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Let's Talk About SexA candid debate on today's "hook-up culture."

Compiled by Adam Christian
Posted Friday, Feb. 23, 2007, at 12:00 AM ET

(Continued from page 5)

Dang. Looks like somebody forgot to tell us that you can create something in a vacuum, namely, an insurgency. If only we'd seen this coming 4 years ago. Who would've thought?

We don't have to choose sides. Let's just let them blow each other up. Clearly American G.I.'s have left center stage as the targets of choice. So we just gradually sneak out. It's like when you're at a party and you start a conversation, and the conversation gets a little heated and more and more guests join in and start to disagree dramatically. Pretty soon lines are demarcated and sides chosen and nobody even remembers who started the conversation in the first place because they're too busy arguing about the conversation itself. And that's when you slip out the back door through the kitchen (after having grabbed a six-pack out of the fridge on you're way out, of course).

Let's do that. Let's slip out the back door through Kuwait (after having grabbed a six-pack of barrels of oil).

Have you already arrived at the Big Idea? If so, there's another party going on in the Libby Dispatches. All comers welcome. GA … 3:35am PST

Monday, Jan. 29, 2007

A darkness has descended upon David Plotz's superb series, "Blogging the Bible." In his latest entry, Plotz confesses that the prophet Jeremiah "is not the jolliest way to spend an afternoon." He goes on to explain why:

I finally recognized why Jeremiah bugs me so much. He's a Quisling, a Tokyo Rose! Jeremiah feels no loyalty to his land or his people—he's so traitorous that he's prodding them to surrender to their mortal enemy! [...]
The lesson in his betrayal of his country is this: All our quotidian bonds—to family, nation, and tribe—are nothing compared with our connection with God. But this doesn't comfort me! I am not strong enough in my faith to set aside family and country for God. And I don't want to be. Jeremiah is a righteous prophet, but I can't help feeling that he's also a terrible traitor.

There aren't many criticisms of this interpretation among the sensitive and erudite readers of our Blogging the Bible Fray. This is, after all, the prophet appointed to wage a one-man war against his native land:

I have made thee this day a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee.

HLS2003 is sharply crtitical of Plotz's ambivalence towards Jeremiah's central message:

I'll give credit where it's due -- Plotz flat-out admits that his faith is weak-to-nonexistent, that he has placed other gods ahead of God, that he does not trust God, that he wants the benefits of God without the obedience, etc. In short, all the same sins that Plotz has, in the past, recognized that the ancient Israelites had committed for centuries. Good for him on the honesty there.

But then he blows his honesty points by engaging in a curious form of doublethink. He accuses God of being unjust for punishing Israel (and, by extension, himself) even though he has just admitted that he (and they) have committed all the sins that God told them not to commit, breaking the covenant non-stop. If you acknowledge that you (and Israel) are covenant-breakers, then how can you simultaneously consider it injustice to have the benefits of the covenant revoked? It's like a murderer who (1) acknowledges that murder is wrong, and (2) acknowledges he committed the murder, but then simultaneously complains that it's not fair to put him in jail.

Sometimes Plotz's alleged confusion in his blog entries raises hard questions. I can't see how his doublethink here does. He admits he is unfaithful, but wants the benefits of faithfulness. He admits the Israelites broke the covenant, but wants them to retain the benefits of the covenant. That doesn't sound like confusion or justified doubt; it sounds like self-deception, whining, and an adolescent feeling of ultimate entitlement.

For MarkEHaag this spiritual conflict has contemporary political dimensions: