Virtue by Osmosis?

Thursday March 31, 2011

In strict contrast to Monday’s blog, there are acts of stunning kindness around the world. You may recall in October 2006 a 32-year-old milk truck driver barricaded himself in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and shot 10 young girls execution style. Yet within days, grieving parents reached out to the widow of the killer, offering forgiveness and financial assistance.

A new study from University of British Columbia finds that just reading about extreme acts of “human goodness” can make people more virtuous, and more willing to help strangers. You can read the story at http://www.theprovince.com/news/Acts+kindness+inspire+others/4526024/story.html#ixzz1I6QWaQh7

I’m not disputing that their conclusion may be true, even though the experiment seems a little contrived. In fact, the “Act of Random Kindness” movement is based on the premise that virtuous acts tend to be repeated by the recipients. If this is so, our compassionate actions should have a cascading effect throughout our community, beyond the initial kindness.

However, the producers of violence on film and television constantly try to assure us their product doesn’t have the same effect on viewers, even the impressionable. The same goes for unethical and indecent behaviour, particularly when shown as acceptable or justified.

If it is really true that what we expose ourselves to affects our behaviour, is it a clue where destructive behaviour comes from, both in our communities and worldwide? Perhaps it is a hint why the sins of the father will be visited on succeeding generations. The children will be punished for their own sins because they simply copy dad’s example. See Ezekiel 18.

I leave you to consider the implication for all of us.

When Will It End?

Probably most of you have seen the news video of Eman al-Obaidi and heard her screams as she tried to tell her story to foreign journalists in a Libyan hotel. She showed the blood and bruises from being gang-raped by Ghadafi’s soldiers, before Libyan security intervened and bundled her away in a car.

This video clip may well be a defining moment in the Libyan uprising for freedom and justice. The many stories of atrocities, terrible though they are, simply become a backdrop to Ghadafi’s rule, but this dramatic presentation of distress from vicious cruelty sears the mind. It becomes the symbol of the systematic violence of autocratic oppression, not only in Libya, but much of the Arab world.

Emergency rule, allowing the detention of anyone without arrest or trial, has been in place for decades in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria, and probably other Arab states. The number of repeats of Obaidi’s experience, and other variations of nationally sanctioned intimidation, in so many nations for up to half a century, defies imagination.

These atrocities rival Stalin’s purges and Hitler’s holocaust. The only difference: these victims died, and continue to die, one at a time over decades, unnoticed apart from grieving families.

This story highlights three things for me.

First, the temperament of the Arab populations has changed. Populations’ fear, infused for half a century by their leaders, has turned to anger, against which intimidation will not work. Further episodes like Obaidi’s will only continue to stoke the wrath of the people. The turmoil is not yet over.

Second, it is a picture of human depravity and its outcome when unchecked. Given the right conditions, the murderous inclination of the human heart, from Abel and Lamech to the outrages of the last century, continue unabated, with no cure from human ability.

Finally, there is hope in Jesus Christ, the only source able to finally tame and change the human heart. His return will herald the world meant to be. Whether in spiritual darkness or in physical captivity, He will come “to open the eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” “He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth” (Isaiah 42:7 and 4).

Apparently, Religion is Close to Extinction!

I find it difficult to believe that otherwise intelligent people fall into the eternal trap of thinking that human practice since time began is going to collapse in a few short years? Yet those who can’t learn the lessons of history, because their determined divorce from God blinds their vision, once again repeat that tired old idea.

An American Physical Society study noted a steady rise in the percentage of residents who claim no religious affiliation, and explained how social factors could help push religion toward the dustbin of history. But they it give a hundred years; time to die before their predictions can be challenged! Read their story at http://www.canada.com/life/Canadians+losing+faith+religion+faces+extinction/4485943/story.html

The world renowned Physicist Stephen Hawking, pictured, claims, awking, pictured, joins the chorus: “God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments in physics,” hardening his previous position that “the Big Bang was merely the consequence of the law of gravity.” Read the account at http://www.canada.com/life/create+Universe+Hawking/3473347/story.html

These predictions also remind me of those who predict the end of the world or Christ’s return on specific dates. I recall Paul’s declaration that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:25), or that “the One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs” at those who seek to throw off God’s “chains” Psalm 2:1–4).

In fact, Reginald Bibby’s careful analysis of statistics on religious belief in his book Restless Churches disputes the persistent old line of religion’s decline. It seems that academia, the legal system and media who promote the idea, believe most people share their secular philosophy and carelessly fit the numbers to their beliefs.

The claim of religious decline not only contradicts history, it also repeats the same discredited claims by eminent ones in the past. Bibby lists Comte, Durkheim, Marx and Freud. He also quotes Harvey Cox who deserted his secular followers with: “Today it is secularity, not spirituality, that may be headed for extinction.”

In a recent cross-country trip to Montreal, Ann and I noticed new large churches, often several, in most cities we visited. In hardened Montreal, an old church building is being revitalized by a flourishing church plant. Even this simple exercise makes it hard to believe in religion’s decline.

The protestations of those like the American Physical Society and Hawking seem like a mouse trying to rationalize away the elephant behind him, instead of taking action to preserve his life!

It’s a Mad, Mad World

The atrocious treatment of unarmed demonstrators during the last week in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, as well as Libya underscores “man’s inhumanity to man” in strong relief. The cries of the numbers of people bereaved or maimed for life in Arab uprisings makes it difficult to sleep at night.

Yet we are aware of similar atrocities in Sudan, Congo, and Rwanda in recent memory. In addition, the last century saw 155 million killed by two world wars and national oppression. A cursory knowledge reveals this carnage has been a defining characteristic of humanity in recorded history.

The enormous firepower and precision of current war machines, currently illustrated in Libya, is a reminder of the growing ability of well-armed despotic rulers to subjugate their people and destroy opponents. History has taught us we have every reason to expect similar violence to continue.

This is in contrast to the irrational belief that humankind is somehow improving with time. What improvement has occurred is predominantly in countries with a Christian heritage, generally in the west. Yet there, the eroding of Christian values threatens to return those countries to chaos.

Even in Canada, with the ebbing of Christian belief, there is a creeping loss of human rights and growing restrictions on belief and expression, engineered by “Human Rights” tribunals. The only real light for the world is the One who called Himself the Light of the World.

If there is any hope for humankind, the exploding increase of Christ’s message across the world, in places like South America, Africa, China, even Mongolia, will help alleviate human cruelty. But final peace and justice on earth will be imposed and administered by the Righteous One.

Just one compelling reason to crave the soon return of Jesus Christ. "Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done” will herald the end to earth’s bloodshed (Revelation 22:12).

The Japan Disaster: Seeking Answers

As I discussed in the last blog, the suffering of the Japanese people raises the perennial question of how a good God could stand by and let enormous suffering like this continue. In fact, why does God allow suffering at all, if He is powerful enough to terminate it?

Bertrand Russell, the most cynical of British philosophers, put the matter baldly. If God is powerful enough to stop suffering and He doesn’t, He can’t be good. If he is good, but allows suffering to continue, He can’t be all-powerful. “From this argument,” Russell claims, “there is no escape.” (Unpopular Essays). God can’t be both good and omnipotent.

C. S. Lewis, before his conversion to Christianity, believed in the common wisdom that God could not exist on the basis of the cold emptiness of the universe, and that the world’s “creatures cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die.” (The Problem of Pain)

But Lewis came to recognise that this position poses a specific problem. “If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?”

Christianity maintains that God is good, and His creation is good, But humankind, in seeking a rebellious independence from Him, messed it up. Ian, in response said, among other things, “I think that this devastation, as horrific as it is, reminds us of the fallen world in desperate need of redemption.”

It is also a symptom of that Fall. In my blog Thursday February 24: Christchurch: Why Me? I show how Scripture supports the idea that our sinfulness pollutes and defiles the ground, destabilising the planet from its original operating specifications.

I have also given some more thought to the general problem of suffering on the Inscribe Writers’ blogsite http://inscribewritersonline.blogspot.com/.

But grinding of the Japanese tectonic plates certainly pictures “creation . . . groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” waiting to “be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21 and 22).