Jesus vs. Slavery

A reader writes:

What is the best response to someone who asks, “Why didn’t Jesus condemn slavery?”

I would point out several things:

1. The Gospels do not offer us an exhaustive record of what Jesus said and did, therefore, it cannot be ruled out that he condemned slavery in a way not recorded in Scripture.

2. He did implant in his Church an implicit rejection of slavery that flowered in later years. Thus the New Testament speak of slavery in negative ways in a variety of contexts. St. Paul counsels slaves who can obtain their freedom to do so (1 Cor. 7:21). He warns masters to treat their slaves kindly lest Jesus treat them harshly (Eph. 6:9). He stresses the equality of slaves and free before God (Gal. 3:28). And he devotes an entire epistle (Philemon) to the subject of God’s compassion for the slave.

3. Slavery was deeply embedded in Mediterranean culture, and the early Church was a tiny, persecuted minority that had no chance of eliminating slavery in the short term. Therefore, since the New Testament is addressed to first century Christians, it is primarily focused on enabling new converts (both slave and free) to live together in harmony until such time as its implicit anti-slavery current could flower and slaves everywhere would be given the opportunity to gain their freedom.

4. Christianity’s compassion for the slave was well recognized at the time, and Christianity spread rapidly among slaves, who were specifically excluded from the rites of many contemporary religious groups. In the eyes of some, Christianity was perceived to a significant degree as “a slave religion.”

5. According to some early Church sources, the slave who is the subject of Philemon (Onesimus) later appears to have become a bishop. He may have played a crucial role in preserving and collecting St. Paul’s epistles (one of which directly concerned himself), and thus we may owe the formation of the New Testament as we have it to a former slave.

Blogosphere Exposes Batman Hoax

Batman2_1 DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) – A man dressed as the Batman today scaled the wall of Buckingham Palace and unfurled a banner advertising the protest groups Fathers 4 Justice, which advocates greater custody and visitation rights for divorced fathers.

The stunt was not characteristic of the Batman, who normally does not lend his name to political causes, and the obviously heart-felt and emotional nature of this particular cause led CBS News anchor Dan Rather to speculate that the Batman may himself be a divorced father being denied custody to his child.

“Perhaps the various Robins who have fought crime alongside the Batman have, in reality, been his children,” Rather speculated. “Perhaps he is now being denied access to them due to a contentious divorce situation in which their mother feels it is unsuitable for children to be fighting crime.”

The Caped Crusader’s success in protecting his secret identity seemed to run out this time, when British police arrested and unmasked him, revealing him to be Jason Hatch, 33, of Glouster and a member of Fathers 4 Justice.

The Boston Globe immediately announced the discovery of the Batman’s secret identity, but within hours superhero experts within the blogosphere debunked this idea.

Batman1“Just look at the pictures,” said Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog. “This clearly is not the Batman. He has way too much body fat and not nearly enough body muscle. The details of his ‘costume’ are all wrong. He’s wearing jackboots that come up to his knees. He’s got a poorly-fitting cowl that doesn’t even have the white, blunked-out eyes that keep criminals from telling where he’s directing his gaze. He’s got a simple cloth bat symbol on his chest, whereas the real the Batman wears a metal plate under this symbol to protect him from bullets. Finally, he’s not wearing gloves but cuffs with little bat fins on them–that means he would leave fingerprints everywhere he goes and severely compromise his secret identity.”

To underscore his points, Birdly posted to the Internet an animated gif superimposing pictures of “the Buckingham Batman,” as the blogosphere dubbed him, with a file picture of the established the Batman.

“The differences between the two are striking. Even if the Batman had totally let himself go, he wouldn’t lose height!” Birdly claimed.

The Daily Planet could not verify Birdly’s claims because the server to which the animated gif was posted immediately polularity crashed after being linked on The Drudge Report.

CBS and The Boston Globe continue to maintain that the Batman’s secret identity has been exposed, but Birdly disagrees. “Believe the evidence of your own eyes,” he pleaded. “Further, this guy lives in Glouster, which is five hours ahead of Gotham City. He would often be at work at the very late-night times the Batman has been busting criminals. There is no way, even with the high-speed Batplane, that he could be in two places at once. And besides, his British accent would be a dead giveaway in Gotham.”

SOME Dare Call It Genocide

A reader points to this story on what the U.S. has been doing to help fight the genocide in Sudan. Excerpts:

The significance of the administration’s action cannot be overstated. This marks the first instance that a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the most fundamental of all human-rights treaties, has formally charged another party with “genocide” and invoked the convention’s provisions while genocide has been in progress. In the past, the convention and the term “genocide” have been applied only retroactively by state parties, long after the violence ended. Former President Bill Clinton underscored this recently when he apologized for his administration’s inaction to stop the 1994 genocidal massacres of the Tutsis in Rwanda.

[T]he United States is taking the lead in trying to rally the international community to exert pressure on Khartoum, all the while continuing America’s unilateral economic sanctions.

The United States is also providing some 80 percent of the humanitarian aid and other support to keep Darfur’s 1.5 million refugees alive. While many other nations have so far failed to make good on their pledges, the U.S. is exceeding its aid commitment.

The European Union has hedged from using the G-word about Darfur. In the late 90s when it dropped the word “slavery” from the U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution censuring Sudan’s atrocities in the south, the EU representatives argued that such harsh terms have no place in diplomacy. But it was with just such bluntness that President Bush laid blame squarely on the regime back in 2001 for crimes against the southerners (he called the crimes “monstrous” and compared them to the Holocaust).

It is now up to the other members of the Security Council to seize this historic moment. On its response to the U.S. resolution rests the fate of the three African tribes of Darfur — and the world’s solemn promise to act to stop genocide.

Some Innovative Teaching Techniques Are Not Good Ideas

As one teacher learned when she tore up a Bible to get students to think about how they would feel if someone desecrated what they considered sacred.

Thinking about what you would feel if someone desecrated what you hold sacred as a teaching technique: GOOD.

Witnessing someone desecrating what you hold sacred as a teaching technique: BAD.

British Abortion Film Wins Prize In Venice

I hate to say bad things about a movie without seeing it, but the data I have on the movie Vera Drake suggests that it is a pro-abort propaganda piece.

It’s also just won a prize at an Italian film festival.

Excerpts from the story:

“Vera Drake,” Mike Leigh’s tough tale of a working-class mother who is caught performing illegal abortions in 1950s England, scooped up the prizes at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, including the coveted Golden Lion.

The film raises difficult questions about abortion in a world where the wealthy have access to discreet and legal abortions and the poor throw themselves on the mercy of practitioners like Drake.

“The audience must walk away with a debate and struggle with it. These things are not black and white,” Leigh said.

Staunton anchors the movie as a working mother who risks her close-knit family’s love after a girl on whom she performs an abortion falls seriously ill and she is jailed.

Somehow, I suspect that the film is more black-and-white than advertised. Given the plot as described, it would be easy for filmmakers to send the clear message that, as regrettable as injuries like this were, they were caused by the era’s “repressive abortion laws,” to which good riddance.

I could be wrong about that, but the odds of a British company spinning the plot in a pro-life direction (i.e., portraying the lead character as a babykiller who injures mothers, too) or even in neutral manner seem to me to be remarkably low.

Seen At Mass Yesterday

Doginchurch

The vest she’s wearing says “American Guide Dogs / Puppy In Training.”

She was real quiet during the whole Mass. Didn’t bark once.

Mostly lay quietly trying different doggie-comfortable positions on the ground. Would open her eyes when people walked by.

Sniffed at the shoes of the collection takers at collection time.

Only excitement was when everyone stood up at the Gospel. She thought it was time to go and hopped up, excited to go somewhere new. Once she realized that wasn’t happening, she settled down and every other time people stood up in Mass she continued laying on the ground and didn’t do more than raise her head.

Real calm, quiet, professional demeanor.

Good dog!

Dan Rather Stands By ScrappleFace Story

DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) – Dan Rather today said that he stands by a recent story reported by the ScrappleFace newswire about a 1972 e-mail raising doubts concerning President Bush’s national guard service.

Wearing a cowl that obscured most of his face, the veteran CBS anchorman–known to some of his colleagues as Darth Rather and Darth InCBS–spoke to reporters in front of the network’s Metropolis affiliate. “That story is true. That story is true,” he said to reporters. “I will make it true.”

Denizens of the blogosphere were quick to respond. “If Dan Rather says it’s true, then that’s good enough for us,” said Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog, which served as a major clearing house for used auto parts and evidence of the falsity of the ScrappleFace story.

Birdly was contacted by the Daily Planet at his home at two o’clock in the afternoon. He came to the door wearing pajamas.

“We originally doubted the authenticity of the story because of concerns that were raised by some of our readers,” Birdly explained. “A close examination of the ScrappleFace logo suggests that it was originally produced on a computer.”

After the ScrappleFace story broke, Birdly says a number of his readers were able to duplicate it in modern word processing programs such as Microsoft Word.

“It appeared to be written in 50 point bolded Courier New font,” Birdly explained. “Some blogs even did side-by-side comparisons of ScrappleFace logo with MS Word-produced versions.”

Though an original copy of the ScrappleFace logo could not be obtained, unnamed sources at Little Red Power Cables Instablog provided to the Daily Planet a copy of one comparison, which appears below. Afterwards, unnamed experts testified to its authenticity.

Scrapplefacecomparison

Birdly did express concern that in his response Rather had not addressed all of the major points of evidence suggesting that the story was a fake.

“For example, look at the subtitle to the ScrappleFace logo,” Birdly suggested. “It’s clearly a reference to FOX News’s slogan, ‘News Fair and Balanced. We Report. You Decide.’ Yet Rather himelf is on record as saying that FOX News didn’t even exist at the time the ScrappleFace story appeared. In fact, he recently reiterated his claim that FOX News still does not exist. Yet he didn’t address this aspect of the story at all.”

Birdly stated that Rather’s failure to address the logo’s subtitle continues to cast grave doubts on the story’s authenticity. “Of course the subtitle doesn’t mean anything at all after a newsman of Rather’s gravitas has vouched for the story. If he says it’s true and that he’ll make it true, then you can be sure he will.”

When pressed on how he would make the 1972 e-mail story true, Rather brushed aside reporters’ questions while loading a couple of laptops and a wireless network router into his 1985 DeLorian. As some reporters pressed closer to get a glimpse of the vehichle’s flux capacitor, Rather shut the car’s hatch.

“I regret that I have but one professional reputation to give for my President!” he declared before screeching away.

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UPDATE: Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog now claims that his comments were misrepresented by the Daily Planet. According to Birdly, he stated that Rather’s failure to address the ScrappleFace subtitle does not mean that it continues to cast grave doubts on the authenticity of the story, whereas the Daily Planet represented him as saying that it does. The Planet stands by its original story.