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Ominous Events in the Middle East

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I was planning to write a post this month to follow up on last month’s post about economics, but I decided to turn my attention to several news items that have appeared in the last few days and that some readers might find interesting. My daughter and son-in-law are studying in Jerusalem this year, so I follow the news from the region fairly closely. Two situations–the continuing developments from the Arab Spring and the on-going tensions between Israel and Iran–are giving rise to some interesting news stories.

When the Arab Spring was taking place, I expected nothing good to come from it. My study of history has taught me that revolutions rarely change things as advertised. It is far easier to unite people in opposition to something than to rally people around a positive program. So revolutions are usually brought about by a broad coalition of people who actually have widely disparate views of what they want after they bring the old order down. Once the existing order is brought down, there is inevitably a power vacuum. That power vacuum will eventually (usually after two or three years) be filled by the group that is best organized, most ruthless, and most patient. As things are unfolding in Egypt, it would appear that the Muslim Brotherhood best fits that description. Here is an article from the Jerusalem Post, written by an American academic who has been living in Egypt and observing events close up: http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=269806.

Another article reports on a speech given May 1 by Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Before a large crowd, he announced one of the goals of the organization. The Muslim Brotherhood is working to create a United States of Arabs, the capital of which will be Jerusalem. This is a bit problematic in that Jerusalem is currently the capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and the Jews are showing no interest in moving out. The article reports the cleric’s solution to this problem:

“The capital of the Caliphate—the capital of the United States of the Arabs,” he continued, “will be Jerusalem, Allah willing!”

Not long afterward, Higazi reiterated the campaign promise, but this time in more unequivocal language: “Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca, or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem, Allah willing. Our cry shall be: ‘Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem! Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem!’”

The crowd responded in kind: “Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem! Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem! Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem!”

Chilling stuff. You can read the entire article at http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/muslim-brotherhood-launches-presidential-campaign-the-capital-of-the-united-states-of-the-arabs-will-be-jerusalem/2012/05/10/.

Another article, this one an opinion piece, presents a survey of what is happening throughout the Middle East, focusing on each country’s attitude toward Israel. The events of the Arab Spring allowed pro-Islamist and anti-Israel sentiments to come forward in each state. But this just fits into a pattern of a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and an accompanying anti-Israel sentiment in almost all of the countries of the region. This article presents a helpful survey of the attitudes of most of the countries in the Middle East: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=269795.

A final article is related to the tensions between Israel and Iran. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah (the Muslim group that, with the help of Syria and Iran, has virtually gained control of Lebanon) made a speech a few days ago. The occasion for the speech was the completed reconstruction of an area in south Lebanon that was destroyed in the last conflict between the Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. He used this speech to warn Israel against any acts of provocation. He announced that the Hezbollah now have the technical ability to reach any part of Israel with missiles. He then made a very ominous statement:

“The days when we were forced from our homes and they were not forced from theirs are over,” Nasrallah said, to cheers from a crowd of supporters watching his speech.

“The days when we were afraid and they were not are over,” he said. “And we say to them: The time has come when we will remain and you will be the ones who disappear.”

You can read the entire article at http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=269614.

Israel lives in a rough neighborhood.

 

May News & Views Now On-line

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DavidThe May issue of News & Views features “Is Jesus’ Resurrection a Historical Fact?” an article by Dr. David, the president and a tutor at Gutenberg College. For other articles and talks by Dr. Crabtree, go to his author’s page.

Go here for details on how you can subscribe to News & Views. Subscription is free.

 

Gutenberg and the Important Things in Life

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A week before I graduated from Gutenberg College in 2010, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an article, History for Dollars, in defense of the liberal arts. He stated that the humanities are a necessary part of a well-rounded education and are essential to understanding human behavior. While I definitely agreed with him at the time, the past two years have further confirmed the positive impact that my Great Books education has had on me. In particular, my experience at Gutenberg College enriched and clarified my understanding of what things in life are important to me. As a result, my liberal arts education has greatly impacted the decisions I have made about the life I want to live post-Gutenberg. First, I want to explain how Gutenberg helped me clarify the important things in life, and then I will show the impact this clarification has had for me since graduating.

During my time at college, Gutenberg’s emphasis on introspection helped me clarify what things are important to me in life. While reading how other people throughout history approached their lives, I was challenged to articulate what I believe and how I wanted to live my life. For example, Plato’s account of Socrates’ defense in the Apology was memorably helpful. I was struck by Socrates’ emphasis on the importance of nurturing the human soul. He believed that one takes care of his soul by becoming humble about what he does not know and then pursuing the truth. To Socrates, success in life was not a socio-economic status, as people believed back then and still believe today. Rather, he thought that there was more value in furthering one’s own growth and that a successful person was someone with a “healthy” soul. The Apology, along with the other Socratic accounts, challenged our culture’s understanding of success and helped me better form my idea of what a successful life should look like. This reading, and other books like it in the Great Books curriculum at Gutenberg, was pivotal for bringing up issues that helped me form a better idea of what was actually important to me in life.

This clarification has not only changed my outlook on what is important in life, but it has also impacted the direction of my life post-college. Firstly, it has played a key role in helping me make life-changing decisions. An example of this would be my husband’s and my decision to remain in Eugene after I graduated. While we have discussed moving to Portland for better job opportunities, we have decided to remain here because we still want to be a part of our post-Gutenberg community. We want our friends and mentors from school to continue playing a role in our development as human beings. While staying in Eugene does restrict our level of income and career opportunities, we value our personal growth and the closeness of the relationships that we have here more than having expendable income.

Beyond helping me make some of those tough, life-changing decisions, my Gutenberg education has also redirected some of my interests in life. Since graduating from college, I have become increasingly interested in the history of ideas and application of sciences in the area of nutrition. As a teenager, when my mom started cooking organic and whole foods, I had balked at the idea of anything new on my plate. This basically limited my diet to highly processed, industrial food. After going to Gutenberg and reevaluating what was important to me, I found myself wanting to know and implement good nutritional practices. In the last few years, I’ve gone from being the “Captain Crunch eating teenager” that I used to be, to the “Michael Pollan reading, gardening, backyard chicken farmer” that I am now. I may not be reading Kant, Hegel, or Hume every day, but my experience at Gutenberg helped me reevaluate my own eating habits after reading about the food beliefs of others, and I now look forward to continuing my studies in food and nutrition.

When I first decided to attend Gutenberg College, I expected that it would be, at the very least, an interesting program. It turned out that Gutenberg was not only interesting, but also life changing. I became more aware of what I wanted in life through the challenge of many other peoples’ opinions. In turn, this awareness has impacted the decisions I have made since graduating and has influenced my interests in positive ways. I am sure that two years from now I will continue to have a great respect for the importance of the liberal arts and have even more positive changes to show as a result of my time at Gutenberg.

 

Gutenberg College did not pay Obama to plug the College

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We wanted to act quickly to quell any rumors that Gutenberg College paid President Obama to state publicly that the approach to education provided by Gutenberg College is the kind of education that America needs today. In a speech at the University of North Carolina on April 24, 2012, President Obama said the following, “…no matter what it is, no matter what field you’re in, you’re going to have to engage in lifelong learning.” When he said this, it was natural for the listeners to assume that he was talking about Gutenberg College. It was equally natural to assume that Gutenberg College paid him for this as a part of our marketing program. I would like to emphatically deny that President Obama was remunerated by Gutenberg College for making this statement.

 

Putting Faithfulness Over Brilliance

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To maintain that Paul invented Christianity is not uncommon in academic circles. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. Culturally speaking, Paul’s influence failed miserably. All over the empire, communities that began as gospel-believing communities departed from the gospel of Jesus that Paul and the other apostles had delivered to them and gravitated toward the new religion of Christianity that was beginning to take shape from various elements of the gospel. Certainly Paul was brilliant enough to be the inventor of a new religion, but he was too honest and too humble to do so. Paul always viewed his role as that of a servant of Jesus Christ. He did not see himself as an original thinker, an innovator, a philosopher, a guru, a wise man. He thought of himself as doing nothing more than transmitting to the Gentile world the truth that had been revealed to him by Jesus and the Scriptures. The measure of his “success” was his faithfulness, not his brilliant insights. Any insights he had came from Jesus. What was required of him was only to faithfully pass those insights on to others. It was not his place to add to them. He had not been called to be insightful. He had been called to be trustworthy.

The irony is this: Paul was a creative genius. While he viewed himself as nothing more than a mouthpiece, in fact he is one of the most profound and insightful thinkers that I have ever read. (In the interests of full disclosure, I am an active member of the Paul of Tarsus fan club. And I am more familiar with Paul’s writings than any other writings in the history of ideas.) It never ceases to amaze me how profound, insightful, accurate, and thorough are his interpretation and application of the Scriptures upon which he bases his understanding of the gospel. It is not uncommon for me, when I have finally gotten to the bottom of an argument that Paul has made, to find myself exclaim, “Paul, you’re a genius!”

But as intelligent and capable as Paul was, he did not use what had been given him to impress. When one rightly understands Paul, one never gets the sense that Paul was trying to dazzle. He was never out to display his intellectual prowess and have people notice how brilliant he was. He was a humble man with one, simple goal: to explain as clearly as he could the gospel of Jesus to others. It was not his place, nor his ambition, to come up with something of his own. He only wanted to pass on to others what had been given to him. One never sees him taking any pride in what he knew and understood. His understanding was not his creation. He did not invent it. He did not discover it. It was a gift that had been given to him. His sole responsibility was to share what had been given to him with others.

I cannot help but think that the history of Christianity would have gone very differently had others coming after him been as humble and faithful as Paul was. Christianity was invented precisely because they were not. Too many, in the generations that followed Paul, were intent on being clever rather than faithful. Too many were tempted to interject into their teaching and theology insights of their own instead of passing on faithfully that which had been given to them by the apostles and the Scriptures. It was the ongoing series of “additions” and “creative insights” that gradually transformed the revelation of Jesus, the Messiah, into the Christian religion.

I admire Paul all the more when I understand what he did not do. He did not succumb to the evil desire to take pride in what he had. Paul, more than any other man except Jesus, possessed a deep and accurate grasp of the ultimate truth from God. I see no evidence that Paul ever tried to turn that fact into a basis of self-glorification. He cared deeply that people be persuaded of what he knew and understood—not out of some misplaced need to have people acknowledge him but rather out of a desire that others, too, might come to believe the truth. Paul was as confident as any man ever could be that he knew the truth; and if his truth was rejected, he grieved—not because he felt personally rejected or slighted but because of the folly of the one who rejected it

God, help me be as humble and faithful as Paul, who emulated your Son, Jesus!

 

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