Adventures in Missing the Point

How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel by Brian D. McLaren and Tony Campolo is a kind of tag-team book. First one author writes a chapter, then the other writes a rebuttal or clarification. The subtitle of the book spells out the thesis pretty clearly--the evangelical church in America fell prey to cultural influences and neglected the gospel's message, substituting something related but not quite right. The indictments mostly deal with evangelical churches, because that's where our authors come from. The liberal churches notoriously went their own way long ago. The Catholic church seems to have become an umbrella organization covering a wide spectrum of belief and practice. But the evangelicals pride themselves on keeping close to Scripture.

As one example take the chapter that deals with the church service itself. The authors assert, and I can confirm, that many churches work hard to provide an emotional atmosphere that is supposed to be conducive to piety. They calibrate the songs for emotional effect--but they seem to be afraid of silence. And in the end it is not our emotions we meet to get in touch with, but God.

Other points: The Gospels demand that our beliefs work themselves out in action, in helping our neighbors. That requirement is not entirely fulfilled by preaching the gospel to him--it needs to be tangible. (Charles Williams once said that "In the end, all loves must be physical.") I am not better than the notorious backslider--he is just notorious and I'm not. But how easy it is to feel and act superior!

I'm afraid I agree with Campolo that McLaren defines postmodernism entirely in negative, and therefore rather useless terms, and judge it a pretty worthless foundation for studying theology. And I have no idea why they want to try to revisit the adequately clear and humane orthodox doctrine on homosexuality--unless they too have been snowed by the local culture. Aside from my complaints about those two chapters I have no hesitation in recommending the book.

Consumption

If you assert that some friends have more money than they know what to do with and they deny it, are you entitled to point to their fancy hot tub and announce "J'accuse?"

Given how much I pay for blogger, I can't gripe too much, but things have been pretty tangled up recently. I couldn't update my template with new pointers to the revised index blogs, I couldn't publish a new entry, and republish didn't work from the archive--all efforts going west with some missing script file. Perhaps my heart isn't pure enough--I generally use Mozilla from a Linux box, not IE from Windows; and that has caused problems in the past. (Not this time, though--I tried both).

Weekend

This past weekend we went to a wedding. Great people, and I wish them all the best.

The weather for the trip was great; cool and sunny, with birds and green and few crazy drivers (even in Chicago). I remember my wedding, being overwhelmed with unfamiliar names and faces; and the groom here seemed also dazed. I think it would be a great comfort to offer the couple a "scorecard" with the family trees and who's at the wedding--a "cheat sheet."

The billboards in Indiana were odd--3/5 for casinos and most of the rest for Krazy Kaplan's fireworks. (Would you trust the safety of a "crazy" fireworks shop?)

War: obsolete index

War

Everybody else already put their oars in, so I guess it is my turn.

• We are in a religious war
• Winning a religious war
• Winning a religious war correction
• Comment on comment on MidEast
• France
• Should France be grateful?
• Vichy and D-day question
• American Empire
• War reporting
• A new campaign begins
• Our World-Historical Gamble
• TV reporting of the war
• Terror and Liberalism and Qutb

I find that I cannot edit long-archived posts and have the results show up reliably on blogger. Thus, in order to keep the index posts up-to-date, I have to repost the index posts from time to time. Major nuisance.

Scattered, by Gabor Mate

is subtitled How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It. I have to admit that's an attention-grabber. People have said that its description of early life at home was right on, and left them weeping. Parents of ADD kids say they've felt indicted by the book. I can see why.

Mate's thesis is that ADD is largely due to environment, not heredity. He explains that all the correlations explainable by heredity are also explainable by the parental environment (including some of the twin studies: twins tend not to go to radically different environments from each other). On the assertion that environment is the key, he goes on to slay the dragon.

Some people are exceptionally sensitive. If a very sensitive baby is raised by parents who are extremely stressed, the attunement between parent and child doesn't happen enough, and there is empaired brain development. (The brain is extremely plastic.)

It is not that a disorder develops, but that certain important brain circuits do not develop. Interference with the conditions required for the healthy development of the prefrontal cortex, I believe, accounts for virtually all cases of ADD.

And what does that do for us?

The prefrontal cortex may be seen as that policeman. (traffic cop) One of its major tasks is inhibition. It evaluates the myraid impressions, thoughts, sensations and impulses reaching it from the environment, from the body and from the lower brain centers. It must select what is essential and helpful and inhibit input and impulses that are not useful to the organism in the given situation. Our initial response to a stimulus, whether anxiety producing or pleasurable, is unconscious. It comes not from the cortex but from lower brain centers where emotions originate. The cortex has a split second to decide whether to give permission to the impulse or to cancel it. One way to understand ADD neurologically is as a lack of inhibition, a chronic underactivity of the prefrontal cortex. ... Hence the efficacy of stimulant medications: they arouse the inhibuitory function.

(from the chapter titled Forgetting to Remember the Future).

As a baby grows he learns to remember the future, to shut out certain stimuli in order to focus on something of interest. It seems quite plausible that if you inhibit the development of this skill you will develop something very like ADD.

Mate spends some time describing himself (classic ADD) and his extremely stressful (for his mother) early years (a Jew in Nazi Europe), and various case histories. He asserts that a stressed parent cannot bond ideally with the baby. Children pick up very quickly on emotions, and on indifference or distraction. Children predisposed to extra sensitivity don't develop the comfort/confidence to be able to focus on one thing well.

His solution to ADD issues with young children is to deal with the parents' stresses first, and only then look to medication if still needed. The ADD child needs pro-active love and attention, and unconditional love and accptance. He goes on in detail about suggestions for parents and teachers of ADD. Teachers need to have ways of letting ADD kids exercise and be creative without disrupting the other students: something most schools are not at all well-equipped to handle.

He has suggestions for adults with ADD as well. I think these deserve some detailed description. My interest isn't moot: we have an adult son with ADD.

The ADD adult, like the child, needs more than organizational tools and behavior modification techniques. Although these do have their place, they will not address the fundamental problem, which is not how the person manages this or that duty or self-appointed task but in what relationship he stands vis-a-vis his own self. The issue still remains one of relationship, but this time parent and child are combined in one and the same person.

The steps he lays out for the ADD adult are

• Compassionate curiosity in the search for self-insight. Notice, not judging the behavior and the feelings that drive it, to find out what the underlying feelings actually are.
• Self-acceptance: tolerating guilt and anxiety. Guilt is intrinsically useful, but can be inappropriate. Learn to decide where guilt is real, and what causes it when it isn't.
• You don't punish yourself for where you find yourself.
• Choosing a guide: psychotherapy and counseling. (Can be $$$, but choose your priorities)
• The physical space. Make a conscious choice about how to live; set small, incremental tasks if you must, with strict time limits rather than job completion goals.
• Sleep hygiene. The ADD adult is often a night owl: separation anxiety? But lack of sleep undermines your emotional and mental state. Be proactive about getting sleep.
• Nutrition. Pretty obvious.
• Physical exercise. Pretty obvious.
• Nature. Get outdoors, relax away from the urban--even if it is only lying staring at the grass in a yard.
• Extracurricular duties. Don't overcommit yourself.
• Recreation. This is NOT the same as entertaining diversions. TV is entertaining "but not a process that re-creates."
• Creative expression. "It is unusual for me to meet an ADD adult who does not have some secret longing for artistic expression, and almost as unusual to find one actively doing something about it." Creativity and ADD "originate in the same inborn trait: sensitivity." Maybe you won't be a famous artist, but you'll be your own artist (in whatever art form: music or math).
• Meditation and mindfulness. This includes the obvious: TM-like generic meditation, but also the spiritual exercises of prayer and contemplation. Contemplative solitude, or "any activity, from gardening to martial arts, that promotes mindful concentration will bring benefits."

That many people would feel indicted by the book is no surprise. No parent can honestly claim that they've never been distracted or unstressed and always ready for their child; and the suggestion that this lack could have injured their child is heartbreaking. So pretty much everybody will recognize themselves in the situations, whether or not there is reason to feel guilty. Remember the "refrigerator mother" explanation for autism? This is somewhat kin to it.

Which is not to say that he is wrong. ADD is on the rise at a rate that doesn't seem explainable by superior diagnostic methods. We have a very stressful and child-unfriendly society. I include the TV babysitter among the disasters of our culture. It cuts off real human contact and self-directed play. TV uses shortcuts to attract our attention and focus, and (Mr Rogers being one of the few exceptions) offers frantic changes in topic and scene that can't possibly help develop concentration. How can you develop concentration of your own when the topic changes are not self-directed by determined by the implacable schedule laid down by the director?

I'm not an expert in this field, unless you count trying to raise someone with ADD. But the first rule of medicine is to do no harm, and the suggestions Mate provides can't hurt, and are bound to help make life more pleasant.

I've skimmed a lot. If you have or deal with ADD children, find Scattered and see if you find it useful.

My earlier comments were not unmotivated, but preparation for this.

Let me begin by asserting my credentials in a backwards kind of way: Most of the public claims of racism are malicious lies. When I hear Jesse or Al complaining that some hapless bystander is racist, I assume they are lying and that the rest of their complaint may be safely discarded. The term has been so abused at the hands of the politically correct and the professional victim class that it has essentially lost all meaning except as unrefutable abuse.

This loss of meaning is dangerous, because there are racists: I've met some--both black and white. While pretending that there hasn't been progress in race relations is culpably deliberate blindness, there's still some attitudes that need some work.

One of them you can see in just about any high school. Count the number of white girls with black boyfriends, and compare that to the number of black girls with white boyfriends. In a big enough school you'll find a few of the latter, but a lot of the former.

Why would black boys be in greater demand in the dating whirl than black girls?

• Girls are held to much tighter standards of physical beauty than boys, and the female standard of beauty is strongly northern European. You may remind me that some high-paid models are black, but notice how many are of East African ancestry, with facial features much closer to Caucasian than West or Central African. It isn't racist to have single standard of beauty, but it isn't terribly clever, given how dramatically beatiful women can differ.
• Women are often attracted to the "bad boy" types, and a stereotypically rebellious/dangerous teenage boy stands a fair chance of attracting girls. Here we start getting into racist stereotypes--or sort-of stereotypes. Given the relative rates at which black boys wind up in conflict with the law compared to other groups, it is an easy stereotype to maintain. (In some places the rates are higher than 1 in 3. Not here, AFAIK.)

  Why women are interested in "bad boys" I can't say for certain: maybe it is the same general principle as that behind the "trophy wife," just transposed into an "I'm good enough to tame the very worst." Maybe the "bad boy" is a budding alpha male and she wants a strong protector. Maybe I should ask a couple of women to review this for me...

  At any rate, insofar as the "bad boy" effect applies, it worries me that the black boy can be so easily considered a "bad boy."

• Our society has a history of the myth of the super-sexual black man. This is somewhat related to the "bad boy" effect, but I think it different enought to deserve its own category. This component is very worrisome, because it springs out of the attitude that the other is inferior, as I described in a previous post. Not just unruly, inferior.

So far so no good. However, there is another effect at work, rather more benign. Both men and women can be attracted to "the girl/boy next door" or "the exotic stranger." The advantage of the familiar is having a stable home life for the kids, and the advantage of the stranger is adventure and mixing up the gene pool a bit. The black boy comes from a different enough environment, even if local, that he qualifies as "the exotic stranger." So should the black girl--but she doesn't seem to. Is this because a super-sexual man is "admired" but a super-sexual woman is "a slut?" Or am I missing something obvious--like social pressures in the black community suppressing black-girl/white-boy combinations? I hope I'm missing something obvious here, otherwise we have a longer way to go than we think.

FWIW, evidence that police stop black men more often than other groups is NOT convincing evidence of racism. Irritating as the policy undoubtedly is, it is merely an efficient use of the limited police resources to target a group much more likely to actually be criminals. Whether police resources ought to be used efficiently is perhaps a political question.

Why do we in the West have a myth that primitive cultures/primitive men are highly sexual? I don't know for sure about other cultures, but from a few hints I think this myth is found in the Mid-East and China as well. How many "Polack jokes" refer to the sexual prowess of the Polish? Think of the Southern (and Northern too) post- and ante-bellum fears of super-sexual negroes, and the lynchings that came of the fear.

Let me make clear at the outset that I judge this myth to be false. Primitive generally refers to the technology and education of a people, not to character traits. People in the most primitive societies spend tremendous amounts of time trying to make sure they have enough food for themselves and their families. They may have many children, but most die because the whole family is living on the edge of disaster.

In White Lotus Hershey suggested that slaves (in his book they were West Coast whites captured by Chinese) found sex a bigger part of their lives because there wasn't much else to do when the day's labor was done. Close but no cigar. I think they are perceived as having nothing else to do. The civilized man finds a multitude of obligations that interfere with climbing in bed with his wife: meetings, social gatherings, late nights with financial issues, taking care of children, and so on. He perceives the "primitive" man in terms of irresponsibility, or lack of responsibilities, and assumes the primitive man would do what he himself thinks he would prefer to be doing.

In addition the primitive man or the slave is quite possibly physically stronger than the civilized man; and it seems plausible that he also possesses greater sexual stamina.

Of course the real slave is apt to be dead tired at night and not have his time his own in the morning, and the real primitive hunter will be thoroughly occupied by finding food and fixing his tools. Our civilized man's perception is mistaken, based partly on projection and partly on non-random sampling. (The slaves' festival dances were the exception, and not common. Of course that's the time the master saw what they were doing: non-random sampling.)

But the master, or the amateur anthropologist, whose time and energies are eaten up by the responsibilities arising from the very variety of opportunities of which he is so proud, feels weak and thinks the primitive man is strong.

Concepts

Francis Schaeffer noticed long ago that a generation had grown up that didn't use the word truth to mean the same thing previous generations did, and things have only gotten weirder since then. Sin doesn't seem to be a concept most kids in college have a handle on--even some of the religious ones. But ask them this: "Have you ever done something that, if you knew your friend had done it, would break your friendship?" It'll take them a while to sift through that question, but sooner or later something will come to mind. And when they do they're not apt to admit it to you, but they've recognized sin.

OK, so I have trouble resisting a good pun. Or a bad pun.

This blogging is a tad frustrating. I feel a little delicacy about using the machines at work for this sort of thing, and there's always much to do with kids when I get home, and competition for the machine when the little ones go to bed. So, I compose late at night, and most of my stellar insights during the day go begging. Trust me, they were brilliant. Just like yours.

With so many Brittany-wanna-looklikes, this University is looking more like a Navel Academy.

The Road to Hell

When The Road to Hell (by Michael Maren) came out I spotted it on the library shelf and grabbed it. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," and what intentions could be better than helping to keep people from starving to death? Around the world, but most especially in Africa, Non-Governmental Organizations and UN programs work to provide famine relief.

The problem is that the hungry people are often spread out over a large area. It is hard and expensive to bring the food to them. So: bring the people to the food!

The results are hideous. The same concentration of people that makes food distribution efficient means that sanitation becomes a major problem. The farmers are uprooted from their farms, and even if they could grow a crop (and they can usually grow something, even if it isn't enough to live off during a famine), they can't. So the amount of food available drops even farther. The farmers that remain on their land can't afford to grow more than subsistence crops, because they can't compete with the free food offered at the concentration camps--so they only grow what they need. If farmers have been encouraged to buy fertilizers or pesticides, they will already be in debt, and so will go out of business completely because of the competition from free food.

In the camps there is nothing to do, unless you can get a job with the NGO. So children grow up (sometimes for a few years) with no traditional children's chores and no examples of parents working, and lose part of the work ethic.

In countries with civil wars, the situation is even worse. The concentration of people and supplies makes them targets, unless the NGO workers pay bribes and hire (generally from among the bandits) guards for themselves and the goods. So the aid workers wind up funding the very civil wars they are trying to ameliorate the effects of.

The aid workers ... OK, let me be a bit more accurate. Some of the aid groups, especially religous ones, try to be more sensitive and spend money as much as possible to the benefit of the locals. But in the more secular ones (the UN groups dramatically so) even the field workers tend to treat themselves in the manner to which they became accustomed in Europe or America, and the generator runs air conditioning for the office in the camp while the refugees swelter in plastic tents without even fans. SUV's for the staff rank in priority right up there with trucks for the food, and don't forget the per diem!

All of this might be dismissed as unfortunate side effects, but Maren uncovered UN documents showing that some refugee relief groups didn't care that their work was worse than useless. Their only significant interests were in maintaining their staffs and the funding levels.

Peter Biddlecomb wrote of visiting one aid/training center which was trying to teach the local farmers how to use modern equipment. Their star tractor driver, Peter discovered, was blind in one eye and so afraid to turn left that he would drive miles out of his way doing right turns to get where he needed to go. He was the star driver because of the number of miles he logged.

An aid group wants to be able to measure how well it is giving aid and number of tons of food imported (not necessarily distributed--see "bribes for bandits" above) or miles driven or number of children in a camp are easy things to measure. The number of people who didn't starve is harder to count, as is the number of farmers who didn't go out of business. The things that actually help aren't always easy to measure.

For example, one proposal for nomadic tribes is a "cattle bank," in which a fellow who is flush with cows or goats in good times can make a "deposit" in exchange for a promise of return in kind or the equivalent in money on demand. When drought strikes cattle can die, and the nomad has nothing to sell for food; but if he has made "deposits" he still has a cushion to support his family.

But how do you measure how well such a thing works to explain it to the donors in the US? By the number of nomads who don't lose everything in the drought 11 years from now? Easier to round up people into camps after the fact, and take juicy photos of starving children to make the donors feel guilty.

Recent years unveiled the sex for food scandals of UN-run camps in Sierra Leone; and the utterly politicized "refugee camps" of Palestine are utter abombinations. NGO's can do good work, even noble work--but the structural problems mean most of the effort is wasted or even damaging. You're safer giving to a religious group, but even there you should consider whether what they do makes sense. Will the people be more self-sufficient after the aid comes through or less?

On the road this morning I saw a fairly new car with a Van Halen 1984 bumper sticker. I hope the owner kept it as a souvenir of his work with the group's tour, because otherwise it seems rather sad. Was the most dramatic thing in this person's life an entertainment 20 years ago?

Lest you think that all I read

are histories and books about current events, let me introduce you to Terry Pratchett's Night Watch. For those not familiar with him, he is a science fiction/fantasy writer who has most recently been writing novels based in his Discworld: a magical flat world carried on the back of four elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space. You should already get the idea that whimsy and satire are his stock in trade. Pratchett also rejoices in a pleasant writing style and a love of humorous asides and literate in-jokes.

There are many different regions and groups of characters on Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (a large and very grimy city, home to the wizards acadamy and the Night Watch), Ramtop (up in the mountains, rural with witches), Uberwald (kind of medieval, with werewolves and vampires), anywhere (Death, a Tooth Fairy, etc), and so on.

Vimes is the commander of the Night Watch, which is Ankh-Morpork's police force. (The Day Watch is a bit more political.) He stars in number of the books as the man who tries to arrange for some kind of order and justice in a city with an official Thieve's Guild and less than a dozen watchmen with no tradition of public service. As time (and books) go by he acquires more loyal watchmen, including dwarves, werewolves, and the incognito/unwilling heir to the throne.

In this book Pratchett throws Vines back in time to a critical time of revolution when the young Vines had just joined the force--and a worthless crew of corrupt doughnut-snarfers it was. Unfortunately, it looks like history has been changed, and young Vines will "go to to the dark side" unless the older Vines can figure out what to do.

Sure, it sounds unbelievably complicated, but this is all happening on the back of a tortoise, remember?

Vines indulges in too much irritable introspection for my taste, but I enjoyed the book anyhow.

I prefer the books with the Watch or the Invisible University (and Rhincewind the runaway wizard) to those with the witches, but I can tell Terry prefers the witches--they get the good lines. One series of books deals with Death, a skeleton with the job you probably expect, and his attempts to understand human life. I think the best of those I've read is A Thief of Time. I get annoyed with his dislike for religion (he uses Andre Norton's idea that gods get power from their worshipper's belief {doesn't sound a bit like Exodus, does it?}); and he's as careless with metaphysics as he is careful with logic (believe it or not) and physics.

From Pyramids this nice bit of physics:

Light moves slowly, lazily on the Disc. It's in no hurry to get anywhere. Why bother? At lightspeed, everywhere is the same time.

Or this observation about Egyptian-style embalmers

Possibly thirty-five years in the funeral business, which had given him a steady hand, a philosophic manner and a keen interest in vegetarianism, had also granted him powers of hearing beyond the ordinary.

Bernard Lewis again

I'm back to Bernard Lewis again with his The Crisis of Islam. (Please forgive me if I don't stick in links to Amazon--I get most of my books out of the library. Three cheers for the South Central Library System of Wisconsin!) This is Lewis' first book since September 11 (What Went Wrong went to the printers before that date, though it was published after).

The book is an expansion of an article for The New Yorker in which he brings to bear his understanding of Middle Eastern history to explain why bin Ladin's views of the world are so popular. Earlier works have been more generic: this one is focussed on how the attitudes in the Moslem Middle East, and to some extent elsewhere, developed the form they have.

He reviews the nature and purpose of jihad, the shock of not just stopped in advance but losing ground, the shock of losing control of all but the most sacred lands in Islam to colonial powers, the shock of losing the Caliphate (felt even in Indonesia according to another source), and the failure of almost every attempt to create their own governments. The Arab response has essentially been to assume that

• We have been betrayed and tricked by the West. The solution is to oppose any Western solutions and ideas, which merely seduce us from the true path. All Westerners are liars, especially the newspapers. The great Satan (seducer/trickster) is the United States.
• We have not been holy enough (following Qtub and Wahabbi), and so God is punishing us. The solution is to be holier in following God's law, with no exceptions.
• We have been betrayed and tricked by false Moslem leaders. The solution is to consider them infidels, especially if they work with the West.
• The Jews are behind all our troubles.

The self-deception and hunger for conspiracy theories of the "secular" Arab population make it hard to communicate with them, and the Qtub/Wahabbist influenced religious Arabs don't want to hear us at all. Terrorism is an old tool in the Middle East, but the confluence of Khomeini's interpretations of Shiism and the exigencies of the Iran-Iraq war (in which Iran used volunteers to run through mine fields in advance of their soldiers), together with the demand for more effective terrorist attacks against Israel, formed the cult the suicide bomber. This is novel in Islam, but attracts very little condemnation.

As usual, Bernard Lewis is knowledgeable and clear, and gets my thumbs-up. If there is one flaw in his analysis, I think it lies in his treatment of the centrality of the Arab/Israeli conflict in Moslem thought. I am not convinced that the reasons are purely political and historical--this doesn't seem to give it enough force in non-Arab regions. I think we should look to Bat Ye'or for another part of the answer: It is because Israel is Jewish that it is such an affront. Israel is not a Western colony, and not a followup to the Crusades, but a revolt by the oldest group of those given a Divine revelation against the "Seal of the Prophets" (TM). It is felt as a betrayal, since the Jews were nominally given respect and protection and "their place" in the world (see Bat Ye'or for how this worked out in practice).

Blood Diamonds

by Greg Campbell, tells the story of how diamonds in Sierra Leone fueled one of the most bizarre civil wars in history. Increasingly corrupt governments failed to address basic needs and basic responsibilities (such as control of the borders), and a flourishing smuggling trade grew up. The diamond cartel (founded by the infamous Cecil Rhoades) had and has a strong interest in buying up all the rough diamonds it can, in order to keep the price from collapsing, so these all-too-easily transported rocks always had ready buyers.

The RUF was formed as a thin veneer of revolutionary rhetoric over an organization designed to smuggle the diamonds that they mined using slave labor in the conquered territory. The proceeds bought more guns, helicopter, cars, and drugs. Even AlQaida took an interest in the trade, buying large numbers of rough stones (which can't be traced through bank transaction records).

The RUF is best known for their intimidation campaigns, in which they attacked civilians and chopped off hands of the people they left alive. They had no affinity for any local ethnic group, no ideology, no plans for government, and no long term schemes for keeping the wealth they accumulated--most of which seems to have gone for guns and drugs. They were vicious thugs looking only at short term money and power.

The groups that opposed them tended to become like them. The Kamajors were tribes from near the border with Liberia that armed to fight the RUF, but they soon found that they needed money, thus they needed diamonds; and they got into the smuggling and intimidation business. The governments troops were not controllable, and often banded together with rebel groups. The ECOMOG (West African economic community military forces--mostly Nigerian) peace keepers were venal and careless, and came to represent "Every Car Or Movable Object Gone." The UN peace keeping forces (in the most expensive peace keeping effort in UN history) were ill-coordinated, ill-equipped, given ill-considered mandates and generally ineffective.

There were only two bright stars in this ugly mess: Executive Outcomes (a mercenary company!), and the British government which sent in paratroopers to straighten out the mess the UN had gotten into. In an absolutely staggering oversight, Campbell completely omits the role of the British troops in salvaging the peace. If you read his book you'll think the UN troops and workers eventually saved the day--and it wasn't so. The UN was in deep trouble until the Brits arrived and put the fear of real armies into the combatants, and started training real police instead of the freelance shakedown artists.

Campbell names names and sources, and I learned a few things (I'd been keeping an eye on events here for some years, so it wasn't exactly new to me). Yes, find and read this book. And see if you want to buy a diamond again, even if only 3% of the share comes from bloody regions. Who says "Diamonds are Forever?" (Answer: The folks trying to keep prices artificially high by monopolizing the supply. DeBeers cannot have 3 executives in the US at the same time or they become liable to arrest and prosecution under US anti-monopoly laws.)

We've had some arguments

with teenage daughters about radio stations and TV shows. When is it reasonable to pick out the good stuff and just turn off the bad, as opposed to chucking the whole thing and leaving the TV off completely?

I think this ties in with the book of Judges. If you will forgive an illustrative short story....

---

Three Israelite brothers, Moesh, Tulax, and Jesh moved to a small valley to farm. They worshipped God, held the feasts, and gave tithes to the Levites, and tried to do what God wanted. In this valley lived a few pagan families who worshipped several different gods: one of fire, one of harvests, another of rain, and so on.

Moesh thought that some of the pagan women were very pretty, but he remembered that he was not supposed to marry a pagan woman, so he married another Israelite from several valleys away, and they started a family. Sometimes he traded food with some of the pagan families, and sometimes they got together for dinner. He noticed that his neighbor Sulla would always splash a little of his drink out onto the floor before he drank any. Moesh asked Sulla why, and Sulla said that this was what they always did--it was one of the customs of the country. When Moesh ate at Sulla's home, everybody splashed a little out of their drink, from the grandfather to the baby (who splashed a lot!). The only one who didn't was Moesh, and he felt a little uncomfortable.

One evening he sloshed a little bit himself when everyone else did, though he tried to make it look like an accident. The next week he did it again, and pretty soon he was splashing a little out just like everyone else.

When their families ate together, Moesh's son BarMoesh noticed that his daddy was splashed a bit of milk out on the floor with the Sulla family, and asked why. Moesh told his son "That's nothing, its just the way they do things here." So, BarMoesh cheerfully splashed his milk too, and not just with the Sulla family, but sometimes when he was alone as well. He asked his friend BenSulla one day why: he'd never thought to ask before. BenSulla said "Oh, that's just so it will rain."

When BarMoesh grew up he married and had children of his own, and at every meal and every time they drank water outside they splashed a little on the ground first--just to make sure the rain would come. One day his son Mobat asked his friend Sulbat about splashing, since Sulbat seemed to know more than he did. Sulbat told him that the splashing was an offering to Ba-el, the rain god; and that every year you were supposed to sacrifice a sheep on an altar in the hills as well. Since Mobat knew the splashing was all right, and helped the rain come, because his daddy said so, he supposed that the sacrifice in the hills was OK too. And so, when Mobat grew up, he took a sacrifice to God at the tabernacle and another one to Bael in the hills. But the altar to Bael was closer, and it even had a statue of Bael he could look at, so he liked it better.

Tulax (remember, Moesh's brother), when he moved to the valley, also saw the pretty women, and decided that one of them was too pretty, and too good a cook to pass up, so he married Murpa. Murpa was a very nice woman, and she loved their children, but she insisted on keeping some of her family's customs, such as going up in the hills once a year to an altar that Tulax needn't bother going to and always putting the chicken head in the fire. Tulax wanted peace and quiet in the house, so he let Murpa do what she wanted.

Murpa told their children BarTulax and Melpa stories about people, and about the land, and about the spirits in the stream, and about the gods. Tulax told them about God and how Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt, which always impressed the children, but Murpa told them most of what they heard, so when they grew up they thought there were many gods. So they went to the tabernacle with their father, but they more often went to the altar in the hills with their mother, or offered a chicken to the fire god themselves.

When BarTulax and Melpa grew up and had children of their own, they told their children about all the gods and spirits they knew, but the real God was only one, and He seemed a bit far away, so their children didn't pay much attention to Him.

Jesh saw the pagan women, but he knew he wasn't supposed to marry one, so he eventually found a wife several valleys away. He made friends with his neighbors, and traded food with them, and sometimes ate with Sulla. Sulla would splash a little out of his cup before drinking, and Jesh asked him why. Sulla said it was just the custom of the country. Jesh asked, "Why is it a custom?" Sulla said, "Well, it is to make sure it rains."

Jesh asked "Why does that help make it rain?" Sulla said, "It is a little offering to Ba-el to remind him that we need rain."

Jesh said, "I can't do that; I can only worship God." Sulla didn't say anything.

But after that, Jesh felt more and more uncomfortable eating with Sulla and his family, and so he tried to only meet with them at times when they wouldn't be eating. Sulla thought Jesh was being standoffish and unfriendly, but Jesh wouldn't eat with the Sullas, nor would he let his family eat with them anymore.

When Jesh's children asked Jesh why the Sulla family splashed milk before drinking it, Jesh explained that the Sulla family was worshiping an idol, and that he wanted his family only to worship God. When Jesh's children grew up and had children of their own, they told them the same thing, and told them the stories of Moses bringing the Israelites out of Egypt.

So, three Israelites came to the valley. One was a compromiser, one was disobedient, and one was faithful. The grandchildren of the compromiser became idolaters. The children of the disobedient man became idolaters, and their children as well. Only the grandchildren of the faithful man were still faithful. It was so easy for the compromising man to compromise, and so easy for the disobedient man to give in to his pagan wife, and so easy for the children to worship nearby idols; that it is no wonder that so many of them became idol worshippers.

Deuteronomy 23:24-25

says "If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grainfield, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to his standing grain."

Deuteronomy 24:19-22 says "When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this."

When I lived in Aurora, the apartment complex was at the edge of the city, next to a farmer's field. If the inhabitants of our complex had tried this kind of "snack harvest" we'd have taken out about a full row's worth of grain: two if the folks from the complex a few blocks down had joined in. Maybe the farmer could stand the loss, but it wouldn't be trivial.

So set aside the literal application of this. Never mind about trying to find modern equivalents (the grocer survives on a thin enough profit margin as it is). What is the principle to follow, or the attitude we're to cultivate?

I think both passages are really aimed at the owner. The first asserts a limited claim of one neighbor on the produce of another. One principle is that the owner is not entitled to demand the entire produce of his land. The second passage asserts the same principle, though in a slightly different context. The first passage says that neighbors have a share, and the second that the helpless have a share. The owner of the land is not the absolute owner.

We are accustomed to seeing this principle in a different context: property taxes. The owner is not the absolute owner because the state has a permanent lien on his land for taxes.

In this case in Deuteronomy the limit on ownership is not so easily calculated or predicted. Neighbors may come around frequently, or there may be more poor around than usual (Ruth 2:15-16). You can think of this limit as creating a certain fuzziness about what is mine and what my neighbor has a claim on. My neighbor is not entitled to steal: going into my vineyard with a basket goes beyond neighborly commonality into greed and theft. But I am not entitled to demand every kernel of corn from my field.

Interestingly enough, if I plant to the edges of my land and harvest every grain, I leave no room and no food for the overlooked birds and insects that pollinate and help keep my land fertile and versatile. If I plant every year and don't let the land lie fallow now and then I'll have to drag in extra fertilizers. Once again, if I assert absolute ownership I run into troubles--not with God's law this time (at least not explicitly) but with ecological law.

Can this sort of fuzziness ever be made part of statutory or common law? I can recall instances when this would have been a useful principle. Recall George Lucas and the "Phantom Edit" revisions. However amused Lucas may have been by the revisions, he had no choice but to assert his property rights over the material, on pain of losing it all. There was no room for fuzziness--and there ought to have been some. Changing the law would have all sorts of unintended consequences, and I'm not advocating such changes; merely showing that justice and art would have been better served with less claim to absolute ownership in this case.

At any rate, the intent of the Deuteronomy passages seems clear enough: I am not to consider myself as absolute owner, and am to consider my neighbor and the helpless as having liens upon my increase/income. This falls short of the New Testament view, but it is hard enough to obey the Deuteronomic rule.

I've found the secret for growing luxuriant grass in my yard: plant a garden.