Rights.

What are rights?

Human rights, inalienable rights, universal rights, my rights, your rights…so many rights. What are they and why do we think we have them?

One of the many definitions of the word in Oxford is as follows:

“a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something:[with infinitive]:she had every right to be angry you’re quite within your rights to ask for your money back”

This is unsatisfactory because it offers no basis…no source.

The atrocities of World War II led to the creation in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (one of the authors of which, John Peter Humphrey, was Canadian) which can (and should) be read here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights.

The declaration consists of 30 articles, the first two of which state:

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

The declaration was ratified and accepted by the United Nations and is considered international law although if you have read the document it seems hardly worth the paper it is written on because virtually every aspect of it is contravened everyday by practically every country in one way or another.

This begs the question – what is the basis of a right? Why do we believe we have rights? The document lacks the one thing it begs for – a power to enforce it and give it the authority of truth.

After all one does not simply have a right because one says one has one correct? If enough people say we have the right to a banana cream pie every second Thursday of the month does that make it a right? What good is a right that cannot be enforced and can be arbitrarily taken away on the whim of an authority?

I ask these questions because people are always harping about rights. I am proud of the fact that the first national museum to be built outside of Canada’s national capital region will be the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg which is scheduled to open in 2014. I am pleased by the accountability such an institution will hold the nation which erected it to.

I ask these questions because among certain circles in my dear community of Christ some grumble about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its impact on society having given freedoms to people in ways some find offensive.

What is a right? Quid est quaedam recta? I ask it in Latin because it reminds me of my favorite Latin question – Veritas. Quid est veritas? The question was asked in a moment of deep irony by Pontius Pilate of Christ as he, the living embodiment of veritas, of truth, stood before him, moments before his crucifixion.

So what is a right?

I think some of my friends of faith are wrong to be offended by the notion of human rights. I think their anger with the charter is wrong and short-sighted because they are missing the point.

The recognition of a human right is a vestige of truth, of veritas, still written on the hearts of humanity. The idea of human rights cannot exist without there being an absolute source of that right. A right that stems from anything that is not absolute is not a right because humans are not absolute, we know this. Humans are not and cannot create human rights…we can uncover them however. We can in our bones recognize their philosophical existence…by speaking of, and enshrining human rights, we recognize that we, humanity, are the ontological extension of a universal, absolute will…the will of God.

The discussion and enshrinement of human rights is a conscious or unconscious recognition that there is an absolute will from which emanates such rights – a will which desires these rights and in so desiring creates them.

We may deny this, in fact we do on a regular basis, but there is no alternative…a right, such as it is, cannot exist without God and so I applaud the discussion of human rights and their enshrinement while recognizing that we, as fallible beings that are not absolute, will never get them ‘right’ so to speak.

Human rights, like truth itself, are as shards of broken glass cobbled together by us into a mirror that shows us a fragmented version of what we could be, of what we should be, and what, ultimately, I believe we will be.

A recent study from the Pew Research forum released yesterday notes that 46 million Americans have no religious affiliation. This includes 13 million atheists and agnostics as well as 33 million who simply do not identify with a religion. You can find it here:

http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Religious_Affiliation/Unaffiliated/NonesOnTheRise-full.pdf

The largest portion of this demographic are 18-29 year-olds, 32 percent of whom claim no religious affiliation compared to just nine percent of people over the age of 65 who claim no religious affiliation.

The writing, as they say, is on the wall.

Every generation for the past three has been increasingly separating from religion. The increase of the religiously unaffiliated in the United States in the last five years has been an astounding 25 percent.

This cannot continue forever…sooner or later you reach zero.

In the face of such declines one wonders how the church is responding.  Is the church responding? Should the church respond? I wonder how mosques, synagogues and other such places of worship are responding.

The good news for churches is that “no religious affiliation” does not necessarily mean no faith. Many consider themselves spiritual and believers in God. This is good news for believers because it is a foundation to work with so to speak. However it is very clear that church, as it has been done (our methodology), no longer works to provide people with a satisfactory connection to God…church, as it has been done, is increasingly being considered irrelevant. The church believes it is the face of Christ to the world and as such some would console themselves with verses that point out that the world will persecute them as they have Christ and while this is definitely meant in part to console it was primarily meant as a warning to be prepared.

Apathy is the worst form of persecution. To be ignored as if one does not even exist is the height of torment. The church in the west is moving into this because the world is moving in a new direction. Sadly one of the responses to apathy is extremism…have you noticed a rise in religious extremism in the last little while? This is the two-year-old’s strategy to get noticed by mum and dad – to throw tantrums, to throw toys around and to scream “I AM HERE ATTEND TO ME!!!” This is extreme and works great for babies…however it is absolutely terrible for organizations like religions and leads to intense repression, massive backlash, and a heightened desire by the populace to ignore them even more.

The world is a semi-nomadic tribe that periodically packs up its tents and moves on to new regions. The church on the other hand has laid stone foundations deep into the cultural earth and to pack up and move with the world has proven very difficult. The church is not the pillar of cloud and fire that God has been, the pillars that moved as Israel moved. The church is Mount Sinai and Israel is leaving the mountain but the mountain cannot follow – it can only be remembered and periodically visited.

Religion should ultimately be considered ineffective to save and the western world is largely figuring this out. This is the whole direction of scripture…over and over and over again scripture points out that the ways and means of God in human hands are ineffective and serve only to teach us that we are not God and cannot save ourselves. That was the point of the law.

The church, as an engine of religion, has done a great job in fulfilling this mandate by showing that it cannot transform or save humanity. Unfortunately what it failed to do was include itself in this mix of humanity. The church cannot save itself either nor can the agents of the church. Sadly this is not the message the world has received – many in the world see the church very much as the Pharisees of old were seen – a group of righteous to whom one may belong to win God’s favor but outside of which one was lost.

This was one of the main areas of contention Christ had with the Pharisees…they taught that if one kept the law one could find righteousness in the eyes of God. Church leaders may not believe they are like the Pharisees and they may take great offense to this but the reality is, it does not matter what the church thinks but what message is being seen and heard – whether they teach it or not people increasingly see the church as a hypocritical organization that offers righteousness and salvation as an agent…it calls humanity unrighteous and than calls them in to receive righteousness. As the great Canadian Marshall McLuhan has said – “the medium is the message”.

Romans 3:10 says – “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;”

The struggle the church faces is two-fold – on the one-hand methodology needs to change to reflect the way culture learns and communicates. This is the easy challenge. The hard part is to reflect the character of Romans 3:10 and publicly admit and live out that even the best and brightest Mother Theresa’s and Ghandi’s of the church are as unrighteous as the foulest child raping murderer. It must do this because it is true and testified to in its own scripture.

People know in their hearts that this is the case but often live lives to avoid this truth or try to deny it however they cannot escape it. It is because this inescable truth is imprinted on their hearts that people sniff out the hypocrisy of a church that teaches the depravity of humanity on the one hand and presents a place where one can learn through obedience to law and scripture to be righteous. This is part of what is happening right now.

The entire church must live out the existential bleakness of Romans 3:10; To truly stand at the bottom of the bottomless well and realize that the only hope is the unreachable light that exists far above them. The church must through, active demonstration of their lives testify to their own unrighteousness and desperate need for the unreachable.

Changing the location of services, changing the order of service and adding components etc. falls into methodology which is needed but without the change in the heart (theology) of the people who call themselves ‘Church’, starting with the leaders,  you have the same carton and only the eggs have been moved around…there is no real difference.

Let us go for a walk
and gather autumn in our arms
to take hold of blazing branches
in selfish erstwhile embrace
for if the world dies in falling flames
we might, in walking forth
set ourselves alight
so as to burn just as bright
for a fiery moment

Church.

I go with ridiculous expectations of one hour transformation and come away jaded and disappointed. I go in with a critical heart and am rewarded with much fodder because you get what you are looking for. So this morning I went trying to be a blank slate and praying simply that God would offer a nugget or two from the Word that I had not heard before…this is what I got.

A reading was done from John 2:1-10

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

The scene:

We have a wedding, or more correctly, we are late into the wedding after-party. You know the time – that part of the evening where all of the alcohol has been drank. Generally it is the craziest part of the evening when most inhibitions have been lost and the best stories are being prepared.

It’s at this point that Jesus’ mother Mary comes to him and very simply states – “The wine is all gone” which, for anybody with a mother, means “Do something about the lack of wine”. Jesus is curt and verges on disrespectful “woman, why do you involve me, my time has not yet come”. Still when momma wants something momma gets it but Jesus has fun with it too.

Jesus’ time comes when Jesus decides it will come and now is as good a time as any…in fact it is the best time because this scene is loaded with symbolism and opportunity. Jesus did not need water in order to make wine…being God enfleshed he could simply have apparated it into being. No…Jesus decides he will use the six enormous containers used for ceremonial washing.

I wonder if Mary was panicking by this point? I wonder if she was nagging him about it. “You can’t use those!” Do something else but these are sacred vessels and for the purpose of cleansing not to be used to hold wine!!!”

At this point I imagine Jesus smirking and saying quietly “You asked me to help and this is what it looks like when I help.”

It is at a wedding feast that Christ takes jars designed to hold water used for purification, has them filled with water and transforms it to wine. In this moment it is as if he says “there is coming a time very soon when you will no longer need this water to be clean. Something new has come among you…the kingdom of God has come among you and everything is changing…starting with this.” It is as if he is saying – these jars will soon be useless…and I am the reason.

Christ’s first miracle foresees his last – as the water is transformed into wine in sacred vessels of cleansing for the benefit of the wedding guests so his blood will also become an agent of cleansing and transform those who partake of it – only once they have drank the wine of Christ they will never thirst again and there will no longer be a need for ceremonial jars to contain water for cleansing…let them be transformed into containers for wine that the wedding guests might partake and continue to celebrate.

Of course another interesting point here is that aside from some servants and Christ’s mother no one else really knows of the miracle that has occurred. Like the master of ceremonies they likely assume the groom is just an amazing guy who saved the best for last.

Maybe that is not really the point though. Maybe whether one sees the miracle or not is beside the point. The miracle happens and is effective whether one sees it or not. Christ’s final miracle at the cross was done  relatively alone as well…his mother was there, and two of his best friends, some Roman soldiers…that was it…and yet that miracle transformed everything.

That first miracle at the wedding…it foresees everything and it contains all the brilliant, unexpected, promise of Christ in one moment.

Yeah…that’s what I got this morning. Not too bad.

Glory is lifted
like hot breath
exhaled in a corpse-cold air
escaping high and away
glory to God in the highest
glory in the dark to light the way
glory in the night at end of day
glory when the money runs dry
glory in the face of the empty sky
glory when the rain threatens to drown
glory as the happy walls tumble down
glory to the only one worth while
glory at the end of your last mile
glory,
glory in your stone filled dying chest
glory to the heaven’s holiest
glory to God in the highest

there is a lot of sadness
in the bar
the brazen bar
no longer with the brass
that landed the name
a lot of shadows
hiding amidst more…
shadows…
long faces
hidden in glasses
whiskey
maybe
beer
something more
arms perhaps
empty arms unfilled
unfulfilled
lost seeking to be found
night is at home here
comfortable darkness
like an old wound
aching
bleeding memories
cold cries of
“this was once the place,
the place of light and life
now stale…now…
out of place”
a projection of my mind
unfairly pressed against
unknowing patrons
lost in song
i know i know i know
in the end
i don’t belong

bent are the boughs of sacred summer
beneath my cherished children’s weight
full of the vigor of a season’s sanctuary
life living itself out in authentic action
overflowing with wandering wind’s warmth

who can stand cold in the midst of it all?

maybe the man waiting on wild winter
with the chill of fall frosting his hoary heart
while the corpse-eating crows caw ravenous
over a hope-filled heavy head
bowed and praying for the union of spring

shadows like fog
cannot be caught
they flow through fingers
as sand
false facades stretch long
exaggerated truths
looming large as lies

but

if they linger long enough
the light will lull them out
till sharp defined is the graven image
of the one who casts them
etched in the unforgiving earth

I have to say Apple and CEO Tim Cook have wussed out lately in their response to the Google Maps firestorm that erupted with the release of the iPhone 5.

I have used Apple Maps turn by turn, flyover features recently for a 200 km plus road trip and it was simply the best directional experience I have had bar none. FAR BETTER than Google Maps. 

The problem of course is that it is a new product and new products have problems. Frankly all products have issues and it is how you respond to those issues that determine how the marketplace is going to react.

Remember when the iPhone 4 was released and people started realizing that if you bridged the little gap in the external metal band with your hand while making a phone call you would dramatically lower the antenna reception? This is a serious flaw. In my mind far more serious than the maps issue because maps can be fixed with software upgrades but a physical design issue – much more expensive to fix.

Do you remember Steve Job’s response to the marketplace as they started whining (legitimately) about the problem. His response was a great big F__K YOU to the world. He said – “hold it differently and get over it…here take this cheap-ass case for free” and guess what – people held it differently, took their cheap-ass case and got over it.

He didn’t say “We’re sooooooo sorry for our inferior product, while we fix it go get an Android phone or a Windows Smart Phone” because that would have been idiocy and it would have inflated the already big firestorm that was in place in the market.

In the case of the maps issue Jobs probably would have said the same thing – “Yeah it’s missing some key components and has some bugs but when you release a new product designed to move the whole freaking world forward it’s going to have issues. Hang in there and keep using Apple Maps because it has a better vision and foundation than Google’s. Get over it. Here take a free song from iTunes.”

Apple PR and CEO Tim Cook need to go back and read Jobs’ playbook. They need to watch the tapes and remember that Jobs’ brilliance did not stop at vision – it extended significantly into PR and marketing and they have already forgotten what that looked like.

Sure they dropped the ball on the maps app but when they went to pick it up they didn’t have to stay bent over and take it they way they have.