Geering Looks Back

Back       March 10, 2017      Otago Daily Times    Summary by Ian Harris

The gift of life is to be celebrated, preferably while we live rather than waiting for others to do it over us when we die. Birthdays are an excellent time for this, an opportunity to reflect on all there is to be thankful for, what life has taught us, how we have changed. So it was fitting that on February 26, on his 99th birthday, the Rev Professor Sir Lloyd Geering, should preach before a packed St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Wellington on “How my thinking has changed”

Sir Lloyd told how it was only in his late teens that he became involved in the church and, at university, the Student Christian Movement. In his studies at Knox College, the approach to the Bible was liberal. He realised that far from being a set of unchangeable doctrines, Christian thinking throughout history was everchanging. Theology was affirmed as the intellectual exercise by which Christians think through their experience and relate it to all other knowledge: “This is what I have tried to do ever since.”

Sir Lloyd moved later to a more radical approach, demythologising stories about Jesus expressed within a framework of mythical thinking, in order to discover their truth for today’s non-mythical world. Later again, evolution became prominent in his thinking. “Rather than God making the universe,” he said, “it was the process of evolution, by eventually bringing forth humans and language that created such concepts as God.  “My discovery about the priority of language made me realise that we humans do live in two worlds.  But they are not the material world and the spiritual worlds our forefathers assumed they lived in. Rather they are the physical world and the world of human thought.”  The human thought-world then becomes the lens through which we see and understand the physical world. Sir Lloyd focused on three areas to illustrate how his thinking has changed:

 God. Initially, God was for him simply part of the total package of Christian ideas. The word named the mystery of life that could not otherwise be grasped by the human mind.  “More recently I have come to realise that God does not name a cosmic reality at all. It is a humanly created idea in the human thought-world – a word by which we have tried to make sense of the physical world we live in.  “God is an idea that has played an extremely important centering role in our evolving culture. It was the idea of God as creator of the universe that led to the rise of modern science, as mediaeval theologians tried to discover what they called ‘the ways of God’ by conducting experiments.  “But also associated with this idea of God were the values of love, compassion, honesty and truth. These make such moral demands of us that they transcend us. And though the idea of God had its beginning in our mythological past, it remains a useful symbol for our highest values. God is love, just as the New Testament asserts.” 

 Jesus of Nazareth. “He is not for me to be worshipped as the divine Son of God, for that sort of language belongs to the world of ancient mythology.” He was rather a wise man, a sage. “The original Jesus did not talk much about himself at all, or even about God. Rather he talked about the Kingdom of God, describing this in parables, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. He used this term to describe his vision of how people should live with each other in loving relationships of reciprocal goodwill.

 Mortality. “We humans are finite, earthly beings, just like all planetary creatures. We are given one life to live, and there is no future existence beyond the grave in some heavenly spiritual realm.”  Summing up, Sir Lloyd said though his thinking had changed markedly since he first embraced the Christian faith, “at no time have I ever thought it necessary, or even desirable, to reject Christianity, as some atheists delight in doing.  “On the contrary, I remain very grateful to the Christian tradition. From the prophets and apostles of old, and particularly from that remarkable but elusive figure of Jesus of Nazareth, I have learned a lot about how to live life to the full.  “I believe today’s secular and humanistic world owes its origin to the Christendom out of which it emerged. And if humankind is to flourish in the future, it needs to acknowledge these spiritual roots and continually learn from them.

https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/theologians-beliefs-have-evolved-gratitude-christian-tradition-remains

FERDINAND – the Peaceable Bull

by Arthur Palmer          February 2017

Was there ever a more unlikely hero than this? In the land of Spain it is the height of valour and national glory to show that you are able to court danger and escape the perils of conflict with apparent disdain. Bull-fighting is lauded as an artistic way to demonstrate this, and matadors are heroic models. Then what do we make of this tolerance, or even affection, for Ferdinand, the bull who had no desire to engage in this display and preferred to sit quietly and smell the flowers?

Perhaps it was the timing. When the story first appeared we were in the mid-thirties, emerging slowly from a major economic depression, following a disastrous war. We needed a new model to admire. To many of all ages this rejection of violence rejoiced the spirits and delighted the imaginations of a world that was unsure where to look for answers to ancient social problems. The children’s book, written by Monro Leaf, was translated into many languages, more than sixty it is said, and came to the attention of men whose job it is to restrain all threats to national power. This unrealistic rejection of violence was not to be encouraged. The powers that be banned the book in many nations and it gradually faded from world attention as the Thirties focussed on the unfinished business of WW1 and began preparing for the next contest.

In April 1942 I met up with Ferdinand again. As a young Methodist I had become a convinced pacifist in my teenage years and now, at 23, I was entering Strathmore Detention Camp. Here I joined about 300 other objectors who had refused the army uniform, and were now coming to terms with a sentence of detention until the end of the war. This supposedly milder form of imprisonment was a new concept, and the Government was anxious to have it accepted, so for the first year it was easy-going, designed to keep us out of the news while the terrible war hogged the headlines.

After three months at Strathmore my attitude was painfully negative: “I refuse to work in this Detention Camp. I protest at this wartime expedient, designed to stifle our cry for peace. Count me out.” Eight of us signed a statement to this effect and we were sentenced to prison rather than the Strathmore experiment. I was sorry to leave so many of my conchie friends, though several of them before and a number of them later were to be found in the prison camps, which were very similar. So I appeared before the Court again and was transferred to Mt Eden Prison for three months, and later to Mt Crawford Prison in Wellington.

One major question remains. Was it necessary to repeat the massacres of WW1 to defeat this evil doctrine of racial superiority? How could the violent death of millions of citizens of many nationalities, many of them unresisting bystanders, be the only option at this time? The last such military contest had laid waste whole continents and left behind the seeds of further violence, as this new crisis was demonstrating. This world war contradicted my core beliefs. I was unwilling to be part of a repeat, though rather short on convincing answers to probing questions as to what should be done right now to counter the Nazi threat.

But I did gain something from that brief interval, and Ferdinand is one of the good memories. At a Camp Concert in May 1942 Ferdinand entertained us with conchie Brian Snowdon’s re-make of Monro Leaf’s classic, even leaving some lines unaltered, but with that more subversive twist and a catchy tune:

Oh, there once was a bull, a magnificent bull
In the green grass around Taranaki,
And he loved modern waltz and such innocent faults
As music and women and baccy.
He was gentle and kind and his moo was refined,
Attracting the heifers’ attention,
But his attributes mild made the other bulls wild,
And they sent Ferdinand to detention.

Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
The bull with the delicate ego,
Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
The heifers all called him “amigo”,
Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
He’d curtsey and greet them politely,
Oh he knew how to tango and dance the fandango,
But he’d never learned how to fight.

Ferdinand would not shirk
Useful everyday work,
But considered armed violence vulgar,
Turks and Wops by the dozens he counted as cousins,
He was brother to Greek and to Bulgar.
When they asked him to go, and he gently said “No”,
The Chief Bulls were stricken with horror,
And they cried “What would hap. if some slap-happy Jap.
Assaulted your heifer tomorrow?”

Ferdinand, Ferdinand,
He thought it considerate of them
To be derned well concerned
About his own personal problem.
Ferdinand was so bland. He answered, “If you will look after
The wealth you collect and want me to protect,
Well then, I will look after my wife.”

Ferdinand wastes his time spreading phosphate and lime
Or whatever the public determines.
Other bulls find it pays to go wasting their days
Out in Poona (Bai Gad!) shootin’ Germans.
Ferdinand’s tail is long, and the tale in this song
Has several instalments impending.
Many years will have passed ere the tale ends at last,
And Heaven alone knows the ending.
(Repeat first chorus.)

-Sung by the “Whenuaroa Warblers”, a camp choir group, on May 9th, 1942.

Yes, those who listened to that, in Strathmore Detention Camp in 1942, spent on average another three and a half years in such isolation. Not much was heard of Ferdinand in those succeeding years. Nazi war-making skill and the world’s haste in emulating it had silenced him. At huge cost the levers of power were transferred to new hands, and now, seventy-five years later, we find ourselves wondering what awaits us as a new President in America assumes a key role in world affairs. We pause to consider what may come next. Is this what we bargained for when so much human potential, much of it innocent and unresisting, was sacrificed or blotted out? Were there no better weapons than this to counter the racist demons which caused our world so much anguish, and which continue to bedevil us?

It’s time to look for new answers.

Europe torn asunder after desire to debate

Ian Harris                        10 February 2017                       Otago Daily Times

Secular moderns don’t find it easy to get a handle on the remote theological squabble that exploded in Europe 500 years ago this year, even though its effects are with us still. That’s because the life-and-death concepts so vital to everyone at the time — God, faith, sin, forgiveness, heaven, hell, eternal life, the nature and authority of the church, the Bible — mean little to growing numbers of Westerners today.

The explosion was the great Reformation of church life in Europe. Yet, strikingly, the man who triggered it had not the slightest intention of splitting the Catholic Church asunder: Martin Luther was a model monk and parish priest, diligent in his studies, faithful in his religious observances, concerned for his parishioners in the small east German town of Wittenberg.

Like many loyal churchmen of his day, however, he shared a visceral disgust at the corruption of the late medieval church, uber-rich, uber-powerful, uber-political. For example, Pope Leo X, a cardinal since the age of 13, needed big money to complete the building of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. To raise funds, he authorised the sale of get-out-of-purgatory guarantees. The money rolled in.

The German franchisee was a prelate who, for a handsome donation to St Peter’s, had at 24 become archbishop of two wealthy dioceses and bishop of a third. For this he had to borrow heavily, and Leo helped him to pay off the loan by selling the guarantees, or "indulgences", in German territory. Half the proceeds would offset the multi-bishop’s loan, the rest would flow to St Peter’s.

The church had long seen to it that sin loomed large in everyone’s consciousness and fears of hell were graphic and real. People might repent of their sins but must still be punished, whether in this life or the next — for which the church invented purgatory.

Earlier popes had moved to ease their plight by assuming the power to shorten or even cancel their punishment. After all, hadn’t Jesus and the saints amassed a huge credit balance of good works, a "treasury of merits" they could draw on? It was available to anyone who bought an indulgenceLuther’s prince forbade these transactions in his domain. But Luther heard that some of his parishioners were travelling to a town across the border to buy an indulgence from a travelling monk who, to boost sales, broadened the papal guarantee to include dead relatives.

The monk pleaded: "Don’t you hear the voice of your dead parents crying out, ‘Have you no mercy on us, for we suffer great punishment and pain? From this you could release us with a few alms.’ As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."

The question "How can I be saved?" caused Luther great anguish, and he was appalled. So on October 31, 1517, he posted on the local church door, which doubled as a bulletin board for Wittenberg’s university, 95 propositions to be tested in debate. In the previous two years he had come to believe with St Paul that putting one’s whole-hearted trust in Christ was sufficient to bring sinners eternal life — and it came from grace freely given, not by punishment beyond death, and especially not by buying it for cash.

Indulgences were a delusion, he declared, and "those who believe they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers." Ouch! Another thesis questioned why Leo did not use his own fabulous wealth to build St Peter’s, "rather than the money of poor believers". Apart from the denunciation of indulgences, though, Luther showed due deference to the pope.

Then they were translated from Latin into German. The new printing presses worked overtime to spread them around. Swirling social, economic and political currents magnified their impact. The theses tapped into wider resentments — church corruption, the torrent of German money flowing to Rome, papal restraints on the German princes’ autonomy. Luther found himself a hero for saying openly what so many were thinking.

The revenue stream from indulgences dwindled, and the church’s focus switched to papal authority. It ordered Luther to bow to authority and recant. Yet, initially, all he had sought was to debate the question: Can the church justify indulgences on the basis of scripture and reason? The cleft widened. Leo branded Luther "a son of perdition" and excommunicated him. Luther publicly burnt the document. A number of German rulers gave him their blessing. Mutual abuse flew and grew. The church in Europe was irrevocably sundered.

A new Europe was being born. 

https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/europe-torn-asunder-after-desire-debate

Trump fears terrorists, but more Americans are shot dead by toddlers

Gary Younge                Guardian/UK                 8 February 2017
     
Gun deaths – intentional, accidental and self-inflicted – dwarf those related to terror. The talk is of secure borders but within the US many live in a state of fear.

Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that since 9/11 not a single American has been killed in a terrorist attack by a citizen from the countries on this list (of Trumps). The reality is that an American is at least twice as likely to be shot dead by a toddler than killed by a terrorist. In 2014 88 Americans were shot dead, on average, every day: 58 killed themselves while 30 were murdered. In that same year 18 Americans were killed by terrorist attacks in the US. Put more starkly: more Americans were killed by firearms roughly every five hours than were killed by terrorists in an entire year. It is unlikely that scrapping a rule requiring extended background checks for gun purchases by some social security recipients suffering from mental illness will improve the situation.)

One need not downplay the importance of terrorism here. Terrorism is not only murderous. In its ability to spread anxiety and undermine democratic engagement with violence it is also deeply reactionary. Rather than galvanising people around a cause it divides them in the crudest manner possible – on the basis of fear. That’s as true when America kills innocent civilians. But the fear most Americans experience daily isn’t imported – it’s home grown. That’s true across the board, but particularly true for some minorities. Every day seven children and teens are shot dead in the US. Firearms are the biggest killer of young black people and the second biggest killer of all children, after traffic accidents.

While researching my book about all the young people who were killed on one random day – 23 November 2013 – every single parent of a black teenager who lost a child that day that I interviewed said they assumed this might happen to their kid. “I didn’t think it would be him,” said one mother. “I thought it would be his brother.” “You wouldn’t be doing your job as a father if you didn’t,” said another.

Many of the areas where these young people live, and die, look like war zones – empty lots, half-demolished houses, depleted infrastructure, militarised policing, potholed roads, boarded-up houses, abandoned churches. But more importantly, they are experienced as such. People (mostly young men) disappear – either to prison or to the grave – leaving a huge gender imbalance. Times are hard, and the informal economy is rife, meaning there are spivs everywhere making an ostentatious display of their wealth. The one major difference is that whereas wars often cement communities as people band together against a “common enemy,” in these areas the enemy is everywhere and, potentially, anyone.

Many of those who insist that, when it comes to terror, one must balance individual rights against collective security, become curiously silent when it comes to adapting their interpretation of the right to bear arms to the issue of public safety.

In 2002 I interviewed the late Maya Angelou about her views on the 9/11 terror attacks. “Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America,” she told me. “But black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.”

If the current administration applied just half the zeal to making sure all people in the country feel included and safe as they do to making sure some outside of it feel excluded and anxious, the impact on Americans’ sense of security would be repaid exponentially.

After a judge blocked the Muslim ban over the weekend Trump said that if there was another terrorist attack America should blame him. Between me writing this article and you reading it the chances are another child will be shot dead. Whom, I wonder, should we blame for that? [Abridged]

Gary Younge is the author of Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of 10 Short Lives

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/08/trump-muslim-terrorists-gun-violence-america-deaths

Trump is only finishing what Hollywood and the media started

Waleed Aly                   Sydney Morning Herald               2 February, 2017

For a brief moment, it was almost as if they were people. They were scientists working on new treatments for HIV/AIDS or whose research had helped contain the spread of that Ebola outbreak a few years ago. They were engineers who led NASA deployments of rovers to Mars. They were elderly people banned from returning home after travelling for a family funeral – and others banned from attending the funerals of their American relatives. They were translators helping Western journalists or the US military. They were dog-owners whose pets were suddenly stranded. They were high-school students who wanted only to attend a space camp. They were vets and doctors and musicians. They were Olympic gold medallists and Oscar-nominated directors and actors.

That's what struck me immediately as news of the Trump administration's immigration ban screamed across the world. I'd never really seen Muslims described in that way, and it was frightening just how much it stood out. It was like some lost tribe had been discovered: the previously invisible inhabitants of the badlands that occupy our fears far more than they do thoughts.

Trump's signing of an executive action to bring sweeping changes to the nation's refugee policies is causing fear and alarm for immigrants in the U.S. whose family members will be affected. And frankly, that's why we're here. Something as crude and bludgeoning as this only happens because of the years that precede it. Say what you will about Donald Trump, he is not suddenly afflicted with insanity. He is not the generator of some new malevolent thought. He's building on foundations he hasn't laid. He can only do this because the cultural environment exists to receive it as some version of common sense. He can treat Muslims in a grossly undifferentiated way because that's largely the way public culture has trained us to see them.

That doesn't mean Muslims must always be terrorists – though that is only a semitone from Trump's rhetoric. It's that they must always be defined by their relationship to terrorism. If we're in a tolerant mood, we'll make a series of disclaimers about the "moderate majority" who reject such atrocities. And sure, that's true.

But the trouble is that's not the story of a people. It's not anything really, other than a statement of what someone isn't. In this formulation you can be "not a terrorist", but you can't be something. Not a contributor, not an asset, not even a battler. You can't be complex, nuanced, evolving. You can either confirm or "challenge" a predetermined stereotype, but that's just another way of saying you must prove your innocence – over, and over, and over ...

So it's hardly surprising that – even as the touching stories of those caught up in Trump's dark fantasy were everywhere – the fact of a terrorist attack on a mosque in Quebec City this week barely touched any emotional register. Nothing about the lives of the six Muslims killed, or even of the Trump-loving white guy who killed them, seems to have been worthy of the same treatment. Trump did make his condolences public, but only as his press secretary said the event justified the President's "proactive rather than reactive" steps

It would be wrong to call this a double standard. It's not that we feel an affinity with Trump's stranded travellers that we don't with those killed in Quebec. The truth is we feel little affinity with either. It's just that the former are fodder for a story we're more interested in telling right now. The best way to tell that story has been to discover the humanity of those affected, but the story is really about Trump and his cyclonic presidency. That's the cause of the emotional investment. Were they victims of Obama, or even a right-wing lone-wolf terrorist, they'd be immediately less interesting, less human.

Yes, I take some heart from the parade of Hollywood celebrities, for instance, dedicating their awards-night speeches to standing against what Trump has unleashed. And I take some heart from the thought that finally Muslim stories are being told that actually correspond to their lives, But not too much. Not when few cultural institutions have been as effective at building the most one-dimensional Muslim stereotypes as Hollywood. And not when a media now saturated with disdainful, heartfelt coverage of Trump's chaos, has not even the slightest hunch that it has done so much of the dehumanising work for him.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/-gu3lay.html [Abridged]