An Unnatural Evil

"Natural evil" as a part of the broader problem of evil has posed a problem for theists for almost as long as there have been theists. It can be seen as suffering that is embedded in nature, not the product of any volitional action. That suffering seems to be built into the fabric of our universe poses a real problem for those who claim that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent - perhaps a greater problem than any other aspect of the broader problem of evil.

Theodicy - as we've seen before - is the attempt to logically reconcile the apparent contradiction between an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving good and perfect God, and the fact of suffering, the fact of evil. The most persuasive theodicies, in my opinion, all involve some appeal to human freedom. They argue that suffering is a necessary product of human freedom, and that such freedom is a greater good than the experience of suffering and evil is a bad. As such, the freedom that produces suffering, the freedom that produces evil, offsets the evil, the suffering, that it produces.

While I am not persuaded by such an account, I can see how many people would believe it. Those of us who believe that the freedom of action and the freedom of will that we experience is more than illusory cling to that freedom as one of our most cherished possessions. We resent any intrusion on our freedom, any manipulation, any coercion. We fight off and rebel against those who would subvert our wills. This shows that at least some of us - those of us who do not so readily exchange our freedom for the illusion of security - do in fact see freedom as a kind of supreme good.

This implicit understanding of the value of freedom is at the heart of the most persuasive theodicies. These theodicies tell us that, if, in fact, we must have either freedom or a life without suffering and evil, we would choose to live freely. My only problem with them is that they, in supposing that we must have either one or the other but not both, in fact place limitations of a supposedly unlimited God. In doing so they implicitly contradict what they overtly propose - that suffering is not incompatible with an unlimited and perfectly good God.

"Natural evil," though, is not so easily attributable to human freedom. After all, what role does our activity have in producing hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, cancer and the like? These forms of suffering, these natural instances of apparent evil, have throughout human history seemed to exist outside the realm of volitional action. This fact, however, has not stopped some from attempting to connect natural evil to human activity.

Augustine of Hippo gave the first theodicy against natural evil that I am aware of. In it he connects natural evil both to the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the justice of God. He argues that no form of natural evil - no naturally occurring instances of suffering - existed in the Garden of Eden. In Eden there could have been no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no earthquakes, no disease, no death. However, the Fall of humanity through the actions of Adam and Eve in the Garden, somehow disrupted the very fabric of the universe. When humanity fell, the whole Earth fell with us.

As such, at least indirectly, natural evil is no natural phenomenon. It is the product of the subversion of the human will, the end result of the corruption of our nature, a corruption which in turn corrupted the whole world.

I suspect that he arrives at this position through a reading of the creation myths of Ancient Israel found in Genesis - and yes, there are two distinct myths. The first myth is found in Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a, and the second myth comes immediately after. While the first myth is primarily about

a.) an ongoing creation process that constantly moves from chaos to order, and

b.) the establishment of Shabbot, the Sabbath, a sacred day of rest,

it also asserts a natural connection between humanity and the natural environment. The activity of creation ends on the sixth day, when God transfers dominion of all the Earth and everything in it to humanity. While that transfer has often been seen as almost a transfer of power - we now have dominion over nature and are justified in dominating it and using it for our purposes - it can also be seen as a transfer of responsibility. However it is seen, it connects the well-being of the world with human activity.

The second creation myth is the story of Adam and Eve, a story that also speaks to the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Genesis 2:5 reads

...when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil...

This verse - and its surrounding context - connects all vegetative life to the existence of humans, who are charged with stewarding natural resources and tending to the well being of the ecosystem. This charge - found in both creation myths - is at the heart of Stewardship Theology, a kind of ecologically conscious approach to the Judeo-Christian tradition. This connection may also be the sort of thing that Augustine had in mind when he attempted to connect natural evil to the Fall of Adam and Eve. When the caretakers of the Earth were corrupted, the Earth they were charged to care for was also corrupted.

Augustine also had in mind the justice of God - a reflection of his androcentrism. Natural evil is, for him, only a problem because it causes humans to suffer. Yet such suffering, seen after the Fall, is for Augustine the prerogative of God. We - cosmically speaking - earned it. Perhaps it is used to drive us toward repentance, or perhaps it is used merely to balance the scales of justice. In any event, when a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, or cancer or some other horrible disease strikes, we cannot ask God why. We know why. Like all other forms of suffer, the why is answered with the Fall.

I have never had much use for this kind of thinking. By now my philosophic and religious objections to theodicy should be clear. In my view, they don't work, and they don't help. They are neither philosophically or emotionally satisfying. Additionally, in this particular case it has always seemed to me to be the height of arrogance to somehow connect human activity to natural disasters. How, after all, could Adam and Eve - who I don't believe were ever intended to be understood as historical figures - eating an apple cause tornadoes and the like? On a literal level it didn't make sense to me, and on a metaphorical level it didn't speak to me.

But, last night I finally watched (I can't believe I get to use this phrase) Al Gore's Academy Award nominated film An Inconvenient Truth. As I watched it, I remembered Augustine's theodicy concerning natural evil. And while I don't think Augustine was right - he was, after all, writing long before human activity could dramatically impact the natural environment - I do think that he was inadvertently on to something. That is, his notion that human activity plays a role in what we call natural evil turns out to be correct, even if not in the way that he understood it.

Natural evil is - in the way that we experience it today - not exactly natural at all, if by natural we mean something like "the opposite of contrived"; or something like "beyond the influence of volitional action." This is because human activity is drastically altering the natural environment in ways that reap a great deal of suffering.

This was not news to me when I watched the movie - in college I did an independent study comparing and contrasting Buddhist and Christian approaches to environmental ethics because I was already convinced that the ecological crisis was the most pressing moral issue facing us today. However, watching the movie brought the point home to me in a concrete way. This is not a matter of abstract thought, of moral theory. This is a concrete issue, a pressing issue, a live issue, a pertinent issue, an urgent issue. An issue that demands immediate action.

The good news is that we already have concrete proof that humans cannot only negatively impact the natural environment, but can also undo our own damage. Of all the various ecological crises noted by the environmental movement that began in the 1960s, global warming is the only one that is still trending negative. So many "unsolvable" problems have already either been solved, or are at least trending toward a solution.

We now have to - simply have to - use our collective political wills to enact changes that will bring the production and release of greenhouse gasses under control. For more information, visit www.climatecrisis.net and stopglobalwarming.org

Mixed Messages

Sitting at the table this afternoon, Adam picked up a book and started "reading" to himself. The story - and those of you who know children's books will understand - went like this:

The itsy bitsy spider said... NO DAVID!

Response to John W. Loftus' Why I'm An Atheist

As part of our email correspondence, John W. Loftus of Debunking Christianity graciously offered to send me a chapter from his book; the chapter titled Why I'm An Atheist. As a part of our conversation, I've been meaning to in some way respond to that chapter for a little over a week now. But, life keeps interrupting. I've had other projects - including work for my book-in-progress. I've joined the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring, and so have been exploring issues related to peace-making and non-violent resistance. And, of course, I've started back to school, working toward an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

This weekend I've had to read seminary-related texts until my eyes bled, and by this afternoon I could take it no longer. So I've finally carved out a little bit of time in front of my computer, with the furnace blasting next to me and the washing machine chugging along in the room adjacent my basement office so that I can really concentrate - you know, focus, without any distractions. (Sometime sarcasm drips from my lips!)

Seriously, though the internal and external conditions may not be exactly right, and while I may not be able to give Loftus' work the attention it deserves, it is high time I made good on my promise to read and respond to this chapter from John's book. I've now read it a couple of times, and can honestly say that I am once again impressed with his writing.

I don't always like John's style or method. He can be very abrasive, confrontational. He often operates with the implicit understanding that ideas must wage war against each other, fighting to the death until a single set, the right set, stand alone as the winner. As the son of a lawyer I think I understand that mode of discourse, though it hasn't always been fruitful for me. My approach is, I hope, more cooperative, more conversational. That is, ideas that at first appear to contradict may have enough points in common that they can be seen as intellectual cousins; sharing enough to be able to, in many important cases agree, while deviating enough to offer interesting counterpoints to each other.

But underneath that important difference in approach, John and I share a great deal in common. Especially, at least in lip service, we share an understanding of the need for interpretive charity. I say "in lip service" because I'm sure both he and I deviate from our most charitable values from time to time, being only human. Also, I suspect, we both from time to time intentionally suspend our charity when confronted with what we individually consider to be the ridiculous. For me this happened most recently when I saw that a Creationist museum was being built in my home state. For John this happens most often when he is confronted with the uncritical arrogance of some Christians, who believe that they alone are in possession of some absolute truth, the content of which they have never critically engaged.

One thing that I really like about John W. Loftus is reflected in the chapter of his book that he sent me - his realization that people change their religious views for both rational and non-rational reasons. Separating those twin sets of reasons can often be difficult, as our emotional state and our cultural, social, historical, environmental, biographical, etc. contexts shape the way in which we reason. We are not purely rational animals, though we exhibit rationality. Rather, our reasoning shapes and is shaped by so much that happens in and around us.

In this chapter as well as, I suspect, in the book as a whole, John W. Loftus explores as best as he is able all of the factors that led to his rejection of his former faith - both the conceptual and the more personal. He does his best to place the reader in his shoes, setting the stage for his final affirmation of atheism (and his affirmation of atheism is much more than just a rejection of Christianity).

The chapter begins after his rejection of Christianity. He describes that rejection as a "demolition," and I can certainly relate. The first noble truth of the Buddha has often be rendered in English "Life is suffering." While that translation is a limited and inaccurate one, the sentiment behind it is something that we can all relate to from time to time. Life is marred by suffering, and our suffering - our moments of intense, existential anguish - lead us to a place of demolition. Former views that provide no help or comfort in a trying moment are smashed by suffering, leaving only philosophic and theological rubble. Once cherished beliefs are swept away with the rest of the debris of our former mindset, a mindset that could not handle the explosive crisis of pain and doubt.

In the face of this rubble, John asks

But after the demolition is done, what could I now believe about how we got here on earth and why?

This question shows that John, like so many of us, asks principally metaphysical questions. This is a product of a model of faith as belief, and of a model of religion that is principally concerned with being able to articulate true statements about God and the nature of the universe, and with being able to convince others of the truth of those propositions. I say this not to criticize John, but simply to explain that I understand his current position as a product of both his intellectual honesty, and of his former position. He is fond of saying - and I suspect rightfully so - that he is basically the same person he was before he lost his faith. In my reading of him, John W. Loftus the atheist is a direct product of John W. Loftus the Christian apologist; and that both are in part a product of a particular model of the Christian religion - a model I have serious problems with.

The chapter then describes his search for answers to this fundamentally metaphysical question, moving through various kinds of almost post-Christian theology, including Deism, theological existentialism, and Process Theology. I use the phrase "post-Christian" theology not because I think than any of these theological positions are incompatible with the Christian faith, but because I suspect that John saw each of these modes of thinking about the nature of both God and the universe as almost "post-Christian" ways of looking at such theological and metaphysical questions. For him Christianity was a very tight set of propositions that, once challenged, fell apart. These ideas were, I suspect, ways in which he tried to rebuild the house of his faith on the rubble of his formerly systematic Christianity.

John W. Loftus was for a short time a devotee of John Hick, who he calls "arguably the most important philosopher of religion in the past century." He turned to Hick's Process Theology - a way of thinking that he has since described as a kind of "half-way house" between theism and atheism - to try to help him cling to what was left of his faith. As such, Hick is a very important figure for him. What both impressed and disturbed him about Hick was his willingness to accept criticisms of more traditional forms of Christianity, creating a more flexible kind of theology that adapted itself to a changing view of the world. He quotes from Hick's An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent:

The universe is religiously ambiguous in that it is possible to interpret it, intellectually and experientially, both religiously and naturalistically. The theistic and anti-theistic arguments are inconclusive, for the special evidences to which they appeal are also capable for being understood in terms of the contrary world-view. Further, the opposing sets of evidences cannot be given objectively quantifiable values.

This more phenomenological approach to religion - which accepts that our beliefs are shaped by our experiences, and that our experiences can be described multiple competing explanations - must have troubled someone who has long sought certainty. After exploring Hick's (and others') concept of a religiously ambiguous universe (and exploring both emotionally and rationally) Loftus writes:

Then the question hit me. Why is this universe religiously ambiguous capable of being interpreted in various rational and sometimes even mutually exclusive ways? Why does it all appear absurd when we approach it all with reason? Why must I resort to giving up on reason and punting to the view that I just don't know, or that it cannot be figured out rationally? Why?

The answer he arrived at was this: "[B]lind chancistic events cannot be figured out!"

This epiphany lies at the heart of his atheism, even though it often hides under the cumulative case against a particular understanding of Christianity. In the context of his rejection of Christianity, Loftus asserts that the universe is a mystery not because there is some cosmic Mystery, some mysterious divine nature at the heart of it all, but rather because the universe is the product of a series of random events, chance occurrences. Unguided. Thus the only world-view (to the extent that it can be called one) that he had left to turn to was atheism:

Atheism was a very unsettling conclusion to me, in one sense. It means that I have no hope in a resurrection, that I no longer have the hope that there is someone outside the space-time matrix who can help me in times of need, or give me any guidance. But one the other hand it's finally a conclusion. I now can believe something, and, as I've said, it's better over here. In one sense my intellectual journey is finally over. It's very relieving to reach a conclusion that I can partially defend.

I suspect that the biggest difference between John W. Loftus and me is that I am more comfortable with mystery. I don't mean that to imply that being comfortable with mystery is a virtue, or that needing to finally arrive at some solid conclusion is a vice. Rather, I say that to say that the biggest difference between the two of us is a psychological one, an existential one. It may also be a product of the very different forms of Christianity that we each inhabited. While I had a fundamentalist phase, and while I've read more than a few books that sought to systematically demonstrate that Christianity is a set of true propositions and that all else is false; John lived that version of the faith far more than I did. I was raised in a much more relativistic and pluralistic environments. So, emotionally speaking, that which threatened his faith can't touch mine. God is to me both a mystery and an experiential reality, not a set of true propositions.

That does not, however, mean that I am right, or that my faith is somehow superior to both his former faith and his current convictions. Simply put, I don't know that there is a God; I only know that I experience something that I call by that name. I know that my faith works for me, that my church nurtures me, and that my experience of God sustains me. These, however, do not prove the validity of any propositional truth-claims concerning them. But, unlike John, I'm OK with that.

In the end, for me belief is not the substance of faith; practice is. For me, faith is a way of life, not a set of demonstrable propositions. For John that simply isn't a satisfactory answer.

I suspect that there is still a great deal of room for dialogue between our two positions, especially as, absent claims about God, our world-views have so much in common. I appreciate reading what I have read about his intellectual and spiritual journey, even as I don't share his final conclusion, or the pressing need to even arrive at a final conclusion. And, I wonder what he would be like if he had inhabited a different Christianity from the modern bastardization of Christianity that has been so dominant in evangelical American circles. I bet he also wonders what I might be like if I had grown up an atheist. In either case, we'll never know.

As a personal note, I don't see people like John W. Loftus as "enemies of the faith." I see John as an honest and noble person, who wrestles with the same questions I wrestle with. The God that I experience is a God who accepts John as he is, knowing that John is a product of God, made in the divine image, with a bright, inquisitive mind, and an obsessive need to uncover the truth. In his quest John does each of us the service of keeping us honest, and should be thanked for that. Any faith that cannot withstand rigorous criticism is not true faith at all.

The Closeted Gay Athlete

According to this story by ESPN's Chris Sheridan, former NBA center John Amaechi is - or is about to be - the first current or former NBA player to come out of the closet. While many are impressed by the courage that Amaechi is showing, gay sportswriter (and I hate using the phrase "gay sportswriter," as though one's sexual orientation had anything to do with one's career writing about sports) LZ Granderson is not. In this thoughtful and provocative piece, Granderson laments that, once again, it is an ex athlete coming out of the closet. In it Granderson writes:

An athlete in 2007 who stays in the closet during his playing days does more to support homophobia in sports than coming out after retirement does to combat it.

Granderson - who in coming out of the closet took a lot of heat from the sports world - has little patience, it seems, for those who hide the truth about themselves when honesty would be dangerous, only to reveal it when it would not only be safe, but even lucrative (Amaechi is now promoting a book, to be released Feb. 20).

I'm not here to praise or curse Amaechi. I'm neither gay, nor much of an athlete, so it is quite possible that I don't understand either culture, much less the intersection of both. But I do wonder why it is evidently such big news that a basketball player is gay. Statistically speaking, it is highly probable that at least one - if not more - player on each NBA team is gay. That so many choose to remain in the closet speaks to the latent (and not so latent) homophobia in the male sports world; a world in which homosexuality is evidently a threat to the masculinity that is perceived as necessary for athletic excellence.

I do, however, share Granderson's desire for the next pioneering soul to come out of the closet to be one who is still playing, so that we can finally put to death the stereotype that gay men just aren't manly enough to be great athletes.

Non-Violent Resistance in the Teachings of Jesus

Before I actually get to the substance of this post, I'd like to start with a brief personal note. As some of you know, I am going back to school. It is now officially official. I haven't checked my email in over 24 hours, because I spent all day yesterday in new student orientation. Today, at 11 am EST, I have my first class. I am officially an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) student at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I've signed up for 15 credit hours this semester, which is a pretty heavy load, but nothing I can't handle, I don't think. Most of my classes, at least at the outset, don't seem worth mentioning. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by them, but at the moment I'm just taking them because they are required - the seminary equivalent of basic requirements, 100 level classes. But there is one class that looks exceedingly promising: Resistance and Reconciliation.

Having just signed up for that course, and having just joined the Christian Peace Bloggers Blog-Ring, I thought I might jot down here, before I leave for campus, a few observations of non-violent resistance in the teachings of Jesus.

That Jesus taught non-violence is not exactly new, though by their behavior some Christian could learn a refresher course in it. As my dad wrote in one of his songs, shortly after explaining how as a PK growing up he had to go to church 4 or 5 times a week:

But I must have been sleeping in
When Jesus taught us to kill

But it takes many Christian by surprise when they realize that the non-violence that Jesus taught was neither passive nor meek. In fact, it was radical and revolutionary, such a strong form of resistance that it got him killed by the authorities. If Jesus had been safe, and if his non-violent teachings had been as domesticated as the must have seemed when they were used by whites to teach slaves not to rebel, or when they are used today to support a growing empire, it is highly improbable that anyone would have been threatened by him at all, much less threatened enough to publicly execute him.

But Jesus was crucified. And, as Marcus Borg writes, we can safely assert that Jesus was crucified because of the sins of the world, even if it is not literally true that he was crucified for the sins of the world, as a kind of substitutionary atonement. Jesus was killed because of the sins of the world, because Jesus opposed the sinful powers of the world that exploited and oppressed the poor. But Jesus opposed those powers not with power, not with revolutionary violence, but with the wisdom of non-violent resistance.

In our cultural context, with Christianity as the dominant thought-world, (what I mean is that, in the West, everything responds to Christianity - it shapes our thought when we agree with it, and it shapes our thought when we disagree with it) the teachings of Jesus often become conventional, domesticated. After all, we have been reciting them to each other for almost 2000 years. But, in his own cultural context, Jesus' teachings were radical, and seen in their context they can retain their power in our own context. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in Jesus' teachings on non-violent resistance.

Two of the most commonly quoted teachings of Jesus concern going "the extra mile" and turning "the other cheek." These have often, and rightly, been interpreted metaphorically and applied broadly to all kinds of situations. In our conventional wisdom now, going "the extra mile" means going out of your way to accommodate someone who is being difficult, in the hopes that such an extravagant gesture will shame and perhaps help shape them. If we "go the extra mile," perhaps the person that we "go the extra mile" for will be impressed with our witness, and be somehow touched, somehow moved, into becoming a more positive person.

Sometimes there is also a measure of constructive pride in going "the extra mile." Sometimes it means doing something that, strictly speaking, isn't required, motivated by the pursuit of excellence. In either event, going "the extra mile" has become conventional, part of what is expected of a Christian; part of one's Christian witness.

The same is true of turning "the other cheek." It is again interpreted metaphorically, and applied broadly. And, again, I see nothing wrong with this - you should know by now my opinion of the religious value of metaphorical interpretation. So, to "turn the other cheek" means to patiently endure an insult. It means to not allow harsh comments to get you down or make you angry.

Both of these teachings, however, in becoming conventional wisdom, have lost their subversive power. They are no longer seen as revolutionary, as dangerous. Of course, this is not true in all cultural context. Gandhi, for instance, based his method of non-violent resistance on these and other teachings of Jesus. His Satyiagraha, his "spirit power," was based on his interpretation of these and other teachings of Jesus. And, he used these as a kind of moral force to shame the British into seeing their own barbaric cruelty, and granting Independence to India.

In the same way, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others applied the methods that Gandhi learned from the teachings of Jesus to the struggle in America for Civil Rights. Non-violent resistance became again a revolutionary way to shame violent oppressors into realizing the barbaric cruelty of their position; into seeing the basic humanity of those they are exploiting. It became the most efficient path to freedom. To fight violence with violence, power with power, was to fight a losing fight. But to resist violence with peace was to undermine the moral authority of the violent and to shame the oppressor.

This is very much more like what Jesus probably had in mind, but it too fails to totally capture the potency of Jesus' teachings in their own context. We can certainly understand how these teachings might have gotten Gandhi and King killed, but that still doesn't show us exactly why they and others like them got Jesus killed. To understand that, and, as such, to understand the potential potency of these teachings, we have to better understand what they might have meant when Jesus taught them.

Marcus Borg's newest book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, has an entire chapter devoted to resistance in the life and teachings of Jesus. In it he outlines how Jesus' teachings and activities would have been seen by the religious and political authorities of his day, who were the power structure in what he calls a Domination System. At the outset of that chapter Borg argues that "the way of Jesus was both personal and political."

It was about personal transformation. And, it was political, a path of resistance to the domination system and advocacy of an alternative vision of life together under God. His counteradvocacy, his passion for God's passion, led to his execution. The way of the cross was both personal and political.

Seen in this light, Jesus' teachings, including and especially the ones concerning turning "the other cheek" and going "the extra mile" can be seen as radical ways to help bring down the Roman occupation, as well as the native collaborators with the occupation that were mainly comprised of the religious authorities.

Matthew 5:39b has Jesus say, "But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Of this Borg notes:

The specification of the right cheek and the awareness that people in that world used their right hand to strike somebody provide the key for understanding the saying. How can a person be hit on the right cheek by a right-handed person? Only by a backhanded slap (act it out and see for yourself). In that world, a slap with the back of the hand was the way a superior struck a subordinate. The saying thus presupposes a situation of domination: a peasant being backhanded by a steward or official, a prisoner being backhanded by a jailer, and so forth. When that happens, turn the other cheek. What would be the effect of that? The beating could continue only if the superior used an overhand blow - which is the way an equal would strike another equal. Of course, he might do so. But he would be momentarily discombobulated, and the subordinate would be asserting his equality even if the beating did continue.

Matthew 5:41 has Jesus say, "and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." Borg says that this statement "refers to a known practice of imperial soldiers."

Soldiers were allowed to compel peasants to carry their considerable gear for one mile, but no more. The reason for this restriction was that soldiers had been abusing the option by forcing peasants to carry their gear all day (or even longer). The result was not only popular resentment, but peasants ending up a days journey (or even more) from home. And so the restriction was introduced, and soldiers faced penalties for violating it, some of them severe. In this setting, what are you to do when an imperial soldier requires you to carry his gear for a mile? Do it - and then keep going. This situation, [Walter] Wink [a scholar, and author of Engaging the Powers, The Powers That Be, and Jesus and Non-Violence] suggests, is almost comical - imagine an imperial soldier wrestling a peasant to get his gear back while the peasant says, "No, no, it's fine. Let me carry it another mile."

That we understand these metaphorically is, of course, appropriate. Any teaching that is so far removed from our historical, cultural, and social setting cannot be taken entirely literally if it is to be in any way meaningful to us. Additionally, it is hard to imagine that these teachings, even in their original setting, were to be taken as hard and fast rules to be applied to any situation without some metaphorical interpretation. Walter Wink argues, for instance, that it is very hard to imagine the literal practice of turning the other cheek to work for very long without the superiors picking up on it, and saying something like, "Oh, its the old 'turn the other cheek' trick," and adapting their behavior accordingly.

However, to properly understand these and other teachings metaphorically, we have to also understand what they might have meant when Jesus first taught them. Understanding that, we see that they are much more powerful, and much more subversive, than our conventional wisdom will allow them to be.

Christian Peace Bloggers

Fellow Louisvillian Michael Westmoreland-White of Levellers has started a new Blog-Ring for "Christian bloggers who care deeply about peacemaking," Christian Peace Bloggers. Following the leads of PamBG and Patrik, I've decided to join up, committing to post something on peace at least once a week.

That will be hard for me for more than a couple of reasons. First, I don't know what will happen with this blog when I start back to school - and I have orientation tomorrow! I'm sure that I won't be able to keep up my current pace of writing something (not all of it for this blog, however) every day. I just hope that I will find the time to do any writing in addition to my work for school.

Additionally, while I often preached on peace when I was both a Youth Minister and later a pastor, I have posted very little on the subject since leaving ministry and starting this blog. I'm not sure why. Mostly, I suppose, it is because I rarely plan out my topics in advance. I love the freedom of blogging - it keeps me from having to chart too tight a course. Whatever I am going through, whatever I am reading, whatever I happen to think of, whatever happens in the course of the day - this is what I post on. So, while I post on any number of diverse topics, really I am the topic here.

That said, I have on occasion written about the War in Iraq, including this post, which applies Just War Theory to both the arguments made in favor of the war and the facts of the war as it develops. I also posted a Christmas devotional, Prince of Peace, that explores cultivating personal peace in the hectic holiday season. Neither of those posts, however, amount to the sort of powerful rhetoric I had on peace from the pulpit.

I remember, for instance, a sermon that I gave just after my best friend returned from Iraq. Titled "Sowing the Seeds of Peace," it focused on the role of faith in cultivating both internal, personal peace, and just as importantly the corporate peace that should characterize Christian communities. It called on Christians to experience the peace that comes from God, to allow that peace to transform them, and then to be agents of peace in a world too often marred by violence. It saw cultivating peace as one of the most powerful expressions of the Christian faith.

This sermon was, in part, the product of my wrestling with my friend's letters from Iraq. After struggling to work his way through college, he decided to join the Marine Corp Reserves in part to relieve some of the financial pressures of trying to pay his own way through school. Of course, there was much more to his decision to join the Marines than just this, but one of the big factors was their promise to help pay for school. With that promise they have bought the loyalty of more than a few struggling young men, hoping to make a better life for themselves.

I remember seeing him right after he came home from boot camp - full of the pride that came from having remade his body and his mind. He was a fine-tuned precision instrument, in the best shape of his life, his self-esteem boosted from having survived rigors that he couldn't have imagined before he set off for Paris Island. His long hair shorn, his beard shaved off, and his body reformed, he glew with pride. The Marines gave him a self respect that no one could take away.

But, by the time he was shipped off the Iraq, he was a different person. His wife had left him, and left him semi-homeless. For a time he lived in my basement, before trying to start a new life in his native Arkansas, on the family farm that his parents had been so eager to leave. Still a reservist, he drove from Arkansas to Fort Knox, KY for his weekend drills, while using the money that the government had promised him to pay for some community college classes near his new home.

Just as he was getting settled in, just as he was beginning to reclaim the bright, promising life that almost died when his wife left, he was called up for active duty, shipped off to drive a tank in the first wave of our invasion of Iraq. Here is what he wrote to me from the ship that took him off to war:

... the guys all talk about killing ragheads. To them it's like a game, just another training exercise, except the targets are shooting back. The targets don't have names or faces or families or friends who love them and want them to come home. They're just part of the "evil regime" that must be overthrown. They're, many are, simply focused, with no thought to the why's and the wherefor's of what they are doing. They simply accept the propaganda against these people. To them, you either believe in what you're doing or you don't; you're either a patriot or you're not. There's no middle ground.

But it's not that easy. People die in this exercise. It's not a game. These people have homes and families and friends, just like we do, and, no matter how we try, no matter how good we are, the innocent will suffer as well. If we think we're doing them justice, might we be wrong? Might our efforts to bring down tyranny create, in the death, destitude, starvation and bitterness that ensues, a greater tyranny of its own?

Hell, I don't even know for sure why we're going. Some say it's to bring down a dictator. Some say it is to finish a war that never really ended. Some say it is to prevent a future, more terrible war. Some say it's for the oil and economy. Perhaps, to us, it's all these things. Perhaps we'll be heroes back home. Perhaps we'll never know.

I know one thing for sure. To the people we have come to "liberate," it's nothing but an invasion of their homes.

I could write more from that letter, post marked Jan. 21, 2003, but my heart breaks reading it now just as it broke reading it when it finally arrived in my mail box the first time. There was so much conflict in all the letters; the internal conflict of a man pulled between competing values, competing priorities. While he was off to war he spent his nights laying on the desert sand, reading Thomas Merton, remembering St. Francis, and contemplating what it means to live a life of faith. In his heart and mind, peace, love and compassion waged war with loyalty and duty. The letters he sent reflected a love and concern for his fellow soldiers. He feared for both their physical and moral state.

What kept him sane - as sane as a soldier can be - during the fighting was his bond with his comrades. He fought with them and for them rather than against anyone. His struggle was to ensure that his friends survived.

When he returned I heard his stories, and I saw the pain in his eyes. He was proud that he and so many of his companions survived. He was proud that he did his duty, and did it well. But there was a deep pain under all of that pride; a pain that reflected that perhaps he gave up too much of his soul just to ensure that his body survived.

That his story is not a tragedy speaks to the resiliency of his spirit, and the redeeming power of grace. He is now free and clear of his commitment to the military, living in Dayton, Ohio, and working on a very different front line. He now fights to reclaim the lives of urban teenagers, operating his own missionary youth ministry. He fights the violence of the streets with the grace and peace of the God who somehow brought him out of war a whole man.

Nothing New Under the Sun

A few weeks ago my church did the most delightful thing. We are renovating the library, and are running out of room to store some of the older books. So, after church, for two weeks in a row, we held a book adoption. Hundreds of books were piled up on tables, with a sign that read "Free to a Good Home." So, in our fellowship time following the service, we ate donuts, drank coffee, and thumbed through a generation's worth of books.

I "adopted" two books, Theology in Reconstruction, by T.F. Torrance, and The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan W. Watts. All I know of Torrance is that he was Professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Edinburgh, and that this book is a collection of essays dating from 1960 to 1964. The book looked interesting, and the price was right. I haven't touched it yet.

Watts I knew a little more about. He was known as one of the intellectual forces behind the rise of Zen in America; the Beat philosopher. He shows up 7 times in Sean Murphy's wonderful One Bird, One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories, a favorite book of mine. I'd been meaning to read Watts ever since I first read about him, but hadn't seen one of his books before. That my church had one, and was giving it away, made my day.

Before developing an interest in Zen, Watts had been an Anglican priest. He brought a Christian theological background to his study of Buddhism, Chinese philosophy, and Indian philosophy - his two Masters degrees were in Divinity and Theology. In that respect, his interests, it seems, mirror my own. I was not prepared, however, for how closely his work mirrors my own - or vice versa.

Much of my theological work has centered on the "emptiness" of God concepts. That is, I make a sharp distinction between God as God and human ideas about God. Each human idea of God is fraught with problems, limitations, and even inconsistencies. This is because, I argue, our theological concepts are attempts after the fact to describe the divine-human encounter; an encounter with the person of God rather than propositions about God. Perhaps the best summations of this approach can be found in these posts:

Xenophanes' Critique of Religion

How the "Heart Sutra" Speaks to "Attachment" in Religion

and especially my more recent

On Knowing God

In fact, I am currently working on a book which in part expands and explores the religious epistemology offered in On Knowing God; an epistemology that is in turn the foundation for the model of religion offered in that in-progress book.

This approach is not entirely new or original, I know. In fact, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Xenophanes, said something very much like it, as noted in a post linked above. But I was pretty sure that most of the ideas I've been developing are my own. My spiritual journey has been informed by a fusion of a Christian background and a Buddhist approach, a fact which makes me - I thought - relatively unique among Christian theologians (to the extent that I can be called one). Yes, Marcus Borg and I have a great deal in common, and his work has influenced me greatly, helping keep me connected to my Christian heritage. But, because I am so familiar with Borg's work, I can keep from ripping it off without at least offering due credit.

However, I started reading Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity this morning, and it has been like reading myself. Since he died six years before I was born, his use of language is very different from mine - he doesn't even attempt to be gender inclusive. But the ideas couched in the language, and perhaps even the experiences that gave rise to the ideas, are very similar. If what I've read so far - about 40 pages or so - is an accurate representation, both our philosophies and psychologies or religion are almost identical.

This has been a little unnerving. I know that, as Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. I know that it is only vanity that expects to be original. But still, now I wonder, given that what I've read of The Wisdom of Insecurity - published in 1951 - is basically the same as the book I've been working on, if I don't have to totally revisit my book idea. At the very least, I suspect, I have to read a great deal more of Watts to more fully understand where our paths intersect, so that I can keep from plagiarizing him on accident.

Anyway, here is a passage from The Wisdom of Insecurity that is almost exactly what I've been working on. I read it aloud to Tom, and he thought that I might have written it:

Surely it is old news that salvation comes only through the death of the human form of God. But it was not, perhaps, so easy to see that God's human form is not simply the historic Christ, but also the images, ideas, and beliefs in the Absolute to which man clings in his mind. Here is the full sense of the commandment, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above... thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."

To discover the ultimate Reality of life - the Absolute, the eternal God - you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth which block the unreserved opening of the mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images is to express truth, not to possess it.

Of course I would not speak of "man," but rather of "humanity," clinging to ideas about God. And, when quoting from the Ten Commandments I would probably use the JPS instead of the King James. But those differences are products of the more than fifty years that separate our work, rather than a fundamental difference in approach. The rest could just as easily been me.

This notion of concepts of God - when clung to, when understood as propositional truths rather than mythic/poetic metaphors - as idols, is a powerful and timely one. It is also at the heart of my own theology. It is, in my view, the greatest source of religious conflict, and perhaps the largest single cause of the culture wars. It is an attempt to pin God down, to capture an control the Sacred. And, to say the least, it is bad religion.

So, I'm going to read the rest of this book, and try to pick up anything else I can from Alan Watts. I need to see where he is taking us, because I fear it is exactly where I've been trying to go - and he got there half a century at least before me.

"Revisioning Health"

Right after I wrote my insufferably long and preachy post on health - really two posts in one, as I tackled both philosophic models of health and the health care system - the newest issue of Christian Reflection, the journal published by The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University arrived in my mailbox. The subject? Sure enough, it was health.

Better than that, the fist article in it, "Revisioning Healh" by James A. Marcum and Robert B. Kruschwitz, was specifically on philosophic/theological models of health. Their thesis was, very much like mine, related to comparing and contrasting what I called "pathological" and "holistic" models of health. However, their piece, as you might expect, was much better thought through, and is constantly in dialogue with both history and contemporary academic literature. In other words, unlike this blowhard blogger, these guys actually know what they're talking about.

What I called the pathological model of health they call the "biomedical model of medicine," but I suspect that we have the same set of ideas in mind. However, I think that they described this model much more succinctly, and, in doing so also managed to describe elements of this model that I left out. They noted both its exclusively negative nature, and its mechanistic approach. Here is what they have to say about it:

One of the reasons for the current crisis in the quality of our health ... is how contemporary medicine "envisions" health through a biomedical model. Patients get reduced to functioning machines, to complex golems made of their anatomical structures and molecular parts. And the focus of medical care becomes the treatment of disease, the fixing of a malfunctioning or broken body part. In the biomedical model, health is not a state of the whole person to be achieved and enhanced, it is simply a default state.

A little later they say:

The biomedical model of medicine, which lies behind the practices of most contemporary medical professionals, defines health in negative terms. Health is simply the absence of a disease entity (like a cancerous tumor) or the absence of the expression or detectible symptoms of a disease state (like the deep cough of pneumonia). It is, according to the first definition in the twenty-sixth edition of Stedman's Medical Dictionary "the state of an organism when it functions without evidence of disease or abnormality."

After exploring this model for a few more paragraphs they answer the question that may be on some of our minds: What's the problem with this? Why is this approach a bad, or at least flawed approach? After all, by focusing on functional problems in the body, it has, in fact, solved a great many of those problems, and promises to solve many more. Here is the problem, as they see it:

When the typical modern physician defines health as the absence of disease, she will address the disease state of her patient and, given the reductive clinical gaze, she usually will address only the specific diseased part of her patient. Her medical practice will ignore the whole person, especially the socioeconomic or cultural context in which the patient lives. She also will ignore or bracket the positive dimensions of health that are proactive in nature, such as exercising and proper nutrition. She will relegate instruction and care for these to other professional healthcare providers, and she may express no further concern for her patient's welfare.

The current notion of health is too myopic: it addresses only the amelioration of disease and pays no heed to the promotion of well-being or wholeness. In other words, it is basically inhumane because it does not encourage the development of patients' full potential vis-a-vis health.

Marcum and Kruschwitz then outline what they call "several recent attempts to humanize the biomedical model of medicine" which have "led to more expansive notions of health in terms of well-being and wholeness." You can find what they have to say here.

Ever Since The World Ended

My younger brother decided, after looking through my movie collection and noticing one gaping hole, to get me Donnie Darko for Christmas. I've now seen it twice - the second time I even got Sami to watch it with me, a mini-coup - and have been meaning to write about it. It is the perfect embodiment of my favorite kind of movie, not exactly a technical masterpiece, but a delightful combination of philosophy, physics, metaphysics, theology, and, of course, extraordinary weirdness. The sort of movie that makes you say, as soon as you overcome the shock, Who the hell comes up with this stuff?!?

But, despite having seen it twice now, I still can't come up with anything meaningful to say about, except this: If you haven't seen it, see it NOW! Rent it this weekend. Hell, come over to my house and borrow mine. (Sorry, turns out I just loaned it out to Tom, who called me just as I sat down to type this.)

It was one of the most spectacular flops in the domestic box office (grossing only about $500,000, which seems like a lot of money to me, but a.) isn't to Hollywood, and b.) represents less than a quarter of what it cost to make) because, it part, we, only weeks removed from 9-11, just weren't ready for a movie whose plot revolves around a jet engine mysteriously crashing into a house. But now it is a cult classic. It has everything a geek could want.

Anyway, the title character, Donnie Darko (real dialogue from the movie: Girl: "Donnie Darko... What kind of a name is that? It sounds like a superhero name or something." Donnie: "What makes you think I'm not?") is a paranoid schizophrenic who starts to have strange daylight hallucinations. He is frequently visited by a giant bunny named Frank, who tells him that the world is about to end. As he chases the clues that Frank gives him, trying to figure out the "master plan," he explores the nature of space-time, gets into discussions about human nature and even free will and determinism, argues about literary criticism, censorship, and even the anatomy and sexuality of Smurfs, and studies the possibility of time travel, per Steven Hawking's speculation about the nature of worm holes.

But the big question throughout the movie is this: Will the world end, or won't it? And, what do we mean about the world ending, anyway?

I can't even come close to answering those questions, because to do so would give away the movie. And that is at the heart of my inability to say anything meaningful about the film. Like every film that I love, it creates its own world, even its own universe. And, while there is some correspondence between that universe and ours, to discuss the details, the architecture of that universe, you must first step inside it. You have to see that universe for yourself before you hear or read what anyone has to say about it, because otherwise you will bring to many expectations to that universe to be able to see it for what it is.

So, instead of telling you whether or not the world ends, instead of telling you whether Frank the giant bunny is real or a product of Donnie's mental illness, before telling you whether or not, and how, time travel is possible, I'm instead going to tell you about one of my favorite songs.

Huh? What? Did I just type that?

Sure seems like it, anyway.

Every time I think of Donnie Darko, and of the ambiguity about the end of the world, I get a song by jazz legend Mose Allison stuck in my head. Like the creators of Donnie Darko, Mose Allison is a cerebral poet and a dark wit, prone to play with the meanings and usage of words. He has a kind of macabre sense of humor, and it infects his music. Light, playful rhythms, melodies, and harmonies mask often biting language. See, for example, his playful Your Mind is on Vacation But Your Mouth is Working Overtime.

But he doesn't just use his gift with words to insult. He also uses it to explore the mysteries of life and death, and the inexorable passing of time. In Was he writes:

When I become was and we become were
Will there be any sign or a trace of th' lovely contour of your face
And will there be someone around
With essentially my kind of sound

When am turns to was and now is back when
Will someone have moments like this
Moments of unspoken bliss
And will there be heroes and saints
Or just a dark new age of complaints

When I become was and we become were
Will there be any Susans or Ralphs
Lookin' at old photographs
And wondering aloud to a friend
What it was like to be then

Other songs that grapple with mortality include If You Live (with its constant refrain, "If you live your day will come") and No Trouble Livin' ("I don't have no trouble livin'/ It's jus' dyin' that bothers me").

But the song that sticks in my head when I think of Donnie Darko is his classic Ever Since the World Ended:

Ever since the world ended
I don't go out as much
People that I once befriended
Just don't bother to stay in touch
Things that used to seem so splendid
Don't really matter today
It's just as well the world ended
It wasn't working anyway

Ever since the world ended
There's no more Bible Belt
Remember how we all pretended
Goin' round lyin' 'bout the way we felt
Every rule has been amended
There's no one keepin' score
It's just as well the world ended
We couldn't have taken much more

Ever since the world ended
There's no more black or white
Ever since we all got blended
There's no more reason to fuss and fight
Dogmas that we once defended
No longer seem worthwhile
Ever since the world ended
I face the future with a smile

Or, as Donnie says, "When the end comes, I want to breath a deep sigh, because there's so much to look forward to."

Cultivating Health

Perhaps the greatest concerns in our country today are related concerns: the state of this nation's health, and the health of our health care system. A compelling case, of course, could be made for the consumption of fossil fuels, a non-replenishable fuel source that emits the greenhouse gases that are linked to global warming and deepens our dependence on foreign oil - even oil which generates revenue for terrorists and those who support them. But as great as that concern is - and the threats posed by global warming and terrorism are nothing to sneeze at - our generally poor state of health, and the poor health of our health care system, may be even greater threats to our collective well-being.

Today, at least 44 million Americans have no health insurance coverage, and an additional at least 80 million Americans have inadequate coverage. Another at least 40 million - mostly students - have coverage for only part of the year. This means that over 160 million Americans have either no access or limited access to the kind of care that they need to maintain their health without risking financial ruin.

Additionally, due to basic lifestyle and dietary choices, we are on the brink of a health crisis. While it is true that many, many health indicators are on the rise - in the last hundred years the average life expectancy of an American has risen from 41 years to over 70 years and climbing; over the last fifty years, adjusted for population increase, death from heart disease is down 60% and death from stroke is down 70%; over the last twenty five years infant mortality is down 45%, to just 0.7% of live births; most occurrences of cancer have declined since their peak in the early 1990s, and cancer deaths have been declining by about 1% per year since 1993 - there are also a few disturbing trends. Obesity and diabetes have been steadily increasing, and if these trends are not abated they may create an epidemic.

Over the last two decades, the number of overweight children in the United States has more than doubled. In some areas of the country Type 2 diabetes - caused by lifestyle rather than genetics - has replaced Type 1 diabetes as the most common form in children. Coupled with the rise in obesity among adults, which isn't exactly news, this isn't promising. Not only are we fatter than we've ever been, our children are fatter than they've ever been, which, if not addressed, will lead to increasing problems.

The increase in obesity among both American adults and children, coupled with the attendant increase in other lifestyle related health problems, has put a tremendous strain on the health care system. As of 2003, we are spending roughly $75 billion per year on obesity related heath problems, with over half of that being paid for by the federal government. That is a tremendous, and preventable, expenditure, and it places a drain on the whole system.

Currently roughly 20% of the population account for roughly 80% of the health care costs. However, as more and more Americans grow fatter and fatter, they will join that 20% of the population and increase the drag on the system. So, while advances in medical technology have thus far dramatically increased the average life span and dramatically decreased instances of preventable death by heart disease and stroke, those advances will not be able to keep us artificially health forever. At some point we will have to face the fact that what we eat and how we live matter, and that no pill yet developed can allow us to eat whatever we want and sit on the couch without suffering some serious health consequences.

As a culture we have a generally pathological approach to health. That is, we assume a baseline measure of health, and see any deviation from that as a kind of disease that needs to be addressed, and addressed medically. This model has its advantages. It is often able to describe and improve our condition. I may have a certain baseline health, and then my body may be invaded by a virus or a bacteria, causing a disease. The pathological model of health is able to identify and attack that invading pathogen, and thus fight off the disease that prevents me from being as healthy as I could be. Or, I may be basically healthy, only to fall down and break my wrist. The pathological model is able to identify and treat my acute injury, and help restore function to my wounded limb.

However, there are limitations to this pathological model. While it is true that the invasion of pathogens or acute injury can be obstacles to health, they are not the only obstacles. And, even when they are obstacles, they are not best fought off only by medical intervention. Our bodies are magnificent organic systems, and medical science in only just scratching the surface in understanding them. And while drugs and other medical technologies help heal injury and fight off invasion, those tasks are also natural tasks, performed by the immune system.

Every time you take a drug there are both intended and unintended consequences. This is the nature of taking powerful chemicals into your body. These chemicals change things. Some changes, of course, are beneficial. Others, however, are not. These unintended medicinal consequences are often called "side effects," though perhaps the best term for them would be "collateral damage." In the fight against disease, sometime health is put at risk.

I am not arguing that we should not take medications. I fact, I am currently taking an asthma medication that may well be saving my life. For the past month my asthma, which I though was under control, has been kicking my ass. By the end of last week I could barely breath. I often wake up in the middle of the night fighting to force air into my lungs. If it weren't for a medication, a drug, a powerful chemical that I take into my system, I may find that I can't breath at all, and slowly die in the middle of the night.

Many, many medications work like this, preventing deaths which just a couple of generations ago could not have been prevented. But these medications do have consequences. My asthma medication, for instance, alters my heart rate. Over time it may even do some slight damage. That it keeps me breathing, of course, more than offsets this possibility, but it is still a possibility, and not a very pleasant one. That is the nature of taking drugs to fight off acute health problems.

And when we use drugs to solve problems that could be solved by other means - by a change in diet or lifestyle, for instance - then we accept unnecessary risk. Instead of cultivating health by helping to build up the immune system naturally, we take chemical short-cuts, not realizing that these short-cuts are expensive both in economic terms and in the terms of over-all health.

An entirely pathological health care model leads to an over-dependence on medical intervention, and as such fails to appreciate the maxim that, all else being equal, the least restrictive or least invasive intervention is best. By contrast, an organic or holistic health model - one that appreciates the interconnected nature of all bodily processes, and the value of building up natural defences and cultivating health, helps us appreciate that what we eat and how we live matters. The goal of such a model is, as stated in the description, cultivating health. It does not see health as a sort of baseline figure that is attacked by disease. Rather, it sees health as something that can be built up or torn down by the choices that we make.

Cultivating health - that is, engaging in behaviors which raise your over-all level of health - can help fight disease and injury in a much less restrictive or invasive way than most medical interventions. Of course, medical interventions are often necessary. While orange juice and other foods rich in vitamin C and anti-oxidants may help build the immune system to fight off basic colds, if you have bronchitis or pneumonia you would be foolish to think that a glass of OJ is a preferred treatment. And, while certain foods and behaviors may help reduce the risk of cancer, there is nothing you can eat or drink that will make much headway against a cancer after it has developed. And, again, while changing your diet may reduce you "bad" cholesterol level, if you have a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol - like, say, my grandmother - you may need to take a pill every day no matter what you eat.

A holistic health model should be held up next to a pathological model, because both models are useful, and both models both describe our experience and help solve concrete problems. And, no matter how healthy we become, no matter how well we cultivate our health, we will, each of us, at some point, get so sick that we need more drastic medical intervention. Basic health care will always be necessary.

And, in our country - despite having some of the best medical care and technology in the world - our health care system is failing. Not only do we, as outlined above, have a crisis of uninsured and underinsured persons that isn't going away any time soon; but we also have escalating costs associated with even the most basic health care. While some of this is due, as mentioned above, to increasing rates of obesity and lifestyle related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes (and I don't mean to sound unsupportive or unsympathetic of persons who struggle with their weight, their diet, and such lifestyle related illnesses - we live in a culture whose eating habits are dictated more by economic interests than by caloric needs or health impact, and that cultural environment shapes all of our habits), a great deal of this is due simply to overhead, to administrative costs.

While there is a basic belief among many in our country that the private sector is far, far more efficient that the government, a quick look at our health care system reveals that often the opposite is true. Administrative costs in an HMO, for instance, dwarf those of any federal program. About 4% of Medicare's expenses, for instance, are due to administrative costs. Many countries with a more socialized health care system have even lower administrative costs than that. Canada, for instance, spends only about 2% or less on administrative costs. If the private sector were, due to the demands of the free market system, far more efficient than the public sector, you would expect then that administrative costs in HMOs to be at 1.5% or less. However, contrary to public expectation, HMO administrative costs soar at over 30%. No government bureaucracy rivals, for sheer volume of obfuscation and raw paper work, that of a "well managed" HMO.

Because of this, I am throwing what little weight I have behind HR 676, a bill that would introduce a single payer health care system. This bill has the support of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, and much of the medical community. I will happily host a discussion on the merits of a single payer health care system (which is not the same as universal health coverage, as universal health coverage, while solving the problem of uninsured persons, does not solve the broader problems associated with our current system) in the comments section of this post.

As a nation we simply have to take control both of our health, and the health of our health care system.

[Note: statistics concerning obesity came from The National Obesity Society. Statisics concerning positive trends in overall health came from The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. Statistics concerning the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans came from the United Methodist General Board on Global Ministries. Information was also taken from an editorial by the Louisville Courier Journal from Feb. 17, 2006, titled "Health Care: The Single Payer Vision," as well as from articles by Dr. Marcia Angell, and by David U. Himmelstein, MD and Steffie Woolhander, MD. All other statistics came from a presentation by Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care, who can be reached by calling (502) 459-3393.]