Easter viewing

The History Channel's series, "The Bible," continues this weekend, and I'm pleased to say it's been pretty good - not entirely accurate to the Bible text but not cheesy and not revisionist.

Diogo Morgado, from Portugal, plays Jesus on Sunday evening (Easter) in the segment about Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, the central core of Christianity.

Interviewed by Entertainment Tonight, he says, "I adopt[ed] Jesus Christ in my life since younger age . . so personal. . ."  He plays the part with respect and charisma.

Tell family stories

For our anniversary (today), my husband suggested we try to remember all the summers in our married life.  The first four were easy to reconstruct and I passed them on to two of our sons.  It filled in some details they had never heard before.

It's a funny thing, but I have to actually remind myself that they don't know all the family history that I do because they were either too little or not there.

"When family stories are hard to tell" at NY Times has some good advice for family life:  tell the stories when they're happy, funny, or even hard to tell.

Money Lessons

According to the opening story in this Forbes article, "Money Lessons for Your Kids," some kids can grow up so ignorant of basic money-handling information that a college student would not understand the concept of a credit card bill.

Author Halah Touryalai suggests basic information for kids at ages five, ten, and fifteen - they should be taught what it means to save, pay bills, make purchasing trade-offs, invest, etc.

Scared of your dream

Michael Hyatt is an extraordinary success at blogging.  He has something like 300,000 followers - hard to imagine!  His name is not a household name.  I never heard of him until my son urged me to take a look at his blog.  (Maybe word-of-mouth advertising is more effective than I thought.)

He wrote a NY Times bestseller and used to be the CEO of a publishing company.  He's "down to earth", and writes in a very direct manner about how to accomplish things.

If you scroll half way down on his website, you'll see on the right a number of video interviews he's done with people like Seth Godin,  Max Lucado, Guy Kawasaki (former Chief Evangelist at Apple), and John Maxwell.

Here's a guest post I like, "How to live your dream when you're scared to death," which starts this way:

"There is a tragedy in our world today. Most people aren’t  living their dreams, and the reason is simple: fear. They’re scared to be who they are."

Don't insulate kids

Failure is not final -  good things can still happen, something everybody should learn early rather than late in life.  Here's an article from theatlantic.com about the benefit to students who learn how to deal with disappointment :

"Adolescents who develop resilience in the face of middle school failures develop exactly the kind of skills that will promote success in medical school." 

Contributor #4

From Gross National Happiness:

"For many academics, there is really no need to explain the link between political affiliation and happiness because it is so obvious. . . In my world, we all just knew liberals were happiest. . . After all, I rarely met conservatives, much less talked with them about their happiness.

"On a lark, I decided to glance at the survey data - something the theorists didn't ever seem to do for some reason - and see who was really happier.  And, lo and behold, it quickly emerged that I had been wrong all this time.   In fact, it is political conservatives who take the happiness prize, hands down. . ."

This is based on survey data from the General Social Survey results 1974-2004.

"Conservatives are happier than liberals, a fact you may celebrate or regret.  My own reaction to this fact is primarily one of surprise, because virtually everything about the politics of happiness turns out to be at variance with elite intellectual opinion and what I always thought.  But the evidence is the evidence."

Contributor #3

"Survey data from 2000 show us that people who give money to charity are 43 % more likely than nongivers to say they are very happy.  Volunteers are 42% more likely to be very happy than nonvolunteers." (From Gross National Happiness)

If you know someone who is reluctant to believe that phrase from the Bible, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," you can appeal to her with this information! The statistical data show that happiness is strongly correlated to giving, whether giving of money or time or whatever.

Encourage your friend to find a good cause and help it to reach its goal of blessing people.

A great story from the book:  Seniors were asked to give massages to babies, a compassionate act for which they would not get even a thank-you.   "After they performed the massages, the seniors were found to have markedly lower stress hormone levels . . . In fact, researchers discovered that the subjects enjoyed more stress-lowering effects from giving massages than they did from getting them."

Here's a TED Talk by a Harvard Business School prof on the topic of "How to Buy Happiness".  He says, "“Spending on other people has a bigger return for you than spending on yourself.”

Contributor #2

From Gross National Happiness:

The closing of a textile factory in 1929 eliminated work for 75% of the families in the small village of Marienthal, Austria.  Much of Europe suffered from the Great Depression even more than America did.

A group of sociologists went to Marienthal to observe and interview.  Their findings were worse than they expected.

"The Marienthalers were not starving - Austria in those years had unemployment insurance that covered the better part of a factory worker's wages.  But the townspeople languished nevertheless. . . Marienthal had previously been an active community with many social clubs and political organizations.  Paradoxically, after the factory closed and people had all day to participate in leisure and social activities, these organizations withered.  People couldn't seem to find the time or energy to do much of anything.

"In the two years after the factory closed, the town library lent out only about half the number of volumes per person as before.  A man said, "I often used to go dancing with my wife.  There was life in Marienthal then.  Now the whole place is dead." People stopped wearing watches, became late for meals, slept much more.

"The researchers logically concluded that what had destroyed life in Marienthal was not the loss of wages, but the loss of the ability to earn them."  It became a classic study on the social importance of work.

With all the complaining about work that we hear, it may be hard to believe it, but "among adults [in America] who worked ten hours a week or more in 2002, an amazing 89 percent said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs."

"Within the bounds of normal worklife the data are overwhelmingly clear that, for most Americans, work in and of itself brings happiness - regardless of how much income it generates."

So contributor #2 is:  work.

Contributor #1

Here's Contributor #1 to happiness as the author of Gross National Happiness tells it (and note that religious people are defined as going to service at least once per week, secularists as going to religious service seldom or never):

"Religious people of all faiths are much happier than secularists on average.  In 2004, 43% of religious folks . . were very happy with their lives versus 23% of secularists.  Religious people are a third more likely than secularists to say they are optimistic about the future.  Secularists are nearly twice as likely as religious people to say, "I am inclined to feel I am a failure."

Bear in mind that this conclusion is drawn from tons of data, not from a small group polled for the purpose of getting into this book.

Author Arthur Brooks suggests some reasons for the association of happiness and religious life:  "social integration and support," material comforts ("People who live in religious communities, even correcting for other cultural factors . ., do better financially than those who live in secular communities"), a little bit of genetics, and belief in an afterlife.

Apart from the data, in my own view as a Christian, I love God and that makes my life better.

Would Contributor #1 be a surprise to most people you know?

Happiness

People's level of happiness was not a concern of ancient governments, so it was unique when America's Declaration of Independence mentioned it.  As you know, the right to happiness is found in the second sentence.

No, wait -  it's the pursuit of happiness that's called a right. Yes, the pursuit.  Thomas Jefferson didn't say that everyone had a right to be happy, but that such a pursuit is a God-given right.

If we want to pursue it, then it would be handy to know what's involved, what factors actually improve the likelihood of happiness.  That is the theme of Gross National Happiness, written by Arthur C. Brooks and published in 2008.  Here's his title at the time of writing:  Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship in Syracuse NY.  I actually got to meet him at a talk he gave on the U of MN campus and found him well-spoken, professional, likeable.

As you'd expect from an economist, his "book is based completely on data - large surveys conducted by the best and most impartial data-collection organizations in the world - as well as on a synthesis of the work of the finest researchers currently working on the subject of happiness."

If you'd like to get a quick idea of your current mood, go here.

Hugh on humility

From Hugh Hewitt's book, In But Not Of, good advice for someone who has tumbled from his or her position:

"Speak only good things about the people who bounced you. There is no upside in bitterness . . ."

It's not the end of your dreams since you can choose to become better for it. But it may be rougher on you to develop humility after it's been forced on you, so develop a humble attitude before the tumble.

"Humility on the front end is easier than after a big bounce.  Getting and keeping humility depend upon two things:  genuine appreciation of the talents of others . . and Christ's message of radical equality [of worth]."

Christians flee Egypt

From "The Voice of Russia, UK edition", here is an article about Egyptian Copts who have fled to Russia to escape persecution under the new government.

Doubting well

You and I are alike in this, that we have for sure been confused about something and at some point had to ask a question.  Sometimes nobody has the answer.  Sometimes the person you ask lets you know that you are stupid for asking!

It's my intent to answer questions civilly, kindly, honestly.  That is what I hope others will do for me when I ask.

John Stonestreet has a new article today about asking faith questions:

"It’s important that young people learn how to question well. There’s a difference between mockers of truth and seekers of truth . . .

"Asking tough questions, in fact, is a sign that God made us in His image and likeness. He has built us this way. We’re expected not only to know truth but to discover it . . .

"If we pretend we’ve got all the answers, or that Christian faith is somehow nice and simple, they’ll either see right through it, or will embrace answers that will leave them vulnerable in the future. Even worse, they may pick up the wrong impression that Christianity cannot play with the intellectual “big boys.”

As C. S. Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity”, “It is no good asking for simple religion. After all, real things are not simple.”

Patient capital

Picture a homeless man in Chicago begging on the street.  He needs a meal, but he needs much more than that.  If someone handed him ten dollars a day and gave him a free apartment, would that do it for him?  It's just not good enough.  An unending river of money coming from somewhere else is not sustainable.

What the homeless man and poor neighborhoods and groups all over the world need -- is their own wealth, their own prosperity.

Micro loans are one way people can be helped toward building their own wealth (see Noam's story here).

The "patient capital movement" is another attempt to not only get a return on investment, but also to generate jobs and wealth that will be sustainable.  Read about one for-profit business,  "Earthwise Ventures" operating in Uganda, started with capital from U. S. investors.

CEO of the investor group, Jes Tarp, says, "“I became convinced that business, not charity, was the real hope of the poor.” He said charity as practiced in the West is well-intentioned and sometimes vital in disaster-relief situations but is also often “defective or inadequate.” Tarp believes “business has more to offer. It allows you to build an economic foundation.”

Sorta entrepreneurs

Forbes magazine had an article about the new "Share Economy" which they estimates is putting about $3.5 billion into the hands of people who can be either consumers or producers.

People rent from, or rent to, their peers:  parking spaces, cars, gadgets, tools, bikes, homes, apartments through digital clearinghouses like Turo, Getaround, Parking Panda, Rentoid, SnapGoods, Liquid, Airbnb.

Highlighted in this article as the premier share-type business is "Airbnb," started in 2008 by recent college grads Chesky and Gebbia.  They "thought they could make some pocket cash by housing attendees at an industrial design conference on air beds in their apartment. They put up a site, Airbedandbreakfast.com, to advertise their floor space.  After three people bunked with them that week, they decided to max out their credit cards and build a bigger site with more listings.  "We never considered the notion we were participating in a new economy.  We were just trying to solve our own problem.  After we solved our own problem, we realized many other people want this."

Right, just like author Jay Richards says, "At the base of the capitalist system is not greed or consumption, but intuition, imagination, and creation" (Cat lover market).

Polar bears can't change

Adam Corolla's podcasts are the most downloaded on the internet.  I didn't even know who he is til I saw this four-and-a-half minute video entitled "Change Your Life."

He makes his case for what he calls the greatest thing about being a human being; he says that we humans squander it every day.

Think he's right?

Anti-semitism testimony

If you liked author Eric Metaxas whom I've been quoting lately, you might want to see this video.  He's the one in the dotted tie.

He is testifying at a hearing of the House of Representatives subcommittee on Anti-Semitism: A Growing Threat to All Faiths.  It's the "archive hearing video, part 1 of 2", and he appears at about these times: 00.51.00, 01.36.00, and 01.51.00.

Social good

From the introduction to Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce & the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

"From where we stand today . .  the end of slavery seems inevitable, and it's impossible for us not to take it largely for granted.  But that's the wild miracle of his achievement, . .  . . . [he] can be pictured as standing as a kind of hinge in the middle of history: he pulled the world around a corner, and we can't even look back to see where we've come from.

"He seems to rise up out of nowhere and with the voice of unborn billions, with your voice and mine, shriek to his contemporaries that they are sleepwalking through hell . . ."

An end to the slave trade and the freeing of eight hundred thousand slaves in the British empire, these are the most notable achievements of Wilberforce and the abolitionists.  But here are some societies they also created to help the unfortunate in their own country:

"Asylum for the Support and Encouragement of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor
Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor
Institution for the Relief of the Poor of the City of London and Parts Adjacent
Society for the Relief of the Industrious Poor
British National Endeavor for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors
Asylum House of Refuge for the Reception of Orphaned Girls (the Settlements of Whose Parents Cannot Be Found)
Institute for the Protection of Young Girls

". . . and finally, the interestingly named Friendly Female Society for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows and Single Women, of Good Character, Who Have Seen Better Days"

They were "do-gooders" who made goodness fashionable, the first society-wide social conscience.

Moral argument

The Christian church was the only social institution that was making a full fledged moral argument against the institution of slavery during the middle ages.  But something happened to the church in England. There were 400 clergy in the 1600's who claimed allegiance to God before allegiance to King James - so he fired them all (Alistair McGrath, Christianity's Dangerous Idea).  The king replaced these brave believers with boot lickers, and the next century saw a church retreating from courageous, Biblical faith.

In the late 1700's, the church generally was full of cultural platitudes rather than a challenge to culture (Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery). There was a small, marginalized group of "methodists" or "evangelicals" who took the Bible seriously. The fight against slavery was born there. That group included William Wilberforce, who fought slavery as a member of English parliament all the rest of his life.

It's easy to see how the Bible inspired that fight.  Jesus taught that caring for people's needs was just like doing it for Him (Matthew 25).  He taught the Golden Rule, to treat others as you would have them treat you (Matthew 7:12).

But even before that - God created humanity in His image, the foundational principle for human rights.

Ubiquitous slavery

Slavery existed all over the ancient world including Greek and Roman civilizations, native American cultures, Islam, Viking raiders, African tribes, etc.  Philosophers Aristotle and Plato had no objection.  They taught that it was natural, that some people groups were pretty much born to be slaves of their (superior) civilization.

Spain began to enslave the native people of the Canary Islands in the 1430's.  "When word of this reached Pope Eugene IV, he immediately issued a bull . . . under threat of excommunication he gave everyone involved fifteen days to "restore to their earlier liberty all and each persons of either sex . . .these people are to be totally and perpetually free . . ."  (from Rodney Stark, Victory of Reason).  But this and the next two warnings by popes were ignored while Spain, as well as other European nations, kept it up.

Governments, plantation owners in the new world, merchants who profited from the trade, all of these constituted a formidable stronghold for the institution.  When Wilberforce and his abolitionist friends started their campaign, slavery had never been outlawed.

Somehow, they thought it could be done.  How?  They had a moral argument.  That's tomorrow's post.

Abolition

A giant figure among English evangelicals at the end of the 18th century went to sea to serve on his first ship at the tender age of 11.  He later became captain of slave ships that hauled hundreds of slaves in hideous conditions from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic, to plantations where they were sold and often worked to death.

But this man, John Newton, deeply repented of that life and changed course by the grace of God.  He became a parson and probably influenced the course of civilization - by becoming a father figure/friend to William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce was the leader in parliament who took on the cause of abolition (of the slave trade) while still in his twenties and never let go throughout years and years of parliamentary battle.  If you wonder, as I did, who could oppose abolition?  Eric Metaxas in his book, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, explains that the answer to that question is, lots of people.

Listen to Newton's song, "Amazing Grace," and his gratitude to God for radical change.  The song is more than 200 years old and it still moves us.

Seemingly impossible

Hans Rosling is a Swedish statistician.  We don't expect to be hugely entertained by a Swedish statistician!  But you will believe after watching this.

You saw his work earlier if you accessed www.gapminder.org.  You saw a beautiful chart of the nations developing over the years in longevity and wealth.

In this video, he does a talk called "The Seemingly Impossible is Possible" in which he includes such original concepts as "Grandma-verified statistics."

He makes a good point about the progress of Africa over just fifty years.

Cat lover market

Here's a story I bet you haven't heard (unless you've already read Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards).

Ed Lowe had a $45/week job delivering sand and sawdust for his dad in 1947.  The company added a new absorbent clay called fuller's earth, so Ed offered it to chicken farmers as nesting material, calling it chicken litter.  They didn't like it.

Looked like a failed idea, but then a friend asked him for something to allow her cat to relieve itself inside the house. He gave her a bag of what he called that chicken litter and she came back for more. He offered it to the owner of the Davenport Pet Shop, who thought it was just dirt in a bag but agreed to give free samples away.  He changed his mind - and Kitty Litter was eventually sold all over the U.S. in pet stores.

Cat litter became a billion-dollar industry.  Nobody saw that coming, not even Ed.  What did he actually do?  He used his imagination.  When his first attempts didn't produce anything, he made more attempts.

Author Jay Richards says, "At the base of the capitalist system is not greed or consumption, but intuition, imagination, and creation."

Correction

If you were not able to access Jacqueline's story in the post below, "Good Wealth", you will be able to do so this time because I've corrected it  (sorry for the inconvenience)

Gapminder

Since we human beings are actually able to create wealth that didn't exist before, has the aggregate wealth of the nations of the world really grown over the last couple centuries?    Yes it has.

For an absolutely stunning visual of how wealth has grown since about 1800, go to "Gapminder, for a fact-based worldview".  Click on the button "Load Gapminder World" and you'll see a chart of colored circles, each representing a nation with its color indicating which part of the world it's in.  Click on the play button.

The circles move to the right indicating a rise in wealth, while also rising toward the top to indicate the rise in life expectancy.  Makes sense that one benefit of rising wealth would be an ability to increase health and longevity.

Pick a country, keep your eye on it as you play the chart again, and watch how its well-being changed over the years.  For example:   China stayed at the low end of income per person until around 1990.  It begs the question, what happened around 1990 in China?

What do you find in this chart?

Good wealth

Millions of dollars of inherited wealth spent recklessly ("Millionaire Image"):  maybe you would say this is bad wealth.  Millions of dollars earned, but through unethical behavior like lying to or cheating other people:   almost everyone would call this bad wealth (the perpetrator would just call it survival of the fittest).

But that is not the common kind of wealth.  It's much more common that good wealth is earned by well-meaning people who are trying to build something ("Creating . . Wealth") for their family and their employees.

It's good wealth when it's earned by providing a service or a product that others need/want at a price that they figure is a good deal for them (it's also good when you make your wealth by working for such a business).

"What we now know is that market economies work because they allow wealth to be created", says Jay Richards in his book Money, Greed, and God.

People all over the world use their abilities and resources to support their families by creating wealth with the help of "micro loans" that help them start or grow their businesses.  They are well-meaning people who are trying to provide material wealth for their families.

One of their stories:

"Jacqueline became the sole provider for her family after her husband, a soldier, was killed. " (See the rest of her story, and several others, here)

Numbers beyond grasping

In the last post, I said there are millions of cells in the brain.  To be really sure that was accurate, I checked out some websites.  I was a bit inaccurate.  There are actually about 100 billion neurons (a billion equals a thousand millions) in the brain, and each has thousands of connections to other neurons, so there's trillions of connections!

Lots of comparisons to a computer are out there too.  There are plans (hopes) to map those neural connections like the human genome project did for DNA, but the sheer number of connections (synapses) is staggering.

You can actually choose to strengthen the connections where thought takes place between your brain cells, primarily through clean living - avoid drugs/alcohol, stay healthy, get physical exercise (same old advice - still important).  

Oh, and continue to exercise your brain - which you're kind of doing when you read this blog and try to think things through.

Mind over brain

When you think about what a brain looks like, it's so different from bone or skin or even muscle.  How can it contain all the memories of your life, and all the things you thought today and every day, and all your preferences and passions?

It's made up of millions of electrical connections between brain cells and it's a material thing.  And "Materialists" claim that that is all you are, just a highly evolved animal brain with a body.

But the Christian position on humans goes further.  Agreed, you have a wondrous material brain.  But you are more than that.  "Image of God" claims that you have a mind and/or a soul and a spirit that are not produced by your body at all.  You have all the intellectual functions of rationality and appreciation for beauty.  You also have a desire to live for something higher than yourself, to create a meaningful life.

Atheists/Materialists have a hard time explaining this non-material side of people.

Here is an article from Eric Metaxas (read about him in the post before this one) on the mystery of the mind.

He changed Western Civilization

Eric Metaxas spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. last spring and made quite an impression.  Barack and Michelle Obama, at his table, are laughing at his dry wit (which shows up whenever he speaks) in this photo.

Having written for Veggie Tales, Chuck Colson, The New York Times, and more, his background is eclectic. He became a Christian believer after graduating from Yale as a confirmed unbeliever (conversion video here).

That's all great, but what interests me are his biographies of a couple of Christians who lived in difficult times and tried to make the world better.  One of them was more clearly successful than the other.  That man was William Wilberforce.  He actually changed Western Civilization after something like 30 years of effort by getting the slave trade stopped in England.

Here's a video of Eric telling the story to a live audience.  His book is entitled, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.

Correcting the millionaire image

The Millionaire Next Door authors Stanley and Danko say that their research (1995-6) "is the most comprehensive ever conducted on who the wealthy are in America - and how they got that way."

If the millionaires of your imagination started out with a huge inheritance, your imagination describes just a very small percentage of them.   Of the millionaires they researched:

• More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance
• Ninety-one percent never received . . as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business
• Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents or other relatives

Chapter 2's title describes these people as:  "FRUGAL FRUGAL FRUGAL."  They have detailed annual budgets and the authors' advice is, "Whatever your income, always live below your means."

Stanley & Danko describe this concept with this story:

"Big Hat No Cattle" - we first heard this expression from a thirty-five-year-old Texan.  He owned a very successful business that rebuilt large diesel engines.  But he drove a ten-year-old car and wore jeans and a buckskin shirt.  He lived in a modest house in a lower-middle-class area.  His neighbors were postal clerks, firemen, and mechanics.  After he substantiated his financial success with actual numbers, this Texan told us:

"'My business does not look pretty.  I don't play the part .  . don't act it . . . When my British partners

first met me, they thought I was one of our truck drivers . . . They looked all over my office, looked at everyone but me.  Then the senior guy of the group said, "Oh, we forgot we were in Texas."

"'I don't own big hats, but I have a lot of cattle."