The Way of Peace

All that men learned from sacred scrolls
was broken faith and twisted souls-
the heritage of noble halls
was broken swords and blackened walls-
So Love invaded guile and war,
          misery and unease;
into our darkness came a star,
          into our anger, peace.

But men forget that heavenly grace
makes every stall a princely place,
and trust to reap from iron force
joy, mercy, or remorse;
and so, good Christians, let us pray
          in thought and work and hymn:
“Lord, make each morn a Christmas day,
          each heart a Bethlehem.”

William R. Mitchell

It’s Christmas time, the time of celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Oh - yeah, except the merchants want to make it a “gift-giving” celebration to sell more stuff and many won’t even say “Merry Christmas” anymore for fear of possibly offending some potential customer. Huh? Why should someone be offended by that? Are they so caught up in their own anti-religious, self-serving attitudes that they can’t stand for someone else to have religious sentiment? It’s typical these days, I suppose…

Oh - yeah, except there are those Christians who say it is a “pagan holiday” and that Jesus wasn’t born in December. Well, maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t, ‘cuz the Gospel stories don’t really say when it was. Oh sure, we can “infer” that maybe it was earlier in the year because shepherds don’t usually spend the night out in the field with the sheep in the middle of winter. (Well, maybe it was just a warm December like we are having in Dallas this week?) OK, but, the gospels still don’t say WHEN it was.

So, along the way Christians came up with some dates to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And why they chose some dates and not others is partly tradition, partly convenience, and partly a mystery. In the end, though, I just have to come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter all that much. I like the attitude in William Mitchell’s poem quoted above: make each morn a Christmas day…

But since speculation seems to be the rule regarding the origin of Christmas, I will throw out my own little bit of inference for your consideration:

Back in the day, before all our modern technology and convenience, the winter was a time of staying inside, trying to keep warm, doing things that didn’t require a lot of outside work and activities. Men looked out on a world that had the appearance of dying. The leaves were gone from the trees, the grass was brown and withered, snow and ice would come and cover everything from time to time. And the sun was receding, each day a little shorter than the previous. Yet, in the midst of all that, when you look across the winter landscape you see little spots of green. High among the dead branches of the oak there would be these little sprigs of green - mistletoe. And some trees weren’t dry and brown - evergreens. These things make a nice metaphor. In the midst of the “dying” land there was a sign that life would return in the spring. That greenery then becomes something symbolic and the basis of wintertime celebrations. It is a sign of hope. Likewise, the return of the sun at winter solstice is an indication that the world is not coming to an end, but will turn and begin anew.

Imagine a Christian teacher wanting to get across the message of hope in the Gospel story. All the signs of hope, of life returning, can be used as a metaphor of God’s grace to us through the birth of Jesus. His birth is our hope, the one “green” thing among all the “brown” stuff of life. God’s love “invades” the world through the birth of Jesus and brings to us the gift of hope of our own rebirth.

Whatever the actual date of Jesus’ birth, I think this time of year is a very appropriate time to celebrate that birth.

Voices of the Advent is a collection of Christmas poems by William R. Mitchell, each beautifully illustrated by William Brown. It is available from amazon.com and lulu.com. A special hardcover edition is available only at lulu.com.

Sampling

Here’s how we make a computer play sound. We take “samples” of a signal, store them in the computer, then play them back one at a time at a constant rate. If we take enough samples of the sound, when we connect the samples back together, the result is close enough to the original that our ears don’t detect the difference.

In this second version the number of samples for each period of the waveform have been reduced to one-third the original number and the waveform is now quite a bit different from the original. Interestingly, at high pitches, the ear will still hear the sound much the same as the original, but at lower pitches there will be quite a bit of difference in sound. Even so, the frequency of the two sounds is still the same and we hear the same pitch between the original and the sample sound. But look what happens if we continue to reduce the number of samples until we are taking less than two samples for each period of the waveform.

Ooops. At this point we have a serious problem (shown by the brackets above and below the figure). Not only did we lose the original wiggles in the waveform, the frequency of the waveform (where it crosses zero) is now less than the original. It won’t sound at the same pitch anymore! This is an interesting phenomenon called “foldover” and is a critical consideration when creating sounds with a computer. We have to take more than two samples per period of a sound if we want to accurately represent the pitch.

So, here’s the point. If you don’t have enough data samples you can seriously misrepresent something. Even people who are fairly intelligent and well-meaning can fall prey to this little factoid. It’s something that I have noticed in many areas of life (and have written about before). When we only have a small amount of information to go on, it is very easy to just “fill-in” the missing pieces based on some assumptions and presumptions and make it look like we know something important when we really don’t.

I see this problem show up in many places. One recent example is a book I have been reading by a well-known atheist who is very skeptical of religion. He gives numerous examples of how bad religion is, and someone reading only his book would easily get the idea that everyone who believes in God is some kind of nutcase. It’s a perfect example of sampling too-few data points to get any kind of a meaningful result. It looks impressive, but is actually just tedious and inane. Amazingly, the inside cover of the book is filled with accolades from reviewers. Apparently they aren’t too concerned with the truth; only with promoting an atheist agenda.

But I’m not trying to pick on the atheists here, because it’s not just some loudmouthed atheists that have this problem. You get the same problem with the nightly television news, Internet blogs, and gossip around the coffee machine at work. The really bad news is that a lot of Christian preachers don’t seem to understand either. They pick and choose a few verses of scripture and try and build a doctrine on those alone. The result is a distortion of what the Bible really says. In hermeneutics (i.e., Bible interpretation) we say that they didn’t take the context into account.

That’s what we mean by “context” in Bible interpretation and why it is so important. Trying to base some doctrine on a mere one or two verses will almost always result in error (aka heresy). We have to take into account the broader scope of the writings in the Bible and understand the language and historical period so we can recognize figures of speech.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well. (Mat 5:38-39)

So, what about that? Does that mean that Christians are to be punching bags for anyone who comes along? Or, does that mean that Jesus repudiated the law? No and no. Jesus had already said:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place. (Mat 5:17-18)

So, the “law” of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is not being abolished by what Jesus said. Instead, Jesus is taking it to a higher level. To make a comparison, Jesus is “up-sampling” the data - providing more data points so that we get an even better representation of what the law meant. The typical human response to assault is to return the assault to the other. That’s a very literal response to “an eye for an eye” and is probably how most people think of it. But if you take things to a higher level, “an eye for an eye” represents the principle of justice. Justice requires balance, and if something is taken from one place something has to taken from somewhere else to balance things out. Since someone harms me, it seems only just that a recompense is made. But what about all the unjust things I have done to others, even those done unintentionally? Well, if I demand retribution against others for their attack on me, then I automatically declare a willingness for retribution to be taken against me for any wrongs I have done. Ooops.

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive.” (Mat 7:1-2)

OK. There’s the point made in summary of the preceding verses, the full context in other words. If you judge that others are to be condemned you have judged yourself as well. If you forgive wrongs done to you, you have set the standard for yourself as well. That’s the way God does things. Most people want vengeance for the wrongs of others because they are ignorant of their own wrongs. God is not ignorant, however, and if you demand retribution for all wrongs, God will probably oblige you.

When you take a full sampling of the actions of human beings, you are going to find that “all have sinned” and all are judged guilty. It’s very easy to limit our samplings to the weakness of others; much more difficult to take a full measure of things and recognize our own weaknesses as well.

I’ve had to change the comment policy on this blog. From now on, you have to be registered in order to post a comment and the comment has to be approved by me first. This isn’t done to eliminate or block people who want to make legitimate comments. The problem is I keep getting hit with bunches of spammer and Trojan-horse type attacks through the blog.

Part of the problem is “open source software” - the idea that software source code should be delivered rather than locked-up binaries. The idea is generally good, and I agree with it in principle. Software application developers waste thousands of hours each year trying to solve problems that could be easily dealt with if they had access to the source code to the programs they must manage. Unfortunately, open source software also allows reprobates to study the software looking for flaws to exploit. There’s the rub, as the saying goes. When a good piece of open source software (like WordPress that runs this blog) gets widely distributed, it makes it much easier to hack into the systems that use it. By comparison, proprietary software that is only available to a few programmers and installed in a few places is very hard to “crack” and abuse.

Ah, but that is the nature of human existence. There is no concept in most people’s minds of how their actions affect others. It’s all “Me, Me, Me…” in most people’s minds. By coincidence, I was listening to some Stevie Ray Vaughn last night on TV, and it’s like he sang in “Crossfire” - what ever happened to the Golden Rule?

Put simply, there is no understanding of the “Golden Rule” anymore (if there ever really was). The words that Jesus spoke, also echoed in the famous Stoic philosophers, the Chinese philosophers, and many others, it too high of a moral concept for their reprobate minds…

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Have you ever thought about the logic behind that statement? How much of the world’s evil is simply nothing more than vengeance against others spawned by a desire to “get back at them” or satisfy the person’s own greed and lusts? Most all of it. Forget about all the conspiracies, the secret societies, the occultism and such for a minute, and just think about the things that cause you grief, anger and bitterness on a day to day basis. Isn’t it just “ordinary people” who won’t apply the Golden Rule? Yep.

And so… we are “Caught in the crossfire” of the evil in men’s hearts…

Crossfire by Tommy Shannon/Chris Layton/Reese Wynans/B. Carter/Ruth Ellsworth

Day by day night after night,
blinded by the neon lights
Hurry here hustlin’ there,
no one’s got the time to spare
Money’s tight nothin’ free,
won’t somebody come and rescue me
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire

Tooth for tooth eye for an eye,
sell your soul just to buy buy buy
Beggin’ a dollar stealin’ a dime,
come on can’t you see that I
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire…

I need some kind of kindness,
some kind of sympathy oh no
We’re stranded, caught in the crossfire 

Save the strong lose the weak,
never turning the other cheek
Trust nobody don’t be no fool,
whatever happened to the golden rule
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire
Help me