anElder's blog

Once in a while I review my files, re-reading articles I've gleaned from the mass media. By divine coincidence I came upon an article entitled "Greed: The Mother of Sin", authored by Phyllis Pickle, then, in 2002, a Contributing Editor at Publishers Weekly. It relates directly to my recent posting re: Paul's contention that money is the root of all evil.

Subtitled "Many world religions say greed is the stuff other deadly sins are made of.", she references (the 2002) testimony by Alan Greenspan, then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, as saying he believed "infectious greed" was the culprit in the (then) recent rash of corporate scandals. Some thought that the fact that Greenspan was "spanking businessmen for exhibiting greed" felt like some sort of betrayal. Afterall we'd been told that greed, properly regulated was good, for business and society as a whole, that we'd come to think of greed as being an ambigious quality; sometimes good and other times bad.

Ms. Tickle said that "the major religions had no such illusions about greed. Greed, say many of them, is not only unambiguous, it is the Mother of All Sins".

Here's a radical idea; that we take seriously the whole concept of Christian forgiveness and apply it to our foreign policy with Iran.

In the Lord's Prayer we ask that our trangressions towards other be forgiven as we ask others to forgive ours. We all know how much of a challenge it is to forgive. We all know it is more blessed to give than recieve. That's why the Lord's prayer asks 1st for forgiveness of our transgressions, it frees us to then forgive others. That's the psychological basis of The Golden Rule.

Now let us summon up the courage to face, quite honestly, our history with Iran over the past half century or so. In the late 1890's a British oil company found significant oil reserves in Iran, set up shop and after concessions were granted in 1901, began to exploit those resources, mostly for their own profit. In 1933 improved terms were granted to Iran. During WW2 Reza Shah Pahlevi, seeking to gain greater control over his nations oil reserves from the British sided with the Axis powers which resulted in a British-Soviet Union occupation of the oil fields in 1941. Reza Shah Palevi abdicated. His son, Muhammad Reza Shah Palevi succeeded to the throne and adopted pro-Western policies. (This is the Shah we are most familiar with.)

Nowhere in the New Testament do I find any reference to Jesus and homosexuality. Why I ask? I suspect it has to do with he being concieved, by divine plan, in the lowliest of stations in ancient Jewish culture that he was accepting of all persons, without exception.

As Our Creator accepts all of divine creation without exceptions, Jesus was conceived in this lowliest of states as Our Creator's living example of unconditional love for all, no matter their station in life. Moreover I believe Jesus could see into the hearts of all who came before him, and saw the love in their hearts. He understood that sexual orientation is a condition of birth, not a choice and thus accepted everyone where they were. Hence he did not, and could not, condemn anyone for being who they were by the nature of their birth.

As the current leading political issue is, rightfully, the economy, I would like to assemble a team of writers, editors and reviewers to author a white paper on the topic of progressive Christain economic policy. With Kety's inside connections to the Obama campaign I would like us to develop a paper that places economic issues in a progressive Christian context.

Rev. Roger has graciously provided us with several good biblical references. With Bill Peltz' well established experience as a stock broker I invite others like these two to step forth and offer your thoughts and experiences.

I would base it in the premise that we, as divinely created creatures, have free will to choose and are bound by the consequences of our actions to provide mutual service one to another. The Golden Rule, AKA, the Ethic of Reciprocity, would be our guide. We would pursue policies that provide a level playing field for all persons.

So if we are a Christian nation, then what would a Progressive Christian Economic Policy encompass, how would it be implemented, what kind of legislation would be needed to put it into action?

In his recent May 28, 2008 piece entitled "Evolution and Homosexuality: The Twin Terrors of the Christian Church", Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote of "a new, human, celebratory theology struggling to be born. In this new theology the call of the Christ figure is not to rescue the sinner so that the sinner can become the abuser of others; it is rather to empower us to become so fully human that we do not need a victim to victimize, but can become a new humanity, people who are not struggling to survive, but who are capable of giving our life and love away. A fully human Jesus, a new way, besides sacrifice, to view the cross and a new meaning to be found in early
Christian creed that in Jesus God has been engaged, will be the hallmarks of this new theology. It is time for the Christian Church to make this shift in a conscious way."

Tuesday morning June 17th.
Last evening, during our Theology Panel conference call, the five participants; Jim Ramelis, Rich Warden, Bill Peltz, Steve Rockwell and Bo McGruffy (sp?), discussed the topic of a Theology of Social Responsibility.

We developed a list of topics that might fit under that label. Included might be:
Economic Justice - Corporatism
Gay Rights - Same sex marriage
Immigration - Undocumented worker rights
Global Stewardship
Health care - universal coverage
War Veterans Care - rehabiliation

Added to that list might be, from prior postings:
Stem Cell Research
Separation of Church and State

We discussed areas were we might find common ground with Evangelicals, especially young folks.

From an June 1, 2008 article in the NY Times, by line - Neela Banerjee (www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/us/01 evangelicals.html) the following appear to be areas of commom ground:
Care for the poor
Environmental protection (i.e. creation care)
Immigrants
Persons w/ HIV/AIDS
Stem cell research
Failing Inner City Schools
Human Trafficking
Support for Senator Obama (informally)

2 areas where we may continue to disagree are Abortion and Homosexuality, which young Evangelicals still consider sins.

The spirit that motivates me to pursue the efforts of the Theology Panel is one that seeks to develop theological underpinings in support of our professed social action goals. At this point I believe a Theology of Social Responsibility best expressed my intent. Let's pursue this further on this evenings conference call shall we.

Please do join us.

I extend a very happy Father's Day to all the Dad's, GrandDad's and future Dad's in our merry Christian community. I rememberance of my Dad who would have turned 105 tomorrow I send rememberances of all those good men now gone from our midst, but not from our hearts.

I raise a toast to all, good men each.

Cheers,

Rich

Just a reminder, for those interested we will be conducting the next on-line meeting of what has become known as the Theology Panel next Monday night, June 16th, 8:30 EDT. To particpate call 1-218-339-2500, use 727705* as your access code.

We are midst a very lively and profoundly important discussion on many topics such as the thinking of early church fathers, reincarnation and social justice. It is the focus of the panel to attempt to provide a progressive Christian theology to our work in achieving social justice (or as one person titled it "social redemption", also a good term). If we can provide biblical, and other, references for our social action work this will make an important contribution to the CL community.

Whatever you like to call our work we are deeply engaged in discussions of our personal world views and how we individually and cooperatively seek to change the world for the better. I am greatly heartened to witness the open mindedness of our community and strongly encourage it's continuance.

Please do join us.

Rich

While we await more evidence, i.e. verifiable information on Reincarnation there is a long list of scientific studies making a good case for an afterlife. Maybe they just give us a glimpse into the eternity Gary speaks about, that the Bible says exists.

The first of these was published in 1975, by the now famous Dr. Raymond Moody, in his book "Life After Life", which describe "actual case histories that reveal there is life after death". Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, famed pioneer for her work with the terminally ill, provided the foreward. In this timeless little tome Dr. Moody describes the experience many of his patients reported to him, the common stages and the impact the experience had on those who underwent the experience. This work became known as the Near-Death Expereince wherein persons clinically, but not actually, dead revived and told of their experiences of going thru a tunnel into the light, meeting dead relatives or a religious figure and being told it was not yet their time to transit from this plane to the next.

Of interest here is that several people reported meeting Jesus, or a Christ-conscious being. At the end of his book Dr. Moody describes parallels between the experiences of his patients and the Bible, Plato, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Emanuel Sewedenborg. The result of his research was to instill in him a deep sense of an afterlife.