Animals and Eternity

There is a painting by Giuseppe Vermiglio of the Last Supper. This painting has three animals in it. I have never pictured the Last Supper with Jesus to have animals included but this is how Vermiglio saw it. The first animal is in front of Jesus and is the butchered Passover Lamb. This lamb was to be spotless and without blemish in order to be sacrifices and served at the Passover meal. This animal represented Christ himself, OUR Passover Lamb. The spotless and perfect one who was sacrificed for us.

The next animal is a small dog. You see this dog coming out from under the table the disciples were reclining on. The small dog here was a symbel of the destitute in society, of those who fed off the scraps of the tables the rest of the people left over after they had their fill. Whatever fell to the floor was picked up and cleaned up by the small dogs. These were the friendly, big-eyed, whimpering ones and not the mean and nasty dogs of the street.

The third animal is a fat cat. Not even a black cat but a cat that represents the devil. The only one to notice this cat is the small dog. The cat/devil sits behind Judas whom we recognize because he is holding a bag full of 30 pieces of silver in his right hand and while all the other Apostles are listing to and leaning toward Jesus, he seems to be looking to make his way AWAY FROM the Savior.

Vermiglio was saying some pretty interesting things through his painting. The dog is in a defensive posture and probably barking annoyingly which the disicples simple don’t see or pay attention to. The only one that sees the evil hovering around Judas is the destitute in society. The Apostles are too busy trying to jocky for position and learning from Jesus that they neglect the world around them and the devil in their midst.

While not crafted and as popular as DaVinci’s version of the same scene, Vermiglio captures something the Leonardo misses. Listen to your animals! Okay, maybe not that so much but certainly BE AWARE of the world around you even while you are worshipping and spending time in the presence of Jesus.

The Ten Commandments

Minnesota Style 1. Der’s only one God, ya know. 2. Don’t make that fish on your mantle an important thing 3. Cussin ain’t Minnesota nice 4. Go to church even when you’re up nort 5. Honor your folks 6. Don’t kill, Catch and release 7. There’s only one Lena for every Ole. No cheatin. 8. If it ain’t your lutefisk, don’t take it 9. Don’t be bragging bout how much snow ya shoveled 10. Keep your mind off your neighbor’s hotdish Vegas Style 1. Love only God, and God is not the name of an exclusive nightclub 2. Sequined purses and boots are not to be worshipped 3. Watch what you say and how you act – there are camera’s EVERYWHERE 4. Even swing shifters need time off, take a day 5. Remember to comp your mom and dad when they are in town 6. Even when the guys pulls a crazy flush on the river to beat your 3 of a kind, killing is not an option 7. Keep your eyes on the road and not the billboards, or taxi signs. 8. A One-Armed-Bandit is a slot machine not a way of life 9. Don’t tell me you “just about broke even” that is Vegas-speak for “I just lost $500 and my wife is gonna kill me.” 10. Your suite is fine, don’t worry about your buddy getting the Presidential Suite Internet Style 1. Don’t bow before your computer even though google is “all-knowing” 2. That perfect internet connection is not your purpose 3. BOLD FACED TYPING is yelling too, watch your language 4. Let your computer rest, never leave it on full time you never know what bugs and spam it will pick up 5. Skype your mom and dad frequently 6. Don’t enjoy mashing your “friend” in WOW too much 7. Keep your firewalls up 8. Knowing your friends passwords can only get you into trouble 9. Watch out what you Text and Twitter about it WILL come back to haunt you 10. The latest MEGA graphics card won’t make any difference if you buy it just for show No matter how you slice it, as good as it may be; the original is still the best. AND still appropriate and timely.

Es Es Percepe

Is there really an external world? Is there really a world outside of our experience? When you see an apple, you picture it in your mind (as you are right now); what happens when you close your eyes and think of something else? Does the apple disappear? Does the world disappear when you close your eyes? If everyone in the world closed their eyes and emptied their minds at the same time would the universe disappear? When we group our regularly occurring experiences we give them names. “Apple” is our word for a consistent collection of sweet, red, crunchy sensations of a certain size, texture, and smell. But that is all an apple is. Or is it? According to George Berkeley (1685-1753) that is all an apple is. To suppose that it is something more, something OUT THERE, is to go beyond the evidence of experience. Worse, it is to think the absurd thought that sweetness can exist untasted and red can exist unseen. To believe that something exists in the realm OUTSIDE the senses is to build a shaky scaffolding to stand on. Yet it might surprise you to know that George was a devout Christian. He actually used this “idealism” as evidence and proof for God. Berkeley argues that God perceives and therefore sustains the whole of the universe whether we happen to be looking at it or not. For Berkeley the continued existence of everything is proof not only of God’s existence but also his benevolence. If God blinked, not only would our world go out of existence but so would we. The Latin “es es percepe” means “to be is to be perceived”. What would we be without others experiencing us? What would we be without our own senses? What would we be without God perceiving us? With us being unable to trust our own senses reality and truth, then, is how God perceives it. The truth corresponds to reality as GOD perceives it: NOT OUR PERCEPTION. Our very existence depends on GOD perceiving us: NOT OUR PERCEPTION of HIM! I think ancient scripture writers understood this when they gave us the priestly benediction: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his FACE SHINE ON YOU and be gracious to you; may the Lord TURN HIS FACE TOWARD YOU and give you peace.” May the Lord PERCEIVE you too.

Quantum Faith

There is a weird, yet incredibly powerful faith in something called “quanta”. The faith was first developed by a German physicist called Max Planck, who proposed that energy comes in tiny lumps called “quanta”. The faith was extended by Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, and Werner Heisenberg; all priests of the faith in the 1920s.

It is because of the faith of quantum mechanics that we have most of our modern technology. This faith in quanta brought forth semiconductors and lasers which, in turn, brought forth all modern computers, MP3 players, cell phones, and many lifesaving medical treatments and scanners.

One of the priests: Niels Bohr commented on the faith, “If you are not astonished by quantum mechanics, they you haven’t understood it!”

Despite the tremendous success of the faith quantum mechanics remains shrouded in mystery because no one really knows how or why it works. It make certain predictions about the unseen world that go completely against our common sense. For instance, it explains how an atom can exist in more than one place at the same time until we check to see what it is up to and then it magically appears based on our looking for it. So it is everywhere until we seek it and then it appears in that particular place as if we called it there. This faith also says that an electron can spin both clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time until we try to measure it. So it is everything in every way until we seek to limit it.

I am anticipating the ACLU will soon ban the study of Quantum mechanics in all Schools.

Hunger

It is really very simple: this “making money” thing. I hear you telling me over and over that “it takes money to make money” which is only partially true. A more accurate statement would be that “it takes money to make MORE money.”

People around me talk about the security of a steady paycheck and insurance and retirement benefits. They say this as if “steady” and “secure” are good things! When EVER has mediocrity become a good goal? Steady and secure are means to mediocrity not to happiness.

Howard Thurman (1900-1981) said “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

If you want to slip out of the handcuffs of hourly wages, you must figure out how to be paid according to your accomplishments. “How long did it take?” isn’t the question you want to answer, but rather, “What is the value of my achievement?” People paid by the hour are paid for their activities. Wouldn’t you rather get paid for your accomplishments?
Average, mediocre people are that way because they cling to the avoidance of discomfort. Every successful person (defined however you want to define success) will tell you that risk and pain are part of any meaningful success. Comfort leads to complacency.

Niels Bohr “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”

Marie Arana “Mediocrity has a way of keeping demons from the door.”

Solomon “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

And Solomon also said “The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.”

According to Solomon, HUNGER is your friend! For what are you hungry? For what are you willing to risk embarrassment? For what are you willing to get uncomfortable for? If you answer is nothing then you will also spend your time in mediocrity wondering why you cannot make ends meet; it is really that simple. The deepest sin of government assistance is NOT the spending of money we don’t have, the greatest sin is the promotion of mediocrity.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst …” Jesus said. Are you hungry?

Universe

There is a lot going on in the Middle East as I am writing this. There is a deposed leader in Egypt. There is death and rioting in Libya and in many other countries as the people try to rise up against their despotic leaders. The United States seems to be caught in the middle of supporting then not supporting then supporting again alternately the leadership, the people, then different people, then…

It is a mess and people are dying.

Will something better than before come from the ruins? History shows that eventually the right side wins but often after brutal and blood years. But history also tells us that the oppressed, when they come to power, soon become the oppressors. Then we have the mess again.

We feel the same thing in our country on a smaller, less deadly scale in the battles for control of state houses and political maneuvering. Our representative government is crazy, messy, prone to abuse, and sometimes hurtful BUT it is the best thing out there right now. Our nations motto is E Pluribus Unum which means “Out of many: ONE” We need to understand that we are MANY different people, different backgrounds, different colors, different skills, different advantages, and just plain DIFFERENT. But it is that difference that can make us whole and complete. The Bible calls us the Body. A metaphor that could be used nationally too. Some of us our hands, some feet, some muscle, some eyes, and some brains but we all NEED each other to make the whole body work. Can the eye say to the foot, “I don’t need you!”

Ancient philosophers looked up to the skies and saw a reflection of themselves twinkling back at them. Thy saw the diversity of the sun, moon and stars but they also saw how they moved in a particular order and harmony. They saw different colors and even some special stars like the North Star, but all in one. They decided to call what they saw “Unity” within “Diversity” or the shortened word: universe.

There is a sense, a standard out there that people need to see. We see it in the universe and we put it on our coins now we just need to live it.

Exclusivity and Truth

Today a key word in politics and social justice is “inclusive”. We need to include individuals who have ideas different than ours because, after all, ALL ideas are valid if someone holds to them. I can say to you that I love fish and I know that fish is good for me. You can hate fish but still tolerate my statement because it is an opinion based on my personal preference. As long as the statements revolve around personal preference we can “tolerate” each other and “include” each other in our own little society.

But what happens when my “true” statement is necessarily stepping on your personal toes? What happens when my statements, true for me, are stated to be true for you too? Statements like “Jesus is Lord” will step on the toes of those who say “Allah is Lord”. If I precede my statement with “I believe …” then no one would/should have a problem with it. I can say I believe Jesus is Lord and you can say you believe this tangerine is Lord and we would both be okay with it. Or would we?

The very definition of Pagan belief is “MANY gods” and was practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans. They were okay with you worshipping whatever god you wanted to only make sure that you don’t have a problem with me serving my gods. Worship was a matter of DOING something for your god like offering a sacrifice at the temple of your god and calling it a day. You have your “religious activity” done for the day/week etc. Jewish religion changed that a little but didn’t force the pagan hand. They lived together and Jews had no problem with pagans as long as they left the Jews alone. Each can serve their own god, perform their religious rites, and go on their way.

Then came this crazy Christian religion. This religion said that there was only ONE God to be worshipped and to worship other Gods was wrong/evil/sinful and should be stopped. This crazy religion said that you needed to do more than just go to your temple and sacrifice, you had to actually BELIEVE in this God and BELIEVING was what got you to heaven. Pagans really didn’t have to believe anything they did, they just had to do it. This crazy new religion sought to convert others to their religion, to make them give up their gods and worship the “one true God” exclusively. How crazy is that?!

You will notice in Pagan religions, including Judaism that there is no such thing as heresy. The reason there is no heresy is that there is no orthodoxy. Orthodoxy means true or right belief and heresy means wrong belief. How can a Pagan religion have a wrong belief when you don’t have to believe, just perform a rite? How can a Pagan religion have orthodoxy when EVERYTHING is included and right and okay?

To me, this is PROOF of the truth of Christianity. Christianity MUST be true because it is the only religion that is EXCLUSIVE. Christianity must be true because it is intolerant of other gods and other religions, you cannot combine Christianity with any other religions and stay TRUE to Christianity. To say you are a Christian Buddhist is not only a stupid thing to say but it is also a WRONG thing to say. It is the equivalent of saying “I am a human tomato”. You cannot have truth without exclusivity and intolerance. I am sorry but someone has to be wrong, we can’t all be right.

Insurance (Get Ready for my latest Soapbox)

I don’t believe in insurance. I think owning insurance of any kind is unbiblical and probably of the devil. I can see Satan rubbing his hands together and smiling that his plan to usurp faith and honesty is working: INSURANCE!

After all, isn’t that basically what insurance is? Isn’t, at its basic level, insurance a hedge against people lying, cheating, stealing and/or not taking responsibility for their actions?

Car insurance is for people who won’t pay for an accident they caused OR for those who won’t admit it was their fault and pay for the other’s damage.

Life insurance is for people who don’t build a savings or can’t manage their money well enough to take care of their bills and/or their loved ones after they die.

House insurance is for people who don’t want the responsibility of carrying the debt of a house YOU AGREED TO PAY OFF after it is damaged or destroyed.

Health insurance is for people who don’t want to take care of their family, friends, or church brothers and sisters.

The cost of insurance continues to go up and up because of the same reasons people get insurance any way. People who won’t admit it was their fault make EVERYONE’S insurance go up. People who sue doctors for mistakes cause the malpractice insurance to go up which causes the price of medicine to go up which causes all health insurance to go up which means you get less in your paycheck for paying your part in insurance which means you get more scared of affording your home or taking care of your kids which means you get more insurance and SO ON!

I prefer a world where people take responsibility for their actions. I prefer a world where people can rely on their church in emergencies instead of insurance agencies. I prefer a world where people have faith in GOD more than insurance.

Frankie and I have not had health insurance for over 20 years now. I believe God has blessed that decision by giving us both good health. For my broken foot and foot surgery I simply went to the doctor and told him that I had no insurance and that I was going to pay cash. He promptly cut his price by two thirds. So did the anesthetist and the surgery center and I paid my responsibilities and THEY LOVED NOT HAVING TO DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.

I can’t tell you not to have insurance. I have Life Insurance, I HAVE TO HAVE car insurance, and I would probably get health insurance if I could afford it; but wouldn’t it be a much better world if people would just quit trying to cheat and avoid responsibilities for their actions?

Let me step off this soapbox now before I hurt myself and have to sue the manufacturer and call my ambulance chasing, most annoyingly advertising, attorney.

The Facts

“Just the facts, ma’am” said Jack Friday in Dragnet. We are obsessed with the facts. The facts will tell us the truth right? Maybe not so much.

We have all seen the experiment or heard of the accident with 4 witnesses and all of them told what happened. They told the facts and all the facts were in conflict with each other. The more witnesses you had, the more problems you had identifying the facts and consequently, the truth.

Maya Angelou is fond of saying that “sometimes the facts obscure the truth.” And the truth is that sometimes truth is what we WANT to remember and not what actually happened. I want to remember a GREAT childhood but my brother or my sister might remember it differently. I want to remember how this guy really ripped me off when in fact I was just stupid at the time. We taint facts for political reasons. We taint facts for personal reasons. We taint facts to avoid responsibility. We taint facts to bend the truth to our advantage. And we simply don’t remember what we should remember to get all the facts straight. I have a son with a near photographic memory for facts and figures but he forgets to come to a family dinner. We remember what we want to remember and it only marginally has anything to do with the facts.

But that is okay. As long as we understand that our facts are messed up and prejudiced by our view of them we can get along. This is the truth AS I SEE IT and not this is the truth NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY! As Maya said, sometimes the facts get in the way of the truth. I can find out a lot about a person if I get them talking about politics. Before too long I can tell you if they are Republican or Democrat, both sides seeing the same “facts” but coming to totally different conclusions. I can tell a lot about your job by asking simple work questions. I don’t want to know the “facts” of your job. I want to know if you are happy there, if you are doing what you want to do, or if you have big or small dreams. The facts often get in the way of the truth.

I am okay with that ambiguity. But I am okay with it because I understand that we all tell the “facts” according to our own worldview, our own particular bent of looking at the world. Your filter can then go through my filter and we can have a GREAT discussion on issues that are important. But if one of the parties doesn’t believe they have a bent of the facts but has a corner on the facts; there is a problem.

What about you? How do you “see” the facts?

The Effort Myth Myth

People really want to believe that effort is a myth. Especially when you consider what today’s media tells us:
• Politicians and beauty queens who get by on a smile and a wink
• Lottery winners who turn a lifetime of lousy jobs into one big payday
• Sports stars who are born with skills we could never hope to acquire
• Hollywood celebrities with the talent of being in the right place at the right time
• Failed CEO’s with $40 million buyouts

It really seems, according to popular myth, that who you know and whether you get “picked” are the keys to succeed. In other words: LUCK.

The thing about luck is that it is a matter of perspective. We are INSANELY lucky to be born in the United States instead of Bangladesh. We are CRAZY lucky to have been born in this time period and not during the Black Plague. We are UNBELIEVABLY lucky to be born with the tools and opportunities we have right now and in this place. But if we set that luck aside for a minute, something interesting shows up.

Delete the extremes – the people who are hit by the bus on one side and the people who hit Megabucks on the other and we are left with everybody else. For EVERYONE else their success is not related to luck; it is related to effort. Smarter, harder working, better informed and better liked people do better than others; MOST of the time.

Effort takes many forms. Simply showing up is an important form of effort. Knowing stuff is a result of effort more than being smart. ( I know a LOT of smart people who don’t know much). Being kind when it is easier NOT to be takes effort. Paying forward without reward takes effort. Simply doing the right thing. I know, I know, you have heard this all before, so I guess it is easier to bet on luck over effort to win your future for you.

If you aren’t betting on luck then why do you make so many dumb choices? Why aren’t useful books selling at fifty times the rate they sell now? Why does anyone watch the crazy reality TV shows? Why do people do such dumb stuff with their money? Why do you not get up at 5:00am every morning?

I think we have been tricked by the extremes. Those lucky people who have their own reality TV show, or hit the lottery or megabucks, or get that great idea that Microsoft will buy for a billion bucks. We look at those exceptions who get SO MUCH more than we think they deserve and we, who deserve more, don’t get anything. Effort is a myth, right? That’s the Effort Myth Myth. Don’t be fooled by the Effort Myth.

A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole with Me

I am kind of weird. In many ways, but the one that comes to mind is that I spend a lot of time thinking about certain ethical and moral issues and that tends to send me down some pretty weird, deep and amazing rabbit holes. My current gristle is the good dog/bad dog within us. We each have a good dog and a bad dog within us; which wins? Call it an angel and a demon if you like, which one wins? We struggle with this daily in every decision we make so it seems important.

The first answer is: the one you say “sick’em to”. In other words if you tell the good dog to “go after” the bad dog, it will and it will chase him away. Or vice-versa. The second answer to that question is: the one you feed will win. If you feed your good dog by doing good things the bad dog will wither away over time. Both of these answers take an act of will on your part. YOU have to say “sick’em”; YOU have to feed the good dog. YOU have to make a decision.

On a deeper level JRR Tolkien dealt with the same issues with my favorite character in the “Lord of the Rings” series: Gollum. In the movie, Peter Jackson even displayed the good and bad dog in Gollum as he talked to himself and his reflection in the water. But Gollum was also a reflection of Frodo, the hero. Throughout the story Frodo’s battle with the good and bad inside him comes more and more out into the open. The One Ring brought to the surface that battle for all who were near it.

On a deeper still level Hemingway fought his own demons in the “Old Man and the Sea” story. The fish represented that battle, the Old Man represented that life long struggle, and the fish carcass represented a hollow victory where no one was there to see it. We fight our greatest battles in secret, when no one is looking.

Still deeper we go down the rabbit hole and we find Don Quixote de la Mancha. His battles were thought of by EVERYONE as imaginary. He tilted at windmills as though they were dragons, he fought barbers for golden helmets, and he fought for and showed honor to his lady who was little more than a prostitute and wanted nothing to do with him. Many of our battles are thought of as simply in our minds but they are VERY real to us.

And down we go even further and we find Solomon. The wisest king who ever lived yet he was also the most foolish. The man who spoke of how to love and honor yet had a thousand women to go to bed with. The man who asked for wisdom only to find it meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Solomon sought the “profound deep” of understanding (Ecc. 7:24) and could not find it. He went on to say that he searched for that GOODNESS and EVILNESS, Wisdom and Folly in people and found both but also found no difference between them. Did you follow that? Or have we gone too far down the rabbit hole?

Solomon’s conclusion to the matter was simple: “Eat and drink with gladness … enjoy life with those you love… do what you do with all your might.” (Ecc. 9:7-10) and to make it your duty to “Fear God and keep his commandments.” (Ecc. 12:13)
I like Don Quixote’s conclusion as well: “Dare greatly, love deeply, win with grace, and lose with magnificence!”

Sin

Oh that I could sin once see!
We paint the devil foul, yet he
Hath some good in him, all agree.
Sin is a flat opposite to th’almighty, seeing
It wants the good of virtue and of being.

But God more care of us hath had:
If apparitions make us sad
By sight of sin we should grow mad.
Yet as in sleep we see foul death and live
So devils are our sins in perspective.
(George Herbert, 1593-1633)

It seems every so often in years there is a slew of movies and TV shows on the supernatural. From Harry Potter to Twilight we are riding the crest of that wave now. TV shows on vampires and movies on the occult show the devil is popular again.

These shows paint the devil or the evil so opposite of us especially when they are exposed somewhere towards the end of the show. They “turn” into their “true” self and are shown to be hideous and easily identifiable. So we all wonder what fooled us in the first place as the heroine stands against the devilish looking ghoul and defeats him in the last climactic minutes. The evil is so opposite of us!

In his poem George Herbert recognizes that sin is us. He recognizes that the devil exposed is really our sins realized. We have found the devil and it is us! Today’s society covers up sin as a life choice, as a personality disorder that needs to be overcome, as an ADD moment that needs to be medicated, as dreams that tell us of previous lives or abuses, and as ANYTHING but what it truly is: the devil in us.

We started a new year and what I would like to do is pull down the thin veil of our personal devil and call it what it is: SIN. We SIN! We do it a LOT and OFTEN. The burden of this on our hearts should “make us grow mad” but God’s wisdom put in a failsafe allowing us to go on. We have taken this opportunity for crushingly true repentance and turned it into ignorance and TV shows of vampires.

In 1961 the Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann was on trial in an Israeli court. Many Holocaust survivors were brought in to testify against him. An elderly Jewish man walked his way into court forced to use a cane because of the horrors done to him in a Concentration Camp. As he got to the front of the courtroom to see Eichmann in his bulletproof glass enclosure he collapsed and had to be taken by stretcher from the room. When asked later if it was the site of the devil Eichmann and all the horrors he perpetrated on him and his family he answered, “no”. “What was it then, that caused you to collapse?” they all asked him. The elderly man looked them in the eye and said, “I’ve painted him a satan in my mind for all these years and now that I see him I find he looks JUST LIKE YOU AND ME!”

So devils are our sins in perspective.

Egypt #7: Floating on the Nile River

Our cruise ship on the Nile was little more than a glorified house boat. It had probably 50 rooms on three floors along with a dining hall to feed us and a “night club” type room to entertain us. But by far my favorite place was on the roof of the ship. The whole upper deck was open to the outside and allowed a 360 degree view of Egypt. There were awnings to sneak under when the sun was too hot and a small pool to hop into to cool off.

In the morning, before most were up, I would climb to the top deck and secure a deck chair at the stern of the ship and just stare at the drifting away countryside of Egypt. The Nile river valley is one of the most fertile places on earth and the lush green shores were beautiful in the early morning. In some areas it looked much like a modern farm with tractors working in the fields and trucks hauling the produce to market. But in other areas I saw the Egyptians getting water from the Nile by an ancient cantilevered system with the long tree branch pivoted on a stump with a weight on the other end to counterweight the bucket of water which was moved from the Nile to a waiting trough.

I liked the stern of the ship because I could see the small waves of the ship’s wake “V”-ing out to the shores making a million sparkly diamonds on the surface. The Nile is the longest and one of the largest of rivers in the world and the diamonds stretch all the way across its half mile width as we pass.

Before the sun has a chance to burn off the mist you get an eerie, other-worldly feeling as you pass. Almost like you step back in time to be a part of the Pharaoh’s barge heading from Cairo to Luxor for his twice yearly sacrifices. While papyrus is now rare in Egypt it used to cover the shores of each side and now you can see other reeds and bushes coming down to the shore where a princess might have come to find a reed basket that contained a future leader.

Many temples or ancient building can be seen from the Nile and you cannot imagine how beautiful it must have been in its heyday. Majestically carved, painted and decorated for the arriving dignitaries or celebrations. 18th dynasty gold was so common that most kitchen chairs had gold in them so you could imagine what the kings throne was like and how the barq that carried the sculpted god was gilded.

I sit now in my 30 year old home wondering if it will make it another 30 and think of Egypt with its 5000 year old buildings. We’ve lost something in our make-it-quick- and sell it mentality. We wonder why time seems to go so fast when we build our lives in the fast lane. We wonder why nothing seems to last when we can’t wait for a few years for something of value to be built. The Ancient Egyptians can still teach us, someday you should ride on the Nile with me and listen to them.

Egypt #6: Religious Deconstruction

The ancient ruins of Egypt are amazing. One of the amazing facts is that they survived the wind, desert heat, and sun for thousands and thousands of years. What is even more amazing is that the ruins are not ruined because of the desert but because of human DE-construction and DE-struction. A lot of that destruction is for religious reasons but let’s start at the beginning.

The Great Pyramids of Giza, as majestic as they are, would have been in a LOT better shape if the later generations of Egyptians didn’t remove the shiny limestone surface and use it for other buildings leaving us just the huge granite monoliths to view today.
Many Pharaohs were either an embarrassment to the next pharaohs or they were heretical and so all of their construction was demolished, their statues broken down and buried, and their hieroglyphs sculpted over. The female Pharaoh Hatshepsut was one who later generations tried to erase. The heretic king Akhenaten was also deconstructed after his death and all his statues demolished.

Later kings simply needed the building materials and so “borrowed” from previous Pharaohs for their own construction. And finally during the Intermediate Periods of Egypt (kind of like their Medieval Dark Ages) they scavenged all they could to live and used tombs for homes and mummies, wood implements, etc. for firewood.

Most of this we can understand, not like, but understand. But some of the destruction of ancient antiquities that really gets us is when it is done for religious reasons. When Greece and Rome conquered Egypt they didn’t have a problem with all their gods, they simply incorporated them into their pantheon by calling Ra Zeus and Isis Athena and so on. But in the 300’s, when Rome became Christian and the 2nd commandment prohibited “graven images” or images made by man, then the real deconstruction happened. Christians defaced and destroyed images of the Egyptian gods and then used the ancient temples for new churches. The religious fervor can still be seen today in the scraping off the faces of gods and in the carving, plastering and painting of Christian symbols into the walls. Later, in the 700’s when the Muslims conquered Egypt they did the same to the Christian churches and even completed much of the deconstruction of the Egyptian gods.

Religious zealotry has its place and we must be on guard against syncretism (combining two or more religions by watering them down) but there must be a place and a way to preserve the culture of a place WHILE changing the worldview of the place. I mourn the loss of Egyptian antiquities to the hand of Christian zeal because there would be so much we could have learned from that history. Even if that learning is simply what NOT to do.

A thousand years ago Christians battled over icons for the same reasons and there was the terrible destruction of the iconoclasts. Today Muslims destroy Buddhist statues in Pakistan that survived 1300 years so we still have not learned from our mistakes.
Apostle Paul used an ancient stone with an inscription to the “Unknown god” to teach that Athenians about the true God. I use the ancient temples of Egypt to teach people today about their religious heritage from Egyptians through the Hebrews to us We attempt to deconstruct the religion by destroying wood and stone instead of deconstructing the heart by shining the light of truth on it.

Egypt #5: Look at ME!

Many of the temples erected by the Pharaoh’s of Ancient Egypt had “Birth Rooms” or “Birth Houses” not because that is where they were born or that is the place for others to be born but because they wanted the people to know they were part of an exclusive club. Being Pharaoh meant being special and in order to prove that they were special they would have to show it in sculpture and paintings in theses rooms. Amenhotep III showed that he was the physical son of the god Amun. The inscriptions on his Birth Room show how Amun visited Thutmose IV wife in her chamber, disguised as her husband. After she was pregnant the words of Amun were “Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes, is the name of this child I have placed in your body. He shall exercise the beneficent kingship in the whole land. He shall rule the two lands like Ra forever.”

So their birth was divine but how was their life? This was shown on the temple pylons and outer walls built by each Pharaoh. The Temple Pylons are the two large walls you must walk between to get into the temple complex, many still remain today because they were so huge. On them would be the inscriptions of how great these Pharaoh’s deeds were. It showed the “smiting’ scene where the Pharaoh smote all the enemies of Egypt and lists all the accomplishments of the Pharaoh in colored, sculpted painting and elegant hieroglyphs.

The inside of each temple was lined with the religious acts of the Pharaoh. All his plunder and sacrifices that were given to ensure the favor of the god that temple was dedicated to. Offering after offering is depicted on the walls leading to the holy of holies in the temple where the god resided and accepted the Ka of those offerings while the physical (less important) parts of the offerings were consumed by the priests attending that god.

It seriously got to the point where we, on our tour, had ENOUGH of the offering scenes which were depicted ad nausea throughout all the temples we went to. Offering after offering, pile after pile of goods, list after list of god appeasements, scene after scene … LET’S SEE SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

It seemed to be a scream of identity. “Let me in!” to this exclusive club. Or “I am SOMEBODY!” and “LOOK WHAT I HAVE DONE!” The fact is we do the same thing today, may not on such a BIG scale, but we do. Teens and Twenties will pick clothes based on what group we want to belong to; our clothes say “Let me in! I’m with you!” Thirties to fifties will work to the point being able to say “I AM SOMEBODY!” And finally the sixties and beyond we live off the reputation and “Look what I have DONE!”

The Ancient Egyptians carved it in stone while we may carve it in stock portfolios and bank accounts or big houses but we build our monuments too.

Egypt #4: New Age Loons

We ran into the loons in Egypt. Not the birds that walked among the reeds of the Nile but the kind that have something wrong in their head. Our first experience was while we were waiting in line to get tickets for the Great Pyramid of Giza. These tickets would allow us entry INSIDE the pyramid and only a few hundred in the morning and another few hundred in the afternoon were allowed. While we were waiting to be among that few hundred we were told by our guide that a group, primarily Americans, paid over $15,000 to open the pyramid early so that just 10 of them to get into the pyramid by themselves for an hour to “meditate”. They believed in the power of the pyramid and believed they would gain special “knowledge” or “blessing” from that meditation. The pyramid was cool to be in but certainly didn’t give me any special powers when I was there. But maybe there were too many of us and I didn’t meditate right.

Our second encounter with the loons of Egypt was in Abydos. Abydos is the holy site of ancient Egypt. After the epic battle between Osiris and Set led to the dismemberment of Osiris he was again reassembled in Abydos and later buried there after reviving enough to have a child with his wife Isis. Osiris was worshipped for thousands of years as the god who ushered you into the afterlife and so his burial place was important. You can find the oldest temple, rivaling that of the great pyramids in Abydos. Within one of the temples at Abydos you will find sculptures up high in the supports of the roof with unusual Egyptian characters. One looks a LOT like a helicopter, one like a submarine and another like a blimp. How did the ancients know these items? How did they sculpt them into their stone 4000 years ago? Many of these New Age Loons will tell you it was because of aliens or at least a “special” knowledge grasped by the ancients and so we found many lugging their “prayer” rugs around Abydos so they could meditate and pray in this sacred alien place.

Now I love ancient Egypt and am developing relationships with some modern Egyptians as well but I don’t worship the ancients or the aliens who may have influenced them. I look at the monoliths and I see nothing more than human ingenuity. Enough people and enough time and you can move a mountain or build a mountain. The work done by the ancients was hard work but it wasn’t hard-to-understand work. We are amazed simply because we build buildings in a matter of a few years where they would plan for decades. We are amazed because they would coordinate tens of thousands of people to work together and we have trouble with more than three trying to get together. We are amazed because they maintained a culture for five thousand years and we are worrying about whether we will last through our third century.

Don’t worship men who worshipped gods that were poor substitutes for the true God. Don’t meditate on wonders of human ingenuity when you have the same image of God within yourself. Don’t stand amazed at the past; do appreciate it, do learn from it, and most of all DO follow the truth into the future.

Akhenaten

Akhenaten ruled only 17 years as Pharaoh of Egypt but his influence was astounding. Imagine a new president coming to the US and this president deciding to change the center of power from Washington DC to the middle of the desert in central Nevada. They would have to start building new buildings from the foundation up, then work on the infrastructure of roads, airports, power lines, etc. Then they would have to move all the governmental support with the people, copy machines, computers, office furniture. They would then have to fill in with the Walmarts, Home Depots, Pharmacies, and Bars. You get the idea.

That is what Akhenaten did. He moved EVERYTHING from the capital near Cairo to a new capital 350 miles away in the middle of the desert called Amarna. He moved the whole government, people and all, to this new site. But what he did that REALLY changed everything was to outlaw the gods of Egypt. He “starved out” the temples to all gods but one: the Egyptian god Aten, the sun god. He changed his name from Amenhotep (Amun is happy) to Akhenaten (Spirit of Aten). This was heretical to the people, but what can you do when your king, the ultimate ruler, said “jump”?

It took a LOT of money to do this. It took a lot of confidence in Aten to do this. That is why many biblical historians believe that Akhenaten was the Pharaoh of Joseph. Joseph influenced Amenhotep with the dream interpretation of HUGE prosperity followed by TERRIBLE famine. Joseph influence Amenhotep towards ONE God, the God who shines on all people, not just the Egyptians. Joseph influenced Amenhotep to become Akhenaten, the Spirit of the One God. Because of the prosperity Egypt was awash in gold, because of the famine and being the ONLY one with food Egypt was FLOODED with gold, people looking for work, and people who couldn’t ply their trade anywhere else. Just what is needed to build a new city in the middle of the desert.

It is interesting that built into the four corners of this new city were steles (tombstone like granite plaques) which were inscribed with the rules for behavior and commands for living in this new city. Here are some of the commands: “There is no God but Aten, you shall worship the Aten and the Aten alone.” And “You shall make no images of the Aten out of wood or stone.” (which, again, was radical because ALL the other gods had images made of them) The Aten was represented only in beams of light coming from the sun which gave light, warmed, and even was shown with little hands on the end of the beams indicating that all we have is from the Aten.

I don’t know if Akhenaten was influenced by Joseph or not. I don’t know if his view of the Aten was really the same God we serve but I do know he changed everything from the government, to the religion, to the art (check out Amarna period Egyptian art). Change came only from HUGE amounts of money and willing workers. But his changes didn’t last long. Akhenaten’s son Tutankhaten (Living image of Aten) became pharaoh at the age of nine due to the untimely death of his father and older brother. He died only 9 years later at 18 and many believe he was murdered because of his father’s heretical ways. (Many priests were unhappy that their patron god was de-funded by Akhenaten). Even though the boy tried to change back under the influence of his “vizier” Ay and changed his name from “Living image of Aten” to “Living image of Amun” or Tutankhamun or as we know him King Tut.

A short 32 years later the 18th dynasty of Egypt came to a close and there came a new dynasty of pharaohs who probably didn’t know Joseph and probably would have made those troublesome Hebrews work a little harder for a LOT less money.

Egypt 2: The Mummy Room

The Cairo Museum is a musty old place. It was built in 1902 and it looks it. It has, obviously, had many remodels and some modernization but basically it is the same as it was over 100 years ago. The good news is that Egypt is building a new museum on the Giza Plateau, next to the Great Pyramids; the bad news is that even with the new museum they will not be able to house more than 25% of all the “stuff” they have for people to see. Right now 95% of Egyptian antiquities are in storage and not displayed.

Most of the display cases in the museum are old mahogany with think smudged glass surrounding the priceless artifacts. It smells of old wood and dust, the tiled floors are swept mainly by the feet of the thousands of visitors each day but behind the cases you will find the desert dust accumulating. After touring with our guide for a while we get free time to look at whatever we want. There are a few items I am interested in:
- Ahkenaten: the heretic pharaoh who believed in the ONE god.
- Merneptah Stele: the only etched evidence of Israel in Egypt.
- Coffers: There are many “boxes” or “arks” which were buried with the kings.
- Ushabtis: Little statues buried with the Kings and Wealthy to help them in the afterlife.
- The Silver Coffins: In the 22nd Dynasty the kings built for themselves silver sarcophaguses instead of the gold covered wood. These was actually MORE valuable than King Tut’s gold sarcophagus.
- The Mummy Room …

The Mummy Room is a modern addition. They remodeled one of the old rooms and made it climate controlled for preservation of the bodies. I first look at Hatshepsut who was a female pharaoh in the 18th dynasty. She MIGHT have been the princess who pulled Moses from the Nile. She is famous for being the daughter of a Pharaoh, the wife of a Pharaoh, and the mother of a Pharaoh as well as being the Pharaoh herself while her son grew up. I look at the face of the Greatest Pharaoh of all time, Ramses II or Ramses the Great; I am amazed by a few things. He is a small man. I would judge that he was not more than 5 and a half feet tall. He had a receding hair line and curly hair. He looked like his father, Seti I who was lies next to him and also similar features to his grandfather Ramses I who was also nearby.

These Pharaohs left instructions for the preservation of their body and their eventual burial with their children. Most honored their parents with monuments and riches for them to take into the afterlife hoping for the same from their children. Seventy days of mourning and embalming, paid mourners lined the funeral procession as the body passed along the causeway from the funerary temple to the pyramid or to the Nile river for its journey to the tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb was packed with chariots, games, food, gold, statues for servants, boxes of clothes and jewelry; everything you might need in your journey to the afterlife. The anticipation of eternity.

Amazingly they all achieved a kind of immortality. We can still see them in glass boxes in a climate controlled room in Cairo. But almost every tomb was raided and robbed in antiquity, almost every mummy was cast aside, used as firewood or fertilizer and had little importance until the last 150 years. Their Ka and Ba (Egyptian soul) is somewhere but I don’t believe it will be joined again with their mummified body like they thought it would be. Eternal life is more than your skill at embalming, it is more than the right incantations and charms, and it is definitely more than how much gold you can cover your coffin with. Eternal life is relationship with the ONE God and not being Ra-mses or “child of Ra”.

Egypt 1: The Pyramids

My second time in Egypt and my second time at the Giza Plateau proved that they are no less awesome today. You can see them from a distance as our little mini-bus takes us close but you cannot grasp how big they are from that view. Even parking within was seems like a little walk away proves to be a LONG walk as they grow larger and larger in your camera view screen. You have to stop taking pictures of the whole because the whole no longer fits and you are still hundreds of yards away. So you take pictures of parts of it and finally all you can get is a few of the monolithic blocks in your camera as you stand close and look up at this immense stairway to heaven.

The largest pyramid is open for sneaking in if you get there early enough. We did and it truly felt like we were sneaking into the greatest man-made structure in history, the only one left of the 7 ancient wonders of the world. Khufu (or Greek Cheops) lifts up her skirts and lets mere mortals take a look underneath.

We start by climbing a hundred modern wooden steps to get up the few ancient blocks to the side opening of Khufu and our cameras are taken from us by a head-dressed Egyptian. There is only one way in and one way out, so they will be there for our return. You can smell the age but it isn’t the musty, humid smell of basements in my memory, it is a dry, dusty, OLD smell. We find a smooth but declining floor lit by fluorescent tubes on the bottom and in the corners so they cast an eerie upward shadow in the tunnel. After about a hundred feet of descending we find a smaller square tunnel in which we have to bend over to ascend, there are boards on the floor to help you climb. Khufu had decided to build his burial chamber UP instead of down and under, so we go UP. “Where’s the escalator?” cried my Las Vegas mindset. Hundreds of steps, bent over and climbing with many stops waiting on people ahead and sucking the dry, old, but now sweaty oxygen. We reached a small landing and made our way through a ladder fed hole in the ceiling only to find another stairway leading farther up and farther in. But this chamber had plenty of head room, in fact it had an amazingly HUGE gap from us to the ceiling. We could see the human traffic jam now as we slowly made our way up. The final landing was only about 5x8 feet as we waited to get into a hole in the wall that was only about 3 foot tall and about 15 foot long. This final tunnel gave us entrance to Khufu’s burial chamber. Only a few could fit through the tunnel at a time and only one direction, we had to take turns. My turn into the tunnel and I met an Asian woman who HAD to get out and didn’t want to wait. She simply got on her hands and knees and crawled between my legs as we met in the middle of the small tunnel. Her daughter apologized profusely as I got into the chamber and found her waiting for me.

The chamber was nothing special. A comparatively large room about 15x20 with no carvings and no paintings on the wall. A simple stone sarcophagus in the one side, no mummy, no gold, just time packed into stone. I was left wondering what these walls have seen over the last 5000 years. From the pounding construction sounds to the pomp of the pharaoh’s funeral procession to the people who robbed and desecrated to the passion of explorers and archeologists to the passage of thousands of years to finally me, here, now.

I seem small and insignificant as I feel the sweat pouring off my face when I pass through that same small tunnel and make my way back to the entrance. I am reminded of the Tower of Babel story in scripture and one of my lessons from that story is that “Man united can do absolutely AMAZING things.” And that is why God doesn’t let us do it too often. I suck in the fresh air and welcome the sun on my face as I emerge again into the real light.

Where do Ethics come From? The Trolley Problem

So we have discussed Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and Mills and their different take on where ethics come from. Some sadist named Phillipa Foot in the 1950's came up with an ethics test called the "Trolley Problem" which goes something like this.
A trolley is running out of control down a track. in its path are five people who are tied to the track. Happily, it is possible to flip a switch that will send the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there's one person tied to that track who will be killed if you flip the switch. What should you do?

Most people would say you flip the switch. Would you?

An even worse sadist names Judith Thomson proposed an amendment to the Trolley problem. The scenario is the same except this time you're standing on a bridge under which th trolley will pass, and there's a large mand standing next to you. The only way to save the five people is to push him onto the track, thereby stopping the trolley. What would you do?

The transaction is the same. One person dies to save five but there is something different about this scenario. Most people would NOT take the active role of pushing the man to save five others.

Here's my take on the Trolley Problem. A difference between the two is how active the parties are involved in the scenario. The one tied to the track is already involved somehow, the one standing next to you is an outside observer as you are. In other words, we think the one tied to the track is "dead already" and the one next to us is not. Hence are ease at condemning one and not the other.

The reality of the situation is that this is a false situation with a false premise. It is assuming I cannot sacrifice myself to stop the train. It is assuming I cannot jump out and untie one or all of the individuals. It is assuming that there is NO OTHER alternative to the two options laid out. So my simple answer is: "I don't ride the trolley." I don't buy your scenario and your parameters. There are ALWAYS more alternatives, our problem is that we refuse to see them because they require sacrifice, pain or simply inconvenience on our part.

Get active, get involved, make the hard choices NOW so that there never will occur a Trolley Problem in your life. Get off the trolley!