Normal and Natural

Western culture is neither normal nor natural.

Normal and natural are the relatively calm, low-level elements of existence, things just one step up from nothing and that persist as people come and go, as animals and plants live and spread, and as the years pass. It's durable, right up until when things change.

As recently as a century ago, most of us were farmers, and we had skills.  We could grow our own food, tend our own herds, manage our own homes for warmth and water and cooking.  We could build a barn or fix a roof if we needed to.  Today, however, we're specialized.

As our civilization became more complex, we spawned specializations to enhance our productivity.  Assemblers and installers, builders and bankers, paper pushers and plumbers, truckers and tech specialists.  It's a trade-off.  If a techie wants a potato, it's a trade with some potato corporation via a couple of intermediaries and transporters, and 'money' is the exchange medium.  If anything went wrong, the techie would likely have to do without.

With increasing complexity and interdependence, we've added a measure of fragility to our civilization.  Most modern folks wouldn't know what to do if the electricity went off for a month or two.  Or if the water supply shut down.  Or if gasoline supplies were temporarily exhausted.  Again.

So should we position ourselves differently?  Should we prep for change? Should we broaden our skills?  What would be a good mix?  And should our children prepare differently for life perhaps than we did?

We can't serve God

... and wealth.

You're nuts if you try.  Any attempt to do so is perhaps entertaining to an outside observer, but it's a guaranteed life of mental conflict.  (Cognitive dissonance, self-deception)

Among the fun questions one might reasonably consider today, ...

What are the chances your thinking might be bent by wealth.     ?

What is the likelihood you're balanced in your view of yourself and the world.     ?

As one of the world's wealthiest people (top 10% anyway), what might possibly be odd in your thinking about things and excess and luxury.     ?

Don't be shaped by the world; rather be changed, transformed ...

If you were to start over from where you are today and rebuild everything in your life and your children's lives, would you change anything?  Should you?

Fun questions.

Attempting a Christian life in a wealthy culture may not be convenient.  Does that make a difference?

If it does, were fake, of course. 

Things have changed, and we've been dragged along.  What's next?

Be careful ... or not.

Driving down the road, I see an older fellow shuffling along slowly in the winter wind.  Should I offer him a ride?  Of course.

But picking up strangers? ... and he may be drunk.  Or high.  Or angry.  Or dirty.

Should I go to the poor places, to the not-rich communities, or maybe go home with beggars and make friends?  Of course.

I didn't know.
When we came home from years out of the country, pretty much everything had changed.  Children had to be protected, doors had to be locked, and strangers were all to be avoided.  We fell in line with the cultural norms and lived like cowards for awhile.

Later, I was forced to go overseas again.  I'd refused a couple of times, but they finally made me go.  It changed my worldview, my theology, and my personal values, permanently.  Later, I took my wife, and the same thing happened to her.  You can ask her.

So I'm in this weird country, riding down the road with a local fellow, and we see an old man with a machete in one hand and a stalk of bananas in the other standing beside the road.  Without a thought, the driver stops and the fellow gets in back with his bananas.  And he was pretty intoxicated on palm wine.  We drop him off at his house a ways down the road, and I ask the driver who he was.  He didn't know, but he went on to explain that everybody helps everybody, and if you have the company car and somebody needs a ride, it's proper to help out.

A dear family adopted us and let us be part of their world.
They showed us places we'd never have seen otherwise.

So after years and dozens of trips to various places, I've picked up folks in the middle of the desert and taken them to the slums where they live.  I've picked up mobs of ladies at the river crossing where they were doing their laundry and taken them to their village.  I've taken teachers home from the school where they worked and truckloads of kids too.  And I've been welcomed in homes and in families.

An old lady and her granddaughter were walking in a long stretch of desert.  I gave them a ride home where she wept as she held my hands and blessed me.  I hadn't expected it to be a big deal.

A friendly conversation with a shoe-shine boy turned into a years-long friendship.  We got to help him and his brother with schooling and employment, and their mom is a dear friend.

A local fellow and I stopped to ask directions, and this old lady told us how to find the place plus she gave us her granddaughter to drop off on the way.  Poppa met us when we arrived in front of the house and thanked us.  We chatted for awhile, and he gave us more directions to the place we were headed.  My local friend said all that was normal.

Then I was in this Muslim country in eastern Africa, and out on the edge of the desert, some kids flagged me down so they could ask for money, laughing all the time; they were just doing it for fun. The second time it happened, I stopped, and they dragged me home to meet mom and dad who welcomed me and showed me around, and we laughed a lot. Goats and camels and the simplest existence for the family of 12 or so. I stopped by several times over the years; they'd welcome me and make me coffee and I'd bring little gifts from the states like printed pictures of them all and maybe some fun food things uniquely western. One workday in the city, a lady suddenly stepped out of the crowd at the bus stop right in front of my truck and flagged me down. It was the mom from the family; she introduced me to about 8 of her friends as she loaded them into my truck, laughing. She knew I'd be glad to give them a ride. As we dropped each off at their neighborhoods along the way, each thanked and blessed me graciously despite knowing I was a Christian. That's the world I've seen so many times in so many places; practicality, appreciation, laughter, acceptance, and tears sometimes.

And we only got robbed once.  Okay, twice, but it wasn't a big deal, and it was mostly our fault for being in that part of town.  And I got injured a couple of times, but it was not huge.  I got to see the hospital in Mombasa from the inside!

I'm at a loss to separate myself from the real world over unreasonable fears and popular panic issues. I'm careful, sort of, but there are more important things.  Would I go to Paris or Brussels, to Nairobi or Cuba?  Of course.  To Syria?  Maybe.  :)  That's the world I understand, and everything that interests me is out there, every opportunity to serve, to help, to encourage ... it's all outside those stupid barred windows.

You might appreciate:  Worshiping the Idol of Safety

"The objective of terrorism is to instill fear.  Politicians then use that fear to shape a reality that advances their agendas. What they are offering us is nothing more than a pseudo-reality that requires we have the discernment to see through the smokescreen to what is actually real. My desire for safety is real, but in reality, I should be far more concerned about a car wreck, chronic disease, or natural disaster than terrorism. When I begin making decisions from a place of fear, I not only buy into a pseudo-reality that is being crafted by political power plays, I begin to close my eyes to the new and dynamic ways God is calling me to join in the world God is making."  John Huckins

Practical note:  Risk avoidance is cowardice, perhaps.  Risk identification/analysis/mitigation provides opportunity from time to time, and it's how you step out of fear.  See Philippians 1.

Know why?

Here's why.

Legal Problems

If regulation and law were the answer, the world would be a perfect place.

We've had to legislate for civil rights, fair labor practices, child labor laws, occupational safety and health regulations ...  why did we have to do that?  Why would we have to regulate how badly you can treat people?

In urban Kenya, my driver pointed out how construction workers climbed the scaffolding carrying cinder blocks and wearing sandals.  It's cheaper, he explained, to bribe the safety inspector than to buy safety gear for the workers. And if they employ folks for more than 90 days, they have to provide benefits, so they fire their workers every 89 days.  All of them.  Then they hire a new group and press on.

The employer who would treat workers that badly is a criminal, of course; he's breaking the intent of the law.  The law isn't enough, however, in Kenya or here. The law provides the minimum threshold for 'legal' behavior, but 'fair' and 'just' can be a long way up the ladder from there.

The abuse of employees through poverty wages and restrictive scheduling is legal, but it is ethically no different than the merchant who bought and sold slaves in years past.  Then and now, some are willing to thrive at the expense of other's lives.  Advocates of slavery defended the practice with arguments of economic necessity, class superiority, and even biblical approval.  For a long time, most folks claimed slavery was reasonable and even a good thing for the enslaved.

In 1837, Senator John C. Calhoun argued, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually." He went on, "I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other."  We know better now, sort of.  Okay, not really; our change of heart doesn't quite cover today's identical practices under a different name.

The result of today's labor practices, 20%+ of American children live in poverty.  For four decades, wage and schedule practices have become progressively more oppressive for workers while corporate profits have soared.  Attempts to legislate a living wage have failed.

You can't legislate a good heart or a reasonable conscience, we've discovered.  Wealth tends to erode every good intent and dull every sensitivity.

Thanks and a hat tip to our government (both parties) for years of legislation bought and paid for by big business.  It now extends into the world marketplace and touches every person in the world.


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Now the hard question.  How do I as a person of conscience avoid participating in the abuse of others?  I won't buy clothes made in child-labor shops overseas, of course.  I'll stick to 'fair trade' products.  But are there companies I'll boycott?

Among the largest low/minimum wage employers whose employees are noted for living below the poverty line:

• Walmart with 1,400,000 employees
• McDonald's with 860,000
• Burger King, 191,000
• KFC (and others under Yum brand) 880,000 employees 

Does boycott work?  Or dragging them into the public forum to answer for their practices?  Or explain the problem in front of legislators.

Walmart has begun to change, thanks to the public outcry against their wage and schedule abuse of employees.  Through early 2016, every Super Center costs between $900K and $1.6M in annual welfare for their employees living in poverty.

Better than boycott, perhaps, are there any fair business companies I can endorse?
Do Costco or Target qualify?  Or Amazon?
What are we going to do with what we know?

Heart, Soul, Mind

Love with all your heart, soul, mind, ... and strength.  Why would someone say it that way?

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In truth, we're torn

between what we know is right

and what we want.

That's the explanation offered by the psych community, and
here's how we stumble through it ...

• As we learn, we come to a logical conclusion, and we lock it down.  Two plus two equals ... you get the idea. We understand and file it away for reference. 

Math works well that way.  It's easy to believe math is true and to live accordingly, but we're inclined to extend the method into realms far beyond the little help that math might offer.

How about a broader question like is selfishness good or bad?  

• We've talked it through, it's a clear question, and we agree it's bad for everybody.  That's the logical path to belief and conviction; we know and understand.  Lock it down. 

But can we live it?  We surely can talk about it, explain it in detail, lecture our kids and friends, but we're casually dismissive about selfishness in our own hearts, and we cannot fully live according to the convictions we've claimed.  Why is that?   (Cognitive dissonance, a conflict between two beliefs, values, convictions; it's an unfinished choice that can take a war to conquer.)

A warrior understands this battle for right thinking ... we fight for it every day of our lives.  The world's assault on a good heart is mega-monstrous, it roils up in every entertainment venue, every political speech, every cultural norm, every peer pressure, every business meeting, and every slanted news report.  It's an incredible struggle to rise up and to think clearly.  Our children watch and learn from us.

Our children are faced with a different world. Morality is ambiguous, character is a soft standard, and sex on the prom dance floor is the latest trend.  They have few examples of magnificence to admire and emulate.  The battle for right thinking continues, and it is all out war.

Love with all your heart, soul, mind, ... and strength.  

Why would someone say it that way?