5-4

5-4

When Brett Kavanaugh was added to the US Supreme Court, “Conservatives” got control of the Court. When Amy Coney Barrett was added the Court went 6-3. Some hope that the US Supreme Court will rule in their favor. We shall see.

 

5-4

was also another significant margin of votes for me. I have been obsessing lately about news related to the US Presidential election. I was very, very afraid that there would be violence particularly on the Saturday after the election after news media had called the election. That feeling wasn’t lessened much when I saw Rick Santorum say that he thought what the President was tweeting was dangerous. Santorum in no liberal. He is a Republican of sure pedigree.

 

Why I asked myself was I so worried about violence starting in the US following this election? Was it just news media winding me up?

 

As I was preparing my class today, the Ethics of War, Peace and Peacemaking to speak about my experiences in Yugoslavia, I realized why I was so upset and worried about the possibility of violence in the US following the election: I’ve been there and done that.

 

As a naïve and ardent young missionary, I took my family to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1986. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s Yugoslavia had been the picture poster child of Communism. The Adriatic coast brought movie stars to vacation there. The Winter Olympics had taken place in Sarajevo in 1984. Belgrade is a lovely town on the Danube River. Who could imagine the violence and destruction that would soon descend on Yugoslavia? But a young Serbian Communist politician called Slobodan Milosevic wanted to replace Josip Broz Tito who had been the leader of Yugoslavia after World War II.

There were changes which Milosevic wanted to make that would make him the “king” in Yugoslavia. The numbers were 5-4.

 

Tito had devised a very, as some say, “torturous” system of government in Yugoslavia. Each of the six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia had a seat in the Presidium, the highest ruling body. The leadership of the Presidium rotated through the republic leaders to try to keep a balance.

 

There was a large number of Serbs in Yugoslavia. They were about a third of the population and the largest group. The Serbian king had ruled Yugoslavia before the World War II Allies had replaced him with Tito. The Serbs wanted power.

 

Tito kept the Serbs from power by a unique system: 5-4. Each republic has a vote on the Presidium. So, there were six votes. However, to control the Serbs Tito divided Serbia into three parts: Vojvodina (in the north), Serbia proper and Kosovo (in the south). Vojvodina and Kosovo were given autonomous status within Serbia. Vojvodina is a very ethnically mixed area with Serbs, Slovaks, Czechs, Romanians and Hungarians. Kosovo, though the home and birthplace of the Serbian people, was 90% Albanian. Each autonomous region had their own courts, government and executive branch. Each of the autonomous regions had a vote on the Presidium. So, the result was 6-3: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Macedonia, Vojvodina & Kosovo vs Serbia, Montenegro, and the Army which had a vote.

However, Slobodan Milosevic and his forces changed the Serbian Republic’s Constitution taking autonomous status away from Kosovo and Vojvodina. Thus, Serbia had now 5-4: Serbia (with Vojvodina & Kosovo), Montenegro & the Army vs Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Hercegovina and Macedonia.

 

When Serbia manage to pass this change and gain a 5-4 advantage in the Presidium, in effect control of the country, first Slovenia and then Croatia seceded from the Union of Federated Socialist  Republics of Yugoslavia. The real war started with the secession of Bosnia & Hercegovina. Bosnia & Hercegovina was about 1/3 Serb. The Serbs in Serbia proper were not about to allow the Bosnian government to control those people. The war, which the West calls the “Bosnian War,” started in earnest. To the Serbs it was always a “Civil” War since the three republics seceded (though the Serbs changing the Constitution precipitated the war).

 

5-4

So, 5-4 and more 6-3 frightens me. People feel justified. This is the way the system works. The President was able put three Justices on the Supreme Court. Now he should be able to expect support for his court cases.

 

Will “We the People” end because of 5-4 or 6-3? There may not be violence in the US on the scale of former Yugoslavia and everyone in the US thinks they are far above that sort of war. But are we? Many see their candidate as God’s choice. Many see the other side as godless or religious maniacs. Yet, the country is almost literally divided in half in terms of the popular vote. We are a nation divided. E pluribus plures. “From the many, many.”

 

I hope that the US does not descend to the madness of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. However, I have seen how populism, nationalism and religious fanaticism can end. Compromise is the essence of democracy. If we cannot get past our demonizing of the other side and start to work together, we are doomed. Sooner or later our country will descend into violence or dictatorship. We must work together. We must live together. We must care for each other.

 

Three keys of a speech

 

When I was taking a preaching course or perhaps it was a pastoral duties course in seminary, my professor said that there were three elements of rhetoric or speech: pathos, ethos and logos.

 

Pathos means, in effect, emotion or passion. If a speaker does not touch the emotions of his or her audience, then he or she will likely not be persuasive. Some preachers and speakers can “play the audience like an organ,” my professor said. They know how to play on emotions. Other speakers, who have something to say, may fail to convince because they do not move peoples’ passions.

Ethos means that a speaker is a moral person or has moral authority to speak. If a person has the right message, but is perceived as having no character, then he or she probably won’t be convincing. On the other hand, if the speaker has a long track record of speaking truthfully, keeping his or her word, and is known to be a morally good and consistent person, then his or her message is more likely to be received and be persuasive.

 

Logos means a message. For a speaker to communicate something, the speaker has to have something to say, a message, a word. Often it seems some speakers are great with pathos, they know how to persuade an audience, even if their message might be lacking. At other times those with ethos, moral authority, may be mistaken and advance a message that is false or faulty. In effect they may abuse their moral high ground to advance a questionable message.

 

Evangelical preachers tend to focus on logos, the word, or message. Is our exegesis, our biblical interpretation right? Some preachers, however, have been consummate “organ players” and even though they had fantastic “falls from grace” (committed obvious and egregious sins), however, they continued to be allowed to preach by their audiences. Some preachers, as I just mentioned, have lost their moral authority due to sinful behavior. However, people follow them because at least for a while the message seems sound.

 

We Evangelicals need to focus on ethos. We have always been strong on logos. I am proud that I have learned biblical Greek and Hebrew and that I went to one of the best Evangelical seminaries in America. However, I am appalled when I see well-known preachers deliberately sin over a long period of time and be “forgiven,” as if their sins made no difference to being qualified to preach the Bible.

I’m also afraid that Evangelicals have become showmen or show women. It’s easy, if you are a persuasive speaker, to move peoples’ passions. It is harder to persuade them to live godly lives. The scriptures warn that in the end times (the last days) people will gather to themselves preachers who will “tickle their itching ears.” 2 Timothy 4:3 

 

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

 

This means that rather than ask preachers to speak God’s truth to them in an uncompromising way, people will seek preachers that make them feel good and give them esoteric knowledge, rather than provoke them to lively godly lives.

 

I could tell many stories and it is not my purpose to bash anyone in particular, however, I know of one extremely well-known preacher who committed adultery and left his wife. He tried to force his son to side with him and not his mother. The son declined.

 

I don’t know all of the circumstances of this case, but it was pretty clear. I know that at times marriages are in bad shape and some don’t survive, but when you have been preaching faithful marital monogamy for decades and then take a “trophy wife,” there’s a fundamental problem with your ethos.

I used to think that logos was the essential element to good preaching. Who can argue with a sound exposition of the World of God? (At least among Evangelicals). But it is too easy to say the right words, to sign the doctrinal statement and harder to maintain ones’ spiritual life and integrity.

 

We need logos to have a sound message. We need pathos to be able to persuade people to follow the Truth. But without ethos we have nothing to say that anyone will hear.