Cesar Milan's show The Dog Whisperer has become a passion of mine, and over time has become a great teacher to me for the handling of dogs, children and people. One of the mantras from Cesar is: "No Talk, No Touch, No Eye Contact." This is an important posture for being introduced to dogs -- even your own dog, and it pays remarkable dividends. A balanced dog's natural state is cautious curiosity. When a human is introduced, the dog tends to observe, approach slowly, sometimes pass by at a distance, and eventually come to smell and sense the human up close. It is amazing to observe and one cannot help but ponder how dogs perceive humans. It causes me to ponder on the story at Exodus 33:18 revealing the protocol God deploys in granting the request of Moses to see God.
The not so obvious truth is that we are quite noble and glorious creatures to a balanced dog -- particularly if we remain calm, confident and gradual in our introduction to them. Dogs are amazed by humans and want nothing more than to be in our presence and please us. Perhaps if we were better at noticing that, we might be better is seeing each other as noble and glorious creatures made in the image of God.
Yet humans have no idea and usually succumb to baby-talk gibberish and less than noble postures in greeting dogs; we tend to miss the opportunity for a mutually respectful and comprehensive man-dog bond. Cesar's show is really about how humans mess up the relationship and how we need to acquire more subtle observations and need to deploy more confidence and poise.
Cesar's show offers great insights on how refined and subtle one's skills need to be in handling animals. It has enhanced my respect for persons who keep dogs, cows, sheep, horses and the like -- and it instills a deeper appreciation for what was meant by scripture writers when they spoke of a Good Shepherd.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Various Items via Livefyre
Comments on JimmyAkin.com
This is a most ambitious topic, but your look at Benedict is too cursory and your skim of Judges deploys way too attenuated logic and no heart-felt clarity. I think the most important beginning point is Jesus of Nazareth, who, unlike us, had no new testament to fall back on. He knew all too well the hard-hearted portions of scripture and knew how the pharisees of his day who, if allowed, would attempt to write their own additions to scripture under dualistic, punitive, vengeful and triumphant themes. Time and time again, Jesus repeats a phrase found frequently in Hebrew scripture when someone encounters the Father: "Be not afraid." Jesus is the one who refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, he offers the father of the prodigal son as a likeness for his Father, and he, in the middle of torture and death, pleads for persecutors to be forgiven. Let us anchor ourselves there before venturing into the seemingly petty and punitive creator described in the Great Flood, or in 1 Samuel, Chapter 15, or in Exodus 32:25-29 (none of which can be explained away by the principle of voice). Since Jesus is so thoroughly devoted to the Father, we must summon the grace to suspend our human logic and endure the apparent incongruity of these "dark" passages.
So this is how you show respect to fellow Christians who fail to embrace your learned views -- you label their beliefs nonsense and you judge them to be crushed and humiliated. Jimmy, do you think the risen Christ is just waiting to Hi-Five you on this self-declared, ego-centered victory lap? Do you suppose He sees the love you profess for Him as superior to the love from those Christians you deem crushed? I withdraw the supportive comment I offered when you introduced this topic.
Prayers are on their way.
If your calling in life includes double vision, you could resort to a pirate's eye patch -- and you could really mess up associates by switching from one side to the other on alternate days. Plus there's the prospect of having a parrott and talking like a pirate as optional accessories.
Jimmy, the loaves and fishes post at ncregister is excellent work on your part.
This topic is a great improvement over the Bereans, but it stops way too short. We should explore the depth of relationship those early Christians had with the risen Christ. How is it that they could watch their wives and children join them in being painted with blood and be torn apart by lions? How did they resist temptations for a Maccabees style armed rebellion? And how is it that their grace under enormous duress led to a bloodless conversion of the entire empire? Further, after the persecution was gone, what happened to the grace and the non-violence? Compare the non-violent Solidarity movement under duress in communist Poland, and now the challenge to faith by rampant hedonism in free Poland.
Granted, this is a new way of looking at sola scriptura -- but the piece holds us Catholics back in that age old inner quest to confirm that our faith prevails over protestant faith. That is so beyond the point. Scholars in all the major denominations lament the misuse of scripture and hardly seek to defend the "sola" notion. There is so much common ground to be shared with other denominations in just grasping what the words written for early Christians meant in the context of their time and culture. Frankly Jimmy, I'm disappointed that your writing doesn't get past dualistic undertones like "us versus them." You are way too gifted to be stuck there.
I have loved golf all my life. One of the great privileges I've had is to walk the grounds of Augusta National during Masters week. Yet I harbor a substantial private embarrassment over the excessive and exclusive comforts associated with the game. I choose to live with that tension and I think it aids my imagination. For example one of the amazing things about pro golf tournaments is the elaborate tent city erected for the event. I've often wondered why the Pope, and bishops everywhere, have not used these tent cities to temporarily move their administrations into the neediest communities. The bishop and his staff can be more present to the poor and draw more economic activity into that community. Imagine a year or two in Calcutta, a year in Camden, New Jersey, a year or more in Oaxaca, Mexico. Jimmy, does your love of authority enfeeble you too much to suggest challenges of this nature to your episcopal friends?
Jimmy, this post and the later one about helping the poor misses the mark rather badly. That nagging conscience telling us that there are still people in need MUST NOT BE MOLLIFIED or swept under the rug with some self-justifying rationalization. Everything we have is held in stewardship subject to a claim of hospitality from the neighbors and sojourners in our midst. By all means be grateful for what one has, and be mindful that our beloved wives and children and elderly not only need a home, they have valid needs of safety and security. Yet those practicalities struggle with the calling to be present and hospitable to those in need. We are called to hold ourselves in that tension and remain there. Matthew Chapter 25 never lets us off the hook. A dualistic mind sees Mt 25 as separating the good and charitable Christians from the badly inattentive ones -- yet no matter how much charity we do, each of us will remain partly responsible for inattentiveness and unmet needs. This is a humility (as in "always walk humbly with thy God") -- but a mind locked in right and wrong, virtue and sin, righteousness and punishment, will desperately seek to pose himself as righteous, which is the opposite of humility. Charity is not about being righteous; the charity we do is hopefully meaningful to those we meet, but it can never be sufficient. In our life review, we will have no choice but to humbly surrender to the Grace of God for all the unmet needs in our communities.
This is a very humbling post and I commend your disclosure. One has to wonder why a person with such a gifted mind and with writings that tend to be firmly grounded in black and white, dualistic thinking, is afflicted (or gifted) with vision of increasingly diminished clarity. I am amazed at your developing gift for discerning nuanced visual cues as part of your love for square dance calling. Of course I will pray for a comprehensive healing with your upcoming cataract surgeries -- but there is no need to abandon the budding gift for nuance and the budding ability to discern outside the certainty paradigm of black and white, right and wrong dualism.
As I read the post and the comments, and ponder comments from Rome authorities, I can't help wonder how much time and effort our Jesus of Nazareth would have spent on questions like this. How about we put an equal effort in pondering the prospect of actually following him and reaching out to the outcasts around us. God gives us these minds and hearts to begin to understand "The Way" and our egos prefer intensely tedious debate over veiling our sisters in faith.
I would have preferred to learn that our bishops have multiple and robust lines of succession. A 91% bottleneck implies an oppressive group think that tolerated only a single point of view. After all, there were twelve apostles, why are so many lines snuffed out? Yet the underlying facts do not support a grand conspiracy to muzzle and control. Pope Benedict XIII (of the Rebiba line) preferred to consecrate bishops himself. His new bishops from the early 1700s were disbursed out to new frontiers all over the world, and those frontiers had explosive growth. These new bishops consecrated their own successors because of logistics -- there was no British Airways service for other apostle lines to pop in and out for frontier area ordinations.
The undocumented status of Rebiba's consecration means we cannot be sure that our lines of succession to the apostles are intact -- this is clearly the Holy Spirit's doing. Doubt diminishes ego driven certainty, and requires constant communion with God to monitor the steps we take. Thus, I think we can expect our episcopacy to overtly manifest charism and grace to re-assure us that they really are successors of the apostles.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Pacifism and CS Lewis
These are comments to a Mark Tooley post at American Spectator.
Mark30339| 9.5.12 @ 9:38AM
Thanks for pointing us to the article. A follower of Christ would see the crucifixion as an ultimate declaration that God does not do the killing in this world, men do -- and that follower knows Christ is challenging him every day to endure and absorb the violence of other men without propagating more. The original Christians watched as their wives and children joined them in being torn apart by vicious animals -- yet the Christian community did not rise up in a "righteous" armed rebellion. Why is our connection with the crucified and risen Christ so different from theirs?
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This is a seemingly unbearable challenge, and the choice to resist evil with violence is understandable. But the choice is a serious human failing -- what is far worse, however, is rationalizing the violence as something done righteously in God's name. Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that he risked his own salvation by joining the effort to kill Hitler and he made no effort sanitize the sin away. His profound appreciation for the darkness of that choice is an example that at least points us in the right direction.
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This is a seemingly unbearable challenge, and the choice to resist evil with violence is understandable. But the choice is a serious human failing -- what is far worse, however, is rationalizing the violence as something done righteously in God's name. Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that he risked his own salvation by joining the effort to kill Hitler and he made no effort sanitize the sin away. His profound appreciation for the darkness of that choice is an example that at least points us in the right direction.
Ryan| 9.5.12 @ 3:28PM
What of when God told the Israelites to kill? Not that it has a ton of modern relevance, but your argument about a pacifistic God - and a nonviolent Jesus - don't always hold water.
Mark30339| 9.6.12 @ 10:55AM
Your question is so valid; one cannot help but wince at the way Israelites portray Yahweh as the commander of their killing. A small consolation is that the Old Testament writers probably harbored some guilt over the violence and tried to sanitize it as God's will. We know that the killing soldiers were considered unclean and required a ritual cleansing period. Perhaps the consciousness of the Hebrew faith communities could only make it that far -- but God keeps pushing them forward. What I know is that when God catches Cain and then David in murder, He does not take their lives. If God really wanted the OT to be last word on who He is, why would He revolutionize our faith with the incarnation, the passion and the resurrection?
Nick| 9.6.12 @ 2:58PM
The Old Testament is intertwined with the New Testament, Mark. You can't have one without the other. The God of the Old Covenant is the same God of the New.
The Old Testament authors were not trying to assuage their guilt by blaming God.
What about the Flood? God killed every man, woman, and child on the planet to keep Noah (and his family) from wickedness & sin. How do you reconcile this fact with your personal view that the New Testament is God's way of setting the record straight?
What about the Flood? God killed every man, woman, and child on the planet to keep Noah (and his family) from wickedness & sin. How do you reconcile this fact with your personal view that the New Testament is God's way of setting the record straight?
The 10 Commandments make it clear that there a worse things than dying. Death is not most horrible thing that can happen to a person.
Disobeying God is the worst thing a person can do in this life.
Disobeying God is the worst thing a person can do in this life.
Mark30339| 9.7.12 @ 7:27AM
I wholeheartedly agree that the OT and the NT are intertwined. But it was resolved early on that Christians did not need to be Jews first and did not need to observe the 600+ rules and commands found in the OT. Jesus himself condensed these 600 down to loving God with your all, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Now, regarding the flood:
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The OT text says that our Creator lamented over what His creation had become and resolved to wipe it out. The Black Sea flood, an epic natural disaster was still fresh in the human psyche and motivates the story. The OT authors have a profound love of God and of His creation and they have a profound dismay for the callous wickedness of men. Putting 2 and 2 together leads to the conclusion that God sent the epic flood to wipe out the wickedness of man and start over. The genius and divine inspiration in the story is the notion that the faith of one man can change everything. It beckons each of us to be a Noah and it testifies to how nature can wash away wickedness. The notion that we have an immature creator who whimsically destroys all he has created in a fit of despair sounds misplaced -- it paints God in the image of man. This human limitation in OT authorship is understandable, and we make note of it because the identity of God is gleaned from an intertwining of Old and New Testaments and a tradition of Judeo/Christian faithful passed down for generations.
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The OT text says that our Creator lamented over what His creation had become and resolved to wipe it out. The Black Sea flood, an epic natural disaster was still fresh in the human psyche and motivates the story. The OT authors have a profound love of God and of His creation and they have a profound dismay for the callous wickedness of men. Putting 2 and 2 together leads to the conclusion that God sent the epic flood to wipe out the wickedness of man and start over. The genius and divine inspiration in the story is the notion that the faith of one man can change everything. It beckons each of us to be a Noah and it testifies to how nature can wash away wickedness. The notion that we have an immature creator who whimsically destroys all he has created in a fit of despair sounds misplaced -- it paints God in the image of man. This human limitation in OT authorship is understandable, and we make note of it because the identity of God is gleaned from an intertwining of Old and New Testaments and a tradition of Judeo/Christian faithful passed down for generations.
Nick| 9.7.12 @ 12:43PM
I made no mention of Christians having to obey the Law of Moses, Mark. My only point was that God is the same in the Old Testament and the New. The fact that Christians are dispensed from certain precepts of the Old Law doesn't mean the O.T. is somehow flawed.
The O.T. authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit as much as the N.T. authors were.
The O.T. authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit as much as the N.T. authors were.
Whether, or not, there ever was a "Black Sea Flood" has nothing to do with the Great Flood recorded in Genesis. The fact that God sent the Flood to save Noah & his family from the wickedness that surrounded them is attested to by Saint Peter, when he says baptism saves like the waters of the Flood (cf. 1 Peter 3:20-21).
It sounds to me like it is you who is trying to paint "God in the image of man."
What about Sodom & Gomorrah? This is another instance of God destroying the wicked, in order to save Lot and his family.
The Levites slay 3,000 after the Golden Calf incident, are made priests, and given the honor of carrying the Ark, Tabernacle, and the Holy Furniture.
Or, what about when Saint Luke tells us, in Acts 5, that God smites Ananias and Sapphira because of their fraud?
The Levites slay 3,000 after the Golden Calf incident, are made priests, and given the honor of carrying the Ark, Tabernacle, and the Holy Furniture.
Or, what about when Saint Luke tells us, in Acts 5, that God smites Ananias and Sapphira because of their fraud?
There is no "human limitation in OT authorship," as you put it. Again, the ENTIRE Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
God Bless!
God Bless!
Mark30339| 9.7.12 @ 10:42PM
Excellent points. S&G were already on a path of destruction; the story is about how far God goes to change that destiny. Moses perceived God to be offended and ordered a slaughter to unify his community by terror, perhaps a standard response to insurrection in the day. God has pushed mankind forward to ever more enlightened standards ever since. Ananias and his wife died when confronted with their deceit -- for each of us, our days on this earth are numbered and our moment of passing may be in the midst of grace or sin or probably both. Mercy should be the presumptive outcome for Ananias given what Jesus teaches; if the message is that God kills sinners we should be experiencing a whole lot more sudden deaths.
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Nick, I accept your discord with my view that the blood lust attributed to Yahweh in the OT is authored by a faithful but limited human consciousness not ready for the revelatory notions of incarnation, redemptive suffering and resurrection. God started this creation 13 billion years ago, I hardly think His consciousness and maturity is the item showing growth as we progress from Genesis to Revelation. Our precious Jesus is preserved in the crucifix as the piercing symbol showing that God shares in our suffering to such an extent that He can make suffering itself holy. Like nothing else, the crucifix tells us that God doesn't do the killing in this world, MEN DO.
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Nick, I accept your discord with my view that the blood lust attributed to Yahweh in the OT is authored by a faithful but limited human consciousness not ready for the revelatory notions of incarnation, redemptive suffering and resurrection. God started this creation 13 billion years ago, I hardly think His consciousness and maturity is the item showing growth as we progress from Genesis to Revelation. Our precious Jesus is preserved in the crucifix as the piercing symbol showing that God shares in our suffering to such an extent that He can make suffering itself holy. Like nothing else, the crucifix tells us that God doesn't do the killing in this world, MEN DO.
Harry the Horrible| 9.5.12 @ 10:37AM
Apparently he also missed the part where Christ instructed his followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords.
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
—Luke 22:36, NIV
—Luke 22:36, NIV
I don't have much use for pacifists.
Mark30339| 9.5.12 @ 1:40PM
Dave Williams comments below about Christians having a velvet glove over their iron fists -- HtH, you certainly aid the metaphor. But with your reference to Lk 22:36 it appears that nuance and metaphor are as useful to you as pacifists. Perhaps you welcome and embrace our Lord's words about living and dying by the sword (Mt 26:52). In another life, you might have joined the Crusaders' slaughter of every man, woman and child living in the city of Jerusalem. Do you seek a license for violence, or a relationship with the risen Christ?
Harry the Horrible| 9.5.12 @ 2:18PM
I might have. Don't think I would have, but I might have. After all, God didn't have any problems with Jericho.
BTW, we all die, so dying by the sword isn't a problem.
I sure as heck wouldn't let Moslems murder and/or enslave me and mine. Remember, the Crusades were a defensive war.
BTW, we all die, so dying by the sword isn't a problem.
I sure as heck wouldn't let Moslems murder and/or enslave me and mine. Remember, the Crusades were a defensive war.
Paul A'Barge | 9.5.12 @ 5:42PM
Hauerwas insists there are "nonviolent alternatives" to defend against "unjust attack," without saying what they are
This is what the pacifists always do: demand alternatives but never offering any.
And do you know why? Because the specifics will not work. And in fact not only will the specifics not work, the specifics of pacifism are ludicrous on their face. You can dismiss them out of hand.
I have no time for braying ninnies like Hauerwas. Why do you?
Thom| 9.5.12 @ 7:43PM
Their "nonviolent alternatives" sound something like this, "I pray he runs out of bullets before he gets to me...."Amen
Mark30339| 9.6.12 @ 11:23AM
My what smug declarations. The next time you confirm your 98.6 body temperature, perhaps you will thank God that you weren't vaporized by US/Soviet thermo-nuclear conflict. We all owe a debt to the poise, dignity and sacrifice of the non-violent resistance movement counseled by Pope John Paul II. Their non-violent example won over rank and file soldiers who refused to intervene and the Soviet iron turned to rust. See also, Gandhi, MLK and Chile.
Thom| 9.5.12 @ 7:42PM
If early Christians were to have emulated Christ’s life and early demises then the Church of Christ would have died out in his time simply because all those that followed his example would have been killed by the Romans or local governments friendly to the Romans or simply ceased to exist because they didn’t “reproduce”. We know 1900 years later, those “pacifists” didn’t emulate Christ’s life in the later part and the first part is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy like you find with Jim Jones and alike. Everywhere you find “sheeple” like this you find them living in the shadows of shepherds that protect them from themselves…
If ever were there a place on this earth that needed what these “pacifists” preach it is the Middle East and I don’t see ships full of these people immigrating there and living the life they say is required to be “Christian”. Christians are fleeing the Middle East because they know how the story ends….
Mark30339| 9.6.12 @ 11:37AM
Remind me again, which of the early Christian armed rebellions won over the Roman Empire? And explain what lethal weapons were used by Christians to prevail over Emperor Julian the Apostate when he tried to restore pagan worship.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Apostolic Succession
JimmyAkin.com has an interesting audio piece on a glitch in the Church's line of succession.
My thoughts follow.
My thoughts follow.
I would have preferred to learn that our bishops have multiple and robust lines of succession. A 91% bottleneck implies an oppressive group think that tolerated only a single point of view. After all, there were twelve apostles, why are so many lines snuffed out? Yet the underlying facts do not support a grand conspiracy to muzzle and control. Pope Benedict XIII (of the Rebiba line) preferred to consecrate bishops himself. His new bishops from the early 1700s were disbursed out to new frontiers all over the world, and those frontiers had explosive growth. These new bishops consecrated their own successors because of logistics -- there was no British Airways service for other apostle lines to pop in and out for frontier area ordinations.
The undocumented status of Rebiba's consecration means we cannot be sure that our lines of succession to the apostles are intact -- this is clearly the Holy Spirit's doing. Doubt diminishes ego-driven certainty, and requires constant communion with God to monitor the steps we take. Thus, I think we can expect our episcopacy to overtly manifest charism and grace to re-assure us that they really are successors of the apostles.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Weigel blasts the LCWR.
My comment to National Review's "The Pope and the Sisters"
George Weigel would have served us better by co-authoring this article with one of the sisters affected, and discussing the procedural due process (or lack thereof) available, and perhaps comparing how the Vatican has handled other straying organizations (like the Legion of Christ). No doubt there are doctrinal issues, but the real contaminating element is not the sisters' umbrella organization but the inability of the authority structure to integrate women into leadership roles and authority roles in the Church. It is so petty for George to imply that street-clothed sisters living in apartments has led to their diminished vocations while saying nothing about the decline of male priestly vocations and the complete abandonment of faith in Europe under the male leadership there. If the Church were to follow its scriptural roots and accept women to be ordained as deacons, there would be an explosion of vocations among women. It is a dedicated denial of this latent truth that motivates George and his bishop friends to be so disproportionately strident on LCWR.
George Weigel would have served us better by co-authoring this article with one of the sisters affected, and discussing the procedural due process (or lack thereof) available, and perhaps comparing how the Vatican has handled other straying organizations (like the Legion of Christ). No doubt there are doctrinal issues, but the real contaminating element is not the sisters' umbrella organization but the inability of the authority structure to integrate women into leadership roles and authority roles in the Church. It is so petty for George to imply that street-clothed sisters living in apartments has led to their diminished vocations while saying nothing about the decline of male priestly vocations and the complete abandonment of faith in Europe under the male leadership there. If the Church were to follow its scriptural roots and accept women to be ordained as deacons, there would be an explosion of vocations among women. It is a dedicated denial of this latent truth that motivates George and his bishop friends to be so disproportionately strident on LCWR.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Good Friday
Spectator.org has an interesting post on Good Friday. My comment is rooted in Ted R's comment. below.
Ted R.| 4.7.12 @ 3:13AM
Who do I say he was? Jesus of Nazareth was a well-intentioned, often insightful man, who (like many gurus) had an inflated sense of self-importance (and, he probably had a martyr complex, besides).
For sure, he didn't deserve to die; his execution served no purpose. At All.
Mark30339| 4.8.12 @ 12:12PM
THANK YOU TED! Finally, we get to the heart of the matter. Yours is the enduring question. While much of the commenting above may be interesting, it seems mostly rooted in prideful division. We Christians seem to be the last to recognize that we resemble Jesus so terribly little -- our discourse here is so invested in ego and pride . . . and so divested of concern for the other.
Ted, I am grateful that you ask your question and please, keep asking it. For decades I have been agonizing over why this amazing person of Jesus was horribly tortured and killed. Why did God fail to protect him, why did he not protect and raise a defense for himself. I know my life is precious, shouldn't his life be infinitely more precious?
I don't think that words answer the questions. I think they are answered in the experience of raw suffering -- especially if one endures the suffering for something greater than oneself and if the suffering is embraced as a means to identify with the experience of this holy man named Jesus.
Jesus's feeble and ignoble death is so contrary to our sense of what is right, that it gnaws at us. Jesus himself doubles down and asks each of us,
Who do you say that I AM? The person of Jesus Christ lifts me up when he refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery, when he urges me to understand why the father celebrates the return of the prodigal son, and who commands me to love my neighbor as myself. The glaring incongruity is his innocently absorbing the terror and shame of crucifixion without calling for holy wars of reprisal. When we are entirely rooted in human logic, it is thoroughly illogical -- yet this incongruity is part of the cross we are called to bear.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Are Drone Attacks Defensible?
[Responding to National Review's Defense of Drones]
"And it is true that some drone strikes against terrorists have led to civilian casualties. However, on balance, drones represent the best opportunity to limit collateral damage."
As a conservative and a Christian, I condemn the celebration of drones and I urge a full accounting for the civilian casualties associated with them. The US government is very secretive about the operations. It is interesting that US citizen Awlaki was hunted down and killed without being in combat and with no judicial process. It is also telling that Awlaki's companion and ally, Samir Khan, was a US citizen and is just as dead - and the US State Department actually apologized to Khan's family. Apparently there is some kind of CIA/DoD death warrant document that excuses the killing of Awlaki but not of Khan. Our government is now deciding in secret what citizens have rights and which ones don't -- and this is 10 years into a war that has no mechanism for truce.
These drones are always killing or wounding bystanders. Celebrating drones and celebrating the deployment of kill squads displays America as the great and terrifying killer in the world. But our author, Nathaniel Botwinick, has no problem with this. Ten years into war he embraces the Patton adage: “no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Are there any followers of Christ weary of the war-making and embarrassed by the callous disregard for life?
"And it is true that some drone strikes against terrorists have led to civilian casualties. However, on balance, drones represent the best opportunity to limit collateral damage."
As a conservative and a Christian, I condemn the celebration of drones and I urge a full accounting for the civilian casualties associated with them. The US government is very secretive about the operations. It is interesting that US citizen Awlaki was hunted down and killed without being in combat and with no judicial process. It is also telling that Awlaki's companion and ally, Samir Khan, was a US citizen and is just as dead - and the US State Department actually apologized to Khan's family. Apparently there is some kind of CIA/DoD death warrant document that excuses the killing of Awlaki but not of Khan. Our government is now deciding in secret what citizens have rights and which ones don't -- and this is 10 years into a war that has no mechanism for truce.
These drones are always killing or wounding bystanders. Celebrating drones and celebrating the deployment of kill squads displays America as the great and terrifying killer in the world. But our author, Nathaniel Botwinick, has no problem with this. Ten years into war he embraces the Patton adage: “no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Are there any followers of Christ weary of the war-making and embarrassed by the callous disregard for life?
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