More "What the Bible Says About Money"

A poor man's field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it
away. Proverbs 13:23

He who mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker; whoever gloats
over disaster will not go unpunished. Proverbs 17:5

He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him
for what he has done. Proverbs 19:17

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out
and not be answered. Proverbs 21:13

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes
to them receives many curses. Proverbs 28:27

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no
such concern. Proverbs 29:7

If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the
land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or
tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely
lend him whatever he needs. Be careful not to harbor this wicked
thought: "The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near," so
that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him
nothing. He may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be
found guilty of sin. Give generously to him and do so without a
grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you
in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will
always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be
openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your
land. Deuteronomy 15:7-11

What the Bible has to say about money...

I'm about 3/4 of the way through reading "Atlas Shrugged", and I can't
help but notice how Ayn Rand's perspective seems to be the absolute
opposite of the God of the Bible's. I'm going to do more research on
how much of the Bible is spent talking about caring for the poor, but
here are a couple passages that came immediately to mind.

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were
arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and
needy."
Ezekial 16:49

" 1Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery
that is coming upon you. 2Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten
your clothes. 3Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will
testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded
wealth in the last days. 4Look! The wages you failed to pay the
workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of
the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5You have
lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened
yourselves in the day of slaughter."
James 5:1-5

To What, Exactly, Are You Referring When You Say, “I Want My America Back?”

I'm sure everyone has seen the video of the lady crying at the town hall meeting that she was scared of the direction our country is going and, with real passion and sincerity, “I want my America back.”

Now, I fully acknowledge that, as a Northeasterner, I do not live in Sarah Palin's "real America." Regardless, this "my America" to which the aforementioned town hall speaker refers seems way faker than the America I happen to live in.

To which "my America" is she so nostalgically referring? Andy Griffith's or the Hardy Boys'? Sorry, that's fictional. Definitely not Woodstock or life in the Haight-Ashbury. Hopefully not the days of slavery, sweatshops, and wars against Indians. Previous to 1900, a healthy person's life expectancy was less than 50 years. Let's not forget that 100 years ago women could not vote! Frontier America is nice to romanticize, but an honest reflection sees it for what it was: a nearly-lawless expanse which was ruled by whoever had the biggest guns and the most money. Liquor flowed, gambling was rampant, sex-for-pay was easy to find, and if you didn't die young from a horrific accident, a drunken bar fight or in childbirth, you probably died from fever, measles or a host of other now-eradicated diseases.

Up until the 1970s companies thought nothing of pouring toxic waste into public drinking water. In the 1950s someone who had a grudge against you could devastate your career simply by pointing and shouting "communist." I'm sure the "my America" she's talking about is absolutely not the America of millions of African Americans, Chinese, Native Americans, Polish, Quaker, Catholic, etc., etc., US citizens who have made this country their home for hundreds (in the case of Indians, thousands) of years.

Personally, I cannot imagine an America I'd rather live in than the one I live in today. I am thrilled to be a member of this society--with all the craziness that entails--and I wouldn't have it any other way. I am more free than I ever could have been as an American in any other decade.

Thank God I live here now.

You Gotta Love Stock Market Analysts

So, I'm perusing Yahoo! Finance, trying to figure out how to get rich quick the good ol' American way--by doing nothing--and the first heading I saw was this:  

Stocks Shake Off Jobs Report To End With Big Gains -- Wall Street has put an upbeat spin on the government's report that the nation lost more than a half a million jobs last month.  Stocks reversed early losses to finish sharply higher as the job numbers raise hopes that Washington will again step in to help the economy.

Big job losses is good news because it means that maybe we'll get free money?  What?  That's like saying it's good that we didn't clean our rooms because maybe now our parents will get annoyed and clean them for us and give us our allowance anyway.  

Then there's another article on how gas may go down to less that $1 (whoa!).  Purely speculative, as is just about everything but the punctuation on this site, but it's a nice idea.  Let's see, how could I capitalize in the stock market on cheap gas.  I can't buy stock in oil companies (unless, of course, you use the above logic, in which case, free money again!), so who profits from cheap gas?  Probably not Ford and GM...they're too busy trying to look not-rich.  My best answer so far is Coke and Doritos:  if you just saved at the gas pump, maybe you'll be more likely to go into the little Mart and pick up a snack!  

Does anyone out there have some oh-so-logical advice on picking up a few stocks CHEAP!!!  ON SALE!!!  EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! as they seem to be so much these days?

Why Liberalism is not Socialism

Liberalism (US version)	Socialism
Favors a multi-party system (i.e. conservatives can kick them out whenever they get enough votes)	Favors a single-party system. My way or the highway
Favors free speech	Favors acceptable speech
Favors individual social freedom	Prohibits all deviancy from the limited accepted social formula
Favors personal career fulfillment	Favors subordination of your vocational desires for the good of society
Favors total religious freedom and equality	Favors no religious freedom in order to create the greatest equality—absence of any religion
Favors taxes that require more from those who have more	Favors taxing you 100% and doling back out to you your "fair share" as determined by the government

So how is Obama a socialist again?

How Can We Possibly See Things So Differently?

I have the privilege (or disadvantage, depending on your perspective) of living in a blue state with many blue friends while having mostly red family members and many red friends as well. Unfortunately this does not allow me to peacefully wallow in my own opinion buttressed by nothing but confirmation of my inherent rightness. I'm forced to confront the reasonableness of the other side as well as the fact that generally they're just good people.

Sadly, it appears that many of my friends, family and acquaintances are not in this position and feel much freer expressing serious contempt for the "other side". And I don't think they know they are or mean to, or perhaps they are expressing contempt for "those other people"...whoever they are. Regardless of your perspective on how the country should be run, being inconsiderate of other people's ideas isn't exactly helpful. In fact, isn't the best way to listen very carefully to what the other side has to say so that you can both come up with the best of both worlds? If nothing else it's important to note that if millions and millions of people think something, shouldn't you pause to just consider it? That many people cannot be that dumb. Otherwise our society wouldn't have lasted even as long as it has.


Anyway, it'd be great if our disagreements would involve a little more listening and a lot less malevolence.

MARKET that baby!

Somebody get Bristol Palin an agent!! Or better, one for Baby Palin-Johnston. A few professional shots of the happy family sold to People magazine should get them, what, $1 million? I mean, I suppose they're not Brad and Angie, but if they market this right, they could sure have the Grocery Aisle Pile drooling. If Bristol and Hottie McHotPocket Levi Johnston know what they're doing, they'll pay for Baby Palin-Johnston's education the good ol' American way...by leveraging their total hotness, dramatic situation and the fleeting and forgetful eye of the media, which currently is batting its flirty eyelashes behind some marvelously (and rare) rose-colored lenses.

If Vanity Fair and the Hallmark Channel are your bootstraps, I suggest you pull them up. Besides, I'm looking forward to seeing that cute baby ;).

On Being Young

I think the primary way I know I'm young is that my thought life is still made up of approximately 90% future thoughts and 10% past thoughts. Having my head tilted consistently future-ward is pleasantly but exhaustively and exasperatingly active and confusing. But at this point it's preferable to gazing back at what's been. At this point I still always have the comforting, if weak, sentiment: "when I'm old I'll understand why all this happened and it will all make sense".

If only.

Response to Lieberman

Here are some of my thoughts about Lieberman's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.


A couple of overarching thoughts initially come to mind:

1) "Democrat" and "Republican" are simply labels describing a certain set of principles, which apparently are supposed to be both consistent and dichotomous (i.e. welfare state + secular public laws + over regulation of business + weak military = Democrats/Liberal, while economic individualism + strict moral laws + under regulation of business + enormous military = Republicans). Naturally we have a big country and times change, so these labels easily slide around based on the times. Why try and squeeze all of your favorite principles under the "Democrat" basket you loved in 1958 when really they fit so much better under the "Republican" basket of 2008? Lieberman seems nostalgic for Democrats of old who would most likely be Republicans today. Which, I guess, is his point.

2) Wow, was the world different 50 years ago! Since WWII (my time frame is roughly Lieberman's lifetime) nuclear weapons have been dropped, people have lived in space, the internet was invented, global airline travel has become the norm, a US president has resigned due to corruption, the US has experienced several energy/oil scares (including now), chemical weapons have been introduced, DNA testing in criminal cases has become norm and exonerated many people falsely-charged, and CNN was established.

All of these things (among others, I'm sure) have made today's world very different than 50 years ago, and the politics has had to change with it. During WWII and the first half of the cold war it was obvious who was "good" and who was "bad" and the entire country mobilized on behalf of the US military. The economy was good and the Cold War became more distant. Later on in the century things got a little more grey. Sen. McCarthy exaggerated the communist threat and damaged US government credibility. JFK was shot by a crazed individual. Nixon lied and stole, and suddenly the US government was not as angelic and trustworthy as we'd like to believe. In Vietnam the US sprayed civilians with chemicals and dropped bombs on Cambodians (who were being annihilated by Pol Pot anyway, another genocide the US government chose to selectively ignore).

Everyone agrees that the shift came with the Vietnam war. Who was to say that our patriotic "ideology" wasn't just as bad as "theirs", since we were committing atrocities as well? (Note: I totally reject the, "we weren't as bad as they were" excuse, and I think the Democrats of the 70s and today do as well.) We did not want to end up like the 1940s Germans, blindly following a secretive leader just because he says our cause is just. To protest injustice became the patriotic thing; just because the injustice was wearing an American flag does not make it somehow excusable.

The difference between today's news and news in the 1950s is that now everyone has it. CNN shows car bombs live. People blog real-time about what they are witnessing. The whole world hears rumors within a matter of seconds, and crimes at places like Abu Ghraib and Haditha cannot be covered up. US righteousness is tarnished, and to ignore our wrong-doings for causes of "freedom" and "patriotism" is to deny both.

George W. Bush's administration has done nothing but magnify the perception of government manipulation and control to an overwhelming level. To today's Democrats, Bush's actions are potentially just as dangerous as that of a terrorist organization; he has been systematically setting up rule by decree from disregarding the opinion of the international community to eavesdropping on US private calls and emails to setting up these unprecedented "signing statements", where he simply declares to Congress which parts of their laws he is not going to obey, before signing. Bombs have taken the place of words. "Ideology" obliterates any sense of the enemy's humanity and makes them monsters, unworthy to live. Essentially, the rigid, unyielding principles which drive Bush's agenda mimic nearly identically the wishes of the leaders of China and the Middle East. You are free to do whatever we want you to do.

With one major, major difference: the US still values American lives. Communist/totalitarian countries have little regard for the lives of their own civilians, let alone foreigners. But it's not a far jump from Guantanamo to holding US citizens without reason, to complete executive power. And that is what today's Democrats are fighting against.



Why Obama is the Man for the Job

Barack Obama is the Democrat of the future. He does not have a "blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet" like Lieberman exaggerates. Rather, I believe his policy is to be willing to meet with them, with standards. Obama is willing to concede the fact that Ahmadinejad and Chavez are human beings with brains and negotiable interests. Yes, perhaps Ahmadinejad's one goal in life is to clad women world-wide with burkas and build himself a personal nuclear arsenal, but if we unilaterally bomb his country, we're never going to find that out. Not talking is an ironclad way to eliminate any and all chance of understanding. Obama represents the only foreign policy that is going to work in the global auditorium: yes, he holds a stick behind his back, but he offers a basket of carrots. Hopefully the result being many more offered baskets and a room of well-fed leaders rather than bloodied, battered, and starving ones.

The reason Obama is going to work for the postmodern generation is because when he looks at the globe, he sees what every young American sees in their peer group: many colors, many faiths, many accents, many cultures with differing priorities, but all human beings who should be treated with dignity. Right and wrong "ideologies" isn't going to work these days. Fanaticism, crime, hate, bigotry, corruption: our "war" is against these vices, regardless of whether they are found under an American flag or any other.


Lieberman is nostalgic for the Democratic party of old. If he wishes to remain in a dualistic world view of good guys v. bad guys, patriots v. non-patriots, I think he will be very comfortable in the Republican party of today.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I recently discovered a website called Letters From Leavers. It was started by two guys as a project for a class at Fuller Theological Seminary, and still exists as a place for people to write letters to their churches. I've only read a few, but they are quite interesting. Somehow I feel like the Evangelical church doesn't want to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of people leave their churches and Christianity all the time, for a lot of different reasons. If you can't see the problem, it's hard to come up with a solution.

I'm Sorry You're Offended

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox



and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast



Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Responses to Critiques of the Emerging Church, Part II.V

I just wanted to let you know that I am planning on writing a "Part III" of the Responses to Critiques of the Emerging Church" posts, but I realized I need to do a little more research. The topic for Part III is orthodox theology, which is not something one can simply whip up. Or, at least I can't. Hopefully I'll get to it in the next few weeks.

Lying is Bad

I recently had a bad experience where a group I was a part of was told something we knew to be blatantly false. Total BS, actually. It wasn't a big bad lie and I suppose nobody actually got "hurt" by its telling. But I was completely insulted. Mostly because this person did such a bad job of it ("do they really think I don't know what they're talking about?") and because the higher road would have been so much more tactful. And refreshing.

House M.D. is probably most known for the perpetual phrase, "everybody lies." I had always kind of chuckled with pity at the cynicism (as several of the other characters frequently do), thinking how much life this Thomas was missing out on by slathering everything with distrust. But I'm slowly being converted. Burying an ideal is always a particularly mournful occasion.

Tired

I think this happens to everyone. You say you're gonna blog, you're gonna be good about it and put something up there hopefully every day, but at least every week.

And then a couple of weeks go by and you just haven't had an original thought. Being tired does that, I think. But sunshine helps.

Focus on the Family Rejects Racial Reconcilation

I think most people would probably agree that it is important to "major on the majors, and minor on the minors." The problem arises when we disagree what exactly constitutes "major".

Obama's recent speech on racial reconciliation has caused a tremendous outpouring of appreciation and support from all sides. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said it was "the best political speech since John Kennedy talked about his Catholicism in Houston in 1960" and that it "was not a sound bite, but a symphony." Thomas Mann, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution called it "[a]n extraordinary speech — not because of any rhetorical flourishes, but because it was honest, frank, measured in tone, inclusive and hopeful." The International Herald Tribune quotes Paul Finkelman, a professor at Albany Law School: "This is not a reparations speech. This is a speech about saying it's time for the nation to do better, to form a more perfect union." And Margaret Carlson from Bloomberg recognized that Hillary Clinton declared that "'Words are cheap'...when she first realized that Senator Barack Obama's were anything but."

In fact, as of 2:38 p.m. on 3/20, I have only found two negative perspectives (I doubt I could ever find an neutral one). One of them is an op-ed piece by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, who is digging unreasonably deeply to manage his conservative attack angle, and the other is Focus on the Family.

Now, I admit that when titling this post my intention was to be provocative. I obviously think that Focus on the Family is completely in support of racial reconciliation. But yesterday's CitizenLink, FotF's political activist magazine, posted an equally incendiary title: Obama Embraces 21st Century Form of Socialism. In this article, Ken Blackwell (Family Research Council Action's senior fellow for Family Empowerment) offers not one positive word towards Obama's speech other than "eloquent." Instead, Mr. Blackwell's twisted Obama's message to be a radical acceptance of government intervention in private citizens' lives. He says, "Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country's economy the most prosperous in all of human history."

It is articles such as these which baffle and infuriate me the most. It represents everything I detest about modern Evangelical America. While Barack Obama uses his forum to address the insidious problem of racism--a wretched sin which has plagued the U.S. from its birth--Focus on the Family chooses to gloss over this wrong to highlight a theological and political disagreement. Thus causing the precise discord against which the speech warns.

Why can't the Evangelical Right lower their holy firearms for just a moment to acknowledge the deep truth and profound Gospel implications of such a message as this? Why cannot they put aside their pet peeves about the dangers of the effects of government welfare for a brief time and contemplate the necessity for healing a deep societal hurt and fear? How does excoriating a fellow Christian's imperfections do anything but damage the message and meaning of the words of Jesus Christ?

I am sad, I am frustrated and angry...and I acknowledge that I am hypocritically and unambiguously participating in exactly the same thing I condemn here. So. I suppose I should take 10 deep breaths and start loving those fellow believers, the speck in whose eye I am not fit to remove.

Responses to Critiques of the Emerging Church, Part II

This will be a quick one.

Some people complain that "churches these days" are "too focused on the bells and whistles" and "don't preach meat" anymore. (Say that in your best granny voice...it sounds better.)

It's true that there certainly is a lot more happening visually in new churches. Video has become a major element in Sunday services, and churches have found unique ways in incorporating creative media into their worship. The worry isn't that there's too much art--the worry is that the art is supplanting the doctrine.

Actually, I don't have much to say about this, because I don't really understand the complaint. It seems to me that all denominations have their shallow churches. It doesn't matter what kind of extracurricular stuff goes on.

Personally, I really like new ways of saying old ideas. Liturgy and video coincide quite nicely into my vision of a worship service.

Do you have a different perspective? What do you think about emergent worship-styles and the messages that come with them?

Responses to Critiques of the Emerging Church, Part I

Although I'm not in any kind of "inner circle"of the emergent movement, I feel compelled to give those who are a little shout-out, and respond to some of its criticisms from my own perspective. I think that I have a basis from which to speak because I have read many of Brian McLaren's books, as well as several speeches/articles from other leaders in the movement and talked with a few emergent leaders. If you happen to be from the emerging church movement and see that I don't know what I'm talking about, please let me know.

I've heard three main critiques about those churches which call themselves "emergent". One is that their "postmodern" viewpoint is philosophically and morally relativistic, and is not compatible with God as an Absolute Authority. A second criticism is that churches focus too much on the bells and whistles of services--videocasts, hip art displays, smooth music, cool pastors--to the detriment of the actual message, which becomes a shallow "Jesus loves you". Finally, all this postmodernism leads to some unorthodox, and in some cases heretical, theology.

First I'd like to point out that "emergent" or "the emerging church" is not a denomination. Every church is different, and every person has different ideas. "Emergent" is a term that was coined to describe a lot of similar ideas and attitudes that have been developing for a few years, and I kinda like it :). Simply put, the emerging church rejects a philosophically modernist approach to Christianity (a methodological, formulaic view which accepts facts as completely absolute and knowable) and instead views the Christian faith through a postmodern lens. Faith is often described as a "conversation" or a "journey"--something always to be relearned and renewed.

Postmodern relativism
I believe there are two types of philosophy--that which philosophy Ph.D.'s contemplate and generally remains in some kind of linguistic stratosphere, and a kind of folk philosophy, which us folks generally live by. I am not a philosopher and cannot debate the abstractest of postulates, but I can construct a worldview which I hope is both logical and coherent. Therefore when I use terms like "postmodern" and "relativism", I mean the people's general understanding of such terms.

John MacArthur is one person who comes to mind when I think of strong critics of the emerging church, and relativism seems to be his favorite subject. I have heard him speak very passionately about the dangers, evils, and inconsistencies of relativism, and have often been frustrated by what I see as a simplistic and incomplete understanding. Unfortunately I think this is a common understanding among conservative Evangelicals. The primary misconception is to assume that "relativism" means "nothing is True." That is indeed a complex philosophy to hold, and one that I think few people outside academia actually hold. At least, no one I know :).

I believe emerging church Christians definitely believe in the One True God who is absolutely and finally True. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "the rock bottom, irreducible Fact on which all other fact depend" [Mere Christianity, HarperCollins, 184). However, it is impossible for any of us to actually know that Fact or Truth completely, for two reasons. Firstly, the only way we could know It is for us to be equal to It, for us to be able to see to world as It sees us, and that is not the case. Secondly, and this is the more commonly referenced reason, we all have bias. All of us are shaped by our experiences, and our experiences are what we base our knowledge on.

Here is an illustration: A girl from Florida goes to visit a boy in Minnesota. When she gets there she says, "Wow, it is really cold outside!" The boy says, "No it's not, it's just right." Both of them are expressing the truth as it is relative to them. Naturally, that does not change the fact that it is 42 degrees F. 42 degrees is the objective, actual Truth. However, even knowledge of that Truth does not change the truth of each of their experiences. In order to know the Truth beyond their experience, they have to look at the thermometer, which would be analogous to the Bible. I think you would agree with me that the Bible is several times more complex than a thermometer, which is where interpretation comes in. I'll get to that in part III.

The same reasoning goes for "moral relativism." There is a universal law, which Jesus summed up very well in "Love God, love your neighbor." However, there is a lot of disagreement on what some of the rules to follow are and even more on how they should be implemented. Some things (like modesty, honor, and authority) are very different between cultures. Others (like the sanctity of life, sex, and personal property) are recognized almost across the board, but are treated differently, even within cultures and within Christianity itself.

What are the implications of a quasi-relativistic worldview such as this ? I believe it means you comes to Truth much more humbly. Knowledge does not completely go by the wayside; you still have all the cumulative experiences of your own life and the knowledge you've acquired from others. But you also know that there is always more to learn and experience. You will never stop on the journey growing ever closer to Truth. When someone is telling you something that you believe is wrong, instead of immediately rejecting his or her position, you carefully consider their perspective and really listen to what they have to say. Then you humbly embrace and lightly hold whatever conclusions to which you honestly come.

We will seek Truth all of our lives, but in the end it is not our knowledge, but our faith that saves us.

To be continued...

P.S.

I just wanted to make clear that what Spitzer did was not your run-of-the-mill sleaziness. He was a huge anti-prostitution zealot who was simultaneously violating his own code. It's hypocrisy and lies, and bad bad stuff.

Isn't it funny (meaning "weird") that the things people protest against most are the things they most frequently dabble in?

Spitzer, Schmitzer

Spitzer was caught making plans to visit a prostitute. And the media is freaking out!!!! I feel like the only one who is not surprised at the governor's faux pas. After all, he's a politician and a businessman. As far as I know, he's not practicing any kind of conservative religion. If he was anyone besides the governor of New York and people found out, it would be kind of sleazy, but nbd.

Of course, the real story is the fact that there is all kinds of hypocrisy going around. Spitz apparently was a big hooker-fighting kinda guy, and here he is patronizing the establishment himself. Journalists (many of whom are familiar with the business, I'm sure) are reporting on this like it's murder rather than a misdemeanor charge.

Is it bad? Sure, it's bad. It's bad for the persons involved as well as their families and society in general. (So you can see, I'm not pro-prostitution). But does a story like this deserve the panting, drooling reporters it gets? Doubtful. However, I am interested to see how long it will take for the book to come out, Uncovered: The Night I Almost Spent With Eliot Spitzer.