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BJS
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587

Posted 4/12/2002 11:14 AM (GMT -6)

This is a Wall Street Journal article that I think would make an interesting starting point for a thread on the current crisis in the Middle East. It is times like these, times when political solutions seem so obviously impossible, that Doc’s point about trusting God instead of government needs to be heeded. Brothers and sisters, let us pray.
________________________________________________________________________________

THE HARD WAY
It's easier to fight than to pray. So let's pray.

Friday, April 12, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

We can all remember when the Mideast was not a crisis but rather an unanswered question: How will they find peace? It was a place that in our lifetimes had not achieved amity and accord but was not always at war, at least not always in full, hot war.

But now everyone--literally everyone you read, hear, speak to--has the sense that events are accelerating toward some unknown outcome. And no one--no one--believes the outcome will be good. We are out of optimists and optimism. The scenarios floated are dire. "Watch Lebanon," says the ahead-of-the-pack Charles Krauthammer. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has 8,000 Katyusha rockets; they have already threatened to hit Haifa. If they do, Israel will answer, and not only in Lebanon but possibly in Syria, where the Hezbollah receives support. Syria would likely strike back with chemical weapons. Israel would answer unconventionally. And Armageddon is launched.

Tuesday night I bumped into a celebrated foreign-policy genius at a birthday party for a friend. He told me he thought that President Bush is doing well, has not yet made any serious mistakes. I said I agreed, and that I thought any effort that buys us time is good. By "us" I meant the world. He surprised me with his vehemence. "There is no 'land for peace,' " he said. "There is only land for time."

"This is not solvable," he added. And he had spent his life trying to solve international problems.

The Bush administration is passionately criticized from right and left. The right says he is shifting, unsure; that sending Colin Powell and calling for Israel to withdraw shows insufficient support for Israel and insufficient resolve in the face of terror. The left scores Mr. Bush for being reflexively pro-Israeli, as America always is. ABC News's daily political Internet report, "The Note," wonders if there's a method in Mr. Bush's madness. Perhaps he's crazy like a trapped fox, deliberately confusing everyone while he vamps up time and searches for options.
Mr. Bush stays in the kitchen and keeps stirring the broth, as Lee Atwater used to say. "Just keep stirring the pot, you never know what will come up." Thus Mr. Bush's statements, which haven't been so much contradictory as--well, let's say he chooses each day to emphasize a different truth. One senses the people at the White House hope they'll be able to look back on this as a strategy of creative ambiguity.

Mr. Bush criticizes Israel to buy time. He sends Mr. Powell to buy time. He criticizes Arafat to buy time. He has Ari Fleischer declare that Ariel Sharon wants peace to buy time. Why buy time? Because time is good. Because it's better than rushing hard and terrible events. Because the horse may laugh.

You remember the old English story. An angry king is about to put a disloyal servant to death. "My lord," the servant says, "give me only one year of life and I will do something amazing and unheard of. I will make your horse rear back and laugh with happiness." The king says, "That's impossible, horses don't laugh." The servant answers, "I have the power to, in only one year, teach your horse to laugh at all your jokes. And when I succeed I will ask you, if your grace will, to spare me. And if I should fail I will peacefully lay down my life."

The king ponders and agrees. Later a friend asks the servant why he made such a stupid, impossible vow. The servant said, "Well, in a year the king may die, or I may die. Or the horse may laugh."

That's what I think Mr. Bush is thinking: The horse may laugh.

You think this way only when you have no other options.

But isn't it odd that in a world full of geniuses, no one has an answer? Isn't it amazing that the whole highly sophisticated, technologically evolved, psychologically and historically astute world feels so at the mercy of this drama, so unable to help it or end it? This is the core of the world's pessimism: Everything you know of life tells you that if there are hundreds of thousands of Muslim fanatics who are shrewd, talented and capable, and if they live in the age of "obliterates," of weapons of mass destruction that can obliterate whole cities and countries, then some of them will get their hands on those weapons and slip through or over lines and borders. And everything you know of life and history tells you that Israel will not surrender; and that, as the writer Ron Rosenbaum, who normally speaks with a voice that is more cerebral than visceral, said this week in the New York Observer, "This is the way it is likely to happen: Sooner or later a nuclear weapon is detonated in Tel Aviv, and sooner, not later, there is nuclear retaliation--Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, perhaps all three. . . . The unspoken corollary of the slogan 'Never again' is: 'And if again, not us alone.' "
Those are the emotions coming from both sides, aimed at and springing from the Mideast, which a Catholic writer has called the vortex, the portal through which God has talked to man since the very dawn of history. The Garden of Eden, Moses, the Ten Commandments, the prophets, the birth of Christ the Redeemer, the crucifixion, the fall of the temple, the return of Israel. The Mideast is the place where God talks to us.

And where these days his message does not seem ambiguous. It's this: You're all in a heap of trouble.

So what are we to do? I was daydreaming about all this as I walked in my neighborhood on Pierrepont Street yesterday, and I found myself staring at a message someone had drawn onto newly poured concrete: "Smile. Today is what you have." It struck me, naturally, as sentimental street art. And then I thought no, it's both spiritual--"This is the day the Lord made/ let us rejoice and be glad in it," wrote the Psalmist--and fatalistic.
It made me think of Mother Teresa and the Catholic writer Henri Nouwen, who was a priest. He went to her once and poured out his problems--he wasn't appreciated, he was misunderstood, higher-ups weren't helping him in his good work. "You wouldn't be having these problems if you prayed more," she said. And that's all she said. At first Nouwen felt resentful--he had expected encouragement, sympathy, solidarity. Instead he got a blunt statement that he knew, in a moment, was true. He really wouldn't be having these problems if he prayed more. So he went home and prayed. And the problems became manageable, and life did not end.

Which got me thinking this: It is easier to fight than to pray. In fact it's much easier to fight than to pray. It's one of the reasons we do more of the former than the latter.

And fighting is hard. But it's not the hardest thing of all the things we could do. The hardest thing is this: I have been reading about Karol Wojtyla during World War II, long before he became Pope John Paul II. Mr. Wojtyla was in his late teens when the war started, and after the Nazis invaded Poland he worked manual labor, on the freezing overnight shift at a factory, outdoors, breaking and carrying rocks. He was ill fed, grew thin, suffered. He had only one pair of shoes, and they were wooden. What energy he had after work he gave to art, to help keep Polish drama alive, for he felt that art would help his nation live. He was unusually generous with others, shared what he had, was known for a particular kindness. He helped friends in the Resistance, but he did not join them. Why? Because, as he told a friend, the only resistance that would work was asking God's help. "The only thing that will be effective is prayer." So he quietly and constantly prayed, for the liberation of Poland and the end of Nazism and the safety of his jailed and abused Jewish and Christian friends.

Prayer is the hardest thing. And no one congratulates you for doing it because no one knows you're doing it, and if things turn out well they likely won't thank God in any case. But I have a feeling that the hardest thing is what we all better be doing now, and that it's not only the best answer but the only one.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 4/12/2002 2:26 PM (GMT -6)

Brett,

Thank you. That was an incredible article. I'm stunned that it was in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks so much for reprinting that.

Let's do it.

Thanks,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Seymour
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105

Posted 4/12/2002 2:51 PM (GMT -6)

I'm sold, and surprized (The Wall Street Jurnal has a conscious?)

I've feared for a while now that Prince Bush is tring to pick a war with Prince Hussein, and with raising oil prices war might just be the "patriotic" outlet for our capitalistic inconvenance. I've been holding on to this letter written by Mother Teresa:

quote:

54A, AlJ.C. Bose Rad,
Calcutta—16

2nd January, 1991

Dear President George Bush and President Saddam Hussein

I come to you with tears in my eyes and God’s love in my heart to plead to you for the poor and those who will become poor if the war that we all dread and fear happens. I beg you with my whole heart to work for, to labour for God’s peace and to be reconciled with one another.

You both have your cases to make and your people to care for but first please listen to the One who came into the world to teach us peace. You have the power and the strength to destroy God’s presence and image, His men, His women, and His children. Please listen to the will of God. God has created us to be loved by His love and not to be destroyed by our hatred.

In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread but that never can nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life which your weapons will cause.

I come to you in the name of God, the God that we all love and share, to beg for the innocent ones, our poor of the world and those who will become poor because of war. They are the ones who will suffer most because they have no means of escape. I plead on bended knee for them. They will suffer and when they do we will be the ones who are guilty for not having done all in our power to protect and love them. I plead to you for those who will be left orphaned, widowed, and left alone because their parents, husbands, brothers and children have been killed. I beg you please save them. I plead for those who will be left with disability and disfigurement. They are God’s children. I plead for those who will be left with no home, no food and no love. Please think of them as being your children. Finally I plead for those who will have the most precious thing that God can give us, Life, taken away from them. I beg you to save our brothers and sisters, yours and ours, because they are given to us by God to love and to cherish. It is not for us to destroy what God has given to us. Please, please let your mind and your will become the mind and will of God. You have the power to bring war into the world or to build peace. PLEASE CHOOOSE THE WAY OF PEACE.

I, my sisters and our poor are praying for you so much. The whole world is praying that you will open your hears in love to God. You may win the war but what will the cost be on people who are broken, disabled and lost?

I appeal to you—to your love, your love of God and your fellowmen. In the name of God and in the name of those you will make poor do not destroy life and peace. Let the love and peace triumph and let your name be remembered for the good you have done, the joy you have spread and the love you have shared.

Please pray for me and my sisters as we try to love and serve the poor because they belong to God and are loved in His eyes so we and our poor are praying for you. We pray that you will love and nourish what God has so lovingly entrusted into your care.

May God bless you now and always.

God Bless you

Lee Teresa me

--quoted in Navin Chawla “Mother Teresa: The Authorized Biography” (Rockport: Element, 1992), 217—9.

If only the princes had headed her prayers! Does the world stand a chance with individual terrorists like Bin Ladin and Arafat? Does the world stand a chance with the state terrorists like Bush and Sharon? Simone Weil says that our generation is not only in need of saints but of a new kind of saintliness. Is it possible for Saints like Mother Teresa or Henri Nouwen to rise from this genernation, a generation wired from birth against saintliness? Is there a resistant strain of saintliness that can take this constant barreness of culture and integrity?

Will Bush Jr. do and dear old dad and ignore Mothers prayer?

EMILY: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”

Edited by - Seymour on 04/12/2002 7:51:55 PM

Edited by - Seymour on 04/12/2002 7:53:26 PM

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 4/17/2002 10:58 AM (GMT -6)

The Anti-Meph Speaks.

My turn. This will sound screwy to some...but whatever.

Prayer does what...exactly?

Yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to say that prayer changes things. Everyone wants to say that prayer is efficacious. Where is your proof besides coincidental events, ethereal feelings, and existential comfort? "Well, God directly answered my prayer this one time." Whooptie doo. So f*$#in what?? How many times have your ardent prayers NOT been answered...and you reinterpret the silence as God's gracious "presence" with you. How many times have YOU been let down trusting God for a miracle?

You don't think that some of those people in that conflict are praying to whatever damn God they think is there? You don't think those mothers are tired of their children being mowed down...and are crying out to God about it?

Prayer, for many, seems to be something to do when there's NOTHING you can do. It's a way to commune with the Great Consoler in the Sky...some Person who knows what's REALLY going on...someone who can make sense out of the nonsense. Bulls#*$. I'm tired of the silly a$$ "Columbine" logic when it comes to prayer. "Well, it could have been MUCH worse. God had to be involved." Get a clue, why don't you!

Trust God if you wish. Trusting God hasn't prevented a number of the most atrocious things we've yet seen. 4 year old babies still get raped. Random accidents still destroy lives. Maniacs with avarice and resolves still blow themselves and others to nothingness. But I'm pretty certain that die hard fans of the Man/Woman/Spiritual Goo upstairs with continue saying that God is doing all he can...and that things will certainly be better. If only R. Kelly had a PR department like God does...

I, for one, am tired of the "Let's Pray" &@&$. Face #@*Ein' reality. We live in a complex existence where nonsense, tragedy, and gratuitous evil is rampant...just like beauty, joyous laughter, and multiple orgasms. You can be killed in a meaningless accident TOMORROW. There are madpeople who can institute mass annihilation more times than we'd care to admit. (Do you REALLY think that they can prevent another Sept. 11th of some type here???) Why the hell must we continue to pacify ourselves with hopes in an potentially imaginary Being? Why must we continually cry out to a Being who can't do a damn thing for us? Ask God to heal your wife of cervical cancer...and what the &#($ do you get. A bunch of expectancy with low chance of anything happening. Why don't we just admit to ourselves that praying to the Great Pumpkin does us about JUST AS MUCH GOOD as it did Linus at Halloween?

But, forget it. If praying makes your feel like something is being done or that God is personally stroking your hair telling you it's gonna be ok, you go right ahead. Whatever floats your boat, do it. If that's what you need to survive this heavenly/hellish existence, do it.

But I'm tired of talking to the wind, hoping that it will blow a nice breeze my way. If God wants my attention, let him get it. Otherwise, I will treat him like all my other idealistic hopes and dreams: surrender it to a harsh, yet wonderous reality. Yeah, God may exist. But let's see him actually do something for a change. Or better yet. Let's do what we can, admit what we can't...and realize that possibly the footprints in the sand have always been ours.

Getting free of my chains,
The ~

"If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him."
--Samuel Butler

"I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure-that is all that agnosticism means."
--Clarence Darrow

BJS
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587

Posted 4/17/2002 11:09 AM (GMT -6)

Dear Anti-Meph (or just Meph):

Why do you think God tells us to pray? [I'm not asking this question with any answer in mind. . .I wonder this often.]

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 4/17/2002 11:48 AM (GMT -6)

Dearest Anti-Meph,

First of all, let me tell you that I'm not going to deny your feelings with what I'm about to say here. It's quite obvious that you are pretty passionate about all this...and you probably have reasons for being that way. You have a right to your feelings and your opinion. Second, (and based upon the first thing) I'm going to assume that some of your more vociferous statements against believing in God were not purposely ad hominem or derogatory, but merely a projection of your frustration at the topic. I'm sure that you are a reasonable person and wouldn't intentionally insult the sincere faith of other human beings...regardless of how you feel about said faith.

Now that all that's out of the way...let's get to business.

Anti-Meph:

quote:
Prayer does what...exactly?

If I may, I want to make an observation. I noticed that you asked what prayer does, not what prayer is. Some people may think that this is splitting hairs, but there may be something very important here. If I am reading this question in the context of your whole post, it seems like you are conceptualizing prayer quite pragmatically. More specifically, you seem to been telescoping prayer to ANSWERS to a specific type of prayer (petitionary) This may be the beginning of your problems right there. Allow me to define what I think prayer is. It's communication and communion with God. Communication in that one is talking and listening to God. Communion in that one is putting oneself in the position to fear more acutely the reality of God in one's situation. I think that it is absolutely crucial that we start with this. Why? Because unless we do this, we will inevitably get prayer mixed up with DIVINE PROVIDENCE...and possibly come to some problematic ideas.

**************************************

Anti-Meph:

quote:
Yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to say that prayer changes things. Everyone wants to say that prayer is efficacious. Where is your proof besides coincidental events, ethereal feelings, and existential comfort? "Well, God directly answered my prayer this one time." Whooptie doo. So f*$#in what?? How many times have your ardent prayers NOT been answered...and you reinterpret the silence as God's gracious "presence" with you. How many times have YOU been let down trusting God for a miracle?

You don't think that some of those people in that conflict are praying to whatever damn God they think is there? You don't think those mothers are tired of their children being mowed down...and are crying out to God about it?

Prayer, for many, seems to be something to do when there's NOTHING you can do. It's a way to commune with the Great Consoler in the Sky...some Person who knows what's REALLY going on...someone who can make sense out of the nonsense. Bulls#*$. I'm tired of the silly a$$ "Columbine" logic when it comes to prayer. "Well, it could have been MUCH worse. God had to be involved." Get a clue, why don't you!

Ok. This is what I'm hearing:

1. There is no direct causal link between petitionary prayer and it's "answer". This is largely assumed.

2. Many times, "answered" prayer is evaluated on a "count the hits, ignore the misses" type line of thought.

3. Assumptions about divine providence are largely that: assumptions.

Let me say forthrightly that I agree with all of these statements, more or less. As a rational human being, I have to say that all these points have validity of some type. It is indeed the case that some people may have some overly narrow views of prayer. But let me also say that you are really looking at certain thoughts about PETITIONARY PRAYER and various ideas of divine providence. You are not attacking "prayer" as a wholistic concept. This is important because "prayer" is its true sense need NOT have concrete, imminently PERCEIVABLE responses that WE INTERPRET as responses.

**************************************

Anti-Meph:

quote:
Trust God if you wish. Trusting God hasn't prevented a number of the most atrocious things we've yet seen. 4 year old babies still get raped. Random accidents still destroy lives. Maniacs with avarice and resolves still blow themselves and others to nothingness. But I'm pretty certain that die hard fans of the Man/Woman/Spiritual Goo upstairs with continue saying that God is doing all he can...and that things will certainly be better. If only R. Kelly had a PR department like God does...

Hmmm...I didn't realize that the existence of the Biblical God was supposed to mean that bad things didn't happen in life. I didn't realize that God was supposed to rescue us from each and every danger that we would face as human beings. Actually, I thought that, though some people in the Bible, believed in God's ability to save, they were realistic about pain and suffering in the world. And they trusted in God's love REGARDLESS of situations. Perhaps I should do more reading...

*******************************

quote:
I, for one, am tired of the "Let's Pray" &@&$. Face #@*Ein' reality. We live in a complex existence where nonsense, tragedy, and gratuitous evil is rampant...just like beauty, joyous laughter, and multiple orgasms. You can be killed in a meaningless accident TOMORROW. There are madpeople who can institute mass annihilation more times than we'd care to admit. (Do you REALLY think that they can prevent another Sept. 11th of some type here???) Why the hell must we continue to pacify ourselves with hopes in an potentially imaginary Being? Why must we continually cry out to a Being who can't do a damn thing for us? Ask God to heal your wife of cervical cancer...and what the &#($ do you get. A bunch of expectancy with low chance of anything happening. Why don't we just admit to ourselves that praying to the Great Pumpkin does us about JUST AS MUCH GOOD as it did Linus at Halloween?

If you don't mind, how about I rant for a bit. What is up with the idea, Anti, that God is supposed to be at our every friggin beck and call, with respect to CHANGING OUR CURRENT SITUATIONS?? Is that what Jesus promised? "Lo, I will make everything in your life alright...until the end of the age"? I don't think so. When you look at the Gospels, Jesus promises more to change US than anything else. By what? His empowering presence and the knowledge of his conquest of the present evil age and it's ruler. So what you sayin? Because God doesn't heal my wife of cervical cancer, I'm supposed to now ASSUME that I can't trust God to do ANYTHING for me? Hmmm...have you been reading all of our discussions on this board about divine activity?

MOREOVER...

If your only impetus for prayer is to get God to help you out, then I'd recommend that you'd be better off NOT being a believer anyway. It's more than slightly apparent that God's relevance (in your mind) is EQUIVALENT to what he can DO for you...not necessarily who he IS in relation to you. Is this truly what it means to be under the Lordship of God in Christ? Ask yourself.

*********************************

Anti-Meph:

quote:
But, forget it. If praying makes your feel like something is being done or that God is personally stroking your hair telling you it's gonna be ok, you go right ahead. Whatever floats your boat, do it. If that's what you need to survive this heavenly/hellish existence, do it.

But I'm tired of talking to the wind, hoping that it will blow a nice breeze my way. If God wants my attention, let him get it. Otherwise, I will treat him like all my other idealistic hopes and dreams: surrender it to a harsh, yet wonderous reality. Yeah, God may exist. But let's see him actually do something for a change. Or better yet. Let's do what we can, admit what we can't...and realize that possibly the footprints in the sand have always been ours.

Look, I can't argue that some people truly DO use prayer as a coping mechanism for life. But think about something. Isn't that what it's partly for anyway. I know that I use my relationship with my wife as a coping mechanism for life. Unashamedly. It's not my CENTRAL INTENTION for the relationship, but it is a reality that is there. Why can't it be the same for one's relationship with God? It is too delusional to believe that a possibly existent God can indeed be the ultimate source of acceptance, love, and meaning? If so, isn't that JUST as "delusional" as humanists believing that we can truly make meaning for ourselves in our ultimate meaningless at nanomites of nothingness in this expansive universe? Isn't it JUST as "delusional" as looking at the empirical evidence of history...and saying that humanity can even HOPE to transcend it's essential problems before we destroy ourselves?

*************************

This was rushed because I don't have much time. But let me end with this. I'm assuming since you are "Anti-Meph" that you at least believe you know me pretty well. I'd be willing to say that you probably do. I must admit that I've sometimes thought some of the same things you have mentioned (though less spirited)

Maybe you ought to think of it like this: If one balances faith and action, prayer can't really hurt. With respect to the Middle East Crisis, I truly don't see any harm in praying for the people and the situation. If it ends up that there is no God, and we HAVE been talking to ourselves, at least we got some existential motivation to do good out of it, felt some important connection to reality...and just maybe, felt a little more at home in this world. I'm sorry, Anti, but I just don't see too much wrong with that.

Holla back,

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 4/17/2002 11:57 AM (GMT -6)

BJS:

quote:
Why do you think God tells us to pray?

Let's, for the sake of argument, say there is a "God" What else could prayer be for but to make us acutely aware of how utterly HELPLESS and dependent we are?? Think about it. If God is so blasted good, and doesn't NEED us to encourage him to work for us, what other purpose could it serve? The idea that God would allow us "spiritual say-so" by begging on our hands and knees (that coincidentally can be TWHARTED at the drop of a hat!) doesn't work. How would you feel if I realized that your wife needed a friggin kidney transplant that I could relatively easily help you with...but I decide to only do so MAYBE if you beg me incessantly. And I call this begging "intercessory" for your wife...and spiritual say-so for you. Would you think me nice? Would you think me "empowering" you in any real way? Hardly. You'd think me a self-aggrandizing bastard with good reason. How the heck is this any different for God?

Moreover, if God really DOES rain on the just and unjust, what OTHER reason should we be encouraged to pray...except to please the Maker?

Think about it.

The ~

PS: Meph, more later perhaps.

BJS
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587

Posted 4/18/2002 2:34 AM (GMT -6)

Reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote: "Prayer doesn't change God, it changes me." This is how he dealt with his unanswered prayer over his wife's death. I always found it unsatisfactory.

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

Springs
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636

Posted 4/20/2002 12:35 PM (GMT -6)

Mad love, Meph.

encore,encore,
Springs

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Ps. 19:1

selah
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210

Posted 4/21/2002 2:28 AM (GMT -6)

Mother Teresa was beautiful.

Maranatha,
selah

Seymour
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105

Posted 4/21/2002 9:31 PM (GMT -6)

quote:

Mother Teresa was beautiful.

Maranatha,
selah

Beautiful indeed, and like all beauty she was passive. And of course the risk of being passive is that you will go unnoticed and unheeded, as indeed she was by these two world princes in '91.

I often look at artworks that just sit their and wait for us to humble ourselves in front of them. They're so passive. They won't work on us unless we put forth the work.

It is so much easer to be agressive and warfull. Everyone has to take notice of you, everyone has to bend to your will if you fly an airplane into a house of cards built on greed and debt, eveyone has to take notice of you if you drop bombs on them from 2000 miles away.

But few take notice of Simone Weil's or Mother Teresa's who explain the whole world and ourselves to us if we just submit ourselves to their loving actions.

What is bravery? Is it not very risky to commit oneself? The suicide bombers commited themselves, and they are denounced as cowards as indeed they are. Yet is it really bravery to retalite by dropping bombs from underground bases from 2000 miles away? Indeed the resluts of such terrorism are the same and on that level are equally cowardly, yet the suicide bombers had to actually sacrifice themselves to do their cowardly acts, we don't even have that minimal bravery.

If Bush had any courage he'd listen to Mother and probably lose his 80% approval rating. But he is the supream coward, very anti-American, very anti-Christ-like, an indeed he holds the same possition in our time that Nero (St. John's Anti-christ) held in his: top Prince of the top dog principality.

Meanwhile Beauty looks passivly on.

EMILY: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”

BJS
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587

Posted 4/22/2002 4:31 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
What is bravery? Is it not very risky to commit oneself? The suicide bombers commited themselves, and they are denounced as cowards as indeed they are. Yet is it really bravery to retalite by dropping bombs from underground bases from 2000 miles away? Indeed the resluts of such terrorism are the same and on that level are equally cowardly, yet the suicide bombers had to actually sacrifice themselves to do their cowardly acts, we don't even have that minimal bravery.

Ahhhhh. . .a Bill Maher fan, I presume?

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

Seymour
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105

Posted 4/22/2002 5:28 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Ahhhhh. . .a Bill Maher fan, I presume?

Sometimes yes. I love it when Tony Campolo is on there.

Wasn't that whole thing weird that he went through with the coward/bravery thing and the sponsers pulling their evil ads and his appology (was it an act of cowardance to appologize to save his sponsers? would it have been braver to stick to his guns on this one?

I still want to say that the suicide bombers are cowards, i think he was trying to say they weren't, but he's got a point.

what do you think? are you a fan?

EMILY: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”

Edited by - Seymour on 04/22/2002 10:29:38 AM

BJS
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587

Posted 4/22/2002 8:51 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
what do you think? are you a fan?

I liked him early on in the show's run, when I thought he was much more objective about things. More recently, his show tends to annoy me in that opposing viewpoints are not usually given equal footing. He is usually setting somebody's viewpoint up for a fall, instead of truly probing for answers.

As for your take on war, I'm just not tracking with you, bro. In this fallen realm that we exist in, death, pain, and suffering are unfortunate realities. All we can do, in my opinion, is try to limit tragedy as much as possible. Often that means the use of force. Absolute pacifism would result in more suffering, not less.

Just as God is often required to choose the lesser of two evils in order to accomplish a "greater good," so we are often forced to make that choice.

My two pennies,

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

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