Holy Righteousness

Tags

forgiveness, Jesus, love, Paul Tillich, Pharisee, Prodigal Son, sin, Sinning Woman

Today’s gospel is the story of the Prodigal Son. Yes, I know, the picture at left, is not that, but bear with me.

Paul Tillich paired the story of the Prodigal Son with the story of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. I think it is a good match.

But, as did Tillich, I focus on the elder son in the Prodigal story, and the Pharisee in the sinning woman story. (And you should assume that the kernel of what I relate is pure Tillich.)

In both cases, we deal with righteous individuals. The elder son is so familiar to us, and frankly I’ve always had a soft spot for him. He’s the obedient one, the one who doesn’t get in trouble. If he were a girl, he’d be called a goodie-two-shoes.

What is often missed is that the Pharisee by all accounts is an obedient one as well. Although we are wont to think of Pharisees as those who spout what they don’t preach, actually they did. They defined things in their own way, and then lived them to the letter. Much of Jesus’ condemnation of them had to do, not with their lack of piety, but that they often missed the point of piety. It was form over substance that was their problem.

Here, there is no complaint that this Pharisee was not righteous. He was, by all accounts. Jesus thinks well of Simon it seems and Simon has honored the Lord with an invitation to dinner, a clear sign of hospitality.

In both cases, the rule-follower gets no respect. The sinner is upheld and pampered with praise. And you have to ask why.

Jesus suggests the answer. In both cases, the sinner has sinned hugely, gigantically in fact. One is a whore and the other a frequenter of whores. And God, in his immense graciousness, has forgiven them. Yet this is not the real point either.

Both ASK for and receive forgiveness, and their gratitude is immense. Jesus in fact says this:

It is someone who is forgiven little who shows little love.

What does this mean?

Tillich suggests and I certainly concur, that Jesus tells us that both the elder son and Pharisee are technically righteous, and what’s more they know it. And they expect to be acknowledged as such. They are quick to point out the flaws of others.

Yet, they are not comfortable in their righteousness, and that is why they struggle so hard to be righteous or more properly perfectly obedient to the letter of the law in the Pharisee’s case, and obedient to a father’s home rules in the other.

Tillich sees this psychologically as suggesting that for such a person, there is no feeling of being forgiven, they feel constantly unappreciated, unloved, and unrewarded. This expresses as a lack of ability to love on their part.

They cannot love greatly, and they thus are always judging others as coming up short. The acknowledged sinner, however, is overwhelmed by the graciousness of God’s forgiveness and loves God, and themselves finally precisely because God loves them. They realize they are worthy. Such people invariably can turn that self-love and God-love outward to a greater world. They love greatly.

The woman who wept over Jesus’ feet did not in fact love first, she accepted that she was loved by God, and thus accepted the forgiveness offered. She is to be commended.

The Pharisee and elder brother? They are still locked in their anger and feeling that somehow they still don’t measure up, simply because they are not accorded the blessings they feel they would receive if God truly found them acceptable.

The lesson for each of us I think is to explore the Pharisee/elder brother in ourselves. Are we doing all the “stuff” of righteous behavior? Are  we always attending to our prayers and our rosaries, and our church attendance, our acts of charity, and then wondering why God isn’t blessing us more? Are we concluding that we have not been deliberate enough, focused enough, pious enough, faithful enough?

Are we feeling less than worthy of God’s love, and thus are we more prone to point to others as appearing to do less than us. At least we are not them! we think.

Does this explain the mind of the fundogelical? The bible pounding, “amen” “Praise God” types who can explain in detail why this person, this group, this whatever are not what God wants them to be? Does this explain why certain people want there to be a hell where all those they think are not as good as they, will find themselves?

I rather think it explains them. But they are but the extreme side of the equation. We all, as I said, have to fight down that urge. We all need to accept, really accept God’s gracious love, and not connect our forgiveness with some “sign” of blessing, leaving our lives free of stress and trouble.

We, perhaps, shockingly, would all be better off to have been the whore than the goodie-two-shoes. We might have the capacity to love more, forgive more, and be joyous.

Amen.

Oh, How Much More?

Tags

climate change, environment, God, hatred, Iowa, sin

Things are quite bad here in Iowa. Rains continue at the rate of 4-5 days a week. We have gotten here an additional three inches plus in the last few days. It did not rain yesterday, nor is it supposed to today. Friday, more rain.

In northern and western Iowa and in Des Moines, the situation is more dire. Des Moines has flooding; Ames, home of  ISU is having it much worse, with drinking water now out. The University is flooded badly and they say the worst has not yet come.

Here, the temps hover in the low 90’s and humidity is unbearable. Water is still standing everywhere from our last storm on Tuesday night. I’ve made the pasta salad that will last until this ends, which is supposed to be Saturday. Humidity that is. Rains are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in the long forecast.

We have mail from Iowa Telecom and we are thinking it may be a hookup for high speed Internet. They were recently taken over by something called Windstream or something which has as one of it’s avowed promises “to bring high speed Internet to rural America.”

I expect to drive part way down and walk the rest of the way, picking up that package and the mail. If it is as we hope, we might be high speeding sometime Saturday when the humidity has dropped sufficiently to work around the house a bit.

Flooding is rampant in Poland I hear. Uncontrolled forest fires continue in Russia, more are dead and dying in Pakistan and millions are displaced due to abnormally high flooding.  A piece of ice the size of four Manhattans has broken off Greenland and may threaten shipping lanes and oil rigs. Of course it cannot be steered.

And yet people too despicable to be called humans continue to claim that climate change is a left wing lie, much like general relativity, evolution, and separation of church and state. I attempt, but fail to find Christian charity to pity these utterly oxygen deprived persons whose brains have long atrophied. No appeal to their shriveled souls will work. Their hearts are dried up prunes of self-righteous selfishness.

I don’t appeal to God to change things, for He did not cause them. We did. We all bear the guilt of things left undone, and things done. It is we who have been more interested in planning the trip to Disney world when we should have been standing at the door of our congressional delegations, demanding that they actually legislate on the public’s behalf rather than to dance in the minefield of re-election politics.

I appeal to God change hearts and minds. He is always ready to do that, assuming one’s mind is willing to set aside one’s petty self-serving beliefs and desires.

We are a people filled with hatred at a world gone amok and we are sadly prone to listen to those who tell us it’s not our fault by X’s or Y’s or Z’s. Plug in your favorite ethnic, religious, or class.

I read a meditation today that in essence said: We will never grow more compassionate toward the world and each other until we are willing to admit our own sin.

It’s so deeply true.

All of us who have a place to sleep, adequate food, have been educated, have worked, have attained, have TV’s, IPods, computers, washing machines, and all the other accoutrements of the “good” life, all of us, are guilty. We have done this. We have let this happen. We have fiddled while Rome burned.

And we now reap the whirlwind.

Oh yes, this too shall pass. The humidity will break, the heat will dissipate, the fires will go out, the waters recede. We will shake our heads and talk about the Summer of 2010. We will have our stories.

Our thoughts will turn to fall, and pumpkins and Thanksgiving dinners and what to buy for Christmas.

And we will nod a bit puzzled, just barely remembering, as some new and fresh assault on the planet occurs somewhere, not here. It will be the poor folks of the Balkans or Thailand, or Argentina. Not us, we forget.

We have our own troubles. Mortgages, and job security, and tuitions, and credit card debt. We can’t be faulted for taking care of our own. After all, we elected those congressmen and women to care for all that other stuff. Except they don’t, because they have their own set of personal issues and frankly, being a congress person is just another paycheck.

And so, next year, or the next, it will hit us between the eyes once again, and we will promise to do better. Yeah.  And we will look for people to blame. And we will listen to the demigods, the demagogues, the puerile pundits who too are only making a living telling us what we want to hear.

And nothing will change.

Unless, You actually listen, open, confess, and act. Will you? Will I? You tell me.

Good for the Soul?

Tags

Anglican, confession, religion, sacrament of reconciliation, sin

Sin is not a big topic these days from the pulpit. In most pulpits anyway. People think such sermons are a downer, and church hierarchy theorizes that it keeps people home. Who wants to ruin a perfectly good Sunday being told you’re lower than a polecat in a chicken coop?

Sin is a big topic in some pulpits when it has to do with preaching about what others are doing wrong. Plenty of time is spent nodding as the preacher intones how this or that group is doomed to hellfire for practicing this or that thing. That packs them in, and makes most people feel good by comparison.

We had a sermon on sin today. And it wasn’t a sermon that made me feel bad, rather I found it enlightening, and a good reminder. Sin: Self Ish Ness. Sums it up pretty darn good doesn’t it? That’s what our rector said. And I think she is very right here. So what to do? How about Soul in Need? Yep, that works too. Or self image needy? Uhuh.

None of these were my thoughts. But they all are worthwhile in describing what is gone amok when we sin. We are not trusting God, not listening, not acting. We are stubbornly thinking of ourselves.

What to do? Confession is, as they say, good for the soul. We, in the Episcopal Church, generally do a community confession each week. I do one daily with the Office. The Episcopal Church has a rite of reconciliation, and provides for private confession. If one asks that is.

The Roman Catholic church is big on confession. Strike that. They used to be. By the time I joined in 1994, they had pretty much stopped regular confession. The priest was ostensibly there on Saturday afternoon, before Mass to hear them. He probably would have been shocked has anyone made the request.

Most parishes had a communal confession sometime during Advent and during Lent. You walked up to the priest (usually a few extra priests volunteered to help out) and you gave one sin, and then you all got a communal penance.

So in reality, TEC does more with confession than most Roman Catholic parishes, at least all the ones that I ever attended. One Our Father, three Hail Marys.

I don’t know what Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians do. I am pretty sure Baptists don’t do much in that vein. I don’t know about Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

Many don’t consider it a sacrament. Many are especially against the concept that you confess to anyone other than God herself. I can pretty much understand that. I don’t think it’s required. But I’m still not sure it’s not useful.

My rector says she makes a private confession twice yearly. She thinks it is valuable. The more I think about it, I think I agree.

What stops most of us I suspect is that we develop relationships with our priests and pastors. We don’t want to tell them of some of the things we think and do. We’re ashamed. We’re not worried they will “tell” but we are concerned that they will think less of us. And most of us want our religious leaders to think well of us.

Yet, our clergy are trained to receive our confessions, at least those that use the sacrament. They have as they say, “heard it all before” and are all too aware of the foibles of the human being. After all, they know only too well their own sins, so I suspect they judge us a good deal less than we might think.

It is hard still to speak openly about our failures. It is painful.

But, I think it should be hard and it should be painful. As I sit at the kitchen table each morning and recite:

Most merciful God, I confess, that I have sinned against you,

In thought word and deed, by what I have done and by what

I have left undone.

I have not loved you with my whole heart, I have not loved

my neighbor as myself.

I am truly sorry and I humbly repent.

For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and forgive me,

that I may delight in your will and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your name, Amen.

I confess, that sometimes I recite without thinking much. And that’s no confession at all.

Our rector says we are going to pause before recitation from now on, to give us all time to think of our sins. I think that helps. But I agree with her, that forcing yourself to sit and speak to another person is of greater help.

It has little to do with the absolution given. It has everything to do with being forced to confront our own culpability head on. I recall the very few times I made private confession. I felt ever so much more at peace with God. I felt reconciled. I felt forgiven. This is not to say that it is required to be done this way to be effective–that would be silly.

What it means is that the process is not for God–he knows without our saying a word whether we are truly contrite. The process is for us. And the process of private confession lifts a burden from us in a way that simply doesn’t happen in our private admissions of guilt.

I wish my church would return to a practice of private confession as normative. Being a Christian is serious business, and we don’t seem to take it as such all too often. This seems a good way to start.

Lessons Learned and Those Before Me

Tags

church, empathy, faith, forgiveness, God, inspiration, sin, solace, tragedy

I fully intended to write about the Kagan nomination today, but the first blog I hit turned that all around. It just struck me as something that people of faith should read, for we all at one time or another, and perhaps periodically, deal with such issues. More a bit later.

I also was bowled over and flabbergasted by the latest idiocy spew from Glenn Beck. I happened to run across it in a hugely funny Lewis Black piece on The Daily Show Wednesday. Go find it and watch it, it was hysterical. Our intrepid nut case actually said, that empathy was dangerous, and in his usual insane style, attached it to Nazi Germany and claimed that “too much empathy leads to bad decisions.”

So, when I saw Eileen’s piece, I felt empathy for the things she said, and well, I thought everyone needs to think about this. What is church, what is faith. How do we weave our spiritual lives within that framework? How do we respond to change? How do encourage our churches to help us live our callings and to help us move along the path?

I have shared with only a couple folks here a horrific tragedy that has befallen my church family. One of our deacons has suffered an accident so breathtakingly heartbreaking, that it is hard to imagine.

His daughter, traveling in Iowa with her three small children was broadsided a bit more than a week ago. Two of the children died, and the mother faces multiple surgeries and a long rehab no doubt. It seems hard to comprehend how a family can face such utter devastation. In but a few seconds, a dozen or more people are directly and horribly affected. Lives are suddenly upended and we turn to God and seek solace and understanding.

I have struggled all week with these events, trying to find a way to do some honor to those whom I never met, but feel somehow connected to. For Mark and his family are part of our church family, and we have been wounded. And in saying so, I am again struck by the fact that if I feel this pain, what on earth must they be enduring?

I recall but a few weeks ago that I was feeling disconnected from church in some ways, mostly from my own failings in ministry. This week, my disconnect is different. I feel useless in this tragedy, unable to see anything that I can do. I pray, I pray for the family, I pray for all those affected. I pray for the organ donees, six of them who received life giving help. How that must feel to them. It doesn’t seem enough though, somehow.

I guess it is normal, feeling this helplessness. But as much as it hurts, I am glad for it. Glad for knowing that I am capable of empathizing with others. Glad that I can bring that pain to myself, and feel that I am part of them, and they of me. Their hurt is mine, and that is what I believe God intends.

I look at myself, and I see a woman who enjoys the rough and tumble of debate and ranting about the inadequacies of my government and of my neighbors in this land. I yell at injustice and I satirize people I don’t agree with, sometimes humorously and sometimes rather harshly. Yet, I am also aware that these people, this larger family encompassing state, country, and world, are my family as well. And I want to ever be able to empathize with all the wrong-thinkers out there, everywhere, even those that do things that make me want to strike out, and often cause me to do that, verbally at least.

Perhaps in the end what I have learned from all this is to set my prayer facing a new direction. And that direction would be to be more peaceful in my mind. More tolerant in my thoughts. Perhaps not rhetoric so much, for I think the fine sharp barb is what sometimes awakens minds. The soft talk only reaches open ears. For the closed mind, something more jarring is required.

Yet, I have been guilty of holding anger in my heart a good deal longer than I should. I have not been as forgiving in my soul. I have perched aloft with my self-righteousness a little too smugly.

And now , O Lord, I bend the knee of my heart

 and make my appeal, sure of your gracious goodness.

I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,

 and I know my wickedness only too well.

Therefore, I make this prayer to you:

 Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.  (Prayer of Manasseh)

Out of tragedy comes grace, and out of grace new insight and joy. I see the glimmerings before me. I walk toward the light.

Lord, you see your people struggle with the  desire to be all you would have us be, over and against the callings of the world. Help us to ever place our trust in you, confident that if we do, we will find the solace and strength to put others before ourselves, and to remember that each and every one of us is your beloved. Let us speak against injustice and call for equality everywhere, to all peoples, and to respect in our hearts even those whose beliefs and ideas we find repugnant. Most of all, let us be kind, knowing that we are all one family.  Amen

 

Piercing the Light

Tags

creation, Genesis, God, Light, Satan, sin

I seem to be revisiting the Genesis stories of creation a lot lately. And that’s a good thing I think, because they always temptingly (pun!) offer us new and deeper insight.

Megan McKenna, world renown storyteller, author, peace activist, and some say prophet, tells a wonderful story about the opening of Genesis, the story coming from the Priestly tradition, compiled into written form during the Babylonian exile in the 580’s BCE.

She relates the first verses of Genesis 1 in dramatic style, bringing forth a evocative quiet as one listens with breathless awe at the scene.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “let there be LIGHT”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (NRSV)

McKenna claims that Jewish tradition has it that in that moment God created every soul that was ever  to be for all eternity. Think of that. Now transport yourself for a moment to that ever repeated visual seen so often on every program about the universe and its beginnings–the explosion of matter into existence during the Big Bang. Combine the two, and you have a most powerful and elegant metaphor for God’s creation. Now add the beautiful mystical words of John 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the LIGHT OF ALL PEOPLE.

The second Genesis story is the older of two probably. Both of course originated as oral tradition handed down from times hazy in distant memory, changed and added to as needed to reflect meaning to each generation. The second story, found at Genesis 2-4, was put into written form during the Davidic dynasty in Jerusalem.

It reflects a quite different story, a God much the less Godly if you will, portrayed as more human, who walks and talks much like the humans he creates. He creates the male first, yet the woman will take center stage in this story.

It is the story of the Fall of mankind, brought upon humanity through the act of faithlessness of the woman and acquiesced in by the man. It is all about sin and human failing. We are introduced to Satan, the fallen angel.

Yet, read properly, (I would say, not literally, but then I would be giving an opinion–NOT me!), it tells the tale of failure to take responsibility for one’s own actions. God, being all patriarchal and such, asks the man what he has done, and the man blames the woman, and when asked, the woman blames the serpent.

Some have suggested that what God punishes here is not human failing. If one accepts that God formed humans exactly as he wished, then he apparently gave them the ability to fail in doing right. It would make God rather unfair and unjust to then punish mankind for all time with some mark of sin just because it actually exercised what was in its very nature.

No, the issue here is not the disobedience in eating of the tree of good and evil. The issue here, the failing that God cannot excuse is the failure to take personal responsibility for one’s own actions. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake, and the snake shrugs and wonders, “what did they expect  of me, being a mere reptile?”

God drives out the two from the Garden to live lives of toil and trouble. And so it goes. And we, are born into sin and live as sinful creatures all our lives. While I have no quarrel with the idea that we are all sinful, for indeed we are, I have always been troubled at the idea that a mere child would carry this burden. It seems both unnatural and unjust. (If you hadn’t figured it out, I take a dim view of my God being unjust.)

So it makes sense to me that God’s punishment was for the irresponsibility of the two. It was a harsh lesson to be sure. But the alternative, rather literal interpretation, seems fraught with problems.

Next: Satan

Are You Idolatrous?

Tags

Christian theology, ego, God, humanity, idolatry, Jesus, Mind of Christ, sin

Of late I’ve been reading John MacQuarrie’s tome Principles of Christian Theology. MacQuarrie, a Scotsman, and Anglican was a systematic theologian and taught for some years at the Union Theological Seminary in NYC. As theologians go, he is more readable than some for the lay reader.

I have found his take on sin quite interesting. He points out that much of Christian theology has gone off the road in its assignment of sin as individual for the most part. I’ve mentioned this before, that many of our churches spend an inordinate amount of time on personal salvation, and never get to the institutional sins we face.

MacQuarrie is four square with the idea that sin is both individual and communal. Along with that he claims that the worst sin of all is idolatry. Not in the sense that the average fundamentalist would define idolatry, but in many more senses, some of which we don’t think of.

So we are not talking about “other gods,” the bugaboo of so much of the first 1500 years of identifiable Hebrew/Israelite history. You remember, I’m sure, the constant refrain, “but X worshiped other gods and did what was evil in the sight of God.” Much of the Hebrew scriptures is in fact a constant refrain, of turning away, punishment, repentance, turning back to God, and then repeating the cycle.

We are talking about the “idols” we are more familiar with in the New Testament. Money of course comes to mind a good deal. Jesus uses the incident about the wealthy young man to illustrate that we can love God or we can love the personal world we have created. Not both. We can be wealthy, and love God, that is a very different thing. But our money must be seen as a means to an end, and the end is not our personal comfort and leisure. It is garnered for a higher end, the betterment of those in need.

We of course, can add power, position, fame, and tons of other substitutes for money. We can idolize beauty, or knowledge for itself. The list would be endless, limited only by the uniqueness of the human being.

What was funny, and a bit of a surprise is that MacQuarrie argues that atheists are idolaters. Their idol is humanity. They cannot, through the use of their senses, see God in creation, and so conclude he cannot exist, and that all that has been achieved in human history has been the direct and complete result of man’s actions alone. They have come thus to idolize themselves as the creator. In some haunty arrogance they pat themselves on the back and deny any other superhuman force can be at play.

He is also a firm believer that we should never over extend one of the natures of Jesus over the other. Both are essential and as human, MacQuarrie even suggests that Jesus at least at some points, sinned. Else, he could not be truly human. But, and this is an important but, when Jesus gave everything up on the cross, he gave up the last idol of all–the human ego. He surrendered all to the Father, and thus made perfect the modeling of humanity.

It is because of his utterly true and real humanity, that we have the opportunity to reach for Christ mantle. It is only because of his complete self-giving that we are shown the way to also strip ourselves of that which holds us back. We of course, never succeed completely. Not even the saints, the mystics, the desert fathers and mothers ever attained perfect self-giving. But we known the means of attaining it, and we can try again and again.

So, the answer to the question, “are you idolatrous” is a resounding yes. We all are. We are caught up in our own dramas. Yesterday I was reading the story of Jesus teaching in the temple in John’s gospel. Jesus spoke of the Father, and the Pharisees asked, “where is your father?”

I pondered that, and concluded, that my Father is in the neat box I’ve constructed for him, and which I have placed in the closet for safekeeping. He’s safely out of the way, not interfering with my life much. I and you and all of us construct a God that “works” for us. One that comports with our personal “theology.” We give lip service now and again, by volunteering, giving money, and attending services of worship.

Jesus shows us that we have a very long way to go. In some sense, it is hard, yet, the truth is freedom comes from complete obedience. The reason? Once we abandon our own “needs” and desires from the equation, we almost always know exactly what is the right thing to do. We are freed from the constraints of having to balance our lifestyle against what our heart tells us we should be doing. We are no longer trying to find the balance between self giving to self and self giving to others. We realize finally that the self giving to self comes naturally when we empty ourselves entirely to God’s call of radically open love to all.

It’s an uncomfortable realization to be sure. It’s so much easier we think to keep God boxed, like a toy we take out to admire from time to time. Jesus had a lot to tell us about temptation and sin. But when we take up the cross as our own, we will see more clearly I suspect, not as Paul said, as through a glass darkly. No we will see with eyes unscaled.

I’m not sure I’m up to it today, but tomorrow? Yes, perhaps like Scarlett, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Circling the Sun

Tags

brain physiology, choice, ego, God, Iran, psychology, sin, theology

Forgive me if this comes out somewhat disjointed. But in order to figure this out I need to set it down. It’s one of those living with the questions type things, and I don’t really expect an answer to be spit out so much as I want to finger the parameters of question.

You see, I don’t believe in Satan. I cannot reconcile God to be “all knowing” and the “perfect” creator, and then that he creates a creature who ends up flawed. Oops, Satan chose to wrestle power from God? If he knows God better than I or we, how could that be? Aren’t we told by the religious righties that all will be “understood” one day when we croak and meet God face to face? Well Satan supposedly met God face to face and opted for his own ego driven power base. Makes no sense to me.

So I see Satan as but  a metaphor for our egos, that thing which makes us realize that I am I and not you or we. It has many drawbacks as we know. One is that it seems to think its survival is paramount to all other living things. It will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve itself, even including ending another live to preserve itself. We sometimes protect that right, and sometimes we do the anomalous thing of extinguishing that life. In other words, sometimes it’s okay and sometimes not, and it’s best to understand quite clearly the difference.

Sin, in my humblest of opinions came into the world when the first of our barely human acting ancestors denied food or shelter to another of his kind in the hopes of enhancing his own survival. That’s how I see it. We placed ourselves first.

Now this is where it gets sticky to me. On the one hand we have, as all life on this planet does, a strong, sometimes overpowering desire to survive. And survive we do, sometimes against incredible odds. Yet on the other hand, we also will offer our lives for family and friends, compatriots, and country. One cannot lay this down merely to helping the species or one’s offspring survive, since sometimes clearly that is not at risk. It is sometimes just inexplicable, and fully altruistic.

Yet, it seems nearly undeniable that we always act in our own self interest. Think about that. It may seem strange, since we all can vision a whole lot of crazy behaviors that don’t seem objectively to be directed toward self interest. But I think they still are.

The bank robber seems hell bent on personal destruction. The consequences of being caught are grim, at least they seem that way to us. The same goes for the drug addict, the alcoholic, and a whole host of “self-destructive” behaviors we can name. But clearly, at the moment of decision, they seemed to be the best solution to whatever problem the person faced. All other choices seemed “less good.”

So we have three things here. First we introduce sin (bad behavior vis a vis the admonition to “do unto others”), as a means to protect our survival. Second, we have undeniable altruistic behaviors that clearly can’t aid survival, and third we are driven always to make a constant choice as to each action or inaction we take–is this the best alternative for me at this moment in time?

There is a war going on inside that I suspect we are often unaware of. We are making thousands of choices per day. Most we do with little or no thought, but we do the action, or don’t do the action based on this largely unrealized assumption that we have weighed alternatives and judged this choice the best.

That much of what we do appears thoughtless to others is somehow our failure to really empathize. We engage in this process yet we don’t recognize it in others, perhaps because we judge their choices to be “wrong” and alien to our own thinking.

Worse, we then conclude that the “other” opinion or choice is not just wrong, but that the person who makes that choice KNOWS that it is wrong and chooses it anyway. For purposes of greed, sociopathy, or any other ignoble reason, the “other” is deliberately making the “wrong” choice. Somehow we internalize it even worse, that they are doing this deliberately to make us angry, to stick it to us.

Yet in the end, the real problem as was said in “Cool Hand Luke,” is ” failure to communicate.” A failure to communicate empathically. I’m unable to see the processes by which you came to decision A, in large part because you are yourself unaware of how you got there. You are sure, just as the sun shines that you are right. I am just as sure that you are not. And I am just as unaware of how I got to where I am. But I’m here now, and God damn it, I am right, and you are wrong.

You see where we get? We end with a fist shaking at each other, and all because we can’t puncture that veil of how you decided that this was the best choice. And more to the point, we aren’t much inclined to try. We are right after all, and you aren’t.

I guess I’m convinced that we need to spend a lot less on armaments and plasma screens, and I lot more on brain physiology and psychology. Maybe if we could understand how we decide better, we could understand each other better.

Iran is at a strange place. Much like China was a few years back. There is a huge disconnect between a significant part of the population. China just cracked down. Will Iran? Probably. Somehow they see it as the right choice, and in their collective self-interest. I’d like to understand, but I can’t.