The Triune God

Some time ago, my grown daughter Stephanie confessed to being confused and puzzled by the concept of the Triune God, which is central to most modern divisions of Christianity. "Father, Son and Holy Ghost." And I have to admit, that the concept doesn't bother me at all, principally because I don't see how it affects the precepts by which we are commanded to live. But, the question set me thinking about how this idea developed.

The conception of the Trinity is the result of meditation on the text by early Christians who found compelling the text "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). The Trinity is generally regarded as central to church doctrine by those who believe it. Major disruptions within church organizations have occurred as a results of disputes over what actually is meant by the Trinity, and whether or not it actually is the true and accurate depiction of God.

The conflict appears to center around the terms used to describe the three aspects of God. When we think of the individual elements of the Trinity, we tend to regard them in the same way we would regard individual persons -- i.e., wholly realized, self-actualizing independent beings. However, our conception of the Trinity comes from the early Church Fathers, who sought to codify our understanding of the Trinity as "three Hypostases in one Ousia."

According to Origen, one of the early Church Fathers:

Hypostasis means an objective reality capable of acting. In modern times, it is commonly translated into English as "person." This is exceptionally inaccurate, as it is completely divorced from the original conception. "Personae" is a closer explication. Ousia means being or nature. As there was only one God, the three hypostases had the same ousia.

To the present day, theologians are still arguing over the meanings of these words and whether this understanding of the Trinity represents a Biblically sound perception. For example, the word ousia is not used anywhere in the Bible in a context that reflects this Trinitarian usage. And in some cases, hypostasis is used in Biblical times in ways that make it interchangable with 'ousia.'

Readers of the translated Bible are being confused because they are injecting their own understanding of or conception of a person into the text; seeing "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" as individual beings, rather than as Origen and the other Church Fathers described them, as individual representations of a core essence, with the representations being some self-selected subset of qualities of the entire being.

There are still Christian churches which reject the Trinity, principally because it is not specifically described in the Bible.

---

References:

• Origen and the Defintions of Hypostasis and Ousia
• Hypostasis in Religion and Philosophy
• Ousia

Those Overpaid Teachers!

Stolen from Spadway, commenting on

Beyond Unions: 5 New Rules for All Teachers

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year!

It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day ... maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE...
That's $585 X 180 = $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries.)

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is! The average teacher's salary (nationwide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

The Christian Sensibility

I dreamed I saw St Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
I dreamed I was among the ones
That put him out to death
Oh I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.
-- Bob Dylan

The beginning of Christian sensibility is the realization that one could commit an evil act and get up the next day and live with it. At that point, one understands the nature of Original Sin; and the true value of God's grace is revealed. Until that evil within has been confronted -- as in Bob Dylan's dream -- God's grace seems but a "nice to have," and the absolute necessity of it is not apparent. Grace abounds when one is "so alone and terrified" by one's own sin ... and not before.

Too many Christians have been seduced by what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" -- the belief that one could live in the world, be of the world, and still accept God's grace. But, he was right that grace is "costly." It requires that one give up living in the world and live only in God. Most of us are unwilling to pay the full price; perhaps, only saints fully accept the cost of grace. Each day presents those decisions -- in thought, word, deed. Peter, in our Lord's darkest hour, faltered. How much more likely then, are we?

Acceptance of the cost of grace is made bearable, finally, in that moment of lonely terror when one looks over the edge into the abyss that is one's own heart. Then, one begs -- not for forgiveness, which is foregone -- but to be saved. Crying out into the darkness, "How can I bear this burden alone?" brings the echo back from the abyss: "You don't have to."

Make me Thy friend, Lord, be my surety: I
Will be Thy client, be my advocate:
My sins make Thine, Thy pleas make mine hereby.
Thou wilt me save, I will Thee celebrate.
Thou'lt kill my sins that cut my heart within:
And my rough feet shall Thy smooth praises sing.
-- Edward Taylor

The End of the Line

Driving up West Burnside Street from downtown Portland, there is a nondescript building on the corner of 22nd Place and Burnside. In the ground floor are the Pizza Oasis, best pizza in Portland; and the Thai Orchid, best Thai food in Portland. Between the two store fronts is a doorway that leads into the building proper: an SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotel.

That hotel was my home for five years.  

An SRO typically is where you end up right before you land on the streets, or sometimes, right after you come off them.  For so much money per week, you get a room.  I paid an extra $5 a week for a room with its own bathroom.  Most of the rooms in an SRO don't have bathrooms; you share the one at the end of the hall.  There's a shared kitchen, too, if you want to use it.  There are some kinds of sharing I can do without.  Involuntarily sharing my food with others is among them. 

For $105/week, I got a room with a bed, a dresser, a sink and a window.  And, of course, a bathroom.  I went into that room thinking that it would be a temporary stop, a detour after a "perfect storm" of financial and personal catastrophes merged, to leave me homeless, jobless and destitute.  I'd managed to scrape a job in one of the worst hell holes imaginable, a produce company on the east side of the river.  But it was a job.  Things would get better.

They didn't.  At work, I was alongside paroled armed robbers, rapers and drug addicts.  There were knife attacks in the back of the warehouse and fist fights on the loading dock.  At home, -- "home" -- there were regular visits from paramedics to revive overdosed drug users, and the sounds of hand-to-hand combat in the neighboring rooms. One winter, the building breaker box melted down and we were without heat or electricity for ten days.  We still had to pay rent, though. Pay, or get out.  You pay -- because when the streets are icy, huddling under a heap of blankets in your unlit room is better than huddling under a bridge.

After a while, you get used to it.  You go to work, you get your check.  You go to the check-cashing place, get your money.  You stop at the manager's office to pay your rent on the way up to your room.

I became a linux user in that room.  Learned shell, perl and C programming in that room.  Learned networking, hardware repair; became A+ and Network+ certified.  Friday night, on the way home from work I would buy two packs of cigarettes and a six-pack of Mountain Dew.  I'd sit down at my desk and smoke and drink soda and program, play chess at FICS, take things apart and put them back together.  Occasionally, I'd upend my keyboard to dump out the cigarette ash that caused it to stop working.

I might have gone on indefinitely in that zombie zone.  About four years into my stay, I got sick.  It was winter.  I went to the clinic at Good Sam.  The doc said it was bronchitis and I should quit smoking. I stayed sick.  I worked sick, shivering all day in the coolers; then going home to lie in bed shivering.  No "sick days":  don't punch the clock, don't get paid.  A couple more visits to the clinic, with the same verdict.

As I lay in my room, too sick even to smoke a cigarette, I realized that if I died there, nobody would notice.  If I didn't show up for work, nobody would call.  People disappearing from that place was a regular occurrence.  I went weeks without talking to my sisters; they wouldn't think it unusual.  You can't get more alone than that: to die and not be missed, until your body starts to stink and somebody calls the cops.

One day I took the bus to work, as usual.  After the two block walk to the loading dock, I had to sit down and rest.  I couldn't go on.  I told my boss I was too sick to work and went straight back to the clinic. This time I got a different doctor; she had my chest X-Rayed; then came back with a worried look on her face.  She showed me the X-Rays. "You have double pneumonia and your lungs are 40% underwater," she said.  "You need to be admitted to the hospital right now." 

Five days later, and $12,000 in debt, I emerged from the hospital. That doctor saved my life, of that I am sure.  And it was like a resurrection. Not consciously, I didn't have some kind of overt epiphany.  As I recovered my health, I began to see the world around me and to take stock of my possibilities.  Within a year, I was working as a telephone technical support "engineer" for Gateway computers.  Two years later, I went to work for WebTrends providing support for the software.  Professional services; then independent consulting. In five years, I went from living in an SRO without even a bank account, to flying around the country on an expense account.

I often look back, and see where I came from.  I didn't get here because I'm "special," or some kind of ubermensch.  I'm nothing special at all; just another guy, with bad habits and an occasional good day.  God put me on a path that led me to a home, a family, a job that pays well.  He let me see my daughter again; he let me keep my friends of 40+ years; he let me live on both sides of the street.  And that's why, every day, I say "Here I am, Lord.  Send me."

Dirt Cookies

There is something about these cookies that won't leave me alone.

http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/02/19/dirt-poor-haitians-eat-cookies-made-of-mud/4120/



I watched this video about 10 months ago, and still, I keep coming back to it. These kids are happy -- happy! -- to eat a dirt cookie.  It's not a joke, not a put-up job. The grownups, their parents, know better. They know the cookies are nasty, but there's nothing else to feed their children.

Today, I'm giving a brief "Mission Moment" at church, in preparation for an offering to "One Great Hour of Sharing". And as I prepare to make my pitch for donations, those cookies are very much in my mind.

Who Does What and Does It Matter

Here are some (numbers from 2008).

Employed Persons by Occupation, Sex and Age
Count (in Millions)	Occupation
52.8	Management, Professional and Related Positions
52.8	Total
24.5	Service
19.2	Office
16.3	Sales
14.8	Construction, Maintenance, Natural Resources
17.8	Production, Transportation
92.6	Total
145.4	Total, all occupations

So, there are 145.4 million Americans in the workforce in 2008, and 52.8 million of them are classified as "Management, Professional and Related Positions."

Sales is an anomalous classification. I believe most workers in that category are probably inside sales, working phones or behind counters. In the Department of Labor Current Population Survey (CPS) tables, sales and office are categorized together. This makes sense. However, I believe also that most persons in sales see themselves as in the category of "Management, Professional and Related Positions," rather than lumped in with "ordinary" office workers such as secretaries, mail clerks and receptionists.

Staying with the CPS classifications, management &  professionals represents 36% of the workforce. (That might give you pause.)  I'm not going to break out the "purely management" from "professionals" such as doctors, lawyers &c.

The reason I'm thinking about these numbers is that one of the constant refrains I hear from the right is that "Americans want ..." this and that. And mostly, I hear this refrain from people in the management classification.

If there's one thing I have learned decisively in 45 years in the workforce, it is that management does not put the welfare of the employee above the welfare of the manager's pocketbook and career. Management is very hierarchical (as is sales, another reason perhaps that they tend to self-identify together). If my boss' boss tells him to do something, he will do it, no matter what he thinks about it personally. He may find it morally or ethically repugnant; he may even think or know that it's illegal; but, he'll do it.

This ability to discount ethics and obey seems to be a quality required for advancement in the world of management. This may account for the rarity of whistleblowers within corporate management. When you think about all the corporate scandals -- the defective products, the financial malfeasance, environmental law violations: pretty amazing how few of these are brought before the public by knowledgeable individuals within the management teams that implemented them or ordered them.  If you have qualms about "sticking in the knife" or "turning a blind eye" on orders, you're probably not going to advance into a position to see behind the green curtain.

Another trait of management is a "Father Knows Best" paternalism. For the most part, managers seem to feel that not only do they know best how to do everything within their business, but they seem to feel a corresponding wisdom about every other aspect of life; and they feel that everyone else not a member of their team has a moral imperative to follow orders. One of the real sticking points in management-labor relations where unions are involved, is that management is absolutely, characteristically incapable of accepting that anyone other than themselves could possibly have anything useful to contribute to the running of a company. After all, if you _were_ competent, you'd be a manager!

The summary line is, that our politics are driven by the 36% telling the 64% what to do -- not just on the job, but in daily life. Now, when the country was founded, the Constitution was written by men who fell into the 36% category: at least, in thought patterns. James Madison was explicit in his description of the Constitutional government as being designed to prevent the "tyranny of the majority," because the anticipation was that the mob would be driven by envy of the aristocracy and would therefore have to be restrained. And the mechanism of restraint was brilliantly conceived.  For rather than applying force of arms, as done by all governments up to that time; and as evidenced in the recently thrown-off yoke of tyranny; the design of the government itself reserved the powers of change to those most deserving of them: the aristocracy; while at the same time, seeming to circumscribe all citizens within that group.¹

Our modern 36-ers are not far from that tree of thought. They believe that it is necessary for the government to be owned by business because if it wasn't, it would be owned by citizens -- and 64% of those citizens are the mob. Hence, again with brilliant insight into the requirements of political expediency, they describe what is best for themselves economically as what is best for "all  Americans."

To the extent that a public school system educates its students to be good citizens, it's bad for the 36-ers: because good citizens can sniff out the poison in the dialog. Hence, 36-ers are against a public  school system that is not devoted to producing "good workers": obedient, mercenary, consumption-oriented and politically malleable. "Sit down, shut up and do what you're told" is the essence of the 36-ers conception of public education. Of course, that's not the education they envision for their own children. To avoid that conundrum, we need vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

To the extent that a healthcare system provides adequate and sustainable care to all citizens, it's bad for 36-ers: because it places all citizens on an equal footing. You will never meet a 36-er who does not believe that he deserves better healthcare than a mother on welfare. You will never meet a 36-er who believes that that welfare mother's baby is genetically and morally equal to his own.

To the extent that a government restricts the avarice of the wealthy, it's bad for the 36-ers: because their lives are dedicated to the pursuit of avarice.

But there's a huge worm in the apple of the 36-ers' eye. There's a layer of citizens at the top of the pile, driving the body politic like a metaphorical brain. Mostly invisible to most of us, the very wealthy work the levers of power in the financial and political capitals of America.

The 36-ers do the dirty work for these rulers. These rulers live in a veritably unbreakable,  invisible bubble. When the 36-er manipulates the political structure to enhance his own comfort by extracting resources from some segment of the 64% below him, he silently passes on the bulk of that extraction to the rulers, gratefully lapping up the crumbs that fall to the floor in front of him.  Above all, hierarchical: just as he is greater than the 64%, the rulers are greater than he.

They keep you doped with religion, and sex, and TV
And you think you're so clever, and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants, as far as I can see.

America has morphed into a kind of feudalism. At the top we have our rulers. The 36-ers represent the gentry, and the lower 64% the serfs.   Everybody is expected to "know his place" and keep it.

Lawrence Lessig has recently penned an article for The Nation, How to Get Our Democracy Back. This article is well worth reading. I have read no more cogent summary of our current political status in America; it is a call to action.

There is no "third way" in American politics. Either business controls the government and turns its broad powers to the ends of profit-making and maintaining the aristocratic privilege of the 36-ers and their rulers; or the citizens control the government and turn its broad powers to the ends of social justice. There is no real-world scenario in which government is ever, will ever be, a neutral party in the daily operations of life in the State.

I can't say that I'm sanguine that we will "get out of the state we're in."

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -- Mahatma Gandhi

¹ Yes, some of the founders recognized exactly what was being done by this design. Patrick Henry is famous for having repudiated the output of the Constitutional Convention, campaigned against it in his home state and helped force the hand of the nascent Constitutional government in order to secure the Bill of Rights; which Madison, et al were wont to regard as "unnecessary" once the government was in place. We owe more of our modern liberty to Patrick Henry than to James Madison.

Today's Poem

There's more to this poem by e.e. cummings than the first line. You
have to read it carefully (in my case, several times) to get the full
flavor.

a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse

Me whether it's president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn't
important whether it's millions of other punks
or just a handful absolutely doesn't
matter and whether it's in lonjewray

or shrouds is immaterial it stinks

a salesman is an it that stinks to please
but whether to please itself or someone else
makes no more difference than if it sells
hate condoms education snakeoil vac
uumcleaners terror strawberries democ
ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair
or Think We've Met subhuman rights Before

The mark of a good poem:  I can't even think of a followup comment that doesn't read lame.