The God of terror, anguish and darkness

James K Baxter with members of the community he fostered. Source John Pettit

Loss of job, break-up of marriage, sickness, death, a child in trouble; despair, agony, grief, the white abyss of unknowing – all can bring us to our knees. Prayer is a crucial response, but one poet declares:

Christ is my peace, my terror, my joy, my sorrow, my life, my death, but not my security. Are lovers ‘security’ to one another? I think not.

He goes on:

Who is harsher than this God of ours? Who is harder to love or be loved by? The God they imagine, and pray to very often in the churches, is a God of sugar compared to the terrible One who grips our living entrails, who drives both good and evil from our souls, as if both were enemies, and fills us with anguish and darkness. I would not advise anyone to follow God. God comes like the sandstorm out of the desert, or the avalanche on a mountain village, or tons of black water from the depths of the sea.

The language chosen by James, K Baxter, a leading New Zealand poet, is extreme. Baxter was a friend of those displaced during the counter-culture upheaval starting in the 1960s and established a community for young people, lived a life of poverty and died at an early age in 1972. As a former alcoholic he knew the terror to be encountered in life, and he embraced those who were at odds with a frigid society.

The love in his heart that Baxter was nationally renowned for drove him hard. He saw his – and everyone else’s – role in this way:

Feed the hungry;
Give drink to the thirsty;
Give clothes to those who lack them;
Give hospitality to strangers;
Look after the sick;
Bail people out of jail, visit them in jail, and look after them when they come out of jail;
Go to neighbours’ funerals;
Tell other ignorant people what you in your ignorance think you know;
Help the doubtful to clarify their minds and make their own decisions;
Console the sad;
Reprove sinners, but gently, brother, gently;
Forgive what seems to be harm done to yourself;
Put up with difficult people;
Pray for all.

The mission focus of this extended Beatitudes could be regarded as a source of agony for men particularly. In this perspective, the most significant masculine characteristics are of enduring suffering in the cause of service, and of accepting sacrifice of self when supporting the needs of others. (More on this view here.)

In similar vein, Alexandra King has written of the terror, agony, grief and a “white abyss of unknowing” (her words) that gripped her during a time of repeated miscarriages. That time was clouded by an anguish only somewhat relieved by contact with family and friends, by bread-making, and eventually prayer.  Even when she becomes pregnant again, the terror remains:

Before every doctor’s appointment, I replace kneeling by the oven [when making bread] with kneeling on hospital bathroom floors, which beats the waiting room. On my knees in the dirt finally feels right. Without fail, behind the locked door, one ear cocked in case my name is called, I place my forehead on the uncaring regulation tiles, and utter the good Christian prayer my desperation has alchemized to incantation. Our Father who art in heaven … Give us this day our daily bread. Every week, miraculously, I emerge on to city streets clutching a contact sheet, which, unspooled, reveals images of a glowing gummy bear who is not dead.

The terror arising from pandemic, disaster, personal circumstances and the decisions we have taken or should take are foreshadowed by the writers of several psalms as they plead for God to grant them relief:

With Death’s breakers closing in on me,
Belial’s torrents ready to swallow me,
Sheol’s snares every side of me,
Death’s traps lying ahead of me,
I called to Yahweh in my anguish…
Psalm 18

Yahweh, you set me on impregnable heights,
But you turned away your face and I was terrified.
Psalm 30

The sheer number of my enemies makes me contemptible,

Loathsome to my neighbours,
And my friends shrink from me in horror.
All I hear is slander – terror wherever I turn – as they plot against me,
scheming to take my life.
Psalm 31

Elsewhere, we have Job, David hunted by Saul, Paul’s list of the horrors he had endured, and Jesus’ own “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 

However, in Baxter’s words, though Christ is for us sometimes “the winter sea whitened by whirlwinds, He is also the albatross floating at the centre of endless calm”.

Therefore, Christian men especially should be prepared for tough-going in entering "mission impossible" territory in our own life and in God's service, knowing that God allows times of darkness, which He uses to test and probe us (Psalm 18), and that with God's grace it is our turn to rescue the poor from the oppressor, and the needy from the exploiter (Psalm 35).  

Courage, my friends!

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Mind, body, and soul - What it all means

Useful thoughts on the theme this blog pursues, that of the essence of what it is to be human, arose at an international conference on "Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul - How Innovation and Novel Delivery Systems Improve Human Health" involving experts in many fields.

The meeting, hosted by the Vatican and the Cura Foundation of the U.S., delved into how a deeper understanding of ecology, economics, technologies used in health care, and philanthropy, each and together, could have a more positive impact on health.

Participants included physicians, scientists, ethicists, religious leaders, patient rights advocates, policymakers, and philanthropists.  Dr. Anthony Fauci and Chelsea Clinton were part of the wide-ranging group of commentators. The goal was to discuss the latest breakthroughs in medicine, healthcare delivery and prevention, as well as the human implications and cultural impact of technological advances.

The Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in a message concluding the event, stated that “humanity is called to look at itself without presuming absolute superiority”, since we are not the only living beings on this planet, and our lives depend on many other living organisms that are part of a delicately balanced ecosystem.

He observed that, while we have shared characteristics with the animal world, human beings are unique given our rationality, moral conscience, aesthetic sense and openness to the transcendent.

Pope Francis also offered his perspective on this complex topic, and we will look at his insights later in this post.

Concerning rationality, Parolin noted that humans’ high degree of self-understanding means we can “reflect not only on ourselves, but also on others and on the universe around us”.

Accordingly, technology has to be directed to improving our living conditions and health, as well as systems and structures affecting how we live, think and act.

In these areas. our moral conscience helps us distinguish between good and evil, making us think about ethical questions relating to ourselves individually and communally.

“A strong moral sense pushes us to denounce and take actions that put an end to injustice” through humanitarian outreach and solidarity, Parolin said. 

The aesthetic sense, he added, also marks a unique characteristic of human beings, since we are able “to contemplate beauty” and “express it in the many forms of art”, such as painting, sculpture, music and dance.

Finally, the most sublime dimension of human existence is our “openness to the transcendent horizon that in the lives of many of us results in religious experience”, which drive us to question ourselves “on the ultimate questions and the horizon that goes beyond the mere earthly dimension”.

He recalled that ancient thinkers in the Greek and Roman eras summed up this specificity and uniqueness of the human being as “humanitas”.

In conclusion, he encouraged the meeting participants, philosophers and people of culture to “continue to deepen the mystery of our existence with enthusiasm and determination, to discover and remain fascinated by what makes us truly human.”

Pope Francis. Source Vatican Media

Pope Francis, in his separate message to the conference, highlighted how the conference centered on mind, body and soul – three fundamental areas that differ somewhat from the “classical” Christian vision which understands the person as “an inseparable unity of body and soul, the latter being endowed with intellect and will.”

Moreover, St. Paul speaks of spirit, soul and body (1 Thess 5:23), a tripartite model that was taken up by Church Fathers and various modern thinkers.

These divisions “rightly indicate that certain dimensions of our being, nowadays all too often disjoined, are in fact profoundly and inseparably interrelated.”

The biological stratum of our existence, expressed in our corporeity, meaning our body, represents the most immediate of these dimensions, even if it is not the easiest to understand.

“We are not pure spirits; for each of us, everything starts with our body, but not only -  from conception to death, we do not simply have a body; we are a body,” Pope Francis said, adding that Christian faith tells us that this will also be true in the final resurrection. [There is a unity not as an "embodied soul" or and "ensouled body" but as an "embodied person".

In this regard, the Pope noted that through interdisciplinary studies we can come to appreciate “the dynamics involved in the relationship between our physical condition and the state of our habitat, between health and nourishment, our psycho-physical wellbeing and the care of the spiritual life – also through the practice of prayer and meditation – and finally between health and sensitivity to art, and especially music.”

It is, therefore, no accident “that medicine serves as a bridge between the natural and the human sciences, so much so that in the past it could be defined as philosophia corporis – medicine as philosophia corporis,” he said.

Furthermore, a broader vision and a commitment to interdisciplinary research makes greater knowledge possible, which translates to “more sophisticated research and increasingly suitable and exact strategies of care” when applied to the medical sciences.

On this issue, the Pope gave the example of progress in the vast field of genetics, aimed at curing a variety of diseases. However, this progress has come with “a number of anthropological and ethical issues” including the manipulation of the human genome aimed at controlling or overcoming the aging process or achieving human enhancement.

The mind and the brain

Also important is the second dimension of the “mind – body-mind which makes possible our self-understanding,” Pope Francis said.

Here, the essence of our humanity is often identified with the brain and its neurological processes. However, “despite the vital importance of the biological and functional aspects of the brain, these do not provide an overarching explanation of all those phenomena that define us as human, many of which are not 'measurable' and thus transcend the materiality of the body.”

“We cannot possess a mind without cerebral matter, yet the mind cannot be reduced to the mere materiality of the brain. This is an equation to follow,” he said.

The mind-body question

On the subject of the mind, Francis underlined that the interplay between the natural and human sciences has led to increased efforts to grasp the relationship between the material and non-material aspects of our being. The mind-body question, originally the domain of philosophers and theologians, is now of interest to people studying the mind-brain relationship.

He pointed out that in the scientific context, the term “mind” can present difficulties that need to be approached in an interdisciplinary way.

For example, he said, "mind” can “indicate a reality ontologically distinct from, yet capable of interacting with, our biological substratum.” At the same time, “mind” usually indicates “the entirety of the human faculties, particularly in relation to the formation of thought”, which raises the question of the origin of human faculties including “moral sensitivity, meekness, compassion, empathy and solidarity, which find expression in philanthropic gestures, disinterested concern for others, and the aesthetic sense, to say nothing of the search for the infinite and the transcendent.”

The soul

In the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Greek philosophical tradition, “these human traits are associated with the transcendent dimension of the human person, identified with the immaterial principle of our being, that of the soul – body, mind and soul,” the Pope stated.

He explained that the third dimension of the conference – the soul – is considered from the viewpoint of classical philosophy, as “the constituent principle organizing the body as a whole and the origin of our intellectual, affective and volitional qualities, including the moral conscience.”

More so, Scriptures, theological and philosophical reflection employ the concept of soul to “define our uniqueness as human beings and the specificity of the person, which is irreducible to any other living being and includes our openness to a supernatural dimension and thus to God.”

“We can say in simple terms that it is like a window, which opens up onto a view of the horizon.”

Concluding his message, Pope Francis encouraged the participants to pursue interdisciplinary research for the sake of a better understanding of our human nature. 

In fact, the conference held a roundtable on exploring the relationship of religion and spirituality to health and wellbeing, including the relationship between mind, body and soul. That discussion dealt with the deeper meaning of human existence and and sought areas of convergence between the humanities and the natural sciences. 

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Rethink needed for deniers of free will

From the graphic with Oliver Burkeman's article in The Guardian

Oliver Burkeman is an award winning journalist who is well-practised in tracking the ebb and flow of debates on the important issues relating to human psychology. He is a Guardian writer based in New York and between 2006 and 2020 he wrote a weekly column on psychology. In 2015, he won the Foreign Press Association's Science Story of the Year for a piece on the mystery of consciousness. He has had books published, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux releasing Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals later this year.

His credentials are important in assessing the state of affairs with regards our ability to continue to recognise that free will is a human capacity that differentiates ourselves from the animal world. Many big names have used findings in neuroscience or from their philosophical probing to reject the view that humans can rise above whatever other influences on them there might be to decide what to do - or not do - and how to live. They see the person, because of activity of the brain when responding to stimuli, acting fully and only in a way beholden to causes going back to the Big Bang.

Burkeman turned his attention to the state of play with regards free will with a long article in The Guardian of April 27, 2021. He first presents the case for the rejection of free will and concludes with might-be deniers' all-encompassing view: "If you’d been born with Hitler’s genes, and experienced Hitler’s upbringing, you would be Hitler – and ultimately it’s only good fortune that you weren’t."

Furthermore:

 “For the free will sceptic,” writes Gregg Caruso in his new book Just Deserts, a collection of dialogues with his fellow philosopher Daniel Dennett, “it is never fair to treat anyone as morally responsible.” 

However, that argument is, in fact, held by a only minority of philosophers:

According to a 2009 survey, conducted by the website PhilPapers, only about 12% of them are persuaded by it. And the disagreement can be fraught, partly because free will denial belongs to a wider trend that drives some philosophers spare – the tendency for those trained in the hard sciences to make sweeping pronouncements about debates that have raged in philosophy for years, as if all those dull-witted scholars were just waiting for the physicists and neuroscientists to show up. 

In one chilly exchange, Dennett paid a backhanded compliment to [Sam] Harris, who has a PhD in neuroscience, calling his book [Free Will] “remarkable” and “valuable” – but only because it was riddled with so many wrongheaded claims: “I am grateful to Harris for saying, so boldly and clearly, what less outgoing scientists are thinking but keeping to themselves.”

Dennett is suggesting that many scientists are positing much more than their findings support. On the other hand,  Burkeman goes on to describe how "... most of those who defend free will don’t reject the sceptics’ most dizzying assertion – that every choice you ever make might have been determined in advance". Instead, "they think determinism and free will are compatible". Accordingly, adherents to this line of thought are termed “compatibilists”. As well:

There are many other positions in the debate, including some philosophers, many Christians among them, who think we really do have “ghostly” free will; and others who think the whole so-called problem is a chimera, resulting from a confusion of categories, or errors of language.

After I have highlighted the features of Burkeman's scrutiny of the free will debate I will explore how Christians have used their intellectual firepower through millennia to come to an understanding of how free will is, indeed, part of the God-given capacities that reflect the dignity of the human person. 

So Burkeman reports criticism of free will deniers:

“Harris, Pinker, Coyne – all these scientists, they all make the same two-step move,” said Eddy Nahmias, a compatibilist philosopher at Georgia State University in the US. “Their first move is always to say, ‘Well, here’s what free will means’” – and it’s always something nobody could ever actually have, in the reality in which we live. “And then, sure enough, they deflate it. But once you have that sort of balloon in front of you, it’s very easy to deflate it, because any naturalistic account of the world will show that it’s false.”

And again:

A doctrinaire free will sceptic might feel obliged to argue that a person hypnotised into making a particular purchase is no less free than someone who thinks about it, in the usual manner, before reaching for their credit card. After all, their idea of free will requires that the choice wasn’t fully determined by prior causes; yet in both cases, hypnotised and non-hypnotised, it was. “But come on, that’s just really annoying,” said Helen Beebee, a philosopher at the University of Manchester who has written widely on free will, expressing an exasperation commonly felt by compatibilists toward their rivals’ more outlandish claims. “In some sense, I don’t care if you call it ‘free will’ or ‘acting freely’ or anything else – it’s just that it obviously does matter, to everybody, whether they get hypnotised into doing things or not.”

To those who find the case against free will persuasive, compatibilism seems outrageous at first glance. How can we possibly be free to choose if we aren’t, in fact, you know, free to choose? But to grasp the compatibilists’ point, it helps first to think about free will not as a kind of magic, but as a mundane sort of skill – one which most adults possess, most of the time. As the compatibilist Kadri Vihvelin writes, “we have the free will we think we have, including the freedom of action we think we have … by having some bundle of abilities and being in the right kind of surroundings.” 

The way most compatibilists see things, “being free” is just a matter of having the capacity to think about what you want, reflect on your desires, then act on them and sometimes get what you want. When you choose the banana [from a fruit bowl] in the normal way – by thinking about which fruit you’d like, then taking it – you’re clearly in a different situation from someone who picks the banana because a fruit-obsessed gunman is holding a pistol to their head; or someone afflicted by a banana addiction, compelled to grab every one they see. In all of these scenarios, to be sure, your actions belonged to an unbroken chain of causes, stretching back to the dawn of time. But who cares? The banana-chooser in one of them was clearly more free than in the others.

To get to the crux of another part of the debate - neural activity and decision-making - Burkeman  presents this retort from free will defenders:

Like everything else, our conscious choices are links in a causal chain of neural processes, so of course some brain activity precedes the moment at which we become aware of them.

Further:

We need only ask whether someone had the normal ability to choose rationally, reflecting on the implications of their actions. We all agree that newborn babies haven’t developed that yet, so we don’t blame them for waking us in the night; and we believe most non-human animals don’t possess it – so few of us rage indignantly at wasps for stinging us. Someone with a severe neurological or developmental impairment would surely lack it... But as for everyone else: “Bernie Madoff is the example I always like to use,” said Nahmias. “Because it’s so clear that he knew what he was doing, and that he knew that what he was doing was wrong, and he did it anyway.” He did have the ability we call “free will” – and used it to defraud his investors of more than $17 billion.

Burkeman displays a great deal of wisdom in his thoughts concluding his article:

I personally can’t claim to find the case against free will ultimately persuasive; it’s just at odds with too much else that seems obviously true about life. Yet even if only entertained as a hypothetical possibility, free will scepticism is an antidote to that bleak individualist philosophy which holds that a person’s accomplishments truly belong to them alone – and that you’ve therefore only yourself to blame if you fail. It’s a reminder that accidents of birth might affect the trajectories of our lives far more comprehensively than we realise, dictating not only the socioeconomic position into which we’re born, but also our personalities and experiences as a whole: our talents and our weaknesses, our capacity for joy, and our ability to overcome tendencies toward violence, laziness or despair, and the paths we end up travelling. There is a deep sense of human fellowship in this picture of reality – in the idea that, in our utter exposure to forces beyond our control, we might all be in the same boat, clinging on for our lives, adrift on the storm-tossed ocean of luck.

Of course, the Christian knows that we are influenced as an individual by our genes (and the history of those genes); by the character of our parents and the material circumstances of our upbringing. That's why perhaps Christians most of all will inquire, in the case of a young person seeking a job reference, as to the standing in the community of the hopeful's family and about the good character of that young person him or herself. Has the young person developed good habits rather than bad habits, both of  which can affect their decisions?

To borrow from Christian teaching, an individual's freedom is rooted in reason and will, which allows a person to perform deliberate actions on their own responsibility. "By free will, one shapes one's own life".

Yes, we can have psychological problems or be manipulated by people and the cultural "ocean" we live in, often without our realising it. Therefore, we need to cultivate habits and practices that allow us to listen to our heart - our conscience.

In this, moral theology is rich with all that can diminish a person's ability to be responsible for their sins. (The priest's role is to help discern the degree of culpability). More broadly, the Christian is accustomed to being warned to avoid the occasions of sin - if your companions think it's smart to shoplift, don't go into a shop with them. In addition, there's the saying to the effect that the sin is committed in the bar, not later with a "friend" in the hotel room.  

What this all means is that our decision-making, here meaning our ability to exercise free will, can be influenced in many ways. But the Judeo-Christian understanding of the human person is that each person, by using their reason and will, which is the capacity to stand above contending choices, is free in the ultimate sense, and is responsible for their life journey, which is accomplished by cooperating with the grace of God.  

As to the "luck" that Burkeman refers to, we can respond as in the old Chinese tale: "What is good luck? What is bad luck?" Where Burkeman sees each person as having to contend with "luck", the Christian knows that God is with us in whatever happens that is beyond our control and that we have the power to cooperate with Him to ensure we succeed on the journey to our final destination, which is to be with Him. 

Sam Harris should give his practice of Buddhism away and delve into the Christian tradition for more success in reading the reality of human nature. From the Catholic Catechism (dating from 1994) he will find these insights:

Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments and other psychological or social factors.

But we are not victims in life. Personal freedom, the ability to exercise our free will, can grow:

Freedom makes a person responsible for their acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and self-discipline enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

This is our challenge - to give more respect to our ability to control our decisions as to right and wrong; to understand that our freedom can be limited and riddled with mistakes if we are not careful; to use self-discipline in order to avoid the slavery of self-imposed blindness. Finally, the more a person does what is good, the freer they become. May we all be free as we should be!

[] Oliver Burkeman - The Clockwork Universe: Is Free Will an Illusion? 

[] See some reader responses here

[] Catechism of the Catholic Church Online

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Time to relax

A video time-out with a salute to the era of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin

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To be unprovable in principle, and self-evidentally so

The Cambridge University cosmologist John D Barrow died late last year, and I have just read something that he wrote that has significance because of its relevancy beyond his own field. His statement shows his deep thought relating to the interface between the search to know God and the scientific enterprise.

His statement came as part of the 2005 Edge.org "big question", which was: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Unlike many others', Barrow's answer was short but pithy. He submitted this statement:

That our universe is infinite in size, finite in age, and just one among many. Not only can I not prove it but I believe that these statements will prove to be unprovable in principle and we will eventually hold that principle to be self-evident.

John D Barrow

Of course, it's the second sentence that holds most significance for those who are dismayed at the adversary nature of science and religion, when science is reductionist on the basis of what is material or physical when it comes to evidence for God, the mind and will (or the soul), and - on the oposing side -  religious fundamentalists (and not all believers) who refuse to recognise well-established scientific findings.  

"Unprovable in principle and ... [holding] that principle to be self-evident." This has echoes of Stephen Jay Gould's principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) of 1997: "Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve."

Simply put Barrow might say, for example, that science will never be able to prove the source or dimensions of the transphysical mind, so it should stick with the facts concerning the material or quantifiable, such as the body and brain, or even the size and number of how many universes there might be around us. 

In fact, Barrow did try to illuminate areas that would be unprovable, and met knockbacks for that effort from rigid colleagues. 

However, Professor Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University, had this to say in his Scientific American tribute to Barrow: "A truly great scientist not only makes significant technical contributions but also reshapes a discipline’s conceptual landscape through a commanding depth and breadth of vision."  And Barrow's vision allowed him to be creative within physics:

The centerpiece of this approach was a remarkable book published in 1986 and co-authored with physicist Frank Tipler entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. It built on the recognition that if the initial state of the universe or the fundamental constants of physics had deviated—in some cases, by just a tiny amount—from the values we observe, the universe would not be suitable for life. The book is a detailed and extensive compilation of such felicitous biofriendly “coincidences,” and it became a canonical reference text for a generation of physicists. It also provoked something of a backlash for flirting with notions of cosmic purpose and straying too close to theology in some people’s eyes. Nevertheless, its style of “anthropic” reasoning subsequently became a familiar part of the theorist’s arsenal, albeit a still contentious one.

From this summary above we see that even in science there are approaches that are shunned simply because they are not in fashion given the prejudices of the elite of the field, without regard to whether the new ideas are intellectually sound or not. Barrow was strong enough to forge ahead:

His adventurous choices of research problems typified Barrow’s intellectual style, which was to challenge the hidden assumptions underpinning cherished mainstream theories. Fundamental problems in physics and cosmology may appear intractable, he reasoned, because we are thinking about them the wrong way. It was a mode of thought that resonated with many colleagues, this writer included, who are drawn to reflect on the deepest questions of existence.

Perhaps Barrow's success arose because of the breadth of his interests. His was not a blinkered existence and that allowed his science to range widely and appreciate insights from beyond the confines of the material world. Davies describes this element in Barrow's life and work:

Barrow’s scholarship and writing extended to art theory, musicology, history, philosophy and religion—a grasp of human culture aptly recognized by an invitation to deliver the prestigious Centenary Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1989 and also by the 2006 Templeton Prize [for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities]. These acknowledgments were in addition to many notable scientific and academic honors, including being made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

To conclude, the Edge question for in 2005 was: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Answers were given by 120 scientists and intellectuals. Each expressed the fact that they believed something but could not prove it. That humility as to the limits at any one time of science and technology is welcome. 

[] Those interested in exploring the evidence for the existence of the mind, our transcendental or transphysical nature (our "soul") should avail themselves of the resources at the Magis Center. 

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Morals and markets and the common good Part 2

                                       - New York Times headline April 24, 2021

The New York Times story makes this point: "The coronavirus plunged the world into an economic crisis, sent the U.S. unemployment rate skyrocketing and left millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Yet at many of the companies hit hardest by the pandemic, the executives in charge were showered with riches."

My March post on this topic focused on how markets must not be regarded as a morality-free zone. The way the individuals in the business elite plump for self-interest within their select group leaves a stain of corruption on all who are business leaders. I had these deplorable figures in my information:

On Twitter this week the US figures were again highlighted with tweets discussing data that CEO pay growth from 1979-2019 was 1167%, whereas worker pay growth from 1979-2019 was 13.7%. These US figures came out last year in a report by the Economic Policy Institute.  

The Times has this information:

Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation.

Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and furloughed 20 percent of its staff. That didn’t stop Norwegian from more than doubling the pay of Frank Del Rio, its chief executive, to $36.4 million.

And at Hilton, where nearly a quarter of the corporate staff were laid off as hotels around the world sat empty and the company lost $720 million, it was a good year for the man in charge. Hilton reported in a securities filing that Chris Nassetta, its chief executive, received compensation worth $55.9 million in 2020. 

 As a final comment, a quotation used in my previous post:

But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace?

Read on my Substack website for a new perspective 

Dramatic realism of the resurrection event

From the Jesus Pantocrator icon, about the 6th Century, at St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt

"Look, I'm not a ghost”, Jesus told his followers. “A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have." Then he said: “Do you have anything to eat?”, and they gave him a piece of baked fish. It’s this realism that Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles finds so dramatic and significant about the Easter events. Barron’s examination of the account is thorough:

Today, I'm going to harp on something. I'm going to harp on it because a) the Bible harps on it a lot, and b) because our culture often misses it. What I'm going to harp on is the very strangeness of the resurrection.

Maybe it's 10 years ago or longer, when David Cameron was prime minister of Britain, he was giving a little speech on Easter, and he was trying to articulate the significance of Easter. Here's what he said: "The message of Easter is kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility."

Now, I know he was trying to appeal very broadly to anyone that'd be listening. And don't get me wrong, I'm for kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility, too. But my guess is that any decent person would be, believer or nonbeliever. A Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist —anybody would be in favor of these values.

Therefore, that can't be the meaning of Easter. That can't be the meaning of the resurrection.

It's a typical attempt, though, in our contemporary setting to kind of domesticate the resurrection.

What does the resurrection mean? It means that Jesus of Nazareth, who in his public ministry consistently acted and spoke in the very person of God, who was brutally put to death by the Roman authorities, rose bodily from the dead and appeared alive to his disciples — not an abstraction, not a symbol for some moral or spiritual state of affairs, but this bodily resurrection of this particular man from the dead.

I'm going to read a little bit here from this magnificent twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, which is filled with these marvelous accounts of the resurrection. This is right after the Emmaus account, and the Eleven are gathered in the upper room.

And it says, "While they were still speaking about this, he [Jesus] stood in their midst and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.... [But he said,] 'Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.'"

I submit to you, everybody, that's a very strange text. Just as they were startled and terrified by the appearance of Jesus, I think we should be a little startled and terrified by this message.

Turning it into a bland statement about "Be a nice person" is entirely missing the point of the resurrection.

Let me try to shed some more light on this by setting up a contrast between this extraordinary account and what a first-century Jew might've been thinking about what happens to us after we die. Because this didn't happen in a vacuum — Jews of the first century had ideas, based in the biblical tradition, about what happens to people when they die. These are all on display in the Bible.

First of all, a view —and it was still held by many, still widely held by many Jews today— that death is just the end. That when we die, we go back to dust and that's it. We're dead. It's over.

A second view, also on display in the Bible, is that the dead go to a kind of shadowy underworld. It's called Sheol in the Scriptures. It's a bit like Hades, what you find in Greek and Roman mythology — this kind of unappealing underworld where people are present, they're alive, but not the way they used to be. That's Sheol.

Another view, you can find it in the book of Daniel. This is read, by the way, at almost every Catholic funeral. It says, "The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them." This idea is that, after we die, the body goes into the earth, but the soul survives.

Now, that's not entirely unlike what some of the Greek philosophers held. So Socrates and Plato would have held some version of that: that our souls escape from the prison of the body, and they live on.

Here's still another view that's on display in the Bible, and in Jesus' time, the Pharisees would have held to this very strongly — namely, that we can hope, at the end of time, all the righteous dead will come back to life in the general resurrection.

Okay. All of those views were on offer. They were held by people in Jesus' time and place.

I want you to notice, what's being described here in Luke 24 — it's not any of that. Certainly not the case that, well, the dead just die and that's it. No, here's Jesus, who died, and he's alive. He's present to them. They're not talking about someone who's gone down to the shadowy realm of Sheol. They're not talking about that.

Remember in the Old Testament when, it's the Witch of Endor calls forth the shade of the prophet Samuel from the realm of Sheol. That's not what's being described here at all,

but someone who stands before them, and he says, "Look, I'm not a ghost. A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have."

This is not the view that Jesus died, his body went into the earth, and his soul went to heaven.

That's not being described here at all. This is not a disembodied soul. No, no. Here he is, standing in their midst.

Maybe the closest we've come is to say, what many Jews expected of all the righteous dead at the end of time has happened to this man in the midst of history.

Jesus, alive, body and soul, standing before them. Jesus, who had been killed, brutally put to death, now through the power of the Holy Spirit alive again in their midst.

I love this detail. It's unique to Luke. It says, when they were "incredulous for sheer joy and amazed." By the way, what a beautiful reaction to the Resurrection: incredulous for sheer joy, and they were amazed. He said to them, "Have you got anything here to eat?"

Don't you love the realism of that?

Here's the risen Jesus, wants something to eat, and they give him, it says, “a piece of baked fish," and "he took it and ate it in front of them." May I say again here—and this maybe is for people today who want to domesticate the resurrection, turning it into a bland symbol — this has nothing to do with dreams, and hallucinations, and vague ideas, and velleities [mere wishes without action].

No, no; this man, once dead, now standing before them, with flesh and bones, and eating fish that they gave to him.

Everybody, that's the strangeness, that's the radicality of the resurrection.

Do you believe it, or not? Do you find deep joy in it? That's the question. That's the challenge that Easter gives us year after year.

Okay? Now, once we see that, can we also discern why this matters so much?

And can I suggest just two implications by looking at the first two readings?

First of all, we have this, in the Acts of the Apostles, magnificent speech of St. Peter.

It's a kerygmatic sermon. "Kerygma" means the basic message of the Gospel. So when Peter in the earliest days gets up and tells the people what Christianity is all about, that's the sermon. Now listen to him:

"The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ... has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence.... You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death."

May I suggest, by the way, this is not someone tickling the ears of his listeners. This is not someone trying to ingratiate himself with his audience. No, no; he's laying it out pretty clearly.

St. Peter is seeing the resurrection as an affirmation of Jesus. The one who spoke and acted in the very person of God is revealed not to be a liar or a fraud, but true, righteous.

But more than that, the message of the resurrection is also a judgment on all of us sinners, who, in varying ways and to varying degrees, put him to death.

Again, let this line sink into your heart as I let it sink into mine. "The author of life you put to death."

You see how the resurrection of Jesus —and I don't mean some vague fantasy; I mean, God raising Jesus bodily from the dead —is a judgment on all of those who contributed to his crucifixion.

It's a judgment on the cruelty, and the hatred, and the injustice, and the self-absorption that produced the crucifixion.

See, if the resurrection's a vague symbol, then I am not all that challenged in my sin. Then these words of Peter aren't going to cut me to the heart if the resurrection’s a vague symbol.

But if through the power of the Spirit, God the Father raises Jesus from the dead, and he stands before me, I see in his wounds a judgment on me. An extraordinary implication of the resurrection.

And look how Peter's sermon ends.  "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."

Again, this is not ingratiating rhetoric. This is drawing out a very important moral and spiritual implication of the resurrection: that we must come to repentance.

And here's a second implication now, drawn from our second reading from that marvelous First Letter of John. John speaks of an Advocate we now have in heaven. That’s beautiful, isn't it?

What does the resurrection mean?

It means that this Jesus who was a denizen of the earth, this Jesus who walked among us, bodily present among us, has now been raised to a participation in the very life of heaven.

See, biblical religion, everybody, is not like Greek philosophy. It's not a story of let's endeavor to escape from matter to a higher realm. No; it's a story of how heaven and earth are meant to come together.

Remember in the Our Father: "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." That's a prayer that these two realms might meet.

How beautiful that the resurrected Christ eats this piece of fish they gave him. That means that this lowly humanity of ours in Christ has been elevated to the heavenly place.

We have an Advocate — a brother of ours who walked the same earth, breathed the same air. A brother of ours has now been brought into the heavenly space. And in that advocacy, we find extraordinary hope.

Can I suggest, next time you go to Mass, attend to the language of the prayers. They're often this language of heaven and earth meeting, because that's exactly what Jesus means. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"; Jesus' flesh now elevated to heaven. You see how a connection between heaven and earth has been established.

That's what the Resurrection means.

Turn the Resurrection into a vague myth or symbol? Then none of this powerful cosmological truth is expressed.

So, the bottom line: Can I urge you, sometime [especially] during this Easter season, open up your Bibles to Luke chapter 24, a kind of masterpiece within the masterpiece.

Enter into these accounts of the resurrection and realize the full radicality of what is being claimed: Jesus Christ, truly risen from the dead.

See this also at Substack here.