Reading Log: Gonzo Dylanology

I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them. -Bob Dylan

 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. - I John 4:15 (NIV)


Time for another confession. Despite my credentials as a music nerd with a major in the sixties and post-doctoral research in the seventies, I was never a big fan of Bob Dylan. I'm aware of his work, and acknowledge and respect his contribution to the canon of modern music, but his stuff just never did much for me. His collaborations with George Harrison were his only works that really interested me.

Dylan's far from alone in that category. There are many "major artists" whose work hasn't held my interest beyond an overview of their catalogue. The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, U2, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin - I'm familiar with all of them, and have their work in my collection, but rarely listen to them for fun.

In the eighties and early nineties, I knew Dylan primarily as a source of comedy. Unfortunately, he tended to come off as the butt of the joke, not as a conscious participant. "Conscious" has more than one meaning that works in that sentence.

I was watching live, and probably taping it, when Dylan went into a fugue state while receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, that moment has been preserved for global posterity right here. Saturday Night Live did a great Dylan bit shortly thereafter, with Dana Carvey as Dylan and Mike Myers as his interpreter, Tom Petty, but it doesn't  seem to be on Youtube and NBC's site doesn't acknowledge that a world beyond the U.S. border exists, so forget them.

In 1992, Dylan appeared on David Letterman's 10th anniversary special. This was toward the end of my seven-year streak of not missing a night of Letterman, so again I was watching, and probably taping. It was hilarious. Paul Shaffer had assembled an amazing band that included Steve Vai, Doc Severinsen, Carole King, and Mavis Staples among its dignitaries. Dylan came onstage, and this huge rock orchestra started into Like A Rolling Stone (a song I probably didn't know at the time). The band was rocking and grooving as Dylan stepped up to the mike and... proceeded to mumble incoherently for a few minutes. He just made vaguely rhythmic nasal sounds, occasionally punctuated by "DIDEN YEWWWW" or "HAWDZIT FEEL" (my best guesses, based on phonetics). Youtube to the rescue once again - you can watch it here.

I recently read Paul Shaffer's 2009 memoir, We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (a candidate for a future Reading Log entry). He confirms that Dylan was disengaged and uninterested, sometime not bothering to sing at all during rehearsals. Shaffer was just grateful that Dylan came through for the actual show, although he calls the performance "a more than decent 70 percent."

In recent years I decided to check out Dylan's explicitly Christian albums, from his "born again" phase. Until then I only knew of this work from the mocking of critics, notably "Serve Yourself", John Lennon's childish response to "Gotta Serve Somebody". I listened to the three albums, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. The only songs that really stuck with me as a whole were Solid Rock and In The Garden, and the latter was significantly improved in the live version found on the bootleg album Rock Solid, which I also added to my collection. I talked about hearing these albums a bit way back in this entry, over eight years ago. Not a bad followup turnaround time by my standards. (I started working on this article in 2014.)

Dylan was far more explicit about his newfound faith than I had expected. These albums weren't the least bit subtle. He was preaching a message of fire and brimstone, warning listeners that only Jesus saves. As is often the case for me and Christian music, although I didn't care for the music, I loved a lot of the lyrics. Saved, the second album, struck me as much more strident than the first. Jody Beth Rosen described Saved well: "It’s as dogmatic as they come, and it’s Jesus-fearing, and unlike other Dylan records its prediction of the apocalypse cannot be interpreted as anything other than what it is."

Dylan's Christian walk seemed to have followed a path similar to my own. Even after surrendering to Christ I was briefly a weak universalist, followed by a season of legalism before settling into a more relaxed attitude that I would have earlier seen as complacency.

This music made me want to know more about Dylan's personal story. I wanted to learn how God lit this fire inside him. I wanted to hear his testimony. Unfortunately, it was at this point that I learned that Dylan is a notoriously closed book to interviewers and would-be biographers. A detailed account of his spiritual journey would not be easily forthcoming. He granted only a few interviews that touched on the subject, many of which are linked on Dylan Devotional.

I was discussing this with a co-worker who's a far bigger Dylan fan than me. He loaned me a couple of Dylan books from his extensive library, hoping they'd help satiate my interest, as well as a copy of Infidels, which my friend considers something of a coda or postscript to Dylan's overt born-again period.

Thus, we come at last to the reason why this entry is a Reading Log. However, it's an unusual one in that I usually actually finish a book before writing about it.

The borrowed books - which, as is my wont, I've kept for way too long - are Sam Shepard's 1977 Rolling Thunder Logbook and Robert Shelton's 1986 No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan.  The former was intended to give me insight into Dylan's mid-seventies life, and the later is a straightforward biography.

I think I read most of the Rolling Thunder Logbook, maybe even all of it, but I didn't care for most of it. It's written in the "gonzo journalism" style that Hunter S. Thompson popularized and his colleagues at Rolling Stone ran with. The style is marked by being disjointed and full of pretentious literary allusions, many of which consist solely of mentioning the names of better writers. Here's an arbitrarily chosen sample passage - this is a complete section / chapter / piece entitled "Hotel Crypt":

It's not long before the nucleus of us takes its shape. Who's who in the
galaxy of things. A small band with all the implications of the Big One. The world we slide through like it's never there. But now it seems reversed. Like we're not there and all around us life is going on about
its business. Waitress serves and goes back home. Back to REAL LIFE.
Back to MOM and DAD or KIDS and HUSBAND or both or all. And us sitting. Us sit eating crab legs in a hotel crypt.

This is typical of the book. Lots of simple declarative sentences, often lacking subject, predicate, or both. If 184 pages of this appeals to you, then I can unreservedly recommend this book. I might also recommend any of several twelve-step programs. This is not to say that the book is entirely without charm.  I particularly enjoyed the account of Dylan deciding partway through a play that he found the content offensive and shouting all the way out of the theatre, thoroughly disrupting the proceedings.

Shelton's book is a traditionally structured biography. I've read hundreds of similar books about dozens of different artists (I probably have 50 biographies of various Beatles alone), but had never invested the time in Dylan to have read one of his. And I still haven't, really. At some point it occurred to me that just because I enjoy someone's work doesn't imply that I should care where they went to elementary school, how many siblings they had, or when they lost their virginity. That's when I stopped reading most biographies. Not all, by any means, but these days I generally need to have some particular interest in the subject or some time to kill to bother reading any sections that could be headed "The Early Years."

I checked the index for Beatles mentions and skimmed a few passages, but in Dylan's case I'm really only interested in the story of his faith. I want to know how it grew to the point where he felt the need to express it so boldly, and more importantly why he stopped. Maybe it's as simple as Larry Norman's account: the audience didn't like it and told him to stop.

Unfortunately, Shelton's book stops short of the period in Dylan's life that interests me. Despite being published in 1986, Shelton's narrative disappointingly ends in 1977. An epilogue mentions only that Dylan had converted to Christianity, offering no further insight.

Perhaps tired of being constantly on the defensive, Dylan was reluctant to discuss his faith. He spent much of a 1984 Rolling Stone interview declining to explain his beliefs.

Dylan upset some moral conservatives in that interview by refusing to condemn abortion, dismissing it as "not an issue". As both an Evangelical Christian and an ardent pro-lifer (two separate matters, despite popular perception; my opposition to abortion is not primarily a matter of religious belief, and predates my conversion to Christianity), I think I get what (I hope) he meant. In a very real sense, abortion is not a root problem, just as theft or lying are not root problems. Sin is the root problem. In that light, theft, lying, and abortion are only symptoms.

The interesting question for me is where Dylan's faith journey wound up. That same Rolling Stone interview mentions that he was by then affiliated with an "ultra-orthodox Jewish sect", implying that he no longer held the New Testament in such lofty regard, and that his son had a bar mitzvah. Paul Shaffer's book seems to support this, noting that he's had to schedule some collaborations with Dylan around the Sabbath. Dylan may have reverted to straightforward Judaism, or adopted a Messianic Jewish faith.

The Infidels album offers few clues. It contains several songs touching on Biblical themes, but no Saved-style overt declarations. Neighbourhood Bully and Man of Peace seem to be about Israel and the Anti-Christ, respectively, but beyond being in favour of the former and opposed to the latter contain no particular insights into the specifics of Dylan's beliefs. I and I, personal favourite track on the album, has been seen as an allegory for Israel. Union Sundown is a surprisingly right-wing statement for someone in show business, but despite their frequent conflation, conservative politics and evangelical beliefs don't necessarily move in lockstep.

Muddying the waters, if Dylan had indeed renounced Christianity, it would be reasonable to expect him to have abandoned the explicitly evangelical songs he wrote and recorded on the "born again trilogy". However, the index of tracks performed live on Dylan's own site show that he continued to feature his gospel material in concert for many years afterward.

For a few years Dylan hosted a radio show called Theme Time Radio Hour. In 2006 he did an episode on the theme of the Bible. Lots of great old gospel blues. Interestingly, when he was naming books of the Bible early in the episode during the explanation of the theme, he included apocryphal / deuterocanonical books (e.g., Maccabees) in the list.

That program, the only episode of Theme Time Radio Hour I've ever heard, showed me a side of Dylan I'd never really considered. I'd long thought of Dylan as somewhat foggy and addled, possibly due to the cumulative effects of marijuana use. However, in that show I heard something new in him: a sense of humour. Now I think Dylan is well aware of his image as a doddering space cadet and is probably quite amused by it. He's willing to play up that image to maintain both a mystique (how can someone that burned out write such insightful songs?) and a distance from his audience, which has probably been necessary for him to maintain anything resembling a private life. Similarly, since getting past the stage of zeal of the recently converted, Dylan is probably content to let people speculate about his religious beliefs. It may even entertain him.

One interesting note - believers generally want to pass our faith on to our children. Although I've never head any explicit declarations of belief from Jakob Dylan, at least two Wallflowers songs touch on religious subjects: "Hospital for Sinners" and "First One in the Car", both from the 2012 album Glad All Over.

"Hospital for Sinners" is about the oft-forgotten truth that a church is "a hospital for sinners - ain't no museum of saints." It offers a vague but positive assessment of churches, concluding that "you ought to be in one." Referring to "statues and apostles, and other Godly things" implies that the churches described aren't all necessarily Protestant, but it certainly doesn't sound like a synagogue either.

The theology of "First One in the Car" is even less definite, but it's clear that the speaker is concerned with spirituality, even if that concern is only a nagging sense that prayer is sometimes appropriate ("I ain't superstitious, but it's making me nervous - now shouldn't we at least say something first?"). The song's refrain, however, actually contains a perfectly good prayer: "May God be the first one in the car, may He be the last one out of ours." The speaker is embarking on a new chapter in life, the nature of which is hinted at but not spelled out. Asking for God's presence and guidance in that sort of situation is to be expected from people of most faiths. I've heard a lot of prayers over the years that included variations of "Lord, please be with us as we..."

The bottom line regarding Bob Dylan's current religious beliefs is that we don't really know, presumably because he doesn't want us to. And that's fine. It's not my job or any other mortal's to judge the state of his soul. I certainly hope that he's got a saving faith in Jesus Christ, in keeping with Paul's statement about Christian conversion during his trial before King Agrippa: "I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am" (Acts 26:29, NIV). Whether he does or not, some of the music he created from 1979 to 1981 has no doubt blessed and encouraged many believers all over the world.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something that happened in my kitchen.

Turns Out The Batusi Is Not The Sign For Anything

It's probably wrong that I think this is hilarious:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A man who provided sign language interpretation on stage for Nelson Mandela's memorial service, attended by scores of heads of state, was a "fake," the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Tuesday...sign language experts said the man was not signing in South African or American sign languages and could not have been signing in any other known sign language because there was no structure to his arm and hand movements.

I used to think finding stuff like this funny made me a jerk. Now I realize it's just a symptom of the underlying condition.

I need to update my will. I hereby request that at my funeral, somebody who doesn't know sign language should stand up at the front making random gestures as people speak. Rudeness is encouraged. If at all possible, work the Macarena in there somewhere.

We can only hope this episode inspires a new fad on Youtube: superimposing fake sign language interpreters at famous speeches. Imagine having someone standing to the side looking like they're playing charades and/or having a petit mal seizure (a fine line, that) as Reagan talks about tearing down this wall, or King talks about having a dream this afternoon (it's always a good idea to catch a nap before giving a big speech), or Obama lies through his teeth and says you can keep your plan if you like it, or Walter White proclaims himself The One Who Knocks. Internet, make this happen!

The Gettysburg address would be a good one, but for some reason I can't seem to find it on Youtube. With all those people gathered to hear the president's big speech, you'd think somebody would have brought a camcorder.

At first I assumed that this was a prank that got way out of hand. Maybe the guy was one of Johnny Knoxville's buddies, or one of Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd accomplices. Maybe the ghosts of Dick Clark and Ed McMahon are orchestrating bloopers and practical jokes from beyond the grave. The fake signer probably thought that surely somebody would call him out before the event actually got rolling. It wasn't until showtime that he finally decided between fake sign language and an homage to Garrett Morris's assistance for the hard of hearing.

Or maybe it was a wacky misunderstanding, like that time a cab driver got shanghaied into appearing on the BBC as a computer expert.

But no, turns out this isn't the fake signer's first time to the rodeo:

The man also did sign interpretation at an event last year that was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, Druchen said. At that appearance, a deaf person in the audience videotaped the event and gave it to the federation for the deaf, which analyzed the video, prepared a report about it and a submitted a formal complaint.

Seriously, guys, checking references isn't a bad thing. Next time at least Google the name of your prospective hire.

At least this kind of thing is too ridiculous to be a widespread problem, or even a regional one.

Wait, what?

 Bogus sign language interpreters are a problem in South Africa, because people who know a few signs try to pass themselves off as interpreters, said Parkin, the principal of the school for the deaf. And those hiring them usually don't sign, so they have no idea that the people they are hiring cannot do the job, she said. "They advertise themselves as interpreters because they know 10 signs and they can make some quick money," said Parkin.

This reminds me of Marge Simpson's plan to give piano lessons despite not knowing how to play the piano: "I just have to stay one lesson ahead of the kid."

I have a nephew who lives in South Africa. I wonder if he can account for his whereabouts on Tuesday. Assuming he wasn't involved in this fiasco (which is probably the case, given that he's seven), I have a moneymaking suggestion for his future reference.

This situation has only gotten funnier / more disturbing as more information has come out:

The man accused of faking sign interpretation while standing alongside world leaders like U.S. President Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela's memorial service said Thursday he hallucinated that angels were entering the stadium, suffers from schizophrenia and has been violent in the past.

Thamsanqa Jantjie said in a 45-minute interview with The Associated Press that his hallucinations began while he was interpreting and that he tried not to panic because there were "armed policemen around me." He added that he was once hospitalized in a mental health facility for more than one year....

Asked how often he had become violent, he said "a lot" while declining to provide details. Jantjie said he was due on the day of the ceremony to get a regular six-month mental health checkup to determine whether the medication he takes was working, whether it needed to be changed or whether he needed to be kept at a mental health facility for treatment.... He said he has previously interpreted at many events without anyone complaining.

...

......

......... Anyway, that's a thing that happened.



As for Mandela himself, I have no opinion. I used to think he must have been a great hero, because Rolling Stone magazine said so. There were even songs about him, and surely bad people never have songs about them released on major labels. However, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 13:11, I've long since stopped blindly believing what the media tells me. The death of my former liberalism was the inevitable result.

My travels around the Net leave me unsure what to think of Mandela. Sorry, no links because I didn't keep track. However, you can probably type "Nelson Mandela" into a search engine as easily as I can, or even easier since you can just copy and paste it from where I just typed it. Looks to me like he was a communist sympathizer (at least), explicitly refused to renounce violence while in prison, and didn't even qualify for any sympathy from Amnesty International.

Standing up against Apartheid is certainly a huge point in his favour. He also seemed to keep things pretty peaceful once he was in power. If there was a lot of revenge-fueled racial violence in post-Apartheid South Africa, it's been kept pretty quiet (which is a distinct possibility).

However, Mandela was also a mover and shaker within the ANC, which has used some pretty questionable tactics over the years. I have a hard time endorsing the organization that invented necklacing. The enemy of my enemy can still be pretty reprehensible.

I was discussing this uncertainty with a friend who said, "You have to respect his spending 27 years in prison."

I replied, "Manson's been in longer than that. You may want to chose a different yardstick."




Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the patio stones in my back yard.

Yet Another Triumphant Return

I recently returned from a couple of weeks of work-related travel. I had a couple of noteworthy experiences on the trip (besides the stuff that I won't be discussing on here for various reasons).

I almost got taken down by airport security at my point of departure. Besides my checked suitcase, I had a carry-on bag. It was a backpack containing my Bible and portable DVD player, and a few other books to occupy me during the trip.

The basket containing my jacket and the stuff out of my pockets passed through the x-ray screening without difficulty, and my own passage through the metal detector was also uneventful. The backpack, however, proved to be a problem. I had to put it on the little conveyor belt, and when I went to meet it on the other side a security guard was waiting for me, already holding it.

"Do you have a multi-tool in here?" he asked, in a pleasant enough tone.

"Nope," I replied confidently.

He smiled, not unkindly. "Are you sure?"

"I was, but I'm getting less sure all the time."

He chuckled, and began unzipping compartments. "Looks like it's way down at the bottom somewhere." After a minute of digging, he produced a multi-tool in its carrying case. It was the one I carried on my belt during my IT days. When I left that job (a diplomatic way of putting it), I stuck the multi-tool into the backpack, which I haul around with me anytime I go anywhere with stuff to carry. I figured that way the multi-tool would always be handy if I was out somewhere and needed it. Of course, I forgot all about it being in there when I was packing for this flight.

"I can assure you that I wasn't trying to smuggle that onto the plane. Feel free to chuck it, or whatever you do with seized contraband."

The security guard was very nice about the whole matter. Instead of just taking it, he asked if somebody had dropped me off at the airport, and if so, whether they were still around. My wife and mother-in-law were just outside the security screening area. I pointed them out, and the guard had someone take it to them. It was waiting safely for me at home when I returned.

Good thing I speak English, or I probably would have died right there, twitching on the airport floor.


Even weirder, the same bag got stopped again by security at the airport for my flight home. Once again I put it dutifully on the conveyor belt. This time, the young lady watching the x-ray monitor (which I couldn't see) stopped the belt and looked at the monitor for a while, clearly puzzled. She was tipping her head to the side, reminding me of my dog's reaction when I used to take my video camera, record myself calling her, and play it back on the living room TV. "Wait... you're on the TV, calling me, but you're sitting over there... but you're on TV... but... now my head hurts. Good thing my walnut-sized brain means I'll forget this in ten seconds, or I'd be traumatized."

The screener lady called a colleague over to join her for some synchronized head-cocking. Eventually they decided to send my backpack to someone else. It came out of the x-ray machine, and was promptly grabbed by a very serious looking guy, who said, "We've got to test this."

"OK", I cheerfully replied. I had lots of time before my flight.

This new guy dug through the bag, and ran a little wand over it. I don't think it was a metal detector. My theory is that it was a dowsing rod, and he suspected that my backpack contained an underground spring. In any case, after a few brow-furrowed moments, he handed me the backpack and said, "OK, you can go." This guy was just gruff enough that I decided not to push my luck by asking any questions. The folks at the first airport, which was much smaller, were a lot friendlier, and they busted me trying to sneak a weapon onto the plane.

It looks like I'll be flying again in October. Perhaps I should invest in some less suspicious carry-on luggage before then.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the bottom shelf, left-hand side, on bookshelf # 1. On the left are a bunch of records that don't fit on my actual records rack. Most readers under 40 will have no idea what "records" are. In the middle are notebooks and photocopies of textbooks from my university days. Yes, photocopies. I was blatantly disregarding copyrights long before anyone ever heard of Napster. Photocopies were a dime each at the library photocopiers (I liked the unsupervised one in the basement), and reduction allowed two-page spreads to fit onto a single sheet while remaining legible. Even those of us who weren't math majors got pretty good at calculating whether it was cheaper to buy a textbook or just photocopy it. Finally, that pile on the right is what remains of my Rolling Stone magazine collection. I got rid of the vast majority of them long ago.

I Married A Concordance

For the past few weeks, every time I've started thinking about any topic the same Bible verse keeps coming up:

"I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" - John 3:12 (NIV), spoken by Jesus.

I was vaguely aware of this verse for a long time; as I've mentioned, I first read through the entire Bible in my teens, a couple of decades ago, and have done so at least once a year since. However, this passage never quite made it to front-and-centre in my mind until now. Lately I keep finding myself in situations where that passage is relevant, even crucial. I take this as a sign that I'm supposed to learn something.

The worst part was that whenever it came up, I couldn't put my finger on its exact location. Knowing that a Biblical passage is "in there somewhere" is better than nothing, but for serious research or debate you need to be able to cite your source.

Worse, I only thought of the passage when I was in situations where I couldn't easily look it up. That is, when my Bible reference books and Internet connection (for Biblegateway.com) were unavailable - usually when I was at my office. I searched the non-exhaustive concordance in the study Bible I keep at work, and asked any co-workers who I thought might know, but no luck. I even spent my breaks one day skimming the Gospels looking for it. I got all the way though Matthew and Mark and about halfway through Luke, which obviously didn't turn it up.

That same day, my wife and son met me at the local library after I got off work. I asked her if she could remember the passage, or even anything about its context. She thought for a brief moment, then said, "I'm pretty sure it's in John. Jesus was talking to Nicodemus." I immediately went and checked, and with that info I had it in about thirty seconds.

I told this story to some friends at church. My wife was promptly dubbed "a walking concordance". I've heard people dubbed far worse.


In other Sunday-type (churchy / Bible-y / Christiany) news , I'm going to be leading our mid-week Bible study group for the next few months. That's a big part of why I haven't been writing much on here recently. I've been putting my writing energy into preparing the material for those sessions. I may put it up here as well, especially since I found while preparing the material for the first session that I don't need to prepare much material for the sessions.

Don't worry. That'll make sense if and when I get around to telling the story.

It looks like the group will be spending 12 to 17 weeks (depending on how deep the group wants to go) on the topic I'm leading. It's a topic I haven't directly addressed on this blog yet, and I'm not getting into it just now. Suffice it to say that it's rather controversial, even within the Church. I'll be outing myself as holding a specific position soon enough, assuming I decide to put the stuff up here.

Oh, and that verse I talked about earlier is one of the main verses that I'll be emphasizing.


And in our final story for tonight, this week I listened to Bob Dylan's three albums from his "born again" period for the first time. I'm surprised by how good they are. Despite being a child of the sixties (despite that decade having ended before I was born) I've never been a big Dylan fan. I became somewhat familiar with him in the eighties, by which time his singing was mostly parody fodder.

Two things in particular impress me about these albums. First, they're very good musically. The songs are solid, the musicianship top-notch, and while Dylan's vocals are... distinctive, he's certainly not incoherent. The singing is more than passable.

Second, I had expected that the Christian messages would be fairly subdued and sanitized. I had heard Gotta Serve Somebody before, and figured that would be the most explicit he got. I was drastically wrong. The Gospel is front and centre on all three of these albums, presented without compromise or apology.

The real shame is that he backed off. I recently heard a Larry Norman concert where Larry talked between songs about fans wanting mainstream artists who are professing Christians to sing the Gospel. Larry said, accurately, "Bob Dylan did it, and we didn't like it. We told him to stop."

I've read a lot of Dylan interviews and articles over the years (that Rolling Stone subscription again), and he seems to have softened his positions. I hope he's retained his personal faith, although that's not the impression I get. I may add one of the many Dylan biographies to my ever-expanding "to read" stack of books, to find out more about this period in his life.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something else that my wife, The Walking Concordance, made with woolly string and hooked sticks. It's much less yellow and more colourful in real life than it looks in this shot.

Journalistic Racism

I've noticed a tendency for journalists to describe various policies - especially "conservative" ones - as racist, without seeming to notice that while the policy is racially neutral, their interpretation is itself quite racist. Other people do it too, but for today I'm picking on the journalists because they really ought to know better.

Unless a policy (which I mean here as any law, regulation, etc.) explicitly applies only (or differently) to members of specific ethnic groups, it is highly unlikely that the policy is itself racist.

I qualify that statement with "highly unlikely" to account for things like voting being restricted to landowners in the immediate wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, which in all probability had the intention (and effect) of blocking the recently freed slaves from full participation in democracy. I can think of other far more recent examples, but those are for another day.

However, the vast majority of policies that get interpreted as "racist" are not actually racist at all. Instead, the interpreter is projecting their own racism onto the framers of the policy.

For example, let's say that a new law were passed saying that a ten dollar per day fine would be levied on anyone who hadn't bathed in the last week. Rest assured that editorials and blogs would immediately present rants along the lines of "this law is clearly intended to discriminate against Freedonians, because everyone knows that their hygiene is questionable at best".

See the problem? More to the point, can you identify the actual bigot in this scenario? If so, you're a large step ahead of most journalists, editors, and Democrats.

I've seen this principle at work many times. One of the worst was a feature in the August 30, 2001 issue (number 876) of Rolling Stone. As previously noted, I was an RS subscriber a couple of lifetimes ago, casting the magazine aside when I learned what "critical thinking" meant (shades of I Corinthians 13:11).

That issue had a feature article on how many states have laws restricting the right of felons (including those who have completed their prison terms) to vote. Two explicit arguments were then made, both of which I find very funny. I sometimes wonder if articles like these are satire written by conservatives, because the liberal arguments presented are so spectacularly stupid:

1. Laws preventing felons from voting, or making it harder for them to do so, are racist against black people. Subtext: black people are criminals.

2. Laws preventing felons from voting, or making it harder for them to do so, skew the electoral system unfairly in favour of the Republican party. Subtext: the terms "Democrat" and "sociopathic criminal" are largely interchangeable.

The sad part is that most readers, through a combination of politically correct sensory bombardment and apathy, won't even notice the switch. Many readers will go away from the article thinking that the author actually had a valid point and that other people are the bigots. After all, "they wouldn't print it otherwise", right?

Serious articles like this make it tough for those of us who are out here occasionally trying to be funny. It's tough to top genuine moral ignorance combined with a complete lack of self-awareness.


This all comes up because of an article I just read. I'm not above discussing a seven year-old magazine and calling it topical - in fact, I may do a lot more of it here in the future - but not today.

From the opening of an opinion piece by Douglas Cuthand published on October 23:

The re-election of a Conservative minority government could have a serious impact on First Nations and aboriginal people through the party's promise to get tough on youth crime...

While the article is mostly about other issues concerning Canada in general and First Nations peoples in particular, Cuthand returns to the youth crime issue before it's over. He holds his position: that toughening up youth crime laws will be especially bad for aboriginal communities.

I'd have a lot more respect for this kind of writing if the authors had the guts to come out and explicitly say what they believe: that aboriginal youth are congenitally criminal, that the Democratic party is full of sociopaths, that Freedonians are naturally smelly.

Unless you're prepared to say that there's something about Ethnic Group X that makes them inherently and irresistibly more likely to violate Policy Y, then Policy Y is not racist. And if you're prepared to say that, then the Ethnic Group X Anti-Defamation Brigade's lawyer is on line one. Good luck. And remember, there is nothing "soft" about the bigotry of low expectations.

A look around the Web tells me that Douglas Cuthand is of aboriginal ancestry himself. That doesn't change anything. People can be prejudiced against members of groups to which they belong.

I'd also like to note that in some cases, there may indeed be social factors that lead to members of Group X tending to wind up on the wrong side of Policy Y. That's a separate discussion that can and should be held. However, insinuations that the policy is intended to "trap" Group X'ers (with the everpresent nod-and-a-wink corollary that that was exactly the plan all along) don't help.

In the interest of full disclosure: I wrote this article mostly as another excuse to slander Freedonians.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. This is a box full of the clay "pigeons" we were using as targets.

Five Reasons To Love P.J. O'Rourke

P.J. O'Rourke has been a huge influence on me over the years, on my thought if not on my writing (although on good days I hope there's a trace of him evident there as well).

I ws a longtime subscriber to Rolling Stone, to no one's amazement more than mine these days. In the early days of coming to grips with being a conservative (I didn't used to understand the "liberal / conservative" distinction - I thought there were just sensible people and silly people, and didn't realize that the silly people were taken seriously by anyone), I began noticing that once in a while a political article in Rolling Stone seemed to make sense.

Most political articles in Rolling Stone revolved around two themes: legalizing the smoking of anything that can be rolled inside paper, and freeing all convicted felons who happen to be minorities because those people clearly aren't capable of understanding what they did wrong. Those oases of sanity were invariably written by the same person: P.J. O'Rourke. As a bonus, those articles were usually funny, making excellent points with well-sharpened verbal daggers.

Then I found out that he had written entire books, and quickly formed a small collection.

I don't agree with O'Rourke on everything, to be sure, but we agree on enough that I can without hesitation recommend any of his books to anyone who wants to start comprehending exactly how messed up the world has gotten because of taking silly people too seriously. You can either laugh at life or cry about it - I made my choice a long time ago. I'll sit with P.J. in the Mocking section.

Today I present what is probably the first in a series (this is almost like a Reading Log entry in a way, since I'm re-reading several O'Rourke books simultaneously, looking for the best quotes) of Five Reasons To Love P.J. O'Rourke:

1. About environmentalists:

The Green dweebs want a world where individuals don't count for much, where all the important decisions - such as whether to shift the Viper into fifth - are made in Washington. They want a world controlled by the political process. That's because the shrub cuddlers are, as individuals, so insignificant. They're losers, the three-bong-hit saviours of the earth, lava lamp luddites, global warming dolts, ozone boneheads, peace creeps, tofu twinks, Birkenstock buttinskis, and bed-wetting vegetarian bicyclists, who bother whales on weekends. They have no money, sense, or skills. But they can make their mark on politics because the whole idea of politics is to achieve power without possessing merit.

- Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, p. 194

The best thing about this quote is that it comes from out of nowhere. It's not in an article about politics, or even environmentalism. It's from a luxury car review (hence the reference to the Viper). It was originally published in Automobile magazine in 1994, and the article's title was, I kid you not, Die, Eco-Weenies!

You have to admire someone who finds a way to work a slam on liberalism, apropos of pretty much nothing, into the middle of a car review.


2. About "human rights":

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you d*m* well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

- Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, p. 227

This quote comes from the transcript of a 1993 speech given to the Cato Institute, a libertarian organization. Whereas this was a speech, and a remark meant to be funny (although true) at that, O'Rourke did not stop to flesh out the ramifications of this position. Upon any serious consideration whatsoever, it becomes obvious that the right to do as you please cannot possibly include imposing your wishes on others against their will, since that would negate their own right to do as they please. Many long books could be - and have been - written to discuss this exact idea, but O'Rourke nails it in two pithy sentences.


3. From the Acknowledgements at the front of All The Trouble In The World, published in 1994 when Al Gore was still the Vice President of the United States:

Particularly, I'd like to thank Vice President Al Gore for being the perfect straw man on such subjects as the environment, ecology, and population. Sorry, Al, for repeatedly calling you a fascist twinkie and intellectual dolt. It's nothing personal. I just think you have repulsive totalitarian inclinations and the brains of a King Charles spaniel.

- All The Trouble In The World, p.xi

O'Rourke called it, many years before Parker and Stone made everyone realize just how completely and serially crazy Gore is.


4. From the dedication page of 1993's Give War A Chance, which O'Rourke dedicated to whoever wound up going to Vietnam in his place after he dodged the draft:

I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you were more use to your platoon mates than I would have been. I hope you're rich and happy now. And in 1971, when somebody punched me in the face for being a long-haired peace creep, I hope that was you.

- Give War A Chance, p.vii

O'Rourke freely admits that he's made mistakes in his past. Like lots of former liberals - including me - he eventually put away childish things. I thought this was a nice tribute.

5. From a major piece about Cuba, which O'Rourke uses as an example of "bad socialism" (as contrasted to Sweden, which he calls - relatively for purposes of contrast - "good socialism"):

Socialists think of society as a giant, sticky wad. And no part of that gum ball - no intimate detail of your private life, for instance - can be pulled free from the purview of socialism. ... Socialism is inherently totalitarian in philosophy.

-Eat The Rich, p. 90

That last sentence sums it up. The only way socialism could even come close to being ethical or moral would be if an opt-out mechanism were readily available, but that would cause the socialist system to collapse completely. If such an option were available, anyone who was even remotely productive would exercise it and leave the takers sitting there with their hands out.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the controller for the radio-controlled vehicle we met yesterday.

"Islamophobia"

I've got a few bones to pick with some statements in this article, in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper is accused of racist motives for not trying really, really hard to get Omar Khadr freed from Guantanamo Bay, returned to Canada, and (I'm speculating a bit here) given a job teaching Canadian Studies.

Let's start with a quote from the article and let the nitwittery speak for itself:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is indifferent to Omar Khadr's plight because the Guantanamo Bay prisoner is ``brown-skinned" and a Muslim, the leader of one of Canada's largest Islamic groups said Monday.

Harper's resistance to calls to repatriate the Canadian citizen shows he is pandering to Islamophobes, said Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry.

"In this case, Mr. Harper is playing politics because of the backdrop of Islamophobia in this country," Elmasry said.

"This is where a leader comes in, to say this is really wrong and I have to correct that wrong by bringing this person (back to Canada) even if I lose some political points with Islamophobes."

[Snip some more of the same, then....]

Elmasry contrasts Khadr's case with that of dual Canadian-British citizen William Sampson, who was freed from a death sentence in Saudi Arabia in 2003.

Prior to his release, Ottawa had said it had made pleas on Sampson's behalf to the highest levels of Saudi government.

"Why is Stephen Harper so callously indifferent to Omar Khadr's case?" Elmasry wrote.

"It's painfully obvious: William Sampson is a white Westerner while his fellow Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, is brown-skinned and a Muslim."

Ahhh, where to begin.

First up, let's take on the opening charge: that Harper's "indifference" to Khadr's "plight" is because Khadr doesn't look like a member of the Osmond family.

Does anyone with half a brain even need it explained that this is nonsense? Omar Khadr was not imprisoned for his melanin level. He was imprisoned because he was on the battlefield in a foreign nation, fighting against the troops of Canada and her allies. That is not in dispute. He committed a clear act of treason, and should count himself lucky that he wasn't killed in battle or shot down like a dog after playing possum then throwing a grenade at medics who were trying to help him and his friends. Whoops, I forgot - the reader should mentally insert an "allegedly" somewhere in that last phrase.

Mr. Elmasry knows full well that Omar Khadr is not in prison because of the colour of his skin. He is being treated the same as anyone of any complexion would be in the same situation. However, that's not good enough for Mr. Elmasry. He wants the Prime Minister to intervene because of Omar's skin colour. He wants Omar treated differently because of his ethnicity, which is not at all relevant to the matter. Just to refresh everyone's memory, this means that Mr. Elmasry's entire argument is racist.


Mr. Elmasry then accuses Mr. Harper of pandering to "Islamophobes", thereby labelling presumably large numbers of Canadians as such. Since the gauntlet has been thrown, let's talk about "Islamophobia". This will be fun.

A phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I won't bother linking to any of the (one quick Google check later) million-plus websites confirming that definition. Two words: irrational, and fear. They both matter. Let's look at each of them, in reverse order, shall we?

Most Canadians do not fear individual Muslims. They may be intrigued or frankly puzzled by their beliefs, which the majority do not share, but only on taxpayer-funded CBC sitcoms do normal Canadians generally react to Muslims as though they're radioactive. They may mistrust Muslims - more about that shortly - but mistrust and fear and not necessarily the same thing. You may have noticed that they're two entirely different words. That's not an accident.

(This is the tip of the iceberg for me on this subject - if I ever write about "homophobia", we're in for a lot more fun.)

However, it must be admitted that there is some fear - not so much of individual Muslims as of Muslim ideology.


This leads me down another path.


Islam is not just a religion. (Though I am sorely tempted to remove the fourth word from that sentence, that would make it inaccurate.) It is an all-encompassing ideology, comprising religious, social, and political systems. Given that Islam is a political system as much as a religion, being opposed to is no more religious discrimination than opposition to communism, libertarianism, or paleoconservativism would be. Free but politically correct citizens of the world rejoice: you can criticize Islam without being a religious bigot!

Second - we're into pet peeve time here - even if you move from opposition to Islamic ideology to having issues with its adherents, that is not racism. Lots of people disagree, explicitly claiming that opposition to Islam is by definition racism. They're being silly when they do so, failing a basic logic test. Say it with me, kids: Islam is not a race. Opposition to it therefore cannot be "racism". Specific words matter. That's why we have so many of them.


Now let's look at the other word from the definition of a phobia: Irrational.

Is fear of Islam (or mistrust, or even active opposition) irrational? I would say no, for several reasons.

First up, as already discussed, Islam is more than a religion. Whereas it is a complete ideology, I can oppose it - and I do - just as I oppose totalitarianism. I wonder whether the ancestors of modern leftists were critical of European Jews in the 1930s, calling them Naziphobes for expressing reservations about Hitler. "What do you mean, you don't want to get in the oven? What are you, some kind of anti-Aryan bigot?"

Second, Islam teaches that it is superior to all other belief systems. I disagree with that, but as long as it remains a theological belief I don't care about it. Christianity does the same thing. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He didn't add, "Oh, or by being a really nice person. And God's cool with Buddhists, too, so they're in."

So, Christianity teaches that it is superior to all other religions in that it's the only one (by its own teaching) that allows access to God (i.e., entrance into Heaven) for its followers. I expect that most religions have a similar "it's our way or the Hell-way" teaching somewhere along the line. In fact, a religion that openly said, "Hey, come with us, or not, it doesn't matter" while simultaneously putting any constraints (moral standards, etc.) whatsoever on adherents wouldn't have many followers. It would have even fewer who were capable of rational decision-making.

This is all fine. As long as the debate remains theological, I don't care whether followers of other faiths think I'm headed for Hell. My faith teaches otherwise, and so I disagree with them. The feeling is mutual, I'm sure. As long as we can all peaceably disagree, which can even include some vigorous discussion and debate, then there's no problem.

Where we have a problem is when a religion teaches that because these other people are theologically incorrect, you have the right to mistreat them in this life; that they are somehow less valuable than yourself because of their beliefs. It is shameful that Christianity has been used this way at different times throughout history, but it is certainly not the general situation today.


Sidebar on religious oppression: there have been times when overzealous professing Christians have done terrible things in attempts to convert nonbelievers. Coercion of various sorts, including torture and murder, have been used to try to make nonbelievers accept Christ. This makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, Christ cannot be forced on anyone. It is supremely unloving, and therefore un-Christlike, to even attempt to do so. Although Islam proudly spreads itself at swordpoint, it is both immoral and logically impossible for Christianity to even attempt to do so.

Second, I don't get the logic in threatening to kill someone - or even going through with it - if they refuse to proclaim faith in Christ. The Christian duty to witness is all about trying to tell people about their need for Christ before they die. My very Protestant position is that this short lifetime is the only chance you have to make that choice. No purgatory, no indulgences, no second chances. I acknowledge that I may be wrong about this, but the logic of Pascal's Wager makes it unwise to take that chance.

That being the case, why on Earth would any Christian risk killing someone who didn't believe in Jesus, thereby condemning them to Hell by their own actions? If someone isn't a believer, then Christians have a duty to protect and preserve their life as long as possible, in hopes that they'll convert before their death. (This, incidentally, is a good theological reason to oppose the death penalty, although Scripturally based counterarguments are certainly still possible.) Attempts at violently coercive proselytizing make no sense whatsoever.


Islam, quite contrary to Christianity, openly teaches that non-Muslims are inferior and can be mistreated with impunity. Their existence is to be tolerated only if they submit to Dhimmitude, a subservient status. Infidels are to be constantly reminded of their inferiority, so that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). Not trusting people who cling to this ideology, who profess a belief system that says they want you subjugated, is not irrational. It is, on the other hand, perfectly rational and possibly the only sane position to take.

The classic retort at this point is that not all Muslims adhere to that teaching, just like not all Catholics go along with the Vatican's position on birth control. My answer to that is simple: the sincere ones do (in both cases).

Then we get to the "moderate Muslims" (Cafeteria Muslims?). They will protest that they don't believe in Dhimmitude, don't want Sharia law, and generally just want to get along peacefully in society. Most of them are probably telling the truth. However, some of those making such claims are practicing Taqiyya, an Islamic doctrine that says it's permissible to lie to infidels (that means me, and probably you) as long as it serves Islam. Lulling the gullible into a false sense of security is a textbook example.

Furthermore, when a mullah (Islamic clergyman - I don't know and frankly don't care whether the title should be capitalized) in a modern (i.e., non-Muslim) nation gets caught red-handed preaching hatred and promoting violence, all these supposed peace-loving moderates are nowhere to be found. The wagons get circled to some degree, but for the most part their only response is the sound of crickets chirping.

I can assure you that if my pastor ever got up on Sunday morning and preached that we should subjugate non-Christians, it would be dealt with swiftly and severely by our congregation. He'd find himself at the unemployment office on Monday morning, but have a hard time finding any work due to the cloud of negative publicity we would raise. He'd certainly never again be invited to the pulpit of another church in our denomination.

Something similar would happen if a clique within the church started that kind of talk (not everything bad - or good - within a congregation begins with the pastor). If violence were advocated by anyone for any reason, the authorities would be alerted immediately, and everything possible would be done to stop the trouble before it started. When these mythical moderate Muslims start acting like this, rooting out and reporting the terrorists in their midst, then maybe they can gain some credibility in the grown-up world.

Actually, there would be no need for anyone to infiltrate or spy on my church to find out what's going on. Our services are recorded, and frequently broadcast live over the radio. The recordings are freely available to anyone who wants them, church members or not. We have no secret agenda. When all you want really is to proclaim the Gospel and love your neighbours, whether they share your creed or not, then there's no need for secrecy, silence, or wagon-circling.

It's been said that you only have reason to fear a Christian when he does not follow the teachings of his faith, but reason to fear a Muslim when he does. That pretty much sums up the situation. Fortunately, I think that most Muslims are as weak and nominal in their faith as most Christians are in theirs.


So, to summarize: Mr. Elmasry is being racist, dishonest, and very, very silly. It's probably best to ignore him; I've obviously chosen mocking, which comes in second.


As for Khadr himself, I love that a video of his interrogation, which was edited and released by his defense attorneys in hopes of generating public sympathy, was met with a resounding yawn by the Canadian public. Furthermore, of the minority that did report changing their opinion of his case based on the video, some actually feel less sympathy for him now than they did before seeing the video. Imagine if his defense attorneys hadn't edited out the parts where he calmly states that he continues to support jihad against the west.

I went though something similar a while back, when Rolling Stone ran an attempted tearjerker piece about Khadr, trying to make it sound like those awful Republicans abducted an innocent kid on spring break. By the end of the article, I was convinced that Khadr needs to be kept locked up forever in the interest of public safety. Frankly, how he got to be this way (his parents probably qualify as monsters for what they did to him as a child) is less important than the fact that he's now a very small step above being a rabid animal.

Can he be rehabilitated? Yes. I believe that anyone can be rehabilitated from any situation. However, I also believe that it's very unlikely, and there's only one realistic shot at doing so. Even if he were willing to try it (which is doubtful at best), political correctness would prevent the authorities from offering it to him. (Hint: it's Jesus.)

A great editorial about Khadr appeared in Canadian papers this week. The title says it all (even though the rest is pretty entertaining to read too): Keep Khadr Where He Is. Whoever wrote it better be careful. If word gets out that they have common sense (at least on this issue), their journalism career could be over.


Finally, just in case my overall position on Islam isn't clear: Islam is a demonic false religion, fabricated by a murdering pedophile. There's nothing irrational about realizing that.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son beginning to doubt that his horse is alive.

Responsible Firearm Ownership

Today's entry is brought to you by this horrible story on CNN. Executive summary: a woman called 911 because someone was breaking into her house, and as the 911 operator listened, the intruders got in and murdered the caller.

This reminds me of two bumper-sticker-type slogans. Yes, bumper sticker slogans are simplistic, but sometimes there's a lot of wisdom to be found at the end of a late-model sedan. I'm guessing that this poor woman's family are feeling the truth of these ideas today.

First up: When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

Second: Saying you don't need a gun because you have the police is like saying that you don't need a toothbrush because you have a dentist.

I used to be a good liberal on the issue of guns, back before I learned what "critical thinking" meant. In my squandered youth, I even subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine, and happily lapped up whatever leftist drivel they doled out.

Of course I thought guns were bad. Rolling Stone, and most other media, told me they were. A gun killed John Lennon, so all guns must be evil. (There are at least two major logical errors in that last sentence - one in the premise, one in the conclusion. Identifying them is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Of course, my self-inflicted socialist media diet also taught me that anyone who claimed membership in, or even any sympathy with, the NRA was automatically a homicidal lunatic. I made plenty of fun of their "guns don't kill people - people kill people" rhetoric, usually by replying, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidentally shoot their own children."

I can't say when or why I changed my view. I attribute it to simply growing up. John Hawkins from Right Wing News has defined liberalism as "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues". That pretty much sums up my youthful position on firearms, and hopefully explains the change.

I hadn't even realized it happened until one day I was visiting someone in his office in a police station. He had a couple of firearms out, and several rounds of ammunition were openly visible in the room. He was working with the firearms as we chatted. As he handled one of the guns, he looked at me and, indicating the firearm in his hand, asked, "This doesn't bother you, does it?"

I replied, "Nope. The only time somebody having a gun makes me nervous is if the same person would make me nervous even without the gun."

I all but felt the light coming on as I realized that what I had just said was pretty much the same idea as the aforementioned NRA slogan.

These days I quite like firearms. I'm a big proponent of self-defense and responsible firearms ownership, and fully agree with the "bumper stickers" at the top of this article. I want the good guys to be armed, and preferably given carry permits (open and/or concealed). If the lady in the linked article at the top had spent her time steadying her aim of a large-calibre handgun (you don't want a small one for home defense - not enough stopping power) instead of dialing 911 (and probably waiting on hold), the story might have had a much happier ending.

Oddly enough, I don't actually have any firearms in my home at this time. This is because I don't feel that small children and firearms are a particularly good mix, and right now I'd much rather have the small children around. My four-year-old son can find ways to be dangerous with Silly String, so even a remote possibility that he might get his hands on an honest-to-goodness firearm is out of the question.

I've also become very familiar with Canada's firearms laws, and (here's where I lose the NRA and its Canadian fans again) I don't think they're that bad. Sure, they're inefficiently administered, but the actual ideas of firearms licensing and registration are sound. (Canada's firearms laws also have a nasty racist streak in them that I may address some other time.)

I used to agree with the standard Canadian firearm enthusiast's belief that licensing was acceptable but registration was unnecessary and needlessly intrusive. A friend argued it with me and changed my mind (see, it is possible). If we had licensing but no registration, there would be nothing preventing (well, maybe we should say "discouraging" - laws never prevent any action, they only provide for penalties that will hopefully be deterrents) me, as a licensed individual, from going to the gun shop, picking out something nice and nasty, then handing it off to Joe Gangbanger down the road who would never in a million years be approved for a licence. Remember, no registration means no record of the sale to me and no record of me giving the gun to ol' Killy Joe, and so no way for me to wind up sharing a cell with Joe like I should in this scenario.

There. Now that I've probably alienated everyone on any side of the firearms control debate, my driveway needs shovelling again. Oh, for a cannon large enough to just blow the snowdrifts away....


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of two of the Beatles dolls my wife crocheted for me (John's back, George's front).

Oaths Revisited

Today I'm going to revisit the topic of oaths. I already wrote an entry on this (which you can read by digging through the archives or clicking right here); today I want to cover three new elements. One that I read about right after writing that entry, one that I forgot to include, and one response to a comment made on that entry.

That last bit makes this a good time to explain that if and when I respond to reader comments, I'll tend do so by writing a new entry rather than by engaging in a dialogue within the comments sections. This is mainly because I think people are at least marginally more likely to read a new entry than the comments section on an old one.

First up, the new information I found after writing that. Not long after I wrote about oaths, a friend gave me a stack of Christianity Today (CT) magazines that he had piled up. Unlike me but apparently like most normal people, once he's read a magazine, he's finished with it and doesn't have the storage space or inclination to archive it. On the other hand, I still have almost every magazine I've ever purchased (or inherited, like these) and I could count on one hand the number of times I've simply thrown magazines in the garbage.

So, thanks to his much-appreciated handoff, I have reading material to keep me occupied for a while. (In addition to those CT issues, I've also recently picked up stacks of Maximum PC, Rolling Stone, Archaeology, and Discover at library book sales and the like. My "light reading" pile, where all the new magazine arrivals go, is almost a foot high at the moment.)

When I was reading the March 2007 issue of CT, an editorial entitled "Why Isn't 'Yes' Enough" caught my eye. I've since learned that it's available online as well, so you should go read it. I must admit, I'm far likelier to read the entire contents of a printed magazine than that same magazine's complete online article archive, so I missed this when CT put it up on their site.

I was very pleased to see again that I'm not alone in thinking that oaths are unnacceptable based on Scripture. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Quakers and Anabaptists agree with me. Or more accurately, I agree with them, since I'm guessing that at least some of them arrived at that conclusion before I did. Especially Irenaeus and Tertullian, who've both been dead for 18 centuries, give or take.

Others, the article notes, have disagreed - notably Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. If any of them were the Messiah, then their opinions would sway me. As it is, not so much.

Second, I forgot to mention note a video I had recently watched where the issue of oaths was discussed in some depth. It was an episode of The John Ankerberg Show, which may be available online if you know where to look (and can get in). Since downloading and watching it could theoretically violate one or more laws in your jurisdiction, I wouldn't know anything about that. Let's assume that I saw it whenever it first aired and have a very good memory.

Anyway, the episode was about the Masonic Lodge. If it were floating around various file-sharing sites - and remember, I'm not saying it is, ever has been, or should be - it would probably be called something like "Christianity and the Masonic Lodge - Are They Compatible?"

The episode took a debate format. A gentleman named Bill Mankin was arguing the "yes" side as to the title, with Dr. Walter Martin taking the "no" position. Watching the entire series (it was spread over five half-hour episodes), I found it pretty clear that *SPOILER ALERT* Dr. Martin was the clear winner on pretty much every possible level.

One of the issues tackled was the fact (or, as Mr. Mankin would argue, "opinion", but let's get real) that Masons swear some pretty elaborate and sometimes explicit oaths of secrecy and loyalty to the Lodge. Dr. Martin tried to address those oaths in light of the same passages I cited from Matthew and James.

Mr. Mankin tried the usual, tired arguments that those passages don't really mean that Christians can't / shouldn't swear oaths. "In the historical context of...(blah, blah, blah, fingers in ears, I can't hear you)"-type arguments that deny the clear reality of "Do not swear at all."

Dr. Martin would have none of it, although he was clearly amused (if a bit disturbed by the disingenuous misinterpretation of Scripture - Mr. Mankin is also a professing Christian). He at one point asked a terrific hypothetical question to clarify the matter.

Dr. Martin proposed that for just a moment we forget about the passages in Matthew and James that forbid oaths. Never mind those, pretend they aren't there.

Now, having done that, suppose that we were to "write in our own passage", wherein Jesus fully intended to clearly forbid His followers to swear any oaths, including oaths of office, being sworn in to testify in court, etc.

How do you suppose He would have worded that prohibition?

I think it would look very much like: "Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." And, hey, that sounds kind of familiar!

Point made, I trust. On to my third issue for this entry, the question asked in the comments of the earlier Oaths thread. Quoting from a reader named Anonymous: "Do marriage vows count as oaths?"

That's an excellent question, Anon (do you mind if I call you Anon? Cool.). My answer is that it depends entirely on how the vows are worded. If they contain "swearing language", as demonstrated by terms or phrases like "swear" or "so help me (deity of choice)", then I would say that yes, they are at least dipping a toe into some dangerous waters. I have no problem, though, with something more like "Do you, Groomster, take this chickie to be your wife? How about you, Lady In The Fancy Dress? Want to hang out with this schmoe in the rented suit until death do you part?", followed by each party letting their Yes be Yes (or their No be No, depending on how the day is going).

If memory serves - it may not, and I'm not digging out the video to check - that's how my wedding ceremony went (possibly including the words chickie and schmoe). Two pretty straightforward questions, two pretty straightforward answers. If I'm misremembering, and we went into places where we shouldn't have, then once again I have reason to be glad that the blood of Christ atones for my myriad failures. (Sidebar: I strongly advise that you never consider my beliefs or behaviours, or the beliefs and behaviours of any mortal human being, as normative for Christians. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. And if a statement or practice can't be backed up by Scripture, take it with a metric whack-ton of salt.)

So a more seriously worded answer would be: I believe that marriage ceremonies should take the Scriptural prohibition on oaths very seriously, and avoid any language that could reasonably be interpreted as the swearing of an oath. Ask the bride and groom each a simple question (feel free to embellish with as much of the "for richer or for poorer" boilerplate as wanted, as long as "oath language" is avoided), to be answered with a simple yes or no (feel free to go with "I do" if you want your wedding to be more like the ones on TV).


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son in his award-winning pirate costume, trying in vain to hide from the paparazzi.