James M. Redwine

Old Testament

Cultural Myopia

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It is no one’s fault. It is a universal curse. We often can recognize virtues in our friends, but may misinterpret the motives of strangers. What someone from another culture means to be irony, sarcasm, humor, even friendly banter or simply an off-the-cuff comment we may take with umbrage.

If a university student calls out “From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”, that student may mean two countries that include Palestine and Israel. Whereas, another student may conclude it is a call to eliminate either Palestine or Israel. The cultural history of both students can lead to ascribing ill will when none is intended. The odds of misinterpretation are greatly increased when people from neither student’s culture see fit to project their ignorance of both students’ backgrounds upon the controversy.

Another near-sighted source of misunderstanding is the overlaying of at least three religious traditions upon all involved. Fundamentalist Christians may conflate their interpretation of the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah with the New Testament’s Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when the topic of a Messiah arises. Confusing matters further is the Quran’s teaching in Surah 3; Jesus is revered by Muslims, but as God’s messenger, not His biological child.

The most puzzling aspect of all the armed and unarmed conflicts among the three Abrahamic religions is each emphasizes making peace and performing good works such as healing the sick, giving charity and forgiving others. Yet, for at least fifteen hundred years each faith has often been used as a sword against those of differing religious and other cultural practices. One wonders if those who profess to venerate their Torah, Bible or Quran have truly studied them or are simply regurgitating coffeeshop/barstool catchphrases.

We currently appear to be carrying on our ancient traditions of denigrating those whom we see as apostates. In the past this may have been simply illogical, immoral and ignorant but of only transitory and limited concern. However, today we may not have progressed in our mutual understanding but we certainly have matriculated from slingshots and lances to weapons that truly are god-like or, perhaps, Satanic. Unfortunately, unlike the gods, we cannot reverse the effects. Perhaps we should actually implement the sage actions each religion’s sacred tome champions and beat our swords into ploughshares before we have no arable lands left to plow or peoples to plow them.

Amazon, The New Tower of Babel

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In Genesis, Chapter 11 God observed the tower that King Nimrod and his Babylonian people had built to reach heaven and the gods and said, “Behold the people is one and they have one language … now nothing will be constrained from them.”

So the gods destroyed the tower, convoluted the one language into many and stopped human progress toward godly status. The Tower of Babel was the ultimate example of the axiom, “Pride goeth before a fall.” Now I do not understand why God would not want people to reach for the heavens, but He certainly devised the perfect way to stop us. Of course, in Exodus Chapters 20 and 34, He warns us He is a jealous being and in Isaiah Chapter 55 He tells us not to try to figure Him out as His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Just a few frustrating moments of trying to understand what the jangling television commercials are saying or an attempt to make sense out of the song lyrics mumbled and slurred into multi-million dollar sound systems designed to make sounds intelligible, will remove any doubt that our contemporary cacophony of colliding incoherent babel surpasses all understanding. Human progress has been hoisted on the effete petard of the universal response to all attempts to communicate, “Huh?”

It is as if the gods have become overly concerned about humanity’s movement back to a universal language, Amazonia perhaps, and have come down to earth to stop us from “all just getting along” by shopping over the Internet. After all, if we can communicate from sea to shining sea via a few simple electronic clicks, there is much less likelihood of a major miscommunication and ergo a misunderstanding that might escalate to conflict. Heck, we might even learn to work together on all sorts of projects, world famine, global warming, the World Cup, who knows what heights we could reach?

Well, if Jeff Bezos is the new King Nimrod and if Jeff really does simply work full-time giving his billions made from Amazon away to charity, I can foresee the Old Testament gods getting concerned. And one way to staunch human progress is to release upon the world Satans of the communications world, you know, movies, cable tv, commercials and what passes for contemporary music.

The goal of the gods might be to attack human progress by having leaders of competing countries such as China and the US of A rely upon translations of news broadcasts in which snippets of the highly paid but incomprehensible speakers instead of enunciating important concepts, peaceful coexistence for example, mumble a leader’s language so that the words come out as threats of nuclear war.

Now I realize this whole column may be based on a false premise of my being personally challenged. Maybe you, Gentle Reader, have no difficulty making sense out of what is muttered during TV, radio, movies, plays, concerts, sporting events, and even sermons. If my failings are simply my personal problem, good, and amen. However, if the whole world is being prevented from understanding what the heck is truly being said and meant, I suggest this new Tower of Babel may soon come tumbling down.

On the other hand, there is a cure to this polemic pandemic, could everyone please slow down and speak up?

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.