CHANGING OUR MINDS ABOUT MATTERS OF FAITH

It happens rarely, especially these days, that people change their minds.  Yet it happens.

Years ago, in a discussion no longer remembered, my ex-brother-in-law mentioned Pensacola Christian College, which offers thousands of students a Christian evangelical higher education.  I visited its website and read its “Biblical Foundations.”  Only one of its statements of faith surprised me: the world was created 6000 years ago.  Absurd.  A specified age ignores the passage of time; a world 6000 years old in 2020 will be the world 6001 years old in 2021—and so on and on.

My letter to PCC pointing out the problem received no reply.  But, sometime later, revisiting its website, I found that PCC had amended its statement to read, “We reject the man-made theory of evolution occurring over millions of years and believe that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old (Gen. 5, 11).”  To its credit, PPC accepted logic and made a correction; “approximately” is an improvement because it avoids dogmatic rigidity about the earth’s age.  The improvement is temporary, however, because enough years will stretch “approximately” too far.  Is the earth “approximately 6000 years” old in 2221?  In 2521?  And so on.

Although PCC was flexible enough to amend a statement of faith, it still did not think through the problem.  The alternative solution is a specific date for the creation from which to count years.  PPC might have picked the evening before 23 October 4004 B.C., the date proposed by Irish Archbishop James Ussher, accepted in many fundamentalist theological circles, though ridiculed outside them.  PPC could keep its faith in a world getting older but remaining millions or billions of years younger than the age postulated by biological or astronomical evolution.

My criticism of an embarrassing miscue and an ineffectual response is not intended as a cheap shot at PCC or evangelical Christianity.  I am simply instancing that, when careful thinking and writing are necessary, especially in matters essential to faith, it is not often or easily done, and miscues are seldom amended.  Indeed, I credit PCC with trying, though it still has more to do.  Despite its belief in the earth’s age as foundational to faith, PCC is unlikely to persuade others that its age has theological significance.

However, other theological issues raise problems on points of essential doctrine with no logical or likely resolutions.  One Christian essential is the origin and nature of sin.  Paul’s famous statement in Romans is brief: “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.”  I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (7:7).  What Paul means by “known” we interpret as “perceived” or “experienced.”  What he means by “law” is Jewish law, which, he claims, causes sin.

Understandably, Christians have an antipathy to the concept or practice of Jewish law.  Two members of Peace Lutheran angrily asked me why Jews needed so many laws and why they could not be content with the Ten Commandments.  And Pope Francis has declared Jewish law dead if it does not lead to Jesus Christ.  My response to their anti-Judaism is not to redefine Christianity, but to show some problems in Paul’s claim.

The first problem is that his example does not exemplify the commandments or, more generally, Jewish law.  The commandment proscribing covetousness is the only one which proscribes an emotion.  Traditional Jewish thinking might regard it as a thin picket in the “fence around the Torah,” here, its commandment not to steal.  To the innocent, simply desiring something belonging to another is not perceived as a sin if it does not lead to stealing.  Only if the desire is perceived as a precursor to stealing can it be perceived as a sin.  But, since the desire does not lead invariably, as cause to effect, to stealing, it cannot be a sin.  Prohibitions of emotions as well as actions as sins are naïve because emotions are very difficult to control and virtually impossible to eradicate.  (Jesus muddled the issue when he equated lusting in the heart and adultery.  No one says stop lusting; everyone says take a cold shower.)

The atypicality and uselessness of Paul’s instance appears by contrast with the other commandments, all nine either stipulations or injunctions about actions.  In human history, individuals or societies never perceived or experienced murder as acceptable until someone came along and pronounced it sinful.  With few exceptions, people are not prompted to commit murder because the law forbids it.  Try this substitute: “I would not have known what it is to murder if the law had not said, ‘You shall not murder’.”  Really?  Likewise with the other commandments and other Jewish laws.  Paul notwithstanding, laws evolve from events perceived or experienced as having undesirable consequences and later established as crimes or, if you will, sins.  But Paul does not so will; for him, sin is not an outward, avoidable or preventable crime atonable so much as it is an inward, inevitable stain indelible.  God built sin into humankind’s spiritual DNA.

The second problem is that the one and only instance of law creating sin is God’s command to Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge—which he might have done without His command and which God knew that he would do with it.   Told not to eat cookies between meals, a child left alone will almost certainly do so.  But even if not told not to eat them between meals, he is likely to do so.  Paul is likely right that an instinct to violate the limits defined by laws is inherent if what is outside the limits is perceived or experienced as pleasurable or profitable—a temptation.  I can accept the all-too-human motivation of this one prohibition.  In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain states, “For we were little Christian children, and early learned the value of forbidden fruit”—a nice spin, I think, on the Garden of Eden story.  Paul assumes humankind’s childlike innocence until laws are learned, but, on the Genesis account, the period of innocence was short.  It ended with God’s command and the temptation which Adam did not resist; truly, Satan did God’s work.  Paul’s instance assumes human orneriness as the basis of sin, but most sins do not arise from orneriness.

Strictly speaking, Paul should blame God for rigging the situation by creating humans morally fixed in frailty.  Or Paul should explain the purpose of theological yo-yoing: why did God create humans inherently sinful and then make them seek forgiveness for their sins.  These questions can generate implacable resistance because they challenge core doctrine, and some answers would discredit, undermine faith, and unsettle Christians.  Or it can allow Christians to continue wrestling with these questions or accept that God works in mysterious ways, and this essential doctrine is one of them.

Again, my point is not to disparage Christianity; it is to show that Christian doctrine about the law, if it follows Paul, is not without its problems.  On his advice, Christians would reject the law, know it not, be free of sin, and need neither grace nor salvation.  Jewish law also has its problems, but it also has an appealing reasonableness.  It enjoins what does good and forbids what, though tempting, does harm.  It addresses action, which people can regulate and control, not emotion, which they cannot, certainly not easily.  It addresses what is humanly possible, not what depends on divine assistance.  It allows Jews to believe that the reward for a good life lived by the law is a good life, not a life after death which allots promised rewards or threatened punishments.

I am certain not to change my mind, and I am equally certain that you are not going to change yours.  But we can, I hope, agree that there is something to be said for cogency in the expression of our convictions and for respect for differences of faith.

WHISPERING TO STRANGERS IN ASHLAND AND TIBERON

     I shall get to the stories in a minute.

Believe it or not, I am a little embarrassed to identify myself as an “animal whisperer” because the phrase has taken on suggestions of hocus-pocus, animal magnetism, emanations, spiritualism, telepathy, and such-like.  I want nothing to do with such bunkum.  I make no claims to possess special powers, to channel some unearthly force, or to converse by beams of brainwaves with friendly aliens.  Yet I cannot deny that many of my experiences have involved more than wagging tails, licking tongues, petting, snuggling, head-butting, purring—the ordinary signs of good relationships with pets.  They involve something simple but scarce: two-way empathy between me and a dog or a cat as the basis for communing.  Staff at the pound noticed it between Miranda and me, and the wrangler noticed it between Sport and me.

I stress the down-to-earthness of animal whispering because I believe that anyone with empathy and any dog or cat with native empathy can commune (some damaged early in life lose it; abuse drives it out or neglect causes it to atrophy).  Communing differs from the communications and interactions of routines, command-and-response obedience, and the usual displays of mutual affection or loyalty.  When empathy joins with trust, respect, and love, all together make an intimate relationship which enriches the lives of both parties.  There is nothing mysterious or “gooey” about being able to “whisper” to dogs and cats; whispering results from the mutuality of these qualities.

Two dog stories of the it-ain’t-braggin’-if-you-done-it variety show what is possible even with animals who are not pets.  They involve dogs whom I met only once and show that dogs have and rely on powerful perceptive, intuitive capacities.

In 2005, when I was shopping in a garden nursery in Ashland, OR, I saw a beautiful, slender, Golden Retriever puppy with a woman and her tween-age son.  Approaching them, I asked—I always ask—whether I might pet their dog.  Given permission, I knelt down for the puppy to come up to me, smell my outstretched hand, wag her tail, and wiggle her body—all the signs of a puppy trying to please.  I rubbed her chest, stroked her neck and head, and spoke to her in a low, gentle voice.  Then I stood up, thanked them, and moved on.

A bit later, as I was leaving, I again encountered the woman, her son, and the puppy; and again I asked whether I might pet their dog.  I did what I had done the first time and the puppy began doing what she had done the first time.  Then her behavior changed.  She did what dogs do when alarmed by or aggressive toward, or when totally trusting, another: she looked directly into my eyes.  I noticed, I looked back into hers, and we maintained eye contact.  Then I got it, her message, and, in a soft, low voice, said, “Oh, honey, you’ve been terribly abused.”  With those words in that tone, her tail stopped wagging, her body stopped wiggling, and she sank into my arms and lap.  I continued caressing and speaking gently to her.  I looked up and saw the mother, son, and now the father, who had appeared for the first time, with his eyes wide and mouth agape.  I stood up and asked them where and when they had gotten the dog: the pound, a week earlier.  I said that, if they wanted this puppy to grow up to be what they wanted her to be, they would not punish her until she trusted them, for, until then, she would not be able to distinguish punishment from abuse, and her behavior would not improve.  The wife turned to the husband and said that what I had said sounded good to her; the husband gave her an abashed look.  Clearly, he had been trying to discipline this puppy and not getting desired results.  I left, with two thoughts: the puppy had a chance, and I would have taken her in a heartbeat.

A more recent episode had Jen, my second ex-wife, as a witness.  On a warm, sunny Father’s Day in 2016, we were walking southbound on a path along the shoreline at Blackie’s Pasture, Tiburon, CA.  Walking northbound 20 yards off the path was a woman and her Bernese Mountain Dog.  We stopped and stood still and silent to admire this beautiful dog, who, seeing me, made a sharp turn and approached me.  When she reached me, she butted her head into my groin and made it clear that she wanted me to caress her.  I did as she wanted.  I knelt; rubbed her neck, shoulders, and head; and spoke softly to her.  When I looked up, I saw the woman smiling at us, with a look of surprise on her face.  I stood up and noted that she was surprised.  She said that Toby did not like strangers and never approached them.  I said, “I’m not a stranger, I’m an animal whisperer.”  She said, “you must be.”

DEPENDENCE DAY: CITY OFFICIALS' MISPLACED TRUST IN CITY ATTORNEY

A friend recommended Paula Moore’s Cricket in the Web: The 1949 Unsolved Murder that Unraveled Politics in New Mexico.  It is a poorly conceived and executed history of a puzzling event.  Facts and inferences are unfocused by any theory about who committed the crime and why.  But one message is clear enough: the legal system of Las Cruces from top to bottom was incompetent and corrupt.  Outsiders from northern New Mexico could not reform the underlying structural deficiencies of southern New Mexico folkways.

Another friend asked how I characterized the culture of Las Cruces.  My answer: it lacks standards of excellence, aspires to nothing, and shrugs off mediocrity of any and all kinds.  Still, do not misunderstand me.  Most Las Cruceans are polite and pleasant.  I wear my Vietnam veteran’s cap, not to prompt thanks, but to open opportunities to engage with friendly people.  I am appalled that so much of the population suffers from persistent poverty and its consequences: poor (if any) housing, poor or inadequate nutrition, poor healthcare, and mediocre education.

On top of these conditions is a police force with no commitment to professionalism or public service.  Officers have antagonistic attitudes and confrontational approaches to most, especially Hispanic, citizens.  Knowing their commonplace abuses of those unlikely to protest and persist in their protests, I have campaigned against the violations falsely charged against me.  If I can prevail in my long slog toward justice—retracted charges and expunged file—perhaps law enforcement and legal authorities will make reforms, and others will demand an end to abusive police and corrupt city lawyers.

The latest skirmish in my campaign is the most telling.  A little history first.  My 5 August 2019 complaint of false charges led to conflicted LCPD responses.  On 5 February 2020, the IA investigator’s internal memorandum stated that “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.”  Two weeks later, the IA chief’s report silently ignored my complaint about these violations and registered no decision about them.  The warning notice states, a “receipt [of the notice] will be kept on file,” and there it sits.

A temporary diversion was the IA response to my 22 September 2019 blog on the possibility of antisemitism as the motive for the officer’s false charges and IA’s slow investigation.  Notably, in my name but without my approval, the IA chief or investigator initiated a complaint of bias-based policing.  After I learned the consequences of such a complaint, I demanded its withdrawal, and it was withdrawn.

Fast forward.  When the Mayor vacillated on his promise that I might present my complaint to the police auditor, I sent OIR the relevant documents, to which it did not respond.  City Council excluded my complaint from review by limiting complaints for review to those dated from 1 May 2021 or later.  In response, on 2 June, I filed a new complaint of bias-based policing based on the five false charges of code violations.  On 10 June, I emailed the Police Chief that I had had no response from IA and expected my complaint to be reported to the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General and included in the OIR police audit.  He did not respond.  On 23 June, I emailed him three, yes or no, and, if no, why, questions about an IA investigation of my complaint, a report to the NMOAG, and its inclusion in the police audit.

A same-day response came from the City Attorney, who did not directly answer my three questions.  Instead, she attacked my complaint.  With legal quibbles: “crimes,” not violations; warnings, not “charges”; etc.  With a bizarrely worded, counterfactual denial: “The events as they occurred actually occurred.  They were properly documented.”  With a direct counterfactual denial: "There is no way to ‘purge’ your file because there is no file to ‘purge’.” Apparently, acting on her advice, the Police Chief ignores my complaint and does none of these things which police procedure, state law, and city policy require.  By denying me due process of law, city officials treat me like a second-class citizen; by covering up a complaint about bias-based policing, they make this bias more obvious.

There is more.  At the end of our two-day exchange, the City Attorney reached back to a first-day phrase for a second-day accusation of sexism, perhaps as a strategic move to counter my complaint about antisemitism with a libel about my sexism.  Culturally ignorant of the meaning of an uncommon word used in an old phrase, she resorted to playing the gender card.  I wrote, “I do not care I whether your knickers are in a twist about my non-lawyerly usage.”  She wrote, “I suggest you refrain from treating me differently because I am a woman.  Do not refer to my undergarments.  I am sure you would not make such a comment to a man.”  Her response should embarrass any feminist, male or female.  (I make light of her desperate libel by joking that she had best explain to her husband how I acquired knowledge about her underwear.  BTW, knickers are knee-length pants.  They were worn by Dutch male settlers in New Amsterdam and since by men, notably professional athletes in golf, football, and baseball, and women up to the present.  The term applied to female undergarments is a more recent innovation.)

On 29 June, she emailed me “that the City Council is informed that they should not respond to your email because that could create a possible rolling quorum.”  She means “advised,”  and her rationale is probably specious.  In other words, she wants to make herself their only source of information about my complaint.  She need not worry about the Mayor or Councilors contacting me.  Only a few, and then rarely, have done so; they are likely pleased to shield themselves from responsibility “on the advice of counsel.”

All in all, a remarkable performance by the City Attorney, who indulges lawyerly quibbles to obscure the truth, lies in defiance of documented facts about violations on, and a file for, a warning notice, libels a citizen, and seeks to prevent elected officials from communicating with him on a strange reading of the law.  All of this follows her office’s lies about an IPRA exception to me and the NMOAG.  Honesty is a word not in this woman’s professional vocabulary or her professional inventory of capabilities.  As the City Attorney, she thinks of herself as a trustee guarding her city’s interests—in the role, she has a personal as well as positional disposition to pugilism—but she forgets to think of herself first as an officer of the court.  The difference between the two is likely to cause the city and her difficulty as I press on.