On Having and Celebrating Life, Real/Eternal Life

Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty: These are the “4-Ls” about which I wrote in my March 9 post. Today I am focusing on Life, the first of those four. Over the next few weeks, I will write about the other three.

Real life is more than physical life. As I said in the March 9 post, the foundation of my emphasis on life was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).

Having abundant life focuses on the quality of life, not just its quantity. Physical life is something that people either have or don’t have. That is, they are either alive or dead. But living abundantly means living with meaning, purpose, and joy.

The emphasis on life, real life, was prominent in the Christian Studies courses I conducted at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. In 1975, I taught a required course for second-year Economics Department students. Horiuchi Akira-san was one of the students enrolled in that class.

On his 70^th birthday in January, Horiuchi-san posted the following comments (in Japanese) on Facebook: “When I was a second year university student, a missionary teacher of Christian Studies said, "The purpose of Christianity is to help people to have life and to have it abundantly."

In a personal exchange on Facebook Messenger, Horiuchi-san (whom I should call sensei since he has been a Christian pastor for most of the years since he finished his theological education in 1981) wrote, “I am who I am today because of my encounter with you. Thanks.”

Real life includes valuing and protecting physical life. Even though it is more than physical life, having real life leads to more than just enjoying the richness of one’s own life. It also seeks life for groups of people, robust physical life as well as meaningful societal life.

This generates opposition to war, to violence of all kinds, to capital punishment, to ecological destruction, and to all exploitation and/or degradation of people because of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else.  

Conservative Christians of the present have preserved the important emphasis of evangelicalism on real life for individuals by faith in God through Jesus Christ, but so many have largely failed to emphasize the equally important matter of helping marginalized groups to have vigorous physical life also.

The New Testament term eternal life is basically the same as what I call real life. I have used the latter term because of the misunderstanding or ambiguity of the word eternal, which was long expressed as everlasting in English.

For centuries, the majority of Protestants (including most Anglicans) read the King James Version of the Bible, which dates back to 1611. Many of us older people memorized John 3:16 in the KJV:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That was the basis for the widespread belief in unending life, which was generally understood as life after physical death.

But beginning with the American Standard Version, published in 1901, the Greek words previously translated as everlasting life began to be translated as eternal life. This became more widely the case after the Revised Standard Version was published in 1952.

Bible scholars increasingly began to emphasize that eternal, especially in the Gospel of John, primarily refers to the quality of life, not its quantity. Thus, eternal life is the type of life that we can have and enjoy now, not just life after physical death.

Life (real life) is the theme of Easter, which Christians around the world will be celebrating tomorrow.

It is because of the resurrected Jesus that all can receive new life = eternal life through him. That is the life that Horiuchi-san received the year after he heard about real life in my Christian Studies class in 1975.

His kind words of gratitude were primarily for my sharing the Gospel of life with him and his classmates, most of whom never accepted that message. He did and that made all the difference.

Happy Easter!

Is the Republican Party Dead?

This is not the blog post I first intended to write for today. Last month I happened to see that Ralph Nadar was celebrating his 90^th birthday (on Feb. 27), and I planned to write about him. But my plan changed when I saw this headline: “Trump Jr. says ‘MAGA movement is the new Republican Party’.”

Various voices over the last few years have spoken about the death of the Republican Party. Surprisingly, one of those voices was that of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

In November 2022, CBS News quoted Sen. Hawley as saying, “The Republican Party, as we have known it, is dead.” That was an expression of his disappointment about the outcome of the mid-term elections. Democrats maintained that those results were because of voters’ displeasure with Trump.

Since then, though, Trump and MAGA Republicans have become much stronger. Last week, “Donald Trump Jr. mused that the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement has replaced the old guard of the Republican Party.”

That New York Post article went on to cite Trump Jr. declaring, “That [old-school establishment] Republican Party frankly no longer exists outside of the D.C. Beltway.”

With Trump Sr. replacing the leadership of the Republican National Committee with his hand-picked supporters, including his daughter-in-law, the traditional GOP has essentially become the MAGA Party.

As the March 25 issue of Time magazine says (on p. 7) under the title, “It’s Trump’s Party,”  “The MAGA movement’s takeover of the GOP is now complete.” In that sense, it may be correct to say that the Republican Party as it has existed for the past century is dead.

What are traditional Republicans or opponents of Democrats to do? That seems to be the dilemma many U.S. voters find themselves in now.

Come November 5, one of two old, White men will be re-elected POTUS (assuming they are both still alive and well then, which is by no means assured.) But what if you cannot bear to vote for “Sleepy Joe” or “Sleazy Donald”?

That’s where Ralph Nadar enters the picture. According to Wikipedia, Nadar is an “American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes, and a perennial presidential candidate.”

The latter is the only aspect of Nadar’s career that I will consider here, for Nadar’s running as a third-party candidate in 2000 is quite likely the major reason George W. Bush was elected President over Al Gore.

It is difficult to fathom how much better off this country, and the world, would be if Gore had been elected in 2000. As you may remember, Gore did receive the most popular votes, but thanks to the Supreme Court’s dubious decision, Florida’s electoral votes went to Bush and he became the 43^rd POTUS.

In that decisive state of Florida, Bush defeated Gore by only 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida, which led to justifiable claims that Nader was responsible for Gore's defeat—or rather, the Democrats and Independents who voted for Nadar were those most responsible for Bush’s election.

What does all this mean for 2024? Among other things, it means that those—and most especially those who live in the so-called “swing stages” of Ariz., Ga., Mich., N.C., Nev., Penn., and Wis.—must beware of voting for a third-party candidate if they don’t want Trump to win the election.

Some speak of voting for the lesser of two evils, and others say if both candidates are “evil,” they cannot and will not vote for either.

But it seems quite clear to me that it is far better to vote for the better of two evils than to not vote at all. Also, it is far better to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than for a third-party candidate that will potentially lead to the election of the greater of the two evils.

And mark it down: it is nearly 100% certain that either the Democratic or the Republican candidate will win the 2024 presidential election.

If Trump’s MAGA party is the only alternative to the Democratic Party, which seems to be the case now that the traditional Republican Party is the same as dead, I admonish you to vote for Biden’s re-election and for Democratic Senators and Representatives. Democracy itself and so much more is at stake.

Tarnishing the Name of Jesus

It was a week ago tonight that Pres. Biden delivered the annual State of the Union (SOTU) message. His address was widely applauded by Democrats and by the mainstream media—and, not surprisingly, panned by Republicans and by right-wing news outlets who castigate the “lamestream” media.

This post, though, is about the Republican rebuttal speech given by Alabama Senator Katie Britt. 

Katie Boyd Britt (b. 1982) was elected the junior Senator from Alabama in 2022, defeating Democrat Will Boyd, a Black Baptist pastor. She received nearly 67% of the vote.

I didn’t remember hearing the name of Sen. Britt before I saw that she would give the rebuttal after the SOTU address, so I looked her up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

In a July 2021 interview, Britt stated, “Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life, and that should be the foundation that everything else comes around.” I certainly would not disagree with that, but surely such a statement should include telling the truth and not bearing false witness.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times candidly stated that “the woman sitting in the kitchen with the cross glittering on her neck lied.” After listening (on Friday) to her Thursday night rebuttal speech, that clearly seems to be the case.

And given what she has said about Jesus Christ and the sparkling (diamond-studded?) cross around her neck as she gave her speech, it seemed to me that she was tarnishing the name of Jesus.

No wonder more and more people in the U.S. are leaving the Christian faith and joining the “nones.”

Sen. Boyd’s rebuttal speech was criticized and critiqued by a wide variety of voices. For example, here is part of what historian Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) wrote about Katie’s talk in her March 8 newsletter:

Sitting in a kitchen rather than in a setting that reflected her position in one of the nation’s highest elected offices, Britt conspicuously wore a necklace with a cross and spoke in a breathy, childlike voice as she wavered between smiles and the suggestion she was on the verge of tears. 

At the close of HRC’s letter, I first learned about Jess Piper and her Substack posts under the name “The View from Rural Missouri.” Her March 8 “view” was titled “The Fundie Baby Voice.”*

But it wasn’t the voice that most disturbed me. It was the lies that Sen. Britt told in that problematic voice.

In his remarks at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening, Jimmy Kimmel made these remarks about Emma Stone, who had just been awarded the Best Actress Oscar: “Emma, you are so unbelievably great in Poor Things. Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.”**

Sen. Boyd did her best to harm Pres. Biden and to lessen his chances of winning a second term as POTUS. She may have done the Republicans more harm than good, however.

I was saddened by the touching story she told of talking last year with the girl who had been a victim of sex trafficking—and then off-put by her blaming the President for that tragic event. And then I was incensed when it turned out the incident in question took place when George W. Bush was President!

On Monday, Washington Post associate editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote that the “horrific story” Katie told, “at least by implication, turned out to be a big fat lie.”

Tumulty went on to note that the “Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Britt four Pinocchios for the way she twisted this tragic story to make a cravenly partisan point.”

Despite her later efforts to walk back what she had said, there was no way her listeners could have known she was talking about an incident that took place more than a decade ago. Even if it wasn’t a blatant lie, it was highly deceitful and told with the intent of harming the President.

It is quite clear, though, that in spite of her prominent display of a cross on a necklace and pious talk, she tarnished the name of Jesus and did the cause of Christ far more harm than good.

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  * Jess Piper lives in (or near) Maryville, Missouri, which is about 35 miles from my hometown. In 2022 she ran as a progressive Democrat to become a Representative in the Missouri legislature, but she was soundly defeated in the district that twice voted for Trump by 80% or so. I am now receiving her Substack posts and have had email exchanges with her this week.

** This was a powerful putdown of Sen. Britt’s rebuttal speech to those who had seen Emma Stone's Oscar-winning performance in Poor Things, but I do not recommend that movie except to insightful, mature adults.

The 4-Ls: Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty

The header at the top of all my blog posts contains the words “Reflections about Life, Love, Light, and Liberty.” Those are the 4-Ls that I have emphasized for years and about which I am finally explaining in this blog post. 

Some of you may have wondered why more of my blog articles are not more “religious” or more explicitly “Christian.” Many of you know that I was ordained as a Christian minister at the age of 18 and that I served for 38 years as a missionary in Japan.

True, some of my blog posts are clearly Christian and/or religious. But many could, conceivably, have been written by one who is neither Christian nor religious as that word is generally understood.

But with a few exceptions, most of my blog posts are directly related to life, love, light, and liberty, the 4-Ls, and those words are basic concepts of the Christian faith and at the core of my life and work.

In 1995 after I had been elected as Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin, the large educational institution in Japan where I had been a university faculty member since 1968, a local newspaper reporter asked me what I would be emphasizing as the head of what was widely known as a “Christian school.”

Beginning at least in a 1994 Christmas sermon in a school Chapel service, I talked about four words that began with the letter L in English. (Those words are known by any Japanese person with a high school education.) So that is what I told the reporter I would be emphasizing.

Not long after I was installed as chancellor, Nakamura Kunie-san, one of my supporting staff members, presented me with the following wall hanging that I kept in my office during the eight years I served as chancellor—and have had hanging above my desk here in the States ever since retirement in 2004.

On the back, Nakamura-san pasted an explanation of the simple image, saying they were the four Ls: Life (生命), Love (聖愛), Light (公明), Liberty (自由). (The Japanese words do not begin with an L sound; they are pronounced seimei, seiai, kōmei, and jiyū.*)

Most of my Japanese students were not interested in religion when I began teaching Christian Studies at Seinan Gakuin University (SGU) in 1968—and that remained so during my three decades teaching required courses in what was founded as, and continued as, a Christian school.

Not long after starting my teaching career at SGU, I came across a book titled ABC’s of Christian Faith (1968) by Union Theological Seminary professor James D. Smart (1906~82). I was impressed by that book and its unifying theme: “Life in God.”

After reading Smart’s book which emphasized that Christianity at its core was not about religion but about life, I decided that since I was teaching an introductory course on Christian beliefs, I would relate my lectures to how Jesus came not to start a new religion but to help people live a meaningful life.

The foundation of that emphasis was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).**

Later, love became a central theme in the new course on Christian ethics that I developed. While there continued to be considerable disinterest in religion, students were generally interested in learning about people who lived lives exhibiting Christian love.

Then through the years, I also began to emphasize the Christian emphasis on light as well as liberty, so by the mid-1990s, the 4-Ls were prominent enough in my mind to make them the focal point of my work as head of Seinan Gakuin, the educational institution with around 10,000 students and pupils.

I wanted then to speak meaningfully to the mostly non-Christian students, staff, and faculty at Seinan Gakuin in Japan. And now I want to write these blog articles so that those who are not, or no longer, active Christians will also find them thought-provoking and relevant for the living of these days.

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 * The image at the top of this post is the center of a large hanging scroll which I received as a gift at the end of my term as Chancellor. The Japanese words for the 4-Ls are written by stylized brush strokes and are read from top to bottom and from right to left.

** I plan to write more about Life in my March 30 blog post and about Love, Light, and Liberty over the next several weeks.