Scoffers

Of all the helping professions, police work seems the most suited to a dark, sardonic disposition often referred to as gallows humor. It’s the byproduct of being subject to crime, degradation, and violence on a day-to-day basis. Still, the case of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer should help officers reflect on the consequences of their words, especially when they’re caught on camera.

Auderer’s bodycam footage recorded him joking with another officer while discussing the death of a pedestrian. SPD officer Kevin Dave had been driving over 70 miles per hour in his police vehicle while responding to an overdose call when his car struck and killed 26-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk. Auderer had been summoned to evaluate whether Dave had been impaired at the time of the accident. Auderer was recorded saying that the city should “just write a check,” and implied that eleven thousand dollars would suffice, because, “she was 26, anyway … she had limited value.”

Auderer later wrote in a statement to the city’s Office of Police Accountability, "I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers. I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy."

Auderer admitted that anyone listening to his side of the conversation alone "would rightfully believe I was being insensitive to the loss of human life." The comment was "not made with malice or a hard heart," he said, but "quite the opposite." Still, police watchdog groups were not satisfied with the explanation, and several demanded Auderer be suspended without pay.

At the time of her death, Kandula was a student enrolled in the information systems program at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. After her death, her uncle Ashok Mandula arranged to send her body to her mother in India. Mandula said, "The family has nothing to say. Except I wonder if these men's daughters or granddaughters have value. A life is a life."

A new worship center in the former East Berlin represents the ultimate secular view of religion. It also reflects the kind of cultural future the American left envisions for the US.

The House of One, to be built on the foundation of a demolished church, will enable Christians, Jews, and Muslims to worship under one roof. Each faith will have its own sanctuary surrounding a central hall that will serve as a place of public encounter. Contractors will lay the foundation stone in May, 2021, and construction is expected to take four years.

Roland Stolte, a theologian involved in the project said, “East Berlin is a very secular place. Religious institutions have to find new language and ways to be relevant, and to make connections.” In other words, religion must conform to, not challenge, the secular ethos.

The House of One embodies the secular view of religion as secondary, if not destructive, to human identity and progress. The divinities being worshiped are not Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah but diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion.

Maureen Mullarkey, writing from a Catholic perspective, believes the Holy See has fallen into that trap. “This is politics. It is not testimony to those matters of personal sin and redemption at the core of the Church’s reason for being. … The Church’s pope (Francis) would put a spiritual face on the aims of secular politics.”

Replacing transcendent values with political ones often brings despotism. Americans see that now in the left’s hypersensitive tyranny, embodied by cancel culture, and hostility toward conservative religious ethics. East Berliners saw it for 45 years under communist domination.

In Berlin today, the House of One also reflects capitulation to the postmodern zeitgeist (spirit of the time). As one theologian said, “This is not a club for monotheistic religions—we want others to join us.”

In his book, author Mark Clark wrote:

If you want to understand the dogma of religious pluralism, consider a scene from the comedy movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. If you haven't seen it, Ricky is a professional race car driver whose car crashes during a race. Thinking he's on fire, he runs around the track crying out, "Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jewish God! Help me, Allah! Help me, Tom Cruise! Use your witchcraft on me to get the fire off of me! Help me, Oprah Winfrey!"

In other words, when it comes to god, you'd best hedge your bets. One god doesn't necessarily exclude the other gods, so don't limit yourself to just one when you can believe in all of them at once! This concept has its roots in Hindu and eastern philosophy, and has largely been adopted in Western culture. It can be found in several popular versions:

I am absolutely against any religion that says one faith is Superior to another. I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

My position is that all great religions are fundamentally equal. -Mahatma Gandhi

One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there's only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to God. -Oprah Winfrey

Pluralism’s basic premise is that all religions are true, or at least partially true; and have value. And in our culture, it is considered narrow-minded and judgmental to believe anything else. So how do we respond to the theology of Ricky Bobby?

What could a team of medical doctors possibly learn about practicing medicine from a Formula One racing team? If the doctors remain teachable, maybe they could learn a lot. That's what happened at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After completing a twelve-hour emergency transplant, the head doctor watched a Formula One race. As a car pulled into the pit, he noted that the crew changed the tires, filled it with fuel, cleared the air intakes, and sent it off in seven seconds.

It struck him that it often took thirty minutes for his team of doctors and nurses to untangle and unplug all the wires and tubes and transfer a patient from surgery to ICU. He wondered if a racing team could teach a hospital how to run an emergency room.

Imagine the pushback from the trained medical staff when the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams showed up to advise them on how to improve their emergency services. After all, what did they know about surgery or patient care? Nothing. But what did they know about speeding up complex processes? Everything.

As a result, after visiting with the Formula One racing team, the hospital staff initiated major changes, including better training, new procedures, a step-by-step checklist covering each stage of the handover, and a diagram so that everyone knew their exact physical position as well as their precise task. It almost halved handover errors.

The hospital team's problems were solved by a group of people who knew nothing about the practice of emergency room medicine. But the Formula One team's expertise allowed them to easily spot what the hospital tribe had missed. And the medical team had the humility and teachability to learn from the outsiders.

Speaking to the Knights of Columbus Council in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said: "God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools… and he has not been disappointed…. If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."

Flippancy is the best [kind of joke] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. ...

If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armourplating against the Enemy [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.

-- Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE

While religious pluralism may be a novel experience for us, it is putting us in touch with the world that surrounded the biblical authors. The pluralism and the paganism of Our Time were the common experience of the prophets and apostles. In Mesopotamia, there were thousands of gods and goddesses, many of which were known to the Israelites--indeed, sometimes known too well. ... Nothing, therefore, could be more remarkable than to hear the contention, even from those within the Church, that the existence of religious pluralism today makes belief in the uniqueness of Christianity quite impossible. Had this been the necessary consequence of encountering a multitude of other religions, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul would have given up biblical faith long before it became fashionable ... to do so.