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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Went South, Found Blizzard

So I'm back to warm Michigan. I took a brief jaunt south and managed to hit a snow storm that qualified as a multi-year record. It'd count as a significant Michigan snow storm - the sort we get two or three times a year.

In a separate embarrassing note, I played Ticket To Ride with little brother. I won the introductory game, then proceeded to loose to my girlfriend (who already knew the game) and then three losses more to my brother. I don't recall any of those games even being particularly close. Moral of the story: Don't teach games to family members.

On a more cheerful side, I read Tropical Gangsters while on vacation. I wasn't very impressed with the writing, but the book is a fascinating anthropological look at human nature and Western influence. I've a few more thoughts to post over the next few days. That makes TheBlogless two for two on book recommendations. Or maybe 2 minus. It really was a poorly written book, err, collection of memories.

Here a church, there a church

So a friend of mine recently posted this article about church size and how it impacts dynamics.

I've mostly grown up around small churches, and my sub-conscious tendency is that small is good. Partly that's personality - I don't interact well with the hoard mentality. Reading through the article, part of is it is that I also tend to resonate more with the inherit strengths of a small church, especially discipline, accountability, and more time with pastors and staff. Perhaps because of my background, it's hard for me to envision a church of 3,000 functioning as well as a church of, say, 500. And no, until recently, I hadn't really put registered that the first church started out at 3,000+.

The whole article is worth a read, but here's a few points struck me:

The smaller church by its nature gives immature, outspoken, opinionated, and broken members far more power over the whole body.

In smaller churches there is an unwritten rule that most everyone must be happy with any new initiative in order for it to be implement [sic]

Ah yes, I like the power of the individual. I tend to forget that not all individuals are equally deserving of power, and it's acceptable - even wise - for more power to be in the hands of a healthier minority.

It is easier to practice lay ministry and the priesthood of all believers in larger churches, where pastoral care must be done on a large scale by lay leaders. Smaller churches tend to acquiesce to clericalism.

For me, this was the highlight in the entire article. My first thought was "Wow, maybe this is why I've seen so many small churches struggle to imbue a mindset of lay ministry in their members."

Larger churches in general have something of an advantage in evangelism; they can provide more “doors” into the church through their numerous programs. Also, many (not all!) non-Christians feel too visible to visit smaller churches.

Another striking thought: In some significant ways, it's easier to accomplish a primary purpose of the church through a large church body.

Pride and Prejudice

So this clip was recently recently:It's made by a church that I used to know people from. (This video is one of my favorites, although it seemed funnier when I saw it several years ago. Not sure why.)

Anyway, the video has me thinking about how easily I stick to my perspective, regardless of facts. It's challenging about to think about how well I actually listen and consider other perspectives, or at least manage genuine arguments rather than slander.

cout << Thoughts.Brief

I finally have gotten back to this blogging thing. I haven't had a lot to say, or at least, not a lot that blogs particularly well. Vague vacuous thoughts about the meaning of life, the average character change per day a person experiences, and the endlessness of life just don't make good blog posts. Or at least, I haven't had the insight or motivation to make good blog posts.

As a side note, playing Halo doesn't make a good blog post either, but is extremely satisfying.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I came across this article which talks about our tendency to be thankful for what changes, rather than simply for what we have. Perhaps one of his most catching comments is near the end where he talks about how pre-1750s, there was no expectation of constant economic growth. I remember that from Aristotle as well - his economics assume a "fixed pie" of wealth, with the primary question being how to distribute the pie.

Here's a brief excerpt:

We assume that we deserve all we receive. Yet until 1750, societies had not learned the secret of long-term per capita economic growth.

Since then, the West has grown economically by 2% per year for about 260 years. This compounding process has made society 1,700 times richer than it was. Even in terms of per capita growth, we are hundreds of times richer, and there are more of us to enjoy wealth and give thanks for it.

We have grown accustomed to a process that is nothing short of miraculous by the standards that prevailed before 1750. We pay no attention to it. We do not even understand it. Congress surely doesn’t. We expect it to go on forever...

...Wealth is not our birthright. It is the product of thrift, future-orientation, and the private property social order. These principles were articulated in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. It took over 3,000 years for one society – the West – to come to believe them enough to put them into action.

It is the moral order that led to the social order for which we should be continually thankful. The goodies this social order produces are merely reminders of the fundamental gift.

Perhaps I've Erred

A man is convinced he is dead. His wife and kids are exasperated. They keep telling him he's not dead. But he continues to insist he's dead.

They try telling him, "Look, you're not dead; you're walking and talking and breathing; how can you be dead?" But he continues to insist he is dead.

The family finally takes him to a doctor. The doctor pulls out some medical books to demonstrate to the man that dead men do not bleed. After some time, the man admits that dead men do not bleed.

The doctor then takes the man's hand and a needle and pokes the end of his finger. The man starts bleeding. He looks at his finger and says, "What do you know? DEAD MEN DO BLEED!"

(Joke source, which is another interesting tangent on my thoughts for today.)

So elections are over. And sadly, the doves aren't fair targets. But I've been thinking about what it takes to convince me votes were wrong.

If our country thrives, do I attribute it to not taking radical policies too far, and that we would be far more successful if my policies were implemented? Or I decide that I was wrong, and others were right, and if I had been more supportive of change, we would do better yet?

If a policy I supported (say, the Iraq war) goes, say, unfortunately, what does that say about my original view? Do I blame implementation? Good idea - bad execution? Do I blame the opposition? Do I blame timing? Fate? All of these can be can be blamed without requiring me to re-examine my original views supporting the war on Iraq.

Here's another scenario: Suppose that the Iraqi invasion had gone stunningly well; the people welcomed us, embraced democracy, and setup a stable government. Would that say anything about the views of critics who talk about the sanctity of life and the sovereignty of nations? What about the criticism that our government was badly in err, if not outright dishonest, about the WMD programs? Would any amount of success address those issues?

I've been thinking about the success of the affirmative action ban (Prop 2) and the failure of the school funding (Prop 5). What does it take for voters to change their minds that their view was incorrect?

If educational funding flounders, does that mean Prop 5 should have been passed? Or does it mean that it would have floundered worse if it had passed?

The affirmative action consequences may be even harder to tell: My guess is that an amazing number of failures will be blamed on it, regardless of the incompetence, laziness, or circumstances involved. It's far easier to say "My organization was thwarted by the lack of affirmation action" than to say "Honestly, people just don't want to provide funding for X any more."

Statistically, I'd guess diversity will drop in many places. It's easy to quantify diversity by "What percentage of are involved?" It's hard to qualify diversity. One can achieve a racially diverse group who all grew up in poverty in Detroit. Does racial diversity translate to a diverse background and perspectives? Probably not. However, I wouldn't want to be the one selling sound bytes to the media on how my all-white college was truly a diverse place.

I don't know what it takes for me to decide that I'm wrong politically. But I'm 99.9% sure everyone who disagrees with is wrong. :-P

A Few Brief Thoughts

I've been very bad about this whole 'posting' concept lately. I haven't been feeling very inspired; mostly just frustrated by not being supreme dictator of the United States and thus being able to bring a different madness into power.

Last during Bible study, we ended up talking about the following quote:

Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

It's been a thought I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now.

It's a whole lot easier to see where others approve of evil than where I do. It's easy to see where North Korea, Iran, or the one's political party of choice is approving of evil. But do I think much about how the policies I support may be promoting evil? How much would I be prepared to have my taxes go up to have a candidate who was honest?

It's pretty easy for me to see how lawyers, or business CEOs approve of evil - there's been plenty of press on that. But do I seriously examine the accepted practices and norms of my profession for how it engages in evil? Do I have any idea how Satan can tempt someone in my career?

Then there's more personal questions. Who do I idolize? Do I overly heed the professional athletes who have frequent encounters with the law, or take performance enhancing drugs? Do I envy the Hollywood stars?

Am I easily impressed by people's workaholic accomplishments, or by their priorities to spouses, children, or community that rarely improve resumes or earn public recognition?

Occasionally I wonder: If someone came in and took out our government, would we be any less chaotic than Iraq? Then I think about New Orleans and the chaos around Katrina. Mostly I've been thinking about how so many Americans, each of whom thinks himself mostly reasonable, can have so many expressions of evil in their country.

Power Conversion

Lately I've been looking at my todo list. In no particular order, it includes:
Exercise
Update e-mail lists
C++ Project
Do great good
Blog
Civic/community involvement
Get to know people
Photography
...

During most of my college years, various advisors assured me that college was when I had the most free time. I'm finding that more and more true. So much of my time is spent doing the basics - trying to keep the apartment clean, running chores, feeding myself, working, and the like.

There's no doubt that I could make better use of my time. And I hope to, a little bit. But lately I've been pondering the Michigan political race and pondering "How did Michigan manage to nominate two people for governor who inspire me so little?"

More to the point, if everyone did what I did, would it change? What does it mean for me to be intelligently involved in politics with my time and money?

Here's another way I've been looking at the problem: Why is it so hard for me to convert my money into influence? I'm fairly well off in one of the wealthiest nations. Why is it so hard for me to convert money to influence in clear, concise ways?

But there's no "$20,000 for sane politics" donation that I can make. There's no "Donate $10,000 to change public education" option. (Although for $10,000, I can fund building a church in India.) There's plenty of good causes I can donate to. But generally, the progress they make is slow, uncertain, and filled with set backs.

It makes me appreciate the appeal of lobbyist: Hire them, and they'll influence the people in power toward your way of thinking. Part of me wonders if we over-emphasize the contributions of the single individual in American and fail to look at the impact of many people working slowly and steadily toward a goal. Part of me wonders if I simply don't realize how little influence 1 in 300,000,000 has.

And part of me is reminded that while influence through power is cool, it doesn't change people's hearts. That's a much slower and harder process.

Fear will keep the local politicians in line

Fear of this electorate.

So in light of recent scandals sweeping the Congress, it occurred to me that what is needed is to simple vote out the Congressional GOP leadership team. Make a stunning example of how unacceptable this level of leadership is. Actually, there's a pretty long list of governance that I think the populace should be pretty put out about. But if campaign finance reform, responsible spending and integrity aren't bottom level issues, surely we can at least hold congressional leadership to the same standard we're holding the Catholic church.

No, I don't really expect the Democrats to get the message, and it'd probably be necessary to oust their leadership in a couple years. But the nice arrangement with the Congress is that they face re-election every two years, so there are plenty of opportunities to vote them out.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking I should start a grassroots campaign for President for 2016. I figure if I can convince 7 citizens per year to vote for me, and each person they convince then convinces another 7 each year, and so on, then I should will have convinced most of America to vote for me.

A Brief Morsel

One blog I follow talks about the recent school shootings. Ironically, I came across this blog discussing the author's thoughts on some of the underlying issues.

I don't know if I have much to add at the moment, but one thought I've been thinking about is the principle that we reap what we sow. I don't mean that in a "we're such an evil bunch of people that of course we deserve to have our children randomly slaughtered" way, but more in a "When I look at the way Americans live, what values do I see us passing on to our children? Do we handle hurt, anger, rage, or fear in a constructive or healthy way? Do I want my children to be like America's role models?" way.

Here's my "Wow" question of the day: How can 65 percent of the world's richest nation live paycheck to paycheck? How can we be so wealthy and have so little savings?

And if we're not wise with money, why on earth do I expect us to be wise with law, or justice, or charity, or emotional healing, or child raising?

Advertising Economics

I hear a lot about the advertising business boom. Selling advertising on buses. On school buses. About FedEx sponsoring textbooks. Google and Yahoo selling ads. Recently, someone auctioned off the right to tattoo a section of his body. There's this vision of the future as a "Minority Report" scene where people receive personalized ads as they stroll about. There's moaning and worrying about us becoming overwhelmed with ads.

Lately I've been thinking about the economics behind this model. Here's my conclusion: This sort of future is only possible if advertising becomes very, very cheap.

Here's why: For a company, advertising is cost limited by profit per item. That is, advertising comes out of a company's profit. Long term, a business can not function if it cost more to sell the item than to buy it. (Yes, exceptions like the razor/razor blade model where one sells a cheap permanent item and an expensive replaceable item. But even then the net profit needs above zero.)

Now a company can shift where it advertises. Perhaps the internet is a better medium than newspapers. Perhaps advertising on textbooks is a better use of resources than magazines. Perhaps sponsoring college bowl games is better than radio. But companies are strictly limited their advertising budget based on their sales.

Likewise, credit cards not withstanding, there's a strict limit on the number of purchasing decisions a person makes during a year. Just because I see more advertising doesn't mean that my yearly buying power goes up. (Yes, there's suggestions that advertising does increase spending, which may lead to debt, which leads to interest, which in turn leads to less spending...or bankruptcy.)

So perhaps the question is really...what's the value to us of non-advertising filled space? What does an advertiser have to value a space at before we'll fill it with an ad? How good is a "FedEx" tattoo on my arm as an advertisement?

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Zeal and Human Nature

I came across this blog entry today discussing the nature of radical Islam. I don't have a lot more to say about it, other than I've been contemplating whether or not we (I) think of ourselves (myself) as somehow more enlightened and less given to violence.

Chinese Torture, err, Modern Medicine

The difference, apparently, in anesthesia. Ancient Chinese used to remove toenails without to torture. Modern doctors first repeatedly stab you with a needle to numb the toe, then operate. When all is said and done, I strongly prefer modern medicine.

Thoughts from today:
Sometimes the "surely it will get better" thought isn't right, and there is a reason that modern medicine is a huge advancement over ancient times.

Experts often know more than novices. I shouldn't pretend to be an expert where I'm not.

Experts are tempted to abuse their expertise for personal gain.

Some problems take an expert to solve.

Some problems take an expert to know that it takes an expert to solve.