Dead Eye Dick and the Sun of God

Dedicated to one that I love[1]

Did you know they now make green softballs, kind of like the fluorescent tennis balls that have been out for decades? I found one in Woodland Park’s now fast-growing grass[2] while I was chatting with a friend—I on my daily walk, she reading beneath the tall oak’s verdant canopy.

Like most all macho men with a ball in hand during a bright spring day and in the presence of a fetching young lass[3] I just had to flaunt an athletic feat, so I feigned a high school nickname which never existed—“they used to call me ‘Dead-eye Dick’”—as an excuse to throw it at a tree way, way in the distance[4] and thus make her heart flutter with admiration.

My aim was true so as I continued my walk I followed my schoolboy bravado by tossing the ball up and catching it, to show my fine female friend just how athletic I truly am.[5] Up it would soar, then predictably down. On the next toss this yellowish green earthly ball peaked next to the blazingly white heavenly one, before bowing once more to the laws of gravity into my outstretched hands.

This law of physics had me musing about Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and that it is through their supreme powers of observation that we know what we do about the truths of the world wherein we live. HAH! This juxtaposed coincidence of Heaven[6] and science struck me like a 100 mph fastball, and with it a realization that it must contain some higher truth.

The laws of nature are the laws of God, and as Einstein said, we can only know God through what we can observe in the world around us: “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Contrary to popular thought, Einstein was a big believer in God, not a narrow religious “God” but a Universal “all that there is” God.

Newton had a similar outlook: “This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.”

So it is that the Earth’s two greatest scientists believed in a superior spirit, an Almighty, a Universal force, a God—just not THE God, that is, they did not believe in the God of Christians or Jews, or Muslims or Hindus. Nor even the non-existent God of the atheists. Rather, their acknowledgement is to a Power, largely unknowable except as to the “slight details.”

Of course, to think of the Theory of Relativity as a mere “detail” is mind-boggling, yet it does put in perspective just how much we DON’T know, yet is real, just not yet “discovered.”[7] Likewise, the opposite: how much we THINK is real, yet may be only illusion, namely what ingrained “truths”—in religion generally and Christianity specifically—are instead more a product of the tradition of man, than Universal Truth?

Yes, as I escape the binding straightjacket-hold of conventional Christianity, I find that it is the over-riding truth of Einstein’s God that has so far ripped me from the death-hold clutch of the traditions of man. Yet still I follow the teachings of Jesus, as those teachings embody and strengthen Universal Law.[8]

After all, what is making disciples of other nations if not living by example Jesus’ life teachings? It certainly can not be the mere cannibalistic drinking of his blood and eating of his body without the works that are consistent with his teachings: the stronger taking care of the weaker, the looking beyond pure self-interest to being other-oriented, the making, standing and if need be non-resistant dying for peace, the loving of all, including supposed enemies.[9]

One need not be a Christian, an acknowledger of Jesus--or any “religious” figure--to so order their life, and would nonetheless be following a path that maximizes the good, the truth, that is Universal Law.

But what of the Resurrection of the sacrificial Lamb of God who died for the sins of the world, so that all that believe in Jesus—and ONLY Jesus--have everlasting life?

Used to be, when I was immersed in the confines of traditional Church dogma that my whole belief system hinged on Jesus’ resurrection. If there was any chance that he did not rise from his death, then it ALL was for naught—there was no heaven, his life teachings void.

This was a true house-of-cards that caused me much, much angst in my youth, for though I did not at that time realize it I know that God was revealing to me a much larger truth. This youth-born seed has been growing into a study—which may become a book—that will free the hope of eternity from such tight constraints.

I see it as an application of Einstein’s search for truth in our sun-drenched physical world, to that beyond time and space.

And so it is seems that all the truth that could set us free is embodied as much in the Sun of God as the Son of God.


[1] Love. Both the highest human attainment, and at times just a four-letter word. There are many kinds of love. First, there is emotional love, which we easily experience, but often confuse with mere self-oriented pleasure. Within the emotional love category there is both CONDITIONAL love and UNCONDITIONAL love. Unconditional love is rare, and usually only by a parent for a child, and a pet for its owner. Even in marriage, one’s emotional love will be conditioned on loyalty and some measure of reciprocity from the other. Thus most emotional love is CONDITIONAL.

Second, there is AGAPE love, which is the love Jesus taught, where we love all--stranger, neighbor even enemy, and is nothing more than good intentions and actions given freely and indiscriminately to all. Agape love will often lack any warm fuzzy emotional component at all, such as when we do good to those that harm us. We need not like them to love them.

My love for the one to whom this is dedicated is both conditionally emotional and agape. Even though she does not reciprocate the affinity I have for her, still do I feel. And that is okay—sometimes the best love is one that is not ruined by its return!

Of course, my feelings are conditioned on her being the person I have known her to be—kind, considerate and non-malicious. Yet if that turned out to be the case, I would show (I hope!) the agape love that just lets it be.


[2] Early spring grass grows so fast and full it is reminiscent of the bushy, bushy big hair of high school girls.
[3]She was coincidentally near the gardenias and geraniums which are just now spewing forth their alluring fragrances.
[4] Typical exaggerated fish story. In fact the tree was just about 15’ away.
[5] I could hear Casey Stengel saying “you still got it, kid”, which is funny because I never had it to begin with!
[6] “Heaven” is both a subjective religious concept as well as an objective scientific reference to the universe beyond our atmosphere, such as “the heavens.”

[7] For instance, new species of animals and plants were recently discovered in the Foja mountain range of Papua New Guinea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4688000.stm. And in the arctic, fossils of a fish with leg-like fins, offering evidence of the evolvement of finned fish to land lubbing tetrapods. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025464.600-first-fossil-of-fish-that-crawled-onto-land-discovered.html. The truth of these discoveries long, long pre-dated our recent realization of them.

However, we can use this same observation in matters of faith: just because there is no scientific proof of spiritual “heaven,” for instance, does not negate its possibility, much less its reality for those who believe. In fact, the essence OF faith is the belief in that which is not seen.

[8] The Golden Rule, for example, was postulated first by Confucius 500 years before Jesus. Yet it’s a cinch some obscure Chinaman/woman said it, indeed it is a Universal Truth that only awaited a human discoverer.
[9] See footnote 1 regarding the difference between emotional love and agape love.

MORE EINSTEIN QUOTES:

These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu (Boston 1977).

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu (Boston 1977).

The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler. Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.Address at the Sorbonne, Paris.

MORE NEWTON QUOTES:

Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit God created everything by number, weight and measure.

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Two Maps—a World of Difference

The man now in Kansas, where I knew, came from Guanajuato, where I didn’t, so I went to the atlas. At once I was struck by the stark differences between the political and natural maps. The political world is a multi-hued patchwork of man-made borders. Pretty greens and pinks and blues and yellows denote continents, countries, confederations, counties and states.

The same areas on the natural map take on more serene quality.
It is the world in its truest, God-made natural state. No borders, just stretches of green, with ridges of black and brown for mountains and orangey-red for deserts all separated by vast expanses of blue. Life flows freely throughout the Natural World, while in the political world people are kept out—and sometimes in—by artificially created manmade borders.

This observation unearthed a truth that had been stubbornly buried within my subconscious: it is the disparity between Natural law (God) and manmade law that is at the root of human strife and suffering.

The subject of my search, Pedro Flores, is a case in point. Pedro was a farmer put out of business by drought. The only available water goes to the well connected few, leaving the distraught many barren of opportunities. Some, like Pedro come with the proper documentation. Others follow the natural yearnings of a better life, even mere survival. Ironically, they may end up in land that was once part of Mexico depending how far south in the US they go.

Many of those who come are farmers who were done in by the inequities of trade laws. NAFTA and US government subsidies have allowed American farmers to sell crops much cheaper than can Mexican farmers, who have no such subsidy. Mexicans who for generations have toiled hard on their land were suddenly plowed under through the laws of commerce and contrivances of governments beholden to special interests. Perversely, some may be working on farms that sell the corn that necessitated their northward migration to begin with.

Nature’s law is “live and help live,” which is a hallmark of the American character. In fact, Americans have largely welcomed and enjoyed our Mexican brethren. Yet we are nowhere near that idealistic state of perfect harmony that would allow people to roam as freely as the birds of the air. And so it is entirely reasonable regulate immigration into our country.

But we must make and adjust those rules in a way that best allows us to live in accord with Nature’s laws. That process will demand a high-minded collaborative process that treats fairly and with compassion all concerned: the American taxpayer, the immigrants now here, and those waiting to come.

The final policy might therefore include some of the following:

1) A guest worker program as President Bush has suggested
2) A requirement for employers of undocumented workers to enlist them in this program, collect payroll taxes and otherwise pay and treat them as our law demands for citizens;
3) A track to citizenship for those working and obeying our laws,
4) English only instruction with bi-lingual education only as a means to learning English
5) Job preferences for American citizens who otherwise meet job qualifications and employer expectations.

Americans are well versed in living by Nature’s highest laws. We need only remember that as we craft our own.

Respectfully, Richard F. Dawahare 4/19/06

What if: “Forget Barabbas, give us JESUS!”

A newly discovered Christian manuscript recasts the treacherous double-crossing Judas as a loyal disciple who would surpass the others by agreeing to Jesus’ request to betray him. Shocking, maybe. But, since traditional Christian theology sees Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection as being a part of God’s plan for humanity’s redemption, then all of the events leading to God’s flesh sacrifice of his only son could be seen as having been similarly ordained by Him, including using Judas in this way.

It begs the question: what if Judas had protected Jesus instead? More significantly, what if the crowd, the chief priests and elders of that fateful day had said, “give us Jesus, our King, our Messiah!” For had the Pharisees and Sadducees accepted Jesus as Messiah, there would have been no trial before Pilate, no crucifixion and no atoning sacrifice of Christ, God’s paschal Lamb.
Think of it, the long awaited Messiah, accepted as such, instead of rejected. What would have changed in their world? How would the structure of their society changed, would it have stayed so changed, and what would our world look like today?

This scenario is fascinating because Christians have by and large been taught that the rejection of Jesus was mankind’s worst sin, and that he should have been recognized and accepted as the savior, God’s anointed son. Can you imagine the consequences that may have ensued from such obedience?

For one, it is certain that Jesus would have prevented his fellow Judeans from taking up arms against the Romans...or against any nation or peoples. Of course, this radical non-violent approach to peace and security could have fared no worse than the fate that ultimately befell them.

His principles of government administration seem easily predictable. Jesus would undoubtedly have integrated His lifelong teachings of compassion, of charity, of love and empathy. He would have policies that encouraged other-directedness--servanthood—especially from those who had more TO those with less.

Acts 4:31-37 describes the sort of economic system Jesus would most likely have instituted. There the apostles and townspeople, filled with the Holy Spirit of Christ’s resurrection, “felt that what they owned was not their own; they shared everything they had.” (Acts 4:32 NIV). “There was no poverty among them, because the people who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles for those in need.” (Acts 4: 34,35).

However, it is entirely possible that Jesus would have abdicated his throne for as he said, his kingdom was not of this world. What then? Would those same leaders and citizens that accepted Jesus as Messiah have stayed totally true to his principles in their administration? Are today’s?

If they did, and society continued in that vein, we would have achieved a veritable Heaven on earth. Yet it is hard to imagine humanity sticking to Jesus’ high ideals. Man’s lower nature would eventually corrupt this nirvana, be it by greed or envy, fear or ego. Indeed it is for remission of these inevitable sins that Jesus died on the cross.

It is on Jesus’ glorious resurrection that Christendom hinges its salvation and hope for life eternal. Yet it is only by rising to his ideals of behavior that we show ourselves loyal in this one.

Rfd 4/13/06

Church and State: an Unholy Alliance

Truth’s path is naturally clear. It is the obstructions of man, the obstructions of our traditions, and especially the obstructions of our own minds that cloud its trail.

The popular pursuit of entangling religion—and particularly in the U.S., Christianity—with politics, the state and its government is perhaps the most difficult obstacle impeding our collective attainment of “truth,” which in the administration of our public affairs means justice, fairness and liberty.

Christians seeking to link church and state seem oblivious to the fact that the religion’s namesake—Jesus Christ himself—was totally and thoroughly opposed to this. He was, as Garry Wills notes in this EXCELLENT piece http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/opinion/09wills.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, in today’s NY Times, “the original proponent of a separation of church and state.”

This truth comes straight from the unambiguous text of the New Testament Gospels by which we know whatever we can know of Jesus and his teachings. If we are to "prepare the way of the Lord (and) make straight his paths" MT 3:3 we must begin and end by correctly understanding his teachings.

Then we can more clearly follow truth and through that be set free.

[PS: Keeping religion out of the state does not in the least negate the necessity of keeping Morality and Ethics within it. Morality and ethics are distinct from religion. Those of all religions, or NO religion, can live by their precepts in a universal fashion. The conflict and turmoil in our world today shows little we actually do.]

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NY Times April 9, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

Christ Among the Partisans

By GARRY WILLS
Chicago

THERE is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here" (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, "Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him" (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: "When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you" (Matthew 6:5-6). He shocked people by his repeated violation of the external holiness code of his time, emphasizing that his religion was an internal matter of the heart.

But doesn't Jesus say to care for the poor? Repeatedly and insistently, but what he says goes far beyond politics and is of a different order. He declares that only one test will determine who will come into his reign: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would Jesus himself. "Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me" (Matthew 25:40). No government can propose that as its program. Theocracy itself never went so far, nor could it.

The state cannot indulge in self-sacrifice. If it is to treat the poor well, it must do so on grounds of justice, appealing to arguments that will convince people who are not followers of Jesus or of any other religion. The norms of justice will fall short of the demands of love that Jesus imposes. A Christian may adopt just political measures from his or her own motive of love, but that is not the argument that will define justice for state purposes.

To claim that the state's burden of justice, which falls short of the supreme test Jesus imposes, is actually what he wills — that would be to substitute some lesser and false religion for what Jesus brought from the Father. Of course, Christians who do not meet the lower standard of state justice to the poor will, a fortiori, fail to pass the higher test.

The Romans did not believe Jesus when he said he had no political ambitions. That is why the soldiers mocked him as a failed king, giving him a robe and scepter and bowing in fake obedience (John 19:1-3). Those who today say that they are creating or following a "Christian politics" continue the work of those soldiers, disregarding the words of Jesus that his reign is not of this order.

Some people want to display and honor the Ten Commandments as a political commitment enjoined by the religion of Jesus. That very act is a violation of the First and Second Commandments. By erecting a false religion — imposing a reign of Jesus in this order — they are worshiping a false god. They commit idolatry. They also take the Lord's name in vain.

Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan "What would Jesus do?"

That is not a question his disciples ask in the Gospels. They never knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and call him "Satan." He could refuse to receive his mother when she asked to see him. He might tell his followers that they are unworthy of him if they do not hate their mother and their father. He might kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church precincts.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the Father's judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, promising heavenly rewards, making last things first.

He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher Socrates. No politician is going to tell the lustful that they must pluck out their right eye. We cannot do what Jesus would do because we are not divine.

It was blasphemous to say, as the deputy under secretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, repeatedly did, that God made George Bush president in 2000, when a majority of Americans did not vote for him. It would not remove the blasphemy for Democrats to imply that God wants Bush not to be president. Jesus should not be recruited as a campaign aide. To trivialize the mystery of Jesus is not to serve the Gospels.

The Gospels are scary, dark and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair. If that is all they are, then we may as well make Socrates our redeemer.

It is true that the tamed Gospels can be put to humanitarian purposes, and religious institutions have long done this, in defiance of what Jesus said in the Gospels.

Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death. He said: "Do not be called Rabbi, since you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, the one in heaven. And do not be called leaders, since you have only one leader, the Messiah" (Matthew 23:8-10).

If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of an institutional Jesus, they will have to give up the person who said those words. They will have to turn away from what Flannery O'Connor described as "the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus" and "a wild ragged figure" who flits "from tree to tree in the back" of the mind.

He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil's agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.

The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats.

Garry Wills is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of "What Jesus Meant."

On the Eiffel Tower

You may already know how reviled this masterpiece was at its completion on this date in 1889, but it always make me wonder what in today's world is similarly hated (objects, concepts, ideas) that will be revered tomorrow. And the reverse--what today is accepted as good or normal that tomorrow will be discarded.

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(From The Writer's Almanac for Friday, March 31, 2006)

Today is the anniversary of the official opening of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (1889). It was built for the International Exhibition of Paris, commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. At the time, it was the tallest structure ever built, at 1,000 feet. The architect Gustave Eiffel was a specialist in bridges and the design for the Eiffel Tower was based on his previous bridge designs. He chose to leave the tower's skeletal structure exposed because it was the easiest way to protect it from wind resistance.

When it was finished many Parisians thought it was horribly ugly. Artists and writers wrote a letter of protest, calling the tower a "truly tragic street lamp," a "mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed."

The writer Guy de Maupassant described the Eiffel Tower as, "A high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, [a] giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney." He hated the tower so much that he started eating in its restaurant every day, because, he said, "It is the only place in Paris where I don't have to see it."

It was almost torn down in 1909, after the expiration of its lease, but the city saved it because its antenna was so useful for the new invention of radio. It's now the most widely recognized symbol of Paris.