Post 30--Christmas--“Let’s Feel Free….”

Christmas 2014 is past; this is being written on December 27. But before we move out of the Christmas mode/mood, I want to return once more for some unfinished business to that Todd article featured in Post 28.  It’s an article well researched and argued and replete with nuggets I want to share with you now, so you can remember it for  December, 2015. 

Todd refers to all kinds of disagreements and perspectives on Christmas and its public manifestations and then offers to help us “sort through the Christmas confusion.”  Well, that’s a noble enough  intent! 

On the one hand we have research from SFU’s school of business indicating that employees talking freely about religion in the workplace tend to be more satisfied than those who don’t, with the reverse being equally true. This research, in other words, suggests that people, Christians and others, will be happier with Christmas trees in the workplace, for it opens the way to religious discussion.  

Strangely, the above report appeared in a news release from SFU that also stated the seemingly opposite. If your employers put up a tree, they “could be sending the implicit message that they value Christian belief… over other religions.”  This could lead to non-Christians hiding their convictions, which can then lead to stress and reduced loyalty. An earlier SFU study alleged that a workplace Christmas tree makes people feel excluded. This latter report, according to the Todd article, “reflected the way…social scientists often view anything vaguely linked to Christianity…as colonialism.” 

The bottom line of the report is the proposal that employers avoid acting as if Christmas is the only religious holiday to be observed by also clearly marking the special days of other traditions. This, writes Todd, “sounds more like something I could embrace” and to which I, the current writer, would add an affirmative “Amen!”

Since my return to Canada after an absence of 39 years, I noticed something peculiar that Todd now brings into the open. “While aboriginal spirituality…is often exhibited in…educational and public settings, some Canadians believe anything vaguely Christian… must be erased from the public square.” I understand Todd to be one of these Canadians. “It is no wonder,” he suggests, that “many religious people…see the process of secularization and multiculturalism as mainly one of ‘loss’ and ‘subtraction’.”

Same with respect to other non-Christian religions. Derryl MacLean, an SFU specialist in Islamic studies, told Todd that “people on the campus ‘bend over backwards’ to show respect to Muslims who wear hijabs and Sikhs who wear turbans. However, “Evangelicals would be ‘looked at askance’ for expressing their religious views.”

We have reached a situation where “openness is rare. Indeed, many Canadians, particularly Christians at universities, are frightened to express their religious beliefs. A former UBC president told Todd “that staff and students made it clear…that they feel the campus is ‘ruthlessly secular’.”  Many people feel that “talking about religion ‘would not be well received’.”  

Todd then suggest that we ought to “truly recognize that this is a pluralistic country with many faiths and secular world views.”  “This means encouraging the expression of virtually all worldviews, religious and secular, in the  public square. (And also being open to criticism of them.)”  He notes that many Muslims, Sikhs, Secularists and even Atheists “merrily put up Christmas trees.”  Research has discovered that by a margin of ten-to-one BC residents prefer “Merry Christmas” to “Happy holidays.”

So, pluralist Canada, let’s go for it. Christ 2015 is just around the corner! Feel free…. 

Post 29--Nostalgia and Christmas Faith

                  

There are several columnists in the Vancouver Sun whom I enjoy reading—most of the time.  Douglas Todd is at the heap of the pile, but definitely Pete McMartin is another. There is quite a difference between the two, with Todd writing about religions and ethical stuff, while McMartin often writes lighter stories of human interest. 

McMartin’s column of December 20 is an interesting mix of raccoons digging up his lawn and a walk to the beach leading him and his companion(s)—wife? family?—into a woodlot whose plants and birds he describes in some detail.  All of this is an attempt to get away from it all for just a few moments, “it all” referring especially to the busyness of Christmas. He experiences the season as one “encrusted with obligations” and wonders “why the whole thing hadn’t collapsed under its weight years ago, why we hadn’t tired of the exertion of it.” 

And then comes the real nostalgic part. “A lot has been lost in the distance between the manger and the mall—faith, in particular, for many of us—but what has remained is the yearning for something to fill up that space.”  He is, of course, hardly the only one to suffer Christmas nostalgia. I recall a couple of years ago a downtown preacher introducing the Christmas hymn sing with the words, “the songs which we all used to believe in.”  We may still go through some of the motions, but it is all superficial without real content for many—McMartin’s empty space.

Then he suggests some potential replacements for that Christmas faith of old: compassion, family or “a new religion to replace the old, maybe this one grounded more in earth than in heaven.”  Frankly, I put the onus on our Christian churches for this loss of faith among our general populace. If after all these years they have not been able to teach and demonstrate that the Christian gospel is as much about earth as it is about heaven, then I come close to advising them to just close their doors and sell their real estate. They have wasted everyone’s time and money and misled the people along a dead end trail. The so-called mainline liberal churches have long emphasized an earthly gospel; the evangelicals and fundamentalists, a more heavenly version.  Shame on the whole works!  I saw it happening from afar during my 30 years in Nigeria; now I see it happening close up. I believe some churches, particularly evangelicals, are waking up to embrace both heaven and earth,  but it may well be too little too late. 

Yes, our Christmas season has a way of pushing the nostalgia button in many of us, including yours truly. I remember the Christmases in my birth country and birth family of ten children with all the cheer and joy, but without the gifts since by tradition these came on December 5. I remember the Nigerian Christmas tables laden with delicious Nigerian foods and surrounded by various groups of international friends. Now that we are in Vancouver, we keenly feel the loneliness that characterizes this secular city, what with all our children and grandchildren living abroad.  Yes, there is nostalgia even for me.

However, there is also more than nostalgia; the basic meaning and joy of Christmas remain in tact for me. I am grateful that not everyone has caved in to this nostalgia and that I can still celebrate in the company of believers a more meaningful Christmas of the birth of a Son of whom it was prophesied many centuries earlier:

For a Child has been born—for us!
    the gift of a Son—for us!
He’ll take over
    the running of the world.
His names will be: Amazing Counselor,
    Strong God,
Eternal Father,
    Prince of Wholeness (or Peace).
His ruling authority will grow,
    and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness He brings.

Merry Christmas!

Post 28--The War on Christmas

My last post introduced the Christmas theme and it won’t let me go. So here’s another one. 

While today’s post has the word “war” explicitly in its title, yesterday’s was also part of the war going on between “Christians and their diverse allies” and “others,” including the “Atheists and their supportive cohort of super-secular multiculturalists.” Strange: Since Christmas is about the arrival of the Prince of Peace, one would expect every one to welcome Him.  Well, we know that’s not exactly the case.

This is how Douglas Todd delivers the first salvo in his spirited defense of  public celebration of Christmas (“Let’s feel free to observe Christmas,” Vancouver Sun, Dec. 6, 2014, p. D6):  

Tis the season to check on which side is winning the war on Christmas. Is it the Atheists and their supportive cohort of super-secular multiculturalists? Or is it the Christians and their diverse allies?

His is a great article that covers the entire range of public opinion on the subject. I am going to just comment on a couple of features of the article. 

 I apologize that I intentionally slipped in a misquote, so slight that it hides its import. Yes, intentionally. I bet you can’t even find it!  Check out the word “atheist” in the quote and in this paragraph. What do you see?  Still not?  Well, here it is: In the quote, the “a” is in higher case, while in this paragraph it is in the lower. That difference, small as it is to the eye, could be expressive of a profound difference in the definition of religion. 

Why, as in Todd’s article, do most people capitalize the names of recognized religions as well as of their adherents like Christianity/Christians, Sikhism/Sikhs, etc., but not of secularism/secularists or  atheism/atheists?  They are all equally worldviews, systems of belief or--dare I say it?—religions; they are all within the one and the same genre of things. So why capitalize some and not others? 

I have never heard a linguist or grammarian explain this puzzling phenomenon, but I believe it is because most people don’t see them as being of one genre. Secularism, atheism and humanism are not in the same genre as religions, their adherents will tell us—and most of us have bought into that. Atheism and its allies are allegedly objectively and neutrally true, while religions are intensely subjective and far from neutral. But you look behind the scenes into Atheist books and you will find every page proposing theses they can never prove, only believe. Yes, they too are faiths; they are no more objective or neutral than anyone else. We’re all the same boat of believers; it’s just that our beliefs are different.  

I readily admit that explanation above does not tell why you secularism and its fellow systems are  put in higher case and those recognized as religions in the lower. Perhaps it is a tradition that developed during the years that secularism c.s. were less popular and considered ineligible for the prestige of a capital letter. I don’t know; just guessing.

But this issue is of huge importance in society, a point we cannot pursue now but will reserve for later. Do note that I am not saying that I have just described Todd’s perspective on this. He may just have followed grammatical convention or, perhaps, his editor changed those letters from lower to higher case.  

That difference in case can be seen as expressive of a difference between them that some, including Todd, depict as “war.”  While many people berate Christianity because, among other reasons, of the hostility between western denominations over the centuries, they for some reason fail to realize that Christians have largely come to terms with each other and co-operate, even though the basic differences still exist, especially between Protestants and Roman Catholics.  In addition, the various global religions are also in dialogue with each other; their main streams do not support religious hostilities.  Apart from the fundamentalists, the religious war has shifted from those we describe as “religious” to those who live by the myth of neutrality—atheists c.s. It is they who now seek to force public displays of “religion,” particularly the Christian religion, out of the public square. And that’s what the Christmas fracas is all about. Get rid of public Christian symbols and with them, the religion itself. 

Time to let go for now. More to come, for Todd’s article is loaded with good stuff. Can’t let it go with this.  Have a good one and merry Christmas to all.

Post 27--Divorce, Children, Christmas Celebration

 

My last post introduced the Christmas theme and it won’t let me go. So here’s another one.  While that one talked of the wide-spread and heart-breaking practice of abortion in the context of Christmas, this one deals with an equally wide-spread and heart-breaking practice, namely that of divorce in the context of Christmas.  These are two practices that the church of Christ has for centuries opposed, rejected, but which, due to the influence of secularism on the minds of many Christians, have become common among Christians, acceptable even to many of them.  Many are no longer shocked by these practices. After all, many people do them. My own extended family has been afflicted by it and it has produced deep and hurtful emotions. 

There’s this weekly “Parent Trap” in the Vancouver Sun. On December 16, a divorced mother explained that her son wants his father to be invited to their family Christmas dinner. She commented, “I’m not sure that I am comfortable with this idea. I don’t want to tear my family apart –Boer: You guys have already done that, “mother!”—but I’m not sure I could handle his presence at the table. What should I do?”

As the column works, readers respond to these traps under the rubric, “Your Two Cents.” In this case, both respondents are women. One wrote,

My daughter and (ex) son-in-law each attend one major family celebration per year—he comes to Thanksgiving at our place, and she goes to Christmas with his folks. This is to ensure that the children know they still have a family, and that both parents will always take care of the children’s needs.  The parents never ever allow their own tensions to intrude on the children, and neither to either set of in-laws—we all suck it up because it’s for the children.

Another woman wrote,

Their lives have been shattered by a family split up and you need to get over yourself. There will be many birthdays, graduations and wedding when you will need to show a united front and put your children’s feelings and desires first. I am 60 and still suffer from the effects of my parents’ inability to come together for me even on my wedding day (italics mine).

Then the columnist herself, Michele Kambolis, a family therapist, chimes in. I quote selectively: “While there are no magical formulas for celebrating the holidays after a divorce, we know the goal is and should always be putting the needs of children at the forefront.”  She then offers a few suggestions as the standards to be upheld.

The first of these is that for the sake of the children, “you and your ex are working together and are on good terms.”  If doing the Christmas thing together is too much for you to begin with, for this year invite “your ex-husband over for a pre-dinner visit, a coffee, or even dessert,” something that “is easier to digest than a long drawn-out dinner.” Whether the pun is intended or not, I do not know.  Whatever arrangement you concoct, “reassure your son that holiday celebrations will continue, but they may not always look the same.”  Be sure to avoid “holiday competition” when it comes to gift giving.  You should consider buying gifts together and “focus on your time together rather than time apart and stick to your agreements.” 

Keep this in your mind and heart; you have the strength, flexibility and wisdom to carry you and your children through the many changes ahead. The holidays will come and go…, but with this perspective you can clear the emotional space to make wise and compassionate decisions for years to come.

The thing that stands out in the comments of all three women is the importance of putting your children’s welfare and happiness before everything else.  If you have decided voluntarily to have a family, you have given up the right to put your own happiness ahead of that of your children.

Even if the child is not the result of your voluntary decision, you need to think seriously about its welfare. That child, born under whatever circumstances, bears God’s image and as such s(he) has the God-given right to your love and a wholesome upbringing that will not leave her/him suffering from emotional scars you have inflicted on her/him. As God got over Himself with regard to us in our sinfulness and gave us Jesus, so He expects you to get over yourself and give both yourself and Jesus to your children.

That is the image of God in you as a parent. 

Post 26--Abortion and Jesus

It’s the 2014 Christmas month. So, our thoughts naturally gravitate towards the birth of Jesus. But today, as soon as you mention birth, many think immediately of abortion. What if Jesus had been aborted? 

I’m passing on to you a short article featured on the Denison Forum of today. True, it’s American in orientation, but if you can forget its place of origin, you can just as easily think of it as Canadian.  I plan to do a more Canadian post on this early in the new year. (No, this is not a promise; just an announcement of my intention!  If it doesn’t happen, no promise will have been broken, just a plan aborted—only a plan!)

The Forum’s article is entitled “The World’s Most Famous Baby Bump.” And sorry for the unnecessary borders around and the invisible within the article. That’s how it showed up on the Forum’s website and I don’t know how to get rid of them without hauling in my “expert.” So, here goes:

Thus a reporter described Kate Middleton's pregnancy as she and Prince William arrived in New York City last Sunday for a three-day official American tour.  Kate is about five months pregnant.  At this stage, her baby has a heart, a face, a brain, fingernails, and is growing hair.  Kate may already be feeling her child's movements. Yet, as journalist Katrina Trinko notes, it would be legal in the United States for Kate to abort her baby.  The U.S. is one of only seven countries—including North Korea and China—that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. How many babies are aborted at this stage?  About one percent of all abortions, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.  However, since more than a million abortions are performed each year in this country, that percentage still translates to 10,000 abortions past 20 weeks.  If you believe that life begins at conception, what can you do about this issue today? One: you can help others think biblically.  One in five Americans who choose abortion describe themselves as born-again Christians.  According to the American Bible Society, only 20 percent of Christians who view the Bible as the inspired word of God ever think about it during the day.  Clearly there is a disconnect between what most churches teach on the issue of life and how many Christians respond in practice. Two: you can help those dealing with an unwanted or at-risk pregnancy.  It's not enough to be pro-birth—we should be pro-life.  We should offer the financial, relational, and medical support mothers need.  And we should look for ways to serve the biological father as well. Three: you can encourage adoption.  BraveLove is "a pro-adoption movement dedicated to changing the perception of adoption by acknowledging birth moms for their brave decision."  They are running a campaign right now to thank birth mothers who made the courageous decision to choose life and adoption.  I believe more Christians and churches should encourage adoption for their members and our society. Four: you can become involved in the legislative process.  You can run for political office—God is calling more Christians into public service than are answering his call.  You can express your concerns to your governmental representatives, and mobilize others to do the same. Five: you can extend God's grace to those who have chosen abortion in the past, helping them find the redeeming and restoring love our Father offers all his children. Imagine this situation: an unmarried teenage girl becomes pregnant.  Her fiancé is not the father.  Her unplanned pregnancy will likely lead to rejection by her family and culture; she could even be executed for adultery.  She may be forced to raise her child alone, in a society where she has almost no means of financial support.  How many in her situation today would choose abortion? She courageously brought her child to term.  Her fiancé courageously married and supported her.  When the baby was born, they named him Jesus.  "What wondrous love is this, O my soul . . ."

Post 25--The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (2)

I ended the last post with the promise that there was more to come about this wild Canadian taxman.  So, here goes….

In 2006, Irvin’s Member of Parliament (MP) took up his case with the Minister of National Revenue. The MP was told that the CRA does not have a mechanism to compensate wronged taxpayers!  But if Irvin would file a new lawsuit for damages, the CRA would settle out of court. So he did, expecting a settlement. 

Nope!  The CRA lawyers fought tooth and nail filing applications and appeals to have the case dismissed. It took seven long years to have it reach trial. As the CTF told it:

During these years, Irvin’s ordeal became public, touching off a groundswell of support…. He was overwhelmed by letters from other Canadian who told him of their own horror stories with the CRA and contributed money to help keep his case going. 

It became apparent that this wasn’t a one-off case of taxpayer wrongdoing by the CRA. It was much bigger than that.  It was about reining in the power of a government agency with almost unchecked power.

The Supreme Court of BC ruled that the CRA owed a “duty of care” to Irvin, i.e.” to treat him in a non-negligent manner.”  Now that sounds pretty tame  in this context, but the CRA is appealing this ruling, claiming it does not have any legal “duty” to taxpayers or that it should be held to account when it is negligent!  Can you believe it? In this civilized country?  Can you now understand why I am livid? 

The CTF has decided to take up this case. It intends to fight to protect this “duty of care” obligation on the part of CRA.  This is “about reining in the power of a government agency with almost unchecked power.” It doesn’t have the money and is appealing for donations.  You can contact them at
< admin@taxpayer.com >.  It could happen to you. Irving did not think it ever would to him either. 

Post 24--The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (1)

POST 24    The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (1)      

I am livid and furious with a level of indignation that demands serious restraint on my part lest I spew out a barrage of ugly epithets that are trying to burst out in the open. Doing so would be unfit for a Christian gentleman.  The focus of all this threatening violence? None other than Canada’s taxman, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

I readily admit that all this internal violence and turmoil is misdirected. It should really be directed at myself and my fellow Caucasian settlers in Canada for the way we have mistreated the Aboriginals, an issue that deserves an even uglier barrage than that which is currently threatening to unleash itself. But being human, the oppression that threatens me, even though less than that suffered by First Nations, outrages me more.  I feel it more. So, with apologies to my Aboriginal fellow Canadians, here goes.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is a highly respected and effective coalition of taxpayers that watch all levels of government in the country for the way they raise and spend public funds. When they take up a cause or issue, you can be sure they have done due diligence; nothing sloppy about them.

They recently sent me a circular featuring the outrageous mistreatment meted out to citizen Irvin Leroux from Prince George, BC over a period of  eighteen years, starting in 1993, when they began to audit him. In 1999, the CRA  informed him he owed them over $600,000 in taxes, interest and penalties. Leroux denied this as impossible and started legal proceedings that dragged on and on and, thus became very expensive. Well, let me just tell you in the words of CTF:

In 2005, the CRA conceded that Leroux did not owe them any money. But the damage was done. During this ordeal, the CRA took aggressive measures to collect on the bogus $600,000 tax bill (over $800,000 by the time this matter was settled).

They registered judgements against his house and other lands, and issued a Writ of Seizure and Sale against all his assets. The Business Development Bank foreclosed on the RV park he had built. He was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on accountants and lawyers to vindicate himself.

The ordeal ruined Leroux. He lost his home, his business, his land, his savings and his future. To this day he owes roughly $300,000 to friends and family members who lent him money while he desperately fought to save his business and his life.  No wonder he has trouble sleeping at night, developed a hiatus hernia and suffers many of the symptoms of a man under extreme stress.

The CRA never offered him a penny of compensation for the ordeal they put him through. Not even an apology. 

But this tragedy doesn’t end there…. 

But that is for next time. Any more of this without a break could just give you a heart attack. 

A’a!  Without intending to do so, here I go, slipping in another promise! I’m discovering I can’t do without promises. Let me just promise to keep them to a minimum. And that’s two within just two lines of text!  And, to top it off with a third, I promise to let that subject rest—for a while, anyway. Even though promises are likely to keep cropping up. Can’t do without them!

Post 23--Transparency Follow-Up

You see I kept my promise. This is a short follow-up on the aboriginal transparency or lack of it without promising to do so.  Never kept a promise so faithfully!

The story was released at a strategic time in the life of the band: just before elections for chief were held.  And you know what happened? He was turfed together with the manager. Whereas the chiefly gauging of the people was explained in terms of the short window of opportunity for the chief, this one actually did not even have that excuse, for, apart from a brief interruption, he served for 34 years! That was more than enough time to rake it in, while his people were unattended to. This time he was voted out.  I hope he will share his takings over the years with the impoverished Prime Minister, the poor man who rules over some 34 million subjects but makes less than the chief with a  constituency about the size of an extended family.

The interesting thing is that the three councilors who were voted in are left with the responsibility of  choosing a new chief. However, according to the re-elected incumbent, Barbara Cote, the Council will most likely ask an outsider to come in and help make the transition. “I really think we need someone…to sort us out,” she said, “perhaps someone from the federal government (FG).”

That, to me, is an extremely surprising development.  Ask the FG to help the band to sort itself out? That FG that has been blamed for so much of the Aboriginal crisis by its mismanagement?  There are both provincial and national Aboriginal umbrella organizations with their officials. Why not invite them in?  Or am I surprised because I’ve been deceived by the media and the literature that feed the public with a barrage of government failures?  I cannot avoid the question: Are the officials of these umbrella organizations less competent and more inept, more corrupt and oppressive than the FG?  Somebody please help me understand.

I do not write about such negative Aboriginal developments because I want to berate them or because I wish to picture them as incapable of handling their own affairs. For one thing, these are not exclusively “their own affairs:” These are public affairs involving public funding. That public is getting impatient with the shroud of intransparency with which billions of tax dollars keep being handed out to a people who claim they wish to live according to their own cultural norms. The situation is feeding into the growing public contempt for a people who are seen to be dishonest, incapable and under the thumb of an elitist bunch who seem never to have heard of accountability. 

I hereby challenge the Aboriginal community to clean up their act and demonstrate to us the positive side of their culture, not merely by putting on occasional Aboriginal cultural shows but by using those public funds to liberate their people from a long history of enslavement to inept FG officials and establish clean regimes that benefit the entire band.

Aboriginals, you people have suffered enough from all angles. No one will put an end to that suffering but you yourself, while us Aboriphiles—a neologism I just coined—can support and cheer you on from the sideline.  I long for you to rise and shine. 

I cannot suppress a vague kind of promise: I will occasionally return to the “Aborigin file.” Keep an eye on it. 

(Major source: Bethany Lindsay, "Highly-paid Shuswap chief, councillor swept from office." VS, November 8, 2014, p. A8.)

Post 22--Aboriginal Transparency

Pos

In the previous blog I  promised—there’s that word again!—that I would explain what I meant that Caucasians are not the only ones to oppress Aboriginals.  Aboriginals themselves oppress each other, at least, occasionally. The Vancouver Sun (VS) of November 5 & 7, 2014, featured some articles alleging an Aboriginal chief’s mischievous financial management at the expense of his own people. I refer you to:

“Family at centre of pay firestorm…,”  Nov. 5.

“Reserve life out of step…,” Nov. 7.

According to the VS, the chief of a very small community, smaller than my extended family—the band has 267 members, of whom a mere 87 live on the reserve--, takes home $200,000 a year, while his subjects live in poverty and hardship, without any development taking place in the reserve. The chief is not the only one: The CEO of the band’s corporation has earned an average of $536,000 in the past five years.  

Though this may be an extreme case, it is not unusual. I have many reports like it in my files. Not only that, but during my RV travels through BC, including the north, I have several times had Aboriginals complain to me about such chiefly mischief.  The communities are not getting their share in terms of development. For this reason, the Federal Government has passed a law demanding transparency. Fair enough, you would think. Who could possibly oppose such a move?

Would you believe it that Canada’s opposition parties oppose this move? I cannot imagine that!  That’s a requirement for all government spending at all levels!  Aboriginals have their own defenders of the situation. The VS reports that Edin Robinson, a prominent Aboriginal writer, objects because chiefs are in effect asked “to prove they aren’t liars and cheat.”!  Well, is that so bad? Isn’t that the point of disclosure? We all know the temptations public money represents for those responsible for it. Aboriginal chiefs are no exception: They are as human as the rest of us! So, Robinson is right on. 

Of course, the real reason for resistance to transparency is all too transparent. The scandalously high salaries of a few elites ruling a community smaller than my extended family are totally indefensible, especially in view of the conditions of poverty and neglect that prevail on the reserve. It cannot stand up to the light of transparency.  

The stated reason for the scandalously high salaries—higher even than that of our Prime Minister and Premier!—is that it goes counter to Shuswap culture. That may be true to a degree, but such traditions have developed under conditions of trust, fairness and equality. When those conditions no longer hold, it is time for serious review. The source culture of that money, Canadian taxpayers, does demand transparency.

I recently attended a lecture in a local church where the speaker, while claiming not to be defending such practices, tried to explain that there is a story behind the news that the media do not tell. That story is that most reserve chiefs and managers are in office for only a few years. This is their one and only chance to lift themselves out of their life-long poverty. So, they take advantage of it. I have lived in Nigeria, where this same story unfolds at every level of government with the result that 80% of Nigerians are poor in spite of the country’s oil income. Yes, the story is quite understood, but it is no excuse.
 

I am not sure who is responsible for this situation. I believe it is a long succession of Governments that have allowed it to develop. I praise our present Government for trying to stem this scandalous situation and am deeply offended by the parties who opposed this demand for transparency. 

(I have submitted another version of this post in the form of a letter to the VS editor.) Am still waiting to see whether it will be published.)

Post 21--Aboriginal Canadians--Initial Musings

 

Before I say anything else, please understand that I am horrified at what Caucasians have done to/with the Aboriginal population of Canada as a whole and BC in particular—BC simply because I live there and am more aware of what is happening there. Which does not mean that I am as aware or as knowledgeable as I either could or should be.

 

I have been interested in the “Aboriginal issue” for many years and have been collecting myriads of news articles and other materials ever since I returned to BC to retire in 2001. This means I have several file boxes filled with this material as well as electronic files. I have been entertaining the hope to do some serious research on the topic after I was finished with my major writing projects, namely the 8-volume series on Christian-Muslim Relations and the 5-volume memoirs. Now that I have completed those two, I find I no longer have the energy or the ambition to start another major project like an “Aboriginal study.” Actually, it probably should have been a "Caucasian study."

If I still had the required energy, the project would have been basically sympathetic to the Aboriginal side.  The raw treatment they have received at the hands of the “Christian” settlers is simply so outrageous from the Christian perspective that we Christians and  our churches should collectively hang our heads in total shame—which, of course, we did during the life of the recent reconciliation campaign.  It actually is amazing that there are any Christian Aboriginals and that one finds churches scattered throughout most of the reservations. I am not going to devote a lot of space to Caucasian colonialism. The facts are all too well documented in a rich genre of literature, though I may occasionally offer some perspectives on that history.

However, the Caucasians are not the only ones to have abused the Aboriginal peoples of BC.  That’s the subject I will write about in the next post.

O’o, there I go again with several promises in the above. Try and find them! Since the previous blog, I have discovered that it is hard to live without making promises. I am beginning to wonder whether we should consider our human race as a Promising Race  just we often characterize it as a Rational Race. Well, whatever.

So, in spite of my promise to the contrary in Post 20, here’s another promise: My promises will be kept to small formats like the next post or some occasional perspectives. They will be nothing big that will obligate me to do something substantial and lead you to expect blog upon blog on this or that topic that I could interrupt only at the peril of losing your confidence and patience. Been there; done that. Never again--hopefully!

Post 20--Confession: Unfullfilled Promises

This blog series is my fourth. You want to know why I keep starting up new ones only to abandon them after a few months? I could not keep up with the promises I made. I had big plans and made many promises to my readers. I had every intention of keeping them, but every time it well apart.  I kept running short of time and the topics I promised to you, my readers, were just too many. So, I’d give up in despair and then would feel intensely disappointed with myself. A half year later, I would start up again—with the same intentions and the same result.

Well, this is post number 20 in this current effort and this time I will not allow another failure. I will make fewer promises. For example, I will not promise to write a specific number of blogs a week or a month, though I hope I will manage one a week—but, remember, that’s my hope within myself, not a promise to you. I will also no longer promise to write on this or that subject and then find it crowded out by more pressing current events in the community.

I actually found myself making such promises even in this blog. I started writing about faith and science, only to “temporarily” abandon it in favour of a more immediate topic.  Since then, other “immediate” topics have intervened and I suddenly realize I am back on the same treadmill.  I want to stop it right now! No more of this! No more such empty promises!

But hold it! No more promises is itself a promise!  How on earth do I get off this treadmill?  To be honest, I’m not sure about this. Some time ago, a Vancouver Sun columnist declared that there are no absolutes. I drew his attention to the internal fallacy of his statement, for that statement itself was absolute.  He admitted it was so and only threw up his hands like, “Now what do we do? How do I get out of this without retracting the statement?” That’s where he left it. Well, that’s where I leave it as well.  Just this promise, just one, no more!

Thanks for your patience in reading this confession. Tomorrow I will….  A’a, there we go. Another promise? 

Post 19--Dalai Highlights

An Exotic Visit

 I started that letter to the editor of the GS (see previous post) with the statement that Vancouver is an interesting place and exciting.  How many cities in the world bring together such interesting people as the Buddhist Dalai Lama from Tibet, the Muslim female human rights activist Shirin Ebadi from Iran and the Christian apartheid foe Bishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa?  Three races, three nationalities, three religions, three Nobel prize winners and three gifts of God to this one world.  Then our city joined them to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Jew, and to Jo-Ann Archibald, a BC First Nations leader.  And all of that crowd moderated by our own Vancouver Michael Ingham, the most controversial, though now retired,  Anglican bishop in the world.  The menu just doesn’t get more exotic than that!  His current 2014 visit is equally exciting, even if, perhaps, not quite as exotic this time.

The Warm Heart   

 As exotic and different as the actors on the stage were, they dealt with a concept that is central to the main institutionalized religion in Vancouver, i.e., Christianity, namely the “warm heart.”  The warm heart was the Dalai’s main message, but, unfortunately, at that time he confessed not to know how to achieve it. It was still in the conceptual stage. I am not sure whether, between that earlier visit and the current one, he has come to any conclusions on the subject. However, it is important for peace that we learn how to develop the warm heart. It is its absence that has led to the violence and terrorism that marks our time. 

As I emphasized in my GS letter, especially Christian schools and churches continue to emphasize the need for a warm heart and how to achieve it. If dialogue is to be a major element during these visits, I am utterly surprised that this Christian recognition has not bubbled up to the surface in the discussion. At least the reports in the print media have been silent on this score.  

Mind-Body-Heart Connection

The Dalai’s visit was apparently the trigger that motivated a Vancouver-based company, Lululemon Athletica, to help fund research into the connection between mind, body and heart at the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, also based in Vancouver. I think it a great gain if the research will end up showing a close connection between these three sides of human beings, a subject that has been avoided in the public school system but, again, since of old emphasized in Christian church and education.  Within the Christian community, it is especially the Reformed tradition that has given much prominence to that connection. Hence, if the Centre is really interested in both dialogue and that connection, she should turn to the Reformed community and its philosophers and explore its vision on the subject. Again, they are right here in Vancouver; you don’t have to go to the ends of the earth for it. At the same time, I would encourage leaders in the Reformed community to reach out in dialogue and share their insights, in the process hopefully also learn something from the Dalai’s side, since genuine dialogue implies mutual sharing. Come on, fellow Reformed guys and gals, let’s pay them a visit and get the dialogue rolling.

Multi-Culturalism
During this time of multi-culturalism, there is a lot of back and forth discussion during which participants take opposite sides. The popular side tends to emphasize differences between peoples living together, while the more academic prefers to major on the similarities. The Dalai sides with the latter. During his visit he affirmed that the similarities should be emphasized, rather than the difference.

The discussion is an example of the tendency of people always to choose opposite sides. Not only individuals choosing opposite sides from each other, but even one side being the dominant school of thought in a given period of time, let’s say for a decade, only then to reject that position for its opposite. Now that one becomes the reigning common sense or the politically correct. Human beings are like a pendulum, always swinging from one opposite to the other.

This tendency is not just a matter of innocent opinion or academic theory; it shapes politics, a point we must save for another day. But let me state my own take, which is that both similarities and differences must be acknowledged and embraced together, for that is reality. They both exist; neither can be wished away. Again, this will receive more attention in another blog—some day. 

Enough heavy stuff for the day. Good bye, Dalai Lama. Thanks for honouring us with your occasional visits. As you have moved on, so will we.

Post 18--The Dalai Lama Phenomenon

When the Dalai Lama comes to Vancouver, the city goes wild, for many regard him the personification of positive spirituality, a spiritual hero. If Vancouver has any need, it surely is positive spirituality, what with the dominance of a strongly secular worldview directing the city’s affairs. I interpret the eager popular embrace of this monk as a sign of spiritual thirst in the city due to the barren spirituality of secularism.  Whenever he comes, the city goes all agog. 

This was not his first visit. He was in town in 2004. I wrote a letter at that time to the editor of a local newspaper, Georgia Straight, which they published. Though with some changes and updates, I reproduce part of that letter here:

The main message in The Georgia Straight (GS) is about the Dalai Lama’s teaching of the “warm heart,”  a concept that is described as one of his core convictions.  The concept is part of his central message here in Vancouver.  The Dalia has turned this into a major discussion topic in relationship to education.  Modern education needs to be rebalanced by joining emphasis on the mind to the warm heart.  Students in BC’s highschools, UBC and SFU are now encouraged to participate in an essay-writing contest on the subject.  The idea is so important in his scheme, in fact, that Buckley, the author of the GS article ends his story with the prediction that the concept of the warm heart may well become the monk’s greatest legacy. Something that important is obviously worthwhile discussing.

Victor Chan of UBC’s Institute of Asian Research, one of the main organizers of the Dalai’s visit, explained what can happen when that warm heart is missing.  The most catastrophic example is that of 9/11. It was a case of highly intelligent and highly technical people who did not have the input from the warm heart.  As a result, they used their knowledge “in a very destructive way.”  That insight he apparently learned from his august visitor.

The example reminds me of the Biblical story of the fall, the event where the warm heart was replaced by an egotistic, cold and calculating heart. That distorted heart, though it did not prevent further developments in technology and art, now led to putting further developments to egotistic use, in the service of  human beings who now were now mainly concerned with their own reputation and greatness.  In both stories the heart plays a central role in the development of life and community and it makes all the difference whether that heart is warm, turned towards God, or whether it steers people and cultures into directions that produce monsters like concentration camps, 9/11, and other forms of terrorism.   

Here we have, of course, the reason various religions set up their own educational systems: to ensure a “warm” heart that leads to compassion and all other positive components that go into a humane society. The secular public educational system has eliminated that warm heart.  It is more than interesting that public funds will now apparently be expended to promote the warm heart concept, surely a deeply religious concept. With secularism now seen as wanting and along with it public education, it suddenly appears that the myth of separation of religion and government itself is now beginning to explode. Well, that would be a great gain from this visit.  

It is peculiar that it takes a foreigner to jump start a conversation on this subject, when Christians and other religions all around us have been saying this all along!  Thanks, Dalai, for trying to put our secular society back on track!  Perhaps your presence will help lift some of the fog from our secular minds.  If it takes one from afar like you to make us listen to what locals have been repeating over and over again, well, so be it!  However, the people of Vancouver should ask themselves why they plug their ears to a similar message from their own indigenous institutions.  Could it be a case of undisguised secular prejudice?

Post 17 Religion vs Science/Evolution?

As promised, we’re back to science/evolution and religion today. You see today’s heading. There is, of course, a long history of the relationship between the two, all the way from supportive to hostile. I published a small book some years ago that contains two essays on the subject. One is my 70-page translation of an essay by Abraham Kuyper; the other, an 80-page chapter on this subject by yours truly. These have gone through two printings and now are available as ebooks. I encourage you to access this material.

          Title of the Kuyper chapter:  “You Can Do Greater Things than Christ.”

           Title of my own chapter:  “Science without Faith Is Dead.”

The paper editions being out of print, you can now access these two chapters free of charge from my ebook publisher under the title Faith, Science, Miracles, Islam: Four Kuyperian Essays at the following address:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/abraham-kuyper-and-jan-h-boer/faith-science-miracles-islamfour-kuyperian-essays/ebook/product-20929893.html

To access them, though free of charge, you need to go through the entire purchase protocol. That is to say, push the cart through to the cash register as if you are intending to buy. You even have to establish an account with www.lulu.com as is required of any customer by every online publisher. But don’t worry, at the end your bill will be an exact $00.00. And while you’re perusing those documents, take a look at some other free < jan h boer > publications on the same website. You will find plenty there to keep you reading for a long, long time!   

Some people have difficulty accessing them. If you do, feel free to contact me at
                                   <  boerjf@hotmail.com  >.

These two essays pretty well represent my basic perspective on the question of religion vs science/evolution. Though fundamentalists among scientists and their counterparts in religion sharply oppose and berate each other, you will find alternative positions in these essays that accept both as mutually supportive, though not in their extreme fundamentalist forms. 

Well, didn’t get much farther today, but we’ll keep plugging away on the subject. You are now in a position to access wider discussions on our topic, within which these posts are offered you. These posts can well be regarded as summaries of those essays. So, read them if you have time, for then you will be able to follow these blogs more easily, perhaps predict them even.  

Postscript
 
This postscript has been added to this post on the day I write Post 18. However, this post (17) is written during a time of considerable turmoil in Canada. For one thing, the Dalai Lama is visiting Vancouver and, secondly, there's been some terrible terrorist activities in the country. So, I decided that, since both science and religion will be around for a long time and can always be discussed, when important events like those two occur, I cannot postpone commenting on them. So, next post on the Dalai Lama. Then, the recent terrorist attacks and then back to science and religion--if some other important developments don't intervene.  If nothing else, according to the Dutch proverb, "Verandering van spijs doet eten." That is to say a change in diet keeps things from getting dull and encourages eating.  Not sure that's always true, but in this case, a handy sentiment.