50th Anniversary of The War on Poverty

While fighting "wars" against states of mind (terror) and existence (poverty, obesity, etc...) is patently absurd, the most unfortunate aspect of the thought process that leads to such wars is that it subtly necessitates a belief that the consequences of individual decisions must be borne primarily by society at large and prevented by communal, rather than individual action.  This means that rather than allowing the painful consequences of poor decisions to be shouldered primarily by those who make such decisions, society (i.e. it's 'agent', the government) must bear the costs of poor decisions and prevent future occurrences by curtailing the rights of all, with each failure of the former necessitating increased severity of the latter. The fact that our "caretakers" obtain power in ever increasing degrees as a part of the process and exercise their "duty" with increasing measures of glee is, of course, just a happy coincidence.

Still, the most tragic irony isn't the aforementioned "big brother" syndrome or the fact that a middle class person somewhere has a higher tax bill as a result; it is that a lack of consequences robs us (I'm really good at making bad decisions, mind you) of the opportunity to learn.  It might seem terrific at first to be unable to feel the pain of being burned, but such pain is ultimately healthy - it keeps us from injuring ourselves further or even irreparably. It may seem compassionate to shield a person from the consequences of his or her decision (and in some cases it is), but in many cases it retards one's growth as a human being and ultimately produces greater suffering in the end.

Criminalizing Christ: The Nationwide Targeting of Homeless - Rev. David R. Henson | God's Politics Blog | Sojourners

Criminalizing Christ: The Nationwide Targeting of Homeless - Rev. David R. Henson | God's Politics Blog | Sojourners:
Cross-post of my response to FB article post from Micah Sapienza:

Hmm...I think the author's heart is in the right place, but his thinking is very cloudy. 

First he seems to be trying to rally a liberal constituency with language like "not just a symptom of conservatism or of the Deep South".   The appeal is, essentially, "Hey now folks.  We know that people with conservative values, including many believers and especially those SOBs down South, are ignorant hateful cretins, but *even* in bastions of progressive reasonableness, such as San Francisco and Berkeley, the homeless are being targeted!"  (And really, is Atlanta, with a Democrat mayor, actually a ''conservative bulwark"?) 

Second, he's running the same play that the Focus on the Family crowd gets lambasted for: Conflating America and The Church and then asserting that it's 'our' (America/The City on A Hill) moral responsibility to use the force of government to solve the dilemma at hand. Government does have a role to play, but it's not because it's a wing of the Church. 

Lastly, the author paints a false view of the issue at hand in an attempt to stack the deck in favor of his argument.  Unfortunately it only reinforces his own ignorance and lack of compassion. Regarding the former, the author's overly-simplistic piece ignores the complicated causes of homelessness, and therefore, the possibility of discussing real solutions. (If you want to pretend your cancer is a contagious viral infection, be my guest.  But your prognosis is going to be very poor).  Many homeless are that way because they choose to be.  This is difficult for many of us to wrap our heads around, but it is the truth nonetheless, and needs to be factored into any solutions that are developed.  Regarding compassion, some of the ordinances in question may be unfair or even unjust.  But none of them seem to preclude one from taking in a homeless person.  The great irony is that this idea - of compassion being dispensed through any mechanism other than a social welfare program - is completely foreign to those such as the author. “Well sure, I’ll volunteer down at the soup kitchen 4 days a week, or lobby for more government intervention, or even get by on a smaller salary to work for a foundation that ‘serves’ the homeless, but you surely don’t expect me to let any of those smelly urchins into *my* house!”  No, in the minds of those like the author, compassion is something that must be dispensed by government agencies in our urban centers, just like Jesus did.  Makes one wonder what the real agenda is.

Cynicism

Cynicism is the candy shell that keeps one's heart from melting with gratitude.  Problem is, I really like candy...

Lev 19:10

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.

Architecture and Masonry

We spend so much time working on our plans - worrying whether/working to make sure things will go as we desire - that we often forget to focus on, and enjoy, the labor of executing the plans and serendipity of those things that don't go as planned.  

Happy Birthday Grandma

I miss you very much. 

Post Season Fantasy

Ok, with the Niners at 8-1 I can engage in some post-season day dreaming. My dream Niner playoff scenario :

1st Round: Niners over Cowboys
2nd Round/ NFC Championship: Niners over GB
SB: Niners over Pittsburgh

Niners banish playoff ghosts of the past by defeating The 'Boys and GB, and emerge as the winningest team in SB by defeating Pitssburgh.

Beating the Raiders in the SB would be a close second. :)

Fathers

I think the weight of a father's presence and discipline develops a weightiness and density of soul. I missed that growing up.

Weeds and Dreams

I have a childhood memory, perhaps apocryphal, of an instance when I was helping my grandma garden. I was probably four, and had been helping my grandma weed a flowerbed when she asked me to pull out a certain weed.  Now this 'weed' seemed to me to be a perfectly good plant. I didn't want to pull it. In my opinion, it was as legitimate a plant as any of the others she had in her bed.  I let her know that I thought this plant should stay, and in the process of reasserting that it had to go she let me know that weeds were simply plants that were out of place and whose presence choked out the growth of the desired plants.  It's the gardeners prerogative to determine what stays and what goes, she maintained, and he makes these decisions based on his desire to see certain plants flourish.

This morning it occurred to me that this is an analogy for life.  Our life is a flower bed.  God is the gardener, and we are his helper.   Our activities and dreams are the plants in the flowerbed. There are some things in our lives which we hold dear that God wants to remove because they will choke out what he's trying to cultivate.  Our job as his helper is to know his desire, watch him in action, and follow his lead as we assist him in his work.

(This analogy also helps clarify who's life it is to begin with - God's, not ours).

Crotchety Comment of the Day

I realize how INCREDIBLY important and busy you are, dear sender of email, but unless we've been sending several emails back and forth in the span of a few minutes, please use an Opening containing my name and a Closing containing yours when corresponding via email. FB, Twitter, and text messaging are available for those messages that don't require complete sentences, but let's try to preserve some semblance of courtesy when we correspond with each other.

Two Questions:

1. Think this won't happen here?
2. If/when it does, would you refuse to receive government support that was funded by these means?

A Good Question

A friend from church posed the following question on his Facebook Wall:

If the love of God is unconditional, why is there a hell?

Here's my slightly abridged reply:

(...)

Regarding God's love, it's unconditional because it's not dependent on anything we do. We shouldn't confuse God's sovereignty in loving who he pleases with the quality of that love. What's more, there's no place in scripture where we're instructed to share a "negative gospel" - i.e. explicate to unbelievers that a set number of them will never be redeemed. The names on the roll of the redeemed is God's business, not ours. The following Spurgeon quote says it better than I can:
" I remember Rowland Hill’s reply, when somebody said that he ought to preach only to the elect. “Very well,” he said, “next Sunday morning, chalk them all on the back and when you have done that, I will preach to them.” But the chalking of them on the back is the difficulty—we cannot do that and, as we cannot do that, the best way is for us to leave our God to carry out the purposes of His distinguishing Grace in His own effectual way and not attempt to do what we certainly can never accomplish! There, scatter a handful of Seed “by the wayside.” Even if the birds of the air devour it, there is plenty more where that came from and it would be a pity for us to leave any portion unsown because we were miserly and stingy with our Master’s Seed!" - Charles Spurgeon Sermon# 2843, The Seed by the Wayside, Luke 8:5

One can only hope this is a hoax

Yeah, but where will the equipment receiving the tax credit be manufactured?

Something tells me China's economy will get a bigger boost from this than ours will.

But Hey, Our EPS are up 33% Y/Y!

Offshored Manufacturing - More than Just "out dated" Wrench Turning Jobs at Stake

Hat tip to Andy K. for this link. My 2 cents: 1) Clearly, Andy Grove's been reading my blog. LOL... 2) The risks of lost institutional manufacturing knowledge are well known, but Grove makes an excellent point re: the link between manufacturing and innovation.

Hat Tip to The Lone Conservative: And interesting lecture on motivation...

Well, duh...

Tough Customers...

...and unreasonable customers can be difficult to distinguish. The way to tell them apart is by their reaction to your best efforts. Tough customers will find a degree of satisfaction in your having done the best to solve their problem. Unreasonable customers will not.

Thankful

Just feeling thankful for two men who taught me to think openly and critically: Emmett Lierly and CS Lewis.