Chief Justice Roy Moore, the United States Supreme Court's Greece v. Galloway decision ... What a Mess.... for Christians!!

Chief Justice Roy Moore, the United States Supreme Court's Greece v. Galloway decision ... What a Mess.... for Christians!!!

What a week!  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore states the following: 

“Everybody, to include the U.S. Supreme Court, has been deceived as to one little word in the First Amendment called ‘religion.' They can't define it.” Moore said. “They can't define it the way Mason, Madison and even the United State Supreme Court defined it, 'the duties we owe to the creator and the manner of discharging it.' They don’t want to do that, because that acknowledges a creator god. Buddha didn't create us. Mohammed didn't create us. It's the god of the Holy Scriptures. ... They didn't bring a Koran over on the pilgrim ship, Mayflower. Let's get real. Let's go back and learn our history."  

Watch the video:   

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/alabama-judge-christians_n_5267662.html

You'll find the Chief Justice praising Blackstone's commentaries.  Such commentaries are influential, but the foundation of his argument is that Constitutional Jurisprudence rests on a law review article written by an otherwise unremarkable Tory member of the House of Parliament.  (The Tories were the party in opposition to American independence, but to heck with that tiny hiccup).  Blackstone was one thinker ... of many, and his claim to fame was translating British law to the masses.  (I.E. he made the law accessible to the non-lawyer and made a lot of money in publishing).

But SCOTUS takes it a step further and renders its 5-4 decision in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, holding that the opening prayer held before a town council meeting does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.  

Read the entire opinion and dissents, totaling  80 pages:  

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-696_4f57.pdf

Chief Justice Moore and SCOTUS don't realize it, but these respective positions are about to be at war with one another.  Governments are now in the position of interpreting the question of "what is religion?" on a "spiritual" basis, instead of an objective basis.  Clearly the Alabama Chief Justice seem to think the First Amendment would allow citizens to legally, and successfully, object to an Muslim Cleric opening a Birmingham City Council Meeting with a prayer; but those same citizens would not have a legal or successful chance of objecting to a minister of whatever Christian denomination the Chief Justice belongs too.  (I've done a cursory search, and I can't seem to find where the Chief Justice worships on Sunday).  The Chief Justice could even be correct... prior to the passing of the 1th Amendment.  SCOTUS precedent is clear that the most recent amendment reflects the most recent position of Congress and state legislatures.... so the Chief Justice is presently wrong because the 14th Amendment is more recent than the First Amendment.  Religious liberty applies equally to us all, but I guess some of us are more equal than others pursuant to this interpretation. 

Jefferson's writings about the separation of Church and State are crucial, not just for the disagreements between distinct religions, but because of disagreements of doctrine among Christians.  SCOTUS's opinion is naive.  Here's why: one of my best friends grew up in the west Oklahoma countryside in a town of about 10,000.  The community was composed of distinct Christian denominations: Catholic, Baptist, and smaller Protestant churches.  Each morning, a student conducted a school prayer over the high school intercom.  The prayer often consisted of the student-conductor praying to God that the the students that were not a member of the conductor's denomination to repent from their ways and be saved from going to hell.  Apparently one ecumenical Church is a little tough on high school kids (and that's not a sarcasm, its tough on adults).  SCOTUS seems to think grown adult will not act this way.  Obviously, SCOTUS has not accounted for the Alabama Chief Justice and those of his persuasion. 

The Hypothetical:  

Now imagine, a prayer conducted before a City Council meeting with a zoning dispute about the location for building a mission center to be operated by Church A, and created in order to feed the homeless.  To open the meeting, the prayer-conductor of Church B performs the invocation by praying for the souls of the Godless-misguided members of Church A because Church A's congregation (or leadership) is open minded to gay rights (or hostile to gay rights) OR  doesn't teach the Rapture (or does); OR teaches creationism (or doesn't) OR you could go on and on about doctrinal divisions.  

However, Church B's prayer conducted in opening meeting sets the tone for the entire meeting with its potential to stir bitterness and vitriol in control of the meeting  (Sounds like starting a day at school on a bad note).  Then if a vote is taken and Church A is denied zoning for its mission center, then it is fair for Church A's congregation to assume that Church B's prayer influenced city councilors to consider (1) that one church has more voters than the other, and/or (2) that the prayer  swayed the governmental body's making of its decision, or otherwise considered Church B's congregation as less than honorable people.  Church B also could assume that the City Government, in operating in its authority to determine how to zone a building, is now also victorious in spreading its religious doctrine. 

Sadly, the issue that gets lost is the zoning a building that will help further both churches' mission by creating a center to help the poor, goes by the way side with at least one congregation angry at the other. 

Of course, the next step is litigation wherein a simple zoning dispute has now become a battlefield of whether Church B's actions have swayed of its City Government incontradiction to Jesus's teachings to feed the poor.  What a mess.  

Supreme Court cases are based on these messes, and until today, the Court previous arrived at resolutions of separating Church and State  But this morning SCOTUS created problems, instead of resolving a problem.  Previous decisions make more sense because it is best to leave religious doctrine at the Government Building's front steps, but now it appears religious doctrine is brought directly into Government Buildings.  Now add to it that the lead jurist of one of the 50 States states Constitution rights only applies to Christians, and the next step is obviously determining which  religious doctrine is superior in a Court of law.  If you aren't scared yet, you should be. 

The Alabama Chief Justice seems to have an answer to this question about what religious doctrine is superior.  I'm fairly certain this pro-gay rights, pro-civil rights, pro-social justice, pro-equal pay, pro-science, liberal Christian who believes every person is welcome at Christ's Communion Table has a different answer than the Chief Justice.  

God help us all. 

Easter Sunday & Cognitive Dissonance

Easter Sunday & Cognitive Dissonance

Indeed, Christ has risen!  It is a miracle.  It is the miracle of our salvation.

However, the stone wasn’t rolled away to find an empty tomb just so we could cleanse our soul.

Jesus gave us something to do.  

I truly am amazed at the posts that occur on the Facebook in celebration of Easter Sunday.  The same people who proclaim the Resurrection seem to spend a good deal of their time posting opinion regarding opinions that seem to be in complete contradiction to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) to spread his teachings.  

I think one of the most specific teachings given to us is contained in Matthew 25:31-46.  

We are called to be the “you” in verses 35 & 36:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,

I was a stranger and you invited me in,

I needed clothes and you clothed me,

I was sick and you looked after me,

I was in prison and you came to visit me.

On a friend’s Facebook page, a college friend posted “The tomb is empty."  Celebrating the resurrection of Christ from the grave.  Something I surely do celebrate as well. 

Directly below my college friends' proclamation, he posts a a video blog entry from a person named Jonah Goldberg of Prager University, mocking the concept of “social justice.”  

Celebrating Christ’s resurrection and then subsequently mocking social justice takes some serious cognitive dissonance.  

Per Wikipedia: The first modern usage of the specific term "social justice" is typically attributed to Catholic thinkers from the 1840s, including to the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in Civiltà Cattolica, based on the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.  He argued that rival capitalist and socialist theories, based on subjective Cartesian thinking, undermined the unity of society present in Thomistic metaphysics as neither were sufficiently concerned with moral philosophy.  

Likewise, at my own church, The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church says, 

"We hold governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to free and fair elections and to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal; to the right to privacy; and to the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care."

So my friend is either not smart enough to connect the dots that his political stance mocking social justice is in contradiction to the Great Commission OR he is engaging in cognitive dissonance. Because I know him to be intelligent, in fact I believe he graduated Cum Laude, the conclusion must be a form of cognitive dissonance. 

The point of this Blogpost is not to embarrass or mock my friend.  

The point of this Blogpost is to ask the serious question, of yourself, about how can one celebrate Jesus’s Resurrection and his teachings and then reconcile supporting a society where each person that needs help if he or she is hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, or in prison is told that they are to blame for their own woes (which is sometimes true, and sometimes not true, but usually a mixture of both) and that the consequences of those woes mean that those suffering people are no longer (or never were) worthy of Christian assistance in fighting the systemic issues that keep them hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or in prison? 

A Reasonable Response to Tax Day

A week ago was National Tax Filing Day.  The day grown-ups suck it up and acknowledge that the society we participate in, that exists within the geographic border of the United States of America, is in fact something that costs money.  

Via the Facebook, I found a link to the National Priorities Organization which had a neat tool detailing what my tax bill paid for this year.  

(Here is the link:  http://nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/taxday/)

Getting away from the demagoguery that swallows any rational discourse, I decided to analyze my tax bill according to this tool and decide if I should really be annoyedor not.  My federal tax bill was $18,639.00 for fiscal year 2013.  Our household got a little of our withheld earnings back. (So the Federal gov’t held a whopping $1,039.00 of our earnings interest free, and the State of Alabama will return a similar amount).  

Military - $5,050.35

I’m a liberal.  I’ve never thought that the key to national security is “the best defense is a good offense.”  I also am not a “hippie” who thinks if everyone puts down the weapons that we will suddenly live in a John Lennon world.  This  $5,050.35 figure does not bother me one bit.  Aircraft carriers, battleships, tanks, B-2 Bombers, the Coast Guard, and, most importantly, soldiers & sailors keep people off the shores of the United States who would come to kill us and conquer us.  These people and things also help us sell goods to other people around the world and help us buy stuff from other people.  (Hey, how did that BMW get here?)  

I’m glad a chunk of that figure goes to developing weapons that reduce the size of the armed forces; i.e the people we put into uniforms, because that means fewer of our people in harm’s way.  I do think this figure could be lower because the United States really does have enough fire power at the push of a button to destroy most of the world.  After all, my $129.67 for nuclear weapons should deter somebody… right?  So all in all, no reason to gripe about this problem.  

Health - $4,236.26

The Tax Tool only provides details for Medicaid and CHIP, but its safe to assume that Medicare is part of this.  To me, $2,354.29 for Medicare and the Affordable Care Act is a quasi insurance/savings account.  Why does Medicare exist?  Because once a person hits a certain age, when medical care is a daily part of one's life, the person becomes uninsurable.  Speaking from personal experience, I’m rather okay with this figure.  My grandfather is 95.  He’s spent the last 4+ weeks in a hospital.  The bill for this care is probably out of the roof and would devastate his savings, probably my father’s savings, and mine if we hadn’t already paid into the system through years of taxes.  At the very least, he will be afforded the ability to die with dignity because Medicare pays for hospice.  Money well spent, or saved, or invested.  Just depends on how you look at it.

Medicaid seems to anger a lot of people.  I’m not sure why.  The $1,813.78 of my taxes that pays for Medicaid helps a lot of people who are disabled and can’t work.  Many other people simply don’t have the money to pay for health insurance even though they do work.  At the very least, Medicaid lets people go to the doctor and prevents disease from spreading. 

I pay $68.19 per year to the C.H.I.P, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.  I’m a fairly charitable person (but admittedly see room for improvement)  The only complaint I’ve heard about C.H.I.P. is that Senator Ted Kennedy promoted it and therefore anything he contributed too must be a bad thing.  I’m glad children can get some health care off of my $68.19.  I need a better reason to not pay for a kid's healthcare besides the fact a law's champion came from a womanizing alcoholic. 

Not mentioned in the readout is the Center for Disease Control.  Watch “Outbreak” or “Contagion.”  I’m ecstatic that my tax money for the CDC to help monitor diseases and prevent epidemics.  

Unemployment & Labor - $1,824.26

$114.63 of my taxes goes to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.  By my count, that’s about what I pay to my church in a two-month span and it goes to a similar purpose.  And unlike my Church, TANF money requires people to find a job and has a cap on the benefits.  

$48.97 for Job Training and Employment Programs.  I’m ok with a less than $50 of my taxes going into a pot to train a laid off worker in a dying industry some new job skills in order to work in stable or growing industry.  Once that worker is back in the work force, he’s contributing to the tax bill too.  

The rest of this line item is a bit of a mystery.  The unknown requires more questions to be asked.  

Veterans Benefits - $941.89

I’ve never stood a post.  I read the paper and follow Jon Stewart’s monitoring of the Veteran’s Administration.  When these brave men & women come back from a combat zone, sometimes experiencing (or doing) horrible things on behalf of us, it is our duty to help them out with medical care.  Some statistics cite that ¼ of homeless men are former veterans.  A good chunk of those funds helps pay for their burial after their corpse is discovered on a park bench.  My only gripe is our country needs to find a way to have fewer veterans… which might happen if Congress and Presidents quit going to war.  I know the VA systems are antiquated and we could give them a better service, with less overhead, if the system was modernized. 

A whopping $35.52 pays for the pensions of those soldiers and sailors that make military service their life’s career.  Thank you!  Soldier and Sailors, of all ranks, deserve a retirement just like the rest of us.  

Food & Agriculture - $940.49

A good chunk of this goes to Corporate Farming in the form of subsidies to either pay for gas to move those tractors that make our food OR to not grow food.  This tax bill makes my food cheaper to buy, and consequently make it cheaper for everyone to buy food.  The rest of the tax money goes to crazy things like policing food manufacturers so our food is safe to eat.  I’m happy the “Free market” has some oversight because one case of avoiding serious food poisoning is worth $940.49.

$45.39 goes to Food Stamps.  I give more than that to my food pantry at church.  The problem with my church's food pantry is that it really only serves the people who can travel to it.  I'm okay with $45.39 going to food stamps, even if 20% of it is lost to fraud.   

Government - $847.94

The line items here are $85.13 for Border Protection and $47.29 for Federal Corrections.  Paying less than $50 to keep people who’ve hurt our society in prison is a great frigging deal!  Just think, Jeffrey Dahmer in jail for less than $50.00!  For anyone who has a strong opinion on immigration, $85.13 for those Border Patrolmen and a fence along the Rio Grande probably sounds like too little is being spent.  

The balance of this $715.52 goes to paying for the Federal Court System; the F.B.I.; the U.S. Marshall Service, your Congressmen, Senators, and President’s salary; staffs of these people,  the gov’t employees who operate all the buildings these people work in, and a slew of other things that are boring and mundane.  Security guards are a huge part of this expense.  So basically, this expense is for the general law & order that allows us to do business with each other and gives us some police to help us out when someone violates that law & order.  

Housing and Community - $744.12

$25.20 of my taxes went to the Home Energy Assistance Program that paid for people with far less money than I to pay for heating oil and electricity so they don’t freeze to death during the winter.  

$43.56 went to the “Community Development Block Grant.”  Housing projects.  $43.56 to give people with less me than a roof over their head.  I’m okay with $43.56 helping someone have a home, even if its not a great one.  

The balance of $675.36 has helped local governments, like my home town and the suburb I grew up in, to get money for sidewalks, parks, and stuff like that.  I like parks, sidewalks, and traffic lights. The Federal Gov’t give the money in bulk to my city and then audits how it is spent, because local gov’ts have a tendency to be even more corrupt than the Federal Gov’t. (or at least that is true in Jefferson County, Alabama).

Education - $378.61

$3.03 for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting is money well spent.  I love Sesame Street, PBS Newshour, Frontline, and quite a few people love Downton Abbey.  An ESPN Bundle on your cable is about $6.95 per month.  Put that in perspective.  

$232.91 for Pell Grants, Work Study, and other Student Aid is fine by me, but I understand some griping because I have complaints too.  The programs for higher education are a good idea in principle.  I’ve got a problem with the “for-profit” universities that are taking advantage of these programs to line their pockets and not really teaching the students anything of value.  

I’d like to know more about this category.  I live in Alabama and the minority of people fighting the majority’s ignorance needs as much money and help from any source as it can possibly get.  

Energy and Environment - $345.65

Whether a person likes fossil fuels or not, your taxes go to subsidies to help keep the cost of a gallon of gas for cars, buses, and commercial vehicles low.  Doing the math, I drive 1,000 miles per month and get about 16 miles to the gallon.  So I use about 62.5 gallons of gas.  18.4 cents per gallon goes to taxes for highways, so I spend 81.6 cents for gas.  The subsidy probably saves me $1.00 per gallon or $62.50 per month or $750 per year.  So from a bottom line standpoint, I think my tax money in relation to gasoline is well spent.  Without doing the research, I’m sure our collective tax dollars for nuclear energy and/or coal fired power plants operate under a similar system.  I think I am saving money.  (Oh, and some of that tax is to put gas in reserve so if something bad ever does happen, our country has gas to fill up military defense vehicles to shoot at people trying to kill us or to ship us food). 

$10.44 of this is spent on the National Forest System.  Sounds like a damn good return on my investment.  I like trees.  I like the deer that breed in those woods that I can hunt and later eat.  Oh yeah, and oxygen those trees produce.

International Affairs - $282.07

I have two friends that work for the State Department and U.S. A.I.D., respectively.  I’ve seen first hand what it takes to train them and the valuable work performed.  $173.88 of this amount goes to programs around the world that are humanitarian.  Whether positive or negative, lots of Americans have a strong opinion about President George W. Bush.  One accomplishment most of those opinions agree about is his strong push towards AIDS/HIV health in Africa.  I’m okay with $173.08 paying some State Dep’t and U.S. A.I.D. employees money to help alleviate the human suffering caused by a horrible disease.  

Transportation - $253.53

$7.41 goes for towards  the Emergency Aid for Public Transportation.  If you lived in NYC after Hurricane Sandy or Tuscaloosa, Alabama after the April 27, 2011 tornado, then this money probably helped you directly.  The rest of it went to public highways, air traffic controllers, and trains.  All of this transportation allows us to move goods and services that give us a job.  No griping on my part.  $246.12 to drive on toll free interstate highways, pay for TSA officers to screen passengers, and railroad inspectors to move stuff around the country is well worth it.  

Science - $208.89

$117.78 goes to NASA.  I do not think NASA is a waste of money.  The rest goes to a variety of items including grants to scientists that discover stuff to help make our life better.  Some of the experiments get twisted by politicians to justify cutting this expense, but if you believe knowledge has value than we have to trust that undirected research requires us to trust scientist to take their research wherever the evidence and facts leads them (even if the hypotheses sound silly or morally questionable before delving into the facts that the scientist is hoping to discover or prove).  

Interest - $2,584.33

This part is annoying because it means 13.8% of my taxes for debts to pay for the previous projects in all of the above categories.  Interest sucks when you evaluate your own household budget.  However, household debt as compared to government debt is not a rational analogy.  Corporate bond debt as compared to household debt is not a rational analogy.  Consider this: states with a “balanced budget”, like my home state of Alabama, are some of the poorest in the country.  Some of that debt is going to pay for stuff I use everyday (for example, Interstate Highways). 

Conclusions:

I sure notice a lot of people are upset about food stamps, “welfare” and other “handouts.”  Obviously, I’m not as upset as others about what I am giving up for these alleged “handouts,” as my costs, as well as the similar costs of most of my upper-middle class contemporaries, for those things appear to be minimal.  Usually after pointing out this reality, the upset person pivots to the collective numbers for “fraud and waste.”  When those waste/fraud figures are compared to our individual incomes, the amount is staggering; but the collective amount of my money that is wasted is minimal.  Honestly, I probably waste more money on impulse purchases in the grocery store line than the amount of my tax money subject to waste/fraud for these handout programs.  Waste and fraud deserve serious attention, but throwing under the bus our fellow citizens who are trying to make a better life for themselves, or even for the people who have given up on themselves, because some people abuse the system is hardly a solution.  When talking about a country of 300,000,000 people, I’m fairly certain my $18,639 has bought me some safety for both home and abroad, healthy living, and advanced the notion we can live in a civilized society that cares for one another in a better manner than the generation before.  

(Forgive any typos or grammar errors.  I'm not trying to make a living or name for myself with this Blog.  I am writing down my thoughts and if anyone does me the courtesy of reading it, I only hope it is a competent entry into the marketplace of ideas).