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Father, father, there’s no need to escalate…

For some reason, I think of my dad, standing at the bottom of an escalator, asking my sister if he needs to go upstairs. Then she tells him that “there’s no need to escalate” and he understands.

…for only love can conquer hate.

Actually, the total annihilation of the human race could also conquer hate. But hate is not something in and of itself that should be conquered, though. For instance, I hate ignorance. I don’t think that some formless “Love” can swoop down and conquer the hate I have for ignorance. It’s ironic that most people are ignorant of my hate for ignorance. (This too I hate.)

Don’t punish me with brutality

So there’s some mob guy named Tony Butali from the Bronx. As a front for his organized crime, he owns a tea-bag “company” which he has named Butali Tea. When Tony needs to put the pressure on a rival, he ties the rival’s hands and feet to a chair and starts slapping him in the face with tea bags. Hence, don’t punish me with Butali Tea.

I have a few days before school starts again, so I thought I’d run a database-driven blog instead of my modest flat-file creation. Much integration will happen in the near future!

Some say that Islam’s third pillar, Zakat, was the forbearer of the graduated tax code. Today’s tax code is even more extreme than the ideal proscribed in Zakat. Islam’s across the board tax is a flat tax, not a graduated (progressive) tax. While Zakat implores that 2.5% of one’s annual holdings be given to charity, for it to be a truly graduated code, this percentage would have to be progressively higher as the scale of wealth ascends. For example, one with modest holdings would give 2%, one with holdings over $500,000 would give 2.5%, one with holdings over $1,000,000 would give 3% and so on. A similar type of progressive tax code is one of the major facets of the Communist Manifesto, and has been a part of the US income tax code since World War I.

It’s quite sad that it’s come to the point where a proper study of Islamic culture must be prefaced with the explanation “Not all Muslims are terrorists”. But it’s obvious why the “stereotypical terrorist” is Muslim, as the great majority of terrorist acts in the past 30 or so years have been committed by fundamentalist Muslim extremists.

That the Oklahoma City bombing wasn’t committed by Muslim extremists doesn’t explain away their growing track record:

1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed … 2000, The USS Cole was attacked and more than 15 American Sailors were killed in Yemen … 11 Sept 2001, four airliners were hijacked and destroyed and thousands of people were killed … 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded … 31 July 2002 5 Americans were killed by a Palestinian HAMAS bomber in Jerusalem while attending school … 12 Oct 2002 more than 200 innocent civilians (including 200 Australians and 5 Americans) were brutally murdered in a Bali nightclub … 29 Oct 2002 more than 700 Moscow theater goers were taken hostage and threatened with execution … 11 Mar 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people and wounded 1,460 … 1-3 Sept 2004, Beslan, Russia school children taken hostage; 344 civilians were killed, at least 172 of them children, and hundreds more wounded … 7 July 2005 London bombings, 56 people were killed in the attacks, with 700 injured …

*Note that these specific atrocities were not committed within the context of declared wars.

To put this into perspective, there are over 1,000,000,000 peace-loving Muslims in the world who are not extremists. The idea of jihad has been corrupted by extremists to the degree that it justifies the murder of innocent people (especially Jews, Christians, and Westerners) for the purpose of instilling fear and terror into peoples and governments. That some Americans react negatively to the concept of “Arab” or “Muslim” is a testament to the terrorists’ effectiveness in instilling fear and terror.

When law enforcement and government agents are assigned the task of looking for terrorists, it seems prudent to me to profile people who are most likely to be terrorists. Put another way, instead of confiscating the nail file of an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, we should be looking for terrorists. It’s all about statistics. It would be absurd to ignore them. A distinction should be made between statistical profiling and racial profiling, the latter of which is prejudicial and not based upon common sense.

Many of Jesus’ disciples were eventually put to death for preaching the gospel after Christ’s resurrection. They were willing to die spreading His word. Something of enormous importance must have happened after Christ’s death. One could hypothesize that the disciples would have gone back to being fishermen and carpenters had Jesus not rose from the grave and appeared in the flesh to them.

Jesus never “doubted” the Jewish doctrine. For in Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah is compatible with Jewish doctrine. He had immense respect for the law.

Also see John 1:16-17: “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The laws of Moses exist partially to underscore how extremely hard they are to follow, and ultimately, the futility of salvation through human actions alone. Jesus was literally the last sacrifice — His death and resurrection constituted the fulfillment of Mosaic law.

Our church has a mission statement — a statement that defines who we are as a community. “In Christ, we are bread for one another. Broken, we gather. Nourished, we reach out.” The statement hints at the community — gathered in Christ’s name — that becomes the body of Christ. Not in the manner of transubstantiation, but more along the lines of Christ’s words, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5) Belonging to a community of believers means a certain solidarity with the mystical body of Christ. The various church communities would be the arms, the eyes, the legs, the hands of Christ, and taken as a whole, would constitute the body of Christ.

Ekklesia is indeed an appropriate term for Christians because it recognizes the communal aspects of the religion. Worship services and masses are central to the Christian faith because they bring people together as “one bread, one body”. It is possible to be a Christian hermit, but the community of believers and the presence of Christ enrich the experience. In other religions, in particular Theravada Buddhism, the individual is given precedence over the community and the worship of deities isn’t stressed. As Buddha said, “…work out your own salvation…”

Christ’s presence within the church body is spiritual, and — for many Christians — visible as well. During the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the bread, through the miracle of transubstantiation, becomes the body of Christ. Within the hallowed confines of a worship space, Christ’s spiritual presence is experienced, the bread is transformed into the body of Christ, and the community of God commemorates it. Our church’s mission statement acknowledges both the mystical body of Christ, and His body, which we commemorate in the Eucharist.

Jesus’ farewell words, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age…” (Matthew 28:20) assure us that He will continue to grace us with his spiritual presence when we gather in His name. Early Christians probably took this to heart. His farewell words were resonating in peoples’ heads, and the thought of Jesus being spiritually present was probably in the forefront of people’s minds. I believe today this is not always the case. In some churches, a casual atmosphere detracts from one sensing the “mystical body of Christ.” In others, Eliade’s “sacred space” can be felt just by walking up the front stairs. In short, the mystical body of Christ is not just something Christians believe in theory, but it’s something they can experience.

I found an old satirical article from The Onion that depicts the insulation many Americans have from the atrocities and poverty of Third World and developing countries: Woman who “loves Brazil” has only seen four square miles of it.

In all good humor is a morsel of truth — For instance, I have no idea what it’s like to be without means to acquire food or utilities, and I’ve basically lived a sheltered life. It’s also interesting (and kind of sad) to think that I can spend in one day what would constitute the annual per-capita income of some of the “developing” countries. We can do this and not even think twice about it.

Oh my gosh! All this time I thought e.e. cummings was a woman.

What I like best about the Confucianist principle of jen is that “subsidiary attitudes follow automatically…”, meaning that if we possess the qualities of jen, we don’t really need to worry about the details because our overall conduct will reflect it. It’s as if you’re a changed person, a la 2 Corinthians 5:17.