Sunday, December 16, 2007

Eyes to See, Patience to Wait

Tonight I've been contemplating Psalms (probably triggered by a friend mentioning that frolicking is used in at least on Psalm). Two quick thoughts after listening to the first thirty-some of them.

First, many of them deal with waiting for God to act to relieve some dire circumstance. It occurs to me how different this theme is than the "We have victory in Christ" theme I often perceive Christians as having. I don't necessarily think that they are opposite themes (Paul, after all, talks a lot about his earthly sufferings), but I do wonder if in America we are so accustomed to instant gratification that the idea of extended suffering before God acts is anathema. It seems cruel or inhumane for God to wait to respond to the righteous in need.

The second thought relates to Psalm 37 where it says:
I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.
My first reaction is "Wow, that's certainly not true today." (Yes, I know, that's not pious of me.) My second is "That can't possibly be true." And my third reaction "Wow, I have no idea if that is true or not." Here's the why behind my third thought:
  • Most of our awareness of suffering comes from the media. Television and print usually capture a moment of great need, but rarely trace the suffering over an extended period. Given that God can be somewhat...slower...to act that we might like, it's hard to evaluate from a momentary picture the faithfulness of God to feed the righteous.
  • While there are plenty who claim to be righteous (including Christians), God probably isn't deciding righteousness by personal declaration. So when the media reports about Joe or Jane or Susie Q in need, not only is it a momentary snapshot, but we don't know anything about their spiritual condition.
  • Paul tells us that the sins of some men are obvious, while the sins of others trail behind them: It takes time to learn about a person. How many people in my life do I really know well enough to know if they have sins trailing behind them? And of those, how many have been forsaken or have children begging for food?

Saturday, December 01, 2007

The Promise of Hope

So my church just wrapped up a series talking about the Bible & secrets. Toward the end of the series, we invited people to anonymously share three areas that most affected them. We have them a list of suggestions (e.g. various types of guilt, hopelessness, jealousy, financial pressure, boredom, etc.) as well as blanks for free hand responses. The church is hoping to use the feedback to help know how to better minister to people.

Lately I've looking over the responses trying to figure out how to turn hundreds of tear offs into meaningful information. It's really sobering and overwhelming to read page after page after page of the deep hurts that people are suffering.

I don't know how to sort out all of my thoughts, but here are a few:
  • The last couple nights have really impressed on me how tempting it is to use wealth to buy distractions rather than facing the hurts of those around us. Facing the hurts of the multitude around us is heart breaking, and it deeply challenges my faith that the gospel is the solution. There's no good answer to the question "What if Jesus isn't enough for the hurts around me?" Perhaps giants of the faith can face the hurt without doubt, but for me with my mustard seed sized faith, it's not that easy. And rather than grieve and weep and grow, it's easier to bury my head in the sand with entertainment, or perhaps picking a less daunting goal like defeating evolution, stopping global warming, or campaign finance reform.

  • We feel so alone and vulnerable, and so we don't share, and so we feel more alone and more vulnerable. Because we feel alone, we don't realize that others are also feeling alone and vulnerable, so we aren't kind and gentle with them, and so they feel more alone and more vulnerable and aren't kind or gentle with others either.

  • "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." I've been reflecting on this comment from Peter over the last week.

  • I finally figured out why overseas travel doesn't strongly appeal to me: It reminds me how weak and fragile I am in the world, and I'm reminded enough of that as I try and get through my life.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Vent, No Duct?

So one of the vents in my room always pours out cold air. I finally got tired of it and took off the vent. Amazingly, it's just a cavity reaching into the bowels of my floor - there's no duct work, or even any evidence that there ever was any duct work. I assume there's a disconnected duct somewhere since when the furnace is on, it pushes enough air into the floor to push cold air out the vent.

But what I can't figure out is how do I end up with a vent but no duct?

My place isn't exactly new - has nobody else noticed this problem for years on end?

Or perhaps a random construction accident took out the duct work, but they just left a random vent?

Or maybe they just accidentally knocked a hole in the wall at some point and decided to cover it up with a vent? (But then how come it actually leaks cold air...?)

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Values

I'm still blogging - or at least, I think I am. As a friend of mine commented recently, though, my track record doesn't back that up.

Lately I've been mired in wedding planning. Okay, it's not really that bad, and it makes me appreciate my fiancee's economical sense of decor and style. But one aspect of the planning that's been really hard for me is the question of how to design a ceremony that reflects our values.

It's great that someone is willing to sell flipclips as wedding favors at $8.99 each. (Actually as cheap as $5.99 for orders of 200+.) But cost aside, what does a flipclip add to the event? Is it decoration? Is it symbolic? Is it commemorative?

But it's been hard for me to step back from the "Wow, it's really cool that for only $0.4391736/person, we can rent a reflective doodad that also doubles as a whats-it-called." sentiment to a more comprehensive picture that encompasses questions like "What would I like our ceremony to communicate?" or "What themes would I like represented at our marriage?" or "Do I really care if we have a concrete cast of our footprints?"

Maybe that's why I've felt so frustrated by the commercialness of weddings: Everyone is very happy to sell something for the wedding, but it's hard to put a context to the detail. [Incidentally, often they don't sell it very well - I've been aghast at how many businesses need to spend $500 to buy a decent website. I understand that pricing information changes, but couldn't you at least ballpark your typical services and costs? I know that an all-text site is so 1998, but couldn't you include a few photographs of the wedding urn you want me to rent from you?]

It's like trying to write an essay. Every essay needs an organizational structure - a thesis, introduction, paragraphs with topic sentences and a conclusion. Yes, details and supporting arguments are important, but an essay isn't comprised by throwing details together. The wedding shopping process feels a lot like trying to wade through the details without a supporting structure.

And yes, developing a structure is hard without knowing the cost of various details. In advanced engineering theory, this problem is known as "Catch-22".

So far the best solution I've found so far is an iterative one:
  1. Fiancee and I outline budget.
  2. Fiancee and I brainstorm wedding ideas and sketch out a corresponding day. (This step keeps highlighting details like 'hrm, it might be X hours between breakfast and the reception, we'd better budget brunch for the wedding party.')
  3. Fiancee and I research approximate pricing (and use the research to brainstorm more ideas).
  4. Review the research. Discard unreasonable ideas ("What? The reindeer drawn sled requires snow and we're not getting married in the midwinter...")
  5. Select affordable ideas that we like. Repeat 1-5 for remaining plans.
Improvements? What have other people done that helped them balance the budget, theme, and detail aspects of the wedding planning process?

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Environmentally Friendly Diamonds

So for the few readers of my blog who for some reason or another don't get my e-mails, I'm engaged. I'm not putting the story up for public domain (yet, at least), but it's well worth asking my fiancee for a retelling if you get a chance.

Planning the proposal was fascinating test, but one of the most interesting puzzles was finding a stone for the ring. My fiancee had said she wanted a stone that she could be sure wasn't mined by enslaved children in the middle of Africa, being used to support wars, or similar environmentally harmful causes. For her, that boiled down to "no new diamond". (I know that other socially concerned friends had been comfortable with, say, Polar Bear Diamonds from Canada, but she wasn't.)

Anyway, I knew all of that when I started visiting jewelry stores and trying to get a sense for the ring market. And it was fascinating how the stores steer the shopper toward diamond rings (and very expensive rings at that). The experience is simply not designed for the socially conscious. Ask about "where are the diamonds from" or express concern about diamonds in general and one gets reassurances about certificates, but no one readily offers alternatives. There's no "Well, we offer X, Y, and Z reassurances, but if you don't trust those, we also have some diamond alternatives available. For example, are you familiar with ...?"

I learned (or reminded myself, perhaps) that I really don't like actively fighting societal norms. I'm really comfortable doing my own thing. But when I have to actively and repeatedly dialog with strangers about doing something different, especially something where they are the experts and I have minimal knowledge, I get really tired and frustrated. It's so tempting to just go along with the norm.

Likewise, I suspect it's hard for businesses to change since 99.9% of their customers expect the experience that I had - and would be deeply put off by suggestions that they consider the social impacts of their shopping.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Money, part x.ii of X

So I've been thinking a lot about money. My budget class had it's first "real" meeting this week (last week's meeting was mostly introductory). There's a lot that's been on my heart, but here's one that's really been on my mind: Why is it so hard to be content with less?

Why does my heart gravitate toward the new and expensive so easily? I want a new desk chair. My current one doesn't give me any problems - it just isn't new or shiny or spiffy. If I didn't know that I could buy a nice new chair for $80, I wouldn't consider grumbling about my current chair. But just knowing that there is "better" out there makes me start contemplating the purchase.

Can I really tell the difference between old and new entertainment? I recently invested $40 in a couple copies of Starcraft. Partly to satisfy my conscience about actually owning software I use - and partly so I can teach my significant other a bit about real time strategy games. Yes, the graphics are a bit dated. Yes, Starcraft II will probably be prettier. But you know, I don't sit there during the game going "Ug, this is so ugly." In fact, I mentally imagine a universe which is far more detailed than the actual graphics. It's only when I see the new and better (Starcraft II demos) that I realize how much has changed.

This week's memory verse is "Just as the rich rule over the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender." I've been realizing that while I often hear a lot about helping the poor (which is great), I don't hear people talk about eliminating Visa and Mastercard. Why not? Partly, I think, it's because we don't tend to believe that debt indentures us to service. (And yes, it's possible for us to get trapped even if we're not poor.)

Here's another principle I've been wrestling with: "Do not say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make money'". So often, credit assumes on the profitability of tomorrow - but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Money, Part x of X?

So I started taking a budgeting class, which may the first of many posts. Two thoughts caught my attention.

First, the study has very case studies of people and their financial situations after they've found themselves in difficulty. It's really tragic to see how financial decisions slowly accumulate until they are a crushing load.

Secondly, the study mentioned the verse
And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
and I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Mostly I've been thinking about in the context of work and what it means to be trustworthy with asking for equipment, new software, new LCD screens, and the like. The full passage context is here.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Post, Post!

So my friend who complained a couple weeks ago that I don't post weekly seems to have had a very valid point. Unfortunately, I don't have much interesting to say at this point. Or maybe more to the point, little of it seems to blog very well. If people are suitable bored, they are welcome to create their own blog for me with it's own fictional posts.

Anyway, one quick thought: I've been reading through Ezekiel (yes, one of the major prophets that despite being major, nobody seems to know aside from prophetic utterances about Gog and the end of the world). So far, the first thirty chapters have nothing to do with the end of the world (sorry to disappoint people), but it's striking how often God says "I will do X, and then you will know that I am God." X ranges from "wipe you out and destroy you" to "return you to the land and make the nations around you serve you", but the formula of:
God acts in a significant way, and then a group knows that he is truly God.
has me thinking about what it takes for me to evaluate my world view. What would it take for me to become, say, an open theist? Or a Calvinist? Or a Muslim?

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Hypothermic Weight Loss Plan

I know I haven't blogged for a while. Partly it's exhaustion; partly it's just that I've been busy with activities that don't blog very well (e.g. met 50 new people).

Anyway, the recent drop in temperature combined with living in a place without free heat for the first time in ten years led me to this brilliant idea: I ought to publish a weight loss planned focused on freezing. If the temperature is lower, my body ought to burn more energy to keep itself warm, right? So there ought to be a point where my body is continuously burning lots of extra energy to keep itself warm, but not too cold so that I suffer from hypothermia and die.

This brilliant plan has great benefits:
  • First, it is continuous and automatic. None of the hard work of getting on an exercise bike, going to the gym, or getting outside. Instead, every moment that I am at home, being a lazy couch potato, my diet plan is hard at work.
  • I know it's working. None of this "hrm, I wonder if limiting myself to a syrup and lemon diet is working" doubts - the constant shivering is an automatic reminder that your body is burning energy.
  • It saves on heating bills.
  • Others share your misery, even if they aren't trying to loose weight.
  • If you want a roommate or spouse to loose weight, no more nagging them to exercise or diet: Just drop the temperature. If one is mechanically minded, figure out how to rig the thermostat so it won't go above 62 or so.
  • It's a great way to make others feel sorry for you: "Yeah, my doctor said I have to be on the hypothermia weight loss plan and I can't have the temperature above 49 degrees - can you believe it?"
I figure the plan is lousy, but I ought to be able to write a 100 page book and make millions anyway. I just need a better name for it.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Llama Economics

So I made a trip to lamafest this weekend. (Yes, lamafest is the correct grammar; llama is a type within the lama genus. And since the festival also included alpacas, it is properly called lamafest.)

I had a good time getting to hang out with the lama farmers and just hearing them talk about their craft. It's a bit stunning, though, to walk around at all the custom craft items which usually cost $30-50, although some larger pieces of art cost much, much more.

Some factoids:
  • You can purchase your own pregnant alpaca for $20,000-25,000.
  • Shearing a lama (yearly) yields around 10lbs of wool.
  • Lama have 1 baby, or "cria", per year.
  • For alpaca, Internet suggests fleece yields $20-40/lb, or $160/lb for yarn
I'm still trying to figure out if it's profitable to get into the lama business. It's a bit troubling to me that the primary value of alpaca is currently breeding them since there is a short supply of them. That is, selling alpaca doesn't seem like a stable business model since unlike, say, food, there's not a need for an on-going supply of alpaca. It also seems very expensive to get into: One needs shelter, land, transport, vaccinations, veterinary visits, time at the shows, etc., etc.

On the plus side, one can get a lama pet for a couple hundred bucks, which seems like a very attractive option for a furry self-propelled lawn-mower. They also don't smell, generate fertilizer, make wool, and hum. I suppose that's not bad for a pet.

There are also miniature lama, I discovered -- I suppose for small lawns and indoor pets.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Hope Deferred

Ah, the circles of life. A few weeks ago, I ended up in a conversation with a friend talking about college dreams and aspirations. We ended up talking about some hopes I'd had in college that haven't really happened. (Or have happened and I haven't recognized them?) It's not necessarily that the hopes won't happen - it's just that they don't seem particularly likely.

I'm left with a few thoughts after the conversation: (Background: I've been thinking about the "Death of a Vision" concept I summarized a year and a half ago.) It's really, really hard for me to hold visions for years. I tend to either want to see them fulfilled Now! (being the patient guy I am) or else deaden my heart to the desire. It's hard to interact with past disappointments in an intelligent proactive way. When I have limited opportunities to make progress toward my dreams, I tend to shy away for fear of additional disappointment. (I'm also tempted to simply demand "Give me! I've earned it.")

Neither approach is how I'd counsel someone else to approach a long term goal, but it's strange how hard it is for me to implement the small steps that I'd give to someone else. It's hard to even seriously pray for them. As Solomon wrote, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

The struggle with renewed disappointments makes me think about how tenaciously people cling to certain ideas:
  • "He loves me" even when everyone else sees how poor the relationship is.
  • "She must be the one" when dating for the first time in five years and rapidly approaching the age of 30.
  • Convincing older people to go to Jesus after they've been disappointed by church time after time.
  • And so on
It's hard to expect others to live what one can't live oneself.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Blank Sheet Creativity

I was walking through Michael's with my girlfriend looking for something (sand timers?) and I a realization:

I'm lousy at blank creativity.

I've always envisioned creativity as a process akin to being locked in a small white room, given a sheet of blank paper, and being told "Invent a new mouse trap."

Other topics that come along those lines:
  • How are you feeling?
  • Name a date activity for Friday night.
  • Create a new board game idea.
  • Figure out how to make church more innovative.
  • Illustrate a theological principle from real life.
  • Find a compelling (to me) blog idea.
  • Layout an ideal living room furniture arrangement.

I'm realizing that I'm not very good at any of those activities while sitting at a computer or a piece of paper. Most of my ideas come from borrowing and modifying what I see around me:
  • Most of my blog ideas come from being somewhere (outside walking, in a store, talking with a friend), not from being on my computer.
  • I mostly come up with illustrations when I have a theological concept in mind and am living out life - something happens, and I think "Oh, that's a good illustration." It's really hard, though, for me to look back through my life for good illustrations.
  • Many of my date ideas are borrowed and modified (or occasionally just downright copied) from other people's activities and suggestions.
  • Walking around Art Van or Home Depot is one of the best ways for me to get ideas about home decorating. It's not exactly that I want my home to have what is there, but it gets me thinking about what is possible.
(And yes, I'm even much better at the the emotion question when I have a specific context: e.g. How are you feeling about waking up to sunlight?)

I suspect the only weird part of this realization is that I'm just now figuring out what tends to stimulate my creative thinking. But it's still weird to me.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Dog Fighting 101: Fido Bite Fido

So there's been a recent uproar regarding high profile sport celebrities and their alleged participating in sponsoring dog fights.

Generally I believe that good people are kind to their animals, but I'm a bit disturbed at the media circus being generated by the allegations. On the scale of human evil, I'm not sure dog fighting scores very well. Even on the scale of celebrity (or even sports figure) evils, dog fighting?

How about worrying about sports figures who, I don't know, commit violent actions against other people or are convicted felons? Or perhaps the child slave traders or pornography produces could use some well directed outrage? Or women-abusers?

Here's a thought: Dog fighting is bizarrely yet fascinatingly cruel. Outrage is an excuse for interest in something new and different. "Sports figure beats woman" isn't new news: We have plenty of people beating others up. But we're short on celebrities who dog fight - and none of our friends sponsor dog fights - so it's news.

A pastor once commented to me that what really saddened him was the amount of verbal violence he saw in Christian homes: Parents who wouldn't let their children see movies or TV would sit at the dinner table and destroy each other with their words.

I wonder if we're not genuinely concerned with finding great evil and eliminating, or finding evil near us and destroying it. We're certainly not concerned with identifying and ridding ourselves of our own evil. But dog fighting - that certainly should be banned.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...How does your garden grow?

I'm a bad gardener. Or maybe I'm an alright gardener - I at least water my plants. But I've discovered several very bad mistakes I've made:

First, I don't know what I planted. I bought this bag o' seeds and planted it - but I don't know what any of the plants are supposed to look like.

Secondly, I over-crowded my garden. The seeds were supposed to cover 500 sq ft: My garden is about 100 - and yes, all the seeds are in it.

Third, I let the weeds grow with my plants (and fourth, I don't know what weeds look like either).

So now after a couple months, I have a tangle of a garden. It has some pretty flowers, but the poor plants are nearly hopelessly intertwined. They are disfigured with extra long stalks which allow them to crawl along the ground until they find space to to point their leafy stalks at the sky. And the weeds are everywhere. I'm finally going by the "if it doesn't have flowers, it's a weed" strategy and figuring that even if a few flower plants die, the lack of congestion will do them good.

Here's a few lessons I've learned from my garden:

1. Know what you are planting. Often in life we don't think about what we want to cultivate, so we have no idea whether we're achieving it or not.

2. It's hard to tell weeds and flowers apart by the leaves. It's easier to tell them apart by whether they have flowers. The corollary: In life, it's important to know what is a leaf and what is a flower. Jesus talked about knowing trees by their fruit (not their branches or trunk or leaves); often I can't tell the difference between foliage and flowers.

3. Ignorance is not bliss - it has consequences. My garden could be so much more if I was a better gardener.

4. I should get my digital camera and take photos of my garden.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Have Blog; Need Idea

Somehow I don't seem to have any bright ideas lately for posting. I'm working on it, really I am.

Edit: Or then again, I could go read someone else's challenging yet inspiring post and ponder how to apply it to my life. It's much easier than coming up with my own.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Where Treasure, There Heart

My garden (such as it is) is flourishing. It's even attracting vicious, evil wasp type creatures. (Alright, they might be bees, but I think they are wasps.) It's been an good experience for me.

Someone (here?) was talking about how divorced we are from our need from rain. My own 20 square foot patch of lawn makes me a lot more aware of how dependent the plants are on water - and how I can't bring water - any water - down from the sky. The hose is great, but it's just not like a good rain storm. And I find myself glad to see the rain because I know it means my plants won't be drooping or dying.

I'm finding myself more grateful for the rain - and gaining (I think) a deeper appreciation of the God sending rain on both the good and the evil - how deeply beneficial rain is.

The other change I've noticed is that I'm more aware of my garden: I notice when people step in it, or my wedding table decoration plant died from heat and dehydration, or it doesn't drain right. I take the time to fix it - and it's hard to let it fall apart. I've been thinking about Jesus talking about our heart being where our treasure is: Not that our treasure goes where our heart is, but that our heart is where our treasure is. If I put time, money, and effort into the garden, my heart goes toward the garden. Likewise for politics or computer games.

[The obvious application - putting effort toward God - isn't as simple as I'd like since I show a bad tendency of treasuring religious effort and show rather than God, but that's another post.)

In other news, I survived my tumble down the stairs, and discovered that I slide rather gracefully. Sadly, though, my body isn't impervious to bruising.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Security

So lately I've been thinking about security in life. A couple friends of mine have gotten robbed. Others have unexpectedly lost loved ones.

On the practical side, I've been thinking about writing a will.

On the philosophical side, I've been contemplating what it means to not lay up treasure where moths and rust (not to mention taxes, thieves, and incompetence) can get to it.

What does it mean to use money for good? What does it mean to stand up for justice? I was reading today about companies that work change Google results to hide slander from bloggers. And perhaps for the first time, it struck me: That's a good use of technical skill: Working to protect the reputations of people.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Commitment

I came across this blog post tonight. Very though-provoking.

Seek

I haven't had a lot to post - well, actually, I've had a lot to post, but I just don't seem to be finding good words to write it all down. Life has been pretty good, although many of my friends seem to be in the middle of tough times, so there will probably be opportunities to be helpful there.

I've also been contemplating that I don't tend to be extroverted or high energy. I don't tend to resonate with fire-breathing (Mr. Awesome) or crazy spontaneous camping trips. Or as one of my friends likes to say, I'm boring. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that. I was reading Tipping Point and the author was talking about connectors. These are people who naturally enjoy and maintain light social connections with many, many people - and that doesn't tend to be me.

I not contemplating this in a "Oh, I really need to be reassured that I have other talents" way, but more in a "Huh...I wonder how this plays into my relationship with God?" way. Did Jesus have a personality? Would Jesus' ministry have been different if he had a different personality? Could there have been a still sinless but more introverted Jesus? Or more extroverted?

(On a side note, I've been reading in Isaiah about how many God tells people to seek him and they will find him. So I've been pondering why God seems so hard to find.)

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Okay, So I'm Ignorant

I was at a teaching a few months ago where the speaker talked about how Protestants don't know their Bibles nearly as well as they think they did. Specifically, he asked how many Protestants could summarize, say, Haggai. I brushed off the comment at the time. Anyway since then (and partially in response), I've been trying to get more familiar with the prophets.

Meanwhile I asked a friend for a theological book recommendation and he loaned me The Greatness of the Kingdom. He described it as talking about the Kingdom of God in the Bible, and it sounded a little dry - a few bits from the Gospels, a lot from Revelation, and maybe a scattering of other passages. I'd really wanted something that dealt more with the Old Testament, and definitely something more practical and thought-provoking than a discussion of a few passages.

So I wasn't very excited about the book (to be fair, that's mostly Dan's fault since he did a lousy job of describing the book) but I decided it would be rude to completely blow off the suggestion. It turns out the book is a fascinating 500-page in-depth study including significant discussion of the entire Old Testament, including the prophets, and many of the New Testament references to the Old Testament. The also includes sections of "How do we interpret the Bible?" (hermeneutics). It's also an interesting snapshot back in time - the book was written in 1959 - to see how the author applied the Bible to that place and time.

The book has been great - although slow reading - and I won't blog about much more of it. But one point that has really stood out to me is how many points in the New Testament refer back to the Old Testament, especially the prophets, and how badly I don't know the background. One quick example: Jesus' message starts with the announcement that the kingdom of God is coming (here and here). But there's no additional information provided about what kingdom. Why don't the gospel writers provide more information? Well, because they assume the gospel readers know about the kingdom from passages in the Old Testament -- especially the prophets.

So I'm realizing that the the speaker was pretty on target about his comment: There's no way I should be so ignorant of what the prophets said about something that Jesus talked about so frequently.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Honesty and Wit in Politics

I came across this article today. It's mostly a light-hearted essay about weird beach laws. But one of the quotes is from a mayor when asked about a law "prohibiting baby carriages from being parked on sand within 15' of a beach entrance":
"I can't fathom what the thought process was behind that one," said Mayor Adam Schneider, who did not know the law existed until a reporter questioned him on it. "We can do a pretty good job of looking foolish when we enforce `real' ordinances, let alone something like this. I just hope I don't get embarrassed and find out I voted for it in the past."
I like the mayor. He's aware of political reality (looking stupid, weird processes, possibility of embarrassment); he's not too proud - he can admit the law seems bizarre; and he's smart enough to realize he might have voted for it. Politics would be a lot more fun if more people had his wit and honesty.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Cents...

Lately I've been getting a number of interesting offers from businesses. My high school reunion, for example, sent me a form letter - a form letter which required my high school name, mascot, and color. It even implied that we'd had a previous reunion. If I didn't know that my high school class is actually organizing a reunion, I would have pondered if it was a daring scam to steal my credit card info.

Meijer (groceries), meanwhile, is being very clever. They used to run a charity program where they would give a small amount (1-4%) of the amount of one's spending that exceeded $100 per month. I doubt I gave more than $12/year that way. Probably more like $2. But I happily handed over my Meijer every time to let them track my groceries.

Now they want me to re-enroll. They'll donate 0.5% of all my purchases to charity - if I pay with cash, debit card, or Meijer credit card. The debit card was not in the initial offer, but they "modified" their policy based on "customer input". Unfortunately, I also get 0.5% cash back on my credit card, which I could give to charity if I was feeling, well, charitable. Part of me wonders if the whole charity aspect was a ploy to increase Meijer credit cards: Try out the program, get people hooked, then encourage them to continue giving by getting a credit card. On the plus side, I don't really like Meijer easily tracking my purchases, and now I don't have to carry a key-fob around to identify myself. I just have to remember to drop a quarter in the jar from today's purchases.

In other news, I'm practicing my home-improvement methodology. I found a small draft in the basement of my new place, so I'm trying the "plastic sheet + duct tape" approach.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Come Now, Let Us Fight

I've had the pleasure over the last few weeks to be challenged in my beliefs in various ways, most of them through interactions that I've been having with others. One of the more thought-provoking questions was "Why do so many Christians take the words of Paul more seriously than the words of Jesus?" (The comment wasn't meant antagonistically, however the print may sound.) It's actually a good question, but not one I'm caring to blog about today.

Instead I'm thinking about something I read in a history of the church book (Church History in Plain Language). The author comments that during the Protestant reformation, Catholics and Protestant sects often militantly fought each other because they saw beliefs not so merely as individual, but as communal, and if one believed falsely, one led the entire community astray. While I'm glad that theologically debates aren't fought to the death and religious beliefs aren't forced upon me, I've been thinking about that passion for others and for seeing other's walk a good path.

My impression is that in American, many of us view spiritual beliefs as private. And even if they aren't private, we often speak in code words or cliches - "God wants us to come to him in faith." The sayings may be true, but they conceal that people view the sayings very differently. Who do I mean by God? Faith? What does it mean to come to God in faith? Is that an active or passive? How do I learn about what it means to come to God in faith? And does everyone agree with the answers I'd give? My guess is no, not at all.

So why aren't we more passionate about sharing our knowledge, our beliefs, our understanding with others? After all, it's what sustains us in tough times, right? It's the source of our hope and joy when times are dark. Isn't it that which gives us meaning when the world is turned upside down? Well...maybe not. Here's three reasons I've been contemplating why we aren't more verbal with our faith.

1. Frequently, we don't have the character for prolonged disagreement about important issues. How we fight or debate reveals our character deficiencies. Paul tells Timothy "And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth..." My first thought in debate is usually "Wow, it's really important that this person see truth." And then when I'm done, I often realize that by about the third sentence out of my mouth, I'd totally forgotten about them and focused on winning. (Never mind that they actually might be right...)

2. Sometimes, our beliefs aren't as important as we claim they are. We don't really see our faith as being our hope in a confused and messed up world. It's more like dessert. Nice, but not really essential. Sometimes, as part of this, we aren't really sure what we believe...and it's not a priority for us to figure out.

3. All too often, we don't deeply care about other's spirituality. Alright, I'm making assumptions. Let me rephrase: Often I don't care - at all. And from observation, I'm guessing others are like me. We're glad we have hope in a crazy world, and if our neighbor came and begged for us to share our beliefs, we'd obliged him. But we aren't desperate for others to have our hope. We don't look at people and think "Oh God, please send more workers to help these people. Please, change me, use me, let me communicate you to them. If it means a Mohawk, tattoos, a different career, embarrassment, shame, the loss of friendships - please God, let me reach others with the hope that I have."

And yes, I think there's other reasons too. There's issues of calling, uncertainty, growth, humility, timing, wisdom, and so on. It's possible this is more me projecting myself onto others than the actual state of affairs. Comments?

Monday, April 30, 2007

Slippers and Wishing

I'm back. Or, more accurately, I'm moved. While I'm at it, I've lost another roommate to marriage. I think that means that over the last five years, I've lost every roommate to marriage. Of course, that's only 2 roommates, but five years sounds more impressive.

I'm not quite settled in yet - it's hard to find spots for all the junk I never use but desperately want to keep. But I'm trying to do better at actually using it and not replacing it rather than simply hoarding it.

And for the first time ever, I'm contemplating the joys of slippers. I've never really thought of myself as a slipper person, but I like to sleep barefoot, and the way the heating in my new place works, it tends to be a bit chilly when I wake up. Slippers seem to be an excellent solution. It's weird - slippers have always seemed a bit pointless to me, so it's weird to find myself contemplating them. I guess that's my weekly dose of walking in other people's shoes.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Protestant Priests

I read an fascinating book (maybe Biblical Eldership by Alexander StrauchZ) which commented that Protestants often function as though their pastors are Protestant priests.

It's both an interesting and thought-provoking comment. As I understand Catholicism, the priests are different than the members: Only the priests are able to perform the sacraments - marriage, Eucharist, last rites, baptism, etc. In some rituals, there's the idea of the priest acting as the person of Christ.

In the Old Testament, the priests were the mediators between the people and God. If one had sins to atone for, one brought an appropriate sacrifice to the priests - which was how the priests were fed. Since priests were God's mediators for Israel, they had special rules for being holy.

I'm not entirely sure what the book meant about Protestant priests (I need to find the comment and re-read the section), but here's some things I've been thinking about:

- Do I believe there is certain ceremonies (Lord's supper, baptism or marriage) that only pastors should perform? If so, why?

- Do I believe pastors are more holy than other church members?

- What ministry do I believe only pastors should perform? Why?

- What do I actually think is different about someone once they've been appointed a pastor?

Confession: Marriage is actually the one that tripped me up here. I'm used to something like "By the authority committed to me as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ, I declare that ________ and ________ are now husband and wife" or " I, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the state and the church, declare you to be husband and wife". (Here's a whole list of wedding pronouncements.")

I tend to think of "minister" and "pastor" an interchangeable, although I'd accept that those needn't be identical words. A quick Google search for "define: minister" suggests my first impression is reasonable. So what exactly is the authority committed to a pastor to declare a couple man and wife? Is it merely the state law requiring a pastor* for marriage? (* - Yes, the actual legalize is a bit more complicated. Judges can marry, some churches offer anyone a "minister" status, and there's actually a difference between the state requirements for officiant and pastoring - I've known churches that have been willing to let non-pastors receive "minister" status so that they can perform marriages. Nuance aside, pastors are the primary officiants at the weddings I know of.)

If the authority is merely state law, what do statements like "...and by the church" mean? Does the pastor have a special authority from the church regarding marriages? Or can I claim that authority? If this authority is special to pastors, where do they derive it from? And how is this different from having a special "holy" class of people - priests?

Friday, March 23, 2007

Of Pastors and Heresy

I thought about titling this entry "Anything you write can and will be used against you..." I've been contemplating authority and openness. A couple of my pastors now follow my blog (at least casually), and I've thinking about the implications.

One of result is this: It's an awful lot harder get away with heresy. And in general, I think this consequence is a good thing. I know, I know, America has stereotypes of leaders being evil men (and women) who can't wait to use their power for evil. How many admirals in Star Trek were ever good guys? (Kirk was demoted back to captain...) Even the beloved Twenty-Four doesn't exactly overwhelm us with good high-ranking officials.

But the absence of authority does not prevent evil - it merely leads to other evils. For example, if we had no environmental laws, how many corporations would be ecologically friendly? Child labor laws are the result of children's work conditions. Anti-theft laws are the result of stealing. And so forth. I'm not claiming that all power is used for good, but that we (I) often underestimate the legitimate good use of power.

I see leaders restraining evil -- appropriately -- as a GoodThing(tm). It's a GoodThing for my pastors to know how I communicate - both content and tone. It's good for them to be able to say "I know you want to teach a church class, but you really need to work on your attitude toward Apple and iMacs. Your writing just doesn't reflect the tone and awe toward them that we feel is vital in teachers." (For those of you not familiar with my church, a significant fraction of our staff and leaders are Apple fanatics.) It's good for the pastors to know the people they are giving responsibility to. It's good for them to know people's doctrine, heart, character, and such.

That said, real openness toward church leadership is hard, especially when one aspires to lead. It's easier to settle for a fake openness that doesn't seem too wicked, too evil, or too corrupt than to genuinely own up to one's beliefs/attitudes/character and see how leadership responds.

It's harder still to accept negative responses from leadership, such as "We're sorry; we don't think you're ready for that responsibility." Rejection, err, constructive criticism is harder still when one thinks leadership's reasons are garbage. Been there, done that. Sometimes leadership is right and I didn't see it. Usually I was right. (Okay, maybe not. But more right than not.)

But the really tough question is this: Do I trust God to work through leadership, even when I think they are making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons? I'm not talking about really important decisions like "What is the gospel?" but just the "minor" day-to-day decisions that appear to impact me. Do I think God is bigger than the authorities in my life? And do I think he works more powerfully when I faithfully serve under my leaders, or when I work around my leaders?

[Disclaimers: Happily, I haven't had any major clashes with leadership lately. It makes writing this much, much easier. Often I think of these important topics when I'm going through the trial, and it's tough to write about while doing justice to all parties. But I have had my fair share of clashes with various authorities. In many clashes, I've decided much later that leadership was right. There's a few I'm still pretty certain I was right about, and it's been a huge challenge to trust that God sees and guides. And there's a handful where I'm not clear who was right.

I also don't intend this post to suggest that leadership should always be followed, or that advice is the equivalent to command, or that one should stay under abusive leadership. I'm thinking more about day-to-day living, not the "What should I do if my demon-troubled king starts hurling spears at me?" question.]

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Bits N Pieces

So I don't have much to say about my absence from the blog-o-sphere, other than, well, that's life. I've had a number of deeply encouraging interactions with friends over the last couple weeks, which is perhaps a bit scary given that my girlfriend is out of town for half of that time.

It's weird - I don't exactly have more time with her gone. In some sense I do, and yet I to have an elastic schedule which expands to fill whatever time I have. I heard a teaching once about time management like filling a jar: If one first puts in the big rocks, then the small rocks, then the sand, and then the water, then it's easy to pack the jar full. But if one starts with sand, it's hard to get the bigger rocks (e.g priorities) into one's schedule. Maybe this elastic experience means I'm doing a good job of time management.

I'm also trying a new experiment with an MP3 bible and iPod shuffle that I own to try and get through the minor prophets. I've always had a hard time reading through the prophets, mostly because the action seems very slow. I've also never been a strong poetic reader - as much as I dabble at writing it - and that may not help. So I'm trying to listen to them several times and seeing if that helps my comprehension. The jury is still out on that, but I can now summarize Nahum. I don't exactly get why a three chapter explanation of God shaming and annihilating Nineveh makes the Bible while other oracles don't, but I can at least summarize Nahum. I've also made a mental note that God's anger is very, very scary.

(I've also been contemplating how impervious Nineveh seemed, and how easy it is for me to think America is untouchable. There's been a handful of recent occurrences - such as Katrina and the TV show Jericho - that have reminded me that God wouldn't have any trouble wiping out America if he set his mind to it. Nahum is another such reminded. It's sobering that all of our technology, wealth, and civilization is meaningless against the intentions of God.)

One of these days I'll get back to blogging about my reading, but for now, here's an interesting survey on modesty. It looks at how guys answered lots of different questions about how women's attire and posture communicated to them. The Al-scientist likes data, and it's interesting how guys answered the questions. As modesty tends to be a hot topic, I should probably put lots of theological disclaimers on the survey like "Popular opinion doesn't make right" and "Just because some guys are offended doesn't mean don't wear it", but maybe I'll just stick with this disclaimer: "Caution: Hot topic. Use common sense, wisdom, and godly counsel."

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Choose Wisely...

For once, I have more blog topics than I care to bore my readers with. So my thoughts on the first two chapters of The Lamb's Supper will be postponed. I also will skip my thoughts on my proposed presidential campaign theme.

I spent most of today reading Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View by Gary Friesen. Oh, that didn't say much about it? Alright, the gist of the book is that God doesn't have an individual will for our lives. Instead we're called to obey God in what he commands, and live wisely by his principles in our choices. But Friesen argues that there's no "one right choice" to our decisions when there isn't a clear command. The author's four point summary of his points is:
  1. Where God commands, we must obey.
  2. Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose.
  3. Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to choose.
  4. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work all the details together for good.
His points aren't entirely revolutionary for me, but I tend to have strong "there is one exact choice" leanings. Friesen does a good job looking at how the Bible discusses decision making and how that differs from the typical American (evangelical protestant Christian?) view of God having a precise knowable will for each and every one of us. So that's my summary of 500 pages, much of which is spent discussing various Biblical texts.

For example, I'm looking for housing and a roommate. At the moment, I have no supernatural revelation from God about where to live - or with him. I have a few commands about what not to do (e.g. moving in with girlfriend = BadIdea). And then there's a collection of desires about what I'd like in my housing situation
  • Warm, dry, safe place to live
  • Place where I can host activities and have guests over
  • Cheap (economical) housing
  • Affordable housing
  • Somewhere near my work, church, and friends
  • Quiet relaxing environment
  • Financially stable roommates
  • Roommates who share my values
  • Trustworthy roommates (e.g. won't steal my stuff)
  • etc.
Many of these desires are based on biblical commands or principles. For example, affordable housing is based on the principle of living within my means. Cheap housing is based on my preference of saving money. But that preference can conflict with other values, for example, living near other friends, or having warm dry apartment, or living near work and friends.

Likewise, there's trade-offs in my selection of roommates. For example, do I prioritize hospitable roommates or ones who can consistently pay rents? If my roommates also value hospitality, then is it realistic to have a quiet relaxing environment?

The traditional view is that there is one right choice for my housing situation, and that if I seek God appropriately, that choice will become clear. The view Friesen supports is that I'm to determine values and trade-offs (e.g. hospitality, frugality, location, etc.) and make a decision (assuming, of course, I'm not violating any clear commands from God, such as "Gophers are evil.")

Thoughts?

Monday, February 26, 2007

Of Catholics

I had a chance to hear Scott Hahn speak this weekend. I'm not entirely sure how to describe the experience, but here's a scattering of thoughts I've had.

Christianese: I've often been reminded - either in teachings or by blank stares - how Christians have their own vocabulary. Frighteningly, Christians sometimes don't even know what their words mean. It's like a physics major saying "Clearly derivative of acceleration with respect to time is velocity" and then drawing a blank when asked what velocity is. This weekend, I definitely walked with a list of vocabulary to figure out. It's my fault for showing up at an event intended for the Catholic faithful, but I was surprised at how different the vocabulary was.

The Presence (experience) of God: After about four and a half hours of lecture, I finally realized that the way Scott Hahn talks about the experience of the presence of God in the Eucharist is paralleled in the way I perceive the dwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of Christians: He is God inside us. There is so much depth and amazement in that simple statement, the idea of a holy being choosing to dwell inside of me. < /mystic > Perhaps because of that viewpoint, or perhaps because of something else, I just don't get the emphasis on the Eucharist. The focal point seems foreign and unnecessary. I suspect there's a underlying views that I'm just missing.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Honestly Now...

For those of you who like links, here a few...
- A few neat thoughts on Damaged Goods.
- A lighthearted paraphrase of Leviticus for modern dinner manners (found via Ochuk).
- A nifty way of dealing with the Greek Bible text, or at least the best I've found so far (thanks Dan).

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about my voting preferences and honesty.

Honesty? Well, that was this week's sermon.

Voting preference? I've been pondering variants of this problem...

Candidate A is a typical politician who moderately supports my important views on key issues (e.g. budget policy, abortion, Iraq). Candidate B is a politician who openly disagrees with many of my core issues, but has an unusual reputation for honesty. He outlines significant policy changes he wants to make on these issues, but also promises limit his reforms to these proposals and not pursue more radical changes.

Given the deciding vote, who do I vote for?

It's a challenging question, because of how it distills the challenge of honesty: Do I prefer a leader who says he agrees with me but leads who-knows-where, or one who openly leads toward a known outcome that I disagree with?

Or put another way, how much do I value honesty in leaders who don't agree with me? Am I willing to vote for them? If not, do I those who disagree with me politically to have the character to do so? If neither I nor my opponents will, then we're stuck in the current cycle of distrust and anger. I've effectively said that my positions are more important than trustworthiness, and that until I can assure that my positions will be represented, I won't vote on issues of character.

And if I won't vote on issues of character, why do I expect leaders with character to be elected?

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Sowing and Reaping

Recently I was helping a friend's daughter learn GIMP (aka almost Photoshop). I feel old since film photography is foreign to her. The topic came up because I was trying to explain why darkening and lightening tools were called 'burn' and 'dodge'. Anyway, the moment along with some other interactions has me thinking about this:
Sow an act...reap a habit;
Sow a habit...reap a character;
Sow a character...reap a destiny.
-- George Dana Boardman
More, I've been thinking about how appreciative I am (or at least ought to be) of so many of the habits my parents imparted to me. It's hard to make a choice in a radically different way than the way I've made the last hundred choices. In fact, it's scary how often my choices are self-reinforcing. I don't like calling strangers, so I avoid tasks which require to me call strangers, so I tend to be stiff and nervous on the few times I do call strangers, which reinforces that I don't like calling strangers.

On the other hand, I remember my dad constantly teaching me "Go after the ball" in soccer. When I played soccer as a child, we often had balls in the middle of nowhere with me and someone from the other team running after the ball. Usually it was clear who would get to the ball first. The temptation is for whoever is going to be second to the ball to just give up and let the first player have it. But that's lousy game strategy.

First, sometimes the first player slacks and doesn't run fast enough, so if the second player is going after the ball hard enough, sometimes he'll get there first. Secondly, the first player has to make a faster decision when he gets to the ball if someone else is going to challenge him for it. It's harder to make a smart decision quickly under pressure. When one doesn't put the pressure on, the player can leisurely survey the field and make a solid pass. With pressure, mistakes happen, or at least sub-optimal plays.

Hustle pays dividends in life too. Not always, but often. And it's hard to learn hustle as young professional. It's a little scary to me that if my dad hadn't taught me when I was young, learning it now might be very, very challenging. I've been wondering how many other life skills I learned from my parents that I'm not even aware of...and how many life skills others are trying to learn now that I take for granted.

Friday, February 02, 2007

8 Hours

Story time. And a little bit of philosophizing about character decay over time.

A friend of mine (okay, several friends of mine) is looking for a new job. It's gotten me thinking about a couple summers I spent in Florida as part of a leadership training program. The program was 10 weeks. We worked during the day (~40 hours / wk) and spent 4 or 5 evenings a week at various church or training activities. The program fees were like $1500 (including room board and food budget), so it was possible to make a small profit over the summer, especially if kind souls helped with the program fees.

Of course, not all of us were lucky enough to have jobs awaiting us when we arrived in Florida. For us, the training program helped us out by giving us a job: Looking for a job, eight hours a day. Lately I've been reflecting on the days I spent looking for a job that summer. I'm still amazed at how many resumes, phone calls, and applications (picked up, filled out, and delivered) can be done over eight hours.

I'm not sure I've ever been that dedicated to a job search since then. I've also been wondering whether or not I'd put that much effort into the search if I lost my job tomorrow - I don't know if I have the self-control for that, or the humility to let my friends nag me over that goal. Alright, who am I kidding, my friends will harass me anyway; I might as well let it be productive for me.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Right Tool...

I just thought I'd mention that I have my computer back up and running. Ironically, after all the trouble I had with my old hard drive, my new windows installation took one look at it, went to work repairing the disk, and now I'm happily copying data off it. Well, I think I am...time for bed.

P.S. Remind me sometime to talk about how the Christian life is more like a road rally than a marathon.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

15 seconds...and poof

So the poof part is that my computer hard disk finally failed. Mostly it is my fault for getting caught unprepared; it had been acting weird for a couple weeks now, but I just hoped that it was alright. I haven't lost much (I did a late November backup), but lost my latest (1+ year) update of my finances from paper to Quicken. Oops. So my computer usage may be a little off for the next couple weeks while I fix that up.

Meanwhile, CBS is doing a thought provoking contest. They are offering a 15 second spot to say "anything" you want...within certain restrictions (e.g. no profanity). So I've been thinking about: How would I use those 15 seconds to communicate the gospel in a clear and creative way using both audio and visual appeal? My follow-up thought is: Is there a better message to communicate to America? Something more like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Christ? If so, how would I present it?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Baaa...and evil.

So it doesn't feel like I've been doing much lately, although I'm managing to keep myself busy with one activity or another. But I did start a class today at church on 'discipleship in the 1st century,' which is looking at what Jesus meant by discipleship. It's particularly interesting since we don't have many examples of discipleship in America today. When was the last time I knew someone who followed a teacher around, emulating the way the teacher lived life? (And no, cults don't count.)

We talked a lot about sheep - communal animals, vulnerable, and valuable for wool, food, and milk. We talked about raising sheep in the Middle East, and how the sheep were generally travelling - none of this 'put the sheep in the pasture by Michigan State with donkey' bit.

Anyway, two thoughts that were a good kick in the pants, err, stood out to me. The first is that following Jesus often involves movement, especially movement to places I wouldn't naturally go. The second thought was that an inherent part of following Jesus is whether other people follow me as I follow him. It's easy for me to loose focus, especially that following Jesus isn't a purely nebulous 'do good' type idea, but there's a very concrete application. I don't think our concept of teaching (e.g. verbal instruction) quite captures the essence of this application, but neither does the nebulous 'do good' idea.

Meanwhile there was a fascinating comment to my last entry:
So you believe that Christian people are the only people in the world that love others unconditionally... w/o self-protection?
I'm still thinking that one through, mostly because I wrestle a lot on what exactly the Bible means in teaching that we're fallen (depraved?) and how that interacts with our experiential observations of people.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Giving And Receiving

So a week ago I mentioned that I'd been reading Tropical Gangsters. Today I thought I'd share one. Ironically, this is one of the few quotes of Steinbeck that I've really appreciated (even though that may scare my high school English teachers). Reading this quote made me think of Gates and Buffet's recent donations, although it's far older than that.
Perhaps the most overrated virtue on our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

Tropical Gangsters, pg 13, quoting a John Steinbeck essay
As others commented earlier, I don't know where Gates' heart is coming from. But I've been pondering whether I really believe people change after accumulating great wealth, and what sort experience it takes for that change to happen.

I've also been pondering whether Jesus would agree with Steinbeck or not. I don't know. Here's something else I read today: It's possible to be many good things without Christ - charitable, disciplined, self-restrained. But without Christ, we cannot love others without self-protection.