Surfacing the Problem by Knowing the Destination – The Ultimate Goal

But the Wedding is in New York
Picture a man preparing for a trip to New York. He begins planning maybe a few months in advance. He books a room. He books a flight. He packs his bags. He prepares the agenda for the event when he arrives at his destination. In this case, the man is very excited about the trip because he is going to be the best man in his best friend’s wedding. He has prepared a speech and prayed that he will be a blessing to his friend. He has even prayed for his friend’s marriage that the couple will find purpose, friendship, and satisfaction in raising a healthy family together.
Our traveler rides to the airport with his wife and is filled with a sense of peace and confidence. This is going to be a great wedding, he says to himself. His flight is flight 87 for New York. He checks his bags and finds the gate. He sits next to another man in the waiting area. He gets his boarding pass and boards the plane. The planes are all lined up waiting their turn to accelerate down the run way.

The planes on this runway are all 737s and they take off to the East and fly over the Los Angeles basin before realigning themselves as needed for their ultimate destination. Our traveler has taken this flight before and likes to look out the window over the great deserts of Arizona and Texas as the flight takes its path to the South before heading up the East coast to New York. This particular flight lands in New York near sunset and the view coming up the eastern seaboard and into Manhattan is profound. After flying over 2,000 miles of desert and then the farms of the Eastern United States, the astute passenger can see the great massive city in the distance. As the plane draws nearer, you realize there are 8 million stories in this city. You feel as if you can see into the apartment windows and into the lives of the various cultures of New York: a Puerto Rican family here, the famous Italian and Irish districts there, Harlem and the birth of Jazz to the North of the city, wall street and the New York stock exchange. I picture the history of so many of the American people groups. My mind thinks of African Americans listening to a Joe Louis fight around a radio with hope of freedom and dignity. As the plane enters the city and fly’s out over the Atlantic, the statue of liberty comes into site.

I remember when I first visited New York with my soon to be wife. We rode the subway into the city from JFK airport. We got off the subway and walked up the stairs to the streets. When I stepped out onto the street, I could not control the emotion as I began to cry. The massive skyscrapers are like no others on earth. The racial tension is palpable. The story of humanity is distilled in every scent and every sight.

All these memories fill our traveler’s mind as he prays for his family back home. The plane hovers over the LA basin and begins to gain altitude. With his eyes closed, he hears the pilot speak over the PA system as the plane backs to the North. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to flight 87. We will be landing in San Francisco in 56 minutes”. Our traveler’s eyes dart open as he realizes, he isn’t going to New York.

The Meaning of the Parable
God puts in our hearts a visions for the great city. He has shown us that we can arrive at our destination just as the first century church did. Our model is Acts chapter two. We are part of a great story of each generation struggling to build a community immersed in the presence of the Holy Spirit and directed into holiness by the teachings of Jesus. Contemplation of this purpose and the hope of arrival is in itself life transforming and filled with peace and joy.

As communities begin to launch down the run way toward their destination, they all look similar. The accelerate down the same runway all headed in the same direction. This is Christianity. We all have the same faith in Jesus as our savior. We all have the same ticket. We are all on flight 87. BUT the fact is we all have different visions of where we are going. Some understandings of the ultimate destination are quite mature and biblical. Some are merely going on a vacation. But ultimately, it is the pastor, the pilot in this analogy that will determine the ultimate destination.
Not to offend any Bay Area residents, San Francisco is a beautiful city and all, but it ain’t New York City. The Transamerica building isn’t the Empire State Building. Oakland isn’t the Bronx. Berkeley isn’t Greenwich Village. There is a Broadway street in San Francisco but it isn’t the Broadway. So too if we seek to become like the successful church down the road, we will not find ourselves in Acts 2.

Acts 2 or The 20th Century Models
There is only one destination for the New Testament church and that is to model itself in principle after the prototype church of Acts chapter 2. The New Testament has a wonderful statement that teaches us to look to God’s model and not each other as our goal. Paul said of some early Christians, “They compare themselves with themselves and have no understanding”. It is not unless we seek as our destination the New Testament ideal that we will travel in the proper direction and find unity in the body.

The first and most important key to understanding the Acts Chapter 2 community is that the Holiness and beauty of the Acts 2 community is impossible to attain naturally. As we set the target or the preferred future to which we are going to strive to enter, the vision must elicit the response, “We can’t get there from here”. A key principle of faith is that apart from God it is impossible to get from “our here” to “God’s there”. This is true in our individual lives and it is just as true as we set our vision for our corporate life. So often, we settle for less than God’s vision because we cannot see how the community we are part of could ever get from here to there. So instead, we set more “practical” goals. We choose to attract people through natural means. We use good music, a naturally charismatic speaker. We avoid challenging the listeners with the uncompromised biblical standard of sacrifice. We catter to people’s natural inabilities and

The Standard of the Acts 2 prototype is so beautiful that this ideal reveals to us our wretchedness and sin. It is the uncompromising contemplation of this biblical model of community that brings us to a place of mourning and spiritual poverty. In the Acts 2 church no one had any needs that were not cared for. In our communities, if a man loses his job is it not possible that he could lose his home as well. Is there not someone in the church to pay his mortgage for a time and another to offer him a job? Is this love the norm in our community? If it is not, then contemplation of the biblical model drive us to ask why is this not our experience and what do we need to do to align our lives with the kingdom model.

Does the lady in the pew next to us in church know how to get to our houses? Are our lives and our communities intimate enough that we take our meals together and meet regularly in one another’s homes? Is such intimacy threatening to us? If it is, can we say that the gospel has set us free from shame? Are we free from the curse in Adam if we still hide and live guarded lives?

peace,

Fear of Man and Fear of God - Piper

This is very good. Set aside 45 minutes. This sermon is about death to the real root cause of unbelief - ego.

Jubilee - What The Bible Says about Economics Part 1

Great Graph from Paul Krugman

This image is powerful...What does this show? Well the great times of wealth polarization were 1928, directly prior to the great depression, and the first decade of the 21st century. Why does wealth polarization lead to depressions? It is very simple. It is like monopoly, when the common person, the middle class, has very little discretionary funds, then demand falls and depressions/recessions happen.

In the 2008-2009 example, the falling demand was temporarily held at bay by increasing the value of homes and thus giving the false perception of wealth to any people. These people then leveraged their wealth by taking out seconds on their homes. This cycle put cash in people's pockets and a surge of demand. But when the bubble burst, the true lack of wealth amongst most consumers was revealed and consumer confidence, (i.e. demand) fell drastically.

So the real cause of the problem is the polarization of wealth. Thus, the biblical solution - Jubilee. Jubilee is a time of wealth re-distribution and the forgiveness of debts. In our day this is known as, bankruptcies and loan modifications.
brad

My Story

I was asked to give my testimony on Easter so I thought I would post it here:

My story is the story of a seeker. This process of seeking began when I was about 10 years old. I remember at 10 or so I saw a World Vision television show about the 1973 famine in Tanzania, East Africa. Prior to this documentary, I was unaware of the problem of poverty. The contrast between the affluence of my neighborhood and our nation with the reality of suffering in other parts of the world was irreconcilable. To me as a teenager I was profoundly aware of this ethical idea. What alarmed me even more than the suffering itself was that no one else seemed to care. My awareness of poverty and of the apathy of people around me was reflected in the music I listened to, the clothes I wore, and my relationships with my peers and my parents. It even affected how hard I studied.

At university I began to study the root causes of this problem of poverty and I discovered politics. I was studying to be a medical doctor. My major was Medical Anthropology and I wanted to work on the most fundamental problems of infectious diseases and clean water with an emphasis in East Africa. As I studied the historical roots of these people's suffering and the realities of global trade and economics, I came to the realization that the problem was not only human apathy but was the result of the intentional acts of the powerful. What was needed was a political solution. Needless to say, I took a serious turn to the left.

Our test case was the problem of South African Apartheid. My activism got me face to face meetings with some very powerful people. We spoke truth to power, but I was profoundly struck by these men's stubbornness. Eventually our frustration resulted in an escalation of the conflict, and my friends and I found ourselves in jail. At this time y heroes were Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Jesus. All spoke truth to power, met resistance with courage, and died well fighting for the poor. When I graduated from college my understanding of Jesus was of a political activist motivated by compassion who was killed as a result of his advocacy for justice and his compassion for the poor.

After college, for some reason I remember I attended a youth group at a church. I remember arguing with the youth pastor, who appeared rather square to me, that Jesus did NOT die for his sin. His advice was that I read the Bible and start in the Gospel of John. Never one to back down from a challenge, I went home, found a Bible and opened to the Gospel of John.

The story begins with John the Baptist's first encounter with Jesus before Jesus even started any public ministry. Seeing Jesus walking toward him, John the Baptist says "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." This verse struck me. I read it again and again and I began to weep. In one moment, I realized that though Jesus did speak truth to power, this is not why he died. Jesus dies to actually solve the problem at the root of all our suffering and our apathy and our stubbornness. Jesus died to solve the root problem of our nature. For the first tie, I saw that I was also in the grips of a moral struggle with sin and my ego and that I was losing. I was convinced in an instant that I was a sinner and was fundamentally just as spiritually needy and destitute as anyone else. I realized in that moment that I did not know God but that I needed His help. Jesus dies to reconcile me to God and to transform me from the inside out. Jesus dies to save me from my demons. In an instant, I understood that our problem is not an economic problem or even a political problem but a spiritual problem: that my problem and our problem mattered to God.

Many of the things I learned through my searching as a young man I still believe, but where each of the roads I went down ended in a dead-end, I now have hope and faith that if God is with us, He can transform both us and those we meet because of the work Jesus did on the cross, and because Jesus is still alive, we are called to serve him and work with Him to expand His kingdom, His justice and to live according to His compassion

Balanace Sheet recession and the Revenge of the Glut

Revenge of the Glut - Paul Krugman

The best explanation of the financial crisis I have heard and it's solution came from an NPR expert from Japan. He explained how property owners are experiencing balance sheet problems.

The result is very obvious. Our balance sheets are wacked so we must recover by saving. This savings a has lead to a ridiculous problem of the paradox of thrift. The paradox is that if everyone attempts to repair their balance sheets at the same time and get financially health all at once, then the economy as a whole goes to hell in a handbasket.

Can I get a witness?

The solution is that we allow the government to temporarily and intentionally get its balance sheet into trouble and spend while we all save. I do see a problem with this fix. The trouble with this solution is that the government already has a balance sheet problem. BUT, nonetheless, if they government tries to fix it's balance sheet problem now, like Hoover did, then the problem will get as severe as the '20's.

Worse Than Expected on the Economy

Worse Than Expected on the Economy

The current economic crisis is a moral issue in that Christians are called to incarnationally empathize (feel with) the suffering around us. We need to prepare to be on the leading edge of the crisis. The fact is the economy is in a total melt down and we need to have answers for people, well being answers, for people who will be on the streets. The future is not going to be "OK".

Jesus calls us to understand poverty and God's provision as Jesus did. California is at 10.5% unemployment and this is only the beginning of the down turn.

People have told me that this is not "relevant", but nothing could be more relevant than real suffering. The Day of reckoning is here. Americans have not faced the facts of our ego-driven greed for consumption and we have found ourselves in incredible debt. Now our balance sheets are underwater. This has at it's root a spiritual problem.

Robert Reich: Finally a Progressive Budget

Robert Reich's Blog: Finally a Progressive Budget

This is so right on!!! Reich understands so thoroughly the real roots of the recession side of our economic problems.

Praise for the Obama budget. I am so partisan; it is funny

Read Stuff..To be an asset to God's world

What I read and why I read it.
I use to not read at all. I know that sounds strange but for about 15 years I read only the bible and 18th and early 20th century sermons. I am still very glad I focused on this limited reading for so many years. I am a better person for it. BUT...this year I began to read other stuff...

I read:
1. Newspapers. I read a lot of news because I think the human condition and economics is on God's heart. People are suffering and understanding why they suffer and putting policy positions in historical perspectie and context is important. So I read...
2. Biography. In the last 12 months, I have read a few. Einstein, FDR, Lincoln.
3. Robert Reich and Paul Krugman....

just a bit about me.

A discussion about the economy with Fred Mishkin, Mark Zandi, Nouriel Roubini and Nina Easton in Business

Thirty nine minutes but really good on the Obama housing plan. Basic outcome, they need to cut actual principle of the mortgages.

What the centrists have wrought

What the centrists have wrought - Paul Krugman
Here is the bottom line on the stimulus.
It is such a drag.
I sold all my stock.
We are in for the real deal. It seems Herbert Hoover has risen from the dead.

Luke 10:38 - 42 Someone Greater than John Piper is Here

If I was to think of anyone who I would like to have a mentoring relationship with, it would be John Piper.

A fantasy might be that Piper called me up and said he wanted to be my mentor. He says that I will have opportunity to teach at the church he pastors and as I grow and prove faithful that my responsibilities would increase. If such an opportunity opened up to me, I would drop everything and do whatever Pastor Piper asked of me. I would work very hard to succeed. This would be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Well, the fact is that someone greater than John Piper is here. Maybe you would think of some other over achiever but you get the point. When Jesus offers us relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit, this relationship is "the one thing necessary". No longer does reading books really matter. TV and entertainment seem pretty irrelevant. Being mentored one on one with Jesus, being called to be a disciple of Jesus is the only really important opportunity in life that gives our life purpose. Seeing this relationship with Jesus as a more practical opportunity than if someone with power and position in the world offered you a one on one internship is a proper perspective on what the kingdom actually offers us.

When I remember this living relationship in these terms, I begin to strip down my life and prioritize my listening to Jesus and studying his word. Jesus, what spiritual direction are you giving me today? What skill set are you teaching me in order to be faithful in little so that I can receive greater responsibility in your church and with your people and on your earth? Jesus is the one with power and position in the big picture and He is the one who has the skill and the knowledge to teach us what is really vital in life to true success and true influence.

peace,
brad

No Solutions- The Obama Gap - Unemployment Figures Dec 2008

The Obama Gap - Paul Krugman
Unemployment Numbers for December 2008
Even Paul Krugman, appears unwilling to say what the real problem is. The fact is the real problem is still not being solved.
The problem is wealth polarization and wage stagnation. This unwillingness to discuss the real problem makes the problem that much bigger.

The fact of the matter is that the only people who have the kind of money needed to jump start the economy is the rich.

I warned about this in September 2008 - The Solution is Wage Infalation via Tax Policy
and again in October 2008 - Stimulus and the Need for Wealth Distribution
The problem is simple. In order to compete on Wall Street companies need to make huge, huge profits. The result is even if a company makes huge profits, their stock prices fall because someone else makes huge, huge profit. So to be competitive companies must lower wages.

The only way to solve this is for government to change the rules of the game. A good example would be to return to income tax levels on the rich that are pre-Reagan.

In that there is no real solution (i.e. this is never going to happen), this is my last political post on this blog. For anything political see The Post-Partisan.

Ross, Holbrooke, Haass To Serve As Envoys - Marc Ambinder

Ross, Holbrooke, Haass To Serve As Envoys

Huge news, Dennis Ross reported in as envoy/negotiator on everything Iran. All I can say is - OMG.

There is absolutely no doubt in Obama's very strong even hawkish pro-Israel position. This is fantastic news for Israel. I am reading Statecraft currently and, basically, Ross is a hero of mine.

Tactics for the Middle East, Barack Obama and The Mideast’s Ground Zero

The Mideast’s Ground Zero - Thomas Friedman's piece
piece this morning makes a few very important points on recent middle east historical events. I would like to expound a bit on how this relates to Christian support for president-elect Obama.

What we have currently in the Israel/Palestinian region is a shift in who the real power players are. Previously, the PLO/PA were the representatives of the Palestinian position. This made a two-state solution, given a few very difficult sticking points, a possibility. Today, we have a different scenario. With Hamas and Hezbollah in power on the borders of Israel the real power brokers are Israel and Iran. With the combination of a shi'a state in Iraq and Iranian puppets in both South Lebanon and Gaza, a two-state solution no longer is practically on the table.

This scenario has occurred at least in part as a result of a few huge tactical and even strategic blunders. The USA supported elections in Gaza prior to the setting up of a state with any constitutional institutional structure. The result is that Hamas, an Islamist party, took power. This total rookie move was basically putting the wine of democracy in a vacuous political wineskin. The wineskin of democracy MUST BE A CONSTITUTION WHICH PROTECTS THE RIGHTS OF ALL CITIZENS and institutions which solidify the development of a sovereign state. The result has been that Iran is now bordering Israel through its proxy Hamas. This is a decidedly anti-two state solution and the state that is threatened is Israel.

So the strategy now has to be to undermine the Islamic narrative of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Nothing accomplishes this vital strategic necessity better than the support and success of Barack Hussein Obama and a changing of the face of America in the political mind of the Palestinians. America must convince the populations Gaze and the West bank and Southern Lebanon that their prosperity is not linked to Hamas and Hezbollah but relationship with the West. What is needed then is most likely a new political player other than the Palestinian Authority in the areas of the future Palestinian state.

Easy to Understand Krugman on Stimulus

Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important) - Paul Krugman

Around where I hang out, people are knee jerk anti-government. I avoid the topic as much as possible, but if anyone is interested, the above Krugman article explains the need for government intervention pretty well. Krugman has been very good over the past week so read all his blog and his op-eds to get what I think is at least an intelligent discussion of the options.

Why I am Not a Fundamentalist - A Brief Look at the Cosmology of Genesis 1

The "fight for Genesis" has been a rallying point of fundamentalists for over a century since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. What fundamentalists have been fighting for is the wrong headed defense of Mosaic or Ancient Cosmology. What such a reading of the text of Genesis misses is that the bible is not intending to communicate the ancient cosmology as a tenet of the faith. Therefore, to make ancient cosmology a creedal belief places the progress of human discovery at odds with faith in Jesus as the Christ. Such a link between Ancient cosmology and faith in Jesus places an unnecessary stumbling block to faith.

Instead, it is better to understand the worldview of the biblical writers as one of the tools the writer necessarily used to communicate the culturally transcendent truths about God's relationship with man throughout history from Abraham to the present.

For example, Genesis 1 states the following:

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

Moses is stating that God separated the waters, some above in the heavens and some below the air on earth. The expanse between the two bodies of water was called sky. Later, Moses places the stars and the like in the sky. This is the Ancient cosmology. This view of how the universe is laid out was prior to our discovery of the water cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation and was a common sense explanation of where rain came from.

Remember, less than 300 years ago, human beings universally believed that there were four basic elements: earth, fire, water and air. No one had described accurately the idea that one element could exist in the three basic states of air, liquid, and solid. These discoveries which we take for granted today are part of our cosmology.

The key here is that you cannot expect an ancient writer to speak from a worldview that was not possible for him to comprehend. God inspires men to write, but, nonetheless, God uses human instruments to perform His work including writing the Bible.

So when we take into account the worldview of the writer, we must look to discover the BIG revolutionary "aha" that the writer was explaining to his contemporary readers. In Genesis, Moses was not questioning whether there existed two bodies of water separated by the expanse of sky. What he was questioning was the understanding that the different elements and objects of the universe were the creation or eminence of DIFFERENT DEITIES.

Moses the Prophet of Monotheism!!!!
In Moses' world, the Israelites had just come out of Egypt where there was a god of the river and a god of the frogs and a god of the Sun etc. The story of Moses is the story that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the One true God of Heaven and Earth and all that is on the earth and under the earth and in the seas and in the sky and the rain and the sun and everything.

Moses tells this revelation using the tools of his culture and ancient cosmology. To miss the radical proclamation of the Lord Almighty as Lord of All and instead focus on the cosmological understanding of human society of 4000 years ago is to not only miss the point but to place ignorance as a prerequisite to faith in God Almighty.

I do not think that the placing of such a stumbling block between faith and those God loves will be something that will be so easily forgiven.

They Used Us for Our Faith

Last night, my family and I watched the movie, Traitor starring Don Cheadle.

There was one line in the movie that I can totally relate to. The Cheadle character is speaking to his friend (who is a Islamist) and he says,

"They used us for our faith"

The Cheadle character is trying to show his friend how his faith made him committed and the politically minded used that conviction to their political benefit but distorted the faith in the mean time.

I can relate. What is so difficult about being in such a situation is that we as individuals haven't been down this road of serving God with our whole being before and it often takes years to figure out who is real and who is just using us for our radical comittment. Someties our desire to serve God in a tangible way makes us vulerable to being used by people with a worldly or political agenda.

I do not think the church has learned its lesson but the fact is, "They used us for our faith".

This is Obama's HUD announcement. Very excellent for the first three minutes or so...BUT..
At about 3:30 notice how Pres Obama increases his pace and then at 3:45 he is blistering. He needs to go back and read his FDR books. FDR wouldn't mess up the pace. As a preacher, I notice this kinda stuff. Enjoy...Man, this guy has the goods.

Laying a Foundation of Grace – Part 1

In our weekly small group, we have been focusing on grace and have been camping out on the saying of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” My experience, both in my own life and in my observations of others, has been that we humans tend strongly toward legalism and unbelief. It is very hard for us to sustain a conscious awareness that God is with us and for us. We struggle with maintaining a grace-based relationship with God that is pervasive enough to transform our fears and frustrations into “righteousness, peace and joy”.

Therefore, the purpose of church is to “encourage one another”. We are to remind one another of the grace of God. We are to remind one another of the immediate presence of God through Jesus Christ. We live in this life in a place of forgetfulness. We do not forget the law. We do not forget that we are not living as holy as we would like. This history is before us all the time. What we do forget is that God calls us forgiven and holy.

There are literally thousands, if not millions, of ways to illustrate from the scriptures how the gospel places us irrevocable in a grace based relationship with God, and I plan over the next few weeks to camp out on these static, immutable, truths. The first illustration I would like to give is given by Paul in Romans 7

What Paul is saying is that through faith we have been identified with the death and resurrection of Jesus. This identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus is the point of Romans chapter 6. Our baptism represents our death and resurrection. We often think that when we die we will be delivered from the bondage of life and we will enter into rest or heaven. Paul is saying that this death has already happened and the benefits of being freed from sin through death has already occurred because we were freed from sin because we already died. Jesus says the same thing when He says, “I am the door. Whoever goes through me will enter into pasture. For I came that you may have life and life abundantly.” Jesus is saying that his death, not your death, is the doorway into freedom from the human condition of bondage to sin.

In Romans 7, Paul makes an application of this participation in the death of Jesus as it relates to our relationship with the law. In our former life, we were married to the law, but now we have died and have been risen to be married to another that is Christ. So we are no longer married to the law but married to Jesus Christ. This reality is a permanent immutable reality. The Christian is not under law but under grace. The Christian is no longer married to the law but is married to Christ. The key then is to first know this but then to apply this truth to our conscious relationship with God.

The Wrath of God and the Christian
First, if I am not under the law, then I am no longer under the wrath or judgment of God – ever. I am never, ever, legally guilty and therefore never ever under punishment for my sinfulness. I am completely off the hook with respect to the punishment for sin. How then does this affect my head?? That is the question. God is never relating to me in a way that is anything other than constructive. When I sin or act in a way that disappoints God or myself, which is very frequent, how is God responding to me? How ought I to feel? How ought I to relate to God in the immediate aftermath of poor moral choices or some other expression of my brokenness.

First, I need to realize that God’s desire is to help me solve this problem of my moral failings. I am a servant of God and God is constantly available to solve my fundamental problem of powerlessness. First and foremost, we need to see God available to help me without shame or guilt to work on my shortcomings and character defects. Guilt and shame are not constructive and God is always relating to me in a creative and constructive manner.

So as I approach God, I confess to Him that I am walking in His grace and that I am in relationship with Christ. I address Christ asking for help. I confess my forgiveness and my thankfulness for His forgiveness. I confess my love for Him. I confess that He sees me as holy and set apart for Him and His good work. For me the moment I relate to God and acknowledging his goodness and helpfulness, I am joyful even if I am disappointed with myself.

We live in a place called forgetfulness and therefore self-discipline and self-control in the moments of the day are fleeting and illusive. This is part of being poor in spirit. This is just the nature of life in this dispensation. But we are under grace and we approach God with faith and hope in His ability to disciple us and empower us.

Secondly, even when we haven’t behaved in a way that disappoints us, we need to approach God with thanksgiving for our forgiveness and we need to confess that we are holy and set apart for His good works. This path of acceptance of our forgiveness and the abiding reality of grace needs to be a well worn path for us. Guilt and shame are not only self defeating, guilt and shame are bad theology and an affront to the cross.

Total Immersion in Grace
Remembering that we are no longer married to the law and therefore we should not approach God as if we are guilty is actually hard work. We are very forgetful. We need to work on this in our devotional life and also in our intimate relationships. We need to express this grace in all our relationships until our community is immersed, baptized, in grace. Only then will we have the joy of the Lord be our abiding moral strength.

Poverty of Spirit – The Doorway into the Kingdom of God

Poverty of Spirit – The Doorway into the Kingdom of God
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit for Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven – Matt 5:3

Jesus Christ begins His discipleship training of His followers with this single overarching principle. The blessed person is the person who is spiritually poor. The experience of the kingdom begins and is maintained through the experience of our spiritual poverty.

Describing the Experience
Just this morning, I by God’s grace had an experience of my poverty of spirit. As I had this experience, I knew that if I could bottle this experience, if I could learn to enter this place regularly, I would find a more consistent love of God and neighbor.

It started this morning as I reflected on my last few months of prayerlessness. A few months back, I had begun a quest to learn how to exercise moment by moment self regulation. Needless to say, I failed in this quest and have discovered that my habits of mind and speech are less regulated and restrained than a few months back. This morning I realized that I was again approaching the problem of self-control and self-restraint directly. I attempted to oppose my bad habits of mind and tongue directly. This approach is decidedly unspiritual. Of course, over the past few months, I have not been aware that I have been taking this misguided approach. As I arose and prepared for work, I realized the answer to this problem is the indirect approach of worship.

So, as I drove to work, I considered this different strategy to solve my problem of character.

As I was driving to work, I found myself accepting just how dreadful my thoughts have been of late. I was reviewing my past few months and accepting that my thought life and my contemplations have been even more crude and worldly than normal and that though I have been striving to behave better, I was actually behaving worse. These habitual ego-laden, worldly contemplations are an immutable part of my emotional makeup. It is not my nature to despair but to simply admit reality as it is. I am fortunate in this regard. But as I thought really how broken my thoughts are a thought entered my mind. Even this unhealthy condition is forgiven. This blessed realization came upon me rather unaware. I am entirely powerless but also entirely accepted. At this instant, I began to feel a joy I had lacked of late. I was experiencing what Luther calls being ‘simultaneously saint and sinner’. The fact is that only in this acceptance of my utter moral failure can I find the presence of Christ from which comes any joy filed power for moral strength. Here is the doorway into an actual righteousness. Here in lies the paradox of our faith.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

The Anatomy of the Experience
As I attempt to define the recipe of this experience, I find two practices that I would consider keys to attacking our sinful habits of heart and mind indirectly. First, if the means that we are exercising do not in and of themselves produce joy in the presence of Jesus then these methods are not likely to work. Therefore, the key is to produce peace and joy in the presence of God. This practice is indirect in that it is not intuitively obvious that the answer to worldly desire is to practice a secret life of worship. This prescription seems rather unrelated and in fact it is. The key though is that the joy of the Lord is our moral strength. Enjoying God is what transforms our affections and it is a deep resolved joy in our relationship with God that produces holy moral action.

Secondly, the path to joy is to enjoy the admission before God of the details of our sinfulness. The fact is that the embrace of grace is deeper realization of our spiritual bankrupt state. Any acts to deny our weakness is a step away from grace. Confession is then an activity through which we are pursuing joy. The conclusion is that we are to pursue joy through savoring the forgiveness of Jesus while sitting in our own moral feces.

Simultaneously saint and sinner,
brad
technorait tags: discipleship; christianity; practical theology

New New Blog - The Post-Partisan

I decided to can the probama blog and I launched another new blog called, "The Post-Partisan". The first post is called: What is Left Wing and Right Wing (and Center Left and Center Right)? – A Paradigm for Post-Partisan Dialogue

the url is: http://thepost-partisan.blogspot.com/
brad

Post Partisan Progress

See probama post, Post Partisan Progress.

Easy N' Light

My good friends new blog:
Easy N' Light
My primary ministry partner and close friend is now a pastor at a local RCA church and will be blogging on discipleship regularly. Please put a link on your blog and visit regularly. His politics are lame, but his Christianity is exceptional. LOL

My new blog - Probama

Probama url: http://pro-obama.blogspot.com/
first post: What is Probama?

The Harder Road - Matt 7:13-14

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." - Matthew 7:13-14

One lesson I have learned in the past month of blogging on politics instead of the teachings of Jesus is that the problems facing our country today are far more simple to solve and far less difficult to understand than the problem of following Jesus. I can write two posts a day on economics or politics without resulting in any deep exhaustion at all. But to write insightfully on discipleship is exhausting and difficult to write even one post a week. The problem of life transformation and articulating to others how this way works and how to walk in this way is exponentially more complex and difficult to practice and understand than fixing global finance.

Global finance is easy. Look to the great depression. How did it end? It ended when the US began to focus on arming for World War II. We ran up huge deficits to fund the war on totalitarianism, and America started working again. So, this path is basically what we need to follow. We need to fight a war on something like dependence on foreign oil and carbon emissions. We need to tool up for this economic war on energy imports as if our life depends on it. America will run huge deficits, but we will come out winning the economic war. In so doing, we will set ourselves up for another 50 years of prosperity. Problem solved. Now for more pressing issues and more difficult issues like becoming salt and light to a morally corrupt and self-centered humanity.

Difficult and Pressing
Every other time this word translated here as narrow in verse 14 is used in the New Testament it is translated as afflicted. The road we choose in following Jesus is a road which seriously constricts our freedom. It afflicts our choices, our momentary well being. This road is hard. This road of following Jesus is narrow and marked with moment by moment acts of self restraint and death to our ego and our impulses and we are called to do this through the power of God and not our own strength. This spiritual mandate only complicates the process all the more. Not only do we need to become loving but this love must come from God, and our victories must make us more humble and more worshipful. Nothing could possibly be harder to learn how to actually implement than the way of Christ.

The word used here originates from the idea of pressing grapes into wine. So, the idea is that you will be far more hard pressed trying to follow Jesus than anything else you or I ever attempt in life. Jesus teaches us, warns us in fact, that very few persist along this course long enough to attain the rest and peace that is promised.

The Problem of Discipleship and Becoming Salt and Light
The church is in crisis today. The outcomes of holiness are strikingly absent. In the church, divorce should not even be mentioned among us, but, instead, many church member's marriages fail. Greed is rampant in the world, but is not material self indulgence evident in the church as well? Christians, who are to find the path of peace, often experience tempers flaring in their homes. The cause of this is clearly a lack of training in the ways of Jesus Christ.

The root of this problem is that the way of Jesus, the way of death to self at the deepest level of our being, and the means of confession and conscious contact with God are not taught in the churches. I heard a preacher recently say, "So last week we learned to 'follow the Spirit'". I thought to my self, "Does he realize how difficult it is to follow the Spirit". Learning discernment to follow the Spirit into the path of self-denial and silence and meekness is harder than beating Roger Federer at tennis or Tiger Woods at golf. Yet, we teach it as if it is like taking candy from a baby.

I have a saying, "The Spirit is always saying the same thing". What the Spirit says is "follow Jesus". Following the Spirit is the most difficult thing in all of human experience. To follow the Spirit we need community and mentoring and discernment of our ego and our motives. We need to learn how to practice the presence of God in the midst of being threatened by people with different agendas than us. We have to learn to listen and prefer others and serve and love.

So, here we have a process to learn that is harder than brain surgery, and, yet, in our communities, we approach the task like we approach politics. Everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion is just that an opinion.

What is needed is quite the opposite. If you wouldn't let a grade school kid perform open heart surgery, do not let a person with a temper, a struggling marriage or a control/ego problem teach people how to follow Jesus. Very few people are experts in the area of discipleship but it is our task to seek out experts and to dedicate our minds and our wills to becoming experts in this the most urgent and most strenuous of all human pursuits.
brad

Happy and Hopeful - Today's New York Times

It is hard for me to put into words the positive emotions I feel as a result of the political changes happening in America. I believe it is a sense of being connected and of being affirmed. I am actually alarmed at the number of situations which bothered me before which are resolved by people of my thinking being in power. I never realized I cared so much.

Primary to all of these feelings is the realization that we now have an intellectual in the White House. It is a huge and central aspect of the philosophy of our household to value education and critical thinking. Better yet, I am not the only one who sees this development. Kristof article in the New York Times today, Obama and the War on Brains, proclaims his hope that a cultural shift could occur in which intellect is no longer seen as a liability but an asset.

Another positive development is how we have thrown the anti-scientific crowd out on its ear so we can reasonably address the economic and climate challenges that confront us, and hallelujah, these problems represent two birds that can be killed with one stone. Al Gore says it all this morning as well in his article on the Economy and Climate Change.

So I woke up this morning and realized that the news papers are filled with people who think like me on these economic and political issues and I feel at home again in America.

brad

False Predictions of Obama - A Sign of Spiritual Disease

In an earlier post, , I stated that my primary motivation for discussing politics is because I desire the church to be a place of fair-minded, balanced, civil dialogue regarding issues of our day like politics, economics, and scientific progress. I would like to take this time to, for the record, articulate some of the dire predictions people of faith have made or claimed concerning an Obama presidency which I believe will prove to be false and therefore prove that political thinking amongst a certain segment of our population is hysterical and irrational. Not only are such false beliefs and predictions irrational but they betray a judgment or demonization of those one disagrees with which is not only partisan but contrary to gospel driven humility and love.

The most extreme views hold that maybe Obama is a secret Muslim or that because of the views of Jeremiah Wright that Obama will undermine our commitment to Israel. I have heard people say that a vote for Obama is a vote against Israel. I have heard people say that if Obama is elected Israel will be attached and that America will not come to her aid. These fear laden predictions seem ludicrous to outsiders but such views are actually present in some circles. At the root of this is a belief that Obama is not patriotic or even that he is anti-American. Certainly there is a belief that Obama does not have a heartfelt religious love of Israel. What is so insidious about these belief is that they are contrary to everything President Obama has stated publicly. Therefore, to hold such beliefs one must hold an irrational conspiratorial worldview and process of analysis of the world and its actors. Such a worldview and such a thinking process is dangerous, uncivil, judgmental, unchristian, and sinful.

Why do I say unchristian and sinful? This is a serious charge which I am making. I boldly characterize this belief as unchristian and sinful because at least the Christian heart and mind should be able to be objective. When feelings cloud one’s vision to negatively view another than these feelings must by definition be negative. The results of such a heart are morally repugnant. Such false and subjectively clouded views of others is the stuff of bigotry and tribalism. Could anything be more contrary to monotheism and the universal declarations of the gospel? Therefore I define such hostile and negative feelings toward another which are based solely on fantasy is the heart of sin. The source of this ill-conceived vision of Obama is bitter and hateful judgments upon whole segments of the human population.

Early signs show how misinformed and erroneous these anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli fears are. President-elect Obama will inevitably surround himself with the best minds in the world and these minds will be almost exclusively Israel loving. Can anyone question the Rahm Emmanuel’s loyalty to Israel and her security? Here is a short article from Jeffrey Goldberg, Rahm Emmanuel and Isreal. Goldberg is a long time friend who says the following about Emmanuel:

he is deeply and emotionally committed to Israel and its safety. We’ve talked about the issue a dozen times; it’s something he thinks about constantly

A second irrational view that finds its source in a fundamentalist and spiritually unhealthy heart is the view that Obama is socialist or a redistributionist. A simple look at the economic advisors that Obama has surrounded himself with, like the Rahm Emmanuel appointment makes this view equally ridiculous. Obama’s economic advisors is a who’s who of the new economy: Warren Buffet, Larry Summers, Tim Guithner, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker,

From this mornings msnbc Article, Obama Meets with Industry Titans,

In addition to Summers and Volcker, the economic advisory board includes: former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; Laura Tyson, a former chair of the National Economic Council; Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Xerox Chairman Anne Mulcahy and Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons. Famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett was participating by telephone.

To characterize Obama as socialist, then I guess Buffet et al are socialists as well. What then shall a misguided evangelical do? What is required is a humble submission to the facts? It has been said that republicans need to do a soul searching of a political kind but I suggest instead what is most needed is a deep soul searching of a spiritual and moral kind.

God Bless,
brad

Christian Ideals and American Ideals - The Obama Dividend

The Editorial pages of the NY Times and others are giving words to the sense of celebration felt here in the US and around the world. Nicholas Kristof, writes in his Obama Dividend editorial this morning that
In Switzerland, an American was bathed in compliments comparing the election to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Jessica watched the results from a bar in Cape Town and wrote: “For the first time in recent memory, I can shout in the streets that I am American and be proud of the progress, hope and color that now define us.”

An awed Tanzanian named Leonard wrote to say that this election has promoted democracy far more effectively than anything the United States could say or do. He ended: “Long live America.”

This resounding sense that we have done something good is a deep Christian value and faith in equality and equal opportunity. I state this love of equality as a profoundly Christian value as a result of the simple reflections on the person of Jesus and the theology of the cross.

Monotheism and Ethics
The life of Jesus was, on one level, the life of a man of humble beginnings and humble means who spoke powerfully and clearly the ethic of love and compassion. Such an ethic is founded on an understanding of monotheism. Monotheism presupposes that all humanity is the offspring of one God not many. This monotheistic foundation is the ultimate foundation of both equality and compassion on the oppressed.

If we are all God's children, we are all equal and all equally loved and cared for. This knowledge which is innate in us is the foundation for compassion and equality.

Today, we celebrate as a human family the triumph of this innate knowledge which resides in the heart of all of us. We are all God's children and His love reaches from the heights of power to the depths of suffering, from the white house to the plains of Kenya.

Praise the Lord,
brad

Its a Beautiful Day

All I can say is this is a wonderful day, a beautiful day. Not only are we seeing the progress of an American ideal but a Christian ideal. More on this tomorrow.

John McCain's concession speech was classy and patriotic. One of the great things in America is that our leadership succession is peaceful. McCain takes such grace to a new level by seeing the positive and historic significance of the election of Barack Obama.

Praise the Lord,
brad

Voter Repression - Already Starting in Virginia and Pennsylvania

Oy....I hate this.

Voter repression is the ultimate drag. Polls are not opening in Virginia in area, aroung Virginia Tech, and in Pennsylvania.

brad

Hour by Hour Voter Guide

This is the guy from 538. Very good and helpful.

Here is their tipping point graph. These are the states to watch in order of likelihood to be the state that tips the balance.

2008 Presidential Election Scorcard Spreadsheet

For your election returns pleasure, here is a helpful excel spreadsheet to use.
1. Download this file (actual excel spreadsheet). Update: something is wrong with this link. Will change.
2. I am going to sit on the couch with my laptop open and fill in the cells as returns come in and well keep score.
The spread sheet is taken from Rasmussens electoral college projections.

The top is the projections and the bottom section is with the toss-ups and the leaners left blank. Then as the toss-ups and the leaners come in just put them in the columns and the spreadsheet will do all the math.

Here on the left is the pic version just for reference.

WOW..24 hours to go....

brad

Last Gallup Poll for the 2008 Presidential Election- Breaks even Harder for Obama

Latest Nov 2, 2008 Gallup Poll

Check out Gallup numbers in the last two elections:
2000and 2004

In 2000, The poll shows Bush +2. The actual was Gore +.5. So it was about 2.5% off.

In 2004, the poll shows Bush/Kerry even. The actual was Bush +2. So the poll was again off by 2%. Both are obviously within the margin of error.

The most famous Gallup screw up was the Truman/Dewey in 1948. But the story there strangely was that the last poll was in mid-October. The poll was famously off by 5%.

BUT!!!!!! - Obama is up in the traditional likely voter polls by 11% traditional likely and 13% among registered voters.

Political Dialogue in the Christian Community

For many years of blogging and participation in Christian communities of faith, I have been rather vehement in my anti-political stance. As of late, for what I believe is affection for the church, I have decided to be more vocal about my political sensibilities.

The motivation behind this entrance into political discussion is a conviction that healthy dialogue on non-essential matters of faith needs to be open, civil, fluid, diverse and joyful and that the place for this discussion can and ought to be within the context of christian community. The fact of the matter is that at present political discourse in the church can be better described as closed, static, monolithic and bitter. This closed and monolithic political ideology within conservative christian community (of which I am an ardent member and supporter) has become outdated, anti-intellectual, and divisive.

The present political election with its transformational issues (issues which are not altogether political in nature) surfaces the need within the church for an environment in which decidedly Christian dialogue can flourish.

I personally have an emotional and visceral connection to the more transformational elements of the Obama candidacy. I find myself driven by motivations that I sense are more aesthetic in nature than driven by policy considerations.

Therefore, I find my love for the church and my vision for the church to become a place of this sort of dialogue to be the primary reason for spending my energy in political discussion and contemplation of late.

My prayer is that the church may we become a place where we make a place for believers to express and give voice to their beliefs and visions for both our nation and our faith communities.

Gallup Poll Breaks Hard for Obama

Nov 1, 2008 - Gallup

This doesn't seem rational but it is satitistically significant. Today's poll is largest likely voter lead of the whole campaign.

Predictions - Obama by 10 Million - Updated Hourly

What I am going to predict is that Obama will do better than the polls show. I predict he will win the popular vote by greater than 7% or about 53-46. A landslide would be if Obama won by 10 million popular votes. This would require a huge turnout. I predict that the polls are underestimating the enthusiasm of the Obama base and the effectiveness of the Obama campaign's ground game for the GOTV effort.
It is all turnout, turnout, turnout!!!!

I predict this for the following reasons:
1. Obama is a better candidate than both Kerry and Gore and they kept it close.

2. Obama has run a better campaign than the Kerry and Gore campaigns and Kerry and Gore kept it close.

3. McCain though a better candidate than Bush has run a worse campaign than Bush. McCain has not shown any discipline with respect to message. He has shown no elegance as a candidate. Worst of all, McCain has not run a campaign with enthusiasm for his own vision and ideas.

4. McCain has not generated enthusiasm amongst the great silent moderate majority.

5. Barack will win the following Bush states: North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, New Mexico. That is 59 Electoral College votes. McCain can really only take Pennsylvania and I think he might take Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania does not have early voting. OK..the big one to look at I think is Georgia. If Obama wins Georgia, this cycle represents a total democrat landslide. A win in Georgia would mean that African-American turnout substantially changed the outcome of not just Georgia but the whole nation.

6. The African-American vote is going to be relatively huge!!!! In 2004, 15 million African Americans voted. Overall, the enthusiasm for Obama will inevitably increase turnout of African Americans to levels of 120% of the 2004 number for an increase of 3 million votes.

7. Overall voter turnout has been growing: 100 million in 2000, 122 million in 2004, and a projected 135 million in 2008. These extra voters are going to turn out for Obama at least 60-40 for an extra margin of victory of 5 million total popular votes.

8. Youth are traditionally the lowest turnout. This stat will change and break heavy for Obama.

9. The Obama campaign has pushed early voting far more than McCain. This just adds to the tactical advantage of Obama.

As this all begins to add up, could it be that Obama wins by 9-10 million votes with these margins leading to a landslide of the swing states as well.

Some election watch hints just to help your viewing pleasure:
1. If Indiana goes to Obama, we are seeing an example of a phenomena of political execution and the mobilization of an entirely new segment of the population that has changed the demographics of the electorate significantly.
2. Missouri: When I look at polls, I always just assume McCain will take Missouri. If Obama takes Missouri, this points to a toss-up landslide.
3. New Hampshire: This is McCain's favorite state. If Obama wins, I think this means there is no room left for republicans in the intellectual east.
4. Ohio: I mentioned above Ohio as a Obama state. Basically, if we don't have to wait all night for an answer to Ohio then Texas becomes the last republican machine in the country.
5. North Carolina: Bush won North Carolina by 12% in both 2004 and 2000. Obama may not win but if it is close that will be a sign of the power of his GOTV work and the African American vote especially via early voting. I think a good way to look at this is that the Obama campaign has tried to win this thing one vote at a time. If it goes well, this is a great testimony of the reality of grassroots democracy. I think this will restore American faith in the process. BUT the opposite is true if Obama loses. This is the worst case scenario and we all know what that means.
6. The Impossible: South Carolina (see video)

Overall, I understand how McCain is trying to sell the idea that Obama is measuring the drapes. The race feels like the wait and see is not who wins but by how much will Obama win by. If instead McCain wins...I will not even for a second try to explain such a culturally bizarre outcome.

Voter Registration Fraud and Voter Fraud

I just voted early and noticed one very conspicuous fact. No one asked me for my ID.

I am posting to ask if anyone understands how fraud is controlled.

When I voted today, there were no controls over whether I was an actual person or if I was who I said I was. Now, I admit I do not know how voting and voter registration is controlled, but this does not seem very controlled to me.

This lack of control if coupled with voter registration fraud it appears to me could easily lead to voter fraud. I am not speculating that this is actually happening BUT asking if anyone knows how fraud is controlled or not controlled as the case may be.

Could I not register as Joe Plumber and then vote as Joe Plumber. As far as I can tell, there was no control against such an occurrence.

brad

P.S. I voted at the Registrar in Norwalk, California.

Comparing Reagan to Obama - Size of Lead

Reagan Wins Landslide Victory

This is a cool article in the following:
1. Reagans margin of victory was 9%. In American politics, 9% can be a landslide. Reagan did later beat Mondale by 18%. (see chart below) . Nixon won by 24% and LBJ by 23%
2. Carter got class. Carter is a great man even if he didn't understand economics. We have learned a lot in the last 28 years.

What have we learned: Class politics is bad economics. High wages helps demand. Support for business and corporate welfare creates jobs.
brad
Update: Recent margins of victory:

Krugman on Seriousness and Strenuous Thought

Serious Times and Trivial Campaigning Don't Mix

This is similar to my post on strenuous thought. This is a vital point: If there is a silver lining to the current crisis, maybe it will provide a serious blow to American Anti-intellectualism.

Debt as a Percentage of GDP

Here is a fact. By the late 1940's the debt as a percentage of GDP was about 110%.

Here is the best graph I can find. It shows the debt from the '50s to present. The point is EXPECT HUGE DEFICITS TO BAIL US OUT OF THE PRESENT CRISIS. The debt could go to about 15+ trillion (GNP is around 12 trillion)


















I think the question of sacrifice is a valid one. What is ahead of us is some heavy sacrifices including a season of HUGE deficits followed by an era of higher taxes.

The Stimulus Package and The Need for Wealth Distribution

In my first post on the financial crisis, The Depression in the Financial Markets – The Solution is Wage Inflation via Tax Policy posted on September 16th, I suggested that the root cause of our financial woes is ultimately a lack of demand. At the root of this problem is wealth inequality.

The middle class squeeze leads to low consumer confidence. People begin to stop spending. For example, high gas prices pulled people's discretionary funds into fuel and retail sales of items like cars begins to slow. Such a trend begins to spiral into recession. The root cause is a lack of wages rising with prices of vital items. Low wages lead to lowered demand which leads to recession.

In the current crisis, this slowing demand is multiplied by a crisis in the financial markets. The financial crisis has many causes but one of them is that on the fringes people that are squeezed begin to default on their homes. In situations where financial institutions are highly leveraged the result is failed banks.

So what is needed of course is a bailout of the financial institutions by creating liquidity and the government acting as the guarantee of certain failing types of financial services. Basically, the government has to inject into the system more cash. This addresses the financial crisis but what about the recession. The recession is addressed by one fundamental type of action. The government must put money in the hands of consumers. This happens though tax cuts, a stimulus plan and general wealth distribution.

Yes, wealth distribution.
Why Wealth Distribution is Needed
Lets simplify the scenario to make the situation clear. Let's say that one person owns all the food and has all the cash. What will happen to his food selling business. The food will rot and the people will starve. The problem is people cannot buy the food. There is no demand. In this situation, in order to save the wealthy man's business, he has to give money to the consumer. In order to stop a recession and save capitalism requires wealth distribution when wealth inequalities are overly polarized.

Life is like a game of monopoly. If one person has all the money, the game is over. The game comes to a halt. In order to start the game again, you have to give some money to the losers. In times like these, we need demand side economics to drive demand and re-start the economy. Some politicians may call this socialism but in fact this is simply economics 101.

brad

Uncommon Wisdom - The Need for a Life of Strenuous Thought

I often quote what I think is a quote from Charles Spurgeon in reference to George W. Bush. Spurgeon said, “It takes thirty years to prepare a sermon”. His point is that inspiration and insight into the mind of God and the scope of the themes of scripture takes a lifelong commitment to the study of scripture and its application in one’s personal life. Such a quest involves a life of strenuous contemplation of the ways of God. Such a life is a arduous seeking for wisdom.

The bible calls us to seek wisdom in our youth so that in the time of calamity she may be found. The fool, in their moment of need, will cry out for wisdom and she will not be found. Wisdom or skill in any area of life is not easy to come by but must be diligently sought over a lifetime.

In today’s world, this is even more true. We live in an ever increasingly complex world. In our modern way of life, if we are to contribute to society we must become a specialist and an expert. The wisdom of expertise only comes from a lifelong quest for knowledge in one’s chosen are of focus.

The founding fathers were stunning in their commitment to the study of governance. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were intellectuals in the extreme. Out of the strenuous work to understand the history of governance, they studied the history of the Classical period and were literate in the original languages of the Greco-roman world. John Quincy Adams was instructed to read Cicero in the original Latin by his father when he was a mere twelve year old boy. The seeking of knowledge and wisdom was considered a civic duty. The fact of the matter is that wisdom is not a commonly held commodity and common sense is no wisdom at all.

But in the 21st century, we have come to believe that if a person is “one of us” and is not an elite or overly educated person, then he or she is more likely to have the common sense needed to represent us and understand us. This principle flies in the face of the reality of the process of obtaining wisdom in any area of life. Would we want one of “us” common uneducated folk performing open heart surgery on our father or proposing a treatment for our wife’s breast cancer. Do we want the doctor who finished in the bottom quarter of his class? I contend that it is even more difficult to govern a nation.

Do you want a doctor to fix your car or a car mechanic to do your plumbing? Neither ought we to expect a business man to be an expert at governing.

If we have learned anything from the Bush years, it should be that we do not want a common mediocre student or intellect as President of the United States of America. The myth that the elite students of the world make poor leaders is simply nonsensical. Real problems, complex problems, require the best and the brightest that the nation can offer if we are to find the nuanced and balanced solution that can withstand the test of time. What we need are intellectuals and students of history to lead the institutions that effect us as a society, both church and government. What we need is a person who has struggled to understand and sought wisdom all his days. If we have learned anything from recent years, may this be the lesson we have learned.

Health Care - Krugman Article

This week is definitely going to be about mudslinging tactics (or is that strategy?) and health care policy. I admit Krugman of the NYT seems to just speak DNC talking points, but the guy is a pretty smart guy. Great article this morning.

Krugman on health care.
brad

Financial Bailout defeat in Congress - A Cowardly Lack of Leadership

For many years, I refused to delve into politics or economics for that matter as I did not want such issues to alienate people from the message of the Kingdom. Times have changed and the need for voices is urgent. Such voices are not coming from congress.

In a move that is pure politics, house members on both sides of the aisle ignored reality and listened to the panic of their constituents. Such caving to public outcry is not leadership.

David Brooks says it well, in his Nihilist Revolt editorial in the NYT:

They (congress) have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed.

showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed. They did the momentarily popular thing.

What we need in this situation is authority.

The American century was created by American leadership, which is scarcer than credit just about now.

What has happened is "chickens coming home to roost". The republicans and some liberal democrats have such disdain for government that they refuse to lead with government action. The following are elements of this total inability to lead:
1. Ideology. We have seen the fruit of ideology in the Bush administration. Ideology is the stubborn adherence to ideals without regard to the changes in situations and circumstances. This is not a time for conservative ideals. What is needed is pragmatism and nuance.
2. Politics. When acting in a crisis one must let the facts and our reason guide us and public opinion must be ignored. Such political expediency transcends party affiliation. Such are our times.
3. Anti-intellectualism: As I listen to the naysayers of government action, I am appalled by the lack of depth and both presidential candidates are not helping the discussion. Where is Robert Rubin? Where is Robert Reich? We need students of history to solve difficult problems like those we face today. In the dialogue, there is no substance. Such depth what really amounts to wisdom is the product of a life of strenuous study of policy and governance. Unfortunately, the public no longer trusts intellectuals so they place "one of our own" in office. That's fine if there is no need to solve a difficult problem. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

We must question ourselves as to whether this is the first major blow to the head of American leadership in the world. It is time we begin placing in leadership both in the church and the state leaders who are equipped intellectually to look the facts in the face and take pragmatic and effectual action.

brad

Understanding N.T. Wright - Tools for the Task – Part 2 - Critical Realism part 1

In my first post, Tools for the Task part 1, I discussed N.T. Wright overarching goal or his life work. N.T. Wright has embarked upon what he calls the Third Quest. Wright’s quest is to, in light of the abundance of extra-biblical evidence concerning 1st Century Judaism, develop a historically grounded hypothesis about how Christianity developed. A key quote for N.T. Wright, having reflected upon the first two quests for the historical Jesus is “when all was said and done, they dug a well and found at the bottom a reflection of themselves.” Wright is saying that these theologians used methodologies which were not critical enough and their conclusions ended up being a reflection of their own preconceived worldviews. What happened in the 20th century quests for the historical Jesus is that the theologians did not utilize the proper historian’s “Tools for the Task”. The result is the pop culture misconceptions about Christian origins which I wrote about in Part 1 of this series.

The First Tool for the Task – Critical Realism
Defining Critical
In our family, I often ask my older children the question, “What is the worst thing a person can be?” The answer they usually give is, “A compliant thinker”. Next I ask, “And what is the opposite of a compliant thinker?” The answer they give, “A critical thinker”. In my mind, one of the great enemies in the 21st Century is anti-intellectualism. To use our intellect and to be lifelong learners, we must understand what it means to be a critical thinker.

A critical thinker is a person who is constantly pursuing a revision of two perspectives: first, the perspective given to us and, second, our own perspective. In other words, a true critical thinker is constantly aware of how his own preconceptions and the preconceptions of others undermine learning and getting the process of getting closer and closer to reality. This critical approach is the first tool for the task which is the critical side of critical realism. To be critical means being constantly aware of the role that perspective plays in the telling and listening of any and all truth claims. Being critical is in many ways the foundation of the scientific method. We are constantly seeking to re-evaluate and therefore improve our understanding of reality by questioning and challenging both our own understanding and the accepted wisdom. We ask ourselves, “Is there another perspective which can help me see things clearly? What is the tellers stance? What is my stance?" We are always aware that, as subjects, both the teller of the truth and the hearer of the truth participates in the knowing process. Therefore, as learners we must use certain tools to be enable us to be skillful critics of both ourselves and the accepted wisdom in order to be active and skillful critical thinkers. To be a critical thinker, one must be both arrogant enough to question the accepted dogma and humble enough to critique one’s own preconceptions.

So that is the critical part of “Critical realism”. The next term to understand is the term "realism”. I will discuss this term in the next post. As we proceed, with other terms which N.T. Wright spends considerable time defining including, “worldview”, “theology”, “story”, “hypothesis and verification”, we will come to see how incredibly helpful these tools are to understanding both the biblical texts and the origins of Christianity.

Week Round Up - Financial Crisis

This week I for the first time got a little passionate about policy. In these posts,
1. The Depression in the Financial Markets – The Solution is Wage Inflation via Tax Policy
2. More on the Financial Crisis
My approach is to actually look at the root of the financial problems. Look beyond deregulation and the need for more liquidity to why are people defaulting on their mortgages.

What the government has done is protect money market mutual funds which is absolutely essential to assure that these safe havens are sustained. These are funds that many companies use to hold cash that ultimately is needed to make payroll. But this is only an emergency measure. The root causes are not yet being deeply and honestly discussed.

Here is a fact -

The pricier loans in the jumbo category racked up delinquency rates that are more than triple what they were just a year ago, and those overdue payment statistics may quadruple before the end of 2008. - Sept 2, 2008

Jumbo prime mortgages are foreclosing. The definition of a jumbo is a loan that is beyond the limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which is $417,000). The real reason the mortgages that are failing are jumbos is because jumbo loans are needed to buy houses in the market since the housing boom of 2002-2006. But nonetheless, the people failing these types of mortgages are prime borrowers.

Also what is happening is that due to inflation MANY people are forced to take out HELOCs to pay the bills. This puts the first mortgage at risk. All this comes back to wages and inflation.

Everyone normally looks at the "the mortgage crisis" but seemingly ignores at least one side of the mortgage problem: low wages with respect to inflation and the middle class squeeze. Everyone seems to think the only problem with the low value of mortgage backed securities is the sub-prime problem, but this is not the source. These fire-priced mortgages that Lehman owned were not sub-prime but "alt-A" and "prime Jumbos". What happened is that these specific types of securities were being downgraded from the "AAA" rating. This downgrade forces money market mutual funds to sell as these funds are required to only hold "AAA" assets.

Why are alt-A graded loans failing? An alt-A is really a loan to a person with a credit score of 580-680 (below 580 is sub-prime)? It has to be because these people's wages didn't grow as expected in a normal cycle. The current statistics are worse than normal. Folks, this has to be wages.

I still hold to wages and inflation being at the root of the problem. The thing to look out for in the policy of a given candidate is what policies will be put in place to deal with the following:
1. Out-sourcing
2. Middle class tax cuts
3. Alternative ways to incentivize wage growth

brad

More on the Financial Crisis

This is my second political posts in two days...If you haven;t read the first post read it here:
The Root Cause of the Financial Depression

This second post is my editorializing on today's freakonomics post in the NYT.

Why did Freddie and Fanny fail:
Update; WaMu is up for sale today. WaMu is the biggest savings and loan in America

From the NYT: Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals

Fannie and Freddie were weakly supervised and strayed from the core mission. They began using their subsidized financing to buy mortgage-backed securities which were backed by pools of mortgages that did not meet their usual standards. Over the last year, it became clear that their thin capital was not enough to cover the losses on these subprime mortgages.

Why did Lehman fail:
…Why did the financing dry up? For months, short-sellers were convinced that Lehman’s real-estate losses were bigger than it had acknowledged. As more bad news about the real estate market emerged, including the losses at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, this view spread….Lehman’s costs of borrowing rose and its share price fell. With an impending downgrade to its credit rating looming, legal restrictions were going to prevent certain firms from continuing to lend to Lehman.

Again can you say housing….It all goes back to people trying to turn sub-prime mortgages and Lehman and Fannie and Freddie and everyone else sports fans are caught holding the bag. Why did this happen? Because in Bush’s first term, it was politically expedient to push home ownership especially in light of the opportunity due to de-regulation.

How about A.I.G.
Here it is…
A.I.G. had to raise money because it had written $57 billion of insurance contracts whose payouts depended on the losses incurred on subprime real-estate related investments. While its core insurance businesses and other subsidiaries (such as its large aircraft-leasing operation) were doing fine, these contracts, called credit default swaps (C.D.S.’s), were hemorrhaging.

Why did this housing market problem happen?
People took too much risk and believed that something had changed in housing and therefore prices would never go down. This was a really stupid idea based in wishful thinking. The only way we could have believed this was that when all these sub-prime variable mortgage loans came due there would be INFINITE DEMAND for houses. But instead, there was a glut of houses and very little demand. Why so little demand? Low wages.

So why did people choose to believe what amounts to self-deception?
Greed and because de-regulation allowed them to do it. To do what, to put all of us at risk for the big bucks.

So this is my point about why it makes no sense in my mind for Christians to believe in republican free-market ideology. We as Christians know that the world is driven by greed and the will to power. So why are we against regulating greed and power in the markets. Because Christians have been duped by right wing politics that bundled together right to life issues and right wing economic dogma.

So why did we fall for this trap? It is because of our anti-intellectualism and our lack of thoughtful dialogue in our own communities about politics and other such issues. There is no room for discussion because there is such a huge social cost for not heeding the party line. Trust me. I know.

Brad

The Depression in the Financial Markets – The Solution is Wage Inflation via Tax Policy

My annual political post...

From the very beginning, I was against the Bush tax cuts. Back then, I refused to enter the fray of politics as a pastor, so I kept my mouth shut except around the dinner table. The reason I was against the Bush tax cuts is that I do not believe in the ideology of supply side economics in the information age. There is too much access to market data, and, therefore, businesses do not invest in growth without strong demand data. Due to the access to data, the 21st century is a demand driven economic world. What is needed today is a balanced approach which supports business and also supports the consumer. Immediately, we need a pendulum swing toward support for the consumer. The crisis we are in today is 100% the result of a lack of money in the hands of the consumer caused by relative wage deflation. Let me explain.

In our current financial crisis, the problem is that the financial markets are getting tight. Insurance and mortgage companies like AIG are having trouble getting credit to make and insure loans. The result is we have a bottleneck in the financial system. The cause of this bottleneck is because AIG and others cannot put up enough collateral for the loans they need. Why all of a sudden are the big financial institutions unable to put up enough collateral? It is because the only real paper of value that they hold is “mortgage backed securities”. It ain’t called real estate for nothing. As we all are so very aware, people are defaulting on mortgages. Therefore, mortgage backed securities are not great collateral. It all comes down to the housing market.

Well, who pays mortgages? Well, people do. The middle class pays mortgages, and the only way to slow down the bleeding in the housing market is to increase the cash in the hands of the middle class. Currently, the middle class is experiencing the big squeeze. In simple terms, us middle class folk will rent before we will starve. We will default on our mortgage and rent before we will stave our children. Thus, the middle class home owner numbers are shrinking, and the lower middle class renters numbers are exploding. This is the big American economic nightmare. The answer to this housing/mortgage problem is not a stimulus plan. The money is not in the coffers of the government. Excluding the sub-prime side of the mortgage crisis, the problem is wealth inequality and relative wage deflation.

The actual big money that is needed to bail the system out is in the hands of employers in the form of business profits. Sorry sports fans but the real root cause of this problem is two-fold. First, it is an ideological drive to support supply side economic policy (i.e. republicanism) and its big policy application, the Bush tax cuts. The fact is the trickle-down didn’t trickle down in the global economy of the 21st Century. Greed got the best of us this time.

The answer is simple – tax policy. What must happen is the government must make a tax policy which gives tax credits to businesses for wage increases. If a company shows an increase in wages to employees, then they get a tax credit. Otherwise, they get a big fat tax increase on profit. This problem we are in is a serious housing crisis that only employers can solve and employers will only solve this problem by raising wages when the government forces their hand. The only question is how hard the government should push.

The bottom line is it all comes down to demand and, specifically, demand for MORTGAGES. The only way to drive demand for mortgages is to increase the wages of the middle class. The only people who can increase the wages of the middle class are employers and the only way this can happen is TAX POLICY.