A Failed Prophet?

Here's our latest Food For Thought article:

Your Kingdom Come…

Things will get better when God’s will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven. That is the promise of the Christian scriptures. Jesus message was intended to usher in a new era for humanity characterized by peace and justice. Unfortunately, two-thousand years later, the world still looks like a pretty awful place. Some people, looking at the state of the world, question whether Jesus was a failed prophet. But the real question is whether people have actually followed Jesus’ teachings of loving their neighbors as themselves, or forgiving others, or caring about their enemies? From looking at the daily news, the answer to this question must be a resounding NO. This raises another question - what if everyone did follow Jesus’ teachings? What would the world look like? Would it not be something very close to the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of? If so, is the problem that Jesus was a failed prophet or that we are a failed people?

A Broken World

I've got a couple of ideas I'm wanting to write about, but haven't gotten around to them just yet. Until then, here's my article from the paper this week:

A Broken World

We human beings have a tendency to be selfish creatures that pursue our own agendas without considering the needs of others. This creates all manner of dysfunction and suffering in the world. As a species, our behavior is creating major problems. There is no quick fix to these problems. Politicians sitting around talking about policy won’t fix things. A rich philanthropist can’t just throw enough money into charity organizations to make the problems go away. The only way this world will ever get better is if we start the hard work of changing ourselves.

There are resources for this change in the most surprising of places. For two thousand years Jesus’ teachings have been a light to those seeking a better path in life, and yet our modern culture is in danger of losing those teachings altogether. In Australia especially, Christianity may very well become an extinct religion over the next few decades. And it’s unlikely that other religions will fill the gap due to their even smaller numbers. At that point we will have no one to guide our way other than the politicians and multi-national corporations. When that happens, do you think our problems will get better or worse?

Articles

My coworker, Jason, and I have been writing short little articles to advertise our Sunday outreach, Food for Thought. We try to share something, in 200 words or less, that will provoke some curiosity from the community. I thought I would post the last couple that we put in.

God’s Not

If God existed, what would God look like?  Perhaps none of us really knows, but at the very least we can probably guess what God would not look like.  If God is the most powerful being in the universe it seems unlikely that he/she would look like the petty gods of ancient mythology.  Such gods reflect the worst qualities in human nature -- envy, deceitfulness, etc. 

Likewise, a cold impersonal god seems an unlikely representation of God since it would mean that a house cat has more personality than the being that spun stars and made life and love possible.  Both options seem unlikely. 

If we were looking for the true God we would expect to find a being that is both personal and universal at the same time -- able to both love us and suffer with us, yet without human pettiness.

Science and Faith

Can science and Christianity enjoy each other’s company?

Imagine if Jesus and Darwin sat down to enjoy a cup of tea. If Jesus put the kettle in the refrigerator instead of on the stove, Darwin would think him strange. This is because he knows scientifically that it’s not wishful thinking that heats the water, but burning gas or electricity. And if Darwin pours the water onto Jesus’ head - to test his reaction - it won’t improve the friendship. Neither party can set traps for one another if they expect to be friends. Relationships have to be experienced through mutual trust.

Science is an amazing tool for learning about the natural world. And the Christian story gives us a lens through which we can understand spiritual realities. Without a lens or framework to explain the spiritual, we only know the mechanisms science reveals to us. We don’t know whether the universe is all about love or all about survival, all random chance or completely determined. Yet with a spiritual lens, we have both a moral vision and the motivation to live in it - to love our enemies, to admit when we’re wrong, and to forgive others.

A Blog Post!

Well, I've fallen off the map again. I was doing okay for a while, but my weekly posts have been getting farther and farther apart. Twenty days is a very long week, wouldn't you say? I won't bother to ask my readers for forgiveness, as it is completely undeserved. I've not had anything in particular on my mind as of late, but if I had wanted to I could have sat down and pounded out a few words. Like I've mentioned before, to write on a regular schedule, even the casual stream-of-consciousness stuff I do here, takes discipline. And although I'm generally a hard worker, I'm still have fits of laziness.

And then there's also the problem of boredom. When I started this blog I thought I had lots of ideas I would want to share. But what I've realized is that I tend to think about the same few subjects over and over again. What seems in my mind to be a hundred different ideas turns out to be, on closer inspection, just the same four or five ideas reframed or reworded over and over again. That's one of the things that drives me crazy about other people's blogs. I always grow bored with them because they start sounding like a broken record after a couple of months. And now here I am doing the same thing. And I'm kind of bored with my own blog...how sad.

But I don't think I'm the only one who gets bored with himself sometimes. I guess that's just human nature. Almost all of my friends that blog have started and abandoned blogs, some of them multiple times. Not that I'm planning to abandon this blog - not anytime soon at least. I just need a bit of fresh material. Perhaps I should do some research on the mating habits of crickets, or write a story about space aliens or something.

Or perhaps I just need to accept that a certain amount of boredom is just part of life. Yes, we  think and say and do the same things over and over again, but that's okay. I don't know. I have gotten many compliments from friends who have said they've enjoyed my posts, so maybe I should just keep writing what I think about and not worry about redundancy.

Or maybe I'm over analyzing my blog. I think I am. I'll stop now. Thank you for reading. More and better posts coming soon. Actually, I can't really guarantee that 'better' part...

Props

In a book I read recently, the author suggested that all the things we have in life are just props. It immediately struck me as a wise way of viewing the world. I pictured a large stage with many different scenes depicting a variety of circumstances. Wouldn’t it be foolish if the actors were to look around at the costumes and set pieces and assume they told them something about their true identity? How foolish we would think them if they felt the desire to either gloat or feel ashamed over what they saw around them. “They’re just props!” we would tell them. “They don’t convey who you are!”

Here’s the truth of the matter: whatever the props around us may be, who we really are will be revealed when we step off the stage and into eternity.

Department of Defense?

Shortly after the September 11^th attacks, the U.S. government decided it was necessary to create a new governmental department, the Department of Homeland Security. The job of this new department is, of course, to provide security for the homeland.

Wait a minute?! Something is not right here. Isn’t that what the Department of Defense is supposed to do? To secure the homeland, repel invaders, etc. That is what defense means right? I mean that’s pretty much how departments of defense work in every other country on earth. So what’s the problem? It’s not as if they don’t have enough resources to provide security for the homeland; the DOD takes up about a fourth of the federal budget. Think about that - a quarter of all government spending on one organization! So isn’t the creation of a Department of Homeland Security a bit redundant? Well…yes and no. If we look at the DOD’s job description, then the answer is yes; but if we look at what they actually do, then the answer is no.

The truth is the vast majority of the DOD’s money and personnel go into foreign projects, not domestic. When I was in the Marines I spent a year on a base in Iwakuni, Japan. Chances are that unless you were stationed there, or had some relative stationed there, you’ve probably never heard of it. Your average American citizen is virtually clueless about what their own government is doing overseas. I’m sure everyone knows that the U.S. is conducting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq right now. But how many foreign bases do you think the U.S. has, not including those in Iraq in Afghanistan? Would you guess 25, 50, 100, 200? Try 865. Now, they don’t have bases in every country, but still, there are only 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, so that means that the U.S. averages about 4.5 times as many foreign bases as there are countries – again, that’s not even counting the bases in actual warzones. If you are American, that’s why a full quarter of the money you pay in taxes is not enough to defend the homeland. Here’s a map showing how the U.S. military divides up their areas of responsibility:

Yep, that’s pretty much the whole world. The COM in the titles is the abbreviation for command. Not surprisingly, there are many who believe that this is going to bankrupt us (presidential candidate Ron Paul for example). I can’t see how it could be otherwise. 95% of the world’s military bases belong to the U.S. The DOD spends around 1 trillion dollars a year. There are plenty of places in the world where that would exceed the budget of entire countries!

My point is that if we are going to have a department of Homeland Security, then we should change the title of the Department of Defense to the Department of World Security. That would, at least, be a better description of what they do. And it would explain why we found it necessary to create a Department of Homeland Security. And it would help people see more clearly why we are going broke. Its not just programs like Medicare that are causing us to go broke – it’s the whole system – an unsustainable juggernaut of spending.

Sidenote:

Of course there are other issues that could be raised besides just monetary ones. While the U.S. government allows some of our allies to maintain training facilities on certain American bases, there are no foreign bases on U.S. soil. When I talk to non-Americans they are usually surprised to learn that most Americans never even question this arrangement. That’s just the way things are. But to those on the outside looking in, a country that has complete sovereignty over its own territories, but has military bases in other countries all over the globe, looks like an empire. It used to be said that the sun never set on the British empire. And if you are a student of American history you’ll remember that in the Declaration of Independence one of the reasons the Americans sited for rebellion is that the British were “quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” Now ain’t that some irony…

Your Primary Identity

Your primary identity is in being known by others. The only ones that really know you are those people that you are in relationship with. Think about it...who really knows you besides your family and friends? I’m not talking about knowing your name. I’m talking about really knowing you - who you are, your personality, your likes and dislikes, your faults and your virtues. Is it possible to be known – to be truly known – by anyone that you don’t have a relationship with?

And yet, so many of us neglect our relationships for other pursuits. It is usually something with status attached - wealth, fame, education, accomplishments, etc. - the so called “keeping up with the Joneses.” Why? What good is it to be successful in your work, but a crappy spouse? Why would you want to be rich, if you didn’t have friends to share it with? That’s madness. When you die, people won’t say, “He was a very successful lawyer,” or, “She was a famous chef,” they’ll say, “He was a great friend,” or, “She was a wonderful mother”…or they won’t say anything at all.