Ameritocracy

There, I have done the unthinkable (but not that I haven't done it before, so perhaps it is only unthinkable to some). A neologism has sprouted. I hereby define 'ameritocracy' as i) a non-merit-based form of power sharing policy, and ii) a kind of American behaviour in which assertions about theology and other such drivers of opinion are leavened with refusal to look at primary sources.

The latter exercises me a great deal. I keep reading stuff about how a Christian nation should behave. Oh, please. America is no more a Christian nation than Jesus was a Roman Catholic. It was founded on humanist principles and fig-leaved with God by a bunch of Freemasons and whatnot, which is why America's religious traditions tend to be oddly crazed (I use this in the sense of 'fractured').

Just this evening I was treated to the awesome contention that the Bible would not condone capital punishment. Well, it does. Unless you do a lot of unedifying stance-shifting and peculiar exegesis. Especially with Romans 13:3-4 on the table, and Paul's blatant acceptance of the right of the state to try him with capital punishment as one possible outcome.

Ah well.

The Law as a Subset of Faith

After many posts on the shortcomings of science as scientia, by which we seem to mean neither sophia nor gnosis, I find myself digging once again in the old texts which form my personal foundations of meditation and philosophy. Indeed, I'm looking again at what some call the New Testament, but which is properly the final summation of an argument called the Old Testament.

The remarkable thing about the New Testament's epistles is that they are good examples of sound Greek reasoning, mostly, with a liberal compounding of Hebrew normative jurisprudence. What should the law be? What must we understand it to be, so that it has meaning? Let us use Greek logic to find out. And so on.

And so, we are told that living by the Law is a prison, and that he who lives only by Law will die by it, in total condemnation. This is true, I think of anyone who claims he lives entirely by science and scientific principles.

I once conducted an experiment in which I tried to emulate some sort of hypothalamic pause. That is, I attempted to use nothing but reason in my responses to my environment, while at the same time attempting to monitor what I was doing. The interesting thing was that I couldn't avoid being subjective, and there was no way to approach any form of Russellian rationality without feeling subcompetent.

I don't think it is possible for most people, without making them hypocrites. I suspect it is not possible for anyone. We are bound to be irrational, or perhaps hyperrational. I contend, while being unable to prove it, that all humans must live by faith, and that the assertion that one is not living by faith is falsehood.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that my years as a science teacher have allowed me to more clearly sketch the boundary at which science must fail. It fails whenever we are forced to be rational while still being ourselves. It's OK when solving a problem of language, symbols, objects, processes (etc, etc) that is outside ourselves; it is a complete failure when it comes to life.

I have met many rationalists (both theistic and not) who claim that the universe itself is sufficient to provoke a sense of wonder. Well, good. But one wonders why there should be any such sense.

The scientific rationalist answer is that there isn't any such 'sense'; it is merely a repurposed function of certain neurochemical behaviours which used to have (or may yet have) survival value in the long slog of evolutionary development. Good, then. But I think to myself about these people: I bet you felt good giving that as a response. And you can't help feeling something, can you? And in the end, you cannot establish any purpose for all those feelings without having to make assertions based on faith...

Science, you see, is like shining a bright flashlight in a dark room so that you can figure out what you are bumping into. But as we light up our universe, we realise that we don't understand how come the light works, and we don't know why there is a room. And guess what: we have no chance of answering those two questions using the flashlight alone.

The Legacy of Simon Magus

I think Christian education, sadly, is becoming an oxymoron. To be Christian is more and more to deliberately embrace ignorance of the Word because 'knowledge puffs up'. But knowledge of the Word is specifically seen as one of the marks of a believer's maturity (even though it is not the only mark).

To be exact, the phrase quoted comes from I Corinthians 8, and it is part of a longer argument. What is argued is that some people are not as learned, and have simpler consciences, so what is acceptable practice to the learned may be injurious to the less learned. Therefore if you find that you can adopt a pagan practice and there is actually nothing in the scriptures against it (for example, smoking cannabis), you may be free to indulge, but this might cause those with a more sensitive or less educated conscience to sin in one of several ways. Paul says that he would even stop eating meat, if eating meat would make his brother stumble in the faith.

The problem of course lies in the context. If there is knowledge which the Scriptures confirm to be theologically true (for example, that Jesus is Saviour for all Christians), then it is not the kind of knowledge that puffs up, but the kind that must be used for teaching (i.e., doctrine), for correction, for reproof, and for training (i.e. instruction) in righteousness (see II Timothy 3:10-4:5).

This is where many who espouse some form of prosperity gospel are completely and sinfully wrong. The warnings against it are absolutely clear, whether in Greek or in English. Here is I Timothy 6:3-10, the words of the apostle Paul himself:

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.

Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

If the apostle argues 'we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out', what could he possibly be saying about the prosperity gospel? Do you think he is in favour of such a doctrine or not? And what 'all kinds of evil' is he talking about?

One particular word that modern Christians should retain in their (in recent years) emaciated lexicon is the word 'simony'. For some reason, it seems to have been forgotten; I suspect it is because this word seems rather unpleasant to the modern materialist ear. Simony is actually one of the great sins which the Lutheran reformation was opposed to. It comes from the attempt of Simon Magus to procure the gifts of the Spirit by purchasing them with money, as recorded in Acts 8:9-24.

I mention it here because it is very clear that the apostles were quite contemptuous of money and material wealth. In fact, they were pretty much proto-Communists in that they believed in redistribution of wealth from those who had excess to those who needed it (see Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:34-35).

In fact, there is no scriptural justification at all that wealth is the necessary consequence of God's favour, although wealth (like any other material thing) can be a blessing. It is easier to argue that martyrdom is a more common reward for using the gift of prophecy, for example, or that the gift of tongues is the least important of all gifts, used more for a sign to the unbelieving than for the edification (i.e. 'building up') of the faithful.

Head Knowledge

I get very distressed when I hear Christians look at hermeneutics and theology and say, "It's all head knowledge. It isn't necessary." They are terribly wrong, by their own lights.

II Timothy 2:15 says, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." It is a clear command to be diligent about handling the scriptures.

The wrongness of the phrase "it isn't necessary" is that it is a half-truth. The Bible and its contents and understanding of it are all unnecessary for salvation, according to Christian doctrine. But study of the Bible is necessary if you intend to use it as a workman uses his tools.

The problem arises when Christians bandy their own scriptures around without first trying to understand what they mean. II Timothy 2:16 says, "But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness." In other words, if you haven't studied the 'word of truth' and are sloppy at parsing or analysing (or 'rightly dividing') it, then you should avoid making irreligious and pointless statements.

That's not to say that those of us who have studied it should be arrogant. The text is complex. But the point is that anyone who makes a comment about a text should at least have a) read the entire text, b) learnt how such texts are to be examined, and c) learnt how to interpret the examined text.

Until one is reasonably experienced, one should avoid making statements about the text. And one should always be humble about accepting new input that is congruent with the entire text; you learn from fellow-labourers how the work is done. What one shouldn't do is blindly mimic or quote the words of someone else who is interpreting the text but not showing the principles by which he does it, or is using spurious principles.

All this applies also to the study of literature. Actually, this is why people who study any kind of religious text would benefit from being students of literature.

Is Christianity Divisive?

Before I give any answer, I shall make a specific point. 'Divisive' means 'having the quality of forcing apart, or of causing separation'. It requires that the target of this quality must already be divisible; i.e. it has discrete elements that maintain their individuality once separated, at least for a time.

Is Christianity divisive? The answer is yes. This opinion is arrived at by consideration of its basic mandates as set forth in the New Testament. Jesus himself says:

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Luke 12:51-53)

The equivalent passage in Matthew's gospel (Matthew 10:34-36) says:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

In fact, the word of God is said to be "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

The point, really, is discernment. Although there is to be unity among believers, each issue can cause division. Sometimes, this is a pointless division; sometimes it is useful. It can be pointed out that without the need for division, the epistles would never have been written; each of them is designed to give advice and argument against or in favour of specific practices and philosophies.

But since the Bible can be treated as a weapon, it must be used appropriately. That requires hermeneutic effectiveness and consistency — people who use the Bible as a tool for dividing X from Y must read it like any other key text: it is indeed possible to use analysis of the text to discard spurious readings, and it is something the conscientious user should do.

Christianity is inherently divisive; it says that some people will belong and some won't, it says that some will be on one side and some on the other, it acts in the capacity of a determining (i.e. a boundary-making, from Latin terminus = 'boundary') agent. It need not be so, but sometimes it needs to be so.

That said, there is another possible point. The act of creating meaning is perhaps itself divisive. To say that something is 'red', for example, is to assert that other things are not. If they were also 'red', 'red' would have no meaning.

Would saying that something is 'divisive' then lack meaning? After all, if all meaning divides, then 'divisive' has no meaning.

I think this argument doesn't work: when we say 'divisive', we mean actively so, dividing with intent or with built-in capacity for causing discord. That sense is attested from the 17th century. In that sense, not all things need to be divisive, although they may serve to divide. In Galatians 3, as well as in Colossians 3, St Paul points out that within Christianity, certain categories — race, social status, gender — cease to be relevant.

Christianity, it seems, may be divisive. But it can also serve to unite.

The Ten Not-Commandments

Occasionally I think about the vast body of myth and legend that accretes on top of other stuff, like the layers of an ever-increasing pearl. Ever since the time the Israelites wandered in the desert, the story has been retold in Sunday schools an youth fellowships until what is 'known' bears no resemblance to the original text. Bear in mind that modern English chapters and verses have little relation to the original textual divisions, which were generally found in continuous scrolls.

In Exodus 20, God tells Moses a few things. He starts by making a few general statements, which have for some reason been elevated to commandments. They are actually a preamble to a legal contract, and are found in Exodus 20:2-17.

Thus, a good reading of the material that follows will clearly demonstrate that Exodus 20:22-26 amplifies and clarifies Exodus 20:2-7, about what exactly constitutes the authority and status of the first party in this contract. This form is repeated; in Exodus 21-23, amplification and detail are added. People who don't read this don't get it.

That's why people misinterpret Exodus 20:12, for example. The verse reads, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." It is meant to be clarified by Exodus 21:15,17: "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death... And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." Obviously, if you do either of these two things, that is what constitutes actively dishonouring your parents, and your days will therefore be short.

The same is true for Exodus 20:13, the much-misunderstood "Thou shalt not kill." This is used as a prime directive, without differentiation, by a lot of bad readers of the Bible. However, this is clarified in Exodus 21:12-22:2; these verses clearly distinguish between murder and accidental killing — for example, if a man 'lies in wait' for another and then kills him, that's murder. It even talks about death resulting from accidental causes and under what circumstances a man can be held reliable — if an ox gores a person to death, then the ox will be stoned to death, but if the ox had a previous history of aggression, then the owner will also be put to death. Similarly, kidnappers and slavers (21:16), and thieves who break and enter (22:2), can be put to death. A person who has read these verses would not be such a sloppy handler of 'Thou shalt not kill' since the subsequent chapters make it obvious how that verse should be interpreted.

The last example I'll give is Exodus 20:15, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." This has nothing to do with lying in general and everything to do with perversion of justice, as Exodus 23:1-9 makes clear: "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause."

That last line means that you should not let someone off just because he is poor, and sounds terribly unjust to the modern ear. However, reading the rest of it shows that the burden is placed primarily on the landowners and owners of animals. And verse 8 is an explicit injunction not to take bribes.

All in all, anyone who thinks that a moral code is based primarily on something called the Ten Commandments is not making sense. It is quite clear that the Ten Commandments are not the be-all and end-all of the Mosaic covenant; they are only a preamble, a list of key points, a sort of introductory PowerPoint slide, to be elaborated upon at length and not to be treated as the main presentation.

It is also clear that Moses broke the tablets of the law (Exodus 32:19) with only Joshua as a witness to this perfidy, and then proceeded to kill 3000 Israelites without God telling him to do so (read Exodus 32:14-28). It was one of many sins of anger that Moses perpetrated, but which God forgave.

Perhaps it's a good thing for professing Christians to read more carefully the entire burden of their scriptural heritage before engaging in unedifying arguments about all kinds of strange things.

Punishment for Sin

It's always interesting to discuss Christianity with Christians. The main reason for this is that most Christians, being human, are pagans at heart. Their instincts are contra-biblical, so to speak, and never more so than when they talk about the just punishment (in this world) for misdeeds.

Normally, their main line of argument, whenever something bad happens, is to blame it on collective sin, ancestral sin, or personal sin. A recent example of this was blaming the Haiti earthquake disaster on alleged national Satanism. I've even heard that the reason one man had to have a heart bypass was because of the wrongs he had done to others. All this is plainly inconsistent with Christian scriptures.

To all Christians who pursue this unhealthily pagan obsession with finger-pointing, I simply suggest a thorough re-reading of the Bible in general. Sometimes, I point to the books of Job (where five different explanations for such phenomena all meet the disapproval of God), Ecclesiastes ("...time and chance happen to them all..." and other paradoxes of why good people get bad things happening to them while evil people don't), Romans ("...all have sinned..." and hence everyone should be visited by random disasters, I suppose) and the Gospels. Sometimes, I get tired of pointing to all the many cases where the Bible tells its readers that being born blind, or being shipwrecked, or being in a tower that collapses, has nothing to do with being in a state of sin.

The one comeback that I've found most common is a quotation from Exodus, often taken out of context, in which God says that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. To such people, I point out that the entire Mosaic code is a legal contract. Essentially, if your forefathers did something bad, somebody normally had to pay the price. This is especially clear when people read the Ten Commandments and stop at Exodus 20.

For example, there's an injunction (Exodus 20:12) that goes, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." It is also known as the Fifth Commandment, the only one with a promise attached. But it is also a logical threat, if you read the elaboration of Exodus 20 that continues into Exodus 21 and beyond. If you read Exodus 21:15,17, these verses say, "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death... And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." Well, that explains why dishonouring your parents will make your days short, doesn't it?

The Ten Commandments are of course the most frequently taken-out-of-context statements of the Bible, although they aren't the only ones. People get embroiled with varying interpretations of 'Thou shalt not kill' (the Sixth Commandment) even though subsequent passages and books clearly differentiate between a) manslaughter, b) accidental killing, c) 'lying in wait', d) military operations sanctioned by higher authority, and so on.

The problem really is selective retention of a collective whole. The Bible's legal code is as consistent as anything else can be said to be consistent, and is remarkably liberal for its time once you read it as the contract it is meant to be part of. It is this burden of massive legal contract which prompted St Peter to say in Acts 15, "Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?" as the answer to whether Gentile converts should obey the Mosaic law.

The first key point of Christianity, with respect to sin and punishment, really is that if everyone is a sinner, then retribution should fall on everyone. It is like failing a pass/fail test; you can fail by 1 mark, 10 marks, or get a big fat zero — but a fail is a fail and you will suffer the penalties.

The second key point of Christianity, is that an unbelievable and unjust and undeserved general amnesty has been declared. No matter how much you failed by, you get a pass. Maybe not a distinction, but a pass. This of course will irritate people who have passed by working hard, but since the Examiner has decided to do it, you can't complain (see the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Matthew 20).

A Christian is technically one who claims that amnesty. It can be claimed by just walking up to the Examiner and saying two things: 1) I admit I have failed (hence, I qualify for the amnesty), 2) I believe you have the administrative right to grant that amnesty and I want it from you. Most people don't believe it is so easy.

But this is exactly what should happen if you follow the basic premise of why the amnesty is given. According to the Christian Bible, God wants everyone to pass. If you cannot pass on your own merit, you have to ask for the amnesty. The catch is twofold and completely based on faith. Firstly, there is no direct evidence of what your score really is — you are only told that everyone fails. Secondly, there is no direct evidence that you need the amnesty (or even, that the amnesty exists or works as advertised).

To me, what's really interesting is the different ways humans interpret this situation. Sometimes, I think to myself, "That's a great deal, why don't more people take it up?" This is often answered by, "What deal?" or "I'm sure to pass!" or "There's no test, there's only a great deal of schooling for no final reason."

Perhaps this is why so many people insist on one of two main ideas: for every human sin, there must be some sort of retribution; and, there's no such thing as retribution—all disasters are just the logical effects of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The idea of undeserved benefit is an alien one, even though it crops up often enough in human society.

The Bible — Unique or Synthetic?

Much of the criticism of the Bible as a religious text (that happens to be the basis for the most influential religion in the world) comes from a few interesting arguments:

• It is just another religious book.
• It is mythical and/or legendary in content, at best ahistorical.
• It is inconsistent.
• It is arbitrarily assembled.
• It is a piece of artfully-assembled cold-blooded propaganda.

And so on. Frankly, I find that all of these arguments are somewhat spurious; I also find the claim that the Bible possesses a supernatural aura or built-in divine imprimatur to be spurious too.

Let me explain, from a purely literary point of view.

To deal with claims of being just another religious book, I would like to ask just one question. Do you know any other religious tradition in which the moral exemplars are such bad people? The only good one is Jesus, and he is totally unlike anybody's idea of what he ought to be. These characters possess true-to-life traits, something you can only appreciate by reading literature contemporaneous with the Bible. Such psychological consistency comes only with modern literature, with the first instances found in Shakespeare (compare his contemporaries, such as Marlowe, and you will see it at once).

To the idea of it being mythical, legendary etc, I freely admit that it sure sounds like it in parts. However, I am sure that if there were such things as angels and God and so on, any objective record would sound like it was mythical, legendary etc. As for ahistorical, I think there is far too much history in it for my liking. However, I suspect that part of the history was cobbled together from incomplete records, much as our own histories of the much-more-recent Cold War will never be definitive.

To the charge of inconsistency, I think it is inconsistent in the literary sense, as would be any collection of 66 books written by different authors. It's a bit like opening a Penguin Classics collection and expecting the style and content to be uniform throughout. Is it inconsistent in a moral sense? Actually, I'm not sure that question can be asked and answered so easily. If God says that whatever God does is right, what if he appears to contradict himself? Is he still right? By definition, yes. God tells humans not to bear false witness, but he assents to the enterprise of lying spirits (angels bearing tidings of great, err, incorrectness of fact). He himself doesn't lie, though.

The last two claims contradict each other. My opinion is that the Bible was assembled by clear criteria, and hence was not arbitrarily assembled. At which point, some people would say, "Aha! Humans assembled it, how can it be the work of God?" and I would reply, "Aha! I assembled the bookshelf, how can it be the work of Ikea?" The same people might say, "Aha! Humans assembled it, it must be propaganda, subject to human bias!" and I would reply, "Well, I needed a bookshelf, and Ikea makes good cheap ones. It's better than looking for random driftwood and rocks and building a bookshelf."

These are all just starting thoughts. Or maybe, startling thoughts for some of you. But whatever they are, I am 100% certain that the Bible is not just another religious book. It is a weird book. It is not holy by virtue of itself as a printed text, neither does God craft some runes of power into every printed copy. But it is a life-changer for anyone who can stir themselves to read it. I mean, what 1st-century book would record that the resurrected man ate bread, and then broiled fish? Bread might be symbolic, so is fish, but broiled fish? Quirky!

The Bible — Conservative or Liberal?

The United States of America is the largest and most influential state in the world in terms of meme-propagation and economic impact. It is that which makes us look on in awe, fascination, horror or incomprehension (in alphabetical order) as we look at the clashes of ideas that take place there.

One of them is the idea that somehow the Bible has been translated badly and no longer serves the people well. It must therefore be made more conservative, say some people. The odd thing is that the methods used seem to be the kind that conservatives often attribute to liberals (and vice versa) — a deliberate use of biased terms, an agenda that shapes the interpretation (see point 7 on making sure that the Bible expresses free-market ideas properly, for example!), and the idea that such interpretation will make people more open-minded.

This propagandism, witting or unwitting, is true of any two sides in an argument. Bound by our words, we have no choice but to be biased. Purely rational languages are stilted and inadequate; Wittgenstein and Russell both surrendered in the end, defeated by the fact that in the end, humans must communicate, whether or not language is used rationally.

And so, to the Bible. Is it conservative or liberal? I think the Bible mocks both sides just by existing. Abraham is a free-market warlord who liberally distributes wealth and lies about his wife; Jesus is an arch-conservative who says that not an iota of the Law will pass away, while the book of Acts notes that early Christians (following Jesus in Matthew 10) sold all they had, pooled their wealth and shared it out according to each one's need (proto-Marxism?).

A close reading of the Bible, attempting to apply the same rules throughout to everything it says, will result in a kind of revelation. The Bible is not about ideal humans, but about fallen humans. Noah is a drunk, Abraham a deceiver, Israel a liar, Moses a murderer, David a philanderer, Solomon a cynic.

It is not the rise of the Republican-styled elite (read Plato to understand what this means) nor the rise of the Democratic-styled masses that is the concern of this book. Rather, it is all about making your aim to lead a quiet and peaceable life, to pursue with excellence the work of your hands, and to live in moderation. The Bible asserts that this is only possible through a right relationship with God. Given any effective definition of God, this is self-evident.

The Bible transcends ideas like conservatism or liberalism simply because it is (in a sense) statistically honest. It makes both mundane and extraordinary claims, dishes the dirt out equally on saints and sinners, and is wise enough to deal in ambiguity and apparent contradiction. A book claiming to have the divine imprimatur but which didn't take into account the mutability of our world would be suspicious indeed.

What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the inerrant word of God. I believe not that it (as a text) doesn't contain errors of some sort (since manifestly anything in language must err by inaccuracy, imprecision, omission or false impression), but that it is inerrant just as an arrow that slays a man is inerrant. It doesn't matter how crude that arrow is as long as it fulfils its deadly task. No mere text can encompass reality or be the entire word of God.

What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the sufficient word of God. It is enough for anyone who reads it to come to any conclusion God might want that person to reach. This is why it is such a complex text. Imagine a textbook designed to teach any student anything that a teacher might want to teach. It would vary in style, form, content, terminology, approach, and many other ways as well.

What I believe, personally, about the Bible is that it is the efficient word of God. I don't mean that it has a high output-over-input ratio, but that it has efficacy, that it has a high signal-to-noise ratio for what it is intended to do. True, many will say it is all noise and no signal, but that is true too of many things that are efficient, simply because what they are efficient at does not meet the specific need of the critic concerned.

I am aware that logic is often seen as the enemy of faith. I believe, however, that faith has a definite logic. In fact, faith is necessary for belief in any system that serves us rationally and/or reasonably. You can't do science, for example, without the belief that your intellectual cognition is related to perception is related to reality; you have to believe that the noumenon (the thing-of-the-mind) and the phenomenon (the thing-of-the-world) have some connection, even though there is no necessary link between them.

The Bible, for me, is a bridge of faith. As a rational being, I recognize that it doesn't contain specific answers to everything — what book could? But as an epistemological being, I recognize that there is truth in it, of a rather penetrating, definitive and assiduous kind.

A Chamberpot Story (II)

In my previous post on the famous chamberpot, I mentioned Jeroboam son of Nebat who was hardworking, talented, successful and thoroughly corrupt. The rest of the story extends into the Second Book of the Kings; whenever a particular king was said to be evil, he is described as 'walking in the way of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin' and is threatened with 'make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat'.

Curious about all this, I decided to look up all the references... 1 Kings 15:25-26, Nadab son of Jeroboam; 1 Kings 15:33-34, Baasha son of Ahijah (who killed Nadab and took the throne); 1 Kings 16:19-20, Zimri the chariot-captain (who assassinated Baasha); 1 Kings 16:25-27, Omri the captain of the host (who succeeded Zimri); 1 Kings 16:30-33 Ahab son of Omri (who apparently made God angrier than any other person and gets another six chapters, together with Elijah his nemesis, until Ahab dies by cowardly accident); 1 Kings 22:51-53, Ahaziah son of Ahab; 2 Kings 3:1-3, Jehoram son of Ahab; 2 Kings 10:29-31, Jehu the captain of the host (who killed all of Ahab's sons); 2 Kings 13:1-2, Jehoahaz son of Jehu; 2 Kings 13:10-11, Jehoash son of Jehoahaz; 2 Kings 14:23-24, Jeroboam son of Jehoash (yes, a second Jeroboam!). Yes, there are a lot of them.

It's amazing, actually. This Jeroboam was a greater villain than any other, a kind of benchmark of evil. In the list above, we finally get another Jeroboam, and the son of Jeroboam II is described as one Zachariah who "did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin." Poor Zach isn't even compared to his own father of the same name. There are three more kings after Zach who are also compared to Jeroboam son of Nebat.

And then you read the last chapters of the Second Book of the Kings, and you realise that the whole thing has become about Jeroboam son of Nebat. It's like reading books on modern history and realising that everybody is compared to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao (and even the Patriarch of Atlantis!) — which is actually true in some schools out there.

A Chamberpot Story (I)

It so happened that my most recent reading came from one of those Old Testament books that many claim not to be interested in. This was the First Book of the Kings, and the section I was reading was the enthralling tale of Jeroboam son of Nebat. This extremely hard-working and talented king was a bad hat through and through, successor to that tragic Solomon who was once the wisest man in the world.

The account was a dire one, but it had me in stitches, because it is one of the many parts of the Bible which displays a pithy sense of humour. Here I shall recount some of the choicest lines.

The Beginning (11:28-11:32), in which a prophet gives a parenthetical example of divine sentimentality:

"And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph. And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces:

"And he said to Jeroboam, 'Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee: (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.)' "

The Idolatry (12:27-31), in which Jeroboam decides to distract the people with two idols so that they won't go to his rival Rehoboam:

"If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, 'It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.'

"And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi."

The Whistleblower and the Cronies (13:1-34), which I shall not quote verbatim but summarise — a prophet tells Jeroboam that his priests (see last section) would be destroyed; Jeroboam lays hands on the prophet and his hand withers up; the prophet prays for Jeroboam and Jeroboam is healed; another prophet says that nevertheless, these prophesies will come to pass, and yet (v33)...

"After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places."

The Doom (14:7-10), in which the prophet Ahijah has some remarkably pungent lines:

" 'Go, tell Jeroboam, 'Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, 'Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over my people Israel, and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee: and yet thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in mine eyes; but hast done evil above all that were before thee;

'For thou hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke me to anger, and hast cast me behind thy back: therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone.' ' ' "

It's a remarkable story, with a truly interesting linguistic sequel. The word 'Jeroboam' later (c. 1816) became a word describing an oversized wine-bottle; that is, a 3-litre bottle of champagne or Burgundy, 4.5 litres if Bordeaux. In 1827, the word became slang for 'chamberpot', because of the large capacity involved. 'Jeroboam' got shortened to 'Jerry', and the word 'Jerry-can' was used to mean a large water container with a capacity of about 20 litres or so. Compare the history of the word 'Jeroboam' with the doom of the king, and you get the feeling that slang-merchants used to be a very educated lot.

Worthless?

Today's post was triggered by something somebody said about how worship comes with a sense of one's personal unworthiness. I think that's partly justifiable; after all, you are indeed facing the Infinite and Eternal — compared to such things, you might feel finite and timebound. But further examination proves that the position of unworthiness is philosophically and theologically untenable beyond certain limits.

Let's begin with some simple assumptions. Let's say you are conscious that God is infinitely greater than you, and not bound by time, space or any physical limitation. This makes you feel infinitely small. I would say that you have a perception problem. Why? How on earth are you perceiving (or conceptualising) infinity (whether infinitely great or small)? The Good Book says that God has set the idea of the infinite universe in the hearts of men (see Ecclesiastes 3:11). If this is true (I am assuming you must believe it is so), then you have a piece of that infinity and eternity in you. You are only a smaller infinity, a kind of aleph-null (for the mathematically inclined, look here).

You cannot therefore be thinking of yourself as worthless, only less worthy than you think you ought to be.

But that's wrong too.

Let's go to another assumption. The standard of 'worth' must be external to the things being assigned a value of 'worth', or else it can't be used as a benchmark. God must be the source of this standard, or else 'worthiness' with respect to God is a useless measure. So either you are not worthy enough (according to God), in which case you can't even aspire to come before Him or worship Him or even interact in any other way with Him; or you are worthy enough — and it's not because of you, but because He has assigned you a sufficient value of 'worth' so that you may approach Him.

You cannot therefore be too unworthy, and to think you are is actually some sort of negative pride or false humility (or humility based on false assumptions).

There are hymns with lines like, "I, though so unworthy, still am a child of His care..." and those have quite another meaning. It means that you are indeed unworthy of your own merit, but you are thankful that he has assigned you sufficient merit to be worthy of grace.

But what is the textual evidence for all this? Many Christians think that philosophy is the next worst thing to sorcery, and the textual evidence for it is that human philosophy (the philosophy of men, human philosophers, the philosophy of the world etc) is quite soundly rejected as long as the basis does not accept the major premise. That major premise is of course that God exists and interacts with us, and St Paul, for example, uses philosophy based on this premise quite shamelessly and extensively (his own words, not mine).

So let's look at the text. From searching the Good Book in its many versions, I have yet to see a human claim unworthiness successfully. God does say that many things are worthless or of no value, but the text says even physical training has value. The text also says that humans have been given (or will be given, conditional on their free-willed request or acceptance) many things — gifts, grace, wisdom, peace... the list is very long, and all of it confers and implies God-assigned worth.

Hebrews 12:3 does caution against the peril of considering oneself more highly than one ought (after all, that was the sin of the greatest of the Kherubim), but it also enjoins us to consider ourselves with sober judgement, and the next few verses talk about our gifts. The implication here is clear: don't think too highly of yourself, but do evaluate your worth according to the standards of God.

A similar concept arises when humans are told that the wise man should not boast of his wisdom, the strong man of his strength, or the rich man of his riches; rather if they must boast, they should boast of how well they know God, specifically in terms of the countervailing virtues of kindness (a scholar should be kind and teach, not mock, the less-educated), justice (an officer should be just and not tyrannical in his exercise of power) and righteousness (a gentleman should be righteous in his use of wealth, and be generous, not hold on to it out of avarice).

In other words, you can hold on to your sense of self-worth, provided you know how that worth is calibrated and what it is measured against. It is no sin to be honest, but it is a sin to bear false witness; in this context, 'bearing false witness' means to either inflate or deflate your actual worth. The Good Book tells us not to use dishonest scales or measures. And this is why we have to soberly judge ourselves.

Have we done what we are told to do? Are we fit (as in exactly a match for) the tasks we have been given? The point is that we fail these tests often, but we do succeed sometimes. And when we fail, we suffer the consequences, but we also know that the Master does not hold most failures to be the be-all and end-all.

So, we're not so worthless after all. What we need to do is figure out how much we're worth and then use that capital to do what we're supposed to do.

Accountability

Sometimes theology, sociology and economics make strange bedfellows. We've seen this in the ideas and ideals of 'liberation theology' and of the 'prosperity gospel' – the former more about liberation than theology, the latter more about prosperity than the gospel.

I was struck by the image of ultimate accountability presented to us in the Bible. "As the eyes of servants look to the hands of their masters... so too do we look to the Lord our God," the psalmist says. It is the accountability of the master to the hireling, the slave and the servant that we find in stark words throughout the entire Mosaic code. It extends to lines like, "Do not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn" – an injunction to allow labourers a cut of the proceeds and a reward for their toil.

In the Book of Job, we further learn that a man whom God considers upright has this to say about what comes from God: "Shall we not receive good at hands of God, and shall we not (also) receive evil?" It is clear that the argument, as it develops through the book, lays the responsibility for ultimate events in the hands of ultimate authority. What seems to be good or ill to us, the ultimate authority has chosen to be accountable for, and faith is a matter of accepting that.

What gets to me sometimes is the cavalier fashion in which the instinctively authoritarian react to good and bad news. I've seen in government officials and educational administrators the attitude that good comes from their actions and responses to the world, while bad comes from the people they are supposedly serving or responsible for. It is only too common to see a school laud the top scorers and claim their excellence as a sign of school prowess, while blaming the tail end on parents, society and computer games. It is also common to see government officials ask for huge personal salaries because the economy is booming while blaming investor panic and events beyond their control when the economy tanks.

I think that what's right is that those who claim authority must also claim responsibility, for both good and bad. In my tenure, I took my departments results out of a level below national average and fixed it firmly ahead of the national average. At the same time, I was also pretty much an irritant and rather tactless in dealing with colleagues. It was perhaps divisive, and rightly seen to be in some quarters. I was young then, but to this day, I will take responsibility for both things. But I do not think that I have met many authorities who would publicly admit their flaws and failings. I have shirked that responsibility myself in some areas, to my shame; I am not so sure that those authorities would feel any shame at all.

The city-state in which I work has one of the highest government salary scales in the world. The rationale for that is that the local system, in many ways, has displayed great success even when measured against far larger powers.

But in education, for example, there is a problem: we give the same kind of homework as educational superpowers like Thailand, Rumania, Hungary and Iran, as well as like Hong Kong, Cyprus and the Russian Federation. Officially, only 9% of the homework given was ever used to grade students. These are the findings of the Third International Maths and Science Survey. Yet, we rank far higher than any of the other nations using similar systems of classroom pedagogy. One interesting difference is that we pay our private tutors a lot more than we pay our teachers; the average tutor at high school level possibly earns about US$1.20 per minute while the average teacher at high school earns about US$0.35 per minute of work.

There is nothing wrong with having a large tuition industry; Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong all have that too. But surely there must be some contribution to results from the shadow sector, and we would be terribly dishonest not to admit it.

Similarly, when the economy booms, ministers get huge salaries; when it tanks, the cost of electricity goes up 20% and employer contributions to employees' retirement funds are reduced. I've seen ministers' pay frozen but not reduced in line with the economic performance of the nation as a whole. But haven't they accepted blame for both good and bad by claiming such high salaries in the first place? Is there no two-way moral hazard thing? I don't see it.

All this leads me to one main conclusion: if good things happen, I'm not responsible; the authorities are — and if bad things happen, the authorities aren't responsible; I am. That happens whether it is in school or in the financial sector. I don't believe it's true, but the people in power do, and that's what counts.

I could be wrong; I would really love to be wrong about all this. But I don't see much evidence against my hypothesis. I have so much evidence for my hypothesis that I might as well write a book, except that I'm not so minded.

So how do I feel? Actually I feel very happy. It brings home one main point to me about the conclusion I have come to in the previous paragraph. Whoever the authorities are, they are nothing like the God I believe in. And that is why I rejoice all the time in whatever I have received.

The Patriarchal Ranking System

Somebody asked me a question which has only just sunk home. That person said, "Why do you always have to think differently? Isn't it dangerous? You might be a heretic."

I must admit I was a little shaken, in the sense that it is obviously true that if you think differently, you might be a heretic. But this was with regard to my habit of saying odd things about biblical characters. (Incidentally, I don't like that phrase – it seems to imply that the people we're talking about are factitious personae in some drama.)

So I trawled through the deep-freeze of my organic datastore and realised that there are perhaps a few things that make me say things most other people wouldn't. Here they are, in order of influence:

1. Family: My family has always been an amazing resource; my great-grandfather translated the Bible into Peranakan Malay, my grandfather did his daily bible study in Greek and Hebrew, and my father has always been able (as long as I've known him) to give the Bible chapter and verse for any quote read out to him (and vice versa).
2. Database: The natural outcome of coming from an academic family is that you tend to have huge hands-on experience with data sourcing and processing. In the days before the Internet, and even now, the man with the library-trained brain will normally beat the untrained brain given the same software and hardware.
3. Education: I was brought up as if my life would be spent teaching literature and history, but I was trained to teach chemistry and computing. The mixture of disciplines allows me to look at a given topic in many different ways.

I think the blend of these three elements makes me a little unconventional. However, any mistakes I have made are mine alone and should not be blamed on my family, my sources, or my education.

That said, I wondered how I actually put these things together. Well, perhaps this is a good time to say that I don't exactly know. However, I have a rough idea. My training in computing, which began a long time ago, makes me attempt to gather all the data I can find in a single brute force search (which is easy to do nowadays because you can find thousands of Bibles online) and then try to put them into a logical construct. The outcome of this construction process tends to be unusual. For example, doing an exhaustive search for anything to do with Jonah produces a psychological picture you won't see in Sunday School. Better still, it will be completely defensible since it is built by analysing everything in the text that has anything to do with the subject.

The best way to explain is to do it on the spot and see how it works (since I don't know what I specifically do, I should just do it and blog about it). So without further ado, let me leave you with yet another construct (or the outline of one). Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Patriarchal Ranking System! (Please don't take this too seriously; I don't actually prepare sermons or bible studies this way.)

Let us begin by defining 'patriarch'. Essentially, we begin with node 001 (i.e. Adam, the 'son of God' – see Luke 3:38) and note that the term is used rather narrowly if defined solely by the text. Such a definition could conceivably cover Abraham (see previous post), Isaac, Jacob and his twelve approximately immediate male descendants. That gives 15 candidates. However, a slightly broader interpretation is given from an historical survey of usage, which would include the line of Adam via Seth and Noah to Abraham.

Since all the subsequent nodes are contingent on node 001, it looks as if we must rank Adam as #1. But this would mean that you would then be numbering them off in genealogical order, which is a trivial solution. Surely we can do better than that.

Aha, the Bible compares Jesus to Adam directly. Surely that trumps everything? Well, not quite. If it were so, we'd have to look at all the various people Jesus is compared to, and this would include that infamous psalmist David and a score of others. Besides, it's only Paul who is doing that comparison.

Maybe we should consider the amount of space given to them. Actually, this would mean that Abraham would win hands-down in a head-to-head fight (argh, this is why you should never mix metaphors). But this solution tends to make the Jews unhappy because it would mean that the next patriarch on the list ought to be his eldest son, Ishmael (and there goes the West Bank haha).

By this time, you can tell that it isn't easy being me. I don't really have a patriarchal ranking system, and I apologise for being a little offensive along the way – but I must say that anybody who thinks I think differently from anybody else is making a very trivial statement. After all, each of us must demonstrably think differently from each other one of us. Nobody has exactly the same neural net, right?

Abraham

These days, I have been moving through the patriarchs of old, trying to see how they conducted themselves in the face of the Almighty. In the last few days, and apparently for a few days in almost every month, I have been thinking of Abraham. On a trivial level, his name is interesting in English because it uses the symbol 'a' for three distinctly different vowel sounds. But on a non-trivial level, it is interesting to see what kinds of man he was – for he was certainly a man of many facets.

Abraham's story is taken from the Old Testament, and it spans the narrative from the end of the 11th chapter of Genesis to the beginning of the 25th chapter. According to this narrative, his story begins at the age of 75 and goes on till his 175th year. In this 100-year career, the patriarch and his wife (his half-sister Sarah) travelled the entire Fertile Crescent, from Mesopotamia up into the foothills and down into Egypt (and up again).

We tend to think of this man as a wanderer travelling light and fast, with a few good servants and a number of relatives. But the account is more specific than that. When Abraham's hapless nephew Lot is captured, Abraham raises an army of 318 trained warriors of his household and goes in pursuit, smites the ungodly, and then disdains the loot. After his Egyptian adventure, he is said to be extremely rich in gold and livestock. No, Abraham is at least a major warlord. His name must have been mentioned with fear and trembling across the entire Crescent.

Similarly, he is an opportunistic politician. Not once, but twice, does he present his wife as his sister for political gain. In both cases, the ruse is somewhat successful and brings great trouble to his opponents. His first victim is the Pharaoh of Egypt, in chapter 12; his second is Abimelech of Gerar in chapter 20. In both cases, huge embarrassment ensues, but not for Abraham.

This streak of limit-pushing is not confined to earthly sovereigns. He enters into discussion with God about how many righteous men it would take to save Sodom from destruction. He has political capital in there, having saved the King of Sodom's sorry ass in the previously mentioned military venture. Furthermore, his nephew Lot and the household thereof are living there.

Along the way, Abraham spawns a truly all-star cast of descendants. There is Isaac, who will be the father of the Israelites. There is Ishmael, who will be father of the desert tribes. There are also the Midianites, from his second listed wife. And apparently, after he was 'well stricken in age', he had many concubines and he sent them all away with gifts in the direction of his ancestral homeland!

After reading these fifteen chapters or so, I am inclined to think of Abraham not merely as some pious patriarch, but perhaps more like an ethically more-or-less correct Mafia godfather. He has the street-smarts and sense of justice, the business acumen and the foot-soldiers, the opportunism and the prolific generosity. What a role-model!

A Cunning Plan

Oh yes, there are already those of you who are thinking of Baldrick and Blackadder when you see the phrase 'a cunning plan'. It is no accident, however, that these three words are associated with power and the promulgation of perilous plans.

That's because the words 'king' and 'cunning' come from the same root. The qualities of a king are, taken as one group, something called 'cunning' or 'kingship'. This is probably why the Bible as a whole is not too keen on human kings, since these tend to display the more venal side of kingship.

Take for example the duties of a king as set out provisionally in Deuteronomy 17. It's very clear; do not set up as king one who is not your brother, make sure he is not imperialistic or grasping in any sense. These are all restrictions on human kingship, designed to pave the way for an ideal which was the plan from the first Adam.

But the consequences of not keeping within these restrictions are interesting. God tells Samuel what will happen in I Samuel 8. A king whose prowess is not fettered will make use of the state to further his goals. Such a king is no servant, but a tyrant. The ideal vision is quite different; it can be found in Isaiah 32; here is a king who reigns in justice and is a shelter, a nurturer, the source of good things and the greener of a barren land.

Sometimes I think that the limitation of reading tiny bits of the Bible each day is that one doesn't see the whole picture. Once in a while, many small bits should be put together to give the overall picture. Simple logic can be used in hermeneutic context. For example: a) the eagle is an unclean bird, b) you should not put up graven images of any kinds of animals... oops, but I've said enough about such things in other posts.

To summarise, cunning is kingship; kingship is cunning. But when you engineer your cunning plans, O leaders of this world, make sure that they are plans worthy of a King.

Faithlessness

Sometimes I think that faith has lost its meaning in the world. It used to be that faith was about making the daring assertion, in the absence of complete data, that things would turn out right in the long run. It has been supplanted in many places by the deliberate belief that 'things will turn out right for me' or that 'things will turn out the way I want it' or that 'everything will suit my idea of good' or that 'everything that happens is a good thing'. I've seen the phrase, 'people of faith', used to describe people who believe in some codified supernatural concept of any kind.

All these beliefs are not necessarily true, and the more general ones may actually be meaningless in a theological sense – 'theological' here meaning 'derived from arguments logically consistent with the corpus of the individual's beliefs'. Even that one assumes that the individual's beliefs are consistent and not arbitrary, something like economic theory but on steroids.

So from what I can see, a lot of people are lacking in faith without knowing it; some are lacking in faith because they think they have it but haven't. A lot of people do have faith but haven't got round to articulating it clearly for themselves. And some have just 'bought a package' and assume it will be fine.

Me, I think that if those of the Christian persuasion read St Paul's Letter to the Hebrews, it tends to clear things up a bit. It's just like reading Matthew 10 and then thinking about the 'Great Commission'.

Psalm 134: In Darkest Night

There's always something about men in dark times that makes them think of the darkest night, with no sign of dawn, no surcease from pain, no hope for redemption. But the 134th Psalm, the last of the Songs of Ascents, has a subtly different take on this theme:

Behold, bless ye the LORD, all ye servants of the LORD, which by night stand in the house of the LORD.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.
The LORD that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.

In the night, we stand firm, and we are blessed. Sometimes, I trawl through the oceanic depths of the Old Testament, and I find gems and nuggets of mysterious metal. One of the chapters that seems to tell me what to look for in the midst of chaos casts me as a watchman, and is breathtaking in its oracular scope. In darkest night, the visions are most colourful.

Psalm 133: Peace In Our Time?

Peace is a useful illusion; it is just like the present, that evanescent moment between past and future. Peace is that balance point between conflict and confusion, between chaos that can be contended against and chaos that has not yet been grappled with. But the 133rd Psalm in all its brevity has an important point: unity is also a weapon against chaos, and it will do in place of peace.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

It is salutary to note that Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." He knew that religion, which by its nature is a lifestyle choice, has the potential to divide; as with any human potential, that potential is sure to be achieved somewhere by someone. But the lesson of this psalm is simple; a blessed life is the reward for living together in harmony. A sword may be present, but it need not always be used to divide.

Psalm 132: Triumphant

There's a fine balance in social matters today that has all to do with the rise of democracy on a sociopolitical level while capitalism increases on a socioeconomic level. The problem is that voting suffrage and cash cannot be the only fundamentals for a robust and humane society.

A large proportion of humans still have qualms about universal suffrage, just as the Athenians did in more exclusive form: does a vote out of ignorance carry the same value as a vote from an informed perspective, and why should the burden of information be on those wanting to be elected as opposed to those doing the electing? Similarly, should the more economically able have any legal (as opposed to moral) liability to the less able (e.g. through taxation, social benefit plans)?

The 132nd Psalm is unabashedly theocratic. The argument goes that if God is indeed all-wise and all-powerful, then theocracy trumps all forms of human government and politics. The problem is that human ideas about wisdom and power infect (as well as inform) our perspectives on God. We'd rather not have anyone (human or divine or whatever) be the boss of us, so to speak. That would be elitist (a meaningless tag because of its ambiguity). Here's the psalm:

Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions:
How he sware unto the LORD, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob;
"Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,
Until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob."
Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood.
We will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his footstool.
Arise, O LORD, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength.
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy.
For thy servant David's sake turn not away the face of thine anointed.
The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.
If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.
For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.
This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
I will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.
There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed.
His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish.

It is a powerful and reassuring psalm of triumph for those on the right side of the anointed theocracy. The victory does not come for free; you find a place for God at the expense of your own rest and the effort of your days. But how does it apply to those who are not the inheritors of the blessing, but who are also not enemies of David?

Sometimes, when I think of these things, I am reminded of this verse by mostly-forgotten journalist William Norman Ewer (1885-1976). He devised a little clerihew that went, "How odd / of God / to choose / the Jews." In these days, we'd think of it as anti-Semitic, since it seems that whenever someone cracks a Jewish joke these days, it's anti-Semitic. But the point of the question is still valid. As a race, as a people, they are as unlikely as any other race or people to be specifically chosen by a supreme deity. Why not the Navajo, for example?

At the fundamental level of reality, we will never know why. This is what galls us; in a world of capitalism and democracy, we uphold the self-assigned rights of all men to own all things and to know all things equally. That it will never be so does not deter us from seeking some sort of philosophical ideal. But the universe is a lot more arbitrary than we are in this respect: effort and hard work are rewarded in linear fashion most times, but surprise and ingenuity win big too.

And that is why people turn away from the sociopolitical idea of God, the theocratic ideal; the perceived inequalities and externalities are too big for human economic and political thought to handle.