What is Fulfillment?

Isaiah set the stage for fulfillment thousands of years ago . . .



Among many other attributes, fulfillment means the Old . . .



. . . giving rise to the new:

Nations will come to your light,
    and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Lift up your eyes and look about you:
    All assemble and come to you;

your sons come from afar,

    and your daughters are carried on the hip.

Other visionaries catch a glimpse along the way . . .

Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’  Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.

But the process is indeed a long one, requiring very burdensome periods of human history. Inevitably, and predictably, the going is tough.
But our Creator has a scenario set up where adversity brings forth endurance in the worst conditions, and creativity to produce tangible evidence of forward progress. The striving to fulfill any great, worthwhile endeavor is arduous and prolonged. It is not given to any one generation to construct; nor is it given to any one people-group to fulfill.
Fulfillment of  prophecy and human destiny is distributed  over many generations of people and time.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins

and will raise up the age-old foundations;

you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,

Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Glass half-Full

The Commons: Sacred and Secular

Here’s a view into a commons area at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv . . . one of the first noteworthy scenes I noticed after stepping off the plane.

Of all the airport scenes I have ever seen in travels across this world, this view seems to be more accommodating than most. The sight imparted to me a feeling of community, rather than a random passing of jet-travelers.

The late afternoon sun may have lent some bright ambience from above to color my perception in a favorable way.

The next morning, today,  I notice this building on the street where we are staying in Jerusalem.

Today I woke up recalling some words from an ancient poet who lived near here.

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
and to the quarry from which you were hewn;

look to Abraham, your father,
and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
and I blessed him and made him many.

The Lord will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

“Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.

My righteousness draws near speedily,
my salvation is on the way,
and my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me
and wait in hope for my arm.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail.

“Hear me, you who know what is right,
you people who have taken my instruction to heart:
Do not fear the reproach of mere mortals
or be terrified by their insults.

For the moth will eat them up like a garment;
the worm will devour them like wool.
But my righteousness will last forever,
my salvation through all generations.”

Awake, awake, arm of the Lord,
clothe yourself with strength!
Awake, as in days gone by,
as in generations of old.
Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces,
who pierced that monster through?

Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over?

Those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Down toward the bottom of this text selection, the poet asks:

Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over?

While modern skeptics dismiss the possibility of such divine interventions to make the paths of faith-based emigrants . . . I was reminded, upon reading these words mentioned above, of a certain group of distressed 20th-century people of the book who, when being threatened with massive malicious extinction, took matters into their own hands and . . .

        “made a road in the depths of the sea”

. . . so that they could exodus from Nazi hell and move forward to carve out a place in the wilderness, on the other side of the Mediterranean: A new-old land in which to prosper, instead of being auschwitzed into oblivion.

Pretty amazing stuff on this first bright Sunday morning in the old country.

Glass half-Full

Between Jerusalem and Damascus

Along the regions of the Jordan River valley, about three thousand and twenty year ago, there was a war going on between two descendants of King David. Asa king of Judah, and Baasha king of Israel, were contending for two different regions within the land that had formerly been, in one brief, shining moment of history, Solomon's united domain. This situation might have been, then between two Hebrew monarchs, a little bit like what they have today in Israeli domains between, say, Likud and Labor. Or maybe not, anyway. . .

The dispute was more about bloodshed then, more about politics today.

So in the course of Israeli history about three thousand and twenty years ago, Baasha king of Israel (based in Shechem) went up against Judah (based in Jerusalem). Towards that end, Baasha built a fort in Ramah, just a little ways northwest of Jerusalem, in order to prevent anyone from going out or coming in to collaborate with Asa king of Judah.

Then Asa took all the silver and the gold which were left in the treasuries of the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, and the treasuries of the king's house, and put them into the hands of his servants, so that they could deliver those precious goods to Benhadad, king of Aram, who lived in Damascus.

Thus King Asa of Judah was was proposing a treaty between himself and Benhadad, that is--between Judah and Aram, or as we might think of it today--between the Jews and the Syrians.

Asa was saying to the Syrian king, hey look, I have sent you a present of silver and gold; go, break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so that he will get the hell out of my face and leave us alone over here in Jerusalem.

Well guess what, Benhadad listened to King Asa, and so he sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of northern Israel.

When Baasha heard about it, he withdrew from his southern position at Ramah, and ceased fortifying it.

Then King Asa made a proclamation to all Judah, and they carried away the stones and timbers that Baasha had used to fortify Ramah. And King Asa used the building materials to build Geba and Mizpah.

Thus we see that not much has changed in the last three thousand years, pertaining to how peoples settle their disputes, except nowadays it's more about concrete and steel than about stones and timbers. And nowadays how likely would it be that the Judean entity, lead by Benjamin (Netanyahu) would ally itself with a Damascus-based warlord such as Assad?

As for the other events of Israeli/Palestinian territories, are they not written in the annals of Semitic history?

Smoke

70 A.D. and the Arch in Rome

About 2800 years ago, King Solomon of Israel built a Temple in Jerusalem. Its purpose was to provide a place where the Jewish people would worship YHWH, better known today as God.
The Jewish kingdom came to an end when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, about 597 B.C.E., and occupied the city. The Temple was looted and sacked. Most of the influential Jews were hauled off to Babylon to be imprisoned or to serve Nebuchadnezzar.
About sixty years after the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, a small number of the Jewish people were allowed to return. Two prophets of that period, Haggai and Zechariah, addressed their exhortations to leaders named Zerubbabel and Joshua, regarding a rebuilding of the Temple.
So within the fledgeling Jewish community of post-exile Jerusalem, work was begun to restore, in whatever way possible, a new Temple. According to Eerdmans New Bible Dictionary, 1970 edition . . .

"The exiles who returned (c.537 B.C.) took with them the vessels looted by Nebuchadnezzar, and the authorization of Cyrus for the rebuilding of the Temple. Apparently the site was cleared of rubble and an altar built and the laying of the foundation commenced (Ezr. i, iii. 2, 3, 8-10). When eventually finished it was 60 cubits long and 60 cubits high, but even the foundations showed that it would be inferior to Solomon's temple."

But the people of Israel were in perpetual trouble, as they are today, with the larger, stronger political and military forces that surrounded-- and sought to dominate-- them, during the next five hundred years.
Most especially, the Seleucid king of Syria, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who (Eerdmans New Bible Dictionary). . .

". . . set up the 'abomination of desolation' (a pagan altar or statue) on 15 December 167 B.C (1 Macc. i.54). The triumphant Maccabees cleansed the Temple from this pollution and replaced the furniture late in 164 B.C (1 Macc. iv. 36-59). They also turned the enclosure into a fortress so strong that it resisted the siege of Pompey for three months (63 BC)."

But the Roman empire was too much for the independent Judeans, who refused to accept any god except their one, true YHWH. The Roman legions subdued them, and massacred over 12,000 on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Those who remained among the Jewish people of Israel were still yet to see a Temple built in Jerusalem.
In 37 B.C., the Roman Senate bequeathed the title "King of the Jews" upon a Jew of Idumaean descent, Herod, who became known as Herod the Great.
His greatness was apparent to his Roman superiors, including Emperor Octavian (Augustus), more-so than to his Judean subjects. Among his several attempts to reconcile with his people (although he was an Idumaean, or Edomite, Jew), was his construction of a new Temple!
Herod "the Great" began its construction in 19 B.C., and it was considered complete by 9 B.C. It was a grand structure, very impressive, and consistent with the Roman way of grandiose magnificence, if not true to the original Jewish plan and worshipful purpose as King David and Solomon had envisioned.
Nevertheless, on a certain day about forty years later, Jesus of Nazareth walked in the place and prophecied that it would be taken apart stone by stone.
And that is what happened in 70 A.D. when the Roman military leader (later Emperor) Titus conquered Judea, ransacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Again. When Titus and his legions got done with the Temple and its environs, there wasn't a stone left, except this retaining wall:

Titus, like Antiochus or Hitler, was quite proud of his conquest of the Jews. His father, the Emperor Vaspasian, agreed that the subjugation of those only-one-God-and-you're-not-Him Jews was quite a feat. A few years later, in year 79, Titus followed his father into the highest office of the Roman Empire. But his time as Emperor was short. He died in 81 A.D.
The next year, 82 A.D., his conquest was commemorated in stone as the Arch of Titus, which still stands in the oldest part of Rome.
In his tour-guide book about Rome, Rick Steves published this explanation about the Arch of Titus:

"The Arch of Titus commemorated the Roman victory over the province of Judaea (Israel) in A.D. 70. The Romans had a reputation as benevolent conquerors who tolerated the local customs and rulers. All they required was allegiance to the empire, shown by worshipping the emperor as a god. No problem for most conquered people, who already had half a dozen gods on their prayer lists anyway. But Israelites believed in only one god, and it wasn't the emperor. Israel revolted. After a short but bitter war, the Romans defeated the rebels, took Jerusalem, destroyed their temple (leaving only the foundation wall--today's revered 'Wailing Wall'), and brought home 50,000 Jewish slaves. . .who were forced to build this arch. . ."

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Rome, observing the Arch of Titus, when I noticed this detailed bas-relief on the underneath part of the arch:

And even though the Romans carried off (as is depicted in my photo) the Menorah from the Jerusalem Temple, the light of God's presence has not been extinguished. It still shines.
According to the one who predicted the Temple's destruction, the flame still burns.
It shines for Jews as a Channukah celebration, and a Next Year in Jerusalem Passover prayer, and hope of a long-awaited Meschiach.
It shines for me as the light of Christ within me, and within all those who believe in Him.

Smoke

After reading Thirteen Days

In September of 1978, President Jimmy Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the presidential retreat at Camp David. Mr. Carter's objective was to forge a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Following a 13-day ordeal of tense negotiations that involved the three primary leaders and their accompanying staffs, the summit did ultimately produce a signed agreement.

In 2014, peace still exists between Egypt and Israel.

Lawrence Wright has written a book reporting what took place during that thirteen day period at Camp David in 1978. The book was published in September this year, 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf/Random House.


Here a few things I learned while reading Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David.

http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Days-September-Carter-Begin/dp/0385352034


Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan accompanied Prime Minister Begin at the summit. Dayan, born in 1915 in the first Israeli kibbutz, had been Defense Minister during the 6-day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

~ Very soon after the war of 1967, in which Israel had gained control of much territory, including the Sinai and Jerusalem, Moshe Dayan met with Muslim leaders in Jerusalem. Although the Muslims had feared that Dayan might allow the Israelis to destroy the mosques on top of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), Dayan did otherwise. He told the Muslim leaders, including the Mufti, to "resume their Friday sermons" at the Al Aqsa mosque. He also eliminated barricades and checkpoints that had formerly separated Arab neighborhoods from Jewish areas.


~ In 1972, President Sadat sent Soviet military experts out of Egypt, back to USSR. By "pulling Egypt out of the Soviet embrace" Sadat was able to steer the Egyptian economy away from the socialist model.


~ The 1978 American-sponsored peace summit at Camp David got off to a very slow start. After nine days of awkward, getting-to-know-you sessions between two delegations whose nations had formerly met only on battlefields of war, the "first concrete agreement of the Camp David summit became a reality." This little breakthrough occurred when an Egyptian lawyer, Osama el-Baz, met with an Israeli lawyer, Aharon Barak, to hash out some legal hurtles. The proverbial sunbeam broke through dark clouds of gloom when the attorneys agreed to delete a phrase. Ironically, the phrase was this sentence: "They have both also stated that there shall be be no more war between them." In other words, the negotiators were starting to get realistic about the limitations of their proposed peace agreement.


~ Also on Day 9 of the summit, the issue of Israeli settlements in the Sinai emerged as the main point of contention obstructing an agreement. This became evident after President Carter became furious with the Egyptian attorney Baz and berated him for misrepresenting his boss' (Sadat's) position on another issue.


~ On Day 10, Anwar el-Sadat and Moshe Dayan, two men under whose command their two armies had clashed on the Sinai battlegrounds five years prior, met in Sadat's apartment at Camp David. Lawrence Wright wrote: "Sadat received Dayan with a polite smile." Despite Carter's request to Dayan that the battle-horses "not discuss the issues" lest they descend into entrenched positions, the two peace-seeking soldiers fell into an exchange about the Israelis' refusal to give up their settlements in the Sinai. But the silver lining behind the cloud was that now the issue of settlements could come full-force to the front lines of their waging peace. Progress, believe it or not, was at last on their dark horizon as the two sides faced each other face-to-face, but not on a desert battlefield. (. . ."settlements" dispute sound familiar to our 2014 ears?)


~ The Yom Kippur War of 1973 exposed Israel's vulnerability in a way that compelled their electorate to turn toward Begin's hardline defense strategies and the Likud party, in 1977.


~ Menachem Begin, born in Russian Belarus in 1913, survived both the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet gulag before being sent to Palestine as a soldier in the Polish army in December 1942. When Begin got to Palestine, one might say he never looked back. He had found that home that all Jews await. His persecuted, embattled life-story explains, in my opinion, the extremity of his Irgun military strategies and terrorist insurrections in British Palestine after World War II. His 1978 presence at Jimmy Carter's peace-seeking marathon for thirteen days, and his consent to its final agreement, was unlikely, to say the least.


But I will not "say the least." Begin's concession of the Sinai to Egypt was nothing short of miraculous. There are conditions in this world that can turn a heart of stone into a human heart. A wise peacemaking Christian man who happened to be President of the strongest nation in the world had a hand in this amazing turnaround.


Speaking of which, I'll skip a Sinai-sized bulk of my notes about this peace-seeking ordeal, to mention a turning point (one of many) that came on the last day, Day 13:


~ As a final signing ceremony was being prepared at the White House, Begin ordered his delegation to withdraw from the Camp David meetings. The thorny issue of Jerusalem was the prickling crown that was about to draw fatal blood from an almost-compete agreement. That old death-struggle between Jew and Muslim had raised its ugly head when Begin's life-defining resolve was threatened by a letter from President Carter. It was a side letter, a mere addendum, and not a legal part of the agreement, that came to the forefront of their last-minute contentions. Carter had written the letter as a point of clarification at Sadat's request. Lawrence Wright wrote:

"If Carter retracted the letter, he would lose Sadat. If he did not, he would lose Begin. There was no way out."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . .er, at the White House, Rosalynn and the staff were making preparations for a signing ceremony to take place in a few hours.

"The true loneliness of leadership is found in such moments, when great gains and great losses await a decision and there is no way of tallying in advance the final cost."

I will not disclose how this last-minute obstacle was overcome, but I will say this: When Jimmy Carter delivered a photographic gift to Menachem Begin as he was sitting on the porch, the old soldier's heart of stone took a back seat, at least for a few minutes, to a heart of flesh. Those photographs were addressed, individually, to Begin's grandchildren.

Now once again, I will pass over copious notes to offer one final thing I learned while reading Lawrence Wright's book.

~ In 1981, after all this laborious peacemaking had passed, and after Israel had formally withdrawn from the Sinai peninsula, President Sadat was participating in a ceremonial event to honor Egypt, and to commemorate the war of 1973. Sadat stood on a decorated platform with many other dignitaries, clothed in a field marshal's uniform, arrayed in his finest honorary regalia. A band played; fireworks were on display. Military jets passed overhead with acrobatics; a military parade passed in front of the platform for their review. But one troop truck halted. Egyptian soldiers leaped to the ground, brandishing automatic rifles and grenades. One of them raced toward the platform.

"Sadat abruptly stood up and saluted."

~ And that was the last time Anwar el-Sadat stood on this earth. He was a leader who paid the dearest price of all for his willingness to break ranks with Arab intransigence and make peace with Jacob. He recovered lands for the Egyptians that they could not reclaim through war. That final stand on the platform--that final salute on October 6, 1981--demonstrated his last full measure of devotion to his country, Egypt. It was also courageous expression of his late-in-life enlistment with a fragile project called peace-- a process that sometimes breaks through, like a sunbeam from a dark cloud, into our war-torn world.



Smoke

The Rabbi's Perspective on Gaza

The book of Genesis gives an account of Jacob wrestling with G_d. I can relate. Sometimes I feel as if I too am wrestling with God.

We are not alone in this contention. In some ways, Jacob is still wrestling with God. History has shown that Israel's contention with Elohim often involves strife with other people. In the present day, the IDF's intrepid excursion into Gaza has called Israel's credentials as a civilized nation into question. If Jacob began the invasion opposing Hamas, bloody events have conspired to make it appear as if he is contending, not only with the whole world, but possibly also contending with the One who made the world.

Because 1200 people are dead, most of them innocent civilians, and many of them children.

If Israel's long-range objective is to establish existential legitimacy in the eyes of the world, who is really winning this contest?

Although I am a Christian supporter of Israel, during this last week that supportive voice in my soul has been drowned out with the cry of innocent blood that now emanates from Gaza ground.

I know that Israel did not initiate this defensive campaign with the intention to kill more than a thousand Palestinian civilians.

But that is what has happened. There's no excuse for a thousand dead bodies, most of them innocents and many of them children. Somebody should have had the sense to stop this thing before the loud din of bloody collateral damage drowned out any possible victory proclamation.

In this audio link that I am now recommending, we hear a Jewish voice that is a credible alternative to the Likud/IDF way of doing things. Rabbi Henry Siegman acknowledges that Israel's initial attempt to end Hamas rockets is justifiable. I agree.

But because of Hamas' treachery against its own people, the IDF has suddenly jolted far past the line of what is, among the opinions of mankind, acceptably justifiable warfare. In Rabbi Siegman's interview with Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, he offers an historically-based explanation of why Israel's defensive sortie could have degenerated into such an excessively lethal assault.

The man has certainly earned a right to offer his perspective. He is a former President of the American Jewish Congress, and former President of the Synagogue Council of America.

I am fascinated with Rabbi Seigman's personal history, which includes his family's escape from Nazi Germany. The Siegman family's arrival in the United States during World War II was a thankful deliverance after several years of evading the Nazis during the early Holocaust period.

Born in 1930, Henry was one of six children whose parents secreted the family out of Germany in 1935. Their odyssey of survival included temporary residences in Belgium and Vichy France, and attempt to enter Spain, and eventually a boat ride out of Marseille to North Africa and ultimately a voyage to New York.

In this Democracy Now conversation the Rabbi speaks of his Zionist youth, his later hope that Israeli peace with Palestinians could culminate with Messiah, and his subsequent disappointment that Israel had been unable to reach an agreement with the people who lived in Palestine when the Zionists moved in. The Rabbi's perspective is a highly credible counterpoint to the Likud/IDF strategy for establishing Israel as a nation among nations. In this link to the July 29, 2014 broadcast of Democracy Now, the interview begins at the 19:00 minute mark:

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us



Smoke

Israel's Hamas tar-baby

I support our alliance with Israel.

But the Israelis, our only true allies in the Middle East, have gotten themselves into a bad spot in Gaza, and we need to help them. Please pardon me if I use this term: we need to Bail them out.

The present rocket-exchanging debacle with Hamas in Gaza has turned into a disaster. Hamas started it by manipulating their own people into a perilous position that placed innocent, civilian residents of Gaza in harm's way. Thus Hamas have offered their own women, children and other innocents as victims on the altar of military politics.

Hamas has outfoxed Israel, because Israel now appears to be the aggressor because of the blood on its hands.

But it was Hamas who initiated the aggression when they began firing rockets from heavily-populated civilian locations, to lure the Israelis into grabbing hold of a tarbaby from which it can never free itself.

This is what Allies are for. The Israelis need our help because they've been drawn into a hopeless situation that can lead to no good outcome for them.

The theatre of war we have here is like Uncle Remus' tale of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox. Hamas, playing the role of Br'er Rabbit, has tricked Israel into playing the Br'er Fox role and grabbin' onto the bloody tarbaby of Gazan atrocity.

"Don't you be messin' with my tar-baby in Gaza, Br'er Fox!" This was the ruse with which Br'er Rabbit taunted Israel, while setting up its own rocket-launching offense from tunnels they had dug right in the middle of Gaza's densely-populated civilian areas.

Unfortunately for Israel, Netanyahu and the IDF were desperate enough to take the bait. Now they be stuck on the tar-baby and can't get away. Now Israel has tarry blood on its hands in the midst of a massacre that becomes a holocaust for Gazans and a public relations disaster for Israel.

So I'll tell you, as an American citizen who is entitled to his opinion, what we need to do. Our United States of America armed forces need to move in. Send in the cavalry. Do a search and rescue surgical operation. Deliver the innocent Gazans from death and destruction, and rescue our ally Israel from political and military disaster at the same time:

Send in the yanks! Dispatch the special ops guys to do a surgical strike that will put an end to this bloody accident of history. Bail out our only true ally in the Middle East. Maybe send the Marines, or the Seals, or the Rangers. I don't know which team, but this is a job that our guys can do.

1.) Get the Israelis to back off, so we can move in from the Mediterranean side.

2.) Find the Hamas rocket-launchers and run them the hell out of those tunnels. Restore Gaza to the peaceful Gazan citizens.

3.) Clean up the mess. Bring in the UN or Red Cross, Red Crescent, whatever it takes to mend the wounded, bury the dead, and restore the neighborhoods of Gaza to their peaceful conditions.

4.) Destroy the Hamas rocket-launchers. Fill the tunnels with dirt. And don't let Hamas back into Gaza. Send the Israelis home; tell them to pay better attention next time. No more tarbabies.

If we could take out Gadaffi and Bin Laden, we can take Hamas out of Gaza, and teach our allies a lesson in the process. Mr. Netanyahu, be more careful next time. We don't want to make a habit of such interventions.

Smoke

Dam infidels at it again

Wouldn't you know it. The people of ancient Israel had a great little kingdom going, with the legendary King David establishing for them an impressive niche among the kingdoms of the earth, and then his venerable son Solomon consolidating their collective labor and wisdom into a golden age of excellence. But then Solomon died, and his sons Rehoboam and Jeroboam couldn't work together, so Jeroboam took some rebels and they struck out on their own to establish a renegade kingdom of Israel at Samaria.
Those dam infidels.
Solomon's golden age kingdom was eventually ground into dust by Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors. Jewish kingdom was extinguished, but their worship of Y_h, and identity as a people chosen to document God's work, survived. After their banishment from Jerusalem, captivity in Bablyon, and eventual return of some Hebrew exiles to Jerusalem, the Jewish people managed to maintain a unique culture and precious heritage, in spite of later Greek hegemony and Roman domination. Almost a thousand years after Solomon, Messiah finally came, suffered Roman crucifixion, but then triumphed by rising from the dead. Jesus' disciples, most notably the upstarts Peter and Paul, forsook Jewish tradition to start a new spiritual work on earth, which became Christianity and spread like wildfire through the Mediterranean world.
Those dam infidels.
After centuries of steady growth, suffering bloody persecutions from heathen Roman emperors, Christianity proliferated in spite of the bloody business of feeding them to the lions and such. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, so we Christians like to say, although I'm not necessarily volunteering for that role. But then 300 years after Christ, one noble emperor Constantine finally got the light bulb turned on his head and became a Christian. If you can't kill them, join them, I guess. As lucid as he was, Constantine got the bright idea to require all Roman citizens to be Christians, thus merging the public function of governance with the private practice of worshipping a risen Saviour. It was an idea that looked good on tablets (not ipads though), but it later turned out to be a mistake, although the organizing strategy worked tolerably well for a millenium or so, until Europe-based Christendom ended up splitting in two--Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox.
Those dam infidels again.
Meanwhile back in the mother lands, in 7th-century AD Palestine and Arabia, Mohammed got to looking around and realizing that mankind had a real problem. Even so-called righteous people such as Christians and Jews couldn't seem to be good and properly serve God, and they had irrepressible reprehensible tendencies toward idolotry and debauchery. So Mohammed took it upon himself a la Allah to straighten the human race out by starting a new religion, which would prove to be more forceful and therefore more effective in its conquest of us unruly humans. So Mohammed and his subsequent imams set out to conquer the world for Allah.
Those dam infidels.
Mohammed and his band of believers did manage to compel a lot of people to their way of worshipping. However, after he died, the surviving leaders of Islam could not agree on who would be the successor, so there were bloody disagreements among them. After a few years, one faction's acknowledged spiritual leader was recognized as legitimate imam to take up Mohammed's authority. But by the time some Muslim agreement was reached, the other faction had already recognized three imams. Thus did the first Caliph of the Shi'a become known also as the fourth Caliph of the Sunni. These inceptive infightings resulted eventually in two major branches of Islam. Since the split happened quite early in Islamic history (about 656 AD, just 24 years after Mohammed's death), the results produced two major branches of Islam--Sunni and Shi'a. This is not unlike the Christian Catholic/Orthodox legacy of two major dogmatic strains.
Those dam infidels again.
Fast forward a thousand years or so, and pan back to Europe, where we've got a a Protestant reformation brewing in the northern regions. Eventually Christendom manifests its inability to achieve consensus by morphing to a religion with hundreds, or thousands, of denominations.
Those dam infidels again, and again.
By and by, our perpetual trail of tears and blood gets dammed up into a global reservoir of apostate tragedy. Those dam infidels have been at each other's throats for millenia. It gets discouraging, not to mention all the oriental religions--Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Zoroastrian, and God only knows how many.
An overview of history makes it appear that we humans will never agree on religion. We'll be disputing about who God is and what he's up to, or if he even exists, until such time as we just blow ourselves to kingdom come.
I believe if God were really among us, he would take a real beating for this refusal to whip us into submission.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Conquest

Several thousand years ago, the people of Israel threw off a bondage of Egyptian slavery.Then, in a 40-year odyssey toward freedom and their own identity, they wandered through desert areas until the people occupied a new homeland where they would eventually set up a kingdom.

The establishment of that twelve-tribal homeland required some conquest of the native peoples. Jewish use of military might under the auspices of divine direction was, and is, a matter of perpetual dispute. Even today, the controversy intensifies, with each new generation, about whether or not the Jewish people are entitled to that narrow stretch of God's earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Their perseverance to build a kingdom secured in righteousness and prosperity reached its golden age of fulfillment under David and Solomon. But it was a flash in the historical pan. After Solomon's death, their progress as an identifiable entity among the kingdoms of this world took on a downhill devolution, until finally the descendants of Israel were overrun by Assyrians, Babylonians, Seleucids, and the Romans.

Their collective push to establish a worldly kingdom actually reflect a rather typical pattern in the development of people groups and their respective nations. But one unique element of the Israel contribution to world culture is their legacy of prophetical writings, which have since achieved universal distribution through a myriad of spiritual apropriations, most notably the Bible. The core of that prophetic heritage is a call to righteousness, or living rightly: morality, the Ten Commandments, etc.

About a millenium and a half after the Jewish diaspora, from out of the Arabian desert came Mohammed. He also issued a powerful summons toward righteousness; he set forth five pillars of right-living upon which the practice of Islam, and its ordained proliferation, would be founded.
I am not a Muslim, so I cannot claim an authentic understanding of their traditions and intentions, but it seems to me that Mohammed pointed out to the world that Jewish and subsequent Christian efforts to establish a correct teaching about God--the One true God--had failed. A ubiquitous presence of idolotry and immorality among the people of Arabia and beyond were evidence that men/women still needed a new infusion of religion, and he, Mohammed, was going to provide it. So he wrote the Q'uran.

But understand this: Mohammend was a conqueror. After his treatise of corrective religious dogma had begun, he went out and conquered multitudes of people, just to teach the world a lesson or two about rigteousness. The conquest of infidels that Mohammed and his immediate successors imposed on surrounding lands was immense. Islam established, through unprecedented levels of conquest, a religious dominion far beyond anything that Moses, Joshua, David or Solomon ever dreamed of.

In the middle of all this religion-spewing history came a gentle man from Galilee. His input to the spiritual heritage of mankind was not an advocay of conquest over peoples and nations. Whereas Jewish religion had been founded upon conquest of the Promised Land, and Islamic religion would later require conquest of the Infidels, Jesus' only advocacy of conquest was a conquest of self.

He counseled people to "take up your cross and follow me." By allowing the strong-armed conquerers of this world to crucify him, he wielded the ace of eternal life, and demonstrated its authority to trump this world's conquestive trick-taking.

He set in motion a narrative of redemptive power that has reined in the depraved hearts of men and women for almost two thousand years now. Jesus' resurrection out-performed the legalistic limitations of Mosaic and Shariah Law. What better way to assure miraculous spreading of the news than rising from dead.

We don't need to conquer the world; we don't need to save it. That's already been done, in the individual hearts of all persons who are willing to receive that deliverance.

Go tell it on the mountain. Go tell the Israelis. Go tell the Islamists: Forget about your conquests. Instead, let God conquer yo' bad self so that you can rise to the challenge of eternal life, and therby overcome this goddamned world.

Glass half-Full

Sadat on enterprise and sacrifice

All his life, Anwar Sadat, the Arab leader who sought to make peace with Israel, was willing to buck the tide of prevailing opinions among his allies.
In his autobiography, he recalls economic conditions in Egypt in 1961, nine years before he became President. Mr. Sadat writes, on page 213 of In Search of Identity:

"In 1961 the nationalization measures were taken and an economic takeoff could have taken place, based on the public sector as well as a healthily promoted private sector; we could have proceeded to vast economic achievements.
"However, our socialism began to be singed in practice with Marxism. Any free enterprise system came to be regarded as odious capitalism and the private sector as synonymous with exploitation and robbery. Individual effort came to a standstill, and from this stemmed the terrible passivity of the people that I still suffer from to this day.
"A point was reached where the state was expected not only to undertake economic planning (apart from running foreign and domestic policies), but actually to provide eggs and chickens and dozens of other things that individual free enterprise could and should have easily provided. As a result, and according to that "new" theory, the people came to rely on the state in everything. They expected the state to provide them with food, work, housing, and education. Indeed, having professed to be socialist, the state was expected to provide citizens with everything they needed without their having to make any positive effort at all. It was that shinking back from active individual enterprise that marked the beginning of our abysmal economic collapase."

That's what the man wrote about individual free enterprise. I think it is still timely advice. But I'd like to bring to your attention another matter of importance that Sadat brought into the discourses of men before he was assassinated in 1981.

A few years before his death, this President of Egypt stood boldly before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, and proclaimed a desire to work toward a peace with justice. He was the first Arab to do so. On November 20, 1977, he spoke a message of hard truth balanced with hopeful intent to the legislators of Israel. Anwar issued a bold challenge that day--not only to the Israelis, but also to his fellow Arabs, and also to the whole world--as if such lofty words of peace can be uttered among men in the annals of power. Peacemaker that he sought to be, Sadat spoke these words as an historical-- and even (dare I say it between Muslims, Jews, and Christians)-- theological foundation for his appeal. He said:

"It is so fated that my trip to you, which is a journey of peace, coincided with the Islamic feast, the holy Feast of the Sacrifice when Abraham--peace be upon him--forefather of the Arabs and Jews, submitted to God, and, not out of weakness but through a giant spiritual force and by free will, sacrificed his very own son, thus personifying a firm and unshakable belief in ideals that have had for mankind a profound significance."

What's significant here is Sadat's use of the words "sacrificed his very own son," in reference to the patriarch of monotheistic religion, Abraham. This is curiously instructive.

I gather that Muslims believe that Abraham actually sacrificed his son (whom they call Ishmael) that day, whereas Jews believe (according to Torah) that God spared Abe's son (Isaac) that day by providing a lamb as propitiation.

Meanwhile, we Christians believe that those words "sacrificed his very own son," apply to God himself, as God sent Jesus, through the historical tradition of Abraham, to be our unblemished sacrificial lamb, offered as atonement for the sins of us all, individually and collectively.

Put that in your hookah and smoke it. We shall see, when the kingdom of God is manifest, how all this plays out.

CR, with new novel on the way, Smoke

Gender issues in Islam

Phyllis Chesler posts an audio of her being interviewed by Tomar Yonah of Israel public radio.

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/945/how-to-not-treat-a-woman

It's an ear-opener for sure, and an eye-opener too, making me wonder if its time to take off the rosy glasses that color my hopeful view about a spring blossoming of freedom in Egypt.
I go back and forth between these two opinions about what may become of this new current on the Nile: "democracy" winning out, or "sharia" creeping in instead.
So anyway, Phyllis offers a discouragingly realistic assessment about the infamous Muslim Brotherhood, and sharia, hajib and niqab, lurking in the dark background of these groundwell changes that seemed to reach a crescendo in Tahrir Square. Phyllis' informed perspective presents a glimpse of the organized force from deep-rooted Islam. It is a strong native presence that could overpower disorganized nascent democracy factions there in the ancient land of the pharoahs.


Ms. Chesler's wake-up call makes me wonder if my fledgling hope is laced with threads of naiveté. Listening to pubic radio and other sources here in the good ole US of A, I've been wishfully(perhaps) thinking that the throng of free expression reverberating from Tunis and Tahrir is all about freedom and secular opportunities facilitated by our western electronic sweethearts--Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

It seems that public radio in the US is a different animal from public radio in Israel. No surprise there, I guess. Israel has been fighting for its existence since long before its rebirth in 1948.
Dreaming about the power of western liberties and their proliferation through social media would be nice, but every day or two I'm stricken with a reality check. That's what this Phyllis Chesler interview is, and I'm still trying to figure out what to think about it. Maybe if you listen to it you can help me decide.

Glass half-Full

God's two-party system

Most folks who found their faith in the Good Book don't realize that David, the second king of ancient Israel, lived and fought with the Philistines for a year and four months.

Saul, the first king, had started his reign pretty well, but had become quite obstinate and paranoid as time passed. Samuel the prophet,who had anointed him as Israelite leader, ultimately regretted that he had ever done so. Saul had failed to understand what was his true role as king.

Furthermore, the defeat of superbad dude Goliath by the young buck David ensured, in the people's eyes, the shepherd's destiny as future king. David's bold public beheading of the giant and subsequent enabling of Israelite victory had been accomplished through God's appointment. Samuel had already anointed him. Of course, David's own skill with a sling--that he had perfected while herding sheep and minding his own business--had something to do with that victorious event too.

So that's a chicken-or-egg conundrum that no one can fathom, although you can try to if you want to read about it in the book of 1Samuel. Israel had two anointed kings at the same time. Go figure that one out. We believers in the Bible know that "God knows what he's doing." And so he does. Could this situation have been a foreshadowing of the two-party system?, the advantages from which we now benefit?. Not like the current Chinese model with only one party calling all the shots.

Our lesson from biblical history is that God does not approve absolute authority among men. Saul's problems began, appropriately, when he had failed to acknowledge the limits of his own power; he had usurped the priestly (Samuel's) function when he should have stuck to politics and military affairs. So God raised up another leader--one who was more responsive to the people's needs. For years, Saul and David were contending with each other, even as they spoke in politically correct platitudes toward one another. Ultimately, David's unselfish humility won out.

Even after the whole Saul/David/Soloman era had passed, the Israelites ending up with feuding factions led by Jeroboam and Rehoboam.

Many folks of our religious persuasion these days support the Israeli regime unquestionably--"Israel, right or wrong." It's not unlike supporting the US in all its worldly ventures with claims of "my country, right or wrong." They should read their Bible a little more closely. If Saul's obstinate jealousy had driven David out of the Israelite camp, forcing him to side with the Philistines (Palestinians), then what does it mean that Israel's greatest king had to spend almost a year and a half in hiding? And hanging out with the other side, for God's sake!

In today's scenario, could those pacifist elements of Israeli society be forming, during their season as minority party, a future effective reconciliation with Palestinians while the old Likud warhorses grind their axes of apartheid, checkpoint-monitored, wall-building westbank/Gaza oppression?

We shall see. There's a lot to be said for this minority party/majority party setup that we adopted a couple centuries ago. We've been doing it here in the USA for about 230 years now, and it works. Or, it has until now anyway. I hope our system of built-in political cleansing is not degenerating into partisan bickery that ultimately lands us in a pile of fiscal shit.

And I hope the Israelis can work out their differences with the Palestinians whose ancestors had provided their real estate.

Shalom, y'all.

East Jerusalem, a poem

You see
the man in the corner with the resolute eyes?
with the star for his emblem and a scar as his prize--
I hear
he drew a line in the sand between his ancient kin
and those other peoples up there in yerushalayim.
He's there
with his settlement on the land, his eretz in the sand
and razored fence with guard-gate checkpoint plan.
It seems
he lives in a cage now,
like his grandfather in Dachau.
I hear
his mother called him Jacob and she thinks he hung the moon
but on the street they call him Ishmael, call him crazy as a loon.
I know
in the former times he had a dream, and that he wrestled with our God,
though nowadays it's just surveillance schemes o'er sand and streets and sod.
Could be
requiring him to move's like waiting for the hot sun to stand still,
so heated have the talks become, the rhetoric so shrill.
But if
ethnic crony segregation bows to democratic equality,
can the leopard lose his dogma spots, or the lion his mane identity?
Then when
hell freezes over and the leopard trades his spots,
its then the lion becomes a lamb, and Israel a melting pot.

Carey Rowland, author Glass half-Full