The Value of Monastic Life

In Challenge Weekly this week (22 August 2011), John Massam, writes in his Publisher’s Letter:

"I was brought up in a tradition that classified involvement with “worldly things” like competitive sport, the media and the world of arts and entertainment as something Christians should abstain from. The idea reflected the injunction that good Christians should be “separate from the world”… What I have come to realise is that Christians cannot cocoon themselves in cotton wool, be imprisoned in a monastery or live in a self-perpetuating community on some idyllic Pacific Island.  Our calling is to live in this world, whether it is as a professional sportsperson, a talkback host, a top-billing musician, a model or newspaper publisher, so that people know we are different.  Different but not peculiar.  A person to be respected, but not ridiculed." (my emphasis.)

La Grande Chartreuse Monastery

Now it is OK that John has had an epiphany and rejected the puritan standards of his upbringing, but he goes too far when he gratuitously impugns centuries of monastic tradition.

Firstly, monks and other religious are not “imprisoned” in monasteries and cloisters: they stay there of their own free will, dedicated to their God-given vocations.  It has been said that if God means for you to enter religious life, no one and nothing will keep you out, while if he does not mean for you to stay in religious life, no one and nothing will keep you in.

Obama and Ondimba: An Uneasy Meeting

  President Obama of the USA has taken some flak for meeting with President Ondimba of Gabon this week.  I can imagine that there would have been some tension and embarrassment in the room, but it would not have been on Ondimba’s side.

President Ondimba of Gabon

  Gabon is a majority Catholic country.  President Ondimba converted to Islam with the rest of the family when his father, then-President Omar Bongo, converted in 1973.  However, the country still promotes the Culture of Life, since this is foundational to both the Catholic faith and Islam.  As a consequence, both contraception and abortion are illegal.

  The contradiction one sees is that President Obama, who claims to be Christian (while a few conspiracy theorists suspect he is Muslim), presides over and promotes a Culture of Death in America.  Since he took office in January 2009, President Obama has been responsible for the killing of over 2.8 million babies in the US.  This amounts to almost twice the population of Gabon – including a disproportionate number of African-Americans, some of whom are descendants of the Fang tribe, which makes up about a third of Gabon’s population.

  Thus I can understand why President Obama would only allow still-photographers into the meeting.  He didn’t want anyone recording President Ondimba asking, “What are you doing to my people?”

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  Gabon is a West African country, with an area about the same as New Zealand (or the state of Colorado) and a population of 1.5 million.

Related Links:

President Obama invites controversial president of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, to the White House (NY Daily News) Slave Trade and African-American Ancestry

NZ Government Policy Inconsistency #237

Consider two families: one has a two-year old girl with Down Syndrome, and the mother is pregnant, the other has a normal two-year old and the mother is also pregnant. The mothers both have antenatal screening tests. The first mother is expecting a normal child; the second mother is told that her child has Down Syndrome.

It is typical in New Zealand for the mother in the second case to be offered an abortion by their doctor or midwife.  (Although New Zealand law does not permit abortion on demand, the High Court has found that the statistics on abortion approvals indicate that that is what we have in practice.)

However, in the first family, we don’t allow the mother to kill her child with Down Syndrome and keep the normal one that she is carrying in her womb.

Why the difference?

The National Screening Programme which identifies unborn babies with Down syndrome is promoted by the Government as the “Quality Improvement Programme”.  If the Government is really serious about “improving the quality” of the New Zealand population by getting rid of people with Down Syndrome, why is it restricting the programme to the unborn?  Is Health Minister Tony Ryall too squeamish to send the men in white coats round to the IHC?  No; he just realises that New Zealanders are not ready (yet) for the culling of 2-year olds, 22-year olds, or 42-year olds.  But unborn children? No problem!  That doesn’t create even the smallest blip on the media radar.

Catholics and Images: Response to Jeff Williams, MBBC

In his Bible Answers column in the Blenheim Sun newspaper, May 11, 2011, Marlborough Bible Baptist Church pastor, Jeff Williams, writes:

“When Catholicism says it is okay to erect images in the church building and to venerate and adore these images which includes bowing before them while the Bible specifically condemns all of this (Exod 20:4-5), guess who is wrong.”

The answer is: Jeff Williams is wrong.  Jeff’s columns are often filled with simplistic, idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible: too many to bother responding every time.  But when he writes such arrant nonsense about fellow Christians, a response must be made.

Firstly, the Bible nowhere says that it is wrong to erect images in a church building.  On the contrary, the Bible records God requesting just that.  Since Jeff uses an Old Testament reference as his text, we shall do the same.  God asks Moses to fashion images of two cherubim and put them at each end of the mercy seat, upon the ark of the covenant (Ex 25:18-19).  This was then placed in the tabernacle of the Israelites’ tent of meeting, the equivalent of a church for them (Ex 40:2-3).  Images of cherubim were also worked into the cloth that formed the walls of the tent of meeting (Ex 26:1).

Later, God commanded Moses to make an image of a serpent out of bronze so that when the Israelites were bitten by poisonous snakes they could look upon the image and be healed (Num 21:8-9).

Later still, Solomon built a temple for God’s dwelling.  He constructed cherubim to spread their wings over the sanctuary (1 Kings 6:23-28).  The walls and doors were also decorated with cherubim (1 Kings 6:29-32).  Images of lions and oxen featured in the sanctuary (1 Kings 7:29).  God indicated his pleasure with all of this by consecrating the temple (1 Kings 9:3).

So God is quite happy with images, especially in places of worship.

Osama Bin Laden: Why was killing the object?

One could have a long discussion about whether the killing of Osama bin Laden (if we proceed on the assumption that it did occur) was a murder, an assassination, an extrajudicial killing, a targeted killing, a killing in self-defence, etc. (for information on the distinctions, see the useful articles on Wikipedia).

However, one should also consider whether killing should have been the objective of the operation.  There certainly appeared to be a need to neutralise OBL’s influence over Al Queda and a need to bring him to account for the terrorist acts attributed to him or ostensibly claimed by him.  But, as with the defendants in the Nuremburg Trials after World War II, it would have been far preferable to deal with OBL in accordance with due process.  It seems clear that President Obama and the Navy SEALs were very much intent on a killing, rather than capture.  The unfortunate – but quite foreseeable – result is the current controversy and speculation about OBL’s death, his motivations, etc.  This could have been avoided, and proper justice done, if Operation Geronimo had been directed at capturing OBL.  The SEALs should have gone out of their way to avoid killing him.  President Bush’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” belongs to the Wild West of the past that he dredged it up from, not in today’s culture. 

The world should have had a chance to see OBL face his accusers, just as it did with Saddam Hussein, and with Göring, Hess, Keitel, et al, at Nuremburg.  It would not have been right for the Allies to simply shoot the Nazis in their beds.  Interestingly, 4 of the 19 Nuremburg defendants found guilty (24 were charged) expressed repentance.  The most important argument against capital punishment (to which targeted killing bears many similarities) is that it removes any further opportunity for repentance and conversion of heart on the part of the one brought to justice.  I pray that those involved in OBL’s killing utilise the time they have left for repentance and conversion.