Scratching the itches of society

Society represents a collection of people who have needs that must be met. Some are basic like safety, food, water, sanitation, healthcare, etc. Others are more "luxury" like entertainment and recreation. The driving issue for society is which institutions of society will scratch which itch? There are basically four possibilities - commerce, charities, families, and the government.

Commerce scratches societies itches when people can organize themselves to offer products and services to society that can provide economic benefit to those who invest their money to provide what meets the needs and wants. The purpose of a business is to "create customers". If organizations cannot make a profit scratching itches, then non profit institutions develop when enough of society feels the products and services are worthy enough that people will donate resources necessary to meet the needs/wants. These non profit organizations form when there exists sufficient critical mass of needs that families cannot meet them, especially as families have fragmented in recent times. The government forms organizations to scratch society itches when society believes none of the other institutional options can or are meeting the needs/wants of society as society would want. This can be because the interest of society is not best met by economic oriented markets and involves the entirety of society, such as national defense, or because non government options to scratch society's itches have the potential to "damage" society.

A great example of how the ingenuity of society can generally figure out how to best scratch society's issues is the area of interpersonal communication. Society needs people to get information from one person to another across distances. For most of history, people used "runners". The telephone was invented which allowed individuals to talk with each other. Initially, this service was offered by private, profit oriented organizations but society felt that it needed to protect itself from being taken advantage of by the "greed"motives of private, profit oriented providers, so government was asked by society to regulate the actions of private organizations to limit any "damage" that may occur while scratching the itches of communication. However, there were communication needs the telephone could not meet, such as mail and packages. To meet this unmet need, government formed the Postal Service. Over time, individuals in society saw that they could meet these needs too and create economic value doing so. First there were delivery services such as Fed Ex and UPS. Then, technology afforded opportunities for electronic mail which was instantaneous and distance insensitive and Skype, which even offers seeing each other while we speak. Now today, the government's role in communication is questionable. First class mail has decreased 25% in just a couple of years and the government loses billions each year trying to provide services to society. Why is government still involved?

The operative principles as to whether private or government organizations ultimately scratch society's itches are this - the profit factor forces efficiency and government sponsors fairness. The mortgage industry is a perfect example. Private banks formed to provide credit to society so that people could buy something today and pay for it tomorrow. However, banks collected their money to loan from society by offering interest on savings and as doing so put society at undue risks if the banks failed - so society asked government to regulate. Moreover, banks were not "fair" in that many people could not qualify for loans and thus could not get their itches scratched. Enter government again (Fannie and Freddie) to inject "fairness" into the credit business. When fairness, NOT profit, is the driving force, the economic value of scratching society's itches falters and society can afford less of it.

Healthcare is next, following the same pattern as credit. Who ultimately scratches these itches of society will be the outcome of society's view of whether their itches are based on "justice" or "efficiency". In the case of society, when "justice" is the norm of equality rather than equity (see earlier blogs), society splits between the market or government as the answer because equal outcomes and profit motive are in contradiction with one another. This is not a moral question but simply one that determines the standard of living associated with each choice - just ask Europe --

Almost every challenge our society faces is grounded in this question ---  something to ponder!!!

The story of Spot

Once there was a 91 year old man living alone with his old dog and his caregivers. The old man decided he needed another dog because his old dog may soon die. His daughter who lived in the same town was totally against him having another dog, especially a puppy because the dog would be nothing but trouble for her and the care givers. So the old man talked the pastor who visited him regularly to take him to get a dog. About the time they arrived at the place to buy the dog, the daughter called the pastor and told him in no uncertain terms that her dad could not get another dog, but they were already there and so the dog was bought and brought home. There was an immediate bond between the old man and the dog, who was white with a black spot and so was named Spot by the old man.

A few months later after the dog had torn most everything up in the house as expected, the daughter came and got the dog while the old man was asleep and took it to a kennel. The old man became furious with his daughter and when he got the chance, drove his own car 20 minutes to the kennel and brought the dog back home. He had not driven for months and this was the last time he ever drove, but he had his dog, who was a faithful companion for him until he died a year and a half later.

One thousand miles away there was a young girl who loved dogs more than anything, but her dad refused her from getting one because her brother did not like dogs and a dog would be a lot of trouble for the family to care for. Finally he promised her that on her 8^th birthday, she could have a dog. But when her birthday came, her dad wasn’t ready to let her have a dog and talked her into a fish for a pet.  She loved the fish the best she could, BUT the fish was not a dog.

A few months later when the young girl was visiting her grandmother far away, something unexpected happened. Her grandmother’s father died and the plans the grand daughter had regarding her visit to her grandparents were altered. They must go 5 hours away to the funeral. When she arrived at her great grandfather’s house, the young girl was met by two dogs, one old and one young. The girl was happy to play with the dogs because she loved dogs so much. BUT strangely, her brother began to enjoy playing with the dogs too.

The grandmother of the young girl told happened to be the second daughter of the old man and lived far away. The grandmother (and daughter) told the children that there was a problem as to where the dogs would go since their owner had died. “They need good homes, somewhere they will be loved, ” said the grandmother and daughter of the old man who owned the dogs and had just died. The little girl responded, “my dad won’t let me have a dog unless it is a Jack Russell and one that my brother would like.” The grandmother smiled and said, “Spot is a Jack Russell and your brother is really playing well with him.” So Spot joined the little girl’s family, a generational blessing passed downed from her great grandfather’s love for the dog Spot.

In the story of Spot there are many actions taken and situations that could be deemed "bad" or "wrong" by participants in the story. The daughter who lived in the same town with the old man thought it was bad for her dad to have another dog in his situation. She thought the pastor was wrong in taking her dad to get the dog without her permission. The young girl thought her dad was wrong for not getting her a dog for her birthday as he had promised. The question is, “what makes someone’s action good or bad, right or wrong.”

This is just one simple story of two lives (an old man and his great granddaughter) that intersect around the death of the old man. God is about redemption. All actions taken cannot be labeled as good or bad without seeing the whole story as God sees it. All actions were woven together into the mosaic of the little girl and a dog called Spot. God’s grace abounded … 

think about it …

Hide and seek

One of the games children love to play, especially with their parents, is hide and seek. At the peak of kid's competency, they take great pride in hiding such that they are not easily found. However, when they first begin playing, say around 2 or 3, they can't wait to be found and usually jump out as soon as countdown is over and shout, "here I am." At this age they really do not like to hide from daddy. They always want to be in his presence.

Such it is with all of us, we were made to shout to daddy,"here I am," but as we age, we get quite competent at hiding - hiding from others, ourself, and our Heavenly Father. For many people, being found out is their greatest fear and they spend much of their time and attention learning how to hide. This is due to sense-making though our carnal mind, which tells us that we will not be accepted and loved if others really knew us. However, hiding is destructive in relationships and robs us of our joy.

When we make sense of ourself and others through a Kingdom mind, we readily shout "here I am." We willingly make ourself vulnerable in our relationships because we trust that the other person accepts us as we are ("Just as I am"). The result of shouting "here I am" is joy and we live a life that is truly blessed.

Hide and seek is not just a game children play, it is a way of life for the carnally minded......

Thoughts on "freedom" this July 4th

Everyone's thoughts around this holiday season center around the blessings of freedom, as they should. We Americans have been rewarded by the efforts of many people over 200+ years to gain and sustain our civil liberties.

Make no mistake about it, as Christians our thoughts about freedom go well beyond civil and economic liberties. There is a song that is popular in churches around July 4th that says, "while the statue (of Liberty) liberates the citizen, the cross liberates the soul."

What do we mean by a liberated soul? Does it mean we can do anything we want? That sounds like freedom that we all would want. We can get perspective on what a liberated soul means from many scriptures, such as "the truth shall set you free." Paul gives us good insight in Romans 7 where he says about himself, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."  (Ro 7: 18 - 20)

This "confession" simply reminds us of the bondage we have to sin as our carnal mind is constrained by our circumstances to make sense of our self and the world around us. Operating in bondage to social exchange, our nature desires that we get our needs met from the world around us, from what we can extract from others that we think we need for well being. No matter how hard we try to do the "right things" in the eyes of God, we can't with our natural way of thinking. 

Josh McDowell has said, "freedom is the power to act rightly." This idea of freedom is obviously missing in this passage in Romans. As Paul continues in his letter to the church in Rome (chapter 8), we find that he reminds Christians that the Kingdom mind (walking in  the Spirit) solves this problem. That is, when we trust (accept by faith) that God has established our soul's well being by the redemptive work of the Cross, we are then free from the magnet of our surroundings, we are no longer bound by what we can get from others to make our self well.


Let's make no mistake about it, while we live in a great country and enjoy civic and economic liberty, we can never forget the truth that sets us free. May it be that "real freedom" of the soul is a soul that makes sense of everything thru harmony with the Heavenlies, or as many say an intimacy with Jesus. 

So while we have a great country, with great founding Fathers, and great patriots gone before us ---- we have a much, much greater God!!   something to ponder this week of celebration ....

Myths about emotion

In his book “feel: the power of listening to your heart” Matthew Elliot warns us of two myths about emotion. First, “we have made our relationship with God more about fulfilling our duty than expressing our passion”. Second, “we have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad.” 


Some points he makes about this are

1.       1. The Bible tells him that people who simply pursue duty and follow the rules often miss the party. Everyone who encountered Jesus began to feel.

2.       2.  Joy is the serious business of heaven. In our lives in general we spend our time doing the duties we’ve been taught we must do in order to be a good person and in the constant checking off of items on that list, we miss the celebration entirely.

3.       3.  Emotion is not an illogical reflex, unreliable and fickle. Emotions cut through all our talk, all our spin, and take us right to the truth of the matter. Emotion was made to supply energy and vitality to our lives. It was made to work hand in hand with reason and logic to guide our decisions. We claim the high ground when our passions match our convictions.

4.       4.  We do so many things to stuff our emotions, to push our passions down, to fight our feelings. Emotions, both good and bad, must be dealt with, but they can never be ignored.

5.       5.  If emotion is the power to drive our lives in positive ways, then lack of emotion deprives us of the power to live whole and healthy lives. Without emotion, our live becomes dependent on sheer will. So our lives are not really about feeling joy, hope, and love, but about keeping those ideas afloat in our minds. There is great sin here.

6.       6. The difference between duty and obedience is passion. God made us emotional beings. His love for us is a passionate verb and it grieves Him when we love him back with a lifeless noun. What we feel – our loves – reveals what we really believe and becomes the motivation for how we live.

A  lot of what Elliott is saying here can be found in the psychologists notion of “emotion regulation”. This theory suggests that as we experience events in our life, emotions occur. The issue is the degree to which felt emotion becomes expressed emotion. If we deem the felt emotion to not be appropriate, we suppress it so that we do not act consistent with it. This leads to stress and burnout. The more healthy way to control the unwanted behavioral effects of felt emotion is to reappraise. This means that we can “think about” the event in a different way so that we do not even have the negative felt emotion we had before. This is used in the service industry to help people who engage the public to deal more productively with irate or difficult customers by telling themselves, “it’s not personal, they are just having a bad day.”

Reappraisal is really the message of Elliott’s book in that he is saying that our emotions and mind work in harmony. We cannot emphasize one over the other. While our emotions reveal to us what we may really believe, we are not to succumb to them but let them point us to what we must really believe. Then let God transform our minds so that our emotions are free to flow in a Godly way.

For example, "The Holy Spirit bears witness that we are children of God." Does this generate no emotion? Does this not make the Christian excited? Can we not embrace that excitement because it comes from something (the HS) we can trust? Just saying ...

Now reappraisal has the risk of simply becoming “rationalization”.  So can we make sense of ourselves and the things around us without “conning” ourselves into accepting emotions to meet our own needs and that keep us out of God’s will. I believe it goes back to whether reappraisal is occurring from a carnal mind or Kingdom mind (psychologists don’t know this). If we rethink events from a carnal mind so that the felt emotions become acceptable and passions that we can act on, we are simply letting our need for respect, pleasure, significance, safety, security, etc. transform our emotions. If we rethink from a Kingdom mind, then the transforming power is our faith in what God has said about us and Himself and what He has done about it.

There’s a lot here but reappraising your myths about emotion can set you free!!  Think about it …