Thoughts on faith

What is faith? It's ultimately a relationship between two people. Where a relationship exists, faith exists. Even strained relationships presuppose some type of connection, even if it's less than ideal.

Jesus lifts up the faith of a child as a model. What does that faith look like?

I doubt there are many people, especially parents, who would doubt the reality that young children have faith in their parents. From infancy to toddler years that faith is nearly absolute. It's utter and complete dependence and reliance on the parent. They believe that the parent will always be there for them. This belief isn't based on any cognitive assertion or rational argument, it's part of the fiber of their very being.

As the child grows into the pre-school years that faith matures. They begin to assert their own ideas that may at times be totally at odds with the parents'. But even at times of flagrant disobedience, the child is still ultimately faithful to the parent. They reside in the parents' home, and they assert their own ideas only because they unconscientiously believe that no matter what happens they won't be thrown out on the street. They assert themselves, but only because they ultimately believe that their parents will keep them safe and keep up their end of the relationship.

As a child gets older, more and more of their thoughts and beliefs about the world come from sources other than their parents. The child must weigh these new worldviews in light of their currently-held view which largely came from their parents (or the media the parents encouraged the child to watch).

It is the hope of every good parent that as their child matures the child will retain the set of beliefs they were taught as a child. Doing so, in effect, is affirming the primary position of the child's parent as the wise and correct teacher of the ways things are.

It is obviously, very sad if a child leaves their parents' worldview and adopts another by, say, dating someone whose values run contrary to the values taught by the parents. The child's relationship with their parent is broken. But even though trust is broken, it is not accurate to say that the entire relationship is lost. The parent is still active in the relationship, seeking reconciliation, praying for change, seeking the betterment of the child.

Every good parent yearns the opposite to happen. They hope that when their child comes of age that they will not only continue to walk in the footsteps of the parents, but that the child will do so as an act of conscience free will and not simply like they did as an infant, trust merely because it was a innate impulse.

When that day comes it is glorious. It welcomes a new dawning of the relationship between parent and child. With the addition of free will into the relationship, new possibilities open up as the talents and interests of the parent and child can now interact in new and exciting ways as they treat each others in some respect as peers and not merely as parent and child.

This is wonderful, and there is a temptation to say, "there is a new relationship between us." But to say that is to inaccurately describe reality. Although the relationship looks very different, it is not an entirely new relationship, as though it were preceded by no relationship at all. The child's faith and trust in their parent looks entirely new, but it's not, its just more mature.

In this ideal scenario, the child had continuous faith in their parent, it just looked different at different points in the child's life. It's easy to celebrate the later stages because unlike earlier stages the child has used their free will to become more of an active participant in the relationship, but the earlier parts of the relationship are just important, if not more so. To elevate this later portion of the relationship as the only true part of the relationship is to glorify human free will and to slap the face of a parent who faithfully nurtured their child through the means of a relationship that spanned infancy to adulthood.

Afterthoughts--

Those earlier days when the child trusted the parent blindly allowed for a foundation to be built that the child could later stand on. As an adopted child who has recently found their birthparent will tell you, it may be exciting to discover your birthparent, but it will take years to have as much faith in them as they do of their adopted parents, a process prolonged by the fact that it is happening at a time when the child can think critically about a parent's intentions, whereas had the relationship began in childhood the child would have trusted them implicitly.

Obviously, God wants us to see a connection between the nature of our relationship to our parents and our Father Above.

Modern American Evangelism

The problem with traditional approaches to evangelism is that most Americans do not find it hard to believe that God loves someone like them. The typical Americans has internalized the God is love concept as well, if not better than the typical evangelical Christian.

Therefore, if a Christian approaches a non-Christian and says that God is going to condemn them to hell if they don’t accept Jesus, what the non-Christian is going to hear them saying is “God is not as loving and forgiving as you think. Christians believe that God is not all-forgiving love, but rather a wrathful God.” The non-Christian will immediately reject this message as categorically untrue, since they know the truth: God personally takes Love as His primary identity, not wrath.

If the conversation continues the evangelical will continue to convict the non-Christian of their sins because if they don’t God will condemn them to hell. If the Christian is successful in their arguing and the non-Christian converts, the new Christian’s new view of God will be one who’s primary concern is the holiness of people. Therefore, this new Christian, like the Christian who converted them, will be more concern about being holy and legalistic than being loving and kind.

Instead, the Christian evangelizing to the typical American should not focus on God’s wrath, but rather God’s love. Instead of trying to call the non-Christian’s mind to their sin, they should call attention to their pain.

Pain and stress is the ache in our modern lives that doesn’t jive with our notion that God is love. The Christian message in modern times shouldn’t primarily be “If you don’t believe, you’re going to hell after you die,” but rather “If you don’t follow Jesus, you’re going to miss out on the fullness of the loving God’s mercy and compassion.” In short, instead of convincing people that “God is wrath” we should be convincing them that “God is even more loving than you think.”

Christians believe that the answer to pain is found in the life and death of Jesus. Jesus died in an act of God’s love so that we may have life and have it abundantly. Not just so we can go to heaven, but that we can be transformed into new creations where the pain and suffering we and those around us experience is confronted and undone through acts of sacrifice and forgiveness.

So instead of using scare tactics which innately turn the evangelist into a judgmental dogmatic, we should be meeting people where they’re at and share with them a message of hope and love that, if accepted, can offer the non-Christian a life of meaning and purpose.

Einstein's Description of Theologians?

Been reading Walter Isaacson’s Einstein bio. It’s awesome. This morning read this thought-provoking quote from Einstein and couldn’t help but think that this idea holds the key to solve the disconnect between science and religion in popular thought.

"Some scientific theories depend primarily on induction: analyzing a lot of experimental findings and then finding theories that explain the empirical patterns. Others depend more on deduction: starting with elegant principles and postulates that are embraced as holy and then deducting the consequences from them. All scientists blend both approaches to differing degrees. Einstein had a good feel for experimental findings, and he used this knowledge to find certain fixed points with which he could construct a theory. But his emphasis was primarily on the deductive approach... ‘The simplest picture one can form about the creation of an empirical science is along the lines of an inductive method. Individual facts are selected and grouped together so that the laws that connect them become apparent. However, the big advances in scientific knowledge originated in this way only to a small degree. The truly great advances in our understanding of nature originated in a way almost diametrically opposed to induction. The intuitive grasp of the essentials of a large complex of facts leads the scientist to the postulation of hypothetical basic laws. From these laws, he derives his conclusions.’” (Isaacson, Einstein, p.117/118)

"’The deeper we penetrate and the more extensive our theories become,’ [Einstein] would declare toward the end of his life, ‘the less empirical knowledge is needed to determine these theories.’" (p. 118)

Most often people dismiss religion as being relative and therefore not authoritative because it is unverifiable, not testable. But theologians are attempting to do the same thing Einstein sought with his deductive thought experiments: move humanity great leaps forward in their understanding of creation. Theologians shouldn't ignore the evidence of life any more than Einstein was ignoring the experiments of scientists of his day (he wasn't). But experimentation is not the key to getting human beings to understand the universe, as Einstein said, deductive reasoning is. Einstein seems to stand as the preeminent example of a critical thinker who models how rational deductive reasoning should proceed.

C.S. Lewis used thought experiments too. The difference between someone like Lewis and someone like Einstein is not really in terms of process, but rather in terms of semantics. Theologians don't say they discover things about God's way, and the scientist doesn't say that they discover things about God's way. But in reality, they're both describing the exact same things. Both theologians and scientists who rely on Einstein's model are both using deductive reasoning to determine the reality of creation. If they're good at their job, neither is doing so to with disregard to the facts of the universe, but they are attempting to move human understanding ahead of where inductive science and everyday experience currently take us.

The Limits of Tolerance

There's a great article in the Wall Street Journal today by a Muslim theologian who is a former member of a terrorist cell. It's fascinating. You should really read the whole thing, but here's a good clip.

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.

Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."

All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.

Deep Thoughts from Senator Edwards

I know most will find this to be splitting hairs, but it's so true. Anyone who prays daily and/or is active in Christian thought does not refer to Jesus in the past tense...at least they wouldn't in this context.

FIRST THINGS: "Senator John Edwards has offered us a reflection that gives us a glimpse of his hidden theological depths: “I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.”

“WOULD be”? Would be as in “he would be, if he knew about it”? There is a very false note here. A Christian who prays naturally thinks of Christ as ever-present and all-knowing, not as a figure from the past who would doubtless have something interesting to say if he were still alive, or who would have definite opinions of certain matters were they called to his attention. On the other hand, at least Senator Edwards didn’t say that Jesus would be turning over in his grave."

Team of Rivals

In my meager estimation, Team of Rivals is an unparalleled work of biography. It's easy to write powerful work when your subject is Lincoln, but Goodwin has found an approach that not only gives great new insight into her subject, but also gives her potent writing a framework which can be at once both a forceful narrative and an intellectual stimulant. She achieves her focus on Lincoln's greatness by doing the counter-intuitive act of broadening her scope and interweaving Lincoln's biography with biographies of his contemporaries.

I must say, seeing Lincoln side by side with Seward, Chase, Stanton, and others--many of whom would be considered great men even if they weren't a part of Lincoln's cabinet--truly makes Lincoln's supremacy express itself, as Tolstoy points out "in his peculiar moral power and in his greatness of character." I've never been so inspired.

Of the many qualities that Lincoln exhibited, I must say his even handed critical thinking approach is the one I found to be most helpful. Largely because reading about it gave words to something I've tried to live out in my own life. He really had an impressive ability to cling to what he believed is true while expressing himself in a way that gave a chance to people on all sides and ideologies to appreciate or see the benefits of his propositions.

I've got Carwardine's Lincoln: Life of Purpose and Power from the library and am half way through it. I wasn't going to embark on more Lincoln so soon after Goodwin's long opus, but after being so moved by Goodwin's writing and then reading this review last week, I feel compelled to give a run at Carwardine. Carwardine's work is really impressive, and had I read it before reading Rivals, I probably would have put it along side of Guelzo's Redeemer President as the best a Lincoln bio could be. But Goodwin proves that one can't really claim to have probed the depths of a person's psyche unless they've explored the people around them.

This spring I watched the mockumentary CSA; it was after watching that mockumentary that I bumped Team of Rivals back towards the top of my reading list. I'm also glad I saw CSA (and read Confederates in the Attic) prior to reading this book since Goodwin is so forceful in the righteousness of Lincoln's convictions that I think if I were to read Confederates today I would probably be even more offended by southern sympathizers or find CSA's revisionism to be even harder to laugh at.

Finally, it was a great book to read to help get a firm grasp on the moral and economic principles that the Republican party was founded on. Carwardine's book delves more into the religious influences than Goodwin does, but even so, Goodwin's portrait of this powerful persona who essentially made the Republican party into a via political party that has survived almost 150 years since his election, is really helpful at a time like this. (unfortunately, it's helpful because I'm now able to clearly identify why some of the most prominent Republicans really have no philosophical right to use the same label Lincoln worked hard to forge.)

Westward Aggression

A friend pointed me to this excerpt from Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation. It was very interesting. In it, Kagan explores the aggression of the earliest American societies and attempts to frame American aggression in terms of a blend of survivalist instincts and religious/philosophical ideals. Kagan seems to subscribe to the idea that the fact that America was founded on the edge of a continent that was separated from "civilization" by months of water inherently shaped America in ways that prevented it from remaining British.

Back in grad school I was first introduced to the idea of America's frontier allowed/forced American society to form in ways fundamentally different than the way society functioned in the old world. It's really fascinated me ever since.

Kagan starts by (I believe, rightly) asserting that the prospect of free land forced the Puritan society to collapse. He's right on when he says, "This colonial America was characterized not by isolationism and utopianism, not by cities upon hills and covenants with God, but by aggressive expansionism, acquisitive materialism, and an overarching ideology of civilization that encouraged and justified both." Then the very next paragraph he details the Indian wars culminating with this statement, "continued expansion seemed to many a matter of survival, a defensive reaction to threats that lay just beyond the ever-expanding perimeter of their English civilization." Once again, I'm on the same page as Kagan.

But then in his "The Expansionist 'Mission'" section he makes an interesting logical move that I don't feel comfortable with. "There were other powerful motives as well, and more exalted justifications. The Anglo-American settlers pressed into territories claimed by others in the conviction that they were serving a higher purpose, that their expansion was the unfolding of an Anglo-Saxon destiny. They saw themselves as the vanguard of an English civilization that was leading humanity into the future."

From where does the justification for this sentiment come? He says the settlers saw their clearing of the wilderness as an "inherently noble task" even though early on in the chapter he rightfully attempted to convince his reader that those who went out into the wilderness were not Christians with higher ideals who attempted to maintain one foot in religion while placing the other foot on unplowed soil. What happened to the Kagan who wrote,

"Their rigid theocracy required control and obedience and self-restraint, but the expansive North American wilderness created freedom, dissent, independence, and the lust for land. The abundance of land and economic opportunities for men and women of all social stations diverted too many minds from godly to worldly pursuits. It undermined patriarchal hierarchy and shattered orthodoxy. Those who did not like the way the doctrines of Calvinism were construed and enforced in the Massachusetts Bay Colony had only to move up the Connecticut Valley. Within a dozen years after Winthrop’s arrival, Puritan divines were decrying their parishioners’ sinful desire for ever more “elbow-room” in their New World. 'Land! Land! hath been the Idol of many in New-England,' cried Increase Mather. 'They that profess themselves Christians, have foresaken Churches, and Ordinances, and all for land and elbow-room enough in the World.'”

It seems to me that Kagan felt the same pull that American and British politicians did when seeing their materialistic, land-grabbing constituents. Unlike the frontiersmen, politicians were educated and powerful men, and they were also, at least publicly, religious. Politicians were pressured to pander to both the urbanites who had established churches as the center of their communities and the frontier squatters who abandoned religious community for economic prosperity. I believe that it was under this pressure that they promoted the idea of nobly advancing our civilization westward. For armed with this rationale, they could remain palatable to the church-goer while sending armed troops to help secure the frontiersmen's ill-gotten land.

The poor rural family could care less about the betterment of society or their place in the larger social network. They wanted economic autonomy and were willing to forgo the benefits of religious community and the relative safety of the cities to obtain it.

No one killed an Indian because they believed they were of a higher culture and it was therefore their moral duty. In the heat of the moment, they killed Indians because if they didn't, the Indians would kill them. After the fighting passed, when facing inquisitors they may have come up with something akin to, "hey we're Christians and we're promoting a free society," but I have a hard time believing that those noble ideals were even close to the real motives.

I'm very interested to see where Kagan takes this in future chapters. If he ends up just doing the typical baptizing of American foreign policy by saying that higher motives drove our interaction with other nation-states, I think I'll end up disagreeing with him. I tend to believe the economic interests almost always get the ball rolling and religious justification only comes about after the fact when leaders have to justify their actions (or the actions of their constituents) to the masses.

I, however, would love to hear what Kagan has to say if returns to his basic notion about how greed is the primary motivator. He's got some good insights, and as long as he doesn't loose sight of his premise, he probably has a lot of good stuff to say.

Brave New World

Huxley writes about a world of ADD, Prozac, prenatal genetic testing, open sexual promiscuity, and rampant consumerism. This novel's warnings about our age would have been worth noting had Huxley wrote them last year, but Brave New World was originally published in 1932!

The narrative is solid, even if it starts slow, its parallels to contemporary life keep the reader engaged until the second act when the story becomes truly gripping. I cannot say enough about the power of this book. It's a Western classic and a must-read for contemporary Christians...heck, for anyone. Christianity Today listed it in it's Most Important books of the Twentieth Century, and it deserves to be.

Ecology of Peace

I must say, I really like Pope Benedict XVI. The stuff I've read that he's written is phenomenal. He's a socially-minded Christian who understands the danger of postmodernism better than any other writer I've encountered. His recent The Human Person, the Heart of Peace letter for World Peace Day is powerful and timely. The excerpt below focuses on the importance of environmental stewardship, but the letter also covers other threats to peace such as poverty and governments that don't allow true religious freedom.

"In his Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II wrote: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given to him, but man too is God's gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed.” By responding to this charge, entrusted to them by the Creator, men and women can join in bringing about a world of peace. Alongside the ecology of nature, there exists what can be called a “human” ecology, which in turn demands a “social” ecology. All this means that humanity, if it truly desires peace, must be increasingly conscious of the links between natural ecology, or respect for nature, and human ecology. Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men. Both of these presuppose peace with God. The poem-prayer of Saint Francis, known as “the Canticle of Brother Sun”, is a wonderful and ever timely example of this multifaceted ecology of peace.

The close connection between these two ecologies can be understood from the increasingly serious problem of energy supplies. In recent years, new nations have entered enthusiastically into industrial production, thereby increasing their energy needs. This has led to an unprecedented race for available resources. Meanwhile, some parts of the planet remain backward and development is effectively blocked, partly because of the rise in energy prices. What will happen to those peoples? What kind of development or non-development will be imposed on them by the scarcity of energy supplies? What injustices and conflicts will be provoked by the race for energy sources? And what will be the reaction of those who are excluded from this race? These are questions that show how respect for nature is closely linked to the need to establish, between individuals and between nations, relationships that are attentive to the dignity of the person and capable of satisfying his or her authentic needs. The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. Indeed, if development were limited to the technical-economic aspect, obscuring the moral-religious dimension, it would not be an integral human development, but a one-sided distortion which would end up by unleashing man's destructive capacities."

A Biblical Worldview

I often times have a hard time explaining to friends and family what it means to have a biblical worldview.

So many Christians simply think in terms of What Would Jesus Do, and that's not a bad question to ask, but being a Christian is much more than simply using Jesus as a moral guide.

Daily Bible reading (and reading other good Christian works) helps shape the way you think. The more you read the Bible the more you will think like a biblical author.

I'm thinking thematically...like with Star Wars and other movies you're familiar with. When I drive through a tight construction zone with high walls I find myself thinking, "just like Luke on his Death Star run"...that's because I've infused myself with the Star Wars experience. Likewise, when I walk down a row of cubicles I sometimes find myself thinking, "just like Balaam on his way to deliever an oracle."

It's the difference between living scripture and knowing scripture. The advantage of living scripture is it will make your life more meaningful as you see yourself as a real member of the Body of Christ in a real and meaningful way. bY giving yourself over to Christ and his Word, you will find a whole new way of experiencing God, life, and discipleship.

An article I read on Lincoln makes this very clear. Lincoln, although he was likely not a professing Christian, read the Bible daily. Consequently, his thoughts and words were shaped by the authors of the Bible. I don't believe that Lincoln used the Bible to attain his political purposes, but rather his encounters with the biblical texts were so regular and intimate that he could not help but have it shape him.

Gettysburg's Good News: "And yet, whatever expectations he may have taken to Gettysburg, however reluctant he was to make a personal profession of Christianity, much of what Lincoln said carried the sounds of the Bible. This was the music of the ancient Hebrew turned into King James's English. This was the language he was raised on. 'Four score and seven years ago.' Psalm 90: 'The days of our years are three score years and ten'; one of the best-known sentences of the Book. 'Brought forth' is not only the biblical way to announce a birth, including that of Mary's 'first born son,' but the phrase that describes the Israelites' being 'brought forth' from slavery in Egypt.

Birth, sacrificial death, rebirth. A born-again nation. At a less-than-conscious level, Lincoln weaved together the biblical story and the American story. 'Fathers.' 'Conceive.' 'Perish.' 'Consecrate.' 'Hallow.' 'Devotion.' The devout in the cemetery heard Lincoln speak an intimately familiar and beloved language. His words pointing to rebirth went even deeper than the Christian message, reaching the primeval longing for a new birth that humankind has yearned for and celebrated with every spring since time immemorial."

NPR : Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down

I can't begin to tell you how much I think this sucks. I really liked this guy's podcast and thought he had a very Christ-centered view of social ethics. I just hope that his stepping down sends a message to the radical right.

Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down: "Rev. Joel Hunter, president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, is declining the job, saying the organization wouldn't let him expand its agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage. A statement issued by the group said Hunter left because of 'differences in philosophy and vision.'

Hunter said he was not asked to leave. But, he says, he had wanted to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

But as the author of a book called Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians, even Hunter admits he wasn't the natural choice to head the group.

Nevertheless, when Hunter accepted the job as president of the Christian Coalition last summer, he says he was reassured that the organization would support his efforts to expand the Coalition's agenda beyond the so-called moral issues of abortion and gay marriage.

"At first it seemed like they were open to that," Hunter says. "But when it came down to it, they just couldn't quite go there. The phrase that was used was, 'Those are fine issues, but it's just not us, that's not our base.'"

Protect Tithing?

This is pretty interesting. Not too sure what to make of it. Part of me says that allowing people to give even after bankruptcy is the right thing to do. But then another part of me wonders if the state should be giving tax exemptions for charitable giving at all. Once they say it's OK to donate to the Methodist church down the street, we have to allow bankrupt people to give to other crazy churches that may or may not be legit.

Will the Democratic Congress protect tithing?:
If the Democrats really want to reach out to religious voters, a New York Times article suggests one place to start: fixing the 2005 bankruptcy bill provision that makes it illegal for many debtors to tithe. Noam Cohen notes that a bill to allow tithing passed unanimously in the Senate, but didn't make it to the House by the recess. Cohen writes:

[Republican Sen. Orrin] Hatch's plan was to get the legislation done during a lame-duck session, but with the election and change in leadership, the Democrats may want to revisit bankruptcy legislation comprehensively. Mr. Hatch and other Republican senators late last month wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to instruct trustees to allow tithing and other charitable giving. But a senior official at the Justice Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because litigation could continue, said last week that the department was not giving such instruction, noting that trustees had a fiduciary responsibility to 'look under every rock, even the church's rock.' But he added that the department wanted tithing protected, and that it had even helped Mr. Hatch draft the corrective legislation."

The Problem with the FDA

I've been writing technical documentation for GE Healthcare for a while now and a large part of my daily tasks involve making the FDA happy by filling out form after form.

As you can imagine, the FDA is very concerned about ensuring that people aren't pumped full of too much radiation or too many RF waves when they're put into GE's medical imaging machines. Consequently, they audit us and tell us exactly how to do many things.

The problem is, the FDA is not as good at determining what is the best way to protect patients as GE Healthcare is. As a corporation, GE is the target of many many lawsuits. If, during one of these lawsuits, it can be proven that GE could have done something to protect patients' safety, but chose not to, GE would loose millions and millions of dollars in settlement costs and lost business.

These lawsuits exist even though GE Healthcare already complies with FDA standards. GE Healthcare has found that the FDA's guidelines cannot be relied upon to protect the patient. Why would that be? Well, probably because the government regulators come up with regulations based on political pressure (e.g., OTC morning after pills), popular perception (e.g., child carseats), and pure science (e.g., trans fat). None of these, however, are grounded in the real issue: are people's lives actually improved by having these guidelines.

Companies, like GE, must be concerned about that reality, because telling a jury that "theoretically our precautions should have saved your son...the FDA told us so" just won't cut it. Companies, therefore, must make their own guidelines based on experience to ensure that consumers don't get hurt.

The assumption that corporate America doesn't care about its customers is, the most part, true. But in this post-tobacco settlement America we now live in, corporate America does actually care about its customers' safety and health, because the moment they stop caring, a lawyer will be on them like white on rice with a lawsuit that will devastate their financials and ultimately tick off their stockholders.

Therefore, the claim that "Consumers have no way of knowing without the government," is mistaken exactly because of this reality. Product labeling lists things like ingredients and gives us good advice like -Don't perform arc welding while bathing- exactly because companies want to tell us so we know so we can't say "Hey, I never knew" and sue them.

Obviously, this issue is larger and more complex than I've stated here, and we need government to act as a check to market capitalism otherwise materialist values will always win the day. But, that said, we must acknowledge that the self interests of the companies, i.e., making money, is innately tied up with the well being of their customers. So as long as the government keeps the legal system open to people so they can bring their grievances against negligent companies to court, companies' fear of lawsuits is actually the best protection we have.

In terms of trans fat and cheap food, I totally sympathize with people who want to get that crap out of our food, but I think legislating a change is merely changing the law without changing people's hearts and that's not really good for society. Companies want a system where people take responsibility for their actions.
Companies want a world where

* they make Funyuns,
* they put a label on Funyuns that says "100% transfat", and
* people who want die earlier buy Funyuns.

If the person does die at the age of 57--which, of course they will--that's sad, but, hey, they got to experience the joy of Funyun's yummy goodness in a way that most octogenarians who avoided them never did. That may sound harsh, but it at least in that world scenario people are taking responsibility for their actions and aren't living a life dictated by politicians. That's a world where people are free to choose between good and evil and in so doing, continually shape their will towards God's--or as is more often the case, see that their will is so bent on their own destruction, they need to turn to Christ and cling to the cross. Either way, God's will is done.

How commercials work

Thought this was a very interesting quote. It was written by Neil Postman in the early 80s.

"There is nothing in the form of TV commercials that requires that a distinction be made between adults and children. TV commercials do not use propositions to persuade; they use visual images, as for every other purpose. Such language as is employed is highly emotive and only rarely risks verifiable assertions. Therefore, commercials are not susceptible to logical analysis, are not refutable, and, of course, do not require sophisticated adult judgment to assess. Ever since the graphic revolution, Commercial Man has been taken to be essentially irrational, not to be approached with argument or reasoned discourse. But on television this supposition is carried to such extremes that we may charge the television commercial with having rejected capitalist ideology altogether. That is to say, the television commercial has abandoned one of the key assumptions of mercantilism, which is that both buyer and seller are capable of making a trade based on a rational consideration of self-interests. This assumption is so deeply ingrained in capitalism that our laws severely restrict the commercial transactions children are allowed to make. In capitalist ideology, itself heavily influenced by the rise of literacy, it is held that children do not have the analytical skills to evaluate the buyer's product, that children are not yet fully capable of rational transactions. But the TV commercial does not present products in a form that calls upon analytic skills or what we customarily think of as rational and mature judgment. It is not facts that are offered to the consumer but idols, to which both adults and children can attach themselves with equal devotion and without the burden of logic or verification. It is, therefore, misleading even to call this form of communication "commercials," since they distain the rhetoric of business and do their work largely with the symbols and rhetoric of religion. Indeed, I believe it is entirely fair to conclude that television commercials are a form of religious literature.

"I do not claim that every television commercial has religious content. Just as in church the pastor will sometimes call the congregation's attention to nonecclesiastical matters, so there are TV commercials that are entirely secular in nature. Someone has something to sell; you are told what it is, where it can be obtained, and what it costs. Though these may be shrill and offensive, no doctrine is advanced and no theology invoked.

"But the majority of important TV commercials take the form of religious parables organized around a coherent theology. Like all religious parables they put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way to redemption, and a vision of Heaven. They also suggest what are the roots of evil and what are the obligations of the holy."

Oh Big Box Mart!

This pretty much captures my feelings about all big box retailers, not just Wal-Mart. For a clearer version click here.

The Inherent Problem with Big Box-style American Consumerism

God forgives his family for each $15 pair of new pants they buy. As Solomon says in Proverbs, paying workers for the hard work they do is important since hard work is supposed to lead to prosperity (Prov 14:23).

People are struggling in poverty even though they work very hard at their jobs. Why? Because as Americans we want to spend less on products (like pants) so we can have more money left over to spend on other things. This materialism leads us to take advantage of those anonymous manufacturers who work very hard but get paid very little. That is certainly not the way it's going to be in the Kingdom of God.

My Prayer:
"I thank the Lord that God is gracious enough to forgive me for my continuing sin, and I continue to pray that God will give me the fortitude to overcome my materialism in all its forms. May my actions help workers receive the wages that they have earned, and when they don't may God grant mercy on those who are continually hurt because of my selfish desires to consume more and more cheap crap."

11/16/06 19:37
ed- I originally composed this post after a conversation with my wife. At the time I was feeling pretty passionate and confident about my beliefs on this matter and unfortunately, my passion spilled over into a very arrogant tone. I'm deeply sorry if my original post offended anyone. It was very inconsiderate of me to write so forcefully.

Wal-Mart: Setting the Expectations

Just for fun, let's look at the world of box-box retailers from the vantage point of the knitted hats. I have a friend who sells knitted baby hats for about $12. These hats are made out of some of the best yarn money can buy, even so the material cost for each hat is only $3. That means my friend, who spends about three hours knitting together a hat, gets paid $3/hr for her hats. That’s crap!

She’s providing a service that most people don’t have the time or the knowledge to do for themselves and therefore she should get paid at least, say, $20/hr. So, in a world where she got a fair American wage, she should sell her hats for $63. But she can’t? Why? Because no one is willing to pay $60 for a knit hat anymore when they can find a comparable one at Wal-Mart for $5. Sure they’re willing to spend $12 because they’re willing to pay extra for the quality yarn. But people are not willing to pay extra for the high-quality craftsmanship of an American knitter.

Without even knowing it, my knitter friend has to compete with Asians because Americans aren't willing to pay American wages anymore for garment construction. Wal-Mart and Asian manufacturers have set American expectations for prices and consequently, quality craftmanship gets the short end of the stick. Americans craftsmen like my knitting friend have to make a decision. Either they have to make their garment quicker and therefore of poorer quality or they have to pay themselves less for the good work they go.

The big problem here is that the potential buyer doesn't see any problem at all. In fact, since they’re buying a hat for $12 they think they're being generous because they're paying $7 more than they would if they bought the comparable hat from Wal-Mart. In their mind it's like giving $7 to a worthy cause (i.e., a hardworking American craftsman) when in reality, the price the buyer is paying the craftsman is an insult.

Now here's another odd situation caused by this retail dynamic that might further shed some light on this. My wife always finds herself in a bind when people ask her to do sewing alterations. My wife, a former professional seamstress, struggles to figure out how to respond to their "I'll pay you for it" comments when friends ask.

Here's the problem. Her sewing is skilled labor of a professional...not just an amateur...as such, they should expect a decent hourly wage, say $20/hr. But, she doesn't want to charge friends full price for her work...but she doesn't like hemming pants, so she doesn't want to do it for free either, so she's inclined to charge half price...sounds reasonable, right?

But, here's the problem. People hear her request for $10 for a 60-minute hem job and they think that she's being greedy or not cutting them a deal. Why is that? Well, it's because her friend bought the pair of pants from Wal-Mart for $15, so obviously to them, the cost of hemming a pair of $15 pants must certainly be significantly less than $10.

But why are the pants only $15? Well, no pants manufactured in America are selling for $15. They’re $15 pants because they’re made in a place were Wal-Mart can pay someone pennies for hemming, heck, constructing the entire pair of pants. Consequently, by having garments made in China, Wal-Mart has convinced people that the cost of sewing together an entire pair of pants is less than $15.

The manufacturers in Asia are setting American's perception for what something should cost. Neither my wife nor our knitter friend, can get a decent wage for their quality work because big box retailers have convinced Americans that their craftsmanship isn't worth a living wage...no matter how much better it is than the craftsmanship coming out of Asia.

Time Traps

From, of all places, marthastewart.com

Time Traps: "When it comes right down to it, that luscious abundance of time we crave reflects a basic desire: to savor life. We want to drink in the rich connections we've created with our family, our community, our friends. We want to sit on the dock and throw stones in the water. Linger at the table. Hold the baby for hours, just to watch him nap. We innately understand that, when engaged in life this way, we'll find a measure of peace.

Unfortunately, this kind of time—expansive and utterly unscheduled—is at odds with our calendars, which have come to dominate our lives. And what fills them up? For most of us, the answer is simple: work. Americans spend more time earning a living than people in most other industrialized countries...

'The basic things we once took for granted—a decent house in a safe neighborhood with a good school—have become increasingly expensive,' says John de Graaf, national coordinator of Take Back Your Time and author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic...

Time gurus point to consumer choice as yet another modern time bandit. Go to the supermarket in search of breakfast and you'll find 48 different types of cereal and 15 incarnations of milk. Sign up for cell-phone service and you'll wade through dozens of calling plans, phone styles, and accessory packages. Whether you revel in shopping or loathe it, "the massive amount of choice in the marketplace is incredibly time-consuming," says de Graaf. "These are all decisions we used to not have to make." The answer, he says, isn't to stay home and take a vow of no shopping. It's to wake up to the realities we face, and then acknowledge how our own actions help or hurt our chances of reclaiming our time."

This whole article is pretty good, and you should probably read the whole thing. My impression, however, is that the article leaves the reader with the assumption that the problem is time management and not our consumer desires. Sure making decisions to decide whether or not to buy Frosted Flakes or Frosted Mini-wheats takes time...but the very fact that we crave such things is the real problem. If we weren't so consumed with keeping up with the Jones middle class Americans wouldn't be driven to become two income families.

Why pro-lifers and pro-choices have a communication problem

I thought this essay was excellent, one of the best I've seen at identifying and analyzing the current lack of dialog between the two sides of the abortion debate. Clearly, the author is pro-life, but regardless of your position, I think you'll find his article worth reading.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square: "I submit that pro-life arguments seem absurd to any listener who has in the back of the mind a sense that the embryo or fetus is being constructed in the womb. Here’s an analogy: At what point in the automobile assembly-line process can a “car” be said to exist? I suppose most of us would point to some measure of minimum functionality (viability), like having wheels and/or a motor, but some might insist on the need for windshield wipers or say it’s not fully a car until it rolls out onto the street (is born). We would all understand, however, that there’s no clearly “right” answer as to when a car is there. And we would also agree that someone who claimed the car to be present from the insertion of the first screw at the very beginning of the assembly line would be taking an utterly absurd position. To someone who conceives of gestation as intrauterine construction, pro-life people sound just this ridiculous. For a thing being constructed is truly not there until it is nearly complete. (Moving from ordinary language to metaphysics, we would say that a constructed thing does not have its essential form until it is complete or nearly complete. And it can’t be that thing without having the form of that thing.)" ...

The difference between making and developing is not just an accident of language. Suppose we’re back in the pre-digital days and you’ve just taken a fabulous photo, one you know you will prize, with your Polaroid camera. (Say it’s a picture of a jaguar that has now darted back into the jungle, so that the photo is unrepeatable.) You are just starting to let the photo hang out to develop when I grab it and rip its cover off, thus destroying it. What would you think if I responded to your dismay with the assertion: “Hey man, it was still in the brown-smudge stage. Why should you care about brown smudges?” You would find my defense utterly absurd. Just so for pro-lifers, who find dignity in every human individual: To say that killing such a prized being doesn’t count if he or she is still developing in the womb strikes them as outrageously absurd.

By contrast, if I had simply destroyed a blank, unexposed piece of your film, you would have been much less upset. You really would have lost little more than a smudge. Passive potential does not count for much. Only developing potential already contains its own form (essence, identity), is already the what that it is in the process of manifesting.

I conclude that pro-choice folks think pro-life claims regarding embryos to be not only wrong but also absurd whenever they think (even unconsciously) that embryos are under construction in the womb. And pro-life folks find pro-choice denials of prized human dignity in embryos to be equally absurd whenever they think that the unborn child develops (indeed, develops itself, unlike the Polaroid photo) from the moment of fertilization.

The two sides are not quite parallel in this, however: Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flatly erroneous.

On Baptism

Found these baptism quotes that I thought were pretty cool...obviously, I'm prone to most things written by Tom (NT) Wright, but even so, I thought these were worth noting. Click the link to see more quotes.

On Baptism | Christianity Today:
"WHETHER BAPTIZED as children or adults, our baptism signifies primarily what God has graciously done for us, and it is upon this that faith rests. It can be argued that the two forms of baptism—infant and adult—together express the full meaning of baptism better than each would alone. In other words, their meanings are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding

WHEN PEOPLE submit to Christian baptism, they die with the Messiah and are raised with him into a new life. This means, first and foremost, a change of status. … Once you are baptized, of course, you can try to shirk or shrug off your new responsibilities. You can pretend you don't after all have a new status. … But what you can't do is get unbaptized again.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone, Romans: Part One"