"murmuring and complaining"

Don't complain.  Instead, state what you need or what can be done about it.

Odd Thoughts on Sainthood

     Did I say this already?  There is no "saint" in Scripture.  The word "saint" does not appear. It is never singular, only plural--"the saints."
     This is a very freeing realization.  I am not a saint, and neither are you, even though you are a believer and the most committed, patient, loving, and forgiving person on earth. Neither is "St. Paul," regardless of what church history has called him. 
     But Paul and you and I, as believers, are among the saints. 
     According to Scripture, the body of believers is the collection of "saints," those who have been "sanctified" by the blood of Christ (gruesome as that always sounds--and is).  Those who believe in Christ have joined that body of sanctified ones.  It is not by anything we individually have done. (It is grace, not works, that saves us, of course; we know that.) Not a one of us is a saint by ourselves, but together we are those who have been "sainted" by the work of Christ himself.
     That doesn't mean that we don't have good works to do, or that we can "continue in sin that grace may abound."  That is not what I mean.  All I wish to point out is that we are not being exactly biblical when we use "saint" individually.  Paul himself struggled with sin just as much as the rest of us, as his letters make clear.  
     When we get caught up in calling individuals "saint," we can get off the track in at least two ways.  One, we think that these individuals really were perfect (they weren't), and two, thinking that we can never measure up to them, we use them as an excuse for our own mediocrity.
     Instead of cruising down those errant paths, we need to recognize that we, the body of Christ, are in this together.  There is no other saint out there to do the work for us, or to cover for us--only Jesus, "the author and finisher of our faith."  And we are--all of us, from Peter to Paul to Mary to Augustine to Jerome, to your favorite Sunday school teacher--His body, a body made saintly by Him.
     The question is not how I can make myself into a saint, but how I can function best as a part of the body.

Joyful Noise

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands..."
     Psalm 100 was commonly memorized when I was a kid, and it's commonly used today among believers, especially those of us who can get aslant of the music sometimes, and among those of us who like to pump the decibels up.
     Yes, do make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
     But please consider this:  when the Hebrews were busy making that noise, where were they? [pause while you think about that].  
     They were not inside the Temple.  They were not inside a tent.  They were not inside a steel-framed auditorium, or even one with acoustical tile.
     They were outside.  Outside.  They may have been in the Temple court, or they may have been in a campsite, on a mountainside, or on the walls of the city.  But they were outside. 
     The sound went up, to God (at least metaphorically, if not literally).  It did not reverberate on their eardrums a thousand times.  It did not kill cilia in their ear canals.  It did not make them cover their ears, turn off their hearing aids, or run for the lobby.
     I love to sing loud.  I love to praise the Lord with all my being.  But I also want to be a good steward of the many amazing senses He has granted us.  Hearing is a huge gift from God. When worship comes close to damaging our hearing ability, is it "reasonable service"?  
Does the "sacrifice of praise" mean the sacrifice of my hearing ability?
     Worship leaders: consult the science.  If www.dangerousdecibels.org is to be trusted, then most worship time is probably causing hearing damage.  
     What are we going to do about it?

Who's "we"?

      On student papers, I'm frequently asking "Who's 'we'?" The options are more than my student writers realize when they carelessly throw the word around.  Is it "we" of the class (and I do tell them to consider the class as the audience, so that does resolve it if they are following instructions)? 
     Sometimes it's "we humans," which is pretty clear and inclusive. Sometimes it cracks me up because it's clearly "we men" or "we women," omitting at least half of their readership.  Often it's "we who live on campus," forgetting the third who commute.
     Sometimes it's a subconscious racial identification, with white, brown, or black in mind.  That one always worries me. (Reminds me of the time I quit reading a particular novel because I reached a paragraph about fifty pages into the thing when the race of one character was suddenly mentioned, irrelevantly, when no other racial identities had been mentioned and race was not an issue in the story; I'm a pretty critical reader, I guess, but "we writers" ought to be more awake.)  It's the old Lone Ranger joke, "What do you mean 'we,' kimosabe?" (How is it spelled--need to google that.)
      Much of the time it is "we Americans," and that one, too, disturbs me (see the blog on competition).  "We Americans" is a good one when the subject is how the US can best help the rest of the world, but not when it's how this nation ought to be afraid of some outside threat, or how this nation can defeat, overcome, or otherwise win in some international competition.
      Any of these uses of "we" may be needed at times, in various contexts.  But "we" needs to be clear.  Let "us" (writers) not be guilty of unwarranted assumptions about our readers.
       But the point that most disturbs me is how little of the time the "we" is us Christians, the Church.  Why do "we believers in Jesus" so often think more about what "we Americans" are doing, or "we men" or "we women" are doing, than about what the Church is doing? I've actually sat in Sunday school classes where the discussion ranged more around what "we Americans" ought to be frightened of than around what "we the Church" ought to be doing to correct the town's or the world's ills.
      "We here at DCC" are a Christian college, so in fact the phrase "we as Christians" does occur rather frequently in student writing.  I wish it occurred more often (though I can get tired of "we as"--just say "Christians," or whatever else is clear).  When "we" stretch our "we-ness" to be "we the Church," no longer are we fighting for rights or hegemony or attention.  Instead we start seeing things from the more universal perspective, insofar as that is possible for "us people."  We start thinking about becoming more like Jesus--humbler, kinder, more patient, loving, and trustworthy.  If "we Christians" will do this, not only will we learn to be unafraid, but also we'll see the world start to pay attention to what "we've" been trying to tell it for centuries.
      I'd like to see us Christians be clear about our default "we"--"We the people of the body of Christ, in order to form a more perfect universe..."
     
      

Competition

Competition--what's the point?  Nationally I mean.

I'm so tired of newscasts that talk about the competition that the US is in with other nations. "We're behind in math and science scores." "We're behind in trade balances." "We're ahead in Olympic golds." "We're behind in the production of ..." And now Obama is trailing Putin in international polls.

Who declared that nations exist to compete with one another?

Just because the US has been "No. 1" in this or that doesn't mean that that is the goal of existence.

But those who have been No. 1 usually fall into that trap. We've arrived, and now we have to stay there. King of the Mountain--it's a children's game. But whom do they learn it from? From their parents, from their culture, from the nature of things (survival of the fittest and all that).

Evolutionary theory implies that it all is a battle of species--a battle, a competition, for survival.

Maybe that's all wrong.

Maybe survival is a gift, and our responsibility in it all is to share the gift, to help others survive.

The TV show Survivor epitomizes the problem in our competitive outlook. The goal is to defeat everyone else and be the lone survivor. Great. Now I'm alone on my desert island. Good TV, perhaps, but a horrible approach to life.

How about (and public TV has tried some like these) Surviving, in which the premise is that we are all in this together, so how can we best work together to help all of us survive? Our foreign-aid policy at least attempts to exemplify an outward-looking attitude (whether it is is another question).

How about a newscast that begins, "Today the US advanced a step in helping provide the world with well-qualified compassionate scientists who will help us all"?   

Why can't the first "we" in our minds be the human race?

Plagiarism: The Overlooked Skill [an exercise in irony for the take-a-stand essay assignment] ]

            These days it’s Wikipedia or stealthisessay.com.  When I was in junior high, eons ago, it was World Book Encyclopedia.  We learn this skill early, and it’s time we learned how valuable it is.  Plagiarism can serve us well throughout college and life, regardless of the career we choose. 

            The word “plagiarism” has been around in English since 1621, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.[1]  The idea that stealing someone else’s creation is wrong is that old in English history.  Its etymology goes back to late Latin, also according to the OED, when it meant “kidnapping,” certainly the worst kind of creation-snatching.  So the concept is as old as the hills, to use a saying whose origin I don’t want to look up but which Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says means “very old indeed” and which the OED tells me is found first in 1898 in a source called Tit-Bits.[2]  Plagiarism has been bugging us for nearly five hundred years.

            It’s high time[3] that we ditched this silly attachment to an out-moded principle that only slows us down and gets in the way of our enjoying life.  Plagiarism brings huge advantages to both teachers and students alike.  It’s time we recognized these and quit worrying about “giving credit where credit is due,” a phrase which not even the internet gives a clue to the first use of.  I mean, just think how much time you could have saved if I hadn’t bother to credit all these sources here or distract you with all these silly footnotes.

            Teachers should be the first to hop on this bandwagon.[4]  Plagiarism makes the teacher’s work so much easier!  As soon as those smoothly flowing phrases emerge in the student’s paper and the plagiarism light starts blinking in the teacher’s mind, with a click or two on the internet, the teacher’s work is done.  No need to waste time reading the work and belaboring the content, style, and mechanics.  Just fling that zero on it, and move on to the next.  What a time-saver!  The more students who rely on plagiarism, the smaller the workload becomes. 

As plagiarism gets more widely accepted, a new grading system will have to be devised.  Instead of giving zeroes, the teacher can begin awarding high grades to those who find the best work on the topic and the highest grades to those who find work that best fits the student’s personality and skill and thus is hardest to detect. Let’s encourage the skills that will help our students the most.  Skillful use of plagiarism is surely going to lead to the greatest success in life.

Of course, there is a danger here for the teacher, suggested by the word “detect.”   Teachers are curious by nature, and detection of plagiarism can become a pastime of its own, a cat-and-mouse game.  The teacher needs to realize that hours can get frittered away in uncovering every source that the amateur plagiarist has used.  While these hours can be fun—the piling up of those “Aha!” moments that are so rewarding—the teacher needs to be wary of addiction to the discovery process.  There may be other pastimes that the teacher would enjoy more—china painting or rugby, perhaps—or other family members that they maybe should be spending some time with.  The wise teacher will not become addicted to the discovery of plagiarism.  The wise teacher, in fact, may be able to make even better use of this skill.  There may be a career in law enforcement, private-eye work, or even the writing of detective fiction; vocational options abound for the astute teacher who is tired of record keeping, faculty meetings, and cell phones in class.

In the mean time, before that new career can be realized, there is a further advantage for the teacher.  If all work is well plagiarized, the teacher need not be bothered by developing any sort of relationship with the student. Since the student’s own personality, interests, and needs can be totally concealed in the plagiarized work, there is no getting to know students individually, no being weighed down by hopes for them or by fears that they cannot write a complete sentence of their own.  It’s a great emotional and moral burden off the teacher.  Teacher and student can agree to leave each other alone.  The student can still get a grade, and the teacher, a paycheck.

Benefits for the student are enormous, as well, at every level of their college education.  Freshmen clearly need plagiarism.  Freshman year is packed with so many important endeavors—sports, music, social events, games, movies, and various addictions—any way that the freshman can save time and effort is bound to reap benefits.  Instead of eight hours spent on a paper that will probably still have some errors in it, twenty minutes can be spent finding a ready-made paper whose errors the student is not even responsible for.  What a saving in time and responsibility!  The student can get right back to racking up fifty more kills on Call of Duty.  Moreover, freshman classes are all those general ones that don’t relate to any major, so it doesn’t really matter that the freshman isn’t learning anything.

Similarly, sophomores aren’t into many major classes yet, so learning is not really a big deal.  Sophomores also are dealing with the let-down after freshman year, the notorious “sophomore slump,” so they often do not have the emotional strength to be doing much.  Too drained to get out of bed, much less think, the sophomore needs help to make it to junior year.  After all, if one does not make it through sophomore year, how will one graduate?  In view of this, sophomores really have no other option than plagiarism.  Papers must be turned in, after all; something is better than nothing.

In junior and senior years, the major is now a main part of one’s curriculum, so now is the time to learn the tricks that pertain to one’s career field. One might think that this means that plagiarism must be laid aside.  How foolish!  Now is the time to perfect plagiarism in one’s own field.  Now is the time to start preparing for a lifetime of relying on the best minds in the field.    What are the key reference works and the key online sources that will save hours of reading?  As Sparknotes is to the English major, so must there be similar sources for psychology, education, business, and even Bible. Seize the day.  The work has already been done for us.  Citing sources will only lead people to think we don’t know what we’re talking about.

The senior Bible major, moreover, needs to be ready for senior sermon.  With just a little searching, the senior can find excellent sermons by the great preachers throughout history—Whitefield, Spurgeon, Donne, Brooks, Graham.  With just a few changes to update the wording, the sermon can sound fresh and original, and most of the audience has probably never read any of them anyway, so the senior is good to go.  This method is also a great time-saver when the senior is besieged with worries about the future: with huge life decisions looming, the senior doesn’t need to be bogged down in the present, worrying about a detail like a senior sermon.

Furthermore, this method is great practice for heading into ministry.  Sites like icanpreach4ru.dum can save a ton of hours of thinking. Once settled at a local congregation, the novice preacher can line up six years’ worth of sermons with just a few clicks.  What a saving of time and thought!  Moreover, when meeting up for coffee with members of the congregation, the preacher won’t be tempted to get into ideas that the parishioners don’t really want to hear about anyway because there will be no ideas in mind.

Not only do Bible majors reap these benefits but also every other major.[5]  Worship arts majors needn’t ever write an original song.  Everything that’s needed is online.  And churches are the last places that want anything fresh and new; just sing the same old songs over and over, and everyone will be happy.  The worship leader can then spend much more time in prayer or guitar practice.  

Missions majors, too: when you’re overwhelmed with the details of getting moved and settled into the ministry in a new culture, you don’t have time to prepare original teaching materials that fit the culture you’ve moved to.   Just take some stuff along that worked for Grandmother’s generation.  It’ll probably work just fine. 

Education majors can clearly benefit from plagiarism.  Isn’t education merely a matter of passing on what other people have already figured out? It doesn’t matter who thought up the ideas, just that the content get passed along.  The students will think the teacher is much smarter if the teacher appears to be the source of the ideas, not some old dead guy whose name the class has never heard.  Education often includes coaching, of course, and coaches too can win a lot more games by always stealing plays from others.  The coach who relies on original plays will soon be known for that style of play, making the patterns predictable.  And thinking up new plays every game is certainly going to be exhausting. Think of the advantage the coach has who steals from a different coach for every game.

Psychology majors?  Since psychology is about reading what is in other people’s minds, about listening to their woes, isn’t it better if the psychologist’s own mind is not cluttered up with original ideas?  How much better to have one’s own mind totally clear in order to listen well to the counselee. 

It’s almost foolish to bring up the usefulness of plagiarism to business majors.  Plagiarism is a form of stealing.  Duh.  What else is a business person going to do in life? Undergraduate school is thus the perfect place to dull one’s conscience and become skilled in the essentials of one’s trade.

Some readers may be thinking, what is so hard about citing your sources, since you have to take the time to find them?  These readers are clearly missing the point.  Not only is citing a time-consuming activity that kills the effectiveness by making the work sound or look like an academic treatise that nobody wants to read or hear, but also it undercuts the whole purpose.  Isn’t the purpose in all of writing and speaking to appear smart?  If sources are cited all the time, it’s they that will seem smart, not me.  Isn’t this all about me?

Dr. Hahlen likes to quote Coach John Wooden, formerly of UCLA, who says, “Don’t learn the tricks of the trade; learn the trade.”  Well, consider this, Coach Wooden: if the tricks of the trade are learned well in college, just watch what we’ll be able to pull off in real life.

 

 

             

           

           

---

[1] I thought about not telling you how I know that, but then you might think I’m old enough to have been around then, when it was probably general knowledge.

[2] Margaret Drabble’s edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature says Tit-Bits was “a popular weekly magazine, founded in 1818 by G. Newnes” and running until 1984.

[3] The OED says this phrase was first used in that sense in 1393(!).

[4] First used in that sense in 1899, in a letter of Teddy Roosevelt’s, according to the OED.

[5] Covered here are only the majors that DCC offers; however, the thoughtful reader should be able to apply the same logic to any major.  

Relationships

For every jerk there's a fool.

Progress

There is no progress if we aren't treating one another better.

English-teacher writing

      Just now I'm marking papers for an online class, and it's taking forever because I can't stop myself from writing comments.  Once I've made a correction, I have to explain why.  And before long, I've written a whole paragraph on why the writer meant to say "that is" instead of "with that said," or "born" instead of "birthed," or "chockfull" instead of "chocked full." (I had to look that last one up, actually; I've used it myself for years but had never thought about how it's spelled or where it came from.  It's pretty interesting.)
      I'm often asked whether I write anything myself.  Well, the answer I came up with a few years back still holds: "Yes, volumes--in the margins of my students' papers."
      For years my friends and family have heard me moan about having to "grade papers."  Just lately I've realized that though I do hate "grading"--putting a letter on them--I actually do enjoy commenting on them. What I hate is that there is never enough time to write all that I want to say.       
       My students have no idea how much I care that they become good writers.  They have no idea how much their ideas and even their mistakes inspire me to think and to look things up.  They have no idea how much writing goes on in my brain that never gets put down anywhere because I have to move on to the next comma splice. 
      And of course they have no idea how disappointed I am when I'm having to waste my life reading fluff or garbage that they spent ten minutes on (because I failed to inspire them with a topic they care about!), or when I see "separate" or "woman" or "Bible" misspelled for the billionth time, or--worst of all--when I discover that it's not even their own work but some essay from stealthisessay.com (why do they think I would want to grade someone else's work, who's not even in the class? Both of us are wasting our lives in that case. That's not what they're thinking, of course; in fact, they are not thinking at all). 
     But even as I whine right now, I'm having a good time.  I do love to write, and I do want to write more, even while I keep spewing details about semi-colons into their margins.

Forgive that? You must be kidding.

     I love how forgiveness gets handled:  we believers know we're to forgive, we know it is basic, and we know what the Lord's Prayer says.  Yes, forgive.  Sure.  And we all say we're ready to do it and certainly ready to tell others when they need to do it.
    And then something terrible--really terrible--happens to us in particular. "I mean, really--this is certainly not what Jesus meant.  I mean, I'll bet even He would have had a hard time forgiving this."
    Forgiveness doesn't mean much until it is about something that hurts.

Frustration is...

...wanting to post something on your blog but going to the site so rarely that you can never remember the password, and by the time you get a new one, you've lost the energy for blogging.  (It happens to me every time!)

The Artist in the Work

    A moment ago I said the artist won't be found in the work itself because the artist is separate from the work.  Hudson River artist what's-his-name painted himself into the corner of his landscapes. Cindy Sherman makes herself the subject of her works all the time. Woody Allen or Alfred Hitchcock put themselves into their movies. But we still would not say that they, the artists themselves, are actually in the work.  It is still just a two-dimensional image of them, on canvas or film.  And there are the moments in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the filmmakers are being carted off by the police, if I'm remembering correctly.
   But then there is God, the artist, the maker of it all.  And he has a message for the work he's created.  And so he makes himself one of us, in every way--body and spirit, three-dimensionally us--in the form of the Son.  He is only here for a short time that way, but long enough to communicate what needs to be said and demonstrated.  Then he zooms away again.
    The Artist has visited his creation, lived among us, and shown us the way out.  :-)

just drifiting

I am overwhelmed by life.  I don't mean work, deadlines, surgeries, health insurance, the future--sure, I worry about those things, but they don't overwhelm me (except at 3 a.m. when I can't sleep).  But the idea that overwhelms me is the fact that we exist, that the earth exists, that the universe exists. 

We know we live on a rock in space.  We have seen the pictures--that gorgeous blue planet turning slowly on nothing, that gorgeous blue planet that is so different from every other rock in its solar system, or even the whole universe, so far as we've seen (which isn't very far, granted), that rock in space that is filled with water that doesn't slosh out into space, that rock in space that has a right-side- up and an upside-down. 

I mean, think about it--a huge rock with these huge gashes in it that are filled with water--water!  And the water stays put within very strict limits, even when there are huge tsunamis or hurricanes.  Okay, so gravity holds it all in place.  Yes, I know there is gravity.  It's keeping me in my chair right now.  But if gravity is so great, how come everything in the universe seems to be moving away from the earth (I heard an astrophysicist say that on NPR)?  I mean, really.  How come the earth attracts only the stuff it's supposed to?  Why isn't the whole universe being sucked into earth?  I know physicists can answer that very easily--at least I suppose they can--but it still overwhelms me.  All the forces that are at work on earth--this living rock, as it were--its magmas and oceans and atmospheres--and all of it inhabited by an infinity of creatures that astound the imagination--this whirling living zoo of the universe! It staggers me to think about.

Right now as I sit at this computer, I am on a rock in space, a rock that is turning around and sailing around in the midst of the blackness of what seems infinity. "The silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me"--is that a close approximation of Pascal's line?  I'm not terrified by it all, but I know what Pascal is getting at. 

It's not even the vastness of these infinite spaces that overwhelms me.  It is the idea of existence itself, not just the existence of my individual self, my little bitty soul, but the existence of all of us and of all of the universe.  "What am I that you are mindful of me?"  (And I am also fully aware that my amazement at it all would be greatly lessened if I were among the millions who have to suffer through life rather than getting to enjoy it as I do.  But I am among those who have the wherewithal to stop and look around and ponder it all.  It is absolutely amazing, and it is terrible that many people's lives are made so miserable by others or by circumstances that they don't have opportunity to appreciate this.)

I'm not terrified by it all because I know that Spaceship Earth does have a Pilot.  We cannot see him, but he has been there forever, and he oversees it all.  He knows where, and how, we are going.  I can enjoy the ride.  I'm still not signing on for a space flight, which is a slightly different matter: I might not be able to trust the maker and/or the pilot and/or myself in that case. But I am not afraid to be sailing through limitless space with absolutely no control over the ship of Earth because I know I can trust the Pilot.

the artist

Those of us who accept the existence of God or god, whatever he may be, generally accept the idea of the universe as his creation.  That is, God is the artist; the universe is his work, or one of them. 

So why do we think we should be able to find him by flying out into space or ascending up into the heavens? 

The artist can draw a picture of himself in his painting easily enough, but the artist cannot climb into the painting to exist there.  He is separate from his work, a different category of being altogether.  Duh. 

And the only way that I will get to meet him is to leave the work and enter his totally other realm of existence, of which this universe is just one little production in his gallery.  To do that, I must be as different as the walking-around human being is from the two-dimensional figure on the flat canvas in the gallery.  I must be as different as the seed is from the plant, as Paul would say. 

Jesus says he is the door. And when we die, he is the door into reality like we cannot imagine.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Money is the key to happiness." And, according to Luke's account, Jesus himself said, "Blessed [happy] are the poor...."  Perhaps we (the human race) are missing something: could it be that it's not the economy that's our problem?

Why is advertising on Christian radio so much like advertising everywhere else--aimed at selfish consumerism?  What if every ad on Christian radio connected the product or service to what a Christian ought to be doing with it in the world?  "Too busy talking with your neighbors about the Lord to cook?  How about a salad from McDonald's instead?"  "Worried that your wife is overworked? How about treating her to a day at ___?" "Need a new app? Or is it time to purchase one for your mother in the nursing home instead?" (If not now, try that one in sixty years.)  Seems like Christian advertisers and broadcasters ought to start thinking differently from the world.

heaven

The problem of heaven always seeming boring to us--but maybe it's like having Alzheimer's: it's a new world every minute. :-)

The older I get, the better Heaven sounds.  But it's not just that one grows weary of the world and its messes.  It's that the closer I'm getting to it, the more exciting it becomes to find out what really is on the other side.  I mean, there will come a day--maybe today, maybe years from now--when I will be on the brink and then make the leap or take the step or slide the slide or just evaporate, and I too will find out what all the dead since Abel bit the dust have been discovering. 

It will be better than space travel, which I'm totally too much of a coward to undertake., much as I am fascinated by it and by the thought of what's out there.  But travel to Heaven--whatever form that takes--will be beyond awesome.  Think of Jesus taking off from the Mount of Olives--he just rises into space and disappears.  Did hawks or eagles see him pass by?  :-)

The evidence is rather otherwise.  The more we travel into space, the more space we cover without running into God.  Is He out there?  We like to think that He is.  But believers also know that He is wherever believers are--in the Holy Spirit.  Where is He?  He's right here. 

So where is Heaven?  I'll bet we could travel to the farthest reaches of the universe and still not run into God.

The only way to get to God is through Jesus--the "Door," the "Way," and the only way to get through that Door is to die. 

God is not "out there." He is in another dimension altogether, and we ain't a'goin' there except through death.  I hope that sounds like fun. (But don't go jumping the gun to get there; there are no promises about shortcuts--the race has still got to be run.)

dogs

I've been watching Tea with Mussolini in stages lately, turning it off when I feel the tension rising so much that it might keep me awake. The first interval I turned off as the boy departed for school in Austria as the seeds of trouble were just beginning to sprout. The second interval is the one that interests me right now, though; my second interval ended when Judy Dench's character has her dog wrenched away.
Now that scene in reality would have been much worse; no doubt the soldiers would have killed the dog in some horrible way, as if it were fun for them. At best one of them would have kept it till the van was out of sight. Certainly, the boy would not have easily have had it held in his arms. But the movie was kind, and the boy ends up holding the dog.
I watched long enough to see his cart following the van through the countryside. But that was it. By then I was too tense to sleep, and thus ended up in this quandary.
Why does the suffering of a dumb animal matter more sometimes than the suffering of people?
There is a saying that Indians had about the British in India, that seeing a starving beggar and a starving dog, the Englishman would pity the dog.
I've always loved dogs, as far back as I can remember. The first death I experienced was the death of our dog Trouble when I was in third or fourth grade. Trouble's death was much closer than the death of our great-grandmother. This is logical, of course, in that Trouble was a real part of our lives and loved us back. Great-grandmother seemed to be neither of these. Children blessed with circumstances like mine--a stable universe orbiting around a happy, healthy family--don't have to experience anything much worse than the death of a pet. That is our first encounter with death and suffering. It's quite logical.
And as I grew up, taught principles of Christian love by family and church, I gradually learned a bit about what it means to love people. First there was JFK's funeral on TV. I was overwhlemed by the national sense of grief and cried and cried. My mother probably began to monitor how much of the proceedings I watched. That was in high school. It wasn't until I was in seminary that I was hit by a more personal grief, when Paul Clark, the father of a family that I was close to, died suddenly one Sunday morning. I grieved greatly for the family. It was the first time the death of a person I knew touched me deeply. As Dylan Thomas puts it, "After the first death, there is no other." That is, after that first experience, like the first experience of anything, the later ones are not so painful (or exciting, or whatever the "first" is about).
Not long after that, my grandfather died, and his death, too, got to me. I suppose I had passed another initiation rite of adulthood: the death of people could be as harsh as the death of a dog.
Further stages have come along. Through the teaching and example of seminary professors and others, I've learned to grieve over the suffering of strangers. Lord willing, if I have any enemies, I would grieve over their suffering, too. I've a long way to go.
But while watching Tea with Mussolini, it was back to the dog days. I still love dogs, and I still can't stand to see them suffer, even in a fiction. But I can't stand to see people suffer, either, even in a fiction. When a movie turns cruel to people, I turn that off, too.
The thing about the dog is its helplessness. Adult people are not helpless. The ladies being loaded onto the van in the movie are human beings who in some sense are responsible for their own situation. They also have each other to rely on, and they have the ability to hope, the ability that humans almost always manage to find in even the worst situations.
The dog doesn't have any of that, or doesn't seem to, anyway. To the foolish viewer like me, the dog is totally at the mercy of the situation. Wrenched from its owner, the one who has fed it and taken total care of it its whole life, the dog is bound to be confused and sad and--hungry. Who will feed it next? It touches me.
The suffering of anything is a terrible thing, the result of sin and the Fall. I'll do what I can to allay the suffering of anything, including ants, to some extent, but there is something amiss if I let the suffering of a dog take precedence over the suffering of people. The people, too, may be at the mercy of the situation. Who will feed them next?