A holy fear, a fear of holiness

The saints trod lightly when near burning bushes, they even take off their shoes when the Lord asks them. There is an awe of what is holy. A holy fear. Rough Peter, a fisherman, who undoubtedly had a caustic edge, tried to get Jesus to go away from him when he realized who Jesus was. Peter knew he was a sinner. He was to learn about grace and the love of Christ but the presence of someone so loving yet holy seemingly scared him.

Sometimes I wonder if the people in the Church who make mockery of others aren’t exhibiting a kind of fear. But it is a fear that rejects the changing power of Jesus Christ, the power that transforms the sinner.

Last night I posted a piece on Charles Williams’ book The Place of the Lion. I quoted from and wrote about two men running in fear. One was running in fear from the other who in his evil and hardness was pursuing the first. The cunning and despising man was turning slowly into a monster so that he was half human and have wolfish creature. But he was running from the Lion-a magnificent creature with ultimate power which he wanted nothing to do with.

In the story, Plato’s forms are invading the world and pulling everything into them. Only the sheep are safe. Buildings are crashing and fires are starting. The earth is arid and the air is hot. Three creatures represent the Holy, what Rudolph Otto called the numinous, the Lion, the Eagle and the Unicorn. The Lamb is there in the story, as a reference to the Lamb of God. But the sheep are there too; a metaphor for the people of God.

As I wrote in my posting last night the lady Damaris saw both of the men; the one whose face had been badly ruined by the other, but also the one who was in pursuit of another soul. Her thoughts, “The face was as inhuman as that other, but while that was man blasted this was man brutalized. It was a snarling animal, and it was snuffling and snorting with open mouth.” This reminds me of a thought that both C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald developed.

That is, that all of us are becoming either the darkness we gather to ourselves or in our clinging to the Light of the world we are becoming “Everlasting Splendors.”

But Lewis had some advice; we are to relate to others as immortals. “Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors indeed, but we must take each other very seriously. “No flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.” Yes, dealing with each other requires a careful kind of love, a costly love.

We cannot know what fear the other holds because we hold on to Jesus and insist on keeping his word. We simply know that Christ hangs on to us with transforming power and love.

Saving the Bay....

My friend Miles Saunders who is the producer/writer of "Saving the Bay" sent me this announcement of its first two showing dates on KQED--be sure and watch!

Language about the Lion & the Lamb

A wonderful yet fearful scene in Charles Williams’ book The Place of the Lion occurs when one of the main characters, Quentin, is so terribly fearful of the powers that are invading the world that he flees from everyone. Another man, who has given himself over to the evil of dominating and manipulating others, as he turns into the animal that he is becoming, chases Quentin through forests and fields until he is soaked with blood, exhausted and blind.

Another main character Damaris goes seeking Quentin and finds him in the field in the midst of the endless pursuit. She also sees a lamb playing in the field and an eagle flying high in the sky.

“Willing to do all but uncertain what to do, she watched, and then became aware of some other thing in her line of vision. It was the solitary lamb that was gently moving towards her, gently and slowly. She looked at it, and across the meadow there passed suddenly the shadow of the flying eagle, cast over her and proceeding from her to the lamb. Moved by a quick hope she followed it; the beast, more slowly, advanced to meet her. They came together, and the innocence that sprang in her knew a greater innocence and harmlessness in it; she dropped to her knees, and put a hand on its back.”

Beside the lamb she keeps calling to Quentin until he comes and falls to the ground and she falls on top of him to protect him. And then the snarling wolf like creature that is still partly human circles and springs. Williams writes that “its hate and its power divided and passed around her.”

And then the wolf like creature comes to an end.

“The power of the Lion came upon him in a great wind, and the breath of his spirit fled to meet it. Strangled and twisted, he was lifted and carried on the wind; he was flung into the air and carelessly dropped back on to the earth. As he fell for that last time he saw the Lion upon him. The giant head loomed over him; the great paw struck his chest and thrust him down. Immense pressure enclosed and crushed him; in a dreadful pain he ceased to be.”

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But what of Quentin?

Damaris “looked at Quentin; repose was coming back into his face, and with it that beauty of innocence which is seen in unhappy mankind only in sleep and death and love and transmuting sanctity—that place of the lamb in the place of the lion.”

Courage children of the Lamb and the Lion.

The history of words and places- a look at another article from Sabeel's Cornerstone

On October the first I posted an article, Laundering words, omitting words, both are lies. I was writing about an article titled, “The Laundering of Words and the Oppression of Palestinians.” It was written by the Rev. Naim Ateek Director of Sabeel in Jerusalem. In Sabeel’s magazine, Cornerstone, the summer 2009 edition, he is pointing to another article, “The Factory of Words,” by Gideon Levy. Picture the Western Wall of Jerusalem taken by en:User:Chmouel,

While Ateek often approaches his topics from a liberation theology point of view, Levy approaches his topics from a far left secular position. Ateek is a Christian, Levy a secular Jew. They both believe that there should not be a Jewish State and believe any such state would be a racist state.

Levy, like Ateek, is attempting to prove that Israel is using words in such a way that they will cover up the truth. And, like Ateek, he believes this was done from the beginning of the State of Israel and even before.

Levy starts his article with his own propaganda-like words. He writes of being a young teenager during and after the six day war. He writes, “At six o’clock after the war Israel was in a nationalistic and religious orgy. Almost everyone participated in this orgy – orthodox and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, young and old. The Land of Israel was liberated and the people of Israel, the chosen people, were saved.” (emphasis mine)

Levy goes on to write about his interest as a teenager in seeing, after the war, “Abraham’s tomb in Hebron, Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem” and “the Wailing Wall.” He later complains that now, they are “cursed places,” because there is “armed soldiers and policemen at the entrance of Abraham’s tomb and an apartheid wall that separates Rachel’s tomb from Bethlehem….”

As I have written over and over this is simply half a story. Before the Six-Day War the Israelites did not have access to these places at all. For a history of the Wailing Wall see Western Wall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In the years before the State of Israel was formed there was constant interference with the Jews in their attempts to worship there. They were even arrested for blowing the shofar on the Day of Atonement. After the birth of the State of Israel the wall came under Jordan’s control and the Jewish people could not go there, not even those Jews who were visiting Jordan from other countries.

The tomb of Abraham has a deeply violent history that faults both Islamic groups and radical Jewish groups. The Mideast and North Africa Encyclopedia gives the details:

“Although predominantly a town inhabited by Palestinian Arab Muslims, a small Jewish community lived in Hebron throughout the centuries. During British rule, the Jews left after the Arab-Jewish disturbances of August 1929 when sixty-four Jews were massacred. Hebron was annexed by Jordan in 1950 in the aftermath of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, and it was occupied by Israel during the Arab - Israel War of 1967. As a result, Jews were allowed to pray in the al-Haram, something formerly forbidden to them.” (Emphasis mine)

The article goes on to tell of a horrible massacre by a Jewish person after some militant settlers moved into the region. “Hebron's worst violence in decades occurred in February 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, a U.S.-born Jewish settler, entered the al-Haram al-Ibrahimi mosque and massacred twenty-nine Palestinian worshippers before he himself was killed.”

Rachel’s tomb, the third holiest site for the Jewish people, was also a forbidden place for the Jews after the 1948 war. Today it is surrounded by a wall because it had become such a dangerous place that no one would travel there. The story of Rachel’s tomb and the reason it is surrounded by walls and soldiers is told at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

All of these stories are to say that the problems in the Middle East are hard, complex and sad. They do not fit into an article that paints Israel with the brush that Levy has used. Levy complains that Israel cannot be a Democracy because she has occupied the Palestinian territories for so long. But what other Democracy does the modern world know whose neighbors are intent on destroying her.

This is not to excuse some of the actions of Israel; her people are sinners like all of humanity. But painting false pictures of Israel, as Levy has done is unacceptable. A.B. Yehoshua one of the great writers of Israel, a member of the peace movement in Israel, and a critic of the occupation wrote a letter criticizing Levy for his extreme views and his thoughts on the last conflict in Israel and Gaza. From his letter:

“The doleful thought sometimes crosses my mind that it is not the children of Gaza or of Israel that you are pining for, but only for your own private conscience. Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure.”

I believe God calls us, in our Christian walk, to honesty.

From a small but heavy book...

Someone on their blog quoted Harvey Cox and his thought that “"Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying." The blogger thought that was good but I instead thought of Dorothy Sayers’ insistence that “The Dogma is the Drama.”

That is the title of one chapter in her very small book Strong Meat. She wrote the book as a small comment on her better known book and play, The Greatest Drama Ever Staged.”

As the Guardian at that time, 1939, put it, “In a masterly pamphlet, Miss Sayers proceeds with wit and flashing insight, to make good the claim that the greatest drama ever staged is the official creed of Christendom, and to show that it is not dogma but, the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness.”

She writes about some fellows who believe her play is great because of her own creativity and fail to understand the absolute greatness of the Trinity, Incarnation, redemption and Christ’s second coming. That is great drama.

She was writing at a time in England when many simply didn’t understand the dogma of the Church. And she blamed the Christians of her day for their weak attention to that dogma both in their words and their lives. As she put it:

“We are apt, for example, to be a little sparing of the palms and hosannas. We are chary of wielding the scourge of small cords, lest we offend somebody or interfere with trade. We do not furbish up our wits to disentangle knotty questions about Sunday observance and tribute money, nor hasten to sit at the feet of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. We pass hastily over disquieting jests about making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness and alarming observations about bringing not peace but a sword; nor do we distinguish ourselves by the graciousness with which we sit at meat with publicans and sinners. Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore—and this in the Name of the One Who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which He passed through the world like a flame."

Sayers was a good friend of Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis and her wit and Christian faith was just as strong. We now have much knottier problems that many fail to attempt to disentangle-and we are certainly afraid of that scourge of small cords or of using the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, lest we trouble someone’s peace. And we need to sit with all sinners, including ourselves, and speak the words of the gospel.

I truly believe her admonitions are correct for this day. “Let us, in heaven’s name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slip-shod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction.”

She adds, “If all men are offended because of Christ let them be offend; but where is the sense of them being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like Him? We do Him singularly little honour by watering down His personality till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.”

And I simply must quote the last paragraph in the book:

“It is the dogma that is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God Who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.”

God's gift of life

A friend of my daughter who is also my friend, Jennifer Lahl of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network placed a beautiful and moving video on Facebook today. 99 Balloons is about a lovely little boy who was a blessing to his parents, a gift from God and a reminder that every life is from God.

Laundering words, omitting words, both are lies

About Rev. Nain Ateek's article, "The laundering of words and the oppression of Palestinians."

CHURCHandWORLD linked yesterday, October 3, to a pdf file from the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. The file was the center’s publication, Cornerstone, summer edition 2009, the article was The laundering of words and the oppression of Palestinians.

The article is by Rev. Nain Ateek the Director of Sabeel. His article was pointing to another article by Gideon Levy, “The Factory of Words.”

Ateek uses the epistle of James to remind his readers that human words are capable of great evil. And they are. Some words become evil, as Ateek points out, because they are replacement words that tend to cover the reality of events. They whitewash and so become lies.

But there are other ways to use words to mislead and make lies. That is by omitting words, a whole string of words such as sentences and paragraphs. That is a way to lie about history and morality and even Christianity.

Ateek writes, “From the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the propaganda machine of the state of Israel has coined words, created myths, produced stereotypes, and crafted propaganda tools in order to justify and legitimize the Zionist narrative, while at the same time, it has managed to cast doubt upon and negate the Palestinian narrative.”

Note that Ateek says the propaganda started from the beginning of the Palestinian-Israel conflict. So when one reads this and knows the beginning history of the conflict, and yes, it goes back to the time of the Holocaust, but is mainly centered around 1947-1948, then one knows that vast amounts of words have been erased or omitted from the article. And only innuendo remains.

Ateek goes on to suggest that Israel from the beginning has smeared the Palestinians as warmongers and “innately violent.” But this is a double lie.

Israel’s beginning narrative is its conflict not so much with the Palestinians; it was that also, but mainly with at least five Arab nations who at that time and even today have misused the Palestinians. So the Israeli beginning narrative revolves mainly around the attack by Syria, Egypt, Jordan and other Arab nations of their new State. And that narrative does not hold that the Palestinians are “innately violent,” but rather that militant and radical Islam is innately violent.

And yes there was violence and destruction on both sides. That is the whole story without omitting words, or sentences or paragraphs.

Ateek implies that the Israelis are blaming the victim when they do not take responsibility for what the Palestinians call the Nakba (the catastrophe), that is the birth of the State of Israel and the displacement of about 750, 000 Palestinians from the new State.

Ateek sets up a simplified picture, insisting that while Israel denies any responsibility for the Palestinians leaving there is scientific and historical evidence coming from Jewish historians proving that movement of the Palestinians out of Israel was planned by the “Zionist leaders.” He cites both Benny Morris and Pappe.

But what does Morris say in his book, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War:

“the refugee problem was created by the war—which the Arabs had launched … And it was that war that propelled most of these displaced out of their houses and into refugeedom. Most fled when their villages and towns came under Jewish attack or out of fear of future attack. They wished to move out of harm’s way. … Most of the displaced likely expected to return to their homes within weeks or months, on the coattails of victorious Arab armies or on the back of UN decision or Great Power intervention."

Morris also wrote, after writing about any ideas that the Zionist leadership may have had about expulsion, “Nonetheless, transfer or expulsion was never adopted by the Zionist movement or its main political groupings as official policy at any state of the movement’s evolution—not even in the 1948 War.”[1]

Both Pappe and Morris are part of what is called the New Historians of Israel. Yet Morris has criticized Pappe’s historical accounts. Several other Jewish historians have as well. Historian Efraim Karsh quotes him in a review of his book, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples,

Pappe states, “My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.”

Ateek uses the verse, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) He writes that Sabeel’s objective is, “to help discern the truth because the truth is capable of setting people free.” Yes, but Jesus was speaking of himself. He is the truth, the life and the way. He is the one that sets us all free. If we will let Him he will free us from telling lies either by laundering words or by omitting the words.

I will write about Gideon Levy’s article the following week.

[1] All of the Morris quotes are taken from, Alan Dershowitz, The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace, (John Wily & Sons 2008)