production greenhouse gases. Our demotion to 2nd place was already predated by the China excuse for not changing our way of life. That excuse asks, why we should change our consumption of fossil fuels to protect the environment if it no longer matters what we do because of what China is doing? In other words, we are too comfortable to get off the train.

Certainly a comfy past presents a hard and fast reality against asking people to change. But there is more than one reality in today's world. Global climate change is accelerating before our own eyes as can be seen in the disappearing of ice in the North Pole and the breaking up of ice in the South Pole along with the dead zones in the ocean. And with this global climate change comes life threatening weather changes to some areas because of the water supply problems, wildfires, the diminishing ability to grow crops, the increase in the number of stronger and stronger storms, and the raising of global sea levels which threatens to evict millions from their homes.

While the reality of History holds us back from making lifesaving changes, the reality of the Future is banging on our door and telling us to take shelter. These two antagonistic realities are battling for both our souls but for our future existence. 

This battle between History's claim on us and the Future's ominous prophecy should be familiar to us Christians because evangelism occurs when we make the Bible's version of this conflict known to people. The reality of the past tells us that we can only expect people to sin and reject God. The reality of the Future warns us of what will happen if we do not repent and believe in Jesus to save us. If such a battle between History and the Future occurs at this level, should we be surprised that a similar kind of battle occurs on earth between the reality of past and current seeds we've sown and the dangerous harvest that will be reaped if we don't change now? Though Jensen does not believe in the Gospel call and thus the dueling realities that comes in evangelism, his illustration of the train that is about to be derailed certainly tells us of the more than one reality we are accountable for on earth. And we need every reminder because those who are addictably comfortable with History's reality want to deny what is coming in the future.

So it is knowledge of these dueling realities in Jensen's illustration which can potentially save us. And whether it actually saves us depends on how we respond and whether we are willing to leave our comfort zone for sake of our future and that of others.