Category: Culture
Early Christianity
For a guy that doesn’t like to read it seems that I do a lot of it. In my Saturday and Sunday morning reading I ran across this article on The Christian Century, website that reports on scholarship looking into the global nature of early Christianity and the possible influence of Buddhism, and other religions, on Christian communities and writings. A couple of paragraphs posted here. Click the title to read more.
Jesus Meets the Buddha
by Phillip Jenkins | “Notes from the Global Church” / The Christian Century | Aug. 30, 2012A proverb that circulated in the former Soviet Union held that the future stays much the same but the past changes from day to day. Less cynically, we might say that as a society develops, people naturally develop interests in new historical topics, and academics turn their attention to these emerging issues. In the case of Christianity, the growth of churches outside the traditional West has led to an upsurge of scholarship about the early histories of African and Asian Christianity, and these histories are being written with the fresh eyes of writers from those regions.
The whole Epistle of James has attracted Asian thinkers. In his classic Water Buffalo Theology, Kosuke Koyama cited James as the most promising means of introducing Christianity to Southeast Asians, especially to Buddhists, who would feel immediately at home with its style of writing as much as its teachings. This is, he notes, just what popular Buddhist scriptures look and sound like. Asian wisdom literature sounds a lot like Judeo-Christian wisdom literature, including James but also Thomas. The Dalai Lama himself is no less enthusiastic about James, praising James’s declaration that human beings are a mist, a vapor that rises and vanishes away. What a wonderful image, he says, for the transience of human life!
Neil Armstrong
I was five years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I have memories of standing in the backyard at our house in Garland, TX looking up at the moon through binoculars and telling my father, “I think I can see them.” I was away from the Internet and TV news media this weekend so I didn’t see the coverage of his death and the humility of his life. Apparently, the country missed it as well based on the reporting of the Washington Post via the Associate Press on Aug. 26. So, this morning I’ve been catching up and remembering his family and friends in my morning meditation. What saddens me is that Mr. Armstrong’s example of humility, his expression of gratitude for the teamwork at NASA, and his responsible citizenship after his 15 minutes of fame was lost as “News” outlets reported on the tropical storm and the impending GOP Convention. Information and news has become a “voyeuristic” business that promotes, creates, and profits from drama more often than reporting the news without bias or at least naming their bias. The FOX News channel is the best example of tabloid TV journalism passing for “news and opinion” journalism that pushes a white Christian-centric conservatism wedded to a capitalism that profits from division, soft racism, and has no problem with, “there will always be poor among you.”
From what I have read about the man, Mr. Armstrong, was not interested in the “celebrity” nature of his existence as one of the few human beings to exit earth’s gravity field, walk on the moon, and return earth safely. Government and private business worked to solve a problem, created technologies that did not exist, cooperated, compromised, and collaborated. One of the best TV series about this time in NASA’s history is HBO’s, “From the Earth to the Moon.” I trust they will bring it back as a tribute to Mr. Armstrong, the other astronauts, the scientists, engineers, and the technicians that made Armstrong’s small step and giant leap possible. That “NASA age” in our Nation’s history might be the last time, in my lifetime, that government functioned well enough to do a thing that no one thought was possible. If, government leaders today could take that example and apply that cooperation and collaboration to our economic crisis, poverty, or disease then people like Grover Norquist (watch his honesty on 60 Minutes) and those that want to manipulate government from the anonymity he offers them would cease to be relevant. Our economy would not trickle down it would bubble up. That’s the difference between Democrats, Republicans, Libertarian, and Independent candidates it seems to me. One set is comfortable with the “lottery winner” mentality of “reality TV” and game shows like “American Idol” because those support the “trickle down” model. The last great “bubble up” economic growth was decades ago after WWII when the “greatest generation” provided an example to people like Neil Armstrong about humility, service, civic responsibility, and what really makes America exceptional. Thank you Neil Armstrong and all the people at NASA.
And now an Aside.
This is the difference in the election for President this November. One candidate’s life has been about enriching himself, his family, and those close to him through every “legal,” not necessarily “moral,” means possible based on his inherited wealth. Government non-regulation and government subsidies or tax breaks have been useful in that process from time to time. The other candidate actually climbed the ladder of economic opportunity that echos across the globe as the American dream. One knows something about collaboration that helps bubble up the ideas that can solve problems or do a thing no one says can be done. That takes relationship, trust, and hope. It takes partners with diverging ideas that want to solve a problem. The other candidate knows how to maintain his status and the status of others like him. It is a choice election about the evolution of our Nation. We can either embrace the multi-ethnic, diversity rich collaboration of our National ideals that learns from the example of the work that Mr. Armstrong and NASA did decades ago or we can embrace the robber baron vision of the white aristocracy behind Rove, the Tea Party, Sen. McConnell, Limbaugh, and Norquist that have gone out of their way to, paraphrasing the Honorable Clarence Thomas(1), “perform a high tech lynching” of President Barrack Obama. The new “Obama 2016” film is the new version of the Sen. Kerry “swift boat” attack.
Note
1. I’m not a fan of Justice Clarence Thomas. I don’t dislike the man. I believe the allegations of Ms Hill about Justice Thomas. Read those quotes here on ThinkExist. But, his words ring true of what white “conservatives” have done and are doing to our President who is pulling the America toward being “post-racial.” I imagine they will do a similar thing to the first “Democrat” woman elected President.