Everything we've got

“When we find a way to save millions of lives, to give hundreds of millions of families the ability to make a healthy, productive future, we should give everything we've got.” ~Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates, Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation makes remarks at the launch
of a Global Partnership on Maternal and Child Health on
March 9, 2011 at the Ronald Reagan Building in
Washington, DC.  They introduced a new partnership
between the US Agency for International Development,
the Government of Norway, The Bill and Melinda Gates
 Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and The World Bank
 that will seek innovative solutions to reduce maternal and
 child mortality in developing countries. AFP PHOTO

So as Jesus walked out into the street, this fellow came running up and asked, “... how can I get eternal life? What do I need to do?”

Jesus said, “... You know the rules: Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, honor your father and mother.”
He said, “Teacher, I've got that.  I've done all that since I was a child!”

Jesus looked him hard in the eye and loved him! He said, “There’s this one thing left: go sell everything you own and give it to the poor. Then come follow me.”

The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked away with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things and wouldn't let go.

To his friends, Jesus said, “Do you have any idea just how hard it is for people who ‘have it all’ to find God’s kingdom?” The disciples didn't get it, but Jesus kept on: “You can’t imagine how difficult. I'd say it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to walk that particular path.”

Watching someone walk that particular pathway is such a stunning joy.

Tick

In an interesting departure from what we were taught in high school about America, government can be bought. 

 
Corporations have an overriding voice when it comes to decision-making by government.

My letter to a congressman gets at best a form-letter reply. Corporations spend hundreds of millions on their issues totaling billions every year, not including campaign contributions .... and the reply they get is favorable legislation.

That's not news, of course.  It's been going on for years, creeping up under the covers like a tick looking for blood.

I've not been able to find even one news report or academic article suggesting that corporate lobbying was largely good for the nation or the people. Not one. Disappointing.

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it isn't detrimental.  The influence of the banking industry, for example.  Their ensuing crash pushed millions around the world across the line to starvation.

In defense of the process, there is a need for knowledgeable discussion on the issues, but that necessary debate can be overwhelmed by paid talking heads.  In the regulatory abandonment of banking constraints, congress was persuaded that not a single dollar could be lost in the derivatives exchange process ....  it wasn't a single dollar, of course; it was trillions.  We lost jobs and income, value in our homes, in our savings, and we went further into debt; the cost - around $104,000 for each US household. And we haven't yet recovered.

Greenspan, echoing the lobbyists before the crash, testified that there was no need for government oversight, because the derivatives market involved Wall Street “professionals” who could patrol themselves. That's what they told him, of course.

Top lobbying sectors 1998-2010^[61][62]

	Client	Amount Spent	%
1	Finance, Insurance & Real Estate	$4,274,060,331	15%
2	Health	$4,222,427,808	15%
3	Misc Business	$4,149,842,571	14%
4	Communications/Electronics	$3,497,881,399	12%
5	Energy & Natural Resources	$3,104,104,518	11%
6	Transportation	$2,245,118,222	8%
7	Other	$2,207,772,363	7%
8	Ideological/Single-Issue	$1,477,294,241	5%
9	Agribusiness	$1,280,824,983	4%
10	Defense	$1,216,469,173	4%
11	Construction	$480,363,108	2%
12	Labor	$427,355,408	1%
13	Lawyers & Lobbyists themselves	$336,170,306	1%
	Total	$28,919,684,431	99%[63]
	Note: Amounts do not include campaign contributions.[64][65]

  

The last stage of capitalizm

"Even if the whole planet were offered as collateral, it could not cover Wall Street’s play."

"Never in the history of the world has finance capital so dominated the real economy, and only in the past two decades have derivatives been so central to finance capitalism.  The meltdown of 2008 was caused primarily by derivatives, requiring a bailout in the tens of trillions of dollars that is still ongoing, with the Federal Reserve buying up securities that no one would purchase – that is, bet on – otherwise. Yet, the universe of derivatives deals has grown much larger than in 2008, effectively untouched by President Obama’s attempts at financial reform.

"Derivatives are the ultimate expression of financial capitalism: they are primarily bets on transactions, rather than investments in production. ...."

From BAR executive editor Glen Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com.

True?  Perhaps generally, yes, though the issues are a bit more complex.  Watching these things, though, we're perhaps concerned about the runaway nature of our governments and economy. We hope for the best, but our concerns aren't new; they've been the subject of writings across the world's religions. You wonder if those prophetic writers might have been given a brief look at the current world.  They've described it as best they could, it seems.

Try an objective review of things we've been told that will accompany the end of the age:

- wars and rumors of wars around the world, but don't worry; the end isn't yet.

- an emerging collapse of the world ecosystem.  Clean water becomes scarce causing a significant population decline. (declining aquifers, polluted ground water?)  Forests and grasslands will be burned up.  (drought, climate change?)

- precious metals will lose their value. Currency will become ambiguous, falling in value, perhaps through inflation or the hyperinflation some countries have already experienced.  (ok, that's weird.)

- wealth will change.  Trade will require participation in a government approved financial system. A mark or number in our head or hand (ha! .. electronic transactions rather than physical currency?) will be the required transaction credential.

- a consolidation of nations into a world government will finally succeed, but only for awhile.  It will perhaps be like current hubristic governments, and it will eventually collapse in a world-wide war.  In the aftermath, a new world order?

- and apparently, those who have died will live again somehow.  Ok, enough, enough.

So we sit and watch as the oceans have lost much of their large fish populations, the glaciers melt, and the weather changes.
Wall Street bets on an EU collapse, and developing countries suffer the most.  Either nothing makes sense, or it's all a little too clear.

Today's exaggerated speculations aside, are there facts we can objectively evaluate?   Early writings on the subject were often obscure, but you have to wonder what the prophets saw that provoked such a commentary.  Can we be realistic rather than religious/superstitious? Is there an appropriate response in our life choices?

Lead the way

If alarm bells don't ring when you check the chart, move on to something more interesting. For the rest of us, ....

Management vs. leadership:  Decades in the military and civilian workforce have provided only a little clarity, and perhaps it's not a truly fair comparison.  The two positions may represent opposite ends of a spectrum along which we might find ourselves.  None claim it's an easy journey; few have done it gently.  All make many mistakes along the way.  Theoretically, it can all be done with dignity and poise.

That said, note the style of the leader:  Equips others to perform without being told.  Cheerfully rocks the boat and presses for decisions.  Recognizes that rules aren't perfect; they can be rewritten.  Deals directly and serves well to the very end.

Executive Summary:  One way passes the time.  The other changes things.  Are both required?  Is it really that clear cut?

Easier

Life issues.  It's easier to let the government manage them.  Or perhaps it's easier to let our favorite political party decide them.  Neither has proven worthy of such trust.

The purpose of government is to serve all the people well in accordance with the vision and principles laid down.  I don't envy them the task, of course, despite the fact that my mother insists I should run for president.  I honor those men and women who serve in government, hoping to do well by the country and its citizens, but they've little chance of being genuinely and fully successful.

So, how shall we then live?  That's the question Francis Schaeffer asked a few decades ago.  Among his comments, he warned about our increasing dependence on government for our formation.  Government rules touching schools and churches, humanistic reshaping of the common media, the leveling of values, of noble purpose, and the advance of materialism.  He was right, of course.

There's an infantilism in each of us that perhaps wants someone else to take care of everything, like when we were children and our parents sheltered us from the world. We want to leave it all to them and focus on ourselves. There's never been a time when an individual of conscience could actually do so.

It will be a bit of a lonely road, and certainly not an easy one.
(Photo:  the far side of Djibouti, 2011; friends live down by the shore in the distance.
Precious friends.)

If now you attempt to think for yourself and make your own way forward with a good conscience, you'll be a radical. You'll be the oddball, the nonconformist, the fringe person.  You won't fit the community norms, the church norms, or the political party norms, will you.

We could just let it all happen and be carried along by it.  Most will.  A few I know will not.

An interesting subject for a new year's bucket list, no?  What shall we then do differently?
Happy New Year.  :)

Homosexuality

"... homosexuality affects far fewer of us than gluttony, materialism, or divorce. And as Jesus pointed out so often in his ministry, we like to focus on the biblical violations (real or perceived) of the minority rather than our own.

In short, we like to gang up."

... "And when we make separate categories for the “real sinners,” when we reduce our fellow human beings to theological issues up for constant debate who cannot even be told they are loved without qualifiers, when our (thinking) conveniently renders others the problem and us the heroes, maybe it’s time to sit across a table and get to know one another a little better, to break up some categories and make some new friends. Maybe it’s time to drop our stones for a while and pass the bread.

…healthy, whole grain, organic bread, of course."

The above are snippets from Rachel Held Evans' blog.



She's right.  Today's furious condemnation of same-sex marriage often comes from folks who have little to say about the deadly effects of things like materialism ...
... or selfishness
... or anger
... or greed
... or ...

So these uppity church leaders came to Jesus bringing a woman who had been unfaithful.  They wanted to stone her, and they tried to get Jesus to agree with them.  "What do you say?"  After drawing on the ground, he finally answered, but what he said wasn't about her adultry.  It was about their hearts, and one by one they left, deeply convicted by what he'd helped them see.

It's so easy to think we're the good ones and others are bad when the truth is that there are none righteous.  Not one.  So now what do we do?