Kruse Kronicle

Does Character Count? Does Virtue Matter?

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan explore why it appears that American society has jettisoned the importance of character and virtue for leadership, particularly in the realm of politics. Does character really count? Does virtue really matter?"

Managing Tensions, Or How to Keep from Making Stupid Arguments

"On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the importance of polarity management, a way of viewing tensions not as either/or problems to be solved, but both/and tensions to be managed. When tensions are turned into problems as is so often the case in today's politics, stupidity reigns supreme and solutions remain elusive."

Calmly Considered: The Mainstream Media-- Purveyors of Truth or Peddlers of Propaganda?

On this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss today's media in America and whether or not it can be trusted to give to the public a reliable picture of newsworthy events. They also ponder the implications for Christians who believe in telling and discerning the truth in a world of information overload.

Calmly Considered: The Sport of Gambling-- Should Christians Take the Bet?

In this episode of "Calmly Considered," Michael and Allan discuss the rise of betting on sports in America and gambling in general.

Should Christians Participate in Black Friday?

Allan Bevere and I discuss materialism, and Black Friday specifically.

Christian Nationalism - Christ AND Caesar?

Here is the August dialog between Allan Bevere and me about Christian nationalism and its implications. 

Calmly Considered: The Demise of Democracy and the Rise of Authoritarianism

In this month's installment, Allan Bevere and I reflect on the rise of authoritarianism in recent years. 

"Democracy is receding in the world and authoritarianism is on the rise. Why is this? What is authoritarianism and what are the circumstances that lead people to trust their futures to authoritarians? How do we recognize authoritarian figures? Is character necessary for good?"

Calmly Considered: How The Church Fails Businesspeople

Last week, I participated with Allan Bevere in a discussion centered on John Knapp's book "How The Church Fails Businesspeople (And What Can Be Done About It)." Discussion focuses on integrating our faith and working lives, with reflection on why that integration is so challenging.

Calmly Considered: Economics, the New Testament, and the 21st Century (in podcast & videocast)

This is the first installment of a once-monthly series called Calmly Considered, in which Allan Bevere and I will be discussing topics related to faith and economics. In this episode, we discuss Peter Oakes'  Empire, Economics, and the New Testament. We barely scratch the surface but hopefully some meaningful dialog. 

Polarity Management Versus Problem Solving

Question. When it comes to breathing, do you prefer inhaling or exhaling?

I have asked this question many times, and it always elicits a chuckle. Clearly, if you choose one over the other, you end up dead. And if your body decided that this ongoing struggle between inhaling and exhaling was a problem to be solved, you would end up dead. Breathing is not a problem to be solved. It is a polarity to be managed.

Polarity management has a much wider application than biology. It applies to a wide range of features in human systems. Economist John McMillian (Stanford) wrote an insightful book called, "Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets." McMillian makes the case that the never-ending struggle in political economy has been to find the right mix of centralization and decentralization. If power becomes too centralized, then it will become oppressive and destructive. Yet, without centralized power, local tyrants emerge, injustice proliferates, and warring factions square off, sending society into chaos. In this sense, political economy is a polarity to be managed, not a problem to be solved.

Writing in the Atlantic, Eric Liu makes an important observation (emphasis mine):

"We don’t need fewer arguments today; we need less stupid ones.

The arguments in American politics today are stupid in many ways: They’re stuck in a decaying two-party institutional framework; they fail to challenge foundational assumptions about capitalism or government; they center on symbolic proxy skirmishes instead of naming the underlying change; they focus excessively on style and surface.

Americans can do better. Remember: America doesn’t just have arguments; America is an argument—between Federalist and Anti-Federalist world views, strong national government and local control, liberty and equality, individual rights and collective responsibility, color-blindness and color-consciousness, Pluribus and Unum.

The point of civic life in this country is not to avoid such tensions. Nor is it for one side to achieve “final” victory. It is for us all to wrestle perpetually with these differences, to fashion hybrid solutions that work for the times until they don’t, and then to start again.

"America is an Argument." Bingo! You will find the same is true in all human structures, including church and family. Part of facilitating better discussion and arguments is appreciating we are often wrestling more with polarities and less with virtue and vice.

Politics 2016 and Christian Mission

The Kruse Kronicle byline is, "Contemplating the intersection of work, the global economy, and Christian Mission." While politics is not the primary focus of this blog, it is impossible to escape how this presidential election is reshaping Christian Mission for substantial segments of American Christianity. In short, we ask how our discipleship should shape our political participation.

Before you read further, you should know that I have opposed Donald Trump since he announced his campaign in June 2015. My take on policy and priorities lean center-right, which should make me lean toward Republicans. While I have considerable policy disagreements with Trump, it does not drive my opposition. My conviction stems from being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I posted a link about Independent Conservative candidate Evan McMullin two days ago on Facebook. He is launching a bid to regain control of the heart and soul of conservatism. I commented, "And the battle for the center-right begins." A Trump-backing Facebook friend asked:

“Why would anyone vote for a Mormon (non-Christian) candidate [McMullin] while citing the immaturity of Trump's (maturing) Christian faith as a reason not to vote for him?”

I used the occasion of that question to unpack my views. Some friends have encouraged me to post this response in a more accessible forum. So here it is with some light editing and a couple of additional comments.

Response

I think the question [quoted above] misunderstands the issue for Christian Never Trumpers. Having no standing to speak on their behalf as a group, I'll speak for myself.

My primary concern is not who wins this election, what happens to the Supreme Court, etc. My concern is the witness of the Church. We are called to be ambassadors for God's coming reign, exhibit love and compassion, and speak up about injustice. We are resident aliens in this world, not full citizens. Highlighting the intensity of that commitment, Jesus says in Luke 14:26 that the Kingdom even takes precedence over family ties. Ties that compromise that witness are idolatry.

There are no perfect candidates unless Jesus is on the ballot. Every candidate will have shortcomings. We are not looking for perfection. A candidate need not be Christian. The question concerns general moral character, not the candidate's religious doctrinal beliefs. The Church stays independent, whoever is elected, lifting that which is good and offering critique for what is not, but first and foremost, living as a community that exhibits the marks of the Kingdom.

As each of us votes, we must decide about which of the candidates, if any, offers sufficient merit to receive our vote. Some conservative voters see Clinton as unacceptable. Fine. Let's take her off the table. This being the case, some feel they must vote for Trump. Fine. I think that is misguided, but let's grant that.

The issue is not that someone might vote for Trump. The issue is the attempt by the Christian Right to characterize Trump as basically a good guy, a baby Christian, basically "one of us," who is just a little rough around the edges. Trump is not a little rough around the edges.

Have you read Art of the Deal? Have you watched his life unfold? At the core of Trump's life is the very antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount. He brags that he never needs to apologize or repent about anything. [His recent apology about leaked videotapes was noteworthy for its novelty but also for NOT being an apology to the people he had wronged. It was to the voters who can withhold something he wants.] He has been the apostle for win at all costs. You don't just defeat opponents. You destroy and humiliate anyone who gets in your way. He advocated seducing the wives of rivals to humiliate them and bragged about having done so himself. He made his fortune exploiting human frailty in the area of gambling. You are unflinchingly loyal to him, or you are an absolute loser. I can go on. Everything about him exudes an unstable vindictive predatory character. His "unfortunate" statements are not the product of an unpolished public figure. They are the product of a calculating, manipulative, pathological personality.

Democracy runs on the basis that there are competing views in society. When someone wins an election, the loser concedes, and the winner leaves the loser standing, the loser living to fight another day. The understanding that no victory or loss is ever final keeps society moving along, even with disagreement. Trump routinely demonstrates he cannot tolerate the presence of opposition, period! Not even from beauty queens. From the beginning of the campaign to the present, it has all been about what HE is going to do. He will fix everything by sheer force of his personality and will, and without any clear understanding of the basics of governance and a demonstrated unwillingness to learn them. This is World Wrestling Entertainment bravado, not leadership. This grandiosity, coupled with a vindictive predatory temperament, is the recipe for authoritarianism.

Too many Christian Right Trumpers are not simply voting for the lesser of two evils. They are serving as his apologists, legitimizing his profound evils. It is an act of hypocrisy, considering all the criticism leveled at the moral failings of candidates in the past. When their agenda is at stake, all concern about character goes out the window. You think Trump is the better candidate? Fine. But do not insult us by minimizing who this man is.

[As one Facebook friend posted: "You cannot support Ahab because you think he is somehow better than Jezebel and call it righteous."--Dennis Bills]

Let's assume that by not voting for Trump, a Clinton presidency leads to some very unfriendly policies toward Christian Right people. So be it! The Church's mission is not to win elections but to give witness to the coming Kingdom. That witness can be given through martyrdom if necessary. Christ does not need the help of hateful authoritarian demagogues to achieve his purposes.

I am not that familiar with McMullin. From what I hear to date, he seems to be a principled man with admirable ethical standards, wanting to build a more civil society with aspiration and persuasion. To the degree that turns out to be true, he is a welcomed, refreshing voice. I don't care what his specific doctrines are.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I am sure I was not persuasive. For many on the Christian Right, this election is visceral. Social psychologists write about "motivated perception," where what we see gets shaped by what we feel is at stake. For so many, legitimate or not, Hillary Clinton embodies the "other side" in the culture wars of the past forty years. Letting her win, much less voting for her, is nihilistic and apocalyptic. One is forced to choose between letting loose the apocalypse or voting for a candidate who is the antithesis to all you have previously advocated as morally necessary.

The motivation to legitimize and rationalize Trump is powerful. According to survey research comparing 2011 to 2016, White Evangelical Protestants went from being the religious segment least likely to believe that someone who commits immoral acts in private life can govern ethically (2011 = 30%) to the most likely (2016 = 71%). (Source) Jeff Jacoby compares statements by leaders before 2011 with statements after in his piece How the religious right embraced Trump and lost its moral authority. When holding a moral standard means substantial loss, they embraced moral relativity, the cardinal sin of "secular progressives" they so despise. Again, my point is not that someone will vote for Trump. My concern is that those who decide they will vote for Trump should not minimize and trivialize who the man shows himself to be.

In closing, I will say that our present circumstances in the American Church are not purely the problem of the Christian Right. Across the political spectrum, much of the American Church is not formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. A great many progressive Christians have concluded that the answer to the Christian Right is the emergence of the Christian Left. They participate in the same hyperbolic "othering" that the right has done and call it "prophetic" and "social justice advocacy." And what we learn now is that when you have for years embraced characterizations of your opponents as wanting to kill women, equating them to holocaust deniers, and declared them to be functionally no different than the Taliban, you lose the words to name genuine authoritarianism when it appears. (See Crying Wolf, Then Confronting Trump) The answer is not a more progressive church. The answer is a loving community of resident aliens seeking the "welfare of the city" and truth, no matter the implications for our host culture's political agendas. Right, left, or whatever, precious little of the American Church owns that vision.

Why So Much Outrage? Thinking About My Discipleship

Bloomberg had an excellent piece by science journalist Faye Flam titled It's an Outrage! See? Look How Outraged I Am! Her lead is "Science is starting to shed some light on the curiously continuous cycle of moral outrages." Expressions of collective outrage are not particularly new, but it does seem to me that the frequency of expressed outrage, and outrage over more trivial events, has increased. Why? Psychologists offer this thought:

Psychologists say it all starts to make sense if you think of outrage as a form of display. Expressing it advertises a person's views and allegiances to potential allies. And the more popular a victim's cause, the less risky it is to join in displaying your umbrage.

So is the outrage disingenuous?

 

Psychologist Jillian Jordan, who led the Yale experiment, said she wasn't trying to suggest that people were faking outrage for the purpose of looking good. She believes people genuinely feel the outrage. The point was to explain the urge to share it so ostentatiously.

 

In real-world cases, most people unconsciously tally costs and benefits, said Harvard psychologist Max Krasnow. There is a cost to outrage, in terms of social risk. The cost shrinks when there are more and more people expressing it in solidarity. If you're the only person lobbing yogurt at the Icelandic Parliament, you might well get arrested. But if you're part of a teeming mob, your collective display of outrage can lead to the ousting of the prime minister.

 

So what triggers outrage?

Why do some incidents provoke almost universal outrage and others set off only those in certain age groups or of particular political leanings? One of the most universal sources of outrage is stealing or hoarding resources, said psychologist Eric Pederson. The theory is that this is ingrained in humans because our ancestors' foraging cultures survived by sharing; if Joe helped himself to what others hunted and gathered, but then did not share his good fortune when he found berries or killed a wildebeest, he'd get in deep trouble.

Humanity's deeply rooted antipathy for cheaters helps explain the outrage over the tax evaders revealed by the Panama Papers. But in other cases, said psychologist Robert Boyd, the definition of what's outrageous is dictated by less objectively obvious cultural norms. Humans are wired to pick up cultural rules and norms, and to aim outrage at violators, he said. Cultural norms vary by political leanings, geography and other factors. Often there's a large generation gap.

Harvard's Krasnow said it all comes back to the fact that displays are aimed at potential allies. An outraged person may have no personal tie to a given issue, but outrage can signal sympathy with those who do. This can be quite noble and selfless, not entirely self-serving; the two blur together in ways that allow human civilization to work to the extent that it does.

According to an anthropologist I read, human reason evolved in the context of communal survival. People observed patterns in events around them and developed heuristic models for survival. They fashioned stories to make sense of events and their place in them. Reason developed as a way to reinforce stories and strengthen societal cohesion. This is also to say reason that challenged societal narratives and cohesion was a threat. We are not naturally wired for objectivity.

 

It seems to me that expression of outrage serves a similar function. Narrowly, outrage is about calling out destructive behavior, but more broadly, it is about expressing social solidarity. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the driving motivator.

 

I have long suspected that the rising waves of outrage may have more and more to do with a need for social solidarity than moral indignation. In a post-modern era, identity is much harder to define and solidify, making us feel more insecure. That insecurity leads us to seek out opportunities for solidarity. Expressing outrage is just such an opportunity, particularly if the offending party/parties are of a "tribe" whom we jointly find disagreeable. The person(s) at the center of the outrage may become completely objectified, serving as a prop in the solidarity-building exercise. Exaggerations, misrepresentations, and apocryphal stories will often be added to heighten the outrage and amplify the endorphin-releasing satisfaction from intensely felt "outrage" solidarity.

 

The problem is that in our rush to solidarity, we can dehumanize others and make poor decisions. Applying a little objectivity will often show more complex circumstances than our outrage will allow. Over the years, I can't possibly recall how many times I have calmly pointed out some exaggeration or misinformation in a charged conversation. It doesn't matter that I may even be sympathetic to those outraged. The reaction is predictable. I am a traitor. I am at least being dismissive of people's suffering. When I point out there is no change in the number of police officers killed on duty in the face of claims of increasing murderous violence against police officers because of Black Lives Matter, I am insensitive to police officers. When I point out that extreme global extreme poverty has halved over the past thirty years and global inequality is declining in the face of claims that "neoliberal capitalism" is making the poor poorer and driving up inequality, I am insensitive to people suffering in poverty. Objective input is not welcome because, ultimately the conversation is about subjective commitments, not objective discernment.

 

Flam closes the article with the following:

 

"It's a complicated game we're playing," Krasnow said, "and sometimes the best strategy is to say nothing."

 

I agree, but the operative word is "sometimes." How about the other times? How are we to conduct ourselves, then? I do not write this as someone who has achieved objectivity and never participates in outrage. Not every expression of outrage is inappropriate. Hardly! And yet, I am self-aware enough to see the dehumanizing, exaggerating, hyperbolic demon lurking at the edge of consciousness when I am outraged. I know how good it feels to be in solidarity with a tribe that feels my intense outrage. As a Christian, I know discipleship has political consequences but does following Jesus really look like an endless rolling wave of outrage? What does it mean when we are so quick to misrepresent facts and dehumanize our opponents when the one we say we follow said:

 

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors [and the Republicans, and the Democrats, and the ...] doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt 5:43-48)

 

It is almost as if Jesus says love should be our solidifying value, not outrage. I do not know. I am still working on it. Let me know if you figure it out.

Infographic: 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

Business Insider: 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

A great infographic from Business Insider.

Why We Reject Facts & Embrace Conflict

Real Clear Science: Why We Reject Facts & Embrace Conflict

There is a growing body of research suggesting that when beliefs become tied to one’s sense of identity, they are not easily revised. Instead, when these axioms are threatened, people look for ways to outright dismiss inconvenient data. If this cannot be achieved by highlighting logical, methodological or factual errors, the typical response is to leave the empirical sphere altogether and elevate the discussion into the moral and ideological domain, whose tenets are much more difficult to outright falsify (generally evoking whatever moral framework best suits one’s rhetorical needs).

While often described in pejorative terms, these phenomena may be more akin to “features,” than “bugs,” of our psychology. ...

For instance, the Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis holds that the primary function of rationality is social, rather than epistemic. Specifically, our rational faculties were designed to mitigate social conflicts (or conflicting interests). But on this account, rationality is not a neutral mediator. Instead, it is deployed in the service of one’s own interests and desires—which are themselves heavily informed by our sense of identity. ...

... Accordingly, the best way to reduce polarization is not by obscuring critical differences under the pretense of universalism. Instead, societies should aspire to lower the perceived stakes of these identity conflicts.  

For example, rigidity, polarization and groupthink are much less common, and more easily addressed, in deliberations within an identity group; closed-mindedness is largely a response to a perceived threat from outside. In heterogeneous contexts, many of the benefits of this enclave deliberation can be achieved by engaging interlocutors in terms of their own framing and narratives, mindful of their expressed concerns and grievances. That is, identity differences should not be suppressed, avoided or merely tolerated, but instead emphasized, encouraged and substantively respected—emphasizing pluralism over sectarianism. This can create a foundation where good-faith exchange and intergroup cooperation are feasible. Or put another way, the problem isn’t cultural cognition, it’s the lack of cross-cultural competence.

Excellent article!

Stop Trying to Save the World (Good Intentions Are Not Enough!)

New Republic: Stop Trying to Save the World: Big ideas are destroying international development, Michael Hobbes

One of the first classes I took in the economic development program at Eastern University was a class where we spent the entire semester studying the wide variety of economic development models that had been tried. Few worked. The best attempts led to very modest improvements. The worst had perverse unintended consequences. The overall message? Economic development is hard to do well!

I missed this article by Michael Hobbes from New Republic last November. It is a 6,000+ word essay, but it is one of the best reads I have seen on the need for careful ongoing assessment, and it is a warning of the inefficient - even perverse - consequences when we do not empirically test our assumptions. Here are some key excerpts.

Maybe the problem isn’t that international development doesn’t work. It’s that it can’t.

He points to these examples:

In the late ’90s, Michael Kremer, then an economics professor at MIT, was in Kenya working on an NGO project that distributed textbooks to schools in poor rural districts. Around that time, the ratio of children to textbooks in Kenya was 17 to 1. The intervention seemed obvious: Poor villages need textbooks, rich donors have the money to buy them. All we have to do is link them up.

But in the early stages of the project, Kremer convinced the researchers to do it differently. He wanted to know whether giving kids textbooks actually made them better students. So instead of handing out books and making a simple before-and-after comparison, he designed the project like a pharmaceutical trial. He split the schools into groups, gave some of them the “treatment” (i.e., textbooks) and the others nothing. Then he tested everyone, not just the kids who got the books but also the kids who didn’t, to see if his intervention had any effect.

It didn’t. The trial took four years, but it was conclusive: Some of the kids improved academically over that time and some got worse, but the treatment group wasn’t any better off than the control.

Then Kremer tried something else. Maybe the kids weren’t struggling in school because of what was going on in the classroom, but because of what was going on outside of it. So again, Kremer split the schools into groups and spent three years testing and measuring them. This time, the treatment was an actual treatment—medication to eradicate stomach worms. Worm infections affect up to 600 million children around the world, sapping their nutrition and causing, among other things, anemia, stomachaches, and stunting.

Once more, the results were conclusive: The deworming pills made the kids noticeably better off. Absence rates fell by 25 percent, the kids got taller, even their friends and families got healthier. By interrupting the chain of infection, the treatments had reduced worm infections in entire villages. Even more striking, when they tested the same kids nearly a decade later, they had more education and earned higher salaries. The female participants were less likely to be employed in domestic services.

And compared with Kremer’s first trial, deworming was a bargain. Textbooks cost $2 to $3 each. Deworming pills were as little as 49 cents. When Kremer calculated the kids’ bump in lifetime wages compared with the cost of treatment, it was a 60-to-1 ratio.

This is perfect TED Talk stuff: Conventional wisdom called into question, rigorous science triumphing over dogma. As word of Kremer’s study spread, he became part of a growing movement within international development to subject its assumptions to randomized controlled trials.

Based on his analysis, Kremer went on to ramp up a deworming NGO, but Hobbes notes the NGO stopped testing after their initial research. Additional testing by others revealed more nuance.

It’s an interesting question—when do you have enough evidence to stop testing each new application of a development idea?—and I get that you can’t run a four-year trial every time you roll out, say, the measles vaccine to a new country. But like many other aid projects under pressure to scale up too fast and too far, deworming kids to improve their education outcomes isn’t the slam-dunk its supporters make it out to be.

In 2000, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a literature review of 30 randomized control trials of deworming projects in 17 countries. While some of them showed modest gains in weight and height, none of them showed any effect on school attendance or cognitive performance. After criticism of the review by the World Bank and others, the BMJ ran it again in 2009 with stricter inclusion criteria. But the results didn’t change. Another review, in 2012, found the same thing: “We do not know if these programmes have an effect on weight, height, school attendance, or school performance.”

Kremer and Evidence Action dispute the way these reviews were carried out, and sent me an upcoming study from Uganda that found links between deworming and improved test scores. But the evidence they cite on their own website undermines this data. Kremer’s 2004 study reporting the results of the original deworming trial notes—in the abstract!—that “we do not find evidence that deworming improves academic test scores,” only attendance. Another literature review cited on Deworm the World’s website says, “When infected children are given deworming treatment, immediate educational and cognitive benefits are not always apparent.”

Then there’s the comparison to textbooks. Kenya, it turns out, is a uniquely terrible place to hand out textbooks to kids and expect better academic performance. When Kremer reported that textbooks had no overall effect, he also noted that they did actually improve test scores for the kids who were already at the top of the class. The main problem, it seems, was that the textbooks were in English, the second or third language for most of the kids. Of the third-graders given textbooks, only 15 percent could even read them.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, a series of meta-analyses found that textbooks were actually effective at improving school performance in places where the language issues weren’t as complex. In his own paper reporting the Kenya results, Kremer noted that, in Nicaragua and the Philippines, giving kids textbooks did improve their test scores.

Here is the crux of it:

But the point of all this is not to talk shit on Kremer—who has bettered the world more with his career than I ever have with mine—or to dismantle his deworming charity, or to advocate that we should all go back to giving out free textbooks. What I want to talk shit on is the paradigm of the Big Idea—that once we identify the correct one, we can simply unfurl it on the entire developing world like a picnic blanket.

There are villages where deworming will be the most meaningful education project possible. There are others where free textbooks will. In other places, it will be new school buildings, more teachers, lower fees, better transport, tutors, uniforms. There’s probably a village out there where a PlayPump would beat all these approaches combined. The point is, we don’t know what works, where, or why. The only way to find out is to test these models—not just before their initial success but afterward, and constantly.

I can see why it’s appealing to think that, once you find a successful formula for development, you can just scale it up like a Model T. Host governments want programs that get more effective as they get bigger. Individual donors, you and me, we want to feel like we’re backing a plucky little start-up that is going to save the world. No international institution wants to say in their annual report: “There’s this great NGO that increased attendance in a Kenyan school district. We’re giving them a modest sum to do the same thing in one other district in one other country.”

The repeated “success, scale, fail” experience of the last 20 years of development practice suggests something super boring: Development projects thrive or tank according to the specific dynamics of the place in which they’re applied. It’s not that you test something in one place, then scale it up to 50. It’s that you test it in one place, then test it in another, then another. No one will ever be invited to explain that in a TED talk.

Hobbes goes on to explain that testing means more money spent on overhead. That overhead would lead to greater effectiveness and, in the long run, lead to a bigger bang for the overall buck, but everything we do now is oriented toward keeping overhead as lean as possible. We ramp up projects that end up being incredibly wasteful. Sometimes they can be downright destructive.

This is the paradox: When you improve something, you change it in ways you couldn’t have expected. You can find examples of this in every corner of development practice. A project in Kenya that gave kids free uniforms, textbooks, and classroom materials increased enrollment by 50 percent, swamping the teachers and reducing the quality of education for everyone. Communities in India cut off their own water supply so they could be classified as “slums” and be eligible for slum-upgrading funding. I’ve worked in places where as soon as a company sets up a health clinic or an education program, the local government disappears—why should they spend money on primary schools when a rich company is ready to take on the responsibility?

There’s nothing avaricious about this. If anything, it demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit we’re constantly telling the poor they need to demonstrate.

My favorite example of unintended consequences comes, weirdly enough, from the United States. In a speech to a criminology conference, Nancy G. Guerra, the director of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Delaware, described a project where she held workshops with inner-city Latina teenagers, trying to prevent them from joining gangs. The program worked in that none of the girls committed any violence within six months of the workshops. But by the end of that time, they were all, each and every one, pregnant.

“That behavior was serving a need for them,” she says in her speech. “It made them feel powerful, it made them feel important, it gave them a sense of identity. ... When that ended, [they] needed another kind of meaning in their lives.”

The fancy academic term for this is “complex adaptive systems.” ...

So do we give up?

First, let’s de-room this elephant: Development has happened. The last 50 years have seen about the biggest explosion of prosperity in human history. ...

Development, no matter how it happens, is a slow process. ...

The ability of international development projects to speed up this process is limited. ...

And this is where I landed after a year of absorbing dozens of books and articles and speeches about international development: The arguments against it are myriad, and mostly logistical and technical. The argument for it is singular, moral, and, to me anyway, utterly convincing: We have so much, they have so little. ...

To this, I would add one note about faith-based economic development. There is a tendency to turn a tactic into a sacrament. Christians and congregations are frequently using two metrics for mission. First, there is a desire to help those in need. Second, there is a desire for congregants to be engaged in helping others in ways that are meaningful to the congregant. If the latter becomes particularly strong, it is very difficult to alter tactics, no matter how much data you show that demonstrates ineffectiveness and even harm. In my book, the first consideration is an absolute must. To do development that does not achieve the first criteria, no matter how meaningful it is to the congregation, is to dehumanize those in need as instruments for stroking our spiritual self-esteem. And that is why addressing economic issues from a Christian perspective requires both warm hearts AND cool heads.

"Anti-Science" and Social Identity

Tom Jacobs has an excellent piece at Pacific Standard, Threaten My Group, and I'll Belittle Your Science. He writes:

Newly published research provides at least a partial answer. It finds scientific findings that challenge the assumptions of a group you strongly identify with motivate people to derogate the research in online comments.

When informal membership in a group—say, the anti-vaccine movement, or those opposed to genetically modified foods—informs your sense of self, and/or provides a feeling of pride and belonging, a perceived attack on its basic beliefs is grounds for a counterattack. Today, that often means writing nasty, dismissive comments online. ...

... While conceding that there are a number of reasons why gamers would choose to angrily argue with the science rather than seriously consider its implications, the researchers focus on one particularly interesting psychological framework: Social identity theory.

This school of thought contends that group membership (be it political, religious, or something as innocuous as being a fan of a particular sports team) is a significant source of our self-esteem. It follows logically that members have an interest in boosting the group's status (and degrading the status of competing groups), since its prominence, or lack thereof, rubs off on ourselves. ...

... Perhaps this discovery can provide an opening for educators and policymakers as they attempt to get around this frustrating psychological block. If scientific findings are to be accepted and acted upon, they have to somehow be presented in a way that does not trigger a defensive reaction. 

We remain, in many ways, a tribal species, and if you challenge my "tribe," don't be surprised if the response is a metaphorical poke in the eye.

To this, I would add that the reason a great majority of people hold a scientifically sanctioned position is not because of science but also because of social identity. Science affirms my narrative and my tribe. "Science" becomes a weapon to deploy against other tribes. It lets me beat my chest in defiant superiority. It becomes a club with which to bludgeon those who threaten my tribe. Advocacy of the "scientific" position frequently has precious little to do with a concern for science. I don't care if it is climate change, vaccinations, evolution, GMOs, nuclear safety, or other topics. It is far more about affirmation than information.

I'll also add this - if you think you are not affected by this dynamic, you are likely either Commander Data from Star Trek or delusional. ;-) It is inescapable. We are communal creatures, and tribalism is always a factor. The realistic response is to continually strive to be self-aware of our tribal issues and be more accepting of the tribal buttons we push in others. Only then can we move toward genuine dialog.

Why Rich People Don't Care About You

Real Clear Science - Newton Blog: Why Rich People Don't Care About You

Examine the income ladder of the United States, and you'll soon stumble upon a surprising fact: Rich people donate a smaller portion of their income to charity than poor people. In 2011, people in the bottom 20% donated 3.2 percent of their earnings. People in the top 20% donated just 1.3 percent.

These numbers don't seem to be anomalous, but there is some nuance. Data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics shows that taxpayers making less than $60,000 donate around 3.75% per year, while those making between $200,000 and $10 million donate less than 3%. However, those making more than $10 million are the most generous of all, donating nearly 6% of their income.*

Psychologists have examined this dynamic even further.

"What we've been finding across dozens of studies and thousands of participants across this country is that as a person's levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases," Paul Piff, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, announced in a 2013 TEDx talk. ...

... Of course, the wealthy aren't doomed to be Scrooges. For instance, the studies did not examine if there were behavioral differences between those who earned their wealth versus those who simply lucked into it. Also, Keltner insists that the human brain is hardwired to care. The wealthy just have to consciously work to be more cognizant of their fellow humans.

I've read other studies that indicate that the wealthy are just as responsive to needs as less wealthy people, but wealthy people are more isolated from the needs of people farther down the economic ladder. Social distance and ignorance may be factors as big or bigger than selfishness or indifference.

The Law of Asymmetric Insight Versus the Law of Assymetric Insight

Arnold Kling recently posted Pete Boettke on Ideology and Economics. The economics in the article is interesting, but I particularly liked this sentence:

"Keep in mind, however, the Law of Asymmetric Insight: when two people disagree, each one tends to think that he understands his opponent better than the opponent understands himself."

I suspect a measure of this is unavoidable. If I do not think my view has greater merit, and therefore other views are flawed, why would I hold my view? The trick in addressing a disagreement is dealing respectfully with others, valuing them, and maybe asking more questions while issuing fewer pontifications. I'm trying to be better a this. Sometimes I learn the Asymmetry of insight is not always in my favor.

The challenge is to avoid the Law of Asymmetric Insight, which is the Law of Asymmetric Insight, with an addendum: When two people disagree, each one tends to think that he understands his opponent better than the opponent understands himself, and he is therefore justified in behaving like an ass.

In short, have convictions but don't be an ass.

ReFrame: Following Christ in the Modern Era

What does it mean to follow Christ in our era? That is the central question for Christians in any era, but it is particularly challenging today. Some suggest that our postmodern and post-Christendom context is creating a level of disruption in the Church not seen since the Reformation. I think that is likely true. So how do we follow Christ today?

A new curriculum called ReFrame attempts a response. It is “A powerful 10-week film-based exploration of what it means to follow Christ in the modern era,” produced by Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia) in cooperation with The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture. It is a truly exceptional series.

The curriculum features ten videos, each about thirty-nine minutes long. The first episode speaks of the increasing complexity and fragmentation of modern life. Our tendency is either to assimilate with our cultural context or to withdraw. We do not have a clear vision of how God might work in our midst. We do not know how to follow. The series uses the Emmaus Road story as a metaphor for being unable to see Christ among us until our vision is “reframed.” The second episode delves a little deeper into the specific challenges we face.

Beginning in the third episode, the series takes a narrative approach, moving from creation and fall to Israel, to Jesus the King, to new creation, to the Church and the Spirit, and so on, helping us see how our daily work and life is connected with God’s “story” at work in the world. The series concludes with guidance on how we might more authentically be disciples in light of our context and light of God’s unfolding narrative.

The format of each episode is built around the TED Talk concept. Half of the video is a speaker making an engaging presentation. There is a setup segment at the beginning and a wrap-up segment at the end. Interspersed throughout the video are commentary, testimony from biblical scholars and theologians, and vignettes by people from business, law, education, and science. People like Scot McKnight, Andy Crouch, Amy Sherman, and Eugene Peterson are among the contributors. Each episode is very well produced, moving along at an engaging pace.

I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing this curriculum is. I have served in various leadership capacities within the Presbyterian Church, USA, and various faith-based entities for most of my adult life. At some point in the late 1990s, I discerned that many Christians have difficulty seeing how their discipleship connects with daily life in meaningful ways. Church has become ancillary to “real life.” The Church is where to receive therapeutic care, get moral instruction for children, or join programs that offer opportunities for charity and the pursuit of justice outside of real life. The Church is not a place where we are formed for mission at the workplace and in the mundane affairs of the world. I am convinced that renewal in the Church will begin only when God’s mission and the whole of life are reintegrated.

Key to reintegration is reframing, yet I find precious few people in ecclesiastical structures and academic institutions who see the urgency and centrality of this need. When attempts are made, they usually proceed from a purely theological bent, without dialog with other disciplines like sociology, economics, science, education, and business. They lack winsome authenticity. ReFrame is a refreshing exception.

ReFrame acknowledges its Evangelical milieu, but I am convinced the curriculum would be well received across a wide range of denominational and theological communities. I am working out the details of doing multiple small groups with the series at Pine Ridge Presbyterian, starting at Lent. The idea is to buy a digital license and “flip the classroom.” Participants will watch each episode online at a password-protected site and then meet weekly to discuss and apply what was learned. The curriculum is a turnkey product complete with guides and promotional materials.

I have been following Regent College for at least fifteen years and am impressed with its innovation and quality of services. I know of few other institutions like Regent. The College offers classes and degrees that focus on the reintegration of life, and I am sure one purpose of the curriculum is to raise the profile of the academic and practical resources they provide. More power to them! I hope they are so successful that seminaries around the country will feel compelled to follow their lead. Maybe even the Presbyterians one day. ;-)

You definitely need to check out ReFrame. If you go to their site, you will find a two-minute promotional video. Episodes 1 and 5 are free to get a flavor of the experience. Thanks to the ReFrame folks for an exceptional product. I cannot wait to put it to use.

Low-income communities are not needy -- they have assets

Faith and Leadership Blog: John McKnight: Low-income communities are not needy -- they have assets

Most people and institutions that want to serve poor communities are focused on what the residents lack. “What are the needs?” is often the first question asked.

John McKnight says that approach has it backward.

“I knew from being a neighborhood organizer that you could never change people or neighborhoods with the basic proposition that what we need to do is fix them,” he said. “What made for change was communities that believed they had capacities, skills, abilities and could create power when they came together in a community.”

McKnight is co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and professor emeritus of communications studies and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

He and his longtime colleague John Kretzmann created the asset-based community development (ABCD) strategy for community building. Together they wrote a basic guide to the approach called “Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets.”

McKnight also wrote “The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits” and, with co-author Peter Block, “The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.” ...

McKnight spoke to Faith & Leadership about asset-based community development and the role the church can play in helping people identify and leverage their strengths to empower their communities. The following is an edited transcript. ...

Excellent piece on asset-based community development. Read the whole thing. More churches need to learn to think this way.

I Stand With My Friends ... Black and Blue

There is an old joke about a mealy-mouthed politician who says, “Some of my friends are for this measure. Some of my friends are against it. As me for me, I stand with my friends.” I’ve always loved that joke, but through the years, I’ve learned that there are circumstances where standing with my friends is the right response.

Today I am told I must choose between supporting police officers and supporting minorities who tell of problems in dealing with law enforcement. Each camp points to the most extreme behavior of opponents to justify dismissive and dehumanizing responses. Yet one of the most challenging articles I’ve read came shortly after the Ferguson verdict. (Why I Feel Torn About the Ferguson Verdict) Safiya Jafari Simmons, a black woman who is the wife of a police officer and the mother of a black son, writes of her dilemma in telling her husband to do what he has to do to come home safe each night while also worrying about what may happen to her son through profiling or a misunderstanding by police. The choice between supporting law enforcement and supporting minorities with frustrations is false.

As we mourn the loss of the two murdered NYPD officers, let us pray for God’s shalom to be made full, especially as we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Shalom. And let us pray that God would reveal to each of us our role in realizing that shalom.

#bluelivesmatter #blacklivesmatter

Race and Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement

Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt recently recounted this conversation between her and her son:

I'm on an airplane with my son. And he looks up and he sees a black man, and he says, "Hey, that guy looks like daddy."

And I look at the guy, he doesn't look anything like my husband, and I notice he's the only black guy on the plane. And he says, "I hope he doesn't rob the plane."

And I said, "Well, why would you say that?"

And he looked at me and he said, "I don't know why I said that."

And so we're living with such severe racial stratification that even a 5-year-old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.

Children (even black children!) learn that black men are suspect as early as five years old. One recent study showed that more than 40% of people think many or most black men are violent. It was 15% for white men and black women and even lower for white women.

Another interesting study flashed a picture to a group of people. Two white men were fighting. One was holding a knife. When asked who had held the knife, most of the subjects gave the correct answer. A second picture featured a white man and a black man. The white man was holding the knife. When asked about this second picture, most people (black and white) incorrectly identified the black man as holding the knife. Deeply engrained biases actually alter what we see. What might this mean for law enforcement?

I have documented that the rate of justifiable homicide by law enforcement has been increasing since 2000, even as the crime rate has been falling. I take this as a proxy indicator for more violence in general being used by law enforcement. I have also noted two possible contributing factors. First, "Broken windows" policing came into vogue in the wake of a crack cocaine epidemic twenty-five years ago. Minor violations were enforced to restore order in beleaguered neighborhoods. People wanted more aggressive policing. Second, 9/11 has moved our collective psyche toward viewing ourselves as continuously living with imminent threats. Policing tactics become more aggressive in an emergency, which may spill over into everyday policing. I would suggest a third factor upon more reflection. The economy's collapse in 2008 has left many people with much less confidence in the government's ability to work well and protect them. Domestic events like Sandy Hook and international events like ISIS beheadings create a sense of the world running amok.

These factors may explain why justifiable homicides have been increasing, but why should this have a disproportionate impact on blacks killed by police relative to the rate of crime in their communities? Some activists see a calculated race war against African Americans. Law enforcement is only one step removed from Bull Connor or the KKK. Studies suggest that about 25% of Americans have openly hostile attitudes toward African Americans. Law enforcement officers are drawn from society, so they are undoubtedly represented among law enforcement. With 17,000+ law enforcement agencies in the U.S., I have no doubt particular law enforcement agencies can come under the sway of such attitudes. But the idea that law enforcement community is part of some orchestrated act of oppression goes much too far. All the evidence points to most police officers being highly dedicated people who genuinely want to serve all the public well. Does this mean that apart from a few bad apples, there is no racial component to what is happening?

As I listen to conversations about recent controversies, I hear a common refrain from many in the white community. If there was no explicit exclamation of racial animus by a police officer, then there was no racism. Any attempt to raise race as a piece of the problem is viewed as "reading things in," or even worse, an attempt at race-baiting or playing the race card. This seeing racial bias purely in terms of conscious motivations of individual actors errors in another direction.

I think race is an issue in the rise of justifiable homicide rates in at least three important ways. First, look at the strategies and tactics we use. Neighborhoods most at risk from becoming bases of serious criminal activity are poorer neighborhoods. Minorities make up disproportionately high percentages of these neighborhoods. Any aggressive policing strategy, like broken windows, will disproportionately impact minorities. Confrontational interactions between law enforcement and citizens will rise, and more interactions mean more opportunities for lethal force. In some cases, our policing strategies set the stage for disproportionate negative impacts on police regardless of the motivations of any particular officers.

Second, we have deep-seated perceptions about black communities and black men. Officers have the discretion to use lethal force when they feel threatened. Like the young black boy on the airplane, a black man will be perceived as a greater threat. The threshold for an officer to act or react will be lower. Without any willful malice toward black men, race will have impacted the death of some black men. Studies show that, with good training, officers can learn to ignore irrelevant issues like race, but how widespread and effective is that training?

Third, there are bad or incompetent actors in law enforcement who do not belong there. Law enforcement is difficult disciplined work, and, as with any human organization, unqualified people will slip through even the best screening process. So let us not ignore that some officers harbor ill will. Aggressive protocols allow the expression of this will.

So even absent conscious malice by individual players, race is thoroughly "baked in" to our law enforcement decisions. It is easy for me to be emotionally detached from this problem as a middle-aged white guy, but when your whole life is peppered with what feels like constant harassment by law enforcement, it is a different story. Marry to this frustration the living memory of once pervasive lynching and miscarriages of justice done with impunity toward the black community, and visceral reactions are unsurprising. Justifiable homicide is just an extreme example of a more pervasive reality.

So I will conclude this series of three posts suggesting that what we have is not a law enforcement problem but a societal one. There are bad apples and incompetent players in law enforcement, just as in any human institution, but law enforcement mostly consists of dedicated people who want to serve well. The difference here is that when officers mess up, people can get killed. Standards must be high. But law enforcement is also responsive to the public's demands. And if our fearful demands lead to policies that have unintended negative consequences, should we be blaming law enforcement for those consequences? Better collection of data and reforming a process where the final determination on justifiable homicide is being made by law enforcement agencies and prosecuting attorneys who exist in a symbiotic relationship are two reform measures being discussed. But even before that, we need to reflect on to what degree fear drives us to make bad policy decisions.

But there is another societal problem. Racial perceptions permeate our society. As law enforcement draws its officers from our society, its ranks will reflect society's views. We certainly need to work to drive racial bias out of law enforcement behavior, but foremost we need to work to drive bias out of society. That would, in turn, rectify law enforcement behavior. And to that end, I would suggest that white Americans stop looking to every excess by either rioting protestors or self-aggrandizing activists as a basis for being dismissive of black voices. I'm now moving beyond the issue of justifiable homicide, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can solve problems like these with a narrow focus on reforming law enforcement.

The two previous posts:

Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement by the Numbers

Why the Increase in Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement?

Followership: The Other Side of Leadership

Ivey Business Journal: Followership: The Other Side of Leadership

"... Followership is a straightforward concept.  It is the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a program, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you.  It gets a bit of a bad rap!  How well the followers follow is probably just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead.

The label “excellent follower” can be a backhanded compliment.  It is not a reputation you necessarily want if you are seeking higher corporate office.  There is something of a stigma to followership skills.  Pity because the practical reality is one does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group.  The fact is that in organizations everybody is both a leader and a follower depending on the circumstances which just adds to the paradox of the followership stigma.

Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters:  it matters a lot!  Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done.  Followership problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness.  At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same:  organizational confusion and poor performance. ..."

5 Things I’ve Learned in 5 Weeks Out of Church - Tom LeGrand

Perspectives: 5 Things I’ve Learned in 5 Weeks Out of Church - Tom LeGrand

Consider this official. I am issuing an apology to every member of every church that I have served over the last 20+ years. ...

... But this Sunday Sabbatical has also illustrated some things to me, particularly now that I am working a 9-to-5 (or, more like 7-to-6) day. Honestly, I’ve never had a real job before, one that occupied a truly specific time slot and required a very specific and demanding schedule. Yes, church work is intense, but the one perk is that it usually has a great deal of flexibility in the day-to-day operations.

I actually think that every pastor needs a season of the workaday world, as it would benefit both the leader and the led. It is amazing how much can be learned by living in the same mode as the people to whom you are called to minister. Here are a few that I’ve picked up: ...

Getting up for church is hard

Family Matters

Yes, It’s okay to attend church where your children want to go

A Sunday off is not a damnable offense

Meaningful relationships are much better motivators than guilt

Good reflection.

 

Prudent but not puritan (Religion and Spending)

Economist: Prudent but not puritan

...  After using a lot of fancy statistical tools, they came up with some expected findings, and some rather unexpected ones. Households "with a strong commitment to faith"— demonstrated by higher spending on religious activities—are less likely to be weighed down by excessive mortgage outgoings or loan payments for cars. Compared with other households, they are more likely to be home owners but their property tax burden tends to be less—suggesting that "some moderation in [the] selection of home in terms of extravagance or location...."

Devout households seem keener on mitigating risk and therefore spend more on life insurance and health insurance; they lay out less on alcohol and tobacco and more on domestic appliances, including cooking utensils. Such homely behaviour is most heavily correlated with religious belief in the American South and Midwest, which are also the regions with "the most conservative interpretation of scripture," Mr Showers notes, in an article in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. (The research more-or-less conflates the term "religious" with "Christian" or "Judeo-Christian" which in the American context is only a smallish distortion.)

But religious families do allow themselves some earthly pleasures. Indeed, they are if anything a little more likely than other households to spend spare money on clothing or jewellery, although the amount each household splurges on jewellery is a bit less. Some of that jewellery, of course, might be devotional: silver crosses or stars of David. They are as likely as anybody else to be spending money on child support or alimony—a proxy for failed marriages—and they are as inclined as other folk to incur interest payments on credit cards. ...

"What do you have in your hands?"

I love this short video!

"In Scripture, when God’s people approach Him with their dreams and desires, He sometimes answers with an unexpected question: 'What do you have in your hands?'"

Hope International

How can we reduce polarization and confirmation bias?

We live in an increasingly polarized society. How do we reverse this trend? My reflection on this topic keeps taking me back to the basic question raised in the sociology of knowledge: How do we know what we think we know? During college in the late 1970s, I read Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman’s classic The Social Construction of Reality. Their description of constructing and reinforcing reality with social interaction is one of the most important books I have ever read. It gave me a lifelong interest in the field.

If studying this field has taught me anything, coherence of ideas is not enough. I value coherence, but we must test ideas in the real world. And yet, the way I go about testing ideas will be influenced by the socially constructed reality in which I live. There is no complete escape from our psychosocial context, but we can stretch our understanding.

For these reasons, I relish discussing topics with people of differing perspectives. Unfortunately, many topics that interest me are bristling with political implications. Civil conversation is difficult. Observations that challenge conventional understanding typically provoke derisive banter instead of substantive dialog. Dispassionate presentation of factual information with measured commentary does the same thing. No matter what I try, keeping dialog dispassionately focused on the substance is hard. Why?

I think economist Timothy Taylor has some great insight. In his post Political Polarization and Confirmation Bias he writes:

Part of the reason American voters have become more polarized in recent decades is that both sides feel better-informed.

The share of Democrats who had “unfavorable” attitudes about the Republican Party rose from 57 percent in 1994 to 79 percent in 2014, according to a Pew Research Center survey in June called “Political Polarization in the American Public.”

Similarly, the percentage of Republicans who had unfavorable feelings about the Democratic Party climbed from 68 percent to 82 percent.

When you “feel” better informed, you tend to be more confident about your views and more dismissive of your opponent’s views. But are we truly better informed?

A common response to this increasing polarization is to call for providing more unbiased facts. But in a phenomenon that psychologists and economists call “confirmation bias,” people tend to interpret additional information as additional support for their pre-existing ideas.

One classic study of confirmation bias was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1979 by three Stanford psychologists, Charles G. Lord, Lee Ross and Mark R. Lepper. In that experiment, 151 college undergraduates were surveyed about their beliefs on capital punishment. Everyone was then exposed to two studies, one favoring and one opposing the death penalty. They were also provided details of how these studies were done, along with critiques and rebuttals for each study.

The result of receiving balanced pro-and-con information was not greater intellectual humility — that is, a deeper perception that your own preferred position might have some weaknesses and the other side might have some strengths. Instead, the result was a greater polarization of beliefs. Student subjects on both sides — who had received the same packet of balanced information! — all tended to believe that the information confirmed their previous position.

A number of studies have documented the reality of confirmation bias since then. In an especially clever 2013 study, Dan M. Kahan (Yale University), Ellen Peters (Ohio State), Erica Cantrell Dawson (Cornell) and Paul Slovic (Oregon) showed that people’s ability to interpret numbers declines when a political context is added.

In this second study, the exact same numbers were used to make the case for the efficacy of a skin cream and for the efficacy of gun control. In the former case, the respondents accurately interpreted the numbers but in the latter case they could not, claiming the numbers supported pre-existing understanding when clearly they did not.

Now stop!!! What are you thinking about this very second? If you are like most of me, you are thinking about personal experiences where you witnessed this in others. If you are a liberal, you are likely thinking of those Fox News-watching Neanderthals denying climate change. Or, if you are conservative, those bleeding-heart mush-heads who think the government can provide quality healthcare. If so, then you are missing the point! The issue is how you and I engage in confirmation bias. We all do it. Yet by definition, it is hard to detect because it happens at a subconscious level.

Taylor writes:

… But what about you? One obvious test is how much your beliefs change depending on the party of a president.

For example, have your opinions on the economic dangers of large budget deficits varied, coincidentally, with whether the deficits in question occurred under President Bush (or Reagan) or under President Obama?

Is your level of outrage about presidents who push the edge of their constitutional powers aimed mostly at presidents of “the other” party? What about your level of discontent over government surveillance of phones and e-mails? Do your feelings about military actions in the Middle East vary by the party of the commander in chief?

He lists other examples. Then this:

Of course, for all of these issues and many others, there are important distinctions that can be drawn between similar policies at different times and places. But if your personal political compass somehow always rotates to point to how your pre-existing beliefs are already correct, then you might want to remember how confirmation bias tends to shade everyone’s thinking.

When it comes to political beliefs, most people live in a cocoon of semi-manufactured outrage and self-congratulatory confirmation bias. The Pew surveys offer evidence on the political segregation in neighborhoods, places of worship, sources of news — and even in who we marry.

I would add two more observations. First, we do not hold our political views in a vacuum. We tend to associate with similar people and build community on shared values. Our views become part of an integrated web of factors that give us identity, a sense of community, and give coherence to the world around us. The more deeply embedded we are in a community the more deeply reinforced is the validity of our positions. Because of this, changing our position on an issue is rarely just an intellectual exercise.

A change in a position can pose a significant existential threat with substantial consequences to our relationships and sense of well-being. Keep in mind that Americans today say they are less likely to marry someone of a different political party than they are of another religion. What would it mean to change your political views in such a marriage? Furthermore, it is one thing to learn that I have been using the wrong skin cream. It is another to discover that as a compassionate, justice-embracing person I believe myself to be, the fair-trade coffee I have been enthusiastically promoting is little more than a marketing ploy or that an abstinence program I have championed has no impact on teen pregnancy. What does that do to my personal identity? Change of views has deeply personal and emotional consequences.

Second, I came across this article as I was preparing this post, Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology. The authors write:

Accumulating evidence suggests that cognition and emotion are deeply intertwined, and a view of segregating cognition and emotion is becoming obsolete. People tend to think that their political views are purely cognitive (i.e., rational). However, our results further support the notion that emotional processes are tightly coupled to complex and high-dimensional human belief systems, and such emotional processes might play a much larger role than we currently believe, possibly outside our awareness of its influence.

This is critical. When I initiate discussions about economics or demography, I very often get an emotional response. Why? Why do I respond like this? Sometimes it is because I do not have the time or the expertise to grasp what was said. I turn to heuristics as a shortcut, making intuitive assessments about what someone said based on experience in other contexts.

At an almost unconscious level, I reason from experience that someone who talks about topic X and uses certain phrases or reasoning patterns also holds a collection of other viewpoints. I then surmise what a person is really getting at. I put that assessment through an emotional filter based on how I feel about this type of person. If my feelings are positive, I congratulate her on a well-reasoned argument. If my feelings are negative, I congratulate myself for being sensible and go to work postulating how she became so silly or malicious. In either case, actual reasoning about the subject matter is minimal. The truth is that emotion figures into all our assessments, and it is probably best to be humbler about our own reasoning abilities and less hard on emotional responses from others.

Taylor closes his piece with this:

Being opposed to political polarization doesn’t mean backing off from your beliefs. But it does mean holding those beliefs with a dose of humility. If you can’t acknowledge that there is a sensible challenge to a large number (or most?) of your political views, even though you ultimately disagree with that challenge, you are ill-informed.

So, Taylor has offered some thoughts about polarization and confirmation bias. I have added a couple of additional wrinkles. I appreciate Taylor’s call to focus first on the log in my own eye. I need to be more self-aware of my proclivities, and I could often have more humility. What else? How can we reduce polarization and confirmation bias? What do you think?

Gossip is Good?

The Atlantic just ran an article called Have You Heard? Gossip Is Actually Good and Useful. The teaser was, "Talking behind other people's backs may not always be nice, but sometimes it can help promote cooperation and self-improvement." It is a very interesting read. You could discuss it from several different angles. This paragraph caught my attention:

As the study explains, "by hearing about the misadventures of others, we may not have to endure costs to ourselves," by making the same mistake. And because negative stories tend to stick better in the mind than positive stories, it makes sense that gossip about people who violated norms would be more instructive than gossip about people who are really great at norms. (What's more, one study found that sharing a negative opinion of a person with someone is better for bonding with them than sharing a positive opinion.)

It strikes me that a considerable portion of political discourse plays a similar role. A small group of people are having a conversation when someone offhandedly makes a disparaging remark about a politician, a political party, or a public policy. Joe says, "Did you see the news today that this is the 17th straight year where global temps have not increased? So much for global warming." (Or "Did you see the news about the ice caps becoming 10% smaller over the last year? How does anyone deny global warming?") Though it may appear on the surface that the remark invites discussion, most often, it is not. It is being deployed as a means of reinforcing social cohesion. And woe to you if you are not discerning enough to know the difference.

The "appropriate" response is to affirm what has been said with your own comments. Group solidarity is built as group members hear each other express affirming remarks. And as the article suggests, affirming negative opinions seems more potent. Knowing that we all have a common view on this one topic builds a basis for cohesion as we move on to more interaction. It isn't just a philosophical exercise to challenge the remark; it threatens group solidarity.

That leaves a dissenter in a difficult place, especially if he has been public at all with a differing view. If you join the affirming chorus, you may soon be outed as a hypocrite. If you challenge the remark, you will be seen as a troublemaker. If you say nothing, your views may later be discovered, and you will be perceived as deceitful. It is a bit of a minefield.

Another layer of this is that sometimes the person initiating the remark knows that a member(s) of the group has differing views. By disparaging remarks, she signals others to rally to her flag with affirming remarks, putting the dissenter in an awkward or defensive posture. It is an attempt to dominate and enforce solidarity.

The idea that talking about others behind their backs and sharing common disapproval of others generates social cohesion poses some challenging questions for discipleship. I once read that not every movement needs a god, but every movement needs a Satan. I doubt it is possible to escape this dynamic fully. I have no easy answers. But I suspect if we aim to love our neighbor as ourselves, then maybe the first place to begin is by deeply listening to our casual conversations, consciously evaluating what we intend to accomplish with the views we express in any given context.

"Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets" by Dave Geenens - Book Review

Order at Amazon: Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets.

What is the purpose of business, particularly as it relates to the welfare of employees? Economists, business leaders, and theologians engage in endless debate about this topic. Regrettably, it tends to be two separate debates with economists and business leaders talking amongst themselves and theologians talking to each other. The first debate tends to be long on economic ramifications but without considerable reflection on what moral imperatives might be at play. The second debate tends to be long on moral reflection but too often within the context of (sometimes profound) economic illiteracy. Each community tends to view the other with suspicion if not hostility. Layer on top of this the political divide between libertarians who see only a minimal role for government intervention in business and liberals who believe a primary purpose of government is to intervene in economic affairs to ensure equitable outcomes, and you frequently end up with unproductive heated debates.

This inability to reflect both economically and morally on such questions leads to significant compartmentalization, so well described in John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Business People (and What Can Be Done About It. See my blog series on the book here.) Businesses frequently dissuade people from bringing their morals into the workplace. Pastors are reticent to approach the topic, except in platitudes, feeling inadequate to wrestle deeply with economic implications. Some businesspeople prefer not to hear about such topics at Church (either distrusting the pastor’s understanding or because they see the Church as a safe haven from the cares of the world), and most pastors are content to oblige. (And from my experience, those pastors who aggressively raise the topic frequently do so from a variety of deep ideological convictions that tend not to generate helpful dialog and reflection.) Yet we need “courageous conversations,” as Knapp calls them, where we genuinely explore how work and faith interact. But how do we begin such a conversation?

Dave Geenens, Director of the School of Business and Graduate Business Programs at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, has given us a wonderful gift in starting courageous conversations with his new book Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets. This is NOT an academic treatise. It is a fable.

Geenens prefaces the story by noting:

One of the first lessons I learned in business was that nothing is free. Free freight? There is no such thing. That simply means that the cost of freight is covered by profit made elsewhere. By one, get one free? The cost of the second item is covered in the margin of the first one. Interest free? The cost of interest is absorbed in the profit made on the sale of the item. Nothing is free.”

The book introduces Rebecca Morton, founder of the franchise business Cupcakes and Coffee, based in Atchison, Kansas, just as the corporation is about to go public. Rebecca is wrestling with what this means for her and her business, particularly with the increased focus on increasing shareholder value. Then she meets Brother Mark, a Benedictine Monk. Throughout the book, we listen in on Rebecca’s conversations and inner reflections as she tries to make sense of it all.

Geenens draws on Roman Catholic social teaching to highlight the good that business is intended to do. At the risk of spoilers, if the business fails to live out its charge to care for the well-being of its employees, other institutions (namely government) must intervene to correct the inadequacy. The advantage business gains through the neglect of employees and failure to do the good it is intended to do isn’t free. The cost is increased government intervention.

What is the good that business is to do, and how do we achieve it? It is a complicated question that Geenens does not directly answer. Instead, he invites us to consider the four cardinal virtues: justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation. How might these inform us as we think about the intersection of work and faith? I won’t give away the whole story here. Geenens’ ideas are pulled together into one image at the end of the book, but you’ll need to buy the book to see what I mean.

The book is well-written and accessible to most audiences. (No degrees in economics or theology required.) I can see this as a wonderful selection for a church book club, any community of business professionals interested in integrating faith and work, and a text for college or graduate classes. Despite the explicitly Christian context of the story, I think the book has merit beyond discussion in religious communities as we think about business ethics. The book is a wonderful discussion starter … a great starting place for a courageous conversation. Buy your copy now at Amazon: Nothing is Free: The Price Only Business can Pay to Protect Free Markets.

Learning to Fail Fast (in the church)

Lewis Center for Church Leadership: Learning to Fail Fast

"... Petrie advocates what he calls "vertical development" or the advancement in a person's capacity to think in "more complex, systemic, strategic, and interdependent ways (in contrast to horizontal development that adds knowledge, skills, and competencies). New leaders must think differently before they can act differently.

Often the qualities we see in church leaders are precisely those most associated with a low level of vertical development (dependent/conformer) — team player, faithful follower, reliant on authority, seeks direction, and aligns with others. A smaller number function at the next level (independent/achiever) — independent thinker, self-directed, drives an agenda, takes a stand for what they believe, and guided by an internal compass. But today's need is for the more highly developed independent/collaborator leader characterized as interdependent thinker; sees systems, patterns, and connections; longer-term thinking; holds multi-frame perspectives; and holds contradictions.

The new leader must be far more adaptable to changing circumstances. Collaboration is essential in order to span boundaries and develop networks. Leaders will need to be much more comfortable with ambiguity in order to be always looking for clues and patterns in the changing landscape. Just as important, this new way of leading must move beyond leaders to affect the entire organizational culture of the church. Congregations need to expect incomplete solutions, much trial and error, and a great deal of learning about themselves and their contexts. ..."

Amen. Reading this post brought to mind an article I read about Microsoft's evolving software development process. It used to be that Microsoft developed an operating system, released it, and then tried to stabilize it over the next three years. In the meantime, the next system was being designed, but you were mostly stuck with a given format for three years. It was much like building a house and moving in until you moved again in three years, and for that reason, each house had to be delivered pretty much as a fully functional operational house when you moved in. Now operating systems have ongoing updates. There are still occasional major revisions, but there is also constant evolution and correction. The church has got to think more that way as well. The article is somewhat lengthy but an interesting read: How Microsoft dragged its development practices into the 21st century

Global Poverty Is on the Decline, But Almost No One Believes It

Barna: Global Poverty Is on the Decline, But Almost No One Believes It

April 29, 2014—Did you know that, in the past 30 years, the percentage of people in the world who live in extreme poverty has decreased by more than half?

If you said no—if you thought the number had gone up; that more people, not less, live in extreme poverty—you aren't alone. According to a recent Barna Group survey, done in partnership with Compassion International and the new book Hope Rising by Dr. Scott Todd, more than eight in 10 Americans (84%) are unaware global poverty has reduced so drastically. More than two-thirds (67%) say they thought global poverty was on the rise over the past three decades.

Similarly, while both child deaths and deaths caused by HIV/AIDS have decreased worldwide, many Americans wrongly think these numbers are on the rise: 50% of US adults believe child deaths have increased since 1990, and 35% believe deaths from HIV/AIDS have increased in the past five years.

Despite the very real good news, more than two-thirds of US adults (68%) say they do not believe it's possible to end extreme global poverty within the next 25 years. Sadly, concern about extreme global poverty—defined in this study as the estimated 1.4 billion people in countries outside the US who do not have access to clean water, enough food, sufficient clothing and shelter, or basic medicine like antibiotics—has declined from 21% in 2011 to 16% in 2013.

How does this sense of fatalism about global economic and health issues affect Americans' view of the developing world? Does it hinder charitable giving? And are Christians' views any different? ...

Interesting research. I found it interesting how people who regularly attend church are more interested in global poverty and more involved in addressing it than those who don't attend church.

Mission Trips: On Avoiding the Dark Side

I have a deep suspicion, at times cynicism, about short-term mission trips. Some of you already know this about me. I say this with reservation because I know so many people who say a short-term mission trip was so transformative for them (though I do remember reading a study a while back that said these trips have a lasting impact on precious few people.) So while I can freely admit that these trips have positive merits, two things deeply disturb me. One concerns the dignity and welfare of the poor who are supposedly being "helped," and the other is the all too frequent experiential consumerism I fear I hear in those who take these trips.

Rafia Zakaria has an excellent op-ed piece in Aljazeera America, The white tourist's burden. "Growing Western demand for altruistic vacations feeds the white-savior industrial complex." She writes:

... If designer clothes and fancy cars signal material status, his story of a deliberate embrace of poverty and its discomforts signals superiority of character. As summer looms, many Americans — college students, retirees and others who stand at the cusp of life changes — will make similar choices in search of transformational experiences. An industry exists to make these easier to make: the voluntourism business.

A voluntourist is someone like Jack, who wishes to combine exotic vacation travel with volunteer work. For anyone interested in being one, a dizzying array of choices awaits, from building schools in Uganda or houses in Haiti to hugging orphans in Bali. In all of them, the operational equation is the same: wealthy Westerners can do a little good, experience something that their affluent lives do not offer, and, as in Jack's case, have a story to tell that places them in the ranks of the kindhearted and worldly wise.

As admirably altruistic as it sounds, the problem with voluntourism is its singular focus on the volunteer's quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient community's actual needs...

It troubles me that the central aim is often not to discern how to authentically partner with others to improve well-being. Rather the aim is for the volunteer to have a particular type of "experience" that is meaningful to them. That is not to say authentic partnership can't be meaningful, but it is to say that true partnership is frequently frustrating, messy, and at times disappointing. Partnership is also long-term. The traveler is often actually a consumer, purchasing an experience for their own therapeutic purposes.

It troubles me further that for volunteers on these trips, the experience becomes a type of conspicuous consumption. Just like sporting my new iPhone shows off my techie style, talking about my noble experience working with the poor becomes a way of sporting my superior moral character and street smarts. And what really troubles me most is that I can identify these traits in my own life at times, and I am deeply aware of how seductive this stuff is.

But the problem doesn't end here. As Zakaria shows, these trips are too often disruptive and destructive of the long-term welfare of the people being "helped." They can destroy jobs, break up families, and foster dependence. This type of work needs to be carefully scrutinized, but far too often, good intentions are thought to be enough. Due diligence and serious introspection are needed.

Zakaria rightly concludes:

Despite its flaws, the educational aspect of voluntourism's cross-cultural exchange must be saved, made better instead of being rejected completely. Natalie Jesionka, a columnist at the Daily Muse, offers future voluntourists some direction on making a real impact on their trips. ...

Two book-length resources I would suggest are Corbett and Fikkert's When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself, and Bob Lupton's, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It.

Religion Links

1. Huffington Post: Understanding Why Americans Seem More Religious Than Other Western Powers

Many Western Europeans think of Americans as hopelessly, bafflingly, and dangerously, religious. Many Americans think of Western Europeans as distressingly, inexplicably, and unrelentingly, secular. In 2009, the German sociologist Hans Joas observed that “it is widely accepted that the United States is far more religious than practically any comparable European state.” And he noted Western European puzzlement: “The more secularized large parts of Europe became, the more exotic the religiosity of the United States seemed to European observers.” So why are Americans, compared with Western Europeans, seemingly so religious? And are we as religious as we seem? ...

2. Business Insider: Countries With More Money Tend To Be More Godless

3. Pew Research: Global Religious Diversity

4. The Atlantic: The Changing Face of Christian Politics

... Christian political engagement is changing in this country as believers seek to untangle their faith from the worldliness of partisan politics and ideology. The melding of Christianity and partisan politics has been 40 years in the making, but the costs of that entanglement have only become clear to Christians over the last decade. ...

... A Christianity that seeks to unilaterally impose itself on the nation is unlikely be fruitful, but it is similarly unrealistic and unproductive to force a secular morality on believers. ...

5. Christian Century: Religious nones may not be who you think they are

... But they may not be who you think they are. Today, nones include many more unbranded believers than atheists, and they show an in­creasingly diverse racial and ethnic mix.

Researchers say this is already making nones’ attitudes and opinions less predictably liberal on social issues.

A survey of Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute found 21 percent are “unaffiliated” (PRRI’s umbrella term for a diverse group including atheists, seculars, and people who say they still believe in God); 20 percent are Catholic; and 19 percent are white evangelical.

“Nones are dancing on the razor’s edge of leading,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI. ...

6. Huff Post: American Bible Reading Statistics Reveal Who Is Studying The Good Book And Why

... According to a study, “The Bible in American Life," conducted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, 50% of Americans read some form of scripture in the past year, and 48% of those read the Bible. Four in 5 read it at least once a month, and 9% of Americans say they read the Bible daily. ...

7. Religion News Service: Bible study: More people say the Good Book isn’t a God book

The study, conducted annually by Barna Research, finds:

• The most “engaged” readers — who read the Bible almost daily and see it as sacred — are now matched by “skeptics” who say it’s just a book of stories and advice. Both groups measured 19 percent.
• While the engaged stayed steady since 2011, skeptics grew by 10 percentage points — since the same survey was conducted in 2011.
• Skeptics cut into the number of folks Barna calls “Bible friendly,” those who read the Bible occasionally and see it as inspired by God. The “friendly” demographic fell to 37 percent, down from 45 percent in 2011.
• The percentage of people who view the Bible as sacred has dropped to 79 percent, down from 86 percent in 2011.

8. Faith & Leadership: Disruption and leadership development in mainline Protestantism

Mainline Protestantism has been slow to create new models of clergy leadership development that take into account the disruptive forces acting in congregations and the culture. ...

9. Boston Globe: Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples?

A new wave of thinkers says yes — and is looking to Scripture for support. ...

10. Cannon & Culture: An Antidote for ADHD Activism

Review by Jordan J. Ballor of Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, The World is Not Ours to Save: Finding the Freedom to Do Good (IVP, 2012)

Writing as a lifelong activist against nuclear weapons, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson is uniquely placed to criticize a brand of evangelical social activism that emphasizes energy and enthusiasm over patience and perseverance. Christian obedience requires all these at various times and in various manifestations, but Wigg-Stephenson detects an imbalance at the heart of contemporary Christian cultural engagement that threatens to wither the roots of the entire enterprise. He is greatly concerned about the “cause fatigue” that he commonly, and increasingly, sees among younger Christians. ...

11. Christianity Today: Aged Out of Church

Ask anyone who's hit midlife, and they'll tell you: this stage is no joke for us.

The emotional, spiritual, physical, and relational shifts that occur at midlife can lead to disconnection from old social networks and a profound sense of loneliness, which brings with it serious health risks. At this point, many also feel drained by the increasingly common occurrence of death, disease, divorce, and the changes that redefine old friendships.

And yet, rather than engage these important but uncomfortable issues that come with aging, our culture—including, at times, the church—would rather laugh it off....

12. Religion News Service: Survey finds growth, vitality in multisite church model

(RNS) The vast majority of multisite churches are growing, according to a new study, and they are seeing more involvement from lay people and newcomers after they open an additional location.

Nearly one in 10 U.S. Protestants attends a congregation with multiple campuses, according to findings released Tuesday (March 11) in the “Leadership Network/Generis Multisite Church Scorecard.” ...

13. Atlantic: Greed Is Good: A 300-Year History of a Dangerous Idea

Not long ago, the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled. How did we come to accept it? ...

14. Huff Post: Why Do People Go to Church?

... What are we doing in worship? We are sorting through our mixed motives and mysterious desires. We are learning God's story again. We are returning home so that we can go with power into the everyday world.

15. Library of Economics and Liberty: You're Not Pushing Paper Across A Desk. You're Saving the World.

In my profession as an economics professor and through churches I have attended, I've been around a lot of people who want to "make a difference." They almost inevitably equate "making a difference" with "working for a government or a non-profit organization like a church that is dedicated, at least in part, to helping poor people." Rarely do I hear anyone say "I want to work in accounts receivable for a company that makes faucets--or worse, a company that just sells faucets and other sundries."

But here's the irony: I suspect that you will probably make a bigger, albeit harder to see, difference in the lives of many by working in accounts receivable for Amalgamated Faucets than you will on your two-week summer mission trip or in your career as a relief worker. ...

16. Christian Century: TV Protestants

An episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead features a scene in a Baptist church that has a Catholic-looking crucifix. HBO’s new series True Detective includes a scene in which a fundamentalist preacher crosses himself. These are two isolated examples of how the people involved in making television shows and movies don’t know or don’t care about the differences between different forms of Christianity. ...

Two-thirds of churched adults say it has been at least three years or more since they heard church teachings on work and career

Barna Group: Three Trends on Faith, Work and Calling

I'm two months slow in posting this article, but it is important.

... Barna Group's new research shows that three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) say they are looking for ways to live a more meaningful life. Whether such meaning is found in family, career, church, side projects or elsewhere, these are all questions of vocation—that is, the way in which people feel "called" to certain types of work and life choices. And in 2014, these questions remain as strong as ever for millions of Americans

Among Christians, there is an additional question: "What does God want me to do with my life?" According to Barna Group's study, only 40% of practicing Christians say they have a clear sense of God's calling on their lives. Christian Millennials are especially sensitive to this divine prompting—nearly half (48%) say they believe God is calling them to different work, yet they haven't yet made such a change.

Sermons are commonly preached on evangelism, discipleship, and spiritual disciplines—but what about vocation? It turns out that most churchgoers are craving more direction and discipleship when it comes to the theology of calling, especially as it relates to work. Barna research shows nearly two-thirds of churched adults say it has been at least three years or more since they heard church teachings on work and career, and yet, the workplace is where most Americans spend a the biggest share of their waking hours. ...

The implied message: Your work is irrelevant and without connection to your discipleship. Meaningful work is the purview of church institutions, and only the work associated with "ministry" (evangelism, charity, and justice activities) is of value.

Does God Ordain Us to the Hardware Business?

I preached at Pine Ridge Presbyterian Church, in Kansas City, MO, on March 16, 2014. The sermon begins by wondering if it is appropriate to ordain people to the hardware business. The sermon text is Genesis 12:1-4, and the real issue is the ministry of work in everyday life. I think this is the first time I have ever preached on this topic. See what you think.

PRPC Mar 16 2014 from Jay Waddell on Vimeo.

Revisiting Wealth - Bob Lupton

This is from Bob Lupton, FCS Urban Ministries, in the Urban Perspectives newsletter. He is always thought-provoking. This issue was especially good! (Note: Urban Perspectives allows copying these articles if attribution is given.)

Revisiting Wealth

Wealth. A sign of God’s favor. At least that’s how it was viewed in Old Testament times. Wealth was equated with prominence, influence, leadership, and yes, even righteousness. Consider Job and Abraham. Oh yes, there were evil and corrupt rich men to be sure. The prophets took them on. But generally riches were seen as evidence of God’s blessing. That’s why the disciples were so puzzled by Jesus’ pronouncement that it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. “Well who can get in, if not the wealthy?!” they questioned. It was clear that they viewed wealth like most other devout Jews – as a sign of God’s favor. Their Teacher was casting an entirely new (and dubious) light on the nature of riches.

Money, power, prestige – these would no longer be the measures of prominence in this Kingdom Jesus was introducing. Meekness, humility, compassion – these would become the defining attributes of greatness. Rich people could certainly join, He said, but this new order of things would be difficult for them – difficult to divest their personal assets rather than contine to accumulate more, difficult to subordinate their privileged status to those of lesser social standing, difficult to place their security in God rather than in their wealth. It would not be impossible, He said, just difficult. Matthew the tax collector was case in point, and of course the very wealthy Zacchaeus. Luke the physician was another. But by and large the wealthy were relegated to lower standing in the pecking order of the Kingdom. It was all upside down – the first being last and the last first. Big change from Old Testament to New.

And so the value of being wealthy was turned on its ear. The well-off became suspect. It was a rich man who treated poor Lazarus poorly and was condemned to eternal damnation. A rich young ruler too tied to his wealth to become a follower. A proud rich man in the Temple whose offering was unacceptable. A successful farmer who took early retirement who was declared “a fool.”  Deceitful Ananias and Sapphira, tragic examples of rich folk who held out on God. Wealth became associated with self-indulgence, with mercilessness, with arrogance, with fraudulence. As a matter of fact, one is hard pressed to find a single reference in the New Testament affirming wealth as God’s blessing. Warnings, yes, but no recognition of its essential role in Shalom.

But just behind the scenes, unmentioned but clearly present, were wealthy supporters of this Kingdom. Zacchaeus was still one of the richest men in Jericho even after he made restitution and gave half his money to the poor. And what about Matthew’s tax business and Luke’s medical practice? And the women of means who supported the Messiah campaign? And members of the early church that sold property to underwrite the church budget? Oh yes, wealth was there alright. It’s just that generosity and self-sacrifice and living by faith were the themes that got the sermon coverage.

But then, how could it be any different? Everybody in the early church was readying for the eminent return of the Messiah. Everyone was on a short-term schedule. Don’t even get married, the apostle Paul urged. Put all your energy into preparedness for the second coming. But Christ didn’t return as expected. (Not yet.)  And so in time everybody began settling into a new normal of church and community life, some thriving, others surviving. The themes of generosity, self-sacrifice and living by faith imbedded themselves in the culture of the church. Wealth remained suspect. The apostle James made quite sure that the rich were not shown deference.

And so the issue churns. Those who create wealth continue to receive the warnings while those modest souls who live off the benefits of the economy that wealth-producers create receive the affirmation. John Coors, a very wealthy and very devout Christian, calls it an “industry of making the rich feel guilty.”  Billionaire Robert Kern, who loves the church but endures the judgment, has allocated a large portion of his estate to educating ministers in the fundamentals of how the economy works.

“Give it all away,” Jesus said. Even your second coat. Don’t concern yourself about tomorrow. Budgeting?   Trust a miracle. Hmm. Does the One who holds the economies of the world in his hand not realize that thoughtful planning and responsible investing are essential for stable societies? Was it not He who gave the promise of prosperity to Israel if they would keep His commands? Was He not the One who warned Joseph in a dream about seven years of famine that would befall Egypt, and positioned him to plan ahead during seven years of plenty? How then are we to understand this radical “take-no-thought-for-tomorrow” departure from divinely guided resource management?

He came to fulfill the law, not do away with it, He said. Don’t abandon the God-given teachings and principles of the past – take them to a deeper level. The blessing of wealth is meant for the Shalom of the entire community, not to be hoarded for personal sumptuousness. Managed well, it provides a stable lifestyle for a workforce and their families, stimulates ancillary enterprises, contributes to the prosperity of the whole village or region. No, He did not come to destroy Shalom but to inspire it. Admittedly, He did use some highly provocative words and actions to shake up a religious culture that was misusing wealth to amass personal power, privilege and possessions. Scattering stacks of money-changers’ cash all over the Temple portico floor was a bit extreme perhaps. But sometimes dramatic intervention is required when greed and self-indulgence become acceptable norms within the Temple community. And He certainly did that!

But perhaps the time has come to bring theological balance back to our understanding of wealth. 2000 years of cautions for those who have the gift of wealth creation may be an adequate length of time to make the point that mammon is seductive, that one’s heart must be carefully guarded against its enticements. At a time when the entire world is awakening to the reality that healthy economic systems are fundamental to the elimination of extreme poverty, perhaps this is a moment for resourced members of the Western church – who have unparalleled capacity to create profitable businesses – to step forward. Perhaps this is the time when the church begins to see itself as more than a purveyor of compassionate service, but as a catalyst of just and fruitful economies.   Might this be a turning point when the wealthiest church in history awakens to the reality that their job creators are the very ones gifted by God to bring economic wholeness to struggling souls too long resigned to unending poverty?

Should Christians Really Stop Saying This?

A Facebook friend linked this article this week, The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying. I get the gist of what he is saying, but I also have reservations. He is a businessperson and tells of how a friend asked how his business was going. He answered with his usual response:

"Definitely feeling blessed. Last year was the best year yet for my business. And it looks like this year will be just as busy."

But on further reflection, he has concluded that it is wrong for him to say that. Two reasons:

... First, when I say that my material fortune is the result of God's blessing, it reduces The Almighty to some sort of sky-bound, wish-granting fairy who spends his days randomly bestowing cars and cash upon his followers. I can't help but draw parallels to how I handed out M&M's to my own kids when they followed my directions and chose to poop in the toilet rather than in their pants. Sure, God wants us to continually seek His will, and it's for our own good. But positive reinforcement?

God is not a behavioral psychologist.

Second, and more importantly, calling myself blessed because of material good fortune is just plain wrong. For starters, it can be offensive to the hundreds of millions of Christians in the world who live on less than $10 per day. You read that right. Hundreds of millions who receive a single-digit dollar "blessing" per day. ...

He goes on to talk about the Beatitudes and talks about how it is the poor and the marginalized who are described as blessed. He concludes by noting:

My blessing is this. I know a God who gives hope to the hopeless. I know a God who loves the unlovable. I know a God who comforts the sorrowful. And I know a God who has planted this same power within me. Within all of us.

And for this blessing, may our response always be,

"Use me."

Since I had this conversation, my new response is simply, "I'm grateful." Would love to hear your thoughts.

There is a lot of truth in this. I find myself strongly identifying with his observations ... and yet ...

What about passages like Deut 8:17-19:

"17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today." NRSV

I have been in small groups with countless businesspeople and entrepreneurs. What I hear from so many of them is profound gratitude for the opportunity to express what they understand as a God-given gift for creativity. They feel grateful because they can benefit their customers, workers, families, and, yes, themselves. When I hear them talk about being blessed, I don't hear them saying, "I did all the right stuff, now see how God rewarded me." Most are intensely aware of their shortcomings and make endless mistakes, yet they are still here in their businesses. They sense God's presence with them in their work, but I don't get the sense that they think that those whose businesses fail do so because of a lack of God's presence. They know people who have done everything seemingly right and don't make it. They feel blessed in the sense that they are where they are in God's grand scheme of things.

What I worry about is the compartmentalization of our faith and the business world. If the businessperson claims all credit for achieving success in creating a sustainable, profitable business, we chastise her for attributing success to herself alone. But if she talks about being blessed in her work (i.e., God had a hand in her success), then that also is taboo because she is saying God withheld blessing from someone else who didn't do well. In short, if you are in business, you are only entitled to have vague feelings of gratitude but not to see God as present in your daily life.

I'm not saying that the way "blessing" is used is without abuse. Someone in the article's comments section talked about "blessed to be a blessing" as a corrective, and I think that has merit. But I worry that the thinking in this article just drives a deeper wedge between faith and daily life. Maybe I read too much between the lines, but it seems that the thinking here is evidence of a deep ambivalence so much of the church has about business and the people who make their living there.

Any thoughts?

A Happy Life May not be a Meaningful Life

Scientific American: A Happy Life May not be a Meaningful Life

Tasks that seem mundane, or even difficult, can bring a sense of meaning over time.

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once wrote, "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." For most people, feeling happy and finding life meaningful are both important and related goals. But do happiness and meaning always go together? It seems unlikely, given that many of the things that we regularly choose to do – from running marathons to raising children – are unlikely to increase our day-to-day happiness. Recent research suggests that while happiness and a sense of meaning often overlap, they also diverge in important and surprising ways. ...

... Interestingly, their findings suggest that money, contrary to popular sayings, can indeed buy happiness. Having enough money to buy what one needs in life, as well as what one desires, were also positively correlated with greater levels of happiness. However, having enough money seemed to make little difference in life's sense of meaning. This same disconnect was recently found in a multi-national study conducted by Shigehiro Oishi and Ed Diener, who show that people from wealthy countries tend to be happier, however, they don't see their lives as more meaningful. In fact, Oishi and Diener found that people from poorer countries tend to see their lives as more meaningful. ...

... Participants in the study who were more likely to agree with the statement, "I am a giver," reported less happiness than people who were more likely to agree with, "I am a taker." However, the "givers" reported higher levels of meaning in their lives compared to the "takers." In addition, spending more time with friends was related to greater happiness but not more meaning. ...

... It is clear that a highly meaningful life may not always include a great deal of day-to-day happiness. And, the study suggests, our American obsession with happiness may be intimately related to a feeling of emptiness, or a life that lacks meaning.

Fascinating article. It made me think of two guys talking about a friend who had bought a $1,000 tie. The first guy says, "Buying that tie won't be him happiness." The second guy says, "Sure it will ... for about 24 hours."

It strikes me that happiness is more fleeting and driven by immediate circumstances while meaning has greater resilience, not easily influenced by the immediate circumstances of any given moment. I also expect, as hinted at the end of the article, that what many of us are genuinely pursuing is meaning but mistaking happiness for meaning. I wonder if there is a role for the Church in all of this. ;-)

 

Religion Links

1. Business Insider: A Fascinating New Poll Shows That Americans Are Losing Faith In God

A new Harris Poll released today reveals that only 74% of Americans believe in God, an 8% decline since 2009.

Before today, U.S. adults had remained fairly consistent in their religious beliefs — 82% of U.S. respondents previously reported that they believed there was a God since 2005.

In another decline, only 54% of Americans are now "absolutely certain" in God's existence, a 12% decrease over the last decade. ...

2. Daily Mail: The Bible-ignorant [British] youngsters who can't tell Noah from Adam: Third of children didn't know Nativity story came from Holy Book

• One in three Britons didn't know where story of birth of Jesus could be read
• Some 54 per cent of children never read Bible stories by adults, study found
• Campaigners now fear the religion is in a state of permanent retreat

3. Christian Newswire: 92% of Americans Own a Bible but Only 16% Read it Daily

4. Religion News Service: Respect for clergy drops, but among Republicans, not so much

(RNS) Clergy used to rank near the top in polls asking Americans to rate the honesty and ethics of people in various professions. This year, for the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1977, fewer than half of those polled said clergy have "high" or "very high" moral standards.

But opinions on clergy differed markedly by party, with Republicans viewing them far more favorably than Democrats.

Overall, 47 percent of respondents to the survey gave clergy "high" or "very high" ratings, a sharp drop in confidence from the 67 percent of Americans who viewed them this way in 1985.

Among Republicans, 63 percent gave clergy one of the two top ratings for ethics, compared with 40 percent of Democrats. ...

5. Economist: All about Adam

A furious—and political—debate about the origins of mankind ...

... A quest for certainty is an American tradition. Old World believers often inherit religion passively, like a cultural artefact. Americans, an individualistic bunch, are more likely to switch churches or preachers until they find a creed that makes sense to them. They admire fundamental texts (the constitution, for example) that plain citizens may parse for immutable truths.

At the same time, the literalist faith is in crisis. Young Americans are walking away from the stern denominations that have held such sway over post-war American life, from Billy Graham's crusades to the rise of the religious right. After they hit 18, half of evangelical youngsters lose their faith; entering a public university is especially perilous. As a generation, millennials (those born between the early 1980s and 2000s), are unimpressed by organised anything, let alone organised religion. Many young adults told the Barna Group, an evangelical research outfit, that they felt stifled by elders who demonised secular America. Young Christians are more accepting of gay rights than their elders. In a challenge to creationists, a quarter of young adults told Barna's study that their churches were "anti-science".

The seeming paradox of a strong faith in crisis is explained by rigidity: that which cannot bend may break instead. ...

6. The Dish: The Language Of Certainty In Atheism

 

7. Faith & Leadership: Mainline Protestants and disruptive innovation

Mainline Protestants can still have an exciting and life-giving future -- if they learn the lessons of disruptive innovation from the steel industry and other organizations, say three Christian institutional leaders. ...

8. Call & Response Blog: Denominational leaders as bridge-builders

... The image of a bridge was one powerful expression of the issues they face now and anticipate facing in the future. But what most struck me were the ways in which, rather than despairing of their bridging roles, these leaders accepted the challenges and articulated the issues with clarity and grace.

First, they understood themselves as being "bridgers" who manage polarity and tension between people, issues or factions in the denomination. ...

 ... Second, these leaders saw their role as being a bridge to support systems and resources for congregations that are disbursed. ...

... Third, guest Marlon Hall, Houston pastor, filmmaker and leader of the Awakenings Movement, helped the gathered denominational leaders think about the ways in which they are a bridge between "the powerful and the engaged," between the status quo and disruptive innovation. ...

9. Religion News Service: Why evangelicalism needs controversies like Duck Dynasty

10. Pew Forum: Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High

11. Associated Press: Evangelicals mass in Peru amid boom

... Evangelicals have seen the most growth in Lima's teeming working class districts but more and more converts are coming from Peru's highlands thanks to proselytizing radio stations emerging in recent years in the region, said Rev. Juan Carlos Perez, a local leader of the Movimiento Misionero Mundial church. ...

... Peru and its capital remain bastions of Roman Catholicism. About three in four Peruvians identify themselves as Catholics. But evangelicals are on the rise, jumping from 5.2 percent of the population in 1981 to 12.5 percent in 2007, the last year for which government census figures are available.

Perez claims evangelicals now account for at least 20 percent of Peru's 30 million people, which would give it one of Latin America's highest growth rates. ...

12. Time: It's Social Ties—Not Religion—That Makes the Faithful Give to Charity

... Having found that religion and charity go hand-in-hand, Robert Putnam and I sought to understand why.  The answer might surprise you. We initially thought that religious beliefs must foster a sense of charity—whether inspiration from biblical stories like the Good Samaritan or, perhaps, a fear of God's judgment for not acting charitably. However, we could find no evidence linking people's theological beliefs and their rate of giving—which also helps to explain why the "religion effect" varies little across different religions. The rates for charitable giving according to the Jumpstart survey are: 61 percent of Black Protestants; 64 % of Evangelical Protestants; 67 % of Mainline Protestants, 68 % of Roman Catholics, and 76 % of Jews. By contrast, only 46 % of the not religiously affiliated made any charitable giving.

Rather than religious beliefs, we found that the "secret ingredient" for charitable giving among religious Americans is the social networks formed within religious congregations. The more friends someone has within a religious congregation, the more likely that person is to give time, money, or both, to charitable causes. In fact, even non-religious people who have friends within a religious congregation (typically, because their spouse is a believer) are highly charitable—more so than strong believers who have few social ties within a congregation. ...

13. Christianity Today: Who Owns the Pastor's Sermon?

Church or pastor? When sermons become books that make millions in royalties, the answer is important.

Spoiler: Copyright law favors churches.

14. Jesus Creed: Who "attended" those earliest churches?

On the basis of a new approach at looking how to discern the social makeup of the earliest Christian house churches, one based more on housing space occupied than on ideal social types, Peter Oakes has offered to us a new way of thinking more realistically and concretely about who was in the earliest house churches. His book is called Reading Romans in Pompeii. ...

... The earliest churches, then, are not made up of pietists who wanted to study the Bible but ordinary Romans from all sorts of backgrounds, needs, yearnings, and connections — each bringing to the table different ears for the gospel. ...

... Undoubtedly, one the best books on Paul/Romans I've read in a long, long time. Oakes combines judicious historical sensitivities with solid exegetical insight, all wrapped into a proper caution that is not always observed among those who use social evidence.

15. The Bible and Culture: Social Description in Early Christianity

Here is an excellent post from Larry Hurtado reminding us that it is wrong to say that early Christianity was largely made up of impoverished slaves, women, minors, and the rural poor. This, is a complete myth. See below. ...

... Here's a sample from Meeks's now-classic work, The First Urban Christians (pp. 72-73): "the most active and prominent members of Paul's circle are people of high status inconsistency . . . They are upwardly mobile, their achieved status is higher than their attributed status." That is, e.g., people involved in trade, business, etc., whose energy and abilities enabled them to acquire a social status that they didn't inherit or have by way of being born into a traditional elite class.

There's much, much more to note. But this will do, hopefully, to steer interested readers toward a more accurate, less simplistic, view of the social makeup of the earliest circles of Christian believers.

16. Why are the virgin birth, empty tomb and resurrection controversial? - N. T. Wright

17. Euangelion: Sin and Death in Eastern Orthodox Theology

I introduced a nice book about Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology by Andrew Louth. In the first post I was describing the Eastern tradition's view of sin, death and destruction. The two most important elements of this perspective I want to highlight now. ...

... Thus, the most significant consequence of the Fall in light of the resurrection is the presence of death. So, according to Louth, it is Christ's conquest of death in his resurrection means that death rather than sin is central to the Orthodox understanding of the consequence of Adam's disobedience (70). ...

... Second, Louth presents the story of Adam is more the story of "everyman" than a story of the "first man". While not denying the latter, he says the Father's were interested in the former. In this sense the story is mythical. ...

... The more I think about it, I'm beginning to find these to be a more satisfying explanation than my inherited tradition. ...

Me too.

18. BioLogos: Long Life Spans in Genesis

... There are 30 age numbers we can get from Genesis chapter 5—three numbers for each of ten patriarchs: the age when a son was born, the number of years the patriarch lived after the son was born, and the total number of years the patriarch lived. For example, "When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of… Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were 800 years… Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years" (Genesis 5:3-5). We get similar accounts of Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah (though for Noah we have to go to Genesis 9:29 to see how old he was when he died).

The first thing more careful observation reveals about these 30 numbers is that all of them end with the digits 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. You might not think that is too remarkable until you realize that it eliminates half of the possible numbers. It is like seeing a list of 30 numbers that are all even. We wouldn't think that was a random distribution of numbers. In fact, the odds of getting all thirty numbers to end with just these "approved" digits in a random distribution of ages are about one in a hundred million.[1] That should make us suspicious that Genesis 5 is merely giving a historical report. Something else must be going on here. ...

19. The Cultural Cognition Project - Yale Law School: Have Republicans changed views on evolution? Or have creationists changed party? Pew's (half-released) numbers don't add up ... 

... Right away when I heard about the Pew poll, I turned to the results to see what the explanation was for the interesting -- truly! -- "shift" in Republican view: Were Republicans changing their positions on creationism or creationists changing their party allegiance?

And right away I ran into this logical inconsistency.

Surely, someone will clear this up, I thought.  

But no.  

Just the same predictable, boring "ha ha ha ha!" reaction.

Why let something as silly as logic get in the way of an opportunity to pound one's tribal chest & join in a unifying, polarizing group howl?

20. Huffington Post: Three Reasons Why Evolution Will Never Convince a Creationist

1) Evolution is not, strictly speaking, mentioned in the Bible, so a Creationist is not inclined to trust it. ...

2) People tend to assume that the two realms of science and faith must be in opposition to one another, or that when one is "right" on an issue the other cannot hold any merit in the conversation. ...

3) Starting from the "evolution" perspective is always taken to be challenging what is found in Genesis 1-3. Perhaps this seems obvious to you. But if that is where a person representing evolution starts, she or he has lost the Creationist from the get-go.

None of this way of approaching the conversation addresses the content of the Bible and the type of writings we find in them. This is, it seems to me, the central issue.

21. Spirit, Science, and Metaphysics: Scientists Claim That Quantum Theory Proves Consciousness Moves To Another Universe At Death

A book titled "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe "has stirred up the Internet, because it contained a notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. The author of this publication, scientist Dr. Robert Lanza who was voted the 3rd most important scientist alive by the NY Times, has no doubts that this is possible. - See more at: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/scientists-claim-that-quantum-theory-proves-consciousness-moves-to-another-universe-at-death/#sthash.m65dCbI8.dpuf

A book titled "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe" has stirred up the Internet, because it contained a notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. The author of this publication, scientist Dr. Robert Lanza who was voted the 3rd most important scientist alive by the NY Times, has no doubts that this is possible. ...

Muhammad Yunus On Defining Success With Money: 'That's The Wrong Way'

Yunus' take on social business and defining success with money.

Why Am I Not Poor?

Christianity Today: Why Am I Not Poor? Dale Hanson Bourke

For many years I sat in a pew on Sundays, listening to occasional sermons about the poor, giving to special offerings and looking appropriately sympathetic and concerned about poverty. But I did not truly—in evangelical speak—have a heart for the poor.

For much of the rest of the week I was consumed with not being poor. I was working to build my business, increase profits, and move up the wealth ladder. I reasoned that the more money I made, the more I could help my church and other worthy organizations. While I heard Christian concern expressed about poverty, the stronger message was that I was rewarded for accumulating wealth. The farther I moved away from poverty, the more I was asked to join church committees and nonprofit boards. The poor may be "blessed," but the wealthy are popular, especially in Christian circles.

As a woman business owner, I was sometimes asked to speak about my experience. I usually gave a nod to good timing, luck, and being blessed. But I mostly talked about hard work, determination, and focus. My upbeat message was aimed at helping others realize that they, too, could succeed. In retrospect, the subtext was a not so subtle "God helps those who help themselves" theme.

My worldview began to change when I joined the World Vision board and traveled to the developing world. There I met men and women who were remarkably hard working, determined, and focused. I spent time with women who cared for their families and also worked at other jobs from before sun up until dark. I encountered people who were intelligent, entrepreneurial, and absolutely ingenious at overcoming obstacles. And despite all of these attributes, they were still numbingly poor.

For the first time in my life, I actually knew desperately poor people. The more I listened to their stories the more it became obvious to me that if there was a difference between us it was that they worked even harder than I ever had. I remember standing next to a woman in a Haitian slum, watching her cook with one hand, care for her baby with the other, and occasionally use her cooking spoon to defend her one room shack from the dogs and young men who threatened to take the little food she had. With stunning clarity, I realized that I could never survive in such circumstances, let alone succeed. ...

... Much of what I had taken for granted in my life took on new meaning when I compared myself to some of the people I had met and noted our differences. My list included:

• I had access to a good education. ...
• I am healthy. ...
• As a woman, I am protected by the law and society. ...
• Insurance protects me from disaster. ...
• I live in a stable country. ...
• I have access to capital and can save my money. ...
• I am part of a growing economy. ...
• I was born into middle-class suburbia. ...

Good stuff!

Why the Church Needs Business

Huffington Post: Why the Church Needs Business

... Beyond the mess that has been the Vatican bank, the Catholic Church can learn a lot from business. This may seem counterintuitive, but the same church that has (rightly) spoken out so forcefully on the excesses and the limitations of capitalism desperately needs some capitalistic skills.

How is it that so many seem to have so little expertise in what so many people take for granted? Not long after the financial crisis in 2008, one priest confidently told me, "Capitalism is dead." I asked him if he could still go to the corner and buy a hotdog. Yes, he said. "That's capitalism," I said. "It's not dead." A few days later another priest with a Ph.D. asked me, as he read about the financial crisis, "What's a bond?"

Whence the lack of business knowledge among otherwise smart and talented (and highly educated) men and women? There are two simple reasons:

First, many cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, sisters and brothers now in their 60s and 70s (that is, those running things in the church) often entered their seminaries or religious orders right out of college, even high school. Thus, many (not all, but many) did not have the important experience of having to earn a paycheck, balance a checkbook, manage employees, read a balance sheet, invest in the stock market, and so on.

The second reason is more basic. Once in the seminary or religious order, business education was not a part of their training. This is an immense lacuna in the training or priests and men and women in religious orders. ...

In How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about), John Knapp reports that one of the biggest obstacles the church has with influencing businesspeople to think more ethically and theologically about their own lives is the business practices of the church. A congregation's or denomination's sloppiness with finances, the belief that fundamental realities about business and economics can just magically be suspended, and, too often, defensiveness (if not hostility) toward sound business practices causes businesspeople to tune out what the church has to say about material matters. The church holds no credibility. It is good that Pope Francis recognizes the need for gifted businesspeople to aid the church's mission.

Social Science and Culture Links

1. Business Insider:  Meaningful Work — Not Money — Makes People Happy

... Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months. ...

2. Atlantic Cities: The Hidden Beauty of a Walmart Store

[4 minute video] A short documentary follows an artist as he paints the inside of the supermarket chain.

3. Atlantic Cities:  The Paradox of Diverse Communities

... Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.” ...

... After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive. As they write, “The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community.” ...

4. Time: Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Only Just Beginning

Once upon a time, globalization simply meant the export of Western culture to the rest of the world. Now the world is turning the tables. ...

... In the past, globalization was to a great degree a one-way street — from the developed to the developing world. Money and technology flowed from the U.S. and Europe into China, India and other low-income countries, drawing them into the global trading system. The process was the same with ideas (democracy, capitalism, Marxism) and culture (popular music, social networking, fast food, Hollywood movies). Emerging nations had few connections between themselves, and limited influence over world politics and finance.

Now, though, the rise of China, India and other emerging economies is shifting that old, one-way globalization into a new, vibrant multilateral globalization, with major consequences for how our world works.

Look at what’s happening in the global economy these days. ...

5. The Interpreter: Unfriending: Japanese public opinion on China <http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/01/22/Unfriending-Japanese-public-opinion-on-China.aspx?>

6. Atlantic: Countries With Higher Math Scores Have Unhappier Kids

Is there be a relationship between math and misery? Economist Justin Wolfers runs the math. The variation is pretty large (Eastern Europe seems egregiously unhappy, while southeastern Asian students seem to be having a unduly good time in class), but the correlation is statistically significant.

7. BBC:  Modern life 'turning people off sex'

A once-a-decade poll of 15,000 Britons found those aged 16-44 were having sex fewer than five times a month.

The figure compared with more than six times a month on the last two occasions when the official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was carried out, in 1990-91 and 1999-2001.

The study's authors say modern life may be having an impact on libidos. ...

8. Atlantic Cities: Across Europe, a Growing Sense That Legalized Prostitution Isn't Working

... France is not alone in its fresh efforts to curb prostitution. The move follows similar bans in Sweden and Norway, while other European countries are also scaling back laissez-faire prostitution policies. Germany is poised to change its liberal sex trade laws, while Ireland is also debating a measure similar to France's. Is the end of legal prostitution in Europe in sight?

It may partly depend on how well France's new laws work. Unlike historical prostitution bans that penalize sex workers, the new laws target customers, making the purchase of sex illegal rather than its sale. Anyone caught paying for sexual services in France will be subject to a fine of €1,500, rising to a maximum of €3,750 for repeat offenders. This follows a model established in Sweden in 1999, but no country as large as France has yet tried anything similar. ...

9. Atlantic: Modern Moms Aren't as Busy as 1960s Moms Were

Moms now spend more time on activities like TV and the computer than on housework, playing with kids, and exercising combined.

 

10. NPR: Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.

But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together. ...

 11. Gallup:  Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov't Responsibility

12. Business Insider: Americans Don't Trust Each Other Anymore

... These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.

Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say "you can't be too careful" in dealing with people. ...

13. Atlantic: Homelessness Is Up in New York City, But It's Down Everywhere Else

14. Archaeology: Top 10 Discoveries of 2013

15. Business Insider: 25 Books That Changed The Course Of History

Every reader knows that a book can change your life.

But what about the lives of an entire generation? Can a book change the future?

Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of central collection development at the New York Public Library, helped us come up with a list of 25 books that changed the course of history.

From the Torah to Orwell's "1984," these 25 titles have had a major impact (listed here in alphabetical order).

16. Seth's Blog: What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity--particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?

A story. ...

... If people aren't donating to your cause, it's because you're not telling a story, or telling the wrong story to the wrong people (in the wrong way). Non-profits make change, and the way they do this is by letting us tell ourselves stories that nurture our best selves.

17. Also on the topic of giving, here is some practical advice. Forbes: How To Give Away Money When It Feels Like You Don't Have Any

How Pope Francis Misunderstands the World

Atlantic: How Pope Francis Misunderstands the World

We're living at a far more equal, peaceful, and prosperous time than the pontiff acknowledges....

Pope Francis is Times' Person of the Year, an excellent pick in my estimation. He strikes me as a man with incredible integrity. I'm enjoying watching him live into this new calling.

The response to his Evangelii Gaudium is particularly interesting to me, with the left gleeful about his condemnation of capitalism and the right going apoplectic about the same. In our age of bumper sticker sound bites, I don't think either side is listening with appropriate nuance. I haven't read and digested the whole document, but I have read the sections that deal with economic issues. I don't see a radical departure from what previous popes have written.

Twenty years ago, Pope John Paul II wrote the following in Centesimus Annus:

Can it perhaps be said that after the failure of communism capitalism is the victorious social system and the capitalism is the victorious social system and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path of true economic and civil progress?

The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, and the resulting responsibility for the means of production as well as free creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy," "market economy," or simply "free economy." But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative. (Centesimus Annus, 42)

I don't find Pope Francis saying a great deal different, although his emphasis may be slightly different. We need to remember that John Paul II ministered under the tyranny of Soviet Communism while Francis did so under the tyranny of right-wing dictatorship. These differences are surely a factor.

The part that does trouble me some, as it does with an overwhelming number of religious figures who speak to economic issues, is a distorted picture of what is happening in the world. It isn't what is said. It's what's missing. For the past century or two, we have been living through the most astonishing surge in human flourishing in history. That reality needs to be discussed every bit as much as the challenges and the injustices.

David Ropeik, in How Risky Is It Really: Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, shows that we are innately inclined to fixate on threats and negative developments. People who do so aren't stupid or ideological … they are human. All of us do it. The inclination to focus on threats is instinctive and has served humans well over millennia. But in the face of complex issues, we need to consider our concerns with more objective analysis. Otherwise, we run the risk of doing more harm than good. We need to approach problems with warm hearts and cool heads.

I have some minor quibbles with Tupy in the article, but it brings important balance. I've documented similar factors in past series like American Social Indicators and World Social Indicators, two series I intend to update next year. The challenge is to hear the Pope's important calls for the inclusion of the poor and his warning against our propensity to justify indifference. Not heeding the Pope's warnings is also to misunderstand the world. But we need to heed the warnings with an informed understanding of what is unfolding in the world. Read the Atlantic article and see what you think.

Religion Links

1. A federal Judge Declares Tax Exclusion For Clergy Housing Payments Unconstitutional. Peter Reilly makes the economic and legal case for preserving the exclusion, In Defense Of Special Tax Treatment For Clergy:

... Section 107 is best analyzed by reviewing the historical context surrounding the development of Section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code, the clergy housing allowance. Section 107 is only one part of the larger statutory framework of exclusions for employees who receive employer-assisted housing due the requirements of the job and for the convenience of their employers. See Joint Committee on Taxation, General Explanation of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, (JCS-10-87) May 4, 1987, at {54}(in amending I.R.C. 265(a) “Congress concluded that it was appropriate to continue the long-standing tax treatment…claimed by ministers and military personnel who receive tax-free housing allowances”). 

Current tax policy lightens the tax burden of the taxpayers who receive qualifying employer-assisted housing. See Sections 107 (clergy housing), 119 (general housing), 134 (military housing), and 911(a)(2) (foreign housing). Congress created these tax-free housing allowances within its discretion and to demonstrate a willingness to give tax breaks to classes of taxpayers who have little choice about their personal living space. Whether the employer provides a cash allowance or a home, each benefit serves the same purpose; that is, often the employer’s needs affect the living space needs of its employees. Many times, these classes of employees frequently relocate, thus preventing them from settling down and hindering long term close friendships. Further, the employers frequently require them to use their homes to conduct employer business. Additionally, the employee’s place of service may not be desirable. These employees must reside where their employer requires and must frequently use their residence for employer business. Some employees sacrifice amenities that most citizens take for granted, such as long term stability in one locale and privacy. ...

2. Eleven Myths About Going to Seminary

1. YOU HAVE TO BE GOOD TO GO TO SEMINARY.

2. SEMINARY AND DIVINITY SCHOOLS ARE EXPENSIVE.

3. YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT BEFORE YOU ARRIVE AT SEMINARY.

4. YOU HAVE TO HAVE DECIDED TO GO TO SEMINARY EVEN BEFORE YOU WENT TO COLLEGE....

3. 10 Facts About The Transforming Global Religious Landscape

1. Religious 'Nones' Are Third-Largest Group

2. China Has Huge Population Of Religiously Unaffiliated

3. Most People Are Part Of Religious Majorities In Their Countries

4. Hindus Are Highly Geographically Concentrated

5. Most Countries Have A Majority Religion

6. Christianity Is A Majority In Over 100 Countries

7. Oldest And Youngest Religions

8. The World's Only Jewish Majority Country

9. Christianity Dominates A Majority Of The World's Regions

10. Religious Nones Still Believe

4.Who's a Jew? Few American Jews say it's a matter of belief

WASHINGTON (RNS) In the most comprehensive study of American Jews in 12 years, a strong majority said being Jewish is mostly about ancestry or culture, not the religious practice of Judaism.

"A Portrait of Jewish Americans," released Tuesday (Oct. 1) by the Pew Research Center, shows strong secularist trends most clearly seen in one finding: 62% of U.S. Jews said Jewishness is largely about culture or ancestry; just 15% said it's about religious belief. ...

 5. Christianity Spreading at Remarkable Rate Among Middle, Upper Castes and Youth in Emerging 'New India'

... The current "remarkable receptivity to Christ" across the entire spectrum of Indian society, which had been traditionally among only lower castes and marginalized communities, is one of five dominant themes identified by Indian anthropologist Prabhu Singh that define today's India and its missional challenges. ...

... "With more than 71 million claiming Christianity, India is now the eighth largest Christian nation in the world," said Dick McClain, president and CEO of The Mission Society, publisher of "Unfinished." "Yet with 456 languages and more than 2,611 distinct people groups, India still has more people groups unreached with the gospel than any other nation -- 88 percent of its population. ...

6. Study Theology, Even If You Don't Believe in God

This lost liberal art encourages scholars to understand history from the inside out.

7. Peter J. Leithart on The End of Protestantism

 The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be.

When I studied at Cambridge, I discovered that English Evangelicals define themselves over against the Church of England. Whatever the C of E is, they ain’t. What I’m calling “Protestantism” does the same with Roman Catholicism. Protestantism is a negative theology; a Protestant is a not-Catholic. Whatever Catholics say or do, the Protestant does and says as close to the opposite as he can. ...

... Protestantism ought to give way to Reformational catholicism. Like a Protestant, a Reformational catholic rejects papal claims, refuses to venerate the Host, and doesn’t pray to Mary or the saints; he insists that salvation is a sheer gift of God received by faith and confesses that all tradition must be judged by Scripture, the Spirit’s voice in the conversation that is the Church.

Though it agrees with the original Protestant protest, Reformational catholicism is defined as much by the things it shares with Roman Catholicism as by its differences. Its existence is not bound up with finding flaws in Roman Catholicism. ...

8. If it is not ‘mainline,’ what is it?

Is there a better name for main­line Protestants? How about vintage Protestants? Or the VPCC—Vanishing Progressive Christian Church? Or the Legacy Church? ...

... Religion News Service took up the challenge, inviting votes and comments in an informal survey. More than 200 people voted. The comments ranged from theological to historical, serious to snarky.

“Liberal Church” led with 24 percent of the votes. Some liked the social and political connotation, but others used liberal as a slam on a church they regard as too loose on doctrines of sin and salvation. Merritt said October 15 that she preferred a different spin on liberal: “Liberationist Church,” because “it taps into the good news that our beliefs lead us to seek liberation for all the oppressed, to expand freedom for all.”

Next, at 17 percent, were those who said labels just don’t work for religious distinctions anymore. National surveys find growing numbers just want to call themselves “Christian.”

“Oldline” was favored in 6 percent of the votes. “Grandma’s Church” drew 3 percent. It has the ring of truth: mainline churches have the greatest percentage of members age 65 and older of any Christian tradition.

Most folks—46 percent—preferred their own picks. ...

 9. Sermons stretch as biblical literacy wanes

Religious literacy is declining as "nones" rise, forcing changes in how churches — and even comedians and filmmakers — relate to their intended audiences. ...

... “One of the results of biblical illiteracy is that sermons are, for the first time in centuries, getting longer,” said Brett Younger, associate professor of preaching at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.

“Precisely because people have not grown up with the stories, many preachers see their job as explaining the text rather than helping worshippers experience the hope of the story,” he told ABPnews in an e-mail.

Brandon Hudson said his preaching has changed to accommodate visitors and newcomers who grew up without church. ...

 10. Watch Out, Pastors: Millennials Are Fact-Checking Your Sermons

 But the most interesting finding: Nearly 4 out of 10 practicing Christian millennials are fact-checking their pastor's sermons. Notes Barna:

The one-way communication from pulpit to pew is not how Millennials experience faith. By nature of digital connectedness, Millennial life is interactive. For many of them, faith is interactive as well—whether their churches are ready for it or not. It's an ongoing conversation, and it's all happening on their computers, tablets and smart phones. What's more, many of them bring their devices with them to church. Now with the ability to fact-check at their fingertips, Millennials aren't taking the teaching of faith leaders for granted. In fact, 14% of Millennials say they search to verify something a faith leader has said. A striking 38% of practicing Christian Millennials say the same.

 11. New Study: Three-Quarters of American Giving Goes to Religion

 Americans give a lot of money to religion—but not in the ways we usually think. ...

... Unlike previous data sets, the current study captures a wider swath of religious giving—not just that to churches, synagogues, mosques, and the like, but to religiously-affiliated organizations like Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army. When that larger group is included, 73%—almost three quarters—of American giving goes to religious organizations.

This point is significant for several reasons. First, it highlights the importance of religion in American philanthropic life. ...

Second, and relatedly, this data shows just how much of America’s tax deductions are a boon to religious organizations. ...

Third, it’s these “religiously-identified organizations” —RIO’s in the hideous acronymization of Washington—that are at the center of the current controversy over religious exemptions to civil rights laws. ...

12. Tithing, church giving dips; sign of the economy or value of charity?

Tithing and church giving in general has taken the most prolonged dip since the Great Depression. Is the economy to blame or perhaps a failure to teach that tithing and giving is an integral part of the spiritual life? ...

13. What archaeology tells us about the Bible

A contentious dig in Israel delves into the kingdoms of David and Solomon, stirring a debate over the veracity of the biblical record.

14. Biblical Credibility and Joshua 10: What Does the Text Really Claim?

... The lexical issues remain vexing and problematic, but they can be addressed. Even if we acknowledge that we have not yet sorted out the lexical details, the presence of terms such as “stop,” “stand” and “wait” gain new possibilities in light of the language of celestial omens and the fact that the context is one that is just right for an ominological application (i.e., on the brink of battle). Certainly a reading of the text in light of omens is more likely for an ancient text than a reading in light of physics.

It should be noted that the text does not suggest the astronomical phenomena were unique; instead, verse 14 says plainly that what was unique was the Lord accepting a battle strategy from a man (“the Lord listened to a man”). A Mesopotamian lamentation (first millennium) shows this same type of terminology for divine judgment when it speaks of heavens rumbling, earth shaking, the sun laying at the horizon and the moon stopping in the sky, and evil storms sweeping through the land. Joshua’s knowledge of the Amorites’ dependence on omens may have led him to ask the Lord for one that he knew would deflate their morale—for the opposition to occur on an unpropitious day.

15. Who “attended” those earliest churches?

On the basis of a new approach at looking how to discern the social makeup of the earliest Christian house churches, one based more on housing space occupied than on ideal social types, Peter Oakes has offered to us a new way of thinking more realistically and concretely about who was in the earliest house churches. His book is called Reading Romans in Pompeii. ...

... The earliest churches, then, are not made up of pietists who wanted to study the Bible but ordinary Romans from all sorts of backgrounds, needs, yearnings, and connections — each bringing to the table different ears for the gospel. ...

We Interrupt Budget Negotiations for This Observation

A momentary aside from the budget negotiations.

Remember after the Gabby Giffords shooting three years ago? Some people seized on violent metaphors by conservatives as an impetus for the shooting (like Sarah Palin putting crosshairs over the faces of candidates she opposed on her website). Other recent incidents have been framed in similar ways. President Obama made a speech about the need to avoid violent rhetoric in public discourse.

I've noted before that the use of violent metaphors is bipartisan behavior. That usually gets pushback from my left-leaning friends, saying that conservatives are far worse about this than liberals. I maintain it is worse with whichever camp is most aggrieved at the moment. On that note, I invite you to listen during our present troubles to the rhetoric of liberals, Democrats, and the President, as they talk about the Republicans as "terrorists," "hostage takers," and "suicide bombers" with bombs strapped to their chest, ready to "blow up the government."  

When hearing violent metaphors, ALL of us have a tendency to overly ascribe malice to people with whom we disagree and to discount it when uttered by those with whom we agree. When it is used toward people with whom we agree, we tend to take it personally. We are less critical when it is used toward people with whom we disagree. The metaphors give voice to our anger and frustration. Therefore, if we cannot achieve some emotional distance from the fray, as many of us seem unable to do, we genuinely perceive that other tribes are meaner.

While I agree violent metaphors can become excessive, I don't generally find them troubling. Jesus used them. "I will make you fishers of men." Ever thought about this from the fish's standpoint? The Kingdom of God is where people get violently snatched from their lives, killed, and then consumed by their captors? Or how about Paul writing to the Galatians that he wished the Judaizers had cut the whole thing off during circumcision? Ouch! Violent metaphors are a part of everyday speech that, when used sparingly and appropriately, give voice to our emotional state. (However, they aren't so effective in persuasion.) So, while I agree that we see many public figures going over the top with this stuff, let us also admit that there is a lot of posturing to show how evil and insane the other tribe is with their violent rhetoric while ignoring our own.

You may now return to your news coverage of the budget negotiations. As for me, I'm focusing on the road to the World Series and cheering for the Cardinals to annihilate each of their adversaries totally… but in a Christ-like manner.

Church is not Worship, Community, or Mission. It's All Three

Rachel Young has a thoughtful article at the The Presbyterian Outlook's Outpost blog titled, Consumers, missionaries, or worshipers? She writes:

... We use the language of buying and selling, of efficiency, of getting the best product for the best price, even as we think about our relationships, our work, our leisure, our church. We are consumers.

I don't have space in this post to offer evidence for these big claims. Check out Hugh Halter and Matt Smay's book And: The Gathered and Scattered Church for an evaluation of how this metaphor seeps into churches. The consumer metaphor invites us to seek church experiences that fit our interests and time. We go to church to get our spiritual needs met. If I were to modify the answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (see below for the actual answer), the consumer might say, "Man's chief end is to connect with God by listening to a great message and hearing great music." ...

So maybe, as some suggest, a better metaphor is missionary. She writes:

... So, we might modify the Westminster Shorter Catechism to say, "Man's chief end is to partner with God to redeem and restore our hurting world."

The missionary metaphor compels me. But, what I find lacking in both of these metaphors is the primacy of worship. Is the gathering of a church only functional? To give people a feel good experience or to shape them as missionaries? Or, are the people of God called first to worship God and then be sent? The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism actually reads, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

I hear her concerns, and I know they are widely shared. I hear similar concerns expressed across the church. But I think pitting these various metaphors against each other, or prioritizing one over the other, IS the problem. I commented in response:

I like how Stan Ott talks about church as three-dimensional: doxological, koinonial, and missional. Or more simply: worship, community, and mission. The three are inseparable. I think classifying desire for a meaningful worship experience as consumerist is overly harsh. It is pursuit of that experience above all else that is destructive. I would also say that pursuit of worship as prior, or over and above the other two, is problematic.

Genuine worship draws us into community and inspires us to mission. Genuine community is worshipful and it is in community that we discern and do mission. Mission is a worshipful response to God and deepens us in community as we do it together. All three aspects must be held together.

There is an ongoing debate in the church about a (false) dichotomy of community (and personal nourishment) versus mission. I sense some want to lift "worship" up as the "third way" out of this conflict. Instead, I suggest that the answer is to embrace all three boldly.

Business and Management Links

1. The 10 Worst Things Bosses (And Employees) Can Say

1. You’re fortunate we gave you a job. Few companies would have the patience and time to invest in you. Don’t make your employees feel like burdens. Encourage them to be better, but don’t condemn them for their shortcomings.

2. You look really good for your age. Beyond the legal issues this brings up of ageism, it’s in very bad taste to give such a backhanded compliment.

3. If you don’t like this job, there are plenty of other candidates standing in line. You’re lucky to be employed. This is a morale killer. If an employee feels like their job is in peril, they’ll be far more distracted at work and will likely start looking for a job elsewhere. ...

2. The 21 Unwritten Rules Of Meetings

1. Make sure you really need a meeting before scheduling it. Could this be resolved by 10 minutes on the phone or via email instead?
2. Every meeting should have a purpose: You either need to make a decision or complete an action together. Giving an update can almost always happen by email.
3. Do not schedule more time than you need. Most meetings are scheduled for a full hour, when they should be 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or 45 minutes—max. ...

3. Harvard Business Review on The Rise of Compassionate Management (Finally)

4. Why Happiness Is Your Secret To Productivity

... How you think is often more important than that you think, or even what you think. The characteristic separating the good from the great, the highly successful from the folks who are just getting along, is their ability to think about themselves as successful even while on the journey to greatness -- however "greatness" is defined for you.

An important skill is to think without acting: To plan. What do you want to be known for? What do you want to do? What is possible? Change begins with what you tell yourself and others. Change your outlook and you change what is possible. ...

5. I've linked this before, but it needs a reprise: "Why I Think Nonprofits Should Act More Like Businesses" (While his understanding of Puritan history is a bit misguided, his overall take is very good.)

6. Wharton Puts First-Year MBA Courses Online for Free

7. Why Amazon Hides Its Cheapest Price (and Where)

 

The Gospels of Sin Management

Jesus Creed: The Gospels of Sin Management and Their Empty Allegiance

American evangelicalism is what it is because of its gospel. Dallas Willard calls its gospel the “gospel of sin management.” American liberal Protestantism is what it is because of its gospel. Dallas Willard also calls its gospel the gospel of sin management. (Some of you will know I call this gospel the “soterian” gospel in The King Jesus Gospel.) Its emphases — right and left — is forgiveness of sin, eternal life in heaven, assurance in the here and now, and either an act (decision) or acts (good deeds) are the precipitating element that gains a person access to salvation. ...

... They have an “empty allegiance” to Jesus. You’re in whether are a transformed into Christlikeness or not. ...

... On the Right, the gospel is “vampire faith” (they want Jesus for his blood), it is shaped by atonement theology and obsessed with atonement theology, and it is about “relief from the intrapsychic terrors of fundamentalist versions of hell” (149).

On the Left, the gospel is about “good acts” and activism and “self-determined acts of righteousness” (149). So the Right is about proper beliefs and the Left about proper behaviors. The gospel is about conformity to Christ in a God-bathed kingdom reality. ...

My comment in response:

I think part of the solution is recovery of the significance of everyday life and work. The primary locus of ministry for most of us is our home, our workplace, and our neighborhood. It is with and for those who are in our circle of influence. And when I say "ministry" here, I don't mean using these contexts as staging opportunities for evangelism (though evangelism will occur) or as opportunities right injustices (though righting injustices will occur). I mean seeing our participation in these aspects of life, the living and work that is done there, as integral with serving God.

I think it needs to be noted that the soterian gospel of the right and left places the locus of "ministry" in the pastors and ecclesiastic institutions, elevating the centrality and importance of those connected with these institutions. Conscious or not, there is considerable psychic investment to keep things the way the are because of the affirmation and status it brings. The rest of church becomes amateur helpers to the evangelism/justice professionals, which is okay by many of them because they can go do their good deeds as prescribed by the professionals while living most of the rest of their lives as practical atheists. All in all, an effective codependency.

Do Nice People Succeed In Business? It Depends

Forbes: Do Nice People Succeed In Business? It Depends

... So much for everyday life—how about the business world? That’s where Adam Grant’s Give and Take comes in. Many people implicitly think that niceness is a virtue for the rest of life, but when it comes to playing business hardball, only the selfish survive. The message of Grant’s book is that this isn’t true, and he gives us both scientific evidence and entertaining profiles for understanding why. Grant divides people into three behavioral categories: givers, matchers, and takers. As their names imply, givers are sweeties who unstintingly share their time and talent, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of it. Matchers calibrate their giving to their taking, and takers take whatever they can get. Who does best playing business hardball? It turns out that the givers do best and worst. When they succumb to the depredations of takers, they become doormats and chumps. But when they manage to work with other givers, they produce spectacular wealth and share the collective benefits. In other words, the costs and benefits of prosociality in the business world are no different than for the rest of life. ...

... In a video interview with one of us (David S. Wilson), Grant said that Wharton students are constantly coming into his office expressing a desire to give, which they assume must be suppressed in their business lives until they make a fortune. Only then can they express their desire to give by becoming philanthropists. If that’s the way that business school students think, then the message of Grant’s book is indeed revolutionary. We need to exchange lenses to see that giving can succeed as a business strategy from day one, as long as givers can keep their distance from takers. Businesses flourish when they create social environments that allow niceness to generate value, thereby winning the Darwinian contest.