As Sarah Palin so eloquently put it a few minutes ago: Thanks Hillary for those 18 million cracks in that glass ceiling, but now we have a chance to shatter it once and for all! I’m PUMPED about a woman VP, and one as conservative and level-headed as Sarah Palin. John McCain is brilliant for this one!
The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey (Aesop’s Fables)
A Man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market.
As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them
and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?”
So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their
way. But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: “See
that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.”
So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself.
But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women, one of whom
said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little
son trudge along.”
Well, the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his
Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to
the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The
Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said:
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey
with you and your hulking son?”
The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They
thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied
the donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to
their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met
them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one
of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end
of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and
his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.
“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them:
“Please all, and you will please none.”
And here’s my moral- I’d rather have a president that some people hate and know why they hate him than one who everyone loves but can’t really tell me why…
(Side note: Martha is one of my personal heroes when it comes to domestic goddess-ness. Is the woman even real?!)
Something that is always running through my head that I don’t vocalize nearly enough is that my church is awesome. Divine Life is unlike any other church I have been to- it practices Christianity in so many real ways that you are constantly aware of how your life should, can and does affect the world around you (which can actually be pretty annoying when you want to have a selfish fit 
). We are Pentecostal in tradition, but probably have the most “un-Pentecostal” order of service that most are used to. We meet on Sunday nights and our service is very… well, I supposed “organic” is a good word to describe it. There is an atmosphere of reverence but the freedom to worship how you want. We have stations that you can visit during service to give of your offerings, take communion, journal, do artwork and submit prayer requests. This encourages me to be an active participant in worship, not just standing there and letting the worship team be the only active participants. The sermons delivered are very intellectual and really make you think. There is usually time at the end for questions and clarification.
Like I said, it is unlike any other church I have attended. I say all of that to give you an idea of what to expect if you ever want to check it out. With so many great options in Oklahoma City, I know you have your pick of which church to visit, so I for one would be super pumped if you showed up
Okay, I said all of that because I want to encourage you all to begin to live out what I dub “Practical Christianity”. We go to church on Sundays and hear about how much God loves us, how we should respond to Him; we get instruction on how to go about this life and how to get through another day. But another thing that should be taking away from Sundays is how to live Christianly. I am no expert on this, to be sure, but hopefully the conscious effort is a good start. As Christians we are to show Christ to everyone. We are to behave in a way that humanizes people, and that takes an effort to get your focus off of yourself.
An example of this from my personal life is a little story from my banking days. I was in college working as a teller and my grandma in Chile had just died over the weekend. I wasn’t going to get to go to the funeral and was dealing with the fact that she wouldn’t be at my wedding which was 2 months away. An older lady came in and did a deposit. Being distracted, I gave her the wrong amount of change (I felt tears coming on and honestly just wanted her to leave so I could go cry in the bathroom). Man, that old lady just laid into me on what an idiot I was, how I was trying to steal her money, blah blah blah. I just burst out crying right here and the whole story poured out of my mouth- “I’m sorry but my grandma just died and I am getting married and she won’t be there and I can’t go to the funeral and I won’t have any closure and let me just count it again, please give me a break I’M HAVING A REALLY BAD DAY!!!”
The look on homegirl’s face was enough to make me feel like a jerk, but I am sure her level of jerkitude was much much higher. She mumbled an apology and sent me flowers the next day. I wasn’t trying to make her feel bad, I just wanted her to understand why I was having a “human moment” and to treat me as such. I’m sure we all try our hardest to think that there is always a reason people act the way they do when they mess up our order, miscount our change or cut us off right before the light turns red. But making a conscious effort to live Christianly, to humanize people by our interaction with them- well, that is rewarding in itself.
I kind of got off on a tangent there but that is one of the greatest things I have learned at DLC. And now I just want to thank my church so much. Ryan and I recently learned of a family in need. They are a family just like any of us- nice house, two cars, two kids, good family. However, due to choices and outside influences and people who DON’T make it a priority to put people above money, they are in a tough spot. Looking for a well-paying job these days isn’t easy and with two small children, simple things like diapers and food can cause major anxiety when it comes time to purchase them.
At our small group, Ryan and I asked for the group to pray for them. We asked them to pray practically, that they find jobs. We asked them to pray spiritually, that God would heal the wounds that the bad turns of luck had inflicted on them. We asked them to pray for the couple’s marriage and for their family. Our small group pastor took the needs, anonymously, to our congregation. The response was amazing- not only because of the amount of diapers and supplies that came in, but that it was for people they didn’t even know. They just know that we care for and love this couple and that they needed some help.
Last night we took the stuff to the family and they were surprised that our church would do that for people they didn’t even know. But to me, and many other Christians in this world, I am sure it would be only natural. There is the mindset of “there is a need that I can help meet, so I do it”. Who cares if they don’t go to my church or don’t belong to my political party… who cares if they live here or North Dakota, who cares what the circumstances are? I am proud to be a part of Divine Life, because it is made up of people who will drop what they are doing, re-prioritize and practice their Christianity. It was more than we asked for, but the impact reached further beyond the phrase “We’ll be praying for you”.
Prayer is essential. Everyday Christianity benefits from prayer and spirituality. But it is most seen and felt when it comes to those practical, everyday actions. I challenge you to implement the goal of humanizing those you come into contact with, and to live it out for all to see. How can that be anything but a good thing?
This article is a bit long, but worth the read if you have or ever want to have children. Personally, I am on the “better safe than sorry” side of the argument but I was always of the opinion that people should be free to make their own choices on this issue. The piece brings up a good point that I hadn’t thought of before, and that is a lesson that can and should be applied to everything in life- it’s never just “my life”, what I do affects everyone around me.
I have a few friends who have chosen not to vaccinate their babies right away with the idea that they might (probably will) change their minds later when their kids get older. For a family who is able to keep the child at home, I can see how this would be the best of both worlds. Not only are you not exposing your child to these diseases by them being around other kids (daycare or school), but you are allowing their immune systems to develop a little more before you inject these vaccines into them.
For most of us, though, our children go to daycare and we put them in the nursery at church where they are exposed to all sorts of germs and childhood antics. It was a requirement for her daycare that Aubrey be vaccinated and honestly, it never even crossed my mind to opt out of these shots (since she’s in a home daycare I don’t think I could have, actually). It was very hard to watch her fat little thighs get poked with those needles and I hated how much she cried. She had a bit of a fever afterwards and was fussy, but it was nothing near the fits she throws when she’s cutting a tooth, let me tell you what!
I don’t know a lot about all the things that these vaccines are being linked to, like autism and asthma. I do know this- my sister and I both got all of our shots and we turned out fine, Aubrey is up to date on hers and she has never been sick with anything worse than an ear infection. There isn’t any science linking these diseases to vaccinations that I can find, it’s all mostly opinion. One argument is that so many more cases have been reported- but hasn’t awareness and education about things like autism been heightened so much that people are catching it earlier? Couldn’t THAT be the reason these cases have spiked?
Also, I get my dog vaccinated because I’d like to keep her around as long as possible, and my sister can share the horror stories of poor animals who contract diseases that could have been easily avoided. My dog can’t tell me what’s wrong with her if she’s sick, kind of like my baby- so why not just ward off all that frustration and pain by blocking the sickness from ever getting to them?
I’m not trying to tell anyone what they should do or saying you are harming your child if you don’t choose to vaccinate them. What I do know is this- if I found out that there was a kid in her daycare who hadn’t been innoculated and had no plans to do so, I’d probably find Aubrey another daycare. Now, this is JUST MY OPINION, not a judgment, but I do see it as a little selfish on the parent’s part to not vaccinate their kids when they go to school and then throw them in with a bunch of other kids to spread the disease if they ever got it. I know that Aubrey probably wouldn’t catch it since she has been protected, but still. The risk is there. And I have researched a bit (not a ton, but enough to solidify my decision) on the toll it takes on their little bodies if they DO get these diseases, and the worst case scenarios are horrifying. Paralysis, deafness, seizures and other things could result from childhood diseases such as polio and measles that are routine when it comes to getting shots.
I mainly posted this article because it is great at showing both sides to the story. And I’d love to hear YOUR opinion on the matter. Not to change anyone’s mind, but to see where everyone is coming from. Dialogue is good- so start talking!
UPDATE: Check out this blog to get more info on the side of those who choose not to vaccinate their children. Thanks Melissa for the link!
MANY, many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed. He did not care for his soldiers, and the theatre did not amuse him; the only thing, in fact, he thought anything of was to drive out and show a new suit of clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day; and as one would say of a king “He is in his cabinet,” so one could say of him, “The emperor is in his dressing-room.”
The great city where he resided was very gay; every day many strangers from all parts of the globe arrived. One day two swindlers came to this city; they made people believe that they were weavers, and declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined. Their colours and patterns, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.
“That must be wonderful cloth,” thought the emperor. “If I were to be dressed in a suit made of this cloth I should be able to find out which men in my empire were unfit for their places, and I could distinguish the clever from the stupid. I must have this cloth woven for me without delay.” And he gave a large sum of money to the swindlers, in advance, that they should set to work without any loss of time. They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms. They asked for the finest silk and the most precious gold-cloth; all they got they did away with, and worked at the empty looms till late at night.
“I should very much like to know how they are getting on with the cloth,” thought the emperor. But he felt rather uneasy when he remembered that he who was not fit for his office could not see it. Personally, he was of opinion that he had nothing to fear, yet he thought it advisable to send somebody else first to see how matters stood. Everybody in the town knew what a remarkable quality the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or stupid their neighbors were.
“I shall send my honest old minister to the weavers,” thought the emperor. “He can judge best how the stuff looks, for he is intelligent, and nobody understands his office better than he.”
The good old minister went into the room where the swindlers sat before the empty looms. “Heaven preserve us!” he thought, and opened his eyes wide, “I cannot see anything at all,” but he did not say so. Both swindlers requested him to come near, and asked him if he did not admire the exquisite pattern and the beautiful colours, pointing to the empty looms. The poor old minister tried his very best, but he could see nothing, for there was nothing to be seen. “Oh dear,” he thought, “can I be so stupid? I should never have thought so, and nobody must know it! Is it possible that I am not fit for my office? No, no, I cannot say that I was unable to see the cloth.”
“Now, have you got nothing to say?” said one of the swindlers, while he pretended to be busily weaving.
“Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful,” replied the old minister looking through his glasses. “What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.”
“We are pleased to hear that,” said the two weavers, and described to him the colours and explained the curious pattern. The old minister listened attentively, that he might relate to the emperor what they said; and so he did.
Now the swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms.
Soon afterwards the emperor sent another honest courtier to the weavers to see how they were getting on, and if the cloth was nearly finished. Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.
“Is it not a beautiful piece of cloth?” asked the two swindlers, showing and explaining the magnificent pattern, which, however, did not exist.
“I am not stupid,” said the man. “It is therefore my good appointment for which I am not fit. It is very strange, but I must not let any one know it;” and he praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. “It is very excellent,” he said to the emperor.
Everybody in the whole town talked about the precious cloth. At last the emperor wished to see it himself, while it was still on the loom. With a number of courtiers, including the two who had already been there, he went to the two clever swindlers, who now worked as hard as they could, but without using any thread.
“Is it not magnificent?” said the two old statesmen who had been there before. “Your Majesty must admire the colours and the pattern.” And then they pointed to the empty looms, for they imagined the others could see the cloth.
“What is this?” thought the emperor, “I do not see anything at all. That is terrible! Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would indeed be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me.”
“Really,” he said, turning to the weavers, “your cloth has our most gracious approval;” and nodding contentedly he looked at the empty loom, for he did not like to say that he saw nothing. All his attendants, who were with him, looked and looked, and although they could not see anything more than the others, they said, like the emperor, “It is very beautiful.” And all advised him to wear the new magnificent clothes at a great procession which was soon to take place. “It is magnificent, beautiful, excellent,” one heard them say; everybody seemed to be delighted, and the emperor appointed the two swindlers “Imperial Court weavers.”
The whole night previous to the day on which the procession was to take place, the swindlers pretended to work, and burned more than sixteen candles. People should see that they were busy to finish the emperor’s new suit. They pretended to take the cloth from the loom, and worked about in the air with big scissors, and sewed with needles without thread, and said at last: “The emperor’s new suit is ready now.”
The emperor and all his barons then came to the hall; the swindlers held their arms up as if they held something in their hands and said: “These are the trousers!” “This is the coat!” and “Here is the cloak!” and so on. “They are all as light as a cobweb, and one must feel as if one had nothing at all upon the body; but that is just the beauty of them.”
“Indeed!” said all the courtiers; but they could not see anything, for there was nothing to be seen.
“Does it please your Majesty now to graciously undress,” said the swindlers, “that we may assist your Majesty in putting on the new suit before the large looking-glass?”
The emperor undressed, and the swindlers pretended to put the new suit upon him, one piece after another; and the emperor looked at himself in the glass from every side.
“How well they look! How well they fit!” said all. “What a beautiful pattern! What fine colours! That is a magnificent suit of clothes!”
The master of the ceremonies announced that the bearers of the canopy, which was to be carried in the procession, were ready.
“I am ready,” said the emperor. “Does not my suit fit me marvellously?” Then he turned once more to the looking-glass, that people should think he admired his garments.
The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything.
The emperor marched in the procession under the beautiful canopy, and all who saw him in the street and out of the windows exclaimed: “Indeed, the emperor’s new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!” Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never emperor’s clothes were more admired.
“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.
The moral that I draw from this story to avoid the blindness. It’s funny how there was nothing to be blind to- no “clothes”, only the idea that the Emperor could not be wrong, and the people were scared of looking stupid if they objected to his idea of beauty.
How many people do you know who are scared of what people will think if they dared to say they like President Bush, support the troops or oppose abortion in these times of Mr. “Si Se Puede”? Are you willing to be the voice of the child to speak out with the truth? Obama (aka the Messiah of America) has a huge following, no doubt, but as the forum at Saddleback Church showed this past weekend, for all his shiny smiles and carefully constructed words, there isn’t much substance to the man. Masses wanting change should not immediately flock to the first guy who dares them to hope for it.
Wolves in sheep’s clothing, all-knowing Emperors… anyone thinking what I’m thinking? Too good to be true!
I’m sorry, I don’t care if you think I am judgemental. I don’t see how you can be a Christian and vote for Barack Obama, a man who supports this monstrosity and be able to sleep at night. It is infuriating and abominable.
Please click here, watch, and send to everyone you know.
The Archbishop of Canterbury invited Sir Jonathan Sacks Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, to address the Lambeth Conference on Monday 28th July 2008. Sir Jonathan was accompanied by his wife, Lady Elaine Sacks and their daughter, Gila Sacks.
Sir Jonathan’s address was greeted by a standing ovation and his responses to questions posed by the audience were frequently greeted with prolonged applause.
Text of the Address
Friends — this is for me a profoundly moving moment. You we have invited me, a Jew, to join your deliberations, and I thank you for that, and for all it implies. There is a lot of history between our faiths, and for me to stand here, counting as I do the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York as beloved colleagues, is a signal of hope for our children and the world they will inherit.
Many centuries ago the Jewish sages asked, who is a hero of heroes? They answered, not one who defeats his enemy but one who turns an enemy into a friend. That is what has happened between Jews and Christians: strangers have become friends. And on this, I think the first occasion a rabbi has addressed a plenary session of the Lambeth Conference, I want to thank God in the words of the ancient Jewish blessing, Shehecheyanu vekiyemanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh. Thank You, God, for bringing us to this time.
I
You have asked me to speak about covenant, and that is what I am going to do. We will discover not only a transformative idea, one that changes us as we think of it; not only a way forward for faith in the 21st century. We will also find ourselves better able to answer the question: what is the role of religion in society, even in a secular society like Britain.
And let’s begin our journey at the place we passed on our march last Thursday, in Westminster. It was such a lovely day that I imagine meeting up with my granddaughter on the way back and taking her to see some of the sights of London. We’d begin where we were, outside Parliament, and I imagine her asking what happens there, and I’d say, politics. And she’d ask, what’s politics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of power.
And then we’d go to the city, and see the Bank of England, and she’d ask what happens there and I’d say: economics. And she’d say: what’s economics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of wealth.
And then on our way back we’d pass St Paul’s Cathedral, and she’d ask, what happens there, and I’d say: worship. And she’d ask: what’s worship about? What does it create and distribute? And that’s a good question, because for the past 50 years, our lives have been dominated by the other two institutions: politics and economics, the state and the market, the logic of power and the logic of wealth. The state is us in our collective capacity. The market is us as individuals. And the debate has been: which is more effective? The left tends to favour the state. The right tends to favour the market. And there are endless shadings in between.
But what this leaves out of the equation is a third phenomenon of the utmost importance, and I want to explain why. The state is about power. The market is about wealth. And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want. Either we force them to – the way of power. Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.
But there is a third way, and to see this let’s perform a simple thought experiment. Imagine you have total power, and then you decide to share it with nine others. How much do you have left? 1/10 of what you had when you began. Suppose you have a thousand pounds, and you decide to share it with nine others. How much do you have left? 1/10 of what you had when you began.
II
But now suppose that you decide to share, not power or wealth, but love, or friendship, or influence, or even knowledge, with nine others. How much do I have left? Do I have less? No, I have more; perhaps even 10 times as much.
Why? Because love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing. I call these covenantal goods — the goods that, the more I share, the more I have.
In the short term at least, wealth and power are zero-sum games. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Covenantal goods are non-zero-sum games, meaning, if I win, you also win. And that has huge consequences.
Wealth and power, economic and politics, the market and the state, are arenas of competition, whereas covenantal goods are arenas of co-operation.
Where do we find covenantal goods like love, friendship, influence and trust? They are born, not in the state, and not in the market, but in marriages, families, congregations, fellowships and communities — even in society, if we are clear in our minds that society is something different from the state.
One way of seeing what’s at stake is to understand the difference between two things that look and sound alike but actually are not, namely contracts and covenants.
In a contract, two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit. So there is the commercial contract that creates the market, and the social contract that creates the state.
A covenant is something different. In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone.
A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us’. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.
So economics and politics, the market and the state, are about the logic of competition. Covenant is about the logic of co-operation.
Now I want to ask, why is it that societies cannot exist without co-operation? Why is it that state and market alone cannot sustain a society?
The answer to that is an absolutely fascinating story, and it begins with Charles Darwin.
Darwin hit a problem he could not solve. I understand from Darwin that all life evolves by natural selection, which means, by the way of competition for scarce resources: food, shelter and the like.
If so, you would expect that all societies would value the most competitive, even the most ruthless individuals. But Darwin noticed that it isn’t so. In fact, in every society of which he knew, it was the most altruistic individuals who were the most valued and admired, not the most competitive. Or, if I can put it in the language of Richard Dawkins: a bundle of selfish genes get together and produce selfless people. That was Darwin’s paradox, and it lay unsolved until the late 1970s.
It was then that three very different disciplines converged: sociobiology, a branch of mathematics called games theory, and high-speed computer simulation. Together they produced something called the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
To cut a long story short, what they discovered was that though natural selection works through the genes of individuals, individuals — certainly in the higher life-forms — survive only because they are members of groups. And groups survive only on the basis of reciprocity and trust, on what I have called covenant, or the logic of co-operation. One human versus one lion, the lion wins. Ten humans versus one lion, the humans are in with a chance.
It turns out that the very things that make Homo sapiens different – the use of language, the size of the brain, even the moral sense itself — have to do with the ability to form and sustain groups: the larger the brain, the larger the group.
Neo-Darwinians call this reciprocal altruism. Sociologists call it trust. Economists call it social capital. And it is one great intellectual discoveries of our time. Individuals need groups. Groups need co-operation. And co-operation needs covenant, bonds of reciprocity and trust.
Traditionally, that was the work of religion. After all, the word ‘religion’ itself comes from a Latin root meaning ‘to bind’. And whether we take a conservative thinker like Edmund Burke, or a radical like Thomas Paine, or a social scientist like Emil Durkheim, or an outside observer like Alexis de Tocqueville, they all saw this, and explained it, each in their own way. And now it has been scientifically demonstrated. If there is only competition and not co-operation, if there is only the state and the market and no covenantal relationships, society will not survive.
What then happens to a society when religion wanes and there is nothing covenantal to take its place?
Relationships break down. Marriage grows weak. Families become fragile. Communities atrophy. And the result is that people feel vulnerable and alone. If they turn those feelings outward, the result is often anger turning to violence. If they turn them inward, the result is depression, stress related syndromes, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse. Either way, there is spiritual poverty in the midst of material affluence.
It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, gradually and inexorably. Societies without covenants and the institutions needed to inspire and sustain them, disintegrate. Initially, the result is a loss of graciousness in our shared and collective lives. Ultimately, it is a loss of freedom itself.
III
That is where we are. And now let’s go back to where it all began.
In the ancient Near East, covenants existed in the form of treaties between tribes or states. They had little to do with religion. To the contrary, in the ancient world, religion was about politics and economics, power and wealth. The gods were the supreme powers. They were also the controllers of wealth, in the form of rain, the earth’s fertility and its harvests. So, if you wanted power or wealth, you had to placate the gods.
The idea that there could be a covenant between God and humanity must have seemed absurd. If you had told people there could be, between the Infinite and the finite, between the eternal and the ephemeral, a bond of love and trust, I think they would have said: go and lie down until the mood passes.
If you had added that God loves, not the wealthy and the powerful, but the poor and the powerless, they would have thought you were mad. But that was the idea that transformed the world.
Covenant is a key word of Tenach, the Hebrew Bible, where it occurs more than 250 times. No one put it more simply than the prophet Hosea, in words we say every weekday morning at the start of our prayers:
I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will know the LORD.
A covenant is a betrothal, a bond of love and trust. And it was the prophet Jeremiah, who in the name of God so beautifully spelled out the result:
I remember the devotion of your youth,
the love of your betrothal,
how you were willing to follow me into the desert,
through an unknown, unsown land.
Covenant is what allows us to face the future without fear, because we know we are not alone. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me.’ Covenant is the redemption of solitude.
IV
There are three covenants set out in the Bible’s opening books of Genesis and Exodus. The first, in Genesis 9, is the covenant with Noah and through him with all humanity. The second, in Genesis 17, is the covenant with Abraham. The third, in Exodus 19-24, is the covenant with the Israelites in the days of Moses. None supersedes or replaces the others. And without going into details, I want to look at one significant distinction between two types of covenant.
For this insight we are indebted the individual I regard as the greatest Jewish thinker of the 20th century, a man whose name may not be familiar to you, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.
Perhaps the simplest way of approaching the idea is to ask: when did the Israelites become a nation? The Mosaic books give us two apparently contradictory answers. The first is: in Egypt. We read in Deuteronomy 26: ‘our ancestors went down to Egypt and there they became a nation’. The second answer is, only when the Israelites left Egypt and stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they became, in the words of Exodus 19, ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’. Now these two answers can’t both be true — or can they?
Rabbi Soloveitchik’s answer is that both are true, but they involve two different kinds of covenant. There is, he said, a covenant of fate and a covenant of faith, and they are very different things.
A group can be bound in the covenant of fate when they suffer together, when they face a common enemy. They have shared tears, shared fears, shared responsibility. They huddle together for comfort and mutual protection. That is a covenant of fate.
A covenant of faith is quite different. That is made by a people who share dreams, aspirations, ideals. They don’t need a common enemy, because they have a common hope. They come together to create something new. They are defined not by what happens to them but by what they commit themselves to do. That is a covenant of faith.
Now we understand how it was that the Israelites had two foundational moments, the first in Egypt and the second at Sinai. In Egypt they became a nation bound by a covenant of fate — a fate of slavery and suffering. At Sinai they became a nation bound by a covenant of faith, defined by the Torah and by God’s commands. That distinction is vital to what I have to say today.
Why is it that no-one made this distinction before Rabbi Soloveitchik, in other words, before the second half of the 20th century? The answer lies in one word: Holocaust.
At the level of faith, Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries were deeply divided. But during the Holocaust they shared the same fate, whether they were Orthodox or non-Orthodox, religious or secular, identifying or totally assimilated. What Rabbi Soloveitchik was doing, within a deeply fragmented Jewish world, was to rescue a sense of solidarity with the victims. Hence his concept, always implicit within the tradition but never spelled out so explicitly before, of a covenant of fate even in the absence of a covenant of faith.
V
Now that we have made this distinction, we can state a proposition of the utmost importance. When we read Genesis and Exodus superficially, it seems as if the covenants of Noah, Abraham and Sinai are the same sort of thing. But now we can see that they are not the same kind of thing at all.
The covenants of Abraham and Sinai are covenants of faith. But the covenant of Noah says nothing about faith. The world had been almost destroyed by a flood. All mankind, all life, with the exception of Noah’s Ark, had shared the same fate. Humanity after the Flood was like the Jewish people after the Holocaust. The covenant of Noah is not a covenant of faith but a covenant of fate.
God says: Never again will I destroy the world. But I cannot promise that you will never destroy the world — because I have given you free will. All I can do is teach you how not to destroy the world. How?
The covenant of Noah has three dimensions. First: ‘He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God, He created man.’ The first element is the sanctity of human life.
The second: Read Genesis 9 carefully and you will see that five times God insists that the covenant of Noah is not merely with humanity, but with all life on earth. So the second element is the integrity of the created world.
The third lies in the symbol of the covenant, the rainbow, in which the white light of God is refracted into all the colours of the spectrum. The rainbow symbolises what I have called the dignity of difference. The miracle at the heart of monotheism is that unity up there creates diversity down here. These three dimensions define the covenant of fate.
There is a famous prophecy in Isaiah 11, that one day the wolf will lie down with the lamb. It hasn’t happened yet (though there is the apocryphal story of a zoo in which, in a single cage, a lion did lie down with a lamb. How do you do that? a visitor asked. The zookeeper replied: ‘Simple – you just need a new lamb every day’).
There was, however, one time when the wolf did lie down with the lamb. When? In Noah’s Ark. Why? Not because they were friends, but because otherwise they would drown. That is the covenant of fate.
Note that the covenant of fate precedes the covenant of faith, because faith is particular, but fate is universal. That, then, is Genesis 9: the global covenant of human solidarity.
VI
And with that, I come to the present. We are living through one of the most fateful ages of change since Homo sapiens first set foot on earth. Globalisation and the new information technologies are doing two things simultaneously. First, they are fragmenting our world. Narrowcasting is taking the place of broadcasting. National cultures are growing weaker. We are splitting into ever smaller sects of the like-minded.
But globalisation is also thrusting us together as never before. The destruction of a rainforests there adds to global warming everywhere. Political conflict in one place can create a terrorist incident in another, thousands of miles away. Poverty there moves consciences here. At the very moment that covenants of faith are splitting apart, the covenant of fate is forcing us together — and we have not yet proved equal to it.
All three elements of the global covenant are in danger. The sanctity of human life is being desecrated by terror. The integrity of creation is threatened by environmental catastrophe. Respect for diversity is imperiled by what one writer has called the clash of civilisations. And to repeat — the covenant of fate precedes the covenant of faith. Before we can live any faith we have to live. And we must honour our covenant with future generations that they will inherit a world in which it is possible to live. That is the call of God in our time.
VII
Friends, I stand before you as a Jew, which means not just as an individual, but as a representative of my people. And as I prepared this lecture, within my soul were the tears of my ancestors. We may have forgotten this, but for a thousand years, between the First Crusade and the Holocaust, the word ‘Christian’ struck fear into Jewish hearts. Think only of the words the Jewish encounter with Christianity added to the vocabulary of human pain: blood libel, book burnings, disputations, forced conversions, inquisition, auto da fe, expulsion, ghetto and pogrom.
I could not stand here today in total openness, and not mention that book of Jewish tears.
And I have asked myself, what would our ancestors want of us today?
And the answer to that lies in the scene that brings the book of Genesis to a climax and a closure. You remember: after the death of Jacob, the brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge. After all, they had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Instead, Joseph forgives — but he does more than forgive. Listen carefully to his words:
You intended to harm me,
but God intended it for good,
to do what is now being done,
to save many lives.
Joseph does more than forgive. He says, out of bad has come good. Because of what you did to me, I have been able to save many lives. Which lives? Not just those of his brothers, but the lives of the Egyptians, the lives of strangers. I have been able to feed the hungry. I have been able to honour the covenant of fate — and by honouring the covenant of fate between him and strangers, Joseph is able to mend the broken covenant of faith between him and his brothers.
In effect, Joseph says to his brothers: we cannot unwrite the past, but we can redeem that past – if we take our tears and use them to sensitise us to the tears of others.
And now we see a remarkable thing. Although Genesis is about the covenant of faith between God and Abraham, it begins and ends with the covenant of fate: first in the days of Noah, and later in the time of Joseph.
Both involve water: in the case of Noah, there is too much, a flood; in the case of Joseph, too little, a drought.
Both involve saving human life. But Noah saves only his family. Joseph saves an entire nation of strangers.
Both involve forgiveness. In the case of Noah, God forgives. In the case of Joseph, it is a human being who forgives.
And both involve a relationship with the past. In the case of Noah, the past is obliterated. In the case of Joseph, the past is redeemed.
VIII
And today, between Jews and Christians, that past is being redeemed. In 1942, in the midst of humanity’s darkest night, a great Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and a great Chief Rabbi, J. H. Hertz, came together in a momentous covenant of fate, called the Council of Christians and Jews. And since then, Jews and Christians have done more to mend their relationship than any other two religions on earth, so that today we meet as beloved friends.
And now we must extend that friendship more widely. We must renew the global covenant of fate, the covenant that began with Noah and reached a climax in the work of Joseph, the work of saving many lives.
And that is what we began to do last Thursday when we walked side-by-side: Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians and Baha’i. Because though we do not share a faith, we surely share a fate. Whatever our faith or lack of faith, hunger still hurts, disease still strikes, poverty still disfigures, and hate still kills. Few put it better than that great Christian poet, John Donne: ‘Every man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.’
Friends, if we look at Genesis 50, we will see that just before Joseph says his great words of reconciliation, the text says: ‘Joseph wept.’ Why did Joseph weep? He wept for all the needless pain the brothers had caused one another. And shall we not weep when we see the immense challenges with which humanity is faced in the 21st century — poverty, hunger, disease, environmental catastrophe. And what is the face religion all too often shows to the world? Conflict — between faiths, and sometimes within faiths.
And we, Jews and Christians, who have worked so hard and so effectively at reconciliation, must show the world another way.: honouring humanity as God’s image, protecting the environment as God’s work, respecting diversity as God’s will, and keeping the covenant as God’s word.
Too long we have dwelt in the valley of tears.
Let us walk together towards the mountain of the Lord,
Side-by-side,
Hand in hand,
bound by a covenant of fate that turns strangers into friends.
In an age of fear, let us be agents of hope.
Together let us be a blessing to the world.
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew congregations of the Commonwealth since September 1, 1991, the sixth incumbent since 1845.
Born in 1948 in London, he has been married to Elaine since 1970. They have three children, Joshua, Dina and Gila and three grandchildren.
Finally, after 13 months and 15 days, Aubrey took two steps last night! She has recently discovered that she can stand up and was showing off for us last night when we got home, and all of a sudden, she stopped and took a step. The look on her face was priceless, like um “what is happening?” and “this is really cool!” Then she took one more step before falling. I was SO HAPPY that BOTH Ryan and I saw it at the same time. We squealed and high fived each other before clapping for Aubrey. She was pretty proud of herself, but as soon as we fired up the video camera, she decided that she had had enough of this walking business and would not perform.
Oh well, it happened and we saw it and she might just be able to walk down the aisle at Natalie’s wedding by herself after all!
It’s been quite the week for me, and not necessarily in a good way. I feel as though my week was going as Angie’s (as told by her husband Jeremy) did after her vacation- everything was against me. I say this lightly because comparatively, my life is so easy and happy. But I wasn’t thinking that last week when I woke up last Monday morning and felt the razor blades in my throat. I had gone to Tulsa for the weekend with my sister-which was great- but somewhere between here and there I inhaled some dust or something because I woke up feeling awful.
I was not happy about the throat infection and migraines that resulted in a trip to the doctor, a huge needle in my hip (OW) and a note instructing me not to go back to work until Monday. Normally I would have been really excited about having a week off, but since I was so sick that Aubrey still had to go to daycare (Ryan took her every morning), I just laid in bed praying for my head to just go ahead and explode already. I haven’t been that sick in a long time so I was glad when, 3 days of antibiotics later, I was able to shower and eat and do things that normal human beings do. I have also missed a lot of church, where most of my close relationships are so I can’t wait til Wednesday when I get to see everyone and hear what’s going on in their lives.
As soon as I got better, Ryan left for a fishing trip that he has been planning (and talking about) all summer. My mom was coming to town for the weekend so I didn’t throw the normal fit that I do when he dumps me for 4 days of not showering in search of a striper the size of a Labrador. I had a good weekend but was still a little weak so I was glad my mom was there to help me with the baby and everything else to do with weekend cleaning.
After she left, however, I started to feel the weight of being the only adult around. Ryan and I are equal partners when it comes to most things in our lives, especially Aubrey. I know this and appreciate it but I don’t tell him enough. I know there are a lot of dads out there who don’t change diapers or delight in getting puréed bananas sneezed into their face, but Ryan is one of those guys who does. We have our routine, we have worked it out to the point that we don’t even have to play rock paper scissors anymore on who gets up in the middle of the night for a bad dream.
He comes home today and needless to say, I am excited. Aubrey is a remarkably good child, but she’s cutting two teeth and misses her daddy so I am ready to see her smiles when we pick her up from daycare and I am definitely ready for some help! Instead of holding her on my hip as I vacuum while defrosting chicken for dinner, he can take her outside to watch the birds (its their thing- outdoorsy people) while I scramble around my house in an attempt to put it in order so I can sleep at night. I know, I know, that’s a whole other issue, one I am sure Aubrey will remedy as she gets older. J
This whole thing got me thinking though, about how many single parent families are out there. I know I am spoiled, but I just don’t know how they do it all and stay calm through it all. I suppose you just do what you have to do, but I have a lot of respect for people who do it, and do it well, without the day to day support from a spouse. So props to the single parents out there- your job is tough but I know your families appreciate the sacrifices you make out of love for them.
As for Ryan, I missed him being around too, not just because he helps with the baby or mows the lawn (hmm… that actually needs to be done after all this rain we’ve had…) but I’m ready to hear all about his big fish, feel safe at night, tell him how Aubrey took a step yesterday (!) and to hear him laugh. This week is going to be sooo much better than last week!
As a working mother from Oklahoma, I'm here to share my thoughts on everything from potty training, to social issues, to what God is teaching me through serving Him each day about all of the things we face each day. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to the discussion!
