James O'Fee's Diary

2005-06-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

On the Staten Island Ferry

2005-06-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

On the Staten Island Ferry, New York

SPIRITUAL TOPICS – AND OTHERS (1)

2005-05-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

SPIRITUAL TOPICS – AND OTHERS (1)

For Sheldon and Donna Cotler, 26 May 2005

Thank you very much for saying that you enjoyed my visit. I, too, enjoyed myself thoroughly. God willing, I’ll get back to New York City sometime – a vibrant and exciting city.

BOOKS

Books don’t cost very much – and even less in the US – so the books you mention didn’t cost me a lot. Please think nothing of the cost. But I’ll gladly give you a book list instead.

AGNOSTICS AND JEWS

I think we should make a distinction here. Time was when the Bible (and Shakespeare) was part of the education of every schoolboy & schoolgirl in this country. No more. Many children today grow up with no knowledge of the Bible and many live out their lives without a thought of spiritual matters.

Of course, Jews have always needed to know the ruling philosophy of the country in which they live as a minority, whether Roman, Greek, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever. Christianity and Islam are both missionary faiths, so I expect that Jews over the centuries need to teach their youth how to combat the dominant faiths.

With the Enlightenment, restrictions against Jews in Europe were steadily relaxed from before 1800, and the result was the appearance of ‘assimilated’ Jews, who have made a contribution to European civilisation out of all proportion to their numbers.

The girl that I met up with at Carnegie Hall (who is the room-mate of Phoebe of Redeemer Presbyterian) turned to be highly educated and we had a wonderful evening together. Her name is Jill.

Jill has worked in Vienna and speaks beautiful, pure German without a Viennese accent (at least, that was my impression). Jill works in the Arts somehow, but she has volunteered as well to help with a German-speaking Museum, which is located on Museum Mile. They are having a major exhibition of 20th century artists. I asked her how many Jews were included, and she replied, none.

That shocked me, in view of the enormous contribution made my Jews to chess and all other areas of intellectual life. Finally I have cracked it – the third Commandment!

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them……

Exodus 20:4, New International Version.

In the Authorised King James version, this is translated as an injunction not to make any ‘graven image’.

This must be enough to explain a Jewish deficit in the plastic arts, in which you, Sheldon, are a luminous exception!

THE TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY

The Christian New Testament was written by men who experienced persecution, as Christians, as a living reality by the various authorities of the day. They had no conception that one day Christians would form a majority in many states, where the self-styled ‘Christian’ authorities would be in a position to do some persecuting on their own account.

In my opinion, it is very difficult to derive what a ‘Christian’ state would be like, since any state that applied Jesus’s commands strictly – turning the other cheek, forgiving 70 times 7, and so on – would not long survive. And most modern Christians would accept that many of the practices of many self-styled ‘Christian’ states have been distinctly unchristian, and practices towards the Jews often very much so.

I would not include the Nazi state among these ‘Christian’ states. Nazism was an atheist and pagan doctrine. Many Christians protested heroically against the Nazis, among them DIETRICH BONHOFFER, whose PRISON LETTERS, for example, are very much worth reading. Hitler and all the other top Nazis were atheists, the German Nation and the Aryan race was their ‘idol’ – where they were not merely political opportunists.

The Nazi grudge against the Jews was not as ‘God-killers’, but rather as blood-sucking usurers and capitalists, and (however paradoxically) also as promoters of Bolshevism. Of course, they drew as well on the centuries-old ‘Christian’ zenophobia.

It is clear that after victory in the Second World War, Hitler would have abolished Christianity and all other faiths that competed with Nazism, in favour of worship of the Volk.

James O’Fee
26 May 2005

James O'Fee's Diary Tuesday 24th May

2005-05-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY 24 MAY

George Szirtes places his diary each day on his website and this impresses me greatly – see http://www.georgeszirtes.co.uk/

So I am starting an account of my days. One day, God willing, I shall place it on my own web site.

After my daily devotions on Tuesday 24 May, I signed up as a member on www.itsyourturn.com where I have started play in a 4-person chess tournament. At 7.45 a.m. I received a phone call. ‘Who can this be?’, I thought, narrowing the field of possibilities down considerably. It was PHILIP LEBECHI phoning from Nigeria. He told me that he had an appointment on 8 June in London. ‘Do you need money?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’ Philip replied. Then the phone went dead.

I met Philip last month in Heathrow Airport while returning from New York. Philip was blind in one eye. He told me that he had been blind for 19 years, but had now had his eyesight restored in one eye by private medical treatment in London. Philip told me that he hoped and prayed that sight might be restored in his other eye. I promised that I would do what I can to help Philip, including raising money if that were necessary.

Philip told me that he had become a Christian while still blind, discovered that he had a gift for preaching, had become an evangelist and had founded 3 congregations in the Church of Christ in Nigeria. He gave me copies of various documents and the contact details of STEPHEN EUSELL, a Church of Christ pastor in London, who had helped him.

Later in the day I received an email from Philip, confirming his appointment in London for 8 June and telling me that he needed £1,000 for the flight from Nigeria to London. But also an email from Stephen Eusell telling me that his congregation had raised £8,000 for Philip but, basically, telling me not to trust Philip. (Stephen Eusell had transmitted a similar message to me some days earlier by telephone.)

I drove to Raglan Road for 9.15 am where I discussed with Helen private matters including the future of our son, Stewart, and of Raglan Road.

Then Helen drove me to Belfast, dropping me off at St Mark’s, Dundela, where I met up with TONY WILSON and a group of Americans that he was guiding around St Mark’s. I have been out of the mainstream of C.S. Lewis affairs since the planned dissolution of the Centenary Group in 1998. Tony tells me, however, that the release of the Narnia film in December is likely to lead to raised interest, and I promised Tony my help.

The group of 15 students and a University lecturer, Dr RICHARD HILL, were from a Christian university in San Diego, California. They had been pursuing a course in British Literature and were visiting Southern and Northern Ireland, Scotland and England as part of their course.

After showing them St Mark’s, Tony took them in their coach to the C.S. Lewis sculpture at the Holywood Arches (erected in 1998 for the Centenary) and then on to LITTLE LEA (C.S. Lewis’s childhood home in East Belfast). Little Lea now has new owners who are suspicious of having large groups of foreign tourists on their property. Tony had negotiated an arrangement whereby we would stick strictly to the driveway.

We took many photographs at Little Lea and there by mistake I left my bag of books – I had guessed that I might have time to myself. The books in the bag were CONVERSATIONS IN BOLZANO, by Sandor Márai, translated into English by George Szirtes; THE LIFE, by J. John and Chris Wally; and 2 C.S. Lewis brochures.

I am halfway through THE LIFE – a simple biography of Jesus by J. John whom I heard speak in Bangor Elim Church on Monday evening – and two-thirds through CONVERSATIONS IN BOLZANO. A novel, the main character is Casanova. It has reached a very interesting stage where Casanova has met the Duke of Parma, with whom he fought a duel over a woman years before when Parma left a scar over Casanova’s heart. Neither gentleman is a ‘gentleman’, and Parma, who is filthy rich, has an amazing proposition for Casanova. George Szirtes has translated this novel into beautiful, elegant English. That evening I phoned a relation by marriage who lives next door to Little Lea. He agreed to pick the books up and hold them for me.

It turned out that the Group intended to visit Bangor. I needed a lift there anyway and offered to guide them. We went to the Heritage Centre (founded by my mother) and I took them round the little museum. Then we had lunch in the little restaurant, where I had a chance to speak to some of them.

Dr Hill had scouted out the territory a few years before and this was his third visit. Most of the students were from smaller denominations – such as ‘Foursquare’, of which I had never heard before – which they regarded as more evangelical than traditional denominations such as Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist. In the USA, they told me, these are seen as corrupted by Liberal Theology.

After lunch, I took them down to the sea to view the marina, taking more photos, and I showed them the chessboard by the McKee Clock which was my contribution to Bangor’s seafront. We visited the Tourist Information Centre and a short drive round the coast. Here we saw SUSAN WILLIAMS driving in her car. She recognised and waved at me, where I was having my first experience of guiding a group in a coach, using a microphone. Then the group dropped me off in the centre of Bangor and returned to Belfast.

That afternoon I found on my computer an email, in Italian, from József Freier (József and I are currently corresponding in Italian, rather than the familiar German). This gave me details of the planned trip from Hungary to Transylvania in August. The dates are 6-16 August. Later that month József will take a group to Poland and, later still, his wife to see AIDA in Verona.

Another email was from Linda Kirkpatrick who was seeking new means of promoting COMPASSION UK, the Christian charity with which I am associated. And Linda phoned me later as well.

Linda’s phone call detained me somewhat from my planned attendance at a lecture given by the CHURCH OF CHRIST in Bangor. There was a muddle over the venue of the lecture, but finally I arrived. The topic was THE RELEVANCE OF SAVING FAITH and it was one of a series of 4.

Several men introduced themselves. The main speaker, and another gentleman, had accents of the Deep South (US), which conjured up images in my mind of televangelists, Garner Ted Armstrong (whom Bobby Fischer followed for many years) and so on. Another gentleman had an accent that was an odd mixture of Southern US and Ulster.

Furthermore, one of the hymns that we sung seemed to refer directly to ‘The Rapture’ which I have been discussing with SHELDON COTLER, my friend who entertained me to dinner in New York. Sheldon is a liberal agnostic and his background is Jewish–

When clothed in His brightness, transported I rise;
To meet Him in clouds of the sky,
His perfect salvation, His wonderful love
I’ll shout with the millions on high.

‘Sheldon would love this!’ I thought.

There were 37 at the meeting. And I found the theology pretty sound, but there was an emphasis that one could not pick and choose in the Bible, and mention of baptism as an essential part of saving faith.

Over tea later I talked of my interest in the Church of Christ with one of the Americans, Texans it turned out, from Fort Worth. They came from a congregation of 250. They supported the Bangor fellowship, which had been founded in 2000 by a man who had been born in Northern Ireland but grown up in Texas.

Back in my flat I made my moves in the Internet chess tournament and went to bed.

Writing this diary entry has taken me nearly 2 hours, an inordinate length of time for what was nonetheless an interesting and blessed day.

James O’Fee
25 May 2005