Misquoting Jesus by Edward Andrews

This book is a reaction to Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman, which makes Jesus out to be a fictional character. But Edward Andrews sets out to prove Ehrman wrong by going for the original text of the bible; not Latin, but Greek! He debunks all of Ehrman’s alleged “evidence” regarding Jesus’ origins, and some of it is rather amusing.

One of the claims by Ehrman is that because there are so few physical copies of the Gospels from before 350 A.D., the story of Jesus is some kind of invention. But Andrews claims otherwise; if Christians were persecuted before Constantine took up the religion, wouldn’t they have had to do their writing in secret? Wouldn’t it have been hard to copy the texts without being seen? Several early Gospels, like that of St. Thomas, were found buried in Egypt. The early Christians probably had to hide whatever books they had, and there must be hundreds, or even thousands, buried somewhere in the Middle East. Once Constantine ended all the persecutions, the Christians could now have as many texts as they liked.

Then there’s another reason Andrews gives for the lack of antique texts. When Paul preached to the Hebrews, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, he would have done so orally. Books had to be hand-written, so Paul wasn’t going to stand in the street and hand out pamphlets! He wouldn’t have published a book and gone on a book tour either. He was lucky to get parchment or papyrus to write his works, and lucky that the book survived his death.

According to Andrews, the lack of primary sources on Jesus isn’t because he never existed. It’s because his followers were persecuted and had to make their writings a clandestine operation.

The Dance of the Wounded Souls: A Cosmic Perspective of Codependence and the Human Condition

Robert Burney is a substance abuse recovery therapist (non-clinical)and this book is about changing the habits that lead to addiction. He offers practical advice on breaking these habits by facing the things that lead to them. Firstly, he states that you can’t find love without accepting that certain things make you angry. Secondly, you can’t find happiness without confronting the things that make you miserable. Third, repressed emotions drive us to rage.

Repressed emotions are written of at length in this book. They drive us to become workaholics, or become obsessed with our bodies, and no good ever comes of that. It’s something we’re taught through bad mentoring by poor role models. He compares to coming-of-age rituals in traditional society to the ones in the modern world as an example. Among aboriginal people, there are ceremonies to mark the beginning of menstruation, because that marks the girl as being biologically mature. In the USA, we have junior high school, where the kids learn bad habits and bad body image. The kids have nothing to do with themselves, so they end up getting in fights, shoplifting, and joining gangs.

Addiction isn’t something that you can just stop. You need to recognize that your lifestyle and living environment may be the underlying cause, and for that, you need to be willing to change them.

Mediums, Monks, and Amulets

Dr. Pattana Kitiarsa is an anthropologist who spent some time as a Buddhist monk in Thailand. Before I go any further, I’d better let you know that this is not some hippy story, where the westerner goes looking for “spiritual enlightenment.” Kitiarsa was no stranger to Thailand, and life in a monastery is not a vacation; on the contrary, it’s very austere and disciplined. You get one meal a day (which is why the monks are so thin) and every morning, the monks march in a line at the village to beg for food. The “earnings” from the begging are shared communally. If there are no donations, and nobody comes to the temple to donate food, then nobody eats.

Dr. Kitiarsa makes it very clear at the beginning that religion, especially Thai Buddhism, can be an opportunity for fraud. Magic is frowned upon in the monasteries, but the monks have to resort to doing tricks to attract donations, without which they can’t recruit new members. In India and Thailand a lot of the gurus are just after the westerners’ money (or looking to have sex with gullible white women) and while the “apt pupils” find enlightenment, the guru is driving a Mercedes (bought with their money.)

He does give one positive example of a magician-monk named Achan Somsak. He’d trained as a teacher, worked as a grocer, and after being ordained as a monk, chose to live by himself in the forest. Fortune-telling is part of his philosophy, but it doesn’t involve magic tricks or any of the stuff that the Indian Fakirs are famous for (like sticking pins through their faces) or cooking tea on peoples’ heads.

The monks and gurus often clash with the government, for multiple reasons. First, there are many who engage in fraud, bilking naïve tourists of their money while suckering them with fortune-telling and silly trinkets that allegedly have magic power. Secondly,

I recommend this book for anyone studying Buddhism, or how it pertains to life in Thailand.

That's The Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader

Though you’d view it with surprise, there was a time when rap lyrics weren’t about murder, wife beatings, gold rings, or revenge. There was also a time when graffiti wasn’t meant to be hateful vandalism. When it all began, it was about brightening a city that was a dreary, grimy, smoggy mess. The graffiti may have been an eyesore to most, but without it, the NYC subway cars were already filthy. It’s not like the city ever bothered to clean them.

That’s the Joint portrays hip-hop as a tree growing out of garbage and rubble. Everything to do with hip-hop and graffiti spread by word of mouth, not by the press or radio (these were the pre-internet days of course.) In Jeff Chang’s essay Zulus on a Time Bomb: Hip Hop Meets Rockers Downtown he portrays graffiti as having been obscure until Henry Chalfant began photographing it. Chalfant was a classically trained sculptor, by the way, who became fascinated by subway car murals, and his photos brought it mainstream. Of course you then had the big businesses try to cash in on it, and then Mayor Kotch put greater effort into power-washing the paint off the cars, so the graffiti craze quickly ended.

This book has neither illustrations nor photos, so it comes off more as a serious study of history than anything else. There weren’t any real surprises in the book, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing either; I watched the VH1 documentary NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell, which also tells the story of hip-hop’s origins. When it began in the late 1970’s New York City, it was more about cheap amusement than fighting. In fact hip-hop shows were a refuge from crime and violence. The equipment was bargain-basement stuff, and the performers and DJ’s didn’t prance around in gold chains. Similarly, with punk rock (also gaining ground at the time) the “fashions” were thrift-store rejects. In the documentary The Filth and the Fury, John Lydon recounts how the leather jacket emblem of punk rock was based on a misconception:

None of us could afford fifty quid for a leather jacket, not in UK in 1978. None of us had that kind of money. He must’ve stolen his, and then you see him in the papers in his leather jacket, and all of a sudden, you have all these kids wearing them.

However, I did not agree with much of what Michael Eric Dyson says in Cover Your Eyes as I Describe a Scene So Violent. He blames the NRA for perpetuating the US gun culture, and blames violence in the “Ghetto” on smaller and smaller living spaces. But this isn’t true for several reasons; first off, the NRA neither advertises nor lobbies towards black men, and secondly, in the most violent neighborhoods there is no shortage of housing. The South Bronx and Jamaica in NYC, South Side of Chicago, Compton in LA, and the worst parts of Detroit are teeming with massive housing projects and/or empty buildings. In the controversial All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence, the author Fox Butterfield has a different approach, no guns involved. He blames black-on-black killing as a low-class southern habit. He claims that in the Old South, there was a culture of revenge; the word no was an insult, and all insults had to be avenged (just like in Naples, Italy and in Albania, and often in Latin America.) The “you disrespect me, I’ll pop you one,” phenomena didn’t originate in Africa.

That’s the Joint makes up for what it lacks in illustrations with some great writing by top notch writers. Even when some of these writers are wrong, it still makes you think. Hip-hop is controversial, as it was 30 years ago, and will still be controversial in later years. I remember back in 1991, my parents were watching The Beatles movie Magical Mystery Tour and said “their lyrics were smart, this rap garbage won’t last.” Well it’s been 23 years, and rap sure did last. I’m going use this book when I teach US history to high school students from now on. In the past decade there’s been a mania for all the music and fashions of the early 1980’s, which none of the aficionados are old enough to remember. It would be wonderful for them to learn where it all originated.

The Second Vatican Council

Pope Paul VI created new Cardinals in 20 nations, including Africa, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Holy relics were returned to Eastern Orthodox churches, and greater dialogue was opened between the church and the Marxists and Freemasons. Birth control pills were approved by the Pope, and a Czech Bishop, recently freed from a Communist prison, referred to the burning at the stake of Jan Huss as an obstacle to religious liberty. Earlier in 1960, Kruschev had stated that he wanted peaceful coexistence with the Catholic Church. Under Pope John, it would be a relatively peaceful time, but that would soon change. 

The 1960’s were a difficult decade, and the Papacy wasn’t blind to it. The world had changed, and the once powerful church was not what it had been. Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia were in the hands of Communist governments that controlled the church, not the other way around. In the USA, young Catholics were leaving the church to seek out their own path, and in Europe, the churches were no longer politically sacrosanct. Even in Montreal, with a larger than average population of faithful, the church’s hold on social welfare would soon change.

Roberto De Mattei should be given credit for his unbiased writing. His book consists of good, solid reporting of events, no bias to be found anywhere. My only problem with the book is the huge number of names that are dropped in. Those not familiar with all the people involved may be slightly confused by it. I would also have welcomed a timeline at the beginning, so that all the events can be seen in chronological order.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

When Jesus was crucified, the worst of his pain came from seeing his mother’s anguish, writes Saint John Eudes in The Sacred Heart of Jesus. But was she not prepared for the terrible death that her son would suffer? According to author, she did not witness his suffering on the way to Herod’s house, for the din of the crowd’s drowned out the sound, and she could not see over their heads. When she finally heard the terrible words, she began to suffer worse than her son, and that gave her the strength to carry out his final will.

Saint John Eudes was a French priest from Normandy, writing at a time when few could write. Whenever he mentions Jesus, he capitalizes the “H” so that it’s always He, Him, and Himself. It seems that this book is meant to show Jesus as someone with an iron will, capable of withstanding intense mental and physical punishment, knowing all along that upon his death he will become a savior and inspiration to the people.

Despite the intense tales of woe, there are positive aspects of this book. In the chapter Seventh Meditation, he describes all flora and fauna as miraculous creations. They are perceived as gifts from a savior, who notices every detail in life. In Saint John’s lifetime, his book would have reached a limited audience, so he was obviously not expecting himself to become a world-renowned bestselling writer. He developed an appreciation for simple things in his life, from the trees to the birds.

It’s like President Reagan used to say, “There is no end to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Selected Letters of A.M.A. Blanchet

Some of the Greatest explorers were Christian Missionaries; Matteo Ricci, Pere Labat, St. Jean Vianney, to name a few, and if you want to go all the way back, then Paul of Tarsus would be the first. He went all over the Mediterranean world, preaching to the Jews, Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians. These men took great personal risks, going into territory that was unmapped and where you couldn’t summon help.

A.M.A. Blanchet was the Bishop of Washington Territory starting in 1846, at a time when there really was not Washington as we know of. It was just a trading post, and the trade was pretty meager, given that it was sparsely populated. In his 1849 letter to the Pope, he consoles the Pontiff for his exile from Rome, praising him for all that he inspired in him earlier. But Bishop Blanchet couldn’t have related to what was going on with the Pope in Italy. The Italian states were in rebellion, and it was the kind of rebellion that wouldn’t have happened in a place like the Washington Territory. The place was just one big expanse of land, difficult to get to and nothing there. How would there be a rebellion of there was nobody to rebel, nobody to rebel against, and nothing to fight over? Blanchet describes his parish as “Indian neophytes” so we can deduce that his people aren’t exactly discontent. Physically, the job may have been tougher, but politically, it was far more secure.

The Bishop’s life in Washington reminds me of the book In Love With Art, about Francois Mouly in New York. It describes Soho in the 70’s as a relatively safe place; there were no burglaries there because everyone knew there was nothing there to steal. At the time, my parents describe their more upscale neighborhood in the Upper West Side as very unsafe, with constant muggings, not to mention pimps, prostitutes, junkies, and everyone with money retreating to doorman buildings or simply leaving the city. In a similar comparison, the life in the Washington Territory at the time would’ve been safer than New York (darn, why is New York always such a rough town?) and even Montreal doesn’t seem as safe in the letters to the Bishop.

The Blanchet’s biggest complaint in his letters is relatively tame; each Indian group has a different language, the whites corrupt them, and he can’t get them to give up polygamy. Their practice of multiple marriages allowed the women to pick whatever husband they wanted (even if he was already taken) and it gave the husband more servants (talk about “mutually beneficial” relationships!) to cook and gather. As for the Whites, he finds that most of the soldiers passing through the territory are Catholic, despite Catholics being a minority in the USA! This isn’t surprising to the historian; thousands of Irish immigrants had been joining the US Army since the 1840’s when they couldn’t find other jobs in their new nation.

By the 1850’s, the tone of the letters has changed. No more is mentioned about the Indians, and he makes many requests for money. I deduce that when the Civil War was through, and the railroads built, there were far more settlers coming in, not to mention the mining companies. Previously, they all ignored the territory because without the railroad, you couldn’t ship the ores or lumber out. But now there were whites, Chinese, blacks, all coming in. There were schools and hospitals to be built and staffed, and schools needed paper, ink, furniture, etc. Churches had to be built, and they needed more nuns, priests, and teachers. Scarcely does he mention the Indians, who I assume had been displaced.

A.M.A. Blanchet’s letters tell the early history of Washington, and for all those who think that Seattle is a cool city to live in, don’t forget that only 150 years ago it was nothing! The men and women who settled it were some of the toughest, willing to go without the resources that keep us in comfort. These letters will no doubt inspire others who dream of the adventurers that built this nation.

The Witness Wore Red

Religious cults are hard nuts to crack. Their member are brainwashed, and you won’t have much luck convincing them that their leader is lying. If the kids are born into this cult, then you have double the trouble; not only will it be a task to convince them, but if they decide to leave then it’s even harder than before. They won’t know what to do with all the freedom or how to live on their own. They may end up on the streets. Whether they’re Mormon polygamists, Satmar Hasids, or Scientologists, the outside world can be a strange, forbidding place.

The Witness Wore Red is about leaving a cult. The author has all the trappings of someone born in one; she’s taught not to trust outsiders, taught to accept disgusting things from the leader, and has nowhere to go when she leaves. I think that when people leave a cult (Escape, Stolen Innocence) it’s because they’ve reached a breaking point; in this case the new leader was getting so bizarre that it scared her off. The only question is, when do they reach that breaking point? Rebecca Musser reached hers when she was 27, but her mother stayed. Others left because they were thrown out. Her life pretty lousy to begin with; her mother is the second wife of a wealthy polygamist, but they have to hide in the basement and take his first wife’s abuses. Since their father signed over his house and bank account to the FLDS, they can lose their home at any time. After spending a childhood being abused by her stepmother, they’re “reassigned” to another man, and things are no better.

The Mormon polygamists have been a problem for Utah, and it doesn’t appear that the state is catching on. Never mind that their huge families cost the state millions in public assistance, but the amount of family abuse going on could drain social services. They’ve been throwing boys out of the house for a decade, and these “lost boys” are living on the streets, getting into drugs, stealing to support themselves. I don’t know how many there are now living by themselves, but it must be costing the state a fortune. These boys have nowhere to go, no education, no family, and they may not know how to ask for a job. Some of them are taken out of school at 13 and put to work, but they never see any of the money they make. Whatever state or community these boys go to will end up with the bill.

I’ll give the book credit for its writing, but it does get repetitive at times. Musser’s story ends well by most standards; she and her boyfriend leave the cult, and she has a decent career. It’s difficult for them to adjust, especially when they’re not used to being in a society where men don’t rule the roost. They have to learn to speak differently, dress like the “other” people, etc. Fortunately for her, she has musical talent, so she’s able to join a local band. Her husband seems to have it a bit harder.

Musser’s younger sister Elissa Wall was the subject of an earlier book on this topic. She was forced at 14 to marry an older cousin (he looks like a real asshole in the photos, like the high school football player who bullies everyone) and was the main witness in Warren Jeff’s rape trial. She and her husband left the cult, but the rest of their family is still there. Increasingly, there are Satmar Hasids who leave their sect and choose to live outside, but like Musser and Wall, they have a tough time adjusting to a life where they have to make choices.

Unfortunately, incidents like the New Square arson attack, among others, show the danger that cult members are in when they have a dispute with their clergy. Fortunately, as in the Nechemia Waxman case, there are members who are ready to testify about the wrongs committed by their clergy. Now it remains to be seen how the government deals with it. 

A Call to a Deeper Love

A child once asked me how I survived in the days before the internet, and I said “we did our research at the library.” When he asked what I did when the information wasn’t available there, I answered “I went without it.”

The same boy asked me what we did before cell phones, and I said “we made appointments and kept them, and we spoke to each other, not to our phones.”

In the old days, people had to survive without the luxuries of today. They appreciated whatever clothing they wore, whatever food they ate, the houses where they lived. The Martin family of A Call to a Deeper Love don’t smile in their photos, yet they appear contented. In fact nobody ever smiles in old photos; they were costly, and having a photo taken was a special occasion, not a day to be looking goofy with a silly grin. Those who grew up in the 1800’s knew the value of quality to their lives.

The Martins were one such group. They were a family in France of whom several members are saints. Zelie, the mother, struggled to raise several children and manage a business at the same time, never wavering in her faith. She was beatified, and her children canonized into sainthood. Her daughter became a nun at 15, and died of tuberculosis at age 24. Years after her death, she became Saint Therese of Lisieux. Like her mother Zelie, she willingly accepted her fate; when Zelie found she had cancer, she openly admitted “I have not been cured because my time is ending.”

The Martin family lived in an era before penicillin, chemo therapy, stents, and heart medications. If you got sick in those days, you died. You needed to accept when your life was over, and unfortunately, a lot of people, including Zelie Martin, had to accept their children dying as well. Nowadays, people get sick because they neglect their health and they drain their family’s means with huge medical bills.

People may not have had as much in the “good old days” as they do now, but they appreciated whatever they had.

Immigration and the Border

There’s something comic about this book. I got the feeling that some folks just never learn, especially Congress. For the last 50 years, Congressmen have been whining about immigration, but they never do anything about it. If you want to know why, knock on every door in Beverly Hills and ask who cleans the bathroom and does the yard work. In all of those nice suburbs of California, do the local teens mow lawns for pocket money? Do the homeowners mow their own lawns or clean their own toilets? Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-appointed guardian of American security, and the biggest hater of Mexicans in the USA, probably doesn’t mow his own lawn either.

Immigration and the Border is about the “fourth wave” of immigration, and the difference from the earlier immigration. Back in the 1890’s, when Ellis Island was the crossing point, there was no question about legality; you were welcome to enter the USA. Sure, some complained about immigrants diluting the labor pool, but the immigrants weren’t a “drain on our society.” They couldn’t have; there was no welfare in those days. As Ralph Da Costa Nunez writes in The Poor Among Us, there was no safety net. If you didn’t work you didn’t eat.

Nowadays, most of the cross-border immigration is illegal. The immigrants from Mexico can’t gain the same image of respectability because of this illegality; if they could be thrown out at any time, how can they gain prominence. Take for instance the case study of “Marcela,” a longtime illegal resident. Her children were born here, so they can’t be thrown out, but she can. Nobody can accuse her of being a “drain” on society, because she probably can’t get any benefits, and if she’s paid in cash, she probably has no social security.

The border of the title is really what this book is all about. It’s a border that’s so close that the immigrants aren’t really that far from home. It’s not like the way Jewish people came here from Russia; that was 2000 miles away. But the average Mexican immigrant only travels a few miles to the USA. If you’re working in San Diego, then Mexico is a short car ride. It’s not like the Italian immigrants who would never see their homeland again; if you’re here legally, you can cross back and forth as long as you can afford bus fare. Let’s also keep in mind the difference between political and economic refugees. If you come here fleeing persecution (like the Russian Jews of the 1800’s) then you have no intention of going back. But the economic ones, like the Irish and Italians, often did return when they could afford it. Like the Irish in the USA who visit Ireland once a year, the Mexicans can visit home half an hour away. If they can get there by car, they might visit once a month.

Whenever I hear a Senator or a Congressman talking about legal and illegal immigration, I ask myself “where have you been for the past 40 years?” Did they not see this happening years ago? The US-Mexico border has been around since 1845, did they not see that people would cross it? As California’s population ballooned, did they not see the number of low-wage and low-skill jobs increase?

Someone better tell that to Sheriff Arpaio, unless he intends to mow his lawn himself.

The Jesuit Guide to Nearly Everything by James Martin, SJ

In brilliant humorous prose, Rev. Martin gives a lesson on independence. Rather than put you to sleep with a homily (he admits being put to sleep by a few himself) he “keeps it real.” Every bit of advise is practical and pragmatic-how to appreciate religion on your own terms, how to accept yourself if you leave your church acrimoniously, and more.

St. Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit founder, is a man he cites as having a letter fetish-6,813 of them in his lifetime, according to this book-and since paper and ink were expensive, he must have composed his letters with great care. Now if St. Ignatius was that keen on writing so much, we can deduce that he must’ve been very keen on education. These were the guys who travelled all over the world, establishing schools that taught foreign languages as well as religion. A Jesuit priest named Matteo Ricci was the first European to learn the Chinese language and enter the Mandarin’s court. It was Ricci who discovered the Jews of Kaifeng, who thought HE was a Jew because he worshipped only one god. It was the Jesuits who risked their lives in El Salvador, took risks when they travelled deep into Africa, and established schools that are still in business to this day.

Martin describes with glee how one woman assumed that the SJ (which stands for Society of Jesus) stood for “stupid jerk.” Now what does that tell you? You can’t insult someone unless you can really think!

The Book of Money

There can be no better time than now to teach kids and adults about finance. The Book of Money is geared to all ages, well-illustrated, and up to date. Here are some things discussed:

-Big loans versus microcredit

-Financial crime versus street crime

-Money in the ancient world

-Money in the age of the internet

-Saving and investing

-Connections between money and health

This book makes a lot of things clear with regard to saving. For instance, it shows that children are big consumers, despite the fact that they don’t earn any money. When they get to adulthood they can be stuck with student loans debts, or even credit card debt. So in other words, they go from high-spending non-earners to cash-strapped earners. Do things look bleak? Not if you follow the book’s advise on saving your money!

I love everything about the book. Bright colors, great photos, easily-to-understand diagrams; it’s everything you could want for a book about finance. It’s great for both kids and adults, but I think the kids need it more. Kids should get a free download of it to use in the classroom.

The American Way of Poverty

Over seventy years after the Great Depression, we have a new wave of poverty. Like the Great Depression, the causes were at work for years-unregulated credit and unenforced finance laws. Unlike a hurricane, you can see a financial disaster coming years in advance. The damage is also harder to repair.

    Sasha Abramsky has crafted an eloquent and well-researched book on the “new poverty” of the USA. We have millions out of work, local governments are bankrupts, and the only difference is that we have the FDIC. But in the 1930’s, there was little government support; you either worked or you starved, and a lot of people probably starved. In the past 20 years, we’ve come to rely on civil service jobs and government assistance, which the government is cutting back on. If a whole town relies on jobs in prisons, police departments, and public hospitals or schools, what will they do when the funds are cut? What will they do when unemployment payments end? In the 1930’s, the factory workers were out of work, but in this decade it’s government employees that are out of work.

    In the chapter Stuck in Reverse he writes, in detail, about people who subsist on 88-cent TV dinners (low pay at Walmart, high healthcare costs) and no fresh produce. Couple this with diabetes, a long commute to work, high fuel costs, and you can see where this is going. Abramsky blames this part on Texas’ ant-union attitude, but Walmart only puts its stores in states where unions are powerless. There are (according to this book) over 20 Walmarts in Dallas, $8.88 an hour wages, and a community so desperate for jobs that it allows a big business to do as it pleases.

   There are many who fight this and win. Look at Detroit’s urban farmers, taking over empty land and growing fresh vegetables. They’re dealing with the problem themselves, without government money. In Cities all over the USA you have non-profit tutoring services, health clinics, and improved school lunches. Some communities pass laws requiring derelict property to be torn down. But it doesn’t work if a city is loath to change. In the recent book The Metropolitan Revolution, the author blames the problems of Youngstown, Ohio on a fractured municipality. With no strong leader, the various councilmen and selectmen can’t agree on anything (kind of like the government shutdown going on right now.) Worse than an unfinished project are 20 years of plans that never get started. Are we “stuck in reverse,” or has progress just stalled.

    In the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2003 Nickel and Dimed, Abramsky paints a portrait of a stagnated class. But unlike the poverty that Ehrenreich wrote about 11 years ago, today’s problems are far-reaching. The food pantries are running dry, and whole neighborhoods are empty, and former well-off middle class people are getting food packages from charities.

    If something isn’t done soon, the future looks rather bleak.

Is There At Least One Honest Politician in This Country?

In 2008, I the media was a wee bit unfair to Hillary Clinton. It seemed as though the anchormen wanted to make a point of ignoring her or rolling their eyes at her every time she opened her mouth. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, nobody ignored. Like Napoleon Dynamite, the audience hung onto every silly thing she said. If Palin was the election’s Napoleon Dynamite, then Hillary was the slow-witted fat guy from Office Space (she never did get her piece of cake.)

In this hilarious, wild book, we see that campaign finance laws aren’t much use, at least not the way they’re enforced. Sure, you can’t give your favorite Senator $100,000, but you can get 100,000 to give $100 each! You can have a big fundraiser dinner with lots of celebrities. When all that’s said and done, the media can, and obviously will, take sides.

Most Americans, according to Dollarocracy, tune into the nationwide news, not the local one. The nationwides, they have the money for the high powered signals, so whomever has the money for the advertising get the longest-reaching signal (duh!) and the average independent candidate might as well forget it. But without this “money-buys-votes” argument, what does it really boil down to? It’s Democrat versus Republican. Our country hasn’t had a strong third party in years. Okay, we had the Tea Party (they sure did a lot better than the Occupy movement), but they fizzled after the Republicans “borrowed” their ideas. When you only have two parties, you get monopoly. Americans are used to the Dems v G.O.P and they’re not going to break the tradition any time soon!

Now here’s an idea. Mitt Romney should’ve (secretly) funded Hillary Clinton or Jesse Jackson to run as an independent. It would’ve split the liberal vote in half, and weakened the Democratic party’s chances against the Republicans. Likewise, the Dems could’ve done the same with the Tea Party (not that they needed to.)

Maybe in 2016 someone will get wise?

Mind Over Medicine

Mind Over Medicine is about a solution to a great American problem; we let our jobs control our lives, and our lives control our jobs. In a recent issue of Minds magazine, some cops from Oregon took a meditation course as a way to reduce stress. Most of them scoffed at the idea; they all had hobbies, pastimes, and things to do outside of work, so what use would they have for meditation and yoga? But the truth is they needed it badly. The job was often boring rather than active, and that made them resentful. The resentment made it harder to maintain self-control when dealing with rude civilians, and there were numerous complaints.

Dr. Lissa Rankin has written a well-researched and highly enjoyable book on overworked Americans and what we can do about this. She makes it very clear; Americans tend to work long hours and lack true happiness. Worse than the long hours, we have long commutes, and we often hate our jobs. But in the chapter Loneliness Poisons the Body, we see how in one small town had far less stress. The town was 

Roseto, Pennsylvania, founded by Italian immigrants in the early 20^th century. Doctors found that there was no suicide, alcoholism, drug use, or crime, and that heart disease was rare. Was it the olive oil? No, the residents cooked everything in lard. Healthy food? No, they all loved pizza and sausages, and their diet was 40% fat. Genetics? They had the same genes as all other Italian Americans. Then secret was communal activity; families, and even multifamily groups, would gather nightly for group singing, while all the kids played together. Happiness was the key to their health.

Roseto didn’t do well in the modern era. As the younger generation left, the parents had less to do with themselves. As younger college-educated people came back, they influenced their younger townspeople with ideas, most of them about material things. The kids started demanding more, and feelings of discontent spread. By the 1980’s, there were more heart attacks among the residents. The chapter Death by Overwork is something that most Americans ignore. Why do we work such huge hours to pay for a huge home, when we could live in a smaller one and work less? Is it necessary for the kids to go to expensive colleges, when community colleges are within biking distance?

Years ago, I visited a family in Israel that lived in a tiny house, the size of a trailer. We ate dinner on the patio, and the father told us how he’d fixed the roof himself. When we left, my father spoke about how shocked he was. “They don’t have any money at all,” my father said, “their home is so small.” But I didn’t see it that way. The family had no mortgage to pay, only two of their kids were still living at home, and they didn’t have to pay for college. In short order, the family was 100% solvent. But if you have a huge house, two cars, and a kid going to an expensive college, are you truly rich? Are you in debt? Do you have to work such huge hours to pay for what you have?

Unless you are free from debt, you will never be truly free.

Christ Centered Biblical Counseling

I once met a retired pastor who’d become the assistant chaplain in the county jail. One of the prisoners was awaiting sentencing for buying old buildings, burning them down, and collecting the insurance. This man was also deeply religious and never went anywhere without his King James Bible. Clearly the chaplain wasn’t fooled, so I asked “did he burn down the buildings on Sunday?” At the sentencing, the judge said “I’ve read the bible too, and I recall somewhere it said “thou shalt not steal.” The accused had done a better job of lying to himself than lying to anybody else!

When it comes to religious counseling, it’s about morals, not psychology, on which we must concentrate or energy. In the chapter The Gospel in Balance, there’s a diagram of the science of forgiveness. I shows how we often let old grudges become more powerful than our will, and the grudge can turn into an idol that we worship. It is when things like guilt, anger, and envy take over our lives that we have to renew ourselves. We need to backtrack to the beginning, and set new goals for our lives. There are three elements to be found here; truth, worship, and change.

Now let’s look at the chapter Hope and Eternity, because “hope” is something where we usually mess up. We tend to think that “hope” actually brings things forth, and we end up sitting around waiting for a miracle to the point of narcissism. A more practical way for the counselor to bring the sufferer to her senses is by encouraging realistic goals. If you want proof, look at all those college grads out there who are bound for life to pay off student loans (note to the righteous, we must be slaves only to the Lord.) What was their goal in the first place? Did they think an expensive degree was a ticket to wealth? Did they think wealth was the ticket to happiness? Now look at the New York City public schools; starting teachers get the exact same salary, no matter where they got their degree. It’s the same thing for police officers, nurses, and army officers.

Before you even think of counseling someone who is troubled, read this book. It shows you how basic morals are the backbone of emotional health.

The Amish by Kraybill, Johnson Weiner, and Nolt

In 2006, a crazed gunman took an Amish school hostage, killed the kids, then killed himself. Immediately afterward, the victims’ families called on the killer’s family, offering support. One might ask how they could be so forgiving, and the answer is that they were taught all their lives to forgive and move on. They learn, by their elders’ example, not to show anger or hold grudges. It’s one of the habits that are essential to their survival.

   The point of The Amish is that tradition is the core of their perseverance and success. Before we go further, please don’t think that “tradition” is what you see in Fiddler On the Roof. On the contrary, the opening song Tradition from that musical is really making fun of tradition. Amish traditions are designed to keep everyone productive and make sure that they all get along.

    I went straight to the chapter Gender and Family because it’s exactly what every non-Amish wants to know about. I wanted to know if their gender roles are rigid, if the men control the women, how the families interact, etc. The answer I got from reading this great book is as follows; while the “work” roles are separated, the “social” ones are not. Girls are taught domestic work, while boys are taught farm skills and craftsmanship, but if there are no girls around, boys will do the dished, and vice versa.  Socially, things aren’t taught as they are with skills. Boys will be given dolls to play with, and girls will be given toy trucks (the parents don’t care) and the genders play together without restriction. It’s also possible, though not mentioned in the book, that the kids are not influenced by stereotypes. Take the average children’s book featuring animal characters; the father has a newspaper and a pipe, the mother does the cooking, little sister wears a pink dress, and the brother wears sneaker and has a scooter. It’s the same thing in cartoons and kiddie shows, but without a TV, and a limited number of non-Amish books, the kids won’t see it. Go into the average liberal household, and you’ll see parents discouraging thee year old boys from playing with dolls. But with the Amish, they don’t care. Genders are separated at times, but never segregated.

    Like the Native Americans, Amish women recuse themselves from preparing food during “that time of the month,” so obviously, the men will have to pitch in for those days that the wives are out. Assigning heavy chores to boys makes sense, because the men have greater upper-body strength. By assigning girls to learn cooking, it free the men to do heavy labor. But that doesn’t mean that the men snap their fingers when they want things; both genders have to respect each other. I was reminded of the book Rolling Thunder (about the Medicine Man of the same name) who argued with some feminists about “sexist” gender roles. The feminists argued that assigning women to do cooking was chauvinistic, but Rolling Thunder argued “where you come from, are you allowed three days vacation every time you menstruate?” The feminists replied “that means she can’t see her children for three days!” What can you do? Everyone’s entitled to their ways.

   Transgressions-like unmarried pregnancy or adultery-are punished by “shunning,” which is a form of temporary excommunication. To the Amish, this is not a punishment, but a way to avoid bad influences. Native Americans are known to do this if a member of their tribe violates their rules; in Looking For Lost Bird, a Navajo family is ordered to leave the reservation, because their 13 year old son is punching female students on the bus. Like the Amish, the Navajo used to have a tradition of having boys and girls work apart from each other, but thanks to modern life, they were thrown together. Some families can’t reconcile this with modern gender-mixing, and you get trouble. Even in modern families, shunning can be used, as it is in the New York Times article Angela Whitaker’s Climb (compiled in Class Matters.) In the story, the mother won’t let her grown children near their siblings out of fear that they’ll be a bad influence, and her method works. Keeping the kids away from trouble is a major part of Amish child-rearing, but only in an Amish community could this work. In Amish life, you don’t have unemployment; the kids are working in some way from the time they can hold a spoon, so they’re never left without something to do. On the opposite side, you have single parent families in towns with no jobs. What will the kids do with their time?

    My only fault with this book is the lack of first-person accounts. The chapter on Rumspringa shows that the media portrayals and the documentary were greatly exaggerated and sensationalized, so I would prefer to hear what the individuals have to say. I’ve also read that the Amish were not happy about the movie Witness, where Harrison Ford defends his Amish hosts with his fists. Their spokesman was quoted as “our tradition bars us from filing a lawsuit to keep this movie out of the theatres.” I would also have like to hear about Edward Gingrich, the only Amish man ever convicted of murder.

  Overall, The Amish is a great book. It’s a tie-in with the American Experience documentary, though it will take considerably longer to read this huge volume than watch the program. The book’s thoroughness is praiseworthy, along with its unbiased approach. It doesn’t overpraise the Amish, nor does it criticize their ways. If you’re wondering how traditional societies cope with the modern era, this book is perfect.

Moral Issues and Christian Responses by Patricia and Shannon Jung

Morals can be a fickle thing nowadays, especially when lines are being blurred by the media. Moral Issues and Christian Responses tries to tackle the way we respond to morals, especially with regard to violence, media influences, consumerism, celebrity worship (the new idolatry) and countless others. Patricia and Shannon Jung have written this book so that we can discuss two modern dilemmas. The first one is the media, which influences us, and the second one is violence, which tests our ability to forgive.

   Forgiveness gets a full chapter in this book, with special regard to the Nickel Mines school massacre. For those of you that don’t recall, a non-Amish man took a school hostage, killed several Amish children, and then killed himself. The astonishing result was that the Amish community was quick to make their peace with the killer’s widow and parents. It was something the Amish had been taught all their lives, to forgive and move on, never letting grudges or anger get in the way of their lives. Perhaps their willingness to forgive other is one of the reasons for their success as a community? However, a spokesman for the Amish said that they would not have asked for leniency had the killer lived. It would have been necessary, in their view, to confine him so that he couldn’t kill again.

    The Jungs are not unsympathetic to people who are angry for having been wronged. They give an example of a worker who want a promotion, and goes out of his way to defame another in order to get it. They use the term “reasonable blame” when referring to an act that was deliberate and that the transgressor knew was wrong. Primo Levi and Simon Weisenthal are an example; both are Holocaust survivors who’ve written books about their lives, and they have not been lenient in forgiveness. Unlike the Amish at Nickel Mines, they expected transgressors to understand their errors before asking for forgiveness.

   One of the issues discussed later in the book is rape. The chapter begins unusually, with a letter to Dear Abby from 1995, complaining about a friend who’s charged with the rape of a girlfriend. The writer of this letter doesn’t deny anything; he admits the events happen as the accuser says. His complaint is that they’d had sex before, and this time round he wouldn’t hear the word “no,” and because the woman was no longer a virgin it shouldn’t be considered rape. But I have to ask myself, would he want this man around his wife and kids? What if it were his daughter that had been raped? In terms of morals, should we be forgiving and non-judgmental if our friend harms others and not us? How would we feel if we were the victims?

    The chapter Sexual Ethics continues to discuss this, with regard to sex trafficking and how faith-based organizations deal with the problem. There are shelters, hotlines, and counseling services, all badly needed because the victims may be reluctant to go to the authorities. The women may be afraid of being prosecuted for prostitution, though in reality, it’s not prostitution at all. Under most state laws, a minor is incapable of giving consent in a sex case, so she can’t consent to exchanging sexual favors for money. Without much help from the government, at least the religious charities are striving to help the victim. But in earlier times, there wouldn’t have been much support; the best a teenage runaway could expect was to go into the Magdalene laundries, and for those of you that saw the movie, you’ll know it replaced one kind of abuse with another.

    The Jungs have done a marvelous job with Moral Issues and Christian Responses, which is detailed, unbiased, and informative. It is the perfect guide to answering today’s moral problems, and most important of all, it teaches us how the power of forgiveness is the basis for overcoming tragedy.