Recently in Humanity Category

From the talk "Human Rights in the New Millennium".

Such contrasts lead to situations that are highly revealing about the prospects for human rights. Right now, the two American political parties are competing to see which can uphold more fervently its dedication to the sadistic doctrine that undocumented immigrants must be denied health care. Their stand is consistent with the legal principle, established by the Supreme Court, that these creatures are not "persons" under the law, hence are not entitled to the rights granted to persons. And at the very same moment, the Court is considering the question of whether corporations should be permitted to purchase elections openly instead of doing so only in more indirect ways -- a complex constitutional matter, because the courts have determined that unlike undocumented immigrants, corporations are real persons under the law, and in fact have rights far beyond those of persons of flesh and blood, including rights granted by the mislabelled "free trade agreements." These revealing coincidences elicit no comment. The law is indeed a solemn and majestic affair.

Green Spaces Boost the Body and the Mind:

In areas with only 10 percent of green space, about 2.6 percent of people experienced anxiety disorders, compared to 1.8 percent of people in areas with 90 percent green space. The disparity was evident for depression as well -- 3.2 percent of people living in more urbanized areas had depression versus 2.4 percent of those in more rural areas. . . .

"If we're in a busy street with more technology and artificial things, we're going to be multi-tasking more, which prevents us from focusing on one thing," Rakel said. "In this day and age, we really need some sort of centering practice. We need to get our mind out of its own stories and focus on something that's pure. Nature is a beautiful example of that -- it's the way things were meant to be." . . .

"If they're in their heads and not paying attention, it doesn't do them much good," said Ryan, co-author of a recent study report that people who are exposed to natural elements are more socially oriented, more generous and value community more. Another experiment he was involved in found that people who spent time outdoors had more vitality and energy.

So getting out of the house helps relieve anxiety and depression. No kidding?

Dr. Rakel's suggestion for a "centering practice" sounds a bit New Age, but he is right that we need to focus on something pure and beautiful. And in our post-Enlightenment, overly-individualized culture, we could do with a stronger connection to the community and greater generosity. The pure, beautiful thing we should center ourselves upon is God whose love in us leads us to love our neighbors, and, according to St. Paul, we can encounter God, though in perhaps in a limited way, through his creation (Rom 1:20).

It makes sense that man should feel at home in nature and have less anxiety and depression since it was God who put us in his creation to tend the Garden. Unfortunately, after the fall we have not tended the garden so much as raped it. No wonder we're so depressed.

In another example of the "water found to be wet" results of many recent scientific discoveries, it turns out that, contrary to the opinion of the pro-abortion camp, unborn babies may really be human.

We already knew that the unborn, at the moment of conception, have a full set of human DNA; that by eight weeks after conception all their bodily systems are present; and that by twelve weeks there is measurable brain activity. Adding to all that, we have now discovered that unborn babies remember.

The data confirm what common sense has already told us: the unborn are very much alive.

(hat tip: First Things)

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/06/30/sweden/index.html

(Hattip: Mark Shea).

I've been reading Noam Chomsky again, and while his writing is typically political in nature, I found one paragraph in particular that touches on something much larger than politics:

What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a "philosophy of futility" and "lack of purpose in life," to "concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption." Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described "intelligent minorities" who serve and administer power.

According to Chomsky, then, people are repressed by the feeling created by our consumer culture that they must have certain things to be happy, that life is meaningless without those things. If only I had the outrageously-priced iPhone 3G (whatever 3G is) I could be happy. If only I had the spouse of my dreams who is the same spouse in the dreams of all of my friends . . . If I could have the perfect child genetically engineered and then implanted into my womb so I could give birth to it and be its almost-mother . . . If only  . . .

Chomsky's slant is political, but the problem of feeling that life is meaningless is not new and is not limited to the repression of political freedom. Expecting stuff to make us happy also represses our freedom to truly love the other human beings around us. We become trapped in self-centeredness such that we miss the good things. Consider the words of the Teacher (or Preacher or Qoholeth or whatever, depending on which translation of the Bible you read):

I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. . . . Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

In contemporary language we might say that trying to find meaning in the iPhone and the 900-inch plasma TV that hangs on the wall, in the six figure salary, or in any of the countless things that the consumer culture says will make us happy, is stupid. Now, there is nothing at all wrong with enjoying the iPhone or wanting to do a specific kind of work or rising to the top of your profession. But to attach our identities to our jobs, to clutter our lives with consumer goods which will be replaced next year by the latest, greatest thing, and to leave our spouses for no better reason than we want to upgrade, are really bad ideas.

Life is not meaningless, regardless of what the marketing departments of giant corporations would like us to believe. The meaning to life and the reward of working are not things, the fruits of our labor. Rather, the meaning and reward are in living life and doing the work, and finding love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in the process. To enjoy the possessions we have is good, a gift from God, but our identity is not tied to them. Chasing after them as if we actually need them is chasing after the wind. Those who chase after the latest gadgets and the six-figure salary in order to find meaning and happiness will find their hearts desolate:

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy upon humankind: those to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that they lack nothing of all that they desire, yet God does not enable them to enjoy these things, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous ill. A man may beget a hundred children, and live many years; but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life's good things, or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

Rather, what is truly good is to

eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot. Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil—this is the gift of God. For they will scarcely brood over the days of their lives, because God keeps them occupied with the joy of their hearts.

Now, make no mistake, it's not always easy to find enjoyment in the toil, which is why the Teacher says we have to find enjoyment; we won't necessarily enjoy what we do by default.

What we do will vary from person to person, but I get the sense from the text that the Teacher is implying simple things. To eat and drink and work are very basic things, fundamental to every human being. And lately it seems to be in the doing of simple things that I find myself the most satisfied. I'm learning to take pleasure in ordinary things like establishing a routine at home with my real spouse and my daughter, cooking food instead of eating at McDonald's, raking the yard instead of using a leaf blower, moving stones by hand when building a fire pit, sitting by the fire and talking rather than sitting in front of the TV and being entertained.

In doing these things I get a sense of the greater picture, a connection to God's creation, and to the most important part of that creation—other human beings. And I don't mean in some creepy New-Age kind of way. I mean coming to a truer understanding, although limited by our imperfect human reason, of our place in the universe, of our relationship to God and to our human family. These are the two relationships in which all humans are called to participate, that is, love of God and love of neighbor. And it is through these relationships and our eating, drinking, and working that we find meaning and joy

The myth of consumer-centric happiness and the stuff it sells have no meaning; they are vanity in the literal sense of the word, that is, they have no intrinsic value. All that chasing after stuff accomplishes is to focus man's attention inward, to himself. But man cannot find true meaning looking inward as the Eastern religions would have us believe. Rather it is doing the basic things, eating and drinking and working and not focusing on "stuff," that man can reach outside of himself toward his brothers and sisters, and can look upward to God in whom alone, as St. Augustine points out, that our heart will find rest.

References
Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, New York: Henry Holt and Company (2004), p. 139.

Ecclesiastes 2:4–11; 6:1–3; 5:18–20. New Revised Standard Version.

In Part 1 I discussed Pope Paul VI's condemnation of contraception in his encyclical Humanae Vitae. Because this document is an exercise of the Catholic Church's magisterium, its doctrines are binding on Catholics—it is something they are required to believe. However, we in the Wesleyan Church have no absolute teaching authority so are left to figure out most matters of doctrine and morality on our own. The General Conference does meet every four years to decide matters of doctrine and discipline, but their decisions can be changed by the next General Conference, which quite frankly is unnerving. For example, though the Wesleyan Discipline currently holds that homosexuality is immoral, a future General Conference could change the Discipline to endorse homosexual "marriage." The 2008 General Conference voted to loosen restrictions on which membership requirements must be adhered to in order for one to be allowed to vote or serve in positions in the local church. While it is highly improbable that the next Conference in 2012 would endorse gay marriage, they could loosen further membership requirements or other doctrines. Only God knows what future Conferences will decide. But I digress.

One issue that the Wesleyan Church General Conference has never voted on is contraception—is it morally acceptable for Christian couples to prevent the creation of life? It seems that we, along with the rest of the Protestant community, tacitly accepted contraception both when the Anglicans voted to accept it at their 1930 Lambeth Conference and when the pill was introduced in the 1960s. The WC has issued a Position Paper on Reproductive Technology which declares that any methods of contraception used must not cause abortions, but the paper presupposes that at least some methods of contraception are licit. However, it does not specify what those licit methods might be, nor does it examine any theological or philosophical arguments for or against contraception in general. Thus, once again, Wesleyan couples are left to decide for themselves. So, here we go....

According to the WC's position paper, a "so-called contraceptive which acts after conception is more correctly termed an abortifacient and violates the sanctity of human life." Because whatever licit methods of contraception there might be must not act as abortifacients, the pill, patches, and IUDs are right out. Both Mircette (pill) and Ortho Evra (patch) "reduce the likelihood of implantation" of a newly-conceived life by altering the endometrium, the lining of the uterus to which a baby attaches himself in order to receive nutrients from his mother (see the "Clinical Pharmacology" sections in both of the above linked documents). Preventing implantation and therefore causing the newly-conceived life to exit the womb in order to avoid having a baby is, by definition, an abortion. Hormonal contraceptives act as abortifacients and are therefore illicit. Intra-uterine devices (IUDs) such as Mirena are designed specifically to cause "alteration of the endometrium" in order to prevent implantation (p. 3) so are also illicit.

So the pill is out. But what about barrier methods such as condoms or diaphragms? Or, perhaps the often-joked-about coitus interruptus, that is to say early withdrawl? Though different in execution, c.i. and barriers perform the same general function which is preventing a man's sperm from entering a woman's uterus, so I will consider them together. While a successful argument from science can be made against hormonal contraceptives, It is much more difficult to make the argument from science against barriers and c.i. because these methods act before conception and not after. In my opinion, Paul VI makes an excellent argument from the natural law against contraception in general, but Wesleyans typically identify themselves as "bible-believing Christians," so arguments from philosophy don't often work so well with us. Since we are, in general, bible thumpers, I will argue against barriers and c.i. directly from the Scriptures.

Because we spend so much time in Romans, Wesleyans often overlook passages like Genesis 38:6–10:

And Juda took a wife for Her, his first born, whose name was Thamar. And Her, the first born of Juda, was wicked in the sight of the Lord: and was slain by him. Juda, therefore, said to Onan his son: Go in to thy brother's wife and marry her, that thou mayst raise seed to thy brother. He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went in to his brother's wife, he spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother's name. And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing (KJV, my emphasis).

Onan being slain by God for spilling his seed should definitely serve as a strong warning for Christians against pulling out early. Now, I have heard it argued that the "detestable thing" for which Onan was slain was deliberately not giving his dead brother children and that therefore the passage does not directly condemn the spilling of the seed. However, this reading of the passage is a non sequitor. In order to avoid giving his dead brother children, Onan could simply have said no. After all, Juda had another son called Sela who could have fulfilled the brotherly duty when he came of age (see the rest of Gen. 38). The issue, then, is not with whether Onan fulfilled his brotherly duty but rather with the method by which he did not fulfill his duty. And not only did he spill his seed, but he deliberately used his sister-in-law for sexual pleasure, adding to the detestability of his actions (cf. H.V., 13). The whole incident could have been avoided if Onan had taken Nancy Reagan's advice and just said no. Had Onan not spilled his seed, he might never have been mentioned in the Bible.

We have ruled out hormonal contraception and, by Onan's example, barrier methods and good ol' coitus interruptus. So, we Christians are left with basically one morally licit method of spacing children—abstaining from intercourse during the fertile period of a woman's cycle, a.k.a. Natural Family Planning (NFP) and, to the medical community, periodic abstinence.

"But how effective is NFP?" you may ask.

Well, according to Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., makers of Ortho Evra, NFP is almost as effective at postponing pregnancy as the pill and more effective than the diaphragm and early withdrawal. When used consistently and correctly (a.k.a. "perfect use"), periodic abstinence (P.A.) on average is 96.25% effective, compared to the diaphragm which is only 94% effective. The sympto-thermal method of P.A. is the most popular these days and is 98% effective which beats the 96% effectiveness of early withdrawal. Even in a "typical use" scenario (not used consistently or correctly) P.A. is comparable to the methods of artificial contraception mentioned above though slightly less effective (Ortho Evra Prescribing Information, p. 2, Table 4).

NFP is as effective as artificial methods of contraception yet fits neatly into God's design for human sexuality. Sounds like Paul VI might be right after all. Chalk another one up for the Catholics.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI reiterated the Catholic Church's centuries-old teaching on the purpose of marriage and the sexual relationship between husband and wife, and specifically on the use of various birth control methods. In his encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) he condemned "the direct interruption of the generative process already begun," "direct abortion" and "any action which... is specifically intended to prevent procreation" (14). Paul VI's reasons for upholding this doctrine do not include a desire to keep married couples from having fun. Rather:

The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life.... And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called (H.V., 12).

He also notes that we

must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life (H.V., 13).

Paul VI might one day be considered a prophet. Consider his insights into the consequences of contraception:

Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings--and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation--need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone (H.V., 17).

Here are a few examples of such consequences which have followed the release of his encyclical:

• Marital infidelity/low moral standards: Growth of the porn industry; an approximately 50% divorce rate among those who are married (CDC), marital infidelity being one of the leading causes.
• Temptation of the young: Increase in teen pregnancy rates (CNN).
• Women as instruments: Again, the porn industry; hip-hop music videos.
• Contraception in the hands of the authorities: Single-child limit resulting in coerced abortions and forced sterilization in China (CNN); on-demand abortion for all women in any stage of pregnancy (admittedly, with some restrictions) made available by the U.S. Supreme Court (Roe v. Wade, XI).

Paul VI does offer recourse for couples who have "well-grounded reasons for spacing births." They may "take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained" (H.V., 16). Abstaining from sex during the fertile period is commonly called Natural Family Planning (NFP) or, in medical circles, periodic abstinence. The Pope recognizes that although NFP requires couples to "control their natural drives" and makes clear "the need for self-denial," he offers hope that "it brings to family life abundant fruits of tranquility and peace" and "fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving consideration for one another" in a way that artificial means of birth control cannot (H.V., 21).

The teaching on contraception in Humanae Vitae is binding on Catholics—it is something which they are required to believe (whether individual Catholics actually follow their Church's teaching is another matter). My own Wesleyan Church has no official teaching on contraception, so as to whether contraception in general is morally licit, we are left to figure it out for ourselves, as we are with most theological and moral questions. The only guidelines the Wesleyan Church provides is that contraception must not cause abortions (Position Paper on Reproductive Technology). That guideline might severely limit a woman's choice for hormonal contraception as many pills and patches can cause abortions. So, these questions remain: What kind of birth control is licit? How effective are the licit methods? Those answers in part 2....

I went camping at Mt. Mitchell over the weekend with my dad and my cousin A.J. When I told a friend about the trip, he said, "I bet you felt closer to God." My response was, "No, that's what church is for." Indeed, at church we enter corporately into the presence of God the Father Almighty, Jesus Christ his only Son, and the Holy Spirit the Lord, the giver of life, and we are especially close to God when we receive Holy Communion. Camping in the mountains does not necessarily bring us closer to God, but it can help us appreciate God's creative work, and most importantly, it can make us feel more human. There is something about camping—sleeping on the ground, cooking over an open fire, and braving low temperatures of 40 deg. F and 40-mile per hour wind gusts—that connects us with our ancestors who lived a far more physical existence than we can imagine.

In our contemporary American society, we forget that we are physical beings. We tend to isolate ourselves in our homes amongst all manner of electronic gadgets which appeal only to our intellect. Many of us sit in front of computer consoles all day and have become "knowledge workers." To avoid smelling physical, we shower daily and put on deodorant. Our toilets have moved inside so that we no longer have to dig our own holes. (On a side note: My mother-in-law tells us that when she was a girl in the 1940s, they still had no indoor toilet. Her father told them emphatically that he would not have a "shit house" inside. Sometimes I think I see his point. Anyway...) My friend who implied we could be closer to God outdoors also suggested that it was a bad idea for men to be present in the delivery room because of the gore, especially the delivery of the placenta. His suggestion is that we be more "Victorian" and simply avoid the thought of such things. Sex and its end result can be a little messy. So what? This is how God created us. Don't misunderstand me. I am not advocating an abandonment of personal hygiene. In fact, I greatly appreciate my indoor toilet. I am also not suggesting that we immediately revert to an agrarian society. I am quite content with my computer programming job. I am simply pointing out our growing tendency to deny our physicality.

To deny that we are physical beings is fundamentally un-Christian. True, we are spiritual beings created for communion with God who is pure spirit. However, in the same way that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God, so we are both physical and spiritual creatures. Not only did God breathe into us the "breath of life," but He also formed us from the "dust of the ground" (Gen. 2:7). We are made from the same matter that God used to create the universe. As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson poetically (hopefully not pantheistically) points out, "Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us." If we deny our physicality, our place in the physical creation, we deny our full humanity.

The Gnostics, an ancient pseudo-Christian sect responsible for writing such apocryphal works as the Gospel of Thomas, had a great distaste for the physical world. They avoided the reality of Christ's humanity, his physical suffering, and his real death. Because his death was not real to them, neither was his resurrection which became for them a personal spiritual experience. Buddhists share with the Gnostics the same distaste for humanity. In Buddhism the body is simply a vessel or vehicle for the soul, and the ultimate goal is for humans to shed their physicality and achieve Nirvana, a state of pure spiritual existence in which distinct human identity is lost and we simply blend in to the universal spirit. To accept Christianity, however, is to accept the belief that we are integrated beings, at once physical and spiritual. We believe not only in a spiritual existence after death, but in the resurrection of the body.

In the evangelical Christian world our worship lacks physicality. We sing songs which are typically geared to move us emotionally. The sermon has become the most important part of evangelical worship and, like our electronic gadgets, appeals only to our intellect. This contrasts starkly with Catholic worship in which all five human senses are engaged: The taste of the wine and bread in Communion. The sound of bells. The smell of incense and candles. The sight of the crucifix and the stained glass windows. The touch of the fingers to the forehead, heart, and shoulders when making the sign of the cross. Add to that the kneeling before Mass and during Communion, genuflecting before being seated and when walking in front of the tabernacle, the striking of the breast during the general confession, the priest kissing the altar and the book of the Gospel. There is no "communion table" but rather an altar, a place of physical sacrifice. The bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ. Unlike evangelicals who talk and feel a lot about God, Catholics worship him with their full humanity, body and spirit.

Evangelicals would do well to add some physicality to their worship, but I am afraid that it is unlikely to happen. The evangelical emphasis is on a personal knowledge of Jesus, an inward experience, feeling "strangely warmed" as John Wesley described it. While looking for good feelings and emotional reactions to God, we ignore Christ's participation in our humanity which culminated in his Passion, death, and resurrection. We put up empty crosses in our churches, if we put them up at all, reflecting our ambivalence to Christ's real physical human suffering. At funerals we will say about the dead body, "Well, that's not really him." It most certainly is! Our bodies are as much us as our souls. By denying that our bodies are really us, we express a disdain for the humanity that was given to us by God. We must be very careful not to sterilize Christianity the same way we have sterilized our lives. If we avoid Christ's and our humanity we risk becoming Gnostics or Buddhists. I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing. Perhaps by going camping we can feel closer to God. Not by isolating ourselves from the rest of the world or trying to find God in nature, but by recognizing our own humanity and gaining a greater appreciation for God's coming down from heaven and becoming man for us and for our salvation.