Strange, Infuriating, Frustrating, Scary Days

Matthew Harrison Brady: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!
Henry Drummond: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?
Matthew Harrison Brady: I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge!
Henry Drummond: Do you think a sponge thinks?
Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
Henry Drummond: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?
Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!
Henry Drummond: [Gesturing towards the defendant, Bertram Cates] Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!
--Inherit the Wind


This isn't about politics. I believe the wealthy should pay more taxes than the middle or the poor. Others see tax policy other ways. I believe that the US shouldn't start wars, and should work with other nations to resolve differences diplomatically. Others see foreign policy in other ways. That's why we debate issues and have elections.
This isn't about religious doctrine. I'm of a tradition that believes in baptizing infants, because baptism is the start of the journey rather than the finish line. Others hold to baptism as a marker that God is done with them. My branch believes in redemptive involvement in the world in God's name as part of our responsibility as Christian disciples. Others believe that we are to separate ourselves from the sinful world as a sign of our identity. That's why we have different churches and different theologies.
This is about something else.
A friend asked me yesterday about the dinosaurs that Noah had on the ark. Her child attends a "Christian" school where the "science" textbook teaches that human beings and dinosaurs lived at the same time. And that Noah included them in his menagerie on the ark.
Gov. Palin, in the same speech where she promised that a McCain-Palin administration would dramatically increase funding for research and assistance for special needs children, ridiculed a government-funded study on fruit flies in "Paris, France. I kid you not." Ignorance and jingoism in one sentence! Since the moment when modern science began understanding genetics, mutation and disease, fruit flies have been humanity's great partner, serving as the research tool in a multitude of issues.
But then again, have you seen the video (check YouTube) presenting a "pastor" in a "church" laying hands on the Governor, praying that "in the name of Jesus" she will be "protected from every form of witchcraft"? Friends, this isn't Salem, and my calendar doesn't read 1692.
The creationists have opened a museum in Kentucky. It has become a really hot vacation spot. For imprisoning children in the Dark Ages!
School districts are having trouble deciding what to do about the growing numbers of unvaccinated children in their schools. They are unvaccinated because, like some replay of the 1950's fluorination hysteria, parents are trying to "protect" their kids. By leaving them vulnerable to all of those childhood illnesses so easily prevented. And putting at risk other kids more recently vaccinated, whose antibodies are still building.
This sort of business is willful ignorance. And some days it is terrifying; others it seems so ridiculous it has to be a joke; still others it too closely echoes the moments when other great nations have begun their inexorable decline.
How does an adult keep a straight face when telling children that there were dinosaurs on the ark? Or even that there was a literal boat with historical animals on it? Why would anyone want to strip the story of all its power by reducing it to a 960 hour sea voyage?
How did the church go from being a place where learning and progress were matters worth dying for (even if it was at the hands of other Christians) to a place fearful of the wonders that might be discovered next? Not to mention the human suffering that can be challenged and defeated through the grace of God, by the use of our minds-the greatest tools God has ever given us?
I think that we have reached the point where, since so much is easy and within our grasp, we think everything should be. And so, we blame autism, for example, on the shots that save peoples' lives, rather than on the fact that we run risks when we put off having our children until our mid- and now late-40's, ages when so many risks are increased! We want it all; we want to work for 25 years, and still get to act like we're in our 20's. And life just doesn't work like that.
But we are Americans, and the notion of American Exceptionalism is so pervasive in this culture that we tend to believe that if we want it, we should have it, and it should go perfectly, whatever it is.
Kind of like that place that Israel reached in Amos' time. When they got arrogant and comfortable and decided that since they were the Chosen, God would bless whatever they did, because it was them doing it! We have no more license to be ignorant and willful than they did. We have no more right to claim special privileges over others than they did.
But, like them, we will pay a price if we keep it up. And that price will be very, very steep.