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Left Behind

I read the book Left Behind a few months ago, and was quite taken by it. I’m intrigued by how other people view their own faiths, and theological texts are often not the best way to do so; I much prefer things like literature or autobiography, things that give me a greater sense of the lived tradition. I was doing some research on the No Child Left Behind Act, and something occurred to me. According the Left Behind series children will experience the Rapture for two reasons, they have not consciously sinned and they are ignorant of the world. The…

Invoking Spinoza

Cornell West has a brave op-ed piece on the moral disaster that is the Middle East: As we witness another sad chapter in the Middle East — the loss of precious human beings, the presence of deep hatred and revenge, and the absence of Socratic questioning and empathy for all — the spirit of Spinoza haunts us. Where are the courageous thinkers who ask the hard questions that shatter our simplistic and sentimental frameworks of pure Israeli heroes and impure Arab villains (or vice versa) in the conflict? Is it possible for Jews to reject the ugly Israeli subjugation of…

Flip Mode

Okay, so I have stated my opposition to the war in Lebanon, but I also want to take another track. I watched with revulsion and anger as parents pulled their children from the rubble of the building hit in Qana. Later when watching the protests as a result of the bombing, it came to me that if the situation was reversed, and a Hizbollah rocket slammed into an Isreali building killing 60 people including women and children, there probably would have been rejoicing around the Arab world. Hizbollah is firing indiscriminately at cities across the border and it is only…