Social Insecurity

Years of observation have convinced me that every government-run social program is fundamentally flawed. Any time you forcibly require people to contribute to a cause, no matter how well intentioned, you undercut God's design. We are all created with an abundance of compassion. However, exercising it requires free will. Conscription suppresses the joy that would otherwise result from doing what God created us to do. Jesus, when asked about the greatest commandment, said this:

 “... you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  - Mark 12:29-31

 When I discuss this with people, I'm usually asked, "but what about those who don't believe in God?" or something similar.  My reply is that rejection of God is a fatal error from which there is no recovery, other than to come to saving faith in Christ. People who willfully reject God and thereby reject His perfect design for social behavior are condemning themselves to accept a poor substitute. The best they can hope for is a pitiful attempt to patch over the most obvious problems, that will ultimately fail. Our government agencies react like a kid playing gopher at an arcade. Every time a problem pops up they whack it with a hammer, but there is no end of problems, and eventually the time and money run out.


 

Eternity - a working definition

For a while I've been contemplating doing a public service by explaining the meaning of "eternity," as in dwelling with God for eternity in heaven. Then I realized I already did that years ago. So, it will save a lot of time to just repost that blog from February 2006.

 I began by contemplating the issue of blaming God for bad things happening to “good” people. The correct response to bad events is to run to God as a refuge in a storm, but we so often blame Him instead. A picture- a little boy is playing in the yard. His mother is watching from the porch. She sees a storm cloud on the horizon. She calls him to come in, but he ignores and continues to play. When the storm draws near, a lightning bolt flashes and thunder booms. The boy, afraid, runs to his mother and clings to her. We should be like that with God. But then the analogy leads to a question. The mother is not in control of the storm, but doesn’t God control everything? If my loved one is killed in a car wreck, couldn’t God have prevented it? Common responses include “God allows hardship in our lives to help us grow,” “this terrible thing happened to spare the victim from something even more terrible,” and “Satan is out to destroy all that God created.” The latter is the focus of my train of thought. Indeed the scripture says that Satan is “a roaring lion, roaming to and fro, devouring whom he will.” So how does he do it? He uses time, I believe. God created time, along with everything else in the natural world. “In the beginning… night and day…and He pronounced it good. “ So time was inherently good, since it was created by God. At some point, though, Satan perverted it to evil. Witness all the injunctions in scripture to look beyond the temporal. “Pray continually..,” Focus on God (eternal) rather than the present. In all situations, be satisfied. Keep your eyes upon God, and all these things will be added.. Prophecy is an illustration of how the Holy Spirit exists outside the framework of time. Without beginning…without end. So how did Satan pervert time? More fundamentally, where did evil come from? The Bible says that Lucifer and a third of the angels in heaven (beings created by God) rebelled and were cast into hell. How could the creation of a holy and essentially good God think to do this? God must have chosen to allow the possibility. The very fact that He took the time to pronounce most of his original creation “good” (Genesis) indicates that He was fully aware that there was such a thing as “bad” even at that “time.” [Hard to avoid using that word!] By so allowing, the act of worship on the part of the angels and man is rendered meaningful. Otherwise it would be a robotic gesture, devoid of sincerity. If a being has no choice but to praise the Creator, of what value is the act? When He allowed the possibility of rebellion to exist, He knew that some would employ it, and He created a way to deal with it – hell. So, returning to the question of how Satan perverts time, consider this picture. A town is built on a seismic fault. In the town there is an important footpath that connects two principal areas. An earthquake occurs and creates a wide rift, splitting the town and the footpath in two. A construction worker who was fired long ago by the town council and harbors simmering hatred builds a thin bridge across the rift re-connecting the path in a seemingly generous gesture. The town tries to continue life as normal. However, the bridge is so narrow that people are constantly losing their footing and falling off the bridge into the chasm below, much to the delight of the evil bridge-builder. Only by walking carefully down the center and keeping their eyes on the point where the bridge meets land can anyone successfully cross. The original path was time as God intended – a safe passage between birth and death, surrounded everywhere by eternity (immersed in creation). The (intentionally) poorly built bridge is time as Satan has perverted it, surrounded all around by certain destruction – the chasm which Satan also caused in his struggle to destroy and pervert God’s creation. God’s victory is already determined, but by keeping us focused on the temporal – taking our eyes off the Lord as we walk, Satan can cause us to stumble and go down to destruction. However, by keeping an eternal perspective we can walk in confidence.

This led me to think about the meaning of “eternal.” The most common idea of this is “infinite days.” This is another of Satan’s perversions. After all, we all know nice people, even loved ones, who died without knowing Christ. Can we really believe that as we go about our daily lives, they are being tormented in hell, day after day, and that it will never cease? There is a ratio problem here. According to this, most people who ever lived or will live are being punished horribly for an infinite number of days for sins they committed during a finite lifespan, even if they were very good in an earthly sense, and died without Christ because no one told them the Gospel. Sorry – does not compute. This alone will turn most reasonable people away from the Christian faith, especially if it is used as a scare tactic. The counterpoint does not fare any better. Tell a teenager who can barely contemplate surviving a one hour church service each week, “you need Christ because then when you die you get to go to heaven and praise the Lord for eternity.” He thinks of singing hymns every hour of every day, day after day, without end, and he runs screaming the other way. So what is eternity? Most people have had the experience of being so intensely involved in something they love doing that “time just slips away.” People talk about how “time stopped” because they were so engrossed. I think this must be what it’s like in heaven. Not that we think about what tomorrow, or the next hour, or the next minute will bring. But just being here “now,” and loving it so much that nothing else matters. How else can we explain that some of our loved ones will not be there, yet there will be no tears. It won’t matter. The time-less experience will be so enthralling that we can’t think of what we are missing. Yet it won’t be the same constant activity. On earth, time and change are inextricably linked. It’s time to do this, time to do that, … In heaven our activities will change, but not because time is flowing. One friend recently told me about worshiping in a church where the worship service was not run by the clock, and how much more meaningful it was compared with a regimented traditional service. Similarly, in hell the devastation of realizing one is separated from God is static and permanent, though not infinitely repeated.

 Some might say that Christians are just people who haven’t had enough trouble in their lives to be angry with God. On the contrary, most Christians I know have had far more than their share of trouble. That’s because Christians are specially targeted by Satan. Why should he bother with the unsaved? He’s already got them in his snare. All he needs to do is maintain a low profile and see to it that they disregard him as a child’s foolish construct, or consider him amusing, like a trick-or-treater dressed up with a pitchfork and a tail. Anyone who sees him for what he is will run frantically to God for protection. Therefore he preferentially attacks and devours those who are running to God, or stymies the witness of those already in God’s protecting arms. Time (perverted) is a tool Satan uses in this way. Most people get into trouble in life when time owns them, rather than them controlling it. It seems unfair to them that God would give them a finite amount of time, and not bother to tell them how much they have. So they spend their lives (time) trying to figure out how to accumulate as much as possible in the shortest time. In the business world, “time is money.” In the academic world, a certain amount of publication and research funding is expected per unit time. We agonize about not having achieved measure X in time Y. The cure is to follow the scriptural admonition to focus on what is eternal and pray continually. How can we do this? Our very lives ought to be lived as a constant, ongoing (time-less) prayer to the Lord. God desires us to rest and dwell in Him, and, if we have strayed, to run to Him in times of distress. When storms come, we must remember that whether God created the storm to drive us into His arms, or whether it is Satan’s doing, the response should be the same – run to the Lord.

College, Smollege (How to Save $$$$)

I'm trying to find a bright spot here. Over and over and over I ask former students how they employ the wonderful knowledge they accumulated in college, and invariably the answer is "not at all."

These are students for whom $50,000 or more of public and private money was spent, and they are telling me that it was a waste. Can this really be true? Well, perhaps not entirely. There are the intangibles: meeting people, learning some time management, figuring out how to pretend to be grown up. But there are other ways to get those things.

The reason most people give for going to college is that it is the only way to qualify for a decent job. So, it comes down to a piece of paper - the diploma. OK - thought experiment. If you pay $50,000 for a well-equipped Chevy Tahoe, at least you get something very tangible that you can use immediately and continue using for the next five to ten years. When you spend the same money for a college diploma, you have no real guarantee of anything except that you are enabled to seek a job from the small subset of companies that actually hire college graduates right out of college. Perhaps you have co-op'ed, which, in some fields, such as engineering, gives you a much better chance of landing a good job. Many employers tell me (a) they don't hire students who didn't co-op, and (b) they care much more about the co-op supervisor's report than about the student's grades. Hmmm. Bells ringing. How about skipping the "don't care" part and get right to the useful part. There is a term for this - "apprenticeship." It used to be quite popular in all walks of life, and still is the norm in noble and well-paid professions such as plumbing, electrical work, and similar trades. In most professional disciplines, this is practiced as well - medicine, nursing, pharmacy for example. In those arenas, the classes tend to be focused on things one really needs to know to be successful and/or to avoid killing people. This is not a "university education" in the classical sense. It is really a glorified vocational education.

Sadly, the most enthusiastic students in most colleges are the youngest ones. I would love to see seniors who are full of excitement and enthusiasm, ready to harness their hard-earned knowledge; brimming with ideas - sorry to leave the university, but glad to be moving on. Instead, I see mainly burned-out shells of the excited freshman that came in four-ish years ago. They have learned how to take shortcuts, cheat, cut classes, copy homework. They have figured out, in short, how to play the system to get the diploma and the grades with the least amount of work.

I have generally seen little relationship between grade point average and qualities of people I would be inclined to hire if I were running a company or a not-for-profit. Some of the high-GPA students are certainly excellent, but so are quite a few of the low-GPA students. A lot of the high-GPA students I wouldn't want anywhere near my lab, and I don't believe they could produce a practical system if it jumped up and built itself and stood in front of them and said "here I am."

The pickle we are in is a direct result of the GI Bill that Congress enacted (with good intent) to handle the huge inrush of servicemen coming home after WWII ended. The problem was that there were not enough jobs for these returning GI's. Congress' solution was to give them free or greatly reduced cost college tuition so that they could go to college while the economy adjusted. The problem is that the economy did adjust, but not in the intended way. Universities saw the GI Bill as manna from heaven. Their enrollments surged, and the tab was being picked up by the U.S. Government. Accountability and standards naturally declined, and enrollments surged even further. Quickly, the college diploma replaced the high-school diploma as the "must-have" ticket to employment.

That's pretty much where we are now, except that costs have increased so much that families are burdened with heavy debt, as are graduating students, just to earn that precious piece of paper.

As I said, I'm looking for a bright spot. I think I've seen a glimmer of it just around the corner. Online education is starting to get respectable, and more employers are begining to take note. Traditional universities are developing strategies for online delivery that still involves face-to-face meetings with teachers, lab exercises, paper tests, and much of the look and feel of a traditional classroom experience. I have a feeling that market pressure will continue to encourage this. Yes, there is something "special" about going off to college, but if we are honest, it has very little to do with learning. My recommendation (maybe 10 years from now) - get a degree online, and meanwhile, go to a third-world country and help people, join an adventure club, volunteer, read, learn a musical instrument, and fall in love.

Memorial for Butterscotch

I know rabbits are low on the food chain, but they can make wonderful pets. Ours died yesterday, and I miss him. He had a beautiful coat of fur – mostly white, with brown and black patches. We named him Butterscotch. He was very clean and used a litter box even though he lived outdoors in a hutch, so I knew something was wrong when I saw he was matted with excrement. I realized he had diarrhea. If I had known how critical his illness was, I would have rushed him to the animal hospital, but in my ignorance I cleaned him up and assumed he would get better. That was Saturday. Monday morning he was lying in his cage in his usual posture, eyes wide open, seeming to watch me come up to the cage, but he was lifeless.

We got him shortly after Easter of 2009. Sara’s school friend got one, and she wanted one too. Tom Wadsworth gave us a hutch. To this day I’m not sure how he knew we needed one, but it was a great blessing.

I worried and fretted about everything to make Butterscotch comfortable. I fenced off a little area of the lawn for him to play in – his “playpen”, and when he was small we kept a keen watch out for hawks. He would come in the house often and he loved to walk around and smell everything. He didn’t mind the dog and cat a bit. Sometimes he would lie in my lap for 30 minutes or more and just snuggle. His coat was the softest thing I’ve ever felt, and he liked to push his nose down into the crook of my elbow.

Tammy’s Dad, Mike, taught us that rabbits love to have you run your fingers down their spine. When I did that to Butterscotch he would spread out his legs and flatten himself against the ground in obvious pleasure. Sometimes he would get so caught up in it he would flip right over on his side. We could also get him to turn around in circles by putting a finger next to his nose and drawing a circle on the ground with it.

Several times, at Sara’s insistence, we put a small collar on him and tried to walk him around the yard. He always seemed to hate it- he would desperately try to pull toward the bushes at the edge of the yard. One day it suddenly dawned on me that being out in the open was probably against all of a rabbit’s instincts. No wonder he was upset. We didn’t do that anymore.

He had a few toys, but none that he played with too much. However, if you held out a stick toward him, he would grab the free end and tug on it. He was really strong and he could usually get it away from you. If you held a stick vertically, he would gnaw on it. He could make short work out of anything wood with his sharp front teeth.
Through the winter, which happened to be quite cold here this year, I insisted on putting him in our garden shed to protect him from the wind. The shed has two large windows, and I put in lights. He wintered well there, but many mornings I had to thaw his water bottle. I wanted to put in a heater, but Mike assured me that rabbits are well protected against the cold by their fur, and as long as they are out of the wind they can tolerate temperatures well below zero.

In the spring, he had grown enough that I wanted to get him a bigger hutch. I mentioned this to several people. Cliff Knight at church heard about it and gave us one that he had. Butterscotch moved up to the big time! I built him a weather box; an almost fully enclosed wooden box that fit inside the hutch where he could go to keep out of the rain and wind.

Around March, when he turned a year old, he began to dig a burrow in his playpen area of the yard. This caught me off guard. At first I assumed he was trying to dig out under the low fence I had erected. But instead, he was digging from the edge in toward the center. He was very precise in his routine, and very remarkable in his accomplishment. He used his forepaws to dig, then his teeth to remove rocks and roots. After a few minutes of digging he would turn around and push the loose material with his forelegs into a mound near the entrance to the burrow. Within a few days, working about 10 minutes each day, he dug a foot deep and far enough underground so I could no longer see him when he went in. Sometimes to get him out I would gently prod with a stick and he would scramble backwards out of the burrow in an obvious huff. He had a number of different sounds, none of them loud, but very distinct. He had no trouble expressing himself. Sometimes I would tease him by putting a stick across the entrance to his burrow. That would make him mad – he would grab it in his mouth and flip it away with a toss of his head. Then he would chirp angrily.

Mostly, I just enjoyed his rather silent company. When anyone came outside to play or work, he would observe from his hutch with calm interest. You never had the sense that he wanted to come out and join; he just liked that there was activity around. When I mowed the grass, I would make sure to give him a handful of the clippings, much to his great delight.

When I think of all the time and energy we invested into this one lowly creature some might say it wasn’t worth it, but I disagree. We had a wonderful bunny for a year and a half. We loved him the best we could, and he loved us back; of that I’m sure. We will miss you Butterscotch!

A Mad Dash to Manhattan

We recently made a trip to meet with family in Pennsylvania, and were honored to be invited to stay with my niece Rebekkah and her family (son Shannon, husband Ben, Griffin the BIG sweet dog who thinks he should be a lapdog but can't quite fit anymore, and a furtive cat whom I promise I will get to know better next time) nearby in New Jersey. On Sunday morning an errant neuron in my brain spawned a nutty idea: maybe we could go into New York City for the day; just maybe. It was still about 6:00 a.m., but as I stumbled to the coffee pot I mentioned this to Ben, for whom all things are "no problem." About 10 minutes later, with input from Ben and Rebekkah, I had a detailed description of an itinerary that was not just do-able, but actually sounded fun. Now I just needed an accomplice. I cajoled my sister Meredith, who, up to that moment, was envisioning a relaxing day reading and napping. With only that much preparation, I finally lit the fuse. Tammy - how would you and Sara like to go to New York today? (She had never been, but always dreamed of it.) I can't even try to describe the flurry of activity that ensued, but a short while later we were buzzing along I-76 toward Newark Penn Station with the Tom-Tom cranking out instructions by the second. Once there we parked at the first parking lot we encountered and walked across the street into the train station. I've always loved trains & train stations - I think it's in my blood. My Father's father was a Pennsylvania Railroad man. For $10 per person (Sara was free) we got round trip tickets to New York Penn Station. (My sister Laurie is right - consider the plight of the hapless foreigner who has to distinguish between New York Penn Station and Newark Penn Station as they are announced on the nearly unintelligible PA system!). The train was amazingly comfortable, especially if you are used to sitting on airplanes. On this one, you entered the car and then could choose to go upstairs or downstairs. We went upstairs, seated ourselves very easily, and soon the train started, almost noiselessly. As we rode across the New Jersey marshlands the view was hyper-industrial. Lots of electrical distribution, chemical storage, warehouses. Very sci-fi and grungy, but with a beauty all its own. Then the train slowed as it came to a slight rise, and suddenly all of Manhattan was visible across the Hudson River. Wow! The train proceeded, but more slowly. Then we began descending, and suddenly we were in the tunnel that would take us under the Hudson and beneath the streets of Manhattan, until we stopped at Penn Station, NY, directly under Madison Square Garden. Total train time- about 15 minutes. When we got off the train, we followed the signs to street level and were greeted by the most fantastic urban view anywhere. I snapped a photo of Tammy with Macy's in the background (how appropriate :)), and then after doing the newbie tourist 360, we hailed a cab for our first stop - MOMA. MOMA is the self-said acronym for the Museum of Modern Art. The cab ride was fast and glorious. I paid the fare (about $11 for the 4 of us) with a credit card since there was a swiper in the back seat, but I gave the driver his tip in cash, which he greatly appreciated. Once inside MOMA, Meredith had the presence of mind to ask the cashier, um, you don't actually have Egyptian artifacts, do you? The answer of course was "no - that's not exactly modern art." That's when I realized Rebekkah had named our first stop as The Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the similarity? They both have M's and A's. I make silly goofs like that all the time. Another quick cab ride, and we were at the "Met", which really does have Pharaohs and Mummies and such. Also, Monet's, Rembrandts, and various Italians. The Met is REALLY big. You can get REALLY tired going from one end to the other and from floor to floor. But it is unimaginably wonderful, and glorious, and, well, pick your favorite superlative - it fits. Hungry now, we all got hotdogs from a street vendor in front of the museum (5th Ave.), and headed for our 2nd stop - the Plaza Hotel (made famous by "Eloise at the Plaza). We walked south along 5th Avenue from the front of the Metropolitan Museum to the Plaza Hotel, a distance of 23 blocks (1.4 miles according to the GPS on my phone). Central Park was on our right the entire way, and several times we detoured into the park; once we watched the sailboats on the pond. It was hot, and we stopped several times, but the sidewalk was a never-ending moving conveyor of color and sound. Since it was Sunday, most people were tourists like us, or vendors trying to sell things to tourists like us. When we finally made it to the Plaza, we were treated like royalty (and paid like it too - two coffees, a soft drink, creme brulee, and ice cream = $55 plus tip!). While we were in the Plaza, a vigorous rainstorm blew up, and thankfully cooled off the city markedly. When we went back outside, it felt 20 degrees cooler and it was still raining lightly. No one minded - we bought two umbrellas from an enterprising vendor ($5 each), and continued south on 5th Ave. We were headed for glitz and glam shopping, but suddenly there was Tiffany's. The real deal. I think they use laser beams and mirrors or something, but I've never seen so much sparkling. The first floor is amazing, but actually tame compared with the 2nd floor, which the directory identifies as "Spectacular Jewelry." Indeed. It's not even worth describing - just use your imagination and you'll probably get a good sense of it. After I dragged Tammy out, we kept walking, but when we got to St. Patrick's Cathedral (W. 51st St. and 5th Ave.)the rain got heavier, so we took cover under some renovation. Sense took over from valor, and we hailed a cab to Bloomingdales. Leaving Tammy and Meredith there, I took Sara out front, hailed a cab, and whisked her off to almost-9 dreamland, aka American Girl Place. I enjoyed it almost as much as she did (not sure what that says about me), and she bought Rebecca with a few accessories. Cab ride back to Bloomies, cab ride for all of us back to Penn Station, quick dash into Borders, dive downstairs, catch the train back to NJ, and on the road back home. We stopped at the Clinton Diner which has a sign declaring "Lots of Good Food Inside!" Indeed there was, and we ate a lot of it.

My testimony

Christians are evangelical in principle and in practice. Each one of us has a testimony to share and has witnessed God's overwhelming grace and mercy very personally. If someone does you an unexpected kindness such as returning a lost wallet, you will likely tell a number of people, and be expressive of your thankfulness. Your gratefulness will certainly depend on what it cost that person to help you. Our instinct is to repay the cost of the favor or to tender a reward. How infinitely grateful are we, therefore, who been saved from hell into heaven by the death of Jesus upon the cross. We fall into error when try to repay our salvation by doing good things to please God. The only good thing He requires or counts is believing in the death of Jesus as the full and permanent atonement for our sin.

Like so many in this world, I was raised into a world-view that didn't include God, except as a cultural icon; a somewhat important but archaic concept that had a significant impact only in a broad sense, but not at the individual level. I tinkered with the things of God a few times growing up- going to special church services once or twice, especially when we visited relatives on vacation. I briefly joined a youth group, but more as a social activity. Nevertheless into this vacuum came God pursuing me. At the age of 33 I had a transformational experience. I was wrestling one night with dark thoughts. I was scheduled to fly across the country the next day, and I could not get the image out of my mind of dying in a plane crash. My mind would not let up on imagining the terrible final moments, and on what would happen to me after dying. I drifted into a fitful sleep, but then I was suddenly wide awake with a person standing next to me. At first I sensed it was somehow my father who had come into my childhood room; but in a fleeting instant I recalled that I was grown up and he lived far away. The person in the room introduced Himself to me as Jesus and asked why I was rejecting Him constantly. I had no answer. He asked me if I would let Him into my heart and allow Him to become Lord of my life, in return for which I would need to have no fear of death. These were terms and expressions I was not familiar with. My response was "OK - I'll give it a try." I remember nothing further except waking up in the morning with a completely changed heart, and a Spirit within that had previously been vestigial but was now fully alive and in control of all my thoughts and actions. I hungered and thirsted for the Word of God from that day on. While some of the initial exuberance of that first day of my new life has tempered, by no means has there been any abatement of my enthusiasm for the deep things of God. Twenty years later I can truly say that each day I wake with a refreshed soul and spirit, and I look forward to walking with God in the paths that he has prepared.

Many books and articles have been written by the learned ones of our time about how religious experience is a remnant function of a particular part of the brain; sort of a religion appendix. Indeed, experiments have shown that religious ecstasy can be induced repeatably by probing this area. The implication is that experiences like mine are not real- they are just brought about by external triggers that stimulate the brain's religion centers. They argue that there was some as-yet undiscovered evolutionary advantage to this behavior.

I see it very differently. Surely He who created us would endow us with the necessary functionality to commune with him. Is it really any wonder that God would put a "God-phone" in our brains so that we could call on Him and experience closeness with Him at any time?

Cash for Clunkers is a clunker

Is it just me, or is there something very, very wrong with the "cash for clunkers" mentality? Destroying working cars is a bizarre 180 on the depression-era approach of scrimping, saving, and making do with what you have. Giving people money that is not their own to encourage them to take out loans for cars they don't really need is even more wacko. Now that we have proof based on simple engineering calculations (which anyone could have surmised) that it is actually more harmful to the environment to produce a new car than to keep driving an old one, there is no good reason imaginable for this program. I'll keep driving my two clunkers (combined age of 27 years) as long as they will keep going. I have no car payments, so I tolerate the inevitable repair bills. As a bonus, my car tags are really cheap. Of course I understand the theory that this will kickstart the economy, but what happens in a few months? Even if the economy does pick up in general, the auto industry will be in a pickle because everyone already bought their new cars, and loan defaults will probably skyrocket - I don't imagine the dealers are being really picky about who they sell to right now. I hope the health care package includes ulcer treatment; I think I'll need it.