Madoff Gets Mad

There was much speculation about what would happen to poor old Bernie Madoff once he went to prison. At 71, some people thought he might be too frail to withstand prison life or that he might get knocked around by the other prisoners.

This story from Foxnews.com proves otherwise:

Bernie "The Bruiser" Madoff got into a prison-yard tussle with a fellow inmate over — of all things — the stock market, eyewitnesses told The New York Post.

And, by inmates' accounts, the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer came out the winner.

Madoff, serving 150 years at the Butner, N.C., federal prison, was heard last week getting into a heated debate over the state of the market with another senior-citizen jailbird.

The shouting match got so heated that the inmate pushed Madoff, who shoved back harder with both hands, causing his attacker to stumble.As the attacker tried to stand up straight, Madoff hovered over him red-faced and glaring, eyewitnesses said.

The stunned attacker went chicken and took off — allowing Madoff to collect some "cred" among his fellow prisoners.

"I didn't think Bernie had it in him. He got the best of him; he was really aggressive, and the other guy was in shock that he fought back," an inmate said.

The shoving match occurred near a ball field at the lockup in front of about 20 inmates during a rare time

Prisoners interviewed by The Post said this was the first known physical altercation at the slammer for Madoff — who paid a consultant for a crash course in prison culture and survival tips before he was locked up.

People should never worry about successful career criminals like Bernie Madoff. They don't get to where they were/are by not being able to read the writing on the wall and find a way to make it work for them. Madoff will probably be running the illegal crap games and organizing the clandestine activities of the prisoners for a fee.

He'll be at the top of prison life before we know it.

Always be Prepared

Just checked my e-mail and found a message from my in-laws telling us where the key to the safe deposit box is, the contact information of their financial advisor and the details of their pre-paid funeral plans.

They're heading out of the country for a couple of weeks.

They're good at covering all the bases....even the possibility of their untimely deaths.

I laughed when I read it because it's so out of character compared to the normal e-mails I get from them.

It made me think that we always laugh at death when its imminent presence isn't felt.

It's only when it's staring us in the face that we take it seriously.

Good Music, Weird Video

yet somehow interesting...

Happy Anniversary!

Twelve years ago DH and I stood up and promised ourselves to each other.

We merged our lives into one life.

This made us very happy.

So we expanded our lives by two.

.

You can still see the love in his eyes...no?

Happy anniversary DH!

Neighbors

I'm still trying to figure out why my next-door neighbors have a rooster in their backyard.

no alarm clock?

they enjoy the cuddliness of clawed and beaked animals?

they're planning a rite of Santa Ria and are waiting for the full moon to come back around ?

Reconciliation with Paul

The Apostle Paul.

There has existed within me a love-hate relationship with Paul. As a fairly intelligent woman, reading his restrictions on women is vexing to me:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

As in all the congregations of the saints, 34. women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

and

1 Timothy 2:11-15
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

It's a puzzling thing to read after Paul's freeing declarations in other Epistles--

27. for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Even considering that the contexts are different--the first two statements relating to an order of worship and practical roles, the third being a refutation of being bound by the Mosaic Law--it still seems a contradictory attitude. If there is no male or female in Christ, in Paul's mind, why does he still lay Eve's sin at the feet of women and restrict their roles and participation in Christian life?

The picture becomes more confusing when one considers the fact that Paul often worked with women and seemed to appreciate their contributions in contending for the faith. He takes the time to acknowledge them in various writings and owes much to the support of women like Lydia and Priscilla working with her husband Aquilla.

However, this is not Paul's only idiosyncrasy. Depending on Paul's mood, he can be abrasive and harsh, referencing castration as a wish towards Judaizers of Christianity, or weepy and emotional as he describes his desire for the Jewish people to come to salvation. He can urge the church in Corinth to cast out an unrepentant member without mercy, and then implore them to have mercy and let him back into the fold. An iron fist in a velvet glove.

Perhaps more than any other writer of Scripture, we get a clear picture of his personality which seems inseparable from his epistles and teachings. He is emotive and self-reflective in a way other New Testament authors are not. He speaks of his own experiences and feelings, using them to further his arguments and convince his audience of the trustworthiness of his beliefs.

We have a picture of a whole, complete person in what he has left behind.

It is only through thinking of Paul and his writings in this particular way that I can reconcile myself to him, making sense of his varied attitudes which seem contradictory or complicated. He reminds me of the uncle at Thanksgiving who everybody loves and respects, but who can also be slightly obnoxious and overbearing. People put up with the bad traits because they are heavily outweighed by the good traits.

I actually have a warm spot in my heart for Paul, now.

Reading through the many debates about the Historical Jesus, the possibly late dating of the gospels and the contention that most of what Christianity is today was somehow invented/accumulated much later than the events the gospels record, I am always struck by the stalwart arguments we have in Paul. The gospels can be debated and re-dated. Compelling arguments can be made about the development of Christology coming much later, placing the Gospel of John in a category of highly developed treatise instead of a simple retelling of Jesus' life. Points can be made about dubious insertions into the other, non-Pauline epistles.

In many ways Paul stands at the crux of Christianity and its self-understanding. He answers the questions with which we are left about Jesus. He makes the interpretive leaps that give Christianity forward momentum and direction. Without his work we would be left with little guidance about the meaning and purpose of Jesus' story.

It is precisely this point which some people use as a contrast to the Jesus of the gospels, making distinctions between how Paul engages Jesus and how the synoptic gospels engage him.

Yet....no matter how sketchy and perilous the academic study of an Historical Jesus becomes, teetering on the edge of obliterating any spiritual frame of reference for Christianity, there is always Paul standing in the way.

This powerful figure, this indefatigable creature, warts and all, has left a record not only of what he believed, but clues as to what those around him believed. It is a priceless snapshot of the conversation and movement surrounding Jesus and how it was playing out in the first century.

I can forgive Paul for his wavering on women. I can forgive Paul for his sometimes harsh way. I can look past that and see a man trying his utmost to spread a message that he truly believed, letting nothing stand in his way.

This is the way that I am beginning to rebuild with the lumber of the tree which I have hacked down. I reconcile myself to Scripture, not because it is inerrant, or scientific, or unchangeable, but because I am reconciling myself to a community, to people, and to the figures who have, through their own lives, attempted to birth God's kingdom into this world.

How I Changed My Mind, Part 2

I wrote this some time ago and never quite completed it, but there are a few posts coming up that will be related to it...so here it is.

When I last wrote about inerrancy, I outlined how a belief in it could only be supported by two ideas, one of which consisted of believing that everything that happens, happens because of God's will, thereby making the case that the Scriptures we have were preserved perfectly throughout history because God so willed it to be. They exist as they are because God willed them to exist just as they are.

I dealt with that.

Now, I want to move on to an idea which has gained strength in me for some time; questioning the infallibility of Biblical authors.

As a Protestant, I have always been taught--in almost every church/denomination--that Scripture takes precedence over any particular person or church. If someone preaches something that is "non-biblical" then a good Protestant is supposed to defer to Scripture and ignore that particular pastor, teacher, or church. There is no allegiance extended to any person or organization that isn't contingent upon a "right" understanding of the Scriptures.

Protestants--the original "show me" people.

I am not opposed to such a bent in people. I think that anyone and anything should be up for questioning if people are uncertain about what something means. However, this very trait which is so intrinsic to Protestantism is at the root of the problem I began to have with inerrancy.

The typical narrative for Protestants goes something like this--Once upon a time there was this really great church that was following Jesus in exactly the way they were supposed to. Eventually the church grew in number and political leaders became Christians and began to use their authority to influence the government to be favorable to Christianity. When enough Christians were in power, they began to meddle in church life, causing all kinds of political and worldly entanglements, corrupting the purity of the church. Eventually, the church itself became powerful and proscribed all sorts of unbiblical and false doctrines. It also became overly wealthy and involved in politics. All of that changed when Martin Luther pounded his 95 theses on the door at Wittenburg. Sola Scriptura brought Christianity back to its roots, back to its "true" form. We no longer needed to fear "The Church" or its leaders. WE could each know what God had said through the Scriptures. When tradition was not found to be based on the Bible....we could comfortably toss it away.

In concept, this was an equalizing, democratic, revolutionary idea. Really, all it boils down to is trust no one.

The problem with trusting no one, is that there is an infinite regress of ones not to trust. We eventually wind up all the way back with the Church fathers whose faith and beliefs are very different from those of modern Protestants, even those Protestants who fervently believe in inerrancy.

As an example, belief in transubstantiation--the idea that the communion elements become the actual, literal Body and Blood of Jesus--was developed very early in the church. By the 2nd century, it was being taught as the accepted doctrine of communion.

This becomes a problem for Protestants, most of whom see communion as simply a remembrance meal, some who see it as intrinsically holy and spiritual, and others who are slightly closer to transubstantiation but don't believe that the actual elements are transformed. In general, Protestants don't fret over the fact that they reject a doctrine which has been in force since the very early church fathers. We are comfortable in assuming that in our modern context, we can assert that even though the church fathers believe that's what happened to the bread and wine, they were mistaken in how far they extended the doctrine and belief.

This intersects with inerrancy only in the method by which Protestants believe things. Protestants may say that they don't believe in transubstantiation because it isn't "biblical". They find no evidence for such a detailed doctrine in the Scriptures. They concede that there is to be communion, by the Lord's own institution of it, but they disagree about its purpose.

At first, it may seem reasonable for Protestants to rely scientifically on the Scriptures for their doctrine, rejecting what seems out of place to them. However, the implications of such an approach are far-reaching. When we reject the conclusions of early Christian leaders who were much closer to the original events and people recorded in Scripture, we are removing the foundations of the religion which we think we are defending. It's like standing in the top of a very tall tree while commanding someone on the ground to chop it down. Once the cut severs the trunk, it will take a while for the highest tip of the tree to fall to the ground, but there can be no doubt that gravity will eventually pull it from its lofty height.

In order for Christianity to sustain itself, there must be a quantifiable level of trust in its beginnings and in its early teachers.

A confidence in inerrancy undermines trust in the church fathers insomuch as simply taking their word about things. Protestants tend to be willing to revise any and all held beliefs until we get to the original apostles, the gospel writers and Paul; we place them and their writings in a special case, declaring them to be inspired and holy.

This creates a dilemma....if we are willing to discard doctrines developed by the early church fathers, going all the way back until we reach the apostles, what's to keep us from going that last step and questioning the doctrines and writings developed by them? There is nothing to logically stop us from doing that. Protestants don't go that far because they recognize that the destruction of the Christian faith would soon follow in the wake of that last step. So, it is not that their particular brand of reasoning and argumentation changes, but that they purposely and consciously suspend it upon arriving at the end point of the apostles.

Catholics are not quite in the same predicament. While they have a high view of Scripture, the ultimate authority of what Scripture means, or what doctrines are in force, comes from their confidence in the infallibility of their popes in all spiritual matters. Catholic Christianity is much more malleable over time. Believing that whatever the current spiritual leader "binds or loosens" has God's stamp of approval, removes some of the issues created by changing doctrines and teachings.

So what's a Protestant to do? The choices seem to be a) convert to Catholicism, or perhaps Orthodoxy, b) believe in inerrancy as a way to sweep away beliefs we currently find uncomfortable or false, c) begin to question the very starting points of Christianity.

None of those choices are remotely appealing to me.

1. I have too many fundamentally anti-Catholic beliefs to sweep aside. Whatever I am, it remains thoroughly Protestant.

2. I can't believe in inerrancy as a way to make myself feel more confident, ignoring the things I've learned in order to ease the struggle of my soul.

3. If I begin to question the very beginnings of Christianity, what will I be left with?

I have chopped down the tree I scaled so eagerly in my life. I have watched it tumble to the ground.

Will I be able to make something useful of the lumber?

Race for the Cure

I ran my first, official 5K this morning in St. Petersburg's Race for the Cure.

Thousands of people showed up to run, participate and support survivors of breast cancer and those who have lost their battle to it. I was one of about 150-200 survivors....probably one of the youngest ones there.

I lined up in my pace range only to figure out that nobody else was paying any attention to the markings. The vast majority of people were walking the 5K. I had to weave and dodge through the crowd of walkers just to get to a place where I could actually jog. Next time, I will move closer to front of the pack in order to be able to start running right away.

Here I am all sweaty and pink-faced, wearing my special survivor medal. My time was about 42 minutes....hey...at least I "ran" it!

Cosmic Joke

I'm still waiting for the punch line. I think it has something to do with a house collapsing on my head.

So...I had a productive week last week. My brother was enormously helpful both as a fellow worker and musclebound laborer. Much of my week was spent organizing and hiring plumbers, contractors, tree removal people, lawn maintenance., etc. After my brother returned home and most of the work I had hired out was finished, I began painting the interior of my father's home.

I rented a paint sprayer and went from room to room dressed up in a hat, goggles, and a haz-mat-looking paper suit. I finished all the ceilings in about an hour.

Playing with power tools is fun!

It took me much longer to begin painting the walls the old-fashioned way---with a roller and paint brush.

I left my dad's place feeling quite pleased with myself and hopeful that things would continue in the same way, with ease and rapidity.

While I was gone DH reported that The Rationalist had accidentally knocked down a bunch of tiles in the bathroom that he and The Intuitive use. We weren't upset with him because we knew that the bathroom needed work and it was only a matter of time before we were going to have to do it.

When I arrived home and checked the shower out, I was dismayed. When our house was built, the builders did not install cement board in the bathrooms, but instead put in green board....which is basically just drywall with a special "moisture resistant" paper on the front of it. The drywall had soaked up water for God only knows how long.

I began tearing it all out, discovering it was completely infested with black mold.

what fun.

Here's what our guest bathroom looks like now:

I still have a lot more to tear out. I've armed myself with a mask, goggles and gloves and closed off the bathroom from the rest of the house as much as possible.

This is going to be a huge PITA to deal with.

Working on my dad's house has been fun in a strange way...because we have had the funds to hire people and purchase the materials needed for the house repairs.....all thanks to my dad's retirement savings.

It's not as much fun when you have to do the same things to your own home with no money to fund the project, although taking a hammer to tile and drywall does seem to have a satisfying element to it. The only good thing is that I know exactly what has to be done to fix our house and in what order.

I guess the timing is right for this unmitigated bathroom disaster, as far as having acquired the appropriate knowledge goes. I just wish the timing was equally as right financially.

Sadly, I think my blog topics in the near future are all going to be about the ensuing hilarity of me and DH fixing our bathroom and my dad's bathrooms all by ourselves.

If the stress doesn't get to us...the toxic mold probably will.

Death Star Truthers

HT: Exploring Our Matrix who gives an HT to Scotteriology

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Work I Go

I'll be spending the next week at my father's house painting and working with my older brother who is coming down to help out.

I'm sure I'll be sore and exhausted by the end of the week, but I'm looking forward to getting a lot accomplished. It will be good to see my brother again.

Poor soul....he doesn't know all the plans I have for his muscular build--manual labor, here he comes.

I'm thankful for his help, because we really needed it.

Sound Bite

From Assistant Village Idiot--

Whenever I encounter in a comments section someone who has a standard signoff like "Cheers," or "Regards," it is abundantly clear that they really mean "F-you." This is especially true of people who sign off "Peace." Watch for it.

Probably not coincidentally, they make the exact same lame joke about my online name. To such folks I say And also with you.

As Homer Simpson says,"It's funny 'cause it's true!"

Tonight's Agenda

Breakfast for dinner--strawberry pancakes and scrambled eggs with cheese.

Watching a movie with the kids--Race to Witch Mountain, starring The Rock, ....one of DH's man crushes...or at least it seems that way because I don't think there's been a movie The Rock has been in that we haven't watched....at least a couple repeatedly.

Anna Karenina

I did it.

I finally plodded my way through the last 300 pages of Anna Karenina. Having raced through the first 700 pages, I found the last third of the novel dragged on a bit. There were only so many fights between Vronsky and Anna, or examples of Levin hunting or disagreeing with his intellectual peers, that I wanted to read and it began to feel a bit repetitive to me.

However...after having read through the sometimes sublime, sometimes laborious, detailed pictorials drawn by Tolstoy, I was rewarded with the last few chapters of Part 8 of the novel--Levin's mystical conversion to faith. Up until these last few chapters, I was wondering where Tolstoy was going in all this. Almost a thousand pages to tell the stories of a few intertwined families and all of the troubles they endure and cause, without any overarching theme, seemed excessive. I hadn't found the key to unlock the story yet. When I found it, I was surprised because it was just what I needed to hear:

The contrast between selfish living and unselfish living.

Anna Karenina illustrates the dangers of living selfishly in pursuit of one's own desires. She pursues her passion for Vronsky knowing it will cost her her honor, her position in society and her only son.

She's aware of her selfishness, aware that she doesn't love the daughter she had with Vronsky, aware that by preventing herself from becoming pregnant, or terminating any further pregnancies, that she is denying Vronsky the heir that he wants, aware that she manipulates him. She dismisses the reproaches of her conscience by telling herself that "It can't be helped."

Anna ends her life as selfishly as she lived it, throwing herself in front of a train with the hopes that Vronsky will suffer, knowing that he should have paid more attention to her. She has driven herself mad with jealousy and the fear of losing Vronsky's love though he has been faithful to her.

She is doomed by her own unrelenting self-interest.

Levin, who constantly struggles with himself, illustrates living unselfishly. He defers to his wife even at the expense of his wishes. He supports his family members in any way he can, though he fumbles through his brother's death and how to incporporate his wife's family into his life. It's never easy, but he finds a way to overcome his irritations and temper.

Anna thinks of suicide as an end of her troubles and a way to punish Vronsky. Levin considers suicide as an escape from the existential despair which overtakes him when he contemplates his lack of belief in God. After spending several months reading philosophy and trying to come to a conclusion about the moments of belief he has felt during his life, Levin is overwrought.:

All that spring he was not himself, and went through fearful moments of horror.

"Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I can't live" Levin said to himself.

"In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is I."

It was an agonizing fallacy, but it was the sole logical result of ages of human thought in that direction.

This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all of their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it as, at any rate, the clearest, and made it his own.

But it was not merely a fallacy, it was a cruel jest of some wicked, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit.

He must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means--death.

And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid a rope so that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting himself.

But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.

I read that description of Levin's state of mind and instantly recognized it as my own, which is not to say that I've hidden ropes or pointy objects, afraid that I might take my own life.

No. But I have experienced the unnameable desperation that can overtake a person when one's "soul" is at odds with one's beliefs...or non-beliefs. How a person with so many good and happy things in life can be brought to such low and empty places internally, incongruent feelings battling for dominance, is one of the mysteries of human life and a testimony to the idea that we are more than our appetites.

Levin, during a brief conversation with a peasant, has a sudden change of heart. He realizes that although he has made no claims to belief in God, he has lived his life according to the Christian virtues he had learned as a child. Despite repudiating them in adulthood, he recognizes that his moral choices have all been made and directed by these beliefs:

He had lived,(without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.

Now it was clear to him that he could live only by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up.

"What would I have been, and how would I have spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I would have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed for me." And not in the further reaches of his imagination could he conceive the brutal creature he would have been had he not known what he was living for.

Levin's thoughts mirror exactly what happens to Anna Karenina who chased her own desires down a path of self-destruction.

Over the last few years as my beliefs have changed and morphed, I have had moments of severe doubting. I have questioned whether what I believe now is really any sort of belief at all. It's so different in character than it used to be. However much things have changed, I live no differently.

And yet....every good thing in my life, and I mean every thing can be traced back to my Christian beliefs. The power to forgive and create a life filled with hope and love, not overshadowed by the past, the power to sacrifice my own wants and desires to serve my family, the power to not let my own pride and self-satisfaction interfere in my relationships with other people, the power to bless and not curse; these are all things I never knew or believed in before I came to Christ. Attempting to live by those principles has not only given my life meaning, but has contributed to the overall satisfaction I find in my life. No amount of reason or questioning can take those principles and convictions from me.

And that is what Levin finds:

"I looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question--it is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given because I could not have got it from anywhere.

"Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all that hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor, reason could never discover, because it's unreasonable."

I'm left with one of Levin's closing thoughts:

"What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words."

Yes...I too am obstinate in trying to use reason to express the "unreasonable".

Humble Beginnings, Competitive Sufferers