An Amazing Invention that Will Lift Millions Out of Poverty

“Imagine a spectacular invention: a machine that can convert corn into stereo equipment. When running at full capacity, this machine can turn fifty bushels of corn into a CD player. Or with one switch of the dial, it will convert 1500 bushels of soybeans into a four-door sedan. But this machine is even more versatile than that; when properly programmed, it can turn Windows software into the finest French wines. Or a Boeing 747 into enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed a city for months. Indeed, the most amazing thing about this invention is that it can be set up anywhere in the world and programmed to turn whatever is grown or produced there into things that are usually much usually much harder to come by.

Remarkably, it works for poor countries, too. Developing nations can pout the things they manage to produce—commodities, cheap textiles, basic manufactured goods—into the machine and obtain goods that might otherwise be denied them: food medicine, more advanced manufactured goods. Obviously, poor countries that have access to this machine would grow faster than countries that did not. We would expect that making this machine accessible to poor countries would be part of our strategy for lifting billions of people around the globe out of dire poverty.

Amazingly, this invention already exists. It is called trade.”

--Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics

Why Do People Kill Black Rhinos?

“The black rhinoceros is one of the most endangered species on the planet. Fewer than 2,500 of them roam southern Africa, down from about 65,000 in 1970. This is an ecological disaster in the making. It is also a situation in which basic economics can tell us why the species is in such trouble—and perhaps even what we can do about it.

Why do people kill black rhinoceroses? For the same reason they sell drugs and cheat on their taxes. Because they can make a lot of money relative to the risk of getting caught. In many Asian countries, the horn of the black rhino is believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac and fever reducer. It is also used to make handles on traditional Yemenese daggers. As a result, a single rhino horn can fetch $30,000 on the black market—a princely sum in countries where per capita income is around $1,000 a year and falling. In other words, the black rhino is worth far more dead than alive to the people of impoverished southern Africa.

Sadly, this is a market that does not naturally correct itself. Unlike automobiles or personal computers, firms can’t produce new black rhinos as they see the supply dwindling. Indeed, quite the opposite force is at work; as the black rhino becomes more and more imperiled, the black market price for rhino horns rises, providing poachers even more incentive to hunt down the remaining animals. This vicious circle is compounded by another aspect of the situation that is common to many environmental challenges: Most black rhinos are communal property rather than private property. That may sound wonderful. In fact, it creates more conservation problems than it solves. Imagine that all the black rhinos were in the hands of a single avaricious rancher who had no qualms about making rhino horns into Yemenese daggers. This rancher has not a single environmental bone in his body. Indeed, he is so mean and selfish that sometimes he kicks his dog just because it gives him utility. Would this ogre of a rhino rancher have let his herd fall from 65,000 to 2,500 in thirty years? Never. He would have bred and protected the animals so that he would always have a large supply of horns to ship off to market.—much as cattle ranchers manage their herds. This has nothing to do with altruism; it has everything to do with maximizing the value of a scarce resource.”

--Charles Wheelan, The Naked Economist (2002 A.D.)

How Fear and Anger Relate

"Anger

Many people are familiar with depression. We are all familiar with anger. Anger says, "You are wrong, I am right." But if you listen closely, it can say more. 

How do you explain an overly aggressive animal? If it is domesticated or accustomed to sharing its space with humans, you suspect that fear is the problem. Though some run in fear, others attack, defending something important that is at risk. Listen to anger and you will frequently find fear. A woman rages at her husband for coming home late with alcohol on his breath. Sure, there is the "You are wrong" component. But there is also "I am afraid you are losing interest in me. I am afraid you could be tempted by another woman. And when you add alcohol, I get even more afraid." 

The problem is compounded with men because men aren’t supposed to be afraid. With no permission to discuss fears, men opt for anger. Sometimes their anger says, "This is the only way I know to get some control in an out-of-control world." But it’s a stopgap measure. Control that emerges out of anger is strictly temporary. Scripture says this about anger: "What causes fights and quarrels among you? You want something but don’t get it" (James 4:1—2). You want power, love, the TV remote, perfect children, but you don’t get them. 

Fear and anxiety say this: "You want something, and you might not get it." You want power, love, the TV remote, perfect children, but you might not get them. You want financial security, health for yourself and those you love, safe passage to work, and you know you can’t presume any of it. 

Fear and anger can be the same words spoken with a different attitude.

--Edward T. Welch, Running Scared: Fear, Worry & the God of Rest 

Seminary is Not a Church

This is a good article from my prof James Hamilton about what seminary can and can't do, as well as perhaps should and shouldn't try to do. Here are the opening paragraphs. 

In my humble opinion, seminary students should seek from the seminary what the seminary exists to give them, and the seminary exists to give them the Bible. Let me be quick to add that the seminary’s main purposes include systematic theology and church history, but God has revealed himself in the Bible. Let me say that again, because it’s that important: God has revealed himself in the Bible.

Seminaries exist to teach people the Bible, which means seminaries exist to teach people Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, introduce them to the Bible’s big story, and teach them how to read that story parts and whole.

This means that there are many jobs the seminary does not exist to do: the seminary is not a church. The seminary is not an evangelistic crusade. The seminary is not your small group, your missions and evangelism coordinator, or even your pastoral internship.

I have often heard preachers comment on some pastoral difficulty then say, “They don’t teach you that in seminary!” I usually think to myself, “nor did they intend to; nor were they supposed to.”

Cars don’t sprout wings and fly, and they don’t teach you to pilot a plane in Driver’s Ed. Evaluate a car, or a Driver’s Ed. class, according to what it is intended to do. The seminary is built to prepare people for ministry, yes, but it’s a school. That bears repeating: a seminary is a school. This means, by definition, that a seminary is not a church. So the seminary is preparing people for ministry, but it can’t do everything necessary to prepare people for ministry. It’s not built to do everything necessary to prepare people for ministry. It’s built to be a school.

-James M. Hamilton,  http://jimhamilton.info/2012/03/26/use-the-right-tool-for-the-right-job-gospel-maturity-for-seminary/#comments

What I Found Written on the Bathroom Stall Yesterday

We stopped to use the restroom at a Panera Bread on Bardstown Road, the hipster capital of the world. On the stall, some white person in skinny jeans had carved:

Question the status quo.

Beneath it, in an obviously different hand, someone had replied,

But do you have an answer? 

Sexual Immorality: The Downward Spiral of Our Rationalizations

"Consider sexual promiscuity. The official line is that modern people do not take sex outside of marriage seriously any longer; mere moral realists say this is because we no longer realize the wrong of it. I maintain that we do know it is wrong but pretend that we do not...

...Another tactic is inventing private definitions of marriage. Quite a few people 'think of themselves as married' although they have no covenant at all. Some even fortify the delusion with 'moving-in ceremonies' featuring happy words without promises. Unfortunately, people who 'think of themselves as married' refuse the obligations of real marriage, but demand all of its cultural privileges. Rationalization is so much work that they require other people to support them in it. Such demands make the cultural protection of marriage more difficult. 

Yet another ruse is to admit that sex belongs within marriage but to fudge the nature of the connection. By this reasoning I tell myself that sex is okay because I am going to marry my partner, because I want my partner to marry me, or because I have to find out if we could be happily married. An even more dangerous fudge is to divide the form of marriage from its substance--to say 'We don't need promises because we're in love.' The implication, of course, is that those who do need promises love impurely, that those who do not marry are more truly married than those who do.

This  last rationalization is even more difficult to maintain than most. Love, after all, is a permanent and unqualified commitment to the true good of another person, and the native tongue of commitment is, precisely, promises. To work, therefore, this rule requires another: having deceived oneself about the nature of marriage, one must now deceive oneself about the nature of love. The usual way of doing so is to mix up love with the romantic feelings that characteristically accompany it, and call them 'intimacy.' If only we have these feelings, we tell ourselves, we may have sex. That is to say, we may have sex--if we feel like it. 

Here is where things really become interesting, because if the criterion of being-as-good-as-married is sexual feelings, then obviously no one who has sexual feelings may be prevented from marrying. So homosexuals must be able to 'marry;' their unions, too, should have cultural protection. At this point suppressed conscience strikes another blow, reminding us that marriage is linked with procreation. But now we are in a box. We cannot say 'therefore homosexuals cannot marry,' because that would strike against the whole teetering structure of rationalizations. Therefore we decree that having been made marriageable, homosexuals must be made procreative; the barren field must seem to bloom. There is, after all, artificial insemination. And there is adoption. So it comes to pass that children are given as a right to those from whom they were once protected as a duty. The normalization of perversion is complete."

--Jay Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience

 

Can We Be Too Christ-Centered?

"There is no such thing, in Christian life and thought, as being too Christ-centered. But it is certainly possible to be Father-forgetful and Spirit-ignoring. At their best, and from their roots, evangelicals have avoided that. In recent decades, though it requires vigilance to make sure we are presenting the evangelical message with recognizable Trinitarian connections. What Would Jesus Do? He would do the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit. He would send the Spirit to bring us to the Father."

--Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything