Paul Please note: Due to the large amount of email Paul receives and the limitations of his physical condition he can no longer respond to all email. But please keep sending — he reads them all.
Four tough crows in leather jackets hanging out on the school grounds hurled epithets as I walked by minding my own business. “Outside our jurisdiction” according to the precinct captain, “Turn the other cheek,” advised the priest. But I will pass the crows again at dusk when I return from town.
Paul Martin
How have you been impacted by adversity? Alternatively…
In general, how do you see adversity as affecting our development as persons?
You could respond with a comment. Or you could treat is as a “meme” and write something about this in prose or poetry on your own blog. If you do a meme, please let us know here in the comments thread so others can refer to it.
I don't know... I have the feeling an "Adversity Meme" won't be too catchy! I only suggest it in the spirit of "Why not?" plus I never tried doing a meme before. Is this how you do it?
I’m happy to say that Nasra Al Adawi at Living in Poetry has just posted an interview about my poetry as well as my upcoming prose book Original Faith: Becoming Our Truer Nature. Just prior to this, Victoria Bresee of The Polished Mirror happened to look over my site and complete the contact form to be notified when Original Faith is available so she can review it. Wouldn’t you know: by week's end, editors at The Atlantic and The New Yorker had also contacted me but I had to beg off, saying I had too many prior commitments.
Kidding aside, I’ve known both Nasra and Victoria for most of my “blogging life” – about two years – and have developed a very positive sense of each of them as persons. Major focuses in Nasra’s life and blogging are poetry; health issues and related charity work; and women’s issues. Victoria comes from a contemplative Christian orientation with major interests in social justice and women’s issues.
Thanks to each of you! And since poetry is such a major theme in Nasra’s writing and blogging, I thought I’d do a poem today. Guess it might as well be about me (but really it's about everyone) since I seem to be blowing my own horn here or at least beating my own drums:
Cutting Time
The shuddering roll vibrated in my fingers Almost like a living thing; like bird’s wings struggling To roil the air in nearly creamy swirls of sound. Into that near-liquid, Flapping like mad, my rim shots splashed their slick remarks: Off-handed cleverness surmounting rudiments That tightened and loosened, gathered and released, into Sudden tom-tom momentary rumba sounds. And my two young arms dropped to the floor tom, A swift triplet ending it on a bass kick. Then smash it, Crash it, thrashing the flashing gold Of every cymbal flaring its fascinating dish Of overlapping reverberations like a chorus of monks Sustaining fading Ohms, underpinned by the Thick and solid thud of the bass drum that suddenly Ripped forward on a low fly, my right ankle Finding the full speed of my green adrenaline Like a horse’s hooves greet earth, Peppering the dance floor four to a swift measure: All the while my hands flicking off hard pieces of silver sound Under the colored lights, Intimate with the dancing of strangers, As I deftly cut and marked off slivers from our time; Like nicks in any pair of splintering sticks That I once held trembling like bird wings in my hands.
Some Concluding Thoughts on Scriptural Arguments against Homosexuality
We’ve delved less into the topic of same sex marriage in particular than views on homosexuality in general, which is OK – our views on the former follow from our views on the latter. I’ll conclude with a suggestion: Perhaps arguments against homosexuality that are presented and genuinely thought to be based on scripture really are not.
1. Christians Divided
Some Christians cite scripture as condemning homosexuality/same sex marriage; some Christians cite scripture in support of homosexuality/same sex marriage.
As I mentioned in the previous post’s discussion thread, I don’t personally take what someone described there as a “rule book” approach to scripture. But if I were going to do that, then without picking up a bible and just off the top of my head, here’s a small example of how scripture can be read as supporting gay marriage:
St. Paul favors celibacy. He also clearly recognizes that this isn’t possible for everyone. For all who can’t control their passions, Paul recommends marriage.
This could be taken as an implicit endorsement of homosexual marriage. It’s no more realistic to expect homosexuals as a group to be capable of celibacy than it is to expect this from heterosexuals as a group.
2. Feelings… Nothing More than… Feelings…
I’d suggest that first comes an opinion about homosexuality; then comes noticing those biblical passages and themes that support it. And that sometimes people hold opinions on this subject that they have not considered all that carefully and that are based primarily on their immediate and often unexamined emotional reactions.
Examples emerge from the previous post’s discussion thread: equating “the gay lifestyle” with sexual promiscuity – and as if, to begin with, describing a homosexual as leading a gay lifestyle provides any more information about that individual’s conduct than it would to hear a heterosexual friend or colleague described as leading “the straight lifestyle!” Homosexuality and heterosexuality are not lifestyles; they’re sexual orientations.
There was also the unexamined assumption that homosexuality is “unnatural.” And there was an instance of someone confusing their aversion for that tiny fraction of homosexuals they see on TV who are often purposefully loud and abrasive to attract TV cameras for an indicator of what homosexuals are generally like and how obnoxious and misguided they are.
And notice how hard it is to find anyone who believes that there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality as based on considerations of evidence and reason stepping forward to proclaim: “But despite all this, I’m overruled by what the Bible tells me. Even though I personally consider that there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality and favor same sex unions, I reluctantly have to come down against it. In my own mind, it would be only fair and right for society to institute civil unions for homosexual couples. However, God’s against it – here, take a look at these verses, I just wish it weren’t so – and so, with much regret and some confusion, I’m against it too.
Somehow this never seems to be the tone. To me it looks like people who condemn homosexuality “based on scripture” have previously condemned it in their own minds for their own reasons.
3. God’s How-To Manual: the Revised Editions
Scripture-based interpretations of issues that society as a whole grapples with show high historical volatility, strongly suggesting that the Bible has never made for a good rule book or How-To manual for every detail of our lives. You really can’t just look it up once, find the answer, close the book, and wash your hands of the whole thing.
These days, for example, you don’t find a lot of people citing the relevant passages in support of the sun revolving around the earth, slavery, or anti-Semitism.
4. Found this Post-it On My Bible…
The Bible is voluminous. With our human capacity for playing with words and their definitions, using logic to clarify or obfuscate, accepting or not accepting particular scholars/pseudo scholars as authoritative regarding historical issues pertaining to the canon and how it was written, the potential for scripture based argumentation is endless.
If the Bible really is a rule book for humanity’s ongoing struggle with its social issues, I bet the rule that God is trying to convey to those with ears to hear is:
Sometimes you have to feel and think for yourselves.
G. Baker has commented to a couple of my recent posts. My guess is that he’s further to the right on gay marriage than most commentators to this blog would be. So I especially appreciate his willingness to bring up the topic here – he emailed his thoughts on the subject and we ended up agreeing to post them on my blog in condensed form. For now I’ll just state that my viewpoint on this is the opposite of Gary’s. I’ve been impressed by the quality of discussion among commentators to Original Faith and look forward to a conversation focusing on the issue and free of the personal antagonism sometimes brought to matters about which people may have strong feelings.
Finding “God’s Side” in the Gay Marriage Debate By Gary Baker
There has been a great deal of haggling in conflicts through the ages about whose “side” God is on. To me, the very question is presumptuous. I view God as “right” by definition. It should be the goal of the church, the body of believers, to place all personal views aside and conform to His will. In this spirit, I believe that Christians should not support the institution of gay marriage.
The basis of this is my firm conviction that the scriptures indicate that any sexual relationship other than male and female, committed to each other only before God, is inherently immoral.
The primary basis for this belief comes from Leviticus Chapter 18. The text goes through a laundry list of sins performed by the pagans in the land the Israelites were to possess. Most of them were sexual in nature, related to incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. Child sacrifice is also thrown in, but that’s another topic. Now, if some of you reading this are asking if I believe that we are all required to live as the Old Testament Jews lived, the answer is a resounding “No.” We are called to a different relationship, as was confirmed when the apostles met to discuss what the new believers were to observe in Christ. However, I call attention to Lev. 18: 24 – 28:
Lev 18:24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before you; Lev 18:25 and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants. Lev 18:26 Ye therefore shall keep my statutes and mine ordinances, and shall not do any of these abominations; neither the home-born, nor the stranger that sojourneth among you; {GB similarly cites Lev 18:27 and Lev 18:28}
The people being “vomited” out were not Jews. They had no relationship with God that I know of, though we know that they had heard of how God had brought the Hebrews out of Egypt. They were never designated in any way to show Godly principles the way the Jews were. Yet God still judged them, and he judged them worthy of death. There is a lot said about how after Christ came, people were no longer judged by law, but by faith. That is true. But Christ never denied the law. He never said that was once considered “bad” was now “good” or “okay.”
Some call this bigotry or hatred. I dispute that assessment. If we see a child playing in the street, having loads of fun, with a truck bearing down on her that she doesn’t see, is there anyone among us that would say “Oh, I don’t want to disturb her fun…” For the love of Christ, I would hope not.
As I said, I believe that I am correct in this view based on the scriptures. I am also aware that many others, secular, Christian, etc., have differing views on the matter, and I am not so far gone as to believe that all wisdom resides in me. May we discuss this in love, brother to brother, sister to sister? Come. Let us reason together.
- GB
Any thoughts on gay marriage or on scripture-based argumentation?
One morning I half-awakened to the morning light filtering through the drawn shade and curtains of my room. As I lay there with half-focused eyes viewing the yellow light on the blue carpet, I slowly became aware of myself seeing these colors. I found myself looking blankly and inexplicably out of myself at equally inexplicable surroundings.
The whole bubble or drop in space/time that was me happening in the happening world took on a radical unfamiliarity! It was as if a gathering thereness to the whole picture had zoomed into focus, surprising me by not making any particular sense. The lamp and alarm clock falling in my line of sight – what were they all about and how did they get there -- really? They seemed appearances from out of nowhere, or maybe Allwhere; certainly from out of no place and for no reason that I myself could adequately account for…
I could not have been more amazed by these objects if they’d started to sing and dance than I was by their sheer presence in front of my eyes that could see them.
A morning without color, raw, damp, and gray. Early in the season on a day like this, some forty years ago at Wells Beach, Maine, the cool air would have held a palpable faint drizzle, constant on the skin. You would have stepped up a short wooden flight of stairs that led from the windy, roaring beach, your hair in tangles, your nose running, your soaked sneakers crusty with sand and salt. And stepping now into the sheltering grassway between two shore-front cottages, on your way to crossing the paved but narrow road back to you grandmother’s, you would have noticed, without seeming to, how the seething surf sounds, and the seaweed scent, and the wind, always the big wind that on the beach had battered your back one way and made your eyes stream the other, and which had held aloft the trembling kite at the end of its taut string, were suddenly lost and gone — as you had been, only moments before, in pauses and surges of white sound, as the gusts which set the scattered seaweed quivering caught and thundered at your hood and collar, while wave on wave murkily gathered, held, crashed, then scurried whisperingly to the shore at foamy, broken angles.
But now you were quickly returning, coming to yourself — and the sparse punctuation of familiar sounds scattered in the easy, warming air: the low, diminishing drone of a station wagon at fifteen or twenty cautious miles an hour; the faint tap tap tapping of a hammer somewhere; a screen door slamming once in the brightening distance. And crossing the little road, whose pebbly, sandy shoulders you and your cousins would walk barefoot that summer to the corner market for a glider airplane or a candy bar, you would have sensed, without seeing, how the new day had grown a lighter shade of gray and the drizzle become finer than it was.
Inside her tiny cottage, my grandmother, who never went down to the beach, was everywhere and nowhere. She was implicit to the aroma of coffee in the brisk air when you woke up in a bed that was your very own for as long as you slept there. She was in the tones of quiet conversation and lilting laughter with your aunt or mother that you heard unhearingly as you hurried past the kitchen table. And she was in the silence late at night as she lay sleeping in her room off the kitchen while you read from the yellowed pages of one of her old mystery novels.
But what I remember most of all about my grandmother is the sense of being noticed. To eat at her table was to share a meal. To ride in her car was to take a trip together. To speak was to be heard, and with a quiet interest, attention, and respect that came straight at me, level, without a trace of anything hidden or condescending. I had never experienced anything quite like it when moving in the world of adults. As a child, I took this to mean that I was something special in her eyes — and I was — without understanding back then how my sister and cousins, as free as I to play in the ocean, were getting just as wet. And if those cousins became, in any sense, our sisters and brothers — and I know they did — it is because together we shared the embrace of a larger element, a second home built on the scale of the sky or sea, where every summer it was possible to lose ourselves, come into ourselves, and find each other.
Some of you have brought up major matters bearing on the subject of belief such as perception, knowledge, the way beliefs often change, and so forth. They could be subjects in their own right.
For now, let’s keep the focus narrowed and stick to the question of “Why – when we do believe something – do we believe it?” Maybe the concept of “evidence” can provide a common framework.
Lots of ideas can come into our heads. To decide whether something’s true, we look for a reality check. We look at the evidence. How much evidence is there and how strong or weak is it? Our evaluation of the evidence is what leads us to view an idea as compelling or not. It’s easy to see this in examples from last post. Specifically, numbers 2, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10 (more or less) are things we’d likely agree about because the evidence would be viewed by most people as abundant and strong. To look at just a couple of them:
- Most of us believe in gravity because we know it’s something scientists agree on very broadly. And most of us view science as a good approach to understanding the physical universe. If nothing else, it produces technologies that work.
- All of us believe in the existence of Papua New Guinea. Even if we haven’t been there, it’s on maps, we can see photos and read articles by all kinds of different people who say they’ve been there, and the general idea of the existence of far away places that we may not personally have happened to visit is supported by tons of evidence.
Sherlock Holmes Goes to the Bathroom
Number nine is interesting – the one about needing to use the bathroom but believing someone’s in there. It’s a common experience (all too common?) and lets us see how the strength of belief goes up with the strength of the evidence.
Say you’re a guest in someone’s house and you come downstairs to use the bathroom. But you see the door is closed and light coming from under the door. You believe someone’s inside. The evidence is pretty strong.
But say that after a few minutes you haven’t heard the slightest sound. You get up from pretending to read a magazine and walk toward the door, listening attentively. Still no sound. You lightly tap on the door and then a little louder… you are becoming convinced that your friend just forgot to turn off the light and left the door closed.
But if instead when you’d come downstairs you’d additionally heard the water running loudly in the bathroom sink, you'd very likely have waited a much longer time before trying the door. That additional evidence would have been especially strong because hardly anybody leaves the water on like that.
Outside the Box?
How does evidence apply or not apply to holding religious beliefs?
In the discussion thread to the previous post, I referred in passing to “consensus” as one way that people have of coming to believe that something is true. I gave a couple examples: The lighting is poor; you think you see something but aren’t sure, so you ask people next to you if they see it too. Scientists replicate experiments and conduct peer reviews. Janice, in the same thread, replied with an example where she thought consensus didn’t apply.
Consider the following beliefs.
1. Water blessed by a priest has special powers.
2. There is a force we call “gravity” that accounts for certain things – for example, why objects fall.
3. Papua New Guinea exists.
4. God exists.
5. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
6. Jesus was resurrected.
7. You were visited by your deceased grandmother.
8. The earth revolves around the sun.
9. You need to use the bathroom but you're pretty sure somebody’s already in there…
10. It’s a good idea to change the oil in your car every three thousand miles.
What leads us to believe some things and not others? What inclines us to think that one thing is true and another doubtful or false - what sort of mental process or processes are involved?
Even more fundamentally: if you can identify what sort of mental process(es) compel your convictions, then what leads you to believe that this process is itself a sound approach to finding out what’s really true?
Please Note
Your comments are very thoughtful. And there are enough of them that I’m finding that for reasons of “time management” I need to get creative in my method of responding.
I enjoy replying to every single comment in detail – and I have to restrain myself! So please bear with me as I figure out a more efficient way forward.
I’ll be posting as regularly as ever and continue to read each comment thoroughly. I’ll continue responding to points raised in every discussion thread – but not necessarily to every point and every comment every time!
