City of God, or City of Man?

Ever since the Supreme Court handed down its verdict on gay marriage, a thought, or more precisely a collection of thoughts have been bouncing around the vast empty spaces inside my head. Then I had a text conversation with my son yesterday afternoon. He mentioned that in the sermon he heard at Christ Church Episcopal in Nashville, the priest had mentioned Augustine's great work, The City of God. It occurred to me that the thoughts banging around up there weren't all that original, since they had much in common with the ramblings of an Algerian philosopher from the 5th century! I suppose that there's nothing new under the sun, but here's what I've been thinking about.

Perhaps, the nine black-robed justices have done American Christianity a huge favor. Maybe now, having been disabused of any notion that evangelical Christianity enjoys majority support in this country, the church can be decoupled from politics in general and the Republican Party in particular. Maybe now, Christians will get back to the real work of Christianity which is the betterment of mankind through the spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I come from a faith background which has always closely identified itself with our country and mostly conservative politics. Although it was rarely if ever said publically, the clear implication was always that Christians were, or at least ought to be, conservative Republicans. Some of this was a result of the fact that generally speaking, Republicans tended to be pro life and Democrats pro choice. Most of the devout Christians who I have known in my life have been consistently against abortion, viewing it as the taking of a human life. Although, I agree with them about abortion, I have never been a one issue voter. I have always been persuaded that choosing a political leader is a terrible mess of a thing that requires a million trade offs and that the man or woman you ultimately choose will be part saint and part sinner. So I always felt that closely associating your church with one side of the political divide in an overwhelmingly divided country made little sense and in fact was bad for business.

Now that we Christians have come to the realization that our views, by and large, are out of favor and we are no longer the dominant fashion of thought in this country, we can all now take a step back from political activism, in favor of delivering salt and light, the roll that Jesus invisioned for his disciples. As exiles from the dominant culture we will be better able to identify with other marginalized segments of society...in other words, the kind of people who Jesus hung out with. Perhaps now that we realize that we can't create the utopian (American) city of man, we will concentrate on the City of God. Which brings us to Augustine.

Now, I'm no Augustinian scholar,(actually I'm not any kind of scholar), and I don't claim that I have read all twenty five books that make up his seminal work. I'm more like a guy who had to read the Cliff Notes version for a paper I wrote my sophomore year at UofR. But, I remember the big stuff. After the Roman Empire was overrun by barbarians at the beginning of the 5th century, the early Christians were getting the blame from many Romans who thought that ever since Constantine had established the new sect as the official religion of the Empire, things had gone downhill. Enter Augustine, with City of God, a full-throated defense of the faith, and it's many contributions to society. But for Augustine, there was a difference between the kingdoms of man and the kingdom of God, and confusing one with the other would lead to trouble.

While my citizenship is American, in the mind of Augustine my first citizenship isn't secular, but sacred. When the power of the state finds itself aligned with the eternal truths of the faith, all benefit. But when the state runs afoul of God's laws, a separation must occur. One goes one way and one another. 

However, when the state and the church start to be seen as two sides of the same coin, both the state and the church are in trouble. The state becomes too powerful, and the church becomes impotent. There should always be a tension between the two. The goals of the modern nation-state often flow from base motives, the desire to exert power and dominion over smaller, weaker neighbors for example. If the church is seen by the world as part of the government, it will also come to be seen as equally base. Now that many Christians are waking up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, 

our salvation lies somewhere other than political power, we can once again be free to administer grace and comfort to a screwed up world in desperate need of both.

On the other hand, the church may respond to a culture that doesn't agree with them on gay marriage, by trying to mobilize those who do into some sort of crypto-religious-lobbying-influence peddling special interest group...exactly the sort of thing that our Lord and Savior would never have done. The battle for hearts and minds isn't fought in a committee. There are no precinct captains in charge of feeding the hungry, no district chairmen in charge of comforting the downtrodden. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a fully engaged citizen and taking part in political work, politics is a poor substitute for the gospel.

Chill Out!!

Alright. I've just about had enough of the gloom and doom apocalyptic nonsense on Facebook. Nothing that has happened this week is the end of the world. So, let's put the sack cloth and ashes back in the closet, and calm down. You, like me, might have thought that the Obamacare decision was the equivalent of legal dyslectia. Maybe you disagree with my opinion that the gay marriage decision was the right one on the merits. Regardless of how you come down on the Supremes, or the Confederate flag, or anything else that may have rocked your world this past week, there should be a couple of things about which we can all agree...

1. On the very day that the gay marriage decision was rendered, ISIS militants staged a public execution of three homosexual men somewhere in Syria. The three were suspended by their ankles from the top of a three story building, then dropped headfirst into the pavement below to the celebratory cheers of a gathered mob. None of us live in Syria. This is a glorious accident of birth for which each and every one of us should be grateful.

2. Tomorrow morning, the Supreme Court not withstanding, I will wake up in my five bedroom, climate controlled home after a restful night in a king-sized rice carved poster bed. I will walk downstairs and grind up a cup of coffee beans from Nicarauga and while waiting for them to brew, I will open up my iPad and instantly be connected to all of the wisdom of the world by way of a platform that as recently as 25 years ago didn't exist. I will drive my beautiful Cadillac CTS all of two miles to my beautiful and spacious office where I am paid handsomely for providing financial services to nearly 500 of the best people in the world. All of this is mine despite the fact that my father was the son of a sharecropper, and my parents once lived in a trailer park. 

3. Despite the chaos of national politics, the Dunnevant family biannual beach vacation is only three weeks away. I get to spend seven days with the coolest family God ever created, and nobody in Washington has any power to stop me.

4. Although gay couples can now marry in these United States, the Chicago Cubs still will not win a World Series this year.

5. While ObamaCare is now firmly entrenched in American law, the Washington Nationals still need to find a consistent power hitting first baseman.

6. While it must be acknowledged that Christianity, at least the Evangelical version of it, is now firmly outside the mainstream of American political thought, it was even further outside the mainstream of political thought in Ancient Rome , but oddly enough experienced its greatest period of growth at precisely the same time as its believers were being used as fuel to light the street lamps.

Chill out everybody. Let's figure out a way to get along with people with whom we disagree. In the meantime, let's all count our blessings.

Name them...one by one.

The Week of the Supremes

This past week saw two monumental Supreme Court decisions which produced the widest possible reactions I've ever seen on my Facebook wall. The Obamacare case was either the death knell for the rule of law, or a victory for the poor. The decision on gay marriage was either a triumph for love or the end of democracy in America. Chief Justice John Roberts was either a man who has grown in his time on the bench or a duplicitous traitor. My view:

1. My reaction to the ObamaCare ruling was resignation, since words, long ago, lost their meaning. It seemed clear to me that the court had no appetite to overturn the apple cart which contained this mess of a law and it would be willing to twist itself into linguistic knots to rule in favor of this monstrosity. This is what happens when laws are 2000 pages in length and written by think-tanks and other varieties of professional idiots. "Established by the states" becomes just about anything you want it to mean. So now the Supreme Court has now developed a new line of work, that of copy editor of poorly crafted legislation. 

2. In May of 2012 I published a blog entitled, "Having a Gay Rights Debate With Myself," where I began to hash out my thoughts on this subject. A year later I published a two-parter on the same subject, once again trying to outline my thinking on what for me has been a troublesome issue. Having already stated my view, I will not again rehash it. When the decision came down I wasn't surprised. It was strange because at once I believed that on the strict matter of recognizing the right to marriage for gay people, the court had gotten it right with respect to due process and equal protection, but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel that this ruling will not be the end of things. In my heart of hearts I believe that some in the vanguard of this sexual politics movement will not be satisfied until every vestige of opposition is humiliated. Tolerance will not be enough, neither will equality in
the eyes of the law. Nothing short of celebratory acceptance will do. If there is a sizable slice of the
population who doesn't care for gay marriage...they must be made to care. My son assures me that this isn't the case. He thinks it absurd to worry that a gay couple would deliberately ask a church to perform their wedding ceremony knowing full well that they will decline, therefore creating an opportunity for yet another legal challenge...this time going after churches and their bigoted view of scripture. He reminds me that during the debate Justice Kagen pointed out that certain Jewish Rabbi's refuse to wed Jews to non-Jews and are constitutionally protected in doing so. He tells me that my slippery slope concerns are overblown. I hope he's right. When I observe the unprecedented speed with which the gay rights and now transgender rights movement has advanced, he will have to allow me my ambivalence.

For me, this week has demonstrated one very good thing. In America, we endure great changes in policy and law with scattered placards and assorted bull horns. On the steps of the Supreme Court were partisans from both sides of these raging debates, and when the verdict was announced one side
cheered wildly, some shed tears of joy, while the other side felt crushed by the news, shedding their own tears. But there was no violence. Nobody killed anyone. Free citizens competing against each other in the realm of ideas played out their cases within the architecture of democracy, and accepted the results without bloodshed. In the grand sweep of history, this is a very new and very rare phenomenon. In this fact I take great pride and a great deal of comfort. 

Any Ideas on Who Should Replace FDR on the Dime?

There are times when I think that Western Civilization is about to implode on itself from the sheer volume of stupidity that it produces. Some deranged, drug-addled teenager shoots nine people in a church and suddenly there's a mad rush to airbrush from our shared history any traces of racism in our ancestors. A breathless CNN reporter, while interviewing another CNN reporter asks, "I'm wondering if perhaps we need to rethink the Jefferson Memorial in Washington. Should we really have such an imposing memorial for a slave owner in our nation's capital?" In my own city, protesters have gathered on Monument Avenue to protest the statues of Stonewall Jackson, A.P. Hill and Robert E. Lee. Overnight, one of them spray painted Black Lives Matter across the base of the Jefferson Davis monument.

I came out quite a while ago as being in favor of removing the Confederate Battle flag from the state capital building in South Carolina. I did so because the state house is a government building and as such represents all people. Like it or not, that flag has been appropriated by racists for over a hundred years, and as such it is painful for a significant percentage of our population. There isn't much that any government can actually do to irradiate racism from the hearts of its people, but removing that flag from the roof of a state capital building seemed like a decent and wise thing to do. However, give progressive lunatics in this country an inch and they will devour the mile in less time than it takes to whistle Dixie.

So, while we are at this business of airbrushing our history, here are a few suggestions:

1. If we are going to take down the Jefferson memorial, then why not the Washington monument? I mean that's a twofer since not only was he also a slave holder, but the Washington monument has got to be the world's largest phallic symbol, an ugly reminder of the mysogynistic, patriarchal nature of the power structure of our nation. Perhaps this could be the first order of business for a Hillary Clinton administration.

2. Andrew Jackson on our twenty dollar bill? Really? I know he's the father of the Democratic Party and all, but Jackson was the brains behind the forced exile of native Americans from Florida via the trail of tears. Replace him with Harriet Tubman...another twofer!

3. Take the change out of your pocket and take a gander at the dime. Who is that handsome man? Why, none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt...the man responsible for the internment of thousands of law abiding Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during WWII simply because of their race! At some point we will have to put Obama's likeness on some form of our currency, why not the dime?

4. Abraham Lincoln is on the penny AND the five dollar bill. This one is tricky, I know, what with the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing the slaves and all. But old Abe was also the first President to employ the modern concept of total war, authorizing as he did the infamous slash and burn tactics of Sherman's March to the sea. By turning a blind eye to the systematic destruction of property, killing of civilians and the raping of women, Lincoln was culpable in the very tactics that we now deplore when perpetuated by ISIS. No, I'm afraid Lincoln will have to be scrubbed from our money and something or someone will have to replace the big statue in Washington. 

We have a lot of work to do. In another ten years we won't even recognize DC. Looks like Obama wasn't kidding when he promised to fundamentally transform America!

My Modest Proposal

Don't be alarmed by what I'm about to write. I'm simply thinking out loud, and writing down the thoughts as they come to me, without the bothersome chore of actually fact-checking any of what you're about to read. It's all very scattered, but most of it is based on the extensive reading I have done on this subject over the past five years, so it's not complete BS. Try to keep up!

Ok, so the United States has a national debt of something in the 17-18 trillion dollar neighborhood. Anyone who has purchased a Treasury bill is a creditor. That includes the Chinese government along with your crazy uncle Fred. A creditor is defined as a person or company, or government to whom money is owed. So we owe some 7 trillion to other countries, and a whopping 6 trillion to...ourselves, in the form of future obligations to Social Security and whatnot. So, we can't just stiff ourselves. But when it comes to what we owe other countries, that number cannot be viewed in isolation, it has to be compared to what those other countries owe...us, does it not? For example, we owe the Chinese roughly 1.5 trillion bucks...give or take a small fortune. However, the Chinese government owes US somewhere around 1.4 trillion. We owe Japan 1.3 trillion, they owe us 1.2 trillion. In fact, if you add it all up, what we owe other countries is pretty darned close to what they all owe us.

So, how's about we just call it even? Write off the whole mess as a giant misunderstanding and start all over. To sweeten the pot a little maybe we could throw New Jersey in to the Chinese to cover the short fall. While we're at it, we could write off those insane trillions that we owe to the freaking Federal Reserve in the form of loans they made to their own government back during the Great Recession of 2008. If you're hoping I can explain the Rube Goldberg contraption that is inter-governmental borrowing, you are hoping in vain. Hint: even Janet Yellen can't explain it. 

Now, the deal with national debt is this, in and of itself it is neither good or bad, it just IS. As long as your economy is growing at a 5-7% annual clip, a 18 trillion dollar debt financed by low interest rates can be grown out of. However, our economy, post recession, has been growing at an annual rate of somewhere around 2%. In Economics, this is what is referred to as "being up Shit's creek." So, either we figure out a way to 1. ramp up economic growth, 2. dramatically cut spending to slow down the need for further debt, or 3. default. 

I would prefer #1. Economic growth at 6% tends to lift everyone up, and has the added benefit of being fun. However, politics being what it is, neither party has the ability or the inclination to put in place a pro-growth program, since neither party can even agree on what growth is or even if it's a good thing!  If there's anything that the American people should know by now is that #2 is never going to happen ever again. For politicians of both parties, economic growth isn't nearly as much fun as spending other people's money. So expecting Washington DC to cut spending is akin to expecting John Boenher to give up his tanning bed. That leaves the only reasonable alternative being # 3.

President Obama: I've called this press conference today to announce that as of midnight last night, the United States of America has decided to default on all of our foreign debt obligations. In return, I have authorized the Department of the Treasury to forgive all the outstanding debt of every country who owes us money. Thank You..........drops microphone.

The Best Years of Your Life

What happens if you wake up one day and come to the conclusion that your best days might be behind you? For my younger friends, this isn't likely to happen, but if you're over fifty, at some point the thought might rear it's ugly head. This is not a matter of depression or even anxiety, rather a frank admission of fact with a keen eye towards the calendar. I am 57 years old, and as such have most likely lived roughly two thirds of my expected life span. I've got thirty years left, more or less, not counting the occurrence of some freak accident or act of God. The question then becomes, will I accomplish as much, create as much, do as much over the next thirty years as I did since I was 27?

Much has changed in the last thirty years. In 1985 there were things that I knew to be true:

1. I was about to become a father. I knew what my job was as a man. My job was to provide for my family. I was willing to do whatever it took. I also needed to provide a stable environment for my kids to grow up in which meant primarily...loving their mother with all of my heart.

2. I loved my church in 1985, not everything about it, but the big things, I loved. I was in a Sunday School class full of young couples our age all struggling with the same stuff, being taught by a guy who was one of us, a laymen who could teach circles around most seminarians. I got challenged every week with something from the bible that was applicable to my day to day struggles. As a consequence, I felt like I was making spiritual progress of some kind, becoming a better person little by little. 

3. I knew who we were as a country. America was a gigantic rowdy stew of discontent, even thirty years ago, but there was still the conviction that we were great, a nation of more good than bad, a force that stood for something noble, or at last made an attempt to. Maybe we weren't actually great, but there seemed a shared notion that we should at least aspire to greatness. By greatness, I suppose I mean that we thought of ourselves as leaders of at least the free world. When the Berlin Wall came down, it was as if we had finally prevailed over the totalitarian inclinations of the world. 

4. In 1985 my family had its organization and hierarchy perfectly in tact as it had always been. My Mom and Dad were the leaders of a growing tribe. They set the pace for the rest of us. It was all so reliable and comforting to know and understand one's place in the world.

I knew more than just these four things, of course, but these four formed the basis of my understanding of what life was about. Today, everything has changed. Some things have changed on the margins, but other things are completely unrecognizable to me:

1. My kids are grown and gone, and with them most of the fire that they put in my belly to make money. Now that I'm not under such financial pressure, it's hard to know how to downshift my internal engine to a lower gear without tearing up the transmission. I'm afraid that without huge overwhelming obligations, I will lose the competitive drive that has been one of the keys to my success in the business world. I feel myself scrambling around for new goals, something freshly pressing, a new rabbit to chase.

2. I'm still at the same church. Many, although not all of the people I knew thirty years ago are still there. The fact that I no longer feel enriched, challenged or motivated by my attendance there isn't all the fault of the church. In fact most of my discontent is my own fault. In matters spiritual the fault almost always lies within I'm told...especially by ineffectual clergymen. So, I feel adrift from my faith community, as the kids now call it.

3. The America of 2015 is no longer the leader of anything except social pathology statistics. We have been surpassed by other, more aggressive nations in the categories that used to measure influence. This isn't the fault of any President or party, it just is. We are fractured, divided by a laundry list of issues, with no common ground in sight. At last count there are 13 announced candidates for the Republican Party nomination for President in 2016. Still, everyone knows deep down that it will wind up being another Bush vs. Clinton matchup. That's who we are now, it's the best we can do. Instead of doing something about runaway debt, a cratering education system and the actuarial doomsday clock which is the American welfare apparatus, we seem obsessed with making the world safe and affirming for the likes of Caitlyn Jenner. Sexual identity politics has now eclipsed racial identity politics, or maybe identity politics has itself been eclipsed, since everything is now fluid and evolving. We're all aggrieved now for one reason or another. 

4. My family is still large, loud and growing, but leaderless. Mom and Dad aren't here anymore. We who remain are trying to figure out what happens now at Christmas. It's a strange season of life when the big lights go out all at once. When they do, I suppose it's natural to stumble around in the darkness for a while waiting for your eyes to adjust.

So, the question lingers, are my best days behind me? What will the next thirty years bring? I feel like I need to regroup, call a timeout and draw up a new battle plan. The plays I have always called in the past might not work against this new world of slippery assumptions. I had a teacher one time who tried to help me learn how to spell the word assume. He said, "always remember Doug that when you assume, it always makes an ASS out of U and ME. Poor guy would get fired for using that trick today. The point is, the days are long gone when I could assume anything about life. Black is white, up is down, left is right, so I'll have to learn to roll with this new world. There's no going back. What's in the past is finished. Whatever time that remains will have to be fought over and won.

My Father's Day Lesson

Father's Day is over and I'm glad. I must admit that I started the day feeling a bit sorry for myself. I was missing Dad and my kids. Church wasn't any help. It was one of those horribly awkward services where instead of a sermon, you're asked to get into small clusters of half a dozen of your fellow congregants and pray about various things. I suppose it's designed to promote unity or some such thing, but for me it's just awkward and annoying. Prayer isn't something I like to do, on command, with strangers. So, that was the low point of my day.

Then we headed out to my in-laws for a Father's Day lasagna lunch. There was key lime pie for dessert. Things were looking up. 

Pam had to head back to church soon after lunch for the beginning of VBS, so I would be alone for most of the rest of the day, not something I was looking forward to on such a melancholy day. I popped three Advil, turned the heating pad on "high" and laid down in my trusty recliner for a nap.

When I awoke, there were two messages on my phone, one from each of my kids issuing an invitation to join them for a "FaceTime" chat. First up was Patrick. He looked good, sounded good and happy. I watched him and his dog Oliver do some pretty cool tricks. His room looked about as clean as straight as I have ever seen a room that belonged to him. It appears that dog ownership has forced him to become a better housekeeper, since whatever you leave on the floor becomes potential dog food. We had a nice talk. I started to feel better. Next up was Kaitlin and Jon. There they were sitting on their sofa with little Jackson next to them chewing on some dog toy looking squeezably soft. They too looked happy. We talked about our upcoming family vacation in Hatteras. By the time this call was finished, I felt a lot better. I had no reason to feel sorry for myself. I needed to snap out of it. How could I complain? My Dad lived to be 89, and was loved and adored by everyone who knew him. I have been blessed with two kids who are smart as whips and busy building their lives, and who love their Father enough to Face Time him on Father's Day. Stop your whining, Dunnevant.

So, around 6 am I settled in front of my television to watch the U.S. Open. Four and a half hours later I watched Dustin Johnson three putt the tournament away, handing the second major of the year to young Jordan Spieth. It was heartbreaking. I have nothing against Spieth, in fact I love the kid. I just always hate to see any athlete fail so spectacularly. Johnson could have won the Open if he sank the first putt, would have guaranteed himself a spot in an 18 hole playoff against Spieth, which he probably would have won, by simply brushing in the second four foot putt. Sadly, he missed them both and in a matter of seconds went from the thrill of victory to the agony of humiliating defeat. Brutal.

That was my Father's Day. Started out poorly. I had to endure a bout of brooding discontent. But then my wonderful kids, along with their beautiful dogs, picked me up. Next year will be better.