Oh great, thank you very much. Now I'm going to be looking for counterfeit Exoduses everywhere in biblical tales of malefactors. :-)
9/11 for me coincided with a time of adult regeneration and a slow, long crawl to understand the God of the bible which I'm still working through. This recent atrocity seems to be an aftershock and I'm really glad how it has prompted me, along with many others apparently, to re-examine Christian-Jewish relations. I found James Wood's recent piece in Ad Fontes to be really helpful.
"All responsibility for lives lost in collateral damage supposedly belongs to Hamas and if, by comparison with Hamas, Israel is less indiscriminate and brutal in its methods, they must be the good guys"
This was one of my takeaways from watching Ben Shapiro's speech at the Oxford union. One doesn't have to adopt moral equivalency to be struck by the difficulty in the maneuver of claiming a mantle of absolute impeccability by dint of relative sin-superiority. I don't think it's a peculiarly Jewish way of looking at ethics, but rather a fallen, universal way. If there is a better example of works righteousness, I can't think of it. What a burden it must be.
For some reason or another my mind has been aflame also by what I am hearing in the rhetoric about anti-semitism and Zionism. It seems in the minds of many that the absolute legitimacy of the founding of the modern state of Israel is inextricably bound, and conflated, with the right of those people to defend themselves. When I hear this from Americans it troubles me, because it is contra the insights of the founders who recognized the universal right of self-defense as a gift from God, apart from the will of any state. So, God forbid, if the citizens of Israel were pushed out of the state, they cannot defend themselves?
This is where I think the Christian ethic of continual sojourn is superior. Rights come from God and the state must simply bow and exert its energies to defend those rights, not grant or establish them. Human rights are not handcuffed to a person's citizenhood in any way. Going the opposite direction, to me it seems, always seems to legitimate blood-and-soil religion and civics.
Excellent! I knew it was you as I listened to your podcast (as a guest discussing the birth of comedy) and could hear and see you dramatically wandering into the kitchen, announcing the pithy phrase, “Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy”, then even more melodramatically walking off, leaving us to ponder what had struck you so deeply that you had to declare it aloud!
I am now a consultant psychiatrist in the far north of Scotland (Elgin), and would indeed love to meet up with you and your husband at some point but am unlikely to make it anywhere near Durham or even Scotlands central belt in the next few weeks. I think I have often thought of you over the years, and more so in the last five or so as whilst I don’t remember us ever really discussing religion as such I think I realised you were questioning a lot and interestingly so have I recently. I have a long term partner, his religious background being Catholicism (he is Irish), but these are definitely discussions for a less public forum. Feel free to use my email - Thomas.mcphee@nhs.scot.
This is a note to Susannah, and I do apologise if I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely, but did Susannah study briefly in Scotland in the late 1990s? If so I shared a flat with her and often think about how she is doing these days. She showed me kindness at a very difficult time in my life and if this is indeed her, I’m glad to see she is doing very well and is happy. I still live and work (as a psychiatrist now) 25 years later in Scotland.
Of course, if this is not the Susannah Black I knew, please accept my apologies.
Tom, you are most certainly barking up the right tree! Alastair came downstairs just now and said "do you know a Thomas McPhee?" and I told him all about that goofy household with you and -- oh gosh what was his name? -- the other Scottish medical student with the dark hair who I think was from Stornoway, and the heavily-smoking Italians. I also said that you were quite possibly the first person I had ever prayed for, because I was at the time in the process of converting to Christianity, and I cared about you and was worried about you -- how are you doing? We have to meet up-- we're going to be in Durham week after next, it wouldn't be that difficult for me to get to Glasgow or Edinburgh.
Oh and it’d be Craig MacMillan who was the Stornowegian. And the Greeks were the heaviest smokers. And who made a racket every night at ungodly hours shouting “Malaka” which I’m sure must mean “I need another cigarette”.
Susannah, this interview with a Jewish Christian, Wayne Weissman, might be of interest to you: https://hishill.org/captivate-podcast/interview-with-guest-speaker-and-his-hill-board-member-wayne-weissman/
Oh great, thank you very much. Now I'm going to be looking for counterfeit Exoduses everywhere in biblical tales of malefactors. :-)
9/11 for me coincided with a time of adult regeneration and a slow, long crawl to understand the God of the bible which I'm still working through. This recent atrocity seems to be an aftershock and I'm really glad how it has prompted me, along with many others apparently, to re-examine Christian-Jewish relations. I found James Wood's recent piece in Ad Fontes to be really helpful.
"All responsibility for lives lost in collateral damage supposedly belongs to Hamas and if, by comparison with Hamas, Israel is less indiscriminate and brutal in its methods, they must be the good guys"
This was one of my takeaways from watching Ben Shapiro's speech at the Oxford union. One doesn't have to adopt moral equivalency to be struck by the difficulty in the maneuver of claiming a mantle of absolute impeccability by dint of relative sin-superiority. I don't think it's a peculiarly Jewish way of looking at ethics, but rather a fallen, universal way. If there is a better example of works righteousness, I can't think of it. What a burden it must be.
For some reason or another my mind has been aflame also by what I am hearing in the rhetoric about anti-semitism and Zionism. It seems in the minds of many that the absolute legitimacy of the founding of the modern state of Israel is inextricably bound, and conflated, with the right of those people to defend themselves. When I hear this from Americans it troubles me, because it is contra the insights of the founders who recognized the universal right of self-defense as a gift from God, apart from the will of any state. So, God forbid, if the citizens of Israel were pushed out of the state, they cannot defend themselves?
This is where I think the Christian ethic of continual sojourn is superior. Rights come from God and the state must simply bow and exert its energies to defend those rights, not grant or establish them. Human rights are not handcuffed to a person's citizenhood in any way. Going the opposite direction, to me it seems, always seems to legitimate blood-and-soil religion and civics.
Excellent! I knew it was you as I listened to your podcast (as a guest discussing the birth of comedy) and could hear and see you dramatically wandering into the kitchen, announcing the pithy phrase, “Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy”, then even more melodramatically walking off, leaving us to ponder what had struck you so deeply that you had to declare it aloud!
I am now a consultant psychiatrist in the far north of Scotland (Elgin), and would indeed love to meet up with you and your husband at some point but am unlikely to make it anywhere near Durham or even Scotlands central belt in the next few weeks. I think I have often thought of you over the years, and more so in the last five or so as whilst I don’t remember us ever really discussing religion as such I think I realised you were questioning a lot and interestingly so have I recently. I have a long term partner, his religious background being Catholicism (he is Irish), but these are definitely discussions for a less public forum. Feel free to use my email - Thomas.mcphee@nhs.scot.
I’m so glad to have stumbled across you.
This is a note to Susannah, and I do apologise if I’m barking up the wrong tree entirely, but did Susannah study briefly in Scotland in the late 1990s? If so I shared a flat with her and often think about how she is doing these days. She showed me kindness at a very difficult time in my life and if this is indeed her, I’m glad to see she is doing very well and is happy. I still live and work (as a psychiatrist now) 25 years later in Scotland.
Of course, if this is not the Susannah Black I knew, please accept my apologies.
Tom McPhee
Tom, you are most certainly barking up the right tree! Alastair came downstairs just now and said "do you know a Thomas McPhee?" and I told him all about that goofy household with you and -- oh gosh what was his name? -- the other Scottish medical student with the dark hair who I think was from Stornoway, and the heavily-smoking Italians. I also said that you were quite possibly the first person I had ever prayed for, because I was at the time in the process of converting to Christianity, and I cared about you and was worried about you -- how are you doing? We have to meet up-- we're going to be in Durham week after next, it wouldn't be that difficult for me to get to Glasgow or Edinburgh.
Oh and it’d be Craig MacMillan who was the Stornowegian. And the Greeks were the heaviest smokers. And who made a racket every night at ungodly hours shouting “Malaka” which I’m sure must mean “I need another cigarette”.