a few predictions

What is happening in our world? Along with a few friends including primarily my boss, I've been speculating.

Current Status

The West is weak. Our moral fiber is thin. Globally, the populations of the erstwhile powers are declining. In Europe (and in the US, to a lesser degree), the indigenous populations shrink while populations of Muslim immigrants grow at a stunning rate.

China owns a massive portion of the debts of western nations. They are buying up mineral wealth, accumulating gold and diamond mines across Africa. The Chinese are flexing military muscles in the waters of the South Pacific and the skies of their airshows.

The Russian state is investing in revitalizing cathedrals. Russia is expanding its boarders, testing the resilience of the West. The response has been underwhelming. What can the EU really do?

An Islamic State has risen in the Middle East, uniting some Muslims by a religion rather than the geographic boundaries of a nation-state. Disenfranchised Islamists in Egypt have pledged themselves to the ISIS Caliph. They capitalize on military might (fear) and mineral wealth.

Prognosis

Add all these things up. What do you see? Here's a bit of a prediction:

1. When China has accumulated enough gold to weather the storm, it will call the debts of the west, creating a global economic tailspin that will sink the West.
2. The Caliph will invade and conquer and/or annex Europe with the support of the Muslim population.
3. Russia will unite its people in a war against Islam, and take back the former eastern block, 'saving' the people there from Muslim domination. They will have their version of the Crusades.
4. China will unite and dominate all of Asia that is not called Russia or India.
5. The US will sit by and shrivel up, unable to muster the moral courage or the military power in the midst of a broken economy to do anything.
6. India will also sit by, but will firmly resist invasion. An attempt to invade India would ultimately lead to China's downfall.
7. Russia, China, and the Caliph will one day wake up and find Brazil somehow standing among them, competing for dominance in a new world order.

Conclusion

My friends, now is the time to make friends for ourselves. Luke 16:8-9.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

The Price of Faith

Note: significantly edited shortly after posting. I may share 

Belinda is pregnant and little baby Liam's arrival is expected on January 3.

As of Dec. 1, we will no longer have health insurance.

This isn't a plea for help. We're going to be just fine financially. That's just my hook to draw your attention to a moral question that Belinda and I have had to wrestle with over the last months.

There is no health insurance plan renewing after August 1, 2012 in the state of New York which will not cover abortion-causing contraception in full. Let me put it succinctly:

 If you have a health insurance plan in New York, you are paying for abortions.

That I cannot stomach.

What do you think? Is this a moral dilemma for you?



For those who are freaking out, we've found an excellent alternative to health insurance in a Christian cost sharing program called Samaritan Ministries.

NYC Abortions

Some stats from the New York State Department of Health for pregnancy and abortion in NYC, 2010.

• There were 208,541 pregnancies in New York City in 2010.  They resulted in 124,791 live births and 83,750 abortions, a 40% abortion rate.
• Among non-Hispanic blacks there were far more abortions than births, 38,574 to 26,635, or 60%.   So for every 1,000 African-American babies born, 1,448 were aborted.
• Among Non-Hispanic black teens, the abortion rate was even greater - 5,956 abortions to 2,265 live births, or 72%.  For every 1,000 African-American babies born to teens, 2,630 were aborted.
• The abortion rate among teens as a whole was 63% - 12,139 abortions to 7,207 live births. For every 1,000 babies born among New York City teens 1,684 were aborted.
• 16% of all pregnancies in New York City - 14% of abortions - were with teen mothers.
• 54% of abortions were with mothers in their 20's;
• 30% of abortions were with mothers in their 30's or 40's;
• 14% of abortions were with married mothers.

'Freedom'

Rudderless speedboat adrift on the sea
Lighthouses so last century.
Mores dismantled 'fore the
Reign of rights.
Liberation's surprise is slavery.

"One cannot establish the reign of liberty without that of mores, and mores cannot be firmly founded without beliefs."

 ~Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (trans. G. Lawrence).

Daniel and Politics

I've been reading the book of Daniel for the last week or so, and it's caused me to revisit my role in politics as a Christian. Every story (for the first half, at least) is an interaction with political authority, and often deliberate disobedience in order to obey God. The difficult thing for us in the US is that we are as much governed as we are part of the government. There is still a sense here of government by the consent of the governed. To make real political change, do I have to change the minds of a few powerful men, or of a few thousands of my neighbors? The constitution says the latter, but we behave as if it is the former.

The great criticisms of the republic were that it always devolved into oppression of the minority for the gain of the majority. And we have seen that play out. Factions must be preserved for the sake of liberty. In Federalist No. 10 Madison argued that a larger representative republic would be more virtuous. It would be harder for an evil politician to pull the wool over the eyes of the majority. I fear that mass media and consumerism have changed that. It's not very difficult today for a very rich man to convince a very large number of people that almost anything is true (as long as it's not Christianity). Humanism is the new majority religion.

What do we do about it as Christians? Do we fight for legislation that expresses our morality rather than a humanist one? When it's asked that way, the answer seems an obvious no. Do we use our voice to speak up for those who are powerless? Well, yes, obviously. Knowing the powerful influence of culture on ourselves, do we fight acceptance of idolatrous and evil ideas into mainstream culture for the sake of progeny?

Daniel simply lived his life in obedience to God, no matter what the king decreed. He didn't ask the king to change his mind. His life and God's miraculous power changed the king's heart. But as members of our own government, can we take such a passive role?

thoughts on homosexuality

My philosophy regarding homosexuality, homosexual marriage, government, abortion, birth control, the family, etc. are in a constant state of flux. Interesting conversation going on over at pseudoblog (Matt Marsh). I really appreciate Matt's ability to penetrate to the heart of issues and arguments.  His post and our exchange in the comments is worth a read, if you're interested in the subject.

The Sensate Culture

The following is a direct quote placed here for reference purposes only. The original can be viewed here:

http://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/

Sensate (Materialistic) Culture
The first pattern, which Sorokin called Sensate culture, has these features: 

• The defining cultural principle is that true reality is sensory – only the material world is real. There is no other reality or source of values.

• This becomes the ubiquitous organizing principle of society. It permeates every aspect of culture and defines the basic mentality. People are unable to think in any other terms.

• Sensate culture pursues science and technology, but dedicates little creative thought to spirituality or religion.

• Dominant values are wealth, health, bodily comfort, sensual pleasures, power and fame.

• Ethics, politics, and economics are utilitarian and hedonistic. All ethical and legal precepts are considered mere man-made conventions, relative and changeable.

• Art and entertainment emphasize sensory stimulation. In the decadent stages of Sensate culture there is a frenzied emphasis on the new and the shocking (literally, sensationalism).

• Religious institutions are mere relics of previous epochs, stripped of their original substance, and tending to fundamentalism and exaggerated fideism (the view that faith is not compatible with reason).

I cannot find a more fitting description of our current culture in the west. 

Their Currents Turn, take 2 (now including footnotes!)

Their Currents Turn[1]

That moment between time

A glimmer of a second

Of existence of doubt

Of suspension of disbelief.

The hard line of reality

Glistens like a memory

Faded, splintered and sedated[2]

10:58pm in the bathroom

in the dark to pee

before sleep the thought rises

like the return of a dream

from muddy water that

Nothing is real.

(and everyone believes it)

The window; the toilet;

Goose bumps;

Unthings.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily[3]

I pinch myself and wake in pain

Staring into the confusion

Between night and day,

Unblind.

I am a bird alone on a roof[4]

(with seven thousand others)[5]

Singing to wake the world:

If of life you keep a care

Shake off slumber and beware

Awake, awake![6]

Numb and Amused and Slaves

Of what we want.[7]

“Ain't we all blind in the dark?” said Diggle[8]

Blind captains lost at sea

What hope?

Still less for those who see

And seeing, dream.

What cunning!

The pain of the pinch too high.

O captain, uncaptained[9]

Dream-life dreamer

In evening-shadow ship

What hope?

"Don't say that!" groaned Wilbur.

"I have to say what's true."[10]

But every ear hears Pilate[11]

I saw the crowd on the corner watching[12]

While a man beat his dog.

I saw the crowd on the corner watching

While a drunk beat his boy.

I saw the crowd on the corner scatter

While the fogey stooped to gather

The musty stack of weathered books

He’d fumbled.

I saw three cars screech up to the corner

Lights, singing “You…You…You…”

“Help! Police!”

The men with sticks and uniforms

Piled out; piled in; and were gone.

Like a dream, the man and his books

Were gone. They never were.

(and everyone believes it)

The man; the books;

His spectacles;

Unthings.

To read, to write[13]

Have become

Another way

To eat and make love.

With no chance of reason.

What chance?

O reason, unreasoned

Self-named science

In vapor-stone dreams

What hope?

You know the one.

Running, running, running, [14]

Running through a country

Always known and unfamiliar,

A rocky country.

What terrible bliss

Because he was dreaming

Because he was awake

Because the isle is full of noises.[15]

Flowering plain

Wind-blown grass

Fair flowers

Hill of earth

Handfuls of dust

In shadows

A drop[16]

A sparkling less-than drop

In the great blue motion

Of the darkened sea

The mad unblind grope in darkness

Pinch-marked.

Some lulled to lose the name of Action[17]

Serial sleepers slayed with things instead[18]

Some scream to wake the dead

And how squirm the

Seeing dreamers at their scream!

But the screamers are mad, you know.

The screamers are all just mad.

---

[1] Shakespeare, Hamlet

[2] Switchfoot, Politicians

[3] From the folk song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”

[4] Psalm 102

[5] As Elijah

[6] Shakespeare, The Tempest

[7] Switchfoot, Lonely Nation

[8] C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

[9] From Walt Witman, O Captain, My Captain

[10] E.B. White, Charlottle’s Web

[11] John 18

[12]Stanza based on Joseph Heller, Catch-22

[13]Five lines based on  T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[14] Seven lines based on James Baldwin, Another Country

[15] Shakespeare, The Tempest

[16] Four lines based on T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[17] Shakespeare, Hamlet

[18] House of Heroes, Serial Sleepers

A Poem in Progress

I got to take a much-needed ROS this morning, and one of the takeaways was this poem. It's a condensation of a lot of my thoughts from the last month or so. I find that when I don't blog or write at lenghth in my journal for a period of time, the thoughts get more and more compacted in my brain, and finally explode in fragmented, poetic form.
This still needs quite a bit of work.

Their Currents Turn

That moment between time
A glimmer of a second
of existence of doubt
of suspension of disbelief.
The hard line of reality
Bends, Twists, Softens.

It was the best...  the worst...
Of was it at all?

10:58pm in the bathroom
in the dark to pee
before sleep the thought rises
like the return of a dream
from muddy water that
nothing is real.
The window; the toilet;
goosebumps.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily
I pinch myself and wake in pain
Staring into the confusion
Between night and day,
Unblind.

I am a bird alone on a roof
With seven thousand others
Singing to wake the world.

Blind captians lost at sea
What hope?
Still less for those who see
And seeing, dream.
The pain of the pinch to high.

O captain, uncaptained
Dream-life dreamer
In evening-shadow ship
What hope?

The mad unblind grope in darkness
Pinch-marked.
Some lulled or lynched
  To lose the name of Action
  Serial sleepers slayed with dreams instead
  Stoned seer, are you not entertained?
Some scream to wake the dead
  And how squirm the
  Seeing dreamers at their scream

But the screamers are mad, you know.
The screamers are all just mad.

Liberty - A Human Right?

Human Rights are difficult. Let me just be clear that this post is more of an exploration than a conclusion. I'm interested in your thoughts.

R N W brought to light the question of whether Liberty is really a human right based on the Wagner quote in my previous post. Wagner indicates that only those who are self-controlled can breathe the air of Liberty without getting drunk on it and being "morally slain." We see this throughout history and in our own culture. When given freedom to do whatever they wish, and unconstrained by an "inner law" based on a Judeo-christian ethic, the people become increasingly enslaved to their desires and passions. As Plato said so long ago, pure democracy always ends in tyranny, because a government must great tighter and tighter regulations to control a people who will not control themselves. That is exactly what Wagner is saying, and what C.S. Lewis prophesied in The Abolition of Man.

But what does this have to do with Human Rights? Should we selectively withhold Liberty from those who are not self-controlled? In a sense we do this already; it's called prison. But is Liberty still a Human Right?

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most profound documents of our time. A true game changer.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The founding fathers are saying here that Liberty is a right by God's law, and cannot be given or taken away by government. In a sense, even if we wanted to take away someones Liberty, we really can't do it. See China. Mao's revolution was designed to control the people by forcing them to think a certain way. But he couldn't do it. It didn't work. [As an aside, it's interesting to note that China is now partnering with very capitalistic organizations like... WalMart. Why? What reason would a still-communist China have to bring the largest corporation on the planet inside its borders? To control the people. Consumerism is the great opiate of America, and it may just work in China too...]


Back to Human Rights. Alexander Hamilton makes an interesting point about liberty, rights, and government in Federalist No.1:

It will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgement, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

This, in a letter that is arguing for the acceptance of the newly published Constitution. Hamilton argues on the same theme as Plato, which Wagner would later pick up, that the elevation of individual liberties above all else ends in tyranny.

I'm still circling the question. Is Liberty a human right?

Let's see what the Bible says. We know that mankind is depraved and rebellious, bent on evil (pursing not-God), and is thus deserving of Death (eternal not-God). In that sense, we have no "rights." Zero. The only human right before God is Death. There is nothing else we "deserve."
However, we also know that humans are created in the Image of God, and that Christ is the perfection and completion of that Image. This bears significant impact on the way we treat each other. God created you; in your face I see the image of my Creator. Therefore, out of respect for Him, I respect you. I respect your ability to make autonomous choices, and until proven otherwise, I respect your ability to control yourself. Liberty, I think is the right and responsibility of all humans to treat each other with justice. Liberty does not say, "Give me mine!" as secular humanism is teaching us today. Liberty is not an individual sport. True Liberty does not say, "I demand my freedom to do whatever I want. Respect me." it says, "I respect you, because God has made you free."

We must follow the example of Christ. He never stood up for his own "rights." Instead he freely gave them up and chose to wield his power on behalf of those who before God are powerless, without rights.

Liberty is Human Right. But to experience true freedom we must not demand Liberty for ourselves. Instead, we bow to the "inner law." We control ourselves out of deference to Christ and his image in others.

Thoughts?

Wagner on Liberty

I've been reading Plato's Republic and now Wagner's The Simple Life. Both reflect the immorality of man and the resulting tendency of democratic peoples toward tyranny. I want to share this Wagner passage at length (the entire work is available from Project Gutenberg), without further comment.

So it is with liberty. It is fatal or lifegiving according to the use made of it. Is it liberty still, when it is the prerogative of criminals or heedless blunderers? Liberty is an atmosphere of the higher life, and it is only by a slow and patient inward transformation that one becomes capable of breathing it.
All life must have its law, the life of man so much the more than that of inferior beings, in that it is more precious and of nicer adjustment. This law for man is in the first place an external law, but it may become an internal law. When man has once recognized the inner law, and bowed before it, through this reverence and voluntary submission he is ripe for liberty: so long as there is no vigorous and sovereign inner law, he is incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken with it, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law, can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown bird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet attained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty than can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These things are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new that proves them, increases daily under our eyes. And yet we are as far as ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law. In our democracy, how many are there, great and small, who know, from having personally verified it, lived it and obeyed it, this truth without which a people is incapable of governing itself? Liberty?—it is respect; liberty?—it is obedience to the inner law; and this law is neither the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd, but the high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are the first to bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but men must be made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomes impossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes on through license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery.

Government, Gay Marriage, and Moral Authority

A week ago today the NY State Legislature legalized re-defined marriage, allowing same-sex couples to marry.

All people should be given the same rights before the law regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or the size of their ears. Morality and legality are different animals. Adultery is immoral, but not illegal. Adulterers should have the same civil rights as the faithful. For the purpose of maintaining civilization, the government declares some acts which most consider immoral to be illegal (see murder) and also some acts which most consider moral (or amoral, but that's another discussion entirely) to be illegal (see underage voting).
Regardless, homosexuals should have the same legal standing as heterosexuals. Ideally, a civil union would be the legal equivalent of marriage, distinguishing between the moral/religious idea of marriage and the civil structure. For some reason, that is not the case. If a non-religious heterosexual couple wants to make a legal partnership, they get "married" in court. The unfortunate reality is that marriage is understood by most inhabitants of the United States as an inherently moral/religious institution. Consider these results of a 2008 Newsweek poll:

"Now thinking about marriage more generally: Some people think of marriage mostly as a legal matter and others think of it mostly as a religious matter. Do you personally think of marriage mostly as a legal matter, or mostly as a religious matter?"
						.
		Mostly Legal	Mostly Religious	Both Equally (vol.)	Unsure
		%	%	%	%
		30	41	25	4

Two-thirds of our population believe that marriage has something to do with religion.

Interestingly, marriage rates across the country have been dropping, while the incidence of cohabitation rises. Marriage is dying, primarily because it is seen as a religious institution. [This also confuses me--what do homosexuals see in marriage that so many heterosexuals do not? I think it's more than just a tax cut.]

According to the same poll, 77% of people in the US say their religion has some influence on their views of gay marriage:

"How much, if at all, do your religious beliefs determine your views on the issue of gay marriage? Are your religious beliefs very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important in determining your views on gay marriage?"
						.
		Very Important	Somewhat Important	Not Too Important	Not at All Important	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
		41	21	11	23	4

Of course, that shouldn't mean too much. One would hope that a person's religious belief (worldview) would affect their thoughts on all parts of life.

Regardless, the question remains--who defined marriage in the first place? It certainly wasn't the government. And yet now they presume to have the authority to re-define what is considered by the majority to be primarily a moral issue. Government's redefinition of the basic unity of human community amounts to a declaration of moral authority.
In Roe v. Wade the Judiciary did not legalize abortion. In 1973 the Judiciary re-defined human life. They claimed the authority to decide when a being with distinct DNA is a human (thus having unallienable rights) and that being is not. Roe v. Wade dehumanized the child in the womb. Last week, NYS redefined the family.
Bit by bit, the government is making itself the final moral authority. "Legislator with a capital L," as my boss (@compasscare) likes to say.

This is democracy plunging toward tyranny. For the government to maintain control of a people, those people must be ruled by a uniform set of moral standards. Otherwise, chaos reigns. Since we have eliminated God as the transcendent authority, the government has appointed itself in His place.

For our civility to be maintained, the primary relationship of each individual must be to their final moral authority (by definition). If my primary responsibility is to a god, I may not obey government. If my primary relationship is to my wife, I may have occasion to disobey government. The only way the government of a people not self-controlled can maintain order is to make itself the primary relationship for every individual, and the final moral authority. This is tyranny: government over the individual.

Then, it will employ terror and fear (see abortion, climate change) and find ways to placate the enslaved population (see consumerism and entertainment media).

I've said enough, for now.

Tyranny and the US Government

Complex, impartial, evolving thoughts mar these lines. Bear with me as I explore the designs behind the issues of our time.

I've come to believe that the current moral turmoil in our society are the result of a fundamental shift in transcendence (that being the thing beyond and above us which sets standards for life). As the result of enlightenment thinkers like Kant and later American influencers like Whitman, we have a war of ideologies. Kant declared that is is man's brain, his own ability to reason, which is the highest standard. We call this materialistic rationalism. There is nothing beyond that which we can see or perceive, and our ability to make rational judgement is itself that which makes us valuable as humans. It is no longer the image of God stamped on us that gives humans dignity, but our ability to make rational judgments. Whitman carried it further. We are all "leaves of grass," individuals whose transcendence goes no further than our own reason.

Now, government has a problem. How do you manage a population of individuals no longer self-controlled by a Judeo-Christian moral standard? In The Republic, Plato wrote, "tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." Why?  With democracy there is freedom, "And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases." With no moral standard which binds a nation together in common principles, the end of freedom is anarchy: "democracy...is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder." Yet, humanity will not tolerate anarchy. Chaos is one of five universal fears of humans. To avoid chaos, we give away our freedoms. In the case of the United States, we give freedoms to the tyranny of government legislation, which poses tighter and tighter restrictions on our actions.

Perhaps it is wrong to say we give freedoms away. They are taken from us by government, and by and large we the people seem completely unaware, being placated by consumerism and swayed by the compelling and entertaining media. 

Please express your thoughts. I intend to use this as a backdrop to explore some of the "issues" which are currently in the national discussion (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc).

The War Against Girls

Jonathan Last's review of Mara Hvistendahl's book "Unnatural Selection" is a must-read. Hvistendahl, despite being very feminist and pro-abortion, may have written the most influential anti-abortion publication of the decade.

Read it here.

"Today in India, the best predictor of violence and crime for any given area is not income but sex ratio."

dollars and cents

Courtesy of the Harvard Political Review's Annual Report of the United States of America (ARUSA), a bipartisan student-run political magazine.

relevance

The middle class in the US is slowly becoming more and more racially integrated.  More and more young people go to college and then work in increasingly racially integrated environments.

The primary areas where we remain segregated are in housing/neighborhoods and in religion.

I'm fairly convinced that if nothing changes the white, middle-class church that has been the foundation of US evangelicalism will be irrelevant within a few generations.  My grandchildren will enjoy the diversity of their school and work environments, and will look for that in their church.

It's also interesting to note that while white evangelical churches in America are for the most part declining in attendance over the last decade (with notable exceptions, such as my own church), attendance of multi-racial and non-white evangelical churches (particularly Asian, African, and Latin American immigrant churches holding bilingual or non-English services) are growing.

Blog Action Day

Blog Action Day is October 15.  This year the topic is water.

I don't know if a bunch of people blogging about global water issues really makes any difference, but perhaps it will educate some who will make a difference.  This year more and more blogs of note are getting involved (including the White House, apparently).

I read somewhere that more people have cell phones than access to clean water.  Who decides that kind of thing?  I don't know what kind of severe estimation goes into that analysis, but nevertheless, I believe it's probably true.

When I was in Mokattam, a slum of Cairo, Egypt, it seemed like more families had satellite dishes for their TVs than they had food to fill their dishes.

When Helping Hurts

Chapter 3: What is success in material poverty-alleviation efforts?

I grew up in a church environment where I mistakenly understood my teaching to mean that God was only concerned with our souls and moral purity. I do not blame any of the spiritual authorities of my youth. Over the last 5 years God has corrected my mistaken notions.  The authors of When Helping Hurts express my current doctrine of Christ's redemption quite well:

Jesus is not just "beaming up" our souls out of planet Earth in Star Trek fashion; rather, Jesus is bringing reconciliation to every last speck of the universe, including both our foundational relationships and the systems that emanate from them.

This reconciliation of all things comes from Colossians 1:19-20, among others. And it has a direct impact on our understanding of the "solution" to poverty":

Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all tings into right relationship again.

I really appreciate that the authors put the responsibility for the condition of the materially poor on sinful individuals and the broken systems of our society.

DEFINITIONS

Poverty alleviation is the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation.

Material poverty alleviation is working to reconcile the four foundational relationships so that people can fulfill their callings of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruit of that work.

By defining poverty as a lack in these four relationships, the authors must produce a definition of alleviation that heals the brokenness.  Aside from this key aspect (which begins to become burdensome by its repetition: "Okay, OK! I get it already!"), they really define material poverty alleviation as "empowering people to earn sufficient material things through their own labor."

We were created to bring God glory, and we were created for good works.  "How we work and for whom we work really matters."
Side note: The motive thing really gets me.  Why do I want an engineering job?  Is it for me, or for God? James 4:1-3

"Our perspective should be less about how we are going to fix the materially poor and more about how we can walk together, asking God to fix both of us."  I want to particularly note the walking together. Relationships, real relationships with materially poor people, are what changed my heart in Egypt (of course through the power of the Word of God and his Holy Spirit). Relationships were particularly powerful for me when I encountered and was befriended by those who had nothing physically, but knew God far better than I might have ever dreamed of knowing him on earth.

A note on the american ghetto, which I have found all too true:

Living in the context of violence, some ghetto children correctly assume that they will not live very long. This can make them very present-oriented and give them little incentive to invest in their futures through such things as being diligent in school. And of course, a failure to get a good education contributes to their long-run material poverty.

In Detroit we knew a man in his late 20s who was trying to turn his life around. For the first time in his life, he was looking into the future and actually believed he might live into his 40s, and it sobered him. He said, "I don't want to be 45 and have people calling my cell for weed." Last I knew he was coming back to church.

Remember, the goal is for everyone involved to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, not just to increase people's incomes.

Next: Part II, general principles for helping without hurting.

Another Country

Welcome back to free convection.  It's been a while. Since I've last written, I've:
-moved to Rochester (and found an apartment)
-got married to the most amazing woman on the planet
-gone on a honeymoon to Puerto Rico

Since returning, I've been looking for a job, collecting books, building bookshelves, and interviewing ministries that serve "the least of these" in Rochester.  It's a fun existence, but lonely while Belinda is working 10 hour days at Harris.

I just finished reading Another Country by James Baldwin.  The following is about a page of it, near the end of the book.  Two women, one black, one white, talking about race relations in the US. It moved me.

WARNING: some of the language used here is pretty... descriptive. If you have a problem with swearing, don't tempt yourself.

Cass looked at the dark, proud head, which was half-turned away from her. "Do you hate white people, Ida?"

Ida sucked her teeth in anger. "What the hell has that got to do with anything? Hell, yes, sometimes I hate them, I could see them dead. And sometimes I don't. I do have a couple of other things to occupy my mind." Her face changed. She looked down at her fingers, she twisted her ring. "If any one white person gets through to you, it kind of destroys your--single-mindedness. They say that love and hate are very close together. Well, that's a fact." She turned to the window again. "But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself--wouldn't you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?" They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be int he streets, draped, almost, from lamp posts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. "Kept you here, stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but, every day, every day, for years, for generations? Shit. They keep you here because you're black, the filthy, white cock suckers, while they go around jerking themselves off with all that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with that same music, too, only, keep your distance. Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don't believe it has a right to exist. Now, you've never felt like that, and Vivaldo's never felt like that. Vivaldo didn't want to know my brother was dying because he doesn't want to know that my brother would still be alive if he hadn't been born black."

"I don't know if that's true or not," Cass said, slowly, "but I guess I don't have any right to say it isn't true."

"No, baby, you sure don't," Ida said, "not unless you're really willing to ask yourself how you'd have made it, if they'd dumped on you what they dumped on Rufus. And you can't ask yourself that question because there's no way in the world for you to know what Rufus went through, not in this world, not ask long as you're white." She smiled. It was the saddest smile Cass had ever seen. "That's right, baby. That's where it's at."

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