Here’s some Tasty Tidbits du jour:
- Morality as heresy?!
- Sola Potatoes.
- The invisible elephant in the room.
- There oughta be a(nother) law.
- “This is a nation where no lovely thing can last.”
- Cat fight coming?
- The rehabilitation of Rupert.
- Keep your eye on SSRN, and don’t be put off by the homely exterior
1
If you think Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and such are “consistent” Christians, rather as Jihadists are frequently assumed to be the most consistent Muslims — i.e., that true Christianity is hateful, moralizing and manipulatively controlling — you’re in for a mind-bending treat in this 14 minute video.
A little history, familiar to many of you. The Christian Church was one Church for a bit over 1000 years. There were distinctive emphases in different regions, but it all held together. Then came the Great Schism, whereby, to put it as neutrally as I honestly can, (1) the Patriarch of Rome and the (2) other four Patriarchs (Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Constantinople) parted company. The differences between them grew greatly since then. Got that? ” The differences between them grew greatly since then.” One could say they’re “separated by a common faith,” or at least a nominally common faith.
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are the unacknowledged descendants of the Patriarch of Rome, who is more commonly known as the Pope (though it’s too easy in the West to anachronistically read back into the first millenium A.D. the papacy that came to full flower later). They are not the untainted heirs of the New Testament Church.
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, a descendant of the other four Patriarchs, in a Canadian TV interview covers a lot of territory in a few minutes. It starts with the startling proposition that morality can be a heresy, based on a question about the internet essay from which this is taken:
Morality is a heresy when it becomes a substitute for our life in Christ. Morality becomes a substitute for our life in Christ when we reduce religion to a moral code, when we reduce the faith to a system of correct behaviour instead of a struggle to purify the conscience and acquire the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We cannot acquire the Holy Spirit by means of correct behaviour, which is just a matter of human works and legalistic works at that. Such an approach fills us with so much judgement and condemnation and arrogance and self-righteousness that the Holy Spirit remains alien to us. We begin to think ourselves to be moral and everyone who is not like us somehow immoral.
You’ll be tempted to stop and chew repeatedly. And, perhaps, to look henceforth more with horror than with amusement at the prevailing religion of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
And for the record, I’m not just posting this to be provocative. This is the outlook toward which Christ has been shaping me via Orthodox Christianity for 13+ blessed years now. But His Eminence articulates if awfully well and succinctly on skillful questioning.
(HT: Lindsey Nelson on Facebook.)
2
I thought this parable was pretty darn good. Some commenters didn’t.
I still think it was pretty good, but I’m hardly unbiased. I was almost starving on sola potatoes once myself, and didn’t know it.
3
David Brooks, an important political columnist and author, however you choose to place him on the ideological grid, apparently wrote a piece about how our desire to live insanely long, purchasing a few extra sickly weeks at huge cost at the end of life, has made healthcare the biggest part of the federal budget.
Uh, David, you’re overlooking something. Hint: Philip Giraldi calls your column “Dying At Home to Win In Afghanistan.”
4
Shouldn’t teachers be required to cover the importance of guns in American history? I guess what’s fair in TX ain’t the same as what’s FAIR in sunny CA.
5
I think I’ve identified my ill-ease with Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin both. It’s not that they’re women, but that they remind me of another woman in my past, who shall remain nameless but who, when she attained power through good looks and snappy repartee, made shipwreck of the ship she was captaining.
But that’s pretty much true of everyone I know, of either sex, in this country’s politics. Hmmmm.
One of our American prophets speaks in poetry when he’s not growing things on his hilly, Kentucky farm. I admire him a great deal. Here’s a poem — or is it a prophecy? — from A Timbered Choir (1991)
6
Op-Ed Columnist Joe Nocera at the New York Times, between which and the Wall Street Journal there’s no love lost these days, claims that Rupert Murdoch has Fox-ified, dumbed down and politicized the Wall Street Journal since acquiring it.
He has a point, to a point. I visit the WSJ’s Opinion Journal daily, and it’s as rare to find a supporter of higher taxes there as — well, let’s see — as to find an opponent of higher taxes at the Grey Lady.
Nocera isn’t likely to have the last word on this. James Taranto in particular is likely to weigh in. Can you say “cross-town rivalry”? Can you say “futility,” “side-show,” and “meanwhile, the rest of us get screwed, but it’ll be entertaining,” too?
7
Meanwhile, the Washington Post seems to be trying to rehabilitate Murdoch back-handedly by having, of all people, Larry Flynt of Hustler Opine that Rupert went too far.
Flynt’s opinion strikes me as classically hypocritical. Every adulterer has his reasons why he’s not your garden variety adulterer, why his kanoodling is different from mere low-lifes who cheat on their wives: “My wife doesn’t understand me.” Or, the classic from the Appalachian Hiker Mark Sanford, “she’s my true soul-mate!”
Yeah, right. Zip it up, Larry.
8
But there is an internet domain that’s helpful in actually making people more knowledgeable. It doesn’t seem user-friendly, but SSRN keeps turning up in my websurfing with fascinating, high-caliber articles. Note that in many (most? all?) cases, a PDF of the article in the abstract is one click away.
Bon appetit!
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 