Advent brings Christmas: Strengthening America Against Evil

Four of my students in China in 2002 asked my help to arrange and produce a choric reading of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech, "I Have a Dream." . They knew the events surrounding King's 1962 letter from the Birmingham jail¹. We learned together how our nation rose to the moral challenge of segregation. They were impressed with the history. I was proud to be an American.

Prominent Christian leaders had urged Dr. King to stop demonstrating. They hadn't understood the brutality, the urgency of those suffering. The government and media had resisted the truth. Dr. King was arrested and jailed on charges of rioting and leading a demonstration without a permit. The law was imposed, and he was found guilty. In subsequent events, Dr. King's lawbreaking was vindicated; the ugly face of segregation was unveiled and God's Way prevailed over racial segregation in our nation. I was there in Mississippi in the 1960's, when Dr. King was assassinated; I saw God work amazing changes through citizens who looked to Him and His Way through Jesus. Citizens stopped treating blacks like rats.

Under pressure from the newly informed free press following the massive crackdown against Dr. King's organized civil disobedience, our government began changing laws. Instead of using the courts to oppress the message and the messenger, government found new respect for the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, and protected the victims of segregation². More importantly, the rights of informants to reveal the secrets of the brutality and economic deprivation were protected. Racial hatred, greed, hunger, sickness and imprisonment were dealt a devastating blow in America. Righteousness and the way of God scored a victory. Advent progressed into Christmas, and God's truth began to be credible again. Remember? We forget so easily….

Case 1: Killing Rats

We never told anyone. In fact, we brothers never mentioned it after the event. Raised in a hunting family, we knew better than killing for fun. Dad, had he known, would have punished us.

Back in the early '50's one January the price of corn went up. We had a grain bin inside our barn with tight walls and a concrete floor. We had shoveled it full with ear corn that fall, because Dad said the price was too low to sell. Now was time to sell that corn. The John Deere B's clutch pulley was linked by flat belt with the pulley of the staked-down elevator, and all three of us brothers shoveled several truck loads of that ear corn out of the grain bin until we got blisters.

I remember the mice running first. Our dogs had fun, and got full. But when the corn was down to the last 20 bushels or so, we began seeing rats. A dog caught one, got bit, and quit chasing them.

One of us got an idea, but the terror that happened bothered me. I won't admit it was my idea: "Shut the door and block it so the rats can't escape!"

We kicked the small pile of corn, the rats ran and panicked because there was no way out. We smashed them with our steel scoop shovels. We each got one or two, then the rats quit trying to escape. They stood, looked us in the eye, and attacked back, biting our boots and loose farmer overalls. In seconds my little brother let out a scream. A rat had run up his pants and fastened his teeth into his leg. I tried to help him smash the rat with my hands, but couldn't. I pulled the rat loose from its death grip on my brother's leg, got bit, and my older brother helped me dispatch that rat. My brother's pants were quickly red with his blood, and our hands were bloodied. For years I had recurring nightmares from this incident.

Here's what I learned: People are not rats. But when people secretly start cornering people, brutally exterminating their humanity, their place in their family or community, torturing them or taking their very lives, people begin acting like those rats. Jesus was such a victim. But he demonstrated God's way, a more powerful response to evil.

Case 2: Killing Jesus.

From before his birth to after his death, Jesus' home community was permeated with hatred, greed, hunger, sickness and imprisonment³. But within his faith community and family were those who hoped in God and His Way. Bible records of Advent songs of Zechariah, Simeon, Elizabeth, Mary, and Isaiah quoted by John, all focus carefully at least implicitly on these deplorable living conditions. There was hope in God. Not in the insurgency that arose from the violence of the occupation. Not in collaboration with the occupation, as led by the wealthy Jewish elite. Both these political parties had blood on their hands⁴.

Before Jesus' birth announcement, the message of God's Way lay quiet among these people. The time came, and the prophecies were about to be fulfilled. The oppressive "Peace of Rome" was stealthily shattered when boy babies of country parents were hounded down and slaughtered to protect government against the possibility of such a messenger arising and threatening the powerful. Jesus and his earthly parents fled to Egypt for sanctuary. The three wise men recognized Pilate's power to kill to keep secrets covered and fled back home another way. Jesus returned home after his exile, grew up, learned the power of God's Way, and at a mature age was baptized to follow His Heavenly Father's way.

Jesus' story illustrates that it's simply not possible to even quietly minister to victims of government oppression without earning the ire of that government. And when the time was fulfilled, he spoke strongly.

Case 3: Uncovering Chinese Government Secrets.

Liu Xiao Bo was sentenced to prison by the Communist government of China. His telling the truth of the brutality of the Chinese government won for him the Nobel Prize for Peace. The population of China, propagandized by media, has initially agreed overwhelmingly with their government⁵. The Chinese consensus: Liu Xiaobo is guilty of the crime of undermining the homeland security of China. Yes, the Chinese government still resists Advent, and has not learned from Jesus or Martin Luther King.

Case 4: Uncovering American Government Secrets.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held in a military brig in Virginia for uncovering military and diplomatic secrets via wikileaks. Our government and the media led by Fox News openly advocates killing him extra-judicially⁶. Here again is an opportunity not unlike Dr. King's letter. We can as a nation face the ugly truth of our oppressive misguided wars in the Middle East, and change the course our nation is on to shame and disdain internationally. We can rise to the truth of our great heritage, as we did in the Civil Rights era when we the people overcame the voices of fear, secrecy, violence and greed⁷.

My suggestion: Help strengthen America through this Advent season. Encourage neighbors and friends to live up to our heritage of moral values reinforced by Dr. King. Check out one of the thousand+ links to the info our government wants to suppress from its citizens: www.wikileaks.ch/

___________________________________

1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail

2.Vincent Harding, 2010. Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement. This author, a sociologist and Biblical scholar, was on Dr. King's staff for years through his assassination. His book gives profound impetus to the passion of this week's Spirit and Dust column.

3.See my previous column, and the many sources listed therein documenting the social and political climate of Galilee and Judea in the decades around Jesus' life and ministry.

4.Myers, Binding the Strong Man. My favorite of several sources listed, detailing the conflict between the Sadducees and other collaborators with the Roman military government, against the insurgency groups, most famous being the Zealot party, of which Simon was one of Jesus' disciples.

5. http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-10/582916.html The Chinese government/media conglomerate has been successful keeping the lid on the information Liu XiaoBo has researched. The government attacks the messenger who has revealed secrets threatening to the "state security." The media collaborates. They cannot focus on the information because the secrets revealed are true and cannot reasonably be discredited. See other news reports, from sources not in China. There are many.

6. Several key government officials and Fox News have joined in calling Assange a terrorist and calling for his assassination. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36xEvVnF2I&feature=player_embedded Notably Ron Paul disagrees. http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-12-10/ron-paul-defends-wikileaks-dont-kill-the-messenger-change-our-foreign-policy/ It's also noteworthy that Nixon's secret tapes revealed that he attempted to draft Cuban expats to secretly assassinate Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. But that time, it remained secret and totally un-American to advocate extra-judicial killing of a messenger. Fox News and some in our government/media conglomeration are way off the mark of pride in American values.

7.Harding, ibid. See also the sources listed in my previous post.

Further comments:

Sensitive potentially libelous information was redacted by Wikileaks. Unfortunately, the happened without military or government help. Our government refused requests to help Wikileaks separate legitimately secret military information from the truth of our tax investment in raw violence against innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regardless of our political opinions, we all need to back up and take a look at our strategies for getting along with our friendly fellow citizens who disagree, and with our world citizens as well. They are humans, not rats. The survival of "we the people" of this nation is at stake.

When Jesus said truth gives us liberty, he meant for us to see the power of our choice to follow God in response to his torture and death. His innocent capital punishment, being treated like a rat by the Romans and their Jewish cronies, was the central ritual of the first Christians, and remains such today. He spoke from the cross, in the midst of his torture and terror. Early Christians learned God's freedom to be, even in the midst of such inhumanity.

Such victimizing didn't work then for that government to defeat Jesus' threat to the way of Rome. Jesus had already spent his life revealing the true face of the government's evil, both Jewish and Roman. When, after their experience with Jesus' crucifixion, the Romans finally stopped torture by crucifixion as an instrument of government policy, it was too late. The government crumbled anyway.

The world hasn't changed. Governments still torture and terrorize the world's people. They are still brought to defeat. It's in God's plan, as Jesus and the prophets foretold it, to proclaim the better Way of God to deal with evil. "Nations rise and fall, but the word of our God remains forever."

The kind of love Dr. Martin Luther King had for Bull Conner and the segregationists who tried to kill him is the same kind of love Jesus had for the Roman government leaders and members of the Jewish insurgency. It's not namby-pamby walk-all-over-me love. Jesus and Martin both confronted evil with the most formidable power in the world. That power, translated in English, "love," includes strong confrontation, and often gets a violent response from enemies. When thus confronted, evil governments fight back and lose, or else come to see the Light of the Power of God. Prophets like Jesus held up the mirror of humanity to the evil in their time, and let it be seen. Governments, wise to the looming loss, have always opposed this truth. It's the reason Liu Xiao Bo is in a military prison in China, and the reason Pfc. Manning is in military prison in America. It's also the reason Martin Luther King spent so much time behind bars, and was assassinated. True prophets have always pulled off the veil of the pretty face of government and revealed underneath its desperate brutality to suppress the truth of its illegal and abominable inhumanity against human beings.

As much as government soldiers and workers don't want it to be that, that's the "cost of freedom" they have levied when, like an adolescent in a fight, they are blind to considering God's way to combat evil. They all say, "We could do nothing else." This is the classic entrapment of fight or flee familiar to the reptile species' brain.

My bias is that the best proof of our greatness as a nation is that we—our government and our citizens—listened to Dr. Martin Luther King. We began to dismantle evil institutions and began following the Way of God because of his ministry. My greatest fear for our nation is that we will not listen to the same revelations of our secret evil in our response to our world's criticism today, and continue on the path to destruction well trod by empires of the past. Only the Truth of Jesus can liberate us from our current path. That's why our nation needs its Christian influence now more than ever. Wikileaks, while not under Christian control, is being used by God to bring His Truth to America now, this Advent season.

So what have Chinese and American leaders done when the truth is uncovered, and they find Jesus' way to be unbelievable? The same thing Romans and Jews did when Jesus' death tore the veil and uncovered the truth. They deny the truth. They try to escape the truth. And they attack the messenger, the one who uncovers what is really done and said, often without editorializing or complaining.

The messengers bringing the truth of our government's ugly face are simply carriers. They really simply transmit what others say, with a sense of reverence because God's way is to give voice to the oppressed, to set them free. For all their personal defectiveness, these three truth carriers are the instruments of the love of God through Jesus Christ. If our nation would listen again, like we as a nation did in the civil rights movement, and like Jerusalem failed to listen and Jesus wept over it, we could as a nation repent again, and survive our sin, and rise to strength and credibility around the world.

American politics has gone far into rat behavior, and far from Jesus. The media pundits and politicians with the most claims to following Him seem farthest from Him. Even most Christians in America think that Jesus' way is the wrong way, especially when it comes to really bad evil. We have a long ways to go to arrive at true repentance, and learn the Way of God against evil that besets us.

Nothing has changed since Rome. Governments desperately want to keep secret the truth of their desperate dealings with terrorized people. When torture and terror of opponents become acceptable policy, as formulated by the Bush administration and confirmed by Obama, governments want us to think everything is hunky-dory: either

1) Those people are better dead anyway, or

2) Sorry, but things happen in war. But war is necessary to destroy EVIL people/rats.

But most of all, they want us worked via the media into a frenzy of hate for the one(s) who reveal their secrets and in so doing undermine their pet theory: "It's far better to pursue terror and torture of terrorist and torturist enemies away from our land and keep our homeland secure." Note the Romans' finding of Jesus guilty by association with the Zealot insurgency, and sending the intended signal to the insurgency with the marquee on his cross, "The King of the Jews."

"Who's the guilty leaker?"

This is the only question the media/government can come up with regarding the wiki leaks, with the unquestioned assumption a crime has been committed causing human suffering and loss. And it has. That's what the leaks reveal. It's the reason they want them suppressed.

What in fact is the crime against humanity? Answer: the depredation and foolishness of our confused foreign policies, wielded by the world's most lethal military hardware.

Unlike that rat in my brother's pants, Jesus didn't attack back; the Gospels all make abundantly clear that he remained perfect in his Truth: that through Him and his way, hoped for by the prophets, we human beings have a better way to deal with the deadliness of our rat behaviors. The way of the Roman Empire to homeland security was soundly discredited. The way of the Zealots to national restoration was equally rejected. What he did is often portrayed as the "loving" way, and rejected as categorically weak. But our English word for this kind of love doesn't say it right.

In his ministry Jesus stated explicitly that Salvation constituted imitating his acts on behalf of the hungry, imprisoned, thirsty, and ill (Matthew 25). His disciples remembered and followed suit. As portrayed in all four first evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, hatred and murderous conspiracies built among the powerful, and led to his execution. After his death and resurrection many early followers were similarly executed.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Our Lord’s Advent and American Democracy

The Salvation longed for in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth in 4BC, and the American experiment in democracy for the last 250 years, have much in common. We have a nation built on principles central to Christianity. Let's flaunt them.

The first Advent was about people longing for life. Freedom from oppression by a foreign regime was a dominant concern. It was military, and it was economic, not unlike the British Crown's domination of the colonies in the 1770's. The Roman-orchestrated exploitation of Galilee, where Mary's hometown was located, makes our nation's current economic problems look like a picnic. The government had little respect for an individual's rights to pursue meaningful life for his/her family.

Jewish farming families of Galilee in 4 BC suffered loss of their farmland. They could no longer depend on the traditional Jewish Jubilee, nor on Roman law, to guarantee land access for survival. Shrewd tax collectors and loan brokers, Jewish wealthy elite of Sepphoris, 3 miles from Nazareth, conspired with the Roman occupation to foreclose on these subsistence farmers. Land was converted into greater profit in the Mediterranean global market of purple, linen, and wine. It was profitable to pick up loan-default farmland, select managers to hire from among the landless peasant throngs, and add acreage to acreage (documented in Myers, Binding the Strongman.)

The rich got richer, and the poor lost their means of survival. Most children of farmers found it hopeless to follow their parents' livelihood; they lacked the capital. The best Galilee farmland became a playground of the rich. So insurgency and terrorism arose, as recounted by Flavius Josephus, the first century historian and recruiter for the insurgency in Jesus' time.

Previously successful farmers, probably including Jesus' earthly parents, were forced to join the newly landless multitudes of peasant families who struggled for bread, safety from robbers, release from jail, a place to lay their heads at night, and freedom from military or insurgent recruiters who kidnapped their sons for war. These landless poor were at the bottom rung of society. The stigma of mismanagement, fault, and sin were wrapped up in devastating poverty. Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, and Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament, continually refer to these people as needing Salvation.

It's from this stigma of sin=indebtedness to which our translation of the Lord's Prayer gets it right: "Forgive us our debts as . . ." Jesus, following John's example, focused on these multitudes burdened with real debt and its sin stigma, rather than on those who would reward him with riches for his miracles.

But let's go back a few decades:

Enter Mary, Jesus' mother-to-be, with an amazing announcement. Deliverance from the downtrodden comes from God through real flesh-and-blood human beings, most pointedly, herself.

Mary's "Magnificat," KJV:

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:

For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

The most amazing miracle in Mary's body was not the undoubted miraculous conception, but the fact that here was a woman of "hunger" and "low estate" whose womb contained the very chosen Messiah of God, who would lead his people—in fact, all nations—out of desperate poverty into the very light of God. Mary got it right about her Son.

Maybe this Advent is a time to wonder: With such a powerful connection between the most conservative, original Christian understanding of Salvation, and our American democracy, why don't we flaunt it?

For over a hundred years Christian leaders have struggled needlessly over the argument between a "salvation gospel" and a "social gospel." In fact, Jesus' Gospel never separated the two, but prioritized the social component of Salvation as did Mary, Jesus' mother. Prioritizing a futuristic Salvation in life after this life came into vogue only around the time the empire adopted Christianity as the only legal religion, in the fourth century AD.

Mary's status in society made her a prime choice by the very God of Creation to bring forth his Son, to turn upside down a political/religious/economic order that had devastated her own family, and that of the multitudes of farm families in Galilee. This "preferential option for the poor" in Mary's song has enormous sanction from the Psalms, the Prophets, Writings, and Moses. In modern times, the Catholic church has led Christianity back to this most conservative theological bias, for the poor.

The Bible seems to have one package of God's acts of "Salvation" that does not differentiate between the current social/political trauma and desire for life beyond this current life. Often diminished by modern Bible teachers, it's the oldest and most original understanding. It includes the whole person, family, community, nation and the world in the here and now. It's in more than half of all the chapters in the Bible, so would be difficult to ignore were it not for the limits of the English language in translation from the original Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. It's also thoroughly researched by Bible scholars representing all denominational perspectives.*

The modern definition is like the frosting on the cake, which reminds me of my grandkids and birthday cake. They focus on the frosting. Paul describes it as a profoundly important additional mystery of the Gospel.

Some authors and titles alluding this more comprehensive Biblical understanding of human sin and of its remedy, Salvation:

Dorothy Day, Selected Writings*

Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down*

Tayor, The Executed God

Carter, Matthew and Empire

Heschel, The Prophets

Romero, The Violence of Love*

Wink, The Powers that Be*

Stark, The Rise of Christianity

Swartley, Covenant of Peace

Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

Crossan, God and Empire

Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity

Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist

Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ

McLaren, Everything Must Change*

Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation

Myers, Binding the Strong Man

Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

Horsely, Jesus and Empire

Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods

Padilla, The Local Church Agent of Transformation*

Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

Whiston, translator, The Works of Josephus

*Start with these

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
http://www.bighorncountynews.com/clergy.html

Fundamentally pro-life—The Advent of Christ

 

Infanticide was brutally common in the Roman empire of Mary and Joseph's time. Abortion was also practiced, but the trauma and poor chances of any survival made it a rare procedure. Yet the beginning of Christianity was fundamentally pro-life. What can we learn from those first Christians?

 

Near the time of Mary's surprise pregnancy, Sepphoris, the Greek/Jewish/Roman city of 30,000 barely 4 miles from Nazareth, was swept with turmoil. Infanticide and abortion, along with starvation and executions, were already present in Galilee with Pax Romana ruthlessly imposed by the Roman occupation and influx of Hellenic culture and idolatry. Civil war could only increase these practices. This new chapter began when Judas, son of the Jewish guerilla leader Ezekias executed by Herod, broke in and looted the Roman arsenal in Sepphoris. He distributed the weaponry and declared the city liberated. The Jewish population hoped the abominations practiced by the heathen occupation were ended.

 

But victory was brief. True to form, the Romans ruthlessly quelled the rebellion.  No Jew was left living in the city. Those who weren't able to escape to the countryside, or to risk surrender into slavery, were killed. Caesar, known to the Roman world as Filio Deus (Son of God) was to be worshiped by law as the god above all gods. He He permitted Herod Antipas to make Sepphoris his personal capital. He needed Jewish "tektones", carpenters and masons who previously farmed and were cheated out of their land by the economy of Rome. Being in virtual starvation and without hope to carve out an existence, they braved the journey into enemy territory. Daily they walked to Sepphoris from Nazareth and other nearby villages, and rebuilt the heathen temples, public baths and homes for the rich. Of course, most were not hired, and became the multitudes to which Jesus later ministered primarily.

 

Jesus almost certainly grew up to accompany his earthly carpenter father daily to work in Sepphoris, by then transformed into a center of Greek/Roman culture. Inevitably the Jewish families of Nazareth including Joseph, Mary and Jesus would have known about hunger, violence and sexual oppression rampant at the time near Roman frontier cities such as Sepphoris.

 

Such was the environment when Joseph discovered that his intended was pregnant.  The options were deadly, and certainly, as Scripture implies, Joseph knew precedents.  "Putting away" a young pregnant girl was an almost certain death sentence for mother and unborn.  In a law-abiding rich Jewish family, the Leviticus law provided the death penalty. Among poorer families, less able to keep the law, such unfortunate girls were more likely put away.  But this too was almost surely a death sentence. If they survived pregnancy, abortion, or suicidal depression, they could end up in a brothel working in the Roman baths or prostitution shrines for the occupation.

 

Because of these practices, combined with the economic and social pressure to birth male babies, by the end of the 2^nd century the Roman Empire suffered from gender imbalance. Especially in major cities, males outnumbered females 3:2. It was opposite in Christian communities where 60% or more were female.  This happened because Christians rescued girl babies found abandoned on city streets, really infanticide euphemistically called "expose the infant." Christians also rescued young women caught in the dilemma similar to Mary, but without an angel visitation to her and to her betrothed.

 

Christianity spread not simply because of miracles.  It also spread because Christian slaves such as those exiled from insurgency-prone provinces like Galilee and Judea advised their troubled masters "We Christians know how to live." Christians at that time fought against infanticide and abortion more as a symptom, showing unlimited compassion and care for the humanity of all, even enemies. Thus, by 250 AD, early Christians had built fundamentally pro-life communities throughout the Roman Empire. These communities featured disciplined training that amounted to pro-life transformation. It was essential to the astounding growth of Christianity exactly at the time of its greatest and most violent opposition. It was comprehensively and foundationally pro-life, unlike the narrow focus of today's pro-life activists.

 

This advent, along with Mary 2,000 years ago, let's connect the powerful few with the deprivation of many poor and lowly, down even to the preborn, and prioritize God's acts on all their behalf as she did in the pregnancy and birth of her Son:
"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior . . .
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."

            —Selections from Luke 1:45ff

Following is a brief list of books and a video supporting a scholarly understanding of early Christianity, most of which are on my shelf.

 

Myers, Chad, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 1997) 500 pages. Essentially this a commentary on Mark's Gospel.  But more than a commentary on individual words, it includes a plethora of ancient documents relevant to Mark's narrative and the background of its writing. Replete with scholarly sources cited, this reading of Mark's Gospel has a bias (p. xxii "forward" by Daniel Berrigan): "…an attentive analysis of the politics of Jesus; that Way of defiance, loving, albeit courageous, toward the worldly powers that in His time and ours ravage the world and legalize crime. Iniqitous authority, lawless and spurious, must be cast from its illegitimate throne; justice must be enthroned.  This is the work of Jesus. It proceeds in the community of Jesus. Love, defiance. Instinctive affection toward persons, even the worldly powers; defiance of their power, its malfunctioning and maleficence."

 

Claiborne, Shane and Christ Haw, Jesus for President (The Simple Way, 2008). Entertaining artistic layout of quotes of many historical documents reflected in my column of December 2011 in the Big Horn County News. An example from p. 183: "Tacitus said that people feared the peace of Rome…because streams of blood and tears of unimaginable proportions followed in the 'peace'."  And from a US soldier in Iraq, "We are dying and killing for abstract nouns like freedom and democracy…but this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ."

 

Heschel, Abraham, The Prophets (2007).  Heschel, a rabbinical Old Testament scholar, was a good friend and theological influence on Dr. Martin Luther King for many years.

 

Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor (2008). Sobrino is a Catholic theologian from Spain with vast experience in Central and South America.

 

Romero, Oscar, The Violence of Love (2004). Excerpts from Archbiship Romero's sermons and papers prior to his silencing by an assassin's bullets at the moment of consecration during Holy Mass at his church in El Salvador highlight this book.  Some of this content is used in the documentary film, Romero, available at video outlets. It traces the fascinating transformation of this scholarly priest from avowed theological conservative to radical liberal because of his years of living with the Indians and poor of El Salvador.

 

Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity (1997). Historical documents are organized into a fascinating detailed account of the first centuries of Christianity by this respected scholar. This book is a primary source for my column of December 2011, "Foundationally pro-life: The Advent of Christ"

 

McClaren, Brian, Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide (Sep 2009) McLaren was invited to address a coalition of Christian leaders for a week in Ruwanda and Botswana following the genocide, trying to process the grief of the nation with Biblical vision. Participants discovered the Bible's words from Jesus and the prophets made clear that God's priorities focus on the greatest causes of human suffering and premature death, rather than on the "spiritual" agenda adopted by most denominations in Christian mission to Africa. The title of the book comes from an exclamation, with tears, of one of the participants.

 

From Jesus to Christ        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NLQfZdkzzM

First produced by PBS, this documentary in three parts and is long and detailed, but not boring.  It was shot on site in locations in which the history occurred. Important and little known documentation of early Christianity is in this series, but the narrative is tainted by an agenda to discredit some dearly-held Christian beliefs. It's an excellent video documentary except for this bias.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Hope and Light

For those of us committed to the Christian faith, advent is the time of year when we think about signs of hope. Seasonally, the winter solstice is also a time that reflects the pinnacle of darkness before days start to lengthen again. Throughout human history, this has been a time when people take stock of their lives and look forward to new beginnings. It's dark today, but we know the light is coming.

Big Horn County citizens face many challenges that are worth considering. Too many of our families with young children live in poverty. These children pay the price (along with their parents) of inadequate housing, nutrition, and preventative healthcare. They also live with the unfortunate consequences of familial substance abuse and serious mental health issues. Many of our young people are forced to deal with grief and loss very early in life. 

I started teaching here in 1973. Since then, I've seen lots of children in various stages of victimization and parents in despair over how to build trust and nourish respect. We have most often dealt with child abuse and neglect through punitive consequences. This approach has kept the cycle of abuse going generation after generation. Too often, professional intervention in families happens long down the road of dysfunction, after family members have given up hope, and is usually laced with the threat of imprisonment or violence. This makes reconciliation and learning new ways of relating doubly difficult. The most effective services happen with families with very young children, before problems crop up.

It's easy to become overwhelmed and pessimistic when looking at these complicated challenges for families. Luckily, in Big Horn County, we have dedicated and talented community members who are working at building more effective systems. Within the past few years, we have established several important supports for families living in our region. We have a Child Advocacy Center that provides trauma-based services for Native children and support resources for their families. Our Community Health Center can provide a medical home for any Big Horn County child and their family. Most recently, we have formed a multi-sector group to work together on expanding opportunities for families.

The Best Beginnings Community Coalition is made up of family support specialists, parents, and community members from across the county.  We're working together to strengthen families through a range of services, including teen parenting supports, home visiting services, and parenting networking groups.  Our goal is to expand prevention-based efforts to supplement existing treatment and child protection services.

This advent season I'm going to focus on these points of light in our community and renew my commitment to supporting this great work. I hope you'll join me in this effort.  There are many needs here, but also many ways to help. Let's follow the example of Jesus and other great prophets in bringing hope to the smallest among us.

The following is supplementary to the edition in the paper:

Here are the partners working with Big Horn County Best Beginnings:

Big Horn County Extension Service
http://www.msuextension.org/counties/Bighorn

Big Horn County Public Health
http://bighorncountypublichealth.com

Big Horn County Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC)
http://bighorncountypublichealth.com/wic.htm

Big Horn Hospital Association
http://bighornhospital.org

Bighorn Valley Health Center
http://www.bighornvalley.org

Child and Family Services Division, Department of Public Health and Human Services
http://www.dphhs.mt.gov/cfsd

Crow Tribe Education Department

Crow-Northern Cheyenne Hospital
http://www.ihs.gov/billings/index.cfm?module=bao_su_crow

Hardin Mental Health Center – South Central Montana Regional Mental Health Center
http://www.mhcbillings.org/?page=hardin

Hardin Parent Center, Hardin School District 17H & 1

Hardin Public Schools
http://www.hardin.k12.mt.us

District 7 Human Resources Development Council (HRDC)
http://hrdc7.org

Noah's Ark Preschool

Smarty Pants Preschool

Support and Techniques for Empowering People (STEP Program)
http://www.step-inc.org

St. Vincent Physician Network – Hardin Clinic
http://www.svh-mt.org/hardin_clinic

For the role of music in emotional development, and seven "c's" of music's function in human relationships see: http://www.stefan-koelsch.de/papers/Koelsch_2010_TICS_music_emotion.pdf

Some of the most scholarly and responsible scientific research into violent human behavior is that of Renee Girard, a social theorist now at Cambridge, famous for his "scapegoat" theory of the origin of human violence. Significantly, a major portion of his research into ancient literature includes Bible reading. Since most of his thirty books are infused with obscure vocabulary from the fields of anthropology, ancient history, psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology, an overview of his research is more quickly found in some of the many academic sources now participating in similar research. Many links, and written and other resources can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard (don't get sidelined with the French football player of the same name).

In the Bible, one can read any chapter of any of the prophets and find focus on how humans treat other humans. The first book of the Bible is framed by two stories. The one at the beginning depicts a good creation that turns bad with a sibling murder event. The one at the end turns good with a sibling decided on God's way, not to murder his brothers who attempted to kill him.

Jesus shows us the father. The father wants to "turn the faces of parents toward their children." The intention of this passage is precisely that of this column, to encourage protection and security for children. It builds our humanity and maturity at any age to attend to the needs of the most vulnerable among us.

The writer has a small collection of books and written materials on Renee Girard's basic theory of mimesis. Find greenwoodfarmmt.org, 631 Woodley Ln, Hardin, MT. 

--
David Graber
graberdb@gmail.com

Hardin, MT

Hoaxes and Suffering Hanyackers

 

It seems like greedy and thoughtless people have been with us since the beginning of time. Some of these people have become better than others at using their "gods" to justify catastrophic actions. After all, anyone who is able to acquire great wealth and power to wreak large-scale havoc on the world must be a divine favorite.

This system of belief has also been used to shield against seeing the consequences of irresponsible actions. Many wealthy, powerful "rulers in high places" justified greedy choices by blaming God (or their gods) for resulting damage to other people and the environment. Unfortunately, this pattern doesn't just reflect ancient history. 

 

My mother told me her story of a similar hoax that caused pain, sickness and death in the Southern Plains in the late 20's. She was a little girl when she first heard the stories from relatives farther west. Her father was one of some three million young men seeking their fortunes in the southern plains. These men ended up spending most of their daylight hours hanging onto two plow handles behind two horses every spring until the prairie sod froze in the fall, turning over virgin prairie sod row after row. They came to be labeled in the bars of Kansas towns as "hanyackers."

 

This system of exploitation was promoted and not just by the many pioneer farmers, but by Wall Street wheat investors. At that time, mile upon mile of golden wheat grew in the newly turned topsoil of the heartland prairies. People living in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota in the late 20's thought the bounty would never end. It was, to millions of farmers and a few wealthy investors, a permanent wealth-generating resource. My mother was one of those who believed that all was well, as she was told that her Kansas wheat farm was too far east for the dust storms to reach.

 

Eventually the rains stopped and my grandparent's crop shriveled, along with that of their neighbors. One July afternoon the fields lay with little residue under a hot clear Kansas sky. The wind stilled, the birds stopped singing, and the chickens went to the barn. A dark rolling bank of clouds rose from the northwest horizon to darken the sky.  My grandparents, informed by relatives farther west, knew what to do. My mother was ordered indoors.  The windows were shut and wet bed sheets were draped over cracks. She remembers her father going out to check on livestock, and to similarly drape wet burlap around barn windows, as darkness fell and the wind rose to a furious level. She remembers sticking her finger into cracks in the west wall of the house to stop dust from pouring in, driven by the wind. Her father came in and they waited out the storm into the night. It only happened once to them. They were more fortunate than most.

 

Almost a century later, we are still struggling with the effects of the large-scale topsoil depletion of the 1920s.   Soil scientists are belatedly recognizing the catastrophic death of billions of beings in every cubic inch of soil when prairie sod is busted.  Without these microscopic creatures, production of soil nutrients for plant health ceases, and must be externally applied for plant growth. We live with that legacy and effects of misunderstood human-created additives to soil to this day.

 

It took more than a decade to undo this hoax of the never-ending wheat bounty from just plowing and planting. Government agents were paid and deployed to convince farmers to start strip cropping their wheat between rows of fallow and planting hedgerows around fields, efforts to hold the fragile soil from blowing into the wind. Some churches began supporting the evidence for more responsible farming practices and a great soul-searching allowed farmers to connect stewardship of the Lord's provision with care for the environment, especially that of the soil. That's the tradition into which my parents were born, like many of our Big Horn County ancestors. But many remained in the darkness, unwilling to look at the real options.

 

During this Christmas season, I'm reminded of how Jesus dedicated his life to bringing the light of truth to bear on many hoaxes, including that of greed trumping virtue.  Mary's eloquent song (St.Luke 1, 46f), expresses her hope that her unborn child will bring a new understanding to the world. I also have hope that as we seek to emulate the life of Christ we will not overlook Mary's "Magnificat." We can overcome our human tendencies to value immediate rewards for a few over prosperity for all.  History has shown that kingdoms that rise this way still fall. Edifices of power on their thrones are still cast down.  The "people who walked in darkness" of hopelessness and despair, those losers and low life, still come around to see a great light. Truth again becomes a legitimate pursuit, and human life, especially that of the "least of these," flourishes as the "rich go away empty," and the "hungry are filled." In early Christianity, this was the heart of the advent message.

 

The following is continued from my incomplete column in the Big Horn County News December 4, 2012:

 

It's true right now. See the new documentary Chasing Ice, soon to appear in Billings. For now, check this web link to a 59-year-old committed Bill O'Reilly fan just after watching it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzw1dZNWiL8

 

The "hoax of global warming" is in reality the big money-perpetrated hoax that we can continue greedy consumption of fossil energy, and that the consequences to climate are legitimately placed in God's hands. We are living on the cusp of the most catastrophic climate change in recorded history. Unlike previous changes, this one is connected to our behavior. The science is conclusive. Governments, the energy industry, insurance agencies and our pentagon are already deep into strategic planning on climate change. The only questions are what kind of planning, for how soon, with what degree of human catastrophe. There's also the question, as in the dustbowl days when farmers kept breaking prairie sod years after the dust storms started, of how long we will persist in ignoring basic changes needed, and how long we will hide behind our theology about God's providence when our greed violates his basic ethics about compassion for all creation.

 

It really is in our corporate hands as human inhabitants of the planet.  I hope we as a nation do not prepare to enter the wars almost sure to break out with roots in climate catastrophe. I hope we will start now to alleviate the severity and build infrastructure in keeping with our historical commitment as a nation to human rights.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
graberdb@gmail.com

Light in the Darkness of Newtown

The massacre of innocents in Connecticut brings a pall of darkness over the nation. Yet, in the midst of the darkness, there is new hope we will regain the civic good will that used to restrain carnage such as this.  We in Big Horn County share the nation's concern about the pathology of individuals attracted to such violence by life experiences and media.  Unfortunately, it's a pathology involving more than a few bad individuals. There is a more pervasive mindset that contributes to opportunities for the disturbed among us to act out their violent fantasies.   

 

It surprised me to learn recently that gun violence in the United States now ranks with that of Somalia, a country known for its ongoing brutal civil wars.  Since Columbine there have now been thirty mass murder events, with this one among the very worst.  I think most of us know that total gun control is not the best solution to this horrific situation.  We know that tighter gun control laws and enforcement of those laws will not necessarily end killing sprees.  Sadly, reducing access to weapons won't guarantee a reduction in severely deranged individuals among us.  

 

A useful direction would be to address the national mindset that required twenty beautiful children, and seven adults, to pay a horrific price for one man's freedom to shoot the guns of his choice. 

 

We need the old gun laws back in place when I was a teenager. Those regulations were designed to protect human lives while supporting responsible use of guns.  Hunting and self-defense were primary reasons to own guns then (see my previous column, AUGUST , 2012 "How we got gun un-control"). Weapons designed smaller and smaller with larger and larger capacity for better concealment and more convenient slaughter of massive numbers of people, such as the Bushmaster 223 and newly marketed high-capacity handguns used in this and recent mass murders, were unknown then.  What military weapons did exist were far larger. Yet working models were rightly kept out of the hands of the consenting general public. That was the right mindset.  

 

As a nation, we have somehow lost our common sense when it comes to weaponry. We have stiff government regulations covering access to driving cars, purchase and use of drugs, and handling of dynamite and fireworks. Such regulations keep our children safe from deranged people or dangerous deadly devices of all kinds—except for guns.

 

Years ago, public will resolved to reduce deaths from car accidents.  We decided as a collective society that we were losing too many human lives to motor vehicle tragedies.   We took a multifaceted approach to reducing the loss of human life, including improved road design (shoulders, guard rails, banked curves), car design (safety glass, gas tank placement), and legal safeguards (speed limits, DUI laws).   The result of these efforts was a drastically reduced death rate from that of the 60's and 70's.

 

Over the same time period that auto transportation became safer, advances in gun technology have combined with legal relaxation of gun regulations to increase the ease and efficiency of death-delivery. Ironically, our advanced American technology, with ongoing handgun design improvements, has now made mass murder alarmingly easy and efficient. While we regularly recall toxic bottles from China or ineffective child care seats, our nation has chosen to deregulate guns. This is in no small way related to a massive media onslaught from the NRA and the gun industry. Marketing has been astonishingly effective in encouraging people to overcome common sense when it comes to the safety of our most precious little citizens.

 

Cholera used to kill lots of people.  So did automobile accidents and urban fires. We've been able to address and reduce the senseless loss of life associated with these hazards.  What seems to be missing in this situation is a rational discussion of strategies to solve the problem.  Our nation is stuck in a national hysteria that has hamstrung our access to a broad-based solution.  Rand Paul, a prominent politician, just sent me an email wanting me to fear that Obama, the United Nations, and our federal law enforcement people are now conspiring together to confiscate my guns. Paul's many followers are claiming last week's tragedy has nothing to do with guns. Cars don't kill people? People do? It's like saying cholera and tuberculosis had nothing to do with germs.

 

So no, just restoring rational gun safety regulations to consistency with our own history and with that of other developed nations of our planet will not alone solve our half-century plague of gun homicide. But it would be a good start toward a rational, investigative science-based discussion leading to real changes. The gun industry and the NRA could restore themselves to their role in our nation as advocates for safety and government regulation of our arsenal of weaponry, and my guns will be accessible for any inspection. But this won't happen under their current leadership. This is not the time for President Obama or other federal government officials, religious leaders or gun industry representatives to shrink from rational dialogue.  Let's work together toward restoring the safety of our children and our own capacity to access basic, American common sense in the face of tragedy.  

 

This ends the column as published in the Big Horn County News. Further information:

 

2010 Advent column, "Strengthening America Against Evil":

http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/search?q=advent

 

BACK IN 1990, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued this warning: "The religious community must ... take seriously the risk of idolatry that could result from an unwarranted fascination with guns, which overlooks or ignores the social consequences of their misuse." Two decades later, about 660,000 more Americans have been killed by guns, with a million more injured.  Continued on this link: http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/01/9mm-golden-calves

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/jared-loughner-mass-shootings-mental-illness

 

http://audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20121101_gunviolencepanel.mp3

 

A rational approach:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13358-four-ways-to-stop-gun-violence

 

 

 

 

--
David Graber
RR 1 Box 1211D
631 Woodley Ln
Hardin, MT  59034

406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
Bonnie's email graberbj@gmail.com