Abstinence

December 31st, 2008

 “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Matt 1:18-20

The Joseph story is sometimes lost in our joy about Christmas. He was quite a guy because he was willing to accept Mary’s claim that she was a virgin even though she was obviously pregnant. He was willing to put aside all that he had been taught about how a devout Jewish man should respond in these circumstances and deal with the public ridicule he certainly experienced because the woman he planned to marry was pregnant.

There is a lot that we can learn from that story about how we deal with the whole subject of sex education today.

An interesting study was recently published by Pediatrics journal. It examined how effective abstinence-only sex education programs are. What it found is that those who participated in those programs, as indicated by their willingness to pledge to retain their virginity until marriage, ultimately do engage in pre-marital sex at more or less the same rate as the rest of the population.

That in itself wouldn’t be all that disturbing, but the study also examined the use of contraceptives. It discovered that those who pledged virginity, once they did become sexually active, were 12% less likely to use contraceptives compared to the general population.

One explanation for this difference is that abstinence-only programs either deliberately or inadvertently create negative associations with contraceptives.

The only difference that the study found is that those who had participated in the abstinence programs did tend to delay their first sexual contact longer than the rest of the population. Some who have analyzed the data suggest there is a greater correlation for this delay with the conservative families these people came from (restricted/controlled contact with the opposite sex, same sex schooling, conservative colleges, etc.) than their participation in a particular type of sex education course. 

Ultimately, though, what this study states is the obvious.  The natural drives to procreate that lead young people to explore and experiment with their sexuality are very strong.

What it also says loud and clear is that the money poured into abstinence-only education programs over the past eight years has not had the desired effect. In fact, the “standard” sex education programs which don’t attempt to place a value judgement on pre-marital sex, but simply educate teenagers about how to responsibly manage their sexuality, appear to be more effective in encouraging young men and women to use contraceptives.

What I’m interested in finding out is whether this makes any difference to those conservative Christians who pushed for abstinence-only programs.

My sense is that it won’t because they will view this as a moral choice rather than an attempt to reduce unwanted pregnancies. It is about pregnancy being an appropriate consequence for pre-marital sex. It is the hubris which suggests that parents can protect not only their own children, but the children of less pious parents, from bad choices by imposing a particular set of religious values.

Jesus spent a lot of time criticizing a similar pride of the conservative Jewish aristocracy.

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Luke 18:9-14

It is the humility of the publican that leads to the recognition that God directs the lives of all of His children, not us. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility as parents to provide our children with ALL the information that they need to become responsible adults. They are the ones who ultimately make the choices about their own sexuality, just as they make choices about the values they are going to use to guide their lives. God is looking for our children to choose Him on their own terms and not as the result of a choices we or any other set of parents have already made. 

We have the great privilege to guide.  They have the responsibility to choose.

 

Posted in Religious Conservatism | 5 Comments »

Peeping

December 14th, 2008

“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?” Isa 8:19

There were a couple of interesting things coming together in the last few weeks that seem to have a common thread. The thread is that some people find an idea so compelling that they become blind to any facts which undermine their position.

One is the ongoing Pro-Life opposition to the Obama election. The second is a report regarding the death penalty. The third is the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a suit challenging President-Elect Obama’s citizenship.

One of the dominant themes of Senator McCain’s campaign was that you can’t trust President-Elect Obama. That point of view appealed to Pro-Lifers, Racists, Libertarians, Liberal-haters, Gay-haters, Free-Marketers, Isolationists, and many who legitimately questioned Senator Obama’s experience. McCain may have succeeded in sowing seeds of doubt regarding Obama, but he failed to convince a majority of voters that he was a better choice.

Of the whole spectrum of Obama opponents, the Pro-Lifers seemed most shocked by outcome. Many refuse to accept the election.  Some predict the God will swiftly and decisively punish our country and all those who voted for Obama.

What is fascinating about this position is that, in practical terms, the past eight years of Pro-Life governance did not substantially restrict abortion rights in this country. It is also highly likely given the financial crisis that we are facing, that the next four to eight years won’t see substantial relaxation of abortion restrictions either. So the operative question is what motivates this reaction?

A group advocating changes in our death penalty laws released a report indicating that it now costs more to execute a prisoner than it does to incarcerate them for life. The rest of the report documents that far fewer capital cases are being brought in the courts because states recognize that it is both expensive to prosecute these cases and many convictions end up getting overturned as new evidence becomes available. So the operative question is why do we still have a death penalty?

The Supreme Court recently refused to take up a case claiming that Obama didn’t meet the constitutional citizenship requirements to be President. There is a second case of a similar nature also making its way to the Supreme Court. It will also likely also be rejected. The mainstream media including nonpartisan fact finding organizations have repudiated all of the claims surrounding this controversy. So the operative question is why does this controversy continue to flourish on the Internet even though it has no substance in fact?

The answer to all of the questions appears to be a conspiracy culture described in a Salon article on the citizenship controversy.

“There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master’s degree in psychology. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it … Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.”

Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory “develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence,” Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. “As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy.” 

 

Let’s examine each of these in the light of this evaluation.

The citizen conspirators are a classic example that requires little additional explanation. When confronted with Obama’s birth announcement in a HI newspaper, the citizen conspirators respond that the announcement doesn’t say where Obama was born, and even if it did, Obama’s parents could have lied, or Obama’s grandparents could have lied, to cover up the fact that he was born somewhere else. I’ve also read some who have suggested that Obama’s real purpose of returning to HI late in his campaign was to tie up the loose ends around this birth certificate cover-up rather than visit his dying grandmother. The reality is that a mountain of simple evidence supports the same simple conclusion that the Supreme Court action reflected. Obama was born in Hawaii and as a result, is a US citizen qualified to be elected President.

Those who support the death penalty have a similar myopia. They are fixated on punishment rather than practicality. As a result, they are willing to spend more money to kill someone rather than imprison them for life. And they are willing to run the fairly high risk that they may be killing an innocent man in order to make sure that they kill the guilty. At the end of the day it makes no difference that the death penalty may no longer be pursued by states attorneys. All that is important is that it is on the books and available for use when the public outrage demands it.

Finally, there is an aspect of this that is even reflected in the Pro-Life movement. That aspect is revealed when you talk with Pro-Lifers about the issue of reducing abortions. You would think on the surface, that this is something Pro-Lifers would welcome regardless of where it comes from. Even if I don’t agree with the premise that life begins at conception, if I’m willing to agree that abortion is bad social policy, shouldn’t that represent common ground?

What I’ve discovered is that, at least for some, the Pro-Life position has nothing to do with the number of abortions that are performed in this country and everything to do with eliminating abortion as choice. It is all about imposing a particular morality rather than addressing a social need. In the case of Barak Obama, this is manifested in the view that it doesn’t matter what Barak Obama does or doesn’t do to reduce the number of abortions in this country. As long as he persists in his view that a woman should have a right to choose an abortion, he is supporting a sinful act, is unqualified for the office, and those who support him are unqualified to call themselves Christians.

So just like the citizenship conspirators and the death penalty advocates, there is an aspect of irrationality in some Pro-lifers. It doesn’t matter that the number abortions in this country is going down at a fairly constant rate regardless of administration. It doesn’t matter that the best years of abortion reduction have occurred during the years when income for the poor rose. It doesn’t matter that good education and easy access to contraception have a direct affect on the birthrate among teenagers.  All that matters is morality.

This is very similar to the conversations with the citizenship conspirators.  They claim that they don’t oppose Obama politically.  All that matters is the constitution.  Or the death penalty advocates.  For them all that matters is justice.

For all three groups, the world easily divides into believers and non believers and what’s worse, they don’t listen to anything a non-believer has to say. That’s because they prefer the peep and mutter of familiar spirits to any truth that may upset their world view.

I don’t know how a democracy effectively handles sections of the electorate who refuse to engage in a rational discussion. The last election proved that these groups are in the minority. Hopefully this minority will recognize that the issues which affect our suvival affect them too, and are far more serious and in need of their attention than those issues which seem to have them mesmerized. 

Posted in Abortion, Bias, Politics, Religious Conservatism | 8 Comments »

Reason Together

December 2nd, 2008

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isa 1:18

We are entering a very interesting time in American politics and culture.

We are clearly in one of the most serious crises in the last fifty years. We are fighting two wars. Our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse. Our environment is close to the point of no return as global temperatures rise. We remain in the cross hairs of a loose coalition of international terrorists. China, India, and Russia are all challenging us economically, militarily, and scientifically for world leadership.

So what do we choose to do?

We elect a young inexperienced liberal African American politician.

How can this make sense in this time of greatest need?

How can we trust someone who is solidly Pro-Choice?

How can we trust someone who is clearly liberal (or maybe even socialist) to the point of being willing to “associate” with folks like Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, and Saul Alinsky?

Or isn’t even an American citizen?

How can we trust someone who learned his politics Chicago-style at the feet of Emil Jones?

How can we trust someone who represents all we fear – uppity disrespectful black folks?

How could God do this to us?

There are people all across this country right now asking all of these questions and worse.

Here are some of the explanations that I’ve heard and read.

It must have been the media.

It must have been the unions.

It must have been those young voters who are so easily misled.

It must have been those black folks who couldn’t see beyond race.

It must have been all that money from questionable sources that Obama spent on his campaign.

It must have been McCain.

It must have been Palin.

It must have been Bush.

It must have been the economy.

It is remarkable that people who claimed that President Bush had a mandate and a mission from God, now reject President-Elect Obama who received more votes than President Bush ever did.

The bottom line is that the voting public has rejected the politics of division. They have rejected the politics of bigotry. They have rejected the politics of character assassination.

The problem, though, is that the scorched earth campaign run by the Republicans has left a lot of people with very distorted views.

It will be interesting to see how President-Elect Obama deals with the skepticism and outright hostility towards his presidency that currently exists in this country.

Hopefully it is an opportunity, like the silted stream, to stir up all of the buried issues and bring them to the surface.  It looks muddy now, but that is only so that the mud can be washed away leaving a clean stream where a polluted one had been.

We have to find a way to reason together as a one country and one people again.  That isn’t to say that we give up our ideals, but rather agree that the survival of our country should be a goal we can all rally around.

 

Posted in Bias, Politics | No Comments »

Reconciliation

November 17th, 2008

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matt 5: 21-24

Jesus was a radical thinker. He confronted the conservative fundamentalism of his time with some very difficult concepts. One of the most difficult concepts for the Jews to accept was reconciliation. They believed that God was vengeful and visited His wrath on sinners in the form of illness, poverty, and misfortune. So it was easy for the Jews to identify sinners and they treated them accordingly.

Jesus rejected that way of thinking. He taught that we are all God’s children. We all need saving, and it was God’s job to judge, not ours. In fact, withholding judgment isn’t nearly enough, we have to figure out how to love everyone – particularly those that we feel were sinners. In this passage from Matthew, Jesus is saying that if any of us are guilty of harboring ANY unkind thoughts about our brother, we are in MORE spiritual danger than murderers.

In other words, as He did through out this chapter, He is expanding the definition of what it means to be a disciple. It’s not enough to just follow the commandments. We have to love our brothers, even if we think they are murderers. That love by the way goes way beyond the simplistic “I love the man but hate the act”. Later in this same chapter He says we have to “walk” with them until we understand them. We have to embrace them, even when we think they have injured us. We have to trust them even when we feel they have stolen from us. In fact, it is so important that we sincerely resolve any differences with our brothers, that we should make that a higher priority than going to church and asking for our own forgiveness.

This is radical thinking that I don’t see many Christians practicing today.

Here’s just one example.

I’ve been corresponding with a handful of different people who felt that a vote for Obama was immoral because President-elect Obama is Pro-Choice. The news last week carried a piece about a Catholic priest in South Carolina who went so far as to suggest that a vote for Obama was a sinful act. As a result, those who committed that act needed to confess that sin before they could receive communion.

This may seem well beyond the pale for many, but I can confirm that there are some who feel that our country is going to suffer the wrath of God because of our failure to elect a Pro-Life Presidential candidate.

I’ve already posted a couple of things on abortion. I won’t repeat those posts here, but just provide a summary and link if anyone wants to do any more research.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/christianpolitics/category/abortion/

Good ideas bad results – Practical ways to reduce the number of abortions
Eternal Life – Practical reasons why “life begins at conception” doesn’t work
Unto Us a Child is Born – God respects choice
Greater Good – Which is worse, abortion or sin

What I did want to spend some time on is this question of Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice as a political issue.

First a quick summary of the issues.

Pro-Life folks feel that there is Biblical evidence that life begins at conception, so abortion is the equivalent to murder. As a result, they feel it should be treated as murder by our legal system.

Pro-Choice folks are more concerned about the rights of women and the control that women should have over their own bodies.

Roe v. Wade is the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision prohibiting states from enacting legislation prohibiting abortion.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey is the 1992 Supreme Court decision where the court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade using the principle of stare decisis. Essentially, when something has been law for a long time and has become part of the fabric of society, it is beyond the scope of the courts to change it.

The bottom line is that the past thirty years have polarized the voting public and made a lot of money for politicians on both sides of the issue.

So let’s dig a little deeper into the claim that a a vote for a Pro-life candidate is a moral issue.

First an easy one. If a Pro-Life stance is just a moral litmus test of the character of candidates, I suggest that it is faulty because there have been plenty of Pro-life senators and congressmen over the past eight years who fell far short of the mark as ethical lawmakers. So there it has to be more than that.

If it’s not just a moral litmus test and Pro-Life supporters are looking for real practical change, then shouldn’t those candidates who deliver real change be the ones who earn their vote regardless of whether or not they pass the litmus test?

In other words, since it is unlikely that Roe v. Wade is going to get overturned anytime soon, and the longer it stands the more difficult it will be to overturn, then shouldn’t Pro-Life voters be demanding more substantive practical progress in reducing the number of abortions from their candidates?

Well as you might imagine, I’ve done a little research on the subject. Here are the statistics (abortions per 1000 women of child bearing age) for the last couple Presidents through 2005.

Reagan -  29.28 – 27.37
Bush I -     27.37 – 25.89
Clinton -    25.89 – 21.30
Bush II -     21.30 – 19.41

What is interesting is that the President who had the most dramatic affect on reducing the number of abortions was the only one of the bunch who was Pro-Choice – Bill Clinton.

Here’s the bottom line from what I have learned so far from those single issue Pro-Life voters. They are unconcerned about whether or not the person they voted for actually does anything substantive to change the status quo. They view their vote as a moral imperative that goes beyond any practical measure. They feel that when they vote Pro-Life, they are voting Pro-God.

My concern, at this particular point is time, is that we don’t have the luxury of this sort of debate anymore. We can’t have folks sitting on the sidelines self-righteously predicting God’s wrath for our moral weakness. Our country is in tough shape. Right after 9-11, a call went out to the American people and they responded as one, even though a lot of us thought the wrong person with questionable morals was in the White House then too.

 I think that the situation is even more serious now. We all need to be in the same boat rowing in the same direction because our ship of state is perilously close to the falls. We don’t have time to argue about the details. On some things we are just going to have to agree to disagree at least until we are in a safer place. Hopefully, we CAN all agree that we care enough about each other to put aside partisanship, pick up an oar, and start rowing. 

Posted in Abortion, Politics, Religious Conservatism | 12 Comments »

The Unrighteous

November 7th, 2008

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? “ II Cor 6:14

It has been a wonderful week in politics.

Our country in my opinion has done something remarkable.

Unfortunately, many of the Republicans are too busy eating each other to notice.

John McCain gave a very gracious concession speech. I’m inclined to also take him at his word, that he will be a great help to this new President and will put service to his country first. If he had chosen to run his campaign in the same way, the results might have been different.

The Republicans appear committed to the path of self-destruction in their zeal to blame this loss on anyone but themselves. Sarah Palin has been the focus through much of this week with some really horrendous things coming from cowardly anonymous sources. I was not a Palin fan, but she certainly doesn’t deserve the blame either.

The conservative wing of the party is claiming that the loss is because the party just wasn’t conservative enough. Perhaps a public stoning of a gay person might have given the party a better opportunity to separate the apostate moderates from the real conservatives.

The moderates look at what they thought was their party and don’t recognize any of the people or the policies.

All the while, everyone is claiming to be to true decedent of Ronald Reagan.

Then there is the specter of Joe Lieberman – the man without a party. The Democrats don’t need him anymore because they have a majority. They also don’t want him because he actively campaigned for John McCain. The Republicans are having a tough time welcoming back John McCain, much less Joe Lieberman. Poor Joe. But he is going to suffer the consequences of the choices that he has made which will make both Republicans and Democrats happy for different reasons.

While all this is going on, President-elect Obama is getting about the business of the country and enjoying the support of conservatives and liberals.

He needs that and our prayers.

 

Posted in Politics | No Comments »

Socialism

November 2nd, 2008

“Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.” Luke 18:22

In the last gasp of a desperate campaign, Senator McCain and Governor Palin have decided that their best strategy is to frighten the American voter by labeling their opponent a socialist. This was the result of a sound bite from a conversation that Senator Obama had with the now famous Joe Wurzelbacher. Joe asked Senator Obama to defend his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the top tier of wage earners while preserving those cuts for the rest of the population. As part of that discussion Senator Obama said that he believed that taxing the wealthy who have seen their income grow over the last eight years in order to provide a break for everyone else who have seen their income shrink over the same period of time, is good economic policy. He use the phrase “spread the wealth around”. That has become the touchstone for this attack.

I think that there are a couple of ways to respond to this claim.

The first is to take Joe the Plumber head on. He appears to object to the concept of a progressive tax system – the more you make the more you get taxed. The usual conservative objection to a progressive tax system is that it punishes success, and as a result, discourages the effort to be successful. Using that logic, the Bush administration aggressively cut the tax rates of the most successful. Their expectation was that this would encourage the wealthy to make more of the sort of investments that made them successful in the first place which will result in growing the economy for everyone else. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

The facts support a much different picture. Democratic administrations where policies favor the middle class have historically done better for both the middle class and the wealthy than Republican administrations. This has held true for the past 80 years.

Economists explain this by pointing out that a robust middle class is the best driver of our economy. When the middle class is doing well, everyone does well. I heard it expressed by CEO Victor Hammel, “I would rather pay a little higher tax on a higher profit than a lower tax rate on lower profits.”

The second is to dive into this claim of socialism.

First a quick definition. Socialism is the opposite of capitalism. In a socialist society there is no private ownership. The government owns everything presumably for the benefit of the people. It’s that last part that gets people confused because Socialists talk a lot about the equitable distribution of wealth.

The McCain campaign has been tossing the word socialism around much in the same way that the Bush administration turned liberal into a dirty word. What bothers me about it is that it is hypocritical and cynical.

It is cynical because the Bush tax cut plan is set to expire on January 1, 2009 anyway. So how does refusing to renew a tax cut, that didn’t have the desired result anyway, somehow suddenly become a socialist act? Those tax cuts were scheduled to expire BECAUSE so many people (including John McCain) were skeptical of their promised effect. Even if this weren’t an election year, I suspect that the Bush administration would have had a difficult time getting them renewed.

What is hypocritical is that we HAVE in fact taken a huge step toward socialism with the various financial bailout plans which both John McCain and Barack Obama voted for. In this case the government has in effect nationalized portions of the financial system (any maybe soon the auto companies) for the benefit of the people.

Finally a moral argument.

No less an authority than Jesus suggested that one our our two great responsibilities was to love our brother. The love he proposed was not just a philosophical concept. He proposed a practical redistribution of wealth from those who had it to those who needed it. He said that this benefited, not only the receiver, but also the giver. Part of the benefit to the giver was the realization that wealth if anything was an impediment to salvation. A prime example was the rich man Jesus spoke of in the quote at the top of this post. When faced with the choice of salvation or wealth, he chose wealth. I wonder what those who are calling Senator Obama a socialist would do today if they were given the same choice by Jesus.  I hope they would chose more wisely than than the wealthy man.

Posted in Finance, Politics | 4 Comments »

The Kingdom

October 19th, 2008

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32

So what is the kingdom of God’s promise? My understanding is that it is everything that we need to grow in our understanding of ourselves and him.

My sense of this moment in time is that the kingdom is going to be a new social paradigm.

For those who have been following some of my previous posts, the crisis that we are facing bears and eerie resemblance to the Fourth Turning predicted by some generational historians. If their theories are accurate, we will have to create a new social order to survive this crisis – the kingdom.

What is fascinating about this whole financial scenario is that it ultimately is the death knoll for the concept of self-regulating markets. What we are going to see now is whole new global regulatory structure which will enforce more conservative investment practices and prevent institutions from getting into the upside down position that they found themselves earlier this year.

The US will have less influence in this system than it had in the past because, among other things, we were the ones who promoted the strength of the unregulated market. Asia, Russia, and the Middle East have a bigger role in this new system because they are the winners in the current global economy.

The other casualty is the conservative fantasy of small government. The election this fall will only serve as evidence of something that most thoughtful people already know.

The era of conservative influence is over. When the conservatives running the government were staring down the barrel of the gun of global financial collapse, they abandoned their principles and embraced the biggest package of government socialism that we’ve ever seen. Our government has adopted a policy of nationalization of a significant portion of our financial infrastructure.

So when you begin to unravel this conservative fantasy, it leaves a lot exposed. The conservative/libertarian ethos is that an individual should be completely accountable for their own actions. They are solely responsible for their own success or failure. So by extension, if government just left everyone alone, defended the borders, and kept the peace – the marketplace would sort everything else out by rewarding the just and punishing the unjust.

What this crisis (and really the last eight years) has proven is that this philosophy no longer works in a globally connected economy. We are interconnected and co-dependent. Our attempt to go it alone, in one great last grasp for conservative greatness, has left us battered and weak.

The more cynical in the audience might take this a step further and suggest that those in power only used conservative principles to gain power. When it served their purposes, they were conservatives. When it was their own money on the line, they suddenly morphed almost overnight into liberals advocating big government socialism.

So where do we go from here?

What the Four Turnings researchers predict is that a new leader will emerge to help define this new social order. The old divisions will evaporate as we all realize that our collective survival requires a new identity.

My sense is that we need leadership which can embrace a new global role for both government and citizens. Our opportunity is to become leaders of this a new emerging globalism because our interdependencies and our problems can no longer be defined by our borders or our old ideologies.

Financial markets, global warning, stateless terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and continued conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq all require multi-national solutions. Our ability to be a leader in those solutions will depend on our ability to put our own internal differences aside and embrace this new globalism ourselves.

Our opportunity is to become a leader in forging new alliances to marginalize stateless terrorism by addressing the root causes that give it life.

Our opportunity is to become leader in building a new carbon-neutral economy.

Our opportunity is to embrace the real promise of the American dream for all those who are willing to work for it regardless of color, creed, birthplace, or sexual orientation.

We are going to need everyone in the boat pulling on the oars to raise our country out of the problems it is currently confronting. The good news is that we have a generation of young people eager to take on that role. The bad news is that in order to accept the kingdom that our Father is poised to provide to us, we have to be willing to give up our previous closely held beliefs about what it might look like.

When you vote in November, spend a little time evaluating which of the two men running has the vision to lead us to this new social order.

Posted in Finance, Politics, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Lender

October 18th, 2008

“Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him.” Isa 24:1-2

This is how the BC Jews tried to reason their way through hard times. They ultimately figured that they must have done something to make God mad at them. They looked for scape goats, but ultimately realized that it was likely that they were all to blame because they were all interconnected.

We find ourselves in a similar situation today with our economy.

What happened as best anyone can figure is that financial institutions lost confidence in the financial system as the value of mortgage-backed securities was questioned.

I’ve already posted some things on why mortgage-backed securities failed, but here’s the best summary I can come up with. It was a huge pool of global cash chasing the percieved safety of the American mortgage market. Irresistible demand combined with a philosophy of deregulation resulted in a supply of increasingly risky loans that were passed off as high quality investments.

The important question is what we do to move forward. In order to talk about the solution, we first have to dig a little deeper into the problem.

We are no longer an independent economy. Our economy is intimately linked to every other world economy through a shared global financial system of interdependent hierarchical lending institutions. All of these institutions to one degree or another hold mortgage-backed assets. When the value of those assets began to erode, the most highly leveraged and least regulated of those institutions, the investment banks, quickly collapsed because they didn’t have other assets to cover the loses they were experiencing in their mortgage portfolio.

By this time every financial institution that held mortgages in one form or another began internal audits to determine what those assets were really worth. As they discovered the extent to which they had been overstating their net worth, they realized that they were overextended. They also realized that if they had to, they probably could not raise enough cash from selling those assets to pay off all of their outstanding loans. Their natural reaction was to retain more cash to make up for the loss in their asset value. The way they did this is was as their outstanding loans were repaid, they initiated fewer new loans. The way they did that is tightened up their new loan requirements which resulted in fewer qualified loans. One of the loans that quickly fell out of favor were those to other banks. That’s because every bank assumed that every other bank shared the same problem they did.

It quickly got to the point where all banks were holding on to virtually all of their funds. This is not a viable long-term position because banks depend on loans for their income. It is an entirely understandable short-term position, however, because the survival instinct is much stronger than the profit motive.

And so the problem.

Unlike in days past when we could barter for goods and services, our economy runs on the principle of deliver today and I’ll pay you tomorrow. In other words, borrowing against future earnings. So the reason why the plumber can leave you a bill rather than insist on a cash payment is because he is able to take that bill to the bank who, for a small fee, will loan him $ .80 for every the dollar of your bill. The bank is willing to do that because the plumber can show a history that you and your neighbors do all pay your bills. The plumber can then pay his bills even though you might take a month to pay yours.

So when the banks stopped lending because they didn’t have enough value in their pool of assets to support their outstanding portfolio of loans, the plumber could no longer leave a bill and started asking for cash. The builder had to shut down his project because he couldn’t get the loan against the future value of that project which would allow him to pay the plumber in cash. The truck dealership had to cancel the sale of a new truck to the builder because the builder couldn’t get the bank to finance the purchase and didn’t have the cash to buy the truck. The truck manufacturer had to close a plant because they weren’t selling enough trucks. The factory worker couldn’t get his faucet fixed because he didn’t have the cash to pay the plumber.

Basically you get the idea. Legal commerce pretty much grinds to a halt and the only people who have cash are drug dealers and illegal immigrants, and only because they don’t use the banking system.

The next interesting thing that happened is that the US Treasury proposed a vague $700B bailout plan where the US would buy assets from banks, only to see the British trump it with a direct investment of government funds into their banks. The rest of the world had to follow suit because if they didn’t, money would quickly move into British banks and out of the banks of the countries who didn’t provide similar guarantees to their banks.

So what is happening now is that each of the major industrial nations is guaranteeing that their banks now have sufficient cash to cover any loses they may experience from the mortgages they hold as assets. The hope is that this will prove sufficient to cause banks to loosen their lending rules and begin to put some of their money at risk again in the market.

Next post will speculate on what this means for the future.

In the meantime for those so inclinded, here’s little bit of scripture to think about in scary times.

“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32

Posted in Finance | 2 Comments »

Blind Eye

October 8th, 2008

 

“Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.” John 9:32-34

 

As predicted, we are now into the last desperate weeks of the presidential campaign and the character assassination has begun in earnest.

 

Governor Palin appears to be settling into her role of attack dog by bringing up Senator Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers and to a lesser extent Tony Rezko.  In return, the Obama campaign is bringing up Senator McCain’s relationship with Charles Keeting.

 

I’ve covered Rezko and Keeting in a previous post, so I won’t do that again.

 

Here’s a little on Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn.

 

They were political activists in the late sixties and early seventies.  He is credited with founding the radical weatherman group.  As the organization became more and more violent, they left.  Ms. Dohrn was convicted of a felony.  Mr. Ayers was acquitted because of evidence of illegal wiretaps.  In the thirty years since, according to many in Chicago, they have both led exemplary lives.  They have become active in education reform, rights of children, and advocacy for the poor.  They no longer advocate violent overthrow of the government.

 

Many articles point out that Senator Obama’s relationship with Dr. Ayers is casual.  As a result of Senator Obama’s commitment to his Southside community, they served on a couple of boards seeking grant funding for Chicago schools.  There were many Chicago political figures on those same boards including conservative republicans  Dr. Ayers also hosted a small meet and greet at his house in 1995 at the request of Illinois State Senator Alice J. Palmer.  She was running for Congress.  She introduced a young lawyer to the group whom she had recruited to run for her seat in the Illinois Senate – Barak Obama. Senator Obama and Professor Ayers also happen to live in the same University of Chicago neighborhood. 

 

Senator Obama has publically rejected the past political positions and actions of Dr. Ayers.  They don’t correspond.  They only see each other occasionally on the street and I’m sure their meetings are cordial.

 

The sense that we should expect our elected officials to somehow publically and privately shun folks like Dr. Ayers because of things that happened thirty years ago is the hieght of hypocrisy for the McCain campaign.  As Senator Obama has pointed out, the McCain campaign is run by folks who not only associated with but were paid by organizations that McCain now condemns (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) as the catalyst for the worst financial crisis in recent memory. 

 

What’s really going on here?

 

Senator McCain is losing the election. 

 

 

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the this election was going to turn on the fundamental points of both campaigns.  The Obama campaign says that McCain represents four more years of the failed Bush policies.  The McCain campaign says that you can’t trust Obama. 

 

 

The bad economic news and his “deer in the headlights” response to the crisis have undermined Senator McCain’s claim to be the steadier hand.  It was Senator Obama who quietly worked behind the scenes with administration officials and the black caucus to finally insure the passage of the recovery bill.  Senator McCain on the other hand seem to make matters worse by rushing to Washington and then trying to distance himself from actually getting the billed passed.

 

The debates have also given the voting public an opportunity to see both candidates in action.  Most in the media agree that Senator Obama has appeared at least as “presidential” as Senator McCain.

 

So Senator McCain and Governor Palin are attempting to change the conversation from an issue on which they can’t win to an issue of character assassination.  But doesn’t this also go against their “country-first” mantra too?  Senator McCain knows that there isn’t any substance to this charge.  What he is doing instead is following a scorched-earth policy which will just make it more difficult for either man to govern after the election.

  

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new tactic.

 

We can read about it in the Bible too.  The Pharisees condemned Jesus because he chose to heal on the Sabbath day.  Rather than question their own values, they rejected not only Jesus but those whom he had healed too.  They said they were all sinners in league with the devil.  Fortunately, then as now, God’s Truth remains the most powerful element in human existence. 

 

Hopefully we will see Truth in action in November too.  If the voting public continues to reject the politics of dissension, maybe it will finally have run its course and future elections will benefit from its defeat in this one.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

The Unjust

October 6th, 2008

“be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matt 5:45

Seems like we spend a lot of time in this country and in this culture trying to figure out who to blame when things don’t go the way that we would like them to go.

I’ve read a lot about the causes of the current financial crisis and heard even more.

Those who haven’t bothered to do much research want to blame it on the greed and irresponsibility of the financial community. There is some truth to that, but only in the context of the philosophy that the free market should be able to govern itself.

Instead this claim sets up a sort of convenient us against them, except in this case it is the Republicans encouraging us to bite the hand that feeds them.

The problem with the simple explanation that this was just wall street running amok is that it fails to place the blame where is should be, on all of us.

First a little history of this bubble.

Many have said it began with a bill intended to stop a discriminatory lending practice called red-lining. The bill was called the Community Redevelopment Act. Banks were required to make a portion of their loans in the neighborhoods in which they took deposits. This whole process worked well from 70’s through the 90’s.

The Bush administration is actually where things began to jump the tracks. There was a law in 2000 that made sure that credit swaps were unregulated. The criminal penalties for falsifying a loan application were removed and the SEC in 2004 allowed the largest brokerage firms to borrow up to 30 times their assets.

All of these things ended up marginalizing the Community Redevelopment Act because unregulated mortgage brokers offered the poor much better deals than banks were able to offer under even the weakened CRA provisions during the Bush years.

There have been attempts by conservative papers like the Investor’s Business Daily to fix blame on the democrats, and there were certainly prominent democrats who supported the effort, but most all of the damage was done during the period of time when the republican party controlled both houses of Congress, all of the committees, and President Bush didn’t use his veto once.

Now a little talk about real blame.

Wall Street for doing what we ask them to do, make as much money for themselves and us as they can.

President Bush and the Republican congress for doing what we elected them to do, systematically get government out of the business sector, reduce regulations, reduce taxes, reduce interest rates, and expect that the free market will usher in a new age of prosperity and conservative dominance.

All of us for flipping houses, taking out equity loans to finance our lifestyle, living on credit cards, and letting our government run up debts that our children will have to pay off.

It is unclear when this financial crisis will sort itself out. Right now everyone is very afraid and as a result the ready cash which had been financing our growth is suddenly hard to come by.

The most disappointing aspect of this crisis, however, is that we are in the middle of a choosing the person who will lead us for at least the next four years, and we are spending our time talking about bogus character issues. We should be holding both candidates accountable for an honest evaluation of how they plan to lead us out of this problem. I haven’t heard it yet.

What I have heard, though, is Jesus’ advice. If you want to be the children of your Father, you have to start by loving the just and those that we think are unjust. I’m working on it.

Posted in Finance, Politics | No Comments »

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