The tree of knowledge of good and evil

 

March 20, 2014

  One of the readings for the first Sunday of Lent describes Eve and Adam’s eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the basis for the doctrine of original sin.

 Most people take such a story as a descriptions of an actual physical event. It is only in recent decades that we have become more aware of how symbols and metaphors function in human understanding. In some ways every statement we humans make is based on symbol and metaphor.

 Take, for example, our description of the ultimate particles that make up the atoms of our universe. Scientists describe these “particles” as either waves or packets. The very term “particles” is metaphorical. It makes us imagine something like a grain of sand. A “wave” makes us think of bodies of water whose surfaces are moved by the wind. A “packet” suggests something that you would put into the mail.

 In fact, scientists cannot reconcile the fact that this elementary particle sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle, so they use both metaphors. They cannot avoid using metaphors to speak about what they are studying. Every scientific description is based on metaphors, and every scientific explanation is a story, a “fictional” description of what we think is happening. 

 Example: “Cholera” is a disease that used to devastate cities (for example, Memphis in 1878). It reappears in conditions where sanitation is not provided, as in refugee camps. What causes the disease of cholera?

 Scientists will talk about a “microbe,” which is a tiny living organism. All of those words, “tiny,” “living,” and “organism” are metaphors, based on experiences from our everyday lives.

 Then scientists tell a story. The microbes live in water that has been polluted by sewage. When a person drinks that water, the microbe is transferred to the blood stream of the person, and the person gets sick.

 This is a fictional construction, a story. The actual event is far more complex. The microbe can be described in far greater detail, nowadays down to the level of its genetic composition. So can human blood be described in far greater detail, and how microbes “behave” in human blood.

 Back to Adam and Eve

 The Church accepts the theory (story) that the authors of the books of Scripture were human beings who were writing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They were not providing scientific descriptions of events, or perhaps more accurately, they were not providing descriptions any more detailed than the everyday “scientific” theories of their time.

 The traditional story developed from that original story is enshrined in later Scripture, for example, in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Adam and Eve “sinned” (a metaphor). They “disobeyed” God (another metaphor). This use of metaphor results in a story where God is like a human parent who gives orders to a child. When the child “disobeys,” the parent punishes the child. “Satan” tempted Eve.

 Here is another way to read the story. God (the term is metaphorical, so metaphorical that Jewish custom forbade even pronouncing the Name) created humans and knew that they would be tempted to push the boundaries of any situation. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a metaphor for human thinking and theorizing.

 Applying this to our present human condition, I use two examples.

 Nuclear fission. We have learned that by “splitting” the atom we can release immense amounts of energy. That knowledge (of good and evil) can free us from the problem of providing energy, or it can destroy our world.

 Genetic engineering. We have learned that we can manipulate the genetic code that underlies all living cells. That knowledge of good and evil can provide cures for terrible diseases as well as genetic disaster for the whole human race.

 God knew when God created us that we would not be able to resist pushing the boundaries. What happens when we push the boundaries?

 We get hurt. Adam and Eve got hurt. They had to leave paradise (a metaphor). The inventor of dynamite thought that he was providing something that would end wars. The exact opposite happened.

 God did not “punish” Adam and Eve. God created unfinished creatures, who would push the boundaries, get hurt, and have the possibility of living more fully as a result.

 Admittedly this interpretation of the story is not compatible with Paul’s interpretation of it in Romans. But we can live with competing stories, just as scientists live with the competing stories about particles as waves and as packets. We can read the Adam and Eve story the way Paul read it, or we can read it as I just re-told it. My way of re-telling it seems more compatible with the kind of God that Jesus described as “the Father,” a God passionately “in love” with each human being.

 Aside: the Adam and Eve story makes no mention of “Satan” or “the devil.” It is the “serpent” who tempts them. It is only later writers, like Paul, who identify the serpent with Satan.

 Our problem is that, down through the ages, we humans have been too ready to translate our stories into descriptions of actual physical facts, “scientific” facts. We have not appreciated how stories function in  human behavior.

 

"Any support you might have had . . ."

April 1, 2015

 

[This was published as a letter to the Quincy Herald-Whig around April 2015. I had footnoted the word “qorban” but the editors omitted the reference, which must have made that word meaningless to most readers.]

 

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

 Who is my neighbor?

 A man who fell among robbers.

 In our town, Quincy, there are people who have fallen among robbers. We are told that food pantries are in greater demand than in times past. People who had jobs have lost those jobs. We are told that successful politicians will provide jobs, while at the same time we are told that politicians should not provide jobs, private enterprise should.

 Young people who want to "contribute to society" find that society does not make contributing easy. They are told that they should do well in school. But it is hard to do well in school when you do not eat breakfast. It is hard to eat breakfast when one of your parents is in prison and the other one is working three jobs and is at work when you should eat breakfast. It's hard not to be in prison when the color of your skin makes people suspect you of bad intentions when you walk down the street. If people treat you like a criminal, why not just be a criminal and prove them right?

 The man who fell among robbers should have been more careful. He should not have been traveling alone. It was his own fault that he got robbed.

 When people are poor, it's their own fault. They don't work hard enough.

 Any support you might have had from me is qorban* [Mark 7:11]. Any support you might have had from me will be taken care of by the invisible hand. But it takes patience. The invisible hand is slow.

 The invisible hand might move faster if the government would give it a boost, but that would mean raising taxes. The Third Great Commandment is: do not raise taxes. Under no conditions should you raise taxes. Everyone needs every penny they earn, no matter how many pennies they earn. Don't touch my pennies.

 We love our neighbors as ourselves. We contribute to the Good News of Christmas. That should be enough. We pass by on the other side because we work hard, and that poor man should have been more careful. We are in a hurry. If we don't hurry, the invisible hand will punish us.

 We love our neighbors as ourselves.

 

 *(Mark 7:11)

 

 

 

When a pope apologizes

April 16, 2010

          Every time I pass a certain house on Lind Street in Quincy, I think of the time when a group of students living there were arrested for throwing a dog off the bridge into the Mississippi River at Quincy. They were drunk, which of course was no excuse.

          But then I think of a story my father told, more than once. When he was young, probably around 1915, he used to “fire boilers” at the Dominican Sisters’ convent in Springfield, Illinois. A sister there befriended stray cats. The cats became a nuisance. So my dad would shoot the cats and throw the corpses into the boiler. Telling the story years later, he would end by laughingly quoting the sister, “I can’t imagine what is becoming of my cats.” He was proud of his ingenuity.

          Our sense of what is morally acceptable changes. One generation sees no problem with shooting cats (or drowning them in a sack, which was another common custom). A later generation arrests you for doing it.

          There are far more serious changes in history. For centuries, church authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, regarded charging interest on loans as immoral (the practice was called “usury”). For centuries, Catholic church leaders defended the institution of slavery as morally acceptable. After all, didn’t the apostle Paul write a letter to Philemon telling him to take back a runaway slave? Paul didn’t question the institution of slavery itself.

          A Latin quotation from my seminary days comes to mind (courses were taught in Latin back then): “In processione generationis humanae, semper crescit notitia veritatis.” “In the course of human history, the knowledge of truth continually expands.” The quotation is from the Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus. It would be hard to find a stronger affirmation of what might be called “evolution” in human thought.

          Catholic theology is in a bind again, just as it was in the days when it had trouble with usury and slavery. Today it is dogma about contraception, stem cell research, and homosexual behavior.

          Today the bind is worse. Before 1871, the evolution of Church teaching was accepted. Change was usually controversial, especially when politics or economics were involved (as it was both regarding usury and slavery), but the change eventually came about. But in 1871 the First Vatican Council declared that the pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra on issues of faith and morals. That locked the Catholic Church into a position as untenable as the ancient custom of the Persians, who, according to the biblical book of Esther, regarded any decree of the king as unchangeable.

          The position didn’t look untenable when the Council bishops passed it, though two American bishops left the Council rather than vote in favor of it. (One of the bishops was from Little Rock, Arkansas. The joke was “the Little Rock met the Big Rock.”) Probably the other bishops regarded the move as a gracious gesture of support for the aging Pius IX, who was in the middle of the trauma of losing control of the Papal States.

          Statements ex cathedra (“from the chair”) are so rare that there have been only two since 1800: the declarations by Pius IX and Pius XII regarding Mary’s immaculate conception and assumption into heaven. The problem is that Roman authorities have not been able to resist the temptation to throw the cloak of infallibility over everything else that they put into the mouth of the pope.

          Pope John Paul II seems to have done everything in his power to undercut the concept of infallibility. The author Luigi Accattoli, in his book When a Pope Asks Forgiveness: The Mea Culpa's of John Paul II, counted, as of 1998, 94 times when John Paul apologized for something one of his predecessors did. The condemnation of Galileo was the most famous case. Yet John Paul II never took the implied step of saying that the doctrine of infallibility is untenable.

          Catholic moral practice, in the U.S. at least, is moving inexorably away from the official positions of the papacy. Judging from the birth rate among Catholics, the practice of contraception is not seen as immoral. A small group of conservative Catholics use this as an example of how the Church has sold out to secularism and modernity, but I know all kinds of adult Catholics who take their faith very seriously, make great sacrifices to make their faith real in their everyday lives, but never talk about contraception. Neither do most priests.

          Homosexual behavior, stem cell research, and artificial nutrition and hydration are issues where Catholic doctrine is slowly losing credibility. This is sad, because a Catholic sensibility has much to say about those issues. Instead, we are asked to keep silent about the ideas and go to war about the politics.

          There is a fine line between “selling out to secularism” and “dialogue with the culture.” We Catholics cannot ignore that line.

 

  

A Glossary for Nonviolent Prophets

written on September 4, 2008

        Aggression is the intent to hurt someone.

        Violence is the intent to hurt someone physically.

        Nonviolence is the strategy of being prophetic without intending to hurt anyone.

        Prophecy is trying to change something that other people do not want changed. Prophecy leads to conflict.

        Conflict is when one person takes a stand and another person takes an opposing stand.

        Conflict does not need to be aggressive. Conflict is part of healthy involvement with others. The goal of conflict is to create change that will benefit both parties. 

        The prophetic person takes a stand for change that she judges necessary for her own well-being. The person being challenged to change will benefit if the challenger can live more fully, because when one person suffers, all people suffer.

        Rosa Parks was a prophet. She judged that a change in the rules for riding buses was necessary for her own well-being. She took a stand by refusing to move to the back of the bus. The people who made the rules took the opposing stand. The result was that Rosa Parks was arrested and charged with violating the law. She continued to take her stand and was joined by others. 

        Rosa Parks was not just a woman who got fed up with a situation. She was part of an organization that was studying the tactics of nonviolent resistance with the goal of changing the racial situation in her community. 

        When Rosa Parks was arrested, this gave her nonviolent fellow prophets the occasion to take a public stand against the rules about riding buses. Throughout the struggle, the goal of the protestors was not to hurt the city officials and those who defended them. The goal was to change the rules. The hope of nonviolent protest is that the people opposing the protestors will come to see the justice of the protest and accept the change demanded. 

        Nonviolent protest often provokes violence against the protestors. That is the price of nonviolent prophecy. The prophet who suffers violence does not return violence with violence, because the intent to hurt another person is always counter-productive. 

        It is very hard to maintain a stance of nonviolence. The urge to strike back when you are hurt is very strong. Many, and maybe most, nonviolent movements eventually become co-opted by people who become impatient with the refusal to hurt in return. That is the story of the protest started by Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King was overtaken by Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, who shaped the later history of the civil rights movement. It is the story of nonviolent movements in Palestine, in Kosovo, and in Chechnya, to name some more recent conflicts. 

        Anger is a feeling.

        A feeling is a form of passion. The word “passion” comes from the same word as the word “passive,” which means that one is not in control. Feeling means that you are not in control of the hormonal physiology of your body. Feelings are neither right nor wrong, they just are. Anger is neither right or wrong, it just is. You don’t control it. You control your behavior when you are angry, but you don’t control the anger.

        When someone is hurting you intentionally, the natural reaction is anger. The nonviolent protestor does not react by trying to hurt the person causing the pain. The protestor can share the feeling—she can let the opponent know very clearly how she feels about being hurt, but she does not lash out intending to hurt the opponent. She uses “I” statements—“I feel hurt, I feel like a child who has just been kicked by another person.” 

        Anger is in itself not bad or counter-productive. It can be a powerful aid in staying motivated to change a situation. What is bad and counter-productive is to try to hurt the person you are angry at. The behavior needs to be controlled, not the emotion. 

        Example of violent protest. You tell me I cannot do something. I react by calling you a slut, or a bastard. Words like “slut” or “bastard” are aggressive words. Their intent is to cause hurt, and they succeed. If words do not seem to be enough, I throw something at you, or I strike you. 

        The more I try to hurt you, the stronger my anger becomes, and the situation escalates. This is what it means when you say that I am “out of control.” 

        Example of nonviolent protest. You tell me I cannot do something (for example, ride in the front of the bus). I react by refusing to go to the back of the bus. I am not trying to hurt you. I am taking a stand for what I think is right. You react by trying to hurt me. I refuse to try to hurt you back. 

        Nonviolence as a political strategy requires the involvement of many other people. Rosa Parks’s protest succeeded because thousands of others in Montgomery joined her by refusing to ride buses. Eventually the cost of the protest became so great for the defenders of the status quo that those defenders gave in and changed the rules. 

        Changing the rules was painful for the officials of Montgomery, but the goal of the protestors was not to cause the pain. The goal was to change the rules. There is pain on both sides of a nonviolent conflict. 

        The nonviolent protestor can use several theories to explain the strategy of nonviolence. One theory is that nonviolence leads to redemption. This is the story of Jesus. Another is that nonviolence leads to political change. This is the story of Gandhi. Martin Luther King appealed to both theories. He sought political change and spiritual redemption, for the good of the protestors and for the good of their opponents. 

        An opponent is someone against whom you are taking a stand. An enemy is someone you want to hurt. Nonviolence uses the term “opponent” rather than the term “enemy,” because the protestor hopes that at some point the opponent will become a friend. 

        Nonviolence is not non-resistance. The nonviolent protestor resists but does not try to hurt. Resistance can provoke violent reactions, and in fact usually does so. It is striking how violently political officials attack nonviolent protestors. 

        The Dalai Lama is trying to hold to a strategy of nonviolence, but Chinese officials react by accusing him of fomenting violence. This is the same reaction Dr. King faced. It seems that violent reactions are so ingrained in human cultures that any resistance is interpreted as aggressive, and is therefore met with violence.

        “Respect” is a key concept in conflict situations. Many conflicts escalate because one party does not “show respect” for the other.

        To show respect is to use rituals of deference. Examples of rituals of deference: paying attention when you speak, not interrupting you, bowing, rising when you enter the room, shaking hands, smiling. 

        Examples of rituals of non-deference: ignoring you, staring at you, refusing to answer when you speak, calling you a name.

        Violence is the height of disrespect. 

        The nonviolent protestor continues to use rituals of deference towards her opponent. The prophet respects the opponent. 

        To tell someone, even a child, that she is not allowed to speak is disrespectful. 

        A child should be taught to behave respectfully. There are rituals of deference that children should pay to parents, but keeping silent is not one of those rituals. 

        Parents need to be respectful to children. I think one ritual of deference that an adult owes to a child is to listen to the child. 

        Young people should be taught to engage in nonviolent conflict. Their anger can be beneficial, if it does not lead to aggressive attempts to hurt others. School officials need to experience that anger. We adults want to back up the children in their struggle to see changes made in the bad behavior of school personnel. We want to teach them how to resist bad situations in ways that will be both redemptive and effective. Since we ourselves are not sure how to do that, we must engage them in the discussion of how to do it.