How to Help Haiti

If you are like me, you feel genuine sympathy for all the people suffering in Haiti, but your dilemma is that you are so far away and feel both physically distant and powerless to do anything. The generous donating of money is good, but there is must be something more that one can do. So, I will write to help Haiti, although I am not sure that this article will be of much help. As I have already said, I am far from Haiti. I am no expert on Haiti and provide this article as food for thought and action.

As I listen and watch news programs about Haiti I am astonished to find that most people focus on physical help. Of course the people in Haiti desperately need medical attention, food, housing, money, and heavy machinery to move ruble. This we cannot doubt. However, alongside previously listed needs, Haiti needs to have virtuous people with specific skills to rise up.

Good, skilled people. Haiti will not recover unless good, skilled people come into Haiti and train Haitians or find Haitians that are good, skilled people. What I call the physical help (medical attention, food, housing, money, and heavy machinery, etc.) that Haiti needs will only be useful if there are people who have the morals and the skills to organize, lead, and distribute well.

In the radio and television clips that I have seen, there has been little talk of Haitian leadership. I’m not sure why. However, I believe that the main concern for Haiti right now is leadership. Haiti needs a messiah (small ‘m’; meaning a political leader who will help to save Haiti from trouble) to rise up. When there is chaos and trouble evil tends to thrive.

There are stories of groups of Haitians who have just received food from foreign aid agencies and some person running into the crowd and saying ‘a tsunami is coming’ so that everyone will abandon their goods. The “boy who cried wolf” then turns into the wolf and takes all the goods that people have left behind. There are bands of people who – either because of their weapons, the size of their band, or their physicality – force other Haitians to give up whatever goods they have left.

Haiti needs good politicians who will unite people to the good causes of providing organization, civil stability, and some kind of law enforcement. Without political leaders (and this may be no more than a father leading his family, or a woman leading a group of 20-30 people) who are morally good and have political know-how and skill, evil leaders will rise up and torment the country.

Good, trained doctors, nurses, engineers, machine operators, economists, etc. are also needed in Haiti. Professionally qualified Haitians with these skills need to be found or trained. Without trained professionals there is little hope that Haiti will recover quickly or well from this recent disaster; both physical and personnel needs have to be met for Haiti to recover.

Help Haiti by giving money if you want. Giving money is better than nothing. However, my fellow Canadians must consider the needs for good personnel Haiti. If you are a good leader that can help organize and enable people, (and I doubt that you are), or if you are a qualified doctor, nurse, or an engineer, then consider actually going to Haiti. Or perhaps you know someone who fits into one of these categories that you can mention this to. If you cannot help and know of no one to help in Haiti, then we must pray. We must pray for order and leaders and engineers and doctors either to go to Haiti, to be trained up in Haiti, or both.

We must pray for Haiti. We must pray for good leaders to conquer evil gangs. We must pray for a type of Moses. May God hear the cries of the Haitians and our accompanying cries! Not that prayer is our only recourse, but it is an essential part of our love coming to fruition. Love must also come to completion in actions. How are we acting?

When A Civilization Is Ripe For Its Fall

In the first article of my last entry, Beginnings of Thoughts on American Politics and Religion, I made mention in the last paragraph that North American Christians should be thanking right-wing Christian groups for preserving the voice (and therefore the power) of Christian conscience in North America. Now, I may disagree with the Christian Right or the Moral Majority, but I do thank them for showing some gusto that many Christians have lost.
I was reminded of this as I was reading one of my favorite books today. Joseph Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues is an absolute treasure, and it is especially helpful for people who have grown up in a Christianity that is supposed to view sex as moderately good at best and to view anger as an absolute evil.
The quote I am getting to comes from a chapter called "The Power of Wrath" in the section on Temperance. Pieper says that wrath is in fact a Christian virtue if it is exorcised properly. Wrath as a virtue, says Pieper, is the energy necessary to do good and fight injustice. Other forms of anger are evil. "Anger is 'good' if, in accordance with the order of reason, it is brought into service for the true goals of man [i.e. justice, goodness,etc.]" (p. 194). Quoting St. Thomas he writes, "Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side" (p. 194).
And now comes the quotation that I have been providing such a long preamble for, which itself is something of a preamble for its last paragraph that I want to highlight:

It is particularly in reference to overcoming intemperateness of sensual desore that the power of wrath acquires a special importance.
Aquinas, it is true, also says that an acute temptation to unchastity is most easily conquerable by flight. But he likewise knows that the addiction to degenerate pleasure-seeking can by no means be cured through a merely negative approach, through convulsively "shutting one's mind" to it. Thomas believes that the deterioration of one power of the soul should be healed and supplemented by the still undamaged core of some other power. Thus it should be possible to subdue and, as it were, to quench the limp intemperance of an unchaste lustfulness by attacking a difficult task with the resilient joy generated in the full power of wrath.
Only the combination of the intemperateness of lustfulness with the lazy inertia incapable of generating anger is the sign of complete and virtually hopeless degeneration. It appears whenever a caste, a people, or a whole civilization is ripe for its decline and fall. (p. 196)

Now, I'm not predicting the fall of North America or anything, but it might be helpful to remember that Christians sometimes need to get angry (virtuously), and to speak out to people who are doing injustice and allowing injustice. Although this might take great courage for a people who seem bent to a non-Christian niceness, and although our pluralistic society tends to beat the voice out of us (how ironic, as its voiced intention is to do otherwise), we must commit ourselves to God's ways, and to helping our earthly society by encouraging goodness, justice, temperance, courage, etc. And as salt, we will help to preserve.

American Politics, Tolkien, Monks with Guns, Fenelon, and Ecclesiastes

Yes, it has been a while since my last post. Please forgive the haste in which this has been written.

1) Beginnings of Thoughts on American Politics and Religion
2) J.R.R Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
3) Buddhist Monks with Guns
4) Francois Fenelon on Dealing with Our Sins
5) Beginnings of Thoughts on Ecclesiastes

1) Beginnings of Thoughts on American Politics and Religion
I was thinking about the ideal forms of church and state and the ideal relationship between church and state the other day. Amidst my pondering I realized the the American Constitution is not as friendly to Christianity as is commonly thought.
Here are the beginnings of some more serious reflections to be had in the future:
I see the model in the USA to be essentially pluralistic. Freedom of religion is an essential freedom in the US. This pluralistic model seems partially good, especially from a stance within our own age (democracy was considered the worst form of government according to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas (I presume), etc.). The pluralistic/democratic model frees Christians from much potential persecution, allows for freedom of worship, and does not (usually) hinder the Christian conscience.
However, I think that the pluralistic/democratic form of government bows to a Darwinian or perhaps Nietzschean theory, where the will to power conquers over the search for virtue, goodness, and truth. The theory is that the greatest good for the greatest amount of people is found in individual wills making concessions to each other. Personal concessions for the public good, this is the essence of the social contract (Rousseau). This seems good to the modern individualist, but might strike people from other ages as anti community. I would agree.
The basic assumption here is that people will get their way most of the time, but will have to give up certain freedoms of their will (i.e. the want to steal, etc.) in order for public order to preside, which is not so much for the good of the nation as it is for the good of the individuals.
But this presumes a nation of weak people. This Rousseauian/Lockean theory can easily be torn asunder once people with strong wills and the power/ability/money to get what they want realize that they can take advantage of the system. This has happened in the case of many powerful business owners and politicians.
The average person either has a weak will or does not have the means to get what they want. That is what the social contract theory presupposes. A Nietzschean Super Man with a strong will and the ability to get what his will desires can ruin such a system. I'm not sure how this might work (either than business and political scams, etc.) in real life, but this seems to be a theoretical weakness to the social contract theory.
The democratic theory also turns out to be largely Darwinian: the strongest survive. In the case of politics this means that people group with the most numbers, or the loudest voice can take over the system. In the past, this means that the Christian voice has stood out above the rest. This has lead to a Christian presumptuousness that America is a Christian nation.
I think that the opposite is true. I believe that America is set up to have a national religion that is largely deist. I believe this because the lowest common denominator between religions is that there is a god who created everything who is basically good, who we should follow. A pluralistic nation will most likely eventually ending up combining a number of theories about God into a watered-down version of sorts. Unless, of course, separate religion's voices become louder and therefore the dominant group.
American will never have more than a national religion because it is one people under God...it combines God, nationhood, and democracy into one system. The USA is not a Christian nation; it is a nation that is under whatever god becomes the most popular.
This overarching Darwinian underpinning (strongest survive) seems to lean to the fact that the social contract theory (most good for the most amount of people through conceding of will power for a orderly system that will allow my weak will to get what it can, but not so much that it won't get hurt) can be overcome by a Nieetzchean one (those with the strongest wills and the power to get what they want will rule).
The sketch presented here, rather than seeming basically Christian, appears to be anti-Christian in its presuppositions and leaning...as much as this was not intended by the Founding Fathers.
Although this system can be used for Christian means (when Christianity is at its most popular). Even when the system is used for Christian means, it can be argued that a Darwinian theory is supporting the Christian church (and vice versa) rather than the church providing for a more permanent political/theological/moral system.
The presiding pluralistic/Darwinian frame in the USA has seemed rather comfortable to Christians in the past, but that feeling is changing for many Christians. As more and more people from more and more countries find their homes in the USA, this might change even more. Perhaps the only reason that it has not changed more rapidly is because of groups like the Christian right and the Catholic church have kept their voices strong in the public square. That last one is an interesting thought.
Somewhat related, read this article from the New York Times.

2) J.R.R Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
I just thought I would mention that I have been enjoying J.R.R. Tolkien's posthumously published The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, which are two famous Norse poems. Tolkien has added some of his own words to these works, but he follows the old stories fairly well. He gave many lectures and classes on Norse legends.
I like reading sources from heroic ages. I enjoy the bravery, the interaction of mystical with every day live. Perhaps I am a romantic. I have also enjoyed reading this book of Tolkien's because the language is so poetic. It is incredible how much can be conveyed in a stanza with a mere thirty words to it. Beautiful.

3) Buddhist Monks with Guns
I read an interesting article today about violence and Buddhism. I mention it simply because it is interesting. The fact that Buddhist monks can commit violence, especially when faced with death, is not that surprising. Violence can be used for both good and evil.
Check out the article here: Monks with Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence by Michael Jerryson

4) Francois Fenelon on Dealing with Our Sins


I have found the below quote from Francois Fenelon's Spiritual Progress to be quite helpful. It is from a chapter entitled "On Daily Faults and the Toleration of Ourselves".

"You will there find the weaknesses necessary to deprive you of all confidence in your own strength; but this discovery, far from discouraging, will serve to destroy your self-reliance, and to raze to the ground the edifice of pride. Nothing marks so decidedly the solid progress of a soul, as that it is enabled to view its own depravity without being disturbed or discouraged.
"It is an important precept to abstain from doing a wrong thing whenever we perceive it in time, and when we do not, to bear the humiliation of the fault courageously.
If a fault is perceived before it is committed, we must see to it that we do not resist and quench the Spirit of God, advising us of it inwardly. The Spirit is easily offended, and very jealous; He desires to be listened to and obeyed; He retires if He be displeased; the slightest resistance to Him is a wrong, for everything must yield to Him, the moment He is perceived. Faults of haste and frailty are nothing in comparison with those where we shut our ears to the voice of the Holy Spirit beginning to speak in the depths of the heart.
"Restlessness and an injured self-love will never mend those faults which are not perceived until after they are committed; on the contrary, such feelings are simply the impatience of wounded pride at beholding what confounds it. We must quietly humble ourselves in peace; I say in peace, for it is no humiliation to do it in a vexed and spiteful way. We must condemn our faults, mourn over them, repent of them, without seeking the slightest shadow of consolation in any excuse, and behold ourselves covered with confusion in the presence of God; and all this without being bitter against ourselves or discouraged; but peacefully reaping the profit of our humiliation. Thus from the serpent itself we draw the antidote to his venom."

5) Beginnings of Thoughts on Ecclesiastes
I wrote this some time ago after reflecting on Ecclesiastes. I read Ecclesiastes the other day and I still stand by much of what I wrote. However, I would like some interaction on this one so as to help my thoughts.

The Book of Ecclesiastes as Tragedy

If you have ever read the book in the Bible titled Ecclesiastes I’m sure that you have gone away puzzled and depressed. All throughout the book the author is telling us that there is no point to anything that we do, and that we must learn to enjoy our lives as much as we can, yet not too much so that we do not make God angry.
It seems to me that the author of Ecclesiastes has either missed a few important ideas, or he has become overcome with despair. The author does not believe in God’s vindication of the righteous, that is for sure. Although, he does believe that the moderately just will live above God’s “sin radar” and below the notice of those in power who might kill him or take advantage of him for his righteousness. Also, he believes, contrary to other biblical books, that the world is, at its core, conflicted: the good and the evil suffer similar fates, yet there is an importance to goodness; unjust rulers take advantage of everyone, yet wisdom does bring light to the eyes. He believes both that there is a just creator God, and that it is better to never have been born than to have lived at all.
Quite simply, the author of Ecclesiastes is conflicted and thus filled with despair. It is not a happy book at all.
The book of Ecclesiastes is a tragedy. The core of tragedy is irresolvable conflict. For instance, fairness is good and evil is bad, but there must be evil to have fairness, which is not really fair at all. However, it must be true that there is good and there is evil, or else we would not feel the conflict. One instance of this (and the book is filled with other such examples) is found in Ecclesiastes 5:8-9:
If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and right, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. But all things considered, this is an advantage for a land: a king for a ploughed field.
As long as there is power, there will be those who use it solely for their own gain, but these structures are necessary, so that there will be peace in the land. One ruling king is better than factions, and the king is powerful enough to protect you from oncoming armies, therefore providing a sense of peace and stability (represented by the ploughed field).
I believe that the author’s tragic outlook springs from his agnosticism. “Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the works of God, who makes everything” (11.5); also, “I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out” (8.17). Although it is claimed that the teacher is wise (12.9), he does not have the same wisdom as that of the authors of the book of Proverbs. Perhaps the “wisdom” of Ecclesiastes even scorns the wisdom of Proverbs, or perhaps it was to be used as a sort of corrective for the extreme positivism found in Proverbs. Either way, Ecclesiastes leaves you feeling cold, unimportant, and in despair.

How do we respond to the author of Ecclesiastes? Is God conflicted in himself, with both good and evil? Or perhaps the traditional Christian understanding of the problem of evil is more satisfactory: evil springs from the free will of creatures, not from the Creator. We all know this, deeply, for we give prominence to fairness and order. All of the problems in Ecclesiastes can be reduced to three answers: 1) The evil in the world comes about from our moral problems, not from God; and, 2) God is “for” humans. This was revealed in Jesus’ coming to earth and his death for all, so that we might be with God. It is not his will for us to be disordered or in despair. 3) Judgment will solve the apparent inconsistencies involving justice in time. (both the judgment of sins in Christ, for the saved, and the judgment of the sins of the world, for those who do not accept Christ’s offer of salvation).

The tragic view affirms evil, while diminishing the role of goodness. This view destroys us, causing us to despair. The proper view is to see that god is good, and that he is being merciful to the evil so that they can repent of evil, and find salvation. He will later make all things new and he will order the universe aright. This brings light to our eyes and life to our bodies. Therefore, those who pursue life must affirm God’s essential goodness, and be patient until it is time for the final judgment.

Why is Ecclesiastes in the Bible? First of all, the Bible is not a children’s book. It takes intelligence and wisdom to be able to understand and interact with what is in the Bible. Ecclesiastes must be a large question mark for those who think that we should believe every word in every book of the Bible. If we affirm the words of Ecclesiastes, we must dismiss the affirmation of the goodness of God that is found in all other parts of the Bible. Therefore, we must be more adult in out interpretation and understanding of the Bible.
Ecclesiastes is perhaps best understood as a teaching instrument. When I taught ESL in China, after teaching good English for a while, I would insert some bad English (i.e. tell them that a picture of a dog is really a cat). I did this to make sure that the students were really learning and paying attention. Perhaps that is the place Ecclesiastes in the biblical canon, to instruct through falsehood. Otherwise, how could it be included among the other “wisdom literature”? Perhaps the same person or group of people put the wisdom literature together, knowing that they would use Ecclesiastes as a corrective and as a “false prophet” to test students. Perhaps this is what is meant in the Epilogue? (Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs (12.9).)
Perhaps this is when Jews decided that they needed to believe in resurrection to believe in a good God.