An interesting article on Iraq from Atlantic magazine.

For some time now I’ve posited that the single largest failure of our efforts in Iraq was not about military strategy. We really did “win” for want of a better word the major military portion of the war, and quite easily for that matter with, in military terms, a very low rate of casualty. Where we have failed is in the cultural part of the battle, failing to take in to sufficient considerations the full measure of the social, political, and religious fabric of the societies where we chose to insert ourselves.

My feeling, and its just an opinion, is that we were very much involved in how to get division a to point b to the extent that we didn’t even consider factors such as clan, tribe, religion, culture, and the effect our incursion would have on these relationships. We seemed genuinely suprised when all of the sudden Sunnis and Shiites, freed from the strong arm of Saddam Hussein, would use that freedom to settle centuries old grudges. And wouldn’t just a bit of study have quickly revealed that Kurds, and Iranians for that matter, aren’t Arabs and may have little in common with “Arabs” even if they shared the same religion? Is there even such a thing as a central casting “Arab” at all? Like Gulliver we are being held down by thousands of tiny threads, the threads of the tapestry of culture, religion, and history we ignored for the “big picture” of our own understandings of how things should be projected on to a part of the world that, despite our hopes, is rooted in understandings of faith, culture, and humanity that are sometimes very different from our own.

Perhaps in the future it would be good for our leaders, thinking about war and peace and foreign policy, to have not just generals and politicians in the loop when decisions are made but also experts in religion, culture, language, and history as well. Had people such as these been given a real voice we might have made different choices about Iraq or not made the mistakes we did in the former Yugoslavia or saved ourselves a world of hurt in who knows what other places where we’ve acted as world police. Knowing the cultural/spiritual/social map of a place seems to be at least as important as the physical map, and perhaps in the long run, as we seem to be discovering, even more valuable.

Story here…

Every once in a while you need to see a story like this to remind you of how good you have it even on the worst day of being Orthodox.

It’s been the coldest weekend in a while in this part of the world with temperatures in LaCrosse dipping close to -20 Fahrenheit. It looks like we’re getting real winter back and even as I type away the temperature is sipping back below zero again.

I admit I’m kind of a fanatic about caring for my car. I wash it, alot, and keep everything in the best possible form. But in times like this it can mean the difference between being stopped on the side of the road hoping for help to arrive before frostbite or making it home safe and warm. It’s amazing what just a slight drop of temperature can do to the various pieces of metal, plastic, glass, cloth, and rubber that make up a car. It’s also amazing at how well it will respond with just a little bit of care.

I’m also feeling a bit better. The headaches I wrote about earlier, thanks to the chiropractor and some exercises / cold packs / aspirin are not as frequent and I’m starting to get over being dizzy all the time. I have an appointment with the chiropractor tomorrow and I’ll be seeing an MD early next week. I still don’t feel up to snuff and the truth is at least part of it has to do with just being flat our exhausted. Another part is weaning myself off a medication I was taking. I loved how it helped me but I couldn’t take the side affects. It’s so hard to find a medication that does good without making you pay for it somewhere else and it seems that often you to negotiate how much good is balanced by the negative.

The one thing about this time of feeling unwell is that I’ve been trying to pray more. Being ill makes me think about things and that usually draws my mind to God. I try to pray more, I need to, and I’ve become aware, again, of how this body is wearing out over time no matter how well I care for it. I work among older people and as I get older I get more of a taste of what they must go through as age takes its toll. Being ill reminds me that I won’t be living forever, at least not in this present form, and even as my head sometimes aches and I feel like I’ve just gotten off a carnival ride other things have become more precious.

I feel, too, an urgency of time. Some of this, of course, is pride, my thinking that what I do and who I am is so important that time has to accommodate it all. But most of it, I think, is about my being a person of the horizon. I hate to sleep because I think of the things I’ll miss and I don’t like the thought of one day dying because even with all its struggles there is still a sweetness about life and the potential of discovery that fascinates me. I think about the places I’ve not gone and dream remaining to come true and a certain sadness sets in.

As messed up as life can be sometimes I have come, over the years, to understand that it is still a gift of God and something to be enjoyed whenever possible. All of the good things in life are a foretaste of even better things to come and sometimes I drive and see great beauty in nature and think of what it will one day be like when it is finally freed from its mortality. I think about that for me as well. I’m a messed up sinner, I’ve done some terrible things and a whole lot of tiny terrible things as it were, and I hate everything I’ve done wrong even when I find myself doing it again and again. I just pray that God will have mercy on me at some future time and see that inside of this messy broken frame there is a heart that, however imperfectly , still desires Him.

One day I will have to stand before Christ and it will be a painful exposure at times, to see my life recalled in detail beyond my imagination and there will be times when I will be deeply ashamed. There will be only one thing to say “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner…” But I believe it will be enough, not because of me, but because of Him. Even now it is often the only prayer I can say in my weakness and I trust that God, the lover of mankind, will be able to fill in the details in ways only He knows.

It’s still cold outside and the snow is falling. There’s a cat on my bed and even though its early I feel like I need to read a little and get some sleep. Imagine that! There will be enough things to do tomorrow and God will be there when I wake up to face the new day.

An article about the rediscovery of an archive of documents purporting to provide evidence of the development of the text of the Koran over time.

Why is this important?

For over a century the Bible has been subjected to many different kinds of analysis as to sources, historical settings, literary forms, and language. In some cases this has been helpful providing insight into the truths of Scripture that had not been explored before such as the relation of the wording of a text to its cultural setting. In others it has been used as a tool by skeptics to dispute the truths of Scripture by viewing them simply as cultural or linguistic constructs unattached to any larger or transcending reality.

For the most part Christians understand that there has been a certain development of the text in the sense that God inspired writers who used the words and images of their times to communicated larger truths. There is an interplay, in the Christian understanding, of God, the author of a Scriptural text, and the times in which they lived. Not so with the Koran.

The prevailing understanding of the Koran among Muslims is that it is a direct dictation to Mohammed and word for word a replica of the perfect word of God. If it can be shown that the text of the Koran has undergone revisions, compilations, or other kinds of adjustments over time it would be a crucial readjustment of what is probably the central tenet of Islam, that Mohammed was a direct revelator of God’s word. The implications could be staggering.

Keep your eyes open for this story.

An interview with Metropolitan KYRILL. Thanks to Paradosis.

A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said, ‘Would you like to say the blessing?’ ‘I wouldn’t know what to say,’ the girl replied. ‘Just say what you hear Mommy say,’ the wife answered. The daughter bowed her head and said, ‘Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?’

A study of who “hates” more, those on the political left or the right.

I think the results extend to the theological as well. From my own experience going through seminary with the evangelical/liberal American Baptist Churches and then moving towards historic Christian faith while in Clinical Pastoral Education I can at least anecdotally say that I have encountered more derision from those who claim a theology of “tolerance” than any other kind of person, even those who weren’t Christian. I suspect that many conservative or traditional Christian students who have run the gauntlet of life in a mainline seminary or CPE would say a silent “amen” as well.

I remember Clinical Pastoral Education and a discussion about the historic position of the Church regarding gender and ordination. I explained where I was moving and began to explain some of the reasons when a UCC student got a snarl on her face and said “That’s just bull****”.” So much for listening and responding to ideas with ideas. What was worse was that the director of the CPE program, a Lutheran clergy, was too cowardly to intervene, having been so cowed by years of feminist rhetoric that he could not even stand up for civility in disagreement.

In seminary I remember being called out by a female professor for the crime of not adding the word “sisters” to a Bible passage that read ironically, “How good it is for brothers to dwell together in unity…” Never mind that as Baptists we were supposed to have the freedom of handling the Scriptures for ourselves, or even that it was clear, and had been since those words were first penned that they included everyone. Those were logical, thoughtful, arguments that were met with anger justified (from a white woman who had graduated from both Wheaton and Harvard) by her “oppression. “

The truth is when people come to Orthodoxy they often discover the first place in their whole careers where they can breathe free air and not have to tip toe around the politically correct and emotionally brittle hardliners that dominate so many Christian communities today. It can be just a relief to hear God described as “Father” without anyone scrunching up their faces. Imagine believing what the Church has always taught without fear of a hysterical attack. It’s why so many have come, why it takes them a while to understand they have nothing to fear, and why they think they’ve discovered the haven of their souls after years of voyaging on stormy seas.

Here’s a link to another article about historic information in the Bible validated by archaeological discovery. The list just keeps on growing as does the list of 1800’s vintage “higher critics” of scripture spinning in their graves.

Our current director of the CIA is proposing having our government expand its capacity and gain the ability to monitor all US internet traffic. Is anyone getting the irony of such things?

We always, as Christians, strive to be loyal to our government, to pay our taxes and give honor to its laws. But it’s never an unthinking allegiance, an allegiance without understanding. The threat of terror is real, but is expanding the reach of the government into every nook and cranny of our lives the solution? Can one defend a society by ignoring, even betraying, its original principles?

These are important questions that even Christians, who in this country are often inclined to give our government the benefit of the doubt, need to ask. Like those who designed this country we need to trust those who lead, but with our eyes wide open.