Abortion activists have to respect UNM’s mission

Editor,

I agree with Mac Morin’s well-written letter objecting to Bible cherry-picking in Tuesday’s Daily Lobo. However, as to his comment on consistency, I’m reminded of Charles Kettering’s famous quote: “Beware of logic; it is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.”

As is commonly observed, numerous mutually contentious religious belief systems find consistency within each other’s patterns of logic. I resonate in part with Morin’s own logic; I worked for years as a full-time Christian minister. The problem is the historical facts. “Old Testament” is a term created by Christians as counterpoint to a “New Testament” describing Jesus as the awaited Messiah.

However, the original Messiah concept of the Hebrew Torah and Prophets said the Messiah was to be the savior (a) of the Israelites, not other peoples, (b) as a group, © militarily, (d) politically, (d) economically and (e) in this world.

But the Christians dramatically revised all those categories to a Messiah who saved people (a) individually, (b) from personal sins and not economic/political woes and © in a post-death world. The “edited” Christian Messiah bore hardly any resemblance to the original Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish concept. Christians totally redefined it. Ask any practicing rabbi why the Jews didn’t accept Jesus as the promised Messiah.

Morin mentions God giving the Canaanites 400 years to repent. But in historical fact, there’s no credible archeological evidence that Israelites wandered for decades in the desert or had been in captivity en masse in Egypt. The preponderance of archeological evidence indicates that the Israelites had been an indigenous Canaan-area people all along.

Morin says God demands just laws and just rulers. Fine; we all like justice. But the Hebrew Scriptures define “just” as that which the Hebrew god decreed.

By current American Southwest analogy: the White Man’s “justice” is not the same as Native American “justice.” Each group defines justice consistently with that group’s desires for its own welfare.

Years ago, just after my Christian minister years, I was seated in a UNM philosophy class listening to a professorial comment that deeply offended me. The teacher, a full professor visiting from Harvard, said exactly this: “The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the greatest success story of all time: how a local tribal volcano god became the Lord of the Universe.” That blunt remark from a remarkably learned scholar made me no happier to hear then than now.

But let’s just say that there’s usually far more to the factual history of any religious people than that which group passes down in its own scriptures. Seeing this clearly helps us understand cultural conflicts.

Kent Ponder
Daily Lobo reader