Way Too True

This bedtime diagram is way to accurate.

Justice, Blind or Otherwise

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical emphasis on justice (yes, my liberal friends will be so proud of me) and whether or not I have any clue what justice is (my liberal friends may be starting to get a little worried about where this post is going).

For example, people have started using YouTube to tell their stories (good) but it also opens the door to malicious slander. What's the appropriate punishment?

A woman impersonated a teenage guy on MySpace to get to know a neighborhood girl. The "guy" then harshly romantically rejected the girl who struggled with chronic depression. She shortly thereafter committed suicide. Reports state the woman was recently charged under Federal laws for hacking because she lied about her identity on MySpace after local officials couldn't find any applicable law to charge her. (No claim made that news/internet reports represent the truth, or even a vague facsimile of it.) What is justice here?

Hebrew law is mostly case-law:

"When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof." [Deut. 22:8]

And then it was up to the judge to determine if the law applied to a particular case. In America, that same law would be epic novel.

• What qualifies as a house?
  
• What if I build an office building?
  
• Or a doghouse?
  
• Or a tree house?
  
• Does the law apply if I build a swimming pool? If the swimming pool is on the roof, does it need a parapet around it, or does the law only apply to death by falling?
• Am I required to build a parapet if I buy a house without one?
• Am I guilty if I build a 1' parapet and someone falls off?
  
• What I don't child-proof my parapet and then a child squeezes through and dies?

I'm still pondering justice a lot. But two quick thoughts:

1. I view justice as "Was the law correctly applied?" (e.g. innocent people not imprisoned) rather "What is a just punishment for the crime?"
2. Material injustice (theft, vandalism) is much easier to settle than emotional injustice. Many of the troubling cases involve emotional injustice, not material injustice.
3. I ought to study the Hebrew laws again. Especially that long list in Leviticus that I usually fall asleep on.
   

Financial Stewardship (Cont., yes, still)

Ah, housing worked out until wedding. Now my fiancee and I just need a place to live. But I guess God has some time to deal with that problem. Now I just need to figure out if there's a way to make God work on my timetable enjoy God's current provision and patiently relax about his future provision. It's amazing how something so simple can be such a challenge.

Financial Stewardship (Cont.)

It's interesting how God works. And by 'interesting', I mean a strange combination of bizarrely fascinating and gut-wrenchingly painful. Alright, I admit it isn't always like that. But sometimes...

So last time I posted about wrestling with the struggle between planning and trusting God in being a good steward, and how often good stewardship through planning seemed to thwart trusting God. Since then, my fiancee and I are still trying to figure out our post-wedding living arrangements that are both budget conscientious and priority driven. For example, we'd really like a place where we can easily invite others and that's central to our community of friends, church, and work. And then we have some luxuries we'd really like (washer and dryer).

On the tricky side, my lease is officially up a few months before the wedding, so there's this weird transition period where I have flexibility. My preference, naturally, is to go ahead and find a place that meets all of our criteria and spend a several hundred extra bucks to have the place to myself for a few months. Meanwhile God seems to be extending my current living situation (which is definitely more cost effective) a few more months, but there's no sign of a place to move to.

In theory, of course, moving from my place (given a roommate & reasonable rent) shortly before the wedding is a highly economical plan. But I don't like the uncertainty and doubt that surrounds that approach. And it makes me realize how quickly I toss out stewardship principles to bring certainty into my life.

Wanted: Financial Manager of $2,000,000

We started a new series on money this week at church. Nothing too earth shattering since I've had the good fortune of working through several different biblical studies on finances. But a couple thoughts that stood out to me.

I was talking with a friend today about three different axis involved in having a biblically sound financial aspect. One is the heart of spending - selfish vs. generous, a second of wisdom (e.g. budget or impulse spending), and the third is the fearful vs. calm spectrum: Do I trust God to meet my needs?

The irony is that there are many people who are fiscally responsible out of selfishness and distrust of God's provision. (This is my natural leaning - why spend irresponsibly and get myself in trouble later?) And then there are those who love giving and spending but never plan ahead, and call it trusting God. The problem, of course, is that it disregards most of the biblical principles on financial matters.

On the flip-side, I was talking to my friend about what it means to have trust in God when one also has an solid emergency account. If I'm relaxed and secure, is it because I have great faith in God, or because I know that rarely does God inflict Job-like disasters on middle-class Americans with wise savings habits? (At least, in my small sample size, it's rare.)

There's something unsettling that doing the right thing seems to make trusting God financially more of an intellectual exercise than anything else.

A Quick Rembrance

In light of the recent political uproar regarding Senator Obama and assorted racial comments, it reminds me of the firestorm that Michigan went through 18 months ago regarding the highly controversial Proposition 2. I heard lots of impassioned arguments about the disaster it would be. And since then, silence. Even the Wikipedia entry hasn't really updated with the actual impact of Proposition 2.

I wonder - do we know the results yet? If we do, do we remembered what we argued, why, and whether it matched reality?

Everyone should be an engineer...mahahaha

So I spent most of today at work trying to solve the fact that three systems which work beautifully individually don't work together at all. On the rare occasions when system Alpha interacts with Beta or Gamma, the result is roughly a blue screen of death. (Of course, we have a much prettier blue screen of death, but when all the glitz and glamor is stripped away, it's still just a blue screen.)

I realized today that most people probably never deal with the complexity of trying to get all the systems to work together. Tax returns are probably a good equivalent, but most of us get someone else to do our taxes. I wonder if architects and builders sympathize with the problem. Do they ever just finish the cafeteria when another architect comes over and says "What have you done? This space was for the geckos!"