3rd of Ten

Dennis Prager has a singular interpretation of the third commandment based on his knowledge of Hebrew.  It's much more far-reaching than the usual reading of this commandment.

Respect them

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli is a passionate Italian, passionate about what helps the people of developing countries. He spent seven years with an Italian NGO (non-governmental organization) trying to help several African nations - and they failed in every project.

Those seven years shaped the rest of his life.  He explains his conclusions in his TED Talk:

Westerners have related to the people of Africa in one of two ways and he doesn't like either:

• paternalistic - you are our children
• patronizing - you are our servants

"If people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid. The first principle of aid is respect."

"I invented a system called "enterprise facilitation." You never initiate anything, never motivate anyone, You become a servant of the local people who have a dream to become a better person. We meet at local cafe and become friends, find out what that person wants to do with their own money and their own energy. The passion that person has for her own growth is the most important thing. We help them go and find the knowledge."

"For once, why don't we listen to them?"

R & D freedom

"Research and Development" is the segment of a company where discoveries and product breakthroughs happen. Sometimes this department gets the short end of the budget because there's no guarantee that there will be a resulting profit any time soon (like next quarter) - but innovation is essential to the long-term growth of any company that involves design or engineering.

Bloomberg reports significant innovation being done at Samsung (So. Korea) and Nokia (Finland) and others, but global investors are most focused on American business innovation this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

CEO of Audi (Germany) says his company does all its work on automatic driving systems in America because "there is more freedom . . to do it." An economics prof in California says that "the best thing a government can do to promote innovation is get out of the way." Apparently Germany's regulations inhibit innovation in this area of R & D.

CEO of Merck (Germany) says, "No country on earth is investing as much in innovation" as the U.S.

Finest hour

(2nd of two)

Most of the country was ready to throw in the towel. Pressure to do a deal with Nazi Germany must have been enormous. A safe answer to the question of whether to continue fighting the Nazis did not exist. Either way they faced suffering, and the people were scared - for good reason.

But Winston Churchill inspired a whole country with his "Finest Hour" speech, one of the bravest, most inspiring ever:

"What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over … the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. 

"If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. 

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Churchill

(1st of two)

Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill. who was called by the author of this piece, "The Man Who Saved the World."  Inflated description? There have been others who changed the course of history at other points, but history really did turn around his choices and his personal character in the early 1940's.

wi

photo: theguardian.com

In his photo above he doesn't look like a fighter, a warrior. But he saw plenty of action as a young army officer, going into "no man's land" during World War I thirty-six times.  And his courage saved Britain from German conquest, Europe from who-knows-how-many years of Nazi tyranny.

Hitler had already overcome Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg when Churchill became Prime Minister in May of 1940. Britain was seriously considering giving up the fight. "Britain was alone, and the pressure to do a deal was overwhelming. The City wanted it; much of the media wanted it; Halifax wanted it; Chamberlain wanted it; Labour would have gone along."

But Churchill somehow turned them around. His "finest hour" speech tomorrow.

2nd of Ten

The second commandment is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," Exodus 20:3. Contrary to the modern assumption that we don't worship idols anymore, Dennis argues that there is a lot of competition for first place in our thinking today - and if one of those things, like power or education or even romance,  etc., comes before God and his moral standard, then it's a path leading to cruelty.

Spreading

CNN reported Tuesday that there were "10 killed, churches torched in protests" because of the satirical French magazine's latest offense against Islam. Many other protests took place around the world, but this one was in the African country of Niger (in red below).

"AFP, the France-based news wire service, said police reported that 173 people have been injured; at least 45 churches have been "set ablaze in the capital (Niamey) alone," and a "Christian school and orphanage were also set alight." Numerous sites were pillaged before being burned."

If you look carefully at the map above, you'll see that Niger's southern border is Nigeria's northern border.  Here are my posts regarding Nigeria. Terrorist group Boko Haram has now overcome and taken territory the size of the country of Belgium in that northeast quarter of Nigeria, just across Niger's southern border.

Food line

It might be hard to picture those long lines of Venezuelans waiting for the privilege to buy food and necessary staples like detergent and diapers (see yesterday's post and Monday's). Here's what it looked like to someone driving past one of those lines:

Bad results

Venezuela's government under Hugo Chavez (below, before his death in 2013) nationalized many privately held companies, pursuant to his socialist ideology. This was followed by "silencing of anti-government media" and increasing government control of the market place including price controls.

Nearly two years ago, as his replacement Nicolas Maduro took over, the currency was "crumbling," paper products and food were missing from store shelves, inflation was soaring.  A local attorney called the situation "depressing" and "pathetic."

Pathetic, because even then Venezuela was "a country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves and oil prices at nearly $95 a barrel, yet unable to supply basic goods because of its crumbling local currency and a shortage of U.S. dollars."

With the price of a barrel of oil this year about half that amount, Venezuela's economic problems look unsurmountable.

HuffPo says, "The self-acclaimed "socialist" regime, which in principle, stands for redistribution of wealth, has been irrefutably inefficient at converting oil profits into tangible social improvement . . [but] Hugo Chávez's fortune was estimated at 500 million US dollars."

Collapsing

That food shortage in Venezuela we read about in October is now even worse. The military has been deployed to protect shoppers and keep some order, while lines at the stores may be half a mile long.

Forbes and Bloomberg both report that the country's economy is on the brink of collapse. Adding to the factors reported last October, it appears that the plunging global price of oil will take them to the breaking point.

1st of Ten

As a Jew, Dennis Prager takes the "ten commandments" as the "ten statements," and so "I am the LORD thy God" (Exodus 20:1) is the beginning of the ten statements.

Two things to notice:

1. Significance of "ethical monotheism" - changed the world
2. Significance of freedom - American founders knew God wants people to be free

You don't have to agree with every point he makes, but these two are important.

Real help

(third of three)

Doug has been trying to carry out Jesus' command to love our neighbors by asking that question from yesterday's post, "how can I best love my neighbor?"  His organization empowers people to provide for their own families and bring productivity to their communities.

Fourteen women provide for their 94 dependents through a chicken business in Swaziland (Africa). One of them, Busisiwe, had ten children to support when her husband died seven years ago. This poultry "value chain" lifted her out of poverty.

"Busisiwe still works very hard, but, for the first time since her husband died, she is able to say she is providing for her family with dignity. She says she is “emotionally free” to dream about her children’s high school graduations and their future because she is able to pay their school fees. Instead of thinking of where her family’s next meal is coming from, she spends her days tending her chickens and expanding her farm. She can afford to hire a tractor to cultivate her land, and purchase high quality seeds."

This is long-term sustainable prosperity.This is "loving my neighbor."

Best love

(second of three)

"How do I best love my neighbor?"



Yep, that's the question.  Doug Seebeck has focused on that question for years while he built global partnerships that support enterprises around the world. In the last ten years these partnerships have created and strengthened 100,000 sustainable jobs.

Like Rudy Carrasco (yesterday's post), he believes in ordinary people who develop their God-given abilities. He tells this story of an African man:

“ A voice from Uganda, Andrew, spoke at the leadership summit last August and he followed a compassion guy on child sponsorship, and he gave a startling message. He said, he said, “Why won’t you let Africa develop like you guys developed?”

East LA kid

(first of three)

Rudy Carrasco grew up without his parents as "a displaced Mexican kid" in East Los Angeles. But he sees God's grace in his life, and he has a passionate heart for the urban poor.

Drawing on his experiences, he believes certain things can make a permanent difference in the lives of the poor - he'll explain it to you in this video.

As a ten-year-old in Sunday School, he had the revelation that God cares about cities. So he decided, "‘Okay. I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of a God who loves me and cares about a place in order to transform it.’”

More terror

The murderous group Boko Haram continue to terrify the people of northeastern Nigeria; their goal is to force them into submission to Islam.

Over the past week they bombed a marketplace with a wired 10-year-old girl, and they wiped out a village, with the dead estimated at 2,000.  Nigeria's carnage, however, didn't get the press that went to Paris.

In Paris, last week's attacks left about 16 victims killed, the terrorists identified, and three of them killed by police.

In Nigeria, last week's attacks left about 2000 victims killed -  and the terrorists not stopped, found or apprehended.

Where was the Nigerian military in all this?  Amnesty International suggests that they were there but ineffective; whether it was due to fear, corruption, or lack of ammunition is not known.

Good world

The "Ten Commandments" were authored by God and given to Moses who then delivered them to the Jews after they left Egypt (see Exodus 20). They were widely known in our Western culture for hundreds of years, but they are not known well or understood today.

Time for a refresher course on the Ten Commandments. Dennis Prager, Jewish, has some good insights for us, whether we're real familiar with them or not.

Think about how much better the world would be if they were observed by everyone.

Like

Christian author Eric Metaxas wrote an article for Wall Street Journal over Christmas. He's a bit stunned, because the article, "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God," received over 350,000 likes on facebook, the most that any WSJ article has ever received.

photo: apod.nasa.gov

So many scientific discoveries about our universe seem supportive and consistent with the Bible. Those fb likes say there's a whole lot of people who are interested in evidence for God's existence. Some non-believers were eager to comment too.

In Eric's words: "What I did was point to the sheer improbability of our existence and ask whether it might not be reasonable to infer, like Fred Hoyle, who coined the phrase “Big Bang,” whether the universe might be, as he put it, a “put up job.”

Answer

(third of three on America's Blessings)

It occurs to me that some might think that this (yesterday's post) is just bragging. Why talk about the benefits of a church-going population? Because elites and intellectuals have mocked and denigrated Christianity for many decades - the very people who write books and teach in universities. Teachers are trained there, and then they train the next generation.

As an example: back in 1964 Richard Hofstadter received the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, in which "he argued that a preference for ignorance is inherent in American Christianity," p.147.

Author Rodney Stark has access to the sociological data which shows that ignorance is not a trademark of religious people - plus the data which answers many other incorrect assumptions. So he publishes the data for people who actually want to know the facts rather than just react.

He corrects misinformation and brings answers to light, the job of scholars.

Religious people

(2nd of three)

Dr. Stark puts the conclusions of the studies (see yesterday's post) right there in the introduction:

• "At all ages, religious people are much less likely to commit crimes."
• Religious people are far more likely to contribute money/time to secular charities (& religious)
• Religious people are happier, less neurotic, less prone to suicide
• Religious people enjoy better health and longer life expectancy
• Religious husbands are substantially less likely to abuse wives & children
• Religious students perform better on standardized achievement tests

The term "religious" is used in the book to identify people who go to church once a week. Stark may not be one of them, since he described himself in 2007 as a "cultural Christian," in the sense of being "one who is strongly committed to Western civilization" - and most of us would not call that a definition.

from America's Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists

America's blessings

(first of three)

Rodney Stark has credentials.  For 32 years he was Professor of Sociology and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington.  He's written 140 scholarly articles and over 30 books including textbooks.

I care about his professional credentials because he stands strongly against the academic tide of opinion in a very striking way: as a sociologist, he claims that Christianity has been a positive force for good in America and the world.  

The purpose of America's Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists (2013) was to make a "full accounting of the tangible human and social benefits of faith in American life . . . This accounting is surprisingly easy because mountains of little-reported research and reliable data exist on a wide range of religious effects" (p. 4). 

Data and conclusions to follow.

Only Jesus

Canon Andrew White ("Vicar of Baghdad") was ordered back to England by his boss, the Archbishop of Canterbury, because of the $57 million bounty on his head and the increasing likelihood that he would die now that Islamic State has conquered so much.

You are probably familiar with the facts of IS domination: the murders, repression of education, burning and confiscation of churches, the refugees who left everything they owned to get away. Click on "Iraq" under "Labels" to see posts about this.

But the Vicar passionately loves all those people he had to - temporarily, according to him - leave behind. Watch the video below, made I think before he was ordered to leave Iraq.  Canon Andrew explains that they (he and the Iraqi Christians) know they have nothing but Jesus. Experiencing the glory of God is "normal" for them. He says, "The Lord is here, His Spirit is with us."


"The Vicar of Baghdad" Canon Andrew White from BearCreek on Vimeo.

A good year

Was 2014 one of your very best years? According to this article, "It may not feel like it, but we are safer, richer, and healthier than at any time on record."

As an example of global improved health, life expectancy in India increased by seven years for men and ten for women since 1990. Even more impressive, life expectancy for Rwanda and Ethiopia is up by fifteen years since 1980.

Extreme poverty, defined by people living on less than $1.25/day, has been reduced by half since 1990.

So in a worldwide sense, the trend is good.  It certainly doesn't mean every person has a better life - especially the people of Iraq.  An update from the Vicar of Baghdad tomorrow.