LACRIMOSA

I have thought long and hard about the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. How awful that so many lives were cut short. The taking of any life is a dreadful thing, but I find the level of horror much higher when it is a young person who is killed. A whole life ahead of them lost. We ought to remember them in our prayers and ask God to give comfort to the families and friends. I also hope that the many people traumatized by this incident will receive help and support.

Peole are trying to make sense of it all, but I am not sure there is sense to be made. The murderer was obviously severely mentally disturbed. All the warnings were there, but we lack the will to address problems of this magnitude. There aren't enough places in secure psychiatric units to hold all the mentally ill who have committed crimes let alone those who might commit a crime. Our legal system is rightfully reluctant to deprive anyone of liberty on the grounds that they might commit a crime. And yet I can't help but think that in this case, where even a judge found Cho a danger to himself and others, there ought to have been something that could have been done to restrain him.

My experience has been that it is difficult to get help for people who suffer from mental illness. The curse of this kind of affliction is that it can make the person unable to see a problem and to refuse to accept help. I have personally seen people having a psychotic episode suffer because they had no way to get to the public health clinic. (I've taken the persons to hospital myself.) I have had persons who were disturbed and suffering paranoia make all sorts of accusations and threats against me, only to find there was nothing that could be done to make the person get help. I have had students in college who had some type of mental illness that didn't make them dangerous in any way, but it did prevent them from functioning at the level that they needed to function in order to complete the course I was teaching. In every case they refused to accept any assistance I offered so that they could succeed. I have seen the agony of families with a member suffering from dementia, but lacking the financial resources to provide custodial care. It is unbelievable that the richest, most technologically advanced country in the history of the world can't do better in carrying for people who cannot care for themselves.

I was greatly disturbed that the echos from the shots had hardly faded before the gun-nuts were out warning people against using this event as a reason for placing any controls on guns. And the right-wing wackos on talk radio were already saying that if more people had concealed weapons this sort of thing could have been stopped. Somebody with a gun could have taken out the shooter and saved countless lives. Maybe that's true in this case, but I doubt it. I can imagine frightened people accidently shooting innocent people because, unlike law-enforcement officials, they really wouldn't know how to handle the situation. I have trouble with assumption that increasing the number of weapons per capita will decrease the number of people murdered.

I don't see a problem with people who collect guns or use guns for target shooting or for hunting (real hunting, not this nonsense where people buy an animal or a flock of birds and then proceed to slaughter them.) I don't see a problem in people having guns in their homes for protection and maybe for some people in specific circumstances to carry weapons in public. I am just very uneasy with lots of people carrying concealed weapons just because they want to. I have watched several fender-bender traffic accidents erupt into fist-fights and wondered what would have happened if one of the persons were carrying a gun. I have also know people who got wounded in the cross-fire between two people shooting it out. How many more times would that happen if the number of guns people were carrying in public were increased?

I am not proposing outlawing guns. As a practical matter we couldn't do it. There are too many already loose in our country, more are made all the time, and illegal ones pour in from overseas. We have no idea what's in most of the shipping containers that are unloaded in our ports every day. We don't have enough custom agents to find out. It would be easy enough to put a small nuclear weapon let alone a bunch of Uzzis in a container and send it into the country. We seem to be in a panic to build a wall and send out the National Guard to make sure no poor Mexican sneaks across the border to work illegally, but ignore the real dangers. No, it would be hard to limit the number of guns.

And then there is the constitutional right to bear arms. Of course the NRA seems blind to purpose of that right, to provide for a well-regulated militia, not to arm a bunch of vigilantes. And what our founding fathers pictured as arms was a muzzle-loading musket, not the sophisticated weapons people are able to own today. Why does someone other than law enforcement need a Glock 19 that can fire five rounds a second, with 33 shots in a magazine that can be changed in two seconds? And why would they need hollow-point bullets that only have the purpose of killing people?

I found it ironic that after 9/11, the Attorney General refused to allow investigators to review gun registrations for clues. It's perfectly all right to spy on American citizens, listen in on their phone conversations, find out what books they are checking out of the library–all without a warrant–but it's not all right to find out who might have a weapon.

Gun ownership aside, something else troubles me. It was horrible, horrible that 32 people were murdered at Virginia Tech. Yet the murder rate in the U.S. is so high that nearly 50 people are killed every day, about 2/3 of them with guns. We are hardly aware of that. Was it Stalin who said something like when one man is killed it's a tragedy; when millions are killed it's a statistic. We politicize the problem rather than trying to solve it. Our governments have become ineffective bureaucracies that do everything except serve the people.

Case in point: in our community we have an excellent agency called Church Without Walls. They work with youth who have come under the juvenile justice system and with youth who seem to be headed for trouble. They are very effective at turning these youth around and keeping them out of trouble. They recently applied for a grant to continue their work. It's a grant they have received in the past and had every right to believe they would receive again because they actually accomplish something worthwhile. In some sort of administrative oversight, one form didn't get signed when the proposal was submitted. Did the agency that received the proposal call the administrator to tell him he made a mistake and he had to come sign the document? No. They rejected the proposal outright. The program will not be funded. Some kids who might have been rescued will be lost. Who knows how much grief that will cause sometime in the future? Who will save us from the idiocy of our own government?

Where are some leaders with vision and common sense, people who will make government work for the common good instead of for special interests? Where are leaders who will do what's right and not what's politically expedient? Where are they? They lose the elections. People prefer to be told what they want to hear rather than the truth. So the problems continue. Oh, there will be a fuss for a while, maybe congressional hearings, maybe even a select committee that will make some well-reasoned suggestions that will be ignored. And on it will go.

What can we do? People of good-will must do whatever they can to make things better now how small the results are. People of faith must continue to commit themselves in prayer. And we must struggle on the way, no mater how dangerous and convoluted it seems.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

The Royal Way?

I just finished the book Lilibet: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth IIby Carolly Eirckson. It's one of a couple dozen books on the British royal family in my collection. Personally, I find most of the royal family a pretty distasteful lot. Most of them don't seem to be very pleasant with the exception of the late Queen Mother, and even she could be a tartar when it came to the Duchess of Windsor or Princess Diana. It seems to be a fairly dysfunctional family. The Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and all of the Queen's children except Prince Edward have been divorced–a good deal higher percentage than normal.

To a degree, I admire the queen, though. She has had an unceasing devotion to duty ever since it was clear that she would be heir to the throne. Something about that whole Windsor clan, however, makes them rather rigid and lacking in sympathy. I don't know if it's the culture of the family or the results of inbreeding. Every ruler since Victoria except George VI has married a cousin of some sort. Even Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, a commoner, were cousins, both descendants of James I.

So what's the attraction of the royal family for me? Just their way of life. They live in a manner almost unheard of in our own day. Several generations ago people much lower on the social ladder lived lives more like the Windsors. Remember the TV series Upstairs-Downstairs?The four Bellamys (a member of Parliament married to the daughter of nobleman) lived in a house staffed by a butler, two footmen, a lady's maid, a head-house parlor maid, an under-house parlor maid, a chauffeur, a cook, and a kitchen maid. That's better than two servants per person. That much staff wasn't so unusual even in the United States. Emily's Post's 1945 edition of Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage lists seventeen different positions that might be staffed in a large house, and some positions might require several staff persons. I suppose there are still people who live that way, but not many. A family with even one live-in servant is highly unusual, at least in the circles I live in.

Well, even granted that wealthy families once had big staffs, the Queen is the Queen after all, and as head of state it is natural that she requires more than the usual number of people to keep things running. I have to say the most unusual staff members are the Queen's Swan Keeper assisted by the Queen's Swan Uppers whose job it is to go out along the River Thames with representatives of the Worshipful Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Company of Dyers in order to mark the newly hatched cygnets (baby Swans) so they can determine who owns which swans. I don't know why they do that anymore. I have no idea when the last monarch had swan for dinner, but that's the way it's been done for hundreds of years. Some of those swans belong to the Queen and she's darn sure going to keep track of them. She can be rather tight about money.

The story is told that one day a young Price Charles took his dog out for a walk at Windsor Castle, but came back with out the leash–called a lead in merry old England. The Queen promptly sent her son back out to find the lead. "Dog leads cost money," she declared.

I guess the whole life-style of the Royal Family is so exotic that it seems to be a fantasy. Of course, some of the family seem to live in a fantasy. Early in Elizabeth's reign Prince Philip complained that they were having to cut back on expenditures and he might have to give up polo. Poor Prince. Now tonight as I am writing this some incident with Prince Harry is being reported that sounds like he came out of a club drunk and tried to punch out a photographer. Sheesh. I'd say I'm glad the American Revolution replaced the monarch with an elected president except I'm not sure we're all that much better off. I seem to recall our current Chief Executive had been arrested for driving under the influence as a young man. The one nice thing about the Royal Family is that at least their foibles only affect them and not the rest of the world. You don't have to worry about HRM The Queen having a bad day and declaring war on Slabovia or something.

Well, I think I'll fill a Royal Albert china cup with Twining's tea (By appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Tea and Coffee Merchants R Twining & Co. Ltd.) and call it a day. Some of us have to work tomorrow, and there won't be any Page of the Presence to bring breakfast to our suite. We are not amused.

Follow the true Royal way, and may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

Religion, Crutches, and Glasses

"These people use religion as a crutch," so declared a nonreligious talk-show host in Miami years ago. This was his usual response to a discussion in which a religious caller quoted the Bible. His objection was that these callers couldn't use their minds because they derived their views from a book, the Bible. It really wasn't true that people couldn't use their minds; it's just that they regarded statements from the Bible as authoritative without further evidence, while the host did not. With some examination it would have turned out that the host also made assumptions that certain propositions were true with no evidence. It often happens that people assume things are true and give little thought to these assumptions unless challenged.

An example: Euclidian geometry assumes the truth of the proposition that given line a, and point b outside that line, within the plane determined by line a, and point b there is one and only one line that contains point b and is parallel to line a. That seems to be obviously true, but it cannot be proven. As a matter of fact, there are systems of geometry that assume either that there are multiple parallel lines or no parallel lines, and some of them are more useful in physics that standard Euclidian geometry. What does that have to do with religion? It simply illustrates that both religious and nonreligious people work with unprovable propositions. Using unproven assumptions in and of itself does not indicate that religious people don't use their minds and more than it indicates nonreligious people don't use their minds.

The expression "Religion is a crutch" is used in another sense, however. It is a pejorative meaning that people can't face the hard "facts of life" and turn to religion as a way of getting through hard times. The metaphor of a crutch is problematic to start with because it assumes there is something wrong with a crutch. Sprain an ankle some time and you discover that a crutch is a necessity if you're going to get around. Of course a person could always do without the crutch and crawl or go nowhere, but it seems to me that a crutch can be an essential.

I simply reject the metaphor in the first place. It is far too limiting. Let's talk about religion as a pair of glasses instead and see where it gets us. The purpose of glasses is to correct vision so that one can see what's actually there. I pick up a phone book and I think there are names and phone numbers in the book, but I can tell for certain without my glasses. I would hold that religion works like a pair of glasses. It allows a person to see what's really there.

It often happens that people don't realize they need glasses. They just assume the world is a little fuzzy. It's only when they actually try on a proper set of glasses that they see what they have been missing. That's the way it works with the Christian religion in my view. You have to actually try it to see the difference.

When I was growing up there were a few people who adamantly opposed their children wearing glasses insisting that it would make their eyes weaker. There's no evidence for that, but as I have suggested people assume all sorts of things without evidence. So there are people who reject religion because it is a way of weakening people. That's what calling religion "a crutch" means. Friedrich Nietzsche called Christianity a "slave religion" because he thought it made people weak and subservient. Maybe so, but Nietzsche 's own views provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Nazis. Given the havoc wrecked by the Nazi's, I'd much rather that people embrace Christianity.

The objection could be raised, of course, that glasses are only a necessity for people who have some defect in their vision. So, religion would only correct the view of persons with a defect. Since many people do not wear glasses one could argue by a rather weak analogy that many people do not need religion. Given the fact that most people do indeed require glasses to correct their vision as they develop presbyopia in latter life, it could be argued that most people do indeed need religion. The truth is that the metaphor of glasses (a crutches) is rather limited in what it can tell us about the need for religion. However, we could squeeze one more observation from it.

In L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz all persons entering the Emerald City are required to have green eyeglasses locked over their eyes. Ostensively, the glasses are to protect the visitor from being blinded by the brilliance and glory of the Emerald City. In reality, it is the glasses that produce the illusion of a city made from green marble studded with emeralds. The Emerald City is a fraud. Many people regard religion as a fraud that disguises reality by preventing the truth from being perceived. But it is not only religion that can do this. Every ideology creates a particular way of seeing things, and sometimes that way of seeing is a delusion. We can see that play out in the political arena again and again. The current debacle of the War in Iraq is at least partly the result of an ideological reading of intelligence reports that accepted every bit of evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction no matter how weak that evidence was, and rejected any evidence to the contrary no matter how strong it was.

The truth is that we never see things as they are. We see everything through a lense that we have created through a variety of experiences.

The philosopher David Hume argued in the seventeenth century that cause and effect could never be proven. We observe that event b always follows after event a, and event b never occurs unless event a occurs first. So we say that a causes b. This is poor logic (technically the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, after which therefore because of which). All we can really say is that in the past b has always followed a. We can never say that in the future b will always follow a. We talk about cause and effect out of habit rather than logical necessity.

Science is much more cautious than the average person in discussing phenomena. It talks in probabilities rather than absolutes. Even all the wonderful Newtonian laws that people learn in high school physics turn out to work only within certain limitations. The rules change when things move fast enough or are massive enough.

Let me stick with science for a moment. Nothing seems clearer than that certain objects have particular colors. Emeralds are green, after all. But they aren't green. The molecules of emeralds have no color whatsoever. Even a large emerald has no color if it is kept in a completely dark room. Light has to shine on it for it to appear colored. Furthermore, if we would look at the emerald in a red light rather than a white light, it would appear black because it wouldn't be able to reflect any green light into our eyes.

What I intended to do in the preceding paragraphs is shake the certainty of a few elements that many nonreligious persons use to construct their way of viewing the world. As a matter of fact, many within the Christian community make use of the same rules of logic and scientific interpretation that nonreligious persons use. It is fascinating to read the works of Thomas Aquinas as he sets out to determine what can be known by reason alone, what can be known by reason or revelation, and what can be known by revelation alone. No one could accuse him of not using his mind.

A helpful term to employ is worldview. Religions are worldviews, ways of seeing what is. But there are nonreligious worlviews also. Marxism is the best known of these. These nonreligious worldviews have all the functions of a religion–they have a system of beliefs, determine social order and morals, produce organizations, and employ rituals. Anyone who saw the May Day displays in the old U.S.S.R. knows what a nonreligious ritual looks like. We might distinguish between these worldviews by describing religions as transcendent worldviews and nonreligious ones as nontranscendent world views. Transcendence is here understood as an order beyond ordinary reality. Nontranscendent worldviews deny that there is a transcendent reality. Is one type of worldview more reasonable than another? Despite the claims of nonreligious persons to the contrary, I don't think so. Both transcendent and nontranscendent worldviews require a "leap of faith." The proofs for the existence of God all have faults in them, but so do the proofs against the existence of God. Look at the problem of finding design in nature. Those who believe that there is a transcendent creator are able to find design. Those who do not find no design. Essentially it seems to me that we are stuck in the same logical standoff that has existed since the mid eighteenth-century.

I do think we can ask whether different worldviews produce different results. And I think we could ask whether a person prefers one result over the other, but we might be surprised that not everyone prefers the same result. I never cease to be amazed at the venom spewed by some Americans against the tolerance and openness of American culture that is a product of the prevailing worldview of American and Western European Society.

Boy, this turned out to be a heavier discussion than I had planned. It's the college lecturer in me coming out. Well, while I think the study of religion is a useful thing, I am also an advocate for its practice, in particular the way offered by Jesus.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.
Wayne