The Life and Times of Nathan Albright

A Word Fitly Spoken: A Short Commentary on Proverbs 25:11-12

2010-07-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, who led the Union to a successful defeat of the rebellious insurrection in the American Civil War, wrote a fragment on the Constitution and Liberty in early 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War, itself a political commentary on Proverbs 25:11. It reads:

"All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of ``Liberty to all'' ---the principle that clears the path for all---gives hope to all --- and, by consequence, enterprize, and industry to all.

The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.

The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, ``fitly spoken'' which has proved an ``apple of gold'' to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple --- not the apple for the picture.

So let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.

That we may so act, we must study, and understand the points of danger." [1]

What was the danger that Abraham Lincoln saw? He saw that some rebellious and unscrupulous people might wish to engage in a fallacious appeal to rights they did not possess that would seek to prevent the national government from having the authority over them so that they may defend their defective and tyrannical culture from the threats of freedom and liberty. He saw that some might seek to claim a constitutional right that was nonexistent in defiance of the goal of the Constitution and Union, to provide for the well being of all citizens. The danger was that some might seek to behave wickedly and rebelliously while cloaking their rebellion in the language of defending the same documents they sought to disobey. Lincoln was wise enough to see this danger, and recognizing the danger, he sought to either prevent it from taking place or to expose and overcome the danger, as he (by the grace of God) was able to do.

In light of the fact that Proverbs 25:11-12 is a very useful text in understanding the power and purpose of words, let us turn to it and examine what it says, as well as shed some light on the relationship between these two verses and other related verses on rebuke. As this is supposed to be a short (meaning, by my standards, short of book length) commentary, it will not include a cross reference to every noteworthy verse, but will hopefully provide a sufficient context to itself be a word fitly spoken in a similar situation to that faced by Lincoln in early 1861.

A Short Commentary On Proverbs 25:11-12

In the New King James Version, Proverbs 25:11-12 reads as follows: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold is a wise rebuker to an obedient ear." This verse is one of the more eloquent proverbs on the beauty of appropriate language. However, if one merely quotes the first verse of the passage, one might not be fully aware of what a word fitly spoken is referring to. One might think that such fit words were only flattering or complementary. It is the second verse that provides the important context that fit words include words of instruction and rebuke. It should be noted, that as wise rebuke to an obedient ear is compared to fine gold, that it is even more precious and valuable than fit words in more normal circumstances, just as fine gold is more precious and valuable than silver.

Since rebuke is itself a type of fit word, or proper communication, let us examine the two elements that are particularly praised by Solomon in this passage. What makes rebuke fit communication is that it come from a wise rebuker and that it be heard by an obedient ear. Both elements are necessary in order for the rebuke to have a beautiful result. A wise rebuker will communicate his (or her) rebuke based on the scripture of God, seeking the repentance and restoration of the hearer. The goal will not be personal glory or ambition, but rather the spiritual well-being of the listener. Likewise, an obedient ear will hear in the wise rebuke not an arrogant and prideful self-righteous attitude but an attitude of loving concern and a desire for restoration and peace. An obedient ear will repent if they hear how they have fallen short of the biblical standard of behavior, and will not be hostile towards the messenger who gives them the gracious rebuke from God. To put it bluntly--a wise rebuker will speak as if he is speaking to an obedient ear, and an obedient ear will hear more wisdom in the rebuker than perhaps was present. Both will give each other the benefit of the doubt.

The Context Proverbs 25:11-12 Provides To Other Passages

Indeed, these two short verses provide an excellent context to other verses that similarly speak of rebuke. In order to keep this note to a manageable length, let us examine a few related passages and how these verses shed a light on what is being said. By so doing, we will see what is required of a wise rebuker, and what sort of behavior represents being an obedient ear.

As it happens, this verse shed some light on a popular passage in the next chapter of Proverbs. In Proverbs 26:4-5, we read: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." How are we to determine which fools to answer according to their folly. Part of the answer is given by Proverbs 25:11-12. For one, we must be a wise enough rebuker not to fall into folly ourselves, thus defeating the purpose of our speech, and likely making a bad situation worse. However, judging a fool as an obedient ear, despite their folly, impels us to answer them according to their folly so that they do not become wise in their own eyes and hardened against the wisdom of God. We may misjudge our wisdom, thinking more highly than we ought about our own maturity or intellect. Alternatively, we may mistakenly believe that we are speaking to an obedient ear when we are speaking (as Lincoln was in early 1861) to a foolish heart hardened in rebellion, to whom no godly rebuke could reach because we are dismissed entirely as being too biased to provide any wisdom to them. We must, as Lincoln did, make a good faith effort and appeal to heaven for His will, and not ours, to be done.

When we give a wise rebuke to an obedient heart, the response is like that of David in Psalm 141:5: "Let the righteous strike me; it shall be a kindness. And let him rebuke me; it shall be as excellent oil; let my head not refuse it. For still my prayer is against the deeds of the wicked." David, a man after God's own heart, was rebuked many times in his life (by godly prophets such as Nathan), sometimes for very serious sins. However, this psalm demonstrates that he always maintained an obedient heart, which considered the rebuke of the (comparatively) righteous as an excellent oil, which served to his benefit (even so much as to be seen as a kindness, rather than an attack). An obedient heart will see rebuke as being to its ultimate spiritual benefit, and so will react to it with appreciation, seeing in the rebuke the still small voice of God warning one about falling short before judgment comes. Who would rather reject a rebuke and instead possibly face far worse judgment from God?

Unfortunately, not all hearts are obedient, and not all hearts will accept rebuke. Therefore, in Matthew 7:6, as Jesus is speaking about the even standard of judgment we should apply, he offers the following warning: "Do not give what is holy to the dogs nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces." Again, we must be able to judge what kind of heart we are speaking to. A rebuke to a heart that is hostile and rebellious against God will enrage them and cause them to turn on you and attack you rather than cause them to turn to God in humble repentance. They will see a call to repentance as a request for abject surrender, which they in their pride are unwilling to submit themselves to, because they are not in reality God's people, but rather on the side of Satan. Therefore, those who rebuke those who are hardened in hostility to God's way can expect attacks and hostility for their good deeds of providing to an unwilling audience the pearls of wisdom they possess. Evil will be returned for good by those who have succumbed to presumptuous evil.

A Biblical Application of Wise Rebuke To (Barely) Obedient Ears

In light of the above passages which serve to expand the wisdom and benefit and value of godly rebuke, let us now briefly examine an example in the preaching of the Apostle Paul when he gave the brethren of Corinth a choice between harsh discipline and loving peace, which would be determined by their own response to his visit to them. This situation is presented by 2 Corinthians 13. Indeed, it is easy and pleasant to quote 2 Corinthians 13:11, which states: "Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete. Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you."

Nonetheless, while not disregarding this desire for love and peace, we must appreciate the context of this gracious blessing. It is in the context of a promised visit where Paul promises harsh discipline to those who are rebellious against his ordained authority. Indeed, in 2 Corinthians 13:2-3, he states: "I have told you before, and foretell it as if i were present the second time, and now being absent I write to those who have sinned before, and to all the rest, that if I come again I will not spare--since you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me who is not weak towards you, but mighty in you." Shortly thereafter, Paul tells them the following, in verses 5 and 6: "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourself, that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless indeed you are disqualified. But I trust that you will know that we are not disqualified."

What does this mean? The brethren of Corinth, like some disobedient brethren today, mistook the gentleness of Paul for weakness. In light of this rebellious behavior, Paul promises them that he will not spare if he sees them act rebelliously when he comes, and that their response to him--whether they accept him with hospitality or react in a hostile manner towards him--will show whether they are disqualified for the Kingdom of God or not. This sort of behavior is not a light or laughing matter--the rejection of an emissary of God is tantamount to a rejection of God's authority and leads to disqualification for the Kingdom of God. We have seen such behavior in Latin America--and among others who are unwilling to see the rebelliousness in their own hearts even as they speak evil of godly leaders who seek the good for the people of God as a whole, and who despite their human limitations act in good faith and receive abuse and attacks for their good deeds.

Conclusion: A Present Application of The Choice of Peace Or Discipline

Just as Paul promised not to spare those who persisted in rebellion, confusing his desire for peace for weakness and a lack of firmness in defending the truth, there have been many who have confused the gentleness of Messrs. Luker and Holliday for weakness, as well as the majority of the Council of Elders. In his excellent opening message to the church, Mr. Luker promised to deal with those who persisted in rebellion, and so he will. He will do no more and no less than the example of the Apostle Paul in Corinth--he will seek peace with those who are willing to accept the authority of God through His servants, and he will not spare (as God will not spare) those who are hardened in rebellion and hostile to the wise rebuke God has provided them through people great and small, important and obscure, elderly and young. Whether any of us is an obedient heart or an unclean pig or dog depends on how we respond to godly rebuke. Since God rebukes and chastens every son He receives, the fact that we receive rebuke is a sign that God is working with us. It is our response to that rebuke that determines whether we are serving Him, or rather seeking to serve ourselves. Let us all therefore examine ourselves continually, to see where we will stand when we must all face our King in judgment.

[1] Lincoln, Abraham. The Collected Words of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 4. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services
2001) 168-169.

On Weddings

2010-06-28T11:34:00.001-07:00

Recently I had the chance to attend a pleasant wedding as a guest with no responsibilities (which, strange as it would sound, has not been common for me). It was on the beach, with a beautiful bridal gown and bridesmaids gowns made by the bride's sister, a dashing groom, and about fifty people (including myself) happy to be there and share in the joy. I have long pondered the issue of weddings (and marriage), and would like to comment on some of my ruminations, as June is a traditional month for weddings. I have pondered the organization of this note for some time, though I think it would be useful to organize the thoughts according to the specific questions that I have pondered.

Question #1: What do weddings really mean?

For me, weddings are the triumph of hope and optimism over the gloomy cynicism of statistics and bad personal experience. Being a somewhat gloomy person frequently lacking in hope and optimism, it is perhaps unsurprising that I have never been to a wedding of my own. Nonetheless, I think even for me, if the opportunity was right, I too could see myself saying 'I do' with all the romantic sincerity I have seen many times before. Since nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and since so few people walk down the aisle expecting to fail, it is important to understand as best as possible what expectations we put into marriage, and where things go wrong.

It would seem, from my personal experience, that women tend to be vastly more concerned with weddings than men are. From childhood, or at least adolescence, I have seen young women collect clippings of dresses, collect information on venues to hold weddings, visualize the cake they want, or other details. Sometimes it seems that the last detail to be decided upon is the identity of the groom. Among men I have not noticed the same degree of wedding planning, though weddings are as serious a matter for men as they are for women, and often unrecognized to boot. A woman is a princess on her wedding day (more on that in a bit), but when a man marries, he is making a conscious decision that his days of thinking and acting for himself alone are done, and that he is ready and willing to cherish and provide for (as best as he is able) his wife, and support a family. It is a choice to act with others in mind over a long span of time, even unborn generations to come, rather than simply living selfishly for today. I think men are insufficiently appreciated for the magnitude of the choice they make when they take a woman in marriage.

It would be beyond the scope of a note to deal with the subject of marriage as a whole, but weddings themselves are grand and romantic ceremonies that are the beginning of the day-to-day work of living with someone else who may have annoying habits of behavior that slipped unnoticed through dating. Weddings are to marriages what graduation from high school (or college) is to the working world. We celebrate and cheer, and then realize the task ahead is not quite what we imagined it to be. Any time we step into the unknown we will find things to be different, and more tiresome, than we expected them to be. Our bravery in taking those steps should be matched with the determination to, so far as it depends on ourselves, see the journey through until death. I recognize this isn't always possible, but that is the goal, after all.

Question #2: Why is a bride so beautiful on her wedding day?

There are a few occasions where a young woman looks particularly stunning: prom night, a debutante ball (for those young women who come from high class backgounds), and a wedding. What all of thse events have in common is that a young woman looks like and is supposed to be treated like a princess, and such treatment always seems to bring out the beauty in a young lady. Additionally, especially in a wedding, a young woman feels (or should feel) loved to know that a dashing prince is making a covenant before God to love her and cherish her as long as they both shall live. If that doesn't give someone a glow of happiness, I don't know what can be done.

Why is it that dressing and being treated like a princess makes a young woman so beautiful? Is it because she is dressed in shiny clothing (inside joke)? I'm not sure. Perhaps being treated like a princess and being cherished is one of those nearly universal ways that young women recognize that others see how special they are. Dressing up certainly doesn't make me feel that special, but I suspect that the wedding vows often capture a truth in how husbands and wives feel loved. A husband promises to cherish his wife, to treat her with love and affection, and I suspect many wives feel unhappy when they do not feel cherished by their husbands, but rather neglected instead. Likewise, a wife promises to honor and obey her husband, unless she is so froward as to remove that important promise from the vow. A man feels confident when he is respected and honored, and tends to be unhappy when he feels his wife disrespects him and dishonors him. A wife who is not cherished will probably not honor, and a husband who is not honored and respected will probably not cherish. From such treachery springs disaster. While it may not be possible to always look like a princess or be thought of as a dashing prince, we should at least do what we can to make sure that we appreciate others and help them to feel loved. It's not always easy, but it's worth it.

Question #3: How do I see weddings as a single man?

In my short life, so far, I have participated in a variety of (usually behind-the-scenes) roles. I have occasionally been merely a guest to the wedding, but more often I have had some responsibility. The first wedding I remember attending was the wedding of my uncle J.F. and aunt Cheryl, where I was the assistant photographer, whose job was to pass film to another uncle of mine. My brother got to be the ringbearer, while I ended up in exactly 0 wedding photos. This early misjudgment of ideal wedding jobs seemed to prophesy my future wedding roles rather well, unfortunately. I have served as an usher of a wedding, helped in setting up a few wedding halls, and once even translated for a wedding at the Feast of Tabernacles in Argentina, which may have been my most invisible role, hiding in a corner with a giant set of earphones speaking into a microphone. Only once have I served as a groomsman, and that was during the ceremony for my mother and stepfather, which was almost the smallest wedding I have ever taken part in. It has been my experience that second weddings tend to be much less formal than first weddings.

As an unmarried person at a wedding I always feel a bit out of place. As weddings are an entrance into marriage, I feel somewhat outside of the experience, an observer but not really a full participant. I can (and do) give my fond wishes for smooth sailing and a happy journey, but I have no wisdom to provide on how to help the new bride and groom enjoy a happy and fruitful marriage. I can only be on the outside looking in. As this is not an unusual state in my life, it is something I am experienced in dealing with, but that doesn't make it any less unsettling. It is a bit alienating to celebrate an institution which one is not a part of, nor has any visible prospects of being a part of anytime soon. It would be less unsettling if one could find a variety of unattached young ladies to dance with (for, as Henry Tilney said to Catherine Morland in Bath in Northanger Abbey, a dance is a little like a marriage*), but that is often not the case.

However, one cannot go to a wedding, particularly where one knows the bride and the groom, and thinks highly of both, where one does not wish them all the happiness in the world. I can only think of one wedding I have attended, and I was an usher in that one, where I had reservations about the marriage based on the drama that had taken place in the relationship. Unfortunately, that marriage quickly ended in divorce. Even someone like myself, who is often pessimistic, can enjoy a wedding and feel the hope that is all around. Though weddings are often expensive and stressful, they are also one of those ceremonies that remind us that we walk by faith, and not only by sight. This world will last only as long as people are hopeful enough to walk into the unknown and make brave ventures with faith that so long as they act well, things will turn out alright in the end. Why destroy that hope by burdening it with the unnecessary weight of mistrust and cynicism? We need all the hope and optimism we can muster, as they alone make the dark days worth enduring. The world has enough despair as it is.

*Here is the passage in question:

"I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours.”

”But they are such very different things!”

” – That you think they cannot be compared together.”

“To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.”

“And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else. You will allow all this?”

“Yes, to be sure, as you state it, all this sounds very well; but still they are so very different. I cannot look upon them at all in the same light, nor think the same duties belong to them.”

“In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are exactly changed; the agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him, while she furnishes the fan and the lavender water. That, I suppose, was the difference of duties which struck you, as rendering the conditions incapable of comparison.”

“No, indeed, I never thought of that.” (Chapter 10)

My Time In The Rebellion

2009-03-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

“My Time In The Rebellion” was a short story I wrote some years ago in a series of stories called Secfenia Dark, based on a role-playing game my best friend and I started in the mid-1990’s that dealt with the fortunes of a small border province that had become a nation after it rebelled from a corrupt and decaying empire ruled by meglomaniacs. The story follows the perspective of a certain Natonito Albright, Directrix (second-in-charge) of the Empire of Secfenia, as he entertains some guests at a favorite restaurant of his in his hometown of Bravia just before the shotgun wedding of his foster daughter (and the orphaned younger sister of his wife) and his nephew, by whom she had gotten pregnant. Most of the story consists of flashbacks as to how a young Senator from the backwater province of Secfenia had helped lead a rebellion and then forced the surrender of the army which had been sent out to punish the rebellion. Crucial to the story, and to the series of stories that I wrote about this particular fictional kingdom, is the concern with the legitimacy of government, dealing with the consequences of sin and the need for redemption, the responsibilities, moral and otherwise, placed on leaders, and the ambition of brave and stubborn people to rise above the status of their birth and the misfortunes of their childhood and fulfill the destiny to which God put them on this earth. These weighty concerns have as well been among the chief and consistent concerns of my own life.

A Young Rebel In Training

The concern with the legitimacy of government in all forms was a habit learned forcibly and often during my childhood. The abuse of power, either through direct action by those authority figures, or through the neglect of teachers, pastors, and other authority figures in my childhood to protect the innocent from the harassment and bullying of peers was a frequent occurrence during my entire childhood beginning in the first year of my life and continuing without abatement through high school. The divorce of my parents, with the division that brings to a family, also gave me early lessons in doubting the legitimacy of the governments over me. My father, on the one hand, was a consistent proponent of one-man rule, a firm believer in the necessity of centralized power to thwart the chaos that threatened him, though he felt uncomfortable with being that one man in rule. My mother, on the other hand, encouraged the questioning of authority and unacceptable nature of the answer “because I said so” when unsupported by reason. Between these conceptions I grew up, in tension between a proclivity to abhor disorder, proclaim and strive aid the abiding rule of God’s law in all aspects of this world, including my own actions, and long for a stability and security that has long eluded my grasp, and an independence of thought and action that has long irked whatever people have been in charge over me and has at times crossed over from prickly independence into actual rebellion.

Some examples should suffice for this tendency of mine throughout my life, and they do not appear only in my writing (although much of this rebellion has taken place through the written word, either through manifestos or blogs or my fictional writings). I have always delighted in correcting the errors of teachers and presenters, a habit I have tried in recent years to restrain in public so as to avoid attacking the credibility of the speaker (which is not my intention, at least not now). The first time I remember this habit being of difficulty is in the fourth grade, where my teacher, Mrs. King, erroneously proclaimed that Ottowa, Canada, was in the Canadian province of Quebec. Knowing better, as my maternal grandmother was born in Ontario, I corrected the teacher in front of the class. I can even remember this habit being evident as a student in the Ambassador Bible Center where a certain minister gave a presentation on Generations which I was in agreement with, and an area of my own where I have read deeply and written upon, but where I corrected a few typographical errors of his in front of the class, and then compounded my error some months later when he gave a slightly different version of his presentation at my congregation and I corrected him again on some errors that remained. Needless to say, despite the fact that I agree with what he says, he has plenty of reason not to be particularly fond of me.

This sort of attack on credibility of those in positions of leadership was not limited merely to implicit attacks based on their errors, but was sometimes much more direct and therefore hostile. My career in the politics of outright rebellion began, not surprisingly, in high school. As a sixteen year old high school student I, with some help from a slightly younger classmate, wrote an anonymous manifesto called the “IB Exception” where I protested that the failure of the high school administration to adequately provide books and classroom buildings to its best and brightest students made their administration illegitimate and unable to enforce stricter rules on student behavior, and that those students that brought money and honor to the school should be accordingly exempt from any such restrictive rules. Now, it should be noted that the two aspects of my personality normally in tension were here united to dangerous purpose. Most of my classmates in high school just disobeyed the rules, ignoring them altogether. However, given my nature, I could not simply ignore the rules and disobey them out of willful ignorance. Rather, the various twists and turns of my nature forced me to face what I took as illegitimate and tyrannical rule publicly and to justify my opposition to it by pointing out the failures of that leadership to adequately handle its obligations to me and to others. This need for justification and explanation, and my chronic inability to be quiet in the face of what I find to be unacceptable, cast me as a public revolutionary and as a rebel against authority.

Justification Denied

The desire to justify led naturally into a search of what the Bible said about authority, with the specific intent of finding out if and how the Bible dealt with the subject of how people are to respond to abuses by authority, and whether the failure of leaders to perform their God-ordained duties absolved their subjects of obedience to and respect of them. I did not find that anywhere in the scriptures, not even in those passages like Amos 7 or Deuteronomy 14 or 1 Kings 12 or 1 Samuel 8 that are the harshest towards the abuse of power. Of course, I did not find either a belief that leaders could do what they wanted without accountability, or that people had to obey whatever their leaders told them, but rather I saw that respect for office and the pointed criticism of the moral flaws of leadership, as well as an obedience to laws that did not contradict God’s laws, were all biblical requirements. While tyrants find little comfort in the prospect of eternal judgment or in what happened to Nebuchadnezzar or the Pharaoh, rebels find little comfort in the Bible, given that rebellion is universally condemned in scripture in the harshest of terms. God is not a God of rebellion, but rather a God of resistance to evil while respecting authority. In fact, it may be said that all sin is in fact rebellion of God’s sovereign authority and His unique position of defining right and wrong.

While my initial goal of finding a justification of rebellion was thus frustrated spectacularly, it was a useful lesson nonetheless. Thanks be to God that my desire to understand obey His word surpassed by desire to justify rebellion. In the process, in the course of much reading and writing, I learned a lot about the way in which the Bible handles situations that fall short of God’s ideal, including slavery and the abuse of power and so on. For one, the Bible seeks a model of gradual change based on conversion and then progressive sanctification in all aspects of life, both on an individual and a societal level. Christians are not to be threats to good government because to be a follower of God is to be obedient to His laws and to respect authorities, for even pointing out the flaws of our leaders is to be done so that they may repent of their sins and become converted to the truth, rather than to condemn them. Even criticism, therefore, demonstrates true loyalty, because we are loyal to their eternal best interests rather than enabling them to sin without knowledge of the result of their actions. So, my studies of how the Bible deals with such things may not have made me less irritating to those in charge, or less questioning, but it changed the motive of the actions—to serve to the glory of God rather than justifying my own rebellious will.

In examining the proper role of such criticism, I came to realize that the purpose of our actions is to build up godly institutions, rather than merely to criticize and tear down what is imperfect, and what is imperfect is both within us and all around us, since our own lives and everything in this world reflects the impact of our fallen state. Therefore, even more so than to critique, my interests changed into seeking to help build up these godly institutions. Having had rather negative experiences with my own family, I saw that I had the responsibility to break cycles that have lasted for generations in my family, to provide a legacy and a tradition of love and obedience rather than continue along paths that only led to misery and destruction. Having seen the results of corrupt institutions in churches and businesses and schools, I saw that I had to do what I could to help reform and replace where I had influence, either through my actions or through my support of others engaged in such work. Rather than being content to criticize the flawed legacy left to me by my forefathers, I had the responsibility to preserve the best of what it held (and indeed there was much I found was good about it) and to improve it so that I may bequeath it to others in a better state than I found it.

If it is a burden that I thus far bear alone, I hope that may not always be the case. Last October, I had the chance to visit Mendoza, Argentina, and some conversations I had with a young man helped me see an ideal of respecting authority that I realized was sorely lacking in my own experience. Very recently, in another conversation, a friend of mine wished to talk with the same minister of whom my other friend had spoken to give him and his wife the news of her relationship with another friend of mine before informing the general public, because she saw them as her parents, having lived with them and being introduced to the truth while living with them. I realized, with some regret, that I had never felt that close to most of my pastors, and have pondered often on what may be done about that situation. How do we rebuild the waste places, and turn the smoldering ruins of the past into a glorious new city, like Nehemiah did in Jerusalem some 2450 years ago?

The Reason For It All

I have some ideas of how this may be done, in part, but to be quite honest, I am concerned that given my (not entirely undeserved) reputation as a rebellious troublemaker that the ideas I have will be viewed unfavorably because they come from me. I see institutions, like the family and church, that are in dire need of some structural repairs, but wonder if my own actions and experiences have made me permanently unqualified to offer some assistance in the necessary and urgent repair work. To give but one brief example, in reading on and pondering the issue of congregational discipline, I have thought that having what amounted to a judicial system within congregations with various appeals courts going up to a final appeals court within a denomination with records kept of the evidence and testimony involved with the decisions made by one church accepted by other organizations that judge according to the same biblical standard might reduce the problem of church shopping by members. In addition, I have thought that where sanctions are given to members, that there should be the following sorts of elements present: what is the specific sin the member is guilty of (with biblical citations), what is the punishment, and what sort of action would be required in order to restore the member to a position of being in good standing in the congregation again. Too often this last element is missing, even if it may be implicit in what is decided. I know in my own life there is an example where this last element seems completely missing. I know I myself have been sanctioned for offenses including the publishing of very nasty allegations towards people (that, to be honest, I see no credible evidence of or reason for anyone to believe, though at the time I thought it acceptable to comment that the allegations had at least be made, something that in a later light I see as unwise and unnecessary), but these sanctions were open-ended, and still exist, and I honestly have no idea what I could have done or could still do at this point to end those sanctions. In other examples I have seen, an unbaptized member living with a non-member has been disfellowshipped, but there was no mention made that either marriage or ceasing to live with the other person would end the disfellowshipment. This led to embitterment, when the real purpose of Christian discipline is to restore people to good graces and lead to repentance and obedience, not to condemn them to damnation and embitterment against God and the Church. Too often this point is not made sufficiently clear when ministers hand out punishments, and it is a serious problem that needs correction. Again, though, I worry that my own history in the matter makes it difficult for other people to hear what I may say on the matter. Where is the rebel to go when he wishes to build a better world instead of destroy the good in what exists in this one?

On Constrained Optimization: Some Scientific and Theological Implications of Intelligent Design

2009-02-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

As someone who has long been interested in the Intelligent Design movement, both as an occasional writer, a frequent reader of books, and as someone who enjoys attending conferences and seminars and colloquia on the subject, I have deeply mulled over the implications of Intelligent Design to both science (given my training as an engineer) and religion (given my intense interest in theodicy--the justification of God's ways). Last night I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Dr. Steve Fuller, a philosopher of science who appeared in Ben Stein's film "Expelled," who has written a couple of books on the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and who has appeared as an expert witness in vairous trials relating to the instruction of Intelligen Design. The conversation involved the topic of constrained optimization, a phenomenon that exists both in divine and in human designs, and a subject that therefore has implicaitons on both the scientific and theological aspects of the Intelligent Design paradigm. This particular essay cannot be exhaustive, so it may be taken as well as an example of constrained optimization also.

Some Scientific Implications of Constrained Optimization or, How Intelligent Design Is Not A Science Stopper

The first aspect in which constrained optimization, a corrolary of Intelligent Design, has implications is in the field of science. In viewing biological artifacts (like, say, the outboard motor of the flagellum, or the blood clotting cascade process, and so on) as artifacts of design, we must also grapple with the nature of those designs and the constraints those designs face. Before we criticize a biological artifact as defective, we must examine the physical limitations those artifacts face, in terms of size, enery consumption, efficiency, and the purpose of the organic machines themselves. The first task, therefore, is to determine the initial conditions that must be met by a given structure (such as the eye, or the Panda's thumb). Once the initial conditions are determined as rigorously as possible, then we may fairly seek after the optimal solution to these constraints. If the given structure meets the test of constrained optimization, then it may be judged as an optimal design. If it is not judged as an optimal design, then one has the responsibility to judge how the given structure falls short of optimality given the stringen initial conditions, and suggestions for improvement can be determined. At this point as well it may be necessary to examine the effects of dysteleology, because it is possible that the present state of the artifact reflects corrpution from a more pristine and optimal original state. Instead of criticisms that amount to wishful thinking, this sort of disciplined analysis serves to provide a rational and fair-minded perspective on the sorts of biological designs we see around us. Furthermore, understanding the constraints present in the biological world may aid us in a practical sense in our own attempts at nanotechnology, and may encourage us to take advantage of biological nanotechnology in order to further our own technological designs.

On an even larger scale, we may view the universe itself as a giant example of constrained optimization. Scientists who have sought to explore the cosmological constants of this universe have often been surprised by the extent to which the physical universe appears to be perfectly designed for mankind. This phenemonon, known as anthropic principle, has restored the centrality of mankind to the universe that was lost in previous centuries. Not all of the scientists who have discovered and expounded on these principles have even been designed theorists (see note 1 below). Given that the properties of so much in this universe, both materials and constants, is subject to such a narrow range of values in order to allow for the existence of life, much less intelligent life as ourselves, it behooves us to examine the purpose of constraints in this universe. Given that the entire physical world is subject to constraints, and that we find in our own experience the same constraints between candor and politeness, freedom and equality, size and efficiency (and so on), exploring the reason why everything in our existence is constrained, and how to maximize our own well-being given these constraints, is a useful scientific task. Rather than being a science stopper, the principle of constrained optimzation allows us an even more profound understanding of the nature of the universe we live in, and thus better able to turn our theoretical knowledge to practical effects in such fields as medicine, engineering, nanotechnology, urban planning, political science, economics, and education, to name but a few fields where the implications of constrained optimization are particularly vital.

So, rightly viewed, Intelligent Design is a science starter, not a science stopper.

Some Theological Implications of Intellignt Design or, Teleology For Dummies

As a rational person, the question why is always quick on my lips. From my earliest existence I have been driven to understand and explain why my life and the world around me was the way it was. This lifelong exercise in theodicy (of which the biblical books of Job and Ecclesiastes are notable examples), which shows no sign of ending as long as my lungs draw breath, itself relates to Intelligent Design in unusual ways. Intelligent Design theory, in fact, springs from a long and noble history within the field of Theodicy. Paul, in Romans chapter 1, considers truths drawn from the physical universe as sufficient in determining the morally fallen nature of mankind and our universal need for salvation. That is, the Bible assumes that as the physical universe was created by the same being who created us in His own image, with the task of developing His righteous character, greater understanding of that universe has moral implications on our lives. A universe designed especially for mankind would indicate that the purpose of the physical universe would be a testing ground for intelligent, rational beings who are to develop mastery over their surroundings while under submission to God's law, manifest in the physical creation itself as well as in the happenings of our own lives. To put it another way, our purpose is to become children of God, to take on His nature, and we have been placed in a universe that is designed for us to make analogies between the different aspects of Creation, to learn righteousness through the making of choices in which there is always cost, and where we must always weigh priorities and examine whether taking advantage of present opportunities is worth closing off future ones.

It is here where constrained optimzation has moral implications. Every decision brings with it a cost. An hour I spend writing or reading is an hour I cannot spend playing a game, practicing singing or my viola, or talking on the phone with friends. An hour I spend driving to see someone is an hour I cannot spend sleeping or eating. Our limtations of 24 hours to each day, seven days to each week (one of which is dedicated to God), and so on forces us to prioritize our time. What is the most important use of our time. Is working overtime to earn more money to be preferred to spending the evening with our loved ones? Is spending hours a week studying for a degree to be preferred to mastering Rock Band 2 or seeing all the movies that come out each weekend? We are constrained by our limits to time. We are also constrained by our limits of money. Do we buy the biggest house we can afford, or buy a smaller house we can furnish well with furniture and books. Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, must weigh the choices of the resouresthey possess. How much do we plan for tomorrow, provide for our old age, and save as an inheritance for our children, and how much do we consume, live for today, and spend in our amusements in the here and now. The choices we make reflect our own "optimal" solutions to the constraints we face, and reflect moral (or immoral) decision-making processes. Furthermore, if our solutions are shown to be suboptimal we will pay for it, and thus we can become trained through the constrained nature of the world we live in to be more responsible, better stewards of the talents given to us by God. Therefore, the constrained nature of our world reflects the purpose of this world in training up wise and chastened children of God.

Concluding Thoughts

One cannot escape implications. What we do reflects ideals and priorities in our minds and hearts that we may not even consciously articulate. Likely, living according to the ideals we articulate have serious consequences that we must face because we live in a world where everything is connected and where choices must be made, and where costs must be paid. In the end, true science and true religion are not enemies, and science properly understood exists as the servant of religion, the tool of dominion for godly people to exercise godly rule over a physical creation that is designed to serve as the laboratory for our moral development. Intelligent Design, in particular, the fact that the entire universe is heavily constrained, has both scientific and moral implications. Properly understanding those implications allows us to improve both our material existence as well as our development of righteous character, and to better imitate our Heavenly Father, who created us in His own image and likeness.

Note 1: Among the works that have uncovered the anthropic principle have been Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny , Guillermo Gonzales and Jay Richard's Privileged Planet: How Our Place In The Cosmos Is Designed For Discovery, and Joel Primack and Nancy Abram's The View From The Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place In The Cosmos (the last coming from an evolutionary perspective) all examine in detail the precise and narrow contraints this universe is subject to as well as man's place in the ideal location to understand the phenemona of the universe. Needless to say, the fact that the road is narrow to life in the universe has moral implications as well.

The Sons of Martha

2009-02-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

I have written (and spoken) about the Sons of Martha several times, as it was the title of my first civil engineering textbook as an undergraduate, the title of a pointed poem by Rudyard Kipling (which inspired both the title of the textbook and the title of a lengthy short story (or short short novel) I wrote about a young engineer in training). Nonetheless, I wish to write again about this subject because there appear to be two forms of confusion about the story of Mary and Martha, one of which the poem represents (by far the rarer form of confusion), and the other a lack of personal responsibility present in the lives of many Christians that is by far the more dangerous of the misunderstandings.

Let us begin with the poem, by Rudyard Kipling, because the poem is rather shocking to the sensibilities of many people, although it has long been an inspiration to engineers, for reasons that will soon be clear:

"The Sons of Martha" by Rudyard Kipling (1907)

The sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, "Be ye removed." They say to the lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved-they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit-then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden - under the earthline their altars are-
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam'-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's day may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat -
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet - they hear the Word - they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and - the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!

The importance of this poem and what it means to engineers can scarcely be overestimated. The poem is, in fact, the source of one of the more bizarre rituals that engineering students (including myself) have participated in. Not coincidentally, the Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer, which involves engineers wearing a ring (formerly iron but now steel) and reciting a rather serious oath much like the Hippocratic oath promising good conduct as an engineer and the service to one's fellow man, springs from this poem, and was actually started by Rudyard Kipling himself, who was invited in 1922 to develop this ritual by seven past presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada who were meeting together in Montreal. Kipling accepted the invitation, and developed the ritual rather quickly based on the ethos of his poem. So, it may be said that all engineers are the sons of Martha, burdened with heavy responsibilities that most people are more than happy to surrender up. Certainly some of us more thoughtful engineers have reflected often upon the burden our knowledge has given us in a world that takes labor, both intellectual and physical, far too much for granted.

The poem is, of course, somewhat hostile to the sons of Mary (the rather nonchalant mass of humanity that cares not how things work, or what must be done to maintain our infrastructure, but rather takes it all for granted), and by implication to the Bible as well. This is due to a misunderstanding, or rather, to a reaction to a more serious misunderstanding by (probably) most people in the Victorian era and thereafter. The verses referred to in the poem are in Luke 10:38-42, which reads (in the English Standard Version): "Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Now, before we address the two misconceptions held, one by Rudyard Kipling, and the other by most people, it is first necessary to determine what this passage does and does not mean. In context, this passage follows directly after the parable of the Good Samaritan, which tells in a rather pointed way that love for one's neighbor involves the taking on of heavy responsibilities. Why then, immediately afterward, does Jesus chide Martha for being too troubled with serving him? The reason, interestingly enough, may be found in Matthew 10:41-42, which reads (in the New King James Version): "He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward." This passage certainly has other applications, but one of its applications is to the nature of the responsibilities Mary and Martha had towards Jesus Christ. For one, Jesus did not demand a great and lavish banquet for himself, nor did he command such for his followers. A cup of cold water refreshes someone on a journey, and is not that difficult or burdensome to provide. What Jesus is telling his believers is that they were not required to provide lavish service, but rather such service as was useful (a cup of cold water after a journey) or necessary (the help provided to the wounded man by the Good Samaritan), rather than lavish and sumptuous service, as Martha was distracted with while Mary chose the good part of listening to the teaching of Jesus Christ, which was the point of his presence there. Our service should not prevent us from learning God's way or from obeying God's law--if so, our service distracts us from our calling rather than serves as an aid to others in bringing glory to God's name.

And it is this that is the fundamental issue. We are called to serve, but our service must be in balance. Far too often people shirk their responsibilities--whether those responsibilities are to learn the Bible and apply it to every aspect of their lives, to be fruitful and productive and godly people capable of handling families, companies, congregations, cities, and nations under righteous administration, in binding the wounds of others damaged in this fallen world or in celebrating joyfully with others who have been blessed by God in their lives. All of these responsibilities we have, and all of them are to bring God greater glory and serve to point other people to His righteous commands and His perfect ways. But far too often we put our faith under a bushel and fail to act as the stewards of God on this earth, and as the ambassadors of God to the rebellious province of earth, who are to bring all things under subjection to God's law. Nonetheless, we are to undertake these responsibilities without being embittered, without becoming weary in doing good, and without letting the cares and troubles of this world separate ourselves from our eternal calling.

The failure of Christians to undertake their responsibilities as the viceregents of God on this earth has rather baleful consequences. For one, people are not educated as to their responsibilities and fail to uphold them, which means that instead of becoming mature Christians whose influence expands, we become immature Christians unable to be profitable servants of our Lord. This means that much work that we are called to do remains undone because people are too passive to do it. Someone must do the work, though (in whatever realm it may fall), and so those people who do the work often do far more than they ought to, and can even become embittered (as the poem "Sons of Martha" indicates is true for many engineers, even in the early 1900's, and just as true today) against the lazy masses who take their blood and toil for granted. The vacuum left by Christians not acting responsibly is often filled by those who are willing to perform the work in society that must be done and are hostile to a Christianity they misunderstand because the examples they see are so poor.

What then, must be done? Both misconceptions must be corrected. The self-proclaimed Sons of Martha, who glory in their labor and scoff at the believers who lazily drift through life must be educated that God does not sanction laziness (think of Paul's comment in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 [NKJV]: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."). Therefore, they have no reason to be hostile to a Bible that in fact praises them for their efforts to bring the earth under dominion due to a mastery of the physical laws created by God. What they need to do, rather than praise themselves, is to offer gratitude to the God who gave them their gifts of diligence, as well as a strong mind and a healthy body to do that necessary work. It is to the lazy masses, though, that have a much more serious lesson to learn--and that lesson is that salvation and dominion require work. In working out our own salvation with fear and trembling we will automatically have influence over other areas, and are responsible for living our faith in our families, among our friends, in our workplaces, in our congregations, and in our societies. There is no area of this earth outside of the jurisdiction of God's law, and no undertaking that cannot benefit from Christians applying God's law to these realms, be they politics, engineering, law, medicine, agriculture, music, entertainment, literature, marketing, psychology/counseling, experimental science, or anywhere else that mankind's energies may turn. We are called to be kings and priests, and that learning starts here, on earth, in this life, where our application of God's law successfully leads to greater responsibilities and a greater sphere of influence.

In that way, may we all be sons of Martha (at least in part) in the way that Kipling speaks, diligent, capable, responsible, doing the work that God has set before us, without seeking credit for it, but rather giving glory to God, who has given us all that we possess. Let us also be sons of Mary in the way that the Bible speaks, not forgetting the service we owe God and others, but also not so caught up in the cares of this world that we neglect the most important aspects of our life, or fail to maintain our vision for the Kingdom of God that is to come, remembering that our present labor has an eternal reward.

An Exercise in Rhetoric

2009-01-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

As a keen student (and occasionally able practitioner) in the art of rhetoric and argumentation, it pleases me greatly to report that on February 12, I will be a judge for the Florida qualifying for the NCFCA (National Christian Forensic Communicator's Association) tournament in Lutz, Florida. Of course, February 12th also happens to be the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, one of the ablest practitioners of the art of speech and debate that has ever graced this earth. So, in honor of this very pleasant occasion, I would like to give some of my thoughts about my own enjoyment of the arts of speech and debate as well as what I have learned from Abraham Lincoln on the limits of rhetoric, often through the seminal works of Dr. Harry Jaffa.

I first heard about this particular competition from some friends of mine at church who have and are homeschooling their six children (some of whom are now young adults like myself), who are all quite friendly, intelligent, and entertaining company. Reading about this competition online, I figured it would be good for me to see for myself the state of disputation and rhetoric among young people in my area who profess to be Christians. Given that I am usually pessimistic about the logical abilities of other people, I figured it might be salutary for me to seek out those who shared my interest in logical reasoning, so that perhaps I might find some reason to be hopeful about the future of intelligent, God-honoring thought. Perhaps I may find some young people who may become friends such that I can write to and talk to about serious matters, as I am fond of doing in both English and Spanish.

Since childhood, I have been interested in public speaking and rational disputation. My first public speech was when I was ten years old for Veteran's Day in Pinecrest, just south of Plant City. Though I was quite nervous, I found that people liked listening to what I had to say (I imagine it was especially gratifying for the mostly older audience to hear a young person speak about honoring the memory of our elders too.). Though I wished to be involved in speech & debate in high school, the events were on the Sabbath, so I was unable to do so, and my opportunities for public speaking have been mostly limited to church since then, and even these opportunities are somewhat more limited than I would wish.

It was as a student in college that I became aware of the works of Dr. Harry Jaffa (a fellow at the Claremont Institute in southern California) about Abraham Lincoln. Though I had, from childhood, been a great fan of Abraham Lincoln and his leadership in defeating the rebellious Southerners and in (finally) ending the curse of the tyranny of ethnic-based slavery in this nation (though the racism prevalent throughout the United States prevented a more egalitarian social structure from developing long after that), I did not know much about his argumentation. Reading the works of Jaffa about the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as well as about the 1860 election (both books I highly recommend: Crisis of the House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom) led me to think about the moral basis of our nation's government, and upon the threats it has faced from those who would deny the equality of all mankind under God (the conservative Darwinists) and those who would deny the responsibilities of mankind to obey the law (the "higher law" abolitionists and their social crusading liberal progeny). This moral focus was all the more interesting since Lincoln was not himself a particularly devoutly religious person, but the arguments he makes concerning the pivotal importance of the Declaration of Independence certainly imply that the only sure foundation of law is moral, which has strong implications for the sorts of laws we pass and the sort of society we struggle to achieve.

Whether the young speakers who I will be judging will know about Lincoln and his arguments, or will know it is Lincoln's birthday, I do not know. I do believe that if they are sufficiently serious about the Bible as well as about their skills in logical argumentation, then they would see clearly the moral basis of law and behavior, and argue accordingly. The need for debate and discussion never ends--even if we are all perfectly agreed in terms of the unchanging biblical standards of right and wrong, there still will be debate on the application of these standards in particular situations, and different perspectives that need to be addressed by the words and actions of others. These differences will remain as long as human beings have different experiences, different personalities, and different rational minds with different plans and interests and considerations. That is to say, for all time. So, as there will always be differences, and always be a need to debate and discuss wisely with others of like minds, these young people (ages 12-18) who will be speaking are learning an immensely practical gift, one that will hopefully lead them to a wiser understanding of the application of God's laws in time and on earth in our lives, families, businesses, congregations, societies, schools, universities, courts, and halls of government. From tiny acorns great oak trees grow. Perhaps there is a reason to hope in a better future for our society after all from those who have turned away from the fashionable humanism of our age.

On Bibles

2009-01-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

For a while now, I have wished to write a bit about the Bibles in my library that I keep around to read. For some reason, probably because I like the feel of thumbing through pages, I prefer to read Bibles in book form rather than online (though I certainly make use of computer Bible programs as well). Although my collection of Bibles is not hugely extensive, I do think it has a lot to say about my religious interests. I have placed the Bibles I have in an ordinal ranking based upon their usefulness to me on a day-to-day basis. I also wish to comment on some of the Bibles I don't yet have but would like to add to my collection as time and resources permit.

New King James Version: The Nelson Study Bible

I got this bible as a college student after some belongings of mine (including my Bible) were stolen at a grocery store where I attended college in Los Angeles. This particular Bible has provided me with much insight from its study notes and I have gotten much use from it. I would personally wish to see a parallel Bible for the NKJV showing the wording from the version as well as the NU-Text and M-Text (for the NT) and the Masoretic Text versus the Septuagint (for the OT). Nonetheless, while I disagree with some of the notes at the bottom of the text, this is the basic Bible I have used for years for studying and writing articles.

1599 Geneva Bible

This is the newest (no joke) Bible in my collection, as I've had it for less than a month, and it was published in 2007 by Tolle Lege Press. Best of all, it's not a facsimile version (see below). I am using this Bible for reading through the scriptures this year, and I have found the language very direct, and the notes quite powerful (the notes from the original 1599 Geneva Bible are included, and some of them pack quite a punch, demonstrating the power of the use of the Bible to contemporary society). I think that, along with the NKJV listed above, that this Bible will be used for many years. The Bible lacks maps and the study guides present in other Bibles, but it does have a handy glossary of Middle-English terms at the back in case someone cannot figure out the definition of vittles (food, or vitals).

The Interlinear Bible (4 Volumes)

At four volumes, the first three with Hebrew and an English translation by Jay P. Green, Sr., the fourth with the Greek and an English translation also by Jay P. Green, Sr, this book is a little too bulky to read as often as the two listed above. Nonetheless, I find it quite excellent when trying to figure out a difficult passage to consult this text, because its translations are literal enough that sometimes one can pick out a nuance that translators often neglect in the attempt to force some sense into a verse. Being able to find the Greek and Hebrew words in question directly also helps in word studies, especially in cases where Strong's is a bit lacking. When people call me on the phone asking for help in how to interpret a verse, I turn to this Bible to shine a little bit of light on it.

La Biblia De Las Americas: Biblia de Esudio

Esta biblia fue un regalo a mi desde mi amigo Ivan, y es una biblia muy excelente que uso mucho en paises (como Sudamerica) cuando tengo que escuchar a y seguir con mensajes en espanyol. Tambien uso esta biblia cuando quiero escribir ensayos sobre la biblia en espanyol por mis amigos latinos. Por estes razones, esta biblia es muy importante por mi porque hay versos en esta biblia que son mas cerca al original hebrero y griega de otras versiones en Engles, y cuando hay un emfasis interesante en esta version.

1560 Geneva New Testament (with Modern Spelling)

This handy New Testament, edited by David L. Brown and William H. Noah, was a delightful little find I picked up in 2006 at an exhibit on William Tyndale and the Bible, which helped spark my strong interest in Tyndale's Bible (see below) and the Geneva Bible (here and see above as well). This Bible completely lacks notes, is pretty easy to read, and my main difficulty with it is that it only has the NT. If it were a complete Bible, I would probably use it a lot more. Nonetheless, it is small and quite useful, helpful in demonstrating the continuing value and excellence of the work of Tyndale and other 16th century Bible translators.

The Facsimile Bibles: 1560 Geneva Edition and the 1526 New Testament translated by William Tyndale

These Bibles I keep mainly for historical purposes, as I am a fan of the work of Tyndale. Neither of these books are easy to read at all, in fact, both are near impossible to read. Nonetheless, they are nice to have around for other purposes, even if mostly to show my support for the work of Tyndale and others of his time and to be impressed at the amazing design work of the Bibles, even if they are near illegible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible

This Bible is a sterling example of false advertising. The real fault with this Bible falls in the fact that its editors do not take the Bible seriously in their interpretations, only translate those verses that are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls (making the Bible highly fragmentary), have a noted bias for variant readings, and include lots of unbiblical psalms and other material interspersed with biblical material, some of which has its order drastically changed. This Bible is of interest mainly in knowing what the Dead Sea Scrolls and three liberal theologians have to say about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is just about useless, even less useful than the facsimile Bibles, which were at least translated by godly men with respect for the Word of God.

Bibles I'd Like To Have:

Though there are plenty of Bibles I don't have (my collection is pretty small), there are only a few that I'd really like to add to my collection. Where I feel my collection is a little weak is in the Hebrew-based Bibles, so I'd like to add a Tanakh and a Stern's Complete Hebrew Bible to the collection. If someone made a copy of the Completensian Polyglot (an excellent six-language parallel Bible) I would enjoy adding that too. If anyone thinks there are some Bibles I need to add to my collection, feel free to comment.

In Between Worlds

2008-12-17T14:32:00.001-08:00

Recently, I have been trying to see things from the perspective of a dear friend of mine, who is in the midst of the long and often tense process of growing up to become a wonderful young woman. Being still in the midst (though hopefully closer to the end than the beginning) of my own rather stressful transition into manhood and the responsibilities full manhood entails (that is, to others, instead of just to one's self), I have a great deal of sympathy for my friend. All my life I have been fascinated by the behavior of other people. From early childhood I watched what big people did, what other little people did, and before too long I found myself as a person in between worlds, where in some areas I was like the big people, and in other areas I was like the little people, though I have never found myself very much like the other people my own age. As I have gotten older and (hopefully) wiser, I have still retained a great many qualities from my youth, including my extreme tenderness for little people and my extreme curiosity about the behavior of those around me. Somehow, these things never got lost along the course of my life, and so I often feel both a great deal older and a great deal younger than I am. I can find myself amused by the humorous and innocent antics of small children, feel with the earnest struggles of my teenage friend, and enjoy the intelligent and serious conversations with adults who are often (at least) my parents' age, often in the same day.

Moving in between worlds has its advantages. Each world has its own unique perspective. For children, the world is a very small place, centered around the child and his (or her) wants and needs (and usually the child cannot separate these very well). Hours can pass by quickly while having fun, or minutes can feel like hours in boredom and frustration. For a teenager, there are often great ambitions, and the desire to be as free as an adult, with a fear of the oppressive responsibilities looming, arguing (either out loud or silently) with one's parents, trying to find one's own identity and place in the world. For many (like myself), the struggles to sort out our feelings about ourselves, our place in the world, our families, our destiny, and where we stand with others continue long after the teenage years ends. For young adults, determining who we are in terms of our education, our jobs, and our friends only leads to other questions of a lasting nature--such as our thoughts for eternity (once we realize we are not immortal--though somehow I managed to escape feeling immortal during my youth, and struggled with a different sort of problem), and our thoughts about what sort of responsibilities we wish to take on in our workplaces, as well as dealing with family (such as, do we want to have one of our own?), once the realization that we were not created to be alone means we must take on responsibilities of seeking and becoming examples for others to follow.

I do not know the world of full adulthood, in the sense of being married and having children, but from what I have seen of others, it offers new challenges in dealing with this need to be a good example for those that follow after us. Successful self-control and the establishment of godly relationships with others leads us into greater responsibilities where we exercise rule over others in households, in businesses, in congregations, and in the world at large. Once again, if we are faithful in little, we are given more to deal with. I know even less of what being elderly means, but here again is a change--we leave a lot of the hustle and bustle to younger people, and sometimes must depend on others to take care of us (especially if health becomes an issue), but at the same time there is an entire lifetime of great stories we have to tell others (and I always love hearing the stories people have to tell), as well as a lot of wisdom about how to treat others, and how to view our life over the long term.

I still remember and look back fondly at the times I spent with my great-grandfather Matthias as we drank root beer, he smoked cigars, and we watched football (during bowl season, when there were some college games not on Saturdays). He would tell stories about the other athletes he knew, who he boxed with and played football with, still sound of mind, still full of his dislike of foreigners and Catholics, still full of love for his far-flung family. Among his great-grandchildren, perhaps I was the least like him, bookish and not gifted with much athletic ability. But it didn't matter--I loved hearing his stories and he loved telling them, and somehow I feel I needed to hear them as much as he needed to tell them, and vice versa. He was as uncomfortable with his position in life as I was with mine, but in sharing his stories and wisdom he gave me a great gift in seeing the world, if only for a little bit, through the eyes of someone else. And in having someone who was so interested in his stories, perhaps he realized that even if he couldn't work anymore, that he still had something to give to the world around him.

It seems that in life, if we are living it properly, we are always somehow moving in between worlds. We were created with infinite longing in our hearts, and a miniscule reach, and though that can be tragic (as we may be filled with much angst and worry about our inabilities to deal with the responsibilities and burdens we have been given), it can also be wonderfully liberating as well to know that we are not stuck in little boxes for all time. Because we can grow, can learn, and can mature, we also are faced with the need of developing the ability to see where others come from, in the knowledge that sometimes we have been there before, and sometimes we will be there in time. There should always be something more for us to explore, some new challenge to overcome, some mountain to climb, some story to hear and to tell, some book to read, some relationship to deepen, someone to teach, someone to learn from, some reason to look at the world wide-eyed and enthusiastic about what is to come today, some reason to have hope for what may come tomorrow, and some reason to be glad one had yesterday. We do not choose to be alive, but if we are wise, we choose to live the lives we have been given as best as we may, and to hope and pray that it is enough, for if we are truly blessed, we just may have the opportunity to move beyond this world today into a world tomorrow that we can scarcely begin to imagine. But to live tomorrow, we must live well today.

On Theonomy

2008-12-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

In the course of my theological readings, I have come across a movement that describes itself as a fringe on the fringe of Calvinism, but though it springs from somewhat different denominational origins than my own personal religious tradition, it springs from nearly identical hermeneutical (and presuppositional) assumptions about how to interpret scripture, even if the interpretations themselves are sometimes different. This relatively recent theological phenomenon is called Theonomy, coming from the Greek words for "God's law," and this group of people, mostly from a Protestant Reconstructionist background (more on that in a bit), view God's law as the sole source of human ethics. This particular viewpoint also views the biblical laws (especially those found in the Penteteuch) as remaining valid in Christianity, a view I hold most strongly and that springs from my own personal religious heritage. It almost goes without saying that this view also holds the scriptures to be inerrant and to be the eternal and unchanging standard for how individuals, families, churches, and societies to behave.

Many of the people who are called (or who call themselves) Theonomists spring from a Calvinist and postmillennialist tradition, with the belief that regeneration of society can spring from a conversion of people to biblical Christianity and the adoption of a biblical worldview that leads to actions by believers in line with biblical principles. Many theonomists, particularly those whose believes are in accordance with Dominion Theology, view the millennium as something to be brought about by an ever-more redeemed Christianity whose biblical worldview ever increasingly influences the world around us, thus bringing corrupt and fallen human institutions further and further in line with God's laws, thus eventually bringing the millennium to this earth through the action of the Holy Spirit in believers.

I do not come from that particular tradition, nor am I particularly optimistic about the ability of human society to be redeemed apart from the direct imposition of biblical law by Jesus Christ upon his return to earth. As someone who believes the law to be an enduring covenant between God and believers for all time and also believes the law to represent the way in which God has ordained for society to be run, though, I would have to consider myself a Theonomist in some fashion. Interestingly enough, I find myself in recent years to have found quite a few close friends of mine within the Church of God tradition who themselves have been (almost without knowing it, perhaps) engaging in serious research and Bible study on exactly these lines, and I have been the fond reader (and occasional implementer) of this research. What all of these lines of thinking, many proceeding from independent grounds, have in common is their start from the premise that God's law in its entirety remains a part of the covenant that Christians commit to by accepting a personal relationship with God. This idea of the covenant as containing within it the entirety of biblical law as revealed in scripture leads to interesting implications, and I will briefly examine some of them here.

For example, one friend of mine has recently written a lengthy and quite authoritative study on the biblical precedent for self-defense springing from the case law of the Penteteuch. It follows that if that one considers that law to be authoritative and binding in its entirety for Christians today unless specifically revised by the New Testament, that self-defense remains a right, and the defense of innocent life remains a responsibility for Christians today. The only way one can sever the link is either through dubious interpretations of the NT that are themselves divorced from proper context, or through denying the validity of the entire Bible to the conduct of Christians. If one does not wish to obey God's commands, and is not willing to admit one's self as a sinner (as, unfortunately, is necessary for me to do quite often) one is left to partake of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and face the punishment of a rebel and a traitor to God's kingdom.

Another friend of mine was a co-writer some years ago in a short book about Sabbath observance which has created quite a storm. Though I struggle to put into practice the ideals of that book about Sabbath observance, it did trigger some thinking about how people react when their actions fall short of the standards of, say, Nehemiah. A friend of mine, who disagreed quite strongly with the analysis and found the point of the research to be glaringly obvious (it is), nonetheless conceeded that if Christians are to be an example to the world that it would then follow that these recommendations would need to be followed. Are we not to be an example to the world? We have not been called to retreat from this world, though we are called to be different from the world even as we interact with the world and provide examples of how citizens of God's kingdom should behave, which would automatically make us an example, whether we want to be or not. What this means is sometimes difficult to determine, though it is something we should always keep in mind.

Even in my own writings, without realizing it, I have examined matters from a Theonomic perspective. An example of this is in my work on the development of Christian virtue, in which I maintained that the development of Christian virtue comes through internalizing God's law such that it no longer becomes a list of do's and don'ts, but rather becomes so entrenched that one sees the law as a prompting to behave in love far beyond the minimum requirements of the law (see, for example, the way in which Boaz surpassed the minimum requirement of allowing Ruth to glean and was prompted to show great generosity to her without shaming her). It is in this sense that the law remains, not as a billy club to pound others for not being obedient, but rather as a way to develop, through the habit of obedience, the very loving character of God Himself, so that we may become more like Him in the way in which we conduct our lives. It is also in this way that we can redeem our own families and congregations, one life at a time.

Perhaps it is in this way that my agreement with the Theonomists is most profound, because it is not something to be done from the top-down, but rather from the bottom-up, and all redemption must spring from the free choice of people, one at a time, to accept the divine offer of unmerited grace. It is only then that redemption can work its magic to heal the wounds of life in a fallen world, to turn repentant sinners into fitting examples of godly behavior, and to help redeem the curse that has fallen upon this world.

On Thankfulness

2008-11-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

As Thanksgiving approaches, I have thought (naturally) about the subject of thankfulness and gratitude, and apparently it is not a subject I have ever talked about directly in this particular blog, so I would like to correct that notable oversight. Thinking about the things one has to be grateful for is a useful task, a balance to the sort of complaints that are sometimes a bit too quick to come. Though this almost-completed year has had a lot of stress, I have many things to be very thankful for, and while this is not a complete list, it should at least serve as a start.

*Start the drumroll*

I would first like to thank God (a good place to start), because while this year has been crazy, stresfull, and full of ups and downs, it has also been full of a lot of much-needed lessons, and much-needed love. I'm not sure where some of the parts of my life are going, but I am thankful to be alive, in good health, with people who love me (more on that below). I consider much of these developments to be due to the grace of God and not my own modest skill.

I would also like to thank my family this year, both in the physical and spiritual sense. As I have detailed in at least one post, I have had a difficult time with some members of my family this year, but getting some issues out in the open helped me (and they) realize that our love for each other was present, even if it was not always recognized. I get the feeling my family is always going to be the source of some drama in my life, but things are much easier to deal with when you can see the love. My spiritual family in South America this year was also especially warm and loving, and helped me to see that some of the issues I struggle with have at the base of them a lack of recognition of love, and are much easier to deal with in the context of loving relationships with other people. We were not made to be alone, but were made to live in a nexus of warm and affectionate relationships.

Speaking of relationships, the feast in Mendoza has given me a very unusual one with a very lovely young lady named Cony. I cannot call her my girlfriend, as she is not, but in being a sweet and loving and affectionate young lady, full of kind words, a gentle touch, and an open heart, she showed me something very important that I needed to learn, and taught me that underneath all of the scars that there is a loving, tender, and even brave heart within me, and that I have the capacity to love and feel loved in return, and that is a gift I greatly treasure, even if I don't really know how to handle it at this point, as I'm still trying to sort it all out. Again, this blessing was not due to my own doing, but rather was a gift from God through a sweet young lady who I hope I always have the chance to chat with.

I must also give some thanks to other friends that I have, as they have patiently listened to me tell my complicated stories, help me figure out what it means, and been generally supportive even in difficult times. A good friend is one who celebrates with those who laugh, and cries with those who mourn, and there has been plenty of both this year to be had. My friends have given me some welcome advice, helped me calm down my rather tense nerves, and given congratulations (and the occasional warning) when necessary, as well as giving many recommendations on books to read, podcasts to listen to, and so on. Without such friends in my life, I would certainly be a lot worse off. Even a kvetchy sort like myself has much to be thankful for, and so do you.

A Photolog of Mendoza

2008-11-18T13:35:00.000-08:00

Considering how much I enjoyed the Feast of Tabernacles this year in Mendoza, and how much my blog could use some more lighthearted and happy posts, I figured that it would be good to show my readers (whomever they are) some of the photos I liked best of my collection, and tell the tales behind them. So, without any further ado, here are my favorite 12 photos of my feast in Mendoza this year:

The first photo, off to the left, is a photo of the Hotel Del Ejercito De Los Andes (in English, that is the Hotel of the Army of the Andes) in Mendoza, Argentina, where I (and the brethren of South America who attended the feast in that location) stayed, and where services and the events for the site were held. While the Americans stayed at a different hotel some miles away, I figured that it would be more fun to spend my time with the local brethren. Interestingly enough, earlier this year there was a fire at this hotel, and many brethren hoped that the feast would be held at a different hotel, but that proved not to be the case, and the rooms in the new part of the hotel were quite nice (I was lucky enough to share one with six other soccer mad young men from Argentina and Chile, and we all had a great time talking with each other.
This next photo to the left is a silly photo of me. While having dinner with my friend Cony (who you will be seeing a lot of in this entry), I was trying to explain what sort of meat people eat in the US (apparently, Chileans do not eat much beef because their country lacks a plains region, being a slender mountainous realm bordering the sea. Unsurprisingly enough, they eat a lot of fish there. Since I did not know the Spanish word for deer, I made a brave attempt at playing charades to explain what a deer was to my dear Chilean friend, and she thought it was so funny looking she took a picture of it. As you can see from the smile on my face, I didn't mind that one bit either.

Speaking of my dear friend Cony, early in the feast, as we were just getting to know each other, she thought it would be a fun idea to take my glasses and wear them. Despite not being able to see very well without my glasses, I was able to take this excellent shot of my funny friend (thanks, no doubt, to the autozoom on my digital camera). I think she even manages to look pretty wearing my glasses, and that is an impressive task. Judging from her smile, it's pretty obvious she's having a good time of herself too, which is a large part of the joy of the feast.

Speaking of my lovely Chilean friend Cony again, this next photo to the left comes from the wedding that occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles this year in Mendoza. I was responsible for translating the ceremony from Spanish to English, where Mr. Langarica (the pastor in charge of the congregations for UCG down in the Southern Cone of South America) gave a lengthy message about how Satan is attempting to destroy society by attacking the institution of marriage. Anyway, Cony was the lucky young lady who caught the bouquet after the wedding, so I took this shot of her with her sweet smile, and avoided teasing her too much about it, as she was somewhat embarassed to have caught the bouquet (as the same traditions apply in South America as apply in the US about prompt marriage).

During the Feast, there was a lot of dancing, and for once I actually enjoyed dancing a lot (in large part because I had a very lovely and friendly person to dance with, which means a lot to me). There was dancing after the wedding, which I did not take any pictures of, but during the second dance of the Feast, the dance for Jovenes y Solteros (that is, young people and singles), I was able to take a picture of my lovely and happy dance partner, smiling as is her habit. Now, it should be noted as well, that part of the reason she was smiling is because I was dressed even more comically than she was, with a bright red wig on that is mercifully not in this photo (though plenty of people managed to take pictures of it). Sometimes it's worth looking a little silly to enjoy time with those you care about.

Besides the dancing among the people at the site, there were also a lot of folk dances held at Mendoza. At least two nights were dedicated mostly to folk dances where the brethren of South America demonstrated their folk traditions to others, and I had the joy of being able to watch my friend Cony (unsurprisingly enough, in the middle of this picture) dance in a few of these folk dances herself with the other young people of South America.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes it's good to be a little bit silly if one is spending time with friends. I certainly could use being silly and lighthearted a little more often, I think (one of the reasons I enjoyed the feast in Mendoza so much), but my roommate Marcelo obviously is getting into the spirit in this photo to the left, where he is sitting in front of the restroom in our hotel room making sure that only very important people use our bathroom. Since our room was the headquarters of the soccer tournament, our room was quite crowded with people coming and going often, especially early in the morning (as the soccer games started at 7AM most mornings, except for high Holy Days). Needless to say, no one slept very much, as all of us had more important concerns.

Speaking of Marcelo again, I learned a new expression during the feast from my South American friends: 1313, referring to the flirtatious winking in MSN Messenger, commonly used by the young brethren in South America to keep in touch (Facebook is pretty common as well). Here, at a nice steakhouse in Mendoza, Marcelo is attempting to flirt with Robin, a young lady from Virginia. It was refreshing to note that the brethren in South America were warm and affectionate and friendly across all sorts of boundaries that normally serve to divide us and keep us from enjoying each other's company.

Another photo from the night at the steakhouse was this next photo to the left. Here Daniel, the unofficial leader of the young adults in Santiago, Chile, and the organizer of this year's soccer tournament (where the Singles ended up tying the employees of the hotel 3-3 in the final after winning against the Middle Aged All-Stars and the Young Married People), and I are enjoying a fine moment in between eating steak. Daniel himself was a very excellent fellow, very friendly, with a good knowledge of English, and a strong faith. Indeed, he had been disfellowshipped from UCG a few years ago after some rumors had been spread about him and a young lady who is now his fiance, but thankfully the truth was revealed and he was able to come back to church, where his faith and his generous spirit remained intact. He and I had a Bible Study after services on the Last Great Day as well where we talked about the problems of respect for authority that are rampant and what can be done about them. I must say, I have a lot of respect for him, for his generosity of spirit to his brethren, for his joy, and for his strong faith and sense of responsibility for those around him.
For me, one of the biggest aspects of this feast was family. This focus on family took several aspects. One of the aspects was the family of faith. There were at least ten baptisms on the evening of the Last Great Day as the feast drew to a close. On that night before the final services, brethren from many parts of South America were baptized by some of the elders, including Mr. Fred Nance (the fellow in the yellow shirt), who visited with his wife and stepsons from the United States, gave some messages, and served as a fellow translator with me. As the members of South America (except in Santiago) are scattered in small congregations, it is only at the Spring and Fall feasts that any large enough group of them are together with elders where baptisms are possible.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a wedding during the feast in Mendoza, and this is a picture of the bridge and groom enjoying their first slice of wedding cake. The bride came from a rural area in Northern Argentina, near the border with Paraguay, where only her family was in the church. The groom is part of about a couple dozen brethren in the city of Cordoba, roughly in the middle of Argentina. Dating long distance is as hard in South America, where there may only be a couple of singles in each congregation, thought of largely as brothers and sisters, as it is in the United States, so someone will probably be ranting a little less, at least, about this subject.

As is to be expected, family is very important among the brethren in South America. Here, to our left, we have Cony and her family. After services on the Last Great Day I wanted to make sure I had a picture of them all, since I had the chance to meet all of them and enjoy their company during the Feast. Cony's father and mother appear at least acceptable with the affectionate regard Cony and I treated each other, though it is obvious that Cony's little sister Jenny is less than pleased about the fact that her big sister had someone with such an interest in her. Someday, Jenny, you too will understand the joy of someone's company like your sister did. Just not yet.

On the morning after the Last Great Day, it was time for us to depart Mendoza and return back home. However, before we left, I wanted to take one last picture with my lovely new friend. After breakfast, where Cony gave me a photo of herself to treasure in my wallet, Cony's father was generous enough to take this picture of Cony and I in front of the hotel. I know I for one will always remember this feast, and remember the wonderful time I spent with my brethren. Thankfully, Cony and I have been able to keep in touch, as daunting as the distance is between Tampa, Florida and Santiago, Chile. I definitely plan on coming back next year, God willing, and enjoying another fine feast with my brothers and sisters from South America. Salud.

Such Is Life In A Fallen World

2008-11-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

Today is Election Day in the United States, and given the fact that the Feast of Tabernacles has recently ended as well (a most wonderful Feast, I might add, in many ways), my thoughts are on the tension that exists in the Christian between the world that is and the world to come, between our earthly citizenship and in our citizenship in the Jerusalem that is above. These tensions are not new, but have existed as long as godly believers have dwelt in ungodly realms, from the travails of Daniel the prophet in corrupt Babylon to the difficulties of early Christians in occupied Judea under Roman rule (and even more so for Paul, who was himself a Roman citizen and thus acutely aware of the tensions of citizenship above and below). Since these problems are not new, they are not likely to go away no matter what I or anyone else may say about them, but at least facing these problems may benefit us by forcing our attention on the dilemmas we struggle with.

It is the belief of UCG (and many other pietistic religious organizations as well), its ministry, and the majority of its members, that voting is a sign that one has become a part of the fallen world of corrupt politics, with the wars and division, the lying and deception that are regretfully part of the political process. This disparagement of politics is often accompanied by a lack of self-knowledge about how ubiquitous politics is in our own congregations and organizations, partly because we are human and still struggle (hopefully) with our human lusts for power and security and glory, and partly because power exists wherever two or three (or more) are gathered for any purpose, and that the allotment of power itself reflects a political system (whether one likes it or not), regardless of how that power is gained or used. The disparagement of politics as nasty and unclean business which no Christian can or should engage in masks the fact that we ourselves are also political, even despite our own sincere and heartfelt intentions not to be political in the mean-spirited, malicious, false, and base way we see around us.

The way things are are not the way things ought to be, in politics or in many other ways. Nonetheless, we live in a fallen world where our beliefs are often in tension with each other because of the way in which sin has spread throughout our world. We ourselves struggle (sometimes successfully, and sometimes not) with our own sinful desires, and struggle to counteract the impact of sin in our relationships with other people, as well as the families we are born or marry into, the companies we own or work for, the schools we attend or send our children to, the churches we support and attend, and the nations of which we are citizens. Even though we are also citizens of that Jerusalem above (something we should never forget or minimize), we are also in a nexus of relationships and entanglements here below simply by being here, without our wish or choice in the matter, and these relationships carry with them sometimes burdensome and unpleasant responsibilities that lead to dilemmas in how we can fulfill our obligations here and above at the same time.

There are no doubt some people who find comfort in either extreme--that we should take no responsibility here and solely be pious and wait and hope for the Kingdom of God (a choice that often makes life on earth hell for ourselves and others because politics loses the influence of its righteous citizenry and becomes a playpen for knaves and scoundrels of the worst sort who seek to prey on the basest motives of their citizenry), or that there is no danger of even serious involvement in politics as they are. As can be expected, though, I take no comfort in either extreme but feel fully the tension between both pulls, the pulls of my responsibility to my fellow citizens here and to my responsibilities to my citizenship above. (My studies in engineering have led me to understand and lament that tension, the state of being pulled in two directions at the same time, is the natural state of my existence, for better or for worse).

It is in light of that tension that I long for the Jerusalem that is above, without forgetting that I have not yet reached that blessed city free of divided loyalties and quibbles about the lesser of two evils and the way in which my own life falls so pitifully short of that noble standard which I most sincerely believe, and it is in light of the feast that just ended that I would like to turn as I close this particular line of thought. This past feast I spent ten days in the city of Mendoza, Argentina with some of the most loving and affectionate brethren I have ever met, who showered upon this outgoing stranger more love and concern that I quite knew how to handle. We ate and chatted, hugged and kissed on the cheek, sang and danced without concern for borders, rejoicing in our common citizenship above. Since I am able to speak and understand Spanish, there was no distance of language between us either, as we were able to communicate with each other our common sentiment of ourselves as brothers and sisters, no matter how far apart we may reside. This love and concern, this affectionate regard, I believe will endure into the time when we will dwell in the Jerusalem above as fellow citizens of that heavenly kingdom.

And when those days ended, we had to return (mournfully, in the case of some of us, as loved ones now became far away) to the fallen world we had temporarily left behind us. I would like to hope that I and others were better people for having spent that time together, as short as it is, but it is only a foretaste of what is to come. May we live to see the day when we must no longer struggle with how to live in a fallen world, but can enjoy life in a new heaven and new earth, without the malign influence of sin and corruption, of death and loss. And may that vision of a better life that we can experience only fleetingly give us strength to endure what we must until that bright and glorious day yet to come.

My Place In The Sun

2008-09-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

The psychoanalytic psychologist Erik Erikson famously theorized that life was but a series of crises in which the successful resolution of one crisis sets up the terms of the next crisis, and gives one the necessary tools in order to solve that crisis without providing the exact solution. In a sense, this is not too far different from the biblical perspective that our Christian walk is to test us in different areas, progressing as we deal with ever more serious vices and problems in our character and seek to master ever more challenging virtues. Some of our problems are universal--there is fairly wide consensus about nearly universal needs, very common desires, and certain struggles that resonate across time and across cultures. Other problems and difficulties and virtues are very unusual, in that few people know they exist, and even fewer seek to master them. We, as human beings, are in tension between the universal that unites us with others and the particular that makes us all unique and in some ways alone. Perhaps, as we are conscious and self-conscious beings, it can be no other way.

Sometime in late 2004, I became aware that something was amiss in my life, and since then I have been in what could be termed the crisis of early adulthood, trying to find one's place in the world. I was finishing my first degree, in Civil (Structural) Engineering, and had just finished my studies at the Ambassador Bible Center, both of which brought me in contact with a larger world I still feel somewhat uncomfortable with. For one, I became aware that the barriers to advancement in my chosen field(s) were quite immense. To take engineering as an example, I had serious difficulty finding an engineering job without passing the EIT/FE exam (which takes about a day, and which I did in Fall of 2005). After this one must work four years become one is eligible to become a Professional Engineer, at which point one is a real engineer, and must keep up all manner of Continuing Education Units and such in order to maintain one's position. There was always some new skill that needed to be mastered, some aspect of self-promotion (a skill I must admit I have not mastered) I needed to gain, something I was lacking in order to meet my ambitions.

I looked around me, and found that I was not alone in this struggle, but that my entire generation was being unfairly maligned for desiring a place in the sun that the generations before us had taken for granted and had denied us, leaving us to struggle in a hostile world that they had made, while they mocked us in our efforts, chastised us for our student debt and our desire for jobs that had good income and opportunities for advancement (both of which I have found difficult in my own life) mocked, as if we were not worthy of great things because we had not paid an ever-increasing and unreasonable amount of dues, all while the price of paying these dues increased and the reward for paying them decreased.

My struggle to relate to that world around me of entrenched power figures who were somewhat ignorant of my need for advancement, who wished to increase the burdens upon me without increasing the reward for bearing those burdens, and my resistance to that sort of treatment, has continued now for several years, and has included such diverse fields of conflict as my family, my workplace, and my congregation. To some extent the problem may be due to perception, but perception becomes reality, and misunderstandings form the basis of long and ugly conflicts. This is especially tragic in those cases where a simple and honest communication at the beginning may have avoided a lot of grief and suffering and anger on all sides. In any case, I have no particular ambitions to rule harshly over others, but my ambitions at any rate have been viewed by others as sometimes threatening to their own position at least, and that is not always an unfair judgment.

Moreover, I do not know how this particular crisis is to end, or when. My family has been largely a lead weigh tied around my ankle in this particular climb out of the darkness into the harsh light of day, instead of rope to help with the climb. The death of my father in early 2006 gave me a greater (if unwelcome) understanding of the gravity of the struggle I faced, being about far more than mere ambition, but even mere survival. The death of my grandmother in 2007 let me know that certain members of my family were extremely unscrupulous in how they sought their own material ambition, and the behavior of other family members has but continued this harsh judgment. The failure of my family to be more than a week reed in my times of grave trouble have had their mirrors in other struggles, such as the difficulty to find strong romantic relationships (intimacy has always been a difficult matter for me, largely because I tend to fear it even more than I long for it, most of the time at least). Seeing the mountain one has to climb is not appealing when one climbs alone without a detailed map to go by.

Perhaps, though, this struggle has been a good thing. For one, it has caused me to be much more compassionate to others, even if it has sharpened by deep sense of sarcasm at the deeply corrupt world all around me. Whether this is a good thing or not, only time can tell. Whether I will learn some patience, that most elusive and difficult of virtues for me, or maybe even learn to be a little less thin-skinned and prickly about what is going on around me remains to be seen. I have not finished climbing the mountain, so I do not see what summits remain to be reached when I finish this one. Perhaps this is but a small peak in the Appalachians, which I must master before attempting the Rockies, to say the least of the Alps or the Andes or Everest. That remains to be seen as well.

The Postmillennial Problem

2008-08-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

I do not normally delve into discussions of biblical prophecy, partly because I find the claims in most (if not all) cases far outweigh the modest biblical evidence presented in support. However, in this entry I will make an exception, though to be honest this is not a comment about biblical prophecy itself as much as it is a comment about the difficulties involved with rigid methodological commitments. I am a fond reader of the American Vision blogs by a fellow named Gary DeMar and his associates, but one aspect of their analysis which irritates me is the way in which their firm commitment to postmillennialism forces them into a preterist view of prophecy that neglects the firm and consistent scriptural record. Since this is a blog, and not a weighty tome of several hundred pages (which would be necessary to analyze the case for different views of biblical prophecy), the analysis will be by necessity somewhat more superficial than I would prefer.

There are basically four ways to view biblical prophecy (especially the book of Revelation, but the same problem is true for the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others): preterism, historicism, futurism, and spiritualism. The preterest takes prophecy as applying to the time in which the prophecy was written. For example, Jeremiah would apply to the Babylonian captivity of Judah, Haggai would apply to the rebuidling of the second temple around 520 BC, and Revelation would apply to the first century church. This is the view taken by Gary Demar and many who ascribe to the postmillennialist position (for reasons that will become more clear below). Historicists see prophecy as applying in stages throughout human history. This view, with regards to Revelation 2 and 3 (perhaps the most notable example of this strain of prophetic view) would ascribe various eras in the NT church according to the letters to the seven churches, and some have even (with considerable excellence) used this view with regards to the OT as well. Futurists see prophecy as primarily about the end-times (which are usually just around the corner in their view). Spiritualists see prophecy as involving different believers or different types of believers in any time, and make no historical commitment about the fulfillment of various scriptures. For example, a spiritualist would see the seven letters of Revelation 2 and 3 as referring to different types of believers.

Now, I am of the belief that the Bible is big enough for all of these views to be true. To use Revelation as an example, I believe John the Apostle was writing to contemporary believers, to eras of the OT and NT spanning thousands of years of human history, to faithful in the end time, as well as to individual believers, congregations, and even religious organizations as a whole whose spiritual profiles match those of one church or another. To view only one view as true, and to view evidence bolstering one particular perspective as meaning the disproving and refutation of another perspective is to engage in bad-logic, a false dilemma of either/or when both/and is the correct and proper answer. The Bible was written for people in a specific time and place, with certain historical and social knowledge and in a form designed to reach people in a specific time (this accounts for the fact that the NT Epistles are written in the general form of first century letters, and why the Ten Commandments are organized like a Hittite suzereignity-vassal treaty, as well as why the Psalms often resemble Ugaritic hymns minus the pagan trappings, why the Proverbs resemble Egyptian wisdom writing, and so on). This does not, however, diminish the equally important fact that the Bible was written for people of all times and places as a revelation to mankind so that we can orient our lives according to the will of God. The laws of God are eternally applicable (though in ways we may not always recognize) and reflect the unchanging and unchangable character of our Creator God. We neglect these laws (however big or small, however famous or obscure) at our peril. Indeed, we may honestly through our hands up in the air and wonder how on earth we are supposed to obey some laws (say, for example, the law about tassels), even as we recognize that God had a point with the law that remains valid today, even as we struggle to understand what that point was.

For the most part, Gary Demar and his associates understand this, as they are members of the Theonomic movement, which posits that a godly society must live under God's laws (all of them, even the civil laws) and not rely on God's grace to rid ourselves of the requirements of obedience. To this end, I would support them. From what I understand of the Theonomy movement (which is admittedly not as much as I'd like to), I agree with their aims and approach, and find them similar if not identical to the thoughts of Ron Dart in his Law & Covenant book, which I find to be an excellent and authoritative examination of the applicability of covenants to our time. However, the commitment to postmillennialism is a serious problem, as it involves a substantial neglect of scripture. It should also be noted that a firm commitment to premillennialism (at least in most of its forms) shares a similar neglect of scripture that has equally serious consequences, and both "solutions" are flip sides of the same coin.

Postmillennialism posits that Christ will return after a millennium established by mankind through accordance with God's laws that overturns the consequences of the fall of man in Eden. In this view, righteousness will spread throughout society ever-more progressively until the world is so filled with obedience to God's law that sin is vanquished and mankind will live in peace and harmony and then Christ returns to establish his kingdom on earth. This appeals to Gary Demar (and others of like mind, especially among Catholic scholars in political science, where I first became familiar with this view, like Harry Jaffa) who consider their work to educate mankind on their proper obedience to God, and the role of the United States as bringing liberty to a world enslaved by tradition, and the role of the Catholic Church (or Christianity in general) as the church victorious becoming more active and more powerful as time goes on in an essentially millennial and extremely optimistic light. It is this optimism, incidentally, that allows them to remain active and avoid despairing in a world that looks pretty dark and depressing (and this optimism is its most righteous and most redeeming feature).

Pre-millennialism, by contrast, is extremely pessimistic about the world's future, and frequently believes that things are so bad in the world today that Christ's return is imminent because mankind is on the verge of absolute ruin. Pre-millennialists often can be found trying to calculate the return of Jesus Christ (against the commands of Jesus Christ, who said 'no man shall no the day or the hour' of his return, something often neglected by would be prophets), and can often be found making various claims about raptures and places of safety based on rather slim biblical evidence and a very healthy dose of speculation that may or may not come to pass. In general, pre-millennialism often discourages any kind of action that could postpone the return of Chist, including any meaningful effort to arrest our civilization's and our nation's alarming slide to ruin and perdition. Indeed, pre-millennialism often itself serves as a recipe for passivity and the misguided belief that God will do everything and so mankind needs to do nothing, in contrast to the equally deluded belief by post-millennialists that mankind's efforts (admittedly of God-led and Holy Spirit-endowed people) are sufficient to bring about the Millennial paradise on earth.

I happen to be a pre-millennialist myself, though not of a passive strain, and I find there to be a great tension between my belief that mankind is on the fast train to hell in a handbasket as well as my belief that I must do whatever is in my (very) limited power to arrest that trend. Indeed, I find this tension to be present quite frequently in the Bible. I think of Amos, for example, sent to preach about Israel's destruction and the social injustices (mirrored, intriguingly enough, in our own society) present in a people of superficial religious and 'spiritual' values but insufficiently deep commitment to God's law and its application in their lives and society (a situation alarmingly like that in the USA at present). I think of Jeremiah, called to preach to a hostile and unwelcoming and unrepenant society trusting in foreign alliances and full of moral decay and a government that was set on the separation of church and state (at least by eliminating religious leaders who criticized the politics of the day). I think of John, persecuted and exiled by the Roman government of his time for refusing to worship the emperor as a god and instead preaching that all men are accountable to God (something our political and religious and business leaders seem to forget sometimes). Their call was to action, and to involvement, even though their mission was unsuccessful. They did not passively wait for God to deliver them in a rapture, and neither did they believe that their preaching would lead to a national revival, as much as they would have liked that, to be sure. Instead, they avoided either extreme and felt the tension that seems to be essential for development of godly character, tension that would destroy us if not for the protection and mercy of God Himself.

That view, surprisingly enough, puts me in the rather delicate and strange position of agreeing with the actions of those who, like those at American Vision and other organizations, seek to write books and engage people in recognizing our nation's (and indeed, Christianity's) lost virtues while avoiding the passive copouts like rapture or dispensationalism, even while I disagree with their approach and consider their prophetic knowledge to be extremely lacking on account of their firm (and unwarrented) commitment to a preterist view of scripture (to the exclusion of other views) and a post-millenialist prophetic framework that denies the whole of biblical history (where calamity purges the unrighteous, where human institutions crumble under the weight of human fraility and Satanic corruption, and where God delivers a righteous and small remnant to start again). We will see, in the end, who is right.

On Asabiya

2008-07-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, I read an extremely insightful book by Peter Turchin, named "War and Peace and War," which examines the cycles of imperial nations. This book seeks to examine what it is that makes empires rise (and fall), and does so in an exemplary fashion. In reading the book, I could not help but reflect upon my own dislikes of the center and my love of the periphery in the cultures I inhabit, and this book deals with those issues as well. The word asabiya itself comes from the pivotal work on Magreb (that would be North African) political cycles by the historian Ibn Kahldun. Asabiya, in English, roughly translates to "social capital," or the sum total of social forces holding a society and its institutions (political, social, familial) together.

Empires, apparently without exception, come from those frontier regions on the edge of what are termed "metaethnic fault lines." The situation of bordering entirely alien civilizations causes an extremely tight "us-against-them" mentality that leads to high levels of social cohesion, allowing large scale businesses and socieities to develop. The same may be true in religious groups as well, and is a subject worthy of further personal study in that regard (For example, can the Church of God and the wider Sabbatarian and Messianic movements be considered on the meta-religious fault line of Christianity, and if so, does that mean that right now we are on the downward slide of an asabiya cycle? More on that later.). Asabiya is apparently acquired through that survival instinct that forces social conflict to be submerged in the face of a grave and common threat where high levels of egalitarianism and high levels of sacrifice among leaders reduce the problems of rivalry and social division. In the absence of such external threats, the selfish acquisition of wealth and power (and the rising inequality between the elite and common population of a society) reduces asabiya and leads to periods of social disintigration (such as what is currently going on in the United States, and what has gone on in Southern Italy, to name one famous example, for the last 2000 or so years). Certain practices, like slavery, appear to lead to "asabiya black holes" in the words of Turchin, which explains why the southern part of the US, with its low asabiya, has such poor wages and such a dismal political record (See in particular the state of Louisiana, the last "core" of the southern slaveholding culture before the civil war, which still shows large amounts of corruption, a sign of low asabiya.).

Core regions of a given society develop because of high asabiya, but the increase of imperial territory inevitably brings the frontiers far beyond the core (for reasons of safety and security, empires do not like their capitals/cores to be in periphery regions). The movement of frontiers beyond the core region mean that the forces that once brought unity to a people leave elsewhere. Through cycles of rising and falling social cohesion, an empire gradually loses steam, and eventually crumbles in what is termed, appropriately enough, imperialpathosis. Once a critical amount of asabiya is lost, an empire is finished. It is only in the frontier regions on either side of the fault lines (which move based on the performance of societies along the fault lines) that new imperial peoples gradually develop. Metaethnic lines are not to be trifled with. Consider, for example, the difference between Israel and its neighbors. Israel is a democratic, secular, Western nation, and its neighbors are highly corrupt, often intensely fundamentalist, and not particularly enlightened in their social views or their terroristic behavior. The border between Israel and its neighbors is a metaethnic line similar to those between the Mediterranean society Israel springs from and the uncultured barbarians who viewed its wealth and power jealously but who did not wish to become civilized themselves. (Incidentally enough, the Arabs did become civilized during the time they were on the outside of the metaethnic fault line between Mediterranean and Persian civilizations and the outside barbarians, but their civilization fell apart before the Turkic and Mongol invasions, followed by European colonization, and it is only recently when their asabiya has risen again as a result of the new fault lines, though it appears not to have civilized them again, yet).

What I found most interesting about the book and its contrast between core regions and peripheries, is that the book managed to pull together two strands in my own thinking. One strand was my personal preference for being far away from core regions, to be a border dweller (something that, not surprisingly, is apparently a longstanding family trait among my ancestors, who long dwelt in frontier regions in Europe and the US), far away from the centers of power. For it is in frontiers, when one is faced with alien and hostile enemies, that one learns how to join together with others for survival and finds the greatest social cohesion. However, the link with the second strand, my firm and strident concern for egalitarianism as opposed to social stratification, gives the moral justification for this preference. In periphery regions, the fierce conflict between at the fault lines leaves a low population (i.e. not many people survive there) that is so engaged in fierce struggle that they do not have the time to engage in pettier differentiation or in the hoarding of goods that separate the haves and have-nots. Instead, everyone is in it together. In core regions, by contrast, elites show off their wealth and power and engage in all sorts of petty intra-elite competitions for power and its accutrements that serve to embitter the less privileged majority of groups and distract those elites from their task of holding together their society/civilization. In other words, they fiddle while Rome burns, and they live in luxury while the legions who dwell roughly and in poverty protect the empire from the barbarian hordes across the wall/river/desert. This breeds a lot of well-earned resentment.

The well-organized and presented thoughts from Mr. Turchin should give those dwellers of core regions a lot of pause. Too often, especially in periods of declining asabiya, power is seen not for how it can serve the people, but how it can serve the officeholder, and this leads to a lot of popular cynicism that leads people to focus energy on civic duties and more energy on getting ahead themselves, which, as the "knave mentality" furthers the decline in asabiya and destroys the society from within, leaving it vulnerable to any more cohesive rival on its borders. Others, the "saints," will serve even as everyone else takes advantage, getting taken advantage of without any gain to the society they thanklessly help. It is those in the middle, the "moralists," of which I am one, who seek to punish and condemn the knaves, and in so doing reduce the cynicism of others and allow for social cohesion to develop once again. The book gave an excellent framework for some very interesting ideas, and his analysis of the modern world empires (the USA, Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and China) is frightening and dead-on. In other words, this is an exceedingly good book, and one which relates to a great many subjects on my mind.

Dark Heroes For A Dark Time

2008-07-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Our heroes speak much about ourselves. Most of us are not the heroic sort of people, but inside of us we hold a certain admiration (and maybe a bit of fear) about the type of people we need to preserve the safety and security most of us hold dear. At times of great optimism, our heroes are idealistic servants of the public good, perhaps of a wealthy background, but at any rate serving within the system to fight against an external system of unspeakable evil (think, for example about the Nazis or the Commies in the writings of patriotic Americans of the '40's and '50's, as opposed to the more complicated writings of those who were themselves Communists and who resented the "simplistic" rubric of good and evil). In darker and more corrupt times, our heroes are themselves darker, torn between the duality of good and evil in their natures (a representative of the tension between dark and light in society and in the people themselves), fighting against corrupt authorities, dark and terroristic villains, and the powerful darkness in their own minds and spirits.

Our heroes reflect ourselves because of the (sometimes rather distressing) fact that we see things not as they are, but as we are. As heroes struggle against the great wrongs that people see in the world around them 9whether internal corruption or external threats), those heroes and their environments are a representation of the hopes and fears of the people they reach. In short, it is possible to reconstruct the concerns of a mostly silent (and not particularly articulate) society through the sorts of heroes that are most popular in a given time. Dutiful, hard working heroes (think of Horatio Alger tales) who succeed modestly based on pluck, hard work, virtue, and connections, speak of societies that wish for modest security and believe in the basic justice of the existing social system. On the other hand, the most recent Batman movie, "The Dark Knight," which I will spend the rest of this entry discussing, gives a much darker picture of our times.

At the heart of this movie are a group of sharply individualized characters who represent, in varying amounts, great idealism and cynicism (sometimes in the same person) in a corrupt society of Gotham City which resembles our own society in many powerful and deeply unsettling ways. Batman himself is a dark vigilante, working outside the law because the law is powerless. By day Bruce Wayne is a wealthy playboy served well by able idealists (like Lucius Fox) and a worldly wise butler. The forces of law are represented by the police and the justice system. Commissioner Gordon is representative of the idealistic but powerless forces of the police who are aware of their own limitations of power (he can't even protect himself, much less the city of Gotham, without the help of corrupt fellow cops and Batman, and he is bitterly aware of this weakness, even as he struggles to do the best he can). Harvey Dent, the supposed White Knight of Gotham (but in reality a two-faced, literally and figuratively, character) and his girlfriend and assistant Rachel Dawes (a former girlfriend of Bruce Wayne, the Dark Knight) represent the hard-working and threatened prosecutors, and the judges and mayors fare even worse.

And these are the forces of good. The forces of evil, ultimately including Dent, after he goes insane with rage over the death of his beloved which he was helpless to prevent, are an event more troubled lot. They include a bevy of corrupt cops who are willing to make deals with mobsters and the Joker (the most evil of the lot, a terrorist in love with chaos who nonetheless represents the moral chaos of the world around, personifying it and seeking to corrupt, terrorize, or destroy any who would oppose his nihilistic vision of destruction). The corrupt cops and mobsters (and, pointedly, Chinese businessmen) are knaves, feeling the pinch from Dent and Batman, who seek to rid Gotham of the corruption and vice they peddle and profit from. Their concern for the grubby profits of evil leads them to be surprised when the Joker, who has no such materialistic concerns and who merely wishes for Gotham to be destroyed, betrays them.

In such a dark world we can easily see our own. The ideals of civil servants can become corrupted by dealing with the evil and venality all around them. Cops abuse their power, politicians are controlled by corrupt business interests, and those who defend the law faithfully cannot even defend themselves. The wealthy live a life of insane privilege far beyond the comprehension, much less the reach, of the people, who inhabit "the lower fifth" and view the police and the wealthy and powerful with barely covered mistrust. The great mass of people trudge from day to day without grand hopes and dreams, merely hoping to make it, and greatly hostile (though nearly entirely helpless) against those who would disturb their drudgery. This world is our own, becoming more and more unequal, riven with intra-elite squabbles and great corruption and oppression of the common people. Who can be trusted in this world? Even the great heroes must wear masks and act outside the law (significantly, in darkness and disguise) to defend the people who mistrust them but cannot live without them. Such is our fate, for the heroes we need are not the heroes we deserve, and the heroes we deserve are not the heroes we need. As Dent says truthfully, "We either die as heroes or live to become what we hate." And so it is with us as well.

All of this bodes ill for our world. It would appear that our redemption is outside of our own hands. Though the movie does not explore the means of this redemption in a systematic manner, we may do so here. For one, hope cannot succumb to despair. The power to deliver ourselves from the powerful and deep evil in our midst (which has infected politics, religion, education, law, the family, media, indeed all of our culture and society) cannot come from ourselves, for all of us are darkened by the dark world in which we reside, often in powerful and complicated ways. But are we so corrupted by our world that we cannot recognize and admire the true hero we need to deliver us, Himself unspotted by the world and above all the corruption that we are mired in? Even so, Lord, come.

Lady Mondegreen

2008-07-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

One of the new words added this year to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary is a word I was not familiar with, but which describes many of my experiences singing along to my car radio (or along to some fine music video on Youtube): mondegreen. The word itself is quite obscure, but it describes the lyrics I sing very well. Why is that, you might ask? Well, mondegreen refers to misheard song lyrics. To wit, the word mondegreen itself, not surprisingly, comes from a misheard song lyric. Lady Mondegreen is the name for a lyric that actually says "laid him on the green."

This is far from the only song (and not even the most familiar example to most people) that has flagrantly misunderstood lyrics. For example, there is a rock song known as In-a-gada-da-vida, which really was intended to be "In The Garden Of Eden." This misheard lyric is so common that it ended up becoming the name of the song. This is quite remarkable and unusual in the history of mondegreens. The word mondegreen itself was first cited in 1953, but the word has toiled away in undeserved obscurity until now. In fact, this word is such a common facet of my own singing that I will probably use it a lot more often, know that I know the word (especially since it suits me well).

One song I enjoy listening to a lot right now is the song "Violet Hill" by Coldplay, the first single from their Viva La Vida, or Death And All His Friends album. My favorite lyric in the song is probably the following: "Bury me in honor, when I'm dead and hit the ground." Of course, when I hear and sing along to the song, it goes like this: "Bury me in armor, when I'm dead and hit the ground." I just think it's cooler (given my love of castles and that sort of thing) to be buried in armor than buried in honor, not that I'm sure that would be even possible anymore (given the absolute scarcity of honor, that is).

This is far from the only song whose lyrics I butcher. I remember slaughtering the lyrics to Norah Jones' tune "Don't Know Why" while in the car with some friends of mine. This sort of tendency to slaughter the lyrics of tunes in spectacularly public ways has made me a bit gunshy when it comes to kareoke. Despite my love of singing, I actually have never sung kareoke before, though I almost sung "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!" with some friends as a joke once at a Winter Family Weekend in Lexington in 2002. Thankfully, I spared myself much embarassment, I think, by not ending up singing that particular tune.

I'd be curious to hear about some favorite misheard lyrics from my loyal readers, because these sorts of funny stories are way too good to keep private. Why not share them with a world that probably includes many people who have done the exact same things. Come, let us take a stroll with Lady Mondegreen and reflect upon our common human frailty, and the tendency of the mind to hear, sometimes, what it wants to hear and not what is.

A Defense of Sola Scriptura Against False Tradition

2008-06-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine alerted me to a rather alarming section of a recent sermon given in Phoenix where the speaker gave a rather sarcastic commentary, laced with invective, against those who would depart from human traditions based on supposedly new understandings from the Bible. In every generation there is a struggle between the Word of God, and its sharply worded commands, and the wishes of entrenched hierarchies who wish to pass down received traditions that supposedly spring from apostles and prophets but are mediated through priests or pastors according to their own biases, seeking to defend their positions rather than the truth entrusted to them from above. It is for that reason that true believers must continually come out of Babylon because of the corruption that constantly assails all human organizations and societies.

If we are to refresh our spirits in these dark times, we must drink from the living waters of Christ, and every generation anew must find in those Words of precious truth the sword of the spirit to cut down the arguments of those who oppose God's way in practice, however much they may claim to support Him in theory. The Bible, far from being obsolete, speaks to the very concerns we deal with in life, though we do not often see it because few people are willing and able to face the harsh light of truth that the scripture has to say about human relationships and obedience to God's laws. One must remember there are two great commandments: to love God with all our heart and all our mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

These two great commandments lead into two essential and difficult elements of true religion. True religion must be in conformity to God's ways. If we are truly called, and truly a part of God's church (that is, the spiritual organism), we will behave in accordance with God's law, or at least have that as our target, and admit when we (often) fall short of it. When someone, no matter what their title or position, or whatever their claim of obedience to God, mocks divine commands and calls those who point out scriptures previously neglected (though never new, for what is true has always been true, and therefore there is really no such thing as a "new truth") as rebels and blasphemers, followers of the doctrines of demons, such a person does not speak with God's Holy Spirit, but rather slanders God's servants and holds himself as a judge of souls, only to find himself condemned.

The second obligation of true religion is no easier to accomplish, loving our neighbor (which means everyone else we happen to come across) as we regard ourselves. If we have an accurate knowledge of ourselves, we will see that we have dignity in that we are children of the Most High God, and we will see the depravity that all of us share as fallen sons of Adam. Such mixtures of dignity and depravity we see in ourselves (if we are honest) are also present, in varying quantities and qualities, in everyone else as well. No one is above the curse of sin and the suffering that results from a fallen nature, and no one is below the dignity of being a child of God. We are all struggling humans alike, whether we realize it or not. None of us has any place for shame, for all of us were put here for His purposes, and none of us has any place for glorying in ourselves, for God alone has the glory--solo gloria Dei.

We can only know these things, though, from a knowledge of the scriptures. It was the scriptures that the wise Bereans searched to prove whether Paul was truly speaking correctly in his messages. It was the scriptures (probably Deuteronomy) that Josiah the righteous king of Judah looked in to see the harrowing judgment about to fall upon his idolatrous nation that God mercifully allowed him not to see. It was the scriptures that inspired men like William Tyndale to risk their lives to translate these good words for the spiritual building up of their fellow human beings trapped in ignorance to vain and corrupt priests who claimed that the church was infallible and that only they had the right to read the scriptures and interpret it. They were wrong--no human church is, ever has been, or ever can be infallible. So long as we are human beings serving other human beings, there will be some area we fall short in, some way to improve, some aspect of our knowledge that is incomplete, or that we give too much credence to human traditions and false interpretations taught by well-meaning people that were nonetheless just as flawed (and hopefully just as sincere) as we are.

It is for that reason that we must ever be willing to look to the Word of God for reproof and instruction, for we are never too wise to learn something new or so knowledgeable that we have no need of further instruction, nor so good that we have no need of further correction. The more a wise person knows, the more they are aware of their ignorance, and the more aware they are of their fallen and sinful nature that they must struggle with constantly. It is only an errant fool that considers themselves all-knowing and all-good, and above any accountability to others or to the scriptures. It is not merely a matter of seeking a private word to God that makes us superior to others, but rather a matter of letting ourselves remember that we are all to be held accountable to the standard of God's word.

It is, incidentally, for this very reason that God commands us to fellowship with other people. We all have, by virtue of our experiences and personalities, and differing quantities and usage of different talents and gifts, some areas where we excel and some where we struggle. Without a close awareness of where our gifts can help someone else with a shortfall in a given area, and a close awareness of our shortfalls that need help from other people who are blessed in that particular area (let none of us suppose we are without them), we fall into the trap that says that we are blessed and others have to follow our example, but we have nothing to learn from them, and no use for them except as followers of us. There is no believer, no matter how old or how young, how intellectual or how unlearned, how patient or how much in a hurry, how fast or slow, how wealthy or how poor, how healthy or how frail, that we cannot learn from and that we cannot teach.

What we lack, more than anything, is that spiritual sight that looks beyond the superficial and physical things, the pretty titles and vain use of power and the bully pulpit, and that examines the spiritual heart within ourselves and others. Let us be less proud of our own thoughts--all of us--and more interested in learning what God has to tell us, and maybe then we could fight less about stupid things, spend less time on what is not remotely important, and get to the hard work that is helping improve the world one life and one relationship at a time, whether that means forgiving wrongs, not being easily offended, changing our ways that lead to our unhappiness and trouble, taking our pride a few notches down so that we can listen to what other people tell us without becoming angry, and facing ourselves and others as the mixture of good and evil that all of us possess. We cannot, though, reach these heights unless we realize that we have not finished climbing the mountain yet, and are still struggling to find a place for our feet and hands to latch onto on the sheer cliff we have made it our goal to climb. Until we reach the top, we have no cause to think ourselves or our organizations to be without flaw and blemish, for if we were without blemish, we would not need to crow about it, or insult others who pointed out our flaws for good motive or bad, but would rather be living testaments to God's goodness even without speaking a word at all. I wish I were at that point. Perhaps someday.

Biblical Re-enactment Society: A Case Study In Collaborative Leadership

2008-06-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, as students at the Ambassador Bible Center, a fellow named Tyler and I co-write a skit for the Lifenets (www.lifenets.org) Charity Auction called "Biblical Re-Enactment Society." The short work (only about ten pages or so) remains the funniest play, by a fairly substantial margin, in my largely serious body of work. My thoughts were directed to this particular skit by an excellent video I recently watched (on http://abc.ucg.org under "Gaining Godly Wisdom, Building Godly Character"), where I saw a humorous skit called "Real Biblical Heroes" that reminded me of my own collaborative script in its use of biblical stories as the fodder for lighthearted humor about human nature and human experience.

Two thoughts came to mind as I reflected upon the "Biblical Re-Enactment Society" skit. The first was about how much fun it was to work on the script with other people. Usually, when I am writing, I sit alone at a computer and type about some melancholy subject or another, often without trying intentionally to be melancholy. However, in writing collaborative works, without trying the works are usually much more light-hearted and funny, much less overwelmingly serious and dark, and are often much more enjoyable in performance with other people. For whatever reason, collaborating brings out a much happier side of my personality than my usual solo writing works. Perhaps this should be a sign that I should write collaboratively more often, though it has been a very unusual practice for me to do so.

The second thought that came to mind is more extended, and is the subject of this paper at large. In life and in my recreational activities (be they writing or playing roleplaying games and so on), I often have serious difficulties with the way in which other people lead. While some people are comforted by strong leadership, as it reminds them of order, for whatever reason (and there are plenty of reasons), the exercise of a strong arm of leadership tends to be taken as a hostile act of war on my part, with serious consequences for my relationships with said authority figures, as well as those others who support them. It is not enough, though, merely to be in opposition to power. Power, like it or not, is something that has to be dealt with, and someone must possess it and use it. The question is not, therefore, whether there is to be power or not, but how it is to be used correctly.

And, as odd as it may seem, the Biblical Re-Enactment Society project has a fair amount to say about the correct uses of power, and how power becomes almost invisible when it is used in a genuinely collaborative effort of shared ownership. Let me explain, in case this seems a bit too unusual. As the lead writer of the skit, I worked at the beginning with a co-writer whose sense of humor was similar to my own, and we created ten pages of written material that followed a group of young people through two scenes (and one "mother" character at the end of each scene) who were attempting to re-enact the scene where Jesus answers the Sadducees concerning a story about a woman who married seven brothers who each died. Even the forms of death were comical, ranging from being shot with an arrow by Roman auxilleries to being stoned to death with stones, which is quite unusual in my body of work (in which death, usually of a tragic nature, is quite prominent).

At the same time Tyler and I were writing this script, another classmate of mine was working on a script for a skit for the same show, about the Robin Hood cycle of tales. In contrast to the collegial working enviornment of my co-author and I, though, he did not seek the interaction of other people with the script. He had a vision for the script and did not desire anyone else to share ownership in it. Needless to say, this created difficulties with the actors and actresses he wished to fill the roles of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, and so on. On the contrary, when our script was handed out to the classmates we wished to take on various roles, several of them made suggestions about how they thought they could change their roles to better suit themselves--including some changes in wording, and the addition, in one case, of some very stellar physical comedy. My co-writer and I had no difficulty with these changes, which made the work an even better one (and certainly gave the other students involved a sense of ownership in the project that made it work much more smoothly).

Without realizing it (as I had never been in a position of authority as profound as directing and producing a skit), I had hit upon a handy technique for collaborative leadership. Since it was a charity show skit, I had no money to offer the students I was directing (nor did I receive any myself). What I could offer, though, was the ability of my fellow students to make their roles their own, and that ownership in the roles, and hence in the work itself, was all that was necessary to make the show a success. The other show never even got performed because no one would agree to work alongside a petty dictator who refused to share "creative control." This was a powerful lesson to me.

Since then, there have been a few, but not many, opportunities for me to be in charge of something, but I have not forgotten the importance of allowing other people to own projects. I know for myself that I like to own the projects I work on with other people, at least owning a part that is important to me. Those that present me with plans fully made and partially implemented who seek my support without seeking my input gain neither, but only gain my opposition. Being so intent on owning projects before I can support them, perhaps my inclination to treat others as I wished to be treated (by allowing them to own a project I had originated) was a more profound lesson in how to lead than I had originally thought.

It is somewhat sad, though, that this experience is rare from what I have seen. Far too often people are in a hurry to get something done and fail to ask other people for input on ways to improve the project or its implementation, and so the projects fail for lack of support from those who are affected by the change. I have seen quite a few such projects fail, either through outright revolt against the change, or through the quiet and effective sabatoge of the change by those who were not consulted before the attempted change. It is a shame they were not so wise as to realize that the desire to create and own is present in all of us, and that it if one desires to succeed, it is far better to be open and collaborative about it than to be secretive and proud about owning something all by one's lonesome. Those who do not share their toys play in the sandbox alone.

Ceteris Paribus: On The Virtues and Vices of Simplification

2008-05-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Ceteris Paribus is a handy Latin expression, used most often in economics, which means "with other things the same" or "all other things being equal." This particular simplifying assumption is an attempt to eliminate, for purposes of comparison or analysis, those niggling factors and error terms that result from the simple fact that all other things are never really equal. Given the rather esoteric use of this particular expression, I am concerned with the practical implications of this simplification, and what it means for our attempts to understand the complexity of our world. Consider this, therefore, a philosophical sort of post.

One of the fundamental axioms of my own life can be summed up with the following phrase: "there is an easy answer, and it is invariably wrong (or, at best, incomplete)." Given the contingent nature of so much in our lives, and the complexity that surrounds us at every turn, the certainty that so many people attach to such doubtful things is an area of deep concern to me. Is the faith of people that strong, or is it that others are so ignorant of the complex details and so confident in their ability to fill in the gaps that they do not recognize how little we really know about ourselves and our world? Indeed, the faith of those that deny the reality of God and the existence of anything beyond the material realm far exceeds the considerable faith of the most devout believer in the inerrancy of Holy scripture. What gives people the logical wherewithal to cast aside such great aspects of reality to comfort themselves with an apparent (and false) simplicity? Often, it is simplifying assumptions like "ceteris paribus" that allow people to toss aside the nasty unpleasantries of reality to focus on the comforting apparent similarities between two cases.

In some ways, this reliance on proof by analogy (of which ceteris paribus is one element) is necessary in logic and proof for lack of better alternatives. By virtue of the Pareto principle, a few crucial factors have a hugely disproportionate impact on something than the vast majority of other factors. In other words, the vital few have an explanatory power that far exceeds that of the trivial many. Who, though, gets to decide which elements are the vital few and which are the trivial many? Who gets to cut through the complexities of a matter and simplify it down to a reasonable and manageable level so that analysis can be undertaken to better understand the matter at hand? What grounds are acceptable for this simplification?

These are not particularly easy questions to answer when we get down to business. Let us consider a continuum between the messy and complicated truth, of which our knowledge is limited and finite on one side and an exceedingly simple but incomplete model of this truth on the other side. The more easily we seek to make the problem that reality presents us, the less our conception of the problem corresponds with the actual reality. The more closely we try to approximate that reality, though, the more difficult we make our given task on ourselves. Where do we draw the line between the quest for absolute truth and the awareness of our human limitations in comprehension and analysis? There appears to be no easy or definite answer to this question, though it behooves us to recognize the simplifications we make, the factors we ignore, and maintain a humble attitude towards the complexity and uncertainty that remain, even if we are pleased with the simplicity and accuracy of our chosen models.

In the final analysis, the test of models is how they correspond with reality itself. A robust model makes predictions about a given aspect of the real world. The more ambitious the model, the more claims it makes, and higher its ability of being falsified by reality. While absolute metaphysical certainty remains beyond the grasp of humanity (as much as we pretend otherwise), we act on our faith by testing our ideas and theories against reality. If they come out successfully, approximating what we expect from the world around us, and using as few simplifications as possible, and capturing as many features of analogous phenomena as possible, we can be confident that our theories and models are true. If we, however, wall ourselves off from empirical tests for fear our cherished theories will not be able to swim in the deep waters of reality, or if, worse, we deny any reality to test our theories and ideas against, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the ridicule which falls on those who talk a big game but refuse a difficult challenge. Let us, therefore, go on boldly, but humbly, while we tilt against windmills and struggle to deal with the complicated world around us. All other things being the same, I'd rather face as much of the reality this world confronts us with as possible.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

This blog is not typically a movie review blog, though in this particular case I will make an exception, because the subject of the movie to be reviewed fits along with the general philosophical and scientific interests of this blog, and so those who read my blog are likely to be at least interested in the subject material this documentary involves. In the interests of full disclosure, I am not only an avid reader of books from the Intelligent Design movement (from Dembski and Behe to Johnson and Denton, among many others), but I have also written on the subject, for a paper on "The Pseudoscience of Evolution" in a historiography class, where I examined the metaphysical commitment of evolutionists to naturalism--that is, methodolical atheism, as an unexamined and unproven aspect of the supposed "definition" of science. Therefore, I am not, nor do I claim to be, a remotely unbiased reviewer of this film, for I am not only an avid student and spectator of the Intelligent Design debate, but I am also a participant, even if an obscure one. With that said, in the interest of intellectual honesty, the review may properly commence.

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" www.expelledthemovie.com

Ben Stein is perhaps the perfect person to make a documentary about the Intelligent Design debate. He does not come into this debate with commitments to one side or another, but merely seeks, as a scientifically inclined fellow partisan of freedom, to find honest answers to honest questions. His spirit of honest inquiry leads him, in this movie, to make a trail all around the USA (and the world) in search of answers to where his inquiry leads him. He speaks with evolutionary lights like Richard Dawkins (who comes across as rather smarmy) and others, and speaks with a few of the leading Intellectual Design scientists (like Dembski and Berlinski and Meyer). He goes to Darwin's home and examines the relationship between Darwinism and Eugenics and Nazism. He compares, in a leitmotif that appears throughout the documentary, the intellectual stonewalling of Darwinim to the Berlin Wall. The movie itself is bookended with a speech where Ben Stein speaks for the freedom of honest inquiry to prevail in all areas to preserve our freedom as a nation.

Perhaps the most poigiant aspect of this appeal to freedom of inquiry involves Stein's interviews with those in the scientific and journalistic community who have been "expelled" because of their adherence to, or openness to an honest examination of, intellectual design. Allowing the theory of Intellectual Design to obtain scholarly credentialing is apparently touching the forbidden third rail of "science." Meanwhile, Dawkins, a militant atheist, manages to expose the shallow National Academy of the Scienes attempt to marry liberal Christians and scientists to leave a place for religious faith that is as consequential as knitting (!) is shown to be a trojan horse for the incubus of atheism. The stakes of this fight are great, for as Ben Stein correctly notes, the dignity of humanity and the humane treatment of those who are weak and defenseless in society (the unborn, the elderly, the handicapped) depends on a moral worldview that ultimately springs from a belief in an ethical Supreme Deity. No God, no morality.

Despite the obvious seriousness of the movie's point, and the rather sobering looks at Dachau and an "insane assylum" where Nazis starved and murdered those with mental and physical deformities (and where Stein unsuccessfully attempts to elicit outrage from the caretaker of this place, who did not think it proper to presume to tell Hitler that what he did was wicked or insane), the movie itself is leavened with a lot of biting humor. Among the funniest moments are where Stein examines some of the "scientific" theories about the beginning of life, such as the deliberate seeding of earth by aliens (who nonetheless developed by undirected evolution themselves) and the piggybacking of organic materials on crystals. Ben Stein is as incredulous as this reviewer is in examining what passes for science compared with what is barred from the gates. Ben Stein's deadpan sense of humor and straightforward search for answers shows how he moved from an ignorant observer to a partisan in this debate through an honest consideration of the facts and the implications of clashing worldviews.

The fundamental point of the movie, though, is that America was founded on the principles that we were endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights simply by virtue of being humans, and these freedoms are in danger because of a metaphysical preconception of humankind as being the result of undirected evolution without any kind of inherent moral obligations or free will. Furthermore, to question this assumption is to come under the wrath of the "science police" and be subject to great harassment, loss of professional career and research opportunities, and blacklisting from future employment. Those who refuse to knuckle down deserve our support as brave soldiers fighting against the great armies of evil who have entrenched themselves in our society with their doctrine of materialism.

Indeed, my only criticism of this movie is that, at 90 minutes, that it is rather too short. No one watching this movie with a remotely open mind, though, can fail to notice that Ben Stein has brought to public light the essence of the greatest current threat to civilization, one that nearly destroyed us in Hitler's time and with Communism. As such, he deserves our thanks and our support. Those who would silence debate about any subject, and punish those who seek the truth and seek honest inquiry, are admitting the weakness of their own position and using their power despotically to preserve their own shaky position. All such efforts threaten the very survival of our great experiment in (righteous) liberty as a nation and people.

May God bless Ben Stein in his efforts, and may those of us watching realize the importance of the fight he is now a (surprising) participant in. He certainly has my support. This movie gets five stars out of five, and is on my list of dvds to buy the minute it is released. Who knows, I may even to go the theater again to see it with some friends if possible.

Five Game Reviews

2008-03-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Though some people may not be aware of this fact about me, I am an avid player of computer games, and I like seeing what sort of community gamers develop, and what kind of appeal a given game has to people. There are many different types of games and gamers. Personally, I am a fan mostly of strategy, historical, and role playing games, and sometimes these overlap. While I do not often pay for games, there are many free games online, and each of them has their own target audience and appeal. There are far too many games for me to play them all, but I have played five of them long enough to make a review of them and analyze in at least some depth what their appeal would be to a gamer like myself (and maybe, like you). Each of these five games is somewhat different, but each of them has aspects that I enjoy.

Travian (http://s5.travian.us)

Of the five games, Travian is the one I have been playing the longest. The game mechanics are themselves fairly straightforward. Everyone starts out with a village in the twilight period of the Roman Empire in a fictionalized grid map where one can either be a Roman, a Gaul, or a Teuton. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages and the choice a player makes depends on how they want to play the game. Gauls are big on storage and trapping, Romans have a balanced approach that allows for simultaneous building in the village and in the fields, and Tuetons have great raiding bonuses. One starts out with six wheat fields, four woodcutters, four iron mines, and four clay pits. Each resource is needed, in varying amounts, for the military units one builds, for trading opportunities, and through buildings in the village. Each person requires one unit of wheat, and different upgrades/units require different numbers of occupants. This game also features alliances, which one can join with buildings, as well as the possibility of expanding the village (though this is an expensive process). Certain buildings can be built only when conditions are met involving the upgrading of other buildings or fields. As fields are developed, they give exponentially higher yields/hour. As fields or buildings are developed, they are progressively more expensive as well. Units can also be researched and given upgrades to weapons and armor to increase their effectiveness in battle. Probably the best part of this game is that the ease of joining alliances makes for plenty of advice from more experienced players and a friendly atmosphere. However, the presence of larger villages near smaller ones means that raiding is frequent and annoying. The best way to avoid getting raided is to build big crannies that safeguard resources, because if a raider gets nothing for his raid, he will (eventually) stop trying. This game is most geared towards gamers who like a strong military and enjoy the Middle Ages. The pruning of inactive villages allows new villages to be placed near more experienced ones. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on one's perspective. The guides in the game, and the forums, are most helpful to the new player who wants to know more about how to develop his or her village.

Overall Grade: B+

Renaissance Kingdoms (www.renaissancekingdoms.com)

This game belongs to a category of games where you play a character in a historical period (in this case, in the 1450's) who has to eat, work, and learn various skills in order to advance in level. In this it can be considered a role playing game. The game's builders are from France, but discussion on the forums and in the game is largely in English (though there are quite a few countries/languages/provinces in Europe from Scotland and England to the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria). You begin as a level 0 character who must level up by gaining 5 reputation points (which involve working 2 days in a church and finding three people who give trust points), as well as the acquisition of 90 gold in order to buy a field. The work one does creates resources which can be sold in the market (giving money to the worker) which then help the town where one resides grow stronger and richer. Interaction between characters takes place in churches (where one can hear mass, as this is after all set in the 1400's), taverns (which serve as site-specific chatrooms only open to those citizens/visitors of a given city) as well as in bulletin board-style forums for text-based roleplay. The game does an excellent job of building community and establishing a sense of place, though the game is a bit anachronistic and is mostly local and provincial in its focus, lacking much in the way of national power and glory. There are town elections, the possibility of travel to other towns, and as one's level improves, a variety of requirements for leveling (including upgrading wardrobe and acquiring certain skill points) as well as opportunities for jobs (like being a priest, or a politician, or a baker, weaver, butcher, and other jobs like that). There is a turn every day, where one must eat in order to live (or go in retreat in a church if one cannot be online during the 24 hour period). Depending on how one plays, it can either take two minutes a day or many hours. One gets out what one puts in. As I enjoy the text-based and chat-based roleplay of the game, I find this the most enjoyable of the five free online games I play. Alas, I am in a very poor town, so leveling up in the future will demand traveling to distant parts. Such is the life, though.

Overall Grade: A

Ikariam (www.ikariam.com)

The most off-putting part of this game is the tagline of the game--"where the gods play." Not being particularly enamored of polytheism, this did not warm me to the idea of playing the game. Nonetheless, being curious, one day I decided to look beyond the tacky tagline and play the game. In fact, I found the game to be quite enjoyable from a gameplay aspect, and very friendly to new players (though communication in the game is a bit difficult, involving only mail messages that count as 'diplomacy'). The quick early leveling, though, is soon replaced by a very lengthy and very difficult process of ensuring sufficient resources, which is a daunting task. Each island contains building materials (basically wood) and one of four "strategic resources" that have to be mined (marble, crystal glass, wine, and sulfur). Buildings and units require differing amounts of these, and in order to develop the town beyond a very early level it is necessary to trade with neighbors. This is not an easy task. Each town can set the price for the goods it wishes to sell, and it takes a great deal of patience/gold to acquire what one needs for a happy and growing town. Establishing colonies is an extremely onerous task, and so developing good trade networks and diplomacy is vitally important. New units and buildings are researched in an academy, which requires scientists (lowering tax base/gold while increasing the acquisition of knowledge). Mining the strategic resource and gaining building material also takes workers, and the island's resource levels are shared with all villages on the island. Military raids also occur in this game, but they seem to be rare due to the high expense of units relative to the low price of most buildings. Cargo ships are a popular item of purchase, though, and necessary to grow beyond very low levels. Each island also contains a Greek-themed "wonder of the world" that increases, at excessively expensive gold levels, the mining of the local strategic resource. Overall, the game is easy to play, but it is difficult to ally or communicate with other players. That said, the graphics of this game are gorgeous, and improve as one's buildings are improved.

Overall Grade: B+

Human Age (www.human-age.com)

A resource-management game similar in basic concept to Renaissance Kingdoms, but updated less frequently with new content and without the forum-based roleplay aspect, this game takes an interesting look at history. Each character begins as a caveman (or cavewoman) and must meet certain requirements in heatlh/morale (two factors which slide or rise depending on accidents or one's activities), skill points, and quests/jobs. Working and hunting lower morale but give one necessary kneecaps (the first currency) for food and other items. Each character must eat one food item (which gives weight--another necessary quality to level), and drink water. There are numerous jobs one must master and certain quests which require that someone work in certain jobs. The process of leveling up is lengthy--taking at least several months if one is diligent. With eleven ages, this would require a very lengthy process of playing to "beat" the game. The biggest problem with the game is that it takes so little time/effort to do what is necessary each day to continue improve the character, but there is so little interaction with other players (except through the "confession" feature, which is entertaining). The lack of interaction makes it hard to keep playing the game in an enthusiastic manner. That said, the offbeat approach of the game is worthwhile.

Overall Grade: C+

Holy War (www.holy-war.net)

The fifth of the five games I have played, this is also possibly the most difficult to get into. There is, thankfully, a chatting option which allows for interaction, which is by far the most worthwhile aspect of the game. Each character can be a Christian, a Pagan, or a Saracen (Muslim) in the time of the crusades. The pagans are lamentably popular, while the Muslims are embarrassingly unpopular. Leveling up requires the gaining of experience, mostly through plundering (unfortunately, this leads to reprisals from the plundered party which can be very harsh--though some players have managed to plunder themselves). Skills can be increased and weapons and armor can be purchased through plundering as well as through work (which gives a low salary, but since plundering is limited to an hour a day for free players, one will spend most of the day working). During the first few days one plays, one can plunder for two hours a day (which costs money after that, not worth paying in my judgment). Unfortunately, the game does not do a good job of letting a player know this, so much plundering opportunity can be wasted. The game also has clans (alliances) and battle modes between "faiths" at higher levels, but I do not know how these work, not being of a high enough level. One can also upgrade one's own housing to increase defense from attacks (a very useful thing) or increasing the rate at which one gains back health. These, I imagine, become very important in later levels. Dueling other players give gold and experience as well, and helps one gain reputation among other players for being a strong soldier. Perhaps the game is more enjoyable at higher levels, but it is not all that fun for a new player, and the game gives little help through manuals. Thankfully, the chatting within the game is most amusing and worthwhile. The setting of the game as a military game set in the crusades is also pretty cool. Sometimes, that's enough.

Overall Grade: C+

Client #9

2008-03-11T09:11:00.001-07:00

I have long followed the career of current (but perhaps not for too much longer) New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. He made his national reputation as an ambitious Attorney General for the state of New York who was very loud and prominent in rooting out corruption in a series of high-profile scandals involving health care companies, gun manufacturers, and power companies, and I'm sure a lot of other issues as well. A Progressive Democrat, he lived up to his political ideology by using the power of government to punish wayward companies who did not live up to their moral obligations with customers and the general public at large. While I admired his stands against corruption, I still feel ambivalent about what such intervention means on a large scale about the freedoms of the citizenry at large.

Spitzer's highly publicized investigations against corporate malfeasance earned him a recent election to become governor of the state of New York. It was there that Mr. Spitzer's problems began to grow, as the highly popular attorney general found himself a deeply unpopular governor. Ironically, the two scandals that have dogged his time in Albany, one of which appears to have brought him down, involve corruption and the abuse of power. The lesson to the rest of us, would be anti-corruption crusaders or not, is a sobering one.

The first major scandal that I know about at least involves his abuse of power in a spectacular way. Having problems with the lead Republican in the New York Legislature, he used his aides to try to dig up dirty news to discredit his opponent and force him to resign. This was not a success, as the revealing of the attempt led to Spitzer losing his own reputation for moral probity in power. Once it was revealed that he sought to discredit his opponents through dirty tricks, it became possible to wonder if he had done the same thing as Attorney General, itself a very serious problem. Of course, Spitzer could choose to deny that he ordered his aides to do such investigations, but such a denial rings hollow, as aides generally do not go digging up dirt on the political opponents of their bosses unless there is either a specific order to do so or it is the general behavior of their boss. Neither would reflect well on the Governor.

The other scandal, that appears to have brought down his administration completely (and that may end up destroying his marriage), involves his identity as Client #9 in an investigation of a high-class prostitution ring. Apparently he spent over $4000 just before Valentine's Day for a high-class prostitute named "Kirsten" from a prostitution ring based out of New York that is under investigation by the Feds and the IRS. His call to the agency, and the agency's response, show that he was not a first-time client. Obviously, this reflects poorly on an anti-corruption and stern moralist sort of politician, more so than it would an obviously corrupt one. It looks like Spitzer's political career is over, but there are some lessons that might be useful for future people in like positions.

It appears, in this day and age, that nothing is really private. While I lament this personally, I suppose that as a rather nosy and public person (public enough, at any rate, to discuss delicate subjects online), that I am part of the problem. At any rate, if you are a person in a public position (whether in government, in business, or in private organizations), you cannot expect any of your personal conduct to remain private whatsoever. I know that in previous times leaders got a way with a lot of things, but the desire for information and the high levels of tracking and publicity present nowadays make it almost impossible to keep a secret life for long. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I cannot say--I could argue it both ways depending on whether I was looking in the abstract or in the particular. Since the private conduct of people is no longer really all that private (sometimes because of our own stupidity and brazenness in the matter), it behooves all of the ambitious sorts among us to be a lot more honest and humble about ourselves. Being holier-than-thou nowadays is a bad call, and almost all the time it seems that the verdict on such would-be crusaders is the sobering one, "Physician, heal thyself." Ridding corruption from within and without still seems a rather difficult task, even more difficult when examining its spread within us all.

Kudos, Then Ironic Comments

2008-02-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

Today I wish to write about a subject that appears in the Bible but that is seldom applied in modern life as it ought to be, but first I would like to give some kudos. Every day I receive an e-mail from Thisistheway.org, with a byline from Mr. Clyde Kilough, President of the United Church of God, and today's e-mail merits praise and attention. The subject of authority and service, and how leaders ought to serve the people they lead, rather than lord it over them, is a frequent (and hopefully not too tiresome), subject of my writings, both public and private. The forms of democracy alone are not sufficient, for a people that does not possess self-control is not fit to rule over a nation (for one must first govern one's self before one can govern others). Nonetheless, the example of Jesus Christ in his service to mankind (through footwashing, instruction, healing, and his offering of himself to remove the penalty of sin from mankind and heal the alienation between mankind and God) and the example of Abraham Lincoln, himself a martyr to the cause of freedom of the oppressed, servant leadership, and democracy were excellent choices to illuminate how leaders should behave.

However, I do not wish this to be the subject of this post, as I write about it frequently enough. Today I would like to write about a different matter entirely, and one that was provoked by my reading of a most excellent book by a fellow named Mr. Ron Dart, called Law And Covenant. In this book (which I would wholeheartedly recommend to any who wish to understand the true covenantal nature of law and its continuing applicability to humankind in a variety of aspects), there is an interesting comparison of the relationship between a man and his concubine and a man and his wife that is a subject of great importance for our times, and one that is often not recognized by preachers and concubines alike.

Concubinage strikes the modern ear as a discordant, and potentially exotic, reminder of past ages. I am reminded myself of references of Solomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines, and of the movie "Fareware, My Concubine," about early 20th century China (if I remember correctly). However, concubinage is not only a quaint historical notion of bygone eras where women dwelled with men without any contractural relationship, and without any guarantee of good behavior on the part of their lover beyond his good will. It is, in fact, a very real, and very common phenomenon. We, though, call a concubine by a different name today--a live-in girlfriend.

In societies where concubinage was recognized, concubines were universally considered of a lower status than wives. While a man might be attached to his hausfrau (as the Germans called such a woman), she had no legal rights (unlike a wife). If he died, she was entirely at the mercy of his will (if he provided for her), because she had no rights to his estate. Her children were not considered legitimate heirs, and were not in line for any inheritence a man might leave. Any states or nations that recognized common-law marriages required lengthy times of cohabitation before granting such a status, while a newly married bride carred the status of a wife as a result of the contractual relationship even on her honeymoon. One of the most grevious wrongs of slavery in the American South was the denial of marriage to slaves, who could conduct informal marriages (by jumping over the broom and so forth) but who could not protect their relationships from the threat of having a husband and wife and children sold seperately to different owners in distant places. Furthermore, a slave husband could not even assure the safety of his wife from the affections of the master, should he choose to take a concubine among his slaves.

The insecurity that results from relationships of concubinage is profound, and it seems obvious that someone who could be a wife would never want to be a concubine. Between a wife and a husband there is a mutuality of obligations, a contractual relationship that the ancients considered a "parity covenant" (a relationship among equals). Both the man and wife have legal and moral obligations to their spouses, and to the children of their union, and their joining in marriage brings honor to themselves, each other, and their families. In contrast, the joining in concubinage brings no legal obligations, and the relationship itself is only as stable as the affections of either partner, bringing no honor to either but only the fear that someone's affection might grow cold and leave a partner and a family without their main provider.

Given this rather grim contrast between the honor of being a wife and the fearful and insecure position of being a concubine, one wonders why anyone would choose to be a concubine? This is not to say that the lot of wives is always pleasant (nor that of husbands either), but the contractual protections of marriage mean something, even in these debased times. Why have women, who call themselves enlightened, traded honor and security for insecurity in the name of "freedom?" It would be like a worker trading a contractual job for a job (in a place like Florida) where there was employment at will (which means an employer could fire you for any or no reason without legal recourse), often for a lower salary. Who would make that kind of trade?

Why have live-in relationships, with all of the insecurity that result from not having a covenantal relationship or a secure status, become a status of freedom? Is freedom merely freedom from bonds and connections with other people (bonds which form anyway as a result of intimacy and friendship) or is it freedom from fear and insecurity and the gaining of a lasting and honored place in a family, community, and society? Is it better to have many lovers in a lifetime, having to move because a relationship has gone shower when dwellings were shared, or worse (as happened to a close friend of mine) having to share an apartment with an ex-girlfriend for months because a lease had yet to expire after having started a new relationship with someone else? Wouldn't one rather have someone one knew well, and had committed to spending the rest of one's life with, to dwell with through the ups and downs that life provides? Even as a man (who has no wife or concubine) I would greatly prefer, for her sake as well as my own, to have a wife secure in her position and knowledgeable of the respect I held her in rather than a live-in girlfriend insecure in my affections to her, and afraid that every female friend of mine was a potential love interest and rival for my affections. Hopefully there are some other people around who feel the same way as I do.

The current rise of concubinage (albeit under a new name) presents many grave difficulties for families and society. The decline of the honor of fatherhood has been frequently and ably commented on by others. The lack of loyalty that people show to each other in society results from a lack of understanding of covenantal relationships and the responsibilities all parties have therein. Frequently, in churches, live-in relationships are considered as fornication, and people involved in such relationships are told in more conservative congregations that they are not welcome at church as long as they "live in sin." Truth be told, though, concubinage did not result in any loss of rights to fellowship (one things of the Levite with the concubine in that tragic story in Judges). Concubinage appears to be a legitimate way, if less honorable than marriage, in showing the world of one's relationship. Fornication appears to be related to furtive and private attempts at sexual intimacy, while a live-in relationship is a public show of a relationship, and hence is no longer fornication.

What then, remains to be done about this worrisome societal trend? For one, it appears that the demonization of the practice needs to stop. While concubinage (a live-in relationship) is inferior to marriage, one does not communicate this fact through throwing people who practice it (no matter how much one may disapprove of it) out of church. It is not, for example, to be compared to the famous case in Corinthians where the man had his stepmother, itself a particular relationship forbidden by the law as being incestuous. It does appear, though, that young women and young men need to be educated about this ancient practice, as a reminder that it is not a new and enlightened practice but rather one that has put women and children at risk for many centuries. As a wise man once said, there is nothing new under the sun.

A Kenyan Catastrophe

2008-02-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

While I have yet to visit the verdant but highly troubled nation of Kenya, which appears, fitfully, to be trying to drag itself from the precipice of a lengthy and horrific civil war, my mother and stepfather have visited the country and commented on the friendliness of the people and the beauty of the land. No doubt many of the people they met in that land have been dealing with the threat of violence after a notoriously rigged election between one incumbent kleptocrat and a would be kleptocrat (for those who don't know, a kleptocrat is one who uses democratic office to rob the wealth of the people and stash it away, usually in Swiss bank accounts).

It would be easy to pass judgment on the collapse of Kenya, all the more easy because Kenya is far away and in a continent known for its abominable standards of governance (Africa, a continent almost without any hope or success whatsoever). Nonetheless, Kenya (along with Ghana and perhaps a couple of other countries) was considered a rare "success" story (at least in relative terms), with high amounts of tourism and a fragile but existing democracy, despite long-held concerns about extreme government corruption and nepotism/ethnic favoritism.

However, while it may be tempting to label the problems of Kenya as being irrelevant, I think they provide a particular relevance that we in more "mature" democracies may be unaware of. There are several elements of the Kenyan problem that are of importance in comparison with other countries (like the United States for example, though other countries would certainly apply too). This list is not exhaustive, especially since it is currently early in the morning and I am only writing this because I am an insomniac and because a longtime and close friend of mine (who has been both a church friend and fellow musician as well as fellow classmate of mine in high school and beyond) asked that I write about it.

The most applicable comparison between the Kenyan election debacle and the situation in the United States (and perhaps other areas as well) is the poor choice between major candidates. After all, both of the major politicians seeking the Kenyan presidency were quite wealthy and had gained that wealth through corruption despite the fact that most Kenyans, by any standard of well-being, struggle to make ends meet (on less than $2 a day, for the most part). Like candidates for the office of presidency in other nations, it can be assumed that neither of them have the interests of the entire nation at heart, but both of them have ulterior motives for wishing office and will reward their supporters with a disproportionate share of the spoils of office.

In nations such as Kenya political parties are often based on regions (Red States vs. Blue States, Quebec vs. Ontario vs. Western Canada, Asante area vs. the rest of Ghana, Walloon vs. Flemish, and so on ad nauseum) or ethno-linguistic groups. This sort of division lends itself towards balkanization and the breakdown of unified cultures. It is not a bad thing to have stark choices about the future of a nation before the populace, but it is a bad thing when no communication based on mutual respect can cross hardened partisan boundaries. Politics can only deal with subjects that can be solved through compromise and partial victories that are based on shared fundamental beliefs and "values." This assumes a common identity that transcends politics and allows for the existence of a loyal opposition that opposes the policies of the dominant group without being labeled or treated as treacherous to the nation or organization as a whole. Where this unity and mutual respect is lacking, politics is only war by ballots rather than bullets, and the bullets are not often long in coming when ballots have failed to prevail.

A fundamental quality of genuine democracy, as Abraham Lincoln stated, is that the government is government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." This has three components. The first is "of the people," which means that the government is composed of those who represent those they govern. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 gives a list of qualities for would-be kings of Israel, and among those is the requirement that they come from among the people and not view themselves as being above those they govern. They must, in other words, never lose sight of the common equality of mankind before God and before others, as we are all children of God created in His image, no matter what we look like, how wealthy, intelligent, strong, healthy, or popular we are. The second quality is that the government is by the people, meaning it has the majoritarian support of the people. Those governments that rule by force or fraud, either through a manipulation of ballots or through the threat or use of violence are not legitimate. Those leaders who rule without the informed consent of the people can claim no divine sanction for their rule, nor claim popular mandate for their decisions in office. Their rule is illegitimate. Finally, government must be for the people in order to be legitimate and democratic. This means that government must have the best interests of the people, the entire populace, at heart, whether that populace voted for or against the leadership or even voted (or was able to vote) at all. Edmund Burke stated wisely and correctly that leaders have a contract with the past, the present, and the future. We must honor and respect our history, those that came before us, and the laws that have been set down from ancient times (especially the laws of God). We must also serve the interests of those who now live and are currently being governed, and we must govern so that we protect the best interests of those who have yet to live, to make the world a better place than it was when we found it.

This is obviously easier said than done. Being human beings, we are all fallible (and I am certainly at least as fallible as anyone else is). As Lord Acton wisely said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Where political power leads directly to great wealth (as it does in Kenya and many other countries), political power will be fought over and bloody coups and revolutions (whether done through fraud, violence, or the normal deception that goes in running for office) will occur. If leaders see power as a way to gain wealth and respect and fulfill long-held ambitions to lord it over others, rather than as an opportunity to serve the best interests of the general public, those leaders will be corrupted by their office, will corrupt those that gain access to a part of the power and influence they shower on others, and they will oppress the people they rule.

In the end, good government is an exceedingly rare thing, and it only occurs when people are governed by the laws of God and their behavior is circumscribed through the discipline that comes from obedience to God and a love and respect for others that seeks to use power to serve rather than to command and lord it over others. The proper use of power to serve is rare, whether that power is held in political office, in the corporate boardroom, in non-profit organizations and churches and schools and families. We may rightly long for the return of Jesus Christ to rule over this world with justice and mercy and wisdom, but we must never forget that if we are to rule, we must practice the proper use of power now, whatever our domain for doing so, even if it is just in ruling over ourselves. If we fail to practice wisely, we will watch the same ugly battles in Kenya take place among our churches, our schools, our homes, and our nations, perhaps with less violence, but with no less rancor and division. We will reap what we sow, and we will stand at the judgment seat of God either having set a good example of service to others, or we will be condemned as hirelings and wolves, fit for utter blackness. The choice is ours, and let us choose wisely. What good is the wealth and power gained and used corruptly if we lose our eternal lives?

Finally, A Presidential Candidate Almost Just Like Me...

2008-01-31T15:06:00.000-08:00

As an occasional pundit more than a little interested in a politics and the use of power (a frequenet subject of this blog in one fashion or another), the goings on the 2008 Primary Season have been of great interest to me. While I hope I do not make the frequent mistake of many in believing that political leaders can fulfill escatological hopes for the bringing of heaven on earth (unlike some people), I nonetheless am a firm believer that the quality of our leadership is of great importance and that in a democratic republic where the ultimate accountability for leaders rests in the people, if one does not participate in the political process, one has no right to complain about the results. This does not mean I always agree with what leaders to choose from, or that I agree with all of their behavior in various elected offices, but I believe we have to do the best job we can as wise stewards of our freedom from tyranny and (whenever possible) oligarchy. That is the subject of another rant, though.

Occasionally, though, I find a candidate who, unusually, reflects my own rather quirky views and personality. Such is the case this year. However, first, I must begin with a story. In 2000 I was a freshman at the University of Southern California when it came time to vote in the primary. As the primary approached, I was an undecided voter, not knowing much about Sen. McCain and not being an enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush (despite voting for him in the general election of both 2000 (in California) and 2004 (in Florida), I never have been an enthusiastic supporter of him). However, I had the chance to witness Sen. McCain speak in person at Bouvard Auditorium just before the election, and I found him to be an immensely sincere and passionate speaker, worthy of my support (he got my vote, despite losing the primary and the campaign).

Once 2008 came around, I thus already was interested in Sen. McCain's campaign, though matters looked rather grim in the last half of 2006 as anti-war fever swept the nation and the Republican party started resembling the nativist (anti-immigrant) Know-Nothings of the 1850's, another tumultuous and highly polarized time in our nation's history. Though I disagreed with Sen. McCain on some aspects of his proposed solution to illegal immigration (namely, those parts which suggested amnesty), as a long-time resident of areas with high amounts of immigrants, I see the need for a comprehensive immigration solution that encourages legal immigration and harshly punishes those companies that employ illegal immigrants and make it easier for them to engage in normal business practices (see Wal-Mart, Bank of America, etc.). As a graduate student in engineering, I also see the need for reforming the H1-B (work visa) program, which is in shambles as the high supply of qualified foreign graduate students (who could greatly benefit this nation) is mostly prevented from finding legal gainful employment. As someone, therefore, who was familiar with the immigration situation, I was more than a little sympathetic to McCain's position as trying to negotiate a comprehensive (and necessarily compromise) solution.

So when McCain won New Hampshire, and then South Carolina, through the support of moderate Republicans (I would personally consider myself, like McCain, moderately conservative--and there is substantial, though not total, overlap between our positions), I was interested in helping out the McCain campaign in Florida, which I did. I happened to volunteer three evenings at the McCain office when I didn't have class during the week, and helped pass out stickers and signs at a McCain town hall meeting in The Villages (where I even got to escort a New York Times reporter to her seat through the relatively, but thankfully not violently, hostile audience), and attended a McCain rally in Tampa on Primary Election Eve. When McCain won a larger-than-expected five-point win the next day, I was quite pleased.

But I was less than pleased with the response of many conservative pundits to McCain's growing momentum. The same conservatives who had supported Thompson (of an 86% lifetime conservative voting record) considered McCain (of an 82% lifetime conservative voting record) an apostate to the Republican party, almost as if one was voting for Hillary Clinton. Various conservatives said that if McCain won the primary that they would not vote Republican in the final election (thus perhaps giving the election to Hilary). It puzzled me that many conservative Republicans would be so hostile to someone who was mostly (though by no means entirely) in favor of their positions.

Then again, I often puzzle why, in my own circles, those who are conservative consider me to be such a radical revolutionary when in reality I am far from it. Certainly, I am a pugnacious maverick who enjoys tweaking the establishment now and again, and certainly I have some longstanding issues with authority (which I will be the first to admit). Intriguingly enough, I found many of the same parallels in McCain's own life. For one, he received many demerits in the Naval Academy because he would not stand for the arbitrary and capricious use of power by upperclassman over underclassman. Here was something I wholeheartedly agreed with. His noble stand in Vietnam not to take advantage of his father's position as admiral in getting out of the Hanoi Hilton out of order and in thus submitting himself to an additional five years of torture and imprisonment was a noble stand for his comrades in prison, worthy of my highest respect. Here was someone who did not dodge or avoid the draft or use political influence to gain a cushy spot in the National Guard, but someone who suffered for the sake of fairness and justice as a prisoner-of-war.

It appeared to me that the reason why McCain is so universally loathed by conservatives (see Rush, a man whose right to speak I defended in my first editorial as an pre-teen in a western Pennsylvania newspaper, and others) was not because of his positions on such matters as the environment, immigration, and finance reform, but because he was not beholden to them. McCain's independent streak, especially shown in his combative and pugnacious personality, not his positions, is accountable for his unpopularity. His appeal with moderate voters lies in the fact that he is willing to work across the aisle (a rare quality these days, probably testament to the fact that he's not a baby boomer) and considers the good of the United States and all of its people above the slavish adherence to the establishment. This, inspite of the fact that he usually (over 80% of the time) agrees with that conservative establishment.

In fact, as a student of history, the situation between McCain and the Republican establishment mostly resembles the curious fate of Stephen Douglas, Illinois' Senator and frequent opponent of my favorite president of all time (Abraham Lincoln). Throughout the 1800's, the base of the Democratic party was in the South, and until the Civil War this base held most of the positions of great authority in the Supreme Court and in party leadership despite being a minority among the population of the US as a whole for almost all of that time. In 1860, Stephen Douglas ran for president, and sought the nomination of the whole Democratic Party. Despite usually supporting the south, they considered him ideologically impure thanks to his opposition of the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, which would have made Kansas a slave state due to the votes of a bunch of illegal Missouri border ruffians and the boycott of the election by anti-slavery Kansas (who organized their own government based in Topeka). Due to this supposed "heresy" to the southern Democrats, and his unwillingness to countenance a national slave code to protect the right of slaveholders to carry their "property" safely all over the United States, the Southern Democrats refused to support his candidacy, even though he was the only Democrat capable of beating the Republicans in a momentous election (does this sound familiar yet?). After a heated and ugly campaign, the Democratic party split, Abraham Lincoln won the general election, and the rest is history.

Let us hope that the Republicans do not repeat this folly in '08. But in order to do so, they will, in all probability (it looks at this point like McCain is going to win a heavy majority of the delegates on Super Tuesday, with a heavy advantage going away for the nomination) have to deal with the fact that McCain will be their man in 2008. Will conservative pundits "hold their noses" and see behond the pugnacious spirit of McCain to see someone who represents the best chance to bring Americans beyond the polarizing politics of Baby Boomers engaged in the long culture wars, with a concern for the fate of our planet as well as the security and well-being of our nation? Will the threats of party activists to avoid voting be empty threats, or will they be acted upon? Much remains to be seen, but either way, I cannot help but feel for Sen. McCain, for despite his human flaws and imperfections (such as we all have), he is a man whom I deeply respect, and in whom I see a great resemblence in temperament and political opinions to myself. To see the depth of hostility shown by people who agree with him at least as much as with his two rivals (Romney and Huckabee) is to see the irrational hatred and hostility that I have long struggled against in my own battles against my own establishment (despite my substantial agreement with it). I suppose everything can be forgiven, except keeping an independent mind.

(Don't) Send In The Clowns

2008-01-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

Today I read a particularly amusing article that stated something that made me feel a little less unusual. The article states that children uniformly dislike clowns, and that even older children are sometimes afraid of them and cannot explain them. When I was a child I was seriously afraid of clowns, and even now I don't like them. What is it about clowns that are so universally disliked by children, and what is it about clowns that make adults think children like them? I don't know the answers, but I can give at least a little bit of perspective.

Why Children Don't Like Clowns?

It is possible that a large part of what makes children not like clowns, at all, is the fact that clowns are fake. Children, in all the experience I have ever had (either being a child or being around them) are pretty genuine. The only children that tend to be private or practice pretense usually have something seriously wrong going on in their lives, and have learned that hypocrisy usually from parents. Otherwise, children are very open and honest about what they want and what they don't like, even when they say they are being sneaky (I find this particularly amusing). However, clowns are not genuine. They have paint covering their faces, masking their identities (not likely to lead children to trust them). Furthermore, they have smiles painted on their faces, and children are pretty good at telling a fake from a genuine article. Somehow most of us lose the ability to do that as we get older, probably because it's so distressing to be in a world surrounded by fakes (especially when most people fake to be accepted by the other fakes), that to search for the genuine article is a fruitless and thankless task. Children, not being burdened by this, tend to see (rightfully) the clowns as fakers, and as untrustworthy fakers at that.

Why Do Adults Think Clowns Are Okay For Kids?

This is perhaps the more inexplicable question. Clowns, like a lot of other entertainment, were originally for adults. The clothing for clowns resembles that of the "fool" in royal courts. Ironically enough, the fool was dressed foolishly, but was given the (rare) privilege to tell kids the truth. Nowadays clowns dress foolishly and tell a bunch of pablum to an often unwilling audience of young folk. It is probably the flamboyance of clowns that makes adults think they would be suitable for kids. After all, clowns typically dress in bright colors and act silly. So do children--but children do it honestly, out of a (usually) innocent heart. Clowns are pretenders. Perhaps adults are insufficiently aware of the need to teach genuineness to their children, and so conspire to foist all of these lies upon children that make them bitter and cynical towards adults (see "The Tooth Fairy," "Santa Claus" and any number of other such lies). Perhaps parents would better serve their children by simply letting children be children, play innocent games (while keeping an eye on them to make sure they stay safe), and tell them the truth, and provide for them entertainments that are similarly honest (this may be a difficult task). That would be a better choice than to foist a bunch of creepy adults in makeup and bad clothing on children. Don't send in the clowns. Seriously, don't.

Reflections on the Music of 2007

2008-01-06T17:44:00.000-08:00

As I am wont to do on occasion, I would like to take this opportunity to write down some of my thoughts on the popular music I liked the best for the year of 2007. Music is rather important to me, as I tend to strongly associate certain situations and experiences and powerful emotions with specific songs that, in effect, say what happened or what I am thinking or feeling. Overall, I was not particularly pleased with the music on the radio, as much of it struck me as rather repetitive. In fact, the music I really liked this year was unusually odd and obscure (I usually like relatively mainstream music). Without any further ado, I will reveal my favorite songs of the year, and explain why they struck me as particularly noteworthy.

Mattafix - Living Darfur

Perhaps the most obscure of my favorite songs of the year, I first heard this song while watching MTV Europe on the Israel extension tour after the Feast of Tabernacles. This uplifting and yet deeply emotional song about the benighted area of Darfur, with its plaintive chorus ("You shall rise...you may never know if you lay low lay low") and other touching lyrics ("See tears that flow like rivers from the skies"..."There's disaster in your past, boundaries in your path...sooner or later we must try living," and so on) gave this song a deep personal meaning for my own life, as well as the struggle of the millions in Darfur who, to this day, face the ferocity of the Sudanese government-supported janjaweed.

Sara Bareillis - Love Song

Perhaps the most upbeat song among my favorites of a rather tense and stressful and not particularly enjoyable year, this song is still rather bittersweet, probably the reason it was a favorite of mine. In a driving piano beat (I am most fond of piano ballads), Miss Bareillis sings a song to a lover about not being able to write love songs on cue based on requests or threats. Love songs must flow from within, from genuine emotion, and are not trophies or commodities. With lyrics that are much more biting and bitter than the peppy beat would indicate, the song reflects fears about love and creative talent being exploited by those who do not really feel the same, a frequent concern of mine.

Robyn & Kleerup - With Every Heartbeat

Another obscure song among my favorites, this song (like "Living Darfur") was not released as a single in the United States, and I also first heard it while in Israel. This song is a sad techno song about bravely facing heartbreak and the pain that takes place with every heartbeat. The song is, obviously, not a happy one as a relationship faces its definitive ending with the knowledge of the suffering that is occurring. "So I don't look back...it hurts with every heartbeat..." Sometimes a song like this expresses one's feelings, and this one did.

Aly & AJ - Potential Breakup Song

Another song whose upbeat music masked rather dark lyrics, this particular number follows the trend of the last two songs in reflecting upon a troubled relationship nearing its terminus. With lyrics as sarcastic as "you're not winning until you're winning me" and "let me repeat that, I want my stuff back," this song lets the deadbeat partner know that his time of taking his girlfriend for granted is nearing a close. Obviously, this was a year of endings more than beginnings.

Hilary Duff - Stranger

Like many of the songs I watched on Rotana while in Jordan (the Arabic music television channel), this song has an Middle Eastern dance beat, and is also about the ending of a relationship. In this particular case, the song is about a dysfunctional relationship falling apart where one of the people pretends to be friendly and affectionate in public while being dark and hostile in private. Indeed, the difference between public and private appearance is probably what makes this one of my favorite songs of the year, especially given the autobiographical importance of the material (given the falling apart of her relationship with Joel Madden, lead singer of Good Charlotte).

Miley Cyrus & Billy Ray Cyrus - Ready, Set, Don't Go

I never thought that a song by Billy Ray Cyrus (most famous for "Achy Breaky Heart") would be on any list of my favorite songs, ever, but this particular song about children growing up and leaving home touched a particular nerve for me. It is a foolish parent that tries to hold on to children after they are ready to go. Wise parents train their children well and give them legacies and equip them to succeed on their own. Foolish parents heap burdens upon their children and try to sabotage their independence. Obviously this is a point that needs to be learned better in some families.

Bucky Covington - A Different World

One of the less polished members of the 2004 (I believe) American Idol finalists, Bucky Covington did an excellent job with this viewpoint of a young GenXer (which I happen to be) musing on the different world now than it was for us growing up without as much technology or as much protection from the dangers of the real world. It is interesting, nonetheless, to reflect upon the results of a different childhood and upbringing. Reflecting on the generational difference between the GenXers and the Millennials of a useful thing. It also helps that most of this song applies to my own childhood.

Maroon 5 - Wake Up Call

This song is a rather biting reflection on a hot-tempered discovery of cheating. The video to this song is not very morally appropriate, but the material of the song itself if something I find grimly humorous given my own fierce (if seldom expressed) temper. With a chorus like "Wakeup call, caught you in the morning with another one in my bed, don't you care about me anymore, don't you care about me, I don't think so..." what is not to like/appreciate?

Overall, my favorite songs of the year are a combination of country songs, dance pop songs, rock songs, worldbeat songs, and adult contemporary songs, a pretty fair cross section of the music that was actually good this year. There were a couple of humorous rap novelty songs, and some pretty good R & B songs ("No One" by Alicia Keys deserves special mention, which avoids being on this list only because "no one" was present all year as that special someone, and that song is crying out for a devoted lover). No album was as excellent from start to finish this year as Keane's "Under The Iron Sea" was in 2006, but we shall see if next year has more consistent musical material.

On Parenting, Spears Style

2007-12-21T05:58:00.000-08:00

With the recent announcement that her sixteen year old daughter, Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant, mama Spears had the publishing of a book on parenting delayed indefinitely. One reason, perhaps, is that Mrs. Spears is not, in fact, a very good parent. After all, her oldest daughter has been married twice (once annulled, once divorced), has two children by a backup dancer with a yen for knocking up young women (who is still, shockingly, a more fit parent than she is) and hangs out with a decidedly bad crowd (Paris Hilton et al.). Now the younger Spears daughter, the star of some Nikelodeon show I've never seen called Zoey 101, is pregnant by her 18 year old boyfriend, and her mother didn't even know what was going on because she always did what she was told (!) and never missed curfiew.

While it is not surprising that the series of unfortunate events that has befallen the Spears family has delayed the publishing of what was likely to be a highly fictitious, if somewhat humorous, book about parenting perhaps for good (or at least until the furor dies down about the behavior of the Spears girls), there are nonetheless some serious questions about parenting that Mrs. Spears could answer that remain, as of yet, unanswered. These questions make the claim that Jamie Lynn Spears wants to raise her children in Louisiana for a "normal lifestyle" (more normal than Hollywood perhaps, which is, I must admit, a rather surreal sort of place) a very dubious proposition nonetheless.

For example, the rise of Britney Spears is full of some odd questions. The Spears family was quite poor while Britney and Jamie Lynn were growing up, and Mr. Spears (curiously absent in most accounts of the Spears family) was unable to provide for his family. That made the young and perky Britney a very early breadwinner for her family through her talent in winning beauty pageants (a southern tradition I admittedly know little about). Her appearance on Star Search also provided her family with some much needed cash (as did her work on Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, no doubt), but also raised some serious questions about her parents. For example, Britney's debut as a 10 year old on Star Search was a very sulty performance that belied her youth, and very early on there was a harsh dichotomy between what appeared to be innocence and precocious sexuality. Obviously there are some serious questions about how that came to be (witness, for example, the naughty schoolgirl nature of "...Hit Me Baby One More Time," her first hit with the simultaneous proclamations of her virginity and desire to remain pure until marriage).

In the case of both Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears there appeared to be a public facade of propriety that obviously hid something far darker within. Where exactly did these young ladies learn to practice pretense so well? How exactly were these young women brought up? From all appearances, the two were thrust into fame and placed, as it were, in harm's way without being prepared for the harshness of the real world. Did Mrs. Spears desire to be famous herself, vicariously through her talented daughters, or was it the desperation of being unable to find financial stability through the male breadwinner of the house that led her to use her daughters in order to achieve financial success and public honor?

These questions, and other serious ones, remain unanswered. The riddle of Mr. Spears and the malign impact his failures as a father and provider on his daughters is also an important one. After all, by all appearances, the Spears girls show a proclivity towards decidedly shady male companions. Britney, for example, dated Justin Timberlake (famous himself for his desire to bring "sexy back" and for his exposing of Janet Jackson during that imfamous Super Bowl halftime show) before having a Vegas wedding with a friend (quickly annulled) and then marrying a backup dancer who skipped out on his previous girlfriend who was pregnant with his second child. Nothing says white trash like that Jerry Springer-ish saga. Jamie Lynn herself appears not to have been seriously committed to her baby daddy either, or else she was being especially coy about her private life in a way that appears to have spectacularly backfired on her. The proclivity of the Spears girls for deadbeat guys may have been learned through the example of their decidedly deadbeat father.

But, lest I seem to be too cruel, the travails of the Spears family are not (at least not by me) to be mined for a sense of proud superiority. Rather, they are emblematic of deeper troubles about the state of parenting. Lest we dismiss the struggles of the Spears girls as merely the signs of the corruption of Hollywood, we must examine our own family lives to see how the failures of parents reverberate in the struggles of their children repeating failed patterns from their own past. Rather, there is for me instead a chilling sense that the struggles of the Spears daughters are merely the struggles of many young men and women in our society writ large and in the gossip magazines. How can a young person without the experience of good parenting and with few examples of good parenting around them succeed in becoming a successful adult themselves? What is necessary to reverse the poor lessons of one's childhood unless one commits to very serious study and the diligent observation of such good examples as one can find? And even then, how is one to succeed when one has to create anew instead of merely repeating a good pattern from one's past, when it is difficult enough merely to follow what one has been brought up in from youth? These questions I ask not only for others, but for myself as well...

Two Votes, Two Ways

2007-12-03T08:45:00.001-08:00

It is a surprising day when Hugo Chavez, populist leader of Venezuela and fierce enemy of the United States, turns out to be an effective example of how a leader handles electoral defeat. On the other hand, the example of Russia's "managed" elections is a more common example of how autocratic governments can subvert the forms of democracy to obtain their desired vote. In examining these two cases, we can look at what it takes to run a successful democracy, and what sort of checks leaders need in order to avoid the corruption of a democratic society.

The Odd Case of Venezuela

Throughout the history of Latin America, there has been a cycle (a very depressing cycle) of fragile democracies that fracture between the interests of rich and poor, whites, mestizos, and "Indians," replaced by the rule of dictators (or caudillos) that promise economic growth or fairness to the people, at the cost of civil liberties and freedom, and end up resulting in a privileged class stealing the rich natural wealth of these nations and seeking control over all aspects of life. This cycle is not limited to Latin America (witness, for example, the African Continent, much of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia), though it is very entrenched here and has been for the last two centuries or so.

This grim history of the failure of democracy in the region (despite the nearby example of one of the world's most successful republican regimes) now has, it appears, a rather surprising chapter in a particularly unlikely place. Hugo Chavez, the blustering and arrogant leader of Venezuela, had been riding high with large victories, and even overcoming a failed coup attempt. However, his attempt to revise the Venezuelan constitution to allow himself a lifetime term of office and the freedom to control all the press as well as the political and economic life of Venezuela, was too much for the nation to accept and was defeated in a narrow vote. Better yet--the spearhead of the opposition was not the fractured older leaders of the opposition, but rather intelligent and fredom loving university students who mobilized in the tens of thousands against the proposal. Even better still, it appears that Chavez will respect the vote, a much better outcome than could have been predicted before this weekend.

A question that merits being asked is how these particular events can serve as an example for others. It is noteworthy in this case that the revolt was led not by the corrupt leaders of the "old regime" but by the young. If there is to be genuine change, there needs to be a changing of the guard in leadership to remove the corrupt holders of power. Such removal needs to be by just and democratic means (as was the case in Venezuela) lest new corrupt powers take hold and entrench themselves just like the old ones did (witness the depressing aftermath of most revolutions around the world). It is easier to reject the leaders of the past for their problems than to build a more just society in the aftermath of that rejection, but having rejected a dictatorship for Chavez, hopefully the young of Venezuela can overcome the mistakes of their fathers and build a more just and more open society in place of the fiercely divided one at present. Hope springs eternal.

Russia's Managed "Democracy"

A more typical example of pseudo-democracies around the world is the case of Russia's election. Vladimir Putin sought to expand the powers of his government for his successor to continue along his lines of controlling the country and limiting dissent, giving power and wealth to his corrupt friends and assassinating critics and rivals. He managed this task through pressuring voters to vote in their places of work where they could be under the supervision of their bosses (and through economic pressure that jobs and financial survival would be dependent on making the "right" vote, which was of course whatever Putin wanted).

This is a typical example because the forms of democracy itself can be corrupted by authoritarian tendencies which may, for political reasons, which to have the illusion of popular consent even when that reality is not present. Popular support, even if it is received by illegitimate means, often confers the appearance of legitimacy that even bullies and tyrants like to maintain. Even the appearance of consent helps to reduce the threat of rebellion and uprising in the most unjust socieities. Most leaders are savvy enough to realize the need for these shows of consent (Soviet Elections, as well as the throngs of cheering masses desired by every dictator), as it gives them the (often undeserved) satisfaction of having done the will of the people.

It is possible, though, that Putin may have overstepped his bounds. Of course, he does not wish for the approval of the West in his election practices, but he does wish the respect of the West as well as economic help for his nation, and this is jeapordized by corruption that becomes too obvious or behavior that becomes too heavy-handed. Having the suspected assassin of one of Russia's heroes of democracy elected to the Russian Congress would appear to be a mean-spirited move designed to demonstrate Putin's control over Russia. Such insults often tend to backfire--managed democracy, like revenge, is a dish best served cold. There are, no doubt, many people who would wish to emulate Putin's example, as Putin emulated the behavior of countless dictators before him.

Life In The Uncanny Valley

2007-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

According to students of robotic design and video game graphics, the uncanny valley is the zone between realistic and cartoony, where the robot or graphical image neither looks realistic enough to suspend disbelief or cartoony enough to be "cute" (think, for example, of anime, or superhero cartoons). Much recent animation and marketing falls into this uncanny valley, where an image is realistic enough to be threatening and not realistic enough to be anything other than creepy and strange.

I am somewhat baffled by many marketing decisions that move into this uncanny valley. Who are they trying to sell products to, anyway? The Heineken Draughtkeg (pronounced "draftkeg") commercials show a creepy looking robot-woman pouring beer out of her stomach, which is a giant keg. Perhaps the people marketing this product found that attractive--a sort of robotic electric Barbarella dispensing beer. Maybe it sells better in Europe, but I don't find that commercial attractive at all, in fact, I find it rather disturbing. Another example of this is in the recent Charles Schwab commercials, which have a slightly animated but still highly realistic rendering of various customers talking about the usefulness and attractiveness of Charles Schwab banking in sort of pseudo-interviews while they are going about their normal life. The problem is that the cartoons are neither obviously animated nor are they completely realistic. They are, instead, supsended at the bottom of that uncanny valley, uncomfortably real but not real enough to be human.

As I read an article today about a bank run at a British bank (the Northern Post), where customers withdrew 2 billion pounds (!) from their savings accounts over concerns about sub-prime mortgages and the problems of adjustible-rate mortgages that are developing in England and that have already read to some troubles here in the United States. Reflecting on that scene gave me some pause, as it reminded me of what I read about the beginnings of the Great Depression in the United States. When people lose faith in their institutions, in banks and governments, in stock markets, in their churches, in their families, in their schools, the consequences are serious. Much of how we live depends on trust, and the actions of those who do not trust, by disengaging from what is around us, cause the day of reckoning to come when the flaws of our systems become glaringly obvious and too powerful to ignore. We are watching history take place, and it is real, and yet it feels unreal at the same time.

Life often gives the sense of being in the uncanny valley as well. Some aspects of our existence appear to be almost dreamlike--such that we recognize them as real but also sense them as unreal at the same time. We disconnect from the full reality of it, either because it is positive and we are content to live in the fantasy, or because it is too horrible to deal with and so we must find some way of not letting the fullness of its reality sink in. There is a sense of deja vu, a vague sense of being troubled by contradictory pulls. Perhaps the marketers are on to something in their portrayals of this place. Without realizing the depth of their actions, they are responding to a contradictory feeling of reality and dream (or, for the more pessimistic, nightmare) and seek to profit off of this conundrum, not realizing that it is not an attractive situation, but rather a repulsize one.

Perhaps as well this problem affects us in our relationships with others. At times it appears that we are unable to relate to people if their problems and experiences are too alien to us. It is as if we are caught in that uncanny valley as well--recognizing that we are dealing with humans, fellow children of God, who are like us and have natures like our own, and yet we are unable to understand and relate to how they think and feel and behave, because we are cut off by unbridgeable barriers of experience. And so we are repulsed by others, because they are real and unreal at the same time, as if they were both human and inhuman at the same time. The same sort of paradox existed in the times of slavery (most of human history, in some form) where people were considered human beings (responsible for their actions) and yet property (unfree, without freedom or will, bound to people or to the land) at the same time. Masters (and slaves) were caught in this uncanny valley of combined recognition of reality and repulsion at the other being alien and foreign, and beyond worthiness of human kindness or dignity.

The uncanny valley is an example of what is known as cognitive dissonance, a paradox between two opposite thoughts/feelings/opinions that cannot both be true but both appear to be true. In the case of viewing robotic beer dispensers, this cognitive dissonance leads us to reject the commercial as ugly and repulsize, and to lower our opinion of Heineken. However, if we are dealing with human beings the problem is more severe. We are faced with the need of recognizing both human dignity and human depravity (both our own and others). We are therefore forced to recognize, if we wish to be truthful, that we and others are both created in the image of God and yet fallen beings as well in need of forgiveness, healing, and redemption. Unfortunately, this is not an easy thing to do.

Welcome To Wherever You Are

2007-09-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life, people would rather have a do-over because the results of an action are less than exemplary. Being a fan of music and sports, I have seen a fair amount of these recently. As I am a busy fellow, I will only look at these somewhat briefly. With that in mind, though, here goes.

"Gimme More?" No Thanks

Yesterday night, Britney Spears sought to initiate her "comeback" with a live "performance" of a new single entitled "Gimme More" where she apparently lipsynched rather poorly and demonstrated very lame dancing moves as well as less than trim physical condition. Her performance has been widely panned and some suspect that her career is over, comparing her unfavorably with her ex Kevin Federline. Furthermore, MTV was panned rather heavily for the desperation inherent in their decision to let Britney open the award show with her, um, performance as well as their decision to have most of the action take place in private VIP parties rather than in the televised show--which was shortened to increase the number of commercials and decrease the number and length of performances shown. Bad call.

Historic Upset

Life has been good the past couple of weeks if you are a fan of two-time defending I-AA champions Appalachian State. A trip to then #5 ranked Michigan ended up in the small school from Boone, North Carolina recording a 34-32 win that ranks as the first time in college football history that a team from Division I-AA has defeated a ranked Division I-A team. The loss led to a chance in the rules of the AP Poll, allowing Division I-AA teams to be ranked, and led to Michigan plummeting out of the rankings. A loss to Oregon this week brings the 0-2 Wolverines face to face with another struggling team, the 0-2 Notre Dame "Fighting" Irish, who have failed to score an offensive touchdown in two games against Georgia Tech and Penn State.

News At 11

There have been a lot of odd and quirky news stories that I lack the time to write about in depth, but have been intrigued by. One such story involves the explosion of a truck in Mexico carrying some kind of explosives that has killed over 30 people and injured another 150. Included among the victims were 3 local reporters who were presumably on the scene to cover the accident and instead became part of the story. Obviously, stories like this will make people a little jumpier over trucks being allowed to come in from Mexico to the US, given such a lax safety record. Other news stories, such as the discovery of "Kryptonite" in Serbia, are not new but are still rather entertaining to me. As usual, I will be on the lookout for more odd and quirky stories as the mood strikes me in case I feel like a blogging mood.

On Friendship

2007-08-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be a friend? I have lived a scattered life, long of the opinion that I was rather little liked and regarded, and I have spent too little time in reflecting and acting on what it means to be a friend, seeing as I thought I had very few people who were concerned at all about me. Perhaps it was rather self-centered, and mistaken, of me to think and feel this way, but so it is. We are all interconnected with each other, and our happiness and sadness, our triumphs and our trials all have an effect on those around us. We are, after all, to rejoice with those who laugh and cry with those who mourn. As I have reflected on the fact that I have a surprising amount of friends and acquaintances, I have also reflected on their lives and on the many connections between all of us, even after many of us have scattered far and wide from where we originally met and have not seen each other for years.

One of my classmates from high school recently got engaged. This is not terribly surprising, as it is the time of life where people tend to get married, but what struck me is that this person's wedding wishes were so frequent (I sent him wedding wishes myself) that he is not able to invite all of his friends to the reception. Certainly I can sympathize with his problem, and the way in which he is handling the large amount of well-wishers is quite admirable. Happy indeed is the man (or woman) who knows how well they are thought of by others. This particular young man graduated from the same high school as I did in the same year, but I did not know him closely then. We were both in Orchestra during high school--I as a violist towards the back of the section and he as the concertmaster--first chair first violin. It seemed that everything came so easily for him--he was charming, friendly, good looking, came from a wealthy and loving family, was stellar in school, in tennis, in playing the violin, and seemingly in everything he did. He was (and remains) active in various religious groups as well as his social activities. And yet he was and remains well-liked by just about everyone. About the only bad thing I ever heard about him was that his violin playing was skilled but not passionate, and considering the bad things I have heard about others (and myself) this is rather light indeed. And yet, despite the apparent ease of his life and of his frequent successes in so many years, no one (including myself) begrudges him any of his happiness. Instead we share in his joy over his happy life, and hope it will continue as such. As he is a just and fair and friendly fellow, his happiness and success does not come with resentment from anyone who knows him.

At other times, one must share sorrow and not joy when it comes to friends. One of my friends, for example, is having a rough time with stomach cancer, and I have not seen him (largely because I am sick right now and would not wish to pass on any germs to someone whose health is already in such a state as his), but I have sought to send my regards through other friends who are able to see him. The same is true for other friends I have--one of whom has been struggling with colon cancer for about two years now, and the father of another friend of mine whose pancreatic cancer has spread to other organs also. At other times, one must support friends whose struggles are not life-threatening illnesses, but such mundane troubles as car problems, or such serious life-issues as the breakup of a marriage or serious family difficulties. There is no shortage of friends in need indeed. When my friends suffer, I suffer with them. I suppose the same is true of others. We cannot be so consumed with our own lives that we are ignorant of what is going on with others--even if there is little we can do besides lend a sympathetic ear to them, or to spend our precious time reminding them that they are not alone and that they are in our thoughts and prayers. It is a terrible thing to feel and believe one is alone--and I would not wish that on anyone, much less those I care about.

At other times being a friend means helping in the labors of what friends seek to accomplish. I have many friends who, like myself, study and write about subjects of faith as well as of amusement. Even if I lack the time to do as much as I would like to help in the various labors of my friends, I will often help them edit and refine what they have written, which is what I would also expect of them. Sometimes this research is an areas I am knowledgeable in, and sometimes it is not. When I know something of the topic, I usually try to discuss this with the friend. If I do not know about the subject at hand in depth (and this does happen on occasion), then I will often take that as the opportunity to research areas I have not studied at length before. Having intelligent and intellectually curious friends is a good way to ensure that one is constantly learning and growing as well, and keeps the mind fresh. It is tragic to cease learning because one thinks one knows everything already. The greater my knowledge, the more profound my sense of ignorance, if only because I realize there is so much more that I do not understand.

I often wish I was a better friend. Often I feel that I am too concerned about my own thoughts and affairs to be the sort of friend I ought to be. Perhaps my friends may feel differently about this, and if so they are welcome to tell me, but I wonder often if I have shared enough in the joy and sorrows of those friends I have. A true friend is present in good times and bad, even if all one can do is provide moral support by one's mere presence and cannot actually do anything about a given situation. Sometimes that is enough. I know I am thankful for those friends I have, and I would hope they are thankful as well.

On The Randomness of Facebook

2007-08-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

This past week, I have become a frequent visitor to Facebook, one of those popular networking websites that appeals mostly to teens and young adults through college age, with the occasional older person as well. The experience has been a useful one for me, because it has given me a much better perspective about a few matters I have long pondered. Since this is a blog given to much pondering, I will continue. Some of these lessons were ones I should have known, but lacked the perspective to put into a full focus.

On Moderate Popularity

I have never considered myself a particularly well-liked or popular person, despite being well traveled and generally talkitive and outgoing. Perhaps I am a bit biased by an early life in which it appeared as though I was a social leper, but I have never considered how dramatically my social life has improved in the last few years until I took a look at the amount of people on facebook who were willing to say they were my friends. Now, many of my closest friends do not even have facebook, even among young adults and teenagers, but over a hundred people so far have been willing to say they were my friends. This is a remarkable thing. To put it into some context, one of my roommates was much more popular around campus it seemed, and he certainly went to more parties and had more dates than I did. However, looking at his profile indicated that he had 78 friends, but nearly all of them in Southern California. Of his 78 friends, 59 of them lived in the Los Angeles area. Of my 118 friends in comparison, only 11 of them lived in my most popular region, Tampa Bay.

My Friendships Are Scattered

This leads to the next conclusion, one that had prevented me from taking a full account of my rise in popularity from leper to a moderately well-liked one. My friendships are scattered all over the US, and indeed, all over the world. I do not have any particularly large groups of friends in any one place. I have sizeable groups of friends in Florida, Texas, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Washington, and a few other places, but they are not concentrated at all, and include a couple of friends in England and one in South Africa. Part of the reason for this scattering of friends is being in the Church of God, which tends to bring one into contact with a wide variety of people. But comparisons with other young people in the church of God on my buddy list (and there are many such people to compare with) demonstrates that while I share a great deal of common friends among people in the Church of God, most of them show a greater concentration in the area where they live. Even among my many friends who are not in the church, many of them, like me, have scattered far and wide in the course of interesting and complicated travels, and so my friends seem to be a bit more nomadic than most. My own moving around, my ties in a variety of different areas, and my lack of a strong social base among peers in my home territory (where I have lived the vast majority of life) have given me a false, and somewhat darker, picture of my social network than was in fact the truth. The truth is, I could travel in many areas and have friends and acquaintances there, at least a couple of people I knew and enjoyed spending time with. However, I don't have any one particular area whose pull of connections is so strong as to make that a place where I truly belong. In the end, though, my dispersed friendships can be a great source of strength provided I can summon the energy to keep up with them, which is the purpose of a site like Facebook in the first place.

On Memories

Joining Facebook has also been the opportunity to revisit a lot of memories of people I knew when I was younger. People who were not particularly nice to me in high school, for example, now inhabit a fair deal of space on my Facebook page, and I remember many stories about those whom I have added. However, the past is put into a different perspective when one reflects on where I stand and where they stand now. Many of us are graduate students, who have moved at least once from where we spent those years together. We are older, and hopefully wiser, and in my case at least, nowhere near as squirrelly and immature as we were back then. Remembering the past, even an unpleasant past, need not be depressing, so long as one knows how far one has come. On the other hand, some people have changed dramatically for the worse in their own moral lives, having fallen victim in college to serious immorality, even as others have become very mature and serious young adults. There are certainly cautionary tales that could be told as well as stories of coming to terms with what has been done but burying the hatchet, so to speak. Perhaps that is another purpose of Facebook I was not aware of. The act of putting one's life on a webpage in pictures and songs and stories puts one's life in a different perspective, viewing how we are interconnected, and how we have grown into the people we are today. If people are honest about themselves, it can lead to deeper connections with people as we find out some of what makes them tick and what is most important to them. I know it has been an eye opening experience for me personally.

For The Love Of The Game

2007-07-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

In 1999, when I was a freshman at the University of Southern California, a movie came out called For The Love Of The Game, based on the novel by Michael Shaara (more famous for his excellent historical novel The Killer Angels, which was later turned into the film Gettysburg). I watched this movie while returning home from the Feast in Hawaii that year, and then bought the soundtrack, whose title track was an excellent song by Semisonic, a band best known for its hit "Closing Time," which uses the last call for a bar as a metaphor for birth. Anyway, I spent early Sunday afternoon with some friends of mine from Houston watching a particularly exciting baseball game, which led me to reflect upon many things.

The movie, directed by Sam Raimi ("Spiderman") details a perfect game that is pitched by Billy Chapel (played with restraint in an excellent performance by Kevin Costner), a washed up pitcher playing in Yankee Stadium for a bad team (only recently good--the Detriot Tigers). As he plays the game he reflects upon his life, as his love (played not-very-convincingly by Kelly Preston) prepares to move to Paris for a job. One of the more convincing aspects, for me, of the movie is the way in which Billy takes a fatherly role to Heather, the daughter of his sweetheart, played very well by Jena Malone. One of the flashbacks involves Heather going to college, and she ends up at USC, which I thought was an amusing and touching detail.

Lyrics to "For The Love Of The Game" - Semisonic

In the morning of the first night of my life
I was feeling like I'd lost my inspiration
Then in the afternoon she walked into the light
To relieve me of my doubt and desperation.

She's not coming here to make herself a name
She only wants to play with me to see if she can win
And we both want it to happen.

None down in the bottom of the ninth with three men on
And she saw me like nobody's ever done before
Now in the glory of victorious dominion
She's receding in the sunshine down the corridor.

She's not in it for the money or the fame
She only came to play with me to see what place I'm in
And we both know who's gonna give in.

For the love of the game
Sometimes you've gotta cry a little.
For the love of the game
Maybe even gotta die a little.
For the love of the game
I made a sacrifice I never thought I'd have to make.

For the love of the game
Sometimes you've gotta cry a little.
For the love of the game
Maybe even gotta die a little.
For the love of the game
I made a sacrifice I never thought I'd have to make. (I made a sacrifice...)

Sometimes you've gotta cry a little.
For the love of the game
Maybe even gotta die a little.
For the love of the game
I made a sacrifice I never thought I'd have to make...

[End song lyrics.]

Anyway, baseball is a pastime I associate closely with my family. As I was watching the game, I wore my Pittsburgh Pirates shirt (even though the Pirates were not playing that day--the Astros and Padres were). When I would visit my father as a child/teenager up in Pennsylvania during the summer, we would often go to Pirates games on Sunday afternoons, not an uncommon way for fathers to try to bond with their children. Indeed, on this particular afternoon the game was originally planned to have a father and one of his friends in the church taking his daughter (my friend Kristin) and some of her friends to watch the Astros. Even the seats we had were with this goal in mind, as we sat in the right field, a few rows up in the closest area to the field, right next to the Astros bullpen. Luke Scott, a rookie for the Astros, plays right field, and one of Kristin's friends is particular fond of him. She and her brother (Jimmy, who went to Burlington Coat Factory on Friday with Kristin and I and with him many funny "hat" pictures on their myspace profiles were posted) were not able to make it to the game, though, because they were in Texarkana at the funeral of their grandfather, who had died of cancer on Thursday. So, they were not able to go.

Before I got to my seat, the Astros were already down 3-0. Richard (the father) and I had gone to get peanuts and beer (no beer for either Kristin and I), and due to the limit of 2 beers per person, my id was useful. Luke Scott had made a bad play on a ball and it ended up as a ground rule double, ending up in the row in front of where I was to sit. Too bad I was not there to catch it. By the time the first half inning of the game ended, Houston was already down 11-0 and their starter had been taken out of the game. I figured at this point the game would be a blowout, but it ended up being a compelling offensive game.

In the second inning, San Diego added to their lead, pushing it to 12-0, but in the bottom of the third the Astros hit a solo homer to spoil a hitherto perfect game from the Padres starter to make it 12-1. Then in the bottom of the fourth inning Berkman and Scott homered and Houston finally showed some offense, narrowing the deficit to 12-8, at which point the Padres starter, who was handed an 11 run lead before he even took the field, was pulled.

In the 5th inning San Diego scored a run on an interesting play where a player (with the last name of Bard) hit a fielder's choice grounder to the pitcher, and the pitcher threw too far to the left of home, letting a San Diego runner score. Then the catcher threw to second base, trying to get a runner out there, but failed. It was a strange play that left the stadium booing loudly. At the middle of the fifth inning, Houston was down 15-8. In the bottom of the 5th, Houston scored some runs themselves. With two outs, Biggio (whose name and number my friend Kristin had on her pink (!) Astros shirt) came in as a pinch hitter, but he did not reach base, and left two on to stop the rally. Before his out, though, the entire stadium was chanting his name. Biggio, you see, is past his prime himself, and is retiring at the end of the season, the last of Houston's famed "Killer B's". Houston ended the inning down only 15-11.

And so the game remained until the 9th inning, though there were some dramatic moments. In the bottom of the 7th inning, for example, after an entertaining seventh inning stretch where three songs were performed ("God Bless America," the Astros version of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" and "Deep In The Heart of Texas" were played), the Astros loaded the bases with two outs, but were unable to drive in any runs with the tying run at the plate. At the top of the 9th inning, though, the Houston closer, Lidge, ran out of gas and allowed three runs, the last two coming from a blast to deep left field. Houston was unable to score any more runs, so in an exciting game with three errors (two by Houston and one by San Diego), seven home runs (four by Houston and three by San Diego), and fourteen pitchers (eight by Houston and six by San Diego), the game was over. By then most of the fans had streamed out of their seats, no doubt disappointed. After the final out, "Come Monday," played on the stadium PA. There is always tomorrow, or next season, for those who do not win today.

Im In Ur Yardz Huntin Ur Dukz

2007-07-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

It almost pains me to write "I'm in your yards, hunting your ducks" that way, but such is the grammar and spelling of a humorous phenomenon known as lolcats. As I find the news around me (even sports news) to be rather grim much of the time, it is important to have something humorous in order to give one a bit of a chuckle, even a silly one, once in a while. First I will look at the structure of lolcat photos, some explanations for their appeal, and how they have spread into other areas besides cats (since I am not a particularly fan of cats).

An lolcat photo (or any other lol*insert noun here* photo) is made up of two elements. One is a photo, and the other is a rather goofy caption. The captions are generally silly, and say such things as "I Loves U" or "I Pronounce Every Day Iz Caturday" or "I Are Serious Cat. This Is Serious Thread" or "You're Adopted" or "Im In Ur Fridge Eatin Ur Foodz" or "I Made U A Cookie...But I Eated It" or "I Can Haz Cheezburger?". In other words, most of the pictures deal with cats in their normal (?) activities and focus on food, excitability, and affection (or the lack thereof).

What makes lolcats funny, besides the fact that people (including myself) are easily amused? For one, cats are pretty funny to watch. They often behave in humorous ways by lounging about, lunging at inanimate objects, steathily hunting like their wild ancestors, and so on. Some cats are cuddly and affectionate, and others are rather standoffish and unfriendly. Cats, for all their snobbery, have recognizable and occasionally charming personalities. What lolcats do is take these photos (some edited, some not) from the lives of cats and adds to them a sort of childish language that one could imagine cats thinking, putting an entirely new context onto the action of the cat and those around it.

It is surprising that no one thought of this idea before, but the creators of lolcats and memecats and so on deserve credit for an inventive way to have an honest and simple laugh. What is not surprising is that the idea behind lolcats has spread far beyond its original confines. A friend of mine from Wisconson sent me some rather humorous pictures he was submitting for an lolopera thread. These photos showed an opera singer (Jessye) with silly captions such as "Oh Noes, Drove Wif Da Top Down," "I C U," "Invisible Giant Cheezburger," "Mah Speeker Iz Too Loud," and so on. If opera fans are adapting something as silly as lolcats, one knows the phenonemon has spread far and wide.

I for one, do not see a problem in this. Perhaps some may find lolcats to be a bit silly, but I know I take this life way too seriously often, and generally need something simple and a bit quirky to laugh with/at sometimes. Lolcats generally lack irony or sarcasm or the other ways in which humor presents itself the most often. So, if you have a quirky and somewhat child-like sense of humor, may you go and seek out some lolcats for a laugh this most serious of Thursdays. It is, after all, a lot more entertaining (I promise) than reading a rant from me.

Bad Call

2007-07-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Though I am not a particularly big fan of professional basketball (I am more a fan of college basketball), I am a casual fan of just about every sport around (that I have heard of at least), and so I try to keep up on the news about basketball as I would most other sports. There has been a recent scandal in the NBA that might even be the largest the sport has ever faced involving mafia ties and gambling by a referee who apparently gambled on games he officiated. While the whole story has yet to come out, what has come out looks very damaging for the credibility of referees in basketball, the particular referee in question, and the NBA's image as a whole, even among a rather corrupt sports climate generally right now.

As the story goes, a referee by the name of Tom Donaghy, whose father was a college basketball referee (so being a referee is in the blood, so to speak) apparently had some gambling debts as he lived an opulent lifestyle in eastern Pennsylvania. He was apparently contacted by a low-level mafia figure over the debts and offered a deal that he couldn't refuse--the debts would be forgiven if he used his whistle to influence the point spreads of games he officiated and make his new associates happy. He apparently took the offer and refereered well enough to be given prestigious assignments, including playoff games. His whistle may have been twisted, but it was apparently not twisted enough to make him anything less than a well-regarded referee (which says something about the state of refereeing in the NBA). Now that his name has come out, information has come out that says that Mr. Donaghy may have been warned about his gambling problem by the NBA before the current FBI case was publicized. If this is the case, then the NBA stands as well to be culpable as they enabled him to affect the course of important games after this warning.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now look back on some of the most important games that Donaghy has officiated and look at how his calls may have been tainted by other concerns. Once someone is found to be corrupt, their decisions fall under much harsher scrutiny. The arrogant dismissals from David Stern, the head of the NBA, about the lack of moral rectitude among referees appears to have come back to bite him. If a ref can be tainted and be considered a pretty good ref, who is to say that there are not more corrupt referees around? The following is a list of the games that, so far, reek of the most corruption:

Game 3, Western Conference Semifinals, 2007: San Antonio 108-Phoenix 101. This game is marred by bad calls, in particular a phantom (and delayed) foul that gave San Antonio three free throws in the 3rd quarter, and other foul calls that kept Phoenix Suns star Amare Stoudemire on the bench except for 21 minutes. The Spurs were favored by 4 points and ended up winning by 7, meaning the calls Donaghy made appeared to have accounted for the point spread in the game. Already a questionable game before the calls, the news of Donaghy's corruption makes this game, and the series as a whole, a tainted one, and diminishes the achievement of the Spurs in winning the NBA title this past year.

November 2004, "The Brawl at the Palace," Indiana versus Detriot. This game, the infamous brawl that ended up with numerous players given lengthy supsensions for lengthy brawling on the court as well as fighting in the stands (between players and patrons) was officiated by Donaghy and others. Apparently this was not the first time Donaghy had problems with Rasheed Wallace, the combative Detriot player (who had threatened the ref a year before and had earned a seven game suspension for it). Donaghy and others were widely condemned for letting the fighting go on for too long, but now there are questions there may have been ulterior motives for the lax officiating with regards to the fighting.

Donaghy does not appear to have been a popular fellow among his peers, certainly not a proof of any guilt, but also a sign that he does not have any support already, much less after these allegations and the mounting evidence have come out. With Donaghy under police protection and a widening FBI probe exposing a lot of very unfriendly evidence, the picture for the NBA looks grim indeed. Where it will lead is a story that may yet be told in the days and weeks and months to come.

A History Lesson

2007-07-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Though I have thought long and hard about what sort of post to write next--I have been dissatisfied with the tenor of most of the news I have read, little of interest has been going on in my life, reflecting on Father's Day and the 4th of July left me with rather melancholy material, and I have been quite busy with graduate school. Though these particular reflections are melancholy enough, I figured it was a suitable subject to discuss on a blogger post, as many people who read this are, no doubt, well aware of my profound interest in both history. Fewer people are likely to be aware of my interest in the generational cycles of history, but recent newspaper articles and serious reflection, as well as my own particularly deep-rooted sense of pessimism have led to this particular post, which seeks to compare our times with the age of the 1920's, our last guilded age. Additional comparisons will be made with the 1880's, another time similar to our own with similarly serious consequences. Make of these comparisons what you will.

A New Guilded Age

I have read much in the past few years about the rising wealth of corporate magnates whose own tax obligations have lowered even as the economic health of the general population at large has been hindered through stagnant wages, a crushing burden of debt, and an increasingly regressive tax burden as societal interest in defending the common people, much less the disadvantaged of society, begins to crumble under the combined weight of moral decay and corporate plutocracy. Let us see how this is so now, and how it has happened throughout critical and dangerous periods of American history that our time, in many ways, closely resembles.

Most of the articles one reads about the comparisons between the historical periods in question (the 1880's and 1920's) and our own revolve around questions of class and distribution of wealth, questions that are of interest to me (but mainly for their implications on the moral justice present in a society). In all these three times wealth was concentrated in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of fabulously wealthy people who lived in obscene wealth and privilege while the general population suffered stagnation of wages (among the middle class) or a deterioration of economic position (among the lower classes). One important measure of a society's health is how equitably its economic resources are distributed. There will always be some degree of inequality in a society through the accidents of birth, differences in diligence, ability, and education, but such factors themselves do not make for extreme differences in wealth, largely because our own native abilities and inclinations do not vary over a huge range. Societies that demonstrate a lack of concern for social justice and for the concerns of those who are not well off (witness most of Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and so on) are precisely those countries which have the most unequal distributions of wealth. To the extent that the United States persists in its increasingly unequal distribution of economic resources, the fabric of society will become increasingly frail. After all, if those who possess an ever-growing percentage of wealth and power do not share in the insecurities of ordinary people, then the concerns of the majority of the population will not be reflected in the policies a nation conducts, unless there is social unrest sufficient to remind the wealthy and the powerful of their obligations to the rest of society.

There is some evidence that this is already taking place in parts of the world. Unscrupulous populists with mandates to forcibly redistribute wealth have taken power or consolidated their hold in several countries in Latin America (namely Venezuela and Bolivia), and nearly took power in Mexico. Meanwhile, social unrest over various issues have erupted in the US (over immigration), in France (over immigration and policies designed to harm young adult workers), in China (over government corruption and population controls), and in other places as well. These are not unconnected. As wealth becomes more unequal the institutions of society (whether tax systems, justice systems, or political systems) become more unjust as they reflect the interests of an ever-smaller segment of society. This in turn leads to growing apathy about the fairness and benevolence of government, unless an authoritarian populist leader can motivate these disaffected masses to rise up against the powerful and corrupt. Paradoxically, this furthers the corruption of the state because such leaders do not tolerate limits on their power from free presses and from independent sources of power, and so personal corruption based on cronyism replaces the corruption borne out of wealth. Furthermore, the institutions of democracy (such as an independent judiciary and the market economy) come under threat because of how they had become corrupted to serve the interests of the few instead of all.

It should be noteworthy at this point that in the present age as well as the 1880's and 1920's, immigrants became a common scapegoat for the frustrated longings of the masses (this was also true in the 1850's). In the 1880's, for example, immigrants from China were often the scapegoats for the stagnant wages of unskilled laborers. In the 1920's, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were the scapegoats. Now it is immigrants from Latin America as well as the Middle East. In all of these cases immigrants of distinctive appearance, religion, and social customs, whose streaming from areas under extreme stress led to increasing competition among native unskilled workers and created intense social unrest on both sides.

Though my opinions on illegal immigration are rather complicated and nuanced, the immigrants themselves are the symptoms and not the problem. Illigal immigrants (then and now) find work because of official corrpution that refuses to enforce laws, as well as corruption in businesses that seek to avoid paying market wages for labor or provide adequate working conditions. In the end, a few wealthy benefit and the majority of people suffer, though the suffering of the immigrants is often less intense because the situation where they came from is even worse. Intensifying the trouble is the fact that while unskilled labor conditions become increasingly unstable and threatening, there are increasing barriers to entering professional fields due to increased requirements for education and competence. When society ceases to be one and divisions between economic classes becomes hardened, the results are increasing social unrest.

It should be noted that these times are precisely those where the burden of taxation placed on the middle and lower classes is the most severe. During the Guilded Age, for example, income tax laws were declared unconstitutional because corporations were judged as falling under the persons whose rights were protected under the 14th amdendment. This was true even though those same courts denied those rights to the people actually defined under the 14th amendment--freed slaves and their descendents. When corporations have rights and people do not, something is terribly amiss in a society. In the 1920's, incomes were taxed while capital gains were not, and so the wealthy profited handsomely through stocks and property speculation (no comment) while the tax burden fell increasingly on the middle classes (whose benefits were typically in salary and not stock). In our times, we see property taxes and income taxes and estate taxes (which tend to affect the middle and upper classes the strongest) lowered while lotteries and sales taxes (which tend to most strongly affect the lower classes) increased. This skews the tax burden to the poor, who are precisely those who can least afford it and benefit the least from the expenditures gained from those taxes. Socities that rely upon the ignorance of the people to provide for their own unust gain play a very dangerous game.

It should also be noted at least briefly that these times are also precisely those where the national and personal debt levels in society reach the highest levels. Nations, banks, and individuals borrow and lend money at increasingly bad terms in order to keep up appearances, ever putting off the day when they must pay the piper and thus ensuring that the reprocussions of those decisions are the most serious possible and extend over the entire globe. Even if people realize the situation they are in, it is as if they lack the ability to do anything constructive about it, further increasing the strains on an increasingly tense situation.

Social/Religious Stresses

It is of no surprise that during these same times the social and moral fabrics of society also becomes frayed. It is foolish to speculate upon which is the cause and which is the effect between the various factors, but it is important to note that they are all interconnected, which would seem to indicate that there is a connection between them, possibly mutually reinforcing.

It is surely not coincidental that evolution has been a major issue in the last four periods of serious societal stress. In 1859, Darwin published his book "On The Origin of Species." In the 1880's, the doctrine of social darwinism, where the wealthy (the fittest) were claimed to owe no obligations to the "lesser" and "unfit" elements of society was defended and elaborated upon. The 1920's featured the Scopes Monkey Trial and the move to teach macroevolution in the schools. Today, of course, evolution is hotly debated, as the benefits of avoiding obligations to God and fellow man outweigh a concern for the objective evidence in the eyes of many powerful people (if not the population at large). A major reason for this is that Darwinian evolution, in its materialistic universe (without room for a just God who rules sovereignly over His Creation) and its appeal to the survival of the fittest (which would lower one's sense of obligation to the poor, the old, the sick, and the unfortunate) serve against the divine requirements of social justice emphasized repeatedly and strongly throughout the entire scriptures.

Meanwhile, these times are noted also for dramatic societal trouble about drug and alcohol abuse, abortion, euthenasia, immorality in dress, objectification of women, rampant problems with sexuality, violence, and so on (see the Great Gatsby for a comment on the situation of the 1920's, or any of the works of Nathaniel West). In all of these times there is a profound dissention between the standards of the youth and the declining hold of "traditional" morality upon the behavior of the population. Furthermore, these times show a consistent trend towards rampant materialism (see above note about evolution) as well as the importance of appearance over a rigorous attention to reality. Each of these issues alone is worthy of several ranting posts, but time and energy do not permit me to spend my 26th birthday this way.

It should also be noted that these times featured the growth of superchurches (the 1920's in particular) at the expensive of denomonational loyalty. Indeed, any kind of loyalty is particularly difficult to find in these eras of history. Such superchurches are also noticed today where pastors write Horatio-Algeresque tales (see the 1880's) invoking the gospel of plentitude (see the Prayer of Jabez for a notable example of this) and where wealth and success are often taken as signs of righteousness. This has the often neglected but rather pointed corrolary that failure and poverty are the signs of unrighteousness, which serves to bring the nastiness of the outside world into the confines of congregations. Rather than preach about the gospel of social justice that is found in the Bible (notice the first speech of Jesus Christ, or the consistent and fierce condemnation of those who abuse wealth and power in the Bible, especially--but not only--in the prophets such as Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah), the emphasis is on numbers (money, membership) to the detriment of deep and serious examination and application of the scriptures. As a result, even though religion is popular, the Bible does not exert influence over the lives of professed believers.

What Follows

This is predictably depressing, but worst of all is the reflection of what follows after these times and is the direct result of the processes of decay and segmentation found in eras like today. When one looks at what followed the last three eras that most closely resemble our own, the results are quite striking. In the first era, the period of trouble in the late 1850's was followed by the Civil War, the most catastrophic war in American history thus far, when a group of states led by privileged and unjust slaveowners sought to create an independent nation founded on freedom from government interference with slavery but the most draconian regulations on slavery and the criticism of it. The Guilded Age of the 1880's led to the prolonged depression of 1890-1896, which led to the birth of the American Federation of Labor and the Progressive reforms of the early 1900's (including antitrust laws and the first laws regulating the quality of food, among others). The "Roaring Twenties" was followed by the Great Depression and the rise of facism and militarism around the world, leading directly into the Second World War, the most destructive war in recorded history. Obviously, this is not good. What can be done about it at this advanced state is difficult to say, but when I look at the state of the world today, and the inability of people to deal with the full extent of the moral roots of this present state (including those people who see apocalyptic signs in these times) is not a pleasant one.

What will follow these present times, I do not know, but such times have never ended well. Perhaps one of the conflicts in our present society will lead to some bitter rift and ugly civil turmoil. Perhaps there will be a depression like that of the 1890's or 1930's, with delayed federal action to respond and laws that swing the pendulum too far to the other side in response to the current imbalance. Perhaps some unscrupulous leader will take advantage of the righteous indignation of people and promise unrealistic solutions in exchange for the further weakening of our freedoms and our democratic system. Perhaps there will be riots and unrest in the streets. I am no prophet, I do not know. What I do know from all the history I have been able to find on such times like these is that the situation will not be tackled until there is no other choice, and the solution will be more expensive and more troublesome than it has to be if the problem is dealt with sooner. We lack the leaders with the moral vision to understand the depth of the problems we face and the moral courage to deal with the problems and how they interrelate. What can be done about that, I do not know. History lesson concluded.

On The Ironies of Weather

2007-05-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Every summer, wise Floridians (and residents of other subtropical nations and states) become very familiar with the National Hurricane Center website (www.nhc.noaa.gov), with daily (or multiple-times daily, depending on how grim the situation is) readings about which tropical waves could develop into hurricanes and which hurricanes threaten the flat, reclaimed swampland where I reside. Having recently moved from a rare area in my city not in any evacuation zone to somewhere in Evacuation Zone A (meaning I may be particularly itinerant this hurricane season), I will be paying even more attention (if that were possible) to the business of hurricanes and tropical storms as I go about my affairs in work and school.

This particular year has started early with regards to tropical storms. Despite it being only the beginning of May, on May 9th Subtropical Storm Andrea formed in the Atlantic just off the coast of St. Augustine, slowly drifting west towards the state in dry, unfavorable atmospheric conditions. This brave little storm is already dissipating, but it marks the first storm of what could be a busy season. Ironically enough, some people (including Florida's Governor) were hoping that the tropical storm would bring some much needed rain to Florida. No dice.

What could drive people to wish for a tropical storm to hit Florida when the last few years have been less than kind to Florida in that regard (lest anyone forget, during the 2004 Hurricane Season, Florida was hit by four major hurricanes, the last two of which knocked out power where I lived for over a week)? In 2005 Florida was hit by another three hurricanes, one of which destroyed part of Miami International Airport (and delayed my flight back to Tampa from New Jersey, though it indirectly gave me first class tickets, so I suppose I can't complain too much). The reason is that Florida is as dry as my sense of humor right now.

Florida and Georgia are so dry right now that a swamp is burning (!) and the air quality earlier this week (thanks to a fire near Gainesville) was so bad it reminded me of the smog in Los Angeles (as well as my experiences with fires out there, which threatened Griffith Park Observatory earlier this week, one of my favorite spots in LA). One fire, the aforementioned fire on the GA/FL border, has burned over 100 square miles of land and is now threatening towns on the stateline. Another fire has burned part of northern Minnesota and is now heading into Canada. Drought conditions have prevailed over much of the United States, and the droughts are turning quite ugly as hotter weather has turned dry grass into a tinderbox.

However, other parts of the United States (like Kansas and Nebraska, and other parts of the midwest) are having floods right now from rather severe rains, the worst floods since 1993. Those floods, by the way, were so severe that they forced some towns close to the rivers of the midwest to move further away from the river to avoid being in the floodplains. If cities and towns in Florida were moved away from the floodplains to avoid damage from flooding, there would not be much of Florida left suitable for habitation, but I suppose that is another subject for another time.

It appears that, however you look at it, this year already is shaping up to be a wacky one with regards to the weather. A late start to winter in Europe created serious problems, and the end of winter featured dramatic temperature swings from spring-like weather to late blizzards. No matter what reason one uses for the weather being as it is, the weather is truly bizarre, clearly not right. While it may keep some of us glued to the weather channel (or various other equivalents), it should force us to think as well how much our lives and livelihoods depend on the fickleness of our increasingly erratic weather.

It would not surprise others to know that my life and livelihood, like everything else in my existence, has an ambivalent relationship with the weather. For one, I live in an area rather vulnerable to hurricanes, living near the coast (a bay, to be precise). However, as a reviewer of modular building plans, I get more work when modular buildings need to be built as replacements for destroyed buildings as well as construction trailers for building sites post-disaster. So, while I dislike disasters, and the stress that hurricane season brings for me as I stare at menacing looking storms in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, I profit off of the same. Like the ironies of the weather, the ironies of my life are many.

On The Sinister People

2007-05-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I am a sinister person. I say this somewhat jokingly, but truth be told, as a left-handed person, I am a sinister fellow. Sinister, a word with nearly uniformly negative connotation and denotation, comes from the latin word for left. In Latin, as in Hebrew and Greek and many other languages, left is given a host of negative meanings and right is given a host of postive meanings. The word left even comes from the Old English and means "weak." It is worthwhile to note some of these relationships first before I go on:

Left/Sinister:

Bend Sinister: signifies the bearer of the coat of arms is an illegitimate child
Sinister is also contained in the names of villians in Marvel Supercomics as well as the Underdog
Sinister is also used as a synonym for evil.
Left does not only refer to the direction, but is also the past tense of "leave" in such expressions as "left behind."
The word left in French, gauche, means awkward or clumsy.

Right/Dextrous:

Dexterity, from the Latin word for right, refers to manual ability, as the opposite of clumsiness, and is often used in role playing games for statistics related to skill in tools and weapons.

Right is not only used for the direction, but is also a positive expression used in "right brain thinking" (referring to creative thinking as opposed to the narrow quantitative thinking known as "left-brained thinking").

Right is also the name of those freedoms which are most treasured and sought after (such as "The Bill of Rights" or the "Civil Rights Movement") and is used to refer to something which is correct and proper as opposed to something which is wrong.

Perhaps these are not noticed very frequently because most of the world is right-handed (different estimates figure the proportion of right-handed people to be about 85-90% of the total population), and it is easy to ignore what is common and obvious. In an entire semester of watching movies, I saw exactly one person writing left-handed, and he happened to be Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem. When I saw Shawn Mullins write left-handed in the music video to "Everywhere I Go," I was pleased, because it is unusual to see people writing left-handed on-screen. Even had I not already noted that I am left-handed, the fact that I even bother to notice what hand people write with should give away that fact, because right-handed people are not prone to notice what hand anyone writes with at all, while left-handed people like myself are always seeking out allies in our battle against a world designed hostile and backwards for the sinister people.

During the Middle Ages, left-handed people were considered tools of the devil and were burned at the stake (I would not have survived in the Middle Ages for other reasons, notably my intelligence, my intolerance for unjust hierarchies, my outspokenness, and my religious beliefs, but being left-handed would have added to the reasons why I would have received the death penalty in those dark times). Even in the United States in the 20th century, left-handed students were beaten on the wrist until they wrote with their right hand--this happened to my father as well as my mother's father, both of whom were born left-handed but who had it beaten out of them rather literally in school.

Left-handedness plays a role often unrecognized in military history as well. In the Bible, Ehud, a left-handed Benjaminite, used his left-handedness to slay Eglon, king of the Moabites, by sneaking a weapon on the right side of his body, where the guards did not check. Later in Judges, the notably left-handed Benjaminites dealt two defeats to the rest of the Israelites before being nearly eliminated as a tribe. Many fortresses in the Middle Ages were built with towers with stairs ascending clockwise, which would allow a right-handed person to defend them easier.

The Bible even adds to the general hostility towards the left-side in Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats--the goats (symbollizing those who are not to be saved) are put on the left side, and the sheep (symbollizing those who are to be saved) are placed on the right-side. Yet, despite the often negative connotations of the word left (and the awkwardness in writing and drawing left-handed), and even the various hostile theories about the origin of left-handedness in people (including high amounts of stress at birth and brain damage), left-handedness endures and even has some positive connotations--including a prediliction for high intelligence and creativity.

So, in the end, perhaps the sinister people of this world like myself can have the last laugh--left-handed people are likely the only ones who even notice what kind of handedness most people have, and they are better at tennis and other one-on-one sports (like boxing) due to the assymetry of handedness. Living in a hostile world does have its advantages after all.

On The Collatz Conjecture

2007-04-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, during the monthly Florida Bibliophile Society meeting, a book collecting former math teacher with a profound interest in Lewis Carroll (of Alice & Wonderland fame) made some interesting comments on an area of mathematics I find quite intriguing. He spoke in particular on the Collatz Conjecture. A conjecture, in mathematical terms, is a supposition that appears to be always true but is not rigorously proven. There are, of course, several ways to prove a statement, which would change the conjecture into a theorem (which is rigorously proven and is followed by three of my favorite latin words--quod erat demonstradum, which mean "it has been demonstrated/proven."

Logic gives us several ways of proving a statement. One is a proof by contradiction. In this proof, we assume that the theorem is not true and then demonstrate that this leads to a contradiction with what is known to be true. For example, if we assumed a theorem was not true and then showed that if this was the case then 1 = 0, then we would prove by contradiction that the theorem was true. This is a particularly elegant form of proof, and I quite enjoy that as well. Other proofs seek to demonstrate that a statement boils down, eventually, to already proven statements, so that the theorem rests on the shoulders of prior statements (standing on the shoulder of giants, as it were). The immediate implications of a given theorem are considered corollaries, and are added to the pool of proven statements as well. Alternatively, theorems may be proven exhaustively, such that within a given range one can demonstrate that the theorem is true because one has exhausted all of the possibilities. I dislike this manner of proof because I tend to get rather bored of calculating algorithms and my attention has the tendency to wander, leading to mistakes in arithmetic. Since this is apparently a common affliction, generally computers are used in this form beyond the simplest of cases, because their attention does not wander (unless they use a Microsoft operating system and have a blue screen error, but that is another subject entirely).

I particularly enjoy conjectures because they are often composed of rather simple statements and can be verified to very large numbers, but because they resist proof by contradiction or traditional methods of proof, and because they make such grand claims that they cannot be proven exhaustively. One such example of this sort of conjecture is that the digits of pi and Euler's constant do not have a repetitive pattern, making them transcendental numbers. Well, this has not been proven (or disproven, for that matter) despite the fact that computers have calculated pi and Euler's constant to extreme lengths and have found (in the case of pi at least) that there are roughly equal numbers of each digit despite no discernable pattern.

Collatz's conjecture is likewise appealing to me because the conjecture sets two rather simple rules, one for odd numbers and another for even numbers, and these rules have been demonstrated to be correct to very large numbers, but because there are an infinite number of postive numbers, the conjecture cannot be proven true exhaustively. Furthermore, the conjecture has resisted a proof by contradiction or the traditional deductive proof.

The Collatz Conjecture has two rules:
If a number is odd, multiply by three and add one (3x +1),
If a number is even, divide the number in half (x/2).
The conjecture states that, eventually, any number will reduce, given these two rules, to one.

Some examples:

1 4 2 1
2 1
3 10 5 16 8 4 2 1
4 2 1
5 16 8 4 2 1
6 3 10 5 16 8 4 2 1
7 22 11 34 17 52 26 13 40 20 10 5 16 8 4 2 1
8 4 2 1
9 28 14 7 22 11 34 17 52 26 13 40 20 10 5 16 8 4 2 1
10 5 16 8 4 2 1

And so on...

It becomes apparent rather quickly that there is some kind of pattern in the way the rule works, and that once a sequence reaches a number already present in an existing sequence then it follows the same trail (for example, 11 would be 11 34 17 52 26 13 40 20 10 5 16 8 4 2 1). However, the proof of this conjecture has evaded the attempts of mathematicians of far greater ability than I (though, to be honest, it is not a difficult task to find mathematicians of greater ability than I am).

I consider such examples as this simple conjecture as evidence that the world in which we live, even when we look only at such narrow areas as mathematics which appear at first capable of exhaustive rational proof, nonetheless possesses aspects which we hold to be true even though we cannot demonstrate them to be true by logic. The world we live in, that is, requires something we call faith. If this is true in the world of number theory, it is certainly even more true in those aspects of life that are not as quantifiable. This may not make some mathematicians very happy, but it should nonetheless provide food for thought for those of us who are able to handle a bit more uncertainty and are able to reflect upon intelligence greater than our own.

Three Vignettes On The Life Of A Graduate Student

2007-04-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

My life as a graduate student provides me with numerous opportunities for dry humor and (sometimes) dispassionate reflection on the quirks of higher education and my own place within it. Knowing that graduate education is still somewhat rare in the United States, and particularly rare in my family (I am the first person in my family to go to graduate school since my great-great uncle Willis David Matthias got his Th.D from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1927, but that is another story), hopefully my musings are not too esoteric or obscure.

On Americans In Graduate School

As an American in a graduate engineering program, I am a rather unusual fellow (regardless of whether I would be unusual on account of my own inherent quirkiness). The vast majority of my fellow graduate students in the School of Engineering, even at the University of South Florida, are not American citizens. Those that are Americans are often older students (many of whom have children only a little younger than myself), and many of the other students come from such diverse lands as China, India, South Korea, Turkey, France, Columbia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. I happen to enjoy studying with such people, as they provide me the opportunity to learn about other lands and backgrounds beyond my own (and I tend to seek out such knowledge anyway). So, for me it is not the presence of people from other lands that is noteworthy. What is noteworthy is the absence of other Americans, particularly young Americans, from my classes. I know I am an odd fellow, but being interested in graduate school in engineering should not make me that unusual, I would think. What makes this rather amusing is that immigration law, which for me personally is a rather non-issue, becomes a very important matter for many of my classmates. One classmate, an undergraduate in a combination graduate/undergraduate program at USF, is from Columbia, and she was unable to go to a recent academic conference she helped organize because it was in Cancun and she did not have travel visa privileges. Other friends of mine face difficulties in finding employment because of a shortage of H1-B visas, with the liklihood that they will have to return to their home nations.

This becomes a problem in that many professions (such as civil engineering, my own) are moving towards making professional credentials more difficult to obtain, often to the point of requiring graduate school. With the above-inflation rise in college costs and the increasing length of time of non-productive (in economic terms) years spent acquiring an education rather than earning a living, coupled with the shortage in young people willing or able to study advanced degrees in science and engineering (and the difficulties in legally hiring educated foreigners to these positions) we face some serious problems. There appear to be no shortage of ambitious young adults in MBA programs, but when it comes to more technical studies the shortage is most glaring (and I have seen it with my own eyes). It appears as if my generation of students has understood that we value the acquisition of money above all else--above integrity, above truth/knowledge--and they have chosen their academic careers accordingly. What are we to do to ensure our nation has enough intellectuals to fill those emptying ivory towers, or even the ranks of middle-class professions like scientists and engineers?

A Nexus Of Cash And Corruption

It is a common thread of mine to comment on corruption in this world wherever it can be found, and recently I have found another occasion to comment on this. A scandal is breaking in the world of academic financing, as numerous university officials have been found to have had overly cozy financial relationships with a clique of financial organizations engaged in predatory lending to university students. While the universities implicated so far in the scandal are on the east coast (Penn, St. John's, and so forth), there are plenty of schools in other parts of the United States that engage in the same practices (and I know of some schools on the west coast that they could look into as well).

The university officials implicated in this scandal (and some government officials as well) received lucrative benefits from a few preferred lenders who apparently gave the universities (and those officials) bonuses based on how many students chose particular loan packages that contained terms advantageous to the lending companies and not as advantageous to the students themselves. Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general for the state of New York (a position that in recent years has inspired rather fiercely anti-corruption officials), apparently began the investigation at the behest of a lender who was apparently shut out of elite college lending on account of being unable to schmooze with the university officials and being unwilling/financially unable to engage in the graft/corruption that such college lending apparently entails. Perhaps the AG of New York should go after the credit card companies that camp out on university sidewalks continually with free t-shirts to give out. Maybe they are paying off university officials as well. That would not be surprising.

A Parking Rant

Actually, one of the benefits of being a commuter student (as I am now) is avoiding such people. When I lived on campus as an undergraduate on the left coast, I could only avoid such people at food speed, and those who know me should realize my foot speed is not terribly fast. Unfortunately, one of the annoyances of being a commuter student is the problem of finding adequate parking.

A few days ago, I received a survey from the University of South Florida about parking, which gave me the opportunity to rant to the people responsible for the travesty that is engineering school parking. (It is a rare treat in my life to be able to rant directly, and anonymously, to people who make my life more difficult than I would prefer). I was bemused by the attempts of the survey to advocate the use of Tampa's rather unacceptable public transportation service (known as HARTLine), as well as advocate future light rail projects to connect USF to the airport and a few other major places. (The question of how someone is supposed to get from where they live to the light rail and back, much less go to work as well, is left unstated).

I took the opportunity of the survey to make a few choice (but non-profane) comments about the incompetence of those responsible for parking at USF. Of course, these are the same geniuses who removed an entire parking lot from student use (for who knows what reason) some weeks ago while the Spring Semester is still in session. Parking was crowded enough before, now the situation is even more untenable. I do not appreciate having to walk half a mile from my car to class, especially not when I have to pass half-empty lots I cannot use because they are reserved for staff. I take such things rather personally, and as a sign of the lack of genuine interest people in charge have about doing what is best for those they purportedly serve. It is distressing that it is so hard to find leaders who are not corrupt and incompetent. If leaders were as competent in serving as they were in advocating their own pet agendas and in avoiding due regulation and accountability, I would have much less to rant about. I think that would be a good thing all the way around. For now, I study what is around me, and occasionally report on it.

Why Is The Beam Always In Our Eye?

2007-04-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

One of the most pointed verses in the Bible concerning our behavior to other people is Matthew 7:3: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? (NASB)" One question I have long had about this verse is, why is the beam (or log) always in our eye, and why is the speck in the eye of the other person? Today I would like to look at at least a few possible answers.

On Specks

The answer to the question of why the speck is the eye of the other person seems a bit easier to answer, so I will tackle that one first. What we see of other people is rather limited. Even a fairly obvious person (I would probably qualify as one of these) still keeps a fair amount of information inside simply because not everything can be communicated to other people without a large amount of time spent with someone in a wide variety of different situations. Furthermore, much of what we do communicate verbally and nonverbally is subject to interpretation (and misinterpretation), which presents a further barrier to understanding other people. Therefore, even for people whose living is spent critiquing (that is how I pay my bills, after all) only have a small amount of material available to judge someone on.

This need not be a bad thing. We are not to be judgmental after all (much easier said than done), so it would be salutory for those of us who do tend to be a tad more hypercritical than we probably should be to recognize that we may be wrong (sometimes really wrong) and mean it. However, even when we judge something correctly in other people, we must realize that even here our information may be incomplete. No mercy will be shown to those who show no mercy, and when we do not know why someone acts the way they do, we may err in being harsh to those who suffer and struggle greatly. Consequently, we may be too easy on those who are better at hiding their sins (or are politically powerful enough that most people with a modicum of sense quail at challenging). So, what we see is often imperfect and that we see imperfectly. Therefore we cannot but see specks in the eyes of others, as their logs are often quite hidden to us.

On Logs

On the other hand, we all have logs in our eyes (I have mine, and I am blessed to have other people around me who seem to take great pleasure in reminding me about them, often). We need not be too hard on ourselves--God knows our situations better than we do--but we do need to look realistically at ourselves and understand that we all fall far short of our goal. Without the pardon given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, salvation would be far beyond our reach, as if we were trying to stand on the ground and grasp for the stars in the night sky.

There are many reasons we have logs. For one, most people do not examine themselves particularly closely. We selectively compare ourselves to others and justify ourselves by looking at how other people fall short and how we have been wronged (I say this knowing I do the same thing, often, myself). In doing so, even when we see the worse parts of our own nature, we mitigate them and try to explain away our own problems through forces beyond our control while denying this privilege to others, what is called the fundamental attribution error. Furthermore, by not dealing with our own problems, we have a skewed perception of reality, which prevents us from seeing our world clearly and makes us less able to correctly judge other people.

What To Do Then?

How do we avoid this difficulty? Besides remaining in a state of blissfully ignorant hypocrisy, there are really two solutions. One is not to judge at all, and the other is to learn how to judge wisely. Our society right now seems to point towards not judging at all (though here it is only those people who wish to live righteously who are judged, in a perversion of the concept of judging). Not judging basically amounts to this: you do what you want to do, I'll do what I want to do, and as long as you don't hurt or judge me I won't judge you. This is incorrect, because if we desire a just society that is suitable for human existence, we must realize that no act is without consequences for other people, no matter how private it may seem. I could go at length about this, but a common example should suffice. For example, many people think that buying cocaine is a decision that effects only the drug user. This is false. The purchase of drugs is but one link in a rather complicated picture that involves a lot of people. Besides harming the user himself (itself a sin, as we are to honor God's temple--our bodies), the act of buying drugs supports a whole legion of people who make their livings in illegal ways (drug dealers, laboratories, etc.) who often combine drugs with other criminal behavior such as prostitution, theft, violence. These people, in turn, depend on the sources of their drugs from international drug traffickers who themselves are involved in crimes such as illegal immigration, terrorism, the international slave trade, massacres of populations in drug growing areas, and so forth. When we act, we can either be a part of a nexus of good or a nexus of evil. We cannot pretend, though, that what we do has no consequences outside of ourselves.

That leaves us with the choice of judging wisely. In doing so, we need to be aware (at least as much as possible) about what is right and wrong, and about why what is simple for us may be difficult for someone else (and the reverse is true also). In seeking to understand others, we may find that they have much to teach us and we have much to learn, even when we set out to teach them about their errors. Also, we must separate the sin from the sinner. We are all sinners, all worthy of the death penalty for our actions, and all (potentially) covered by the grace of God should we choose to accept the offer. We all have much to struggle with in this life, and we should recognize it as such. If we spend the limited time and energy we have on this earth honestly and openly seeking to live rightly (and increase in knowledge so that we have a better idea of what it is we are to do and how it is we are to do it), then we will speak louder about sin than we would through a million jeremiads against the sins of others. Sometimes we speak loudest through our own example--do you know what your example is saying? That is a frightening picture to consider indeed.

C is for Controversy

2007-03-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

In a humorous news story out of New Zealand reported by Reuters, two teenagers (Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo) appear to have busted the claims of drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) concerning the product Ribena. Ribena, a syrupy drink marketed mainly to children, supposedly contains blackcurrants with four times the vitamin C as oranges. Instead, the young ladies found that Ribena contains nearly no vitamin C at all, and that one commercial brand of orange juice in New Zealand contained four times as much Vitamin C as Ribena. The young ladies brought their research to the attention of the company, but it was ignored until the research reached New Zealand's Commerce Commission, which has charged GSK with fifteen counts of various malfeasance, with potential fines around $2.1 million.

This particular humorous case raises some interesting questions about drug labeling. Companies like GSK are extremely powerful, with drug marketing efforts (through direct commercials as well as employing doctors as drug peddlers) that may not serve the interests of the consumer at large. After all, the two expenses that continually outpace the rate of inflation are health care and higher education.

One of the ways in which drug companies like GSK were thought to be superior to snake-oil peddling alternative medicines/vitamin supplements is that medicines were supposed to contain a humorous array of comments about varying results and side effects and so forth. That is, products that drug companies market are supposed to be honest, at least to the level of honesty we would expect from buying used cars from a dealer (with an automobile manufacturer's logo over his business) rather than from a guy on the side of the road.

However, it appears that a product marketed mainly in British nations (it first achieved fame as a drink distributed to British youth during WWII) is merely an overly expensive form of soda rather than a health drink of any kind. Make of that what you will. However, give praise to two plucky and creative young people in New Zealand for their work in refuting some spectacularly false claims about the health benefits of a drink marketed by a drug company. The world needs more people like those two, because it has all the snake oil salesmen it can handle.

A Truly Scattered Post

2007-03-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

Well, given that this blog only shows a small part of my life (though sometimes a larger part than is probably wise), it might be nice to know what this particular blogger is up to when he is not ranting about something or commenting on bizarre events in the world. This post is meant to give a look into the scattered and very random life that is my own. Consider it three very odd posts in one with very little connection, except that they have to do with my life and what I am up to currently. So, here goes.

Nathan's Passive Investment Portfolio

I decided to begin with the weirdest and most ephemeral of the three mini-posts. Last year I started a Roth IRA, because I am rather skeptical about the solvency of Social Security for my generation (thanks to overly greedy Baby Boomers, but that is a rant and I'd like to avoid that if possible during this entry). Deciding it was better to take personal responsibility for my retirement, should I ever want to rest, or ever live that long, I opened a Roth IRA with my tax refund last year, shortly before I turned 25. Since my employer had no retirement plan, I made my own. So far it is doing pretty well, and had over 10% gains for last year. I calculated the amount of money the account would have if the amount in it right now were compounded at 10% until I was 65, and the amount was around $170,000, so I was pretty pleased with that. Of course, now my employer is starting a 401(k) plan, so my financial planning gets a little more complicated now that I have my own Roth plan as well as the deferred plan from my employer. Since my employer will match 50% of the first 4% of my income that is contributed into the 401(k) plan, I figured it would be good to just put 4% into that and continue my regular contributions into my Roth IRA. Between the two, I should have a decent amount set for my passive portfolio income. Now I can look for more active investments to add to the list. I'm not one to put all my eggs into one basket. Rather, I am a person who likes to diversify to reduce risk rather than put all my eggs into one basket (real estate, tech stocks, krugerands, etc.).

White And Nerdy

Okay, Weird Al Yankovic made a song in "White And Nerdy" that suits me a little too well, I suppose. I think I just may be a little bit too nerdy for my own good. How so, you ask? Well, if all goes as planned (and that is never a given in my world), I just may be adding another major to my graduate studies. I suppose I can never leave well enough alone. Right now I am already an MSEM (Master's of Science in Engineering Management) student also going for two graduate certificate programs at the University of South Florida (Technology Management and Total Quality Management). Well, being the uber-nerdy person that I am, I am seeking to add another program with a thesis option, because I suppose I am a glutton for punishment (and, to be honest, a chance to write about third parties in modular engineering and their role in increasing efficiency in building approvals is too good to pass up). Remember that I am a person whose undergraduate major at USC was civil (structural) engineering and whose minor was history. My interests are wide and finding ways to keep myself sufficiently involved in all (or most) of my interests while fulfilling key personal ambitions on my personal five/ten year plan is a difficult task. I do seem to like it that way, though, so there's no reason to complain. It just makes my life rather complicated.

Some Theological Comments (But No Rants About Dead People, I Promise)

Ever since the C.S. Lewis Society Annual Banquet I went to on Thursday night, I have been doing some C.S. Lewis reading (finishing "The Great Divorce" and "Mere Christianity" since then). There are a few things about C.S. Lewis' writing, particularly in "Mere Christianity" that I found quite fascinating and worthy of discussion. First, the concept of Sehnsucht (German for some mystical longing for a place one has never been but knows one belongs, such as the Kingdom of God) inspired me to write a sonnet. Within us all is a God-shaped hole, a longing that can only be fulfilled by our Creator, and when we try to fill it by other means, we commit idolatry by keeping ourself from the one being who can fulfill our needs. It is sad that so many of us try to fill our longings with sex, drugs, alcohol, money, and the like. The second part about C.S. Lewis' writing in both "The Great Divorce" and "Mere Christianity" that deeply moved me was his writing about how God judges the behavior of believers. A quote that made me cry from "Mere Christianity" (page 215) follows:

"There is either a warning or an encouragement here for every one of us. If you are a nice person--if virtue comes easily to you--beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee.

But if you are some poor creature--poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all--not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last)."

I could not read those paragraphs without thinking both of them applied to me--both as greatly gifted and greatly cursed. Perhaps we are all a bit that way. The third aspect of C.S. Lewis' writings that I found most interesting was his conception of the Trinity. He compared it to the bond between God the Father and Jesus Christ, and said that it was sort of a "group identity" much as is found in a family or corporation. In the chemical sense, that would be the same as a bond between two or more atoms (whether an ionic bond or a covalent one). That bond is what God offers to us (and that we can in no way deserve). While I disagree that this bond is itself a person, except in that fictitious sort of personhood that corporations have, the conception I have of the Holy Spirit is not really different from his. If C.S. Lewis captured what Trinitarians believe when they refer to the Holy Spirit, as that spiritual bond that joins us together with God in His family, then the disagreement becomes one of semantics rather than a different conception of the nature of God. I found that to be most interesting, and enlightening. As such, I thought it worthy of comment.

From Russia With Love

2007-03-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

When writing my occasional world events blogs, I do not generally like to write about nations that are particularly large or important (since I figure there are already plenty of people who write about such events and are much better able to put them into a coherent picture than my anecdotal sort of style). However, I have been rather troubled by recent events in Russia, and this blog will deal the dark return of Soviet ways on Russia's brave defenders of truth and liberty. The following short comments will relate to some of the more threatening and ominous signs coming out of Russia that the bad old days are returning.

The Soviet Defenestration Returns

I once wrote a historical essay called "The Defenestrations of Prague," and found three important ones in history. The third was the assassination of Jan Masaryk. It is interesting because the Soviets threw him out of the window of his own house and then claimed it was a suicide. The same thing happened on Friday, March 2nd, when Ivan Safronov, a 51 year old Russian journalist who was critical of the military establishment was found dead after a fall from his fifth-floor apartment. He apparently made some enemies after embarassing Russia's military establishment by publishing articles demonstrating the failure of Russia's experimental Bulava intercontinental missle.

Till Death Do Us Part

A mother and daughter set of Russian immigrants who came over the United States in 1989, Marina (age 48) and Yana (age 25) Kovalenskaya, flew to Moscow last month from their home in Los Angeles to attend a family wedding. There, they apparently met up with enemies, because they ended up sick with Thallium poisoning. They were transferred from their hotel room to the American embassy hospital, and from there to the Sklifosovsky clinic, Moscow's top emergency hospital (according to Guardian Unlimited). Thallium poisoning was apparently favored during Soviet times as a poison, but it is unclear how these two women became targets for assassination. Perhaps it hardly matters.

Welcome To Russia

You'd think that with all of the assassination attempts going on that Soviet-type thugs would be too busy to harass young artists, but you would be wrong. Ivan Ushkov, age 33, is part of Russia's "lost generation," the generation that dealt with the fallout from the fall of the Soviet Union while other generations got rich and found positions of power in the new regime. He is a photographer and artist, who takes (and draws) pictures that demonstrate the dark truth behind Russia's rather phony and glamorous facade. He's a man after my own dark heart, but apparently that sort of dark truthtelling is a bit dangerous in St. Petersburg, Russia, these days. His first Moscow showing was cancelled and he has dealt with bogus police investigations of his art studios because he portrays an image of Russia that threatens the interests of the powerful. Of course, I will let this fine gentleman have the last word about the false positive picture Russia's leaders try to promote, "They are smoking their own dope, basically." Indeed. Another comment of his is also insightful: "But if you don't watch television or interest yourself in politics then very soon politics could get interested in you." Very true also.

Lest We Forget

Since Dateline did such a lovely and thorough job on researching the strange assassination of Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvineko, I will not write about it here (as it is too well known for my blog). That said, it is worth mentioning that dark truthtelling is becoming a rather dangerous occupation on Russia. Russia killed more journalists last year than any other nation besides Iraq and Algeria. Worse, many of these appear to be the work of those closely allied to the Russian government, a very ominous trend. Those of us in the West, and in the United States in particular, should not forget that we have our own rather brutal Cold Warriors here as well. We should not be naive to think that if the world's attitude towards truthtelling darkens that we will not be affected by it at all. If the perceived need for security ever trumps our concern for freedom (especially to tell the truth, often an unpleasant thing), then we will suffer greatly, especially those of us with quick pens and big mouths.

Next Time, Bring Some Chocolate

2007-03-02T12:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know I just posted earlier today with one of my more serious-type blog entries, but an unusual and obscure news article involving a small European nation was too rich to pass up:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070302/ap_on_fe_st/mistaken_invasion

I'm sure that somewhere, some company that sells maps (think Rand McNally or Thomas Guides or Google maps) is just salivating over the opportunity to turn this into a really bad commercial that I will have to add to my YouTube favorites list. How often do soldiers on military exercizes wander by accident into neighboring countries? Hopefully, not very often.

In fact, this particular incident, as unintentional as it is, marks the first Swiss invasion of anywhere since 1521, when the Swiss were feared all over Europe for their fierce armies of pikemen, and when they were defeated in battle around Milan. After that the Swiss Guard could be seen in the Vatican City area, but mostly for show (obviously pikemen are not so feared militarily nowadays). The Swiss, except for being invaded by Napoleon in 1798, have been at peace since then making excellent watches, chocolate, and serving as the bank deposit headquarters for would-be billionaire dictators all the world over. Who knew they harbored secret desires to take over their tiny neighbor, the Grand Duchy of Liechtenstein, which happens to be the last surviving principality of the Holy Roman Empire.

Perhaps the Swiss were concerned that the little nation, whose population of 34,000 is only slightly larger than that of my hometown of Plant City, would defeat them in the preliminaries for Euro 2008 (a highly competitive soccer tournament). Perhaps the nation of Liechtenstein, which has no army, was too tempting of a target for Swiss operations of "regime change."

Of course, it appears that it was just some lost soldiers who couldn't follow directions in the dark and refused to admit they were lost. I've done the same thing myself (most notably in the Wilderness of Virginia), and the worst it ever did for me was waste a couple of hours worth of time and gasoline in impenetrable forests that are so bad that two Civil War battles were fought there when large armies got lost near Catherine's Furnace among the second-growth forests (Chancellorsville in 1863 and the Wilderness in 1864).

At any rate, at least there are no hard feelings on both sides. One would hate for the Swiss to face a nasty UN resolution for aggressive acts against its peaceful neighbors. We wouldn't want that to happen...

When Is Greed Good: An Examination of Enlightened Selfishness

2007-03-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

I plan on doing a lot more research on this topic this evening for my Erev (Friday Evening) Bible Study, but the following are some thoughts I am trying to organize beforehand. Former American President Ronald Reagan said that "Greed is good," and has been widely lampooned since then. Selfishness is widely considered to be a highly negative quality, and the supposed narcissism of my generation has come under rather undue criticism from Baby Boomers (perhaps the most harmfully selfish generation in the entire existence of planet earth, if environmental scientists and moralists can be believed). Adam Smith stated that we do not trust the generosity of the butcher (or any other merchant) but his self-interest. The research of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow sought to demonstrate that in certain circumstances selfishness was an act of altruism because benefitting the self also served to benefit others as well. Jesus Christ seemed to indicate the same thing when he stated that those who were not faithful with unrighteous mammon would not be faithful with much either (a paraphrase). The question is therefore: in what circumstances is selfishness good?

At first blush, this question may seem quite proposterous for some people. Many people do not consider selfishness to be positive at all, especially the selfishness of others (all of us are at least a little bit selfish ourselves). When we feel jealous about the success of others, and are insecure about how we are loved and respected, we are behaving selfishly. When we try to hoard money and resources and knowledge for ourselves rather than give them generously, we are also behaving selfishly. Most would agree with me, I suppose, that these types of selfishness would be bad. This is the sort of selfishness that seeks to increase one's own at the expense of other people (through shortchanging them as is common in the actions of businesses towards their salary/pension obligations, tax obligations, and social obligations). No one, save an overly greedy and wicked sort of person, would consider this sort of greed to be good.

What kind of greed is good then? When Adam Smith referred to the self-interest of the butcher (a stand-in for merchants in general, businesspeople who make their living by providing goods and services to paying customers), he seems to be referring to the fact that when a company seeks to meet the highest customer standards at the lowest price, both the customer and business benefit. The customer benefits by having his or her needs and wants fulfilled, and the business benefits by receiving profit on the transaction (as well as the possibility of future profit as satisfied customers tend to be creatures of habit and return to the same businesses over and over again so long as their standards are met). In this case, the selfishness of the merchant (the desire for profit) was benevolent because it served to help the customer as well.

This, then, provides the way out of the false dilemma of selfishness versus generosity and an environment where acting to benefit ourselves benefits others, and acting to benefit others benefits ourselves. This world is what Maslow (and others) would call an enlightened world. In an enlightened world, success, wealth, honor, and love are not zero-sum concepts, where one person must suffer if another benefits. Once an environment becomes synergistic (where gains in one area trigger gains in other places as well, to the benefit of all in the system), then we can gain enjoyment from the good we do to others, and acting for ourselves will serve to benefit others. In these cases selfishness is not a bad thing at all--and it cannot be separated from the benefit we are bringing to others as well. Both generosity and selfishness (taken as personal enjoyment and personal benefit) are intertwined into one.

In order for selfishness to be good, however, we must build an environment where what benefits us benefits others as well, and vice versa. This sort of environment would increase the connections that people have with each other, and would mean the sharing of gains we have with others around us, and vice versa. In such a realm of mutual generosity and love and respect, what benefits one benefits all, and there need not be a hostility or jealousy about the good that happens to others, so long as everyone shares in its benefits. This can be true of families, churches, businesses , and societies, indeed even the whole world. It is only the case, though, when we start from the premise that all human beings are worthwhile and valuable and important simply by being human beings, and that the human beings who are yet to be born are deserving of the same pleasures of this earth that we who now inhabit hte earth are. Such enlightened selfishness is not wicked at all. The question, though, remains: can we behave so righteously ourselves as to make enlightened selfishness possible for ourselves and those around us?

It Isn't Pretty....

2007-02-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

I am often amused by the news stories I read, and yesterday I read a pretty funny one:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/wrtv/20070227/lo_wrtv/11122828

Apparently, some sorority members in Indiana at DePauw University didn't get the memo that members of sororities are supposed to be attractive. Out of a chapter of 35, only 12 were slender and pretty enough (apparently) to meet the national chapter's rigorous standards. The University is protesting, complaining about the hardship it has caused its students, and is considering requesting the sorority to leave campus. What most concerns me, though, is that some people actually believe that sororities were meant to promote womanhood. Indeed, it appears that the university and many of the sorority members are the ones confused about what sororities (and the Greek system as a whole) is actually about.

Now, I have never been a part of a fraternity (and certainly not a sorority, obviously) myself, but during my time in Los Angeles I lived about half a block north of Fraternity row at the University South Central (as I affectionately called it). Delta Zeta might have been one of the many fraternities and sororities in that area (my old apartment, in fact, had once been the fraternity house for some Pharmacy fraternity). I can't remember, though. It was all Greek to me. I do remember, though, that the Tri Delta Sorority was at the end of our street, and they were widely considered to be one of the most competitive sororities (and had a large number of slender blonde members).

There are basically two types of fraternities/sororities that I saw. Some fraternities (though no sororities) were professional fraternities. The professional fraternities were generally coed, and included Alpha Rho Chi (the Architecture fraternity, where I had many friends), as well as professional fraternities for nursing students, engineers (I had many friends and classmates here as well), and so forth. These fraternities partied, but also had a professional focus that allowed students with similar majors to congregate together. Generally speaking, even as a teetotler I did not have a problem visiting my friends at those houses. Other fraternities like honor fraternities would also fall into this category as well.

The other fraternities and sororities appeared somewhat more sinister to me, however. They were largely filled with rather affluent students in high risk of contracting cirrhosis of the liver and any number of other diseases involved with copious amounts of alcohol consumption and fornication. While claiming to benefit the campus life in general, these societies were made up of people who were often quite arrogant, and unpleasant to be around (especially on Thursday through Saturday nights when msot of the partying went on). The people in this second group of fraternities certainly gained useful connections, but that had more to do with the fact that they were all pretty well off and well-connected already, and were now even better connected.

As far as the sororities go, they had even less credit to their names, as they appeared to be largely populated with young ladies whose slim figures as freshman pledges tended to gain as the years progressed due to poor eating habits and excessive drinking. Sadly, the wardrobe quality of many of these young ladies (though not all) did not tend to improve as they aged. Nurse's uniforms on Halloween remained a consistent tradition on that street during my time there. Indeed, the only way sororities might have promoted womanhood is to provide a place for girls to be around each other without guys around. I don't know if that's a good thing, though.

I don't know, to be honest, what the young ladies at DePauw University expected from their fraternity. Maybe they justed wanted to meet friendly and ambitious young ladies. If so, perhaps they would have been better served joining service clubs or professional clubs rather than a sorority. If your focus is not on the superficial, then there is probably no place for you in Delta Zeta or any number of other sororities. Perhaps being kicked out of the sorority is a good thing--if they are not superficial enough they just may be good enough people that a sorority would do them no good at all. And that is a matter of celebration, rather than mourning. Sometimes being kicked out of a group can be a good thing, after all. That, however, is a subject for another day.

Profile In Courage

2007-02-21T07:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I read a fantastic article about a person who has taken a brave stance against corruption by the wealthy and powerful in the rather corrupt nation of Columbia.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070220/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_uribe_s_nemesis

Anyway, I was most impressed in the article by the courage this particular fellow had to oppose the drug traffickers on the left as well as the paramilitaries/government on the right. It is not an easy thing to antagonize everyone with guns in a nation as violent as Columbia. I am not someone who views Hugo Chavez very highly, so I do not know what to make of the friendship Gustavo Petro has with him, but there is much about his behavior that is admirable and worthwhile. Let us take a few lessons and comment on them.

1. Fight the power.

In today's world, those who hold power at all are generally corrupt, and often threaten those who seek justice and truth. Leaders would rather have those who follow them blinded by idyllic and pleasant false visions than grapple with the truth about what is and how it came to be. In most cases these threats are not all that severe (depending on what sort of authority someone has), but in the case of Señor Petro, he and his family have been threatened with death due to his firm stand against corruption in high places. Then again, as Mr. Petro was tortured by various unpleasant means (including large amounts of beating and dunking) for mostly peaceful protesting, it appears as if he has little fear for himself, and a realistic appraisal of what his resistance means to him and to his long-suffering people.

2. Where there's smoke, there's usually fire.

When faced with unpleasant accusations, there are a few sorts of defenses that people can make. The best defense is to come clean (preferably on 60 Minutes or some other popular show) and to be honest about one's side of the story, not minimizing what one has done, but putting a less hostile spin on it than was initially presented. Honesty about one's own flaws and foibles gives a lot of credibility when talking about those of others. After all, if we are not honest about ourselves, we are not likely to be honest about others as well. And if we have nothing to hide, those who oppose us should not have anything to hide either. Those, on the other hand, who do have something to hide, cannot bear to have their lives brought into the harsh light of day. Therefore they can choose to either hide their lives all the more and refuse to answer allegations (pretending that such matters are beneath them), or they can attack the person opposing them by slurring, namecalling, and the like. Most of us choose both methods (the odd fellows among us choose all three methods, in a baffling display of inconsistency). The point, though, is that enough independent allegations leads to a prima facie case of wrongdoing, and the refusal to answer becomes an admission of guilt.

3. Never Give Up

Columbia right now is experiencing a massive scandal extending all the way to the presidency thanks to the persistent efforts of Gustavo Petro and other members of the democratic opposition. In steadfastly opposing the paramilitary of the right wing (supported, sadly, by the American government with billions of dollars worth of aid and equipment) and in defending the rights and dignity of an oppressed common folk, Gustavo Petro has demonstrated firm integrity as well as a stubborn refusal to give in. Even where one would disagree with his policies (and I must admit I do not know them very well, except that I would assume human rights, avoidance of corruption, and land reform would be among them), one must respect someone who behaves with integrity and avoids making alliances of convenience with either the paramilitaries/military forces or the leftist guerillas, who between them have all the guns.

So, this blog gives a salute to the bravery and integrity of Gustavo Petro, former guerilla and now muckraking politician. Let there be others as brave and morally upright as you in the struggle against the evil all around us.

Keep Them Separated

2007-02-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

Now, I get a lot of e-mails that I find vaguely irritating, and most of them I simply delete. However, some of them (see the Nigerian e-mail scam blog entry) become blogger-worthy rants. Some time ago (to be exact, it was February 11th), I received an e-mail that I get regularly that is supposedly written by someone I know a little bit (and know greater by reputation, as he is the President of the church I generally attend). The e-mail irritated me because it was highly simplistic and purported to add accuracy to thinking when in reality it did no such thing.

There were six "separations" that the author stated were useful in organizing what is learned. Each of these six is worthy of comment:

1. Separate the facts from mere information.

Well, in case someone has failed to consult the dictionary, information and facts are highly related. In fact (no pun intended), information is facts that are collected and from which conclusions may be drawn. Therefore if this statement were to be accurate, it should be stated: separate information from mere facts. However, even in this form the statement is unhelpful, as the diligent collection of facts to form information is quite useful in honing one's intellectual abilities. Here is one example where separation is of no help whatsoever, because having the facts together to form information, and then utilizing the information to form knowledge and then wisdom is a fundamental process in sharpening one's own intellect. Only a moron would seek to separate people from the process to developing independent thinking.

2. Separate the truth from idle gossip.

This separation principle is also unhelpful. What is truth to someone is idle gossip to someone else, and vice versa. In order for this principle to be helpful, there must be clear boundaries as to what is considered truth and what is gossip. Indeed, gossip need not be untrue. Do we trust the word of others on reputation without supporting evidence and logical presentation? If so, then even if that person is a minister or politician or boss, or other leader, then we are accepting gossip rather than truth. Determining the truth can be a very unpleasant task, and oftentimes it can only be gathered through a close understanding of gossip, as the dark truths may be impolitic to say out in the open. In this way, one may need to have a close ear to gossip in order to understand the truth.

3. Separate the good from the bad.

Again, it appears as if this principle is entirely useless if one wants to live a life in truth. The truth is the honest and unvarnished knowledge of ourselves and our world, and those around us, and that can either be good or bad. Separating out the good from the bad to focus on either in isolation does us no good in finding the balance of matters. If we focus only on the good, we become blind to the dark evil inside of ourselves and others, particularly those who do not like to deal with unpleasant truths. If we focus only on the bad and not the good, then our lives become darkened because we do not see that there is good in this world (even if there is not as much of it as we would like). If we surround ourselves with darkness, we cannot help but be corrupted by it. But if we do not deal with darkness at all we lack understanding of our world and ourselves, and cannot truly repent of who we are.

4. Separate the important from the unimportant.

This principle would be helpful if one could tell what was important and unimportant. And a further question needs to be dealt with: important to whom? If we separate matters based on what is important to us, we become rather selfish and self-centered, and that is certainly not a godly way to be. We do not always know what is important to God, though where we do know this we have an obligation to act accordingly. However, while it may be unimportant to us to play ball with our children (if we have any) in the yard, such matters may be very important to our children, as they are a sign of love and consideration. Again, unless one has defined what is important correctly, it appears that this principle is an invitation to selfishness.

5. Separate the relevant from the irrelevant.

Again, it appears as if this is an unhelpful principle of separation. What is not relevant in a particular situation may be very relevant in another situation. Also, if we have already separated the good and the bad (see above), then we may be missing very relevant information to a situation, especially if it involves the unpleasant reactions people have to certain situations. Unless we are sensitive to where people are coming from, and what background they have, we can often make little sense of their behavior, and this is certainly not going to improve our lives. Ignorance is not bliss, even if knowledge is seldom blissful as well.

6. Separate the usable from the unusable.

Again, it seems as if this principle is not a helpful one if written large. While in any given situation one may have to parce out information that can be used now from what cannot, over the long term there might be vastly more information that is usable, and if that information is lost then future decisions may be imparied by a lack of knowledge. If this author wishes to give wise advice for wise decisions, he ought to be vastly more informative and precise than he is in these rather overly simplistic maxims.

Oh, and I have class now, so I guess it is time to /rant, for now. I have another one to come if time permits later on.

Fifteen Points

2007-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

In 1939, a noted religious who founded one of the largest Sabbatarian Christian organizations and whose influence (for good and ill) has spread far and wide throughout the world in many religious organizations to this day made the following fifteen points. I will list them here and comment on each of the points.

1) The assembly is not an institution or an organization, but a society of believers.

This is quite true. While a religious organization can be useful, even necessary, to act in these rather over-regulated times, one must never confuse an organization, which is a business entity meant to fulfill legal obligations (usually involving tax law) with the assembly of believers (the actual "Church of God"), which forms a spiritual organism rather than a physical organization. This spiritual organism (which the NT authors, in particular Paul, were fond of comparing to a body) may include members in a variety of organizations (or none at all) and includes those who have been called at all times, and those who are yet to be called into the family of God. It is obvious that such an entity cannot ever be contained within one physical organization.

2) The church is not hierarchical, that is, in descending order of minister, elders, deacons, male laity, male children, women, and female children.

This point should go without saying. The offices of the Church of God (see Acts, Ephesians, Titus, etc.) are not ordered in a hierarchial form, but are rather defined in a functional manner depending on the various gifts that God gives us. While each of us has some gifts in excess of the usual (whether teaching or organizational skills or language and so forth), all of us, regardless of supposed rank, are to develop our spiritual skills in all areas to the best of our abilities as we seek to become like God. Even our savior Himself did not place Himself on a hierarchy above us. Jesus considers Himself our elder brother, and elder brothers are not to lord it over younger brothers. Rather, they seek to lead their younger siblings by example in a spirit of loving service and gentle instruction. If Jesus Christ does not lord it over us (when he could claim the right to do so), then no human leaders can justify a hierarchial society.

3) The Christian's relationship to the church is organic, not organizational.

See commentary to point #1 above. The Bible is consistent in treating the church as a body of believers (both in the sense of an organism and in the sense of an assembly), rather than in the organizational and beaurocratic terms which our benighted generation is so fond of. This is plain to any who open the Bible and read it with eyes open.

4) The church has no office and elects no officer.

Properly speaking, religion is an avocation not a vocation (thanks Mr. Ed for the lively commentary on that difference). Just as the rabbis in the first century were trained for a trade as well as their religious instruction, those who serve congregations were not intended to do so for filthy lucre. Paul himself, for example, refused to take monetary support from congregations when it became a problem (such as in Corinth), an example that few today seem to follow. It is sad that many today who draw salaries for religious service are unqualified for any other gainful (read: professional) employment. This should not be. In addition, the Church of God (as it is an organism rather than an organization) cannot elect an officer. For one, Jesus alone is head of the church, and any who would usurp Him have a lot to answer for. For another, those officers chosen in an organization are not done often for godly reasons, and are entirely lacking in a spiritual matter, simply existing for the good of the members and not reflecting any great spiritual understanding or excellence. When the first seven deacons were chosen by the early Church, it was for the purpose of serving the needs of the brethren in the collection to allow the apostles to spend their time preaching rather than waiting on tables. Such a position did not signify that the said deacons were in any way superior to others, but they were placed in responsibilty due to their prior reputation for diligence and reliability and faithful honesty.

5) Elders and deacons are not officers.

This is true (see above) because elders and deacons are servants and not masters.

6) There is no such thing as "instant elders" created by official act. In the pursuit of the Christian vocation members become elders as a matter of growth and maturity.

Those who have been ordained elders without demonstrating the proper wisdom and moral excellence for their position (not an easy task) bring discredit on many others.

7) Elders are not "over the church" and members are not "under the elders."

This should go without saying. The Bible (see 1 Peter 5 and elsewhere) teaches mutual submission, as everyone is to respect and honor everyone else, rather than behave as baboons do in a dominance-subodination hierarchy.

8) Overseers are "in" and "among" rather than over the assembly.

Again, this is an obvious point given the biblical doctrine of mutual accountability.

9) Overseeing does not involve control and carries no authority -- that is, the power to rule and to decide.

Overseeing is a responsibility for the benefit of the members, rather than a position of authority over the members.

10) "Elders" are simply senior members, male and female, who have matured through years of service. Ideally, there should be as many elders as there are older members, with no case of arrested growth.

This is quite true, although sadly this is not the case because there are vast majority of elders in age who through arrested growth are not cable of mature service but who still require milk and not meat.

11) "Deacons" is simply a generic term describing members, male and female, who serve. In New Testament times deacons ranged from apostles to lower members.

Again, this is quite true. A deacon was a word for a servant or waiter (for waiters then and now are servants who bring us food--whether spiritual or physical). The prominent leaders of the NT church (see Paul, Peter, James, Jude, etc.) were fond of calling themselves the servant or slave of Christ, which meant that they were the servants and slaves of the members as a whole. Many early church leaders were literal slaves as well, from early histories, and our current church leaders are so in at least a metaphorical sense.

12) Deacons in the church do not constitute a special class or have a special rank, or do any special work. They are merely servants devoted to the life of the Christian community.

This is obvious given the example of such servants in Acts and elsewhere in the Bible. However, as we are wicked and desire rank and position for ourselves, like the carnal 12 disciples before the death of Christ, we have twisted this into a base and false hierarchy.

13) Permission of elders is not required before anyone may engage in any Christian work or share in the activities of the church. Denying a member any active participation in prayers, songs, teaching, or exhortation is a gross usurpation of power contrary to the Bible.

No comment.

14) No man or group of men has any authority in the church by virtue of office which does not belong to other members.

Amen, and amen.

15) Nothing shall be done which affects the whole church without every member being heard before the decision is made. The quorum necessary for any action by the church is the entire membership. Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbetur-- "What touches all, is to be approved by all." This is not a matter of passive assent or silence, but the result of active participation.

This is correct, and it is regrettable that many decisions are not made in the light of day, but rather in darkness and secrecy. Kudos to those leaders who seek not only the passive acceptance but the active participation of their brethren, and follow the example of the early church (read Acts 15 for a particularly enlightening account of a conference were apostles, elders, deacons, and members (all discussing as equals) came to agreement on what could have been a violent confrontation).

When I read these fifteen points, I shake my head and wonder how we wandered so far into the darkness when the truth was there in the light all along.

Ghosts In The Machine

2007-02-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

Today the former Finnish president outlined his plan for the quasi-independence for the area of Kossovo, but it appears that (as is usual with such compromises) neither side is particularly happy. I'm sure that while NATO and the EU (and the UN) have bigger concerns than being the custodians of the downfall of the Serbian Empire (started just before WWI and reaching its largest size after WWII), it appears that for the second time in less than a year that a seemingly integral area of the Serbian empire is seeking its independence to follow the other former Yugoslav republics (Slovenia, already in the EU, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and new nation Montenegro as well). The compromise outlined by the UN would give Kossovo access to international organizations (like the UN and the IMF) and give it its own flag and control over its own international relations. It would, however, give great rights to the Serbian minority, including municipal control in its own area and the right to accept transparent transfers of money (i.e. subisides) from Serbia.

Unfortunately, as these matters seem to go, the Kossovar Albanians (who have 90% of the population) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with anything short of full independence. They see (rightly) that their own rights to self-determination are being shortchanged to benefit a bullying and abusive nation (Serbia) and its large and morally corrupt ally (Russia, who dislikes the precedent of Kossovo applying to, say, Chechnya and other areas that wish to break off from Russia). The Serbians, on the other hand, see Kossovo as an integral part of their empire, for Kossovo was the core of the Serbian empire until the 1300's, and the Battle of Kossovo in 1389 (a complete defeat that led to Ottoman rule over the Serbs until the 1800's) remains a pivotal event in Serbian history. No Serbian politician wants to go down in infamy as the person who surrendered Kossovo. Serbs have a long memory, and no one wants that eternal infamy.

So while one people seeks justice and the other remains tied to its own dark memories, it appears that neither side is to be happy with this deal, as it does point to independence for Kossovo, but without the status that the Albanians crave and the Serbs fear. The fact that Kossovo is currently a nation with a 50% unemployment rate, with aid (and expenditure by expatriates) accounting for some 30% of its Gross National Product, and with entrenched drug trafficking, prostitution, and copyright infringing interests (obviously not a good thing) makes the situation even more sticky. However, as development aid cannot enter the nation until its status is determined (being a UN Protectorate does not account for much), it appears that Kossovo will be granted near-independence soon, whether the Serbs like it or not. The demands of justice trump the bonds of memory.

Banned In China

2007-01-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I was speaking with an acquaintance from China, and she could not see this particular blog. From my reading about China's rather thorough attempts at blocking certain types of internet sites (mainly those that are deemed politically threatening), I saw with amusement that my own blog had fallen afoul of the Chinese censors, which means I must be saying something right, even though China has never been a particular blogworthy subject to me (with the exception of this anecdone, of course). Apparently some poor civil servant (hopefully proficient in English) read the subject matter of my blogs and assumed (correctly) that I am not a particular fan of China's government and that those reading my blog might be exposed to a bit too much free and loose discussion about government and tyranny than is politically expedient. The refusal to deal with dissent is a hallmark of authoritarian and insecure people and governments and organizations. This amusing incident, though, deals with another subject of great interest to me, and that is knowledge. In particular, I have a saying (in snappy Geneva Bible English, no less) that would apply to this situation, and probably many others:

Know thyself.
Know thy friends.
Know thine enemies.
Know the difference.

"Know Thyself."

As Sun-Tzu wisely said many years ago, someone who knows neither themselves nor others will lose every battle, someone who knows themselves and others will win every battle, and those who know either but not the other will win some and lose some. The Bible says, even more authoritatively, "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free." While the extent our knowledge is not something to boast about (but rather an opportunity to help teach others), knowledge is a matter of supreme spiritual importance. Knowledge is the foundation of conduct and attitude. Our experiences and knowledge greatly influence us, and if that knowledge is incorrect, our lives will be built on faulty premises and our behavior will not be pleasing to God, or beneficial to ourselve sand others. We must know ourselves before we can begin to change our ways. All human beings in their natural state belong to the "vicious" state or morality. Before we can move from that we must be aware of what is often called our human depravity (a rather unpleasant term), or the mix of good and evil in our "human nature." A true and accurate knowledge of ourselves will demonstrate that we have gifts and abilities as well as struggles and problems. Such a balanced and accurate self-knowledge (admittedly difficult to obtain) will show that we have worth in the eyes of God (and, hopefully, ourselves and others) but that we are not perfect, and because we all struggle we can sympathize with others who struggle without falling into self-righteousness and hypocrisy. Likewise, if we do not know ourselves well, we may behave in ways that are mysterious to us (and others) and may behave in ways that are at cross purposes with what we really want (but may be unaware of or too afraid to admit) and what is best for us. The price of ignorance can be very steep, even if knowing the truth is not always pleasant.

"Know Thy Friends"

It is a difficult thing for anyone to know who is truly on their side. Some people are prone to falsely believing that everyone is their friend, simply because they are nice and most people are nice to them. While we all have many acquaintances, most of these people we enjoy chatting with on occasion and spending occasional time with share with us rather superficial relationships. We may enjoy the same kind of movies, games, books, music, we may go to church together, or be members of the same family, but not share any particular deep personal bond, even if we have no particular problems with each other. Such a wide circle of acquaintances may help us find people to talk to, but do not really help with the need we have for emotional intimacy (even on a platonic level). A friend is someone who knows us inside and out, good and bad, and loves us anyway. Some people never (or with extreme difficulty) let people get that close to them, and so they therefore have few friends. If we are a friend to others, the people we know have to open themselves up to us as well, and we need to be worthy of that trust if we do not wish to inflict great pain and suffering on them (and there is enough pain and suffering in this world already without us adding to it). The sort of intimacy that comes from knowing friends and being so close with friends can be dangerous, though, if we choose our friends unwisely. Our loyalty to friends can put us in difficult dilemmas if our friends are invovled in matters they should not be. Proverbs, for example, and other places, are particularly prescient on the need to be careful how we choose our friends. Our friends say a lot about who we are.

"Know Thine Enemies"

We all have enemies. Some enemies are those who disagree with us without being disagreeable. These disagreements, as they are not the cause of personal disrespect, can lead to a sharpening of ideas, and an understanding that different background and experience (as well as a different situation in life) can lead to very different positions that need not be defended with hostility. What is best for us may not be good for others, and vice versa, and knowing this does not need to be entirely unpleasant. It is possible to be the best of enemies with someone, respecting even with strenuous disagreement. Most of the time, though, what is meant by enemies are those who not only disagree with us, but actively oppose us to such an extent that even harmonious opposition is impossible. With such enemies, respect may be impossible, and the need to defend from enemies and attack them may feel overwelming. In such occasions it is difficult to admit when someone who is our enemy may be right (just as it would be difficult for those who are your enemies to admit that you are right). However, being able to recognize what is correct about enemies not only helps us to avoid a Pogo situation ("We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us") but also may give us an advantage if we retain some semblance of rationality while our enemies do not.

"Know The Difference"

We must, at all times, know the difference between ourselves and our friends and our enemies. We may not share the same motives as anyone else, and even when we agree with our friends we may do so for different reasons. Likewise, the reasons we may be enemies with someone may be a matter of mutual disrespect (rather than any fundamental difference of opinion) or may be a matter of difference of opinion without any personal dislike. Or, worst of all, it may be both. Knowing how we are different from our friends would mean we have to know them and be able to explain ourselves (at least somewhat) in their language, if that is possible. The same is true with our enemies. In a best case scenario, we would have a baseline respect for everyone, simply because we are all human beings created in the image of God, but in practical terms not respecting someone as much as they think they ought to be respected is considered disrespect.

Knowledge is not the be-all and end all of our lives, but it is the essential beginning to living a worthwhile life. We cannot hope to live a worthwhile life until and unless our life reflects an accurate knowledge of ourselves and others. As someone once wisely said, if our lives are not in accordance with reality, reality will work against us. If that means your posts get banned in China, that is a small price to pay.

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied

2006-12-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, former Chilean dictator and tyrant General Augustin Pinochet died of a heart attack. The reaction to his death was a mixed one in what remains a somewhat divided nation some thirty-three years after he took power in a US-supported coup against an ineffective and highly socialist leader (President Allende, whose neice Isabelle writes some terrible dreck for novels, including one this writer had to read during high school). He then instituted a reign of terror against leftists (particularly young ones) who disappeared, and were presumably tortured and slain. Even after he gave up power to give Chile a fragile (but so far well-functioning) democracy, he still had immunity from facing justice in this life for his serious crimes against humanity. Despite some attempts by Spain and England earlier to bring him to justice, he remained unconvincted despite his serious wrongs.

So now he is dead, and can no longer face justice in this world. The result of his death was a mixture of cheering and mourning, of riots against Chile's recent attempts to try the aged Pinochet for his crimes, cheering people who claim (in a news article I read on it) to love Pinochet like they love their own children, and mourning people who feel as if the opportunity for justice has been taken from them. We live in an unjust world (and some of us have a more intimate and personal understanding of this than others, and some of us understand the injustice in different ways because of our own different personal experience). This world has always been unjust, and as long as humans govern I do not have hope that it will ever be entirely just, though I would hope for it to be a good deal more just than it is now. The world was probably more unjust in the past than it is now, but there is greater dissatisfaction at justice now than before, and injustices people used to get away with without comment now bring harsh condemnation (from people like myself, often).

There are two ways of viewing this growing dissatisfaction with the injustice of this world. One view, largely a holdover from wicked days in which leaders ruled harshly without accountability for their often wicked actions, considers leaders to be some kind of divinely ordained power figures who are only answerable to God and not to mere mortals (especially cranky and somewhat mistrusting mortals like myself). Simply because leaders behaved this way through much of the course of human history (and because of the undeniable appeal of leading when one does not have to answer to the hoi polloi, that is, the common folk) this still appeals in politically backwards and ungodly leadership models.

The other way of viewing this problem is the one I hold. In the two millenia since Jesus Christ came to this earth certain evils which were tolerated in times of old have become less tenable. Slavery, which was a "necessary" evil in the times of Paul (see Philemon) gradually became morally untenable as the commands to love slaves as brethren increasingly meant (as it was intended to originally) that one should not have slaves at all. The same is true with polygamy as being against the biblical mutual respect of men and women and the understanding that a man and a woman become one in marriage and thus it is sinful to cleave to more than one person. In the same way, the evils of "gentile" government that were tolerated have become increasingly morally untenable as they go against the true biblical understanding that as we are all God's children, created in the image of God, we should all be respected as such. Those who claim to rule with God's authority must meet the same moral standards God does, and if they do not they must be accountable to God's fellow children for their failings because leaders have no moral nature higher than those they rule (and often a good deal lower of a nature). We are all equals in the eye of God, who is no respector of persons. We should not be respectors of persons (or titles) either.

Unfortunately, this world seems not to have been created with an eye towards making sure justice happened in this life. A just world would need to be ruled by a perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful being or set of beings, and only God meets that qualification. Therefore, those of us who long for a just world long for God's kingdom, even if we try to help this earth more closely resemble the perfect world above. Whether we admit this or not is one thing, but our world's demands for justice mean that we demand (whether consciously or not) for God to come to this earth and set up His kingdom, because none of us are capable of the perfect moral demands. It is for this reason that no just human government is unaccountable, because imperfect beings must be held accountable for their actions in order to avoid the creation of abusive systems of government (something of particular distaste for me).

Since this world is unjust, though, and since a perfectly just universe would not be particularly kind for any of us (because all of us fall woefully short of the perfect standard and are deserving of death for our sins), there must be some place for mercy and grace in our behavior as well. We must not abuse these to excuse the sins of others (who often twist grace and mercy to give themselves license to take advantage of others while demanding forgiveness for their own actions). However, mercy and grace are necessary because if we cannot forgive others and cast our burdens upon Jesus Christ then we ourselves carry a burden of bitterness and anger that no one can or should bear. And about that I have all too much experience myself. Since this world is unjust, though, sometimes we must wait for justice in the time to come, when no one will be able to escape censure for their deeds, naked in the harsh light of day to face accountability for their deeds. I think, though, that such a time would not be a time for gloating, but at least it will be fair. And that is enough.

A Bittersweet Success

2006-11-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

This week I officially got my own office instead of having to share the copy room with a particularly ornery machine that has a tendency to jam easily, grab too many papers to scan or copy at once, and generally behave in a surly manner. While my papers at work are still in the state of some chaos (then again, aren't they always?), I know have some space to myself, even if I don't particularly like the layout yet. For example, I don't like the fact that the entrance to the office is behind me, as I tend to panic when people surprise me from behind. But I digress. Despite my pleasure about having an office of my own, what makes it a bittersweet success is the rather sad circumstances that opened up an office for me in the first place.

The former occupant of this office was named Manuel. He was in his mid-to-late 50's, overweight, with high blood pressure, high cholesteral, sleep apnia, and so forth (all of these problems being similar to those of my father before he had his stroke last December and died of a heart attack in February). He slept little (more at work than anywhere else), and worked two jobs--reviewing building plans as well as delivering newspapers. Then, while I was out of the country last month, he had a brain aneurysm. He is still in the hospital, though he may be released soon, as he has somewhat recovered (though his brain function is still highly limited and he is not going to be able to return for a long time, if ever, to work, a disastrous consequence for his family).

I can think of a few reasons why my coworker's health would be of such a concern to me, besides the fact that in general I don't like to see people suffer. What is the most troublesome is that his health seems to have been affected in a similar way to my father's health. Right now Manuel is at the slow recovery from a severe health crisis stage. Hopefully it goes well for him. Still, this has not been a good year for the health of people I know (I could go on and on with examples from friends, family, and coworkers, but I would rather not). Suffice it to say, though, that reminders of mortality are not ever very far from me, at least right now.

A Lesson In Irony

2006-10-29T05:23:00.000-08:00

In my recent trip to the nation of Turkey, I saw two related cases of irony. The trip, however, was not merely ironic for me, but even more so for a friend of mine there as well, who was of Armenian ancestry. Why that would be ironic should be made clear in what follows.

Irony #1: Nathan correctly (and unintentionally) predicts the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature

Before I went to Turkey I wanted to do some research (because I am a compulsive reader and like to know information about the places I am about to see). Besides the usual tourist books (the Lonely Planet guide) and the history books, I decided to get a copy of "Istanbul: A Memoir" by the author Orhan Pamuk. I had been familiar with his work since reading a story about his arrest and trial by the Turkish government for making a comment about the Armenian genocide in his novel "Snow," published last year. He was, thankfully, acquitted, but for an author to suffer punishment for writing what is historical fact (or even a reasonable historical interpretation) is highly offensive to me.

Anyway, I read his memoir of his hometown, and it was an excellent book, a mixture of dryly ironic commentary on how his city has consistently thrown away its Turkish charm to appear ever more Western in the last 200 years as well as personal history about his own life and his family. He even manages to comment on the endemic stray dogs in Turkey (which I happened to see first hand). So, what does this have to do with predicting the Nobel Prize? Well, I thought I would attract a great deal of scrutiny for bringing such a pro-Western author to Turkey, but it turns out that customs in Turkey is rather non-rigorous and my bags were not even searched. Towards the end of my trip to Turkey, I found out that Orhan Pamuk had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first Turk to win a Nobel Prize. And I could say (sorta) that I knew (of) him back when. At least this is a better story than my discovery of Ricky Martin before he became a big success (shifts eyes).

Irony #2: The Crime of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and France

I commented earlier how one of my friends who was in Turkey with me was Armenian, and this particular irony is a rather cruel one. According to basic Turkish law, it is a crime to affirm the existence of the Armenian genocide. In fact, the crime is punishable (if one is convicted) by up to 3 years of prison time. This has long been a sticking point in the Turkish attempts to enter the European Union. After all, if Germans are forced to recognize the Holocost (as they do), then it would only be fair to expect other nations to admit their own historical misdeeds. Not that it is very pleasant business to admit massacres. Which Americans would want all of the American Indian massacres to be endlessly displayed prominently in accounts about the United States, after all?

Anyway, France passed, on October 12th, a law that made it a crime in France to deny the Armenian massacre. That puts any Turks who go between France and Turkey in a difficult position, at least if they are forced to confront the issue in both countries. The whole issue strikes me as rather grimly ironic in that two nations noted in the Christian and Muslim worlds, respectively, for their rather anti-religious secular stands are making such a religious issue (if I may use the term) over history. At any rate, I (somehow) avoided being arrested while in Turkey while delicately explaining the issue and at least strongly hinting at my own opinion on the matter. At least the rioting going on in Istanbul while we were there was against someone other than the United States. It was nice to see protests against another nation for a change.

Trouble In Paradise

2006-09-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

For the last dozen years or so, it was widely thought in Thailand (and elsewhere) that the King of Thailand (who is quite beloved to people I know personally as supposedly having the best interests of his people at heart) was a bulwark for democracy in a part of the world that has known mostly dictators in the post-colonial period.

Of course, that is no longer the case as the King of Thailand has supported a coup by a Muslim General against a corrupt but populist democratic government. As is always the case in this sort of coup where rule of law is trampled by tyranny there is always some sort of specious justification--usually involving the attempt to get rid of corruption (even though undemocratic leadership is almost invariably more corrupt than democratic leadership even of the wickedest variety), or the need to cure pressing military problems that a general would be expected to know better than an elected politician.

The truth is that even though democracies are far from perfect governments, they are better at governing just about anything than any form of unrepresentative government. Generally speaking, democracies depend on the vigilance of the people (who themselves, in many politically immature systems, do not seek to be responsible as adults). Democracies, however, allow the governened to hold their leaders accountable for their actions, which is the most effective form of preventing corruption and keeping leaders reined in (which is sadly necessary at all times and in all situations). In all other forms of government, there is some form of force or fraud that prevents people from having rightful supervision over their government. In the case of a military government, the modus operendi is that of force, where men (and possibly women) with automatic machine guns prevent people from exercising their God-given rights. In that of a monarchy, the modus operendi is fraud, where a leader perports to have some sort of divine or semi-divine status that puts such a leader beyond scrutiny and criticism from mere commoners. In Thailand, the current situation has a little bit of both flavors of tyranny.

Despite the promises that some form of autocracy will be more efficient and effective than a democratic form of government, the truth invariably demonstrates that any gain in stability depends upon massive atrocities and only temporarily hides the disasters that threaten society, and exacerbate their results (see Congo, Iraq, Nepal, etc.). In addition, the threat of military force at the slightest problem a democracy faces prevents the citizenry of a given nation from developing the necessary maturity to make democracy work. Democracy is not an easy business--it depends on there being an active citizenry with the expectation that laws will be obeyed by all--including lawmakers, soldiers, and other officials of the state. It also depends on a citizenry that is willing to demand their rights (even at a cost) and accept the responsibilities for ensuring that no one abuses their power. This is the responsibility of adults, who are capable of dividing right from wrong and are able to handle solid intellectual and moral food rather than the milk of civics lessons.

What is currently going on in Thailand at best will end up in a situation like Nepal (where popular demonstrations forced the fall of the autocratic monarchial rule) and Argentina (where a disastrous military conflict ended the rule of a military junta not unlike Thailand's current leadership). At worst, dictatorships can linger on indefinitely despite failures in solving the military problems that bring them to power (see Pakistan, Myanmar), or can even threaten the absolute dissolution of a nation (see Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Congo, Serbia, etc.) and attract foreign military operations. It is far better, given this grim picture, for a nation to tough out the inevitable rough periods of an early democracy and form their own solutions to problems that allow for minority rights as well as majority rule, lead to more egalitarian social structures and the elimination of immoral systems of social division that deny the natural equality of humanity, all issues of massive difficulty that demand gradual and patient work. In no nation can these tasks be considered completed, but only in a society of mature political citizens can such tasks even be partially resolved in a lasting and beneficial fashion.

Sadly, these basic lessons are too often ignored, both by people with power who become addicted to position and authority and who forget that what is best for them is seldom best for the people as a whole (even paternalistic authoritarianism is an unrighteous form of government). While it may seem expedient in such cases to temporarily withhold democracy in order to deal with pressing problems, the skills in creating and maintaining a democracy can only be learned through struggling through trials. As painful as such difficulties may be for a nation, it is necessary for a society to endure such difficulties so that they may grow in maturity. To treat the citizenry of a society as children forever is to deny the promise that God provide to us as rulers. If we are to rule effectively over others, we must be able to rule over ourselves and develop self-control, patience, and resopnsibility. This can only be learned in an egalitarian society where people are resopnsible for their own actions without being able to rely on the commands of others who claim some sort of superiority to them.

How long will the simple love simplicity (for nothing in this world is truly simple)? It seems, in much of the world, that it will be for at least a while longer.

The Imaginary Engineer

2006-09-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

For those who do not know, I am a graduate student in Industrial Engineering (Engineering Management) at the University of South Florida. During a discussion in class yesterday (Tuesday, 9/12) our class (and professor) had a rather passionate discussion of what makes Industrial Engineering such an obscure and misunderstood part of the engineering profession (thankfully no one has asked me about the Taylor motion studies--yet).

My background, to be fair, is not that of industrial engineering. Until I was well into college (my junior year, to be precise), I had scarcely heard anything at all about Industrial Engineering, despite being very active in the engineering school and finding acquaintances from a wide variety of engineering disciplines. My background is Civil (Structural) Engineering. While people may not know my specialty is buildings (most people, for some reason, automatically think of bridges), at least some people have an idea of what civil engineers do. Maybe a woefully small percentage of this world, but a recognizable portion nevertheless. Industrial engineering lacks even this sort of common understanding.

This may not be a bad thing. When people do know about Industrial Engineering, they inevitably misunderstand it (I will refrain, at this time, from extending that comment into a general thesis of my endeavors). The name Industrial Engineering itself is somewhat off-putting. People think of factories and assembly line processes when they think of Industrial Engineering. While this is certainly a part of the field, it is a very small part (in this country--not so in areas of the world where primary manufacturing actually goes on). For the most part, Industrial Engineering can be (perhaps a tad misleadingly) simplied as management for and of smart people. In particular, Industrial Engineering looks at the processes (both in procedures and power relationships as well as in technology and equipment) that lead to efficiency as well as effectiveness in management (including the management of engineers--who in a previous discussion in another class of mine had very little nice to say about MBA's without an engineering background). A look at my classes in my curriculum sheet will give some idea as to the sorts of material an industrial engineer would study on the master's degree level:

Principles of Engineering Management
Management of Technological Change
Technology and Finance
Engineering Management Policy and Strategies
Statistical Design Models
Work Design and Productivity
Total Quality Management Strategies
Occupational Safety Engineering
Project Management
ISO 9000/14000
Benchmarking

In other words, the field of Industrial Engineering is one of those hybrid fields between engineering (with its focus on technical and technological solutions to the problems of mankind) and concerns of management (even adopting some of the jargon of management, like Total Quality Management and Six Sigma and so forth, as well as the concern of finances). This sort of blend has led Industrial Engineers to market themselves (when they do market themselves, which is not often, apparently) as engineering without the math (and by math engineers mean such things as differential equations and matrix analysis). The fact that Industrial Engineering is not as heavy in high level mathematics has led many other (perhaps envious) engineering students to label Industrial Engineers as "Imaginary Engineers."

I find this to be amusing, but others are perhaps less amused by this. Every major, at least in engineering, has some sort of insult attached to it (my favorite for the civil engineering profession: mechanical engineers build weapons; civil engineers build targets--and my favorite for engineers in general is: What do engineers use for birth control? Their personalities.). Industrial Engineers seem to have done a poor job of marketing themselves. This is perhpas ironic, but it is not a serious problem to me (I generally have a severe distaste for the inevitable distortion and oversimplification that results from marketing efforts, even if I recognize the necessity of successful marketing to make sure the needs of people are met, even when those needs are not originally known or felt). As it is, there are few industrial engineers in this world, and few people know what they do or how important they are. This was the source of some humor in the classroom as well.

I suppose I could go on much longer, but the basic point has been made and I have other ways to spend my time then endlessly pontificate on an obscure field most people reading this are probably quite unfamiliar with. At any rate, hopefully this has been a useful update as to how I spend my time when I am not ranting about some topic, and about why my updates are so infrequent. Regardless, until my next post, fare thee well.

They got no clues and they wanna get warmer, but Nate won't turn informer...

2006-08-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

Alright, I suppose that not many people will be familiar with the bad one-hit wonder lyrics (For those who are really curious, they happen to be from Snow's "Informer."). However, there is a serious point to the rather flippant title. Currently, the nation of Romania has been faced with a growing furor over the release of files about the secret service during the Communist regime. Apparently, the nation of Romania had 700,000 informers in a population of only 21,000,000 people. Seriously, that is one informer for every thirty people. And people think I'm paranoid.

Anyway, with all that snooping going on, it appears that some skeletons hidden deep in closets are being revealed in a rather unpleasant manner. For example, one respected former BBC reporter (according to an AP article on this topic by Allison Multer) apparently was snooping on his friend, a poet, because he had made a fellow university classmate pregnant and refused to marry her. For this the government blackmailed him. At least his friend, upon finding out what was reported, had the kind heart to forgive the reporter for what was "neutral" information. Many others were not so fortunate.

What makes someone turn informer? It is a frightening thing when societies become so dark, and so incapable of handling matters openly and honestly that they must sneak around in dark corners trying to find all sorts of unpleasant information to turn family members and friends against each other. It's a terrible world when people seek to extort and blackmail others because of our human mistakes in order to make us tools of oppressive tyrannical government. *Shivers*.

It is rather easy in such cases to think the problem exists merely in other societies, particualrly communist or Facist societies. It is certainly true that totalitarian societies tend to have a lot of this sort of informing going on. However, paranoia does not merely exist in societies like Stalin's Russia, Ceaucescu's Romania, or Hitler's Germany. Elizabethan England, for example, had much the same problem. Such informing has existed in our own society before as well, and may yet again.

However, such a paranoid society cannot exist without willing participants. In societies that depend on secretive behavior and the paranoia of thought control, much still depends on the courage and strength of people to thwart the wickedness of corrupt leaders and their shady minions. It may be a regrettable necessity (and I think it is both regrettable and necessary) that we all live at least somewhat secretive lives, in at least certain ways. We call such secrecy privacy after all, and value it highly.

If the rise of snooping technology allows every moment of our lives, and every word we say (or write) fodder for prying and unfriendly eyes, we still do not have to cower in fear if wicked people seek to use such knowledge against us. We have the choice, if we are brave enough, to face up to what we have done and refuse to collaborate with any kind of secret police force. The choice and the responsibility are ours, and we must all face on our own, at some time, the bitter choice between living an honest and candid life and giving in to the temptations of an easier and less complicated life. Nothing worthwhile is simple anyway. Everything is complicated, and those who have easy answers speak without wisdom and understanding. And sometimes, there are no good choices, but merely a choice about whether we are to suffer in one way or another.

Whichever path one chooses in such occasions, though, there is a lot of sympathy from me for such people. After all, those who inform on the lower level are often fairly ordinary people, and often feel the greatest amount of guilt and suffering for what they do, because they do not have the defenses of habitualization that numb and harden the conscience against wrongdoing that come for those higher in authority. Even so, regardless of what one chooses, sometimes there is a bitter price we must pay. It is useful to reflect upon that sometimes.

Planetary Bodies

2006-08-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

A group of astronomers have decided to tackle the thorny issue of planetary definitions, a task that has grown more controversial in recent years. They have proposed a hard and fast definition for planets with three components: 1)Planets must be 500 miles in diamater or larger. 2)Planets must orbit a sun. 3)Planets must be circular with self-gravity. This last qualification is the toughest, surprisingly enough, disqualifying earth's moon (whose shared center of gravity with the earth is outside of the moon).

If this definition of planets is accepted, it would mean that there would be 12 currently recognized planets, with the possibility of many more in the future. Besides the eight planets recognized without controversy (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and my favorite, albeit controversial planet (Pluto), there would be three more planets: Ceres (the largest member of the astroid belt), Charon (Pluto's moon, which would be promoted to the solar system's first "double planet"), and Xena (a recently discovered Kuiper belt object--like Pluto and Charon--slightly larger than Pluto). Of course, any object in the solar system that met the three defintions above would also have to be added to this list.

This would mean that other definitions would have to change. Astroids and comets, for example, could no longer be called "minor planets" or "planetoids" as they currently are. As for whatever heavenly bodies met the definition of planet, they would fall into one of three categories. The first is the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Ceres (?)) which are rocky planets of small to moderate size that have a regular orbit and are kept warm to hot by the sun. The second group of planets would be made up of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) that are all of large size, with regular orbits, and have a large number of moons. Any of these moons that had self-gravity would also be planets as well, though this does not appear to be the case at all at the current time. Finally, the third group of planets in the solar system would be called "plutons," which are small, cold, distant, dark, and have eccentric orbits. Is it any wonder I like this type of planet so much? Included in this type of planet would be Pluto, Charon, Xena (or whatever they rename it) and any other large spherical Kuiper Belt Objects.

I don't know about you, but I have to salute the 17 year old blogger who mobilized a "save Pluto" campaign and thus influenced astronomers to come up with a consistent definition of a planet, even if it means that textbooks will have to be edited accordingly. At least my beloved Pluto remains a planet, with some new company to boot.

Las Islas Malvinas

2006-08-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

I had wanted to write about the Tour de France, but the recent scandal concerning Floyd Landis' win provided a rather cynical story, and though I'm not opposed to those in principle I figured I wanted something with a grim sense of humor rather than an almost Greek tragedy of hubris.

So today I looked at a lovely article which talked about recent problems between Britain and Argentina over some remote rocky islands in the South Atlantic, a few hundred miles off the Argentine coast. These islands were the cause of the Faulklands War in 1982, when I was all of a year old. The upside of this war was enshrining Prime Minister Thatcher as the "Iron Lady" and the collapse of the military dictatorship in Argentina (always a cause for celebration). Of course, this did not settle the issue.

After all, the Fauklands (called by South Americans Las Islas Malvinas) have been an international issue since at least the 1770's. At that time they were empty islands belonging to the crown of Spain. During the collapse of Spain's colonial empire, England began to increase their presence in that part of the world. For example, St. Helena, an island only a few hundred miles away in an equally barren part of the South Atlantic, was the final prison of Napoleon. So some British settlers came to eke out a rough existence of fishing and sheepbreeding (woot) while Argentina was fighting for its independence.

Of course, once Argentina had its independence and government settled (a task that lasted until the 1860's) they wanted the islands back, but it was tough luck, as the British were not interested in returning the islands. Once the British Empire itself fell apart, the Faulklands took on an intense symbolic meaning for both nations, far beyond its actual value (it is a net money loser for England, but that hardly matters when national pride is at stake). For Argentina, the islands symbolize a part of the Argentine homeland that has been taken from them. For the British, the Faulklands are a symbol of glory and empire that has not yet completely died out.

So, what will come of this round of what is currently economic warfare? It is hard to say, but such cases as this are ones I tend to find great amusement (perhaps that is the wrong word) in. How about you?

The Next Oil Sheikdom?

2006-07-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

While making my merry way through the news stories this evening, I came across a rather entertaining item about a land few people associate with oil, or for much of anything other than perhaps a failed Norweigian colony that died out in the 1400's, or some Inuit perhaps, or maybe lots and lots of snow. This land is ironically enough called Greenland, and if some oil companies have their way, this sparsely populated arctic desert of some 58,000 mostly Eskimo inhabitants will be rolling in plenty of green.

Somewhere under the rapidly thinning icecap of Greenland lies a lot of oil--by some estimates, half of the supply in Saudi Arabia (which is quite impressive by any standards). Until recently, this oil has been impossible to get at, because even though 110 billion gallons of oil is a huge amount, digging through a mile of ice is less than appealing, even with the drillbits at the disposal of the oil companies. Of course, now that Greenland's ice is melting like a snowcone on a hot summer day, it is rather ironic that this brings even more oil (and in a relatively peaceful part of the world) close to the surface, where it can be explored and exploited.

The residents of Greenland hope that the possible wealth brought to them by oil concessions allows them to become independent from Denmark. After all, the Danes have ruled this forsaken glacial wilderness since establishing some colonies on the coastal fringes of the rather icy land, which currently makes most of its income on fishing and depends on subsidies from Coopenhagen to survive. If the oil of Greenland can be tapped, though, Greenland seeks to become the next Kuwait.

Of course, not everyone is thrilled about the prospect of intense oil business in what has hitherto been a very remote portion of the earth. Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have expressed concern over possible harm to the whale and seabird population that currently dwells in a land with relatively little direct human impact. Of course, since Greenlanders are seeing plenty of cash opportunities with their oil reserves, it is likely that if the oil can be found, those seabirds and whales are probably just going to have to go elsewhere.

That is, unless oil is found on Baffin Island.