Dennis Prager came to Phoenix to share an evening with a few hundred of us, and here are some notes:
Again I was impressed with his genuine warmth and thoughtfulness. He is real. The theme, which sort of became crystallized in the course of the talk, was "What brought me to where I am today," or some such thing. He told a few amusing anecdotes--how his camp counselor from when he was 11 years old listens to him on the radio and emailed him the other day--Dennis reads his emails himself--and recalled that Dennis--at age 11 mind you--would read The New York Times (admitting now how it's just not right for an 11 year old to be doing), and what a slob he was (more on that in a bit). He spoke of the development of his own faith, and his upcoming book on Judeo-Christian Values (you can get a taste from my weekly posts of his articles on the
Blog and in his article archive.
A few nuggets of wisdom:
- "Boise, Idaho is more cosmopolitan than New York City." Growing up as an Orthodox Jew in NYC, he never met a Christian (he liked the idea of Christianity as a child because "all you had to do to go to heaven was believe in Jesus, and not have to follow all the laws in the Torah"). As a youth, he didn't even meet a Reform Jew. New York is largely a conglomeration of ethnic neighborhoods, so many people can go through life and never meet someone outside of his ethnic group.
- Religious "belief is not what matters: values matter. They are separate things." I don't quite agree with the statement at face value, as my values come from my religious beliefs. But it helps to explain something that has baffled me. My conservative social values come from my Orthodox Christian faith, but there are some within my faith that fall along the liberal values line, a la Jim Wallis and his ideas in his book, God's Politics, which is basically an apologetic for the Left. Prager notes how he, as a practicing Jew, has much more in common with the Evangelical Christians who employ him than he does with liberal Jews. He said that he cannot judge the validity of any given religion; he can only judge the actions of practitioners of a religion. His statement is not as heretical as it seems. You will know a tree by its fruits.
- He reiterated how he is a JFK Democrat, and suggested sending John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address to college students to see if they could guess if it was a Republican or Democratic president who gave it. His point is how the values of liberals of JFK's day are the values of conservatives today. Conservatives tend to vote those [traditional] values, while liberals tend to vote their economic values [social values from an economic reference point] Thus, they couldn't understand how people in Kansas, for instance, voted against their economic interests by voting for Bush.
- The American Founding Fathers were very attuned to the Jewish roots of their Christianity, unlike the Christianity of Europe which suppressed its Jewish roots. Hebrew was in Harvard's core curriculum requirements until about the year 1800, the Yale University Shield depicts a Bible with Hebrew words they translate as "light" and "truth," and Thomas Jefferson saw the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt as a national symbol. Thus the values of the Founding Fathers were truly Judeo-Christian.
- Referencing a disagreement he had with his wife (I forget the context now) he pondered, "If a man is alone in the woods, is he still wrong?" <laughter, women poking their husbands was observed>
I got to ask a "two-part" question, which really was two different questions (I honed those skills in seminary, when there would be speakers and chances were you only got one question, so I would nest a couple into "one," partly to get them in and also to have a little fun at the expense of those who did ask ridiculously complex, multi-part questions). So I asked, on behalf of a "friend" how he learned to stop being a slob. He said, "How do you know I have?" [laughter]. But apparently something snapped a couple of years ago where he just started to clear his office of all the clutter--I'm waiting for that "snap" to happen... He also clarified how he would be messy, but clean (a distinction I have maintained as well).
The second "part" was what he thought of my idea of "Relative Absolutes," in which one can maintain the exclusive claims of his own religion, yet recognize at the same time how God is infinitely greater than what He has revealed to us. He liked it. And it still seems to me that such a perspective allows one to completely affirm the Gospel, while recognizing that God can reveal other truths to other people. So, as regards reincarnation, for example, I can say resolutely that is not true. Each person is a unity of body, mind, and spirit, and is thus unique. However, as I like to say, "God is God, and He can do whatever the hell He wants!" Yet I do not believe that reincarnation might be true. It isn't. But God may make it true for Buddhists, let's say, if He wants to. I can't judge that, at the same time, it does not diminish the Christian imperative to spread the Gospel, because that's what God has commanded us to do.
When the show ended, he took out his minicam and panned the audience slowly. It's sort of a video journal. After the show, I approached him with a "third" part to my question. He had said earlier, somewhat in a tongue-and-cheek context, that as a Jew, he only need concern himself with his actions, not his thoughts, and it seemed to him that a lot of Christians shoulder a lot of guilt over sinful thoughts, so being a Jew was much easier. I asked him about the Tenth Commandment (not to covet). And he clarified that in that particular provision that is true, but did not apply to thoughts in general. I linked that to Jeremiah 31:32-34, and whether that implied an accountability for thoughts, recognizing that Christians interpret that as a Messianic prophesy. He didn't have an answer, and he was direct and honest about that. I wasn't trying to needle him; I just learn more about his perspective. I would have loved to have explored it more with him, but that simply wasn't possible as others were waiting their turn.
So someday, hopefully in the very distant future, when he is in Jewish heaven and I am in Christian heaven, God willing, perhaps we can continue that conversation.