December 10, 2006

The Refiner's Fire

This is a bit far from normal topics here at Adventures, but the sermon at church this morning was of such surpassing beauty that I was left in complete wonder.

I want you to consider that the line between good and evil lies not like a thread through society, between good and evil persons, those destined for heaven and those destined for hell. I'd like you to suppose instead that it goes through every single human being. And I'd like you to imagine that there is indeed a fire which burns, not eternally, but until the last day. And that after we die, every word or thought or deed that shrinks from God's grace is burned off by the refiner's fire. And that means that when that process is finished not all of our earthly self gets to heaven. But not none of it, either, even among the worst that humanity has produced. Out of such as remains from the refiner's fire, God makes a heavenly body fit for worship, friendship, and eating with him forever.

For the Mother Teresa and the Francis of Assisi, we can imagine there's very little burnt off, and the refiner's fire is pretty much a painless process. They have accepted the forgiveness of God and been transformed by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. They're pretty much in the clear and in heaven they'll be instantly recognizable. But the Adolf Hitler and the Joseph Stalin are another matter. Almost everything in them, so we imagine, turned away from the grace and transforming love of God in Christ, and forgiveness was something they never sought. But here's the twist. Because God created them, because they emerged from God's creative purpose, we cannot simply say they are evil without giving up on the all-pervasive grace of God. So what we can say is that for people like them the refiner's fire is an agonizing and almost total experience, and that what's left is pretty much unrecognizable. It takes God to the very limits of his grace to make something beautiful and heavenly out of the scant and desolate remains that emerge from the refiner's fire. And what does appear in heaven after God's astonishing work is almost unrecognizable from the earthly person that perpetrated so much that desecrated the name of God.

When the full transcript is available, I'll post a link.

UPDATE: Here is the full text.

Written by Chester at 10:37 PM | Link | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article

"To be remembered is worthless"

TigerHawk excerpts a bit of General Lucius Aemilius Paulus on the nature of seeking military advice from others.

What then is my opinion? That commanders should be counseled chiefly by persons of known talent, by those who have made the art of war their particular study, and whose knowledge is derived from experience, by those who are present at the scene of action, who see the enemy, who see the advantages that occasions offer, and who, like people embarked in the same ship, are sharers of the danger.

Commentary

I'll see his Lucius Aemilius Paulus and raise him a Marcus Aurelius. From his Meditations:

"People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out. But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don't just mean when you're dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?" [Book 4, #19]

"To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it." [4:49]

"Give yourself a gift: the present moment.
People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y? " [8:44]

"You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?) [8:53]

"To see them from above: the thousands of animal herds, the rituals, the voyages on calm or stormy seas, the different ways we come into the world, share it with one another, and leave it. Consider the lives led once by others, long ago, the libes to be led by others after you, the libes led even now, in foreign lands. How many will soon have forgotten it. How many offer you praise now -- and tomorrow, perhaps contempt.
That to be remembered is worthless. Like fame. Like everything." [9:30]

"When you wake up, ask yourself:
Does it make any difference to you if other people blame you for doing what's right?
It makes no difference.
Have you forgotten what the people who are so vociferous in praise or blame of others are like as they sleep and eat? Forgotten their behavior, their fears, their desires, their thefts and depredations -- not physical ones, but those committed by what should be highest in them? What creates, when it chooses, loyalty, humility, truth, order, well-being." [10:13]

"How they act when they eat and sleep and mate and defecate and all the rest. Then when they order and exult, or rage and thunder from on high. And yet, just consider the things they submitted to a moment ago and the reasons for it -- and the things they'll submit to again before very long." [10:19]

Written by Chester at 10:01 PM | Link | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article

November 30, 2006

Sex in the Muslim world

Several articles of late have discussed the sex lives of Muslims (or the lack and frustration thereof). Der Spiegel reported a few weeks ago on the topic.

Rabat, Morocco. Every evening Amal the octopus vendor looks on as sin returns to his beach. It arrives in the form of handholding couples who hide behind the tall, castle-like quay walls in the city's harbor district to steal a few clandestine kisses. Some perform balancing acts on slippery rocks and seaweed to secure a spot close to the Atlantic Ocean and cuddle in the dim evening light. The air tastes of salt and hashish. On some mornings, when Amal finds used condoms on the beach, he wishes that these depraved, shameless sinners -- who aren't even married, he says -- would roast in hell.

[ . . . ]

A Moroccan study published in early 2006 in L'Economiste, a Moroccan business publication, shows how paradoxical young Arabs' attitudes toward religion and sexuality can be. According to the study, young Muslims in the Maghreb region are increasingly ignoring the clearly defined rules of their religion. Premarital sex is not unusual, and 56 percent of young men admit to watching porn on a regular basis. But the respondents also said that it was just as important to them to pray, observe the one-month Ramadan fast and marry a fellow Muslim. When seen in this light, young Muslims' approach to Islam seems as hedonistic as it is variable, almost arbitrary.

[ . . . ]

Google Trends, a new service offered by the search engine, provides a way to demonstrate how difficult it is to banish forbidden yearnings from the heads of Muslims. By entering the term "sex" into Google Trends, one obtains a ranked list of cities, countries and languages in which the term was entered most frequently. According to Google Trends, the Pakistanis search for "sex" most often, followed by the Egyptians. Iran and Morocco are in fourth and fifth, Indonesia is in seventh and Saudi Arabia in eighth place. The top city for "sex" searches is Cairo. When the terms "boy sex" or "man boy sex" are entered (many Internet filters catch the word "gay"), Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the first four countries listed.

It's true. Here's the GoogleTrends report for "sex".

There's more. An article in another German outlet discusses sex in Egypt.

A heavy testosterone cloud hovers over the city, clumps of young men that nobody needs in dusty street cafés. "People are sexually mature at the age of eleven or twelve," explains psychiatrist Ahmad Abdallah,who is the director of the youth clinic as well as the website IslamOnline. "But then it can take fifteen or twenty years before they have official sex because parents won't agree to a marriage until the son has a decent job, ideally as an engineer or a lawyer, and an apartment or at least enough money to feed a family." But there is almost no work to be had. The number of Egyptians increases each year by 1.5 million, the minor education and health reforms that Mubarak's government set in motion are being devoured by this "youth bulge."

Those who want to break the sex prohibition have to do it in a car or simply in the street dust. On some evenings, you can see one Citroen after the next parked on the strip next to the Egyptian museum. Youths who go to American films and wish to melt into the intimacies shown risk being branded as traitors, and so they sneak into hysterical Bollywood soap operas or Egyptian productions with the kohl-eyes and the constant moaning and screaming that is supposed to represent passion.

The interesting thing about this is that Bollywood films adhere to Indian standards for sexuality, meaning that couples are allowed to writhe against each other while partially clothed on film, but not even kissing is allowed.

And in another article in Der Spiegel, the sad tale of an Iranian actress unknowingly caught in flagrante on video is related:

Actress Sahra Amir Ebrahimi is familiar with the role of the bad girl - the fiery-eyed young woman based her career on it. Her screen persona, the beasty little character Sohre, is one of the protagonists of the cult series "Narges" -- and Sohre is known for her intrigues and machinations.

[ . . . ]

But that's all over now.

Twenty-five-year-old Ebrahimi is said to have appeared in a porn flick that is selling like hot cakes on street stands across the country, and ever since, she's been considered a hussy in real life too. What, people are asking, drove the Islamic Republic's most promising soap star -- normally seen dutifully wearing her headscarf and an ankle-length coat -- to perform on a narrow bed in front of a shaky camera?

In the prudish mullah republic, even tame films of private pool parties meet with eager customers on the black market. But demand for Ebrahimi's unexpected onscreen performance is literally unbelievable. Despite its comparatively steep price of €10 ($13), it is believed that more than 100,000 copies of the cheap DVD have been sold in Tehran.

Commentary

It was the 1950s that preceded the 1960s both chronologically and culturally in America's psyche. Forget about democracy. Might there be a correlation between sexual repression and attraction to terrorism? Maybe it's not freedom the Muslim world needs, but free love.

Written by Chester at 11:11 PM | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article