02.28.07
Carbon offset: the Indulgences of the Environmental Religion
Dateline 1517: Pope Leo offers indulgences to the faithful who offer alms towards the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica. In response to this (and other Church corruptions), Martin Luther writes his 95 theses providing one of the sparks for the Protestant Reformation.
For those of you unfamiliar with indulgences, they are pardons of temporal punishment for various sins. In Catholic church theology, sin invites a duality of consequences: separation from God (the eternal) and earthly punishment (the temporal). Eternal consequences are governed by Grace won on the cross by Christ and thus, can only be redeemed through a return to relationship with Christ (via confession). Even after a person has been rescued from eternal consequences, however, temporal consequences must be addressed (either here on earth through trials and tribulations or via time spent in Purgatory). Indulgences were originally conceived as a method through which a person could use the merit of the church to satisfy these consequences. Prayer, recitation of the rosary, and reading of scripture were common devices through which this was accomplished. One thing to note in particular is that indulgences could only be granted for sin already committed – it was not a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Martin Luther took issue with the idea of indulgences in general; however, he particularly took issue when the papal commissioner for indulgences in Germany began using indulgences to raise money for St. Peter’s Basilica. By giving alms, the faithful could absolve themselves of the consequences of their sin.
This brings us to carbon offset, the indulgence of environmentalism. A carbon offset is a device that allows a person to reduce the global warming effects of the CO2 produced by their daily activities: driving a car, using electricity, eating food. Various methods of mitigating one’s carbon footprint include planting trees and using renewable energy derived from solar energy, wind power, and bio-fuels. Like the indulgences, carbon offsets allow a person to ‘pay’ for their ’sins’ against the earth. And like indulgences, they offer a way for the corrupt to profit from the good intentions of the faithful…
Enter TerraPass, a company that allows you to pay to offset the carbon footprint caused by your driving and air travel. How does it work? You buy one of their passes that corresponds to your car and driving habits. Then they take the money and invest in research to develop new technologies that will possibly reduce future CO2 production. That’s right, with the right amount of money, you too can drive your SUV and be green at the same time – all while TerraPass makes money off of assuaging your guilt. Sound familiar?
If nothing else, environmentalism has shown itself for what it is: a religion through which one group gains power and wealth by creating guilt and then giving its adherent’s a method through which they can manage it. And like all religions that came before it (including Christian religion separated from Christian faith), it will never achieve true heart change. Only a relationship with the Creator can do that.
02.21.07
Honor and single-sanction at the University of Virginia
This is post specific to the students and alumni of UVa. If you have no interest in UVa and could care less how it handles matters of honor, by all means skip on over.
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Still with me? Good. As many of you may or may not know, the students of UVa are currently considering the question of whether to remove expulsion as the Single-Sanction for honor offenses (lying, cheating, or stealing). As it stands, the current system works like this:
- student lies, cheats, or steals
- student comes forward – honor charges cannot be brought from this point
- someone else comes forward and charges are brought against the student. from this point on, the offending student may come forward and leave school with honor
- a honor trial is held in which the student is either found guilty, and removed from the community, or innocent, and nothing happens
A little bit of history. The Honor System was founded in the 1840s when the University was still a small, closely-knit community in which students and faculty lived together on the lawn. The notion of a gentleman was alive and well and when a professor was shot during a disturbance on the Lawn, he refused to identify his assailant, saying that a man of honor would step forward willingly.
As time has passed on, our society’s notions of honor and integrity seem to have passed away in favor of relativistic morals. At the same time, the University community has changed, as well; no longer is it a close-knit community housed together along the lawn – it is now a sprawling campus comprised of >18,000 students. There was a time when honor reigned supreme – and your honor or dishonor affected mine. Unfortunately, most students now view themselves in relative isolation; what you do affects you and what I do affects me.
The Honor System as it was originally defined depended upon the community to defend its own trust – now, all trust is placed in the golden calf of Single Sanction. When it was founded, the single sanction was a side effect: honor was first found lacking by the community and removal was the only possible remedy. However, removal is now the focus – and the notion of honor is left with nothing but lip-service. This can be seen in the defense of single-sanction. As one of my friends put it: it (single-sanction) is “its most potent, enduring symbol”.
The main problem with this focus is that student juries become focused on the consequences that are to be faced by the student – not whether his or her actions will damage the community of trust. Case in point: because of the single-sanction, honor offenses are statutorily limited to those that are of “sufficient gravity such that open toleration of the act would impair the community of trust sufficiently enough to warrant expulsion of the offender”. How can honor be defined by consequence? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Further, there are many students who, when faced with the knowledge that guilt = expulsion, prefer to give benefit of the doubt. In this case, a charged student is found innocent not because of the facts of the case, but because of juries inability to stomach a consequence.
So, what is the solution? I don’t know, but whatever it is, it should be focused on restoring true honor to the honor system, not intent on saving a golden calf that looks oh so good. If nothing else, the referendum on the ballot represents an attempt to move the discussion forward. You may not agree with the solution proposed, but rather than rejecting anything that interferes with your precious consequence, suggest something that will restore the system to what it should be: a system whose most potent, enduring symbol is the honor and integrity of those who agree to adhere by it.
02.07.07
Just what is the Church anyway?
I just read an article from boundless that was written in response to an article by the ChurchReport.com that discusses the impact of shifting demographics towards singleness on the church. Basically, the idea is that US churches are seeing a growing population of singles and are struggling to figure out how to best deal with this demographic – including a shift from “family-friendly” programs. What I saw from both articles was indicative of the general misunderstanding of “Church” in America (and perhaps all of the West). Both articles (and most of the accompanying comments) seemed to focus on churches like they do corporations – In other news, Microsoft is deciding whether to focus on Vista or Office. Come on, is this what we have reduced ourselves to? Products that the church can promote or not? The whole discussion is rendered moot when we look at the local church as what it is – a building (jk) – the community of believers. When we see people rather than programs, we don’t have to be concerned with whether we are reaching out to singles or to families. If there is a family in your community, you seek to show God’s love and minister to their unique needs – if there is a single, you do the same for him/her. Most of us have communities of friends which are made up of both marrieds and singles — we should seek to reflect Christ to all of them.
This is not to say that there is not an issue to be discussed here; if there wasn’t, would we even be discussing it? In fact, the call to true community is harder than a call to programs. It makes the problem all of ours rather than the problem of those we lift up to be our leaders. True agape is never the easy way out.
