Larry Hart

Introduction
For news of the world I rely on reading, between breakfast and saying morning prayer with Brenda, just the headlines of stories that appear on the internet –– or at most browsing quickly through those that catch my quickly fading interest. I find that consuming a limited amount of “news” is good for my mental health and the state of my soul. Because of medical issues I haven’t written anything on religion or politics in the last six months that requires much of an expenditure of energy. But lately I have felt something of a compulsion to write in order to combat the laziness I seem to be getting used to, as well as to keep my blog active. So, here is a new post of my observations upon browsing four recent stories (or at least their headlines) ––– “Four Easy Pieces:”
1) You Can’t Expect Israel to Feed & Fuel Its Enemy –Can You?
2) Which Side Ae You On In the Israeli – Hamas War?
3) A Mormon Challenge to Southern Baptist Moral Theology
4) A Heart Problem –– Gun Violence

You Can’t Expect Israel to Feed & Fuel Its Enemy –Can You?
Since writing the following observation some food and medicine has begun to trinkle into Gaza, but not nearly enough ––and no fuel. As of this writing 60% of the residents of Gaza have been displaced, the bombing has intensified, and Israel’s ground forces have entered Gaza. The last I read 3,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza. So, here is my observation:

Israel has announced its determination, in retaliation of Hamas’s ruthless attack, to lay complete siege to the Gaza strip, allowing no food, water, or electricity or fuel to the 2.3 million people who live there, half of them children, living in the Gaza strip with no way out –– no way of escaping the horror of the falling bombs and rockets. This siege is not really a new Israeli stratagem. Israel has kept the people of Gaza in a strangle hold for the last sixteen years. Gaza, is not the only, but certainly it is one of the world’s most tragic humanitarian crises. This overcrowded and impoverished enclave of human suffering, misery,, and sorrow has been referred to by Human Rights Watch as “an open air prison.” Now, Israel promises, with American dollars and weapons, to intensify the blockade and the horror that is Gaza. As of the last couple of days, some aid (not nearly enough) but no fuel has gotten through. 

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Johnathan Corincus, Spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, said of Israel’s plan to lay complete siege to the Gaza Strip, “You cannot expect us to feed and fuel the same enemy who is butchering us.” I am not quite sure who Corincus means by “you.” I assume he means the Western world, which revolted by the horrors of the holocaust, feels itself obligated by perpetual guilt to support Israel regardless of its own ruthlessness. If he is speaking from a non-religious, secular, perspective he is correct. No one can expect anything from him or the people of Isrl other than what seems reasonable to what Corincus and his fellow Israelis deem in their own best interest. However, Israel has declared itself a religious, rather than politically secular nation, and from that perspective I think that something quite different might be expected. First, what is known as the lex talionis a principle stated in the Old Testament which allows for revenge, or retribution, but only in proportionate measures. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in his eagerness to show American support of Israel asserted, contrary to this “just war” principle: “This is no time for neutrality, or for false equivalence or for excuses for the inexcusable.” Austin is correct in arguing that Hamas’s cruel and deadly violence is inexcusable –– but he is not only wrong but morally deficient in denying there is an equivalency between Hamas and Israel. So, I say again, given the lex talionis of the Hebrew Scripture, which is meant to limit the extent and cruelty of revenge, as well as the spiritual depth and wisdom that Israel might have learned from its long history of suffering, I can indeed expect Israel to show more restrain and compassion than it has. But there is a another reason I would expect Israel to show more humanity than it has since before its inception as a state in 1948. One would think that the suffering of the Jewish people as a people stretching back across the centuries might have distilled in them a spiritual wisdom of goodness and kindness which, sadly, is just not there. Speaking for myself personally, I really am not terribly concerned with what may be expected of Israel, but I do know with a good deal of certainty what is expected of me. I remember that another Jew, a supposedly simple carpenter and sage, once called upon his followers to do what Corincus, along with most of the world, thinks irrational –– insane: “Feed your enemy, bless those who curse you, when someone strikes you on the right cheek turn the left one to them as well, love your enemy, overcome evil with good, blessed are the peacemakers.”

Which Side Are You On In the Israeli-Hamas War?
A student asked a NYC teacher which side she is on in the Israel-Hamas war. I don’t know what she answered, the question formed in the headline was all I paid any attention to. I guess I didn’t pay much attention because my own answer comes easily, spontaneously, simply––”Neither.” War crimes, regardless of who commits them, sicken me. I am the enemy of all and every kind of violence. I am all for aid to the refugee –– food, medical care, shelter, and water to the deserving and the undeserving , and to the displaced and shell shocked regardless of race, nationality, politics, faith, or other such distinctions. I do my best to be as consistently and deeply as I can a person of and for peace — non-anxious, non-angry, non-violent. When I say my prayers for the men and women engaged in combat I must confess I pray something that is akin to: “Lord, please don’t let 2+2=4,” in that I pray for the safety of all and the death of none. When I pray I do so fully aware that both Israel and Hamas have committed acts of unspeakable terror, but I cannot hope to contribute anything to the spirit of peace by justifying the atrocities of either. So, I pray for the protection of all the defenseless noncombatants (Palestinian or Israeli), and for the healing of alll the wounded. I pray that God will somehow open the way to peace and reconciliation. I pray death, humiliation, or destruction on no one. My dream can be seen in Edward Hicks’s painting the Peaceable Kingdom which is based on Isaiah the Prophet 11:6-9. That is my dream because I believe to dream that dream is to dream the dream of God. If you find my stance on love and non-violence impractical you might want to read the history of Gandhi’s liberation of India through the practice of ahimsa, a practice he derived from the Sermon on the Mount and applied within the context of his own Hindu faith. If only everyone seeking freedom from oppression or deliverance from an enemy would become a satyagraha.

A Mormon Challenge to Southern Baptist Moral Theology
Robert Jeffress, Southern Baptist minister, pastor of the large, affluent, and prestigious First Baptist Church in Dallas Texas, and Fox propaganda consultant, has consistently argued that the character of the president is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that Trump is a sexual predator, a father who lusts after his own daughter, a perpetrator of violence, a thief and chronic liar, greedy, or evil in M. Scott Peck’s clinical definition of evil, all that matters is that he professes the right “policies;” that is, those policies which support the values of money, status, and power favored by clergy like Jeffress and Franklin Graham. The latter condemned those congressional representatives who voted to certify the 2020 election as Judases . They had, he said, betrayed Trump who had done so much for us––like giving us lower taxes. Only a narcists or sociopath would think character does not matter.

In his interview with CBS anchor and managing editor Nora O’Donnell, Romney laments what has become of the Republican Party––its loss of integrity. He then goes on to say quite contrary to Jeffress and numerous other fundamentalist pastors and Republicans: “Character counts. The character of our leaders makes a difference and it shapes the character of our country.”

I find it ironical for a number of reasons that it is a political and religious conservative (a former Mormon missionary and Republican Presidential candidate), Senator Mitt Romney who is now challenging this bit of morally ignorant nonsense that character does not matter. In the real world, what professionals do we deal with –– lawyers, bankers, dentists, doctors, police officers, fire fighters, school teachers –– that we would say their character does not matter?

A Heart Problem –– Gun Violence
The new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives –– what’s his name? Johnson? Has responded to the latest (the latest as of this hour but soon to pass out of sight in the rearview mirror) tragic shooting in Lewiston Maine, which has left eighteen people dead, twice that wounded, and who has counted the number left in the painful and crushing blackness of grief. Johnson’s response had been eagerly sought because he has a reputation for being really smart, and after all is officially now one of the most important leaders of the American people –– second in line to the president. But I am beginning to wander –– that seems to be a problem with me. Even if I run fast I can’t seem to keep up with what I am thinking. I am always having to say, “Slow down!” to myself.

So, Johnson has responded to the blood, and sorrow, and death in Lewiston with his own version of the usual Republican cliché that guns are not the problem, “Guns do not kill, people do.” Johnson dresses that up a little by saying that guns are not the problem, so no need to control their availability or use, the human heart, he says, is the problem: “At the end of the day,” said Johnson, “the problem is the huma heart. It’s not guns. At the end of the day we have to protect the right of citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment” I would have thought that “at the end of the day,” in the last analysis, that the bottom line, is that we need to secure the safety of people. I mean isn’t that the very purpose, or at least a primary for which governments are formed? Isn’t that even the foundation of the Second Amendment? I mean if the British come stomping across my cornfield I’m going to need a musket. But see, I’m starting to outpace myself again. What I want to say before I outrun myself is I think, as a person of Christian faith who has spent not a few years studying the New Testament, Johnson is correct –– the problem is indeed one of the heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19). But it’s just not as simplistic as Johnson makes it.

First, in the Bible the heart is considered the seat, or center of life, vitality and strength –– something like our life force. It therefore means the mind, soul, spirit, or our entire emotional nature and understanding. Second, the heart does not exist apart from other hearts, from other people, or from the physical world in which it exists. The heart does not beat with thought and feeling in a vacuum. It is part of a system. The whole universe is a system made up of interacting and linking systems. No one thing can really be understood separate and apart from the system of which it is a part –– not you, not your family, not your church, not your nations, and not gun violence. Violence of every kind obviously depends on the motivations of the heart, but to be enacted it also requires means and opportunity. By Johnson’s reasoning we should have no laws regulating automobiles or their drivers. After all, it is not cars that kill but the people driving them.

America does have a heart problem. America is and has always been a violent nation, a violent system, and is constantly growing more violent, coarser, cruder all the time. Much of our entertainment is violent, our literature is violent, our politics is increasingly violent, our ecology is violent, our economics is violent, our treatment of the poor and vulnerable among us is violent, we ravage God’s creation with violence, our language is violent –– there is no more violent word in the English language than the F word –– religious leaders are supportive of violence as a just and practical solution to social and international problems. The whole nation is on fire with violence. Yes Mr. Johnson, The problem is indeed the human heart, it is in your heart as well as in Robert Card’s and in mine, for we are all complicit. Do you think that your support of George Santos,, your desire and actions to keep him in congress as long as possible, does not expose the rot and weakness in your own soul? “Those who are good bring forth from the good treasure in their heart, but the evil bring forth from the evil stored in their heart” (Matthew 12:35).