I was sitting in my first class of that day, honors psychology, with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Ritter.  I don’t remember the specific topic that he was lecturing on but I do remember that Mr. Orr, the basketball coach and history teacher, knocked on the door, let himself in, and told Mr. Ritter to turn on the TV.  He said that some planes had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City.  Mr. Ritter was able to put the TV signal through a projector and we watched on a big screen as the horrifying events of that day unfolded.  There was not a sound as we watched, we were all stunned and watched in quiet.

Needless to say we didn’t get much done the rest of the day.  Time came for us to switch classes, my next class was supposed to be English.  Ms. Nicholson, the teacher of that class, was friends with Mr. Ritter and she took us back to his classroom to continue to watch.  We watched to our horror as the towers fell to the ground.  We heard that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon and another had crashed in a Pennsylvania field, and I was scared.  We didn’t stay for the entire length of that second class period.  Ms. Nicholson took us back to her classroom and asked us to write down our feelings at that moment.

We didn’t understand who this could be, we had no idea.  We knew that this was likely going to lead to war.  Seeing as how I was about to turn 18, I was thinking that they might reinstitute the draft.  Ms. Nicholson asked us to share some of our thoughts.  We were all scared and I was not alone in fearing the draft.

That class ended and I didn’t have a scheduled third class.  I skipped lunch and sped home to watch more TV coverage.  I didn’t learn much, it was just more speculation and coverage of the fallout.  Time came for me to return to campus, I had a fourth period class and it was band.  By that time there was already an attempt to make the day as normal as possible and we went out and practiced marching.

The Greatest Generation had Pearl Harbor, Baby Boomers had JFK’s assassination, our generation has September 11, 2001.  I will always remember where I was that day and even though it is nine years later I am still able to recollect all that I did that day.  I think it is a shame that we have moved on as far as we have.  This day should not be about waving the flag and ginning up more patriotism but it should be about simply remembering.  In an attempt to move on I am afraid that we will forget, I pray that never happens.  This post is my attempt to keep the memories alive.

Sometimes you just have to ask, what were they thinking?

This picture found through the twitter posting of a friend.

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Returning to G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, here is another favorite quote:

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. … His (the Mystic) spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not.

This link is only for the extreme Lost fans.  It is an attempt, and I think a successful one, to explain most if not all of the mysteries of the island.

Another warning bell from Chuck Colson about the danger of civil religion and the rally at the Lincoln Memorial a little over a week ago…

This link will take you to an index of all the things that have been blamed on global warming. It is certainly exhaustive but by no means complete and the interesting thing about this list is how many things are contradicted by a later entry on the list.

I almost got to take a history of economic thought with this professor but he left UNCG just before I got here.  A short article by him argues that there is a hole in the economics curriculum, that we don’t place economic thought in the context of history and I completely agree.

I love messing with numbers to reveal relationships, otherwise known as statistics, and I love baseball.  What I love even more is when you can combine the two.  A great article by Joe Posnanski reveals some interesting relationships when it comes to the ball and strike counts batters face and the odds of certain things happening, a fascinating read.

My brother witnessed many praying, people witnessing to others, and I am sure some people came to know Christ through the rally.  In this I am thrilled, however, I am reminded of a couple verses from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Phillipians:

Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.  What then?  Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.  (Philippians 1:15-18, NASB)

In quoting these verses I am not in any way judging the motives of anyone who went to the rally or the speakers at the rally, only God can judge people’s motives.  My main point in quoting these verses is that motives are often hidden and to keep in mind that they may not always be pure.

I have since watched a little bit of Beck’s performance through the C-SPAN website and I will take issue with the overall theme of the rally.  It amounted to a worship service in the Church of the National Mall for the United States’ civil religion.

What do I mean by civil religion?  There are other names for it, such as patriotism or nationalism.  In the United States version there is a blend of church, history, and patriotism.  There are appeals to the faith of the pilgrims, of the founding fathers, and to later prominent figures in American history.  These people are held up, we are compared to them, we have fallen short, and in order to restore America we need to return to the olden days and to a “God” of a very general nature.  In civil religion, faith and patriotism can at times seem indistinguishable and more often than not patriotism overwhelms faith.

I have recently been reading Letters and Papers From Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and it has made me more sensitive to the role of civil religion and how patriotism can overwhelm faith.  Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor leading up to and throughout the rule of Hitler in Nazi Germany.  He helped to form and lead a breakaway group of Christians known as the Confessing Church.  They broke away because the Nazi party succeeded in taking over influential positions within the German Church. Animated by a fierce nationalism, many members within the church came to believe in the civil religion propagandized by the Nazi party and the redemption that it promised instead of in the redeeming power of Christ.  Civil religion is a subtle form of idolatry, it often uses the language of faith to place the nation above the only person deserving of worship, Jesus Christ.

This is why I called what was broadcast at the Lincoln memorial a false gospel.  The rally was not about preaching Christ, it was about how the United States has lost its way and needs to turn back to the “holy scriptures” of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address.  Can we build a more just society or make improvements by returning to those documents?  Sure we can, but even if we were to achieve that it would not provide salvation from the core problem of the human condition, the problem that was solved by the cross and the resurrection, rebellion against God.

America will not be restored by electing new leaders, by piety to a god in order to receive a special blessing so that we can defeat our “enemies”, or by fidelity to political documents.  It will be restored when the Church, the people that call themselves followers of Christ, walk humbly, love mercy, and do justice towards others.  In simple acts of kindness and faith, acting upon the words of Christ, people’s hearts will change.  They will see the Church not as a group of people known for the things they are against, but as a group of people who have been changed by Christ and who demonstrate love and justice to all people equally.

This is an absolutely brilliant commentary on the rally last weekend at the Lincoln Memorial by a leader at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He declares the message at the rally to be a false gospel…

A little mini-scandal in baseball last week saw the leaking of financial documents from several teams that showed them making a healthy profit.  This raises the question, is revenue sharing working in baseball?

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, posts some thoughts on why he thinks the Bible is such a tough book for Americans. Hint it has to do with our cultural identity.

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One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes from his sermon, The Weight of Glory:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

Last week I reposted an essay on why there should not be conflict between faith and science.  Relevant Magazine just published a testimony of someone who went on the same search as I did and arrived at the same conclusion…

Along those same lines here is a beautifully animated video that shows some mathematical theorems behind nature. Here is link to a detailed explanation of those theorems and about how the video was created. Stuff like this reinforces my awe of God’s creation.

I sympathize with the local food movement because I think it is important to be in touch with how the food we consume is grown and produced but I just recently found an op-ed in the New York Times from a “locavore” that worries about the dogmatic direction the movement seems to be heading, along with some math that debunks some popular claims.  The author of that op-ed elaborates on his blog.

I moderately enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and The Foutainhead.  Jason Lee Steorts of National Review enjoyed the latter far more than the former. After reading his critique of Atlas Shrugged I find that I agree with him.

It is not always like CSI.  North Carolina’s crime lab, a division of the State Bureau of Investigation, is in deep trouble because of conflict of interests.

Raising taxes will not work to reduce deficits and balance the budget.  Why?  Because people for the most part are rational and are acting that way.

Rebutting Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and op-ed writer for the New York Times, is a guaranteed good read.

I guess I won’t ever be moving to Cleveland, the nanny state has set up shop there.

from abundancesecrets.com

From an economic perspective the term “fair trade” is almost a tautology, meaning that you have stated the same thing twice without adding emphasis or meaning.  So long as a trade is free from fraud and coercion then a trade could be considered fair by definition.  Under these circumstances both parties are better off after having engaged in trade and if either party is made worse off then the trade would not occur.

Unfortunately the “fair trade” movement as I have witnessed it is not focused on promoting trade free from fraud and coercion, it is primarily focused on paying higher prices to producers and on sustainability.  I am afraid that the emphasis on the former is undercutting the latter.  Let me explain.

As an example, lets talk about coffee.  We go to Columbia and tell the coffee farmers that we will pay a higher price if you follow certain guidelines.  The farmers agree, the cost of adopting the guidelines is small compared to the gain he can achieve by selling his coffee at the newer and higher price.  This higher price encourages the farmers to produce more than they would have before.

Now lets think about it from the consumer’s standpoint.  You are a socially conscious consumer of coffee.  You are willing to pay a higher price for coffee that is labelled “fair trade”.  You soon realize that the coffee tastes the same as the coffee not labelled fair trade but you don’t mind at first, it makes you feel good, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Then an economic downturn hits, you lose your job, and you can no longer afford to pay that high price for coffee.  You downgrade to a coffee that is just as good but not labelled “fair trade”.

Lets go back to the farmers in Columbia after this happens.  Things have been going well, they have invested in more acreage to produce even more coffee.  They soon realize that there is more supply than there is demand.  They would like to cut the price they charge for their coffee but they can’t, with the additional guidelines and thus higher costs they can only drop their prices so far and still turn a profit.  Unfortunately, they can’t drop their prices low enough and some go out of business.  This is what I mean by sustainability being undercut by the focus on higher prices.

In economics prices are signals.  They tell us what resources are scarce and what resources are not.  These signals then tell your local businessman, farmer, or the coffee grower in Columbia how to allocate his capital and labor in an efficient manner to achieve the best results.  Anything that purposefully distorts prices muddies the signal being sent and creates inefficiencies.

Paying a higher price is a good intention but as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with them.  We have to look at the results.  If the price for coffee demanded by the market is too low for the producers in Columbia to supply it at then this is a signal to the people of Columbia.  Their land, capital, and labor is better used elsewhere.  This will mean transition and vocational education into new careers.  We can help them with that, it would be far better than paying a higher price for coffee.

If we want to help the third world develop then we must focus on institutions.  Robert Solow, a Nobel prize winning economist, was surprised when he looked at a model he developed and found that it was not labor or capital that explained economic growth.  He found that there was still a large percentage of unexplained growth in his model.  For you statisticians out there this means that the error term in his equation still explained quite a bit.  Solow and others went on to research what could be added to the equation in order to reduce the significance of this error term.  Data on human capital (also known as education), technology, and economic and political institutions have all been included in the equation and all have shown to reduce the amount of unexplained economic growth.

Education is great, technology certainly helps, but my money is on the political and economic institutions.  The farmer in Columbia is not going to be encouraged to grow coffee unless he knows that he will be able to keep the rewards of his hard work and then trade it in a market that is free from fraud or coercion.  This primarily means that property rights are held sacred and are enforced by the political institutions.

Doing something worthwhile is not easy.  Simply paying a higher price for coffee or clothes is not enough.  Lets focus on building good institutions in the third world, where property rights are enforced, and where trade is conducted free from fraud and coercion.  Now that would be “fair trade”.

And here is an anonymous poem that I found while reading Ravi Zacharias’ Can Man Live Without God:

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He came to my desk with a quivering lip,

the lesson was done.

“Have you a new sheet for me, dear teacher?

I’ve spoiled this one.”

I took his sheet, all soiled and blotted

and gave him a new one all unspotted.

And into his tired heart I cried,

“Do better now, my child.”

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I went to the throne with a trembling heart,

the day was done.

“Have you a new day for me, dear Master?

I’ve spoiled this one.”

He took my day, all soiled and blotted

and gave me a new one all unspotted.

And into my tired heart he cried.

“Do better now, my child.”

As I have been surfing the wordpress blogs I have come to re-discover the apparent conflict between faith and science.  Maybe rediscover is the wrong term, I guess I have grown up in a world that is seemingly divided into two camps, those with faith and those who believe in science.  So maybe “aware” is the right term and I first became aware of this conflict in middle/high school.  Growing up in church I was a hardcore believer in God’s creation, the Adam and Eve story, the whole nine yards.  I remember writing on papers handed into my biology teacher “evolution is a lie”.

Going through college and encountering more and more people that did not share my beliefs caused me to at the very least question why I believe what I do.  The world around me shouts at me the advances that are directly related to scientific theory and discoveries.  At the same time the world around me shouts at me the evidence for a God.  All the while people divide themselves into camps proclaiming themselves to be 100% right and everyone else 100% wrong.  And here I am in college trying to figure these things out with people from both camps yelling at me to get on their side.

Trying to work out these issues for myself was and with this post probably still is like standing in the middle of “no man’s land” on the western front of World War 1.   I see each side firing at each other with all that they have and all the while they are only entrenching themselves deeper into their own positions.  With everyone proclaiming themselves right and everyone else wrong, no genuine discussion or debate can occur.  Now I am not saying that to think yourself right is a bad thing.  What I am trying to say is that when you start off a discussion with “I’m right and you’re wrong” you have immediately put the other side on the defensive and there is a high chance that there will be no productive discussion.

For so long we have all grown up in a world where faith and science don’t mix.  People of faith are on the defensive against those who believe in science and see people of faith as behind the times.  Also at different times those who believe in science see themselves on the defensive when their whole life’s work/worldview is tested by something they can’t prove in a laboratory.   I think the whole debate between creation and evolution displays more about human nature than it proving who is right and who is wrong.  We all have a tendency to think we are right 100% of the time and we all cling to that especially when the issues you believe in are the source of power or position or just something you have believed in your whole life.

I don’t see such a need to for them to be in conflict with each other.  Science when properly applied seeks answers as to how things work.  Faith when properly applied seeks to explain the why.  I think we get into trouble when people use science to start explaining the why.  Darwin’s theories of natural selection are all well and good but when people start to use his theories to explain away God then I think they have gone too far.  I think we also get into trouble when people try to shut down scientific inquiry because the results of that inquiry don’t line up with a literal reading of God’s word.

Now far be it from me to cast doubt on God’s word, but His word also says that a day of God’s time is like a thousand years to us.  So… for me whether God literally created the earth and all things on it in 6 days or whether he used evolution is not the important question.  The important question for me is did God create in the first place?  For me that question is a resounding yes.  The complexities of this world and the universe much less the human body show me evidence of an intelligent designer.  For me science illuminates my faith, it shows me the vast expanse of creation and by extension the vastness of God.  At the same time science shows me the intricate details of the human body, how God put it all together to work just so.

Going back to the analogy of standing in no man’s land in World War 1, I think I’m going to stay there.  Unfortunately that probably means that I will end up receiving fire from both sides but oh well.