Integrating Missionally

From the Pat Robertson Haiti debacle, Jeffrey Weiss has a story entitled “Haiti and the Pat Robertson Paradox” Great thoughts on religion in America (HT: Len Sweet)

From the election on Tuesday

Massachusetts Voters Backed Brown to Show Opposition to Democratic Agenda, Poll Says

“Nearly two-thirds of those who voted for Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race said their vote was at least in part to make clear their opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.”

Now What? Democrats Struggle to Make Sense of Losses

Between Republican Scott Brown’s surprise Senate victory over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s decision to lift campaign restrictions on corporations Thursday, Obama’s Transportation Security Administration nominee stepping down, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s nomination coming under fire, and even progressive radio station Air America going off the air, Obama had just come through the most bruising five days his administration, his party, and his progressive base had ever seen together.

From Science this week

Neurons Developed from Stem Cells Successfully Wired With Other Brain Regions in Animals. Why does this matter?

In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals,” Weimann said.

Human Brain Uses a Grid to Represent Space. Why read this? Well, these cells correlate with Alzheimer’s. Fascinating read.

The parts of the brain which show signs of grid cells — the hippocampal formation and associated brain areas — are already known to help us navigate our environment and are also critical for autobiographical memory. This means that grid cells may help us to find our way to the right memory as well as finding our way through our environment. These brain areas are also amongst the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease which may explain why getting lost is one of the most common early symptoms of this disease.

From Health, Wellness, & Food

Unraveled? Here’s How to Knit Yourself and the World Together. Okay, get past the Buddhist quote and you’ll find some great thoughts:

Have you ever looked into the mirror and wondered who is staring back at you? Or longed to unite the many parts within you? The friendly one, the angry one, the resentful one, the sad one, the calm one, the impatient one, the confused one – that are all jumbled up behind a public persona that’s buffed and glossed – but tends to crack when you’re angry or upset.

27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips. “These 27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips will get you on the right track for this New Year”

How To Reach Your Goals By Keeping A Journal. Great suggestions for record-keeping!

Cook Pizza in a Cast-Iron Skillet. A great suggestion.

Think you need a pizza stone to make some great homemade pizza? Megan from DIY home weblog Not Martha suggests trying your trusty cast-iron skillet before shelling out for a uni-tasking pizza stone.

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Why is East Asia more conservative?

“One of the major problems in most societies…is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations.” What an opening sentence! We do that don’t we? We observe people, find out an important aspect of their belief system, and immediately categorize them according someone’s correlation theories. Suppose I said that I stated on this blog that I believed in macro evolution, the belief that one species can evolve until such time as a new species is formed, i.e., a horse becomes a cow. (I don’t believe this by the way.) Based on that statement, a whole set of associations, correlations, and categorizations begin to occur in your brain. For a particular group of people, I am now someone who denies the authority of scripture, see Genesis 1-11 as metaphorical or fiction, not true. Some might say that I would embrace homosexuality, endorse women as senior pastors and deny the virgin birth of Jesus. All because I stated that I believe in macro evolution. Is that a fair correlation?

We in the West have generally associated atheism with liberalism. I have to wonder if that is why we who claim to follow Christ fight so hard for maintaining the belief that America is a Christian nation, that our founders were Godly men, and our culture to be based on Judeo-Christian principles. We are fearfully concerned that the increase in atheism will lead to a total and complete social liberal agenda.

However, could it be that there are societies which are both far more secular than the United States, and more socially conservative? Is that even possible? According to the World Values Survey, it could just be. It appears that East Asia is more secular than the US and yet on social matters, it is more socially and fiscally conservative than us. A recent post by Razib Khan, a socially conservative atheist notes this.

I think it may be interesting to note something I heard Bob Roberts say at a conference in California in 2007. He said that there is such thing as a postmodern world. However, there is a postmodern West. According to Bob, who has spent years in East Asia and the Middle East, postmodernity is not an issue in these areas. Primarily, I think one of the reasons is because they have yet to go through modernity. They are still mystics, not relying solely on the modern scientific method to account for every aspect of life. They still believe in the spiritual. They still have faith. Their worldview does not revolve around the propositional but the relational.

In fact, another extrapolation of data from that same survey gives us the glimpse that those nations coming out of communism, which had a heavy emphasis on the non-existence of God, actually are less inclined toward the liberal socialism that appears to be growing in Western Europe and the United States. “In China atheists are actually some more hostile to the precepts of godless Communism than the religious..it was curious that Chinese atheists are probably among the segments of the world population most likely to appreciate the non-zero sum power of capitalism and economic growth.”

In the US, however, where the emphasis is on scientific and propositionally-based truth is great, atheists in America are about five times more likely to be extremely liberal than theists. I will follow this up in a future post.

What do you see as some of the reasons that Eastern cultures are more socially and fiscally conservative than many of the more Western cultures? In addition, how does that impact how we deal with the philosophical expressions of modernity and postmodernity as well as the religious embrace of either a modern or postmodern viewpoint?

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“Society is about the quality of human relationships within families and communities. It is local, small-scale, inter-personal. It has a human face. The state is central, impersonal. It levies taxes, it provides services, but there is nothing voluntary about its operation. It uses power, not goodwill. So if the state grows at the cost of civil society, something is lost. When taxes replace generosity, and social workers replace caring neighbors, a dimension of social life atrophies and wanes. Instead of individuals being linked horizontally to one another in bonds of reciprocal responsibility, they are linked vertically to the state. They become passive recipients instead of active citizens. And though there are many gains – equality of provision, consistency, reliability – there is also a loss. The fabric of community wears thin.”

— The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, 128.

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Jonathan Sacks, a British Rabbi, notes:

To integrate, there must be something to integrate into. To become socializd, there must be such a thing as society, a proposition some politicians have famously denied. Nations are constituted by, among other things, a shared moral code. But liberalism in its modern guises, and still more in its postmodern ones, denies that there is such a thing as a shared moral code. It argues, instead, that we should be maximally free to do our own thing, live our own lifestyle, refuse to conform. What then becomes of the idea of belonging? The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, pg 5

John F. Kenneday

The individuation of society, the plea of liberal, social politics, has led to the fracturing of society. John F Kennedy’s famous speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” has been transformed into “My country needs to take care of me, my family, and my job.” What once was about country is now about me or my unique indivuated group. And it is destroying the sense of belonging.

In 1995, Robert Putnam wrote a journal article entitled Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital (Journal of Democracy, January 1995, Volume 6, Number 1). He later expanded this into a book entitled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

In the book, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they’re more likely to bowl alone:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values—these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

This was confirmed by a 2006 study for American Sociological Review. According to a report in USAToday:

Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago — a sign that people may be living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.

All of this started around the late 1950’s, early 1960’s in the United States, around the time liberalism began to take root in USAmerican society. However, it is not limited to the US. It’s impact has now been shown in Britain.

Research commissioned for the BBC found that UK society is a far lonelier one over the last 30 years (1971-2001), noting that “neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.”

Daniel Dorling (at Sheffield Univ.) headed the research team which created a formula based on “the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year….The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community, according to social scientists. They refer to it as the level of ‘anomie’ or the ‘feeling of not belonging’.”

Using these measures they found that the weakest communities in 1971 were stronger than the strongest communities in 2001.  An astonishing 97% of neighborhoods had experienced this increased isolation over these 30 years.

“The researchers conclude that the increase in anomie weakens the “social glue” of communities. The result, they suggest, is that neighbourhoods are likely to be less trusting and more fearful.” (See the BBC report here and the whole study here as a pdf)

The conclusions of Sacks must not be ignored. Liberalism is destroying the sense of community, society, and belonging. One can only note how hard it is to get people to visit your home, or to visit in other people’s homes (with the possible exception of the South).

The church has a role. Unfortunately, however, the church is following culture. Attractional churches are large but often lack community. People may choose to get involved in a small group, but the reality the emphasis of attractional, and dare I say mega, churches is the weekend event. Community has a limited ability to occur in a large gathering, especially when a large part of the gathering is passive.

When the emphasis is on missional activity, doing ministry together in the community rather than seeing church as the weekly gathering, belonging takes place. Strong relationships are developed and people have a large network of relationships to support them, encourage them, and a group where “everybody knows your name.” It develops that network because of a shared sense of responsibility and purpose.

What are ways that the church can build community and overcome the impact of liberalism in the West?

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Obama won.  I have prayed for him and will continue to do so.

When I awoke this morning, I had someone ask me about the election, specifically the fact that few of the 50 largest cities voted for McCain.  After I shared my response to my friend, I thought I would just post it for the world to see this morning (though I have revised it a tad).

I think there was a primary factor expressed in a variety of ways.  Now I admit I haven’t examined the exit polling, just my thoughts on what I have seen and heard over the past year or so.

I don’t believe this was a vote on ideology; in fact, the extreme liberal-voting Obama moved right during the general election.  This was an emotion-based election.  It was displayed in the following ways:

The Chains are Gone

First, I think part of it is the emotional compulsion of the African-American vote. I think it was an embracing of a messiah-figure. Obama was Moses and they believe that this is their exodus. I saw (or maybe heard) video of an African-American lady who believed that she will never have to pay for gas again if Obama became president. Centuries of repression – whether real or perceived – were released in this vote. It may be this is the opportunity for race relations in our country to totally heal en masse, though not en total – it will always exist.

I think even outside the African-American vote, this was a messiah-istic election for many who have felt repressed, again, whether that repression is perceived or real.

I also think that this was a referendum against George Bush. There was great anger towards him. I think had Bush been a true conservative, in the likeness of Reagan, instead of a pseudo-conservative who attempted to placate the democrats to win their support, this would have been a different election.

I think Europe loves Obama because they perceive he will move the country more socialist.  The Europeans finally believe they will have someone that will make us like them, thus ending (in their minds) the domination of the US in a variety of areas. Again, an expression of emotional repression.

I think for the democrats, this was emotional in that they felt a right to be in power and would do anything to get it back. I think there is an unhealthy fear within the liberal expression of our democracy.  They want to bring back the fairness doctrine not because they want fairness in the media, but because of the loss they have felt since the 1990’s.  Again, this is an emotional issue, not a fairness issue.

I think the polarization of the country was brought to full display in this vote. People are so emotionally unhealthy that civility and integrity are gone (and has been for a few years).  Our country is looking for meaning and wholeness, but they are trying to achieve it through destructive behaviors.

Finally, I think this was a guy who could really communicated in a way that moved the emotions. While there was little substance with his style (in general) he was soooo much better than McCain in communicating that he influenced the influencers. Communication theory has taught us that commercials are not the major factor in an election. They actually just influence the opinion-leaders. It’s the opinion-leaders who are the influencers.

Syndrome, from The Incredibles

I’ll close with a thought from the movie The Incredibles – yeah that cartoon a couple of years ago. At the movie’s conclusion, Syndrome applauds what Dash had bemoaned in the movie’s opening — his master plan to kill all the superheroes and stage a false save-the-world story for himself ends with him selling his inventions to the general public. At this point, he says, “Everyone will be special, and then no one is.”

The danger of fairness is that it destroys uniqueness, both individually and corporately. Who wants to be average? Well if you have felt repressed for years, average is better than where you feel you are. The issues will come when those who become average want to become better than average, and what they will do to achieve it.

In addition, Christians have to recognize the reality that fairness is not part of God’s plan. Wholeness and Uniqueness are. Unless we are able to live out our uniqueness, our identity in Christi will be repressed and we will not be able to discover who we are in Christ. Even in heaven, we will not all be the same.  We will be who we were created to be.

Just my thoughts…

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