The Middle Way

Today’s editorial cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch shows two addicts sucking on the gasoline nozzle. The larger one, wearing an American flag, is telling the other, marked with a Chinese flag, “Hey pal, no one likes a petroleum hog, OK?”

Tired as we all are of hearing that we Americans consume 25 percent of the world’s oil, we and our leadership have skillfully ignored the issue for over thirty years. We are told that there are undiscovered petroleum reserves under the earth, and I have no reason to question that; however, we must keep in mind that it takes millions of years for plants to decay into petroleum. Therefore, we have to conclude that the supply is limited, even if we do not yet know what that limit is. When we run out of oil, be it in forty years, or four hundred years, we will be out, and there will be no way to get more.

The problem with oil is:
• We consume twice as much oil as we did thirty years ago. European and Japanese demand has been steady, while China and India have been rapidly increasing their demand to accommodate their growing economies.
• We are still buying and driving sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), which are by far the least fuel-efficient personal vehicles (other than motor homes) on the planet.
• Neither American companies, nor major oil producers elsewhere are actively exploring for new sources; and if they started today to invest in exploration, we would not see the fruits for another ten years.
• Likewise, American oil companies have not invested in gasoline refineries in recent years. Why? It’s more profitable to exploit the shortages. In fairness, the oil business is not the most profitable. The large numbers thrown around for profits ($35 billion first quarter for Exxon) still represent only three percent of sales.
• America’s gasoline is cheaper than anyone else’s outside the Middle East. Sure, the Iranians can get it for 40 cents per gallon and the Saudis for 65 cents; but for everyone else, it is more like $5-$7 per gallon.
• Crude oil prices currently are around $70 per barrel, and for the reasons described above, are expected to exceed $100 per barrel in the next few years. This will translate into $4 per gallon gasoline.
• Worst of all, our purchases of Saudi oil and European purchases of Iranian oil are indirectly financing the Iraqi and Afghan resistance and various terrorist organizations around the world. The shocking truth is, we Americans are paying the costs of both sides in the war on terror!

Of course, oil producers need to continue exploration and drilling for new sources. A problem more than thirty years in the making will not be resolved overnight, and is not likely to be resolved in the next thirty years. And unfortunately at present, when planting and fertilizing cornfields is considered, ethanol consumes more energy than it generates. A further problem with ethanol is that it has an affinity for water, meaning that it must be transported by truck or rail, not by pipeline, consuming even more energy.

We are facing a moral imperative to conserve! I’m not suggesting lowering the speed limits, We learned in the 70s that lowering the speed limits was a potentially effective conservation measure that defies human nature. The only way to conserve, unfortunately, is to make gasoline so expensive that:
• People will drive more efficiently, making fewer small trips, and weighing whether trips are really necessary.
• Automakers and individuals have an incentive to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. In theory, it should be possible to build a compact car that gets 100 miles to a gallon.
• Government and private enterprise will conduct the research necessary to develop and set up distribution networks for alternative fuel sources.
• Government and private enterprise will expand the reach of public transportation.

Ohio is a compact state, being relatively small and its boundaries nearly fitting into a square. We should be a leader in this. (Messrs. Blackwell and Strickland, are you listening?) We should have rapid passenger rail service between each of our largest cities at least over 75,000 population; and bus service connecting smaller cities and every county seat, regardless of size. A resident of rural Vinton County should be able to go to any other county seat or larger city in Ohio by boarding a bus (or train?) in McArthur. Cities should develop light rail, where feasible, and bus service should be established between suburbs that have large employers. Suburbs should be able to connect to light rail stations and the ends of city bus routes with feeder bus service. The usual objection to public transportation is that the public will not support it. I wonder why, when we can hop into our cars and go anywhere for only 15 cents a mile? *

Raising the gasoline tax may be the only way to change our behavior. This is a legitimate governmental function, because the future of our economy, and even our national security, is at stake. If we could greatly reduce or even eliminate our need for Middle Eastern oil, we would no longer have vital interests there, and could withdraw once the Iraqi and Afghan governments are on a firm foundation. Then terrorists would have no reason to attack us that they could sell to their populations (Israel is another question, which is outside the scope of this article). The lower oil prices would benefit nations needing petroleum to develop their economies, and force Middle Eastern governments ** to come to terms with their own people, something they can avoid with oil wealth.

I favor a gasoline tax increase of 25 cents per gallon each quarter until the gasoline price reaches $5 per gallon. The difference stays at home, not in the Middle East, and should be used primarily to develop completely new and renewable fuel sources for automobiles; and secondarily to develop and build a better public transportation infrastructure for our country.

In so doing, we will prove ourselves to be more worthy stewards of the gifts God has given us.


* Based on $3.00 per gallon for gasoline and 20 miles per gallon, but excluding depreciation and maintenance costs. Your results may differ …
** And that of Russia, which is a major oil exporter to Europe and Central Asia.

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will be heaping burning coals on his head.” - Romans 12:20

So Pfc. Lynndie England has received her punishment in a court-martial for her role in the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. And as usual, she is taking the fall for highers-up. While I do not condone what she did there, she is not the one who should be punished. Her commanding officers, perhaps even up to the Secretary of Defense, should be severely punished or censured for creating a culture in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay that encourages such behavior. To practice hazing on prisoners of war like a bunch of drunken fraternity boys on a pledge breeds contempt for our military and the nation. It contributes to the undoing of everything the military is trying to accomplish in the war on terrorism, and fuels the Iraqi insurgency.

Terrorist status is no justification for abuse. Keep them secured, but treat them like human beings. Prior to Vietnam, we (generally) adhered to very high standards of prisoner treatment, one that often caused the prisoners to later embrace our cause. Taking the moral high ground contributes just as much to victory as sound tactics or superior firepower.

Instead of thumbing our nose at the Geneva Conventions, we should be embracing them.

“You should learn to call him ‘fleshly’ [of the flesh, not the Spirit] who thinks, teaches, and talks a great deal about high spiritual matters, but without grace.”

-- Martin Luther, “Preface to the Book of Romans,” in Commentary on Romans, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1976), p. xviii.

In Part 1 of my review, I discussed the areas in which I found at least partial agreement with Rev. Parsley. In this post, I shall deal with those on which we disagree. Generally speaking, the problems I have deal with an attitude that to me resembles that of the Pharisees in Scripture:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-4a, 5 NIV).

Indeed, at the beginning of his chapter on Islam, he begins with this statement:

“I am not a spiritual person. I am actually a little suspicious of those who are. I have met too many granola people (fruits, flakes, and nuts) in my time. I do not have many dreams or dramatic spiritual experiences, and if I do, it is usually due to too much pizza before I go to bed” (p. 89).

A minister of the Gospel who is “suspicious” of those who are spiritual? And what is the point of being a Christian, but to develop a spiritual relationship with God? Perhaps Rev. Parsley needs to review the book of Romans; for example, “If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ… and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, which lives in you (Romans 8:9b, 11 NIV, emphasis mine).

Homosexuality: A threat to marriage?

Rev. Parsley begins this chapter with guns blazing: Marriage, he writes, is being threatened by the gay agenda, therefore State and Federal Constitutional amendments are necessary to protect it. I do not understand how homosexuality can be a threat to marriage. The one has nothing to do with the other. The real threats to marriage in America are those posed by heterosexuals: sexual promiscuity and excessive resort to divorce, particularly on the grounds of “incompatibility.” As I noted in my previous post on homosexuality, I would agree that to expand the idea of holy matrimony, as established by the Church, to homosexuals makes a mockery of the family; however, to permit civil unions for secular purposes, such as insurance benefits, need not have the same effect. I dislike even this idea, but would not consider it a moral catastrophe if they were permitted by law, as long as they did not affect the right of clergy to refuse marriage between homosexuals.

In his book, Rev. Parsley tells the story about a radical gay activist who found a radical lesbian activist and eventually married her. It’s a great story, and not a unique one; but he uses this story to argue that homosexuality is not biologically determined. Are we confused here? Is it not possible that homosexuality (the tendency) is indeed biologically determined, but sodomy (the act) is behavioral? For example, is it not biologically determined when persons whose genes have the XXY chromosome mutation have some characteristics of both sexes? We know that genetics can determine that people have tendencies toward alcoholism or obesity, but we do not criticize them unless they drive while drunk or are extremely careless in the way they eat.

Please note: I am not defending sodomy against the Scriptures, nor am I minimizing (as Rev. Parsley seems to) the difficulty many individuals may face in their effort to overcome their homosexual desires. For some, just as with alcoholics and the obese, it will prove just plain impossible to overcome. I will concede this to Rev. Parsley, however: those who intentionally persist in sodomy pay a high spiritual price for doing so.

He cites instances where radical gay activists have threatened those who refuse to support their agenda with long-term hatred and vilification; yet one has to wonder whether Rev. Parsley is not stirring up the Bible-believing Evangelical with an attitude that is not Biblical at all. We need to remember that excluding the homosexual from our churches and society will serve only to keep them lost. We can disapprove of sodomy, while loving those who practice it as children of God, and showing them that they may receive his grace with repentance, just as is true with every other sin.

Islam: Reductio ad absurdum

Rev. Parsley clearly buys into the idea that the war on terrorism is the great “clash of civilizations” foretold by Samuel Huntington a decade ago; and he clearly treats Islam as an evil monolith that worships a false god.

I have read most of the Koran, and will be the first to acknowledge that I find most of it difficult to understand. It is written in a cultural setting very different from mine, appealing to a mindset very foreign to my own. However, I believe he distorts the facts in his three central assertions about Islam:

1. The God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam are two separate beings. He bases this on the Arabian paganism of Mohammed’s time, in which a father deity (which they did call Allah) had three daughters. However, the Koran repeatedly makes reference to the Jewish and Christian scriptures as a foundation of Islam (for example, suras 2:147 and 5:48). Muslims honor Moses and Jesus as prophets. This is not the message of a false God.
   
2. Mohammed received renditions from demons and not from the true God. Rev. Parsley bases his assertion on Mohammed’s life story: according to tradition, a spirit crushed him almost to the point of death and demanded that he recite. While this seems rather severe coming from the God of Jesus, is this so very different from the way God commanded Jonah to obey him?
   
3. Islam is an anti-Christian religion that intends to conquer the world through violence. This is a reduction to the absurd – the mirror image of some jihadist assertions that Christianity is an anti-Islamic religion that intends to buy its way to conquering the world. We cannot deny that most of the world’s terrorists today are Muslims; but it should also be clear by now that they do not enjoy the support of the entire Muslim community (witness the outcome of the Afghan elections just completed, and of the outrage in Iraq continuing to build against the resistance to its elected government).

My objection to Rev. Parsley’s discussion of Islam is the same as my objection to his discussion of homosexuality – he is inciting hatred. Hatred is not only anti-Christian, it pours gasoline on the terrorists’ fire. The only to stop this hatred is to prove by our Christian example that ours is the religion of love. Yes, we must defend ourselves against those who would strap bombs onto themselves, but we must recognize that the Wahhabis and the Taliban, while unfortunately part of Islam, are not the whole of it.

The Right to Life: What about love?

Let me stress at the outset that I believe in the right to life; and much of Rev. Parsley’s chapter on this subject resonates with me. He devotes the beginning of the chapter to a discussion on the relationship our Founding Fathers placed between the value of life and that of liberty, which he summarizes thus:

“The statesmen and heroes of the American republic have always understood that
whenever the principle of the dignity and sanctity of life is questioned, the
rule of law is automatically thrown into very real jeopardy.”

He then blames the persistence of legalized abortion on the barbarization of America as evidenced by what he calls Hollywood’s “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” mind-set, which results in denying the humanity of the victim (that is, the fetus); and on the profitability of abortion clinics, which he calls the “death industry.”

So where do I disagree with him? Only in this: He is more ready to punish those who would commit abortions, than he is to address the causes. He attacks sex-education classes as exacerbating the problem of teen pregnancy; and the way they are taught in public schools, this is true – because sex information not presented in a moral context is by definition presented in an immoral context. When it comes to sex, there is no such thing as morally neutral; but this is not an argument against informing youth of the facts of life. The solution, then, as I discussed earlier about public welfare, is to leave sex education to those who will teach it in a moral context; which is the church, not the state. To do so will require a proactive evangelism that reaches public school children outside the public school, which understands reality and is able to respond to it. This evanglism is one that reflects the higher Love that instructs us in the sacredness of sexual love. Rev. Parsley, by contrast, cries out for a political solution, one that makes the government do the church’s heavy lifting for it.

The reality is, we do not have a strong political consensus for making abortion illegal; and even if we did, it is bad public policy, for history shows us that in that way lay the coat hangers, the back alleys, and the deaths of unfortunate mothers as well as of their children.

One more question for our Evangelical friends: If life is so precious to you, why are so many of you such strong advocates of the death penalty? Aren’t we by that means snuffing out the humanity of those who are so sentenced, possibly denying them all opportunity to receive God’s grace through repentance? There are other penalties that can better deter crime by their example to others; such as life imprisonment without parole, especially if it includes hard labor. And if life is so precious to you, why do so many of you uncritically embrace America's involvement in foreign wars? I am not arguing against our continued involvement in Iraq, but I do feel that we rushed into it without adequately considering the consequences - and many Evangelicals were leading the charge into the war three years ago, as I recall.

We certainly need a Christian revival in this country, but that revival will come only from God, working through us at the grass roots. Individual Christians can influence constructive change in our society on their own and through their churches, as well as through government, but only when they understand and think about the issues on their own, not when they are stirred up by those who confuse faith with a political agenda. Government cannot legislate a Christian society, nor should it try. History has shown that Christianity and our society are both strengthened when we not only have a separation of church and state, but also (as I recently noticed on a bumper sticker) a separation of church and hate.

Copyright © 2005, Harold D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use the material in this blog provided this copyright notice is shown and the use is not for profit.