For those who don’t know the book (which can be read online here): Lewis is mostly known for his Christian books, but this is a more a philosophical book that’s actually not particularly Christian. The main point of the book is 2-fold: First there is an Orwellian critique to the modernist project of man conquering nature, in which Lewis states that the final step of this conquering will be ultimately self-defeating on the part of man. The second point is that there is a more or less absolute set of values inherent to this world, which he calls the tao,  with a word borrowed from Eastern philosophy, of which all meaningful human values in all cultures are derived. I do not agree with every detail, and I don’t get more than half of his references, but  I’ve always found the basic ideas of the book, and it’s critique to modernism, quite compelling. (But you need to read the whole book to understand his conclusions, including some weird parts that are hard to read.)

(I also have the idea that some of her remarks about middle ages and the renaissance would not have been made if her issue of the book would have included, like the Dutch version does,  De despcriptione temporum, his inaugural lecture from the chair of mediaeval and renaissance literature at Cambridge University (1954).)

One of the things Rand reacts quite strongly to is the idea that magic and modern science are related:

The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

Lewis as a scholar of medieval and renaissance literature (see also the ‘de descfriptione  temporum’ text I’ve linked to) knows what he is talking about, and anyone who knows something about the life of Isaac Newton for example, who was both a scientist and an alchemist who did weird studies in the occult (and a Christian who wrote bible commentaries)  should know what he’s talking about. Newton can indeed be considered as one of the last great Western magicians as well as one of the first great scientists…

Very important here is what Lewis means with the words science and magic. Both are not means of mere knowledge for him, but of power, power over reality, including power of the one who has it over other humans. Magic is a way to get power using the supernatural, science (and technology) is a way to get power using the natural world. Note also that ‘magic’ as used here is the opposite of astrology, which has the purpose of conforming to the influences of the stars and the supernatural!

Lewis himself does not deny the existence of science as a search for knowledge, and indeed explicitly notes that there are scientists who are seeking for pure knowledge, but that’s not the goal of most applied science both in the 16th century and the momdern time, which shares indeed the goal of magic: to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

I don’t think Lewis would say that this is always a problem, he’s not a luddite and used technology himself, and never rejects it. But what he wants to show us is a dark side that is inherent to modern (applied) science. A dark side that might remind us to the lie of the snake, that told the first couple that they would be like God.

And indeed, science has been used for ‘playing God, and abused in a lot of abominable ways to get power, not only over nature, but also over other humans. Most science nowadays is subdued not to those who want pure knowledge, but to those who want power and money.  This is how we came to have the atom bomb, genetically engineered crops that are very handy in making multinationals richer, etc, (While some other scientific fields not useful for securing power and money are underfunded!)

So what happened to magic? It lost because it didn’t seem to work the way science worked, and was pushed out of the modern worldview which became more and more hermetically naturalistic. But its goal is still the same goal of a lot of modern science.

The point of self-control to be able to conform ourself to reality is also something we should not forget. We are not the creators of the universe, and there are things higher than us we should conform to, like certain laws of nature. I do not mean this deterministically, we should not let every thing we meet rule over us, man is indeed able to fight back when reality is hostile and evil, but we moderns should not forget that we can never be free without self-control…

what do you people think?

peace

Bram

(U2, channeling an idea that might come from Nietzsche)

(Note: I am not American nor a real Academic, and I do refuse to take the views of American or other academics, feminist or otherwise, normative for all of the planet. I will listen to you, but if my experience or what I’ve seen completely disagrees with your theory don’t push your worldview onto me please. I also don’t even give one single atom of Hydrogen about political correctness and using the right shibboleths for any side as you will see… Also, this was inspired by several different conversations happening lately, and was not written to attack any person or text specifically. )

Let’s start with saying it flat-out loudly: I’m tired of people who decry sexism and racism and then go bashing white males all the time. No matter what excuse you use, it still is sexist and racist and self-defeating anything you want to accomplish to this outsider of your liberationist tradition!

Yes, I know some of you will say now that racism and sexism come from privilege and that you cannot discriminate against the privileged and bla-bla-bla. But sorry, that won’t convince me, and all those redefinitions will bring us is only a semantic quicksand and more misunderstanding, and maybe even more discrimination.

Firstly, the whole idea of tying ‘racism’ completely to the idea of privilege is a semantic shift that has only happened in certain academic circles, and not one I had ever heard of before entering the blogosphere or discussing about such subject with a certain type of academics. For other people the word ‘racism’ just means negative prejudices based on race (skin color and similar traits) or the hatred and discrimination built on it. And all this bashing of ‘white people’ does definitely fall under the ‘classical’ definition of racism.

Secondly, the idea that racism cannot exist against whites sounds quite dangerous to me actually. It only reminds me of an attempted ‘animal farm revolution’. And completely outside of reality as far as I can say too. Living in a European city with a lot of different people from very different backgrounds I’ve seen racism coming from a lot of sides towards a lot of sides. Including racism (and sexism) against native white Belgians, especially white women even. And most problems here were not really just ‘privilege’, but some are more symptoms a very serious cultural clash. When I lived in a street full of immigrants, my (then) fiancée was afraid to go outside after 8 because a certain kind of men made her uncomfortable because they behaved like just because she was walking outside as a non-veiled white women, which was less than nothing in their eyes, or more some public property they could prey on with their eyes and words (luckily in her case nothing more, but not every woman has been that lucky). I’ve never seen a more severe case of what feminists call ‘rape culture’ in my life actually.

(And to go on in the politically incorrect direction: the thing is, from all nationalities or cultures present only representatives from a few were problematic in this way. Certain cultures and subcultures seem to tend more to xenofobia or woman-unfriendliness while other don’t seem to have such tendencies at all… Some people from elsewhere really seem to be completely denigrating towards Western non-veiled women. Also, a lot of muslim and African cultures are mostly hostile to anything not heterosexual in a way beyond what we Westerners -even ‘homophobic’ ones- can imagine. I once had a boy from an African country tell me how they lynched gays with burning tyres in his homeland as if it was the most logical thing ever. He couldn’t even understand I was surprised by that!)

Something else: The whole way ‘whites’ are described here is quite deterministic to me, and I do not see how it does anything else than keep the gap between ‘whites’ and ‘non-whites’ wide open. Maybe I don’t get what you want to say because I’m not part of certain academic circles and because I don’t read the right books, or am not American, I don’t know, but this repeated use in a blaming way of ‘whites’ only gives me the idea that whatever happens they will always be the fault for some people, most of which are white themselves by the way, but don’t have all of the other point of privilege that matter to their views on privilege (more on that later).

But anyway, ‘reverse’ racism is just as big a problem as racism. I’ve seen this with certain non-Belgians who were quite hateful against the native Belgian (and sometimes against all of Western civilization ) We’ve never had much slaves over here by the way (only genocidal kings with private African colonies in which they unleashed hell for the local people to get themselves and a few mega-industrials richer), so the biggest racism problem here is not really between ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ (dumb terms, there’s nothing white about me) but between Belgians and certain newcomers from mostly certain muslim countries, who are mostly brownish-skinned indeed, but the problem is not one of skin or appearance, but a serious clash of cultures from both sides.

I don’t think there’s much difference whether it is Belgians looking down on the brownish guys, or the brownish guys looking down on us white Western infidels, or the brownish guys on the black Africans, or… Racism is evil in every instance…

Yes, racism between non-Belgians is not that uncommon either I am afraid, it’s not only white people who are racist, and there can be really strong racism with no white people involved, even in a white European country. I once, while in a working-class job had a North-African co-worker who was as deeply racist against black Africans as a few of his not-so-friendly co-workers were against his people.

(Yes, it’s probably classist and again not very politically correct, but some specimens among those generally not very educated working class people I worked with were quite shocking to me because they were unashamedly racist, sexist and hating on anything homosexual in a way I thought did not exist in our enlightened modern society! It was only later when I heard certain stories from elsewhere -remember the tyres?- that I realised it could be even worse.)

So don’t tell me racism can only come from white people, and never be directed towards white people. That’s just plain nonsense to me, and if you dismiss what I’ve seen and experienced for an academic theory you should not expect me to listen…

Now to get to my point I wanted to bring across: Racism, as all form of hate and discrimination, tends to work according to the principle of the never-ending vicious circle of violence. It always comes back in a new way from the other side. Hate begets hate, violence begets violence, prejudices and racism beget prejudices and racism. That’s how it works. And the hate on the oppressed side is just as destructive as what comes from the oppressor. And even long before the stage of hate and violence the same principle is clear: misunderstanding breeds misunderstanding, prejudices breed more prejudices, etc… This will also work between 2 groups of ‘equal status’ btw. Never forget that racism can be fully operative without any real privilege-imbalance going on between the 2 groups that are racist towards each other.

And no, I have no problem in confronting privilege and opening peoples eyes for it. But please cease the racist-sounding lingo against the privileged. It will only make a lot of people who need the message close their ears. Look for others word or you will create confusion with anyone except for those who know the right lingo and subscribe to the latest academic theories… I must honestly again say that to me all of this calling out of privilege which in the end comes down to bashing white males to me sounds only like a weird attempt at an ‘animal farm revolution’ that does only make the distance and problems bigger and does not in any way bring reconciliation and not at all stop the spiral of racism actually.

The only revolution I can care for as a follower as Jesus is one that tries to free both the oppressor and the oppressed from the system that distorts the image of God in either of them.

Discrimination is a problem, cultural clashes and prejudices are a problem,and privilege is a problem, and these things are sins that should be fought against, made visible and repented of, but this way of framing it is going nowhere, sorry…

One more remark about the whole privilege thing: privilege is never absolute, and it actually can be completely contextual. As for myself, in one situation I have been completely privileged as a native Dutch-speaking male, in another I have been completely the lowest person in rank just for being an introvert, or not been taken seriously in any way just because I’m a religious person (I live in a secular country where being an evangelical gives you the opposite of privilege). Or because I’m a non-academic who does not use the right shibboleths…

Last remark: there are much more ways of institutional discrimination (also very depending on the context) than the usual suspects of sex and race: Introvertpobia (or extravertnormativity) for example can also be institutionalised in certain sectors for example (I’ve experienced that, and might even have been fired for such reasons once), and hippie profiling can also be a strong form of unjust institutional xenophobia. There’s a lot more going on than the few highlighted problems that are battled extensively, and a lot of people who need to be lifted out of the darkness and given a place on the table, and a voice on deciding what we’re going to do. And sometimes we will have to listen and try to understand things that go beyond what we can understand….

(Last politically incorrect parenthesis: don’t ask me what to do with a man in the street who hates all Westerners, sees all non-veiled women as lowly sex objects and wants gays to be executed, but God loves him and even wants us to love him, and if we don’t listen to him first, he will never ever attempt to listen to us. I actually refuse to believe that anyone is beyond redemption, and even he carries the cracked image of God. Which doesn’t mean I would let my wife ever talk to him…)

To close let us pray:

Let us be like Jesus
who loved the least
and went for the most lost ones first
He, who had the privilege
of being God Himself incarnate
and became a lowly baby…
Let us ask for His Spirit
to open our eyes,
and for the upside-down Kingdom
of the Father
to shatter all of this evil
that divides us and destroys us…
Let us love
let us fight hate
let us bring down barriers
and invisible walls

what do you think?

Bram

I hope to be able to post a song with a short story every 2 weeks, and the other week I will do something similar but a bit different, but you’ll have to wait until next week for the details…

Let’s start with one of my favorite songs from my teenage years. While the radio mostly played electronic dance music and the people in school followed that trend or listened to more hard music and alternative rock, I mostly followed my fathers record collection, and listened to stuff like U2 and Bob Dylan. Yes, maybe not that original, but not much people my age (except for my friend MM) were into that stuff at all at the time, so in a way I was a rebel… When I was older I developed a taste for more obscure music and lesser-known names and weird sounds, but the starting point of my musical journey was there with U2 and Dylan.

One of my favorite songs has always been, and will always be U2′s ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’, a song I have blogged about before.

For the spiritual significance, see the blog post I linked to. For the musical significance, just listen to it: to the rhytm, the functional minimalism of the electric guitar and the use of the delay-effect on it, and the passion in Bono’s voice. This is a kind of music that only works because the musicians are giving everything, and without that the song would not be interesting, and it’s actually quite simple.

I have no idea of any influence of the 80′s songs of U2 can be found in my music at all, but I’ve listened to them a lot…

Next week we’ll have another version of these music posts, a series on one of my favorite bands that more people need to know about, and in 2 weeks we’ll have another song that has influenced me a lot in these musical Friday series…

peace

Bram

I know I haven’t been blogging a lot lately, after the birth of my daughter in the fall, and the death of my father in Februari my life has been hectic and disordered, and I didn’t find the time nor energy to do my basic daily stuff, let alone the extras like blogging.

But now that things are stabilising I want to resume blogging, and to get back in rhytm I will not just write new posts on whatever subject comes up as interesting enough to write about, but I will also start some new series:

* A series on the incompatibility of capitalism with Christianity, of which the announcement post has been posted already accidentally yesterday instead of today Wednesday. New posts in this series will be posted on wednesdays, most likely every two weeks.

* A series about the gospel, and how it is good news for us, with guests posts that will most likely be posted on mondays every two weeks. More information about this series will follow later.

* A series about songs that have inspired me, which will be posted on Fridays.

My (ir)regular posts about different subjects will like always continue to come whenever I am inspired. Coming soon are 2 or 3 philosophical posts inspired by Ayn Rands vitriolic marginal notes on C.S. Lewis’ ‘the abolition of man‘.

peace

Bram

I’m generally known as ‘a person critical to capitalism for religious reasons’, something which, never ceases to surprise certain people for some reason. Sometimes in discussions people really don’t understand why I am so negative about capitalism, or why I assume it to be completely incompatible with my Christian faith. So what is quite evident to me seems to be completely weird and otherworldly for others, and that’s why I decided to write my views down in a series of blog posts and explain the reasoning behind certain conclusions that I’ve reached. This has also helped me to work out what exactly my thoughts are….

So practically I will do a series with one post every week or (more likely in my current scheme) every 2 weeks on Wednesday. But before we start, I want to first explain with this what exactly I’m going to do, and define some terms.

My own faith
I am a Christian with (non-reformed) evangelical and pentecostal roots, who currently has a spiritual home in a vineyard church. I am also very indebted to other traditions inside the Great Tradition of Christianity, and you can expect me to quote from a range of Christian thinkers from Eastern Orthodox church fathers to postmodern new monastics. I also want to make that I am not inventing something new here, and will not at all try to say something that has never been said before. I will only try to discern what I see as important in the Christian Faith how it clashes with what goes for capitalism these days that runs rampant in today’s world.

(Note that I do not specifically speak for my church here, or for every one in the traditions I do identify with.)

On capitalism
I will treat capitalism phenomenologically here, and react to the capitalism I encounter both in current world politics, and what I see described in the words of its defenders in certain discussions. This will probably differ as much from the ideas of its original prophets like Adam Smith (which I’ve never read) as hardcore Stalinism differs from the ideas in Marx’ books, or like christian fundamentalist practice differs from the sermon on the mount, but I only care about the actual effects and influence of capitalism on Creation, society and our faith, not on what it could or should be in the head of theorists.

The form of capitalism that I critique here might be described as neoliberal consumer capitalism with a corporatocratic twist. There probably are other forms of capitalism that do not fit all of my criticisms, and I wish we had a world in which none of my criticism would be true for any system, whether or not people would call their economic vision capitalism.

On the opposite of capitalism
One very important comment I have to make is on the the opposite of capitalism: do not be so naive to think that the 2 only options possible are capitalism as we currently know it, and Marxism. I’m not at all a Marxist, and Marx himself doesn’t even interest me that much. I don’t find most of his analysis of society that relevant for our age, and moreover none of the people who tried to live out his philosophy ever succeeded in doing so, but most of them did succeed in bringing great evil. That doesn’t mean I might have benefited from some thinkers in the Marxist tradition or use words and concepts that have originated from his thought if they accurately describe what I want to say, but my real inspiration lies elsewhere: in the bible and the Christian tradition.

You actually don’t have to be a Marxist at all to disagree with capitalism. Most church fathers would probably find it a horrible doctrine of devils for example… It’s something that only exists since recent times in our Western world anyway: all people who lived before Adam Smith and Karl Marx for example were neither, and I want to find myself not only in the camp of those who critique capitalism, but also in lines of traditions that worked well without any hint of capitalism.

That’s why I I might quote the bible or various church fathers more than I will ever quote Marx in my critique of capitalism. Which does not mean that I will quote a lot of other people too, including various notable ‘leftist’ thinkers where I agree with them.

(And no, quoting someone is not an endorsement of everything they have ever said or written, it only means that that particular quote is interesting)

Left and right
Another note about dichotomies: I do not believe in ‘left’ and ‘right’ categories, and pigeonholing all ideas in either box is the best way to not understand anything of them. I don’t even know how I’d label myself, Something like a Christian green social anarcho-democrat would probably only confuse more than it clarifies anyway…. And anyway, don’t go over-analyse labels please, especially not if they have connotations where you live that are not universal, like the word ‘demomrat’, which for me just refers to the idea of democracy, and not to all the bagage that one of the two ‘binary’ parties in the American 2-party-system (that are actually more alike than you’d think) brings to the word.

My adience
I will try to write for everyone. Even though I do understand the language of academia and am able communicate in it, it’s not my native language, and what I write is important for everyone, so I will try to write in general language. If I use too much lingo just warn me…

I am afraid that the ‘solipsistic path of parthenogenesis’ that the academic world follows is a hindrance for a lot of truth and valuable insights to reach a lot of people who could benefit greatly from them. I also do not claim to have read all the up-to-date literature on every subject or any academic or leftist canon. I most likely won’t be quoting Lacan and the other cool cats worshiped by contemporary academia, and only anarchist I will quote for example will be Kropotkin on biology and evolution, not on politics…

Why I write this
The reason why I write this is not academic or theoretic, but purely practical: I am convinced that the kind of capitalism that pervades Western society nowadays (especially consumer capitalism in combination with corporocracy) is harmful in many ways: it is destructive to human beings, to the planet and all that lives on to, and to Christianity. So want to warn people, and hope to be able to help people to find a way forward….

All critique is welcome, but please do read what I write and react to what I say, not to what some people who have never read him assume what Marx has said. That kind of conversation makes no sense at all…

Tune in  for the first post, which will be about the centrality of ‘the market’.

peace

Bram

Looking at my stats today I saw that my blog has been found 5 times today looking for ‘brambonius cools emerging’. Makes me wonder if anyone still uses the term ‘emerging church’, and why people would bother finding out if I (using my internet nick) have something to do with it.

To be honest, I don’t even know myself :p

I can’t deny that I’ve been following the ‘emerging church dialogue’ (even if I was quite late to the discussion.) and that I have learned a lot from it. I am a postmodern evangelical after all, so I found in it the words to explain how I look at the world; On the other hand, I think I’m too post-modern and too evangelical (once a charismatic, always a supernaturalist…) to ever fall for modernist forms of christianity, be it either fundamentalism or liberalism. Thank you very much, both are completely inconceivable for me… So if you mean some kind of ‘liberalism 2.0′ I’m not your man. I’ve found out that I’m allergic to all forms of liberalism, from liberal theology to liberal humanism and oldschool liberal politics and economics (like the stuff they call ‘conservative’ in America).

So if you mean the ‘tall skinny kiwi‘ type of emerging church, or the Shane Claiborne type of christianity, yes!: I’m in…

If you mean some kind of updated liberalism, as some seem to use the word ‘emergent’ (maybe mainly the critics, see cartoon) count me out. It won’t ever work for me. I’m a supernaturalist who is quite critical towards the enlightenment.  For me that’s just the negative-picture version of fundamentalism… I will readily affirm the apostles and Nicene creed, but I will also place them alongside the sermon on the mount as foundational to Christianity. And I believe in the gifts of the Spirit for today (and the fruits), Christian non-violence and peacemaking, equality of the sexes [and egalitarianism], the priesthood of all believers, the trusworthiness of scripture (I don’t care about the modern concept of ‘innerancy’ though),  creation care and stewardsghip over nature, and the incompatibility of capitalism and christianity… I believe God works in all of His Church, even though I have no use for a lot of things in various traditions that I believe to be abominable (like double predestination, rich TV-preachers asking money from the poor, relic worship, christian materialism etc…)

To satisfy the heresy-hunters even more some labels I could wear: I’m a Wesleyan anabaptist-inspired postmodern charismatic evangelical with both orthodox and organic church sympathies, inspired by Francis of Assisi, christian mysticism and apophatic theology, who thinks Christianity is a way of life restored in relationship to God than accepting all the right theologies.

Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. In the end after the day of Judgment that’ll be all that’s left, with all evil and everything incompatible with God erased….

And as you might have noticed, I’m as non-reformed as a protestant can be…

May the Spirit lead me and bring me to the right path… May God bring His Kingdom and reveal Christ to me more and more, so that I can follow Him!

peace

Bram

I’m not talking about big spectacular dangerous sins or serious addictions here. My biggest temptations lies more in things that come close to being nothing at all than in big evil sins… Sometimes I find myself irritatingly weak for example against all kind of ‘nothing-addictions’ when hanging around a computer that has an internet-connection (and facebook). Just wasting time is a big problem that I can’t afford, but it can be so compulsive, when I miss the energy to start what I should do, or miss the overview of the stuff I have to do, or just don’t have the attention to do anything not mindless… And then the meaningless click-an-surf-mode goes on, my time, energy and everything goes down the drain…

How can I solve this?

The problem here is discerning what the underlying problem is, and what just the symptom. I sometimes wish I could disconnect completely from the internet and facebook to free myself from these ‘nothing-addictions’, which is an impossibility for both my work and my social life. But still the idea lingers that everything would be different and that I would be doing more if I would be able to disconnect completely.

Which probably is mostly nonsense: at the moments that I’m productive I don’t fall into these kind of addictions at all, with internet on and facebook open… It’s only when I’m already distracted that they are out to get me… Moreover, I don’t think the internet is the main problem here, in an internetless life I would find other ‘nothing-addictions’… A very interesting article by Paul Miller, who did what I sometimes dream of and lived a year without the internet confirms what I already suspected… The problem lies not in the internet or facebook, and will never be solved by just disconnecting..

So I guess my real problem is battling my ADD and my overall lack of discipline, not the internet… I need to battle deeply ingrained patterns and to fight the false ideas of freedom that ‘not having to do anything’ is a form of freedom. There is no freedom in having to follow every stupid impulse, or in having to follow whatever comes your way. If that is freedom there can be no free will indeed. (And any form of humanism is impossible, since it’s nature that has by default won from the human being, just as Christianity is impossible, the flesh will always win.)

I do not believe in this determinism. Man may be a weak creature, but we do have free will! Even though it’s sometimes not strong enough against the other things that want to control us…

So here we come to the paradox: Only in self-control can freedom be found, otherwise you’re a slave to whatever impulse from inside or outside that comes your way.

Now that I realise this I know that I’ve been lazy all my life, and that I have to unlearn and relearn a lot of things. May God help me with this, I cannot do this alone… Wasn’t self-control one of the fruits of the Spirit? Where are those fruits [love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, see Galations 5:22] in contemporary Christianity anyway? Or are they not manly enough?

peace

Bram

I have never been to Iraq, or most places that I read about on the news. So all I can do is, while staying critical and sceptical while comparing sources, believe that news stories are based on something and are not just exaggerated propaganda. I do know that even as a kid I knew that the few times that a news item happened close to someone I, those people  had to nuance and sometimes correct what had been said on the news. So I am quite sceptical most of the time, and still…

Yesterday I posted an article from the independent that describes some horrible  problems in Fallujah, Iraq:

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

I’ve read more dramatic articles about cancer and birth defects in Fallujah through the years, so I would not think about it being not true or be that sceptical at all.

But then I got a very interesting reaction from one of my FB-friends, someone who actually knows something about Iraq (he was there in 2002 with a Christian Peacemaker team from the US in full war-time), that reminded me to always remain sceptical:

The things that happened in Iraq are disgusting and i am definitely interested in radiation toxicity via u-238, but marines had extensive bases in and throughout Fallujah for 7+ years…..an extreme increase of cancer would be discovered among their population as well. Has it?—i personally don’t know. Also, in my time in Iraq in 2002 the big theme was the 300% increase in leukemia cases and birth defects in Iraq, including the areas northwest of Baghdad, like Fallujah. At the time it was blamed on DU ordinance from the gulf war of 1991. So when did these increases occur? In 2002 or 2012? The article comes across as a rehash of leftist propaganda—which i hate even more than the right-wing empire-driven propaganda. I hate it more because the suffering of the oppressed is plenty horrible enough. We don’t need to inflate it with unsubstantiated, half-ass studies claiming calamities never before seen in history. Let’s stick to the evils we know are true….and in the meantime i would love to see further investigation into radiation in Iraq. The dramatic claims thrown out every once in awhile, usually by democracy now or the Guardian or Independent, come across as dishonest and biased….which makes the skeptic not only doubt these articles…but also the already proven atrocities. What happened in Iraq is awful enough for any sane, compassionate person. If someone isn’t already convinced with available information….no amount of super-”Hiroshimas” will change that.

So the same problems did exist before 2004 already, which is not spoken about at all here, and it indeed looks like the same story with other details, which is indeed a bit fishy. Which makes me want to know what’s true here, and what’s exaggerated, and makes me doubt the news even more…

2 remarks:

I’m tired of all those scare tactics on any side (left or right doesn’t matter). I’m tired of the illuminati, chemtrails, chips that are going to be implanted in my forehead, and weird stories about big evil, etc… that are so exaggerated that most people with some common sense dismiss them immediately. A further problem is that those extreme fringe versions of things that are real problems work as a vaccine: The false version makes it impossible for most readers to take the real version even serious through guilt-by-association fallacies. Speaking about vaccines, some anti-vaccine advocates are so crazy and spout so much nonsense that all critique on any vaccine will be dismissed by some people. But still it’s true that our youngest daughter did have problems from the heavy combined vaccine she received as a baby. which does not mean that all vaccines are evil…

So please, everyone, on every side, cease the #@é& propaganda, and stick to the facts, stick to honesty and journalistic integrity. Sensational scare tactics will in the end only do worse on every front.

(There’s a similar principle at work with how the extremists of the Westboro baptist church make christianity evil in the eyes of some, or with how femen ridiculises feminism…)

The second remark is about my friends last sentence, which reminds me of a parable of Jesus, in which the rich man, who’s suffering in the afterlife because de didn’t help the poor Lazarus, asks to be able to go back and warn his brothers, but the answer is no, since ‘if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, why would they listen to someone who came back from the dead’? I think the same principle is at work here: Any informed person knows that a lot of terrible things happened with the people of Iraq during the war, so if one does not care about that, why would they care about an exaggerated version?

Lies in propaganda serve no goal but more division, more distrust, and more disinformation.

Let’s always remain sceptical, work for peace among people, and reject the lies and propaganda from any site that just fuels hate and division. We’re all brothers and sisters, and the real enemy are not other human of flesh and blood, but Powers and Principalities, Systems and the lies with which they make enemies out of those who should be brothers!

Let’s fight injustice, work for justice, and erase the hate!

peace

Bram

After reading a very interesting article on Roger Olsons blog about a book that criticises what goes for capitalism these days from a Christian POV, stating that contemporary neo-liberal (some Americans would call it neo-conservative for some reasons, but American conservatism is built on the tradition of enlightenment liberalism anyway) capitalism is completely incompatible with Christianity. Something which makes a lot of sense to me.

I’m actually quite tired of people who call the economy ‘reality’, as if the reality of people working for slave wages in sweatshops oversees or the mass extinction we cause are not more important realities than just ‘the economy’. The economy is there for the people (all of them!) and not vice versa, otherwise there is something completely wrong…

But what’s troubling :

Have you ever noticed how stores, especially “big box” stores, lure you into buying things you had no intention of buying when you entered them? I often go to a store, neglecting to pick up a cart as I enter because I am only there to buy a couple “necessaries” and then, halfway through the store, realize I need to find a push cart for all the stuff I’m carrying. As I exit the store with my bags full of things I didn’t plan to buy, I feel manipulated. Sure, I could resist, but it would be an enormous, almost super-human effort always to resist that.

So why does that matter? What has that to do with discipleship? Bell’s main point is the way in which contemporary capitalism distorts our desires—away from God toward money, power and possessions. Capitalism is an economic system of disordered desire. Even if it “works,” Bell argues, it is contrary to the spirit of Christ.

The thing that worries me here is that the next thing I did was ordering the book he’s talking about…

Bram

(the irresistible 21st century virgin boy)

Last week I had a serious flu and I was quite sick, and not able to do much at all, not even reading or thinking, so I was lying on my bed listening to old CD’s with demo songs that I recorded years ago, when I still used the nick/artist name ‘the irresistible 21st century virgin boy’*. One of the old CD’s contained a song I kissed waiting goodbye that I thought was lost forever, one of my earlier attempts to do something with beats and guitars together in a real song. But it also  vocalised  some critique to a book I mentioned in a recent post (‘I kissed dating goodbye’ by Joshua Harris), and I suppose more broadly to the rhetoric of the people of ‘true love waits’ , who then had a Flemish division here in Belgium that sent me a lot of news letters because I once had carelessly signed one of their pledge cards on some christian event. (It seems they’re out of the running now though , can’t find anything of them anymore lately…)

The song itself was dismissed later because I hated how I hadn’t been able to find a really fitting melody on the sometimes quite random chord progressions. Re-listening there’s something in it that I like, and some things that I hate (that really bad word flow of the ‘don’t concentrate’ part for example.) But is was a good try, even if it got forgotten without ever been played again…

[please listen to the song 'I kissed waiting goodbye' here https://soundcloud.com/bram-cools/i-kissed-waiting-goodbye (lyrics are there also) and tell me; does it suck completely, or is there still something interesting about it?]

The title ‘I kissed waiting goodbye’ does not mean that I (with my weird artist name) had any problem with the idea of sex as belonging into a marriage relationship (I still believe in that, even though I don’t think a state marriage has much to do necessarily with the definition of marriage) but the whole imported ‘purity culture’ had some exaggerations that I found quite weird. And the local people that preached it were quite peculiar specimens too btw… The emphasis on waiting and not doing stuff was what was getting on my nerves…

Like I said earlier in my recent post a purity culture I don’t know, some of the critiques to ‘evangelical purity culture’ I’ve seen lately are describing something I don’t recognise at all, but I did have my concerns with what I did see. If I would have encountered weirdos like the 2 creeps in Sarah Moons latest blogpost my concerns would’ve been a lot bigger. And it might be that I didn’t even register some of the things that didn’t make sense to me, I think that’s how I never picked up those gender roles in Harris’ book if they are there. my brain didn’t even notice them because they made no sense to me, and they got thrown with the ‘this is too American’** garbage bin.

(Remember that an ‘American writer’ for me is as distant and exotic as an Italian cardinal, and Indian Sadhu  or an African Touareg songwriter…)

The whole movement always was a bit too obsessed with sex for my taste. (an obsession with having no sex all the time is just a weird form of sex-obsession.) It seemed like all they wanted to talk about was how to not have sex, and that was not what I was looking for, I was looking for how to actually grow in my relationship in all kinds of areas. All that talk about what not to do is not good for building a relationship. what people need is positive advice about to grow in love, and not just sexually!!!! there’s much more to a relationship than that, and focussing a relationship on that will make it unbalanced, be it a relationship focussed solely on sex or one focussed solely on avoiding sex …

One of the things I probably dismissed as otherworldy nonsense was the idea of ‘never being alone with someone of the other sex’, including the one you’re not yet married to but having a relationship with. As someone who had been always single with a lot of female friends some of which I saw alone regularly such things just didn’t make sense and didn’t get registered in my brain. It was not something that could convince me anymore than the idea that Belgium does not exist… (It would never haver worked with me and my wife either)

Another point that I found troubling was that I did not see how filling people with a ‘no sex’ message and conditioning them all the time to not touch and not be intimate would ever be reversed on a wedding night. I was too realistic to believe such a thing, whatever promises of ‘great sex lives for those who wait’ were gives. I just didn’t see that happen with such an obsessive attitude. And I later read a lot of articles that affirmed, sometimes from people who were completely blocked down sexually, so it wasn’t a false concern… I know it did work for other people, but I who was already blocked on sex and completely turned off by a world around me that seemed to sell sex on every corner but no love was more traumatised about sex on that moment. And in need of simple honest not overly sexual intimacy. It would actually take years of very slowly growing in intimacy before I would even be ready for sex and by that time I’d be ready to get married too.

By the way, there is something really problematic about all the weirdness this kind of movements does attach to the Christian ideas about sex and marriage. There is something dangerous about a good idea or a truth being hijacked by people who exaggerate in preaching it, and lump it together with nonsense and worse… It might work as a really good vaccination to ever believe it again. Those preached to who are first convinced but later see that the ballast is nonsense will most likely throw away the child with the bathwater… (an example of that here)
See also Ken Ham and his weird form of young earth creationism as litmus test for Christianity…

But let’s close with what I think is important about true love: it loves! And loving is not about not doing things, but about doing things. Apophatic theology (saying things about God by saying what He is not) can be an interesting way to communicate truth about God, but not doing certain things is not the essence of any form of love, and if it is you’re distracted from the real thing…

peace

Bram

* There was something sarcastic in that name, mainly the ‘irrestistible’ part… I’ve been single and eh, extremely celibate until I was 22 or so.

** Nothing racist about that. Other cultures always have things that are found to be nonsense and irrelevant by outsiders. But I do think I can indeed say that ‘too American’ is a valid reason for a lot of Europeans to  dismiss something…