“All You Need is Love” From 156 Countries

The Significance of Christmas: God’s Justice Comes in the Form of the Other

Faithful Progressive does a wonderful job articulating the significance and power of the Christmas story, especially the ways in which it connects with great literature, art and philosophy in describing the human condition:

I have for many years not really cared if the Christmas story is literally “true” or not in all of its aspects. Did wise men pay homage to the newborn under guidance of a star? Probably not…But, of course, thematically it makes sense for them to to do so–and for those of us who celebrate Christmas to do the same.

Innocence, poverty, purity of heart,

hope and the promise of justice

(God’s most essential and always timely gift)–

these things trump even the brightest

minds and the finest gifts.

This is true whether we approach the Christmas story as religion or a profoundly artful narrative. As we never tire of arguing, the arts and religion appeal to three basic philosophical categories which we will briefly highlight here.

First, both the arts and religion put forward a philosophy largely based upon Being rather than of instrumental activity or doing. It is the fact of Jesus, his essential being, that we celebrate at Christmas. Like all newborns, he just lies there, and we project so many of our “hopes and fears” (as the song says) upon the gift of his Being in the World.

Second, historically both religion and great literature have presented a tragic vision of humanity that stand in sharp contrast to either the unbridled positivism of crude versions of evolutionary theory (“things are evolving toward the better, toward the perfect if only unhelpful memes like religion would get out of the way”) or the essential and debilitating nihilism of other atheist thinkers (“it all ads up to Nothing”).

There is deep Tragedy at the heart of the life and story of Jesus: God has sent him to us a supreme gift, and yet we don’t recognize him as such…Our hopes for him, like our own deepest hopes in life, are often unfulfilled. But literature gives an awareness that our tragedy is no different from others who have gone before us. And religion, here in its Christian expression, gives us hope of transcending all of this in a life of faith in the face of tragedy.

Thirdly, both religion and literature and the arts explore the wisdom of transcendence and especially finding transcendent truth in an embrace of the philosophical Other. Jesus, an outsider Jew, living a marginal life with poor unmarried parents in a an occupied country, is the essential outsider. He is the Other incarnate. He is Other-Worldy, too, for us believers!

Northwestern University Professor Regina Schwartz recently edited a very interesting series of papers on Transcendence in philosophy, literature and theology. Schwartz and others distinguish between “vertical” transcendence, which generally looks above and beyond, and “horizontal” transcendence which is rooted in the idea of justice and “the transcendent other embedded in social life.”

Yet even this distinction is somewhat blurred, because as philosopher Emmanuel Levinas notes, both elements are also present in the Biblical understanding, where “there can be no knowledge of God separated from the relationship with men.”

In her own beautiful contribution to the book, Schwartz considers the ideas of Levinas in the context of Shakespeare’s ideas of justice in his play Othello. She finds much commonality in the latest philosophical thinking on ethics and the thinking of the greatest writer the English language has produced.

“I would argue that not only does each act of justice open up to eternity, as Levinas argues; furthermore, the human craving for justice that impels each act is transcendent. Where there is a check upon naked self interest, relentless aggrandizement, sheer grasping of power, it comes—not from some contractual understanding that our will cannot be done without compromise with the other…but from some other-worldly desire to make the world a just place, that is, to partner with creation by securing it through acts of justice.”

On Christmas, we believers believe that God partners with us and secures creation by sending Jesus (and his compassionate justice) to us.

Great literature and recent ethical philosophy have much in common with the universal values which seem to define nearly every religious tradition: all see compassion and a desire for justice as being a force which takes us out of the materialist box of rational self-interest and into the realm of solidarity with the Other.

Merry Christmas to all (whether you celebrate with us or not)–and happy holidays, believers and atheists, literalists and pluralists– from a Christian who loves the story of the birth of Jesus as both religion and art!

Meowy Christmas!

From Santa Claws

PA Police Described as “Feudal Warlords” in Death of Immigrant

From the Associated Press, via NPR:

A Pennsylvania police chief charged with trying to cover up the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant by white teenagers was named in a 2006 civil suit that made a startling claim: Borough police beat to death a Hispanic teenager, then hung him from the bars of his holding cell to make it appear a suicide.

Matthew Nestor, police chief in the borough of Shenandoah, was never charged, but the allegations contained in the lawsuit, in Tuesday’s indictment and in other civil claims depict a police department with pervasive hostility to minorities and a penchant for using excessive force.

Police “acted as feudal warlords in this coal town community that people were afraid of,” said attorney John Karoly, who represents the parents of 18-year-old David Vega in their federal lawsuit against the borough. “I would not suggest they were abusive to everyone and anyone, but I would say the pattern certainly starts to appear that minorities took the thrust of their abuse.”

Salvation Army Bell-Ringing at its Finest

h/t Sasha

Winter Solstice: Why Isn’t The Shortest Day Also the Coldest?

more about “Video: Weather Wit & Wisdom December …“, posted with vodpod

The Onion Reports: New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths

Again, it’s THE ONION:

MINNEAPOLIS—A study published Monday in The Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry has concluded that an estimated 98 percent of children under the age of 10 are remorseless sociopaths with little regard for anything other than their own egocentric interests and pleasures.

According to Dr. Leonard Mateo, a developmental psychologist at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the study, most adults are completely unaware that they could be living among callous monsters who would remorselessly exploit them to obtain something as insignificant as an ice cream cone or a new toy.

“The most disturbing facet of this ubiquitous childhood disorder is an utter lack of empathy,” Mateo said. “These people—if you can even call them that—deliberately violate every social norm without ever pausing to consider how their selfish behavior might affect others. It’s as if they have no concept of anyone but themselves.”

“The depths of depravity that these tiny psychopaths are capable of reaching are really quite chilling,” Mateo added.

According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a clinical diagnostic tool, sociopaths often display superficial charm, pathological lying, manipulative behaviors, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. After observing 700 children engaged in everyday activities, Mateo and his colleagues found that 684 exhibited these behaviors at a severe or profound level.

The children studied also displayed many secondary hallmarks of antisocial personality disorder, most notably poor impulse control, an inability to plan ahead, and a proclivity for violence—often in the form of extended tantrums—when their needs were not immediately met.

“Children will use any tool at their disposal to secure gratification,” Mateo said. “And as soon as the desire is fulfilled, be it some material want or simply an insatiable and narcissistic desire for validation, they quickly become bored and lose interest in their victims, all the while thinking only of satisfying whatever their next hedonistic craving might be.”

Mateo added that even when subjects were directly confronted with the consequences of their inexplicable behavior, they had little or no capacity for expressing guilt, other than insincere utterances of “sorry” that were usually coerced.

Because children are so skilled at mimicking normal human emotions and will say anything without consideration for accuracy or truth, Mateo said that people often don’t realize that they’ve been exploited until it is too late. Though he maintained that anyone can fall victim to a child’s egocentric behavior, Mateo warned that grandmothers were especially susceptible to the self- serving machinations of tiny little sociopaths.

Despite the overwhelming evidence presented in the study, its findings have been met with heavy criticism from people who associate with children on a regular basis.

Batavia, NY resident and 38-year-old mother Mary Corcoran echoed the sentiments of many other adults who refuse to believe they are sharing their homes with merciless predators.

“Not my Jimmy. Just this morning, he told me I was the best mommy in the whole world,” Corcoran said of her son, 5. “In fact, he’s been such a sweet little boy this month that Santa just may bring him everything he asks for.”

Hard to Claim This High Ground While Wrestling in a Mud Pit

From the AP:

OSLO – President Barack Obama, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, says all nations must follow standards on the use of force.

The president, who last week ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, says he reserves the right as commander in chief to act unilaterally to defend the U.S. But he also said he is convinced that sticking to standards strengthens the countries that follow them — and isolates and weakens those countries that don’t.

Even when confronted with an adversary that doesn’t follow any rules, Obama said the U.S. must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war.

Obama spoke Thursday during a ceremony at city hall in Oslo, Norway, where he formally accepted the peace prize he was awarded in October.

An Old Man’s Winter Night, by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him — at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; — and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man — one man — can’t keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

War is Over

If You Want It.