To Moore and Starnes: Read the Bible, Boys

Todd Starnes of Fox News got himself all wound up because Michael Moore tried to give what he called the “Sunday school” answer in explaining his recent comments about the movie “American Sniper.”  Moore sarcastically tweeted that Jesus would shoot people in the back.   Moore’s sophomoric attempt to explain what Jesus would do, no doubt in an effort to tweak the evangelical right, seems to me standard operating procedure for him, so why get wound up?

I don’t like seeing folks like Starnes rush in explaining why Chris Kyle was okay with Jesus.  Starnes, while begging off that he’s “not a theologian” nonetheless was prepared to claim Jesus would have been perfectly okay with Kyle shooting jihadists and sending them to “the lake of fire,” offering that Jesus would have said to Kyle “well done thy good and faithful servant.”  Chris Kyle may well have been okay with Jesus, but only if he repented of his sins and believed the gospel (Mark 1:15).  Shooting jihadists is unequivocally not a qualification for entry to heaven.

Starnes’ argument is based more on his conservative political views than sound biblical  thinking.  He confuses being a good Christian with being a good American.  In fact, Starnes goes on to talk about how Hollywood used to support the troops – citing John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Bob Hope – as if somehow their support has some connection to Jesus being happy with Chris Kyle.  Earth to Todd: there’s no obvious connection here.

Moreover, I don’t know that one can so easily characterize what Chris Kyle did as obviously right or wrong from a biblical standpoint.  When Roman soldiers asked John the Baptist what they should do in light of the coming wrath, he replied “Don’t take money from anyone by force or false accusation; be satisfied with your wages.”  Luke 3:14 (HCSB).  John didn’t tell them to stop being soldiers but didn’t encourage them, either.  Jesus proclaimed that a Roman centurion showed faith greater than that found “even in Israel.”  Luke 7:9 (HCSB).  Centurions were hard-bitten leaders who gained leadership of 80 to as many as 500 men through the grit of time and blood, making Jesus’ willingness to commend one astonishing.  Yet, Jesus said nothing about his status as a soldier. While arguing from absence gets one only half way in any argument, neither the Old nor New Testament seems to condemn or commend soldiers for soldiering (any more than it might have condemned or commended bloggers for blogging).  Note to Michael Moore:  read Revelation – Jesus is coming back, and he’s geared up for . . . (gasp, oh my) WAR.  Note to Todd Starnes: neither Jesus nor John told the soldiers they ought to keep soldiering.

I didn’t know Chris Kyle and I feel badly for his family.  He has children who will never know their dad.  He has a wife who is missing her husband.  From what I discovered about him, he really was a magnificent soldier.  From a heavenly perspective that neither makes nor breaks him.  He either had repented of his sins and believed that Jesus was the Christ, or he didn’t.  I hope he did.  I’d love a chance to meet him in heaven.

In the meantime, both Moore and Starnes need to get out of the theologizing business and stick to what they both seem to know well: sarcastic bomb throwing. 

Did I really just say that?

A Father's Legacy

            My dad often wondered about his legacy.  It mattered to him how his children would grow up and what kind of people they would become.  One of his priorities was that all of his five children receive college educations.  The tally, at the moment, is that his five children have nine degrees, soon to be ten.  One of us had a double major in college, so I suppose you could even argue we have eleven degrees.

            If you judge a man on the success he had in convincing his children to get educated, my Dad was an unqualified success. Of course, education is one thing, character is another altogether.  Well, on a bottom line sort of level, none of the five kids have ever been in jail (as a convict – I have been to jail to visit clients and take depositions from time to time – not sure if any of my sisters have ever been inside a jail).  But certainly character is more than just avoiding scrapes with the law and paying your taxes. 

            Okie dokie: My oldest sister left a good paying job as a college professor to spend two years in the Peace Corps – while in her mid-forties!  If this weren’t enough, she came back from Kenya and is now primarily responsible for taking care of our aging parents.  Two of my sisters are pastor’s wives and all this entails.  Both are exemplary moms and wives.  My other sister and her husband have raised two sons amidst the sociological carnage that is a liberal college town without any psychological damage to either son – no mean feat these days.  Oh, yeah, and the four of us who are married have all been married to the same person since we got married; three for more than 20 years.  One of us (me) celebrated 30 years of marriage this past August.

            So what, you say.  Plenty of American families could point to similar stories and none of this proves any particular character.  Maybe.  But there’s more.  Dad actually taught us things about living.  Me probably most of all because I was the only boy, and the oldest.  I learned from him that a man is judged by the way he speaks; that you don’t get something for nothing; that you should be honest with people; that when people are mean to you, the best strategy is to kill them with kindness; that instead of smoking cigarettes, you might as well suck on the tail pipe of a car (okay, he got that one from his mom – thanks, Grandma!).  I learned that patience most often wins out – not because he told me but because I tried his patience many times over and he won out!  I learned that if you love your children you will simply try to spend time with them, even doing simple things like eating dinner together.  He taught me to throw a baseball.  He taught me to fish.  He taught me to drive.  He taught me that you went to work even if you didn’t feel like it.

            Big deal, you say.  Lots of Dads did similar stuff.  That’s just it, though.  If you had a Dad who was like mine, then he was there for the big and the little.  His legacy is just that – life isn’t about doing something enormous, life is about doing the little everyday things well on an everyday basis.  Given the last true conversations I had with my Dad, I think he missed out on that idea as an ideal, even though he was actually living it out.  He couldn’t see it for himself, but I see it.  It took me 51 years and many stupid blunders to finally get it through my thick head. 

             Men – men of character out there – if you are reading this stop right now and go tell your wife you love her.  Go spend a few minutes with your kids doing something, anything with them.  Tell your kids you’re proud of them – even if they’re adults.  Stop thinking you have to do some enormous thing in life to accomplish great things in life.  My dad didn’t develop the cure for the common cold; he didn’t end the Cold War; he didn’t hit .400 in a baseball season; he didn’t invent the internet; he didn’t write a best-selling book; he didn’t do anything that anyone would ever say was spectacular or that would give him a place in history.  So?  Most of us won’t and you know what – who cares?  Doesn’t it matter more that we have taught our children wisely while we have had the chance?  Doesn’t it matter that by our example our children learn something (even dopes like me who take way too long?). 

            Thanks, Dad.  I know you’ll never read this, but thanks all the same.  You do have a legacy and I thank God you were the man who gave it to me.

Tommy the Chimp: Blissfully Unaware He's Not Human

The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in Albany has ruled that Tommy the chimpanzee is not entitled to basic legal rights.  The court, in a moment of judicial clarity and legal sensibility rarely seen these days noted "Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their action."  I’ve been waiting since I graduated from law school in 1988 for a court in the United States to make just such a ruling so I could finally clear my mind about this once and for all.

The Nonhuman Rights Project, undaunted, continues to push its downright bizarre idea that animals should be imbued with rights akin to those held by humans.  Haven’t these maniacs seen Planet of the Apes?  We lose and the chimps don’t treat us well.

On a serious note, though, the kind of thinking pushed by the Nonhuman Rights Project mutilates what it means to be human.  What follows from the Court’s ruling is the very thing that differentiates humans from chimps: rationality.  Chimps may exhibit some basic solving problem capabilities – I’m sure other animals do as well.  But we have no evidence that chimps concern themselves with whether their activities have an impact on the world around them or whether other species might be affected by their decision making or even whether chimps have any thoughts much beyond their own survival.  People, on the other hand, have a capacity, used or not, to engage in speculative thoughts about how their actions will percolate into the future.  We are, as the court notes, held responsible for the actions to which our thoughts lead.  We are responsible because the law insists, even in the face of morbid stupidity and irrationality, that people are capable of rational thought.  We don’t hold chimps responsible for their actions because we simply have no evidence chimps engage in such rational thinking.

The very willingness of our courts to even entertain the discussion about whether chimps should have rights explicitly and clearly demonstrates why humans have rights and chimps don’t.  There has never been any evidence presented that any chimp cared one whit about whether human beings had rights or not.  There is utterly no reciprocation here.  The very fact that goofballs like the Nonhuman Rights Project can even exist shows a willingness among humans to tolerate all kinds of silliness in the name of kindness.  We give such organizations a chance to present their case for the very reason that we are rational and want to make sure we make good decisions about our actions and the consequences of those actions.  Chimps at the zoo, or in Africa, don’t get together for a colloquium entitled: Close Enough: Horseshoes, Hand-Grenades, and Humans, Why Humans Should be Called Chimps and Given Chimpanzee Rights.  They simply don’t have the intellectual or moral capacity to fathom the concept of rights.  It is a uniquely human attribute.

We don’t hold animals to any sort of culpability.  Yes, if a dog mauls a child it might be put to death.  This is not because anyone harbors ill will towards the animal or thinks the animal has acted immorally or illegally.  It’s because we just don’t want the dog to hurt another person.  It’s a purely utilitarian act, not a condemnation of the dog for behaving like a dog.  With rights come responsibility.  Think of a driver’s license.  We hold people accountable for having a driver’s license.  If you are convicted of certain offenses, you can lose the privilege.  Unlike the dog situation, a person loses his license because he is culpable and we hold him accountable.  We expect people to actually consider their actions and conform to the law because their legal rights demand legal responsibilities.  Animals cannot do this.  As a result, it is simply nonsense to suggest animals should have any legal rights.

Moreover, one has to understand that providing rights to chimps denigrates what it means to be human.  It doesn’t give chimps dignity, it denudes humans of dignity.  It says that humans are nothing special, not a peculiar species, not qualitatively different than any animal.  Human dignity arises because we are something different, something unusual, something peculiar on this planet.  Any ordinary human being recognizes this early on.  A little boy using a magnifying glass to burn a couple of ants on a hot summer sidewalk is not a serial killer.  He’s just a kid who recognizes there are gazillions of ants and frying two or three won’t likely affect the ant population or anyone on this planet.  But more fundamentally, he recognizes that there is something fundamentally different about him and the ants.  Not only is he bigger, but he can rationalize; he can think; he can plan; he can control.  The ants can’t do this.  The little boy learns a lesson that distinguishes him from ants.  As he grows up he stops burning ants on the sidewalk not because he thinks the ants have rights or even ought to have rights but because he understands it is unnecessary.  He has a conscience.  He is human and can decide he will act in ways that put off his own desires in favor of another, even if it’s an ant.

Human beings are not mere animals.  That we even consider how we treat animals at all signifies the deep divide that exists between humans and animals.  A world view that assigns human characteristics and rights to animals, no matter how smart the animal, miscomprehends what it means to be human.  We are not simply “higher beings” on the evolutionary scale.  The reason we are capable of even understanding that we are “higher beings” is because we are made in the image of the highest being: the God of the universe. 

So Tommy the Chimp remains in his circumstances.  So far as we are aware, he is perfectly content and completely unaware of the legal mechanisms which sought to secure his so-called freedom.  Doesn’t that, itself, say something?