Can you believe?: December 2019

26 December 2019

Digesting 2019

But first, the kitties!

Before getting to my annual digest of some of the past year's posts, I'm delighted to share some of the wonderful photos I received earlier this week of our Hebron kittens in their new home ... with the teammate and family who adopted them after I left Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron. My room in the Old City had been their nursery and I their happy foster parent.

January 2019: Truth and impeachment.

In making his case that the U.S. House of Representatives should impeach the president, Atlantic Ideas editor Yoni Appelbaum carefully argues that impeachment is a calm and rational response to Trump's off-the-rails presidency. It's not an extreme, apocalyptic, risky step for Congress to take. Instead, it would channel the wild, divisive argumentation we see everywhere now, fueled by slashing social-media campaigns, and potentially reduces this bitter torrent to the disciplines required by the very process of impeachment: an actual application of the Constitutional filter of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Quaker cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, Jan. 2013.

Appelbaum challenges Representatives not to base their impeach/don't impeach decision on Senate vote calculations, on scattershot investigations by Democrat-dominated House committees, or on the hopes that Robert Mueller or other judicial processes will either force their hands somehow or do the job for them. (It's also possible that many of us, acting from a misplaced sense of prudence or just disbelief, are waiting for Trump to commit, at long last, another outrage so scandalous that the country is galvanized into decisive action -- but somehow not so outrageous as to do us permanent damage!)

(Full post.)

February 2019: Is Jesus optional?

The awkward truth: we live in a pluralistic and secular world which often treats Jesus -- and every other aspect of divinity -- as optional, even trivial, occasionally laughable. It doesn't help when Christians themselves marginalize Jesus to bless cruelty, greed, racism, nationalism, or domination. Instead of those anti-evangelistic messages, we could be fearlessly and lovingly eager to learn what others believe -- what occupies the same space in their lives as our non-optional Jesus occupies in ours. Ilya Grits reminds us,

And here we must not forget one of the most marvelous thoughts of the Church Fathers, a thought that Metropolitan Anthony Bloom so loved to quote in the very last years of his life: “Just think – what happiness it is to live among these people. It’s not important whether they believe in God or not.

“God believes in them!”

There are many questions about Jesus I can't answer, and which my own confidence in his reality in my life does not eliminate. It's important for me not to pretend that such questions don't exist -- to avoid them is to lose the ability to evangelize with integrity.

(Full post.)

March 2019: Serves them right.

One of the most disturbing reactions after Manafort's first sentence, in Virginia (47 months) was the tendency of many commentators to reassure us that surely his second sentence in Washington, DC, would be much harsher. Wait! What is the social benefit of that punitive spirit? What the country should demand from Manafort is restoration of money stolen from the Treasury and a total ban from any future participation in selling influence, wangling mortgages, and faking credit-worthiness.

Source.

The Paul Manafort case focused our attention on bias in the court system. As a convenient target, it might feel very satisfying to seek to flog Manafort as a compensation for the wickedness of that bias. But the leverage really ought to work in exactly the opposite direction: question all harsh sentences everywhere! Ask whether harsh sentences accomplish any social good at all! Demand that every judge be a "Manafort judge" and assume a seed of decency ... and that every participant in the whole "justice" system work to learn why decency becomes subverted. Seek restoration as the goal in every sentencing decision, and reserve incarceration for the custody of dangerous felons, rather than to satisfy that righteous indignation that is the stock in trade of populist politicians.

(Full post.)

April 2019: Malice in Wonderland.

... I want to concede a generous assumption to [Tucker] Carlson and his segment of conservative media. Let's assume that all who call themselves conservative (and particularly the Christians among them!) want the USA to be a blessing to the world. One way or another, we all want God's will on earth as it is in heaven, with everyone treating neighbors as themselves. If someone in our current rhetorical battles wants a future that is nice for them but wretched for others, or disclaims any responsibility for those who suffer, let them say so publicly instead of simply trading on fear, jealousy, and resentment.

Given that assumption, can you discern a vision of a desirable future for the USA and the world in the anti-immigrant, anti-diversity party that makes up so much of Trump's base? With all that malice and venom, is there another side of the coin that would compensate? Persuade us with a conservative vision of a country and world at peace, where the better angels of our nature could come out and play. Let us hear the policy implications, and let us subject those proposals to the same questions of resources and realism as Carlson asks ... only without the mocking tone and implied eyerolls. Since it's fun to point at failures of socialism, what examples are out there of conservative success stories that have been blessings to the world?

(Full post.)

May 2019: Abortion and the cost of rhetoric.

Sources: baby bassinet; execution gurney

The actual Bible is achingly ambiguous about the "sanctity" of life. My serious summary: life is precious, except when it isn't. Babies are precious, except when they're not. My opposition to abortion is not based on any specific Bible verse, but on the whole tradition of interpretation that is summed up by the "consistent life ethic" -- which opposes abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, militarism, social and economic injustice, violence in all its devious and addictive forms. Are there other traditions of biblical interpretation? Yes, of course. Can I prove that the "consistent life" interpretation is more correct? No! Does it even command the respect of most Christians? I doubt it.

However, for me there's a persuasive consistency of this "seamless garment" approach to following the Prince of Peace. It's internally consistent: the unborn life is important, but its survival is no more guaranteed than that of the life that has emerged into the world. Just as we ask for sacrifices and communal responses in situations where conception was unanticipated, we ask for sacrificial and communal responses to injustice. We ought to be just as diligent in caring for the born as for the unborn, knowing that all our outward fortunes are uncertain, all of us require care and mercy. It's consistent with the loving kindness and mercy of the God of the Bible. And, just as Jesus and Paul demand, it rejects the hypocrisy of forms for the countercultural reality of the Good News.

(Full post.)

June 2019: Whiteness.

Patrick Chappatte, source.

In high school classes we learned that race had powerful social significance but no biological significance. That social weight was a huge part of Evanston Township High School's daily reality in those years, with 5,300 very diverse students trying to figure out, together, which end was up. To ratchet up my own tension still further, at home I had to conceal my fascination with race relations because that was a taboo topic with my parents. They became even more extreme when my 13-year-old sister Ellen began running away from home and being caught by police in predominantly black neighborhoods.

I vividly remember scenes from my junior year of high school. One student especially fascinated me: she was black, had brains to spare and a sharp tongue, and seemed refreshingly uninterested in the good opinion of white students or teachers. Among my white classmates was the first person I ever met who self-identified as a Communist; he too seemed more interested in the world of ideas than social approval. Mostly, that was the niche where I'd be hiding.

(Full post.)

July 2019: The Poor People's Campaign, a meditation on unity.

When a Christian community is united by a deep concern about racial justice, why would there be any caution about adopting a minute reflecting that concern?

For one thing, this particular yearly meeting was born, at least in part, out of conscientious opposition to adoption of a uniform discipline, and by extension, to hierarchical decisionmaking in general. It is not the business of a yearly meeting to impose a decision or a text on constituent meetings who are perfectly capable of developing and adopting their own statements. Of course, in theory, the yearly meeting sessions are simply all the monthly meetings gathered into one place, but pious theory doesn't prevent the alienation that local Friends can feel when an assembly located in another place claims to be speaking in their name.

There are other churches and denominations where pronouncements are routinely made from a central office. This can result in alienation between the central office and the grassroots membership. (What is gained by anyone when a denomination issues a righteous proclamation over the heads of their constituency? Does it lead to an increase in righteousness, or to a burst of superficial gratification among those who prevailed in the politics of that denomination?) Friends generally avoid such practices, and the Conservative yearly meetings seem particularly resistant to them.

If I sensed correctly, there was another basis for urging careful process: would our public statements be grounded in truth? Were we implying a greater degree of righteousness in overcoming racism than we were actually demonstrating, in our lives as individual Quakers and in our meetings?

(Full post.)

August 2019: Other people's anger.

We human beings generally feel entitled to our own anger. It's other people's anger that bothers us. Of course, when people are upset about things that upset me, it's easy for me to sympathize. But I'm white and male, I'm not Muslim, my relatives and I have no history of being mistreated by the powers that be. I'm half-Norwegian and half-German; the Norwegian half glows in worldwide praise for our peaceful and generous ways. As for the German half, at the risk of stereotyping, we're maybe more accustomed to giving orders than taking them. In the American context, we Northern Europeans don't have much experience being on the receiving end of persistent and systemic cruelty. Maybe we ought to exercise some humility and very careful listening when we encounter anger and disillusionment from people whose histories are very different.

When actual victims and survivors of cruel and coercive objectification speak up, or their family members and descendants speak up, we see at least two popular reactions: ....

(Full post.)

September 2019: The hyphen within, part three.

One of our friends in Russia has a Russian Orthodox father and a Muslim mother. She herself was profoundly influenced by evangelical Christians who conducted public meetings in the early post-Soviet years. When she speaks on spiritual topics, she draws from both wells -- Islamic and Christian -- and also from her own long life of prayer and reflection. After years of conversations with her, I would not dare to assign just one religious label on her. And, as committed as I am to my own Christian identity, anchored in a specific relationship with Jesus, I cannot imagine being deprived of the company of this unclassifiable friend.

Even so, my Western mind protests. Doesn't religious identification involve discipleship -- a singleminded, unembarrassed, and unhedged followership of a specific teacher? Biblical phrases such as "unequally yoked" come to mind, and "you cannot serve two masters." I remember the admonition of Canadian Friend Hugh Campbell-Brown to "plow deeply in the furrow you've been given." (To give him justice, I don't think he would want this quotation to be used in the service of a narrow approach to faith.)

Of course you don't have to go to Russia to find hybrids....

(Full post.)

October 2019: Is God nice?

Dolphus Weary (r) and 1975
version of me.

Jesus confirms that God permits seemingly random tragedy -- for example, the Galileans massacred by Pilate, or "those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fellon them -- do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!" (from Luke 13:1-5).

If I rely solely on the recorded history of our understanding of God, and on the incredible diversity of ways that we've interpreted that history, my head starts spinning. So this morning, knowing that I was being led to write about whether or not we have a God who lives up to God's own standard ("compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love" -- Exodus 34:6, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Jonah 4:2), I decided to try asking God directly: "Are you a kind God?"

(Full post.)

November 2019: Giving thanks for small things.

I do a lot of climbing every day. Physically, I have to climb up the steep path to the kindergarten housed in the Ibrahimi Mosque complex. The prayer path is also sometimes steep. (Last night I spent most of the night at a home demolition, a topic I'll return to in another post, but you can imagine how that might lead to some spiritual questions.) But when the outward prayer and reading time is over, I need to remain in that place. I need to center down still further and spend a few minutes in God's lap.

I realized, sitting quietly in the Ramallah Friends Meeting, that this little group of Quakers has represented a special place for me to get away and be with God in the company of others, in accordance with a regular routine. It's a safe place for me to be nothing more than a little kitten, resting in the presence of the Creator. I am not nearly as cute as our baby cats, but Friends seem to welcome me anyway. And after we greet each other in the entryway, we are ready to experience together that ancient rhythm: the prayer path, steep as that path may seem after some of what we experience in a typical week, but also the time of total rest as we remember God's promises together.

(Full post.)

December 2019: Praying without ceasing in Hebron. (Also: Send Judy to Bolivia!)

Trustworthy churches: In December 2018, I posted a survey asking the question, "What makes a church trustworthy?" I learned a few things about surveys (such as "keep them shorter!") but still got some interesting and instructive answers. Those responses helped shape these posts early in 2019:

Trustworthy, part one: the cost of betrayal.
Part two: a colony of heaven.
Part three: choices.
Part four: churches' choices.

Commentary on the Christianity Today editorial by Mark Galli and its coverage continues to come in. A few samples: Slacktivist Fred Clark ... and two columns from GetReligion's Terry Mattingly: In religion-beat work, the facts matter; the one thing journalists need to learn from the Christianity Today firestorm.

Two helpful podcasts on authoritarianism: Trumpcast interviews Ruth Ben-Ghiat; Lawfare interviews Peter Pomerantsev.

Meanwhile, history is being rewritten.

Global Voices' RuNet Echo project brings us two posts on the Internet in Russia, its past and its problematic future: What lies ahead in 2020, and Andrey Loshak's documentary.

Instant nostalgia: Bob Ross and Christmas Eve snow, thanks to Open Culture.

Favorite blues clip of the year (and it wasn't easy to choose!) ... Steve Guyger, "What Have I Done?"

19 December 2019

Praying without ceasing in Hebron

Ten days after the end of my three-month service with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Al-Khalil (Hebron), Palestine, I still struggle with conflicting urgencies in choosing what to report.

I want to report accurately about how, day after day, you can unexpectedly run into squads of soldiers with their fingers near their triggers, or clouds of tear gas, or someone being searched from head to toes, or checkpoints closed with no explanation. At the same time, you can expect daily encounters with playful children, helpful strangers, cries of "welcome to Hebron" on all sides, delicious food, parties with fireworks nearly every evening,

In other words, I want to convey a situation that is, all at once, both outrageously abnormal (the conditions of occupation) and persistently normal (the life that the people of Hebron make for themselves despite the occupation). Whatever I say, I don't want to discourage you from visiting this lively and friendly city, and seeing for yourself.

Furthermore, I want to report in my own voice -- that's my sole channel, and I want to draw on whatever credibility and connection with readers that I might already have. At the same time, I don't want to exaggerate my voice or my role. Every day CPT observers, and others in similar teams, are on the streets monitoring the interactions of citizens and soldiers, documenting irregularities, and sending our observations to a variety of agencies ... but it would be hard to prove that we have made a huge difference.

In any case, CPT's writers are encouraged to keep in mind a "balancing act between humility and presence." CPT and others are there in common cause with Palestinians working nonviolently for justice rather than claiming superior knowledge or attempting to be freelance heroes.

Personally, I didn't go to Palestine with any heroic illusions. All I hoped to do was to learn more about praying without ceasing. In that sense my three months were a success.

On most days, I woke up at 5 a.m. to have time for prayer, Bible reading, and a brief video chat with Judy before beginning the day's activities. Usually we started the day with an hour at each of two checkpoints through which hundreds of people pass during that one hour -- including around two hundred children. Two of us monitored each checkpoint.

The checkpoints were for me a perfect occasion for prayer. For example, I used a counter app on my mobile phone to keep track of people passing through the checkpoints in both directions. Each click of the counter prompted me to pray a blessing on that person ... although when they were coming through in larger bunches, I would fall behind and miss some blessings. I doubt this practice would measure up to the great Christian mystics, but it reminded me frequently of my commitment to pray without ceasing.

Breakfast and a team meeting followed the school arrival hour. During the team meeting, we took turns providing a devotional reflection before we reviewed plans for the rest of the day. We also made sure that people were signed up to take care of dinner and dishes. Our practice of checking in with each other about how we were doing also helped me stay oriented to prayer.

In the afternoon, I was often one member of the pairs assigned to accompany the kindergarten children whose path home was parallel to a path used by Israeli settlers. It was a very natural exercise to pray a blessing on their path home. On my last day on duty, I made a video of this walk, to remind myself of the experience and honor of accompanying those children.

There were other regular occasions of street monitoring -- some weekly, some annually. Each Friday we watched as Palestinians passed through checkpoints (at least two) to worship at the Ibrahimi mosque. On Saturdays, Israeli settlers often toured sites in the Old City. Each tour group was guarded by several squads of Israeli soldiers, and their passage through the markets and passageways of the Old City put them in immediate contact with Palestinian shopkeepers, customers, and pedestrians.

Annually, such events as Sukkot and Sarah's Day brought thousands of visiting Israelis to these same crowded streets, along with additional soldiers to provide security for the visitors and impose additional restrictions on the local Palestinian population. The tensions raised by each of these potential flashpoints was an occasion for prayer. Even when I wasn't on the street during one of those occasions, we coordinated continuously via social media.

Last week I reported on another seasonal event, the olive harvest.

The most stressful monitoring assignments were the ones not on the calendar -- for example, responding to reports of arrests, temporary road blocks and checkpoints, or the use of tear gas and other munitions. Sometimes these occasions would lead to stone-throwing by Palestinian young people, aimed at the checkpoints or at the vehicles doing the blocking, with a response of varying (but always disproportionate) severity from Israeli forces.

Part of the stress for me was finding vantage points to observe as closely as possible while not getting directly in the line of fire. On the "Day of Rage," my teammate and I were temporarily right in the middle, finding percussion grenades landing nearby (one hitting the metal awning over my head with a shower of sparks, while I was trying to cope with tear gas). As smoke from burning tires made it hard to see farther than a half block, things quieted down for a while, but resumed later in the evening. Prayer was never far from my mind.

For me, the most difficult assignment was the home demolitions on November 28 in Beit Kahil town near Hebron. After being part of an interview team with the families whose homes were to be destroyed (the conversation resulted in this article), we were all waiting for the seemingly inevitable conclusion. Even so it was a shock to be awakened at about 1 a.m. on November 28 and told "the demolitions have begun." By the time we were able to organize transportation, get to the town, climb over walls and fences with our heavy cameras, meet up with journalists, and find a vantage point, it was nearly 2 a.m. and the destruction was in full swing.

One of my prayer concerns during that hellish scene was for the souls of the equipment operators. who could not have been in any doubt that they were destroying homes of innocent people, regardless of the guilt or innocence (as yet undetermined in court) of the suspects in custody.

My school of prayer for those three months included, as you might expect, pleas for safety, intercessions and blessings for others, and sheer inarticulate lament. Sometimes it boiled down to just one word: "Why?"

Christianity Today editorial: Trump should be removed from office. (Related observations from the Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and Emma Green in The Atlantic.)

Josh Marshall's three essential points on impeachment.

This process has been so clotted with tantrums, goalpost-moving and dissimulation that it can be hard to keep one’s bearings. For me, those three essential points clarify the matter and drown out the yelling and stomping.

Thanks to Danny Coleman for this timely reminder: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on stupidity.

A photo-essay on winter in Murmansk, Russia.

An update on Hebron from Curt Bell.

Steve Guyger Band:

12 December 2019

Olive harvest

Dialogue Quilt at Ramallah Friends Meeting (see explanation panels at end of this post)

As my family knows, I have the opposite of a green thumb. (Red thumb? Blue?) I seem to have no affinity for plants. When I mow the lawn, Judy carefully places wooden stakes to mark anywhere I might otherwise (despite all efforts at vigilance) cut down a newly-planted treasure.

Olive harvesting in Palestine gave me a chance for a more positive relationship with plants -- specifically, with the majestic olive trees who occupy a central place in the economy as well as the culture of the region.

When our Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron planned our participation in this fall's olive harvest, we coordinated with several other Palestinian, Israeli, and international teams and offices. We were also in direct touch with several olive-growing families whose groves were adjacent to Israeli settlements or roadways, making them vulnerable to settler harassment. Some of the families needed Israeli permits to access their trees -- permits that only gave a short time to complete their harvests, rain or shine.

We participated in seven families' harvests ourselves. My share of the work seemed safe enough for a city boy -- I would draft an article about the harvest. No way I could hurt a tree with words! At three of the actual sites, I would be part of the accompanying team monitoring potential harassment and making photos for CPT use.

That's all I did at my first site. We had two team members who loved climbing the trees, and who worked very competently alongside the growers and their families, pulling or shaking the olives off the branches. Several settlers walked across their property peaceably, along with nearly two dozen Israeli soldiers, over the course of the afternoon. The single ladder at that site was used by a grower, and I couldn't reach any olives from the ground at that site. The only actual labor I did there was carry a heavy sack full of olives about 300 meters to a roadside taxi stand.

When we arrived at our second assignment, a group of volunteers was already hard at work helping the local Palestinian family, which included a retired educator who had known CPT for most or all of our 24 years in Hebron. Among the helpers was a group of Israeli volunteers who worked at one side of the property, and several Palestinian college students and faculty members were picking olives at a second site. One of the Israelis met us at the entrance to the property. She asked with a smile, "Do you want to work where there are Jews or where there are no Jews?" A bit startled, I replied that this was the first time in my life I'd been asked such a question! As it turned out, by the time we'd finished our interview with the retired educator inside her home, most of the hard work had already been done.

My third experience was with the grower shown in this Facebook video. Finally I had a chance to do some harvesting myself! Once again the only ladder was in use by a more qualified person, and I didn't quite dare climb up into the trees myself, but in this case there were hundreds and hundreds of olives within reach from the ground. By the time my arms gave out, I think I had done a more or less decent job for a first-time picker. Best of all, I don't think I did the trees any harm.

We had heard some distressing reports about recent settler harassment of olive harvesters in various parts of the West Bank, including an incident in which an elderly member of Rabbis for Human Rights was injured. In the three locations where I participated, the harvests were completed without incident.

You can find the CPT report here.

This past Monday I returned from a three-month period of volunteer service with Christian Peacemaker Teams. I'll write about some of my experiences with the team in Hebron in the next few weeks. I'll also be looking for opportunities to speak with your church or meeting, or with other audiences as way opens.

In the meantime, here is a glimpse of my final moments with my kitty companions. Of course they didn't know that I would soon disappear from their lives, but I knew it.

I would also post any number of photos of the wonderful team with whom I served, but posting each other's personal photos on public Web sites is something that can cause complications, so we don't do it.

Nancy Thomas's book on Bolivian Quaker history has been published! I ordered my copy at Wipf and Stock's special Web price from this site. (UPDATE: My review is here.)

News from another writing friend: Bill Yoder has put his archive of religious journalism in one convenient location: wyoder.de.

Does the Christian right in the USA worship a false idol?

Leon Aron on Russian political humor. (My own tribute from last year. And an earlier post comparing Quaker and Russian humor, plus Mike Royko on corruption in Chicago.)

God and Stephen King.

Netanyahu wags the dog ... again.

Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."

Information about the Middle East Dialogue Quilt and its imagery (photo at top of post):

05 December 2019

A grievously neglected commandment (mostly repost)

Source.

This post was originally the second part of a two-part essay, "Love, a heavy cross?" which I posted nearly six years ago. Once again an election season nears, and our urgent attention to a particular neglected commandment seems more important than ever.

(Love,a heavy cross? Part one.)

We Friends are known for shining a spotlight on the commandment not to kill (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17). Sexual ethics are a big focus among many Christians. But I hear almost no alarms about the commandment whose routine violation in the church and in the world causes constant destruction and sorrow:

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

(Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:20.)

One of the original applications of this commandment was in court settings, where witnesses were not to provide false information, or to withhold true information, in trying a defendant. Planting evidence, or deliberately ignoring exculpatory evidence--favorite tactics of corrupt police forces and courts to this very day--are clear violations of this commandment.

The more general principle can be expressed in the query found in many Quaker books of discipline: "Are you careful of the reputation of others?"

For nice people like us, who would never shoot or poison someone, the sabotage of reputations is both convenient and deadly. The methods are not especially difficult, especially when they're implemented behind the target's back.

Allude to the target's suspicious friendships, alliances, choice of college or seminary (or lack thereof), affiliations, tastes and affectations, as if these were enough to tell us all we need to know about him or her.
Repeat rumors about him or her, repost scandalous or tendentious Facebook posts and the like, without fact-checking.
Recount mistakes the target person has made, as if making those mistakes was his or her major occupation in life, or there were no possible alternative explanations, or the target never did any kind of restoration.
Constantly emphasize the difference between our side's best ideals and the target side's worst mistakes, cherry-picking as necessary.
Do any or all of the above with glee, taking no thought for the harm done to the target or to our own souls. (For the glee-impaired, crocodile tears will do nicely.)

Does this commandment pertain only to "neighbors" we know personally? Are we in fact allowed to bear false witness against whole groups, races, religions, or celebrities and politicians?

No! Even when politicians (to pick an easy example!) do something we don't agree with, we're not entitled to treat them as targets, vilify them with fake outrage, insult them ... even though their operatives may be doing exactly that to "our side." We're entitled to make our case passionately and point out the defects in our adversary's case, but not to cross the line into false witness. And the discipline of discerning that line might itself be a wonderful opportunity to live life more mindfully, more deliberately. We might realize that the Russian saying "living a life is more than crossing a field" applies not only to us, but also to those for whom we once had no sympathy.

This principle has an immediate practical benefit, especially in election season. I receive tons of e-mail every day, but now any e-mail that begins with the formula, "Hey Johan, guess what idiotic thing Senator X did today," gets deleted without further ado, even when I agree that Senator X is usually wrong. In fact, any e-mail that begins "Hey..." can usually be deleted without harm!

This principle of not bearing false witness plays an important role in distinguishing ethical evangelism from proselytism. This reminds me of a post from some years ago in which I quoted Yakov Krotov on bearing courteous witness to Christian faith. (Scroll down to the "kind questions.")

"Bearing false witness robs the victim of the cloak of truth and is closely allied with God’s command not to steal."

(Back to December 2019.) I'm having a hard time saying goodbye to the kittens I've helped care for since October 22. As they sit in my lap this evening without any apparent anxiety, they surely have no idea these are our last hours together. Tomorrow morning I say goodbye to Hebron.

As his online viewership continues to climb, video blogger Yegor Zhukov's sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow in Moscow. Update: Three-year suspended sentence.

David Kirkpatrick on the USA's truncated evangelicalism.

Another online archive that will grow on you until it (maybe) takes over your life: digitized medieval manuscripts.

Warren Haynes's version of "It Hurts Me Too."

Can you believe?