10 days after

my last post was from the night before Mackeil was born. that was ten days ago and a wild ten days it has been. in the spirit of my last post here are some things I have learned or "re-remembered" in the last ten days...

• when changing a newborn baby boy's diaper you must be prepared for an inadvertent stream of liquid coming at you. I hear it's something about cold air. it is best to use the new diaper as a shield when this happens but sometimes your hand is your only defense.
• there actually is a reason why some people keep a coffee pot next to their bed.
• moms are incredible people. their capacity to love most likely can not be measured. moms, grandmoms, it doesn't matter, they can all kick it into overdrive.
• it is amazing how quiet a house can seem when 2 of 4 kids leave for a night of vacation bible school. i forgot how quiet a house with just 2 kids can be.
• even the love of a mom can be tested at 4am when a kid is awake and won't eat.
• friends are really good. and some of the best friends are family.
• paradoxically, it is both easy and hard to believe in total depravity when living with a newborn baby.
• there is no good reason for me to be awake when I will most likely have to get up twice with Mackeil in the next 6.5 hours before starting my sunday.
  

the night before

here are the thoughts going through my mind the night before my wife is scheduled to be induced into labor.

• I sure hope there are enough beds available that we actually get in.
• We finally decided on a name!
• I've really enjoyed conversations with my wife lately. I love her more and more. I hope we don't let jockeying for sleep time in the coming months drive a wedge between us.
• Why am I still up when we are scheduled to go into the hospital in 5 hours?
• At least 2 sets of friends have said that the transition from 3 to 4 kids is not too bad. I hope they're right.
• I wish we would have gotten our third child potty-trained before bringing home another diaper-maker.
• We are incredibly blessed as a family.
• I really hope I get to share some good news and put some cute pictures up here soon and that everything will have gone well.
• The Lord is good. We put our trust in him.
  

World Food Crisis

I have been doing some research on the world food crisis. It is amazing what can happen throughout the world with us knowing very little about it here in the U.S. Basically, millions of people around the world are going hungrier than before because the cost of nearly every food staple has risen dramatically in the last year. If someone went to the market with all they had before and bought a 10lb bag of rice, now they can only afford a 6lb bag of rice with the same amount of money.

Why is this happening? Well, it's quite complicated but here are some of the reasons from what I've read:

1. rising energy costs - the higher cost of fuel means higher transportation costs associated with delivering food. in addition, the cost of petroleum based fertilizers has skyrocketed. finally, the increasing use and demand for bio-fuels (i.e. corn based ethanol) is taking away from the supply of food.

2. the weather factor - drought in places like Australia (one of the world leaders in wheat production) has had a major impact on supply levels. also, many tropical areas in the world are experiencing shorter growing seasons due to warmer and drier conditions. this is a factor we have little to no control over though many would point to the environmental effects of Global Warming.

3. increasing demand -
a.) part of the current food crisis is in response to positive developments. over the last several years many sites are reporting that millions have escaped poverty, especially in population heavy countries like China and India. this is good news! thankfully, many of these people are able to add meat and dairy products to their diets. that is good but it means the quantities of these foods gets spread thinner and demand rises.

b.) the corollary to this is that as demand for meat rises on a global level the demand for grain to feed livestock rises as well. often debated, it take somewhere between 4-16 lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of beef. and chicken requires roughly half the amount of beef though still substantial amounts.

4. governmental policies (wading into deeper and more controversial waters) -
a.) government subsidies in many countries encourage overproduction and distort prices. this makes it impossible for farmers in other countries to sell their goods at the cost of production, let alone for a liveable wage. this forces these countries to become dependent on imports (presumably cheaper) to feed their populations. when world food prices rise however, the infrastructure to produce their own food doesn't exist and they are dramatically affected.

b.) some grain producing countries enact policies prohibiting certain exports when global food prices rise. they do this understandably to keep domestic food prices under control. what that means for the rest of the world though is that less food is in the markets and so as demand rises (or even remains) supply decreases relatively and prices go up.

c.) countries have to make policy decisions on where to focus their development assistance. underinvestment in agricultural productivity is contributing to supply levels not keeping up and therefore higher prices.


So what can we do?

Consuming Jesus - Part 3

This was a pretty good book. I think Metzger is at his best when he is analyzing history and culture as the beginning of the book does. He does a great job of looking back and showing how the church got to this moment of being consumed by consumerism. It's effects are so wide-ranging, it's almost the water we're swimming in, without even knowing.

From there, the author goes into how the church should live out its calling in this consumer culture, that is separated, by and in large, by race and class. In my opinion, this is where Metzger's writing is weaker. He is synthesizing the work of others such as John Perkins, William Cavanaugh, and Marva Dawn. Not that any of it was bad but I thought the first half of the book was more compelling.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an inkling of the effects of consumerism on the church in America but wants to explore its implications further and begin to live counter-culturally, resisting the commodification of the church . I was especially challenged in regard to the mono-cultural tendencies of the small group movement.

giving and equality

I was reading a booklet called The Grace of Giving (reprinted as this) and the following principle really struck me:

Principle #5: Christian giving contributes to equality (2 Corinthians 8:13-15)

"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'

Stott writes:
"...the same dilemma that confronts missionaries. Should they 'go native', becoming in all things like the nationals they work among? Or should they continue to enjoy western affluence without any modification of their lifestyle? Probably neither. The Willowbank Report on 'Gospel and Culture' suggests that they should rather develop a standard of living 'which finds it natural to exchange hospitality with others on a basis of reciprocity, without embarrassment' [Making Christ Known (Eerdmans/Paternoster, 1996), p 82]

In other words, if we are embarrassed either to visit other people in their home, or to invite them into ours because of the disparity of our economic lifestyles, something is wrong; the inequality is too great, for it has broken fellowship. There needs to be a measure of equalization in one or the other direction, or in both. And Christian giving contributes to this equality."

I couldn't agree more.

Social Justice vs. Mercy

this is something I wrote about a year ago but not in a forum where I could get any feedback. let me know what you think if you get a chance...

I was listening to a well known pastor give a talk on missional leadership today. At one point he began remarking that in the church we often talk about social justice when we should be calling it ministries of mercy or something like that. There was much that I disagreed with in his little aside but essentially he was saying that we need to be more careful with our language. His point was something to the effect of “justice” is what Jesus got for our sake and “mercy” is what we get from God. Therefore, we should practice acts of mercy not justice.

I think as followers of Jesus we need to practice both, but that we should be able to distinguish between them. In my mind social justice is when we act to make right the systems that enable and support oppression in any form. Mercy is when we act to relieve the symptoms of oppression (that comes from without or within).

This pastor used the example of a homeless man who is an alcoholic and hungry. He said that if this man lets alcohol destroy his life and doesn’t try to get a job then justice is to let him rot away on the streets (not his exact words). Mercy in his mind was to give this guy a hot meal, some clean clothes, and a place to sleep. He doesn’t deserve it but neither do we. I think this is a typical way of thinking about the problem of homelessness (or any number of social problems we see) in this country. It assumes that everything we see is a product of choices, good or bad. “If I have a nice home it is because I’ve made good choices and if someone else is homeless you can probably trace it back to bad choices.” Those of us who don’t really experience any form of oppression tend to overlook the way our society is structured that leaves some with such a feeling of desperation that they make bad choices.
I don’t believe that justice is to just let this guy get what he “deserves”. I’m trying to look beyond the obvious (alcoholism, inability to get/hold a job) and see if there are any systems that are not right/just that keep him in this vicious cycle. So social justice would be to act to correct the laws that aim to keep the homeless population out of our sight so that businesses can thrive and everyone else can pretend they don’t exist. But this takes a longer time then I would like and in the meantime, out of gratitude for how God has treated me, I should practice mercy by taking care of his immediate needs, etc…

In the end, I think this pastor was on to something though he missed the boat in some ways. We are lazy with our language in this culture and if we’re not careful, words like justice and mercy will lose their meaning (i.e. grace, love, awesome, good). But regarding this example, let’s be a people that would stand for both justice and mercy where appropriate. Let’s let our hearts be angered by the things that anger the heart of God and be moved to make systems right and treat people with the mercy that we’ve been shown. Come Lord Jesus!

Escape From Reason

...a quick review of a book I read this week.

Escape From Reason - Francis Schaeffer, IVP

Schaeffer offers a concise yet penetrating overlook of philosophic thought from the time of Thomas Aquinas through the 20^th Century. Written in 1968, Schaeffer had such an insight into the thinking of his day that 40 years later, the things he saw are finally making their way into mainstream ways of thinking. He was writing brilliantly about postmodern thought 30 years before I ever even heard of it.

I won’t lie, this book, though short and sweet, put my intellect to the test. He moves through 750 years of philosophy at breakneck speed. He does not adequately encapsulate any of the thinkers he writes about but more shows the movement of thought through different eras. I found it to be quite helpful in understanding how the current science vs. faith debate came into being. Essentially, Schaeffer argues that for the Christian to fall into the modern (and postmodern) way of thinking about a dichotomy between reason and faith leaves us without legs to stand on in either category. It’s a very compelling yet challenging read.