Tag: North State Journal

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Resurrection as a Historical Event

Easter is the day that 2.3 billion Christians (32 percent of human population) will declare that two centuries ago, a Galilean rose from the dead three days after he was crucified by Pontius Pilate. Resurrection is the founding faith statement of Christianity. Christmas did not birth Christianity, a naive understanding of that religion, but Easter. Without Easter there is no Christianity. In fact, Christians celebrated Easter from the start on a weekly basis. They went to synagogues on Saturday — first Christians were Jews — then broke bread on Sunday mornings because it was on the dawn of the first day of the week that the first witnesses found the tomb empty.

But did the resurrection really happen? We dismiss this conversation from the start because resurrection, we say, is a matter of faith. And isn’t faith a matter of opinion? Isn’t faith in the resurrection more about believing a God can bring something new out of old, and not about whether it actually happened or not? Such misunderstanding on matters of faith stem from confusion on how we know things, epistemology (for the philosophical minded). We match the verb “knowing” with truth and “believe” with opinions: we believed Duke would win but we know UNC won the NCAA finals (I hope this statement doesn’t open old wounds). Isn’t faith, then, merely a matter of opinion? But Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, says all knowledge requires “believing.” Because “believing” fundamentally means a personal commitment to a claim. No one thinks believing a claim will make it true. We believe a claim because we are confident the claim will be proven true thus worth our commitment. So a person who hears the results of the NCAA finals would say, “I believe UNC won,” basing that commitment on the trustworthiness of his source. If he researches more, he would find corroborating evidences. Then he will conclude and say “I know UNC won,” but it is still an act of “believing.” To be sure, his faith is more confident, but he chooses to continue to organize his life around that truth, i.e. wears a UNC shirt and taunts Duke fans. All truth, no matter the level of proof, requires faith.

So is resurrection worth one’s commitment?

Our modern science….

(to read the rest please follow this link to North State Journal)

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Pride before the Fall

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On the last night of the Republican convention, my father called and told me to vote for Trump. I was shocked then, so I wasn’t so shocked when I saw Trump win. My father still doles out unsolicited advice. Sometimes his advice irks me — how I should wear my hair — but this political advice was a shocker: “Vote for Trump. He is going to make America great again.”

My father is a Korean-American immigrant. We flew in as illegals through JFK airport in 1980. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty for all immigrants who came before 1982. The timing was evidence of providence, my father says. Knowing the harrowing anxiety of living as an illegal, I expected him to vote Hillary even if her policies didn’t line up with his conservative Christian values. I might be able to dismiss Trump, but I cannot dismiss those who vote for him because I cannot dismiss my father. This was the undoing of the Democrats; they were dismissive of voters like my father.

My father is not an “uneducated white male” being duped by a billionaire. He is neither white nor uneducated. He graduated with honors in Korea, and got a master’s and a doctorate in America — in a second language. He is not being duped. But neither were those labeled “uneducated white male.”

The Democrats’ explanation of Trump’s continuing popularity despite stacking scandals reeked of condescension. The Democratic Party surmised that all Trump voters are dupes or people whose moral compass got busted. To vote for Trump is to condone his behavior. But everyone I know who voted Trump declared, “I don’t condone his actions, but….” The Democrats railed about the danger of ignoring Trump’s “fatal” flaws. But Clinton voters were also giving the same preface. They said, “lesser of two evils.” Whose evil will I ignore?

It was easier to lambaste Trump’s sin as worse, because he never fully denied any of the accusations. He ran as a xenophobe, a racist and sexist. Clinton tried to smear her “sins” gray. Anyone else at the State Department would be in jail if they did what Hillary did.

What the Democrats accused Republicans of doing, turning a blind eye to the sins of their candidate, they were also doing. If they had taken their own medicine, then they would not have pre-arranged a marriage to Hillary before the primary dating. Wikileaks released 20,000 DNC emails exposing top DNC staff concerned about the upstart Bernie Sander’s candidacy. So they rigged their own primary.

The elites of the party decided they knew better ….

(please continue on to North State Journal to read the rest, 1 week free trial available)

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Theology in American Politics

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Theology, a way of seeing the world with God as an agent, has always been fundamental to American politics. This is exhibited by in “God we trust” minted on our bills, “under God” in our pledge, and “God bless America,” the benediction ending every presidential speech, the priestly president blessing citizen-congregants.

Yes, the jingles are of recent origin (“under God” was added in 1954), but they are surfacing of an undercurrent going back to the words that birthed this republic, “Endowed by their Creator.” Thomas Jefferson was no Christian — a fundamental deist who made sure his scions didn’t hold foolish notion of Jesus’ divinity by cutting out miracles from the gospels — but this was a thoroughly theological statement. The Revolutionary War, you can say, was a warring of two theologies, the English monarch’s divine right to rule against God-given rights of individuals to choose their government. Manifest Destiny was an appropriation of the theology of calling, rooted in Jewish self-understanding as God’s people, for America’s exceptionalism supposedly justifying the right of expansion.

Because theology is such a strong currency, it has been used often, and often abused.

(as this is a piece I did for North State Journal, a North Carolina state wide paper, please follow link to continue reading – 1 week free trial available.)

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Courage to Compromise

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“Hamilton” is a juggernaut musical currently fetching at least $700 for prime seats. It’s a civic class in hip hop, George Washington’s cabinet argument as rap battle for the future of the fledgling American economy: Jefferson’s rural and agricultural against Hamilton’s urban and commercial. Reason in rhyme with best diss wins, which is not too far from the truth. Jefferson and Hamilton are at the opposite ends and no one wins. So they strike a compromise, both losing to win.

A piece in the musical titled “The Room Where it Happens” is a retelling of that compromise over a dinner. Hamilton gets the federal government to assume state debt and tax individual states for it while Jefferson gets the capitol, destined for Pennsylvania, closer to his home on the Potomac. Historians call that dinner the “Compromise 
of 1790.”

The current demonizing of compromise as the bane of Washington politics is a travesty, a straw man used by candidates to win cheap votes which leads to the farce of politicians running as “non-politicians.” To some, Mr. Trump’s non-political background and political ineptitude makes him the best politician.

In previous columns I argued that conversation and compromise, the scapegoat for everything ugly in politics, is what we must get better at. My closing argument is for more compromise…

(as this is a piece I did for North State Journal, a North Carolina state wide paper, please follow link to continue reading – 1 week free trial available.)

 

 

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Stories in Midst of Tragedy

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The violent tragedies of the deaths of two black men and the five police officers shattered my heart, as it did many Americans. The tragedy called for words but also made words feel useless. A column can’t dispense any advice worth holding, but I have two tiny stories that have framed the tragedies for me. Perhaps they can be chairs for people to sit and converse. No healing happens without sharing, and no useful action is birthed without conversation.

I was watching the Facebook stream of Philando Castile, his white shirt soaking red, body slipping down the passenger chair, his neck arched, ridges of his Adam’s apple pushing through the taut skin as his head slumped, and Diamond Reynolds looking through her phone camera directly at me, giving witness, with the surprising distance of a journalist, with only a slight tremble hinting at the wreckage of her heart.

as this is a column printed with North State Journal website please go to their website to continue to read (one week free trial available).