Author: Fr. Antonios Kaldas

I am a Coptic Orthodox priest who has served at Archangel Michael and St Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church, Mount Druitt, Sydney, Australia, since 1991. I also serve with two special purpose groups: Aletheia Apologetics, which addresses difficult questions; and Solace of the Lord, which provides benevolent support. I lecture in Philosophy and Apologetics at St Cyril's Coptic Orthodox Theological College in Sydney. I am an active researcher in Philosophy of Mind at Macquarie University, with a particular interest in Consciousness Studies. I am married with two beautiful grown up children, and many pets, not all of whom have grown up emotionally, yet.
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Behind Copenhagen

As I write, the leaders of the world are gathered at Copenhagen to discuss what is to be done about the threat of global warming.

There remains a significant minority of climate change ‘sceptics’ in the world. The debate over the reality of global warming is a fascinating illustration of the human ability to ‘manufacture’ a preferred reality. At the one extreme you have environmentalists who have clamouring about the damage humans are doing to planet earth since the 1960s, and who now feel they have enough solid evidence to say a rather big “I told you so!” At the other extreme you have the vested commercial interests for whom saving the planet is just going to cost too much money, and who find it more convenient to believe that global warming is just a big conspiracy.

Both these extremes exhibit all the classic features of self-deception: picking and choosing the evidence that supports their case and ignoring the evidence that doesn’t; setting up ‘straw man’ arguments for their opponents and demolishing them; attacking the character of those on the other side; and so on. Their positions may be complete opposites, but sometimes it’s amazing how similar their tactics are! And none of those tactics are very likely to lead them to know the truth of the matter.

In the middle, of course, lies the real and objective science. As I understand the current state of play, the debate is able to continue because the evidence is not yet conclusive either way. It is simply not possible to say with certainty yet that man-made global warming is a perilous reality or to rule it out with confidence.

So the game becomes one of risk management. Sometimes, even if the risk of something bad happening is small, you may still want to invest a lot in avoiding it, because if it did happen, it would be disastrous. We do this every time we hop into a car. Your seat belt will be useless and inconvenient 99.9% of the time you are in the car. Yet you put up with that because that 0.1% of the time when you need it, when you are involved in an accident, it can save your life. The seriousness of the danger makes all that inconvenience worthwhile. That seems to be the argument of the more sensible and objective climate change believers at the moment, and I must confess it makes a lot of sense to me.

It also bears a startling resemblance to the argument about believing in God. Even if you believe it highly unlikely that God exists, the danger of being an unbeliever if God is real is so great that it actually makes sense to believe in God just in case. I suppose this is another variation on Blaise Pascal’s famous wager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager).

Following the risk minimisation logic through, you will find some rather unexpected personalities on either side of the global warming debate. For example, while the Greens’ Senator Bob Brown is an avowed atheist, he sees the sense in taking the safe path on the environment. On the other hand, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell is a climate change sceptic!

That’s not to say that all Christians should be global warming believers. As I said before, the evidence remains inconclusive at this point. But it is interesting to see how people can change their standards for accepting things so drastically according to what they want to believe.

The gathering is interesting from another side as well. Nations have historically found it almost impossible to collaborate effectively on anything without selfishly seeking what’s best for themselves. Even friendly nations often will not help each other without getting something out of it, or at least safeguarding their own interests. The Americans have been the world champions at this game for some time now, although China seems to be challenging for the crown through its business ventures in Africa. But now, faced with a potential crisis that threatens the very existence of nations, and one that threatens the whole world without exception, will this selfish approach be continued? Or will the nations finally feel that they must put aside individual agendas and come together to save humanity from destruction?

I think it would be naive to expect that any real change in attitude is likely to occur, at least not until things get really, really bad. And perhaps not even then. And yet, it will be interesting to observe just how much change does occur, and how much of it is genuine rather than grandstanding on the world stage.

Meanwhile, think green! Hey, it’s a nicer lifestyle anyway.

Fr Ant

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The Top Ten

 

We are currently in the process of developing an updated course of religious education for the Primary School at St Mark’s College. It’s a huge job (all prayers much appreciated) and one that will take at least a couple of years if it is to be done right. Part of the process is to identify and list the most important verses and Bible passages so that a schedule of passages for memorisation can be produced. Rather than putting this together willy nilly, our strategy is to first identify the most important Bible passages and then pare this list down to those that are most crucial. These will be memorised over the 13 years of schooling the students receive at a Coptic School.

If you had to list the most important Bible passages to you, which would you include? Perhaps they would be passages of comfort and hope? Would you put in those that teach basic tenets of the Christian faith, like the divinity of Christ or the means of salvation? Would you include passages that are just poetically beautiful? I have found the process to be surprisingly interesting. Having only completed less than half the job, our list has already gone over the 250 mark. Every one of them is a passage that is probably instantly recognisable to any Christian, yet I had no idea there were so many!

I am beginning to think I might want to print up this list and hang it on my wall. In a way, it is like a gallery that depicts all I believe, and how I want to live my life. Of course, the danger is that this list ends up being just a transcription of the whole Bible, so a degree of discernment must be applied. And that’s the hard part. It isn’t hard to find life-changing passages in the Bible; the hard part is choosing a select few to represent the whole faith.

Anyhow, allow me to share with you some of the more beautiful of the longer passages I have added to the list. I find these inspiring and moving, as profound in their message as they are striking in their expression. My Top Ten Bible Passages:

1. Isaiah 53:3-9
2. Matthew chapters 6-8
3. John chapters 14-17
4. Romans 8:35-39
5. 1 Corinthians 9:19-22
6. 1 Corinthians 13:1-8
7. 2 Corinthians 6:4-10
8. Philippians 2:5-8
9. Philippians 4:11-13
10. Hebrews 11:33-40

Perhaps I have leant too heavily on the New Testament and neglected the Old, but it is so hard to choose! Perhaps if I went through this exercise again in a month’s time, the list would be different. If you had to do a personal “Top Ten” list of Bible passages or verses, which would they be? Feel free to share your own particular favourites.

Fr Ant

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Stay Away From The Sand.

 In the days before I became a priest, I had many interesting discussions with various Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons (for some strange reason they seem to avoid me now). Among the many things this taught me was how easy it is to fall into the trap of making the Bible mean what you want it to mean. Allow me to clarify.

 There are two ways to approach the Bible. One is to read it with an open mind and let it educate you; and the other is to come to the Bible with a fixed idea already in your mind, and then selectively read it in order to find support for that idea.

 I shouldn’t just blame the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. At university I had a rather difficult dialogue with a homosexual Christian. I could not for the life of me see how one could profess Christianity yet openly flout a very clearly stated tenet of Christianity. His arguments were masterpieces of Bible twisting.

 And just in case you’re starting to feel a bit smug about it all at this stage, I am afraid that we in the Coptic Church are sometimes guilty of a bit of clever Bible twisting ourselves. How often have I heard a disgruntled husband sulkily pointing to St Paul’s command that wives must submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22)? Somehow, the verse before it (“submitting to one another”) seems to be invisible to these guys. People use Bible passages to accuse and discredit their enemies, forgetting that the same Bible exhorts them to love their enemies and do good to those who persecute them.

In fact, the Bible itself warns us not to twist its words: “knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Peter1:20). History is replete with sad examples of Christians reading into the Bible support for their own agendas that in reality have nothing to do with God’s Word. The medieval Crusaders killed and pillaged and raped in the name of Christ. The European Catholic Church of the early Renaissance put people to death as heretics for believing that the earth orbits around the sun. In each of these cases, selected Bible verses interpreted in a certain way were used to back up these actions; actions that we now see are clearly the opposite of what the Bible stands for and teaches.

The Protestant Reformation reacted to this particular form of Bible twisting by creating its own. Martin Luther himself is notorious for calling the Epistle of St James a “book of straw” and dismissing its teachings. Why? Because St James insists that “faith without works is dead”, whereas Luther espoused the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone without works. Thus does HH Pope Shenouda III often warn us to beware the danger of the “single verse”; the use of a Bible passage taken out of context, and without reference to all the other passages in the Bible that touch upon the topic.

You can be more confident in your interpretation of a Bible passage if no other Bible passage contradicts that interpretation (of course, you must also beware of mangling the meaning of other passages so you can squeeze them into your interpretation). As Orthodox Christians, we have another check on our interpretation: Holy Tradition. This consists of the interpretation of the Bible by the Fathers of the Church, the generations who lived in the centuries immediately after Christ, including Fathers who knew the Apostles personally, who sat and learned at their feet.

Christianity is a living tradition, not a monument of granite. The basic truths of Christianity will always be the same in every age and in every society, but of course it is the application of those truths that can often be most challenging. How much harder that challenge is if those truths themselves are vague or misinterpreted because we haven’t been diligent and honest in our reading of the Bible!

 Like building a house on a foundation of sand.

 Fr Ant

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Awesome!

The fourth annual Archangel Michael & St Bishoy Church Trivia Night last Sunday was everything it promised … and more (about 20 degrees Celsius more!) Yes, it was hot: and I’m not just talking about the competition. The scorching November Sunday evening had us wondering just how bad global warming might become.

Yet somehow, a couple of hundred dedicated quizzers managed to keep their grey matter from liquefying and focused on the challenging questions. It was great to see Team 2 Kool 4 Skool there for the first time, representing the teachers of St Bishoy College. While their spelling was atrocious (write that out properly a hundred times!) their general knowledge was dazzling. They just beat out Team Hectic Kebabs into third place overall for the night. No prizes for guessing what was on the minds of the fourth place getters, just two sleeps away from 43 days of fasting.

But in the final run, it was the syntactically challenged Team Awesomeness versus the imaginatively named Team Insert Names who battled it out for the shiny new trophy. And when the final scores went up on the electronic score board, it was an awesome victory for the awesome Team Awesomeness, while the second place getters were left to insert their names on the runner-up certificates. Well done to a team who have been there or thereabouts in every trivia night so far.

No doubt you will want to know how Team MIB fared. Yes, the team made up of the clergy and their families struggled bravely through questions from maths to nautical navigation. Had we known there would be points up for grabs for being able to catch a lolly thrown at you with your mouth, we might have practiced! It’s not that easy when you have to deal with the wind-drag on a moving beard. Then there was that hope-crushing crashing out of their entrant in the Speak-for-60 seconds-without-saying-the-word-‘and’ competition. 59seconds! We was robbed!

I’m not trying to make excuses, mind you. But I will point out that we did improve two whole places to come 6th this year. At that rate of annual improvement, I expect we should win the competition in 2012.

Not that it’s about winning, of course. It was a lovely night of good natured fun and fellowship, the kind of occasion that brings people closer together in love and Christian unity. Once again, I am left feeling incredibly honoured to be serving among a group of such dedicated and mature youth who designed and ran the night with very few hitches indeed – may God bless them all.

Now for next year, do you think we might have a few more questions about religion, and astronomy, perhaps?

Pretty please?

Fr Ant

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In Praise of Truth

 I thought twice before writing this piece. The danger is that it is a topic where it would be so easy to sound trite and fanciful. For those experienced in the fickle ways of the world, truth can become nothing more than fantasy for children. When our Lord proclaimed that He had come to bear witness to the truth, the jaded Pilate scoffed cynically, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In more recent times, post modernism has seen truth become suspect; so much so that any idea of a real, objective truth is to be rejected, and the only truth is a relative truth. You can make up your own truth.

 

And yet, truth cannot be so easily dismissed. It is there, lurking underneath everything we experience. Solid and unyielding, sometimes surprising, occasionally astonishing, always constant; our existence is built upon the basic existence of truth.

 

Our Lord called Himself “The Truth” (John 14:6) and He called the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of Truth” (John 16:13). He came into the world “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) and He exulted that the Truth would set us free (John 8:32). He denounced the devil because he “does not stand in the truth and the truth is not in him” (John 8:44).

 

For the *true* follower of Christ, then, truth is not an optional extra. It is an essential part of the make up of the Christian and should be found within the very fibre and sinew of the Christian soul. To be separated from the truth is, for the Christian, to be separated from life itself.

 

Truth is beautiful.

 

When we study the creation that surrounds us, how can we not be moved by its beauty? This is a beauty grounded firmly in truth. There is the true reality of the twinkling stars of space, the reality of the sweet harmony of a little bird’s call on a fresh spring morning and the reality of the soothing scent of a dew flecked rose. We take these things in with our senses and we know that we are alive! We know intuitively the difference between what is real and what is imagined, between waking and dreaming.

 

The deeper we delve, the more beauty do we find. A complex mathematical problem suddenly comes together and falls precisely into place: “Beautiful!” erupts the student. And it is! A solemn piece of music or a well crafted poem moves us to tears and we sigh longingly, “Beautiful”. A deep spiritual insight breaks upon our consciousness, explaining much that was hidden to us before and we shake our heads and say … “Beautiful”. This universe of ours is filled with natural laws and events that are finely tuned and amazingly designed. Among them is our own brain, designed with the built-in capacity to recognise truth and to delight in its beauty.

 

Truth can be painful, yet its beauty is not thereby diminished at all.

 

As long as one lives in truth, one is surrounded by its piercing beauty. There is a joy, a life , a vivid clarity in the sense of reality that truth brings that transforms even painful truths into deep pleasures. Yes, there is a sort of pleasure in discovering an evil creeping about inside your soul. You are repelled by the ugliness of the sin and the horror of having that slimy spiritual substance staining your innermost being. And yet, to discover it, to know that it is no longer hidden, to finally understand why you behave so unaccountably badly at times – this brings its own great joy and relief. The world begins to make sense again, and of course, true repentance becomes possible.

 

For without truth, there can be no true repentance. How can the soul that deceives itself ever truly repent? If it lies about the existence of its sins, how can it repent them? If it falsely apportions blame to others but never to itself, what can it change in order to attain repentance? If it constantly finds false excuses to excuse its evil behaviour, how shall it ever be motivated to repent? The truth of one’s own sinful nature is one of the hardest truths for us to bear, and a truth we flee from by instinct. But those who insist on turning around and facing it, however painful and dangerous it may be, discover in that courageous act the nobility of truth. And they are transformed by it, just as a coward’s life is transformed when he finally stops running from his fears and turns around to face them. He becomes a different person.

 

This is the transforming power of the Truth of Christ.

 

There is so much more to say in praise of truth. Perhaps, another time.

 

Fr Ant

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A Very Precious Person

Today is 14th November. It is the anniversary of the ordination of our own beloved Fr Botros in 1996 (Happy Anniversary Abouna!) but it is also the anniversary of the enthronement of His Holiness Pope Shenouda III way back in 1971. No doubt, a great deal will be written and said about this beacon of Coptic history, but I would just like to add a few personal little memories to the avalanche of praise that rains down this day.

You see, for me, it is not the more obvious achievements that inspire my love and affection for this man whom I have only met on a handful of occasions in my life. It is not the number of Churches he has established, nor ordinations he has carried out. It is not what he has done that impresses me, it is who he is; his character and personality.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Pope Shenouda has played a vital role in my being Coptic Orthodox Christian and in serving as a priest. Through his character and his leadership, he has created a Church where the Truth of Christianity is first and foremost, above all else. This may sound obvious, but it must not be taken for granted. There are sadly many Christian communities in this world where the Truth of Christianity takes a secondary role to material wealth, or politics, or power, or personal rivalries.

His Holiness also made the Church into a more open institution. He warmly welcomed people who do not fit the usual image of a Coptic Christian into the Church with open arms. His personal support for missionary work in Africa and elsewhere is a case in point. His concerted efforts to make the French and British Orthodox a part of the Coptic Church without losing their individual identity is another example.

My own service is yet another example. Who ever heard of a man being ordained a Coptic priest when he could not even say “Abana Allazee” (“Our Father”) in Arabic, but only in barbarous English?! In my early years, some people left our parish in disgust that this new-fangled priest was praying in English in the Sunday liturgy. Without the sense of support and confidence from His Holiness, neither I nor the many other Fathers and layservants who have grown up in Australia and other western lands could have continued in our service. His Holiness made us feel that we belonged in the Coptic Church, where many others in times past would have excluded anyone who didn’t fit the Arabic mould.

Even more influential has been His Holiness’ personal modelling of integrity and character. His courage and strength are now legendary, being displayed in the difficult Sadat years. His wisdom has been extraordinary and his theological and spiritual knowledge and ability as a teacher have had influence far beyond the limits of Coptic Orthodoxy.

But it is his meticulous and constant application of Christian morals that has inspired me the most. His Holiness is the kind of person who insists on the truth in all he does, big and small. He refuses to take shortcuts that are not in keeping with Christian morals and ethics, no matter how hard that might make things.

Added to this honesty is a compassion and selflessness that is astounding for one in a position of authority such as his. Patriarchs are bowed to and served hand and foot. How easy it would be to just take this for granted; he is certainly busy enough to just accept this and turn his mind to weightier matters. And yet…

It was very dark, and four new young priests were standing outside the Papal Cell in St Bishoy’s Monastery at 2am, waiting to welcome His Holiness back from Cairo where he had just delivered his weekly Wednesday Sermon to 10,000 listeners. They scratched sleepily at the itchy fuzz in their newborn beards. The car swept up the driveway, and the small figure of His Holiness emerged from the back door. With a smile beneath manifestly tired eyes he patiently greeted the small group, and after a little good natured banter, he began to climb the steps to his cell. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around. He called his secretary and sent him into the cell to get something for him. A moment later, he called up the four startled new priests and gave them each a little torch. “Here,” he said, “take these. I was told that the monastery generators have been breaking down lately, and you might find that your electricity cuts out every now and then. You might want to keep reading in the dark, so use these.”

I still keep my torch as a treasured memory of a love that cares for each and every soul individually. Even at 2am after an exhausting Patriarchal day.

That is but one example of many of the courtesy, the thoughtfulness and the genuine love that His Holiness lives in our midst every day. Most of our youth have never known the Church without Pope Shenouda. May they continue to be led by his example for many years to come. Fr Ant

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I Like Coptic.

Coptic manuscriptI really like Coptic.

The language, I mean. It is a beautiful thing in itself, and it also opens doors to new dimensions of spiritual growth. When I hear it, I like to think about the words echoing down from at least 5,000 years ago, changing slightly every few centuries to be sure, but still their essence continues from generation to generation, through historical periods as diverse as that of the Hyksos and the Turks (who both ruled Egypt at different times). I imagine an Egyptian peasant chatting idly with his friend on a felucca on the Nile as they drift lazily past the temple of an ancient god, or kindly father gathering his wife and children around him on the roof at evening to pray and read the Bible to them in Coptic.

My son recently introduced me to a Bible system you can download for free called “e-sword” (www.e-sword.net). I already have two Bible programmes on my computer, so I wasn’t very excited, until he told me you can also download the Bible in heaps of unusual formats. So now, I have the Septuagint in Greek, the Old Testament in Hebrew and best of all: the Bible in Sahidic Coptic! OK, I can’t read Hebrew, and I’m on my L plates with Koine Greek, but these versions have little links for each word so that if you hover your mouse over it, it gives you an instant dictionary definition of the word.

Reading the Bible in another language often provides insights into the finer shades of meaning, especially if it’s in the original language used to write it in the first place. I use the Hebrew and Greek versions when I want to get to the bottom of a tricky or uncertain verse, or when I want to discover some of the alternative definitions of the words used that haven’t translated across to the English. For example, there are four different words in Greek that are all translated into the English language as “love”, and each one has a different meaning. CS Lewis has a famous book about this topic called The Four Loves.

There’s more: reading the Bible in Coptic tells me a little about how our ancient forefathers (and mothers) interpreted the Bible. A translation can tell you a lot about the translator. Many words in one language will have no directly equivalent word in another language, so the choice of words, the choice of shades of meaning in the translation tells you what the translator thought was most important in the original. Reading it in Coptic, you can imagine St Anthony walking into the Church as a young man and hearing those exact Coptic words thundering down from the lectern to pierce his heart with longing to follow Christ. The way the phrases are structured in Coptic builds a slightly different picture in my head to that I get when I read it in English.

That’s also why I pray a Coptic liturgy every Thursday. I’m still learning, so it’s only about three-quarters Coptic so far, but growing. There is something different about our liturgy when it’s prayed in Coptic. Perhaps it is because the melodies were made for these words. Or perhaps again it is the sentence structure and the use of the specific words chosen. I am not sure, but I do know that the Coptic liturgy is a precious jewel in our treasure box of Coptic heritage. It needs a lot of effort to learn the language and come to appreciate it, but in my experience, it is effort that is rewarded many-fold.

And finally, there are those who wish to bring Coptic back to life. What a great thing that would be! There are virtual communities out there, such as Remenkimi, who regularly communicate in Coptic – that’s right, they exchange Coptic language emails. Anyone who’s interested in learning more about Coptic will find a wealth of information at their website (www.remenkimi.com).

A word of warning: while the learning and use of Coptic in our spiritual lives can be greatly beneficial, some people can take it a bit too far and become fanatical about it. Coptic should never be forced upon people – it should be a choice they can make if they wish to. There are many who know not the slightest scrap of Coptic and still enjoy deeply fulfilling lives within the Coptic Church, and that is as it should be, for our Church is about Christ, after all, not a human language or culture. It may not be for everyone, but learning Coptic is worthwhile for those who are interested in languages, and those who are interested in authentically experiencing the ancient and unique Coptic spiritual heritage in all its native glory.

Ougai!

Fr Ant

PS HH Pope Shenouda III Coptic Theological College offers courses in Coptic, Hebrew and Greek languages. I can also strongly recommend a “do-it-yourself” Coptic primer by Sam Younan enticingly titled “So You Want to Learn Coptic?“

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Wow! A new blog system to confuse me all over again…

Thank you Bill for once again working your magic and upgrading this blog. I hope that this post turns up, becuase if it doesn’t, I’m going to have to bug you for a tutorial!

While there are many disadvantages to our technological age, there are also without doubt many advantages. Communicating via a blog is one of them! So is Skype (and things like it). As a child growing up in the era when dialling a phone number meant poking your finger in a hole and rotating an actual dial, I wondered if the day would ever come when ‘television phones’ would be commonplace. Now, it is not only possible, but you can do it from your mobile phone!

It is not the technology that is good or bad in itself – it is after all just a tool. If anything it allows us a greater ability to achieve the things we wish. If those things are evil, then it allows us to do more evil, if good, then we can do more good. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I wonder when I’ll have a flying car in my driveway…

Fr Ant

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Which Truth Is True?

There are many interesting contrasts to be found in history. By putting two personalities side by side and comparing their lives, one often gains valuable insights and lessons. Consider two famous reformers whose lives overlapped; Mohandas Ghandi (1869-1948) and American Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957).

For those who may not be aware of their stories, Mohandas Ghandi was an Indian lawyer who fought for civil rights for Indians in South Africa and then later was one of the leaders of the movement to achieve the independence of India from British rule.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was also a lawyer who became a Republican senator in the USA from 1947-1957, the post-war period when communist Russia was growing in power and spreading its influence around the world. Many in the USA felt as threatened by communism as they do today by Muslim extremists and terrorists. This led to the “Cold War”, in which no actual fighting took place between Russia and America, but a tense state of rivalry existed continuously. McCarthy was at the forefront of the movement to keep communism out of America.

These two men tried to change their societies for the better, or at least what they each saw as being better. Ghandi saw the injustice of South African racism and fought to create fairness and equality between whites, blacks and Indians. He saw how Imperial Britain was plundering his native land India for its own selfish purposes and fought for the freedom of his people. McCarthy saw a great threat from Communism in America and fought to stop its ideas spreading in the nation built upon democracy, individual ambition and the free market.

But where Ghandi often looked for the good in others and within himself, McCarthy saw evil where it did not exist. While Ghandi had a very strong grip on reality, McCarthy believed and acted upon falsehoods. For Ghandi, truth was paramount. He refused to take advantage from anything that was false, no matter how much it might benefit his cause and advance his goals. He went so far as to identify God with Truth, a very Christian concept! With this attitude, it is no wonder that he was brutally truthful with himself, weeding out his own failings and inconsistencies constantly and thus treating others with a deep and genuine humility. Perhaps it was because he set such a high standard of truth for his own inner life that he was able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood so easily in his external life.

McCarthy on the other hand took the opposite view. In order to achieve his goals, he was willing to arrogantly throw unsubstantiated accusations at people left right and centre, thus stirring up mass hysteria. While some of his allegations turned out to be true, time has shown that most of them were exaggerated or totally false. He was in fact, a skilled exponent of the “Conspiracy Theory”. This is a well known phenomenon in modern society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory). Its common features include allegations of secret plots, usually carried out by shady characters who appear innocent but have great hidden power or influence. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are very hard to discredit. When anyone points out the obvious mistakes in them, they are immediately painted as being part of the conspiracy! McCarthy accused even many of his fellow politicians as being closet communists, which no doubt contributed to his own eventual self-destruction.

Another stark difference is evident in the tactics and ethics of the two reformers. On one occasion, as Ghandi was a leading a major protest against the British, he insisted that the protest be halted over the Christmas break. He would not take the Christian police and security guards away from their families on a day he knew to be very precious and special for them, even though he himself was Hindu and not Christian.
On the other hand, we find McCarthy willing to bully and threaten, abusing his position as a senator throwing wild allegations around that tarnished the name of many good people and organisations unnecessarily. He seems to have felt no compassion for the many lives he damaged, for the innocent wives and children of those he wrongly accused of being communist.

Both Ghandi and McCarthy had enemies who opposed them and did their best to discredit them. But again, it is interesting to note the character of their respective enemies. Ghandi’s enemies used smear and innuendo together with unjust imperial power to try to stop him. McCarthy’s enemies were not opposed to his goals, but rather to his tactics, and used the legitimate power of the senate and common sense arguments to censure him and stop his irrational witch hunt.

Both men suffered for their efforts. Ghandi spent a number of years in jail throughout his campaigns, a situation he accepted with calmness and dignity. Nor did he allow this painful experience to weaken his commitment to his noble goals, nor to embitter his feelings. In a most Christ-like display of forgiveness, he held nothing against his enemies and treated them always with dignity and respect. Through this patient and confident strength, he overcame his enemies. He was an example to his countrymen, an example that was probably the biggest factor in the fact that independence came to India peacefully, rather than with a bloody war of independence. In the end, he was assassinated: the man who fought for peace and non-violence all his life died by violence. But his legacy lives on until today. India celebrates his birthday as a public holiday, and it is also International Day of Non-Violence.

With time, the rational majority in the USA began to feel uncomfortable with McCarthy’s fanaticism and his conspiracy theories. Courageous senators began to stand up against him and openly challenge his tactics, thus running the risk of being accused of being communists or communist sympathisers themselves. But in the end, sanity prevailed, and in 1954 the American Senate censured McCarthy; a rare dishonour. This broke his power and effectively put an end to his policies. From that time on, he was shunned by other senators who would leave the chamber when he spoke, or blatantly turn their backs to him and ignore him. His public popularity waned, and he died three years later, most likely from alcohol-induced liver failure.

One would imagine that Ghandi died with a sense of peace, having maintained his integrity all his life, and having lived and died for the principles he believed in so strongly. McCarthy on the other hand, appears to have fallen into alcoholism during his later years and died a broken man.

Perhaps this contrast can teach us much about life. It is not enough to have noble goals. The way we go about achieving our goals is often just as important as the goals themselves. “The end does not justify the means”, the famous proverb says, and McCarthy’s life is an ample illustration of the truth of that saying.

Devotion to Truth is another of the major lessons I see here. Ghandi’s insistence upon truth and his unwillingness to accept or use innuendo, allegations or gossip to his own advantage raised him above his enemies and many of his fellow reformers. McCarthy’s crass self-serving methods discredited him and lost him the respect of his fellow Americans, so that “McCarthysim” has passed into the English language as a most derogatory term. Sadly, he might have been a hero of history had he used more ethical methods. The difference was Truth. Both of them claimed to be telling the truth, but only one of them really was.

For a brief summary of their lives, the interested reader will find Wikipedia useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghandi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

I have not yet read a good biography of Joe McCarthy, but I can highly recommend Ghandi’s autobiography; “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”.

Fr Ant

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Hitchens’ Twisted Mind

What kind of God asks you to kill your son?

Christopher Hitchens, one of the “New Athiests”, posed this question in a lecture I heard recently. With great eloquence, Hitchens put God under the microscope and found Him wanting. How could God have asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah? What would we think of any human leader who asked us to kill our children to prove our loyalty and obedience? Surely, we would call such a leader a megalomaniacal despot, an egotistical maniac? That was the gist of his argument against God. It is Hitchens, after all, who wrote a booked entitled: “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”.

A sincere Christian cannot leave such a challenge unanswered…

The Unique Nature of God

If a human being were to demand this act of another human being, one would certainly have to question his motives and his character. No human has the right to take the life of another. We are all on the same level, so none of us has the right to practice the power of life and death over another, or even over himself. That is why the consistent Christian is opposed to both abortion and euthanasia.

And yet, we do not mind killing lesser creatures for good reasons. I have no doubt that even Hitchens occasionally sits down to enjoy a nice meal of roast lamb chops. I wonder, this make him a megalomaniacal despot and an egotistical maniac? How dare he participate in the brutal slaughter of a poor and innocent fluffy little lamb, merely to satisfy his selfish desire for protein?!

Now it is true that there are vegetarians in this world who for conscience’ sake refuse to eat the meat of living creatures. But they still eat vegetables and fruits and nuts, which once were also alive in their own way. They too grew and flourished, only to be cut down ruthlessly in their prime merely to please the palate of the human eater. It may seem a silly comparison, but if God is who we think He is, then the difference between a celery and a human is nothing compared to the difference between a human and God. If the human is justified in eating a celery because it is so far inferior to him as to be considered expendable, then God must certainly be justified in sacrificing a human, because a human is far, far more inferior when compared to God. What is more, humans eat fruits they have not created. They merely plant and water them, but no human makes a plant grow out of his own power. Yet God is the One who made each of us out of nothing. Without Him we would not exist. Does not the Giver of life have the right to take it away if He so chooses?

The Sublimity of Surrender

The above looks at the matter from the perspective of God, but looked at from the perspective of Abraham or even of Isaac, Hitchens’ argument is equally unacceptable. Hitchens is guilty of a mistake that is common in modern Western society: the destruction of the good name of Submission.
For the modern thinker, surrender is the ultimate evil. If we look at relationships as a power struggle, then indeed to submit to another is a defeat. In many areas in this world, the strong defeats the weak and forces him to submit. Moreover, this submission is often designed in such a way as to humiliate the loser, to cruelly rub their face in the dirt.

But for a God of Love, submission is not a power struggle, but an indication of strength: the invincible strength, in fact, of true, divine, aghape love. Think of a father carrying his small daughter, perhaps two years old. This father allows his child to play with his nose, to grab it and pull it painfully, and then laugh at her achievement. He is submitting to his daughter. She is the victor, he the vanquished. But this is not a power struggle. This is a relationship of love, and the father’s willing submission is an expression of that love. He would in fact give anything for his daughter, perhaps, his own life in order to save hers. That is his free choice, a choice he makes because it is the nature of love to give without expecting anything in return. This is the beauty and the nobility of love.

This is the love shown by Abraham. God never forced Abraham to sacrifice his son. He did not threaten him with punishments if he refused. He merely asked him to do it, and the choice was completely up to Abraham whether to obey or not. In the same way, young Isaac must have willingly submitted to his father’s wishes. There is no sense of a struggle in the story. It is true that the Bible tells us that Abraham bound Isaac with thongs upon the altar, but there is no mention of resistance from Isaac. Very likely, he trusted his father as implicitly as his father trusted in God.

Abraham was willing to give back to God the most precious thing he had in his life: his one and only son. After a lifetime of Abraham and Sarah longing for a son in vain, after finally receiving the son of their prayers in old age, what an incredible sacrifice it must have been for Abraham to give that son back to God, and to do so with his own hands. It is an action that bespeaks tremendous faith and trust in God, and submission; freely chosen submission that came from love, not from weakness. He could easily have said ‘no’.

Thus does the human father test his daughter by asking if she would give up her favourite toy for him to play with. He does not need the toy and it is not the toy he is interested in. He is interested in his daughter’s reaction, whether she will love and trust him enough to give up her toy to him, whether her heart is selfish or generous. With such gentle tests, the father teaches his daughter what it means to love and to give. And when she gives him her toy, he immediately gives it back to her, together with so many hugs and kisses of genuine affection for his gracious little dear. This is what the incident of Moriah is all about.

The Historical Context

In this test of faith and love, God also gave Abraham an important message. Many tribes of Abraham’s time, with whom Abraham would no doubt have come into contact, practiced the cruel sacrifice of their children to their gods. These tribes actually did kill their own children in a bloody frenzy of madness and misguided devotion to false gods. We cannot even begin to imagine the horrors that must have played out in these people’s minds over the years.
Abraham was susceptible to following the example of these tribes. But on Moriah, God showed him that such a thing was unnecessary. It was as if He was saying to Abraham: “I know that you are willing to go even as far as killing your son for Me. Your devotion is at least as fervent as that of the pagans. But it is more than theirs, just as I am more a true God than their gods. Do not follow in their footsteps and do not imitate them, for you see, I have no need of their kind of sacrifice. I will bless you for what is in your heart, and not for your external actions only.”

So much of the pagan religions of ancient times seems to have been external. Yet here was God pointing out to Abraham that it is his willingness to obey and to submit that really matters, not the killing of his son. God is not interested in having children sacrificed to Him. He is interested in kind of heart His children have. This approach to worship must have been absolutely revolutionary for Abraham’s time and environment. It is easy to see how it fits in with the teaching of Jesus and prepares us for it.

A Base and Narrow Mind

Finally, I cannot help wondering at the kind of mind that can only see such horror in something so beautiful. If anything, I think Hitchens’ comments reveal far more about Hitchens that they do about God. He and his fellow critics of religion look upon the astounding sacrifice of love of the Cross of Christ and see only vileness. Richard Dawkins describes the Cross as “sado-masochistic” in The God Delusion. Somehow, he manages to keep himself completely blind to the love that the Cross represents, the supreme act of humility, of noble giving of oneself, of total and utter devotion to the beloved. Instead, he can only view the Cross from the point of view of selfishness. Upon the Cross, if Dawkins is to be believed, we see only God satisfying a base aberration of the human mind: the Father being sadistic to the Son; the Son enjoying the suffering in a fit of twisted masochism. “Religion poisons everything” says Hitchens. Who is doing the poisoning now?

What kind of mind can reduce noble love to animal violence? What’s next, I wonder? Nursing mothers only care for their child because they have a perverted desire to fatten them up and eat them? This is perhaps one of the most repugnant aspects of the New Atheists. They really seem not have thought things through to their logical conclusion. They seem unaware that their philosophy leads eventually to everything we hold dear in life losing its value, and in the end, to a sort of nihilistic fatalism where nothing matters anymore.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Fr Ant