No Soy Materialista

No lo soy. Yo no lo soy. No puede ser. Es que no soy lo suficientemente rico.

Esto es lo que me dijo justo antes de tratar de averiguar qué ropa ponerme hoy. Echaba un vistazo a las 40 perchas de la ropa que tengo, con la esperanza de encontrar algo decente. Al final, escogí cosas casi al azar, y fui al sofá en la sala de estar. Encendí uno de nuestros 3 televisores, y arranque uno de los 5 ordenadores. ¡Ojo!  Dos de ellos están en la tienda, ya que no están funcionando correctamente. La vida es una lata cuando los aparatos no funcionan bien. ¿Aparatos? Hmm. ¿Me pregunto cuántos tengo? Déjame ver. En mi casa, he encontrado:

2 planchas
2 cortadoras de cabello
1 máquina de afeitar eléctrica
1 maquinilla de afeitar piernas
3 planchas para alisar el pelo. Soy un hombre. No sé cuál es su nombre oficial.
1 piano eléctrico, a tamaño completo
3 cámaras de video
3 cámaras de película – es decir, el estilo viejo.
2 cámaras digitales, los que he podido encontrar. Seguro que hay más.
1 impresora
1 reproductor de vídeo. Sí, todavía tenemos una.

1 concola Wii, con 4 mandos, y 3 o 4 nunchuks

1 reproductor de DVD. Pero está bien - no es un BluRay.
1 PS2. Una vez más, ya que no es una PS3, no hay problema.
1 PSP. Esto podría ser problemático.
3 teléfonos inalámbricos, sólo 1 de los cuales trabaja.
3 routers Wifi, una vez más, con sólo 1.
1 laminador
2 secadores de pelo
1 aspirador
2 GPS. Contar el por qué tenemos 2 para un solo coche seria una historia demasiado larga y penosa.
1 frigo
1 máquina de café
1 lavadora de platos
1 lavadora de ropa
1 secador de ropa
1 tostador
1 estufa
1 horno
1 microondas
2 batidoras de mano
1 batidora de mesa
1 plancha de sándwich
1 máquina de hacer pan
2 tostadas francesas responsables
1 olla de cocción lenta
1 parrilla

que llega a un total de. . . ¿¡CINCUENTA Y TRES CHISMES?!

Ah, y la pièce de résistance - no menos de (y probablemente más de) TRECE teléfonos móviles. Esto, para una familia de seis personas, dos de los cuales no tienen la edad suficiente para tener los móviles todavía. ¿Cómo ocurrió eso?

Esta lista, por supuesto, probablemente no es exhaustiva. Hay rincones y grietas donde más artilugios podrían estar escondidos. Decidí no incluir lámparas, aunque no estoy seguro exactamente por qué. La lista tampoco incluye cualquier cosa que pueda ser encontrado en trastero, que es un pensamiento aterrador.

He mencionado que tengo 40 perchas de ropa. Me refiero a mí, personalmente, el hombre de la casa. Las 40 perchas no incluyen el almacén de ropa que tiene mi mujer, ni ninguna de los 4 armarios de los niños. Tampoco incluye ninguna ropa doblada, de los cuales hay montones, ni, de nuevo, lo que pueda estar en el trastero.

¿Por qué digo todo esto? ¿Por qué expongo mi debilidad por los bienes materiales a todo el mundo? Bueno, primero, porque un poco de confesión es buena para el alma. Segundo, porque no se puede solucionar un problema hasta que reconozca que lo tengo.  ¿Te atreves dejar un comentario de cuantas perchas o chismes tienes?

I Am Not a Materialist

I am not.  I'm not.  I can't be.  I'm not wealthy enough.

This is what I told myself just before trying to figure out what to wear today.  I scanned through the 20 hangars of clothes that I have, hoping to find something decent.  Finally I just threw something together, grabbed one of my 30 pairs of socks - all black - and settled into the living room.  I turned on one of our 3 televisions, and booted up one of our 5 computers.  N.B.  Two of them are in the shop, as they are not working properly.  Life is such a drag when your appliances don't work right.  Appliances?  Hmm.  I wonder how many I have?  Let me see.  In my house, I found:

2 irons
2 hair clippers
1 electric razor
1 leg shaving razor
3 hair straightening irons. I'm a man.  I don't know what their official name is.
1 electric piano, full size
3 video cameras
3 film cameras.
2 digital cameras, that I could find.  It seems like there are more around here.
1 printer
1 VCR.  Yes, we still have one.
1 DVD player.  But it's ok - it's not a BluRay.
1 Wii, with 4 remotes, and 3 or 4 nunchucks
1 PS2.  Again, since it's not a PS3, we get a pass.
1 PSP.  That could be problematic.
3 cordless phones, only 1 of which works.
3 Wifi routers, again, using only 1.
1 laminator
2 hair dryers
1 vacuum cleaner
2 GPS.  Why we have 2 for only one car is too long and painful a story to tell.
1 fridge
1 coffee maker
1 dishwasher
1 clothes washer
1 dryer
1 toaster
1 stove
1 oven
1 microwave
2 handheld mixers
1 blender
1 sandwich griller
1 breadmaker
2 french toast makers
1 slow cooker
1 electric skillet/grill thingy

which comes to a total of . . . (carry the one . . . . )  FIFTY THREE GIZMOS!?!

Oh, and the pièce de résistance - no fewer than (and probably more than) THIRTEEN mobile phones.  This, for a family of six, two of whom are not old enough to have mobiles yet.  How did THAT happen?

This list, of course, is probably not exhaustive.  There are nooks and crannies where more gizmos could be hiding.  I decided not to include lamps, though I'm not sure exactly why.  The list also does not include whatever might be found in the storeroom downstairs, which is a scary thought.

I mentioned that I have 20 hangars of clothes.  I mean me, personally, the man of the house.  The 20 hangars doesn't include my wife's warehouse of clothing, or any of the 4 children's closets. It does not include any folded clothes, of which there are legion as well, or whatever might, again, be lurking in the storeroom.

Why do I bring all this up?  Why expose my weakness for material goods to the whole world?  Well, for one, because a little confession is good for the soul.  Two, because you can't fix a problem until you recognize that you have one.  I guess now is the time to start Materialists Anonymous, and develop, or plagiarize, a 12-step program.  Would you dare put in the comments section how many hangars or appliances you have?

Changing My Mind

A little confession is good for the soul.  So here goes - I am hard-headed. I am thick-headed.  I am so dense, light bends around me.  What brought this on, you ask?  Let me tell you.

I have an ongoing debate with a liberal.  Once, he made a comment about how "the rich" - referring to wealthy Americans - affect the lifestyles of people in the Sahara.  I said I didn't get the connection.  He sighed, and said that was part of the problem. We let it go at that.

Fast forward a year or so.  I recently watched 2 documentaries.  The first one was called "The Great Climate Change Swindle."  It showed interviews with several prominent scientists who made the unpopular claim that, although the climate was obviously changing and maybe even heating up, Climate Change (CC) was not due to man's activity. The upshot was that if you really wanted to halt the changing of the climate, you would have to turn down the Sun and dry out the oceans, neither of which is what we would call a "viable option."

Now, most of it was merely academic, showing charts and graphs and such, which can generate a "So what?" response.  The clincher came at the end.  They showed the repurcussions of the CC movement on Africa. They have no electricity in the villages.  The people have to burn wood or dried feces to cook their food or keep warm.  The fire pits are located inside their one room "houses" so they inhale the smoke, polluting the lungs of the indigenous people.  The CCers want them to invest in solar and wind energy, two sources that are not sufficiently developed to be any real help.  "I can't see solar power being strong enough to move trucks," says one native.  Nor are they cheap.  "The West wants us to use a very expensive source of energy that even they are not willing to use or cannot afford. How can we?" says another.

Well, my righteous indignation bubbled to the surface.  How dare they refuse poor Africans the right to develop, by saying they can't use the coal and oil that are buried in their lands?  Shameful.  Those CCers ought to be ashamed of themselves.

After I cooled off a bit, I watched the other documentary, something called "Buy, Throw Away, Buy."  Unfortunately, most of it is in foreign languages or English that is a bit hard to understand in places.  Here is a version that is mostly translated into English subtitles. This video is about the idea of Programmed Obsolescence.  It shows how the development of the light bulb was changed to make sure they did not last more than 1,000 hours, roughly the lifespan of a modern incandescent bulb.  This was AFTER they were already making bulbs that lasted up to 2,500 hours.  There is a bulb in a California fire station that has been burning for over 110 YEARS!  And now, in the 3d Millenium, we can't make one that will last more than 1,000 hours? When did the R&D money for light bulbs run out?  Even Edison's first commercial bulb lasted 1,500 hours.  This was in 1881.  The video claims that there was a patent for a light bulb that would last 100,000 hours - no, there is not an extra zero there.  Can you imagine a normal, incandescent light bulb lasting at least 11 years, and more like 20, if it was used "only" 12 hours a day?

The light bulb was the most developed example, but more were given about how our computers, furntiture, clothes and such were designed to fail, to wear out unnecessarily, in order to keep us buying and selling at an ever increasing rate.  The classic example for this is the inkjet printer. It is often cheaper to buy a new printer, than either to fix it, or even to buy new ink cartridges for it. 

This produced a bit of discomfort, but the real hammer came at the end. They finished the documentary by showing that our consuming, throwing away, and consuming was harming people - in AFRICA!!  In Ghana, there is what used to be beautiful riverbank, where children played, the men fished, probably animals came to drink. Today, it is a dump.  Used computer and electronic parts are left to bake in the sun, ostensibly "second-hand" items sent to "help developing countries."  The cast-off material is sent by the boatload, and the natives dig through it to find scrap metal that they can sell for a few pennies.  Some of the stuff they have to - wait for it - BURN, in order to get rid of the useless plastic. Toxic, plastic-burning bonfires litter the area, polluting the lungs of the indigenous people.

"Polluting the lungs of the indigenous people."  Where did I read that before?  Oh, yeah, it was in the documentary about global warming. For years, I have advocated free-market capitalism, believing that it was consumers' desires that drove the market.  What is obvious now, thanks to this video about Planned Obsolescence, is that it is the market that drives consumers' desires.  The market is the cause, not the effect, as I had believed earlier.

In a later post, I will further develop this idea of planned obsolescence, and what implications it has, at least from my Christian perspective.

Is Jesus Coming Soon? Really?

The latest failure to predict the date of the end of the world brings to mind a thought I have had for some time:    Is Jesus really coming soon?  It has been a main tenet of Christianity for decades and even centuries that Jesus is coming back.  Let me say at the outset that the certainty of His return is NOT under question here.  That He will return is patently obvious with even a cursory reading of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels and Revelation.

The vast majority of evangelical pastors believe that Jesus will come back very, very soon.  My father has preached this truth for nearly 50 years, and my current pastor has done the same for almost as long. Who can blame them?  They began their ministries in the 60s, when it seemed the whole world was falling apart around them. Vietnam, the drug culture, free "love", a rebellious music culture, political posturing, attempted and successful assassinations, the Cold War and the arms race all made it seem as though the world could end at any moment. The biggest selling book in the 70s was a book about prophecy, "The Late, Great, Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey, ultimately selling 28 million copies by 1990 (Wikipedia).

But, clearly, the return of Jesus has not happened.  Why not?  I think there are some reasons to think that His return may not be as "imminent" as has been thought.

First, consider that the Tribulation, the 7-year time period of divine wrath, is to be the culmination of God's judgement on the earth. It is to be the apex, the grand climax of history.  It is true that the world is in bad shape, but is it SO bad as to warrant this type of treatment? A quote, attributed to Billy Graham in the 60s,  said that if God didn't come back soon, He would owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology. Ignore, please, the idea that man would tell God that He had to apologize for anything.  Look instead at the type of situation that caused these two cities to be destroyed.  They were full of sexual immorality, to the point of being unsafe to be outside at night.  "Big deal.  My neighbourhood is like that." Yes, but not the entire city.  Not the entire country.  Not the whole world.  Furthermore, EVERYONE in the city came and wanted to engage in their perversion with unwilling participants - demanding it so forcefully, in fact, as to endanger the life of the man, Lot, who was trying to protect them.  Even then, if God had found 10 believers, He would have spared the cities, as He had promised to Abraham.

Is our society THAT wicked, at this moment?  It could be better, yes, but it could be a lot, lot worse, and I submit that it will have to get a lot worse before God's patience runs out.  God promised Abraham that he would inherit the land of Canaan. However, he would have to wait for it, "for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." At least four hundred years would pass before the Israelites were freed from Egypt to conquer the Promised Land, and even then, God would wait another 40 years, owing to the rebellion of His nation.  God is LONG suffering, way more than any of us might be.

Another difficulty with the imminent idea has to do with the new temple. According to popular thought, the temple will be built on Mount Zion, or the Temple Mount, the site of Solomon's Temple.  The key difficulty here is that there is already a structure there - the Dome of the Rock, completed in A.D. 691.  It is one of the most sacred shrines in all of Islam.  Are Muslims enthusiastic about their religion?  Consider that they are willing to kill people for drawing pictures of Muhammad, and it will be easy to imagine what would happen if anybody even remotely suggested the idea of tearing down a 1,320-year-old sacred shrine, and building in its stead another temple, belonging to their sworn enemy.

If this were some marginal religion without any real clout, it might not be an issue. However, there are over 1.65 billion Muslims in the world, according to a study by Houssain Kettani, in January, 2010. That figure constitutes about 24% of the world's population.  Another report estimates that there will be over 2 billion within the next 20 years. Almost all of this increase will be due to births, as there is a large number of youth of child-bearing age within the religion.  If Islam is growing at such a rate, why would they even consider compromising on the holy site of Bait-ul-Muqaddas, the Noble Sanctuary, the third most holy site in all of Islam? It is hard, at present, to imagine a circumstance that would permit any world leader to convince Muslim leaders to agree to a peace agreement that included such a provision.

It is true that God is sovereign, and that "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD."   God can change circumstances in a heartbeat. However, based on the patience of God, and the Muslim demographic, perhaps the question that has been asked for so long, "Are we ready for Jesus to come soon?" might better be changed to "Are we ready for Jesus NOT to come soon?"

The God We Want

A lot of people have rejected God, for a variety of reasons.  However, I believe that many of these reasons fall into one category - unfulfilled expectations.  They look at what God claims he can do, and then when he doesn't do it, they conclude either that he is a liar not worthy of following, or, more frequently, that he does not exist.  They do not find God the way they want him.  What kind of god do they expect to find?

First and foremost, he should prevent calamity and disease.  Who has not agonized over the death of an innocent child, or a baby born with a debilitating handicap and wondered how God could allow such a thing? Something strikes at our very being to see anyone suffer, of course. With adults it is easy to think that they might have done something to deserve the situation in which they find themselves. With children, on the other hand, we prefer to think that God should step in and act. When he doesn't, faith takes a hit.

What else should God do to prove he exists?  Certainly the prevention of violence would be high on the list.  Can't God step between a mugger and the bullet he fired at his victim?  Would it be too much to expect a rapist to have a heart attack before seeking out a victim?

Another aspect would be judge of the wicked.  Obviously wickedness abounds in the world today.  Terrorism, slavery, drugs, human trafficking, corruption, and exploitation is a very short list of very serious actions that mankind is currently involved in, and appears to be getting away with it all the time.  Where is God, if he exists?

These do not even take into account the times that we needed money at certain times, or the car broke down, or we lost a job, or the business went bankrupt - all instances where God could have intervened, but did not.

So then, someone might read where God says, "Call unto me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things that thow knowest not," and think that it is not true.  One could read "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" and come to the conclusion that God is just toying with us when we don't get what we think we need.  In fact, probably many Christians have abandoned the faith, because they could not wrap their minds and hearts around the apparent contradiction that God talks a big game, but at crunch time, he fails to deliver.

God, however, is not a vending machine, where we put money on, pull a lever, and grab the candy bar that comes out.  He is not a butler, waiting at our every beck and call.  He is not a child who must do our bidding, when and where we want it.  On the contrary - he is the father, leading and directing, warning and disciplining when necessary, providing the basic necessities, not the luxuries we so desperately desire.

Most importantly, he is the father to his children.  What does a father desire most from his children?  Requests?  Demands?  Pouting?  No. He desires a relationship with them.  Jesus also said "Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.  Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."  (John 6.26-7)

A person who wants to see what God can do must first accept God as he is, not as he "should" be.  Then, he must strive to develop a relationship with him, being more interested in who he is than in what he can do.

The People in Your Church

This is a promotional video done by Ambassador Baptist Church, about some of the stories that form the membership there.  It reminds us that everyone has a history, nobody is perfect, and behind the smiles are problems that can crush the life out of a person.  The grace of God helps us through these difficult times and gives us a purpose, a reason to continue, as we remember that this world is not the end of all things.

Real People in Church

What the Church Needs

I came across this today.  I have had the feeling, no doubt others have as well, that the Church has lost its compass.  It needs to come back to its roots, to its foundation.  As it was said in the Letter to the Church of Ephesus, in Revelation 2.4, "I hold this against you, you have forsaken the love you had at first."  The church is not obsolete - it remains God's plan for this age.  However, may He help us find our footing again, and set us on the right path.

95 Modern Theses for the Church