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Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat details the way in which technology has changed the world in which business is done in the 21st century. In that, he looks at the types of workers who will prosper in such a new world, and then he ponders what type of person will thrive as workers, and how we might as a society ‘train’ them. He concludes, and I am simplifying here, that those who are broadly educated with a curiosity to learn will do best. And it strikes me as to whether this is a new insight or not. I’m no scholar, but haven’t those with broad training and a curiosity to learn more always been at an advantage?

I’ll leave that for others to reflect on and/or prove or disprove. I am intrigued by how he suggests we come by curiosity to learn. Steve Jobs, he says, finally began to grow in this when he dropped out of college, but then dropped in and took for a time whatever classes he wanted, fueling the breadth of his knowledge and his curiosity.

But more to the point, Friedman says that those who are wanting to really be prepared need to find the right teachers. A student once asked him what courses he should take to learn how to learn. His response is intriguing:

“Go around to your friends and ask them just one question: ‘Who are your favorite teachers?’ Then make a list of those teachers and go out and take their courses – no matter what they are teaching, no matter what the subject.” It doesn’t matter whether they are teaching Greek mythology, calculus, art history, or American literature – take their courses. Because when I think back on my favorite teachers, I don’t remember the specifics of what they taught me, but I sure remember being excited about learning it.What has stayed with me are not the facts they imparted but the excitement about learning they inspirited.

The parenthesis in his final sentence is very important:

And while it seems that some people are just born with that motivation [to teach oneself], many others can develop it or have it implanted with the right teacher (or parent).

Technorati Tags: Education

I watched The Dark Knight Friday afternoon, along with, it seems, half the country. I’m not really prepared to say a great deal about it, though the rest of my family here loved it (one daughter and my wife saw it twice).

I’ve puzzled over my reaction to the film, though I will say that Heath Ledger‘s Joker is as good as everyone was saying it was. Surprising to me, though, was how good Aaron Eckhart played his part as Harvey Dent. And having just been to Chicago, I enjoyed spotting places I had been (a good portion of the film was shot in Chicago). The two and one half hours did not drag. I was thoroughly entertained.

That all said, I have been stumped and unable to put into words my thoughts regarding the film. Another, however, has done it for me, with greater sensitivity than I could ever have mustered. These comments are from Margie Haack who with her husband Dennis spearheads the ministry of Ransom Fellowship. Here is a portion of what she has said, but I encourage you to click through and read the whole:

At the end of the Dark Knight I was left in want of a hero large enough to make life meaningful again, someone who could bring light to the set, who could heal the lives ruined by injustice, crime, ambition, violence. The Batman, the faltering, finite hero we love, disappears into the night still determined to try to fix the world, but everyone, including him, knows how impossible and grievous this calling will be.

Technorati Tags: Movies

I’ve been thinking about Mike B. almost daily as he continues on his attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Marsha reports that he has but 600 more miles, or about 25 percent more of the trail in front of him. This is one LONG piece of real estate!

Some of us who are cheering him on might begin to think that he’s got this thing licked. My guess is that the longer he is on the trail, the more grit is necessary to continue pressing on.

In honor of Mike’s hike, I picked up and recently read Bill Bryson’s wonderfully funny and insightful A Walk in the Woods. There is much here that will give us average people insight into just how difficult and yet transcendent is this thing Mike is doing. (I heartily recommend the book. However, Mr. Bryson makes occasional use of words that most of us do not use in polite company. Don’t be surprised by that.)

A sobering reminder is given regarding where Mike will soon be:

“…when the northbound hiker leaves Vermont he has completed 80 percent of the miles but just 50 of the effort. The New Hampshire portion alone, running 162 miles through the White Mountains, has 35 peaks higher than 3000 feet. New Hampshire is hard.” (page 221)

He needs our continued prayers and cheering!

Heck… I need cheering. We all need cheering, come to think about it. When I turned forty, given a liberal estimate of an average lifespan, I had completed 50 percent of my “miles”. But looking back over the past ten years or so, it’s pretty clear that by forty, I think I’d only completed 20% of the effort.

Mike’s hike is a picture of perseverance in our Christian life and calling. We do not know how much effort yet lies ahead, but we need the prayers – and cheers – of others to keep us from turning back.

Technorati Tags: Dreams, Struggle

I was driving early this morning past a church whose illuminated message board, among other things, said this:

This is Gods’ church

Yes, exactly that, punctuation and all.

Me? I’ve been satisfied with monotheism, myself.

I was so bummed yesterday morning. The alarm went off and I leapt from bed to hit the ‘snooze’ button a few times to give myself an extra half hour sleep. I missed and hit the ‘off’ button instead, meaning that if I had gone back to bed, I would never have gotten up. I was bummed, you see.

So, I went to the living room to have my quiet time, which, had I successfully hit the ‘snooze’ button, I would have missed.

But, bummer, I’m reading in Numbers, and the chapters in my reading were about a plethora of sacrifices. Nothing redemptive or encouraging here, by any means. I was reading with a critical mind and heart. All of these sacrifices were an excessive expense. Exorbitantly wasteful. Hundreds of cattle and sheep, for what? I could not fathom the bloody wastefulness.

And then it hit me: if it was excessive and exorbitant to slaughter some cattle for my sin, how excessively exorbitant was it to slaughter the Son of God for the same? But that is what it took, and the Father was not unwilling to pay that price. And I don’t think he looks at me, in my sloth and rebellion, and says, “That was an excessive expense.” No. He determined to save me knowing who I am and what I do. He paid the price of his Son for this rotten apple of a man. Wow.

Suddenly, I was not so bummed.

One needs to be freed from many things before he is free to really love others. If we do not realize that, we will not love and will too easily abandon the call to love those for whom love is difficult to give.

We have considered that we need to love out of reverence for Christ. Our affection and actions for another are to be rooted not in the other’s worth or value to us, but primarily in our love for Jesus. We have also considered that we can only be freed to love others when we find out value in Christ, and do not base our love upon the performance of the other. (We also had some poetic help from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.)

There is one more thing that I wanted to share on this subject. There are two relationship killers that must be exorcised if we are really going to be free to love:

• Expecting someone to be what they are not and cannot be
• Expecting another to fulfill all our needs

In a marriage relationship, if I focus upon my spouse’s weaknesses and failings, the relationship will never progress and never know any joy. Never. If I expect Barb to be what she by nature is not, I will never, ever, know how to love her. I will be continually critical and disappointed, ready to love her when she finally achieves my level of expectation (which is constantly shifting). If I act this way, I cannot love her as she is, for I am always waiting for her to be what she is not.

Similarly, if Barb looked to me to fulfill all her needs, as some women do with their husbands, she will be grossly disappointed. In many marriages, this disappointment morphs into a deeply critical spirit of judgment as the wife finds herself unfulfilled and blames that on her husband. She will find it impossible to love the one who lets her down simply because her expectations are too great. He may never be able to fulfill the expectations she has placed on him.

These two wrongly adopted expectations are relationship killers because in many relationships, the disappointment they generate lead the disappointed member to look elsewhere for fulfillment.

The same thing applies to the church. I am not saying that there is never room for critique or even at times for leaving. But what I am saying is that these two things should be avoided like the plague: 1) expecting the church to be what it is not and 2) expecting the church to fulfill all one’s needs. The church, like a spouse, will NEVER be able to measure up under such criteria. When men or women leave a church for personal, not theological, issues, at some level, these expectations will be found.

When those things are exorcised, however, love can be unconditional, and one will then be able to pray for and work for change, in a spouse or in a church. Those two expectations pull people apart. Seeing, however, that Christ fulfills all and is all, draws us to others in service. It is Christ alone who frees us to love.

Technorati Tags: Church, Family

I reported earlier about my discovery that free WiFi is now available at Starbucks. I’m curious if anyone has tried this and what their experience has been. I’m finding that the Starbucks that I frequent – Creekwood off SR-70 in Bradenton – the hotspot is definitely tepid. Once I connect, my experience is fine. But I’m finding that it takes sometimes fifteen or twenty minutes or more to establish the initial connection. Pretty useless unless I have other things to do while the connection comes about.

Anyone else had this experience? Anywhere?

Technorati Tags: Computing

My friend who was having such a hard time with Dostoevsky (see here and here) has finished the book, and mellowed greatly in her appreciation of it. I guess it ‘got better’!

I asked her to share her thoughts with me, and she has given me permission to share them here. She does not think they are profound, but that was not what I was looking for. More, I wanted to get an honest human reaction to what is on the one hand a dark book with some gleaming points of real light. Feel free to interact with her!

My gut about Crime and Punishment is that it scares me how much I am like Raskolnikov (I didn’t really want to own up to it – that’s why you didn’t get a review of the book). I get annoyed at people; yet, I get truly carried away with how much I am irritated by something that they have done, and it takes on an almost inconceivable level of dislike where I rationalize why it’s okay for me to dislike and treat them as I do. He despises the pawnbroker, he despises the police inspectors, he despises everyone, and he doesn’t show them any charity (charity, meaning grace), in interacting with them. He thinks he has a right to hate and treat hatefully because of his superiority.

Sonia, on the other hand, is so full of love, and real unconditional love for everyone she meets. Dounia, too – their characters are almost copies of one another. She doesn’t judge, or hate, she just loves people. Her unfailing love practically drives him crazy because he knows he’s so vile and shouldn’t deserve it, but she never stops reaching out to him with Christ’s love. His pride is one of the things that makes him hate others – and he will not attempt to share in the identities of others. One of my favorite quotes is by a Balkan theologian Miroslav Volf (he wrote a lot about ethnic relations in the former Yugoslav republics), and it says, “We must have the will to give ourselves to others and welcome them by readjusting our identities to make space for them.” That’s kind of along the same lines as Philippians 2, which is also one of my favorite verses that I strive for but seldom achieve:

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

Sonia gave so much of herself to show love to others who were suffering – Raskolnikov on the other hand was conceited and set himself up as a demi-god, and didn’t consider the interests of others (although he curiously did have compassionate streaks that emerged). And Sonia in the end is a beautiful picture of how God chases us, and we run away, but if He wants us, we can’t hide.

And so, you see why I find this to be such a fascinating book. The one who gives this beautiful picture of God is a prostitute. Amazing.

[Note: the image is of Gromit reading Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoevsky in The Wrong Trousers.]

This is an interesting op-ed piece from today’s Wall Street Journal. I’m more intrigued by what the piece says about Planned Parenthood than by what it says about the position of the NAACP.

Technorati Tags: Abortion, Race

There is a type of Wheaties box love at which we are all too skilled.

Those who get their pictures on the Wheaties box do so because they have performed well in some athletic venue. We fans pay close attention to these ‘heroes’ because of their performance, and we ‘adore’ them. We are good at it.

So good at it, that we transfer such performance based adoration to all other relationships. We love others when they perform well for us and meet our expectations. Our children hit home runs in little league or bring home a sterling report card or otherwise measure up to our standards, and we are all over them with favor. Our wives act according to the notions we have regarding what a wife is to do, whatever that might be, and we are quick with words of love and affection. And our churches or pastors do for us what we expect them to do, and we are their biggest champions.

Such love is easy, but fleeting and ultimately unfulfilling.

For pictures do not remain on the box forever, and those we ‘love’ will some day fail us. When the pictures fall off the Wheaties box, our adulation disappears. The child suddenly hears no words of encouragement, but only words of disappointment and scorn. The wife stops meeting her husband’s standards, and thus stops hearing from him endearing words (as he looks for another woman who will meet his standards). And the church becomes another disposable commodity, not a collection a relationships to be cherished and worked through.

So strange this should be true of us who claim to know something about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When Christ gave his life for us, our pictures were hanging elsewhere than on the Wheaties box. Yet he loved us. And he still does. Christ looks at us with a deep affection, sacrifice, and love that is unrelated to our performance. I fail him and his love for me never changes. For him it does not matter how well we perform, it does not matter where our picture is placed. He still loves us.

We need to see this deeply so that our love for others might be freed and transformed. Only then will we show genuine affection to our spouse or our children or our friends, an affection given not because they perform well for us or satisfy us, but because they are those we want to love. Period.

If we only love when our spouse or child or church is worthy of Wheaties box notice, we will never be freed to love out of reverence for Christ.

Technorati Tags: Church, Family