Basis

An example?  Try inserting your biggest issues into the scene here.  How

relevant and helpful are your concerns in such a context?  Is there

a larger perspective, a broader view that might be helpful?

It's always a surprise to discover that one or another of our firmly held opinions is baseless.

In Spain, my father had come to visit us while we were stationed overseas. In long walks and talks, I'd lectured my dad on a variety of issues from my position of superior understanding.
Years and years later, he'd laughed as I apologized; he said, "I figured you'd grow out of it."  That was him explaining how he'd put up with the nonsense of my 20's. Like most my age, I'd had emphatic opinions on subjects about which I knew little.
A gracious gentleman, he had offered thoughtful conversation on a variety of issues which took root over the years.

Opinions are easy to come by.  Listening to the news will lean you left or right, incline you to panic or protest, or fear.  Listening to friends who agree with you is the least informative of practices unless somehow objectivity is inserted in the conversation. Thoughtful discussion with those who disagree with you can be wonderfully productive.

Experience is an opinion-shaper, too.  The church in America is loved and despised.  The variance is perhaps based on experiences with some particular group or issue.  Criticisms abound, but are rarely heard.  Appreciation rests firmly among adherents.  Both sides have something to offer, so why the boundary between them?  The church is not the gospel, of course.

Facts and opinions are only distantly related.  Preferences for
such vary from group to group. A larger, inclusive context
 can help clarify things. Can we assist the process?

It's much easier to be narrow-minded and judgmental. It takes a larger heart and mind to make a place in our world for the differences among us, to listen and understand.  It's taken decades to grasp that truth, at least for me.  I don't think it has to take that long, though.

Can we learn early?  Can we model such thinking for our children?  And for our friends?

America Dreaming

Richard Reeves explains inequality and opportunity in America, asking “What are your chances of making it from the bottom to the top?”

So what do we do with what we know?

Histronomics 403

A life alone?  Or ...


Two are better than one.  They can help each other along; if one falls, the other can be there to help them up.

Uncles do kid duty with nephews

in eastern Africa

In family and extended family, each is included. They help each other succeed at life, lovingly filling in where the need is.  It's personal, loving, and relational.

On a larger scale, a community or a tribe carries the same thinking.  We care for our own; we help each other and go forward together.

Brothers with years walking together as men

The larger the group, however, the less personal such help becomes.  The larger the population, the more likely the strong will take advantage of others.  The trend leads to separation in one form or another, a gap between the powerful and the others.  In the end, you have social classes, economic segregation, government and welfare programs ... entitlements replacing the brother who walks with you through difficult times.
Lacking the personal connection, such efforts are 80% solutions at best, benefiting in some measure but often bringing dependence or reduced advancement alternatives to the beneficiary.  The effect of such programs on family and community relationships is troublesome.

Catholic Youth Camp ... in western Africa

Churches can go either way.  A healthy church is like family; they will share each other's burdens and focus on the community at hand.  Not every church is like that, though.  Some exist inside the class and wealth zones that preclude awareness of what life is really like.  Some denominations are bent that way as well.  Have you noticed the mindset of your friends and acquaintances? And your own?

In the 60's, we criticized the Catholic missionaries who worked in the strife-torn countries of Central and South America.  They were 'improperly motivated' and aiding the 'wrong cause', we told each other.  They weren't, of course.  They risked their lives to serve and help.  They still do.

The improperly motivated and 'wrong cause' missionaries on the international playground then and now are the monied interests.  The economic players have no intent or plan to do well by the people from whom they extract their wealth. Goldman-Sachs is financially larger than most countries in the world and extracts wealth from all without regard to the harm done.  They are the typical representative of similar multinational corporations.

The ever-widening gap between rich and poor is perhaps our best indicator of missing the mark, is it not?

So how do we and our family and friends get on track and stay there?

See Histronomics 401, Histronomics 402, and The Deadliest Sin
See Saving Horatio Alger: Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream

Death Rate

Worldwide, a recent year's gun related homicides totaled 127,607.

Worldwide following the Great Recession (meltdown), the deaths caused by Wall Street, et. al., totaled 900,000+  just in eastern Africa and just the first year.

Worldwide civilian owned guns, 644,008,400.
Wall Street business employees, 165,200 if you count them all.

Do the math.

Wall Street employees are 926.37 times more deadly than guns and gun owners.

If you count just the decision makers, they're 10,000+ times more likely to kill someone than a gun owner, criminal or otherwise.

The recession events brought the deadly nature of national and international finance practices to our attention.  The world-wide impact continues unabated and more broadly than just the single recession event.

"We have learned that the largest financial institutions are a dagger pointed at the heart of our economy." A recent New York Times editorial noted that, regarding the controversies surrounding JPMorgan Chase, “the underlying problem is not only this or that violation, but the fact that the sheer size and scope and complexity of the banking behemoths defy controls, encouraging speculation and bad behavior.”

We would add undermining free-market capitalism and nearly bankrupting the United States. ...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis of the 2007-09 financial crisis and its aftermath estimates the cost in the range of $15 trillion-$30 trillion, or $50,000 to $100,000 per American citizen. One to five years of output produced by 310 million U.S. citizens is down the drain. 

At the center of these horrific losses are the “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF) behemoths. The Dodd-Frank act claims to end TBTF. Instead, it entrenches the TBTF pathology. Since its enactment, the giants have gotten bigger and the profitability of community and regional banks that might have posed more meaningful competition has been undermined by its complexity.

There is a tenable alternative: Government policy should require that giant banking institutions restructure and streamline their disparate operations into separately owned companies, less complex and opaque, and more manageable and focused.

Lesser actions are incapable of altering the unacceptable status quo or providing for a credible regime shift. For example, higher capital requirements (or decreases in permitted “leverage ratios”) may provide temporary confidence in the capital strength of TBTF institutions, but they offer false security. In a financial panic with liquidity runs, enhanced capital cushions cannot ultimately stem a crisis of confidence and outflows of funds.
...

The only workable solution is to downsize and devolve the TBTF banking entities into units that the FDIC would label “Too Small to Save,” just like the other 99.8 percent of U.S. banks."

From WSJ and Dallas Federal Reserve Bank articles by RICHARD W. FISHER and HARVEY ROSENBLUM

Making a Difference

Mother Theresa set a stunning example for us all.

"You cannot cure the soul of others or ‘help people,’ without having changed yourself. You cannot put in order the spiritual economy of others, so long as there is chaos in your own soul. You cannot bring peace to others if you do not have it yourself. Often, we help other people, not by a series of conscious acts directed upon their soul, but rather by influencing them through our spiritual gifts, without ourselves seeing or knowing how we do so." ~Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

I didn't know that.

A sweet lady I sort of know pulled me aside to talk for a moment.  She began telling me how I'd greeted her a few years ago and how helpful and encouraging it had been for her during a difficult time.  Then she told me how once I had stopped to tell her about how delightful her children had been in a class we taught and that it had been an important moment for her to hear those things.  She thanked me for being a good brother.  I hadn't known it was important.

,,, and assistance in western Africa

Family and student project ...

We're conscious of the needs of others, particularly when they're dramatic needs. Hunger, poverty, war and violence ....  

The local church brings relief to a village in eastern Africa 

after a terrorist attack.

What perhaps we're blind to are the hidden needs in every soul. We deliberately address the needs we see with what resources we have; sponsor a kid, help a family, lend a hand, those kinds of things.  Every day though, we touch the lives of others by the person we've become over the years; we hope it helps when we do.

It hadn't really occurred to me that helping others would require big changes in me, but I guess it does.  Still more needed, obviously.  

Change

When I was a kid, we heard at church that we had 'lost China.' That meant the missionaries had been thrown out of the country. After a century of sacrificial work, there were maybe three million Chinese Christians. When missionaries were thrown out, the only thing we could think was that we had lost China.

Image: Ng Han Guan / AP

Chinese police officers watch and prepare to detain worshipers near a 
building where Shouwang house church leaders told parishioners to 
meet in Beijing, China, Sunday, April 10, 2011.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong burned the seminary libraries, expelled Christians from the country, and declared that the name of Jesus would never be pronounced on Chinese lips again. He tried to erase the Christian faith. The Chinese church is now perhaps the fastest growing church in the world.

According to a survey published in 2010, there are now approximately 52 million Christians in China and over 50,000 registered churches.  

Statistics published in: Katharina Wenzel-Teuber, David Strait. People’s Republic of China: Religions and Churches Statistical Overview 2011. Religions & Christianity in Today's China, Vol. II, 2012, No. 3, pp. 29-54, ISSN: 2192-9289.

Estimates vary widely above these baseline figures.  The fast-growing 'house church' movement is illegal and unregistered.

Two interesting elements; (1) growth came in the absence of Western support and encouragement, and (2) growth came when the price was highest for an individual.

Official and behind-the-scene abuse of citizens who choose to be Christians continue today. The ChinaAid annual report states that the number of incidents of persecution increased in 2012 from the previous years, including a number of arrests, sentencing to labor camps, short term detentions, rape and torture in police custody, destruction and confiscation of property, the loss of jobs or business licenses, fines and police intimidation, and beatings.  (See 2014 report) (See 2016 report, 2017 CNN update)

Iraqi refugees from ISIS insurgence

Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the
 violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjarl west of  Mosul, arrive
at Dohuk province

Elsewhere in the world, religious intolerance is in the public eye.  ISIS is perhaps the most behaviorally irrational and difficult to understand.

Is there an appropriate response from us as individuals?  As a nation?
It's just news and numbers until you realize there are people involved.