God and the Tsunami

I got a letter today from someone said he knows faith is not a rational emotion, but he is deeply bothered by why God appears to be so quiet in the face of disasters (I assumed he was thinking primarily of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean), especially when he was so active in the Old Testament. I thought I'd post my response, for what it's worth.


Hi,

I actually think Christianity is rational, although it may not appear to be rational at times, just as some of the discoveries of science appear to be irrational, but they are only irrational from our - or, at least, my - limited perspective. For example, if I understand correctly, scientists believe that electrons circling in atoms can jump between lower and higher orbits without passing through the intervening space. To me that seems pretty irrational, but if it is indeed the case, I believe there is a rational explanation for it even if I don't know it, and even if I can't understand it.

Your concern seems to be that God is silent when it appears he should be active and vocal. You mention that in the Old Testament he was active.

First, about the Old Testament. Remember that the Old Testament miracles were spread out over thousands of years, and how many were there? Maybe a couple hundred recorded? And they were all in a very limited area - in and around Israel. So the likelihood of your seeing a miracle, even in Old Testament times, would be very unlikely.

But that still leaves the question of why God so often appears to be silent or inactive. Why doesn't he step in and save people, like the 100,000-plus who have lost their lives from the tsunami? Or the little girl who steps in front of a truck and is killed, or the child dying of cancer?

It seems it would be wonderful if everyone lived to a ripe old age. But suppose everybody did live to a ripe old age? Then wouldn't we be asking these questions...

- Why does God allow people to forget even the people they most love?
- Why does God let people's bodies become so frail?
- Why does God let us go blind?
- Why does God allow people to die so suddenly, without even a chance to say goodbye?
- Why does God allow people to die so slowly, suffering for months or years?
- Why does God allow some people live to 105 while others only get to live to 92?
- What kind of a joke is God playing, making people only to let them die?

In essence, I think what we object to is that life is imperfect, that it is unfair because some people are happier or live longer than others, and that it all ends in death. We want paradise back.

But this, I'm afraid, is the curse we live with. But also, perhaps God is speaking in this disaster. Maybe God wants to impress on our minds that this life is tenuous, that there are no guarantees here about health and long life, that we should not put our full hope in this world, but put a good portion of our focus on the next life, and maybe he wants it clear that we can't wait until 15-minutes before our God-guaranteed lifespan is about to end before turning to Jesus.

I don't know. But not only does the Bible make no firm guarantees of long life and good health, but there are places where it promises disaster. Sections of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation are examples.

Most of this is speculation, and I'm sure it doesn't answer your question fully. Like you, I want to understand as much as I can, but ultimately - Christian or non-Christian - you have to accept that there are questions for which you will not find a full answer. But at least, as a Christian, you can rest assured that a just and good answer really exists, because you believe in a just and good and all-knowing God.

God bless you

Crucify the Christians

Two days before Christmas I was a bit bored. So much so that I decided to look at chat rooms, which I had never really bothered with before. I went to a Christian chat room on Yahoo at about the time a group of what I will politely call "non-Christians" decided to barge in.

I watched briefly as "crucify_the_christians" and "angrysatan666" and others cursed and insulted Christians, typed obscenities in clever ways to avoid the filters, described what they said were Jesus' sexual preferences, and so forth.

Then "crucify" said Christians are ignorant.

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

He said we are ignorant because God doesn't make sense and the Bible is just a book written by humans.

"You ever read the Bible, Cruz?" I asked.

Sure he had, he said. His parents made him read it, and he really liked the nasty parts in the Old Testament about the God of anger and Hell.

Not recalling anything about Hell in the Old Testament, I asked him where he had seen this.

He didn't know.

"Can you name five books of the Bible, Cruz?"

He couldn't name one.

"You don't know the Bible at all, do you Cruz?"

That, he said, wasn't his point. His point was that Christians need to question the Bible.

Hmmm. So, he had barely a clue about the Bible's contents, but was sure it was wrong and should be questioned.

"I'm lost, Cruz."

"Good," he replied, "That's where you should be. The point," he said, "is that there is no point."

Ah. So I should be at the point where there are pointless points.

We also talked about the existance of God. I asked if he knew any of the arguments for the existance of God.

"How would you reply to the cosmological argument for God, Cruz?"

He didn't know what it was until I explained it.

But that was okay by him. All he wanted, he said, was to make Christians realize that there is no answer, that "the answer is a question."

I tried to point out that he had been making statements of what he believed to be fact, so he was kind of like Christians (and everybody else) in that he believed specific things to be true.

No, he said, that was "just a manner of speaking."

O-kay. So now we have points that don't have points and questions that are answers and facts that are just a manner of speaking. All that and he's sure God doesn't exist and the Bible is wrong although he hadn't a clue about the arguments for and against God and had nothing but the vaguest notions of what is in the Bible.

I offered to pray for him, and he asked me not to. It sounded as if the idea made him a bit nervous.

"Don't waste your breath, it won't help."

"Sorry, Cruz. You hang around Christians long enough and somebody's bound to pray for you."

So I did.

What was interesting about this slam-bang exchange was that I began to like Cruz, and he's been on my mind and I've prayed for him several times since. While I wasn't going to put up with his junior philosopher nonsense, I felt I kind of got to know a lost kid, probably in high school, who would likely be very polite and friendly in person.

Hey Cruz! I'm still praying for you, buddy.

Merry Christmas!

I just got back from a Christmas Eve service. Singing the beautiful old hymns, a simple message of Christ's advent, everybody with candles lit. It was packed and it was wonderful!

I'll bet the two best attended church services during the year are Christmas and Easter, partly because they're special days, but I'll bet part of it is that it is pretty hard to focus on silly trivia on those days. Unless your church is totally dead, the focus is Christ both days; Christ's birth on Christmas, and Christ's resurrection on Easter.

Maybe churches would be fuller on other days if they focused on Christ then too!

Merry Christmas!

The Churching of America

I just read an excellent and encouraging book, called The Churching of America: 1776-1990, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark.

Basically, it's an historical examination of the church in America, and the book's messages are many. Perhaps the most encouraging message is that the church has actually been growing steadily throughout American history. And perhaps the most useful observation, or warning, is that the more worldly a denonimation becomes, the more dead it becomes. While that's hardly a surprise, it's good to see solid scholarship backing it up.

By "worldly" (my word, not theirs; they use sociological terms) I don't think the authors mean that it's a problem for the church to use modern techniques for communicating with people, but simply that a church will begin to wither if it begins to get fuzzy about its doctrine and about holy living.

The authors suggest that this toning down of the church's stands and soft pedaling of its harder doctrines is initially encouraged by wealthy church members and - interestingly - by the pastoral leadership of the church. Why? Because they both want to fit in with society. Then, one compromise leads to another and pretty soon you have a dying church.

I think this raises an interesting question: How much should the church try to identify with the world in order to win it? I suspect a lot of dying churches initially said they were trying to be more "relevant" to the world when they actually wanted to fit in better. I think a good test is this: Are we compromising our beliefs to fit in? If not, I think we're okay. If we are compromising, I think we're on a downward slope.

A few other interesting points:

The authors say that the downward trend for churches begins in the seminaries. For example, they note that the Methodist Church, after truly explosive growth, began to urge seminarians to study the latest liberal German theology. These students were then assigned to churches and spread their views there. Because the Methodist Church is hierarchal, the individual churches could not reject these pastors, so unhappy parishioners split off from - or were kicked out of - the church, some forming the basis of the Holiness Movement.

The Southern Baptists, on the other hand, do not have a hierarchal organization. Their seminaries went liberal too (and amazingly, had problems virtually from the start!), but unhappy Baptists could not be kicked out of their denomination because the denomination does not have that authority. So conservatives could stay and fight, and they have been fighting, and lately, winning. Also, Baptist churches can select anybody they please as pastor and kick them out if they please. For that reason the Southern Baptists have had more success in maintaining their faith, though it has been a continuing battle for their seminaries.

I take it from this that democracy is good at preserving orthodoxy, and unless a church strongly believes that hierarchy is God-ordained, it should lean toward democracy.

Another interesting observation from the book is that the truly explosive growth of the Baptists and Methodists came when they had unpaid or underpaid amateur preachers. Professional clergy, the authors argue, want to be treated as professionals, get good pay and be respected in the community. This, they argue, kind of nudges the church in a worldly direction. I have often thought that church jobs should pay less than the prevailing wage, for just this reason, so churches don't attract the uncommitted.

But what is truly amazing and exciting about this book is that it explodes the myth that church membership has been declining through the years in America. To the contrary, the authors say it has been on an almost stairstep upward path since colonial days, from 17 percent of the population being church members in 1776 to 60 percent being members in 1980.

The reason people think it has been declining, or has gone in waves, they say, is because they only look at the path of particular denominations, which do indeed rise and fall. But, they note, there are constant renewals that create new churches and revitalize faith. That is the most encouraging message of this book.

This is a very rich book, with a lot of insights, and I'm just touching the highlights here and not even doing them justice. I'm not totally convinced of everything the authors claim, and I am not even sure the authors are Christians, but their book is fascinating and well worth pondering. I highly recommend it.

Is It Just Me?

When I first became a Christian it seemed there was more emphasis in church on... well... God.

We still sing some great songs and hymns that glorify God, but it seems the emphasis has changed a bit; now it seems to be more about people - either what God will do to benefit us or that we ought to be doing something.

I have no objection to either of those topics; Jesus certainly spoke about benefits and responsibilities, and you can find plenty about both these topics throughout the Bible.

But it seems it should all flow from God. My faith is not a cost/benefit analysis and it is not a list of rules (or "principles" or "guidelines" or "steps" or whatever we want to call them), any more than my relationship with my wife is either of these things.

God is the one I love. I long to worship him. I long to connect with him. And when, in church, the benefits or responsibilities of the Christian life are shifted from being the outcome of my love for God to being the centerpiece of the Christian life, I'm disappointed, and I leave feeling I haven't connected with God.

Under Isaiah

Like the books of most of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah strikes me as disjointed, and I think the reason is that it is not a single narrative, but apparently a series of sermons preached at different times. Nevertheless, there seems to be a general theme. Many of these sermons deal with the fate of nations, of Israel and its neighbors. Isaiah speaks of their sins and of God's judgement upon them, and then of his mercy and forgiveness and restoration for a repentant Israel.

But...

In the midst of these themes, you occasionally notice something a bit curious; something in the text that strikes a slightly discordant note - a promise, perhaps, that appears too lavish for the topic at hand. Odd... as if you were on a boat and noticed a curious swelling in the sea. But then the swelling subsides and the sea returns to normal.

And then, at other points, a beautiful transcendent passage flashes out of the narrative - sometimes for just a second - stunningly unrelated to the apparent topic, and then is gone again, like a jumping fish diving back into the ocean.

As you read, it becomes increasingly clear that Isaiah is about something even greater than the rise and fall of nations. There is something mysterious going on beneath the surface that occasionally breaks into the open. Sometimes you see messianic hints which seem, well... doubtful, blended, as they are, with other topics to the point where they are merely suggestive (Was it just a peculiar current? the reader may ask, or was there really something there under the water?). But at other times the messianic promises simply leap out of the water, flashing clearly in the sunlight, often at unexpected moments in the text.

And toward the end of the book the New simply breaks out with wild abandon - with long messianic passages, such as Isaiah 53, wonderful promises, and descriptions of a new world. The fate of nations is almost forgotten in its glory. It reminds me of the Bible as a whole - the hints and explicit prophesies of the Messiah in the Old Testament, followed by the glorious reality of the Messiah in the New Testament.

What Happened to Thanksgiving?

I'm not a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas, but it annoys me to be confronted with Christmas decorations and songs before Thanksgiving.

I remember I once did a story for a newspaper about a training class for Santas. They began work the day after Thanksgiving, and I remember thinking that was a bit excessive. But lately I've been seeing Christmas decorations before Halloween, and now, before Thanksgiving, they're everywhere.

For example, I was at Starbuck's this morning nursing a cup of coffee and the store was decorated with snowy wreaths, selling Christmas coffees and playing Christmas songs.

One patron suggested to an employee that it was a bit early for all this Christmas stuff, and another echoed, "Yeah!", and the employee kinda sighed, as if he agreed but didn't have any say in the matter.

Amen!

What's the matter with Thanksgiving? It's a nice low-key holiday that anybody can enjoy. It has Christian roots, but is not really a Christian holiday. Anybody can celebrate for any reason they want. You can be thankful for family or football, or turkey deep fried in peanut oil, a day off of work, or whatever.

Can't you merchants at least notice Thanksgiving before diving into Christmas? You keep starting Christmas earlier and earlier, so by the time it really arrives I'm going to be sick of it.

The Polar Express

I just saw the movie, The Polar Express, about a boy who awakens Christmas Eve to a steam train that stops right outside his house. He gets on and it takes him to the North Pole. I really liked the movie. In fact it brought back a strange memory I have barely thought about for decades.

I remember when I was a child I awoke in the early morning and looked out the bedroom window of our little crackerbox house. As I looked I saw a steam train with a light and black smoke from its funnel, silently puffing up the street toward my house. It was a short train, with just a few cars. It wasn't as nice as the Polar Express and it wasn't Christmas Eve, but, like the Polar Express, it was mysterious in an entrancing sort of way.

Later in the morning I told my mom and dad about the train.

They looked confused. They said there was no train on our street. My mom quite sensibly told me there were no tracks. She pointed out that we lived in a canyon that dead-ended into the mountain. There was nowhere for a train to go. She suggested I'd been dreaming. But all her comments seemed absurd to me at the time. Maybe the train was going to a gold mine at the head of the canyon, I thought. And her objection that there were no tracks seemed to me to be pure quibbling. But her logic eventually led me to doubt... somewhat. But to this day I still halfway believe that there is a steam train that goes up Pasadena Glen Road.

And I wonder where it's going.

Fixing Social Security

President Bush has suggested that people be allowed to put part of their Social Security money in their own retirement accounts. Fine, but the problem, as I understand it, is that the Social Security Administration is not putting your money away safe in the bank where it's earning interest (as it should be doing), but rather is using your money to pay current retirees. Therefore, if the gummint lets people put part of their money into their own retirement accounts, that means there's less money to pay current retirees, which means that for a while, there'd be a shortfall.

With that in mind, I want to share my ignorance - for free! - about how to minimize the shortfall to reduce the cost of Social Security.

Why not let anybody who is eligible for Social Security work tax free? No federal taxes - at all. If these people were going to retire otherwise, that's no income loss to the government. In return, the government would ask that they delay collecting Social Security for a few years. Nobody would have to do this, but some would, and that would save money. This has the side benefit of helping boost the economy and keeping seniors active and hopefully healthier. Also, I suspect that some of these seniors would be covered by their companies' health plans, which would save money for Medicare.

Alternately, working Social Security recipients could be taxed at maybe five percent of the normal rate, and the small amount that is collected from them would help fund Social Security.

The Social Security age for people just beginning to work should be raised. Lifespans have been increasing and people can generally work longer. People in the system, however, were promised a retirement date, and we should honor that.

Why not let workers put part of their Social Security money in private accounts if they agree to wait until they're older to withdraw their money. The older they are, the less delay they have to accept. If they want no delay, they'd just keep their money in the current system.

Why not give workers larger Social Security pensions the longer they delay taking it. I believe this is done to some extent already, and I think the concept should be extended.

Why not give people the option to donate their money to the Social Security system. Not many people will do that, but even if some do, it would help.

Thoughts on the U.S. Election

As I reflect on the election, I think it is interesting that a large turnout usually helps the Democrats because there are more Democrats than Republicans, though they aren't as disciplined about voting, so if you can get those Democrats to the polls, you should win. But in this election the turnout was huge, and still the Republicans won.

Why? Is the electorate becoming more Republican?

Possibly. James Taranto at OpinionJournal thinks that what he calls the "Roe Effect" is coming into play. His assumption is that people who believe abortion is okay (by which he means Democrats) are more likely to have abortions. This may mean they have fewer children, and if they have fewer children, 18 years later they're going to have fewer voters. Hmm. Maybe so.

I also think that if the Democrats had to lose, it is too bad for them they didn't lose by a huge margin. An overwhelming loss might have persuaded the vast majority that there is something wrong with their party, rather than letting their radicals weave loopy conspiracy theories to explain the loss. (I think Karl Rove gets far more credit from Democrats than he is due.)

Something else that strikes me is that the old media went all out for Kerry, and he still lost. CBS is only the most glaring example of this partisanship. I practically gave up reading the LA Times before the election because I could see that almost every political story was slanted to put the Bush administration in a bad light. But, as I said, he still lost, even with the huge power of the media behind him. And I believe he lost because of the Internet and bloggers. They questioned and ripped apart media stories, spread information (and misinformation, though that was quickly corrected) with breathtaking speed. They made the main stream media look ridiculous, and I think that can only have a salutary effect.

The old media says it has a watchdog role to perform, which is fine. But it is utter hypocrisy for them to then turn around and whine about others watching them. This election others did watch them, despite the whines, and with embarrassing effect on the old media. If this makes the newspapers and broadcast media shape up, great! And even if it doesn't... well, the Internet media is only growing stronger.

Outsourcing

Since Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has been complaining about "outsourcing," I thought I'd add my two cents to that discussion.

I have two friends, one who is absolutely a Democrat, and another who is quite likely one. Both of them have founded Internet companies that either are - or look as if they will be - fairly successful.

One of these friends has built his company using programmers in the Ukraine and Shanghai. The other started his company using North American programmers, but is now expanding using programmers in Bulgaria.

They are, in a word, outsourcing, and this, of course, has given me a great opportunity for kidding. But kidding aside, I really don't see what they're doing wrong.

Not only are they giving jobs to people in less wealthy parts of the world, but they are also giving jobs to people in the United States. Not to mention making nice products for consumers. So, who's worse off?

Of course, nobody objects to what they're doing. The problem comes with existing companies that decide to lay off people in the U.S. and replace them with people overseas. And that, of course, is painful for the people who lose their jobs.

But should we prohibit companies who have hired people in the U.S. from firing them and replacing them with people overseas? If we do that, then it seems we are giving people like my friends a very unfair advantage. My friends get to pay very low labor costs, while existing companies, which have hired and - for some time, at least - provided a living for American workers, would have to pay higher American labor rates.

At an extreme, the companies with the higher labor costs might go out of business, so the people whose jobs would have been outsourced might lose their jobs anyway.

But I really don't see this happening. I think the concern about outsourcing will die away because other jobs will arise to replace lost jobs. Like what? Well, I think again of one of my friends. He and his partner might not have been able to start their company if it wasn't for low cost programmers in the Ukraine and Shanghai. But because they were able to start their company, now they are able to hire people in the United States - including programmers. These are U.S. jobs that might not otherwise have existed.

So I think in the short run it will be painful for some people, but in the long run there will be more jobs, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Of Address Books and Tigers

I had two conversations in the past few days, both with nuggets worth sharing.

In one instance, a friend and I were talking about the presidential candidates, and he said of John Kerry, "A tiger doesn't change his stripes just because he's running for president."

While true enough, I burst out laughing - imagining all these tigers giving stump speeches.

The second comment was a bit more profound (And what couldn't be more profound than the stripy tiger comment?). A few people from work, including the company founder, went out to lunch the other day, and the founder, who is extremely bright and very successful, made this off-the-cuff remark. He said that sometimes he forgets people he has met, so he occasionally reads through his address book just to remind himself about them.

That may sound as dull as yesterday's spaghetti to you, but to me it is profound, at least for entrepreneurs. I believe much of my boss's success is due to his connections, and to his hiring and working with people he trusts.

It made me think of how many people I've met, chatted with, liked, whose talents I've admired, and then whom I've forgotten. How stupid! It's like you're doing an interview whenever you meet someone new. Why don't we draw on that knowledge and reenforce it by reviewing our address books periodically?

Leviticus

I just finished reading the book of Leviticus (in the Bible) just because I thought I ought to every once in a while, not because I find it particularly enjoyable, it being essentially a list of regulations, some of which have a logic that is completely opaque to me.

But some things about Leviticus did strike me as interesting. One was its detail. In it is described with far more detail than I'm sure most of us would care for, various kinds of offerings, animals that can be offered, flaws that make them unaccpetable, exactly how much grain is to be used in offerings. How the offering is to be cut apart, what is to be done with it after it is offered. Etc.

I wondered about some of the regulations. Why was God so insistent that these sacrifices be done in such a particular way? And then, a little further on, I read the threats against those who offer up their children as offerings to Moloch, and I thought, "Okay, maybe that's why."

I suspect that all worship, whether Christian or Jewish or whatever, is to a some extent similar. Even those who offer up sacrifices to the Devil ... well, they offer up sacrifices. I can imagine that if the Israelites were offering up whatever sacrifices they pleased and the followers of Moloch were offering up the sacrifices they pleased, the Israelites might be inclined to say, "Hey, why don't we try giving our children as burnt offerings, like the Caananites are doing?"

Maybe that is the reason for many of the precise regulations in the Old Testament. Perhaps they are intended to make clear to the Israelites that the worship of God is not to be confused with the worship of false gods offered by neighboring peoples, whatever the superficial resemblances may be. God may have demanded differences in their service simply (or partially) to separate the worship of God more completely from the practices of Israel's neighbors, which, if adopted in part, might be adopted in their awful, sinful whole.

Or maybe - entirely likely - God simply has reasons about which I have no clue.

Another curiosity that struck me is "uncleanness." Throughout the book people and things are either clean or unclean. It seems to be a negative for whomever is unclean, but it does not necessarily imply any sin on their part. Even a moldy house or clothing can be unclean. Sexual relations cause you to be unclean. Burying a body makes you unclean.

If you're unclean it appears people were supposed to avoid touching you until you are clean again, and priests weren't supposed to be involved in service to God if they were unclean.

It almost seems like a combination of health regulations (and it was easy to see the health value of some of the rules) and, to put it in modern terminology, "Wear good, clean clothes to church." In other words, you wouldn't want to see your pastor walk up to the pulpit, setting aside a plumber's plunger with which he'd been unclogging his toilet, wipe his grimy hands on his shirt, and then with those same filthy hands open his Bible and begin to preach.

Nothing wrong with fixing a broken toilet. It's a good thing to do. But most people regard it as pretty filthy work, and I think Leviticus suggests that we should not associate things that disgust us with God.

Another thing that struck me is what seemed to be the needless complexity of regulations regarding sexual relations. Why doesn't Leviticus just say, "Limit your sexual relations to your husband or wife?" Well, at that time men could apparently have concubines and slave women with whom they could have sexual relations. (This is suggested in some of the regulations.)In thinking of this, I was reminded of Jesus' comment that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of the people's hearts.

I wonder if some of these Levitical regulations were because the people had hard hearts. Jesus said a man should have one wife, in which case the command I suggest in the previous paragraph might be appropriate, but if, because of men's hard hearts, they insist on having multiple wives, or wives and concubines, or wives and slave women, or whatever combination, then life becomes much more complex and the rules of sexual behavior become much more complex.

It occurs to me that ideals are often simple, whether it is for marriage or something else. But when the ideal needs to compromise with people's hard hearts, things can get messy. But it is interesting that God - for a while - was willing to make that compromise while leading people more firmly toward monogamy. But the compromise was accompanied by fierce penalties for those who wanted to be even harder of heart. God drew a line, not where he wanted, but where he would temporarily accept.

The final thing that occurs to me is what I will call the "unscalability" of the sacrificial system outlined in Leviticus. As we would say in the software business, "It doesn't scale," meaning that some things can be done easily if you're only doing it a few times, but it becomes extremely difficult to do it thousands or tens of thousands of times over.

While offering the complex and numerous sacrifices detailed in Leviticus was possible for a limited number of people, it would appear to be increasingly difficult to do as the number of people increased. Also, as I recall, the tabernacle (and later the temple) were of a very precise size, and simply would not accomodate sacrifices for tens of millions of people.

Either God did not anticipate this, which seems rather unlikely, or it was his intention that this not be a permanent arrangement, and that perhaps his intention was that the sacrificial system of Leviticus be seen as a foreshadowing of Christ's all-sufficient sacrifice.

What's Wrong With Trade Deficits?

I went out for coffee the other day with a liberal friend of mine who was concerned about the U.S. trade deficit with China. He tried to persuade me that it is a problem, but I just don't get it. There are so many real problems in the world, why would anybody spend a moment worrying about the trade deficit.

I'm not an economist (and if I'm wrong about this, I invite any bright economists out there to explain why) but as I reflect on my life, I realize that my family has for years had a very serious trade deficit with the local supermarket. We pay the market money and the folks there give us food. However, we have never sold anything back to Ralph's; but if this is a problem, I don't see why.

But maybe it's different between sovereign countries. Maybe because countries can mint their own money, that makes a difference. I'm not sure why it would, but let's assume it does.

So, basically, the complaint is that we are buying more from China (or whomever) than China is buying from us.

But it seems that there are only two possible things that can happen with the dollars we send to China: 1) they are used to purchase U.S. goods and services, possibly after being traded through many countries, or 2) they are never used to purchase U.S. goods and services.

So, if someone eventually buys U.S. goods or services with those dollars, then the trade deficit "problem" is solved.

On the other hand, if the Chinese bury the dollars in a wet hole in the ground until they rot, then the U.S. has obtained some nice products or services from China, and all the Chinese got out of the deal was some rotted paper. I think we Americans would be happy to have a trade deficit like that forever! We could send the Chinese worthless paper and they'd give us lots of nice stuff.

Unfortunately for that bright idea, the Chinese are not such idiots.

Intelligent Design in Wired

The latest copy of Wired magazine has a fairly good discussion of Intelligent Design, which Wired (on the cover of its paper version, at least) calls "Creationism 2.0." Cute.

If you can get past the sensational cover art ("THE PLOT TO KILL EVOLUTION" in blood-red letters, complete with telescopic crosshairs aimed at the head of an evolving man) the actual discussion of the political aspect of intelligent design was quite good. I wish the author had beefed up the scientific part of the discussion, but still, not bad at all. There's even a sidebar by George Gilder that explains why he subscribes to intelligent design.

It's a good read. The intelligent design argument, if you are not familiar with it, basically says there are certain vital aspects of life that are "irreducably complex," meaning that they are complicated and cannot be made simpler, which means they could not have started simpler and become more complex by evolution. There needs to have been some designer at work.

For more on the topic, I'd recommend Darwin's Black Box by Lehigh University's Michael Behe; Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton. For a more specifically Christian view, The Fingerprint of God, by Hugh Ross, is excellent. And of course, it's always fun to go back and read Darwin's Origin of Species to see the other side of the argument. Here's a review I wrote of it.

UPDATE: My friend Chris also recommends God the Evidence : The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World by Patrick Glynn.

New Pray for Denmark Site

A while ago I wrote about a Web site a friend and I have created for people to pray for the spiritual revival of Denmark. The site didn't look very good at the time, but now I think Pray for Denmark is looking pretty nice. Please take a glance.

In addition to encouraging prayer for Bill's and my ancestral homeland, I hope Pray for Denmark will be a model for other Web sites by people who want to promote prayer for their homelands.

Robinson Crusoe

I read to my son frequently, and gave Robinson Crusoe a try. (Great book, but the old language was too hard for him.) But, anyway, it had a neat quote - though in rather archaic language - about the perversity of human nature:

"They are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action, for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools; but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men."

A Sermon to Himself

I just started reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton (very good so far) and was struck by this description of Hugh Knox, a Presbyterian minister who had a very positive impact on Hamilton's life (pg. 34). Let me quote:

"As a raffish young man, he exhibited a lukewarm piety until a strange incident transformed his life. One Saturday at a local tavern where he was a regular, Knox amused his tipsy companions with a mocking imitation of a sermon delivered by his patron, the Reverend John Rodgers. Afterward, Knox sat down, shaken by his own impiety but also moved by the sermon that still reverberated in his mind. He decided to study divinity...."

Fascinating. A mocking sermon delivered by himself convicted Knox's heart and turned him to God.

A Disgrace to Journalism

I am watching the current U.S. presidential election with fascination, and while I'm not certain who the winner will be, I already know who the losers are.

The losers are the big media: The LA Times, the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, to name just a few.

Having worked for some years as a newspaper reporter, including a stint as a stringer for the LA Times, I could see that individuals in the media were generally very liberal, but while their liberal bias would occasionally seep into their news coverage, I always believed that a good story would always trump a bias. In other words, I thought any good reporter would rather have a scoop than cover up a story, whatever his or her biases.

That may have been the case then, but I no longer believe it is true. What caused my change of opinion was watching Unfit for Command (a book very critical of Sen. John Kerry's experience in Vietnam) be published and rise to the top of Amazon's best seller list, and yet for more than a week the charges layed out in the book were utterly ignored by the big media.

I saw the story unfold on the Internet, in great detail, with quotations from the Congressional Record and testimony by Kerry's fellow Swift Boat veterans. I watched day by day to see how the major news media would treat it. Would they give the vets charges and Kerry's response equal treatment? Would they give it a liberal spin? Well, no, they didn't spin it, not at all. They pretended it wasn't happening. They wrote nothing.

Except sometimes they slipped. My local newspaper ran an editorial cartoon showing "mud" being thrown at Sen. John Kerry's war record. But I hadn't read anything in the paper's news pages about criticisms of Kerry's war record. So what was this "mud" the cartoon was referring to?

Not a clue from my hometown paper's news pages, or from any of the biggies. But a simple search on Google News for "Kerry Cambodia" turned up plenty.

The "mud" (in part) is this: Kerry claimed to have been on his Swift boat in Cambodia during Christmas, 1968, and that this memory is "seared" into him. Nixon, he said, lied when he said there were no Americans in Cambodia because he, Kerry, was there. However, Kerry's fellow Swift boat commanders, and Kerry's superiors, say he was not in Cambodia. He was at Sa Dec, 55 miles from the Cambodian border.

After a week or two the story slowly seeped into newspapers' editorial pages (I, for example, wrote a letter to the editor - which was published - asking where the news story about the "mud" was), but the news pages were remarkably free of anything on the topic. After I wrote my letter, the paper ran - grudgingly, it seemed to me - a vague Associated Press story on the bottom half of page two of the B section.

When the Swift Vets television ad began being run and the biggies could no longer ignore the story, they initially responded with stories about the motivations of the vets, and still studiously ignored what they were actually charging.

And when they were finally forced to address the charges, they picked the most ambiguous of the charges (how Kerry got his war medals) and for the most part ignored or burried the more clear-cut Cambodia charge.

Then, finally, Kerry got mad and responded to the Swift Vets, then the media started covering the story... sort of. By contrast, if these were charges against Bush, the media would have been all over it.

It would be easy to attribute all this to conspiracy, but I really don't think so. I think it is a result of today's media being run by a group of likeminded people who have apparently forgotten - or are intentionally ignoring - what they should have learned way back in Journalism 1A.

In any case, they are a disgrace to their profession and it makes me glad to have been a reporter back when my colleagues - even my liberal ones - had some professional ethics.

Being a Pest

I mentioned earlier spending time in Illinois with Chris, my bestest buddy and frequently debating opponent, at the Cornerstone Festival. Chris is a writer, so I pestered him to create a blog.

Nah, he said. I've already got a forum. Don't need another one. Yada yada yada.

So I was rather surprised to get this email from him:

"Hey Brad,

You'll never believe what I did:

http://faiththoughtswithmerlin.blogspot.com/

Yep, that's where you'll find my blog. I can't believe it did this. I mean, I carried on so much with you about my not wanting to share my thoughts with the e-world. Now this. You're having a bad influence on me. I think the world is coming to and end. And, for some weird, warped reason, it's kinda fun--not the world coming to an end, but having a blog. Thanks for corrupting my soul. :0)"

I hope you'll give Chris's new blog a look. He already has a couple of thoughtful posts.