[Dialogue] 1/08/09 Spong: A New Year Dawns for Our Nation and the World

Thu Jan 8 13:48:18 EST 2009

Subject: A New Year Dawns for Our Nation and the World

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Thursday January 08, 2009 

A New Year Dawns for Our Nation and the World

A high level of anticipation marked both this nation and the world as 2008 went into the history books and 2009 dawned. This anticipation came from three sources that I can identify. 
First, there was a sense that the national nightmare through which we have walked in recent years is finally coming to an end and with it has come a new anticipation that the darkness would soon lift. This darkness began its descent upon us on September 11, 2001, when we awakened to the realization that we were a nation hated enough to have suicide bombers kill almost 3,000 of our citizens by hijacking our airliners and driving them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The administration in power used this national tragedy to launch us into a war they were already seeking an excuse to begin. We found ourselves lied to about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in order to justify this war of aggression against Iraq. Our leaders sold it to us in part as a war to attack those who were responsible for 9/11. Even though that connection was stated by the highest people in our government a thousand times, we now know that Iraq had nothing to do with th
e 9/11 attacks. Our president and our vice president knew this also. In the pursuit of that war, other assaults upon the dignity of this nation were perpetrated in places like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the secret torture chambers that our own CIA operated around the world. The hatred for America that was present primarily among radical fundamentalist Muslims on 9/11 now began to spread across the globe. 

As the Iraqi war spiraled down into unfinished chaos, insurrection and civil war, we watched the alienation of our top military personnel from this administration. Many were removed, retired or silenced to keep the shameful truth about this war and its mismanagement from the American people. It was a war that was costly beyond measure in people killed, in bodies mutilated and in dollars squandered. A major cause of the current economic recession is clearly the pressure this war placed on our economy. Then we learned that while our troops were being praised publicly for their faithful and heroic service by this administration, the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital where our Iraqi war wounded were being treated was shameful and deplorable. Then we discovered that the funds for the rebuilding of Iraq had been used in ways that were completely irresponsible. It appeared that the only ones who profited were related to the oil industries while the American taxpayers and the Iraqi citizens were violated yet again. 

Next, in quick succession, came the New Orleans disaster that gave American prestige a black eye arou
nd the world. I was lecturing across Sweden when Hurricane Katrina devastated the jazz capital of the world and the people in Sweden could not believe that this was America they were watching on their television sets. The world noted that the President of the United States was in California at a Republican fund raiser when Katrina struck and that it took him days to awaken to what had happened. When he did do so, the response of our government to this disaster was too little, too late and too incompetent to be helpful. 

Finally, we watched the economy, battered by one self-serving decision after another, implode on this President's watch. First, there was a series of spectacular business failures. Enron, with deep ties to this administration, was the first to topple. CEO Ken Lay, who died while appealing his conviction for fraud, helped to lay out the energy policy of this nation as counsel to Vice President Richard Cheney. In that implosion went the life savings of many Americans while millions of others, especially in California, found their standard of living rocked by exorbitant energy bills. This was followed by criminal behavior in such corporations as WorldCom and Tyco, whose CEOs are now in jail, and inappropriate actions at AIG, whose CEO was removed. Then came the collapse of such banks and investment houses as Citigroup, Wachovia, Bear Stearns and Lehmann Brothers. The greed revealed in the mortgages given to people without anything close to the ability to pay them once the come-on period expired
 was, in retrospect, appalling. We watched Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, government-run agencies, go into debt that required billions of taxpayers' dollars to rescue. We saw companies like Countrywide Finance, Washington Mutual and Merrill Lynch die or disappear as independent corporations with millions lost to shareholders. Then the American automobile industry, which had for years resisted government attempts to force the building of fuel-efficient automobiles, began to totter on the edge of bankruptcy. The CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler came with hat in hand to beg for a government handout, but the fact that they each traveled by corporate jet to do their begging indicated how tin their ears were to the understanding of what has happened in that industry. As the year ended, Bernard Madoff was revealed as the orchestrator of a $50 billion scam, hedge funds were collapsing, fraud was being uncovered, millionaires were destitute and confidence in this nation's leadership had reached an all-time low. 

Americans would be hard pressed to name an administration as incompetent as the one now passing from the scene. So part of the reason for the high levels of anticipation felt across the land as 2008 entered the history books was that we had surely seen the worst, that whatever tomorrow brings, it has to be better than yesterday. There was a sense that we had walked through a new dark age and that the hope at the end of this tunnel was not delusional. 

The second reason that high levels of anticipation
 marked our nation (and the world) at this year's end was the presence of President-elect Barack Obama. The people of this nation, in which race has for centuries been a defining feature, elected an African-American to lead us from this slough of despair. Throughout the campaign, the American people wrestled with their deeply entrenched racism under many guises. Rumors abounded that Obama was a closet Muslim, pointing out more than once that his middle name was Hussein! Others identified him with the black anger of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, still others as a pal of a known terrorist or as the most "liberal" senator in Washington, transforming Ted Kennedy into the category of being a "moderate!" Some politicians told us that white working class voters would never support an African-American and that Catholic voters would never support a pro-abortion Protestant. All of these were veils behind which racial prejudice fought its final and losing battle. The current political establishment, however, had so violated the trust of the people that none of these charges stuck, so by a significant majority the American people pinned their hopes to this African-American, sweeping him and his message of change into office. 

The third reason why hope was so transparently present as the New Year dawned was brought about by our peculiar electoral process. We chose our new president on November 4, 2008, but we will not place him into office or endow him with the power to make decisions until January 20, 2009. That schedule created a=2
0gaping hole in our national life. This meant that we had a lame duck president for seventy seven days, during which time this nation stood almost paralyzed with wars raging abroad and the economy staggering at home. There was no confidence in the ruling president and no power yet in the hands of the newly elected president. So Congress simply punted on the automobile industry bailout, on environmental concerns, on winding down the war in Iraq, winning the war in Afghanistan or halting the war in Gaza. During this time the credibility of this nation dropped to such a state that President Bush, making a farewell trip to Iraq to showcase the "stable" Maliki government as the crown jewel of his administration's war policy, suffered the indignity of attending a press conference with Mr. Maliki at which a reporter, cleared to attend this press conference by the security system of this puppet regime, hurled both of his shoes at our President as well as the invective of calling him "the murderer of women and children." 

Meanwhile, we watched President-elect Obama putting together his administration, which is made up not of ideological cronies, but of people who have achieved reputations for expertise in foreign affairs, in defense, in economics, in housing and in education. They are a cross section of our racially and politically diverse nation. They tended to be centrist in their philosophy. They are both Republicans and Democrats. They do not agree on all issues but they are united in the fact that each is wid
ely recognized as competent. There is no Alberto Gonzales or Monica Goodling in this group. In this administration, policy decisions will be debated and this President will have the benefit of a wide spectrum of opinions before he makes a decision. There is renewed hope in that reality. 

We are now living in a world that perceives America as a nation willing to torture; willing to destroy the environment for the sake of higher profits; willing to allow the unregulated greed of American business leaders to bring the economy of the world to its knees; willing for the dollar to lose so much of its value that its status as the ultimate unit in the world monetary system is at risk. That is why the people of this land have this year transferred their New Year's Day celebration to January 20. On that day we will place our hopes and the enormous burden of national leadership onto the shoulders of a 47-year-old child of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother, who was raised first by a single mother and then by his grandmother in places like Indonesia and Hawaii and who, because of his ability and scholarship, became the editor of the Harvard Law Review, a freshman senator and is now the president-elect of this nation. So save some of your "Happy New Years" for January 20, for on that day a new year really dawns. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Joan from Highlands, North Carolina, writes: 
Do you believe in heaven and20hell, the blissful heaven and the burning hell? And do you believe in Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

Dear Joan,

Answering your two questions is impossible until some terms are defined and some explanations are given. When you define heaven as "the blissful heaven" and hell as "the burning hell," you reveal an evangelical mindset that asserts a particular understanding that you are requesting that I either affirm or deny. It is to bind the discussion to your frame of reference. That immediately suggests that you do not want real answers, you want affirmation. I cannot give you that nor would I be interested in doing so. With that background, however, let me proceed to respond. I think it would be fair to say that I do not believe in a blissful heaven or a burning hell as evangelicals define those terms. I do believe in life after death and shall try to explain both why and in what way in my next book, which is scheduled for publication in September of 2009. 

You define heaven and hell as places of reward and punishment where God evens out life here on Earth. I regard that as primitive, childlike thinking that transforms God into a parent figure who delights in rewarding goodness and punishing sinfulness. This portrays God as a supernatural, judging figure and it violates everything I believe about both God and human life. 

If anyone pursues goodness in the hope of gaining rewards or avoiding punishment, that person has not escaped the basic self-centeredness of human life=2
0and it becomes obvious that such a person is motivated primarily by self-interest. The Christian life is ultimately revealed in the power to live for others, to give ourselves away. It is not motivated by bliss or torment. Both of those images are little more than human wish fulfillment.

The fiery pits of hell are not an essential part of the Christian story. If one would take Matthew's gospel and especially the book of Revelation out of the Bible, most of the references to hell as a fiery place of torment would disappear. That is a quite foreign theme to Paul, Mark, Luke and John. Evangelicals never study the Bible deeply enough to make this distinction. They basically talk about a book they do not understand.

When you ask about "believing in Jesus Christ as your personal savior" you are using stylized evangelical language. That language has no appeal at all for me. To assert the role of savior for Jesus implies a definition of human life as sinful, fallen and helpless. It assumes the ancient myth that proclaimed that we were created perfect only to fall into sin from which we need to be rescued. It was a popular definition before people understood about our evolutionary background. We have been evolving toward humanity for billions of years. Our problem is not that we have fallen from some pristine perfection into a sinful state from which we need to be saved, it is that we need to be empowered to become something that we have never been, namely fully human beings. So the idea that I
 need a savior to save me from a fall that never happened and to restore me to a status that I never possessed is in our time all but nonsensical. It is because we do not understand the nature of human life that we do not understand the Jesus role. I see in Jesus the power of love that empowers us to be more deeply and fully human and so I do not know how to translate your questions.

Sorry, but the old evangelical language that you use is badly dated and I believe quite distorting to my understanding of what Christianity is all about.

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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