Knowing Right Where We Are

Published on June 14th, 2010.

Kristi and I are in Michigan for a visit with her family. We feel at home here. Kristi certainly does. In the basement is a room with pink carpet, according to her request in seventh grade – or mauve, to be precise. By now, the children feel at home, at least more than their first day of our visit.

For the first day, as long as Kristi and I were in range, Carson and Madalyn were fine. But panic struck when we put them down in the evening and left the room, much like panic struck when we would put them down on the nights following their homecoming from Ethiopia. These were not fussy cries, but cries of true sadness, even heartbreak. When their faces are soaked with tears, they aren’t just whining. They were in an unfamiliar place, they were in the dark and their parents just disappeared.

We like to be home. We like to be where we belong.

In his book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler explores “the rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape.” The introduction of the automobile and the rapid expansion of technology, have changed the way we work, the way we live, and the way we live, or don’t live, together. He writes, “The process of destruction that is the subject of this book is so poorly understood that there are few words even to describe it. Suburbia. Sprawl. Overdevelopment. Conurbation. Megalopolis…To me, it is a landscape of scary places, the geography of nowhere, that has simply ceased to be a credible human habitat. This book is an attempt to discover how and why it happened, and what we might do about it.”

Interesting. It’s not just for efficiency that homes are not built with little kitchens in each bedroom. Some space is meant to be shared. We like being together. Early American towns were built with people and community in view, and not just the sale and distribution of property. Kunstler provides a fascinating historical summary of how towns, in different places across time, have been built and the meaning of those spaces for the community.

I will enjoy learning about “the rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape,” but not because I am terribly concerned to do something about it, or fuss too much that it is what it is. Rather, Kunstler’s project is sure to reveal something true about what it means to be a human being. In what frustration he finds in the present situation, the Christian can look to Christ, his church the new creation for a resolution, whether Kunstler points us there or not.

They say that a good way to get the gist of a book is to read the conclusion first. Well, for Kunstler’s book I went right to the last paragraph, and there I found a gem.

All of that is a long introduction for Kunstler’s last paragraph, which is exactly the nugget that I hoped to find:

There is a reason that human beings long for a sense of permanence. This longing is not limited to children, for it touches the profoundest aspects of our existence: that life is short, fraught with uncertainty, and sometimes tragic. We know not where we come from, still less where we are going, and to keep from going crazy while we are here, we want to feel that we truly belong to a specific part of the world (275).

Life is short, it is fraught with uncertainty, it is often tragic. I’m grateful to God that, through his word, we can know where we come from, and that through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can know where we are going, and because we belong to God’s people, the church, we don’t have to go crazy while we are here. In the church, which is an outpost of the new creation in this world, we know exactly where we are, even if we do live in a geography of nowhere.

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A City of 420,000 People and No Families

Published on May 28th, 2010.

At an individual and societal level, we can make something like work, for example, and its monetary and material rewards the only things that matter. It’s what we do as as sinners, as idolaters. In a fallen world, there will be places where a good thing like work becomes the only thing to the exclusion of something like, for example, the family.

In China, that’s actually going on. This week, TIME published an article about a series of suicides at Foxconn factory, the place that makes all of our iPods and other gadgetry.

Here are some excerpts from the article. Be sure to read the last paragraph.

The massive Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is known for assembling famous electronic goods like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. But in recent months it has gained a darker image, as a place where distraught workers regularly throw themselves to their deaths. The latest fatality came on Tuesday morning, when a 19-year-old employee died in a fall in the company’s Shenzhen compound, according to the state-run Xinhua news service. He was the ninth worker this year to have died in a fall from factory buildings on Foxconn’s properties in Shenzhen; two have survived suicide attempts, according to state-media reports. Another teenager, who the company revealed this month died after jumping from a company building in Hebei province in January, brings the total employee death toll from falls to 10 this year.

…Like Sun, the Foxconn workers who died this year have all been young, ranging in age from 18 to 24. The cases all differ, but there are common themes. “They feel a sense of pressure — pressure to make more money, pressure to work harder, pressure from family or difficulties in personal relationships,” says Geoffrey Crothall, an editor for the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong–based workers rights’ group. Experts say suicides can happen in clusters, with people in a group influenced by earlier incidents.

The dead have all been migrant workers, and for many Foxconn was their first job. The company pays most of its assembly-line workers in Shenzhen the city’s minimum wage of $130 a month, and many work significant overtime hours in order to maximize their incomes. “The work [at Foxconn] is long, monotonous and boring,” says Liu Kaiming, a labor researcher and executive director of the Shenzhen-based Institute of Contemporary Observation. “The speed is very fast and you can’t slow down, for 10 hours a day at the minimum. You can see how someone could easily become numb and turn into a machine.”

After hours, many workers live in on-site dormitories, where heavy staff turnover makes long-lasting personal connections impossible. That combination — long workdays and a minimal social safety net — leaves vulnerable young workers with few places to turn, says Liu. “Foxconn has 420,000 people; in the U.S. that would be a big city. Even in China that would be a big city, but it’s a city without any families. Everyone is working. They live in a dormitory for seven months and don’t know their own roommates’ names.”

Foxconn says it has provided social options like libraries and sports for its workers, and recently has prevented many more attempted suicides. But labor activists argue it needs to make more fundamental changes, like paying higher wages so that workers don’t feel forced to work so many overtime hours.

In mid-May the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend ran a story by a young reporter who spent a month working undercover at the factory. Liu Zhiyi wrote that the workers all dreamed of wealth, but felt that they had few opportunities outside the company. The workplace wasn’t a sweatshop, Liu wrote, but the assembly-line work slowly dehumanized the employees. “It seems as if while they operate the machines, the machines also operate them,” the story said. “Parts flow by, and their youth is worn down to the rhythm of the machines.”

Click here for the entire article.

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The Internet is Not Jesus

Published on April 29th, 2010.

New mediums of communication may transform daily life, but they cannot transform life. They promise only to mediate, albeit in new and exciting ways, the same old good and evil that make up every human being.

An article published in the recent edition of Foreign Policy titled, Think Again: The Internet, explores how the internet changed our lives but failed to change us. No surprise.

In the days when the Internet was young, our hopes were high. As with any budding love affair, we wanted to believe our newfound object of fascination could change the world. The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global village. Writing in 1994, a group of digital aficionados led by Esther Dyson and Alvin Toffler published a manifesto modestly subtitled “A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age” that promised the rise of  “‘electronic neighborhoods’ bound together not by geography but by shared interests.” Nicholas Negroponte, then the famed head of the MIT MediaLab, dramaticallypredicted in 1997 that the Internet would shatter borders between nations and usher in a new era of world peace.

Well, the Internet as we know it has now been around for two decades, and it has certainly been transformative. The amount of goods and services available online is staggering. Communicating across borders is simpler than ever: Hefty international phone bills have been replaced by inexpensive subscriptions to Skype, while Google Translate helps readers navigate Web pages in Spanish, Mandarin, Maltese, and more than 40 other languages. But just as earlier generations were disappointed to see that neither the telegraph nor the radio delivered on the world-changing promises made by their most ardent cheerleaders, we haven’t seen an Internet-powered rise in global peace, love, and liberty.

And we’re not likely to. Many of the transnational networks fostered by the Internet arguably worsen — rather than improve — the world as we know it.

Read the rest of the article here.

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Does he really make even death come untrue?

Published on April 5th, 2010.

Praise be to God for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The answer is, Yes!

HT: Timmy Brister

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Intellectuals and Adam’s Helpless Race

Published on April 4th, 2010.

The story of human history shows the human race to be both self preserving and self destructive, self denying and self exalting. The Christian understands this story to reflect the working out of both the image of God in mankind and our fallen state as sinners.

In his book, Intellectuals, Paul Johnson teaches us about human nature when he teaches us about some of the worlds most influential public leaders, including Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoy, and Chomsky, among others. In this New York Times Bestseller from 1988, Johnson pulls back the curtain on the lives of a dozen such leaders, whom he calls, “Intellectuals.”

The first three paragraphs introduce Johnson’s intriguing project:

Over the past two hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Indeed, the rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in shaping the modern world. Seen against the long perspective of history it is in many ways a new phenomenon. It is true that in their earlier incarnations as priests, scribes and soothsayers, intellectuals have laid claim to guide society from the very beginning. But as guardians of hieratic cultures, whether primitive or sophisticated, their moral and ideological innovations were limited by the canons of external authority and by the inheritance of tradition. They were not, and could not be, free spirits, adventurers of the mind.

With the decline of clerical power in the eighteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be a deist, sceptic or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs. He proclaimed, from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. He brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach than his clerical predecessors. He felt himself bound by no corpus of revealed religion. The collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience existed to be selectively followed or wholly rejected entirely as his own good sense might decide. For the first time in human history, and with growing confidence and audacity, men arise to assert that they could diagnose the ills of society and cure them with their own unaided intellects: more, that they could devise formulae whereby not merely the structure of society but the fundamental habits of human beings could be transformed for the better.

One of the most marked characteristics of the new secular intellectuals was the relish with which they subjected religion and its protagonists to critical scrutiny. How far had they benefited or harmed humanity, these great systems of faith? To what extent had these popes and pastors lived up to their precepts, of purity and truthfulness, of charity and benevolence? The verdicts pronounced on both churches and clergy were harsh. Now, after two centuries during which the influence of religion has continued to decline, and secular intellectuals have played an ever growing role in shaping our attitudes and institutions, it is time to examinetheir record, both public and personal. In particular, I want to focus on the moral and judgmental credentials of intellectuals to tell mankind how to conduct itself. How did they run their own lives? With what degree of rectitude did they behave to family, friends and associates? Were they just in their sexual and financial dealings? Did they tell, and write, the truth? And how have their own systems stood up to the test of time and praxis?

Christians can, do and will live in every kind of political context and under every kind of political leader, some are better than others. Some are safer than others. Johnson’s book helps us understand something of what makes the difference. For the Christian, we can appreciate the connection Johnson makes between the autonomy of a figure, the trouble of their ideas and the tragedy of their leadership.

Thankfully, there is a good leader out there– a second Adam has come to help his helpless race. Intellectual or not, the gospel is understandable and available to the simple minded and the smart alike. What is required is only that we repent of self autonomy and submit ourselves to the authority of Christ. Johnson’s book tells the story of what happens when those in power won’t.

Looking forward to this book.

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Auschwitz and A Hatain Earthquake

Published on February 3rd, 2010.

Sixtyfive years ago last week, Auschwitz was liberated from the Nazis. At the New York Times, Samuel Pisar relates his experience as a concentration camp survivor.

Today, the last living survivors of the Holocaust are disappearing one by one. Soon, history will speak about Auschwitz with the impersonal voice of researchers and novelists at best, and at worst in the malevolent register of revisionists and falsifiers who call the Nazi Final Solution a myth. This process has already begun.

And it is why those of us who survived have a duty to transmit to humankind the memory of what we endured in body and soul, to tell our children that the fanaticism and violence that nearly destroyed our universe have the power to enflame theirs, too. The fury of the Haitian earthquake, which has taken more than 200,000 lives, teaches us how cruel nature can be to man. The Holocaust, which destroyed a people, teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason.

It was not that a select group of people who had a capacity for genocide just happened to end up in the same place at the same time. This is what all humans are capable of. Pisar knows the human heart’s murderous capacity from experience. Read the rest of his story here.

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Lord of the Rings & the Truth about Ourselves, our World and Redemption

Published on January 4th, 2010.

For each of the first three years of our marriage, Kristi and I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy. One year I believe we watched them straight through on a Sunday afternoon into the evening. After a three year break, we just completed our fourth viewing of this great story. This year, we had to break the first DVD up into two days. Showing our age?

An investment of nine hours in this decade’s most glorious film achievement is worth some reflection.

A truly great film that resonates with a wide audience and stands the test of time does so for a reason. Truly great stories speak to us in our situation as human beings, as those who live in a fallen world and as those who need a redeemer. Lord of the Rings does this.

Lord of the Rings is a story about us, as we are. We are capable of great good. We are capable of great evil. We are hungry for power, and at our worst we will trade any good to make it ours. I am always struck by how much of myself I find strewn about the film. Boromir’s lust for power, Theoden’s stubbornness, Faramir’s insecurity, Madril’s relationship destroying myopia. And though Gollum wasn’t of the race of men, his conflicted allegiances picture our own inner conflict with sin. Of course, our flaws are the easiest to see and they are cause for the most profitable reflection. Prideful as we are, there isn’t much use in looking for ourselves in the film’s heroes, though there are flickers of each of them in all of us.

Lord of the Rings also tells us a story about the world, as it is. There is no such place in the world as Middle Earth. There is no such place as Rohan. There are no Hobbits. There are no Elves. But there is a such thing here as good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly. The postmodern stories of our day love to confuse these lines. Good, after all, isn’t always truly and completely good. And bad usually has a story to tell about how it got that way.  If we are passive in our reading of many modern stories we can find ourselves justifying murder, infidelity and all manner of evil. But, like the world of Middle Earth, this world is under a grey curtain of rain. It is broken. The headlines on any given day speak to this. War. Murder. Pain. It’s everywhere and everyone is looking for a way out.

It’s not an altogether terrible thing for us to recognize that no one is all bad or all good. And it is true that most of the trouble in this world is more dynamic than a black and white telling of the story can do justice. But here, Lord of the Rings commits us to the good guys without glorifying them. And the Biblical story does the same. We can affirm human goodness and say that men are flawed in every way. We can affirm human sinfulness and the just wrath of God against that sin, and still have hope. The race of men and this race of men needs a redeemer, a savior, a ruler.

Finally, The Lord of the Rings tells a story about redemption, as it is. If we look for hard parallels between the redemptive themes in Lord of the Rings and the Biblical story of redemption in Christ, we will be frustrated. Some might think that the lack of a one to one correspondence between Christ and Frodo, for example, means that it is a mistake to make any connection at all. But there is no problem here. Lord the Rings doesn’t claim to be a telling of the gospel story. But we do see particular redemptive themes strung throughout the story.

The people of Middle Earth needed Frodo, a substitute to carry the burden of evil that they could not, and destroy that evil.  The people of Middle Earth needed Gandolf, a resurrected Lord, who defeats all his enemies according to his promises. And the people of Middle Earth need a returning king like Aragorn who will rule them, reign over them, and restore their fortunes.

Each of these victors get at something of what role Christ plays in God’s story of redemption revealed in Scripture. Christ is our Suffering Servant, he is our Resurrected Lord and he is our Returning King.

As the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are that community of people who recognize this Christ, who accept his substitutionary death for sin in our place, who trust his resurrection for the defeat of the enemy of death, and who submit happily and humbly to his righteous rule. Here, among these people, it is to be on earth as it is in heaven. So it is our prayer as the people of God. One day our King’s rule will be consummated, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There are other marvelous take aways. I appreciate the richness of male friendship that colors numerous relationships in the story. Genuine expressions of male partnership, camaraderie and even affection are natural and meaningful. With the changing landscape of sexual morality in our day, like gender relationships will grow increasingly complicated.

I also appreciate the unapologetic and pronounced distinctions of gender. Women are strong, but in a way that complements their femininity. They are beautiful and gentle. They are resourceful and supportive. Men are sensitive, but in a way that complements their masculinity. They are leaders and protectors. They are serious and valiant.

Finally, it’s just a good story told well. Jackson mastered his medium and we are all grateful for this work of art.

If it’s been over a year, watch it again. That’s a good way to spend the time that has been given to you.

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A Parable of Image Bearing in a Drunken 4 Year Old

Published on December 19th, 2009.

An Associated Press story from yesterday will not leave my mind.

Tennessee Tot Found Drunk, Wearing Dress.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (Dec. 17) — Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl’s dress taken from under a neighbor’s Christmas tree.

The child’s mother, 21-year-old April Wright, tells WTVC-TV the boy “wants to go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.” Wright says she and the boy’s father are going though a divorce.

The boy, found outside his house in Chatanooga on Tuesday, was taken to a hospital and treated for alcohol consumption.

Sons image their fathers. They were born to do so. The natural impulse of sons to bear the image of their fathers heightens the seriousness and responsibility of fatherhood. Some of how we turn out is wiring. Much of how we turn out can be understood as the organic transmission of character and qualities from our parents. Adam was made in the image of God and so are we all (Gen. 1:27; 9:6). But Adam’s son Seth was also born in the image of his father, Adam (Gen. 5:3). And so we all are born in the image of our fathers.

But ours is a strange and a fallen world. Adam fell into sin, and that’s why we read a story like this today. It’s why this boy’s father is in prison. It’s why this boy’s mother and father are going through a divorce. It’s why this mother will raise this child alone. It’s why in doing what is quite natural – trying to be like daddy – this boy was found drunk in a dress in the street in the night.

Many children in similarly difficult family situations don’t end up where he did, when he did, doing what he was doing. But that doesn’t mean the fall out from absent fathers isn’t equally as tragic and destructive wherever else they aren’t found.

And so when we read an article like this, we should pray. We should pray for this four year old and his mother, and countless others wandering in the dark in a drunken stupor – actually or metaphorically – searching for the the presence and love of a father in a fallen world. That longing is, after all, where all of our longings and strange behaviors point. May they come to know their Heavenly Father so that they may say, with the Apostle Paul, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49).

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In California, “Huge Consumer Demand” for Chihuahuas

Published on December 11th, 2009.

That’s right.

Hollywood reflects culture. That’s true. But Hollywood certainly does influence culture.

One revealing, though not so alarming, example is a new demand for Chihuahuas in the state of California. However morally insignificant the consequences, they are interesting.

The Associated Press reports,

California has more Chihuahuas than it can handle, and it has Hollywood to blame.

There are so many Chihuahuas at shelters in Oakland, they have started shipping the dogs out of state, said Megan Webb, director of Oakland Animal Services. They have sent about 100 to Washington, Oregon and Arizona, she said, “and as soon as they get them, they are ready for new ones.”

Chihuahuas make up 30 percent or more of the dog populations at many California shelters. And experts say pop culture is to blame, with fans immitating Chihuahua-toting celebrities like Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus, then abandoning the dogs.

The problem appears to be specific to California — shelters elsewhere would love to share the wealth, said Gail Buchwald, senior vice president overseeing the ASPCA adoption center in New York City.

“We never have enough supply for the huge consumer demand for small dogs,” she said.

One of Webb’s biggest problems is a lack of money to fly the dogs to other states. Buchwald said she would be happy to help.

“Nothing is outside the realm of possibility here. We have a supply-demand isssue,” she said.

Chihuahuas are the most popular breed of dog in Los Angeles, so it makes sense it is the most abandoned breed, said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles. In Oakland, some days, they get 10 of the 5-pound dogs a day, Webb said.

The problem is so bad that shelters all over California that were built for big dogs had to remodel to accommodate the little guys.

Speaking of idols, the Psalmist writes that “Those who make them become like them” (Psalm 115:4-8). The “huge consumer demand for small dogs” reminds us that our wants and tastes and desires are directed by what we worship, in deed dictated by the objects of our admiration and love. We make idols, and then we become like them.

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Study on the Effects of Pornography

Published on December 10th, 2009.

The following is the executive summary an excellent study on The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community. I suggest reading the whole thing. Reality confirms revelation.

Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual’s concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability.

Social scientists, clinical psychologists, and biologists have begun to clarify some of the social and psychological effects, and neurologists are beginning to delineate the biological mechanisms through which pornography produces its powerful negative effects.

KEY FINDINGS ON THE EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY
THE FAMILY AND PORNOGRAPHY

• Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.
• Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.
• Among couples affected by one spouse’s addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse.
• Both spouses perceive pornography viewing as tantamount to infidelity.
• Pornography viewing leads to a loss of interest in good family relations.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND PORNOGRAPHY

• Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.
• Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornorgraphy they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography.
• Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity.
• Prolonged consumption of pornography by men produces stronger notions of women as commodities or as “sex objects.”
• Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities.
• Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution.

HT: Ed Stetzer

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