James M. Redwine

Bible

7 Days vs 45 Minutes

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Both the Quran and the Bible claim the World was created in 6 days by a God who even took a final day to rest up. I am okay with this explanation. It is simple, understandable and interesting. It certainly beats all the hours needed by me in an attempt to dimly comprehend the physics, chemistry and biology behind evolution. However, this is not a column about the age-old discussion about science versus religion. No, this is a plea to the sadists who write the directions that accompany Do-It-Yourself home improvement projects such as installing a ceiling fan.

If God needed only 6 days to create the World, it is pretty obvious to me He did not have to decipher some instruction manual written originally in Chinese then translated into what resembles English. God had the advantage of proceeding unencumbered by misleading photographs of parts and diabolical descriptions of which part goes where. My assumption is Satan was still in God’s good graces when the World was created or he had already been cast out of heaven before God decided to amuse Himself with Adam and Eve.

Apparently Satan did not attempt to confuse God with some phony How-To book on Creation as did the fiends who wrote the instructions for installing the ceiling fan Peg demanded I put up last weekend.

Let me first point out the light Peg told me to replace had been put in by me only 10 years earlier. I had no trouble unscrewing the old one and connecting the black wire to the black, the white wire to the white and the green ground wire. After all, I have had about 20 years of formal education and labored at numerous jobs that required I follow instructions, being a husband for instance. If things are simple, I am your man.

But when I opened the 39 page instruction manual for the “Impreso en China” (made in China?) ceiling fan and light I had the same sinking feeling I experienced when I sat for the Bar Exam. It did not help that the portion written in Spanish made as much sense to me as the part in English.

The most nefarious part of this guide into the depths of the “simple” procedure was the statement on page 5: “ESTIMATED ASSEMBLY TIME – 45 MINUTES”. Yes, this was all in capital letters and in bold type. I could sense the glee of the group of nasty nerds when they wrote this great Creation Myth. God would have just thrown up His hands had these sadistic purveyors of obfuscation been around to “help” Him develop the World.

A Capital Idea

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President Trump has decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Administration’s two main stated reasons for doing so are: (1) it simply acknowledges the reality, i.e., the Jews of Israel already say it’s their capital; and, (2) America’s decision will promote peace among the Jews, Christians and Muslims who live there. Of course, many of the residents of Jerusalem are sectarian and do not ascribe to any religion. However, none of them can escape their own or their neighbor’s cultural heritage.

According to the Old Testament people were already living in the areas we now call Palestine and Israel when the Hebrews migrated there. And according to the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, Arabs and Jews have the common founder, Abraham. They are genetically half-siblings at their origin.

This makes some sense to me as science has established all humans arose from one source in Africa and the Middle East is geographically connected to that source. We are all connected genetically, although it seems unfair I cannot understand nuclear physics nor run a 4.3 forty.

It is our elected federal government’s function to set and execute our foreign policy. I am good with that. But I would like to respectfully suggest to President Trump that if we want to truly recognize the reality on the ground in Jerusalem and promote peace as an honest broker, we should also recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, just saying.

Judge Not

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Matthew may have had a bad experience in either the Roman courts or the Jewish courts in Jerusalem. He does not refer to any such case but his emphasis on “measure for measure” suggests to me he had run into a bad judge. See Matthew, Chapter 7, verses 1-5.

He apparently thought his judge was tainted:

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam in your own eye then (perhaps) you can see to cast out the mote in the eye of the one (Matthew?) you are judging.”

Of course, I do not know if Matthew had a run-in with a corrupt or ignorant or lazy judge; the Bible is silent on that point. However, after having numerous experiences with judges myself, I sense an undertow of bad judging in Matthew’s lament.

Gentle Reader, you might surmise that for years I have been contemplating what makes for a good judge and especially what makes a bad one. I have been judging, observing others judging and teaching the mysteries of judging for some time. My general conclusion is that Matthew hit the head of the nail. One should first demand a person be of good character then build a judge on that foundation.

Sure, it is helpful if your judges are of, at least, average intelligence and do not consider “work” a four letter word. However, as with any job requiring specialized knowledge there is no substitute for experience. We all learn best by doing and if we have not done it ourselves the next best teacher is someone who has done it. Naturally, we should not countenance experience being first gained on litigants in court any more than we should allow new surgeons to learn on patients.

America’s systems, there are several, of selecting our judges could all benefit from emulating countries where judges are chosen from a pool of persons who have concentrated on the profession of judging during law school then have served a lengthy apprenticeship under experienced judges. Unfortunately, in America our law schools have no option of a major in “Judging” and there are no requirements in most states to be a judge other than a law degree.

If we turned new doctors loose on patients after four years of classroom only education, Hippocrates (460 B.C. – 370 B.C.) would arise from his grave in anguish. But we do not hesitate to entrust decisions from child custody to the death penalty to people who may have never seen a court case other than on television.

The solution is not complicated. I suggest we copy the medical model and require a strong foundation of specialized law school training followed by several years of mentoring by experienced judges. Of course, none of this matters if the future judge has poor judgment, a defective character or is like the hypocrite in Matthew.

Fighting Words

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IU Alumni Magazine Fall 2017 Edition

As lifetime members of the Indiana University Alumni Association Peg and I receive IU’s magazine which usually is devoid of substance and replete with solicitations for even more money. I normally toss it in the trash with a casual glance. However, this Fall 2017 edition contained an essay by C.J. Lotz titled “Fighting Words” which took up the issues surrounding the questions being asked by every Talking Head. Of course, no one really wants to know what anyone else thinks so right after the questions are raised the Talking Heads answer them for us as they wish. The main question is, “Are we becoming an ever more polarized society?” The question the Talking Heads deign to answer for us is, “Why?” It is simply assumed that we are.

Frequently someone opines that we are in the midst of the most fractured, volatile social and political environment America has ever experienced. Such a priori statements reek with irony. The people who boldly assert such an evaluation are themselves adding to the fracturing. Often there is neither citation of facts nor any attempt at logical analysis. The nearest thing to a thought process is an assessment of blame. Targets might include everything from a nasty election to Hurricane Harvey being the wrath of the gods for the outcome of the election.

While Hurricane Harvey has neither mind nor soul, it does remind one of the kind of natural disaster the gods of the Bible or those of Ancient Greece might use to send a message. Harvey’s destruction struck at the just and unjust without discrimination. Such an approach is similar to the types of statements you can hear every day in our national and interpersonal discourse. You will notice I did not say we were engaged in argument. Arguments entail clashing viewpoints. What we so often witness today are simple pronouncements as if from Olympus.

The past two years have witnessed the kind of hyperbole and vitriol one might expect from the buildup to a professional boxing or wrestling match. Take the recent bout between the boxer, Floyd Mayweather, and Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Conor McGregor. Mayweather made $300,000,000 and McGregor $100,000,000. With four letter words and gross threats of physical harm the pre-fight “conversation” sounded like two twelve year olds in a school yard. It reminded me of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and FOX’s Sean Hannity yelling out fake news. On the other hand the banal invective did help gin up lots of money from red meat loving fans, which of course, is the objective of the news media too.

Fighting words by groups and individuals are our society’s replacement for the kind of physical fighting that once was used to quell disagreements. Each side of a dispute would choose a champion, a mounted knight for example, then the two champions would fight to the death of one of them. The survivor won the argument. In other words, might did make right or as we might observe today, one side was right because it won, not won because it was right. There are often no nuances to our contemporary verbal clashes. It is all or nothing.

What is more concerning are the motives each side projects onto the other. It is simply assumed the opposition is lying and venal. The possibility of an honest mistake or another reasonable alternative is not considered.

Perhaps such a development in our national and personal discourse is itself subject to interpretation as suggested by the IU publication. So, if you have nothing of particular interest to do for awhile perhaps you might want to take an Odyssey with me for a week or so in search of constructive conversation.

Cultural Cleansing

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A nation is its culture and experience, its history. That is what determines its character. The same is true of the world. We learn or do not learn from the mistakes and accomplishments of ourselves and those who have preceded us. If we learn, we can accomplish more. If we do not learn, we may repeat mistakes. To learn from the past we must know and understand it. If we hide the past, we do not change what has happened but we may live to regret that we no longer remember it.

ISIS or ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq or the Islamic State of Syria, has been culturally cleansing the ancient Middle East for several years. Its members are offended by statues, monuments and artifacts that once, before ISIS destroyed them, carried within them thousands of years of human knowledge and culture. ISIS could not bear to allow memories of ancient or even contemporary peoples who had the temerity to have different beliefs from ISIS. This is particularly puzzling with religious differences since ISIS’s belief system is based on its particular interpretation of Islam which could not have existed before Mohammad who lived from 570 A.D. to 632 A.D. Yet ISIS viciously attacks the artifacts and history of cultures thousands of years old.

Of course, ISIS as all such denigrators of history, is not changing the facts of history. ISIS is merely proving their own ignorance of it. Such actions are much as children who put their hands over their eyes or duck their heads under the covers in an attempt to convince themselves that because they do not see something it never existed. Or as ISIS and some other people do, they destroy historical artifacts and try to convince themselves and others that a certain history never happened. Of greater concern is the very real possibility their actions will lead to the loss by future generations of an opportunity to learn from that history.

To preserve and observe a historical artifact, a temple to Baal that was 5,000 years old or a Christian church that was 2,000 years old for example, is not to worship Baal or Jesus but is to build upon and learn from history. To destroy artifacts of a nation’s past does not change that past but it may result in the nation repeating past errors because those errors are out of sight and therefore out of mind.

History teaches us that power waxes and wanes and that who is on top today may be oppressed tomorrow. The burning or banning of books, say the Bible for example, does not invalidate a book’s content. It does validate the lack of vision of those who arrogate to themselves the sole interpretation of truth or history.

Each of us has the right to venerate or denigrate whatever philosophy, religion or creed we wish. However, just because what happened in history may be offensive to us does not mean we should attempt to establish such history never occurred. Haven’t we lived through enough of such culture destroying behavior to recognize the danger in such a course?

Perhaps next week we can revisit such a revision of history that occurred right here in Posey County, Indiana and delve into what that revision might mean to us today

E-Gads!

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At a time when monks were reverently transcribing the Bible law clerks were laboriously writing down commandments issued by English monarchs. Often both were in Latin. Almost nobody but priests and lawyers could read Latin. The general public was told how it had sinned and why it was going to prison by these ecclesiastical and secular insiders.

As the ability to read became more common, laws were written in English. However, the general public still found the legal system mysterious. But while many may question the validity of my thesis, I postulate the major thrust of America’s legal system in this modern era has been toward making the law less arcane and more accessible for lay people as legal professionals are gradually relegated to the role of cloistered monks.

Today millions of citizens file and handle their own lawsuits. From divorces to property disputes and even murder trials people can and do represent themselves. Frequently the only role left for the legal profession is to try and repair the damage caused by an inarticulate lay resolution. As for judges, they are often relegated to simply signing their names to documents they had no role in crafting. And starting in 2017 in Posey County, Indiana, Electronic Filing will continue the march toward universal access to court records.

Soon, other than for laypersons, all court filings and record keeping will be done electronically. E-Filing is what it will be called. Documents will be scanned and, except for a few confidential categories, will be available via the Internet. One will no longer have to resort to third party reports of cases. Instead of gleaning our gossip and satiating our curiosity at the coffee shop or the tavern we can go right to the source day or night.

Now, after being embroiled in legal matters for almost half a century I might question the sanity of someone who finds Judge Judy and the like of any interest, but others may differ. If so, they will soon be able to emulate the Russian hackers without even needing to hack. I can envision millions of bleary-eyed voyeurs eschewing sleep to delve into the misfortunes of their fellow travelers electronically and a legal system where contact with an actual human being is as dead as Latin.

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