Free speech and political correctness

 A few scattered thoughts on free speech, political correctness, and censorship:

• Learning about people different from ourselves is lifelong learning. We never get to a point where we can be quick to judge a group of people we just learned about.
• Lifelong learning also means we need to show each other grace about actions and words that harm or offend people. (This doesn't mean staying silent when someone says or does something inappropriate, but it does mean giving people time to learn and not expecting them to reach exactly the same conclusions as us.)
• Free speech is a bedrock principle of free and democratic societies and it must be protected.
• Free speech has never meant entitlement to a platform. Newspapers publish a variety of opinions in the Letters to the Editor, but they have always had the right not to publish everything they receive. Public venues have never been required to rent their stages to absolutely everyone who wants it.
• When social media allows misinformation to spread unchecked, it leads people to make dangerous decisions, and deepens divisions in society.
• When social media flags or censors misinformation, people complain about censorship and move to platforms that allow misinformation, deepening divisions in society.
  
• We do not have a fundamental right not to be offended.
• Words can cause deep offense, intended or not. When we find out someone is offended by our words, we should not be quick to criticize them; we should listen and carefully consider their experiences and feelings. There are times when offensive things must be said anyway.
• A few of the most vocal free speech defenders don't appear to care if their words cause deep offense to some.
• A few of the most vocal defenders of minorities are very quick to judge anyone who disagrees with them on even the smallest details, and will try to ruin careers over the smallest offense.
• There will never be a complete set of hard and fast rules about which ideas get a platform and which don't. The debate over which ideas should get debated publicly will never end. This is good.
  

Overall, I appreciate the voices that value free speech and greater understanding of people different from ourselves. These are the voices that can build unity between very different people. Personally, I want to be a good listener and to articulate clearly what I think. This takes lifelong learning.

Alberta fighting division with division

Since the federal election in October 2019, there has been a clear increase in separatist sentiment in Alberta and other parts of western Canada. I recently blocked Wexit ads on Facebook because I was getting sick of them.

Many feel like we're under attack by the federal government and other provinces. Across our country, our health and quality of life are quite dependent on fossil fuels, and a significant chunk of that comes from Alberta. Yet in 2017 Justin Trudeau said, "We can't shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out." Even though he backpedaled on that comment, it gave many Albertans the impression that he doesn't care about our jobs and prosperity. The federal government passed laws that many in the resource industry think will make it harder to get resource projects done. And they created a national carbon tax.

So Albertans get the impression that Trudeau is against us, he has numerous scandals involving questionable ethics and competence, and then much of the rest of the country re-elects him. Yes, his party is reduced to a minority, but the balance of power is held by other parties that want more restrictions on fossil fuels, and the Bloc Quebecois that appears openly hostile to Alberta.

Justin Trudeau says he's been trying to build unity nationwide, but we've become more divided.

But as Albertans, we should not fight division with division.

First of all, let's acknowledge that human-caused climate change is serious and we need to work toward net-zero global carbon emissions in the coming decades. If you read through my Facebook feed, it's no secret that I support major action on this.

When people predict bad things in the future, the worst predictions are rarely right. In this case the worst predictions are human extinction or even the extinction of all life of earth, and I (with my limited understanding of the subject) consider these extremely unlikely. But predictions of 100 million premature deaths this century, even more in coming centuries, and accelerating extinction of other species are not the worst predictions; they represent mainstream science.

If you or someone you love works in the fossil fuel industry, it is certainly hard to support government policies that would eliminate these jobs in the coming decades. I get it. Renewable energy development, retrofitting of buildings, and transportation infrastructure construction will create many jobs, but I understand the fear of forced change. People don't know if change will help them get ahead or leave them behind.

For all of Justin Trudeau's faults, he actually brought in the most pro-Alberta climate policy of all the parties that support a carbon tax. The rebates all go to the province that the money came from; since Alberta has the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions and hence the highest costs, we get the biggest rebates. If everyone in Canada simply got the same rebate, that would be another net flow of money out of Alberta. The Liberals are also the only party to support both a carbon tax and a new oil export pipeline so that we can get a better price for our oil while we can still sell it.

As for the economic effects of a carbon tax, I challenge you to find a jurisdiction that has had a carbon tax for several years where the economy has done badly. I'll mention Sweden as a success story--it has the highest carbon tax on earth, and its economy has done just fine in that time.

When we get criticized for pipeline building, oil sands mining, and stuff like that, let's not pretend that cutting the emissions from our oil production or converting our coal power plants to natural gas is enough. Yes, let's talk about the progress we've made, but let's be just as vocal about our commitment to achieving net-zero emissions in the coming decades.

As a province and as individuals, let's:

• Invest in much more renewable energy, grid energy storage systems (pumped storage hydroelectricity is just one option that doesn't need a single new invention), and maybe nuclear power.
• Finish converting our coal power plants to natural gas.
• Invest in carbon capture, both from industrial stacks and from the atmosphere. (Carbon Engineering has a promising technology to convert atmospheric CO2 to hydrocarbon fuels. If it can run on 100% renewable energy, then it would produce carbon-neutral hydrocarbons.)
• Produce oil as cleanly as we can, to sell to the world for as long as they use oil.
• Actively work toward net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 (with a possible exception for industries exporting to countries that haven't achieved net-zero emissions by then).
• Diversify our economy so that when the world won't buy our oil--or anyone else's--we still have a strong economy.
• Support political candidates who show strong integrity and leadership skill, and support the kinds of policies (in many areas, not just climate change) that you think are a good idea. Speak out against hypocrisy, abuse of power, and neglect for our future.
• Don't insult people we disagree with especially if they're motivated by love and compassion; respond intelligently and respectfully. (I'm getting tired of the insults directed at Greta Thunberg on Facebook.)

The coming decades will bring an unprecedented level of change to the world. Much of it can be positive. Do we want to isolate ourselves and become an economic also-ran, or do we want to work with the rest of Canada and the world to meet this challenge head-on?

Robocalls and mass texts

It's election season here in Alberta. So here's a thought: what if robocalls, mass text messages, and similar forms of automated campaigning were banned? Would anyone be disadvantaged from this?

If political candidates have to rely on volunteers, paid staff, and paid advertising to get their message out, then the number of people they can reach is roughly proportional to how well they engage everyday people in the political process, whether as volunteers or donors. If they can write a computer program to mass text or mass call a huge list of randomly generated phone numbers, they really don't need to actively engage the rest of us; they can annoy get their message out to massive amounts of people without a lot of money or help.

So would banning robocalls and mass texts get more people engaged in the political process? And maybe reduce people's cynicism and distrust in the whole political process?

Identity theft tips for Canadians: my story part 2

In 2008 I found out that I'd been a victim of identity theft. Now I'm writing about my story and providing some tips. Part 1 of my story is here, and today I'm posting part 2. Tips for dealing with identity theft will come later. As I said last time, my goal is to help you feel empowered to detect and address identity theft yourself.

Repeating my quick disclaimer: All opinions here are my own non-expert opinions. They are informed by personal experience and some reading on the subject. But I haven't discussed this with other people with experience in this, and I haven't studied the subject in depth. Also, I'm Canadian. Different jurisdictions have different laws and customs that could affect how this goes for you. This information will be most applicable to Canadians.

My Story Part 2

The foreign company with a horrible reputation

I received another collection notice, this one on behalf of an American company. I found out the company leases credit card point of sale equipment to retailers, and they thought I'd rented equipment and never returned it. Through a web search I also found out they have an absolutely horrible reputation--people accuse them of fraudulently adding pages into contracts after they're signed making it very difficult to end a lease. I just checked their Better Business Bureau rating today--they have an F rating, and in 2016 the attorney general of New York filed a lawsuit against them.

After a few times contacting them and maybe getting a few collection notices, they sent me an affidavit to fill out. It was fairly detailed, and they wanted me to include copies of a few cancelled cheques that I had written. I felt pretty reluctant to send copies of cheques to a company with a reputation for fraud, so I thought I'd leave that part out.

Also, they wanted the affidavit notarized. When I went to get it notarized, I mentioned to the notary that they had requested copies of cheques, and my reluctance to include those. He suggested blacking out my account information. So I downloaded a few cancelled cheques from my bank website, blacked out my account info on the computer, and printed them to send with the affidavit. (Tip: If you're ever blacking out information on a document on your computer and then emailing it, make sure the recipient can't just move the box out of the way and see what was under it. With some file formats and drawing programs this is possible. I was printing these documents, so this wasn't an issue.)

I received one more collection notice from this company, so I called to confirm they received the affidavit. The person I talked to found my affidavit, compared my signature on the cancelled cheques to the signature on my supposed lease agreement, and confirmed they were quite different. The collection notices stopped.

However, in tracking me down, this company had checked my credit report, bringing down my credit score a little bit. I asked the credit bureau to investigate as before, but this time, the leasing company claimed the credit checks were not fraudulent. I called the same person at the leasing company and she said she'd address it. I eventually called the credit bureau again, they said they'd investigate again, but once again the leasing company replied to the credit bureau claiming the credit checks were not fraudulent.

Once again I called the same person at the leasing company. She didn't seem to be aware that credit checks like this can bring down a person's credit score, and didn't seem to care either. She asked me, in an insulting tone, "Are you bored?" wondering why I was pursuing this. I felt angry, told her not to insult me, and asked to speak to her supervisor. "I am the supervisor," she replied.

I didn't manage to talk to anyone else there about this, and I didn't pursue this one much further. The credit bureau didn't give me any further help in disputing the leasing company's claim. I kind of felt bad about not pursuing this as a matter of principle, but at the same time, I knew the effect on my credit score was small and the credit check would disappear from my file in a few years anyway (maybe even less than a year later by this time). Still, I remain a bit disappointed that I didn't find a way to completely clear this up.

Cost to me: Fuel for a trip to a notary, lower than usual notary fee ($30 or 40, maybe), and some postage stamps.
Emotional cost and inconvenience: Filling out a several-page affidavit, several phone calls, and a visit to a notary. Frustration at dealing with a horrible company and lack of a clear process for me to dispute their claims with the credit bureau.

Epilogue

I've been requesting my free credit report from the credit bureaus almost once per year, and diligently checking my bank statement and credit card bills each month. There haven't been any further signs of fraud. My tax refunds have come on time, and in the correct amount, and I can submit them online now.

I never did find out how the identity thief found my Social Insurance Number. As I said last time, I've never had my SIN card go missing. (I used to carry it in my wallet, but some time before all this identity theft started, I stopped carrying it.) I don't know if my police reports (I didn't mention all of them in my story) led to any arrests or if they contributed to statistics that motivated law enforcement to take more action on identity theft. I don't know if my information is still out there with the potential to be misused again.

My life is essentially the same as it would be if this had never happened, just with a little more worry and a little more diligence about protecting my information. Meanwhile, life with all of its joys and challenges continues.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps anyone who may be experiencing something similar. I'll get into some subjects like credit monitoring, how to clear up identity theft, and identity theft insurance in future posts.

Identity theft tips for Canadians: my story part 1

In 2008 I found out that I'd been a victim of identity theft. Once in a while, I tell some people my story, and a while ago I was thinking I should write out some tips based on my own experience. With the recent Equifax hack, I decided it's time to start posting what I've written. My goal is to help you feel empowered to detect and address identity theft yourself. I plan to cover the following topics:

• My story
• How to detect identity theft early
• How to clear up credit reports and other records
• Identity theft insurance.

I haven't started writing the last three topics, so this could take a while. The good news is that I've started writing part 2 of my story

Now I'll give a quick disclaimer: All opinions here are my own non-expert opinions. They are informed by personal experience and some reading on the subject. But I haven't discussed this with other people with experience in this, and I haven't studied the subject in depth. Also, I'm Canadian. Different jurisdictions have different laws and customs that could affect how this goes for you. This information will be most applicable to Canadians.

Also, if it comes across like this didn't really bother me all that much and it wasn't all that scary, I would like to mention that memories of how I felt have faded over the years since this happened. Many people have had it worse than me too, but it certainly caused some worry when I experienced it.

Identity theft is a serious issue, but with confidence, calmness, and some basic knowledge of the credit reporting system and your rights, I believe most people can deal with it.

My story

Prologue

In 2006 I noticed one fraudulent transaction on a credit card bill--a plane ticket worth hundreds of dollars. This was pretty easy to deal with. I called my credit card company. They sent me a pre-filled affidavit for me to sign, and the transaction was removed from my bill. The affidavit was basically a sworn statement saying I didn't make that transaction, I didn't authorize it, and I didn't benefit from it in any way. They also cancelled my existing card and sent me a new one.

They also advised me to contact the two credit bureaus Equifax and Transunion to request a fraud warning on my file. The fraud warning states that I have been a victim of fraud in the past, and that anyone issuing credit to me should call me to confirm that it's really me applying for credit.

The real stuff starts

In 2008 I received a letter in the mail from a collection agency saying I owed a large Canadian bank several hundred dollars. My last name was spelled wrong. I have no accounts with this bank but I deal with their insurance division. I contacted the bank and found out that this letter had nothing to do with my insurance.

Someone had opened a bank account in my name in Ontario (I live in Alberta), deposited a counterfeit cheque at an ATM, withdrew the money immediately, and then closed the account. By the time the bank realized the cheque was counterfeit, the money was gone. The bank or its collection agency sent multiple letters to the address registered on the bank account to demand payment. When that didn't pan out, they looked up my real address on my credit report and sent the letter to me.

After talking on the phone with the bank several times (more than I should have had to), they set up an appointment for me to visit a local branch to sign an affidavit something like the one that I had signed for credit card fraud. In the meantime, I got the occasional voice mail from the collection agency. Each time, I called back and explained the situation. Soon after the affidavit was signed, the calls stopped.

I found out that my identity thief had used a fake Social Insurance card and a fake Canadian citizenship card in signing up for that account. The Social Insurance Number (SIN) is what linked that account to my credit file despite the misspelled last name. By the way, I was born in Canada, so I have a birth certificate, not a citizenship card. And I've never had my Social Insurance card stolen either.

I reported this information to the police. They took a police report and I never heard back from them.

Cost to me: Fuel for a trip to a bank, and a trip to a police station.
Emotional cost and inconvenience: The initial "What's happening to me?!" worry, followed by several phone calls, a trip to a bank, and a trip to a police station.

Digging for info

What else had my identity thief been doing? I ordered my free credit reports from both credit bureaus by mail. I found that the bank that I had recently been dealing with had checked my credit file for identity verification (not for creditworthiness) in 2007, and another big bank that I don't deal with had checked my credit file (again for identity verification) the same day. (Why hadn't the first bank noticed the fraud warning on my file and called me to confirm the applicant was really me? I don't know. It could have saved me some headache and saved them hundreds of dollars.)

I called this other bank and found out that someone had tried to open an account in my name in Ontario. Sensing a pattern here? I made an appointment to visit a local branch to look into this further. At the local branch, they showed me the file for the fraudulent account.

There was a "Comments" field that said, "Suspected fraud. Do not tip off client." No transactions had ever taken place on that account. The bank closed that account, and I thanked them for being proactive in preventing fraud.

My credit file showed a couple other credit checks that I hadn't authorized, one from a credit card company and one from a cell phone carrier. The credit file shows phone numbers for every company that checks your file. So I was able to call both companies pretty easily. Neither company had called me after seeing the fraud warning, but neither company had actually allowed anyone to set up an account in my name. They recommended that I contact the credit bureaus though.

When someone checks your credit file for creditworthiness purposes (including for credit cards and cell phone contracts), it drops your credit score just a bit, and other companies that check your credit file can see that credit check. But when someone checks for identity verification, only you can see it on your file; others who check your credit report can't. So both of those credit checks were bringing down my credit score a little bit. When I talked with the credit bureaus on the phone, they said they would investigate. They contacted the companies that checked my credit file, confirmed that the credit checks were fraudulent, and removed them from my file within a month or two.

Cost to me: Fuel for a trip to another bank, two postage stamps.
Emotional cost and inconvenience: Filling out credit check forms, several phone calls, and a visit to a bank

Taxes

After I did my taxes in 2008 or 2009, it took an unusually long time to get my refund. When I finally received my refund, they paid me some interest on it because of the delay (and reminded me that I'll have to pay taxes on that interest the next year--sigh). There was no explanation for the delay.

Later that year I received a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency explaining that they'd received two tax returns in my name from different addresses, and had determined that my address was the correct one. The letter was to inform me that I'm experiencing identity theft.

I called CRA on the phone to discuss it. They said I could apply to change my SIN, but it's optional and doesn't necessarily prevent my old SIN from being used fraudulently in the future.

I decided not to take the time to change my SIN. Several years later, I have not had any further incidents with my taxes. However, for several years I was not allowed to file my taxes online, and they stopped mailing my personal tax package to me for fear of sending my online access code to the wrong person. I just had to go to the post office to pick up the package. I could still use tax software, but I'd have to print my return and mail it in.

Cost to me: Several stamps for filing my taxes over the next few years, but probably more than offset by the interest the government paid to me.
Emotional cost and inconvenience: Phone call, loss of the convenience of online tax filing (which I actually wasn't using before this), and a little bit of annual worry--wondering if it was a mistake to not change my SIN.

Coming soon-ish

Part 2 will discuss what was probably the most aggravating and costly part of this whole ordeal, although I'm pretty sure it still cost me less than $50.

Kids and religious violence

I haven't written much about my kids in a while. Ok, I haven't written much about anything in a while. And yes, the word "kids" is plural--we have a son now too!

I've been thinking about how we teach kids stories from the Bible and what to do with the violent ones.

Our three-year-old has heard the story of David and Goliath--a shorter, toned down version anyway. One day, she wanted to play David and Goliath. She was David and I was Goliath. Fortunately, she didn't sling a rock at my head; it was just pretend. But after a few times acting out that scenario, she wanted to switch places.

So when I was David I paraphrased a few lines that I remembered from the Bible. When she said I couldn't defeat her, I said, "I have God's help!" Then after I defeated her we switched places again.

This time she said "I have God's help!" before defeating me. And it got me thinking...

I want to teach her to trust God. But how will she understand what that means, especially when some important stories of God's people involve God-ordained violence? When she thinks about trusting God, I certainly don't want her first thought to be, "God will help me succeed at violence." So how do we respect scriptures and not sanitize them too much, while guiding her away from this kind of thinking?

Church search: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quote #2

Part of my "Church search" series...

What might surprise you or perhaps even worry you would be my theological thoughts and where they are leading, and here is where I really miss you very much. I don't know anyone else with whom I can talk about them and arrive at some clarity. What keeps gnawing at me is the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today? The age when we could tell people that with words--whether with theological or with pious words--is past, as is the age of inwardness and of conscience, and that means the age of religion altogether. We are approaching a completely religionless age; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" aren't really practicing that at all; they presumably mean something quite different by "religious." But our entire nineteen hundred years of Christian preaching and theology are built on the "religious a priori" in human beings. "Christianity" has always been a form (perhaps the true form) of "religion." Yet if it becomes obvious one day that this "a priori" doesn't exist, that it has been a historically conditioned and transitory form of human expression, then people really will become radically religionless--and I believe that this is already more or less the case (why, for example doesn't this war provoke a "religious" reaction like all the previous ones?)--what does that then mean for "Christianity"? The foundations are being pulled out from under all that "Christianity" has previously been for us, and the only people among whom we might end up in terms of "religion" are "the last of the knights" or a few intellectually dishonest people. Are these supposed to be the chosen few? Are we supposed to fall all over precisely this dubious lot of people in our zeal or disappointment or woe and try to peddle our wares to them? Or should we jump on a few unfortunates in their hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape? If we are unwilling to do any of that, and if we eventually must judge even the Western form of Christianity to be only a preliminary stage of a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well? Is there a such thing as a religionless Christian?...

The questions to be answered would be: What does a church, a congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life, mean in a religionless world? How do we talk about God--without religion, that is, without the temporarily conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, the inner life, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we can no longer even "speak" the way we used to) in a "worldly" way about "God"? How do we go about being "religionless-worldly" Christians, how can we be those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? Christ would then no longer be the object of religion, but something else entirely, truly lord of the world. In a religionless situation, what do ritual and prayer mean? Is this where the "arcane discipline" or the difference (which you've heard about from me before) between the penultimate and the ultimate, have new significance?...

The Pauline question of whether circumcision is a condition for justification is today, in my opinion, the question of whether religion is a condition for salvation. Freedom from circumcision is also freedom from religion. I often wonder why my "Christian instinct" frequently draws me more toward non-religious people than toward the religious, and I am sure it's not with missionary intent; instead, I'd almost call it a "brotherly" instinct. While I'm often reluctant to name the name of God to religious people--because somehow it doesn't ring true for me there, and I feel a bit dishonest saying it (it's especially bad when other people start talking in religious terminology; then I clam up almost completely and feel somehow uncomfortable and in a sweat)--yet on some occasions with nonreligious people I can speak God's name quite calmly, as a matter of course. Religious people speak of God at a point where human knowledge is at an end (or sometimes when they're too lazy to think further), or when human strength fails. Actually, it's a deus ex machina that they're always bringing on the scene, either to appear to solve insoluble problems or to provide strength when human powers fail, thus always exploiting human weakness or human limitations. Inevitably that lasts only until human beings become powerful enough to push the boundaries a bit further and God is no longer needed as deus ex machina. To me, talking about human boundaries has become a dubious proposition anyhow. (Is even death still really a boundary, since people today hardly fear it anymore, or sin, since people hardly comprehend it?) It always seems to me that we leave room for God only out of anxiety. I'd like to speak of God not at the boundaries but in the center, not in weakness but in strength, thus not in death and guilt but in human life and human goodness. When I reach my limits, it seems to me better not to say anything and to leave what can't be solved unsolved. Belief in the resurrection is not the "solution" to the problem of death. God's "beyond" is not what is beyond our cognition! Epistemological transcendence has nothing to do with God's transcendence. God is the beyond in the midst of our lives. The church stands not at the point where human powers fail, at the boundaries, but in the center of the village. That's the way it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we don't read the New Testament nearly enough in the light of the Old. I am thinking a great deal about what this religionless Christianity looks like, what form it takes, and I'll be writing you more about it soon.

 --Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his letter to Eberhard Bethge on April 30, 1944, from a Nazi prison less than a year before his execution (Published in the book Letters and Papers from Prison), bold text emphasized by me.

A Lutheran church

Part of my "Church search" series..

One church we visited met in a school about a 10-minute walk from our house. We'd heard about it through the flyers they occasionally sent out about community events they organized. It turned out that it was a small Lutheran church plant, affiliated with a mid-sized Lutheran church a little further away. It was part of the Lutheran Church--Canada, which is the more conservative of the two biggest Lutheran denominations in Canada. (By the way, this shows just how divided Protestantism is--there are multiple Lutheran denominations, multiple Baptist denominations, several denominations called "Church of God," and who knows how many other subdivided denominations.)

This church used fairly contemporary music in its worship, and followed traditional liturgy, although didn't seem as traditional as Anglican or some other Lutheran churches. (We did visit one more liberal Lutheran church a couple of times too.) It was a small church, but had a decent number of young people. There were also a number of mentally and physically handicapped people that sometimes attended, and it was good to see how they were welcomed.

The first couple of times we visited, we didn't really connect with the people, and we continued visiting other churches or skipping church on Sundays for a while. But then one time we talked with the people some more and started feeling more of a connection there. We began to attend more regularly and even attended a few mid-week Bible studies at someone's house.

Although we were connecting reasonably well with people, I got a sense that this church was a bit too close to what I was used to. I got a sense of legalism (getting too hung up on following the rules) from some people. I also had a feeling that if I expressed some of my doubts or less conservative beliefs, that they may not understand or accept that as well as our previous church, but I'll admit I didn't really test this out.

I looked into some information about this Lutheran denomination and found out they do closed communion--not all Christians are welcome to take communion there; only those that agree with the church's beliefs about communion should participate. I didn't particularly like this, but decided to find out more.

The next time I was there when they had communion, Cathy wasn't there with me. I went forward, but I said to the pastor, "I'm not Lutheran. Is it OK for me to take communion here?"

"Let's talk after the service," he replied, and he said a blessing.

I sat back down, and soon the pastor sat beside me and asked if I would like to take communion. I said yes, so he served communion to me. After the service he gave me a short explanation of their beliefs about communion, that the body and blood of Jesus are really present in the bread and wine, and he explained a bit of the difference between that and Catholic beliefs, for example, that Lutherans don't have to do anything special if they spill the communion elements. (I assume this means Catholic priests need to do something special if they spill the it because it is the body and blood of Christ.)

I was somewhat familiar with this belief before that, and I said that I find it believable but I'm not sure about it. He said I'm welcome to take communion there any time.

Shortly before our daughter was born, the leadership of this church decided to shut it down temporarily while they tried to find a different location and work with other Lutheran churches in Edmonton to get some more people involved. I don't think it ever restarted.

We attended the "parent church" of this little church a few times that fall and winter. That church had the same pastor as this one, but we didn't connect with any others there.

Then spring came, daylight saving time started, and after the time change our daughter started waking up from her morning nap around 10:30, the same time that services started at that church. That didn't leave us enough time to get there without trying to change her nap schedule. And since we weren't feeling any sense of attachment to that church...

To be continued...

Church Search: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quote #1

Part of my "Church search" series...

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.

A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves this dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

--Dietrich Bohoeffer, Life Together

When I first saw this quote, I only saw part of it (and yes, there's even more than I've quoted here, so look it up if you want to read more). It started from almost the middle of the third paragraph: "Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community..." This and other things I read affected my concept of what church should be. As I've talked about before, I found it so tiring when pastors would come up with one idea after another of how to reach out to the community and hopefully grow the church. It seemed like there should be a better, simpler way--something that is better at welcoming people in various places in their faith and practice, yet manages to unite without insisting that people need to get with the program.

This is still what I hope for. That hasn't changed, at least not much.

But eventually I read a bigger chunk of this quote. I hadn't seen the first couple of paragraphs before. That turned my attention onto my own wishes for a church community. If I find a church that seems alright but doesn't quite match what I hope for, do I leave? Do I insist that the church change? Or as Bonhoeffer said, a church that doesn't meet my expectations could be exactly what I need.

There's a time to leave a church and a time to stay. I'm not trying to say people should always put up with whatever church they happen to be in. I'm not even going to try to lay out a set of rules for deciding whether to stay or go. Certainly, I think people should leave churches that are toxic environments, but how do you define a toxic environment? And I left a church that I don't consider a toxic environment.

But I will conclude this post by repeating myself because I can't come up with a better ending: a church that doesn't meet my expectations could be exactly what I need.

Church search: United church and liberal Christianity

Part of my "Church search" series...

One Sunday, we decided to visit a United Church. (The United Church is a Canadian denomination formed in 1925 by a merger between a few denominations including the Methodist Church and most of Canada's Presbyterian Church. I don't think there's an exact equivalent in other countries, although I'm sure there are similar churches. It's one of the largest and most liberal Protestant denominations in Canada.)

Visiting that church was my idea. We both come from the more conservative / evangelical side of Christianity (conservative in beliefs, not necessarily in worship style), and I wanted to understand and experience the liberal side of Christianity more. I consider myself somewhere between conservative and liberal. In my experience, conservative Christians are quick to dismiss liberal Christians as "not real Christians." I don't want to be quick to do that, so I wanted to see what these churches are like. I had been to United Churches before (for cousins' baptisms and that sort of thing), but not for years.

I'm not sure if Cathy was all that interested, but she came along. We walked in the church and found that some singing had already started, and I don't think we were late. Almost everyone there looked like they were over 60 years old. The minister might have been one of the youngest people there, probably in her 50s. But the place was packed. People say the United Church is in decline, but this church seems strong for now. However, with its demographics, it certainly will be in decline in the next decade or two unless something changes.

Cathy asked if I wanted to stay. I was hesitant, but I wanted to see what the actual service would be like.

The service that day had a theme of friendship, related to one of the lectionary readings that day, from the book of Ruth. Through the songs and sermon, I don't think I ever heard of Jesus referred to as anything more than a supreme example of friendship. It left me wondering, do they believe that Jesus was the son of God? Do they believe that in some sense Jesus has redeemed us and overcome death? (There are varying ideas among Christians on how Jesus redeems us and I don't want to be too picky about how they understand it, but I have a problem with throwing out the idea of redemption entirely.)

I realize there are people who call themselves Christians, and even some priests / ministers / pastors, who don't believe in God at all. Today I'm not interested in getting into a debate about whether they should be considered Christians or not. My point is that these people still find meaning in Christian practices and worship, even if they believe there's nothing supernatural behind it. While I don't want to disrespect what they find meaningful, personally I don't find much meaning in religious practice without some sort of belief behind it. I'm not talking about complete certainty--God knows I don't have complete certainty myself. This gets into what I mentioned in my previous post about the Anglican Church, rising above doubt.

I appreciate worship that gives me a sense of something greater than myself, greater than the people around me, greater than any human institution. Hearing reflections on friendship with some mentions of Jesus thrown in doesn't do that for me. As I said in that Anglican Church post, I can appreciate a church that can understand and appreciate doubt. That said, doubt can't be the last word. In what the church says and does, it needs to lift us up toward something greater, not sit at the lowest common denominator. This may not be easy to do, but in my experience, liturgical and evangelical churches tend do this better than mainline non-liturgical churches such as the United Church (and yes, my mainline experience is pretty limited). Evangelical churches on the other hand can be less understanding of doubt.

Maybe we visited that church on an off day. Maybe a lot of other United Churches are better at rising above doubt (and maybe have more varied demographics too). Maybe I just haven't been exposed to this form of faith enough to see the beauty in it. But I don't see myself practicing my faith in this way. We haven't been to a United Church again and have no plans to go again. I'd still like to understand liberal Christianity better, and I'm not sure where to look.

One more experience I'd like to share, this one from an Anglican Church:

The Anglican Church tends to vary between liberal and conservative beliefs, but it is one of the churches that many evangelicals would consider overly liberal, kind of like the United Church. A while back, the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton passed some sort of motion about wanting to bless same-sex civil marriages, although without considering them church marriages. That motion probably needed approval at the national level before it would have any effect on their practices, but still, most conservative Christians would consider the blessing of same-sex unions to be a bad thing. (I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. Politically I'm in favour of allowing same-sex marriage, but in the church I'm not sure what should be done given differing interpretations of the Bible.)

The Sunday after this motion passed, I happened to visit an Anglican church. The priest talked about it, didn't really give his opinion, but he acknowledged it has been a contentious issue in the church for a number of years. But what stuck out to me is this: he said the recent decision was made with grace. And though the liturgy of that service, I always had a sense that this church honours Jesus as savior, redeemer, and Lord. Maybe they are overly liberal, I'm not sure, but they still give me a sense of a living faith in a real God.

Four months into fatherhood

Our daughter is over four months old now so I'd like to look back on the last little while.

She was born in the morning, and since we used a midwife rather than a doctor, and everyone was thankfully healthy, we went home in the afternoon. My parents and my brother came to see her. (My sister was away on vacation so she couldn't meet her that day.) At night she cried for hours, so Cathy and I switched off holding her. Around 3 or 4 in the morning she went to sleep and must have slept for 5 hours. And so began parenthood.

As anyone who's been through this will tell you, the first few months are tough, especially the first few weeks. Fortunately the baby slept better most nights than the first night--no 5 hour stretches of sleep for a while, but no 5 hour stretches of crying either. And at first she slept better in the day than at night.

If parenting would always be like the first couple of months, I wouldn't want to be a parent. I was sure it would get better, so I didn't regret having the baby, but wasn't loving fatherhood either. Hearing Cathy's frustration was tough too. Sometimes she'd even say she wants to put the baby up for adoption. She sounded serious, but sometimes it's hard to tell how serious she is when she's frustrated. The baby seemed to fit the definition of colic too, so that didn't help.

And then sometimes I'd imagine the future. I imagine taking her camping, seeing her fascination with seeing certain animals for the first time, and teaching her some camping skills. I imagine her curiosity about the world around her. I imagine her affection for us. Then it really feels like parenting will be worth it. I know parenting isn't supposed to be a selfish thing, but I want to experience joy in the sacrifices that it takes to raise a child, and I'm sure I will.

Things have improved a lot. After 6 or 7 weeks, her crying reduced to the point where it wouldn't count as colic. She's healthy, she smiles at us, and she plays with toys (mostly putting them in her mouth or dropping them). We're both embracing parenthood more, and finding more joy in it. I've seen Cathy's confidence grow so much. It is a joy to play with her and see her mature. I'm looking forward to seeing what she's like when she's older.

We're very grateful for all the support we've received, especially from both of our parents, and even more especially, from Cathy's mom who stayed with us for four weeks.

Church search: Liturgy and Anglican churches

Part of my "Church search" series...

Since I've been most interested in visiting churches that are not evangelical, most of the churches I've visited have been on the more liturgical side, some of them Anglican. Cathy has visited some of these with me. Also, we've visited one United church (I don't think that's considered liturgical) and a couple of Lutheran churches. I'll cover the United and Lutheran churches separate posts.

I find that when I go to an Anglican church when I haven't been to one in a while, I find many parts of the liturgy quite meaningful. There are some beautiful things said about God's love and grace. Also, through some things I've heard and read, I've come to appreciate taking communion more, and communion happens more often in liturgical churches.

And then after a few services, things start to seem more repetitive. Granted, non-liturgical churches can be almost as repetitive in different ways, and in both cases, we are saying or singing words that some other writer came up with, so in either case we aren't just saying personal things. The difference with liturgy isn't just about how repetitive it is; it has to do with a different understanding of what's happening during worship. One place to read about this is this article called "Liturgy Is Not a 'Style'." Getting back to communion, these churches teach that God really does something with us through communion, that in some mysterious, not-fully-understood way, our souls are nourished by the body and blood of Jesus even as our bodies are nourished by the bread and wine. I don't know if I believe that, but I find it believable, and it has deepened my appreciation of communion.

I find that churches with less conservative beliefs tend to understand and appreciate doubt better than more conservative churches. As someone who has wrestled with doubts about God for years, I can appreciate this. But it's important to rise above these doubts, not to explain them away or suppress them, but to find ways of experience God and appreciate Christianity even in the midst of doubt. I find that appreciation of mystery is one way to rise above doubt without simply suppressing it, and that's one reason I appreciate a liturgical understanding of communion. (I'll talk more about rising above doubt when I write about the United Church.)

One time in particular that I visited a certain Anglican church for the first time, I really felt a strong sense of both reverence and grace, through the words that were said and sung, through looking at the stained-glass windows. The songs were familiar enough too, and that helped. Other times that I've been there, it hasn't always felt that way. The time that I went there with Cathy, the sermon was done by one of the lay leaders in the church, and it was painful to listen to. She wasn't a good speaker (maybe needs more practice), and the subject was about giving money to the church.

I also find that I want to learn more from church history. The historic churches seem to have many good insights and helpful practices that often get lost in evangelical churches' desire to follow the Bible alone. On the other hand, the historic churches have done a lot of awful things over the centuries, but it would be good to learn from those mistakes. I appreciate how the Anglican church tries to embrace the best of both Catholicism and Protestantism, and has a more open attitude toward other Christians than some other churches have (for example, they welcome all baptized Christians to take communion, unlike some churches).

In general, I haven't been able to connect well with people at the Anglican churches I've visited. There generally aren't many people around my age, but there are a few, and some that are younger too. I've had good conversations with a couple of priests, but haven't really got to know others.

So my Anglican experiences have been meaningful, sometimes repetitive, and haven't provided much experience of community. I'm not sure if this tradition is the way I want to practice my faith long-term, but it's definitely one that I want to continue learning from.

The princess

I have some news! Last Tuesday our baby girl was born, at 9:10 in the morning. (Did you think this would be about the new prince or princess of Britain based on the title? Ha ha, fooled you.) She weighed 9 lbs, 1 oz, which was surprising because Cathy wasn't any bigger than most pregnant women, probably even a bit smaller than most. (A few weeks before birth, I heard a few other women say how jealous they were of her.)

Everybody's healthy, just sore and tired. Cathy's mom is staying with us for a while, and she's a big help. And so the adventure of parenting begins...

Church search: Building frustration

Part of my "Church search" series...

It's been about a year since we decided to leave the church we were in. Soon I told my parents, who attend the same church. They were disappointed but supportive of us finding something that works better for us. Soon after that, they were at a meeting talking about some of the church's future plans. They gave me a sheet of paper they got at that meeting, not intending to pressure us to stay, but to just make us aware of potential changes just in case it would make us want to stay.

The paper had an outline that the pastor wrote up about where he saw things going with the church in the next few years. This ministry plan included stuff like starting small group Bible studies in various parts of the city, which is something that I would've appreciated. This was also part of efforts to reach out to other people. It also covered a bunch of other ideas. Something about this whole thing frustrated me. As I've said before in this series, my enthusiasm for reaching out to people through the church is near zero. Simply reading a "ministry plan" frustrated me, however good its intentions were. Maybe I'm better off attending church services but paying absolutely no attention to the church's other programs and plans.

I read that plan on a Sunday morning when we didn't go to any church. That morning, I went out for a jog to a nearby park in the river valley. Maybe I had been planning to go running before I started feeling frustrated, but running turned out to be a good way to vent the frustration. I ended up exploring off the beaten path a bit, ending up at a little ravine where the trail basically ends, or at least gets very narrow. I turned around and continued running, arriving home feeling like that was what I needed.

Why would something like that frustrate me this much?

In future posts, I'll start talking about churches we've visited.

Work is...

Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
--Revelation 13:18

But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
--Revelation 19:20 (NIV)

At the industrial site where I work, there is a sulfuric acid plant. The first step of sulfuric acid production is to burn sulfur. That sounds pretty horrible, but the vast majority of the product of combustion is converted to sulfuric acid; only a little bit is emitted into the air.

When I've read Revelation in the Bible since I started working at this plant, the parts about the lake of burning sulfur always remind me of work. While we don't have a lake of burning sulfur there, we do have a pit of molten sulfur, and the sulfur gets pumped out of the pit to a furnace where it is burned.

Now I'm involved in a project involving a bunch of the plant's motors. This includes connecting them to a modern computerized control system instead of buttons on the control room panel. Every set of on / off switches on this control system needs a tag number, and one of these motors got the tag number HS-666. This motor runs a pump. This pump moves molten sulfur from the sulfur pit to the burner.

Conclusion: work is hell.

Church search: Straddling the wall

Part of my "Church search" series...

Not too long ago, I happened upon this chart about some common stages of faith and found that I could really relate to it, especially the wall-hitting part. (If you'd like to save time, just read the two gray boxes on that page, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

I'm quite solidly in stage 4 (the journey inward) of that chart, sometimes feeling pulled back to stage 3 (the productive life). Truth be told, I've been trying to straddle that wall between stages 3 and 4 for several years now, but didn't mostly let go of stage 3 until we decided to leave our church last year.

A number of years ago I found myself dealing with increased doubts about Christianity. As I decided to start dealing with doubt rather than just letting it fester, I began to learn about some different ways of thinking within Christianity. The book "The Last Word and the Word After That" by Brian McLaren was influential in this regard. When Christians talked kind of favorably about doubt, it sounded something like, "It's good to confront your doubts because it will ultimately boost your confidence that we're right." But Brian McLaren was willing to consider that maybe we really are wrong about some things in our faith, or even if these things we doubt turn out to be true, there is still something to our doubts. Or the truth / falsity of these doctrines isn't the most important thing.

As I learned from people who are willing to ask the tough questions (mostly through reading), my faith was challenged and refreshed, and I learned to deal with doubt better. But doubt didn't go away, and other things I learned made me feel cynical.

Meanwhile, this whole time I was one of the leaders of the youth group at my church. I wasn't frequently in much of a teaching role, but when I did have opportunities to teach or discuss, I did try to encourage questioning and keeping an open mind, avoiding pat answers, that sort of thing. But I still felt myself suppressing some of my questions and issues, and I found that these issues sometimes made me reluctant to discuss certain aspects of faith with these young people. When I did express these questions and issues, people were generally accepting and sometimes tried to understand, but they rarely challenged my thinking the way that the things I read did, and it rarely felt like they really understood. Actually, the pastor was one of the people who understood me best, but even then, I felt more and more like I needed more space to decide for myself what I believed.

I quit youth group leadership. Even though it had been great in many ways, this was part of getting more space. After a little while longer, I considered quitting church entirely, with the hope of eventually coming back. Instead I decided to just cut back on church attendance.

Cathy and I started dating, and she accepted and appreciated me for where I was at. She began attending the same church as me, when she was able to make it. We got married. Church attendance varied. We got a new pastor, and like the previous one, this one understood me better than most people in the church. Around that time, I initiated a Bible study group mostly for people around my age. Again, I tried to express my questions and issues, and sometimes found that certain people were also wrestling with something similar. When it was my turn to lead the discussion, sometimes I felt like I should be toning down the expression of my doubts. Eventually this group dissolved.

I've often felt like I need to experience a different way of thinking about Christianity on a deeper level. Some of my reading has made me aware that it really is possible, but in the evangelical church (mostly in the church I grew up in) I haven't been able to find people who really get me thinking in those different ways.

Plenty of good things had happened in our old church, including things that wouldn't have happened if we left earlier. But I was stuck, straddling that wall between the "productive Christian life" and searching for something better. And so, last year, it was finally time to go.

Leaving church

I'd like to start a series of posts here about something Cathy and I are in the process of. Around the middle of 2012, we decided to stop attending the church that I grew up in and to find something different. We each had different reasons for this, but we agreed that it needed to be done. My reasons for this change are complex and add difficulty to a search for a new church, so I think this experience should provide fodder for a whole series of blog posts.

Cathy has never connected all that well with people at that church. She's found people friendly but hasn't formed any strong friendships or had deeper conversations with people there. When I was younger, I had good friends there, some of my best friends. For a variety of reasons, we've drifted apart. As most of them had kids, they reached a significantly different stage of life from me (one that I'll be entering soon, but I digress). This factor combined with geography--everyone seems to live in a different part of the city, not the same part as me anyway--and not very persistent effort on all of our parts led to weakening friendships. These are among the reasons why Cathy never connected well either.

But in this series I'll focus more on my reasons for leaving and my thoughts and experiences with a search for someplace new. If Cathy decides to write about her experience, I'll post that too if she wants.

My views have been drifting away from typical evangelical Christianity over time. I believe evolution, I don't believe in the infallibility of the Bible, I experience doubts about pretty much every aspect of Christianity, stuff like that. In my former church, those views didn't get me in trouble, but I rarely felt like people understood me either.

This isn't just about changes in my beliefs and opinions though. It's about the way evangelical churches do things, and some deep-seated feelings that I can't entirely explain and justify, but can't let go of either. Something about his just doesn't feel right.

The pastor has an idea: we need to change _______ so the church can reach out to the community better. He encourages people to read books or go to seminars and conferences, changes are made in how the church does things. Maybe the church grows a bit. Maybe the church shrinks a bit. Long term, not much changes. Then the pastor has an idea: we need to change ______ so the church can reach out to the community better...

After a while, we get a new pastor. A similar cycle repeats itself. Maybe the pastor claims it's not so much about growing the church, but simply about serving others. But it feels the same to me. Sometimes good changes happen, and occasionally those changes have a lasting effect. But much of the time, this whole way of doing church feels dead.

Meanwhile, I've been drifting. As I said earlier, my views have been changing and I don't feel understood. I read stuff saying this "church growth" focus takes people's eyes off the Gospel of Jesus Christ and makes people cogs in a machine, and that resonates with me. A blogger or two suggest churches shouldn't even have "vision statements" or much for goals because those interfere with community, and that resonates with me.

My enthusiasm for community outreach through the church is near zero. The church still wants me to reach out to others. But why would I want to bring others to something that leaves me feeling this way? It's not that they've mistreated me. The people there actually mean a lot to me, and some have been part of my life for all of my life. I have a good relationship with the pastor. This church and this pastor are probably a better fit for me than most evangelical churches and pastors are. And yet so much to do with church programs makes me feel so cynical or just weary. Feeling this way has made it clear to me that something about my relationship with God and his church needs to change.

Jesus inspires me. When church is about Jesus, that can inspire me too. When it's about programs for reaching out, I get weary of hearing about it.

I'll unpack some of these thoughts in later posts and talk about things that have happened more recently. If you found this through my Facebook profile and you'd like to keep following it, you'll have to check back here or subscribe to an RSS feed, because I don't plan to post links to any more posts on Facebook.

Big change on the way

I'd like to share some news with both of my faithful blog followers. We're expecting a baby! This will be our first. We're both excited and nervous. Admittedly, we're not as excited as a lot of parents get, at least not as excited as the stereotypical ones. But we are looking forward to it.

Divinely inspired food

"Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils and millet, and spelt and put them in one vessel…" Ezekiel 4:9®

This is a direct quote from the Food for Life website, ® symbol and all. Yes, that verse of the Bible is now a registered trademark. So where did this come from, and why do I bring it up here?

Well, when I started paying more attention to the natural food aisle at the local grocery store, I noticed a cereal and a few other products called Ezekiel 4:9, which got their ingredient list from a verse in the Bible. Something bothered me about this. There's nothing inherently wrong with getting food ideas from the Bible, and it must be a natural food, probably fairly healthy, but a few things bothered me about this:

• It shows "magical thinking," implying that a key to good health is hidden in an obscure passage in the Bible, that a recipe from God must be healthier than anything else. They even refer to the Bible as the "Holy Scriptures" on the package. Again, nothing wrong with calling the Bible this. But it contributes to the impression that there's something "magic" about their food.
• It seems to be taking advantage of their customers' Christian or Jewish faith in order to make money, especially customers who believe this magical thinking.

But recently we bought one of their products. While eating it, we were wondering what that whole passage in the book of Ezekiel was actually about. Here it is from the New International Version, with verse 9 is in bold. I laughed as I got toward the ending:

“Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the people of Israel.

“Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the people of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the people of Israel.

“After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the people of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year. Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with bared arm prophesy against her. I will tie you up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege.

“Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. Weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. Also measure out a sixth of a hin of water and drink it at set times. Eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel.” The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”

Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.”

“Very well,” he said, “I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.”

He then said to me: “Son of man, I am about to cut off the food supply in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin.

So God gave this recipe to Ezekiel as part of an act symbolizing a siege, hardly an event known for healthy, tasty food. And then there's the fuel source. So if Food for Life really wants to be biblically correct, they should bake their products with that wonderful renewable fuel--cow dung.

God as the source of morality

Some people try to argue for the truth of Christianity or the existence of God based on the existence of a moral law: we know intuitively that there must be some sort of absolute standard of right and wrong, and that can only come from a higher power. I generally haven't found this convincing. Yes, it feels like certain things are right and wrong, but I don't think we have any hard evidence to say there really is right and wrong. I believe in moral absolutes because I believe in God, not the other way around. If I was an atheist, I think I'd be a moral person, and I'd advocate for certain causes, but I don't think I'd truly believe in any absolute moral law.

C.S. Lewis found the "moral law" argument quite convincing, and it was a big factor in his conversion from atheism to Christianity. I read his book Mere Christianity a few years ago, which devotes a few chapters to this topic. While most of it didn't seem like strong evidence for God's existence to me, there's part of it that I find myself pondering once in a while. I looked up that part, and here it is, from the chapter called "The Invasion:"

If Dualism [the idea that there are two higher powers, one good and one bad] is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons— either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it—money, or power, or safety. But pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. I do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong—only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. We called sadism a sexual perversion; but you must first have the idea of a normal sexuality before you can talk of its being perverted; and you can see which is the perversion, because you can explain the perverted from the normal, and cannot explain the normal from the perverted.

Is it possible to be bad for the mere sake of badness? If not, does that mean there is something at the most fundamental level of reality that is good?

At times, it seems more likely that whatever fundamentally exists without cause would be amoral (neither good nor bad) and not intelligent. It seems unrealistic that something good, or something intelligent, could exist without a cause, as Christians affirm. It almost seems to good to be true that the one thing whose existence is fundamental to all of reality would be good, and loving, and intelligent.

And yet, good seems to be able to exist on its own, but bad "is only spoiled goodness." At the very least, this would make a completely good God more plausible than a completely bad God.

I haven't said anything to defend the existence of an intelligent God, and possibly only a weak defense of a good God. But there's something compelling about this. And Christians take it further: we claim God loves each of us--tiny specs on a tiny spec in a tiny spec in an unimaginably huge universe. And soon, at Christmas, we will celebrate a time when we claim this good, intelligent, loving God actually visited us. Are we crazy? Or is God crazy in our eyes for doing things this way?