Thinking about where we are

I have three other posts in my head about the parable of the sheep and the goats, as a whole, before spending some time on the individual needs and meeting them. I wasn't sure what order to put them in, but my hard drive appears to have died. While I am typing on an expired laptop with no access to documents, the obvious answer is to write up the short one. (And pray for a speedy resolution to the hard drive issue.)

I have been thinking about the way things have come together. I have spent most of this year carefully studying the Savior's life and thinking about how to emulate it as a weak and fallible mortal. That seemed like the right thing to do. 

Before that, I spent most of the previous year carefully studying the Constitution, and how we think about that. It also seemed like the right thing to do at the time, though it wasn't expected. The end part that focused on un-ratified amendments? I had no idea that was coming, but it was valuable. It mattered. 

So now, if I find that the thing that I most need to delve into is how we meet the needs of others, and it looks at both individuals and governmental and societal structures, that may be what I have been laying the foundation for all along without realizing it. 

It appears to be something that is needed, and more necessary than I could have imagined when I was starting, but I didn't know I was starting.

This may be more important for me than for anyone else, because I really like being able to tell the end from the beginning. I hate having so many important things unclear. I have still been able to look back many times and see the hand of God guiding me. That is important.

Listen for that voice. Watch for that hand. If you can get an idea of the destination along the way that is great, and it may help you follow better, but sometimes there are things that it is okay not to know, and to just trust. You have to be able to discern good influences from bad influences, but we can do that.

I believe we are all capable of doing much good and feeling much joy through that, but we have to be open to it.

Two barely remembered things, part 2

"Marching ill-becomes a saint."

That's what I think I remember. Or marching is not becoming of a saint. It ill-behooves a saint. Something like that.

Searching on this phrase is even more futile, because no matter what configuration you put them in, when "marching" and "saints" are both part of it, you get the song, "When the saints go marching in."

I asked one friend, and she initially understood it as "Marching - even if you are ill - (or maybe until it makes you ill) is very becoming of a saint." I don't know if I have ever had any kind of church teacher who would say that.

I don't march that often anyway. I have marched once this year. I do have concerns about it.

I have concerns that when you get a bunch of people together, some people will start being stupid and destructive, which for many observers ends up overshadowing the message.That goes back to the front window on Eugene City Hall being broken out at the end of a march protesting the Rodney King verdict, which no Eugene city officials had any part in (as far as I know).

I also have concerns that it needs to be part of a larger effort. During the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, there were marches and protests and sit-ins, but they were also combined with boycotts and other forms of economic pressure, with clear demands being made.

(For what it's worth, they also practiced an incredible amount of discipline, work-shopping and drilling on how to respond to different situations. Militancy isn't always about guns.)

I have those concerns, but I also remember the mental boost and the sense of community that came with the March for Equality and Justice, and I know many people felt that way about the Women's March.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-first-march.html

I remember that a massive Boston Protest led to the cancellation of at least 67 rallies supporting white supremacy:

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/23/headlines/white_nationalists_right_wing_groups_cancel_67_planned_rallies

I can't necessarily tell you the best way forward, especially as we are moving toward a world where anyone who will see the need of protest will be too tired to march and too poor to exert any kind of economic pressure.

I still feel very clearly that what that teacher was saying was wrong. The people who reject your protest because it is loud or inconvenient or feels scary to them are the same people that will tell you that taking a knee is too disruptive, generally speaking.

And I think that for someone who was a teacher of mind back then, the protests they would have seen would have been for the equality of Black people, and of women, and that farm workers have a right to reasonable pay and treatment. Those causes should resonate with people trying to follow Christ, regardless of denomination.

Instead, we often seem to be most interested in maintaining the status quo. Often that is a situation that is tenable for us, but not for others, and instead of caring about that we get mad at those who make us uncomfortable.

Colin Kaepernick is right about police brutality. His peaceful, respectful protest has drawn a lot of anger at him, and not at police brutality. That is not his fault. How you get enough people to really acknowledge the problem on a level where people actually do something about it is something I don't know. I respect him following his conscience, and I think it will be a long time before my conscience will allow me to stand for the national anthem again. I don't know that it will change anything.

Since I have started writing about the parable of the sheep and goats, the consistent theme is that answers will be highly individual, and that the complexity of issues is one reason for that. It may never make sense for you to march.

That does not excuse the need for listening to what marchers are saying, and paying attention to what is going on in the world, what needs there are, and what you can do to help. Priests and Levites walked by the man who fell among thieves, but are example is supposed to be the Good Samaritan.

Seeking truth, caring for others, finding ways to help -- those are the things that become a saint. Scorn for the attempts of others does not.

Two barely remembered things, part 1

Before I get back to prisons and other areas for service and activism, there are a couple of old thoughts that have been nagging at me. One is really pertinent to the discussion that really just started with thinking about the parable of the sheep and goats. Therefore, I am going to do the other one first.

In both cases they are things that I heard once in a church setting, and I think in a class setting. I think the one for next week was in a Young Women's class, and this one might have been from an Institute class. That puts them as things that I heard as a college student and as a teenager, respectively, so there are reasons that I don't remember the details clearly.

In both cases, I think the person saying it was quoting someone else who would have had more prestige and authority. Remembering names would have helped me find what I was looking for. This is a common failing, as I have heard many people say that they can't remember who said something, but they think it was a general authority, or attribute something to a general authority, but it turns out to have been a youth speaker or fireside speaker. Proper attribution is important, for speakers and listeners.

Anyway, what I think I remember someone saying is that the true sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality. Maybe it was a lack of charity. They could go together.  Charity would certainly include hospitality.

I have had other teachers impress upon me the importance of the hospitality in the Middle East. I don't know how far back that goes, like maybe that developed more recently than Lot's story. I don't have a hard time imagining that in an environment with lots of desert space and sand storms that hospitality would become very important, and maybe that would become such a part of the culture that it would carry over into cities where there were more resources. And, even if there are options for taking shelter and buying food, local residents intent on raping newcomers means you can't automatically consider the city to be safer.

Honestly, looking back at the story, it seems preposterous to me that the focus on the story has been that the genders of the rapists and the intended victims was the same, so that's why the cities were destroyed: for being gay! Because rape is about attraction and not power and abuse! I say seems preposterous, but with some of the reactions to the currently unfolding tale of how much sexual abuse and harassment goes on in all industries, we are still largely preposterous. We should work on that.

Before I started writing this, I tried my search one more time, and I did find something:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-patrick-s-cheng-phd/what-was-the-real-sin-of_b_543996.html

It's from 2010, well after what I am thinking of, though certainly some of the same points are made. I think he is way off base with his interpretation of Genesis 7 and Jude 1:7, so I am not turning to Reverend Cheng as a scriptural authority either (though he clearly does study a lot and has some good insights), but there are two other scriptural references, which I appreciate.

In Hebrews 13:2, we are admonished to not neglect hospitality, because thereby some have "entertained angels unaware". That sounds like Abraham and Lot in that story. The people of Sodom were their opposites. They are not mentioned, but it is not hard to see the connection.

More pertinently, in Ezekiel 16:

49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. 

That correlates a lot more with Matthew 25 than anything about sex.

I acknowledge that hardening your heart towards others, pride, and idleness can weaken a commitment to chastity and fidelity, and getting caught up in sex could harden the heart; we don't do what we do in a vacuum. Charity remains preeminent, as the scriptures have reinforced many times.

What I hope stands out most is that your righteousness and your reward are very dependent on your love for others. There is no similar promise for how well we police other people's sex lives. What you do in your sex life is important, but it is not your job to worry about what sex others are having.

There are things we should be aware of and interfere with, like abuse of strangers and rape and harassment, but that is not about consenting adults having sex.

I don't see how we keep getting that wrong.

Prisons - the easy part

Once you start looking at misery that is built into structure, it can be pretty discouraging. Figuring out what can be done, and what part you can play in that is hard.

That may be one reason that so much of how we give can be personal. I have my specific resources, and I can broaden some things, but there are things that I definitely can't do, at least definitely not at this time. So maybe sometimes instead of fighting the structure I am just alleviating one thing for one person, and that is still valuable.

I'm not going to try and sort out Christ-like activism today, but if you want to do something helpful for those in prison, I can share some ideas for that.

First, broaden your mind. You might think this is a totally alien issue, but don't be so sure that you don't know anyone in prison. My friend went. Someone I went to school with is in now. Other people from school that I knew better have spent time in jail. A neighbor's son, whom I do know, is in now.

There is a lot of stigma attached to jail, so it is easy to avoid talking about it, and then to feel like it's something that affects other people.

I will even go a step beyond that and admit that some of them might not be great to communicate with, because there are some pretty manipulative and dangerous people in there. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. Use your judgment and discretion, but use it after you have learned more, and not as a reason to shut off your compassion before you have even thought about it.

First of all I go to Prison Culture again:

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2017/11/15/help-criminalized-survivors-of-violence-for-the-holidays/

If you go to the Amazon wishlist for incarcerated survivors of interpersonal violence, it looks like there is only a need for one notebook now, but on the sidebar I see other lists, and the book drive for California prisoners could use some help too:

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/342NY9MRYCWGB/ref=cm_go_nav_hz

Still from Prison Culture, you can donate to help reunite families for Christmas visits through STEPS:

https://egscf.crm.salsalabs.org/webDonation/

Just Detention fights prison rape. Donations can be helpful, and sometimes there are opportunities to send encouraging messages. You can learn more about them here:

https://justdetention.org/

Those are the only two that I have personal knowledge of, but Charity Navigator gave a high score to Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=14635

That doesn't mean that there aren't more out there. There may be small charities that don't get rated, or still good work without meeting all of the criteria used by the rating system. The best thing you can do may be finding that person from school or church or family that needs to be remembered more.

I do believe that once you commit to helping, you find ways, and that it is fine if they start small.

Prisons - Profits over people

I just read this today, about how a prison sentence for deaf and hard-of-hearing prisoners can easily become a sentence of solitary confinement, partly due to a lack of resources and partly due to fear that sign language can be used for secret plans:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/09/19/why-many-deaf-prisoners-can-t-call-home?utm_content=bufferf88c8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Remember that calls are already grossly overpriced for prisoners without disabilities affecting speech or hearing.

I imagine that there is a feeling that it is fine to make a profit off of the inmates, because as inmates they have committed crimes and troubled society and it's just payback. That's why jokes about prison rape are so common, with some people assuming that this happens to rapists and child molesters and that this is justice.

Given how many rapists never do any jail time, that form of punishment would be far too random to be justice anyway. However, a lot of prison rapes do happen. Let's take a closer look at that.

For staff-on-inmate sexual victimization, 67% of the victims were women, even though they represented only 13% of the prison population.

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/11/86-percent-of-women-in-jail-are-sexual-violence-survivors/

(Also worth thinking about that 86% of the women in prison are sexual violence survivors.)

From a California study, 67% of LGBTQ inmates report being assaulted while in prison.

Now, if we are looking at guards on inmates, greater victimization of women, and greater victimization of LGBTQ, that looks like abuse continues to be more likely to be afflicted on the marginalized, making it much like the outside world -- I can assert my dominance by hurting you.

It is not really surprising that those pathologies are  perpetuated on the inside, but this seems like a good time to also remember how people end up in prison, like drug laws that were racially biased in both how sentences were decided (sentences on "crack" versus other types of cocaine) and where drug raids happened and who was searched.

This leads us to another fun fact: on any given day, 62% of inmates have not been convicted of any crime:

https://newpittsburghcourieronline.com/2015/02/26/report-60-percent-of-jail-inmates-unconvicted/

Crowded dockets where the right to a speedy trial becomes a joke is a part of that problem, but an even bigger problem is the lack of bail funds. You can't get out if you can't pay.

Of course you can argue about the need for bail with non-violent crimes, but is there a bigger issue with why so many people can't afford bail? There might be, if police specifically target poor communities for minor infractions that can be hard to fight if you are overworked and underpaid.

Information on for-profit policing often focuses on asset forfeiture, which is a problem, but a police force supporting itself on fines, and focusing on the part of the population that does not have the resources to fight unfair charges has been an issue for many communities, largely written about after Michael Brown's death in Ferguson.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/us/ferguson-missouri-racism-tickets-fines/index.html

If society doesn't care about you, it is much easier to end up in prison. You can be cared about even less there, which makes you a financial opportunity. That in turn can affect how people value you, like when the prisons are more dangerous due to overcrowding, but no one wants to lower the inmate population because it can affect firefighter availability:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/19/prisoners-who-fight-wildfires-in-california-an-insider-s-look

But wait! Maybe a lot of people are in prison now because of drugs, and maybe they shouldn't be there, but now that the opioid crisis is affecting white people and we are being more compassionate, shouldn't that get better?

https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants/

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/work-therapy-how-the-salvation-armys-chain-of-rehab-centers-exploit-unpaid-labor/

Maybe not. Once you start realizing that you can profit off of the people you dehumanize, you keep needing a wider base, because you always need more profits. Of course, the opioid crisis has made some big bucks for people too:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

I know, it's a lot of links, but there is a lot to say on this. There is a lot, and it flies against existing beliefs that are very comfortable, and I don't feel like I can manage to be coherent on this. Not only is it very emotional for me, but also it is this vicious cycle going around and around that is very demoralizing.

I will try to treat the demoralizing part over the next post or two, but for now, can anyone who truly believes in the New Testament, who truly wishes to follow Christ and end up on his right-hand side instead of his left when that separation happens -- not dividing sheep and goats, but dividing those who know Him and those who don't -- can you truly support this current structure?

Who is in prison?

I don't know how much people think about the parable, or the individual components. I do wonder, though, if when people do look at it they find ways to keep the "in prison" part from applying. After all, those are criminals in there.

Yes, John the Baptist and Paul both spent significant time in prison. Jesus was taken prisoner, though everything happened pretty quickly there; I'm not sure that he spent much time in a cell. Do we only visit good prisoners?

I have already mentioned price gouging on prison phone calls and not funding programs that appear to help, and there will be something eventually on how valuing profits over people becomes a problem. Before that, we need to remember that not all people are valued equally.

They should be. You may believe that for religious reasons, or humanistic reasons, or because you take the founding documents of the United States seriously, but there should be a belief in the equality of people and it is commonly stated. Practices often do not back it up.

Looking at the modern carceral state has many issues, which I will try and get to clearly and logically, but I am finding writing on this topic very difficult and if I break it down into small pieces to try and make it go by easier (because there is so much here), that's just how I have to be.

However, with these three model prisoners I think there are some points we can make.

John the Baptist was in prison because he accurately criticized the king's marriage. It doesn't even look like Herod took it that personally, but Herodias took it seriously enough to plot John's death, and that worked out.

Jesus was arrested for upsetting the social order. They had to change his blasphemy charge to sedition to make it stick, because Roman law and Jewish law felt differently about monotheism, but as revolutionary as he was, none of it was actually illegal, including his accurate claims. Determined people in power were still able to get him in jail.

Paul's imprisonments also involved false charges as well. As Saul he had thrown people in jail for practicing Christianity, so there was some logic in him being in danger for preaching it, but still whenever there was an actual hearing, the general result was that it wasn't illegal.

It was not only then that there were political components to who went to jail. This can affect the writing of the law, but it comes up even more in how the law is pursued: where is it enforced? against whom?

This is especially important now as we have an executive branch that leans toward totalitarianism and a legislative branch that does not seem interested in checking it.

Consider this case:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/01/politics/doj-woman-laughed-jeff-sessions-confirmation-hearing/index.html

Yes, the charges ended up being dropped, but the precedent of the charges even coming up is disturbing.

The United States has about 4.4 percent of the world population but 22 percent of the world's prisoners. Are we sure that is just? And if it's not, what do we do?

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink

I'm going to back up from prison a bit and explore the parable from the thirst side, kind of how we looked at homelessness.

On a very basic level, this can be literally someone asking for a drink and providing it, but this is normally only going to happen with guests in your home. You can be surprised by circumstances: last week two witnesses to an accident were waiting for the police outside our house, and we offered them beverages. Perhaps it could involve offering to pay for someone's beverage on a social occasion to allow them to participate when funds are tight. It is still less likely that you will encounter thirsty people than hungry people or sick people or strangers who need taking in.That doesn't mean that thirst isn't a problem, just that it may be less visible.

So you may find that in warmer weather some people keep bottles of water on them and some specifically seek out people who may need that water and some set up cooling stations to try and alleviate that need.

Beyond that, you might look at more permanent options. Portland's fountains started with a gift from Simon Benson. Whether it was because he wanted to keep lumberjacks out of saloons or because of seeing a thirsty girl, they have been a benefit to many people and animals. It was a good thing.

It was also something that took advantage of an existing source of clean, fresh water, which is not always available. In light of that, communities that heedlessly tap deeper into groundwater without thinking about sustainability should think carefully. Communities should think carefully about letting companies come in and bottle water, encasing it in plastic and shipping it away for a profit. It may be hard to resolve thirst once you have created it.

Are the negatives worth the benefits and are those equally shared? Because the community may be getting some increase in jobs or rental fees, but those will probably be dwarfed by the potential profits going to someone else, or it would not be a good business proposition for the company.

Allowing fracking contaminates groundwater. It seems to correlate with cancer and birth defects. Even if you ship in drinking water, but people are bathing in it and growing plants in it, and local animals are drinking in it, is it worth it?

This brings us to Flint, Michigan. For 1290 days, they have not had clean water. Along with a permanent impact on developing brains of children and an increase in miscarriages, there are people have water shut off for not paying their bills, because apparently it is not required for the water to be drinkable.

There were options set up for helping people pay their water bills, which I participated in, and some people have received some help with shipments of water and filters, but the overall problem has still not been solved, and there is something important to look at here.

The change to the water system was not something that the citizens decided on to save money, or that the properly elected water board decided on to save money. In fact, there were better options that were less expensive. Cost-cutting measures were cited, but the choices were based on who could profit, and those decisions were made by an emergency manager imposed by the state.

There can be legitimate questions about whether declaring an emergency was necessary or whether the state's emended emergency manager law put in place earlier that year is good legislation, but there shouldn't be any controversy over whether the things you do in an emergency should put profit above people.

It still happens again and again. The initial contract for repairing the electrical grid in Puerto Rico is a good example of that, though it looks like that will not stand.

It is not easy to know what to do about this type of corruption. It may often be that as an individual there is not something that can be clearly done, so maybe you pay for five filters, and try and convince friends to buy more, or you contribute to a legal fight. There are many levels on which you can give.

What I think is most important here is the glory we give to riches, even as Christians, when they were pretty explicitly condemned by Christ. When we allow hunger, thirst, and illness to flourish so that someone can be rich, we are not followers of Christ. Individual charity may at times be the only means available, but we should not unquestioningly assume that.

I am not sure where looking at the larger structure will lead, but I am certain that we need to look.

https://www.nrdc.org/flint

Every creeping thing

This is a departure from my previously scheduled material, because I have fresh grief and anger.

Today we have three cats and one dog, but Friday there was a fourth cat. That is why there is grief.

In the middle of the grief, I started thinking about how we only know the origins of one of our cats.

In 1996 we had just lost the last of our original clowder to old age, but there was a stray hanging around and we started putting food out. Eventually Max started letting us pet her, and coming into the house, and she slowly but surely became an indoor cat.

Once we could get close enough, we saw that she had been spayed, and there was an old flea collar on her, but there weren't any other clues to her age or history. When she died seventeen years later, we knew that she was at least eighteen, then, and that is pretty old, but she could have been older still and we had no way of knowing.

It was too hard being without a cat, so for the first time ever we officially adopted a cat from an adoption group: no ads in the paper, no friend of a coworker having kittens, just going and finding a cat. So we knew Maeve's age and that her owners had given her up when they moved, and the name she was used to, though it kind of got transformed into Mavis.

Otherwise, this spring Lilly Belle was found at the side of a very busy road when she was probably no more than four weeks old. The woman who found her looked for signs of other cats, but didn't see any.

Two years before that Ashley turned up starving in our back yard, and was probably about six months old. I think she is a little smaller than she would be if she had never had that starving period in the middle of her growth period.

And before that, when our only cat was Mavis, Maria took her class on a field trip to a cat shelter and fell in love with Cody, whom we had to take or he was unlikely to be adopted. Cody was older, maybe ten, but that is only a guess. Teeth can help you figure out age, but he had lost all of his. That and a balance problem indicated that he might have been hit by a car. He was found wandering around too; it just seems like he had a harder time getting there.

It was probably during his time on the streets that he picked up the herpes that would flare up and give him respiratory trouble, and the pododermatitis in his front paws, but he probably would have had the allergies anyway.

He did in fact have a lot of health problems even before the ataxia started that turned out to be connected to a rapidly growing tumor, but he was so good about everything anyway. If he had to move his head back and forth to balance, it did not stop him from getting where he wanted to go. He only got sick enough to quit purring once. He was still purring Friday. Three years was good but we would have wanted longer.

I don't know that his time on the streets shortened his life, because we don't know what caused the tumor, but it makes me mad that he had to go through so much.

This current system regularly gives us cats that we love, but it leaves a lot more cats that aren't so lucky. We could find another way to get cats. That's three lucky cats, but two were kittens and how often is there only one kitten? There could have been siblings and mothers out there. There are shelter cats still waiting for someone. There are cats that have had to go feral because no one stepped up. And how much did Mavis miss the people who let her go? It took her a while to love us.

If I start getting into dogs, and all of the abandonment and neglect and abuse there, we'll be here a while. Let me just say that when it seems like our animal population numbers are ridiculous, that was never planned. We just have soft hearts.

So what I really want to say is don't contribute to this. Don't take in an animal and then decide the commitment is too much. Don't be careless with them so that they get lost. Don't let cats out! Yes, it can take some getting used to for them, but we have turned four strays into indoor only cats, so I know it's possible. Doing that protects birds, and the cats live longer and are healthier. They won't get hit by cars or eaten by coyotes or tortured by future serial killers. Just don't.

And if this doesn't seem like a topic for a religious blog, remember that not a sparrow falls but that God knows it. The dominion we were given over the Earth and the beasts upon it was never a license to abuse. It is not an excuse to neglect.

I am glad that we had Cody, but if an easier and longer life for him meant that it all happened with someone else, that could be okay. We are good at finding cats, but it can be hard for them to find good homes. Don't contribute to that.

I was in prison, and ye came unto me

Back to that day when the immediacy of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats hit me, we had a friend go to jail.

He was not a close friend. We talked to him sometimes and tried to keep an eye out for him. Still, this was big, and the least we could do was write to him.

In truth, we never actually visited him. Sometimes he was pretty far away, and most of the time there is this process where you have to get on an approved list and there can only be a limited number of people on the list, but a lot of it was learning to navigate the system.

At first, we could only send him post cards, which limited the available space, and there had to be a full return address, which meant you couldn't save space by abbreviating that. Then, when he got transferred we could start using envelopes and multiple pages again, but there were rules for that too. Sometimes they would forward a letter if he was transferred, and sometimes it would simply come back. One letter disappeared, and it seemed like it could have been a censorship issue, but I could not think of anything I wrote that was improper. I mean, I knew that was an issue and I wasn't exactly pushing boundaries.

We would have loved to send care packages, but that was out. You could send books as long as they came directly from someone like Amazon or Barnes and Noble. We could not buy a book and then send it ourselves, or use any of the private sellers through Amazon.

I think we did a phone call once. That is a hassle too, because they may that very expensive and inconvenient. It shouldn't be, because most phone services are pretty cheap now, but there are provider monopolies and they gouge. Some prisons are switching to video chat only, and they are gouging too.

It is easy to argue that a lot of these things are important for security. Some of them probably are. Today is not going to be my only post about this.

Just for today, though, one thing I remember noticing over time is that it seemed like when they mentioned any prison program at all - whether it was training shelter dogs or gardening or continuing education - the statistics on reducing recidivism were always good. It did not seem to matter what the program was, but just that there was something that was allowing them to connect and set goals and work toward something.

If such small things can be so valuable, it seems like we should make that a priority. Even if you don't care about the individual prisoners (and you should, but let's say that you don't), you should care about the overall reduction in crime. There is an advantage to having members of society that are productive, engaged, and fulfilled.

Instead, we take even something as minor as letting the prisoners stay in touch with people who care about them, and we turn it into an obstacle course and opportunity for profiteers.

There is more to this story.

Giving to the homeless

Building on last week, there can be many right answers for giving. It is not my place to tell anyone how to give specifically, but I feel comfortable saying in general that we should be thinking about it and listening for how we should give.

I know there are people who have a general policy against giving to panhandlers, believing it is more effective to give to programs like food banks and shelters. That may work better than just giving money to people who ask for it.

In my observation, sometimes it seems like the neediest don't ask. Some of them may just be too beaten down to keep trying, but also I remember one man who never interacted with the flesh and blood people around him. Every morning when I saw him, it looked like he was talking to the building. I don't know what it looked like to him.

So, what you get asked may not be the most reliable indicator of how to help or what is needed. Even those times when I have been prompted, my couple of dollars is probably not a big deal, but I wonder sometimes if it is just to let them know that they are seen, and remembered.

It may not always be for them. I remember once feeling strongly to give to one man sitting down with a sign. I was too slow to react where I actually had to backtrack a little, but then another man said something, and he was frustrated with it, because he needed it more.

I don't remember exactly what he said - just the frustration - but we talked. He had just lost his housing, but was desperately holding onto his gym membership so he would still have a place to shower. I had never thought of that before, but I later learned that it is common. Some gym memberships are really cheap and rent never is. He was more frustrated that day because he was literally just coming back from a food bank and they had given him a bag full of things that he could not use.

So we swapped. I gave him some cash and he gave me the food he couldn't use. I was going to be helping with a food drive that weekend, so it was good timing. Someone else could be able to use it, especially someone with a kitchen. I didn't give him that much money; I never have that much money. Maybe it helped some, but the listening probably helped more.

He was in touch with programs, but they were not meeting his needs. I am sure it is possible to argue that he was being difficult. Some people would definitely be turned off by the anger, but if you haven't recently had to worry about being able to shower before a job interview or having a place to keep food that you don't have a can opener for, those things can be frustrating.

I know there are programs that do a really good job too. At least one food bank has different options for people who are actually on the streets versus in a home but poor. Still, there are a lot of shortcomings. Some programs discriminate against LGBT+ people; those youth are so much more likely to end up homeless that this is a real shortcoming. Some programs don't allow pets, which may be someone's only source of emotional warmth. Some hate shelters because of lice and contagious diseases. These are all things that you can easily not think about if you have a home, but not everyone does.

When you do really think about it, it's easy to get discouraged, and private giving seems woefully inadequate. It can then be logical to look at the structure. Is there a way to increase affordable housing? Is there a way to fix income inequality? Can we do more for mental illness?

Possibly as individuals we can't. We can look into uniting with other individuals, or at working with the government, or finding ways to multiply the existing resources. There are a lot of ways to go.

One time I was heading to the bakery to pick up a cake. The bus passed two homeless men and I felt I had to give something to them. I bought some extra food at the bakery and took it to them. They were walking when I passed them, and I didn't see them right away. It was easy to feel silly, but I went down another street or two and found them. It also looked like they already had some food. I think it was a weird interaction for them, but it felt like the right thing to do and I did it. Maybe they were going to have an opportunity to share, but maybe it was for me. Maybe it was a reminder that we had a lot. Even when things felt tight, we could still get a cake.

You can see how many unknowns there are. Even if I could fool myself into thinking that I can teach someone else how to give right, how would I quantify it? I can only suggest looking and listening.

Think about things with your head and keep openness in your heart. There may be miracles. There may be miracles you don't recognize, but things can happen."Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Hebrews 13:2)

If you have concerns about being able to hear, or to understand what you are hearing and know that you are hearing it, that can be resolved through prayer, and probably through some trial and error. It's not an accident that faith, hope, and charity get grouped together -- they feed on each other and lift each other up.

I believe that we can grow together in love, and I hope that we will.

Giving decisions

I'm going to do something really unconventional here and speak in concrete terms about money.

There is a long tradition of not doing this. I have been a part of it. I remember teaching a Sunday school lesson on tithing, and the question came up about paying on the net or the gross, and I answered "It's ten percent of your increase," just like I had heard so many times before.

There is good reason for that. Letting people decide what is right for them is appropriate. I remember sometimes hearing some people say "Do you want net or gross blessings?"to be cute. It technically still leaves the decision to the listener, but it's also prejudicial, clearly implying that one way is superior.

Perhaps partly because of that, I have always calculated my tithing based on my gross income. I would reconsider at times, based on not getting the amount taxed. I would then think that I would have to pay tithing on any refunds, but also, I would decide that I do benefit from the taxes paid, so continue paying on the gross. And I usually do some kind of extra contribution when I get a refund anyway, it just isn't tithing. As much thought as went into it, it was still ultimately a feeling of what was right, and that was individual.

It is easy to feel like the thing that is right for you is right, period. Obviously, that must be what everyone does. This is never a safe assumption.

I have seen at least one person say that they pay on the net. It would probably be more if it was something people talked about more openly. Because we should not be trying to impose our will on others, that can be a good reason to not talk about these things, but also I think I am a better person, and have a better understanding, for knowing that at least one good person with sincere faith pays on the net.

I have often had people preach paying a generous fast offering, and never have they given specifics on generous. They just repeat "generous" like "ten percent of your increase".

I first remember thinking about this on my mission. Missionaries don't get a lot of money, but rent and utilities are paid, so that money only needs to cover groceries, toiletries, and so forth. I think we got around $100 a month back then (this was in '93/'94, Fresno), and I had been paying around $10, but I felt to double it. Sometimes things got tight, but it worked out.

I probably kept on doing that for the next ten years, but where I really remember thinking about it again was probably around 2000. I know the date it ended precisely (the reason for that will become clear later), but I can't remember exactly when it started.

I think it started with a double it, that probably went from $20 to $40, and as time went on, I kept feeling to increase it. $60. $80. It definitely got to $120, and I think topped out at $140, but I remember wondering how high it could go. Could I get to a point where I was donating more than I was living on? (I was probably making about $48000 a year then.)

Then in September 2008 I lost my job and the tech sector crashed before I could get a new one. Even by the time I was working full time again, I never got back to where I was financially.

In light of that, it would be hard not to wonder whether I shouldn't have been doing something else with my money, like building up savings or paying extra on the mortgage or something. I can tell you that I was getting help from the church for a while and any amount I had built up was blown through pretty fast. It felt like a lot of money to give at the time, but it wasn't really that much.

Instead, I was learning to listen, and I hope to be unselfish and to trust, even if those traits are still not perfect within me.

Now, back to the last week's concerns about charitable giving that inspired this detour.

I do not give to every panhandler I encounter. Frankly, I usually don't have enough to really give much. However, I am sometimes prompted to give, and I really try and listen to that and act on it quickly.

Sometimes they haven't asked. I remember seeing someone on the train who looked like he was asking other people, but after a couple of "no" answers he stopped. I was prompted to give to him. I have offered to people who didn't ask but it felt like they needed it. And sometimes they ask, and "yes" is right, and sometimes it's okay to say "I'm sorry, I can't."

I hope it is clear that the purpose of this post is not to tell anyone what is right for them, or to brag about how righteous and generous I am. I do think it can be helpful to get a greater insight into the thought process and decisions of other people sometimes, and then I usually go and make an emotional, intuitive decision. Or, I hope, that what happens is a guided, inspired decision.

There are a lot of different combinations out there. The right answer for me may not be the right answer for you. It would probably be weird if it were. It can get more complicated too; do you tithe on gift cards? (I haven't, but I suppose if I got a lot in them, I might.)

What I feel real confidence in is that there are answers available. We can know and we can listen and we can do a lot of good that way.We may be wrong about it even at the time. When I was continually increasing my fast offering, I now think that was more about what I needed to learn from it than the money that was needed by others. It probably still helped some others, and God is good at making blessings flow in multiple directions like that.

Think of how much the "Trying to be like Jesus" series kept coming back to his knowledge of people individually and making their healing or learning experiences unique to them. That still applies.

There are individual answers for you, with individual lessons and individual opportunities. There are also many individuals around you that He cares about just as much, and whom you can serve. Be ready, be willing, and listen.

Sheep and goats - abundance

I am in a time now where I am struggling financially. That may explain why the concept of abundance has been so much on my mind.

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." - John 10:10

This key phrase is part of another sheep metaphor. Jesus is talking about his role as the good shepherd, who will die for his sheep. The sheep respond to him differently because the others will abandon the sheep, or kill or steal them.

There is enough of this imagery that I find it interesting when church goers become fond of "sheeple" as an insult. I know what they mean, but they are usually overgeneralizing and assuming superiority, which is not very Christ-like. Sheep are not blindly following if they are following the one who loves them and serves them, who sacrifices for them. Stated following without thought may turn out to be not following at all, on closer inspection. That is why some people will think that the only problem with their following was that they never encountered Jesus personally.

Following consciously means taking on more of the shepherd's role. As Jesus sent the twelve forth to the lost sheep of Israel, he told them...

"Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give." - Matthew 10:8

This is the pathway to abundance: freely giving and receiving.

Since March I have been primarily been focusing on passages from the New Testament, specifically the gospels. It is definitely time for The Book of Mormon now, in Mosiah 4:

"16 And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

17 Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—

18 But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

19 For behold, are we not all beggars?..."

In his injunctions to give, Jesus doesn't say anything about screening. Today there is a lot of paperwork that goes into getting help, lest we risk someone getting help that doesn't need it or deserve it. This is stressful for people who are already in a time of crisis, and it can also feel really humiliating. That is not abundance.


It is hard not to notice how often those who have benefited from various aid programs are the first to want to cut them off. Paul Ryan and Ben Carson (SSI and food stamps, respectively but not exclusively) stand out in particular.

That sounds like it is getting political. If some parties are more likely to be against the most basic Christian teachings, and if they still preach adherence to Christian principles, and if other parties that on one level seem to be more generous still find themselves holding back in some areas, those are all areas worthy of thought and discussion. That is not what we are doing right now.

(Whether individual giving can be enough is also a reasonable discussion, and we probably will spend some time on that in other posts, but I feel a need now to talk about making decisions on giving, so that will be next week.)

What seems most important now, though, is that on an individual level Christians are required to respond to the needs of those around them.

It might be reasonable that when someone is asking for money you buy them food instead. Might.

It is definitely reasonable that sometimes you may not have aid to give. Still in Mosiah 4:

24 And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give.

25 And now, if ye say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received.

That is actually very comforting for me. Yes, there is still room for the poor to be condemned for their bad attitudes - I could look at it that way. But also, even when I have nothing material to give, I can still have a giving mind, instead of a judgmental mind. There is still something I can do right. There is value in the "yes" in my heart.


On that note, let's take one more verse from Mosiah 4:

20 And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy.

There are things that only God can give, and those are given generously.

There are no excuses for our withholding.


Give freely. Receive freely.

It cannot be clearer than that.

Sheep and goats - the reward

Matthew 25:34-36
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

The next few verses establish that these blessed did not think of this as service to the King: "We never saw you!"

Not having ever looked through those in need and seen their Lord is the primary commonality between both those who worked to meet those needs and those who didn't. They only saw people, but some valued people and cared about those needs and some didn't.

I think I have a lot to say about this parable, but the thing that came to me on this most recent re-reading is that this kingdom that we are supposed to have, that has been prepared from the foundation of the world, is a kingdom where the needs of all are met.

One way of looking at the list of needs is that it is deliberately all-inclusive. It includes physical needs that can be easily solved by giving, but also the issues that cannot be resolved that simply are still served by coming and visiting. Without mentioning poverty, it includes the results of poverty.

The only thing that appears to be excluded is spiritual correction. There is no mention of "I was sinning or not working hard enough, and you came and corrected me." It's almost as if that isn't really a need.

And it makes me think "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."

That if we would do God's will, that kingdom would be here now. We would not have to wait for it. The hungry would be fed, the thirsty sated, the naked clothed. Strangers would be embraced and become no more strangers. There might still be sickness and prisons, but they would be remembered and comforted.

And, there is much more that we could do in those regards. That's the case I want to make.

When Jesus was confirming his identity to an imprisoned John (possibly for the benefit of John's disciples, as we have already seen evidence that John knew), Jesus answered:

"The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." Matthew 11:5

That may not all be in reach for us, but much more of it is in reach that we are accomplishing. How much do we care? How committed are we to doing His will?

That's what we are going to be covering over the next few weeks.

Sheep and goats

I know, I wrote about Matthew 25 before, and that parable, before. I have not written about the time it became real to me.

It was a normal Sunday in the singles ward. We tried to keep an eye out for people. When I was worried about someone and didn't know what was going on, I would ask around, and Carlos was generally my best source. I think that day was in December, and being both cold and near Christmas made it seem worse. Of the people I asked about, one was sick and one was in jail.

With the sickness, it wasn't a disease requiring hospitalization or anything like that, but it had lasted about three weeks at that point and she was having a hard time shaking it. That's the kind of thing that can put your job in jeopardy, and make cleanliness and shopping difficult, as well as cooking for yourself if you do still have food. It can be lonely and isolating.

For jail, yeah, you don't expect to hear that at church, but there are a lot of ways and reasons that it can happen. I think I need to do a second post on that topic.

For right then, I just remember the knowledge washing over me that there are sick and in prison right now. There is nothing antiquated about that parable.

It had been easy to think about service in terms of people needing emotional support (which they do) or that sometimes they will need help moving or meals brought as appropriate, and maybe sometimes you bring cookies just as a little boost.

Nothing is wrong with any of those things, but they are predicated on lives that proceed fairly normally and that we know when things go on. That just isn't always true.

For someone sick or in prison, they drop out of sight. We won't know without looking. We may not realize how catastrophic a little thing can be.

The parable is pretty simple on the service, but there is a lot in there, and a lot that we may not think about, at least not without having it shoved in our faces.

Maybe over these next few weeks I will do some shoving. Maybe that will feel like a shove not due to the forcefulness that I use, but because taking the information in can be a push far outside of the comfort zone. I've been there.

However, for those who are sick and in prison and hungry and thirsty and naked and strangers, their discomfort is far worse, and there is nothing more critical to our salvation than how we respond to that.

Gospels wrap-up - Horrible Saturday

I am interested in people. I want to know what they have been through and how they felt about it and everything.

Scriptures usually aren't heavy on that kind of detail, but there may be hints. There are a few verses that have resonated with me.

John 6:
67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 

Luke 22:
35 And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. 

Things like this give me a sense of how hard it must have been for the apostles to know Jesus was dead.

We've already addressed how they were not expecting the Resurrection. Sometimes they did not seem to understand that he would die either, but there were times when they clearly felt it.

John 11:
16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

They were willing to die with him. They were willing to fight for him, but he didn't want that. They had seen his power, but he didn't use that. He really was gone, and we know now that it was only going to be for a short time, but they didn't.


Did they feel despair? The Pharisees were worried enough about him rising to request guards, so maybe the apostles had some hope too. Did they struggle with whether they had been mistaken all along? They had not been given the Holy Ghost yet; the gift of the Holy Ghost and knowledge of the Resurrection transformed them (and can do that for us as well). Maybe there was a fear that they would be next, or only a numb grief. I can only imagine that it hurt.

It seemed strange to me that we should call the day of the crucifixion Good Friday, but I suppose we do because we understand that it was an important step on a way to good and needed things. There was terrible darkness, but there was a new light with the dawn.

There will always be hard times. They do end. They can bring great blessings.

Let's keep up hope for that.

Gospels wrap-up - points of view

One of the parts that has always stood out to me (way before this phase of study) was the injuring and healing of Malchus. I suppose initially it just stood out for the gore: ear comes off, ear goes back on.

Later (closer to now, but I might have thought of it before), is that only one of the gospels tells us about the ear going back on. It speaks a lot to who Jesus was that even at the time of his arrest -- after the suffering in Gethsemane and after finding his companions had fallen asleep on him again -- his priorities are not just keeping his friends safe, but even healing one of those who is presenting as an enemy.

(I would say it says something about his enemies that this show of mercy and power didn't stop him, but he had been compassionately and miraculously healing all along; there was never any reason to think that one more would make a difference.)

After confirming that the healing is only mentioned in one place, I started noticing the other differences in each telling.

First of all, only John names names. Everyone identifies that it was a servant of the high priest, but only John knows his name, and only John tells us that it was Peter doing the smiting.

It makes sense that John knows more if we assume that he is the disciple known to the high priest who got himself and Peter let into the hall (John 18:15-16). That puts them in a position to know more about the trial, and about Peter's denial.

At the same time, some of those details end up in all of the other gospels. Of course they spoke to each other, but the person catching the others up may not remember everything. Even if several listeners hear the same telling, different things stand out. The one who included the healing was Luke, the physician. Maybe that detail meant more to him.

There is a part of me that wonders if maybe the reason the others didn't name Peter is that they were afraid of making him look bad. In the end they had all been told not to fight it.

That is only speculation. Even with knowing that transcription and translation can affect what I read, I do love the Bible, and especially the gospels. I find value in them. Going through them so carefully this time has had value, and it has still not completed my learning. I know that.

I do want to point out that remembering different things, or noticing a difference, is very human. Some of the differences may point to different personalities or passions, which we can only guess at, but in our day it means that we can get different lessons for different times, even with no new material being added. The new is in us.

I often want to know things that are left out, but I am grateful for what we have.

Actually, John has something helpful to say about that as well:

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen." (John 21:25)

Amen to that.

Trying to be like Jesus - praise

I think I am about done with this segment.

It doesn't mean that there isn't anything else to learn, or even already learned, but it may be time to move on, probably including two posts where I am learning more from the apostles.

I still need to cover something that happened on Palm Sunday. It's a minor thing, and it might even only be one thing that was remembered a little bit differently by the writers (more on that in another post).

Matthew 21:
15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased,

16 And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

Luke 19:
38 Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.

39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

40 And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

It's no surprise that priests and Pharisees would be displeased with the praise; their refusal to accept Jesus as their king and the Son of David was the crux of their entire conflict.

At the same time, there also seems to be a disapproval with the enthusiasm of the belief. I think they found the overflowing of joy and praise in itself to be offensive.

The response of Jesus is not a doctrinal argument, and why would it be? He knows that their hearts are hard, and if there is an opening it is not going to be won by argument. Instead, especially in Luke, I find an empathy for the joy.

You wouldn't think it is necessary -- usually when we need to feel for someone it's because of their hard time, not their time of elation. Still, some people will look down on anything.

The strongest lesson of this series has been how Jesus was able to focus on the needs of each individual, reminding me both that it works better and also that a single person is worth it. Right next to it is his repeated rejection of contempt for humanity and mortal life.

We might overflow with emotions, and be slow learners, and long for comfort, and take pleasure in small things, and Jesus was kind and patient with that.

"Condescension" is generally a word with negative connotations, except when we are talking about Jesus, who truly brought himself down to our level. It is negative when another mortal is doing it, believing that they are higher.

The one who actually had every reason to look down on us didn't.

Humans are messy. We get impatient and loud and emotional, and it is as we were created. That can be frustrating and inconvenient, but it is also understandable.

The first way to be like Jesus is to love: fully, sincerely, and generously.

One natural result of that should be that you quit being an ass.

Trying to be like Jesus - the Greeks

In John 12 we learn of certain Greeks who desired to see Jesus.

They get what they wanted, but I wonder how much sense it made to them.

Here he is speaking very openly of death. There is still some metaphor used, so it might have been possible to think it was all figurative.

He then begins talking more to his Father than to the people, and the Father answers, but many people think it was thunder.

We are getting to a point where I am going to have to write more about the actions of the apostles, because there are things to learn there too. One thing I will not criticize them for is not understanding that the Messiah would allow himself to be arrested and crucified, die and be buried, and then rise again on the third day.

He was hinting all along; in hindsight it all makes sense. Foresight can be pretty powerful too, but it is still usually building on experience for the way that things normally happen, and this was something completely new. This was a change, and they were not really prepared for it.

However, he did work to prepare them for it. He told them. Here with the Greeks -- who are not going to get a chance to see the ministry that the others have been observing for three years -- he cuts right to the chase. It probably did confuse them, and then made sense later.

That was always consistent and remains so. You have to be willing and open to the help, but He will help you along.

Trying to be like Jesus - hypocrites

My blogs are mostly for the purpose of organizing my thoughts, and since I have started blogging daily it is also for building my consistency and skill as a writer. On that level, it does not matter if or how other people view my blog.

At the same time, I know that some people do read it and benefit from it, which means that if extra effort is needed to make something more clear or accessible, that is worthwhile, and relevant to the goal of building skill as a writer.

I know that with this blog, non-religious readers (or even religious readers who are not Mormon) may find some of the content stupid or weird. Religious readers (especially Mormons) with a conservative bent may find some of the content offensive and evil. I may hit all of those points today.

I have not quite been praying for Christ to return yet. It has come closer. I have expressed through prayer that it seems like the only solution to the world's problems - the only hope of anything improving at all. Still, it does not feel like the time is quite right yet. There are still people laboring and growing and improving, and the work is not done. I try to reconcile my will with God's through prayer, rather than making a lot of demands, so right now my position is that it is too soon and I will trust in God's wisdom and love for us and be patient.

It is nonetheless physically sickening to see how we have fallen. Yes, I am feeling that more because of Charlottesville. There are other factors, and have been. Knowing that people with the characters and personalities of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have control over nuclear weapons is not comforting, rising economic inequality and environmental degradation have been frightening, racism has been a problem here since before the eighteenth century -- I know all of that. The sight of young white men with torches chanting Nazi slogans because enough people are trying to move forward that they feel threatened has still made it much worse. That we have a president who pretends it is many sides because he knows that the actual side is his bread and butter, and that he has been reluctant to admit that anything can be terrorism if it's done by a white person -- that just makes it worse.

"Blood and soil" - that's an old Nazi expression. "White lives matter" and "We will not be replaced" are new, but they are significant in what they express - that actually proclaiming the value of any lives other than white is a threat to their existence. Their existence might change - it should actually improve - but no one is planning their deaths. I guess there is stupidity there, but I don't think there's that much sincerity, so the real problem is evil.

I have a problem with the marchers,  but I also have a problem with all of the people who can be appalled at that, but still feel a need to interject "All lives matter" when BLM is trying to draw attention to the disparities. I have a problem with the people who care more about their feelings being hurt, so that when you are trying to talk about justice and equality all they feel is offense. There are people who are much worse, but the people who can't de-center - who won't see the bigger picture because it is uncomfortable - are a large part of the problem.

I keep thinking of the condemnation of hypocrites. You can believe that you are very righteous while missing the most important things.

You can believe that Hillary Clinton is corrupt for endless investigations into her e-mail, despite it not turning up any evidence of deliberate wrong-doing, or violation of rules that were current at that time, and feel justified, but if you then ignore Trump administration private server use, deletion of e-mail, defrauding of clients, refusal to divest of conflicts of interest, and sexual harassment and assault, that is hypocrisy.

And you can justify that with a personal dislike of Clinton, and that shouldn't even matter because she's probably not going to run again, except that without examining that it is already starting to happen to potential future candidates - before they even declare - so it does matter. We need to be willing to face past mistakes so as not to repeat them. And if one of those past mistakes is proclaiming that there is no difference between the two parties you need to quit lying to yourself right now. There may not be enough difference, but the difference is real.

And that is certainly an issue with racism, because the people that say the most ignorant things about racism show an ignorance of relevant history. There were deliberate actions that got us to this state, and some people moved the pieces and some people just ignored that there was anything going on, but that means that they comfortably perpetuated evil, and no devoted follower of Christ does that.

And I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, because some of it has already been said and some of it will come up on the other blog down the road, and this is already a long post, but I am going to make a couple of strong statements now, and if they offend you, but you have felt the truth in other things that I have said before, then I hope you will grapple with that offense and the reasons why.

Because I am saying right now that you cannot follow Christ and support Trump. If you think you can, you do not know Him. I am saying that if you want to be on the right side when He separates the sheep and the goats, you cannot support Trump. If you want to have a store of oil so that you can get through the time where we wait for the return of the Bridegroom, you cannot support Trump.

Supporting Trump involves too much self-deception. It involves too much shutting your eyes to evil - not just the appearance of evil, but actual evil. It involves too much hate when you need to be building up love.

If you don't see the connection between Charlottesville and Trump, you are not trying. If you are congratulating yourself because you voted for Stein or abstained instead of voting for Trump, you better re-examine that. People are hurting, people are dying, and his is not the sole responsibility but it is all centered around him, so start there.

The United States of America went to war with Nazis and with Confederates. While there may be complications in the way we did that or the motivations, we were nonetheless fighting against great wrongs. Those defeats should not be technicalities - we should be completely rejecting slavery, racism, fascism, totalitarianism, antisemitism, and all other bigotry.

It's gross that we haven't yet.

Trying to be like Jesus - publicans and sinners

I have been thinking recently about the word "publican".

The first time I really thought about it was when I saw a bar owner referred to as a publican. Pub. Publican. Okay.

More recently I was thinking about how two of the places we ate in Italy were both called "antica osteria" (old tavern). Since I have also been focusing on the New Testament, it just sent me down this road.

Taverns in England were associated with the construction of Roman roads. It's not that no one was drinking ale before, but with more travelers there was more need for lodging, and for places that provided that.

Perhaps that doesn't sound like a public service, but those travelers could often be on government business, or traveling to government posts. I don't know that alcohol production had a lot of regulation in Roman times, but nonetheless it does not seem to be a coincidence that the proprietor of a public house ended up having the same title as a tax collector or public contractor.

Yes, the publicans in the Roman empire were more than tax collectors. They might also be military suppliers and oversee building projects. "Public" remains the key word, even if our understanding of the word has changed.

The tavern was open to those passing through, but by virtue of being open (and possibly due to the presence of alcohol) the locals would gather there as well. It could be a place of fellowship and cooperation.

None of those things sound so terrible. There were reasons that the Jews at the time of Jesus had scorn for publicans. For one thing, when a publican collected more taxes than expected, that was profit for him. It was easy to exploit the position.

Greed, dishonesty, and extortion can all be reasonably condemned, but it had gone beyond that, where just the job was enough.

I am not even saying that Jesus only appealed to honest publicans; we know Zacchaeus had cheated people because he said he was restoring what he had gotten that way. Jesus would call anyone to repentance who would listen.

Beyond that, it is interesting to me how much scorn there still is for both bar life and tax collection, if not always by the same people..

There can be reasonable debate about the role of public works, but just as in Roman times there are benefits to a road system and means of transporting potable water. There are things we do better together, and that requires taxes and civil engineers.

It is also valuable to have places where people can gather together - formally or casually - and the presence of alcohol can make that worse but does not necessarily have to.

We should not be so quick to look down on things. We should especially not be so quick to look down on people.

Related posts:

http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2017/02/trying-to-be-like-jesus-inside.html

Trying to be like Jesus - knowing God

Another part in the New Testament that kind of bothered me was in Matthew 25, when Jesus speaks of separating the sheep from the goats. I thought it was down on goats, and I felt sorry for them as an animal lover.

Maybe this is a good time to write about it because I have recently seen some of each.

 Mentally I have one picture of goats and one of sheep, and they are pretty easy to tell apart. Some varieties are more similar.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/12/21/371714463/is-this-a-goat-or-a-sheep-its-harder-than-you-think

In context, someone who has to separate the two is clearly keeping both. That part is just that there is a sorting into two groups that are different; it is not a judgment on goats.

It is a judgment on those who withhold service.

There are things to be done: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and welcoming the stranger. Some do them, some don't, and the interesting thing is that many of them don't seem to have thought much about the significance of doing it. The Lord tells them that whether they give this kindness or withhold it, it is as if it is to him, but both sides seem surprised.

If serving people because you want to go to Heaven is how you start, I think that's okay. I suspect that more frequently things are done because of love, or not done due to a lack of love. I also do not expect that to be a stagnant thing.

The chapter has two other parables, dealing with the ten virgins and the talents. The foolish virgins are turned away as not being known by the bridegroom (despite being invited guests). With the talents, the servant who squandered his makes the excuse that based on his knowledge of his lord, he was afraid of losing it. The lord replies that if the servant knew him, then he should have known to invest it and create an increase with it.

Perhaps of these three parables told together, the last one contains the key: we will get to know our Lord by serving others.

I have written about how sometimes there were lessons built into healing, and time advised to ponder it after, but this is a good time to focus again on how freely given the healing was.

He healed those who asked him and some where others asked on their behalf. He healed people whose affliction was not due to sin (like the man blind from birth) and some where it is strongly implied that sin was a factor (the man lowered through the roof). He healed one who does not even seem to have been particularly repentant (John 5:14).

We may not be able to heal miraculously or turn a few loaves and fishes into food for a multitude, but we can give what we have. We can choose to let more people have access to health care and food and clothing. We can visit those in prison and work for their good, which would probably lead us to see that there should be far fewer people in prison in the first place.

As we work for his children - focusing on their needs rather than their worthiness - we will come to know him by becoming like him. Rather than imagining (mentally creating) a God who is as petty and spiteful as our worst selves, we will be re-creating ourselves in his image. He gave us a good start, but the only way to complete that process is by becoming filled with love, and that love will overflow into works.

It cannot be more clear.

Trying to be like Jesus - what we're listening for

Mark 11 and Matthew 21 both give accounts of Jesus coming upon a fig tree while hungry. Based on its appearance from a distance it should have been full of figs, but there were none. He cursed the fig tree and the next day it was withered away.

I have read two divergent sets of thought about this incident.

One was in Michel, Michel,  a novel by Robert Lewis. A young Jewish boy is raised by a Catholic French woman during the Holocaust, and shortly after his baptism as Catholic an aunt steps forward who wants to take him to Israel. The novel deals with the custody battled and the stress of the religious differences.

The aunt's lawyer is a Jewish man with some unique ideas about Jesus who has named his son Judas. He thought that Jesus was letting the power go to his head, that destroying the tree was a sign of petulance, and that's why Judas betrayed him, though he felt guilty later. While not accepting the divinity of Jesus, the lawyer apparently did believe in the miracles (and I don't remember if there was any explanation of that).

In Jesus the Christ, by James Talmage, there is a very different explanation. He had shown his power to heal, to multiply food, to exert power over the elements by calming a storm and walking on water, and to raise the dead. He also had power to destroy, and to demonstrate that he chose a tree that was symbolic of hypocrisy with its show of leaves without fruit.

https://www.lds.org/manual/jesus-the-christ/chapter-30?lang=eng

Although Talmage does not mention it, I can't help but wonder if the tree was diseased; something was wrong with it. Regardless, for the power that Jesus had available to him, the fig tree is a fairly merciful use.

One thing that is interesting to me is that in both accounts, between the cursing of the fig tree and the discovery of the results they tell of the cleansing of the temple, and they both contain this line.

Matthew 21:12
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

Mark 11:15
And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;

The doves were intended for sacrifice, and they were the substitute for poor people, but even these inexpensive birds marked for death were taken into consideration. He would not hurt them or frighten them by overturning their cages or the tables they rested on.

I believe on my first reading - many years ago - I did feel sorry for the fig tree, because I care about plants and my sympathy is stirred pretty easily. It never occurred to me that it could be petulance, because I at least trusted him enough for that. He was too good for that. (And it was years before I noticed the part about the doves.)

There are many different possible views to have on the things that we read about in the Gospels. How we come to the material influences what we will get from it. There can be a benefit in questioning, because that can lead us to find deeper meanings and reasoning, but an attitude of scorn will do no good either.

Related posts:
http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2017/05/trying-to-be-like-jesus-inspiring.html
http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2017/07/trying-to-be-like-jesus-missing-point.html

Trying to be like Jesus - missing the point

Generally when I am thinking of the perfection of the answers that Jesus gives, I focus on Matthew 22, which we have covered a lot the past two weeks. While I had that in mind, in family scripture study we read another one that I had forgotten: "Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?" (Matthew 12:10)

This question came up more than once, and his answers gave concrete examples. Even on the sabbath you would let your animals out to water, you would pull an ox from the mire or a sheep from a pit, and you still do circumcisions on the sabbath when the appropriate day falls there.

Beyond the example, he added that extra part to try and get their minds to a higher plane:

Matthew 12:12 - "How much then is a man better than a sheep?"

Luke 13:16 - "And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?"

John 7:23 - "If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?"

It reminds me of the Savior's great love and wisdom. One can hope that those asking the questions would see the point, but if they had thought a little before asking, they could have guessed. There was an unwillingness to see the point, because they did not want to accept him.

It is easy for us looking back to see their rebellion, but I am not sure they always felt rebellious. Toward the end, when there are people plotting to kill Lazarus to hide the miracle, and cover up things that they know happened, at that point I think they had to have known that what he said was true and still not want it. Before that, though, there could be room for being wrongheadedly pious.

The verse that first started me thinking about that this time around was Matthew 18:10 -

"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

Mormons believe that, and we have modern revelation to support it, but it's right there in the New Testament written pretty plainly. Despite that, I remember reading a Puritan verse about unbaptized children getting "the easiest seat in Hell", and some literature influenced by the tragedy of children being doomed for dying before baptism.

I can easily see room for confusion on the age of accountability, and how the salvation of those not given the opportunity to know Christ in their mortal life works out - that's why the modern revelation is so helpful - but it should be pretty unequivocal that little children and therefore certainly babies do not go to Hell. Not only is there a clear statement, but it is in harmony with everything else we know about God being love, and everything we would want in a Heavenly Father who is worthy of our worship. How does that get mixed up?

In high school I had a friend who had "Who created whom?" written on one of her folders. I know she found it clever and provocative. I didn't like it, because I knew, and there was no question. Except, regardless of my belief in God creating us, and us being created in the image of God, I have come to see that his children then often create their concept of God in their own image. If we perfectly reflected that starting image, it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, what happens is that we often end up petty, spiteful, and cruel, and then perceive God that way.

Clearly there is a lot of room for thought there, and much of that should probably first be sought in personal reflection. To search and find our better qualities, and to build our relationship with God and feel those qualities, is an important and valuable process.

I do still think it is helpful to point out that a lot of people use religion - specifically Christianity - to condemn the poor and shore up those driven by selfishness and greed.

I don't know how often I have been through the Bible, but it's been a few times, with some parts more than others. I find no Biblical justification for vilifying the poor. There is some for condemning the rich. That is very pertinent today.

Therefore, if you do have a goal to be Christ-like, reflecting upon how we perceive the rich and the poor could be an excellent starting place.

On that note....

https://www.thisappalachialife.com/single-post/2017/05/10/My-Mother-Wasnt-Trash

Trying to be like Jesus - context

Sometimes it is easy to misinterpret answers.

Right after "Render unto Caesar" Matthew gives us another example of a question asked.

Matthew 22
24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:

26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.

27 And last of all the woman died also.

28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

On my mission a woman used this a proof that Mormons were crazy to believe in eternal marriage. I remember it so strongly because she expressed relief that there wasn't eternal marriage, as sometimes it was hard enough putting up with her husband until death, which I found a little appalling.

I can see why she read it that way, but it did not shake my faith. There have been enough hands on the Bible that there can be things that were captured wrong, things that were translated wrong, and things that modern revelation supersedes. However, I think there is something different going on here, based on right before and right after the text.

Before:
23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him,

After:
31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,

32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

33 And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine.

That's a lot of focus on the resurrection. We know it is a big issue, because Paul once used that point of contention between the Pharisees and Sadducees to get out of a jam (Acts 23).

We also know that based on their traditions, the question doesn't make any sense. In Levirate marriage, the marriage to the brothers was all for the purpose of producing an heir for the deceased brother. The failure to produce heirs through multiple marriages could create some complex inheritance issues, and having the practice at all could create some difficult marital situations and complicated feelings, but it would not really call into question which was the preeminent marriage.

Jesus doesn't waste a lot of time on that. He tells them they are wrong, but quickly goes into testifying of the power of God. He quickly points out that even by their logic, when they reference the God of Abraham that this is not just a reference to the past, and to someone who is no more, but a testimony of God's power over death. That does more to silence them than a legal treatise on marriage and inheritance law.

Taken together, Matthew 22 gives us one easily applicable lesson, one that provides context, and one where hedging about a simple answer gives us a parable, but it starts with a parable too: the marriage of the king's son.

In that parable we find invited and committed guests making excuses, and then others attending but one refusing to follow the bare minimum required of dressing appropriately and answering. That can serve as a reminder that in the end everyone is invited, but we still have to accept that invitation, by our actions and in our hearts.

We see examples of people trying to quibble and test and wiggle their way out of it, and Jesus continually providing more wisdom, more examples, and more opportunities.

At some point we should quit testing his patience.

Trying to be like Jesus - logic

In A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony, one character encounters a manticore who is serving the Good Magician Humphrey for a year in return for having a question answered. The question was whether the manticore had a soul. The magician's response was "Only those who have souls worry about them."

Questioned about the value of the answer, the manticore insisted that it was perfect. A simple "yes" or "no" could have been a guess, and a long complicated answer could have been confusing. The answer given was simple, but its truth was also self-evident in the way it was given.

I am always impressed with the answer to the tribute question in Matthew 22: "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?"

19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21 They say unto him, Cæsar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

Not only is the logic self-evident, but beyond that there is a more important answer as it directs them to think about whether or not they are rendering God his due.

Something similar happens with the account of the woman taken in adultery.

John 8
3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Yes, the Mosaic law called for stoning, but the Roman rule they were under did not allow them to impose the death penalty on their own. More to the point, Jesus was there fulfilling the Mosaic law and bringing them to a higher law that had more room for compassion. There is room for several sermons in there, but the most effective sermon was the single sentence that directed them to look inward.

Last week was about how parables can be such effective teaching tools, because they can be understood at different levels, but sometimes that is not needed. There is also room for combinations; the parable of the Good Samaritan follows a direct and self-evident answer that got a follow-up question. Also sometimes it is not automatically clear how important context is, which I may spend some time on next week.

I see three components to the effectiveness of Jesus as a teacher.

One is his understanding of the law and doctrine. He has studied and pondered and is full of wisdom, ready for whatever question will be asked.

The second is his investment in the uplifting of the hearer. Not only does he want them to understand at an appropriate level, but he leaves room for growth: there are hints to what questions should be asked instead, and directions given on what questions should be asked.

Finally - and in harmony with the overall theme of this series - there is an understanding of the needs of the listener, and an evaluation there.

I'm not done with the series yet, but one of the key takeaways should be that He knows you.

What will you do with that?