Category Archives: war

Education, God, health care, meditation, Newfrontiers, society, war

Personifying Anxiety

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In the last few weeks I have started using the Calm app in order to meditate. I can recommend it for anyone who is looking for guided meditation. I’m very new to mediation, though, and got into it as part of enjoying the Ayurveda way of life in recent months. When I used to pray, the focus was always either on worshipping God or praying for other people. In meditation, you get to focus on yourself, not just out of selfishness, but also with the aim of being in a better place to serve others.

This morning, the app’s very gifted Canadian main author and speaker, Tamara Levitt, encouraged what was effectively the personification of anxiety.

While I was sitting in a quiet place, first focussing on my breathing, she then encouraged me to think about a situation that causes me fear and anxiety. She prompted me to locate where in my body I could feel this anxiety, physically manifested, as it were. Once I had found it (it could be in your jaw, forehead, chest or gut, for example), I was encouraged to describe for myself its size, its shape, its colour, its intensity and so on. That’s why I’m calling it personification. I acknowledged it without judging it, giving it space and room to manifest itself as a genuine concern in my life – yet all the time aware that my anxious thoughts do not necessarily correspond to reality. I spoke to my anxiety, giving it genuine recognition, saying that I would address it at a future moment, but for now letting it drift away, like the leaves floating leaves on a nearby stream. At the end of just ten minutes, I felt so much more peaceful and even assured that the challenging situation I had been thinking about would one day be resolved. If there is one certainty about any situation in life, it is that it will not stay the same.

A clearer head left me better equipped to start work … at least until a different kind of anxious thought came into my head that would not leave me alone. Hence today’s unplanned blog.

I am referring to the battle raging between Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel as I write. I can’t stop placing myself in the minds of my fellow human beings who are living in an overwhelming fear of death. Back in 1997 I spent the night in Belfast and a bomb went off at the end of the road where my hotel was situated. Before the flight home, we all had to get off the plane and identify our suitcases that had been removed from the hold before we could take off because they suspected that we had a bomb on board. The tangible and unforgettable fear I experienced was existentially unsettling in a scary, new way for me, but it was nothing in comparison to what the people in Palestine and Israel must be experiencing right now, especially the children, elderly and infirm.

I’m tempted to take sides at this point, but that won’t help. You can guess what I think anyways. Plus the fact that we don’t have much of a right to say anything, since our countries are benefitting from the enormous wealth we have made by selling Israel and Palestine the weapons they are using to annihilate one another. What we can say, however, is that these war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide are being perpetrated because of the revolting and fatal division created by religion, or belief in a different, superior God. How many lives and despicable tortures would never have taken place, if , instead of a primitive, selfish belief in a non-existent God, human beings recognised their beauty, complexity and racial unity with one another and the universe. Even or especially when wrongful political decisions are made.

“If there is an omnipotent God – in the sense of a Creator of the universe, then he / she / they must surely be capable of communicating in a credible and unambiguous way with the entire human race. The absence of this reality, together with the culturally and geographically different accounts of who God is, is ultimately evidence that God is a human creation, invented in order to to justify oligarchical laws and to promulgate tribal superiority. The concomitant racial hatred results in division, untold suffering and unnecessary death.” Beyond Redemption – a shorty story by Nigel Dutton

This religious division does not start at the national or inter-faith level, but already within one and the same faith and ultimately in individual human hearts. When I was a member of the Newfrontiers sect, our church was invited to join in on certain ecumenical activities promoted by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches across our town. Our church never joined in on the basis that we could not possibly be united with churches that did not believe the gospel and preach the Bible. My former mentor and pastor, whom I still fondly respect and admire, would say to me and even to the other church leaders, “Why would I want to put my race horse (referring to his church) along side your cart horses (referring to their churches)?” If such theological arrogance can exist within one faith, it becomes easier to understand how divisive fanaticism caused by such hateful division between different religions can lead to the appalling suffering that it happening right at this moment between Muslim human beings and Jewish human beings who live in the same street.

Faith really is, as Nietzsche said, a refusal to believe what is true. My hope and intention is that, as the world becomes more enlightened, religious differences might one day be put aside and that people will look first and foremost to the miracles that unite them.

I’ll end with probably one of the deepest lyrics on this subject ever written:

But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you’re bound to get irate, yeah

Madness is what you demonstrate
And that’s exactly how anger works and operates
Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love, y’all, y’all

Black Eyed Peas

Post scriptum: today is Ascension Day, a day on which we remember that the resurrected Jesus Christ ascended into heaven in bodily form and now sits, still in his resurrected, new-order, imperishable human body on the throne of eternal heaven, ruling the world and the universe and sovereign over the control of the thoughts and actions of every single (even unborn) child, man and woman.

I think Nietzsche can probably rest his case.

politics, refugees, society, vision, war

Low-life blunders on

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This sick, jingoistic low-life blunders on after over a year in the role of the President of the United States of America. Every time I think he cannot do anything more outrageously unethical, he does.

As we have recently discovered, thanks to the “biased, lying, fake-news-ridden press”, his racist obsession with dealing with illegal immigrants entering the USA has led to the intolerable separation of children from their parents. The (so far) 2,300 children are not only separated, but being held in make-shift detention centres, given sedative drugs that are being presented to them as vitamin pills and some have so far never got to see their parents again (source: BBC news).

Even since this Auschwitz-like atrocity has come to light, Trump shows absolutely no signs of adjusting his zero-tolerance policy. On the contrary. This week he wrote on Twitter:

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back to where they came from. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and law and order … Our immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, must be based on merit – we need people who will help to Make America Great Again.”

America once was great, largely thanks to its cultural diversity. Just take a look at the names in the cast and crew list of some of the greatest US movies ever made. This man Trump is a disgusting, perverted affront to the values of humanity, the riches of cultural diversity and to the rights of children and families.

And the greatest irony in all of this is that the US likes to regard itself as a Christian nation. It is estimated that over 40% of the nation go to church every week and 70% regularly attend a service. If Christianity is meant to have a positive influence on the moral behaviour of a nation, then it clearly is not working.

At the end of the day, the increasingly hollow slogan “God bless America” is an insult to prayer, an insult to racial tolerance and an insult to human equality. Even more so when it comes out of the mouth of an ignoramus like Trump.

Let’s hope God wakes up soon and gives the Americans the president they really deserve.

“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?”   Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Berlin, God, new writer, society, vision, war

Faith and Doubt

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Faith, according to the Bible, is a synonym for certainty:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

So, when Christians say that they believe in one creator God, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, heaven and hell, the exclusivity of the Christian faith, and so on, they experience a real certainty about what they believe.

On the one hand, this is admirable and surely it is better to base the decisions you make in life on strong convictions than on some kind of half-baked, half-hearted notions. Even if, in reality, convictions do not determine our actions but describe them.

On the other hand, it is this certainty that creates deep division between the faithful and the heathen,  ultimately leading to domination, oppression and even war.

It is interesting that doubt, however, has never caused any division, wars, oppression, repression of artistic creativity and scientific research. On the contrary. And the contrast is very stark.

It seems to be that both on the micro level (individuals giving one another the benefit of the doubt) and on the macro level (entire cultures trying to comprehend one another and collaborate for the greater good) that doubt is a much more sound basis for our lives than certainty, which leads to bigotry.

Religion divides through its binding people into clans and cliques and providing them with a so-called divinely inspired narrative justification for their superiority.  We will never be able to get rid of it but we should at least see it for what it is and strive to limit the damage it causes.

So, in this context, a better definition of faith would be “the refusal to believe what is true” and a better definition of doubt would be “the basic requirement for the recognition and promotion of human dignity.”

“Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.” Voltaire.

 

 

Berlin, Children, European Union, God, politics, refugees, vision, war

God’s revenge on the USA

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So, very sadly, I was right yesterday. Trump has already after only a few months in office gone down in history as the world’s biggest ever mass-murderer. Thankfully, his crass stupidity has opened up much bigger opportunities with other nations like China, leaving the US behind as a future “third-world” nation.

Maybe Almighty God will now spit the USA our of His mouth, just as He has promised to do with many others who do not obey His commands and just as He allowed to happen to His chosen people on account of their disobedience during the Holocaust (Deuteronomy 28, especially verse 49!)

Below is an account from Sky News today, who, for the first time ever, have taken a pro-European, as opposed to a pro-UK/US, perspective.

Mark Stone, Europe Correspondent in Brussels

 I was in the vast Paris convention centre late on that December night back in 2015 when the climate change accord was agreed.

The jubilation among the delegates was palpable. Politicians, scientists, activists were all ecstatic.

They were surprised too. After the total failure of the previous summit, five years earlier in Copenhagen, they had finally achieved what they had thought was impossible: almost every nation had signed the accord.

Nearly a year later, in November 2016, I was in a US rust belt town in Pennsylvania as America prepared to vote. Out of work and with their factories shut, the people of Johnstown, Pennsylvania chose Donald Trump.

:: Trump announces US will withdraw from Paris climate deal

His promise to “make America great again” had resonated across large swathes of the country largely because he promised to get their jobs and their industry back.

Mr Trump’s pledge to pull out of the Paris accord meant, they believed, that their factories would reopen, their jobs would be returned to them.

It was a cruel populist tactic and it has now been compounded. In an hour long statement on Thursday evening Mr Trump held true to his word.

“In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect the people of the United States we will withdraw from the climate accord,” he announced from the Rose Garden of the White House with a jazz band and fake applause.

The factory workers are thrilled, naturally. But it’s impossible to see how, ultimately, it will make their lives better, let alone reignite their factories.

Far from putting America first, leaders globally now believe that he has put America last.

It will be left behind as other countries accelerate, with unprecedented enthusiasm, their green energy initiatives. That will have an economic impact.

The flurry of condemnation from around the world was a hint of how big a deal the Trump decision is.

In their joint statement, Italy, France and Germany expressed their regret and said they believed the climate deal gave substantial economic opportunities for prosperity and growth.

It’s true that the accord unlocked significant low carbon investment and innovation globally creating more and more jobs.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron, in a rare 11pm live televised statement, said: “I want to express myself a few hours after the declaration of the President of the United States of America because this is serious.”

“The US has turned its back on the world.”

“France will not turn its back on Americans,” he said, before inviting American scientists to come and work in France.

He ended with: “Make the planet great again”.

The EU Commissioner for climate action and energy, Miguel Arias Canete, issued a lengthy statement condemning Mr Trump’s decision and concluded: “Today’s announcement has galvanised us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership.

“Europe and its strong partners all around the world are ready to lead the way.

“We will work together to face one of the most compelling challenges of our time.”

John Kerry, the former US secretary of state who was instrumental in ensuring success in Paris in 2015, described the decision as “an ignorant, cynical appeal to an anti-science, special-interest faction far outside the mainstream”. (Ed: Of course a veiled reference to Christians).

He added: “If the world doesn’t press forward faster, we’ll see stronger storms, longer and more intense droughts, more wildfires, a swell of climate refugees and intensified conflict around the world.”

China, once the climate change villain, is now seen in an altogether different light.

While Mr Trump was speaking in the Rose Garden, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was dining in Brussels with EU leaders.

It is China’s enthusiastic commitment, along with India and Japan, to stick to the Paris Accord that will, it is hoped, mitigate the decision by Mr Trump.

While there is significant disappointment and dismay at the decision, there is reserved confidence among politicians, scientists and activists that the pledges made in Paris in December 2015 can still be met.

So maybe there are a few silver linings to Mr Trump’s toxic cloud.

The world, minus just America, will now have new impetus, willingness and resolve to implement the Paris accord and ensure the fight for the environment can continue.

Already, extra support for developing nations to help them meet their goals has been pledged.

New bonds are being formed as old ones fray. The European Union and the world’s largest emitter, China, releasing a joint statement on fighting climate change is significant.

The European Union sees this as an opportunity to reassert itself globally.

And given that significant portions of the American electorate are against Mr Trump’s decision, it seems certain that climate change will now be a key theme in the next US election.

It’s not often that climate change features highly in election campaigns.

I fear ,though, that the silver linings won’t stretch as far as places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

America’s rust belt workers will be disappointed.

Ed: I rest my case.

Berlin, European Union, politics, refugees, society, vision, war

The epitome of hypocrisy

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Quite apart from not having a single leadership bone in her body, Theresa May is increasingly turning out to be an incompetent, undemocratic and undiplomatic hypocrite. No wonder she gets on so well with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.

Today she has had the absolute effrontery to lecture the Scottish First Lady and Scottish Parliament that they should focus more on “raising standards in education, taking care of the health service, reforming criminal justice, helping the economy proposer, improving people’s lives.” How outrageous! These are exactly the areas where May’s government has the worst track record in living history!

She also said, “A tunnel vision nationalism, which focuses only on independence at any cost, sells Scotland short.” Hello? She added, “There is no economic case for breaking up the United Kingdom, or of loosening the ties which bind us together.” Hello? So how come none of these arguments applied to the singularly nationalistic, economically disastrous breaking away of the UK from Europe?

Alex Salmond replied, “The days of Scotland being lectured to by high-handed prime ministers at Westminster, these days are over.” Let’s hope he’s right.

Funny how world politics ultimately relies a lot on chance and the influence of the gutter press as opposed to democracy, sound reasoning and moral values. Theresa May is only in power because David Cameron made a serious miscalculation and the leaders of the former Labour Party (we can obviously forget Corbyn) and the Liberal Democrats had no balls and stood down. I guess Shakespeare understood that when he wrote:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves.                                                       Or lose our ventures.” Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3.

I only hope that this same tide will as soon as possible sweep the likes of May, Johnson, Trump away into an ocean of oblivion and that the new tide will bring in some real leaders like Obama who understand the importance of human rights, democracy and unity and who can articulate these values with supreme eloquence. He was clearly much too good for the Disunited Sates of America and the Disunited Queendom of Not-so-Great-Britain minus Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Berlin, God, new writer, refugees, society, war

What is truth?

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Okay, so my blog entry from last week about God’s and many christians’ attitude to the persecution and murder of children in Syrian prisons caused a bit of an angry reaction in some readers. Sorry about that. It was not really my intention.

So here is my reply, in particular to the preacher who took objection to my “ridiculously naive, unacademic and fundamentalist” interpretation of Romans 9:8 or Galatians 4:23 and John 14.6.

I admit to feeling humbled and challenged by what she and others wrote. Including those who wrote that I am bitter and sour and just want to get my own back on the church for what happened.

I’d like to deal with the second point first because it is more straight forward. I am not bitter and sour, largely because I have been attending an amazingly high quality therapy for the last three years that has helped me to come to terms with all that has happened. Through this therapeutic process, I have learnt both not to bear any grudges and to accept the full responsibility for what happened. I have absolutely no one to blame except myself.

If I were to have an agenda, it would be simply to provoke others to question seriously whether or not they are trapped in a sect, as I was, or whether  they are living  their lives in a liberated, responsible and meaningful way.

Now to the second question. We are often taught that the truth is an absolute, otherwise it cannot be truth. That is, however, a singularly western non-sequitur. And the objections of Frau Dr. D. that my suggested interpretation of certain Bible texts was arrogantly naive provides significant evidence for this.

I honestly believe that this woman is a very sincere, studious, devout Christian who truly believes in Jesus and in the text of the Bible. Her underlying conviction is that my suggested interpretation of is based on a specific culturally-determined interpretation of the texts that is out of kilter with reality, history and the most respected methods of textual interpretation. She argues, and this cannot be denied, that, according to the Bible, Jews, Christians and Muslims all have the same roots in the one and the same God.

Ultimately, what this has shown me is that, even if I were to accept that the Bible alone is the infallible word of God, the breadth of completely differing interpretations by sincere believers ultimately transforms infallibility into subjectivity.

Believers who want to argue differently set themselves up as arrogant know-alls with a superior level of revelation and the obvious result is division, persecution and conflict. Which is in itself an abomination in the eyes of a loving God. It also means that God’s word cannot ultimately be regarded as infallible since subjective interpretation takes precedence over his ability to communicate infallibly with his creatures. And how absurd is that?

So, back to the bizarre syllogism that the truth is an absolute, otherwise it cannot be truth. Ultimately, both Dr D. can be right in her interpretation and so can the fundamentalists.

Therefore, paradoxically, there is a reality even higher than the truth itself, and it is this: that the truth is always subjective. I rest my case.

‘Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.’  Mahatma Gandhi

Berlin, European Union, politics, prison, refugees, society, vision, war

Freedom of movement?

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Freedom of movement is something that many of us in the West take for granted. Most of us can get up and leave our home in the morning and travel to work, go shopping or visit a restaurant after work with friends. We can travel around the country without let or hindrance, and, if we have a passport and enough money, we can travel freely to many other nations of the world.

Imagine for just one moment, however, that you woke up tomorrow morning and you were told by the state authorities that you will no longer have the freedom to move around. You will no longer be able to travel to other countries. You cannot leave your town. In fact, you cannot even leave your house. You are to remain imprisoned there until you die, even though you have done nothing wrong. It is simply a legally binding decision made by your government. Failure to comply will result in immediate execution.

How would we feel then? Cheated? Outraged? Infuriated?Rebellious?

Why? Because any restriction in movement is a contravention of a basic human right. It is also at the root of what started the first war. “This is my property, the boundary to my land, and if you set food on it, I will kill you.” It is also a main reason as to why prison is considered an effective form of punishment.

All this is something that Ms. May, Mr. Johnson, Mr Trump, Mr Corbyn et al. cannot understand. In attempting to maintain free trade of goods whilst restricting the movement of people, they are placing material gain higher than human rights.  This is supremely unintelligent and morally despicable.

All in stark contrast to Angela Merkel who understands that you cannot have the one without the other. She also understands that no wall will ever be able to stop unwanted crime and terrorist attacks. She understand that walls simply provoke isolation and racial hatred, not prevent them.

Racism and evil do not run along national borders. They run through the heart of human beings. This is where it all starts and this is where we as individuals can choose to end it.

 

Berlin, European Union, new writer, politics, refugees, society, tourism, war

Berliner

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It has taken me a couple of days to write again. I have been so upset by what has happened in my city, even though we are still waiting for details to emerge.

Last night I went to the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market which is right next to where I used to live. There was an eery silence while hundreds of people laid flowers and lit candles. Very faintly in the background I could hear Christmas music and a vacuous sermon from the Gedächtniskirche, totally out of kilter with the prevailing mourning.

When I went into the KDW, the largest department store in the EU, it was empty. Three days before Christmas. Surreal.

My main concern is the sadness for those who had their lives so unexpectedly and tragically taken from them, for the injured and for all those who are close to them. This tragedy will affect the most relaxed capital city in Europe for many years.

My secondary concern is that a possible act of terrorism will achieve the goals of those who carry it out. Society becomes divided. Acts of mercy are described as treachery. Racism rules. Trust is undermined. Faiths are divided although believers worship the same God. An ominous fear prevails. Democracy is hijacked by extremists.

This morning on the way to work there was a very large holdall unattended on the station platform. As I got nearer, an Asian guy approached it and I asked him if it was his. “Yes,” he replied. For the first time in my life I realized that the question was meaningless: if he was a suicide bomber, it would make no difference.

On the train, I then read about that (excuse me) fucking idiot, Nigel Farage, saying that this event in Berlin was Angela Merkel’s fault. Horst Seehofer and the AfD are following suit.

In Berlin we have the first ever ruling red-red-green coalition. Last week, it looked as if Berlin was going to pioneer the political future model for Germany. As just one minor example: they have up-to-now rightly stood against increased video surveillance of our city. Will all that change now?

I hope against hope that my adopted city and country will not give in to the aims of terrorism. I hope that democracy and freedom and racial tolerance will prevail. And I trust that, in spite of all current appearances, the pen will triumph over the gun.

 

European Union, new writer, politics, war

The greatest crime: forgetfulness.

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This morning on the way to work I saw a new poster of a woman with a child in her arms in the middle of a war zone, with the title: “The greatest crime: forgetfulness.”

Over 3.5 million children die unnecessarily every year (that’s a city the size of Berlin). And right now, so many children and their families are being killed daily in Syria, Yemen,  Nigeria, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Niger, Chad – to name some of those that I am aware of.

I feel so challenged. What am I doing about this? Why are Europe and the USA so unbelievably powerless to help? Where is the church? Where is God?

Humanly speaking, our selfishness must lie somewhere at the root of the answer. I know that if it were my son depicted in the image below, I would drop everything and do all that I could to stop this from happening. If these atrocities were happening in our country, we would have to do something. But we are too far removed. We seem to have become numb to the images, as if they were scenes from a fictitious movie rather than real life. We forget.

Tony Robbins wrote: “Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”

I don’t know about you, but I have made my mind up to spend my remaining years on this beautiful planet helping to bring healing, peace and reconciliation.

For further information about how you can help, contact:

Caritas International

Save the Children

Amnesty International