Today is the beginning of my next serious long-term blogging project, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

One of the very first observations which anyone attempting to read this book will make is this:  It is long.  The Signet Classic unabridged edition which I am currently working my way through clocks in at a whopping 1463 pages.  But don’t let that discourage you.  What else are you going to do while you kick back at the beach or the pool this summer?  You might as well read something good, and for my money this is one of the best books you can read.  There are many abridged versions out there which are half that length or even less, but don’t bother with those.  Get the unabridged version and read it.  Consider this a personal challenge from me:  you will be less of a man or woman if you cop out by reading the abridged version.

Les Miserables is the story of Jean Valjean, a convict freshly out of prison after serving nineteen years hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread.  (The original sentence was five years; unsuccessful escape attempts and the resulting additional time pushed it to a grand total of nineteen years.)  He believed that his sentence was grossly out of proportion to his crime, and by the time of his release he had built up a tremendous bitterness toward society.  This bitterness was only intensified by the rejection and scorn which he experienced in attempting to find work and lodging immediately after his release; he was determined to have his revenge against society and against God in some form or fashion.

But an unthinkable act of mercy and generosity by a saintly small-town bishop drastically alters the trajectory of Valjean’s life.  From that point on, Valjean determines to live as an honest man, and through the rest of the story he struggles–quite imperfectly at times–to become an honest man.  Javert, an extremely zealous police chief who once supervised Valjean’s work gang, is never far behind, and is determined to have Valjean back in prison for breaking parole.  Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, the owners of an inn in Montfermeil (then a small town way out in the country, now a suburb of Paris, just as Cumming, Canton, or Lawrenceville is to Atlanta), are also pursuing Valjean, for their own corrupt and dishonest ends.

It has come to the attention of the staff here at Everyone’s Entitled to Joe’s Opinion that some of you are actually out there holding prayer meetings at gas stations and praying for cheaper gas.

I appreciate the intent, and I hope to God that He decides to answer your prayers.

But come on.

We live in one of the most ridonkulously wealthy places on the face of the earth.  The average American ranks among the wealthiest 5 percent of people in the entire world.  Even the homeless guy living under the bridge is still in the top 10 to 15 percent of world wealth.

There are people and places in the world that can’t even fathom the level of wealth that we have here in America.  If I were to post pictures of my neighborhood here on my blog and they were to come and see it, it would completely and totally blow their minds.  Most of these people probably don’t even have a computer that can access my blog, or even know what a computer is.

There are even people right here in America who live in a level of need that we can’t begin to fathom.  As I said earlier, there is the homeless guy under the bridge.  There is also the single mom trying desperately to make ends meet, the laid-off worker struggling to get by, the school in the poorer part of town where most of the children don’t even have shoes or basic school supplies.

And then there are fabulously wealthy upper-middle class Americans who believe that their lifestyle is a blessing from God that it is their prerogative to enjoy and flaunt.  Any threat to that lifestyle is perceived as a Satanic attack.

The average American (that would be most of us, who rank in the top 5 percent of world wealth, whether we care to admit it or not) is inconvenienced by $4-a-gallon gas because he/she has made significant lifestyle decisions based on the assumption that gas is cheap and will always be cheap.  An entire culture of suburbia has grown up to support those lifestyle decisions and is driven by the assumption that gas is cheap and will always be cheap.

So how does it look when huddles of middle to upper class Americans are gathered around gas pumps all around the country praying against this latest Satanic attack against the American life that God has blessed, while the needs of the homeless guy under the bridge, the struggling single mom, or the children at the poor school are not considered worthy of even batting an eyelash?  (Heads up:  Probably not very good.)

Maybe this is an act of judgment by God against America.  If it is, I certainly can’t say that we don’t deserve it.  My hope is that this whole thing will ultimately turn us into a people who are at least a little bit more concerned with the real needs of those around them who are not as fortunate.  Because I just don’t see God calling off the dogs of higher gas prices so that we middle-to-upper-class Americans can get back to going on about our business while remaining completely oblivious to the needs of others in our midst.

George Carlin is dead, and it seems as if evangelical Protestant-dom can’t get enough of trashing him for his foul language and his atheist views.  It seems as if our capacity to engage with others outside of our worldview is limited to:  “He is not a good role model.”  “He is damned and is now in Hell; what else is there to say about him?”  “He got it all wrong on the only thing that matters; we don’t need to have anything to do with anything else that he might have to say.”  It is as if all of existence and all of humanity are divided into two categories:  those who are with us, and those who are of the world–who need to be condemned and exposed as bad role models.

This is unfortunate.  When the sum total of all that you can say about another human being is “He’s not a Christian, therefore he’s damned and on the way to Hell”, that comes awfully close to the way in which certain power groups dehumanize those whom they wish to oppress.  There are numerous examples of this from history.  Medieval Christians to Jews:  “Their people crucified Jesus.”  White Americans to African-Americans:  “They’re the descendants of people who were cursed in the Bible and that’s why their skin is dark.”  You can look at history yourself and find other examples of this.  If we as evangelicals continue to go down this road, it opens us up to some terrible possibilities.

By the way, here is a CNN writeup of what other comedians had to say about George Carlin.

And here is his “Stuff” routine, which is one of his most popular.  For those of you who have never heard of George Carlin, here is a good place to start:

We are in the middle of the last chapter of Mere Christianity, which is entitled “The New Men”.  In this chapter, Lewis likens the process of going from being creatures made by God to being sons of God to the next step in the process of evolution.  But there are some key differences between this step and any previous step in evolution.  Namely, it is induced by something outside of nature (Jesus) coming into nature.  Also, it does not involve sexual reproduction, it is strictly voluntary, it is not transmitted by heredity, it is happening at a much faster rate than any previous evolutionary change, and the stakes are much higher.

Well this is it folks.  We have finally reached the end of Mere Christianity.  In the previous chapter Lewis considered the question of whether or not Christians ought to be expected to be nicer than non-Christians.  He came out saying that the true question is whether a Christian is nicer than he or she was before becoming a Christian, and even at that, that is not the point.  Jesus did not come to earth and die in order to make us nicer people, He came to make us into new men.

And that is what Lewis focuses on in this final chapter of Mere Christianity.  All of you young-earth creationists out there beware, because in this chapter Lewis shows quite clearly that he is not in your camp.  (I read this book right after I became a Christian, and I think the reason this did not raise any red flags for me was that I did not yet know enough to know that I wasn’t supposed to believe in evolution.)

Lewis uses evolution as an illustration to describe the process of our becoming “new men”.  Go back to the time of the dinosaurs.  Assuming that you could talk to dinosaurs and find out their thoughts on where the direction of evolution was going, you would probably find them thinking–assuming that they think about such things at all–that the next step in evolution would produce bigger, badder, stronger, faster dinosaurs with stronger armor and bigger teeth.  None of them would even suspect that the next step in evolution would produce relatively small, physically weak, armorless creatures who gain mastery of the entire world through the superior strength of their mind.  But that is exactly what happened.  The stream of evolution took a completely different turn, and here we are.

Watch that last step, y’all!!!!!  It’s a lulu!!!!!

Or, as Tweety Bird would say it, “Watch dat wast step!!!  It’s a wuwu!!!”

Well folks, our good friend James Dobson has gone and done it again.  As Obama tries to reach out to evangelical voters, Dobson has accused him of distorting Biblical understanding and pushing for a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.

Let’s look at some of the comments by Obama that have drawn so much ire.

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

That seems to me like a perfectly legitimate question to ask.  Many people outside of evangelical Protestant-dom have the perception that we are all about trying to hijack the government of America and turn it into a repressive theocracy.  That is the perception which people on the outside have of us, whether we like it or not.  And given the things which the conservative Christian political activists who are getting the most media face time are saying, I don’t think this perception is too far off the mark.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is okay and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

The truth is that the Bible says an awful lot of things which are very difficult for us or which make little if any sense to us.  If we were to take everything that the Bible says at face value, we would have to dismantle an awful lot of American culture.  So we have constructed an interpretation of the Bible that makes it safe for us, by which anything that challenges us out of our materialistic American suburban lifestyle really doesn’t have anything to say to us.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament. “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said. Added Minnery: “… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

That may be true, but at the same time are we as American evangelicals dragging biblical understanding through the gutter by seeking to ignore or tone down the parts of the Bible that challenge our materialistic suburban ways?

Those of you who have been tracking with me for any length of time know my views on the Catholic Church:  I believe that there is much in the Catholic faith that is worthy of respect and admiration, but I am content to admire from a distance.  Today we are going to talk about one of the reasons why I am content to admire from a distance.

One word:  Mary.

Some of you who have been tracking with me for a really long time will remember a series that I did a few years back about my view of Catholicism.  In Part 3 of this series, I made the point that there are several aspects of Catholic belief that run contrary to the teaching of Scripture, and I detailed some of these.  I made the point that recent Church pronouncements on Mary rival the Mormons for creativity.

And then I found this little piece from Scott Hahn in which Mary is likened to the Ark of the Covenant.  Read it, if you will.  Be warned, though:  it is a very long read.  But then, it’s summer right now; what else are you going to do while you’re kicking back at the pool or beach?

There is very little in the way of direct Scriptural evidence to support the doctrines of Mary that have been made into dogma in recent years, but Hahn does a masterful job of pulling out a little bit of Scripture and making it seem to do the trick.

It’s as if the Catholic Church is saying, “Do you really want to be part of the One True Church?  Do you REALLY REALLY want it?  How badly do you want it?  Because if you want it bad enough, you WILL find a way to wrap your mind around all this and make it work.”

I think it would be more honest for the Catholic Church, in response to the question of why we have to believe all this stuff about Mary, to simply say “The Church teaches it” and leave it at that, rather than to send Scott Hahn out on some exegetical adventure to try and find a way to show that all of this is really connected to Scripture after all.

Walker Percy was a Louisiana author whose career spanned over three decades and whose interests included philosophy and language.  He is best known for his 1961 novel The Moviegoer.

The Message in the Bottle is a collection of essays spanning the full length of Walker Percy’s writing career.  They all hang together around the question of why, despite all of the prosperity and technology of modern times, people are increasingly sad and unfulfilled.  Percy postulates that the answer has to do with the fundamental difference between man and all of the other animals on the face of the earth–language.

We are now only two chapters away from the end of Mere Christianity.  We are in the section called “Beyond Personality”, in which Lewis discusses what a God who is beyond personality looks like and how we as humans can engage with a God who is beyond personality and experience that life which is beyond personality.  Along the way, Lewis answers a number of common questions and objections, and in this chapter Lewis tackles the question:  “If Christianity is true why are not all Christians obviously nicer than all non-Christians?”

What lies behind this question?  There are two possibilities, one reasonable and the other not so reasonable.  The first is that if Christianity is real then there is an expectation that it ought to be able to change lives, and that we ought to be able to see at least some evidence of this in the behavior of people who identify themselves as Christians.  Indeed, Jesus Himself told us that we would know whether or not someone is truly a Christian by their fruit–that is, by the difference that it makes upon their outward behavior.  If being a Christian has truly made no difference upon the outward behavior of one who identifies himself as such, then there is reason to doubt whether or not he is really a Christian at all.

The second, which is not so reasonable, is the idea that the world is clearly divided into two camps:  people who are 100 percent Christian, and people who are 100 percent non-Christian.  And the people in the Christian camp are without fail going to be nicer than the people in the non-Christian camp.  Many non-Christians hold this expectation, and love to cite examples of Christian misbehavior as evidence to discredit Christianity.  Many evangelicals are among the worst offenders of those who hold this expectation.  They love to say that people are either in or out, saved or not saved, that there is no such thing as “almost saved”.  (I wrote about this in an earlier post.)  And they love to say that Christians are morally superior people (because of the power of God) who can keep the commandments and live moral lives better than people who do not believe.  (I also wrote about this earlier.)