BlackPhi Webitorial Ramblings

News & Comment From A Christian's Perspective

Server Not Accessible - Posted 26th May, 2006

I'm not going to be able to access this web server for a week or so. Thus there will be a gap in postings, a delay in answering any comments and if the server goes down it will stay down. Apologies if this affects you - hopefully normal service will be resumed the week after next.

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Murder at Haditha - Posted 19th May, 2006

It's been reported this week that the Pentagon has accepted (unofficially at the moment) that US marines shot 24 Iraqi civilians in cold blood, in the town of Haditha. According to NBC News:

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true. Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

The story was reported by Time back in March:

On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communique from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire," prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other.

But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing, disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children.

If the allegations are true, then the soldiers involved are sure to find themselves vilified and prosecuted vigorously, with lots of politicking about how high up the buck stops. Rep. John Murtha had a slightly different view, saying "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Something of the pressure involved was revealed in a Guardian report last August about Haditha, revealing a town under the control of insurgents:

Alleged criminals are punished in the market. The Guardian witnessed a headmaster accused of adultery whipped 190 times with cables. Children laughed as he sobbed and his robe turned crimson. Two men who robbed a foreign exchange shop were splayed on the ground. Masked men stood on their hands while others broke their arms with rocks. The shopkeeper offered the insurgents a reward but they declined. DVDs of beheadings on the bridge are distributed free in the souk. Children prefer them to cartoons. "They should not watch such things," said one grandfather, but parents appeared not to object.

One DVD features a young, blond muscular man who had been disembowelled. He was said to have been a member of a six-strong US sniper team ambushed and killed on August 1. Residents said he had been paraded in town before being executed. The US military denied that, saying six bodies were recovered and that all appeared to have died in combat. Shortly after the ambush three landmines killed 14 marines in a convoy which ventured from their base outside the town.

It seems to me that Haditha was a place where evil was rampant, and the soldiers succumbed. There can be no excuse for what they are alleged to have done; nevertheless I cannot imagine how I would react in their situation, so I am wary of being too judgemental.

The final word goes to Eman Waleed, the young girl whose extended family was murdered around her:

Nothing can bring back all that was taken from 9-year-old Eman Waleed on that fateful day last November. She still does not comprehend how, when her father went in to pray with the Koran for the family's safety, his prayers were not answered, as they had been so many times in the past. "He always prayed before, and the Americans left us alone," she says.

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Da Vinci Code - the Book - Posted 14th May, 2006

I can see why many people enjoy this book. The long list of review excerpts at the beginning of the book includes one from salon.com which seems pretty close to me:

Dan Brown's conspiracy-theory thriller is the pulp must-read of the season...an ingenious mixture of paranoid thriller, art history lesson, chase story, religious symbology lecture and anti-clerical screed.

I can also see why the Roman Catholic Church don't like the book - essentially they are accused of covering up the truth about Jesus and replacing it with their own propaganda. Similarly, I can see why many Protestants don't like it - it presents the Bible as a purely man-made creation:

Everything you need to know about the Bible can be summed up by the great canon doctor Martyn Percy ... "The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven" ... The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. ... The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.

My reason for disliking the book, though, is much more anoraky. I enjoy mysteries and thrillers which include an interesting factual background. This book seems to offer all sorts of information about renaissance art, mythology and church history. What it delivers is different. I don't know a huge amount about the art, but I know enough about early church history to see that Dan Brown's writing is unreliable. Even the first entry on his 'Fact:' page, about the Priory of Sion, is apparently a hoax. I'm not keen on descriptions that read like they were copied from guidebooks, either, nor on slabs of cod theology, pagan or otherwise, interrupting the narrative.

Overall I thought the book was a fair read: worth borrowing from a public library, but I wouldn't recommend buying it. I do think there is a fighting chance, though, that the film could be good - a lot of the flaws in Dan Brown's writing may well be overcome in the transfer to film. I hope to see in a couple of weeks.

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Darfur: Peace In Our Time? - Posted 14th May, 2006

Darfur has been in the news this month: with a Save Darfur rally in Washington at the end of April, and a peace agreement signed last week, between one of the rebel groups and the Sudanese government. Whether this will bring peace is anyone's guess - what does 'peace' even mean for the victims after so many atrocities?

There has been a great deal of public pressure in the West for something to be done about Darfur, but not much consensus about what. The trouble is that civil wars are always very messy, and the presence of oil does seem to make things worse. The international community has been slowly working towards processes for calling leaders to account after crimes against humanity, such as genocide, but has really not got a grip on how to prevent them. Bosnia and Rwanda are both recent examples.

It doesn't help that, more than a year after a peace agreement sought to end the separate conflict in the south of Sudan, international aid there has been generally ineffective. Rowan Williams raised the two issues in an Eastertide letter:

The mechanisms by which international aid is delivered are so slow that the people of war-torn southern Sudan, even a whole year after the peace agreement, are still waiting for basic aid, and too few voices are raised in the wealthy world to protest.

In Darfur, neither national nor international forces have found a way of breaking the cycle of brutal violence and terror. Too many of us human beings, it seems, are content that death should be at work in others so long as our own life is unaffected.

Prophetic words indeed.

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Lord of the Shambles - Posted 7th May, 2006

Amazing worship at Caversham Baptist Church this morning. It all looked a bit of a shambles, yet it was easily the best corporate worship that I have been in for a long, long time. It was even better than my visit to East Ilsley Baptist Church a few weeks ago - a tiny church but immensely encouraging worship at a time when I was feeling discouraged (if you live around that area I can heartily recommend a visit).

Why was this morning's worship so good? Three things stood out for me: firstly it was genuinely corporate - everybody was involved in the singing, I reckon, rather than the musical worship being dominated from the front. Secondly, the led prayer and meditation session was a remarkably moving and powerful presentation of truths from God's Word. Thirdly was the way that the whole focus was on God. His Spirit was clearly moving among us - hopefully bringing blessings to many, although that isn't really the main objective. Who was today's worship leader? Nominally Steve Burt, but in reality I reckon the Holy Spirit was in charge.

So why does this posting emphasise the term Shambles? Am I just being mean to Steve? In the old days the term was used for the street in a town where butchers would kill and dress animals ready for selling the meat. Sanitation was non-existent, as were hygiene laws, and the streets were often dark and narrow (see the picture) so you can imagine what a disgusting mess a typical shambles was. One of the points coming from this morning's service was that when our lives are a mess, and when we can't sort things out ourselves, then Jesus is there for us. He is Lord of the Shambles.

Updated 8th May, 2006: I forgot to mention that there is a baptism at CBC next Sunday, the 14th. These tend to be special occasions, so if you are in the Caversham area next week why not pop over at 10:30? You would be very welcome.

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Zacarias Moussaoui - Posted 4th May, 2006

So, Zacarias Moussaoui - the self-professed Al-Qaeda conspirator who claimed he was meant to hijack a fifth plane on 9/11 - has escaped the death sentence. Instead he will spend the rest of his life in a supermax prison, possibly in solitary confinement. Since he is currently aged 37, the rest of his life could be a very long time.

I must admit, I was surprised at this verdict. This probably reflects my stereotyping of the US justice system. Unless and until the jurors speak publicly, it won't be clear just why they decided against the death penalty; it is fairly clear that they were split, when a unanimous recommendation is required for execution. The documentation of the jury verdict, which has been released (warning - large pdf document), gives hints about what influenced the jurors. For example most (9) thought that Moussaoui's abusive father and dysfunctional family were relevant. Three jurors thought that his role in 9/11 had only been minor anyway and that he only had limited knowledge of the attack plans (the latter point is one that the jurors added to the list of mitigating factors themselves).

From a Christian viewpoint, a problem with capital punishment is that it doesn't give much opportunity for repentance. Whether we feel comfortable with it or not, Jesus died for terrorists (and wannabe terrorists) just as he died for everyone else. Moussaoui should now have plenty of time to contemplate his actions. If he repents of what he has done and changes then that would be good news; although I don't expect it would make any difference to his imprisonment.

Another aspect of Moussaoui's case is that the charges were not really about what he did, but what he didn't do - that he could have told the truth about the plans for the 9/11 attacks and so prevented them, and the resulting loss of life. It has long struck me that the parable of the sheep and the goats focuses on what we do or fail to do to help others, whereas religious groups focus so much more on not doing things they disapprove of.

During his sentencing trial Moussaoui offered to take the stand against himself, saying that he would rather die 'in battle' than in jail. He lost.

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Birthday Thoughts - Posted 2nd May, 2006

It would have been my father's birthday yesterday, May 1st ... if he hadn't died last autumn. All through April my brain has been giving me little organiser-style reminders: "Ting, birthday coming up!". Thanks a lot, brain!

Inevitably, perhaps, I find my thoughts turning to "where is he now?" sorts of questions. Is he up there on his own little cloud, wearing a white nightie and playing his harp, whilst waving down at me (a clever trick)? It's an amusing picture, but somehow I doubt it. He was not a religious man - not militantly anti-religious, perhaps, but certainly not keen. Moving to Ireland didn't help: it's a lovely country but its history is far from being a good advert for organised religion.

When I first became a Christian, over a quarter of a century ago (ouch!), there were still people around who believed that being baptised was what got you into heaven - a poorly baby who hadn't yet been christened could be a real source of fear. I think that belief has become a lot rarer these days; although some evangelicals seem to have a very similar idea about praying a suitable prayer. On the other hand there are those who believe that everyone is saved automatically by Jesus. All three positions can quote Bible passages to back up their views. In John's Gospel, though, judgement seems to depend on an instinctive response to the light of Jesus. Then again in Matthew's Gospel, where you end up depends on how you treat other people. You can see why I'm not a fan of using prooftexting.

The bottom line is that my Dad is now in God's hands. What He'll do with him, I have no way of knowing. If I was God, I'd go for interesting people over religiousness every time. But I'm not, so I'll just have to trust that His hands are safe hands.

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