catsittingstill | Calling Christians of Good Will

Calling Christians of Good Will

I just read a horrible post in Pharyngula.

Those of you who follow the news may recall hearing about the crash of a small plane carrying 14 people in Montana; all aboard were killed. This was obviously a tragedy, made more poignant by the fact that seven of them were children. To make the tragedy particularly bitter, nine of them were from a single family, two children, two spouses-of-children, and five grandchildren of one Irving Feldkamp, who lost a shocking swath of his family in a single appalling event.

Irving Feldkamp owns a chain of clincs called Family Planning Associates. They do real Family Planning, meaning they provide both birth control, and abortions for when birth control fails.

I bet you can see this coming. I bet some of you are cringing, seeing this coming. It is, I'm afraid, just as bad as you think.

One "Gingi Edmonds" wrote a story on Christian Newswire, gloating over his loss.

We warned him, for his children's sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if "you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you". (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their two surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don't want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual 'I told you so' moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp's - Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow - and I think of the haunting words, 'Think of your children.' I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the 'Tomb of the Unborn'?

I particularly like the "I don't want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual "I told you so" moment. Because, of course, that's precisely what she wants to do.

So now is the time for Christians of good will, Christians who don't think a good God would even contemplate an evil act like murdering five children for the "sins" of their grandfather, Christians who are revolted by anyone gloating over someone else's pain, Christans who are appalled by the idea that anyone would deliberately try to make a grieving old man's suffering even worse, to speak up!

Don't tell me; I have it on good authority you exist, and I believe it. Tell Gingi. Her e-mail is gingi@gingiedmonds.com. Tell the world: write your local paper; write your state paper; put a post on your blog. Speak out against this evil; do it boldly and unashamed and without apology. Even if you disagree with abortion you can still make the point that you are revolted by Gingi's heartless attempt to profit from Feldkamp's tragedy.

Go forth and show the world that Christians are not intolerant evil jerks who increase suffering. And pass it on.

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You've framed it right, by my lights. As ever. I do indeed know and share friendship with Christians of good will, folks who know what "caritas" and "agape" are, and seek every day to grow in the light of their master's teachings and spirit. They have done me the honor of living-and-letting-live-with-best-wishes; I do my best to return the honor and the favor.

Alas, too many people in the world, especially some loud and bellicose factions who claim to belong to the "great" religious traditions, prefer to oversimplify existence as some proprietary-supernatural analog of a bad war movie driven by a rationalized ferocity they persist in associating with the divine (perhaps because that seems to justify their own ferocity). They believe they are the majority. (They wish.)

I see such folks as more of a threat to their own deepest truth (and their religions' viability) than any of the rest of us. I'm guessing they will never see that.

I too have friends who are Christians of good will. I hope they will choose to speak out, so the world can see and hear them, because right now I feel like the fanatics are getting all the airplay--because the fanatics are making noise and the non-fanatics aren't. I don't think that's good for Christianity, or for the world.

those odorous vermin in Topeka will send their "representatives" out to the funeral to protest saying that this was His judgment on the people involved.

Oh, bleagh. I hadn't thought that far ahead, no. (You're referring to the Fred Phelps gang, I take it?) I *hope* you're wrong, but it's a slender, forlorn, straggly kind of hope. Prob'ly die soon, poor thing.

wish I was. Knowing their ilk, though . . . . . .

Leave the ilk out of it. It's just standing over there grazing.

That's an ilk? Quick--where's the camera?

Sure, can't you see? It's wearing a funny hat and planning a fundraiser.

No, that's the foregin.

It is sometimes hard to imagine that there's such a thing as a truly tolerant Christian. As you said, such people must exist, but bad apples like Gingi make it hard to see.

There are bad people in all walks of life, of course. The difference between the religious ones and everyone else is that the religious ones do their evil in the name of God, and in fact will go out of their way to tell you that their righteousness comes from their church. You never see people being assholes "in the name of atheism".

God's fan club members keep making him look bad. Is it any wonder that some people look upon that club with derision?

I'm pretty sure Christians of good will outnumber the fanatics--I hope they'll make that more apparent.

I've never seen someone being a jerk in the name of atheism, but I wouldn't rule it out, especially if you make a challenge out of it :-)

Richard Dawkins comes close when he says that teaching a child religion is child abuse.

A Cartoon appropriate to this discussion.

*sigh*

Ya know, it's one of those things that makes me remember why I walked away from Xianity -- from the god of Abraham no matter what suit it's wearing...

"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The mind of a child accepts them, and only through great pain, perhaps even tragedy, can the child be relieved of them."
-- Hypatia of Alexandria

Well, I'm pretty sure most Christians are not like that. But I *do* hope they step up and say something publicly soon.

I like that quote, BTW.

I can imagine and have met a goodly number of them:

fleetfootmike and family,

micktim and

stevieannie,

plaid_dragon...

Unsurprisingly, they're all filkers.

:-) 'Cause we meet a lot of filkers...

I have seen people be assholes specifically in the name of atheism. It's not as common, but it does happen.

I've sent her this:

Dear Ms Edmonds,

I was appalled to read your piece on Christian Newswire. I found it deeply upsetting that a Christian could entertain the idea that such a terrible tragedy could--let alone should--be viewed as God's vengeance. Anything more totally foreign to the message that Jesus delivered to the world would be hard to imagine. I also found it hypocritical in the extreme that you claimed not to be trying to say "I told you so" when that is the entire subtext of your piece. "We warned you, and now God has taken your family: let that be a lesson to you." Did you really mean to say that, Ms Edmonds? Do you think God would look kindly on you for saying that to someone who has just suffered a horrible bereavement? Who is your God, that he would countenance gloating over someone in misery?

God does not deliver revenge in this life, Ms Edmonds. That is not the way of Christianity, but of some dark and primitive cult from the dawn of time. Re-read your Bible, please, and re-learn the true message of Christ, for your own sake and for your readers who may well see you as some kind of authority.

Love your enemy. Do good to them that wish ill to you. Forgive those who trespass against you, and commiserate with them whole-heartedly in their sorrow, and leave no room in your heart for meanness and smugness, for they are hateful to God. And do not use someone else's grief to make points for your cause, because then you are truly turning away from Christ and towards the darkness.

I hope I will be one of many who write to you to say this...one of many who see the cause of Christ misused and perverted to serve all too human ends. I hope you will find it in your heart to listen.
____________________________________

I'm not a Christian, of course, but I hope I can be counted as someone of good will...

It is a powerful and moving letter, and I certainly count you as someone of good will. :-)

get an answer, put it here?

It bounced. The recipient's mail folder is apparently full, which may be good news in itself. I shall have to resend it at some point tomorrow.

Hah! Her email box is full.

I'm not very surprised.

Um, let's not e-mail bomb her. That's a questionable act at best. (Though I see it's too late.) Other than that, resist!

Deliberately overloading her inbox was not my intention--but I do think it is appropriate for people to respond to her piece, not just to papers and blogs (though that is my foremost hope) but also to her personally.

It is very unfortunate that the most vocal people of my faith represent it and the lessons of Jesus so poorly. She needs just as many prayers as anyone else. :-(

I'm hoping that the non-fanatics will become more vocal, and improve the signal-to-noise ratio regarding Christianity while simultaneously making the world a place where the bulk of discourse is non-fanatic.

Oh no. i believe God would not contemplate an evil as such. But, we bring evil upon ourselves by the choices we make! And sometimes, the innocents suffer.

Just like abortion, the innocents suffer because of the mother's choice.

(rolls eyes) It's fine to disagree with me. I encourage you to consider having the courage and courtesy to sign your name while you're doing it.

That said--any God who would kill children over something their grandfather did is a God so palpably evil that anyone who knowingly chooses to follow that God has some explaining to do.

And regarding "innocents suffering" over abortion, I grant you that for the vast majority of its development a fetus is mindless and therefore innocent as a rock is innocent. Inhumanly innocent, if I may coin a phrase.

However in the vast majority of abortions it is hard to imagine it could suffer pain; a fetus's nerves don't grow all the way to its brain until the 6th month, and most abortions take place long before then.

When analyzed closely, this is a fascinating set of statements which clearly points out the self-contradictory nature of most attempts I've seen that try to explain good and evil in theological terms, or which try to rationalize God's behavior.

Let's look at it closely:

"God would not contemplate an evil as such."
That statement attempts to defend God as being Good. It follows the usual pattern of explaining that God is kind and benevolent and would not purposefully be mean.

"we bring evil upon ourselves by the choices we make! And sometimes, the innocents suffer."
Another in a long tradition of statements that tries to explain that the evil in this world is a result of man's own inhumanity to man, not because of God being mean to us. A statement that, in most cases, even atheists can agree with. So far, so good.

But once you think about it, here's the interesting thing. In the context of responding to Gingi's article about the tragedy, those statements contradicts each other. Because Irving clearly couldn't have directly *caused* the plane crash (i.e., none of his actions could have caused the plane to malfunction), then the only way the crash could have been his fault ("evil he brought upon himself") would be supernaturally, i.e., God intervened and smacked the plane down Himself.

A God who exacts punishing revenge on a man by deliberately and precisely killing many members of his innocent family in an airplane disaster has clearly performed an evil act. That kind of behavior is what we call "terrorism" these days, and we all agree it's evil, immoral, self-defeating, and ineffective.

Even if one agrees with the idea that abortion is murder and causes innocents to suffer, that kind of excessive revenge would be just plain wrong. If we took abortion out of the equation, for example, if Irving was simply a serial killer rather than an abortion doctor; even if we all agreed that Irving was evil and needed to be punished, we'd all also have to admit that murdering Irving's innocent family is still the wrong type of punishment.

Anyone who says that Irving brought this upon himself and his family is simply not understanding what that statement implies about their God. By saying that Irving "had it coming to him", they are admitting that their God is an immature, wrathful, vengeful, spiteful creature who can commit truly mean and vile acts of terrorism with deliberate and horrifying precision.

At that point, any argument you try to make that says your God is good and loving, and deserving of our love and worship, falls completely flat. No amount of quoting Bible verses will fix that.

And let me follow that up with something even more specific:

If you believe that your God could commit such an act of revenge, it actually says nothing about your God. What is shows us is your *personal* idea of what's right and wrong.

By saying "Irving had it coming to him", and putting up the front that it was God's will that he be punished, you're simply hiding your own vengeful nature behind God's name. That's the real truth behind all of this.

I think this is well put, but I have a couple of small disagreements.

"we bring evil upon ourselves by the choices we make! And sometimes, the innocents suffer."
Another in a long tradition of statements that tries to explain that the evil in this world is a result of man's own inhumanity to man, not because of God being mean to us. A statement that, in most cases, even atheists can agree with. So far, so good.

Actually, there is plenty of evil in this world (or at least plenty of bad occurences that cause suffering) that has nothing to do with people being cruel to each other. Forest fires, landslides, hurricanes, plagues, volcanoes erupting, tsunamis, droughts, floods--while a few of these (floods and fires for example) may occasionally result from human agency, 1) the vast majority of them do not and 2) of the minority that do, many are inadvertent--people who put levees around rivers or leave a campfire burning are not usually *trying* to cause floods or fires later. Human ignorance or shortsightedness may be responsible for these events, but not human evil.

And then there's all the wasps who paralyze caterpillars and lay their eggs in their helpless bodies type things

But once you think about it, here's the interesting thing. In the context of responding to Gingi's article about the tragedy, those statements contradicts each other. Because Irving clearly couldn't have directly *caused* the plane crash (i.e., none of his actions could have caused the plane to malfunction), then the only way the crash could have been his fault ("evil he brought upon himself") would be supernaturally, i.e., God intervened and smacked the plane down Himself.

I see another supernatural possibility you have left out: some non-God supernatural cause may have caused the plane to malfunction. (Not that I believe that for a second, but just for the sake of argument.) The problem with that idea is that I thought Christians were supposed to believe that non-God magic was inherently evil, and therefore 1) wouldn't bring about a "balancing of the scales" in any sense and 2) would be abhorrent even if it did.

Actually, now that I think about it, this ties back into the idea that seems (to my uneducated eye) to underlie Christianity, which is that it's possible to right a wrong committed by one person by punishing someone else who had nothing to do with it. Christ can't have "died for our sins" unless it is seriously possible to right the scales of justice by knowingly punishing the wrong person. If it is possible to do this, then it is possible in Feldenkamp's case to right the scales of justice by punishing his innocent children and grandchildren (plus three other random adults and two other random children who were also on the plane) for "sins" committed by Feldenkamp.

To me, this seems preposterous and evil. I can't imagine punishing the wrong person setting anything right. But other people seem to think differently.

Yeah, I wouldn't call accidents and natural disasters "evil". I think that to get that moniker, it needs to be premeditated by a creature that posesses intelligence and free will.

And yes, there is also that "sins of the father" argument. But a Google search on the phrase "sins of the father" tells me there's a specific Bible verse that says you're not supposed to do that kind of punishment. (Among other verses that say that kind of punishment is to be expected.) So anyone trying to make that argument from a Biblical perspective probably has some 'splaining to do anyway.

Well, if there's a God decreeing natural disasters, that would count as being premeditated by a creature that possesses intelligence and free will, and yet not coming from human evil, in my book :-)

But I guess I was just thinking of them as evil because they make innocent people suffer. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call them "random bad things." The fact remains that innocent people sometimes suffer because of things that have nothing at all to do with human evil, and that while human evil may explain all "evil" in the word (pretty much has to, if you define it that way, unless you believe that there are other creatures that possess intelligence and free will) it doesn't explain the reason for all human suffering.

I definitely see a difference between "evil" and "stuff what hurts someone." The former is a subcategory of the latter in my eyes -- no harm, no foul; I don't think that an action, however malicious the intent, can be evil if it doesn't actually do anyone any damage, which is why I don't believe in the concept of "evil thoughts" -- but only a subcategory. To be evil, something has to be both harmful and either deliberate or negligent (either of which imply done by a conscious being), and the hurt done has to be unnecessary to prevent greater harm and known (or should have been known) to be unnecessary. (Thus, for example, Tom Paxton's example of the refugee with two babies and one broken arm, who puts one down and walks on carrying the other so that at least one may live, is not committing an evil act, merely a tragic one, even though she is knowingly and deliberately taking an action which will harm someone.)

Whether it is evil to knowingly do something unnecessarily harmful to someone who thoroughly deserves it is a question I have not yet answered to my own satisfaction.

I'm not sure I would require an act to cause actual harm to be evil. For example if someone tried to use a rifle to shoot me dead, but missed and the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the earth, I would still consider that an evil act even though no harm was done.

But maybe this is a disagreement over semantics; I agree that "bad thoughts" are not evil if you don't act on them.

As regards the whole "punishing one for the sins of another" thing, I've come to the conclusion that the only moral response to a sacrifice like the one Jesus is purported to have made would be to reject it. "What? All my sins will be forgiven if this Jewish carpenter is tortured to death? I guess I'll just have to do without forgiveness, then!"

I often thank Whomever May Be Listening that I'm not one of those people who believes in an angry and spiteful God. It can be oddly comforting to understand that sometimes bad things just happen and it's nobody's fault.

I've come to the conclusion that the only moral response to a sacrifice like the one Jesus is purported to have made would be to reject it.

Yes, the "This game is evil; I can't stop you, but I won't play" response.

It can be oddly comforting to understand that sometimes bad things just happen and it's nobody's fault.

Yes, very much so. When my mother died I was extremely sad, but at least it was nobody's fault; just a bad thing that happened.

"What? All my sins will be forgiven if this Jewish carpenter is tortured to death? I guess I'll just have to do without forgiveness, then!"

And some walk away from Omelas...

Yeah. :-) I had never thought about that story, in that light.

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Calling Christians of Good Will

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You know what will also happen, don't you?

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being a jerk in the name of atheism

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and when you

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God would even contemplate an evil act like murdering five

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