Homily Addendum

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Homily addemdum -- Confession as Enablement:

An excerpt from a recent interview in Slate with Pulitzer Prize- winning myrmecologist and sociobiologist E. O. Wilson (Altruism and the New Enlightenment). Mr. Wilson is an Alabama boy who has evolved in his thought:

So it comes down to a conflict between individual and group-selected traits?

Yes. And you can see this especially in the difficulty of harmonizing different religions. We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories. We have bizarre creation myths and each is characterized by assuring believers that theirs is the correct story, and that therefore they are superior in every sense to people who belong to other religions. This feeds into our tribalistic tendencies to form groups, occupy territories and react fiercely to any intrusion or threat to ourselves, our tribe and our special creation story. Such intense instincts could arise in evolution only by group selection—tribe competing against tribe. For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

Can we do anything to counter our tribalistic instincts?

I think we are ready to create a more human-centered belief system. I realize I sound like an advocate for science and technology, and maybe I am because we are now in a techno-scientific age. I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves. Right now we're living in what Carl Sagan correctly termed a demon-haunted world. We have created a Star Wars civilization but we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. That's dangerous.

Mr. Wilson ironically echoes the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “Modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to its scientific and technological abundance”

“Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools.”

The Greatest Salesman in the World

--Seen in Tallahassee this week

--We just want you to be all you can be
--You want me to join the army?
--Let's try this again
--Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

There is an immeasurable distance
between late and too late
--The Greatest Salesman in the World,
Og Mandino

Other nations when victorious
on the battlefield dictate peace terms.
But when Israel is victorious
it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews
to be the only real Christians in this world
--Israel's Peculiar Position, Eric Hoffer

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
And one of them shall not fall on the ground
without your Father
--Matthew 10-29
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Homily: Confession as enablement.

Ranger recently found the book "The Prayer Warrior's Way" by Cindy Trimm in a North Florida restaurant. She also wrote The Art of War for Spiritual Warfare, co-opting both Sun-Tzu and Cameron with no evident credentials. (Her bio claims she is a "Doctor" and a former "Senator", but neither the academic nor the civic reference are found on her website.)

But it caused him to wonder whether he, too, could become a prayer warrior. He feels as misunderstood as Jesus, at times, and as they are both SOG, he decided to go into it. Taking a particular Ranger's perspective, he asked:

What if Jesus died not to atone for my (our) sins, but rather so that I (we) might continue to sin? Why else the various actions toward forgiveness, like confession and penance? Why get forgiven when the reality is, we will sin again? The confessional booth is a revolving door, and it is a form of repetitive atonement forestalling ... what? It is a fix, a nicotine patch -- your mileage may vary.

Is God a fool, or the Greatest Salesman in the World? What is this ephemeral snake oil of the sacraments that cures no one from his indwelling slant towards ignominy, from his ever-present, puerile Reptilian Brain? We pay for it, gnash our teeth and rent our garments, but to no avail: The sunrise brings another day of moral failings.

--Like Burma Shave signs,
on the way to Ranger's house

Why die to relieve us of the burden of sin when that dismissal is a sham, and the reality is that your empire is built on the necessity of man's moral lapses? Whatever the intention, sin is big business.

Why do we deify one single (unverified) Jew who forsook his religion and tooka spear for us, and then we proceed to pogromize and slaughter untold millions in abject degradation -- in the spirit of Christianity -- since that day? Is this good faith? Is it we who created Jesus to enable our millennial inequities?

--The end of the Burma Shave trail

Why is Jesus more sacred than his his murdered brethren? One could become even more catholic and extend that to every State murder of any vilified individual or group. If He died for a purpose, then why have millions been murdered hence as a result of racial hatred, if we are all brothers?

Simply put, why value and worship a Jewish God born of Jewish traditions, and then vilify Jews for the next 2,000 years?

Utterly flummoxed as to the answers, Ranger is content to ask humbly, "If there is a heaven, will God one day reunite him in eternity with all of the mismatched socks in his drawers?"

--Jim and Lisa

Is Heaven a One-Way Street?

If I listened long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing that you lied straight faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe
--A Reason to Believe,
Tim Harden

Human decency is not derived from religion,
It precedes it
--God is Not Great,
Christopher Hitchens

I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
--We are the Champions,
Queen

Prepare yourself you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
--Spirit in the Sky,
Norman Greenbaum
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Sunday Homily: What then?

There are things we believe to be true, even if facts get in the way.

The ancient Greeks believed that the universe had no beginning; it just always was. The Jewish God showed up and was revealed as the Unmoved Mover. This monolithic being created the whole shebang from his munificence and creativity (presumably without the need for hallucinogens).

Today, we are more like the ancient Greeks in that we believe the universe to be eternal, without end. We believe this based on our acceptance of biblical promises that we will be rewarded in an afterlife with eternal happiness, or at least, that we will live eternally.

But what if this presumption is as wrong as many of the other Greek beliefs? Physicists agree with the Bible when they hawk the Big Bang Theory -- some event created all that we know. However, predicating a beginning point does not demand a perpetual persistence; the universe is not a Wankel rotary engine, after all. In fact, a start date would seem to imply an end date.

Some of our presumptions about systems:

• A beginning implies and end

• A front implies a back

• Good implies bad

• An inverse implies an obverse

• Up implies down
  

These thoughts popped into Ranger's head as he traveled Highway 90, and he wondered what St. Paul or Constantine felt at his epiphanies. If the universe is not eternal, where will God stash the faithful? Is there an alternate universe of Ft. Knox Storage Centers which could serve as eternal crypts? Will He contract out to a group like the Chinese who could provided massive shipping containers to hold the cargo of humanity?

Or, is heaven not subject to the rules of the universe? Could infinity fit on the head of a pin? Is heaven in this solar system, or somewhere else?

Directionality is also a question. We now know that subatomic particles can change their spin ... kind of like tiny Glenn Becks or minute hermaphrodites. Therefore, if a person can ascend to heaven, does it not follow that they could also travel in the opposite direction?

This would be like the template that religion allows people here on earth ... one could get a little taste of the strange on the weekend, say, then pop back up for some hearty Confessional and a good bowl of soup to get back on the good foot (until the next descent into the fiery place.) Watch how many transits you take, though -- do it one too many times, and you may end up looking like Kieth Richards.

Or is heaven a one-way street? Can a person leave heaven, or is it a kind of benevolent prison, like being consigned to live in Rolla, Missouri for life? Is this the mandatory sentence for living a fairly good life -- a kind of eternal Groundhog Day, albeit without snow shoveling?

Do they speak English or Aramaic in heaven, or do you cleave off into enclaves of only your own native-speakers -- mini gated communities in the Giant Gated Community in the sky? Was Babel just ruse?

What is your vision of hell? We envisioned old people who finally got their perfect recreational vehicle -- and could actually afford the gas -- but then being consigned to travel back and forth across Iowa, never being able to breakout of the vast Midwest into, say, Idaho.

Can you branch transfer from Hell to Heaven, or vice versa? Can you time share? Earn parole?

--Jim & Lisa