Part 4: When “Personally Feeling Good And Being Happy” Is Our Goal

A Cultural Laziness Which Has Evolved From An Attitude That Life’s Main Goal Is To Have Fun

It seems that our culture has come to expect to be catered to – to have their needs (felt needs) met. It also seems that we have moved from living as pragmatic narcissists to that of entitlement-expecting narcissists with a hedonistic bent. In the secular realm, catering to those felt needs is simply a business transaction; but in matters related to the spiritual, such catering can have eternal consequences.

In discussing the general attitudes of the younger generation with a friend from work, she told me of an e-mail she received from one of the coaches from her son’s baseball team. It had to do with what this coach has seen with the kids he’s coached and how it is also reflected in the college grads he’s hired. He titled his e-mail The Coddled Generation. Here are some excerpts,

Last night I was watching a 60 Minutes program about motivation in the work place and the uniqueness of the generation entering careers in 2011.

The show was really interesting, both from the perspective of an employer as well as a baseball coach. On this particular show, the coaching professionals interviewed were motivators and trainers used by businesses – experts on the emerging generation of workers and how best to speak to and communicate with them. The show highlighted fun and wacky office cultures like Google and Zappos where strange outfits are commonplace, happy hours are frequent and workers can take turns in the “nap room.” This was designed to show how corporate structure has evolved to help make workers comfortable, keep them happy and engaged, and ultimately increase productivity.

At one point, one of the consultants interviewed described this generation as “The Coddled Generation,” and then went on to describe how their upbringing has led to a completely different worker. This expert referenced school environments where Mom calls to complain about a grade, where simply showing up is reason for celebration, and where trophies are awarded to each and every athlete.

…

I honestly believe that the culture has changed, and there are two main differences:

A lack of desire to be outstanding…

A need for coddling and hand-holding

Read the rest of this entry

Part 3: When Christianity Is About The Experience, Feelings Become Paramount

An Emotion-Based View Of Christianity, Giving Too Much Importance To The Feelings Of An Individual And To That Of Making Converts

At the heart of the twenty-first century Western model of Christian evangelism is the scripture found in Matthew 28 – what is commonly referred to as The Great Commission.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

– Matthew 28:19 ESV

With this verse Christians have, in sincere and fervent zeal, taken the Gospel message of Christ to all the nations of the earth. Unfortunately, and in spite of their zeal, some may have missed the true intent of the verse. Note that the reference I show above ends not with a period, but with a comma. The folks at Stand to Reason promote the principle of Never Read a Bible Verse^[23], which is a pithy way of saying that one should never read a snippet of scripture (or any text, for that matter) without understanding the context of the passage the snippet is contained in. Using this principle, a better reference for The Great Commission would be Matthew 28:16-20, the paragraph which contains Matthew 28:19.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

– Matthew 28:16-19 ESV Read the rest of this entry

Part 2: When A Church Is Run As A Business, It Can’t Help But Be About The Bottom-line

A Pragmatic Mindset Derived More From Capitalism Than From Scripture

It is my opinion that the United States became a rich and powerful nation due, in part, to the aspects of capitalism which cater to the ability of humans to self direct their will towards goals, achieving them through determination, discipline and hard work. It is not difficult to find story after story of entrepreneurs who took little to nothing and built empires through their perseverance. Yet, hard work alone was not the recipe for success these people used. There were, and are, plans – business plans, marketing methodologies, sales approaches, growth models, etc.

Just about every salesman is schooled on how to entice a potential customer with the product he is selling, convincing the customer that he needs the product – regardless of whether or not the customer does, in fact, need the product. You may have heard the idiom, “He could sell ice to Eskimos!”^[7], describing the abilities of a top salesman to sell a product to an unlikely buyer. Or consider the various marketing strategies employed by establishments wishing to get customers inside their stores – all for the purpose of pitching products to them. The “loss leader”^[8] strategy stresses the point of selling one product at or below production costs for the sole purpose of being able to put other “for profit” products in front of the customer. It’s a gamble – a bet – that the customer will not leave the store with only the “for loss” product. And who among us has not had product B pitched to us via means of first having product A presented? For example, at a Bass Pro shop I recently had a timeshare presentation pitched to me after being enticed to win a new truck by just “entering a drawing.” Then there is the “bait and switch”^[9] approach in which the customer is led to believe they are getting product A when, in fact, they are sold a cheaper product B. It should be noted that one common feature of any sales approach is that the product is dressed up – enticed – to appear as indispensible to the buyer. Is it any wonder, then, that the phrase “Caveat Emptor”^[10] – “Let the buyer beware” – came about?

Read the rest of this entry

Part 1: An Introduction to the Problem Facing the 21st Century Western Church

The “Takeover and Colonization of Christianity”

Twenty-first century Western Christianity is in dire straits. Europe exists in a post-Christian state, and many believe that the United States is effectively on a path towards that same end. While some may argue that there has been a resurgence of evangelical growth, what with such phenomena as the megachurch or emergent church movements, it seems that more and more people in the U.S. are choosing to affiliate themselves with no religion^[1]. Whereas up through the mid-twentieth century one could expect an average United States citizen to understand the tenets of a Judeo-Christian heritage, a worldview of pluralism is now permeating the environment, essentially deadening secular society’s sensory receptors pertaining to moral truths. Strangely enough, we find that this state of affairs has occurred despite the West having experienced over 60 years of peace, prosperity, and religious freedom. Or, perhaps, I should state that this condition has occurred because of said peace, prosperity, and religious freedom.

Read the rest of this entry

Flashback to 2004, when there was still a show called "Crossfire" on CNN, and when the President of the Human Right Campaign (which advocates for, among other things, same-sex marriage) was still Cheryl Jacques.

Pro-family supporters fear legalizing same-sex marriage will open doors for polygamy to continue breaking down the sanctity of marriage. The issue of polygamy, presented by many pro-family groups, is showing itself more and more as a dead end for pro-gay activists in their push for homosexual marriage to be legalized.

Tucker Carlson, host of CNN’s "Crossfire", debated with Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques on the polygamy issue. Carlson asked her why shouldn’t polygamists be able to marry and all she could say was, "I don’t approve of that."

When conservatives say that about same-sex marriage, they’re called Puritanical, or shoving their views down others’ throats, etc., etc. But it was all the willfully ignorant Jacques could come up with at the time. She couldn’t fathom the idea that by changing the definition of marriage once, others would take that and run with it for other definitions.

Willfully ignorant. And now we have this.

Kody Brown is a proud polygamist, and a relatively famous one. Now Mr. Brown, his four wives and 16 children and stepchildren are going to court to keep from being punished for it.

The family is the focus of a reality TV show, “Sister Wives,” that first appeared in 2010. Law enforcement officials in the Browns’ home state, Utah, announced soon after the show began that the family was under investigation for violating the state law prohibiting polygamy.

On Wednesday, the Browns are expected to file a lawsuit to challenge the polygamy law.

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

The same-sex-marriage-to-polygamy link was understood by the dissenting conservatives on the court in the Lawrence case.

The connection with Lawrence v. Texas, a case that broadened legal rights for gay people, is sensitive for those who have sought the right of same-sex marriage. Opponents of such unions often refer to polygamy as one of the all-but-inevitable outcomes of allowing same-sex marriage. In his dissenting opinion in the Lawrence case, Justice Antonin Scalia cited a threat to state laws “based on moral choices” against “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in New York, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, made a similar comparison on his blog on Thursday in an essay criticizing the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage and the possible “next step,” which could be “another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity.”

This linkage, hand-waved away by same-sex marriage advocates at the time, is nothing less than willful ignorance. Each step was a clear slip down a slope they denied existed. Further predictions of what will happen should not be taken lightly at all. But they will. Case in point:

Such arguments, often referred to as the “parade of horribles,” are logically flawed, said Jennifer C. Pizer, a professor at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, and legal director for the school’s Williams Institute, which focuses on sexual orientation law.

The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while “you’d have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way” to recognize polygamy.

Professor Turley called the one-thing-leads-to-another arguments “a bit of a constitutional canard,” and argued that removing criminal penalties for polygamy “will take society nowhere in particular.”

Except that it is happening as we speak. This is not the first attempt at the polygamy issue, and if it fails it’s certain to not be the last. Marriage has always been defined as:

A) Two people
B) Different genders

When B has fallen, A cannot be very far behind. Beyond that, marriage will be whatever anyone wants it to mean, and thus will cease to have meaning. The social engineers will have won, but society will have lost.

A five part series.

The Space Shuttle ended a 30 year run of launches, today, with its final launch at Cape Canaveral. Is this the effective end of government sponsored manned space exploration? Despite the euphoria of the 1960s, what with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions geared to get us to the Moon before the Soviet Union, and along with it an implausibly fictional dream of exploring the universe, we are left with the potential prospect of sending robotic rovers to boldly go where no man has gone before. In 1967 we were dreamers: dreaming of Pan Am passenger shuttles, transporting people to operational Lunar Bases by 2001, or of moving past the speed of light to meet up with Vulcans in the 23rd century. Yet the laws of physics (and economics) are unmoving reality checks, and it appears that where no man will ever get to where no man has gone before.

Yet, despite the silliness of some of our predictions, hopes, and dreams over the past 50 years of manned space travel, I think it’s interesting to note the changes that have occurred between the first and last Shuttle launches. Consider that at the first launch of the Shuttle, in 1981, there were no laptops carried by the astronauts, indeed, there were no laptops at all! The digital cameras they now use to record images and video were also nonexistent. If an astronaut desired to carry a portable music device onboard in 1981, it would have been a Sony Walkman and it would have played cassette tapes. Of course, now an astronaut can slip an iPod in his pocket and carry thousands upon thousands of songs. Or consider the changes in video conferencing, e-mail, cell technology, as well as the computer processing power needed for virtually all of these advancements.

Still, there is a sense of loss as we bid farewell to this part of our history – a decidedly 20th century aspect of history. Will the future of manned space travel move from government funding to that of private enterprise? If so, what are we to make of such a transition? It might end up that such a venture will be an example of how, save for political or national security issues, government is best left out of areas which private enterprise is fully capable of handling.

I leave you with a song, penned by Kate Campbell, comparing the building of a concrete canoe with the first end of the space program…

Bud’s Sea-Mint Boat
by Kate Campbell

He lived his life
A civil service man
Designing toilets
For the space program
He believed
If we could go to the moon
There’s nothing on Earth
A man can’t do

So he ordered a ton
Of sand and clay
In his front yard
He built a frame
Most folks said
It’ll never float
Still they came to see
Bud’s cement boat

A dream is anything
That you want it to be
For some it’s fame and fortune
But for others concrete
Sometimes you just
Gotta follow your heart
No matter where it leads

He gave up fishing
And most of his friends
Worked all night
And every weekend
But he didn’t mind
The sacrifice
Cause he’d build a boat
That’s one of a kind

Well the neighbors thought
It was a real eyesore
They’d say hey Bud
What are ya building that for
And knowing they would
Never understand
He’d just smile and say
Because I can

Well he got laid off
In seventy-four
And they don’t go
To the moon anymore
But down around
The Alabama coast
She still floats
Bud’s Sea-Mint boat

Remember my post noting how some Pharmacists now carry weapons to protect themselves from drug addicts holding them up for oxycontin? Well, in Long Island we have a story of 4 people (2 employees and 2 customers) being shot dead in a Pharmacy hold up. The alleged shooter (and his wife) has been found and arrested. From ABC News,

Drug stores are now equipping themselves with surveillance cameras to protect themselves from possible break-ins.

Seriously? All I have to do to protect my household from a possible break-in is install a surveillance camera?

###

Remember my post noting how TSA is keeping us all safer by patting-down 5 year-old girls and 80 year-old grandmothers? Well, besides letting the identity-thief stowaway get a free ride, it seems that the TSA also has an inability to keep checked firearms from getting stolen.

The NBA follows the NFL’s example and heads for a lockout.

In both cases, you have millionaire team owners and players trying to figure out how to divide up billions in revenue.

Ain’t professional sports great?

Relative bias in the media vs actual bias. A new book from a UCLA political science professor demonstrate how, because the media is so generally slanted to the left, outlets like Fox appear more right-slanted, when in reality they’re far more centrist.

Rosalina Gonzales had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of injury to a child for what prosecutors had described as a "pretty simple, straightforward spanking case."

Trevor Phillips, chairman of Obama’s Equality and Human Rights Commission accused Christians, particularly evangelicals, of being more militant than Muslims in complaining about discrimination, arguing that many of the claims are motivated by a desire for greater political influence. Hmm, define "militant".

What if Charles Schultz had done cartoons of Doctor Who characters? The result would probably have looked like this.

"Smart" diplomacy; cozy up to dictators, snub our friends.

Democrats pilloried George W. Bush for "not listening to his generals" when he made decisions counter to the Pentagon. When Obama does it, not so much.

Would ID requirements for voting amount to a Jim-Crow-style poll tax on blacks? E. J. Dionne thinks so. James Taranto wonders if ID requirements for Amtrak, hotels, air travel and employment are equally as "racist"?

Nancy Pelosi said that they had to pass the bill before we could find out what’s in it. Apparently, some surprises are buried in there.

President Barack Obama’s health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.

The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

Whenever there is a budget shortfall, taxes are always on the table. How about we take them off just this once?

Medicare spending is unsustainable, and the CBO itself admits that its tools for determine any consequences from Obamacare are flawed. Yeah, that should "fix" health care.

And finally, define "emergency" (click for a larger version):

In Detroit, two armed and masked men attempted to rob a Walgreens at 4:30 am. However, pharmacist Jeremy Hoven responded by drawing his concealed handgun and firing at the robbers. They fled.

Hoven’s former Walgreens colleagues were oh so grateful for his possibly saving their lives that night. I say “former” colleagues because Walgreens thanked Hoven by firing him.

In Seattle, pharmacist Michael Donohue was confronted by a hooded robber demanding OxyContin which, evidently, has become a hot item for those interested in abusing drugs. However, Donohue responded by drawing his Glock 19 and pointing it at the robber. The robber fled (notice a pattern here?).

You might think that, with so many pharmacies out there, that some of them are bound to be targeted for robbery. Michael Donohue could tell you about that, for it seems that the incident describe above occurred only two hours after he identified (in a police lineup) a man who had held up his pharmacy previously.

In this CNN video report on the story, note the ending in which some pharmacies have taken to posting signs indicating that they do not carry OxyContin. If only it were as simple as putting up a sign. In an interview on Armed American Radio, Donohue tells of a pharmacist friend who was killed in a hold-up and of another colleague who insures that he always has a supply of OxyContin on hand, for would-be robbers.

As point of fact, it should be noted that any form of self-defense training, especially that involving the use of firearms, should also include knowledge of the laws pertaining to the use of deadly force. Another pharmacist, in Oklahoma City, is now in prison for murder after shooting a robber in his pharmacy.

The Dalai Lama calls himself a Marxist.

An "unexpectedly" we could do with down here. "Canada Jobless Rate Unexpectedly Declines in May to Its Lowest Since 2009" It’s down to 7.4 percent. We’re adding government jobs and they’re adding private sector jobs. Our dollar is getting weaker while theirs gets stronger. “Our economy has one of the best records in the area of job creation in comparison with other industrialized countries and this is why we will continue to keep our taxes low,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told lawmakers on June 8. Lessons to be learned  here.

Obama finally figures out, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." Which is one big reason why the stimulus didn’t stimulate.

Civility Watch: “Good afternoon brothers and sisters. Welcome to Nazi Germany….Brothers and sisters, this is not going to be an easy fight,” he shrieked. “It took World War II to get rid of the last Adolf Hitler. It is going to take World War III to get rid of Adolf Christie. Are you ready for World War III?” Union leaders are setting the example in New Jersey.

Soaking the rich won’t work the way the Left intends. Historical tax rates vs actual receipts put the lie to the idea that raising rates will necessarily bring in more revenue.

When even actor Aston Kutcher comes to the aid of Sarah Palin, you know the media has gone way too far.

And speaking of which (click for a larger version):

u no wat im sayin?
In We Don’t Need Know Education, Mike Adams laments the writing (and speaking) quality of today’s average university student.

I’m getting to be a crabby old man and I’m not even fifty. But working at a liberal university for eighteen years has taught me never to accept responsibility for my actions or my disposition. Instead I blame my most recent bad mood (the one I’m in right now) on a student who just asked me a question about the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Leon, (1984). Wanting to know the holding, he asked if it meant “that the police can rely upon a search warrant they don’t reasonably no is invalid.” I almost told the student there was know way he was going to pass my course if he didn’t no the difference between “know” and “no.” But I just new I would get in trouble if I did.

Maybe I’m getting to be a crabby old man, and I’m already over fifty, but I don’t recall there being such a disparity between college-age adults and post-college adults when I was in university.

###

Experience without Reason results in empty pews
It’s become hip for Christian leaders to toss around the “80% [or substitute some other large value] of the kids in our youth groups will leave Christianity by the time they finish college” warning. Regardless of the actual number, most will agree that we live in a time when more people claim to have no belief (or religious affiliation) than ever before.

Brett Kunkle, at Stand to Reason, has a novel idea: Why not teach apologetics to our Christian youth before they leave for college? Yeah, I know, in an age of touchy-feely, Jesus-wants-to-have-a-personal-relationship-with-you Christianity, teaching hard-hitting material which causes one to exercise their brain is considered revolutionary.

To drive the point home, Brett will sometimes role-play as an atheist college professor and present his case to unsuspecting Christian high school students (see video below). Take the time to see how the youth do in defending their faith. How would the youth group in your church do?

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I’m OK, You’re OK; but I can’t tie my shoes
From Jerry Weinberger,

I’ve been a professor of political philosophy in the political science department at Michigan State University for almost 40 years. I was chair of the department for four years. So I know a thing or two about the state of the student body…

…

…more and more of my students, and not just freshmen, can’t tie their own shoes. They lose syllabi and can’t follow simple instructions; they don’t get the right books; they e-mail me to ask when and where the final exam will be held (as if they didn’t know when they signed up and don’t know how to find out); they forget to bring blue books to exams; they make appointments and don’t keep them; and many never come to office hours at all, except perhaps on the day before an exam.

###

College is a waste of time
Some college students are finding the whole idea of dropping a wad (or, their parent’s wad) to be caged in for four years, inculcated in the ways of the world, to not be their style. Dale Stephens writes,

I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.

Interesting. He also mentions Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, which predicts a “free agent economy” in this new world economic order we’ve found ourselves in.

In a Michael Ellsberg article highlighting Stephens, we get a glimpse at the counter-cultural notion that young-adults (aka teenagers) are more than capable of entering the full-fledged “adult” world.

Usually when we hear the words “disruption” together with “teenagers,” we think of loud talking in movie theaters, playing clown in class, and other discipline problems.

But teenagers like Stephens are engaging forcefully in a very different—and more profitable—form of disruption: disruptive innovation, as first described in detail by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Instead of perpetuating the myth of adolescence, in which we train our young-adults to expect the years of 13 – 20+ to be years of unfettered FUN, why not task them with the responsibility of being productive members of society?

Yeah… I know. Where’s the fun in that?

When you politicize health care, you get government-style efficiency. "NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors."  And for those already in hospitals, doctors are having to prescribe water to make sure the elderly stay hydrated.

If the liberals are to be believed, poverty causes crime. And yet, in this tough economic time, the FBI reports a 5.5% drop in violent crime.

In economic news, Democrats are dead set against voting for any 2011 budget. There’s been a lot of hoopla surrounding the "repayment" of the General Motors loan from the auto bailout, except that it’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors. Indeed, GM has a sweetheart tax deal that is saving it $14 billion, not to mention another $14 billion is being lost in general on those bailouts.

The Obama economic "recovery" turned 2 years old in May. Upwards of a trillion dollars spent, for what? The number of people with jobs hasn’t changed, unemployment is far worse than they said it would be if we did nothing, median incomes are down, housing prices are down 10%, and I don’t need to tell you about gas prices. If George W. Bush were President, you just know he’d be personally blamed for this, but Obama gets a pass.

Canada, by the way, has been leading the US out of this mire by reducing debt and spending, even with a socialized medicine albatross around its neck.

Immigrants are turning to that "racist" Tea Party.

When we elected Obama, that was when "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal", right? So why does he not get slammed for not signing the updated Kyoto Protocol? Bush got criticized for it, even though it was Clinton who originally didn’t sign it. Nah, couldn’t be the double-standard, liberal media.

When you make entitlements untouchable, you risk hurting those you purport to be concerned about because economic collapse hurts us all, including and especially the poor. The idea that it couldn’t happen here is severely myopic.

And finally, "smart" diplomacy". (Click for a larger version.)

The Indianapolis Star has the story:

Federal officials said Wednesday that the new Indiana law cutting Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood violates Medicaid rules — a determination that could cost the state millions and possibly even billions of dollars.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informed state officials by letter that it was denying Indiana’s new Medicaid plan because states can’t pick and choose where recipients receive health-care services.

What happens next is, at best, a guess. But almost certain is that it will add fuel to a legal and political battle likely to be watched closely across the nation.

An HHS official would not comment on what happens if Indiana does not change its law, though one possible ramification would be withholding funding.

Indiana relies on about $4 million in federal Medicaid family planning funds and more than $4 billion in total Medicaid dollars.

Sounds like gangster government at work here. From the same report:

Anti-abortion activists challenged the Obama administration’s interpretation of federal Medicaid policy, saying they believe states do have authority to defund Planned Parenthood and called the letter a strong-arm tactic.

“We’re not surprised by it,” said Indiana Right to Life Legislative Director Sue Swayze. “This is the most pro-abortion president we’ve ever had. It almost feels like they’re bullying the state of Indiana over the wishes of our legislative branch.”

President Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, said, “(HHS) Secretary (Kathleen) Sebelius is strong-arming states like Indiana to protect the administration’s powerful ally Planned Parenthood.”

According to the Associated Press report, Indiana attorney general Greg Zoeller intends to continue defending the statute.

Planned Parenthood is already challenging the statute in court. The actions of HHS will only add another layer of litigation to this battle.

Hat tip: Jonathan Adler