I believe you have been promoting bigotry and helping to perpetrate a fraud.

During both of your interviews with Pastor Joel Osteen on your CNN broadcast, you let the religious leader tell your audience that Scripture calls homosexuality a sin. But you didn’t ask him where the Bible says that.

It’s both an important point and an easy one to settle. You could have asked Pastor Osteen for the chapter and verse that he thinks calls homosexuality a sin. What you would have found is that he couldn’t provide it, because Pastor Osteen was expressing his personal opinion, not quoting the Bible. The Bible doesn’t say that homosexuality is a sin.

It seems to me that Pastor Osteen, as a religious leader, has a right to believe what he wants and to encourage others to follow. So if he doesn’t accept homosexuality, it’s his prerogative to spread his anti-homosexuality message. But I think it’s dishonest when he pretends that his opinions are those of the Bible.

Similarly, if you don’t like homosexuality, it’s your right to say so on air. But I think it’s irresponsible of you to let a guest tell your audience that something is in the Bible without even asking where.

This glaring omission is all the more surprising in light of your claim to be “challenging.” Why didn’t you challenge Pastor Osteen on this basic factual issue?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Joel M. Hoffman, PhD

+1.718.834.1080
Joel@Lashon.net
http://www.Lashon.net

The historical Adam is apparently important for fundamental Christian theological reasons, which is why Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that, “The denial of an historical Adam and Eve as the first parents of all humanity … produces a false grasp of the Gospel” and told NPR that “without [an historical] Adam, the work of Christ makes no sense…”

His basic point, shared by many others, is that, “the Apostle Paul … clearly understood Adam to be a fully historical human.”

It may surprise some that I don’t agree at all. I don’t think that Paul believed in an historical Adam.

I think that the whole notion of “historical” is a modern one, created by modern science, and that it’s this entirely modern approach that pits history against myth. Paul didn’t believe in an historical Adam or a non-historical Adam. He just believed in Adam. It’s only as modern readers that we divide things — for ourselves — into historical and non-historical.

Even ancient historians like Herodotus (5th century BC) and Josephus (1st century AD) freely mixed what we would now call history with literature. As part of their histories, they included verbatim conversations that they had no way of knowing. Similarly, they mixed history with myth, as when Herodotus writes about the phoenix in the same terms as the crocodile or when Josephus, whose life overlapped with Paul’s, describes a cow that gave birth to a lamb during his own lifetime.

So while I understand the modern inclination to ask whether or not the Adam that Paul believed in was historical, I think it’s an anachronistic question. And more than any answer to it, it’s the question itself that parts with Scripture.

[Update: John Farrell has a review on Forbes.com of Peter Enns' new book, Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say About Human Origins, including a discussion of some issues surrounding the historical Adam. Also, Dr. Enns just posted a 40-minute lecture in which he talks about the material in his book. (5/14/2012)],

It is well known that people are generally sensitive only to big relative changes, and tend not to care about, or even notice, small ones. This is why three shots of vodka is much more than one, but if you add two shots of milk to a gallon of milk, you still have about a gallon. They’re both a 3-ounce addition, but the vodka increased 200%, the milk only about 2.5%, and we notice the percentage, not the absolute amount. Similarly, a fifteen minute car ride feels longer than a five minute one, but seven hours and 15 minutes on a flight doesn’t seem different than only seven hours and five minutes. A child who grows from four feet to five has shot up, while a mountain in the Rockies that goes from 8,200 feet to 8,300 looks the same.

This can be a problem when small changes yield big profits. If, for example, you could earn a million dollars by making your house only 5% darker, you’d do it. You wouldn’t even notice the 5% reduction in light. But here’s the rub. If you’d do it once, you’d do it again and again. Pretty soon you’ll end up rich but living in the dark.

Worse, you won’t even know what went wrong. You’ll try in vain to isolate which 5% decrease did you in, and you’ll conclude that every step of the way seemed like a good one. Each time you got a lot of money for a difference you couldn’t even notice.

This dilemma is especially pronounced when big organizations get involved. Most of us can’t earn a million dollars by making changes to the lighting, but hotel chains can, and they do, which is why hotel rooms are so dark. Of course, it’s not just lighting. That same chain makes the soap bars just a little smaller, and gathers up the tiny profit from each bar of soap for a huge increase in the bottom line. Airlines put the seats in their planes just a little closer together to augment revenue. Oil companies raise the price of fuel by just a cent or two every so often. Call-center managers reduce staff just a tad. Supermarkets provide slightly fewer cashiers. Managers demand just five more minutes out of each employee’s workweek.

And it’s not just the corporate world. Municipalities suffer the same kind of fate when they cut the number of police just a bit. So do school districts that reduce each teacher’s training only a little. And at the federal level, a decision is made from time to time to spend just 1% less on some important program.

What we end up with, though, is schools that don’t work, planes that only young children fit comfortably in, hotels that are too dark to see if your clothes match, phone menus from hell, long lines to buy food, burdensome workweeks, and so forth.

The problem comes from the seemingly desirable goal of maximizing profits combined with the human tendency not to notice small changes.

The only solution I can think of is to agree that maximizing profits is a bad idea in the long run.

To look at another example, imagine a swimming pool. With so much water, it’s hard to imagine that giving away a single cup could make any difference. Yet a pool can be emptied one cup at a time. If you think you can sell one cup and not impact the pool, you’ll end up with lots of money and nowhere to swim.

At first glance, it might seem as though the same mechanism that prevents us from noticing slightly darker rooms also means that a huge hotel chain won’t care about slightly higher earnings. For example, Marriott International had gross revenue of over 12 billion dollars in 2011. That’s over 12,000 million dollars. Does it really matter if it’s 12,321 million or 12,322? Sometimes, maybe not, though other things being equal any CEO or board member will opt for more money instead of less, no matter how small the difference. But other times, even a tiny amount can make a huge difference: if saving just a thousand dollars means not going over budget, even a huge hotel chain might need that $1,000. Or if a bonus for some employee is tied to meeting a certain goal, that $1,000 might be the final step toward getting the bonus.

The overhead cost of making any change might also seem important. Even if smaller bars of soap are cheaper, for example, the one or two cents saved on each bar is offset by the costs of putting someone in charge, of changing the specs, etc. But even though this may mitigate the tendency for our lives to get worse, it doesn’t eliminate it. Furthermore, as companies grow larger, the overhead costs become less significant compared to the potential savings.

Similarly, eventually the soap will be so small, the lighting so dark, the teachers so poorly trained, that a 5% reduction doesn’t net much profit. For example, if a bar of soap weighs 3.5 ounces, cutting 5% means not having to pay for 1/6 of an ounce of soap. Multiplied by over half a million Marriott rooms and 365 days/year (potentially over 180 million guests, but probably closer to 100 million), that’s up to almost 1,000 tons of soap each year saved by that 5% cut. But once the bar is whittled down to only 1 ounce, the same 5% cut saves less than 200 tons. It might not be worth it. Unfortunately, this pattern just means that there might be a lower limit to how bad things can get. Even more unfortunately, as companies grow larger, this limit goes down.

So, again, the only solution I can think of is to agree that maximizing profits is a bad idea in the long run.

Pastor Osteen just confirmed to Oprah Winfrey that he believes that “homosexuality is shown as a sin in the Scripture,” noting that he encourages people to be “willing to change and grow.”

On the other hand, when Piers Morgan asked him in October whether he supports the Biblical position of a life for a life, Pastor Osteen admitted (in this video): “I don’t know,” because the death penalty is a “complicated issue.”

In other words, Pastor Osteen doesn’t feel compelled to support everything in Scripture. He openly ignores Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and Dueteronomy 19:21. He reserves the right — as we all do — to pick and choose.

This is why I don’t think there’s any merit or integrity to his argument that he is forced to condemn homosexuality because Scripture calls it a sin.

As it happens, I don’t believe that Scripture says that, but I do support Pastor Osteen’s right to interpret Scripture as he chooses.

What I don’t support is the way he presents his opinions as unbiased fact.

As far as I’m concerned, until Pastor Osteen takes responsibility for his own words, he’s no better than any other coward who hides from the people he attacks.

Yes, she was awarded a prize for simply being quiet, the bar in her school sadly having been set so low that by doing nothing she was already outperforming her peers. (Rabbi Larry Milder expresses a similar sentiment in his song about his experience teaching Religious School: There’s a Riot Going On in Classroom Number Nine.) Equally unfortunately, most of the audience at the award ceremony chuckled in solidarity, probably remembering their own not-so-different experiences in Religious School. Some of them may even have thought, “so you’re the goodie-goodie who got us all in trouble when we were pasting our yarmulkes to the wall.”

How did this happen, and what can we do about it?

Many Religious Schools seem like case studies in institutional bipolar disorder: children must attend but nothing should be required of them; or everything should be required of them and there should be no consequences for not fulfilling the requirements; or the consequences should be so severe that everyone hates being there; or loving Religious School is so important that the school is turned into a playground where nothing is taught; and so forth.

Hidden in this list of institutionality-disorder symptoms are three of the elements that I believe are crucial to a productive Religious School: content, connection, and compassion.

I think we have an absolute obligation not to waste the time of the students who show up to Religious School. After all, they aren’t allowed to leave. If I go to a lecture and I’m bored, I can walk out. But we don’t give children at Religious School (or public school, for that matter) this prerogative, so I think we have to make sure that their time in class is well spent by giving them challenging and engaging content.

Having fun also seems like a good idea. And some people believe that the best way to have fun is to turn learning time into game time. But I disagree, because, fortunately, children naturally love learning. So I think that by providing a stimulating environment we will also create a place where children enjoy themselves. Schools that dumb down their curriculum to make the place more enticing have it backwards.

Having fun also contributes to my second element of Religious School: connection. If the only point of the school were to convey information, we could distribute textbooks, offer a yearly exam, and do away with the weekly gatherings. But Judaism is not merely a collection of facts to be learned. It is also a sense of connection — to our history, to each other, to the Jewish people, to Israel, and to the synagogue.

Thirdly, I think our school has to offer compassion to people — children and parents — whose lives are increasingly lacking that vital component. Too many parts of our lives are uncompromising and rigid, forcing us to adapt to them rather than letting us be ourselves. Our school can offer an island of relief against this troubling trend.

Taken in isolation, any of these three aspects — content, connection, and compassion — can lead us astray. If we focus only on content, our Religious School will lose its soul. Connection by itself won’t work, because we have to offer something to be connected to. And compassion alone threatens to make the school irrelevant to people who are already thriving.

But in combination, I think these three goals can help provide the foundation of a school worthy of the collective energy we all invest in it.

[Reposted from the Vassar Temple Blog, in turn reprinted from my article in the Vassar Temple January, 2012 bulletin.]

And I think this is what we see with President Obama’s plan to help home owners refinance at a lower interest rate.

At first glance, it seems like a good idea, because home owners will save money thanks to lower mortgage payments. But that’s only half the story.

The other half is that people who have invested in real estate will earn less.

For example, on each $100,000 of mortgage loans, an interest-rate drop from 6% to 4% saves a home owner almost $1,500 per year. If, let’s say, one million people shave two percentage points off an average of $250,000 in mortgages, then one million people will save on average upwards of $36,000 each over the next ten years.

But by exactly the same token, investors in real estate — banks, but also pension funds and the like — will collectively lose more than $36 billion over the text ten years.

Just by way of example, one adverse reaction will be to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has some $1.34 billion invested in real estate. If the return on that $1.34 billion drops from from 6% to 4%, the fund will earn $27 million a year less, for a total loss of $270 million over ten years.

In short, there’s no free lunch here. When some people save money, other people earn less from their investments.

Like a ship taking on water, America is sinking from debt. And like two groups of sailors — each trying to save half the boat by shifting the water to the other side — our leaders seem focused on solving half the problem even if they make the other half worse.

In the past I have chastised religious leaders and other prominent people for not speaking out against terrorism committed by their alleged coreligionists. So I want to be clear that I do not support what these Jews (if they are Jews) in Israel are doing. I’d like to think that no one could even make such a mistake as mixing up my respect and tolerance with their hatred and bigotry, but I know that as tensions rise, so does mistrust. That’s why I’m publicly denouncing these acts as clearly as possible.

Equally, I hope I’ll set a model for others to speak out, even when they might not think it’s necessary. The next time we read of religious violence or intolerance, I hope we’ll also read of masses of religious leaders speaking out against it.

For many people, that question — part of the haunting Unetaneh Tokef prayer — is reason enough to boycott the Days of Awe. After all, the text of that famous medieval poem offers a simple, clear answer to why people suffer: it’s their own fault. They were given a perfectly fair trial (conveniently featuring God as prosecutor, defense attorney, witness, and judge), and every last chance to return to the right path, but they stubbornly refused God’s lifeline. So they died.

But the subtext of Unetaneh Tokef tells a different story, referencing the Book of Job more than any other. For example, the “still small voice” of the Unetaneh Tokef text mirrors Job 4:16. The text of the next line of Unetaneh Tokef deals with angels, as does Job 4:18. Literally reading between the lines, we find Job 4:17: “Can humans be acquitted by God?”

The text and subtext vehemently disagree, so what looks like an answer — people die because God makes them — is really a question: What’s going on here?

The High Holidays in general are like that, and so too are our lives. We have a text. But we need the subtext to understand it. And the simple, clear answers are usually wrong.

Here are two examples.

Toner Cartridges

Last October, apparently, a terrorist group experimented with shipping explosives in toner-cartridge packages as a way of bringing down cargo aircraft. In response, the US government, through the TSA, “restricted the transport of printer and toner cartridges.”

To me, this kind of response is like seeing someone drive up to a government building with explosives in his Chevy and reacting by making it illegal to approach government buildings in a Chevy. It misses the broader point.

Even though the toner cartridges offered certain benefits, they were not central to the malicious plan. Yet four months of government work produced an inane, short-sighted response that focused on printer and toner cartridges, rather than on the real issues.

Nuclear Power Plants

In March, an earthquake-induced tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan along with many of the auxiliary systems that were supposed to mitigate the impact from any potential damage. The result was partial reactor meltdowns, thousands of square miles of contaminated land, billions of dollars in damage, and as-yet unknown health consequences.

In response, officials here in the US looked at the degree to which nuclear reactors can withstand earthquakes and tsunamis, variously noting that those two events are unlikely in the areas where certain reactors are built, and that other reactors can withstand any likely earthquake.

But, again, the problem isn’t earthquakes or tsunamis per se. The problem is unexpected conditions. And it only took until last month for new unexpected conditions to surface. A fire broke out in Arizona that threatened the nuclear facility in Los Alimos. And floods forced the shutdown of two other nuclear power plants across the nation. Just last week, reports were published about jellyfish blocking the intake valves of cooling systems at some nuclear power plants.

Shortsightedness

It seems to me that what these decisions — and many more like them — have in common is shortsightedness. They are instances of reacting to a specific example of a broader problem by focusing on the example instead of the problem.

By and large, high-ranking policy advisers and nuclear engineers are not stupid. Surely they can see the folly of these decisions.

So I’m left wondering. What is it about our political and social systems that, apparently, makes it so difficult to react rationally?