Profoundly Christian

The greatest power on earth, a parent's love for their child, a warrior's love
 for his brother, or the love of one for another in time of need ...
 'Love' has perhaps been devalued over the years by

those who claim that heart but live without a

 changed life.  It should make a difference,

should it not?  To love as it was first

intended is a life changer

and costly.

... so loved the world ...  not the denomination,

not the race, not the country or culture,
 but all of humanity, apparently.
Should we also?

The name 'Christian' has perhaps been devalued over the years by those who claim the credential but continue living unchanged.  It should make a difference, should it not?

The one who is profoundly Christian will be unlike others. The one who is profoundly Christian will be ... the message, the light that shines. And changed.

The one who is profoundly Christian will love extravagantly, even at great personal cost.

The one who is profoundly Christian will live for a purpose, and a great one at that.  To serve as the turning point for another's life, to be help in a time of need, could there be a greater goal?  That which is right and just and good, the power of mercy and grace, that's what flows in their veins.

Wealth and privilege don't matter; class and position are valueless.  Religiosity is perhaps unhelpful; as are legalism, superstition, and wishful thinking.  At the other extreme, faith and hope, justice and mercy, these are life changers, even world changers, and are the very stones upon which eternity is built.

Knowing the Author of it all, to perhaps catch a glimpse of His greater reality is worth all our labor and every step in our journey. Knowing Him is our strength.  Of such is the substance of profound Christianity.  That is the goal and worth the fight.


Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Do we choose by truth or preference?

It hadn't occurred to me that you could come to a wrong conclusion from right information. It was a surprise.

Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy at New York University, "I want atheism to be true. And I’m made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t that I don’t believe in God and naturally hope that I’m right in my beliefs, it’s that I hope there is no God. I don’t want there to be a God. I don’t want the universe to be like that."1    
He is among the few who speak objectively about the force of preference against truth.

What we want will affect what we believe, what we admit is truth, and the impact of our lives.  

(NC-17) What if an unborn child is in fact a child?  Do we believe what we prefer, or do we acknowledge truth?  Is our position based on science or politics, truth or preference?

Pascal warned us, "Truth is so obscured nowadays, and lies so well established that unless we love the truth, we shall never recognize it."  Is he right?  When is the last time truth forced us to change our personal behavior?  

What about that unborn child?  Is there a difference in the child between the day after being born and the day before?  A week before?   Care to look at a court review or perhaps a larger context.  What are the preference issues and what are the truth components?  (ref)(ref)(ref)(ref)  Do we prefer the unborn child be disposable?  Can we see the difference between right and rights?  And responsibilities?

There are medical issues we can now see before birth.  The discussion is difficult and emotionally charged, and no one trusts regulation to provide the right answer.  It's all hard to face, perhaps in part because the outcome may impose an inconvenient burden on us individually and collectively.  

Can we choose truth even when there's a price tag?  And what about our government's role?

 ¹ Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130, emphasis added. Interestingly, Nagel has recently released a book in which he concedes to some degree the credibility of the evidence for a non-material cause of the universe. See Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Neither the first nor the last to separate preference from truth, he offers a look at the dilemma of conscience, morality, honesty, and self-choices. Aldous Huxley once explained, "I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it not because I think there was enormous evidence for it, nor because I believed it had the full authority to give interpretation to my origins, but I chose to believe it because it delivered me from trying to find meaning...."

Over Time: the Crowd

Things have changed, in part of course, because we've crowded together in the cities and surrounding areas.  There were just a few of us in the early days, comparatively speaking, and we had plenty of room to spread out and live.

We've grown dramatically in number; what impact might that have?  Our population has tripled in the last century with the majority of the increase occurring in established urban areas.  More than half of the world is now urban.

World Health Organization: The urban population in 2014 accounted for 54% of the total global population, up from 34% in 1960, and 14% in 1900. 

Increased population and density have changed our culture.

We began as rugged, independent ruralists who could build anything, fix anything, and make do with what we had. Since the beginning of industry, we've become a culture of consumerist/ specialists.  Everything we do takes hundreds of skills spread across hundreds of people.  Or thousands.  From getting food on the table via stores and transport to building airplanes via dozens of suppliers and producers and engineering organizations, we're extraordinarily complex and interconnected.  Most of us couldn't last a month on our own in the wild, of course.  And we have so much stuff, but we keep buying more.

We were a nation of younger folks not too long ago.  We've changed.  Now there are so many older people in the middle of everything.  :)

There's a benefit, perhaps.  The 50 year+ folks are stunningly productive.  They can do in a day what the 30-somethings will struggle with for a week.

It's worth seeing the things that have changed with some clarity.  Old ideas may not fit, old solutions may not work, and the way forward will not be like the past.  Everyone is scrambling to keep up. Schools, governments, churches, and families are pressed hard to cope reasonably with the high-speed changes that sweep us all along like a flood.

We do get to choose our own goals, however.  Our purpose can be noble despite the most tumultuous of times.

Impossible Change

Everything changes, often at a slow pace that hides from us the significance; not unlike a frog in a kettle slowly brought to boil.  Our republic has changed for good and bad.  Here's a look at one radical change that needs redirection.  It's our government and its declining ability to represent us all.

Like the great issues past, like slavery and racism, like equal opportunity and gender equality, this one will generate similar upheaval as the debate is enjoined, but the difficulty of the task is irrelevant; it must change.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." — Noam Chomsky, American Linguist and US Media and Foreign Policy critic.

Don't just look and leave.  Look and learn ... and pick a position ... and do something.  That way, at least you'll own your future, and you'll be able to explain your part to your kids.


This article was originally published here, April 2013.

Imagine a world

It's a surprise to realize there's little difference between a self-centered bully and a killer. The only thing that keeps a bully from killing every time they're inconvenienced or annoyed is that it would get them in trouble.  They'll do what they can get away with.


In the decision to do harm to another, the only constraints are morals and penalties.  As the moral element has already been weakened in the bully's mind, the remaining constraints are legal and cultural penalties.

Imagine a world with no rules.  From an early age, our children would tend to violence.  Absent some extraordinary moral stance, each would find occasion for doing deliberate harm to another.  Parents would find themselves struggling to raise good-hearted kids in a violent world, a world where the cultural barriers to destructive behavior are missing.

... a world where the barriers to destructive behavior are missing?

Actually, we're all familiar with that problem and the moral changes that follow.  We've been watching it happen for decades.

Insulating young children from destructive
influences is becoming progressively
less possible.

For instance ... 

Broad sexualization, particularly at earlier developmental stages 
Now common among preteens along with the commensurate disease and relational problems, our abandoning of sexual boundaries has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar porn industry, human trafficking and child exploitation, national redefinition of marriage and family, the broken relational context between parents and children, and the erosion of commitment between partners.

Vaccination for STDs now considered normal
and necessary for all children.

Before the 70's, the general stance of abstinence until marriage, etc., had been the understood standard of right-thinking, but much had changed following the war years.

Today, the process of sexualization unavoidably burdens our pre-teens and tweens.  Should an 8 year old get a body-waxing to remove visible hair on her legs?  Should a 12 year old need to worry about a bikini wax?

It's troubling enough to see young folks overplaying the sexual attraction card.  It's oddly bizarre to see preteens, with parental support, involved in the same game before they even know what it means.  Such activities are brain and life shapers.

Have you noticed that kids don't stand by the street waiting for the school bus without parental supervision?  Just fifty years ago, children and dogs ran free.

Western culture has morphed on many issues; change came slowly, it progressed inexorably.  Is our current cultural position on sexuality and behavior a good one?  Is it smarter or more beneficial than the one from which we've evolved?  There are some troublesome issues ...

Out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. From around 4% in the 60's, it is now more than 40%.  Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families.  Each is more likely to be trapped in poverty, more likely to suffer a variety of impediments to life.

The Father Factor

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (US DoH/Census); 5 times the average. 

• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes; 32 times the average. 
• 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes; 20 times the average. (CDC) 
• 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes; 14 times the average. (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26) 
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes; 9 times the average. (National Principals Association Report) 
• 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes; 10 times the average. 
• Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school. 
• Children with fathers who are involved in their lives are 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school. They are 70% less likely to drop out of school. They are more likely to get A’s in school. They are more likely to enjoy school and engage in extracurricular activities.

This is just one of many change categories.  Most areas of life are changing, and some are troubling ...

• Commercialization of life purpose
• The divorce between business for profit and business for service
• The exaggeration of capitalism to the threshold of depriving others of the means to live
• The trivialization of character and reason, perhaps best exemplified by reality television
• Polarization of the public forum

Note that discussion on the subject today will include the observation that there's always been such change.  True, yet when seen in the larger context of civilizations in turmoil, such change is significant.

So as we observe what we've done, it's clear that just making rules is no solution.  We've made rules and managed to apply them and to justify doing so despite the destructive outcomes.  So how might we, as a culture and as a nation, be changed for the better?  What would it take?
  
Now, imagine a world where we've agreed to value character more than bling, caring more than having, and serving others more than winning.  What would it be like to live in a world without Kardashians in the limelight?

Beside still waters ... or not.

It would be nice, but courage and character are not formed in peaceful times beside still waters.