Understanding One Thing is to Understand Everything

Although not always expressed the same way, here is an idea I heard reference to from time to time through the years I lived in Japan:

The Zen Perspective

The words above are attributed to Suzuki Shunryu, a Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. In 1962 Suzuki (1904~71) founded the San Francisco Zen Center, which was the first Zen monastery outside Asia.

Suzuki was also the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and last year the 50^th anniversary edition of that book was published.

Fifty years ago when I first heard the idea encapsulated in Suzuki’s words, I didn’t know they were rooted in a Zen concept. But perhaps that helps explain the use made of koans in Zen. To understand one thing, such as a koan, leads to satori (enlightenment), that is, understanding everything.

Granted, there are lingering problems here; still, it is an interesting perspective.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Perspective

I have long liked, and often quoted, the widely known words of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning:  

Seeing depth, or transcendence, in the ordinary is what Barrett Browning was emphasizing, and that is likely true for Suzuki also. The problem, and shame, is that there are so many who are content to just pluck blackberries, never seeing more than the obvious.

In this connection, I recently happened to read this important statement by Henri Nouwen: “. . . the whole of nature is a sacrament pointing to a reality far beyond itself” (Seeds of Hope, 1989, p. 100). Unfortunately, so many people don’t see the sacramental nature of the universe.

When we don’t fully see/understand “one thing,” we are unable to see/understand “everything.”

Gifty’s Perspective

Originally, I planned to write this whole blog article about Gifty, the precocious central character of Yaa Gyasi’s fascinating novel Transcendent Kingdom (2020). Gifty, like the author, was born to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama.

But unlike author Gyasi (b. 1989), who has an MFA degree, Gifty is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction.

In her experiments on the brains of mice, Gifty realized that in the case of humans, at least, there is something more to human consciousness than just the physical brain.

For example, Gifty asks, “ . . . if the brain can’t account for things like reason and emotion, then what can? If the brain makes it possible for ‘us’ to feel and think then what is ‘us’?” (p. 197).

At the very end of the novel, Gifty says, “I’ve seen enough in a mouse to understand transcendence, holiness, redemption.”

Gifty likely didn’t know anything about Barrett Browning’s poems nor much, if anything, about Zen. But she seemed to intuit that to understand one thing is to understand everything.

What about us, now?

Thinking about Death

It was early on February 15 that I started writing this article, for it turned out that my wife June and I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about death on Valentine’s Day.

Our Sunday School class discussion that morning as well as the movie we watched that evening were both about death. We also were sad to hear that two people in our circle of acquaintances had died that day.  

Death in “Fidelity”

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the Sunday School class had a long and fruitful discussion of “Fidelity,” Wendell Berry’s short story first published in 1992. It centers around the death of an 82-year-old man—the very age I am now.

In that intriguing story, Burley is seriously ill, so his family and neighbors, wanting to do something for him, take him, without him being able to give his assent, to a hospital in Louisville where he is hooked up to all sorts of life-lengthening devices. But he was deprived of his right to die with dignity.

Death in Blackbird

That evening we happened upon Blackbird, a 2019 Prime Video movie that we had never heard of—and which was panned by the movie reviewers we read after we watched it. But we thought it dealt with the planned death of Lily, the central character, in a thought-provoking way.

Lily has a serious degenerative disease. It seems that soon she will lose all ability to function as a normal human being, likely even to lose the ability to swallow. Before that happens, she wants to have an enjoyable weekend with her family and then drink the lethal potion procured by her doctor husband.

Choosing death with dignity rather than having to suffer and/or to exist in a prolonged vegetative state is the issue in this movie, similar to that of “Fidelity.”

Death Control as Well as Birth Control?

Contraception, commonly called birth control, has long and consistently been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church—and in recent decades by an increasing number of conservative evangelicals. But birth control is legal and widely practiced in the U.S. and Europe.

Has the time now come for wider acceptance of, and more legal provision for, what might be called death control? Note that whereas birth control is taking means to prevent pregnancy/birth, death control as I am using the term here is taking means to hasten death.

Death control is not a widely used term—and sometimes it is employed to refer to efforts to prevent death just as birth control is a term used to prevent pregnancy/birth. But I am using the term to refer to suffering, terminally ill people taking the initiative to end their lives.

Of course, there are strong religious and ethical arguments against all forms of death control. Again, the Roman Catholic Church and conservative evangelicals are at the forefront of that opposition. Birth and death should be completely left to God, they say, and humans should yield to God’s will.

Similarly, there was a time when it was widely thought that vaccines interfered with the natural order, or the divine order, of things and should be spurned. For that reason, in the 18^th century U.S., some religious people saw vaccines as “the devil’s work.”

In much the same way, birth control opponents through the years have also seen using “artificial means” to prevent pregnancy to be attempts to usurp God’s work in creating new human life.

The Roman Catholic Church, for example, teaches that using contraception is "intrinsically evil," for it gives human beings the power to decide when a new life should begin whereas that power really belongs to God.

Death control is staunchly opposed for the same reason: the power to decide when life should end, they declare, also belongs only to God.

But for those who see no ethical problem with birth control, or vaccines, shouldn’t the prudent use of death control also be considered ethically permissible?

(I am planning to post more about this controversial topic on March 5.)

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky

If you are weary with 2021, go back with me 200 years to 1821. That is the year Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born. That famous Russian novelist died 140 years ago this month, in February 1881. He and his writings are certainly worth thinking about.

Dostoyevsky’s Life

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (often transliterated Dostoevsky) was born in Moscow, the son of a doctor. In 1838 he enrolled in a military engineering school in St. Petersburg, but he was more interested in the humanities than in engineering. After graduating in 1843, he resigned from the army.

After 1845, Dostoyevsky became involved in a political and cultural group of rebels, which was severely targeted by the Russian government. Saved from death by a firing squad in 1849, he spent four years at a prison labor camp and then served five years in the army in Siberia.

Dostoyevsky’s major novels were all written between 1860, after his return to St. Petersburg, and 1880. Three days after his death on Feb. 9, 1881, he was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery of the historic Alexander Nevsky Monastery. His funeral was attended by tens of thousands of mourners.

Dostoyevsky’s Writings

Dostoevsky's oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories, and numerous other works. His most acclaimed works are

Notes from Underground (1864)
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The Idiot (1869)
Demons (or The Possessed) (1871-72)
The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

The last of these is arguably the best of the five—and it is said to have been the last book that Leo Tolstoy read before his death in 1910. (Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy knew of each other and of each other’s writings, but apparently they never met in person.)

Dostoyevsky’s Gospel Emphases

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works, published by Plough Publishing House most recently in 2014, is a delightful book, made even more delightful with the illustrations, including the cover image, by Fritz Eichenberg. (Here is the link to my 11/30/13 blog post about him.)  

The first selection in the book is “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov, and certainly that is one of the premier pieces in Dostoyevsky’s writings.

A key assertion here is that “the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.” The Gospel, to Dostoyevsky, unveils that secret.

While the book has four selections from The Idiot and a couple from Crime and Punishment and some from lesser-known writings, those from The Brothers Karamazov are the most powerful, and two lengthy selections are of Elder Zossima (which in other books is sometimes spelled Zosima).

In “From the Life of the Elder Zossima” (Kindle version, pp. 142~182), Dostoyevsky asks through Zossima, “And what is the use of Christ’s words unless we set an example? The people are lost without the Word of God, for their soul is athirst for the Word and for all that is good” (p. 153).

The last selection in the book is “Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima” (pp. 210~226). In the brief introduction, the book’s unnamed editors say, “There is no doubt that here we have before us Dostoyevsky’s religious testament.”

In the Foreword (written for an earlier version of this book) Malcolm Muggeridge (1903~90), an Englishman who was an agnostic until he converted to Christianity in his 60s, wrote,

Supposing one were asked to name a book calculated to give an unbeliever today a clear notion of what Christianity is about, could one hope to do much better than The Brothers Karamazov?

Certainly, in it, as well as in his earlier writings, we find the Gospel in Dostoyevsky presented in many thought-provoking and appealing ways. For both Christian believers and non-believers, Dostoyevsky is unquestionably worth reading and/or reading again.

_____

** Of the several sources consulted, I am particularly indebted to David J. Leigh, a Jesuit professor at Seattle University, for his “The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky,” published in Vol. 33. Nos. 1-2 of Ultimate Reality and Meaning, a journal published by University of Toronto.

“Good” White Evangelical Politicians

There has been considerable criticism of white evangelicals—and I have posted critical remarks myself (such as in my 2/4 blog post). But putting labels on people and saying everyone with that label is the same is a problem—and I wrote about “evangeliphobia” in my 1/30/16 blog post.

In this article, I am thinking particularly of two white evangelical politicians: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). I am referring to them as “good” because of their taking politically unpopular stances partly or largely because of their Christian faith.

Applauding Rep. Kinzinger

Adam Daniel Kinzinger (b. 1978) has served as a U.S. Congressman from Illinois since 2011. Recently, he has been in the news largely because he was one of the ten Republicans in the House to vote for the impeachment of President Trump.

A Jan. 29 piece posted on Christianity Today’s website is entitled “Meet the Republican Congressman Who Says His Faith Led Him to Vote for Impeachment.” 

According to this Jan. 28 article in The Atlantic, Kinzinger was a kid who grew up in a Baptist Church, and now, they write,

As someone who identifies as a born-again Christian, he believes he has to tell the truth. What has been painful, though, is seeing how many people who share his faith have chosen to support Trump at all costs, fervently declaring that the election was stolen.

“The courage of Adam Kinzinger,” an article in the Feb. 6 issue of The Economist, reports on the “angry pushback” Kinzinger is getting and even how a “fellow evangelical Christian accused him of being possessed by the devil.”

Surely, though, many evangelical Christians—and most of those who are not—have to be impressed with not only the courage but also the integrity of Rep. Kinzinger.

Applauding Sen. Sasse

Benjamin Eric Sasse (b. 1972) is the junior U.S. Senator for Nebraska, having won his second term in the Nov. 2020 election.

Born in Nebraska as the son of a high school teacher and football coach, Sasse graduated from Harvard in 1994 and went on to earn a Ph.D. degree (in history) from Yale University. Currently, he is the only Republican Senator with a Ph.D. (There are three Democrats with that degree.)   

Sasse was baptized in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. As a college student in the 1990s, he began to embrace the "reformed faith" (Calvinism). And during his college years, Sasse was active in Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). Later he became an elder in the United Reformed Churches.

Sen. Sasse has long been a critic of the 45^th POTUS, and on Tuesday (Feb. 8), Sasse was one of only six Republicans (out of 50) who voted that the second impeachment trial of Trump is constitutional. And (perhaps today) he is likely to vote for Trump’s conviction.

His opposition to the Republican President has led to him being censured by Republicans in Nebraska, but he has persisted in doing and saying what he thinks is right.

Like Rep. Kinzinger, Sasse’s faith has led him also to be a man of courage and integrity.

Criticizing Rep. Kinzinger and Sen. Sasse

Applauding the evangelical Christian faith which has led Rep. Kinzinger and Sen. Sasse to be men of courage and integrity—and, as such, outspoken in their opposition to DJT—does not mean general agreement with their political ideas.

It is possible to respect and to admire people of integrity who embody and express goodwill while still disagreeing with their ideas and their political position on important issues.

And it is unfair to allow dislike for some white conservative evangelical politicians, such as Sen. Josh Hawley and Sen. Ted Cruz, to lump all conservative evangelical politicians together and to castigate them all.

Thankfully, there are “good” white evangelical politicians, and even though I am critical of some or many of their political positions, I am thankful for Rep. Kinzinger and Sen. Sasse.

The Inaugurations of 1865 and 2021

It has been three weeks since the inspirational inauguration of President Joe Biden. There are some distinct differences and a significant similarity between that inauguration on January 20 and President Lincoln’s second inauguration on March 4, 1865.

The Inauguration of 1865

This Friday is 2.12 and the 212^th birthday anniversary of Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps the most often quoted POTUS in American history, his short Second Inaugural Address was one of his most powerful speeches.

Lincoln won the 1864 election, held during the Civil War, as the candidate of the National Union Party (made up of Republicans and “War Democrats”). He defeated Democratic candidate George McClellan with 55% of the popular vote and with a whopping 212-21 advantage in the Electoral College.

Lincoln’s inaugural address the following March ended with these impressive words:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

(Here is the link to that 3/4/1865 inaugural address, which was only a tad over 700 words long. At that link you can both read the speech and hear it read. And this is the link to my blog post in 2/2015, which was mostly about that remarkable address.) 

The Inauguration of 2021

President Biden’s inaugural address was a solid one, but perhaps there were not a lot of memorable statements. The following words spoken to the international community, though, are noteworthy:

America has been tested and we’ve come out stronger for it. We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges but today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. And we’ll lead not merely by the example of our power, [but] by the power of our example. We’ll be a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security.

The most memorable words at the inauguration were spoken by Amanda Gorman, the dynamic young inaugural poet. She ended her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” with these words articulated with her immaculate diction,

The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it
If only we're brave enough to be it.

(In case you want to hear/read Gorman’s poem again, here is a link to it.)

Differences and a Similarity

The Senate’s second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump is set to begin today. As you know, the House of Representatives voted on January 13 to impeach the 45^th POTUS. The tally was 232-197 with ten Republicans and all the Democrats voting to impeach DJT for “incitement of insurrection.”

Before that vote, however, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise cited Lincoln’s words about having “malice toward none” in voicing his opposition to impeachment.

Scalise ended his appeal for acquittal of DJT: "Madam Speaker, in times like these, let’s not reach for our darkest demons but instead, like Lincoln, seek the higher ground.”

Then, in the week following Biden’s inauguration, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley portrayed Trump as a victim of ill will and exclaimed “Give the man a break! . . . move on.”

Seeking to convince lawbreakers—or high government officials inciting insurrection—is not done because of malice, though. It is done for the sake of justice and with the intent of keeping society—or democracy—safe.

Lincoln’s second inaugural address was near the end of a long civil war in which perhaps up to 750,000 soldiers had died—and he had won the election by a huge landslide.

By contrast, Biden’s inaugural address was after a disputed election, just two weeks after an attempted insurrection, and with extensive armed protection, for it was not known what the insurgents might do to disrupt the festive events of January 20.

One thing is clearly the same now as in 1865, though: we all want a “just and lasting peace.”

Which Christian Values Do You Endorse?

Jack Hibbs, whom I have not known of until recently, is the founder and senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California and has a daily half-hour program on Bott Radio. This post was sparked by a Jan. 21 article by Hibbs on The Christian Post’s website.  

The “Christian Values” of Conservative White Evangelicals

In the just-mentioned piece, titled “What’s next for evangelicals post-Trump,” Hibbs (b. 1958) declares that “President Biden is clearly not interested in the concerns of evangelicals.”

“So,” Hibbs asks, “what are we to do, now that Trump is leaving office and we have a new president who goes against our values?”

The “we” he refers to, I assume, are most of the readers of The Christian Post and those who attend his church, said to be about five thousand adults each Sunday, not including teens and children.

Hibbs concludes that “we need to look to 2024 with an eye towards finding the next president whose policies will be in line with our values.”

What, though, are the values of this conservative evangelical pastor? Well, we have some clue in the last five of the 15 points in Hibbs’s church’s “statement of faith” (see here).

Those “Christian values” were succinctly expressed in a Facebook post of West Virginia singer David Ferrell (shared by one of my FB friends earlier this week): “No pastor can support same sex marriage, homosexuality, transgender, abortion and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

But, where in the Gospels do we find Jesus condemning same-sex marriage, homosexuality, transgender, or abortion? The values that Jesus emphasized seem to be quite different.

Jesus’ values are largely affirmed by progressive Christians, including many prominent Black pastors, most of whom were strongly opposed to President Trump—in spite of his being extensively supported by conservative White evangelicals because of his championing “Christian values.”

The Values of Progressive Christians

Last month I read The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (2017), a powerful book by Wendell Griffen, who is both a pastor and a circuit judge in Arkansas. He also wrote a provocative Jan. 21 article titled “The end of Trump’s presidency does not end America’s root problem.”

In stark contrast to Pastor Hibbs, Pastor Griffen asserts,

Trump will forever be remembered as the most vicious, politically incompetent and corrupt president in U.S. history. He left office dishonored, defeated and despised by most people who value justice, truth, integrity, peace and hope.

Griffen also extols the Christian values of MLK, Jr., including his condemnation of racism, materialism, and militarism.

The same emphasis on the Christian values articulated by Griffen—and ignored by Hibbs—is prominently seen in other noted Black pastors, such as William Barber, Jr., of North Carolina; Raphael Warnock, our new Senator from Georgia; and Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, among many others.

What gall to suggest that these Black pastors—and the many progressive Christians, White and Black, who agree with them—all of whom spoke out in opposition to President Trump, are opposed to Christian values!

Which Christian Values Do You Endorse?

In his January 3 sermon, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor of a church near Dallas said that President-elect Biden would be a “cognitively dysfunctional president” and then asked: “what if something happens to him and Jezebel has to take over? Jezebel Harris, isn’t that her name?”

According to this 1/29 article, that pastor, Steve Swofford, also said that the Biden-Harris administration would not likely be “doing things our way,” so he urged his congregation to maintain their “convictions for Christ”—or, in other words, to stand firm for the “Christian values” of evangelicals.

On the other hand, in the Conclusion of his book Griffen challenges his hearers to “prophetic citizenship,” which, he says, focuses “on the needs of the people God cares most about.” That is, “people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, frail, imprisoned, and unwelcomed.”

So, in reflecting on these different sets of values, which do you endorse as the more important and most in harmony with the teachings of Jesus?