When I'm playing a particular computer game and reading the online chatter about it, one of the usual topics of interest is how quickly the game can be beaten. People want to take as little real time or as little game time as possible to win. I'm not a hardcore blitzer, but I have to admit: it's kind of cool to conquer half of Europe in five turns.
That Beat The Game mindset can be a a big problem in real life, though, particularly if you happen to be a preacher. When I first set out on my own, there were days when I was extremely disappointed because of how slowly things were moving. I felt like I was doing everything I could think of to advance the cause of the kingdom, yet the kingdom was not advancing.
Because I'm soooo much smarter now, all of two years later, I can see several big problems with my perspective then:
- Just because you do the right thing doesn't mean that others will do the right thing. Real human beings are not the same as armies on the computer screen. Just because you tell them to do something, and even provide all sorts of amazing reasons why, is no guarantee that they will do it. None of us can command. We can only hope to influence, and even that is often just a hope.
- It's not about any of us. It's about God. Sometimes, I wonder what God thinks when He looks inside my head and sees all of my plans that I think are so perfect. How arrogant of me to think that my wisdom or my efforts are what matter! I am not the builder. I am the tool. The marvel of it all is that God can use such flawed instruments to accomplish His purpose.
- Good does come in time, because God does accomplish His purpose. Only God can know what effects our actions will have. That's why He tells us to do certain things and avoid others--because He knows what will happen. It's up to us to continually do what is right. All we know is that His word will not return to Him empty, but that's all we need to know.
For instance, when I came to Joliet, there were two young ladies in the church here who had not obeyed the gospel. For years, I prayed for them, preached sermons for their benefit, taught them in Bible classes, and did everything I could think of to encourage them. No result that I could see. Two weeks ago, as I was going out on Thanksgiving vacation, Josh agreed to fill in for me. I suggested that he preach a David Banning sermon about how young people can work usefully in the church. He did. Both girls obeyed the gospel because they heard the sermon and knew they wanted to work for God.
Now, who gets the credit for that? Me, for recommending a sermon without a clue about the effect it would have? Josh, for preaching a sermon another man originally wrote? David, for writing that sermon, probably without an evangelistic thought in his mind? We all know better.
I rejoice that those two girls came to Christ, but I rejoice just as much that it happened the way it did. Life is too complex for any of us to figure out, or manipulate, or control. All we can be sure of is that God will work His will, in His way, in His time. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever.
I'm certainly no scientific expert, so I don't know how valid this is, but I was thinking interesting thoughts this morning. Everybody, whether creationist or evolutionist, believes that every living human is a descendant of one, or at most a very few, ancestors. Those ancestors then interbred with siblings, first cousins, etc., to eventually produce the human race we have today.
Now. . . how did that work, exactly? All DNA contains flaws, and the more closely related two parents are, the more likely it is that their offspring will possess serious defects. If you start off with just two sources of genetic material, sooner or later, that gene pool will get so shallow that all the creatures it produces will have three heads and flippers. That's why incest is such A Bad Thing.
So, if we all started from one mated pair, how come we don't all have three heads and flippers?
The creationist answer is easy. God created Adam and Eve to be genetically flawless. Their offspring could interbreed with each other without introducing crippling mutations. Only as the human genome has aged have those deadly flaws been introduced.
To be honest, I can't think of what the evolutionist answer might be. Their human ancestors don't get to start out with new, flawless DNA, because they had to evolve from Homo erectus or whatever. In addition to the new, good mutation that made them smarter and human, they had to be carrying the old, bad, mutations that made interbreeding with Sis such a bad idea. If those flawed genes were recessive, about 25% of the human race would have started off with serious health problems. If those flawed genes were dominant (and it's equal odds either way), EVERYBODY would have begun with serious health problems (Huntingdon's chorea, anyone?). That does NOT sound like a good recipe for winning out in the survival of the fittest.
Maybe we just need to add another couple millions years to solve it. All the ones with serious health problems died off, and the strong survived. Then the population was diverse enough to avoid that downfall.
I just did something that reminded me of you. And that is clean out my fridge. The chili only had TWO-TONED mold, as opposed to your four- or five-toned macaroni and cheese...
That's is the evolutionist's official answer. But the idea of information poses a serious problem for the evolutionist. He's using a keyboard with two keys: copy and delete. It's hard to write a story (or a genome) using only those two keys.
The answer is that you are obviously misguided in your line of questioning. Evolution is no longer debatable just like man-made global warming. 150% of all scientists agree so stop this illegal line of thinking right now
With battered helm and sharpened sword,
So often tried before;
The soldiers of the wounded Lord
March forth to holy war.
His will has shaped a grand design
To order and defend;
He shouts along the battle line,
"Endure until the end!"
We war against a horde of foes
Conceited in their might;
We find no shelter from their blows,
No victory in sight.
But shield to shield, the ranks fight on
Till darkness shall descend;
Our triumph rises with the dawn;
Endure until the end.
We must not fail for want of breath
Nor waver in the strife;
The clash of arms is to the death,
The prize, eternal life.
Our King prepares the joys of peace
For which His hosts contend;
Till then, our struggle cannot cease;
Endure until the end.
Channeling my inner Bernard Cornwell, apparently. Thoughts?
Thursday's appearance by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan had some interesting tidbits in it. I think my favorite was when Greenspan said, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity--myself especially--are in a state of shocked disbelief."
For those of you who aren't econ dorks (assuming you've read this far), here's the point. Between 5-10 years ago, Greenspan, among others, had the opportunity to push for increased regulatory oversight of, among other things, the crazy financial schemes that led to the crazy mortgages that led to the late great housing bubble, where all our troubles began. Greenspan chose not to regulate. He figured that the best defense against financial cataclysm was that all those Wall Street folks would be wise enough not to do anything that would cost them their shirts five years down the road.
That doesn't sound like the human race I know. People are just not good at overriding short-term impulses in favor of long-term wisdom. That's why we have 100 people at Margaret St. on Sunday morning instead of 10,000. Nor are the people on Wall Street any wiser than people on Main Street. Just like millions of people allowed greed to blind them to the consequences of buying more house than they could afford, so too all the investment bankers allowed greed to blind them to the consequences of building financial houses of cards.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I am not a lasseiz-faire capitalist. Free-market theory only works when the participants in the market, by and large, make rational decisions to promote their own self-interest. That theory doesn't work in the real world because people aren't rational. Sometimes, the government has to step in and regulate to protect people from themselves. And to protect the rest of us from them too.
The protecting the rest of us from them is the part that I'm most concerned about. Why is it my problem that people made a bunch of really stupid decisions??
For real! I dislike how people made stupid decisions and now expect the government to step in and save them... you got yourself into the mess, you get yourself out!
What can I say - 50 percent of people are below average intelligence. Folks overspending their budgets through houses and credit cards don't make sense to me... but then, I was raised by Dad, too.
ps - I'd like to comission a hymn on Philip the evangelist. I'm feeling like a "theme song" would really be nice to have. All the Josh's of the world have "Dare to Stand Like Joshua." Hook me up with a great song about my namesake.
This article is a pretty good response to Greenspan's comments.
I am laissez-faire precisely because almost all of the problems we are seeing right now are a direct result of non-laissez-faire "capitalism" - the housing credit market was one of the most heavily regulated markets there was, and with the US government demanding that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac give loans even to people who had no chance of repaying it, we saw exactly what happens when a government tries to control a market, which leads to massive distortions which eventually pop.
The banks were just responding to the incentives that were presented to them. They were intensely rational, given the incentive structure that they found themselves in.
Market capitalism only works when there is a real market.
Thank you for linking that article. It's commonly misunderstood that the housing/lending markets were "free". Using recent events to criticize free markets is a little like using the failure of a helicopter design to criticize the viability of airplanes.
but why do those banks need those rules? let them fail!
if they are "too big to fail", then they are probably too big, period.
if the market really is free, those banks that do stupid stuff like that will fail, and then people will stop investing in them. it's the "safety net" promises of bailouts and the like that continue if not directly encourage that kind of behavior.
this bubble popping was blatantly obvious to many people for a long time - obviously it's unwise to give 8 credit cards or a $400k house to a student who won't be able to pay it back! the banks did that because they knew that what is happening now would happen, i.e. lots of public money being dumped into them to save them from their own idiocy.
this is an open letter by the CEO of BB&T bank, outlining why he thought the bailout was a bad idea, as he had attempted to run his bank wisely.
the further problem is that whenever the response is "more regulation", you inevitably get the rush for pork, as evidenced by the second (i.e., passed) bailout bill which includes provisions for all manner of ridiculous things which have very little to do with helping banks.
i'm not an anarchist, there are good reasons to have a government, but the secondary effects that come from just about every single government action make them far more costly than we realize. it is extremely hard politically to overturn existing laws, and so many laws go into effect and then just sit around like so much cruft.
Here it is, folks, the Holy Grail of bad hymnody: "If Men Go to Hell, Who Cares?" Bryan Alexander found this somewhere. It's so ghastly it's giggle-inducing. Beyond the hymn itself, notice the process that this idea went through to become published:
- The Rev. O. M. Stallings actually preached a sermon entitled "If Men Go to Hell, Who Cares?"
- E. M. Bartlett (best known as the author of "Victory in Jesus") actually decided that it would make a good hymn.
- Somebody in the Stamps-Baxter regime thought it would be a good idea to a) arrange and b) publish this hymn.
Most of the words in the hole are just repeats of "If men go to hell, who cares?" As for the others, I encourage all of you to use your mad Stamps-Baxter rhyme analysis skillz to fill in the blanks. It's not hard.
I'm playing the fun connections game - I have a meeting with a judge on Friday, with the head of the TC hiring committee in a couple weeks, and a couple of my rep friends are recommending me to everyone... so, it could be worse! Granted, I make it even harder by not being able to move to a job.
truthme, I've never sung the song you're speaking of, and the whole song may sound different than the part you quoted, but it seems to me that there is a place for us both to say and sing warnings to those who are lost. The words of the song actually sound a lot like some of the things Jesus Himself said. Sure, those words may ring hollow if those visiting the services can clearly see that no one in the building cares anything for them because they've been ignored, etc., but if the church is full of caring people who are truly concerned about people's souls, it seems to me that that particular song may have merit. As for big plastic smiles, a person would about have to have one of those to sing "If men go to hell, who cares?"!!
While the title is on the surface offensive, the verses clear it up ... Who cares? ... the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit AND the true christian ... they care! This was most likely when "Who cares?" wasn't a flippant remark meaning "Nobody care." And I agree with you about the other song, which I have sung in year gone by. It is a mournful tune ... not at all an "I'm holier than thou, too bad" kind of song ... very somber.
