Kent Loves Barbara

This was a public display of affection. For reasons unknown, I want to make it even more public, so here it is for anyone who chooses to tune into to this blog. The old battered guy is me. The beautiful young woman is Barbara, my wife. We were dancing at the reception after the wedding of two of our very closest friends. It was just weeks before the wedding of our daughter Julia. I am so blessed to love her and be loved by her. I pray that God will give me more love and more ways to serve her. I pray that he will conform my mind to the mind of Christ. I want to love her as Christ loves the church.

People I Have Known

I thought about how many people I have known.  Then it occurred to me that relationships happen at a whole bunch of levels, from passive and superficial to active and deep.

I have seen millions of people milling around like ants. Examples would be Tokyo subway stations, Mardi Gras crowds between parades, rock concerts before the show starts.  Oh yeah, millions and millions in 55 years.

I have seen millions of people wheeling in formation like flocks of birds.  They are full of purpose. Yet the purpose may be hidden or not very relevant to me.  Examples include antiwar protests, parades, crowds cheering a team, a sport, a singer.

I have seen thousands of people (many thousands) like deer in the woods.  They are alone or in small groups.  If they see me at all they respond cautiously.  I have only the vaguest sense of what has brought them to this spot and what will take them away again.

I have seen thousands of people just as I might see monkeys in the zoo:  playing, interacting, sleeping, waiting, and none of it really involves me the spectator.

I have joined with thousands of people as a participant in cheering, worshipping, protesting, or playing in large groups.

I have talked one on one or in small groups with thousands of people. We have told each other stories.  We laugh.  We listen.  We care, but we are careful how much we show it.

I have talked very seriously with hundreds of people.  We have shared our problems. We have explored our beliefs. We have confessed our failures.

The Lord knows how many people I have argued with. I am afraid to think of it.

I have shared meals, really shared, with hundreds of people.  We sat at a table or on the ground.  We passed the food.  Sometimes we thanked God for it.

I have embraced many dozens of people.  Sometimes it was a full strong hug.  Sometimes it was a quick arm around a shoulder.  Sometimes there was tension. Sometimes there was a wonderful sense of peace.

I have wept with dozens of people.  I cried or my heart was touched by their weeping.  Sometimes it was for a brief moment.  Sometimes it was only a couple of times in a lifetime of knowing that person.  My father cried in my presence only twice that I can remember. The same is true for my mother.  My wife and I have wept together many times.  My children, my friends, my coworkers, my brothers and sisters in the Lord have wept with me or me with them. Sometimes we hold each other or at least touch.

There are less than a dozen people that I have nursed when they were ill or who have tended to me at such times.  Seldom have I cleaned others or cleaned up after they vomited, sweated, or lost control of bowel or bladder.  Most of those times were with my children.  I want to love many people enough to do such things for them.  However, the truth is that I almost always avoid it if possible.

I have only helped to care for one person’s lifeless body.   My father died in his sleep at a family reunion.  I helped to move his body and zip it into the body bag.  I helped lift it onto a gurney and rolled it to the coroner’s SUV.  My father was gone.  Only his body remained.

Relationships happen at a whole bunch of levels, from passive and superficial to active and deep.  Without them I would be nothing worth mentioning.

Yes There Are Such Things As "Sweat Shops"

For some reason my link didn’t work in the article on WTO.  Here is the pertinent paragraph from the web page I referred to.

Child Labor. Despite a 1991 Supreme Court (India) ruling that child labor in tobacco should be
prohibited, more than 325,000 children labor in the bidi industry in India. Older children (over
ten) roll 1,500 to 2,000 bidis each day, six and a half days a week. For their labor, they may
earn as little as four rupees a day. In comparison, the government-set minimum wage for bidi
rolling is 30.9 rupees per 1000 bidis rolled.15 Bidi rolling is classified by the (India) Child Labor
Prohibition and Regulation Act as hazardous because the working position produces chronic
back pain, interferes with normal growth patterns, and causes physical deformation. Bidi rollers
also suffer lung disease from constantly inhaling tobacco dust. They have high rates of
tuberculosis, asthma, and other lung disorders.16 On November 24, 1999, the U.S. Customs
Service banned the importation of bidis produced by Ganesh Bidi Works in Mangalore, India,
after receiving evidence that the company uses indentured child labor to produce the bidis.17
Under section 1307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, it is illegal to import merchandise into the United
States that is made with indentured labor.18
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, June 12, 2001
15 Human Rights Watch, “The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor in India” 1996. In 1995, the exchange
rupee/dollar exchange rate was approximately 34 rupees to the dollar. Minimum wage for bidi rolling was
approximately 89 cents per 1000 bidis rolled.
16 Human Rights Watch, “The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor in India” 1996.
17 “Attorneys General Call for Crackdown on Bidi Cigarettes” NAAG News Release, 6 December 1999.
18 19 USC Sec. 1307.

The World Trade Organization

I first visited Singapore on business about 1980.  It is a tiny country.  It was already quite prosperous by Asian standards.  Today it can be considered wealthy by most standards.
I was there, as were many Americans and Europeans, to take advantage of very low cost labor.  

As an idealistic thirty something young man, I had struggled a bit with guilt over the idea of hiring Singaporeans willing to work for very low wages.  The word exploit was determined to assert itself into my thinking.  However, as I visited our factory, I was struck by how similar it was to our facilities in the U.S.  The building was simple, but nicely constructed.  A bell rang twice a day, and assembly line workers, engineers, and management would all gather in the hall for snacks and tea.  There was a pleasant cafeteria where a food server was determined to dredge the soup for an extra chicken’s foot for me, an honored guest.  The workers chuckled as I toured the line.  To this day they assure me that I am an exact twin for Kenny Rogers.  Just a year or so ago a young factory planner convulsed with laughter when, apropos of nothing, I said “You think I look like Kenny Rogers, don’t you?”

There is no worker’s paradise in this world.  I have been in many factories since, some worse, some better.  Some of those factories were in the U.S. or Europe; others have been in various parts of Asia.  I certainly understand that some truly wretched work places exist in this world.  The bidi factories in India are an infamous example.  Go here www.tobaccofreekids.org/ research/factsheets/pdf/0037.pdf if you need convincing.  Or read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair if you would like a home grown example.  However, I also know that many of the alternatives to an industrialized society are not nearly as lovely as we might hope.

There are no agrarian paradises, for the same reason there are no industrial paradises.  We humans miss the mark, and miss it often. A less popular word for this is “sin”.    I am told that even farm work with internal combustion engines is tough.  I am told by folks who have actually farmed using only animal and human muscle, that it is very hard work indeed.  It is hard work that must be shared by the whole family.  Taking one day a week to rest is audacious act of faith in those circumstances.  My oldest daughter lived in Tanzania for a few months. She told me of whole villages who were chased off the best land and away from water sources by their more aggressive neighbors.  She saw a culture where the men lounged while the women bore the entire burden of farming, child rearing, and keeping house.  During my first trip to Singapore, a day trip driving through the Malaysia jungle and plantations, brief though it was, was enough to convince me that using a machete or a hoe for twelve hours a day in humid 100 degree air might be a tough way to earn a living.  Certainly it can be tougher than spending long hours assembling widgets for someone twelve thousand miles away.

At last this brings me to the World Trade Organization.  It happens that I know almost nothing about the World Trade Organization other than that it purports to promote world trade.  I know only a little more about those who are opposed to the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it promotes a system whereby richer countries exploit poorer ones, especially by using their populations as a source of cheap labor.  It would seem that hiring workers for factories built in other countries is seen as being the modern version of the slave plantations at home and abroad in the nineteenth century.

Sadly, in most of the world, oppression and exploitation are certainly common.  It may be home grown, or it may be instituted by folks from other countries.  The folks who institute such oppression may be rich or may be dirt poor.  Exploitation is an equal opportunity enterprise.  All colors, all faiths, all ages, and both sexes may promote it or may suffer it.  To impugn “multinational corporations” as the biggest perpetrators of such injustice strikes me as foolish.  It is foolish to think that willing workers vying for a job at wage that will better their lives should be seen as ill treated.

I am, however, willing to scrutinize my own motives and actions.  Am I best using the riches with which God has blessed me?  Do I feel compassion for those folks who must work much harder and who have much less?  Am I personally doing more each year to help those who are oppressed?  What part do I play in promoting injustice?

I invite my readers to do the same.  Once you have done so, do not purchase the sneakers or the MP3 player if you are convinced that the company that manufactured them is doing more harm than good.  

A Good Quote

THOMAS BROOKS
English Puritan (1608 - 1680)

Discord and division become no Christian. For wolves to worry the lambs, is no wonder; but for one lamb to worry another, this is unnatural and monstrous.

Bertrand Russell and Me

Bertrand Russell was to secular philosophy something like C.S. Lewis was to Christianity. He was born in 1872 and died in 1970. He had a large following before anyone had heard of Lewis. He lived 7 years after Lewis died.

A few days ago I realized that Russell had almost as big an impact on my life before I was a Christian as C.S. Lewis has since. He was an icon for the secularists. He epitomized those who disdain religion or any sort of spirituality. He believed he spoke the bright clear truths that centuries of ignorance, superstition, and priestly ambition had obscured.

I don’t think I even knew his name until I was in my twenties. I have known him only from his frequently cited quotes and infamous controversies since that time. Last week as I read a long quote by him, I got curious and began to research his life and philosophy. I had not realized until that moment how much I had been influenced by him and by like minded folk. As I read some of his essays, it occurred to me that his conclusions were virtually identical to those I believed I had arrived at through my own experiences, education, and musing. I am still left to wonder how much I was programmed by folks like Russell and how much was simply a matter of being just as sadly misled and seriously self deluded as he was.

I am very thankful that God exposed the pain and horror that lay at the end of the thinking that I shared with Russell. I have seen no evidence that Russell was ever able to comprehend it. It is very sad to think he may have lived a long, affluent, celebrated life and all the while walked a road to utter despair.

Here is the quote that shocked me into realizing just how much I had been like him:

(1957) Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster; page 108

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcomes of accidental collisions of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction … that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

I thank God that my foundation of despair crumbled. I thank God that I fell into his loving arms. He saved me from an eternity of inhabiting my own soul, separated from him.

Bertrand Russell

Confabulation

Pamela taught me this word and concept recently.  

confabulate
2. Psychology To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.
Recently, I inadvertently caused quite a stir at work by listening to a talk by one manager and then doing a bit of confabulation as I discussed that talk with a much higher level manager.  It was almost impossible for me to believe I had misremembered what was communicated in the talk.  Fortunately, the talk was actually video recorded.  I was able to watch it again and see exactly where my memory gaps occurred and how I had filled them in with incorrect information.  Since the topic was the size of lay offs that might be required in my region of the organization, I believe that the right and left side of my brains (emotive and rational)  collaborated to create a confabulation that was a good deal worse than what had actually been communicated.  It was a powerful lesson for me about how one’s emotions can influence how one remembers and retells an event.
Confabulation can be the result of brain damage or brain disorders.  However, it can also be a normal brain's response to certain situations.  Below I have cut and pasted four relevant paragraphs from a much longer article:

Confabulation and Delusional Denial: Frontal Lobe and Lateralized Influences. by Rhawn Joseph, Brain Research Laboratory, Neurobehavioral Center
Reprinted from: Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 845-860, 1986
…
Confabulation (or rather, in the less extreme case, self-deception) does not occur only among severely brain-injured individuals, but, rather, is sometimes the byproduct of the normal process via which explanations for behaviors, impulses, or other actions are provided; particularly those that have causes that are not immediately and/or completely amenable to linguistic translation or interpretation (e.g.,"gap filling"). Although confabulatory, in many instances the explanations seem reasonable, innocuous, and accurate, although completely erroneous.
For example, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) describe an experiment in which shoppers were asked to indicate a preference among four supposedly different (yet identical) nylon stockings. A very significant and pronounced position effect was noted such that most chose the stocking to the right of the display. When asked their reasons, no one mentioned position, but instead commented on differences in color, texture, etc.—although all of the stockings were identical. Moreover, when position effects were mentioned by the experimenters, most of the shoppers were disbelieving.
In other instances, confabulation is merely the result of an attempt to provide explanations that are acceptable to the self-image. Indeed, it often happens that people will make a"slip of the tongue,"“speak without thinking,"make foolish statements, act on sudden impulses or in a peculiar or insulting manner, or engage in various objectionable activities, and yet no even realize that an inappropriate act was committed. Of course, if pointed out, this does not prevent the left hemisphere (i.e., the speaking half of the brain) from inventing numerous explanations or denials. If questioned, the individual may claim to have"no idea"as to"what cam over them"or, in other instances, dismiss the action as a rare and momentary lapse that is not as bad as it seems. Such explanations commonly are produced, for example, by young women who have been successfully seduced. (See Joseph, 1980, p. 777).
Although such actions and denials have been classified as various forms of resistance, repression, etc., one need not posit the existence of an unconscious in order to explain the motivational origins and mechanisms involved (Joseph, 1980, 1982). Rather, in many instances these behaviors, denials, and conflicts are the result of the differential organization of the right and left cerebral hemisphere (as well as that of the limbic system) and their inability to completely communicate and engage in information transfer and exchange (e.g., something is lost in the translation and during transfer). In certain instances, one brain half often has little or no knowledge (much less understanding) of what is occurring in the other.
…

Lord of Lords

I don’t think it is in the book, but in the movie Marilla says to Anne “To despair is to turn your back on God.” Pamela will know for sure.

That thought came to me tonight soon after I watched the movie “Lord of War”. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was alone (five immediate family members all from 5 to 5000 miles away) and that my blood sugar was low. If you haven’t seen it, I wouldn’t recommend it. At one point the main character, a fabulously wealthy gun smuggler, is told “I would tell you to go to hell, but I think you are already in it”. I had the overwhelming impression by the end of the movie that hell is exactly where the spirit behind the film might lead someone: to separation from God and from all good fellowship forever.

The relentless theme seems to be that evil reigns supreme and there nothing that any of us can do about it. My hope is that Nicolas Cage and the other producers supposed that the prospect of utter despair would send the moviegoer running to find God and thus to find release from hell on earth. Regardless of his intent, that was the impact on me. I found myself standing on a crumbling ledge, staring down into an abyss of despair. Even now, almost an hour later, I can still feel my soul crying out to God to be delivered from that vision.

The movie showed many, many sad truths and claimed to be based on actual events. I thank God that his gift of faith is adequate to shield me from the lies that even now assail me and coax me to leap into the abyss.

God is love. God is sovereign. God works all things to good. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord. There will be no more crying, no more pain. We will live with him forever. Meanwhile, the pain is real. There are plenty of good reasons to cry. God is love. God is sovereign. God works all things to good.

O.K. Blog written. Snack eaten. At least one family member has joined me in my home. Time to read the bible for a while and rest. May God be with you. May you know Him and his grace.

Good night!

Jesus' Performance Feedback

I work in a large corporation.  Each year, my boss at the time (I’ve had 25 or more different bosses in the past 31 years), gives me written feedback on how I am doing.
In the last decade or so, a common practice has been for the boss to solicit feedback from my peers, my subordinates, and from other managers in the company.  I also get a “rating” which is a little like getting graded on the curve.

I am far from perfect.  So it behooves me to listen to the feedback I get.  This year, I was sad to see that my “grade” had dropped some.  Also, along with a lot of really nice comments, I got quite a few that hurt.  As I struggled to make sense of it, I wound up spending a long time praying and reading the bible one Sunday morning.  Suddenly I had a thought: if someone had collected feedback on Jesus, what would it be like? Unlike me, Jesus did a perfect job of carrying out his job assignment, and he loved every single person he met.  

I spent a couple of hours scanning through the book of Matthew in the New Testament (NIV translation).  Jesus is quoted a lot, of course.  I also found at least twenty instances where a person or group was quoted saying something specific about Jesus.  Then I sorted them into those corporate speak standards:  Strengths and Opportunities.  
Unlike the comments I received, I am able to see who said what. They are as follows:

Strengths:

“We saw his star when it rose and we have come to worship him.”   the wise men

“This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased.”   God the Father when Jesus was baptized

“He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”   Isaiah (quoted from a prophecy he made about 800 years earlier)

“What kind of man is this?  Even the wind and the waves obey him.”   his disciples

“Could this be the Son of David?”   a large crowd

“Truly you are the Son of God.”   his disciples

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”   Peter

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”   God the Father when Jesus was transfigured

“Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.”   Peter

“Surely he was the Son of God.”   Roman officer and his soldiers


Opportunities:

“Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”   An angel speaking to Jesus’ father

“This fellow is blaspheming.”   some religious leaders

“Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”   two demon possessed men

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”   religious leaders

“It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons”   religious leaders when Jesus healed a mute man

“It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”   religious leaders when Jesus healed a man who was blind and mute

“He has spoken blasphemy.  Why do we need any witnesses?  Look now, you have heard the blasphemy, what do you think?”    high priest among religious leaders

“He is worthy of death.”   religious leaders

“I don’t know the man”   Peter

“Crucify him.”   a large crowd

“He saved others, but he can’t save himself!  He’s the King of Israel.  Let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God.   Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said ‘I am the Son of God’”   religious leaders