Damon Vrabel: Will The Real Church Please Speak Up?

The Coming Crash: Usury and the Irrelevant Church

by Damon Vrabel article link article link

05.13.10 | Canada Free Press | Silver Bear Cafe

Please, let us stop this usury! - Nehemiah 5:10

It’s been a wild couple of weeks - increasing unemployment, Greek debt crisis, yet another ridiculous bailout, pressure on Goldman Sachs, accusations of commodities manipulation by JP Morgan Chase, and new freakish levels of market volatility that might be signaling the next phase of market collapse. The many day-to-day issues can leave us dazed and confused, so most people ignore them. Huge mistake.

They are all related to the most powerful force on earth that controls our lives because it is the very foundation of our society - usury. We are ruled not by governments anymore but by financial powers that use interest-bearing debt to exert control over governments, corporations, and people. Almost all other political issues with which we concern ourselves are secondary symptoms of or purposeful distractions from this larger narrative that is never reported by the Wall-Street-funded media. Sadly the church has remained silent as well.

Explaining the details can be extremely complicated, but the basic core to understand is that the US government issues no money. Instead all money comes from private banking institutions with interest attached. At times in the past the US government issued real money for people to use - US notes and coins. But today all money comes from the Federal Reserve’s private banking system by putting the US government, i.e. 308,000,000 Americans, in debt. If the US government were not in debt to the banking system, the American people would have no money.

More technically, the Fed and its Wall Street cartel banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs make billions by doing nothing but controlling our money. They have the monopoly license to create the core money in our system from holding US Treasury bonds on their balance sheets. These bonds represent the debt of the United States. Thanks to interest, the bonds pull a large portion of our wages to the banks. The primary purpose of the IRS is to take your wages to pay the interest back to the banks. In effect, Wall Street owns a good bit of your labor. And the more bonds they hold, i.e. the more debt the population is in, the more money they make thanks to the interest flows and the profits from gambling on your debt. The system is very much one of "us vs. them." Such is the nature of monopoly power and usury.

Economics and Morality

Controlling others and living off their backs by forcing them to borrow with interest in order to have any money is called usury (this does not include standard, self-liquidating bank loans to businesses to fund production). It is a system that ensures everything we do, whether in the public or private sector, feeds Wall Street and the controllers above it. It creates a two-tiered societal pyramid of money pushers on top vs. money users on bottom. The power differential is huge. Everyone is hostage. In doing something as simple as buying food to survive, we contribute to usury because we only have usury-based money, not real money. Like the slaves who built the Egyptian pyramids, today we are stuck building an invisible pyramid of monetary power.

In such a system there is never enough money to pay back all the interest to the money pushers. The only solution is for the money users - government, corporations, individuals - to borrow more. This is the reason our debt continues skyrocketing to increasingly insane levels. It isn’t about politics, but the fundamental exponential math underlying the system - the users must borrow more and more to pay back interest and keep the system afloat. Such math is guaranteed to fail. Iceland and Greece have reached the point of failure. The rest of the Europe and the US will experience failure as well. Then we will see money and assets vacuumed up the pyramid by the money pushers - the banking establishment that owns the collateral and can take your property.

The exponential math not only creates exponential debt growth, but also exponentially increasing:

* Scale – government and businesses keep getting bigger; we get smaller and local communities lose their meaning

* Velocity – the hamster wheel keeps spinning faster; human life suffers

* Consumption – we buy more and more things that break more quickly

* Production – we make more and more things that break more quickly

* Inflation – the dollar buys less and less; we can’t seem to make progress

None of these things have to happen in an economic system. They only happen in ours because of debt-based money, usury, that greatly benefits the top of the pyramid while everyone else suffers to a certain degree depending on their level in the pyramid.

So this system is guaranteed to fail due to not only the impossible math, but also the fundamental immorality. Taken together those five issues paint a horrible picture. Republicans blame Democrats and vice-versa. Nope. It’s all a very simple result of a system based on usury, which used to be considered profoundly immoral. It was a fundamental violation of every major religion. It still is for Islam, but Christianity succumbed long ago. They thought a free market economic system would be beneficial, but got snookered into thinking that usury had to be part of that system. On the contrary, monolithic usury kills the free market.

Our monetary system is a top-down controlling machine, not a free market. It is run not by government, but by the most powerful financial interests in the world. Some people feel in their guts that someone must be stealing from them because they just can’t get ahead no matter how hard they work. Well that’s because it’s true - someone is legally stealing from them. The simple math of usury pulls money from people on the bottom of the pyramid who create real value toward those at the top who create no value. MBAs and others serving the system must reckon with this truth rather than remaining blind. Farmers understand it well, having lost their property over the years to the bankers. Families feel it in the fact that it’s difficult to get enough money to feed the kids compared to 50 years ago when one parent could work a standard week and feed a family of five. Everyone in the system will feel it once the debt system collapses as it is doing in Greece.

Living off the backs of others was called feudalism 300 years ago. It was slavery 100 years ago. Today it’s called the "free market" thanks to the propaganda and fraud of neoclassical economics. It completely ignores the truth of our monetary system, the math behind it, and the eventual collapse that will result from it. Greece is giving us a glimpse, but it is only a mild pre-game warmup compared to what’s coming. The world will rue the day it was ever seduced into accepting usury and the illusion of prosperity driven by nothing but debt.

The Irrelevant Church

On this issue of monolithic usury, the issue from which many of our other problems spawn, the church seems to have no voice. Recently, an older church leader told me, "Keep it up, this needs to be addressed, but you have more guts than me, I don’t want to be killed." Sobering comment, to be sure, but in the shadow of Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King, is the church now impotent? Are its leaders now too afraid to speak truth to power, to stand against darkness? Or is the problem that the church is, like most of us, fooled by the myth that we live in a free market so we don’t realize we are immersed in an immoral system of controlling usury?

Lower class Greek citizens are now learning the painful truth about the mythical free market. A few of them have died as the police brutally repress them to enforce the usury system for the rich bankers like Goldman Sachs. Where is the voice of Bishop Romero? "I order you, stop the repression!" Iceland learned the lesson a few months ago. Several other populations have learned the lesson in the past as the controlling debt peddlers punished, conquered, and restructured their countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, England, etc.). The same lesson is coming to the rest of Europe and the United States. But again, the church seems to be oblivious. It failed to heed Martin Luther King’s warning, "One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake…today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake." The church has fallen asleep.

The Dialectic of Left vs. Right

A possible reason is that the church has been co-opted by the manipulative left vs. right civil war created by the corporate media. In fact, Protestant denominations have split into conservative vs. liberal camps so they war against each other - Wall Street is brilliant at divide and conquer. Some sermons in conservative denominations sound like speeches from conservative politicians. Liberal Christian magazines sometimes seem to be just liberal political magazines with an added dash of Jesus.

Postmodernism should inform us that the left vs. right narrative is contrived to keep people from noticing the real power structure behind Wall Street that controls our lives. As long as the church submits to the false framework, church leaders will be "safe." But that means they will also be irrelevant because they are not speaking to the primary narrative in our world that has always caused problems and is getting ready to unleash far more pain and poverty in the near future - the issue of monolithic usury and debt servitude. By not speaking against usury, the church has become a pawn of it. So the church has largely been conquered by the same concocted civil war that has divided society.

Dollar Tyranny

Another reason the church may be silent is the simple fact that it depends on money just like everything else does. Since all money in our system comes from usury, it is difficult to even notice it. And what authority would the church have to speak against it since it is itself complicit in it? Anybody or any organization that uses a Federal Reserve Note or a credit/debit card, which everyone must do, is unknowingly participating in usury because, again, all of that money comes from the bonds held by Wall Street. But knowingly or not, how could the church or any organization speak against the very thing that fuels its own existence?

The church’s tax-exempt status may be another reason for the silence. Tax exemption is one of the powerful ways the financial empire system influences and controls other entities. If the wrong person says the wrong thing, the IRS has the ability to suddenly remove the exemption, which doubles the cost of running that organization. The church never should have submitted to such tyranny over what may or may not be said.

Comfort of the Middle Class Bubble

Finally, it seems the comfort provided by the monetary system for the great mass in the middle, which is a key part of the church, keeps us from wanting to really think about it. The illusion of peace and prosperity that has lasted for so long has been nice. Some of us even thought we had that comfort because we were better people, so God blessed us. Reckoning with the truth will be painful for those who believe this. The fact is that our perceived comfort today is a result of the darkness of usury. The middle can only exist because there is a bottom that keeps our system afloat. They are the only reason the middle class exists. Moreover, the comfort is currently an illusion because most in the middle class don’t realize how indebted they are. Total unfunded liabilities currently hidden on the government’s financials put each American in an extra $300,000+ in debt that they currently aren’t aware of. That debt comes from the fact that, again, our money comes from usury.

Since the bubble was built on usury, its very existence is immoral, and everyone who participates in it becomes infected. It is also flimsy because usury means the bubble is sustained by debt. Many are already aware of the hollowness of the bubble since it has destroyed the fabric of our communities and a sense of deeper meaning in life. But others are able to ignore that and focus on the material comfort. What will happen to them once the material comfort itself crashes? It will soon. Some market forecasters predict the final collapse of our debt system will be worse than the Great Depression. The math is clear - it will be worse. Just like Greece, we will then see Wall Street paying the government to crackdown on the people, cancel social programs, and take their assets from them to hand them over to the upper class behind the banks. That is the end result of usury - using debt to control others and take their assets so they have no equity. At that point it will be too late for the church to save the lower and middle classes from violent repression and the upper class from their narcissistic detachment from the horror.

"Silence is Betrayal"

So is there a wing of the church that has not yet sold its soul? Is there a remaining Christian voice against usury, or are Muslims the only people in the world who stand against it? The church must wake up to the truth of our system and become relevant again. This is the civil rights issue of the 21st century, only this time it is not black vs. white but a few money pushers vs. the great mass of users. The power of the bond market is getting ready to wreak havoc. We’re all in it together this time. As Martin Luther King said, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal…. That time has come for us today." Will the real church please speak up?

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Let Us Finally Gift The Life That Was Gifted To Us !!

The occupation of America (the public-Nation) by the United States (the private-State) MUST END - this applies to Canada as well, essentially the 51st State (has been for decades), and Britain; ALL ARE SIMILARLY OCCUPIED AND OWNED, the Anglo-American Brotherhood goes back millennia. WE MUST RESIST: ** OUR ONLY WEAPON IS OUR REFUSAL !! ** Violence must be avoided at all cost, the Corporate behave as beasts, we must not. Partisanship is used by those wholly corporate as it is an instrumentality of it. A blend of Rwandan-Serbian "Tea" steeped in hate and violence will only serve corporate interests and increase our suppression and enslavement. Those who incite violence must be indicted; if death results they must be charged with inciting Genocide. An invective firestorm can only result in harm and they know it - DO NOT BE USED BY THEM !!

We are the VALUE of the currency. The CORPORATE hold the threat of physical force over us, but we hold the the ultimate power over them, the VALUE of their riches, without us they are less than paupers. We must take back our value and employ it for ourselves, together !! Disinvest from the Corporate, repudiate their debt and Government and invest in community. Withdraw all support and use of Federal Reserve Notes (FRN's) and associate currencies (CDN Dollar / Pound / EURO), demand employment of public monies !! Protect your neighbors from predatory banks: surround their homes and resist repossession (without violence) !! Withdraw all monies from any bank who will repossess any home !! POLICE AND MILITARY, WE ARE YOUR BROTHERS, SISTERS, SONS, DAUGHTERS, AUNTS, UNCLES, MOTHERS AND FATHERS: YOU ARE US, WE ARE YOU - STAND WITH US NOT THE CORPORATE: YOU ARE FAMILY, THEY ARE NOT (all of us are considered chattel by them - they "disowned" us as family a long time ago inorder to "own" us as slaves) !! WHEN OUR RIGHTS ARE SUPPRESSED AND TRAMPLED ON SO ARE YOURS - PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR SOLES ON OUR SOULS !!

Our Nations are about to collapse, their artificial supports have rotted away, have crumbled, have been hammered by willful intent, neglect and greed !! If we do not step in and assume responsibility for our safety and security we will surely perish. WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO OUR FAMILIES AND TO OURSELVES: OUR FUTURE IS OURS OR THERE WILL BE NO FUTURE !! "DO NO HARM, CAUSE NO LOSS" MUST BE REMADE AS THE COMMON LAW OF THE LAND !! The Spiritual Illness that possesses us, that occupies every facet of our lives must be cured. It is Mammon, the false-god of the Corporate. It is cured by out-going concern, forgiveness and unselfish love - well-being and salvation is the result - a gift from God (no matter your definition): if the "result" is unselfish love (giving not taking) then it is the truth - all else is error. A society of the "gift" gives life, a society of the "take" takes life. LET US FINALLY GIFT THE LIFE THAT WAS GIFTED TO US, IT IS OURS TO GIVE !!

Note: Cross-Post from Mammon or Messiah research. Previously posted on MMr April 03, 2010

The Uncompromised Spirit: Fires Of Persecution

"I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." Rev. 1:9. John was banished because he was a witness for Christ in the preaching of the gospel. At that time Christianity was outlawed as a form of *treason* against the Roman gods. ** Paul declared that "all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution **." It has always been the fate of Christians, and especially of the prophets of God, to suffer persecution and sometimes martyrdom. Satan never persecutes his own citizens, nor does he afflict cold or lukewarm church members. It was the *godliness* of the early Christians that brought on them the wrath of the great adversary. This explains why *persecution is largely unknown to the modern church*. This fact is set forth by a well-known Christian writer: "Why is it, then, that persecution seems in a great degree to slumber? The only reason is, that the church has ** conformed to the world's standard ** [Woe to them that are at ease in Zion], and therefore awakens no opposition. The religion which is current in our day is not of the pure and holy character that marked the Christian faith in the days of Christ and His apostles. It is only because of the spirit of compromise with sin, because the great truths of the word of God are so indifferently regarded, because there is so little vital godliness in the church, that Christianity is apparently so popular with the world. Let there be a revival of the faith and power of the early church, and the spirit of persecution will be revived, and the fires of persecution will be rekindled." [Ellen G. White (SDA), The Great Controversy, p. 48]

Christ prophesied that persecution would be the fate of His followers, including His immediate disciples. (Matt. 23:34-36.) This prediction was literally fulfilled. His forerunner, John the Baptist, was beheaded by order of King Herod; Christ Himself was scourged and crucified; Stephen was stoned to death; James was beheaded by Herod Agrippa; Philip was scourged, imprisoned, and crucified; Matthew was killed with a halberd; James the Less was stoned, and his brains were dashed out with a fuller's club; Matthias was stoned at Jerusalem and then beheaded; Andrew was crucified at Edessa; Mark was dragged to pieces by an infuriated mob on the streets of Alexandria; Peter was crucified, head downward at his own request; Paul was beheaded at Rome by order of Nero; Jude, the brother of James, and who was also called Thaddeus, was crucified at Edessa; Bartholomew was beaten and crucified; Thomas was thrust through with a spear; Luke was hanged on an olive tree in Greece; Simon Zelotes was crucified in Britain; and John was persecuted and banished to Patmos, and was the only one of the early disciples who died a natural death. [See Fox's Book of Martyrs]

Persecution for Christ's sake has always been a blessing in disguise. Of the Israelites in Egypt we read that the more they were persecuted "the more they multiplied and grew." Thus it has ever been. The ten pagan Roman persecutions of the early church were terrible beyond description, but during that period Christianity made its greatest progress. By the end of the first century it is estimated that there were more than six millions of Christians in the Roman Empire, and by the end of the third century Christianity had supplanted paganism as the religion of the empire. The first Gospel seeds were watered by the blood of martyrs, and bountiful was the harvest.

Tertullian wrote to a persecuting Roman ruler: "Kill us, torture us, grind us to dust. ... The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in numbers we grow; the blood of Christians is seed." (Apology, chap. 50.) This experience was repeated during the persecutions of the Middle Ages, and will be repeated again just before Christ returns. (Matt. 24:21, 22; Rev. 7:13, 14.) [excerpted from The Seven Epistles of Christ, chapter 1, The Crown Jewel of Prophecy, by Taylor G. Bunch, 1947]

Out of a Roman penitentiary came the Apocalypse to bless Christendom. From the barren rocks of the volcanic hills of Patmos came the book that completes and crowns the canon of Scripture. Although his only earthly companions were criminals, John did not become discouraged and lose hope. He rose above his circumstances and environments. Although he had been compelled to sever his connections with home and loved ones, he maintained his union with God and held communion with heavenly beings. ** We should be thankful for the bleak and barren places of life that cut us off from all earthly help so that heaven can draw near **. Lonely Patmos became to the prophet "the house of God" and "the gate of heaven." A monastery now crowns the summit of the most nearly central height, where tradition says John received his visions. It was built eight centuries ago and dedicated to "Saint John."

From the places of exile and affliction have come the characters and literature and music that have been the greatest blessing to mankind. While in exile, facing the wrath of his brother Esau, Jacob in his extremity found God, and his character was so transformed that he was given a new name to correspond to his new character. It was while Joseph was in exile in Egypt that he developed a character that gave him the blessings of heaven and the favor of Pharaoh. He became a savior of the nation and of his own people. Moses was a fugitive when he met and talked with God at the burning bush, where he received his commission to deliver Israel from affliction and bondage. While a fugitive from the wrath of Pharaoh he wrote the books of Genesis and Job.

The experience of David while fleeing from the wrath of Saul brought him the greatest blessings of his life. It was during this time that he produced the best and most spiritual of his psalms. Elijah was in exile fleeing from the wrath of the angry Jezebel when he heard the "still small voice" directing him to his last work, which culminated in his translation by means of the fiery chariot. Ezekiel and Daniel wrote their great prophecies during Babylonian captivity. Tyndale and Luther produced their Bible translations while fugitives from the wrath and power of papal Rome. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress came out of Bedford jail to bless the world. In the dark room of affliction and hardship the greatest characters have been developed and the greatest literature has been produced. Such also is the noble heritage of the Revelation. [quoted source unknown]

Chris Hedges: After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

by Chris Hedges article link article link

May 10, 2010 | TruthDig.com

It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars. They have failed to unequivocally denounce unfettered capitalism, globalization and pre-emptive war. The obsession with personal piety and “How-is-it-with-me?” spirituality that permeates most congregations is undiluted narcissism. And while the Protestant church and reformed Judaism have not replicated the perfidiousness of the Catholic bishops, who protect child-molesting priests, they have little to say in an age when we desperately need moral guidance.

I grew up in the church and graduated from a seminary. It is an institution whose cruelty, inflicted on my father, who was a Presbyterian minister, I know intimately. I do not attend church. The cloying, feel-your-pain language of the average clergy member makes me run for the door. The debates in most churches—whether revolving around homosexuality or biblical interpretation—are a waste of energy. I have no desire to belong to any organization, religious or otherwise, which discriminates, nor will I spend my time trying to convince someone that the raw anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John might not be the word of God. It makes no difference to me if Jesus existed or not. There is no historical evidence that he did. Fairy tales about heaven and hell, angels, miracles, saints, divine intervention and God’s beneficent plan for us are repeatedly mocked in the brutality and indiscriminate killing in war zones, where I witnessed children murdered for sport and psychopathic gangsters elevated to demigods. The Bible works only as metaphor.

The institutional church, when it does speak, mutters pious non-statements that mean nothing. “Given the complexity of factors involved, many of which understandably remain confidential, it is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments, and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience,” Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote about the Iraq war. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the eve of the invasion, told believers that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a menace, and that reasonable people could disagree about the necessity of using force to overthrow him. It assured those who supported the war that God would not object.

B’nai B’rith supported a congressional resolution to authorize the 2003 attack on Iraq. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which represents Reform Judaism, agreed it would back unilateral action, as long as Congress approved and the president sought support from other nations. The National Council of Churches, which represents 36 different faith groups, in a typical bromide, urged President George W. Bush to “do all possible” to avoid war with Iraq and to stop “demonizing adversaries or enemies” with good-versus-evil rhetoric, but, like the other liberal religious institutions, did not condemn the war.

A Gallup poll in 2006 found that “the more frequently an American attends church, the less likely he or she is to say the war was a mistake.” Given that Jesus was a pacifist, and given that all of us who graduated from seminary rigorously studied Just War doctrine, which was flagrantly violated by the invasion of Iraq, this is a rather startling statistic.

But I cannot rejoice in the collapse of these institutions. We are not going to be saved by faith in reason, science and technology, which the dead zone of oil forming in the Gulf of Mexico and our production of costly and redundant weapons systems illustrate. Frederick Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or “Superman”—our secular religion—is as fantasy-driven as religious magical thinking.

There remain, in spite of the leaders of these institutions, religiously motivated people toiling in the inner city and the slums of the developing world. They remain true to the core religious and moral values ignored by these institutions. The essential teachings of the monotheistic traditions are now lost in the muck of church dogma, hollow creeds and the banal bureaucracy of institutional religion. These teachings helped create the concept of the individual. The belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that can defy the clamor of the nation is one of the gifts of religious thought. This call for individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for compassion, especially for the weak, the impoverished, the sick and the outcast.

We are rapidly losing the capacity for the moral life. We reject the anxiety of individual responsibility that laid the foundations for the open society. We are enjoined, after all, to love our neighbor, not our tribe. This empowerment of individual conscience was the starting point of the great ethical systems of all civilizations. Those who championed this radical individualism, from Confucius to Socrates to Jesus, fostered not obedience and conformity, but dissent and self-criticism. They initiated the separation of individual responsibility from the demands of the state. They taught that culture and society were not the sole prerogative of the powerful, that freedom and indeed the religious and moral life required us to often oppose and challenge those in authority, even at great personal cost. Immanuel Kant built his ethics upon this radical individualism. And Kant’s injunction to “always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means” runs in a direct line from the Socratic ideal and the Christian Gospels.

The great religions set free the critical powers of humankind. They broke with the older Greek and Roman traditions that gods and Destiny ruled human fate-a belief that, when challenged by Socrates, saw him condemned to death. They challenged the power of the tribe, the closed society. They offered up the possibility that human beings, although limited by circumstance and human weakness, could shape and give direction to society and their own lives. These religious thinkers were our first ethicists. And it is perhaps not accidental that the current pope, as well as the last one, drove out of the Catholic Church thousands of clergy and religious leaders who embodied these qualities, elevating the dregs to positions of leadership and leaving the pedophiles to run the Sunday schools.

These religious institutions are in irreversible decline. They are ruled by moral and intellectual trolls. They have become arrogant and self-absorbed. Their sins are many. They protected criminals. They pandered to the lowest common denominator and illusions of personal fulfillment and surrendered their moral authority. They did not fight the corporate tyrants who have impoverished us. They refused to denounce a caste of Christian heretics embodied by the Christian right and have, for their cowardice, been usurped by bizarre proto-fascists clutching the Christian cross. They have nothing left to say. And their aging congregants, who are fleeing the church in droves, know it. But don't think the world will be a better place for their demise.

As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced. We are becoming objects, consumer products and marketable commodities. We have no intrinsic value. We are obsessed with self-presentation. We must remain youthful. We must achieve notoriety and money or the illusion of it. And it does not matter what we do to get there. Success, as Goldman Sachs illustrates, is its own morality. Other people's humiliation, pain and weakness become the fodder for popular entertainment. Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing see contestants disappeared from any reality television show or laughed out of any Wall Street firm.

We live in the age of the "Übermensch who rejects the sentimental tenets of traditional religion. The Übermensch creates his own morality based on human instincts, drive and will. We worship the "will to power" and think we have gone "beyond good and evil." We spurn virtue. We think we have the moral fortitude and wisdom to create our own moral code. The high priests of our new religion run Wall Street, the Pentagon and the corporate state. They flood our airwaves with the tawdry and the salacious. They, too, promise a utopia. They redefine truth, beauty, morality, desire and goodness. And we imbibe their poison as blind followers once imbibed the poison of the medieval church.

Nietzsche had his doubts. He suspected that this new secular faith might prefigure an endless middle-class charade. Nietzsche feared the deadening effects of the constant search for material possessions and personal hedonism. Science and technology might rather bring about a new, distorted character Nietzsche called "the Last Man." The Last Man, Nietzsche feared, would engage in the worst kinds of provincialism, believing he had nothing to learn from history. The Last Man would wallow and revel in his ignorance and quest for personal fulfillment. He would be satisfied with everything that he had done and become, and would seek to become nothing more. He would be intellectually and morally stagnant, incapable of growth, and become part of an easily manipulated herd. The Last Man would mistake cynicism for knowledge.

"The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars," Nietzsche wrote about the Last Man in the prologue of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." "Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself."

"They are clever and know everything that has ever happened: so there is no end to their mockery." The Last Men indulge in "their little pleasure for the day, and their little pleasure for the night."

The consumer culture, as Nietzsche feared, has turned us into what Chalmers Johnson calls a "consumerist Sparta." The immigrants and the poor, all but invisible to us, work as serfs in this new temple of greed and imperialism. Curtis White in "The Middle Mind" argues that most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their consumer society and empire. He suspects they do not care. They don't want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins or the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is welcomed and appreciated. It ensures that we remain Last Men. And the death of religious institutions will only cement into place the new secular religion of the Last Man, the one that worships military power, personal advancement, hedonism and greed, the one that justifies our ruthless callousness toward the weak and the poor.

© 2010 TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

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MM research cross post

Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle

by Michael Parenti article link

May 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

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Ed Kinane: All Earth is Alive and Akin

All Earth is Alive and Akin

by Ed Kinane article link

May 9, 2010 CommonDreams.org

"We have been socialized to treat [animals] as objects for our use rather than beings with intrinsic value and rights. It is easier to exploit when we depersonalize. Objectification and exploitation of animals parallels the objectification of women and cultural minorities...." --Linda Destefano

To "objectify" is to turn creatures into things... objects without thought, without right, without need, without feeling. Objectification is a major obstacle to peace and justice on this bleeding planet.

Turning the living into things is precisely what the U.S. war machine did to the people and land of Southeast Asia. It is what that machine is doing to the people and land of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such lethal objectifying can only occur insofar as military personnel are themselves objectified, i.e. desensitized and robotized. How and why does our culture foster such barbarity?

We need to resist objectification wherever and whenever we can. There are several fronts where the struggle must be waged. They connect and overlap. Struggle on one fortifies each of the others. When any one front is neglected, justice for all suffers.

Take sexism. Sexism entails objectifying women, often as sex objects, usually as work objects. To objectify half of the human species -- especially that half doing the least to destroy and the most to nourish -- is to deny and degrade all life. As long as there is sexism, violence will thrive. Eliminating sexism is crucial to eliminating war.

Take racism. Racism entails objectifying people of color. When people are reduced to things they can be exploited and war can be made on them. A "nigger" is a thing. So are "gooks" and "hajis."

Because, over the centuries, the people of pallor had a knack for weaponry we became world-striding conquerors. Since we conquer people of color, extract their resources and live off their labor, we have to depersonalize them. To live with our righteous selves we can't value those we exploit. Or those exploited on our behalf. Hence racism.

Workers are likewise objectified. Under industrialism and corporate capitalism jobs are structured so workers are depersonalized and function as mindless machines, as drones. Their stupor is then used to justify their further exploitation.

The training and enculturation of higher functionaries (officers, engineers, executives, professionals, etc.) tends to compartmentalize their minds. Oblivious to their own co-optation, for them the consequences of their actions often remain opaque.

Industrialism and corporate capitalism - think oil spill -- see not only people, but the whole of nature as dead matter. Air, earth, water, forests and rivers are treated as inert and not as the vital elements of the biosphere that they are.

The ecology movement, in exorcising our centuries-long amnesia, teaches us the intrinsic value of all nature. The recovery of this knowledge by the industrial world is essential to the struggle against violence on all fronts.

All oppressed and their struggles are one. Worldwide, most workers are women, most women are persons of color, most persons of color are workers. Even if they aren't thus doubly or triply victimized, they share the same fate: they are dehumanized, brutalized -- treated as animals.

As long as vast categories of humans are treated as non-human animals and as long as non-human animals are denied care and respect, workers, women and people of color will likewise be denied care and respect. Everyone loses.

This isn't platitude, it's common sense. It's the pragmatism behind, for example, organized labor demanding a living wage for non-unionized workers. The higher the wage floor, the higher the wage scale for all.

The more respect for the least empowered, the more respect for all. Long ago a Palestinian sage put it this way: "What you do to my least brethren...you do to me."

Insofar as the objectification of any kind of creature is routinized, the barbarism of a culture grows. Our layers on layers of callousness, like proliferating systems of military 'defense,' threaten us all. By objectifying anyone -- human or non-human -- we risk sharing her fate. The hardening of our hearts hardens our entirety.

What we do to animals in laboratories and on factory farms, the Nazis did in prison camps to defenseless minorities. Their medical experiments, presided over by doctors and scientists, grew out of standard laboratory procedure.

Whether it be in some research labs or in Nazi death camps - or in occupied Palestine or among the tortured of Abu Ghraeb, Bagram and Guantanamo -- the cold-bloodedness is similar. In each, caged, silenced, disenfranchised victims are met by clinical detachment and totalitarian power. By playing god the perpetrators deny their own humanity.

In all of these cages the victims and their tormentors are not so different from each other or from ourselves. How can we not consider them our kin? As ecologists and feminists keep reminding us: we are all connected. There is no heartbeat that is not somehow our own.

Ed Kinane works to end state terrorism. He was with Voices in the Wilderness in Baghdad in 2003. Reach him at edkinane@verizon.net.

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God's Goodwill In Civil Disobedience

Whom Should We Obey?

"And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man's blood on us! Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ** We ought to obey God rather than men **," Acts 5:27-29. There has always been a controversy within today's church concerning Bible smuggling and other activities which are considered "illegal" by today's law. Those in disagreement with "illegal" practices commonly quote Paul's epistle to the Romans, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves," Romans 13:1,2. In context there is a clear commandment to obey civil authority for the punishment of evil, and the good of mankind. Verse three clearly defines this context, "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. ..." Yet those who do good in sharing the saving message of Jesus Christ in a Muslim nation have reason to fear. The rules established by Sharia law (Islamic rule) clearly are a terror to good.

We must not confuse civil authority with God's will. We have a right, and duty [FOR MY NAME'S SAKE], to exercise that which God instructs, *even if it violates man's law*. The apostle Paul was clearly instructing the early Church to *submit to man's rule in doing good*, that we may not be found as evildoers. If you walk by a pond where a child is drowning, you would ignore the "No Trespassing" sign and save the child. Godless nations and their token "official" churches who oppose Bible smuggling want their children to drown. In the book of Acts, Peter was clearly commanded by the local "rulers" not to teach in the name of Jesus. However, in verse 20 of chapter 5, the angel of the Lord instructs Peter to "Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life." Was the angel of the Lord disobeying God? When Joshua sent two spies to view the land of Jericho, they were hidden in the house of Rahab the harlot. Rahab's house was built along the wall of Jericho, a wall built to prevent "illegal" passage of unwelcome visitors. When the king heard of the arrival of the Israeli spies, he immediately sent word to Rahab and instructed her to bring forth the spies, which had entered her home. Rahab disobeyed the command of her king and hid the spies, even lying to protect their whereabouts. Later that evening, she secretly "smuggled" the spies out of the city by lowering them through her window and down the wall with a long cord.

This act clearly suggests God's goodwill in ** civil disobedience **. Rahab, a harlot, who knew little of the God of Israel, was prepared to do good unto God, disobeying authority, and even placing herself in grave danger. For this act, her life was spared. A similar act of smuggling is found in Acts 9:25 when the disciples lowered Saul down a wall to spare his life from the Jews who were conspiring to kill him. Acts of civil disobedience and secrecy are not uncommon in the Scripture. We find Mary and Joseph quietly fleeing to Egypt in the evening. The mother of Moses hides him in a basket and places him in a river to escape a decree that would kill her baby. Daniel is ordered to discontinue his daily prayers. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are ordered to worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. Some Christian leaders have stated that if we disobey the governing authorities then we are deserving of the persecutions, which come upon us. Are Christians in China who refuse to register with the official church deserving of the beatings they endure? Are Muslims in Islamic nations who convert to Christianity deserving of death by stoning?

A teenage girl in Pakistan is charged with murder and awaits execution if she is found guilty. Her "crime" was committed when she gave a Bible to her Muslim friend. Her friend, after reading the Scripture, was converted and subsequently executed by her own family for refusing to recant her new faith. Because this Christian girl gave the Bible which led to the conversion, she is being charged with the death of the Muslim girl. How would our *theology of absolute obedience to civil authority* deal with cases such as these in Islamic nations? Are we willing to risk our lives and the lives of North Koreans to distribute God's Word? These are sobering questions and must be asked before contributing to ministries like The Voice of the Martyrs [typifying the questions the COG must ask in withdrawing from the SAGE systemic -MM]. As you support such a ministry, you are also partnering in "illegal" acts, which sometimes carry a penalty of death. However, you are in good company with those who have not only asked the question, "Am I willing to lay down my life for the sake of the gospel?" but have also demonstrated their willingness to do so. ** Your English Bible was paid for with the lives of such martyrs **. We realize that the type of ministry undertaken by VOM is not popular. It challenges our comfortable lifestyles. It violates our "rights." It also points us toward a higher call and strengthens our faith. EXPATRIATION WILL BE CONSIDERED *TREASON* (we will be brought before the courts of men, for God's sake, to bear witness before kings, rulers, nations); GOD'S COMMUNITY IS NOT LUKEWARM !! - OUR CHOICE IS MAMMON OR MESSIAH !!

Matthew 10:16. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. 17 But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; 18 And ye shall be brought before governors and kings ** for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles **. 19 But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. 20 For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. Luke 21:12 But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute [you], delivering [you] up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers ** for my name's sake ** [GOD'S GIFTS; RESPONSIBILITIES OF OUR FAMILY NAME]. 13 And *it shall turn to you for a testimony*. 14 Settle [it] therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: 15 For *I will give you a mouth and wisdom*, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. 16 And *ye shall be betrayed* both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and [some] of you shall they cause to be put to death. 17 And ye shall be hated of all [men] ** for my name's sake **. 18 But there shall not an hair of your head perish [GOD IS WATCHING, HE KNOWS]. 19 In your patience possess ye your souls.

Acts 19:21. After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome. 22 So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season. 23 And the same time ** there arose no small stir about that way **. 24 For a certain [man] named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; 25 Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that ** by this craft we have our wealth ** [BUSINESS; WEALTH]. 26 Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands:

27 So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; ** but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth ** [A GREAT FALSE SYSTEMIC THREATENED]. 28 And when they heard [these sayings], they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great [is] Diana of the Ephesians. 29 And *the whole city was filled with confusion*: and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre. [BUSINESS MEN ANGRY; MOB RULE] 30 And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not. 31 And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring [him] that he would not adventure himself into the theatre.

32 Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. 33 And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made his defence unto the people. 34 But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great [is] Diana of the Ephesians. 35 And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, [Ye] men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the [image] which fell down from Jupiter? 36 Seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly.

37 For ye have brought hither these men, which are *neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess*. 38 Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him, have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another. 39 But if ye enquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly [CALL FOR USE OF THE LAW COURTS AND GOVERNMENT]. 40 For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this concourse. 41 And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.

Those who believe that we should respect governing authorities and submit to their laws even when it hinders evangelical activities [OR STANDS IN THE WAY OF GOD'S RIGHTEOUS COMMUNITY], also believe that in so doing we will avoid persecution. They are right. If the Christians in China stop meeting illegally, the Public Security Bureau will stop beating them. If Christian women in Sudan submit to Islamic law, their children will not be sold as slaves, their husbands will not be crucified or drowned. If William Tyndale had not "illegally" translated the English Bible, he would not have been burned at the stake [IF WE DON'T TURN THE HEART OF THE COG AND ESTABLISH GOD'S COMMUNITY, IT IS THE CURSE WE WILL HAVE TO FEAR; DOING NOTHING RESULTS IN MAN'S EVIL MAGNIFIED UNTO HOLOCAUST !!]. As someone said, "suffering may prevent sin, but sin will never prevent suffering." As we continue our work in serving the persecuted Church, we continually receive requests for more Bibles (and so do we in the work of Giving & Sharing). Are you willing to help us help the persecuted? -- [written by Tom White and Steve Cleary (WITH COMMENTS ADDED), from The Voice of the Martyrs, October, 1998 (source here: Giving & Sharing).

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The Systemic is SELF-DEFINING

The Systemic is SELF-DEFINING

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-20

Psalm 23:5 “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over” = God will fill you with love if you let him, to overflowing !! – drink the cup of water given in Christ’s name, because we are the *anointed* who *belong* to Christ [Matt 9:41] — he who worships the Beast and his Image, and receives his mark in his forehead [BEING], or in his hand [DOING; the COG Inc., who ** BELONG NOT ** to Christ], the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out WITHOUT MIXTURE [Babylon = confusion by mixing] into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy Angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: [Rev 14:8-9] – God will NOT contribute to the misery in the world; this cup is against COG error/iniquity and is MERCY and TRUTH, the pure [fire] and purifying [brimstone] Word of God !! – GOD DOES NOT BEAT HIS CHILDREN INTO SUBMISSION, HE LOVES THEM TO LIFE; GOD’S WAYS ARE *NOT* MAN’S WAYS !! – this is the REVELATION, the APOCALYPSE, when the COG’s error is “revealed” and corrected; their torment is the SHAME felt as they are purified to become God Family !! – Christ and the Holy Angels are there for teaching and support NOT to witness pain, anguish, torture [the everyday witness soon to be changed, beginning with the COG]: KNOW CHRIST, HIS *LOVE* [His nature of interaction; God's character] !!

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-21

The Systemic is SELF-DEFINING, ie., the S&L debacle, the Dot.Com’s, Enron and Worldcom-MCI [criminal fraud], and the present “world financial crisis” [Sep.2008-present; the theft of the past, present and future]; “generally accepted accounting practises” = the *lack* of accountability, responsibility, trust — corporate politico-business, and self-defined Christian-ity [most professing Christ-ians, including the COG Inc.], DO *NOT* FIT INTO GOD’S DEFINITION(S) !! – individually our “being and doing” define us; WE MUST PUT ON ** THE CHRIST DEFINITION **, THE AGAPE RELATIONSHIP WITH ALL THINGS, this is what must be RESTORED !! – WORK [G2716 perform, accomplish, achieve; root G2041 ergon, instrumentality] OUT ** YOUR OWN SALVATION ** IN RESPECT AND AWE [Phil 2:12], IN FELLOWSHIP, IN CONCERT WITH OTHERS, YOUR CITIZENSHIP [G4176 politeuomai - live - let (one's) conversation be 1) to be a citizen 2) to administer civil affairs, manage the state 3) to make or create a citizen 3a) to be a citizen 3b) to behave as a citizen; to avail one's self of or recognise the laws; to conduct one's self as pledged to some law of life] WORTHY OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST [Phil 1:27] – people seek comfort [self-worth; assurance; validation]; WE MUST PROVIDE THE COMFORT, THE AGAPE RELATIONSHIP, GOD WILL PROVIDE THE COMFORTER TO MAKE IT ALL POSSIBLE: THE COMFORTER PROVIDES THE COMFORT, WE HAVE THE RESPONSE-ABILITY, the MINISTRATION of “God’s” spiritual gifts !! vs. the ** lack of comfort ** that drives the self-medication [sex, food, drugs, media, appearance, status, etc.] within the comfortless systemic, and this includes tribalization: selfish family, selfish Christ-ian-ity, politics, etc. – WE HAVE BEEN FITTED FOR ROBES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, MEASURED *BY* CHRIST [upon repentance and Baptism], THEY MUST *REMAIN* WHITE, PURE, *NOT* FILTHY RAGS NEEDING TO BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF CHRIST, IN SHAME !!

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-22

Systemic failure [true face shown]/greed, dishonesty = T$’s lost in share value, etc. [manipulated stock market profit = gain at another's loss] – “insider” trading [inside knowledge used prior to public release] vs. “disclosure rules/law” – auditors-regulators-brokers complicit [monetary mechanisms, use of trading indicator(s), fraudulent schemes] – government “politico-business” loath to risk offending the corporations [the SAGE] will result in cosmetic laws, selective prosecution(s) – public monies, pension funds, etc., at risk; “investor victimization” is the result of a “lack of knowledge”; INVESTORS MUST DEFEND THEMSELVES BY KNOWLEDGE AND APPLICATION OF THE SAME – use of “corporate monies”, investing in corporatism, maintaining MAMMON, will change nothing, it is the NATURE OF THE BEAST – WE MUST *CHOOSE* A NEW SYSTEMIC, THE ** CHRIST-SYSTEMIC **, A NEW NATURE OF INTER-ACTION !! — governmental “leaders” are complicit in the very same practises [public and private], as is “their” governments: THE PUBLIC MUST OVERCOME THE INSTILLED FEAR AND TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR LIVES [the "earning" of public confidence by those in power, as a controlling, regulating mechanism, is a myth; the violation of a manipulated and created "public trust", that is of itself a violation of the very same public] !! – THE SYSTEMIC OFFERS US NO CHOICE BUT ITSELF, UNDER THREAT, BUT GOD DOES, UNDER *PROMISE* !! – IT IS UP TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, acting individually and then collectively *as* community !!

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-23

There is a “realization” growing, but will it take root in “good ground”, will it result in “conscientious objection”, THE CALL OF GOD, TO HIM, HIS SYSTEMIC ?? – will the symptoms disclose the disease, or will it go unrecognized, or worse, ignored, again ?? – society must choose a “new body”, the body of Christ, and the COG must pluck out, cut off, and cast away its infected parts, the “Inc.” [Matt 5:29-30, 18:7-9, Mark 9:43-47] !! – our “locked and gated” selfish-communities must be unlocked, opened, and shared freely, without claim [without money, without price (Isa 52:3, 55:1)], ** TO FREELY SHARE *ALL* THAT GOD HAS FREELY SHARED WITH US ** — we must be emancipated from the “master” of NEED, the systemic slavery [the commodification of life] and the hierarchical, authoritarian model engendered – the secular understanding of this is loosely termed libertarian-anarchism, or communitarianism, but when you add God’s consciousness as governing principle, it becomes the Christ-Systemic, not just another “-ism”, a form of business – Human self-realization is only possible through God, His freedom and liberty given as gift; the beginning of self-realization leads to conscientious objection which in turn leads either to the Call of God [seeing beyond self] or to the opposite, selfish individualism [just another form of authoritarianism, an imposed will of others, a rejection of the God relationship].

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-24

You cannot “vote out” those who you did not “vote in”, those behind the elected body(-ies), those who actually “govern” and “manage” society, those beneath the visible, moulded surface [the face behind the mask]: the SAGE, those whose interest(s) *are* the “national interest(s)”, those of concentrated global power and position, the oligarchy who socialize costs and risks onto the public-Nation, the corporate global elite, whose “might is right” – this corporate-consciousness [and its "high priests"] is NOT a “conspiracy theory”, it is an instilled and imposed way of “being and doing” [a variant, yet 6000 years old; the "US" of America was founded within it, and by it; "America" (its ideals) were placed upon it and it became the foundation, the inseparable mythic: God and Nation)] but it is diametrically opposed to God’s Way, and Christ called it “evil” in totality, as an instrumentality [means; instrument of mentality] – our educational institutions and media [especially advertising/pr] are its main proponents: the manufactured consent [Noam Chomsky], the selfish desires engendered, and the commodification of life itself [of Christ] plugs us in and holds us in servitude to it – CHRIST CALLS US *OUT* OF THIS “CREATED”, EVIL WORLD, ITS SYSTEMIC [the "UNEQUAL YOKE"], INTO HIS WORLD, HIS WAY [utilizing the CHRIST-SYSTEMIC] – WE MUST BE A NEW CREATION, WE MUST BE *AS* GOD IN THE WORLD [man's world; a wheel within a wheel (course; way of life)] !!

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-25

The tribunal, the court of public opinion must be enlightened [Christ is Light, Truth; JUDGEMENT = GOD, JUDGEMENT *IS* GOD (as touchstone)] – GOD’S “JUDGEMENT” IS FOR US TO BE HIS FAMILY: we are sentenced to Liberty and LIFE, to CHRIST; we are called to repentance and life !! – this world [its sin; the absence of God's character] sentences us to imprisonment [to its systemic], and death [as "penalty", as result of ourselves]: “evil shall slay the wicked” [Psm 34:21], “there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle [H5216 lamp (means; the burner) and/or the light] of the wicked shall be put out [H1846 TO GO OUT, BE EXTINGUISHED, DRY UP, ** TO BE MADE EXTINCT **, BE DRIED UP; TO BE EXTINGUISHED, BE QUENCHED"] [Pr 24:20]: ** MANKIND IS IN EXTINCTION MODE **, WE WILL BURN OUT, CONSUME OURSELVES UNLESS CHRIST QUENCHES [by Water of Life] THE EVIL: Christ paid the penalty for us, and He will intervene, BUT FIRST, WE MUST, AS THE BODY OF CHRIST, *PREPARE* THE GOSPEL, OUR RESPONSE-ABILITY vs. the growing and deepening darkness [faith (light kindled) must be found by Christ when He returns (Luke 18:8); WE WILL LIGHT THE WORLD, the HONOR is ours *with* Christ] !!

MM Book 2 Chapter 10-26

The COG must return to Christ [withdrawal; undefiled by the Inc.]; He will return, His “flesh” must be saved *ALIVE* – ARE WE ALIVE *IN* CHRIST, OR AGAIN CONSIDERED DEAD IN THE WORLD [the second death] ?? – to be *alive* with Christ means to be “*dead* with Christ from the rudiments [G4747 principles; material causes; G4748 the walk; to direct one's life] of the world [G2889 kosmos; instrumentality]” [Col 2:20] – WE MUST BE SEPARATE, NOT COMPLICIT IN THIS WORLD; ** WE ARE SEPARATED WITH CHRIST, WE ARE ALIVE ** – WE ARE RECONCILED TO GOD BY CHRIST’S DEATH AND SHALL BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE, we are no longer “enemies” of God [Rom 5:10]; WE WERE/ARE RECONCILED BY OUR REJECTION OF THIS WORLD’S SYSTEMIC [dead to Mammon] AND BY OUR CHOICE OF THE CHRIST-SYSTEMIC [alive to Messiah] !!

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Michael Sandel: Towards a Just Society

Towards a Just Society

by Michael Sandel article link article link

20th Fenruary 2010 The Guardian

Today, most of our political arguments revolve around welfare and freedom – increasing economic output and respecting people's rights. But a just society requires something more: reasoning together about the meaning of the good life. Whether we're arguing about financial bailouts and bankers' bonuses, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or how to contend with the environmental costs of economic growth, questions of justice are bound up with competing notions of civic virtue and the common good.

In 2008, Barack Obama tapped Americans' hunger for a public life of larger purpose and articulated a politics of moral and spiritual aspiration. During the first year of his presidency, however, he has found it difficult to translate this politics of aspiration into governance. So, as frustration with politics builds on both sides of the Atlantic, it is worth asking what a new politics of the common good might look like. Here are four possible themes:

Citizenship, sacrifice and service: If a just society requires a strong sense of community, it must find a way to cultivate in citizens a dedication to the common good. It can't be indifferent to the attitudes and dispositions that citizens bring to public life. It must find a way to challenge purely privatised notions of the good life, and cultivate civic virtue. Traditionally, schools have been sites of civic education. In some generations, the military has been another. I'm referring not to the explicit teaching of civic virtue, but to the practical, often inadvertent civic education that takes place when young people from different economic classes and ethnic communities come together. It is a serious question – how can a democratic society that is cosmopolitan and disparate hope to cultivate the solidarity and sense of mutual responsibility that a just society requires?

The moral limits of markets: One of the most striking tendencies of our time is the expansion of markets and market-orientated reasoning into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. Consider the outsourcing of war to private contractors; the rise of commercial surrogate pregnancy; the growing use of market incentives to motivate students and teachers; the advent of for-profit prisons. These questions are not only about utility and consent. They are also about the right ways of valuing key social practices – military service, child-bearing, teaching and learning, criminal punishment, and so on. As marketising social practices may corrupt or degrade the norms that define them, we need to ask what non-market norms we want to protect from market intrusion. We need public debate about the moral limits of markets.

Inequality, solidarity, civic virtue: In many countries, the gap between rich and poor is growing, reaching levels not seen for many decades. Too great a gap between rich and poor undermines the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires. As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives. The affluent send their children to successful schools, leaving other schools to the children of families who have no alternative. Private health clubs replace municipal recreation centres and swimming pools. A second or third car removes the need to rely on public transport. And so on. The affluent secede from public places and services, leaving them to those who can't afford anything else.

This has two bad effects – one fiscal, the other civic. First, public services deteriorate, as those who no longer use those services become less willing to support them with taxes. Second, communal spaces cease to be places where citizens from different walks of life encounter one another. The hollowing out of the public realm makes it difficult to cultivate the solidarity and sense of community on which democratic citizenship depends. So, inequality can be corrosive to civic virtue. A politics of the common good would take as one of its primary goals the reconstruction of the infrastructure of civic life.

A politics of moral engagement: Some argue that politics and law should not become entangled in moral and religious disputes, for such entanglement opens the way to coercion and intolerance. This is a legitimate worry. Citizens of pluralist societies do disagree about morality and religion. Even if it's not possible for government to be neutral on these disagreements, is it nonetheless possible to conduct our politics on the basis of mutual respect?

The answer, I think, is yes. But we need a more robust and engaged civic life. In recent decades, we've come to assume that respecting our fellow citizens' moral convictions means ignoring them, or conducting our public life without reference to them. But this stance of avoidance can make for a spurious respect. Often, it means suppressing moral disagreement rather than actually avoiding it. This can provoke backlash and resentment.

Rather than avoid the various convictions that our fellow citizens bring to public life, we should attend to them more directly – sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening to and learning from them. There is no guarantee that public deliberation about hard moral questions will lead to agreement – or even to appreciation for the moral and religious views of others. It's always possible that learning more will lead us to like them less. But we cannot know until we try.

* This essay is adapted from Michael Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

• Read the Citizen Ethics pamphlet in full here.

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Unoriginal Sin: The Judeo-Christian Roots of Ecotheology

Unoriginal Sin: The Judeo-Christian Roots of Ecotheology

The Heritage Foundation; Policy Review

1990 Summer; SECTION: No. 53; Pg. 52

BYLINE: Robert H. Nelson; the author of Modern Economic Theology [Rowman and Littlefield]

Many participants in environmental decision making have assumed that the goal of environmental policy is to reduce pollution, improve air and water quality, and achieve other environmental objectives in an efficient way. Yet, experience has shown that magnitudes of benefits, levels of costs, and other factors affecting efficiency often play little part in environmental policy-making. Decisions are instead frequently made as an act of symbolic affirmation, to make a statement for or against a particular set of values. Indeed, on close inspection, environmental policy-making often turns out to be a battlefield for religious conflict. Rather than rational policy analysis, the making of natural resource and environmental policy in the United States has become an exercise in theological controversy.

Many environmentalists today have no objection to the characterization of their outlook as a religion. They readily acknowledge a goal to change the values of society and that the values they seek to promote rest on what is fundamentally a religious underpinning. The leading historian, an energetic advocate as well, of American environmentalism, Roderick Nash, recently described environmental views as deriving from a set of "ecotheologians" who propound a new "gospel of ecology." There is in the "recent concern for nature" what Nash describes as a "quasi-religious fervor." Joseph Sax, in making the case for reducing the human presence in the national parks, states candidly that he and other preservationists are in truth "secular prophets, preaching a message of secular salvation."

Environmentalism is, to be sure, a diverse movement. Many people support environmental improvements for practical reasons that have nothing to do with environmental theology. They simply want clean air and water, parks for recreation, and protection of wildlife. Nor are all environmentalists skeptical of science or opposed to economic argument. For many environmentalists, taking care of the environment is simply a matter of doing economics better. Factoring in all the benefits (including nonmarket benefits) and taking proper account of private actions that have impacts not accurately reflected in market profits and losses.

Yet, the growing importance of the theological element means that those who would engage environmentalists in constructive dialogue may find that they have no choice but to enter the realm of theological discussion. Increasingly, the environmental policy analyst must address matters not only of physical science, economics, and other conventional policy subjects, but of theology as well.

Greener Pastors

Modern discussions of environmental theology have been strongly influenced by a 1967 article in Science in which the historian Lynn White Jr. asserted that contemporary environmentalism required a sharp break from the Judeo-Christian heritage. Because the Bible teaches that the earth and its creatures are created to serve the purposes of mankind, according to White, "Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects" [God ordained dominion not domination -MMr]. White believed the environmental crisis of the current age required "a new religion," perhaps inspired by the faiths of "ancient paganism and Asia's religions," in which humanity must be understood as part of and not distinct from nature. White also drew inspiration from some Christian teachers, particularly St. Francis of Assisi.

The messages of contemporary environmentalism are widely seen, by environmentalist supporters and critics alike, as a major step toward the fulfillment of White's prescription of the pantheistic veneration of nature. Yet, despite its wide influence, White's argument has served more to confuse than to illuminate the actual tenets of environmental theology. The laws of nature frequently are not the laws of an idyllic or pastoral world; they are the Darwinian laws of the jungle - "nature, red in tooth and claw," as Tennyson put it. Indeed, rather than becoming a part of nature as White asserted, the actual goal of environmentalism is the opposite: to inculcate a new morality with respect to the natural world that is found nowhere else in nature. No other creature is obligated to protect other species - as the Bible says that Noah was once commanded to do, and as the Endangered Species Act of 1973 again seeks to accomplish.

Environmental theology typically says little or nothing about God. It offers no answers concerning the hereafter; it is vague about the route of personal salvation; and in other respects it departs from basic tenets of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Yet, perhaps more remarkable is the extent to which environmentalism actually incorporates elements from the western religious heritage, indeed, the real source of the appeal of environmentalism may be that it offers traditional religious messages of the West in a new secular form - a form that, in an age of rampant secularism, lends these traditional messages great authority for large numbers of people.

Devil's Design

One source of modern environmental theology is the long, powerful tradition within Christianity that regards wealth and riches, sophisticated reasoning, the structures of the law - all the formal institutions of society and of the good life - as dangerous and corrupting influences. These instruments all too often serve, not the will of God, but the devious designs of the devil. Since the fall of man from the Garden of Eden, human weakness has rendered the products of human reason unreliable, often deluding man to false optimism and excessive confidence in his powers. The leading American Catholic theologian of the 20th century, John Courtney Murray, once labeled this tradition within Christianity as one of "contempt of the world" and found that it has seen "sin as a permanent human fact that casts a shadow over all human achievements." This tradition encourages asceticism (and had an important influence on a number of monastic orders), spurns the attempt to perfect an earthly existence, and suggests that man "should by right neglect what is called the cultural enterprise - the cultivation of science and the arts, the pursuit of human values by human energies, the work of civilization." This outlook often asserts that the world is about to be overcome by the forces of evil. But there can still be hope that "in that moment [of collapse] the light disperses the darkness."

Contemporary environmentalism shares a closely related outlook: a sense that modern civilization tempts man to evil and represents retrogression rather than progress; an apocalyptic foreboding concerning ecological catastrophe and the near-term future of the earth; an attitude that human reason, as today embodied in science, offers false promises and alienates man from his true self; a view that a widespread sinfulness has infected the world (now seen in the "assaults" on and the "raping" of nature that meet popular indifference); a condemnation of the pervasive greed that motivates current evils (found especially in corporate "profiteers" who abuse nature); a view that urban and industrial civilization cuts men off from deeper and truer natural instincts; and a desire for a return to an earlier and more natural existence - the existence of the earth long ago - in which the products of modern science and economics would be banished. The deliverers of such environmental messages today issue a new call for men to renounce their evil ways and to live in simple harmony with their true natures and with the divine order that governs the universe - much as Christianity has preached repentance and deliverance from sin, and obedience to God.

Unheavenly City

This belief in the alienation of man from his true nature existed in the western tradition even before the advent of Christianity. For Plato, the undermining and corrupting power of greed and other economic influences, destroying the virtues of the citizenry, explained the decline of man. In the latter part of the ancient Roman empire, Augustine brought together the Platonic tradition and Christian theology. For Augustine, life on earth offered an existence of sin and depravity, characterized by "the love of self" and the pursuit of self-interest, as exemplified by the corruption and debauchery of ancient Rome.

In the history of western religion, Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation represent the next great statement of such a theology. Owing to the fall of man, reason is subverted; government, the law, and other institutional products of man's rational faculty will reflect the corrupted nature of man, exemplified for Luther by the Catholic Church. Reunion with man's true nature is not to be achieved in this world, but is possible only in a heavenly future. Luther also continued the Platonic and Augustinian tradition of seeing economic competition and the pursuit of self-interest as forces of darkness.

In some ways, Marxism is a secular variation of the tradition of Plato, Augustine, and Luther. Its fundamental thesis is the growing alienation through history of mankind from his true nature. In a new rendition of the fall of man, Marx argued that the forces of technological advance and economic growth created surplus production, causing the outbreak of class warfare to gain control over the resulting surpluses and thus yielding the alienation of man from himself. The Marxist concept of alienation was derived, as the political scientist Isaiah Berlin commented, from what "Rousseau and Luther and an earlier Christian tradition called the perpetual self-divorce of men from unity with nature, with each other, with God." Yet, Marx promised that there would soon be a day when the millennium arrives - the laws of economic history have predestined with ironclad certainty that the impending culmination of class struggle will open the way to a future in which earth becomes heaven.

Deep Ecology

The ideas of "deep ecology," which derive from this theological emphasis on the fall of man, are not widely known to the American public but are exercising a significant and growing (if often unacknowledged) influence even within the mainstream environmental movement. In their book "Deep Ecology", Bill Devall and George Sessions offer a familiar portrayal of the fall of man. The story of history as one of decline from an earlier existence in true harmony with nature. In their version of the story, "technological society not only alienates humans from the rest of nature but also alienates humans from themselves and from each other." Human pride and an excess of confidence in human reason, now exalted as scientific reason, have led to the fall of man. Devall and Sessions thus preach that deep ecology challenges "not only the growth addict and the chronic developer, but science itself."

As a secular faith, the tenets of deep ecology are closest to the Marxist analysis. Dave Foreman is the founder of Earth First, a self-described "radical environmental" organization that has received wide media attention in recent years for engaging in "monkey wrenching" (sabotaging heavy machinery and other acts of destroying instruments of development). If Marx once believed that the class struggle for surplus production had yielded the alienation of mankind from a truer nature, Foreman now contends that "human destruction of the wild" is the "keystone to understanding our alienation from nature, which is the central problem of Civilization." Foreman follows Marx in locating the fall of man in history; in this case, it is the arrival of agriculture and an organized society.

If advancing technological capacity for Marx first made surplus production possible, and thereby yielded the class struggle, Foreman now finds that it was the "nascency of agriculture" about 10,000 years ago that first left man "apart from the natural world" and yielded the evils of "city, bureaucracy, patriarchy, war, and empire." Where Marx saw history as revealing an ever deeper corruption and degradation, Foreman now finds history to be the story of "an ever widening rift" that opened "between the wilderness that created us and the civilization created by us." In the gospel of Foreman, if it was the wilderness that created man, man has now rebelled against his primitive naturalness and fallen into sin. One can hardly fail to note the environmental retelling in secular form of the Genesis story. The creation in the Garden of Eden and the original sin of Adam and Eve (the pursuit of knowledge) causing mankind to be cast out into sin and iniquity.

In his recent, much-noted book, "The End of Nature", William McKibben writes of a severe "crisis of belief" in the current era but asserts that "many people, including me, have overcome it to a greater or lesser degree by locating God in nature." When Europeans first arrived in North America, McKibben writes, they found a "wilderness" that was a "blooming, humming, fertile paradise," very much like the biblical version - but by destroying God are instead "making ourselves gods." If they succeed, if nature, or God, no longer exists, there would be no "hope for a living, eternal, meaningful world." In essence, "nature" becomes for McKibben a substitute for the Christian God. If Friedrich Nietzsche a century earlier warned of dire consequences of the death of God, the end of nature today for McKibben and for many others of environmental faith would have much the same meaning.

Because there is a long tradition in America of separating church and state, and for tactical and other reasons, spokesman for the contending theological viewpoints often leave the religious elements implicit. As a society, we often mask basic value disagreements by dressing them up in the formal rhetoric of rational discourse. Yet, theological terms and a recognition of an underlying religious content have been creeping into policy discussions with growing frequency. Although leaders of environmental groups are often guarded in their public statements, funding solicitations of these groups are often much more revealing of the fundamental values and convictions of their membership. A few selections from recent solicitation letters of leading environmental organizations are offered below to illustrate the prominent role that themes and images from our western religious heritage play in the appeals of these groups.

Natural Resources Defense Council: Imagine a spectacular bay [in Alaska] that is home to the greatest concentration of marine life in North America - with more fish, birds, whales, seals, and otters than inhabit any other single place - more wildlife refuges and critical habitat areas than any other region on the continent. Now picture that the world's oil giants - Shell, Mobil and others - propose drilling for oil and gas in this national environmental treasure, at the invitation of the United States government. Opening up Bristol Bay to oil and gas drilling is akin to opening up Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks to oil giants. I believe we can save Bristol Bay if I can convince you to help us.

One meaning of "save" is to preserve, but another is to curb the influence of evil. Today, urgent new calls are being issued to save innocent environments and helpless wildlife from the ravages of human exploitation and sinfulness. In this case, nature must be saved from "oil giants," who provide an especially powerful symbol of the growing alienation from nature resulting from modern technology and the forces of economic development. It is the ability to tap oil, generate electricity, and utilize other energy supplies that has given mankind a new and enormous power to reduce nature to submission for human purposes. The oil companies use drilling equipment and other intrusive technologies that can be seen as almost literally raping the virgin earth. Oil companies are large and impersonal corporations, motivated by the pursuit of profit and indifferent to the assaults on nature that their own activities bring about. In short, if the power of greed has long tempted Christians to sin, and if in Marxism surplus production moved one class to enslave another, now in our own time the need for energy to maintain the luxuries of modern living compels man to still further depravity, the violation once again of the innocence of nature.

The Wilderness Society: We need to protect our wilderness areas from being bulldozed, stripmined, denuded, and drilled. Destroy them and we destroy our spirit. Destroy them and we destroy our sense of values. Destroy them and we deprive future generations of their greatest heritage. Destroy them and we upset a critical balance of nature, an upset that will have long-range adverse effects on our health and quality of life. Wilderness and the environment have become today's scapegoat, sacrificed on the altar of economic expediency.

To preserve a wilderness is to maintain a place where humanity can experience nature in the absence of human intrusion. Wilderness "cathedrals" some have called these places. A wilderness, like a church, is a small enclave where the alienation, otherwise so pervasive in modern life, has been challenged. If the church historically sought to teach and to minister the restoration of man's sinless nature, as it was once found in an earthly paradise in the Garden of Eden, an environmentalist's return to nature now seeks a physical environment where the signs of human misdeeds are missing. A place, as the Wilderness Act of 1964 states, that is "untrammeled by man." If reunion with nature for many in the current age has assumed the traditional meaning of reunion with God, a wilderness is a place for communing with and being at one with the divinity.

Sierra Club: The progressive loss of the ozone shield will result in millions of new cases of skin cancer. In addition, increases in ultraviolet (UV) light will cause massive losses in the productivity of the oceans because, as one scientist put it, "we simply fry the plankton in UV." An increase in global temperatures is resulting from the over-use of fossil fuels and from massive deforestation. Also, rainfall patterns will shift, resulting in devastation of the world's food crops. Finally, the sea may rise, flooding much of the world's coastal plain. Citizens are going to have to be fully educated about the threat to global climate and then called to action.

In the Bible, the wicked can expect to incur the wrath of God. Drought and pestilence will be the lot of those who disobey, as in the time of Noah a flood encompassed the entire earth. Now, as the Sierra Club warns, massive flooding again threatens. Global climate change raises the prospect of widespread "devastation" of agriculture. Other catastrophes and disasters loom as well, which may arrive at any moment. Yet, these punishments for human attacks on and indifference to nature can be avoided. Men must be "called" to a new crusade on which the very future of the earth may depend. They must be educated in the truths of the natural world in order that they may reform their wicked ways. Otherwise, if the separation of man from nature continues to widen, there will be an ultimate and unforgiving reckoning.

Environmental Unitarians: The environmentalism of these solicitations and of deep ecologists such as Dave Foreman is of a fire-and-brimstone sort, harking back to Calvin and other Protestant reformers who saw a depraved world filled with sinners bent on their own destruction. But environmentalism also has its optimists, who have greater faith in human reason and in the benevolent impulses of mankind. These "Unitarians" of the environmental movement envision a happier future for humanity. Indeed, a wide range of practical and theological considerations can be found among those who have enlisted in the environmental cause.

In a recent analysis of "the meaning of wilderness," the chairman of the Sierra Club, Michael McCloskey, identifies 24 reasons to support the creation of wilderness areas. The reasons were classified into four main categories: biocentric; anthropocentric but not utilitarian; anthropocentric and utilitarian; and, least valid, commercial. The utilitarian reasons included "watershed function," "education," "science and research," "therapy," and "recreation." Wilderness areas in the United States can be seen as a museum of the geological and biological past, especially important to a nation that otherwise lacks a lengthy history to record. But McCloskey concludes that the core justification for creating wilderness areas is that they provide "beacons of hope for all those whose lives are oppressed by lines of traffic, layers of smog, piles of trash, and the menace of toxins. At last, perhaps, we can understand what Thoreau meant when he said: in wildness is the preservation of the world.'"

Is Man Part of Nature?

Despite drawing heavily on the Judeo-Christian tradition, environmental theology also contains major new theological elements. In the western religious tradition to return to an original state of nature has been to return to the sinless condition of mankind in the Garden of Eden, or for many secular theologies of the modern age, to some primitive tribal existence. Current environmental theologians, however, now have available to them the fairly recent scientific knowledge that for all but a very limited recent span, nature did not include human beings. To return to the original nature of creation thus might now be interpreted to mean a return to a state of nature that preceded human influence.

This theological logic is today exhibited in the formal criteria for designation of wilderness areas, where it is precisely the absence of signs of human presence that must be documented. Following a similar logic, the National Park Service maintains a policy to avoid interfering with nature and to seek to return to original natural conditions preceding human influence (thus, man-made fires are fought but "natural" fires are allowed to burn). The government goes to great lengths to regulate very small quantities of man-made pesticides, but sees little problem in the widespread presence of dangerous pesticides that are created naturally by plants and vegetables. Global warming due to natural causes would be a cause for concern, but would no doubt stimulate much less public alarm than warming due to a buildup of gases caused by human activities. In each case the violation of nature is the basic concern, not the risk or other impact on human well-being.

The AIDS of the Earth: Environmental theology faces a dilemma that could prove insuperable: how can mankind find harmony with and return to an original state of nature when the very presence of man may now be seen as foreign to original nature? One theoretical answer would be the disappearance of mankind. Many environmental proponents seeking to limit the violation of nature support a sharply reduced human population on earth. A former leader of Greenpeace, Paul Watson, recently commented that "our species [is] the AIDS of the Earth: we are rapidly eroding the immune system of the Earth, destroying [her] ability to cleanse herself." If so, perhaps the proper fate of humanity might even be the same that medical research today seeks for AIDS.

Such theological logic was actually carried to this extreme by the author of a proposal - hopefully offered somewhat tongue-in-cheek - that appeared a while ago in a radical environmental publication: "only a very few of human pathogens are shared by other partners on our planet - biological warfare will have no impact on other creatures, big or small, if we design it carefully." Although few if any environmentalists would so advocate, in some fringe groups serious proposals are being made to exclude signs of human presence from as much as one-third of the land area of the earth.

Some environmentalists have avoided this theological difficulty by arguing that man should be seen not as foreign to but as an inherent part of nature, no different in any fundamental way from the plants, animals, and perhaps even inanimate objects of the natural world. A faith of an animistic or pantheistic character would result: worshipping nature and seeking a unification of man with the divine element to be found directly and literally in the natural world. However, these environmentalists face a theological problem of equal severity. If the lion is not to be condemned morally for wanton acts of cruelty against other creatures, why, then, should mankind be judged harshly for making practical use of the natural world? This brand of environmental theology ends up in a virtual self-contradiction: men are to look to the current natural world for their values and spiritual sustenance, yet are instructed to behave and are to be judged by a standard found nowhere else in nature.

Law of Nature and of Nature's God

Lynn White's influential argument that only a new and non-western religion could protect the environment has diverted attention from a more promising theological direction for the environmental movement. Few would dispute that there are new threats to the world ecology; that there are growing numbers of people, creating increased demands on natural resources; and that quality of life becomes a greater concern as other basic human needs are met. These factors and others suggest the necessity of taking active steps to maintain and improve environmental quality. Yet, it does not follow that a brand-new theology is needed to justify such efforts. Indeed, perhaps reinterpreted a bit to take account of improved ecological knowledge and other changing circumstances, the messages of the Judeo-Christian tradition not only offer ample scope for environmentalism but firmer grounds for the development of an environmental ethic and a theology of environmental protection.

While deep ecology and other branches of environmental theology have borrowed from the ascetic tradition of Christianity, there are other theological outlooks of equal importance. Besides the tradition of "contempt of the world," John Courtney Murray labeled a second and much different central tradition of Christianity as one of "affirmation of the worldly." There is no need to reject the current social order and its values, but man should set about "building himself a world" through the historical processes already at work. Although this theological tradition recognizes man's sinful nature, it sees history as not the story of a fall into ever greater sin and evil, but potentially of the progressive realization of "the life of reason" with the help of God.

Such a worldly and rationalist outlook reached a high point in Christianity in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. If Martin Luther saw rational argument as often subversive of strong faith, for Aquinas a life of reason brought man closer to God. Much of Christian theology over the centuries has been grounded in a natural law tradition that finds in reason the means to discover the divine intent for this world.

Mammon or Messiah research cross-post