I have forever struggled with the issue of money. Maybe it was because I was partially raised by an anthropologist who had certain ideas about wealth that made me instinctively distrustful of those with lots of money. Maybe it was because I have never gotten over the economically socialist ideals of my youth. Whatever it is, no matter how many conversations I have with wise and Godly people who tell me wealth is not incompatible with bearing the cross of Christianity, I can never shake the feeling that there is something wrong with having either a significant amount of money beyond what is necesary to support a comfortable lifestyle, or having a lifestyle that requires more than the average American income. And considering that the average American income is filthy rich by the rest of the world's standards, perhaps even this is too much.

I have usually supported these feelings through an approach to discipleship that says something like "if you're really a mature disciple, then you won't have a lot of money lying around" as if there's something inherently more holy about being poor. I have come to realize that thinking along these lines is not only false, but elitist as well. I think that in a vacuum, in some kind of perfect world, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having the splendors of David, Solomon, and Job; and enjoying the luxuries of the beautiful world He has provided.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a vacuum. This is where my where my line of thinking has led me. I drove to work today and watched a man hobble up to a dumpster on crutches and start digging through the trash. Even he is richer than the vast majority of people in Zimbabwe. Upon our shoulders has been placed the burden of the poor, and we have shrugged this responsibility and spent our money on digging ourselves a perpetuating lifestyle that requires more money than we have any business spending. I'm afraid I don't have the patience for playing games with people on this topic anymore. I'll still be open. But I'm tired of being "the devil's advocate." I'm convicted that America needs prophetic voices.

Does He want us to be happy, healthy, and wealthy? Sure. But I GUARANTEE YOU THAT BEING HAPPY, HEALTHY, AND WEALTHY DOES NOT REQUIRE A $300,000 HOUSE, TWO NEW CARS, AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF TOYS. There. I've said it. I'm not good at being mad and pushy. I'm stepping on toes and it makes me feel like junk, but I'm doing it because of the book of Hosea. I'm doing it because of the man at the dumpster and the nations of Africa who have to watch their children die of starvation in their arms. I'm doing it because of Jesus Christ who had nails driven through his wrist. He asked us over and over and over to feed His sheep.

Don't quit your jobs. Go and get promotions. Go become the head of every corporation in the world. Don't be a fool and neglect the needs of your family. But somewhere there is a place to live that is not dangerous that doesn't require you to buy ridiculous housing. There is no place on earth that requires you to drive a $40,000 car. Put away some money for retirement, so that you are not a burden when you're older. Put away some money for your kids for college. Put away some money for your daughter's wedding. And then give. Give everything else to God. Be competitive in your giving. It's not about how many more toys you have, but how many thousands of dollars you've given away and kept secret. Be a ninja of giving. Don't wait. If you need to sell your houses and cars, do it. See how God blesses you.

This post is more likely to display my ignorance/misunderstanding than anything else, but it's been on my mind lately, so I'm going to spit it out.

In postmodernism there has been quite a stir about the nature of language. Folks like Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault came to the realization that the way we think about things is sculpted through various institutions like family, media, religious organizations, and education. Then, structuralists like Ferdinand de Saussure informed us that such ideologies are transmitted foremost via language -- proving quite literally that the pen is much mightier than the sword. Somewhere in the mix of genetics, institutions, and language a human being is formed. It is the lattermost influence that has captured my thoughts most recently.

Language is such a strange beast. We have almost completely arbitrary sounds which correspond with concepts whose existence/importance are determined by culture. Take for instance the word "umbrella". In our culture it conjures an image of a rather fragile, black object which dramatically expands and which we hold over our head to keep it from getting wet. In other cultures, the same object was intended as a symbol of high class -- as the root "umbra" (shade) suggests, it was something that kept the sun off of rich people's heads, and instead of being black and gloomy, it had a light and dainty connotation.

Language is also inherently connected with ontology. This becomes evident when you break the object the word is referring to. Umbrella refers to the object described above, but what happens when the umbrella breaks? What do you call that object? While the most obvious answer is the phrase "broken umbrella," there are other answers as well. You can call it trash. But more importantly, once freed from its most obvious function, an infinity of possibilities opens up. If the shaft is still intact, the Broken Umbrella is now a walking cane. The Broken Umbrella is a fire poker. It's a sparring weapon.

Suddenly it becomes necessary to make a distinction between the physical object and all it's potential uses/names. Martin Heidegger gave long, strange German names to these things: the physical object itself is the vorhandenheit (roughly translated as ready-to-hand) and its potential use is the vorhandensein (present-to-hand). Linguists and fiction writers recalled the Genesis account and how Adam gave names to each creature. They played with the idea of recovering such an "Edenic" language where each word exactly represented a given object or concept, a language where words referred to a given object in its ready-to-hand state, a language without the present-to-hand.

No one put much more thought into the Edenic Language Project. While it seemed like an interesting (if not impossible) enterprise, in order for these new words to accurately convey a given object, they must either be a verbal conglomeration of each of that object's possibilities (which would make for awfully long, unusable words), or they must be words that inherently map to this conglomeration in the minds of each of the participants in the conversation. The problem with this is that recalling every possible context and function for an object renders it irrelevant to the here and now. It is like trying to make a key that fits into every keyhole in existence. The resulting key would be nothing but a needle, and completely useless for opening doors.

The "moral of the story" of the Edenic Language Project appears to be that while acknowledging the ontological reality of an object in its ready-to-hand state is healthy, in order for that object to be accessible and therefore useful, it must be found in a context and must be given a function.

[The following paragraph is my application of the ideas of language into the context of theology. I am attempting to say something about God, so it will be inherently flawed.]

This is one of the reasons why God, the headwater of all ontology, the ultimate, omniscient, omnipotent ready-to-hand Object is so difficult for us to wrap our minds around. This is also why, when God chooses to interface with humanity, he does so in a specific context with a specific function in mind. He resolves Himself down into the present-to-hand (whether as Jesus Christ, Scripture, the Spirit, etc.) in order to tell us a specific thing about a specific situation. This ties back to Greg's post and tells us how critical it is that when we attempt to be the incarnation of Christ among people, we must try to remember where we are, and to apply appropriate teachings to appropriate contexts. That is not to say that there aren't Universal Truths or teachings which are relevant for every situation. But once you get more narrow than The Greatest Commands, it is important to remember who you are, who your audience is, and what, exactly, you are trying to say.

a nose is a thing to despise,
for his nose grows when he lies!
one day his sweet wife
will take out a knife
and make him the most honest of guys.

where nothing new is under sun
the nothings fuse to make us one
though fulfillment is futility
the "new" thing shines ephemerally

The United States tied with Italy, playing 9 men against Italy's 10 for basically the entire second half. Granted, Italy scored both goals in the game. But still! This is case in point for a strange truth about the United States: we're worthless without a story. If you put the United States into a game with no backstory and no risk, they will lose. Give them high stakes and Hollywood style suspense and you've got the potential for miracles -- the United States is fueled by being the underdog. Would we have fended off the Brits during the revolution had we not been outmanned? Would Lance have won all those Tours without having cancer? I'm not saying we're going to win the World Cup or anything. We may be eliminated on Thursday. I'm just saying that Americans love a good story.

Want alternative energy?

Any context where the Czech Republic can wipe the floor with The United States of America is worth an extra long lunch break.

So I change templates like I change socks. This one is 100% custom made, however, so all praise/vomit due to me. By the way, Greg McKinzie has finally posted again on his blog, so go jump into the discussion.

For all you compulsive blog readers out there, here is what I have done to make life a little more efficient:

1. Go sign up for a Google Homepage.


2. If you don't have a gmail account, have someone who does send you an invite and set one up.


3. Set up a Google Reader account.


4. Grab the RSS/Atom feed off of any of the blogs that support this and add them as subscriptions to your Google Reader.


5. For any blogs that don't have RSS feeds, tell the blog owner to fix this, and then in the meantime create an account at FeedWhip and have them email any site changes on the blog to your gmail account. This also works for any blogs whose comments don't have feeds.


6. Sign into your Google Homepage, click "Add Content", and add your Gmail account and Google Reader to your Google Homepage. You can also add your Google Calendar, and any news feeds like the BBC or Slashdot.

Voila! You now have a one stop shop for all your obsessive bloggage. BTW, everything listed above is 100% free.

UPDATE: Google Homepage now has a World Cup content module under the Sports secion. Alas, Germany beat Costa Rica today, but not before scoring two goals.

I received one of those forwards that would make a good conspiracy theory:

Do you know that 'bird flu' was discovered in Vietnam 9 years ago?

Do you know that barely 100 people have died in the whole world in all that time?

Do you know that it was the Americans who alerted us to the efficacy of the human antiviral TAMIFLU as a preventative.

Do you know that TAMIFLU barely alleviates some symptoms of the common flu?

Do you know that its efficacy against the common flu is questioned by a great part of the scientific community?

Do you know that against a SUPPOSED mutant virus such as H5N1, TAMIFLU barely alleviates the illness?

Do you know that to date Avian Flu affects birds only?

Do you know who markets TAMIFLU?

ROCHE LABORATORIES.

Do you know who bought the patent for TAMIFLU from ROCHE LABORATORIES in 1996?

GILEAD SCIENCES INC.

Do you know who was the then president of GILEAD SCIENCES INC. and remains a major shareholder?

DONALD RUMSFELD, the present Secretary of Defence of the USA.

Do you know that the base of TAMIFLU is crushed aniseed?

Do you know who controls 90% of the world's production of this tree?

ROCHE.

Do you know that sales of TAMIFLU were over $254 million in 2004 and
more than $1000 million in 2005?

Do you know how many more millions ROCHE can earn in the coming months
if the business of fear continues?

So the summary of the story is as follows:

Bush's friends decide that the medicine TAMIFLU is the solution for a pandemic that has not yet occurred and that has caused a hundred deaths worldwide in 9 years.

This medicine doesn't so much as cure the common flu.

In normal conditions the virus does not affect humans.

Rumsfeld sells the patent for TAMIFLU to ROCHE for which they pay him a fortune. Roche acquires 90% of the global production of crushed aniseed, the base for the antivirus.

The governments of the entire world threaten a pandemic and then buy industrial quantities of the product from Roche.

So we end up paying for medicine while Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush do the business.

ARE WE CRAZY!!? OR ARE WE IDIOTS!!?

AT LEAST PASS THIS ON SO THAT IT CAN BE KNOWN!!!!!!!

And one more thing to add -- turns out we had an outbreak of bird flu in this country in 1983. Something like 17 people died of it. But, since the magic powers of Fear were not yet being exploited for political gain, USDA handled it. Something like 20 million domestic fowl were destroyed, and that took care of it. Don't hear that mentioned much these days, do we?

An overabundance of upper case words, exclamation marks, and phrases like "pass this on" gave me the feeling that this is some hoax somebody concocted just to compose another famous forward. So, being the skeptic that I am, I typed the words "roche", "tamiflu", and "rumsfeld" into Google and let 'er rip. I wish I was surprised. I wish I were even a little upset about it. Unfortunately I've lost the capacity to care anymore.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/