The Great Disqualifier

Was supposed to be short, came out a little longer than expected.  Discussion on pain for the XA blog.


In the dominion of God, in our kingdoms below,
The dross of the earth trumps all beauty and worth.
In the abode of the expanding universe of sights,
each second more startling than the second before
As the cosmos putter on into infinite complexity.
If there is one thing we've learned from the bowels of space
Its that something is happening beyond comprehension, beyond the infinite.
Yet isn't it a curious thing when you stop to see
That so much beauty is trumped by our cries of "foul"?
That our struggles and pain claim sovereignty of knowledge
As the Great Disqualifier for love and for hope.

The question is simple, and I've heard it several times.  "If God is so great, then why is there pain?"  Yet the longer I live, the more I'm seeing how this question is such a small objection to a great concept.  Its the main stumbling block for so many, yet no one seems to point out the inherent paradox in the question; it sets up its own answer with its own rules.  In such a scenario, pain becomes the Great Disqualifier that strikes down the concept of God with a foul swoop.  But I don't understand why so many people ask the question but never question the basis of the question itself: Can the existence of pain defeat God?  Does pain have such power and importance that we ascribe to it?

Of course semantically the question doesn't work, since you are basically supposing that opposite extremes cant coexist, akin to saying that "if cold is so cold, then why is there hot?"  You are striking down the possibility of their coexistence before you even ask the question, and God has been escorted out the courtroom with out a proper hearing.  But of course the question goes way beyond a simple semantic question, because emotions are involved.  The question is such a stumbling block not because its logical, but because its emotional; we see injustice in the world, people dying of starvation and want to ask "why?" because it disturbs us to our very core (some more than others).  The question is seldom rooted in intellectual opposition but almost always emotional hatred of the idea of a God who is all good, yet ignores the cries for help from his creation; a God that shows no pity to a pitiful group of people.

With the risk of getting caught up in more rhetorical gymnastics, I'll get to the point: the real question, in my opinion, that people ask isn't the one so often stated but rather a question about the capacity of God to overcome pain; in the war against God and pain, would he ultimately come out the victor?  Would justice be done in the world and all evil be set right by God in the end?

If this is the question that we are really asking, it has much more to do with our own willingness to believe that God can do justice than his actual capacity.  Like I mentioned at the beginning, I think the thing most astronomers learn from the get-go is that the universe is expansive (and still expanding) and is completely beyond ultimate comprehension.  I remember one of my clearest thinking moments in my past was sitting on a beach at the age of 17, staring at the night sky and having the strangest feeling that despite so much inner struggle with the concept of God, the universe seemed to revolve around something amazing; that all of creation, the wind, the waves, the moon, the stars, were involved in a delicate dance that was both calming and breathtaking at the same time.  Something was going on way past my understanding, and for the first time I was ok with it.

If this God who claims to defeat pain is the creator of the universe, the author of all finite existence, then couldn't he conquer the pain and suffering of his entire creation, and even more so your own personal pain?

Is God deaf to your pain?  On the contrary, He came to earth to carry your iniquities and pains, not to defeat pain, but to show that it is powerless against you.  The ultimate defeat of pain isnt its non-existence, rather the loss of its power over you.

Is God deaf to the pain of the world, unmoved to justice?  He makes rulers rise and fall for that very purpose, protects thousands through trials, and though good and faithful men and women die every day, the righteous "find rest as they lie in death" (Isaiah 57:2) because through His victory, death has no power!  And though evil permeates through the world, He waits not desiring that it continue, but desiring that "all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:4).  Though so many deserve destruction, the God of justice decides to give mercy first.


Where in your life has pain gained more power than it actually has?  Where have you allowed pain to wipe away the majesty of God throughout creation and in your own life?

The Great Disqualifier has its days numbered; though it last through the night, its feeble grasp on the human condition is a fading shadow in the joy of redemption, and cannot hold us down any longer.

And may we live to prove it true.  

~Jared

More than the Facts

If any of you are reading this from my blogger site (and not cross-posted) you will no doubt have seen the quote thats at the very top banner:

"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother" - Kahlil Gibran

The quote is from a larger work that I would encourage anyone to read, which is "Jesus" by Kahlil Gibran, a famous lebanese poet.  The book is a collection of poems based from the point of view of people featured in the New Testament, including Herod, Pilate, all the disciples, and even Caiphas the high priest.  The poems are from the Gibran's personal view of Jesus, which probably differs from a Biblical understanding, but regardless have some amazing insights into faith and belief.  The above quote is from a poem written from the perspective of "Thomas the Doubter."

The reason I love this quote so much is because I think it really illustrates a facet of spiritual faith that most people prefer to skip over; some call it lukewarmness, others call it the midnight of the soul, and some prefer to call it weakness.  Of course all of these views will agree on one thing, which is that the experience of doubt is crippling.  Doubt can bring the happiest person to tears, the go getter to complacency; doubt shakes the very pillars of our being, and seeing the collapse of all you know to be true can be a fate nearly worse than death itself.  Yet doubt, as the quote illustrates, is connected to faith.

So can doubt be good?

Despite how crippling it is, I think in my own life I've seen just how important doubt is; the way I see it, doubt is not weakness, but rather the natural consequence of living a life of worth.


For those of you who know me, you know that I am an inherently doubtful person, and doubt has played a huge role in my life.  Doubt chased me away from my Christian upbringing into stubborn agnosticism; doubt used to haunt me at night, never allowing me to sleep; doubt hurt my relationships, and had I let it grow unchecked, would have made me complacent; a useless vessel with no purpose in life.  The main way that doubt has torn me apart is that, in many cases, it spurred me to inaction rather than encouraging me to search for the truth.

So is doubt bad?  The answer is not clear cut, but I feel the best way to look at is to ask yourself the all important question: what is the fruit?  Does my doubt fuel me to search out the answers, or does it mire me in self deprecation and depression?  The distinction is very very important because doubt is, despite its pain, important.  Anything that is worth believing should also be worth doubting; and anyone who has ever done anything worthwhile in life had their doubts about what they were doing.  Doubt is proof that whatever you are wrestling over is very important.

For many years, this is where I would have stopped.  I saw doubt as a necessary part of life, and an intellectual exercise, but always ignored the emotional and healing aspect.

As an agnostic, I remember reading several arguments and historical accounts of Jesus, giving some pretty convincing evidence the Gospels were historically accurate and that the claims of Christianity should be considered.Funny enough, this was not the thing that ended up bringing me to follow Christ.

Beyond historical documents and apologetic arguments, I knew that reading Jesus's words had hit me in a place that no one had ever hit me before, and that He was the most amazing thing to happen to human history.  Many philosophers wanted to convince my mind, but Christ wanted my heart.  Despite the many philosophers I had read, Jesus Christ was the only name I heard echoing in my head as a 17-year old agnostic.  Depressed and afflicted with doubt, I was on the edge of taking my own life, and yet I could hear this Jesus in my head, saying I was worth it, beloved.  Nietzsche made me feel powerful, but Christ made me feel loved.

Overcoming intellectual doubt, though important, is only part of the process because doubt is almost always rooted in emotional hurt.  When the father of the demon possessed boy cried out to Jesus for his unbelief, it was not simply "show me proof" but rather "Help me!"  When Thomas doubted, the evidence Christ gave was not "here I am" but rather "come and see!"  Jesus was willing many times to argue people, but He never neglected people's need for more than an intellectual ideal.  I dont find myself as a follower of Christ because he's a cool idea, rather because, in the purest sense of the word, He saved me.  At the end of the day, people in doubt and suffering want more than the facts; they want a Savior.

I still experience times of doubt, because I am a doubter by nature, but I am learning more and more how doubt and the search for truth is a transformation of both heart and mind.  Letting the Truth transform my outlook, but also letting the Truth heal me of all the places I am hurt.  As a closing note, I think Kahlil Gibran put it more succinctly than I will ever be able to:

"For Doubt will not know truth till his wounds are healed and restored"

~Jared

Gift

A short one for a significant day.

Many of my friends took a task to write a blog titled "One Thing."  The idea was to identify the one thing that drives you as a person, the one thing that takes priority over all other things.  The question is interesting.  What is the one thing that will keep you going when everything else falls apart?

Today reminds me of my own life and that, regardless of whether or not I have realized it or not, there is one reason I live, One Thing that keeps me going.

And that one thing is the Truth.

From the ignorance of being a child, to bitter moral depravity, to the rabbit trail I find myself on, I have always, in some way or another, wanted the Truth.  The Truth about life, the Truth about myself, the Truth about existence.  My ultimate fear is not finding the Truth to be inconvenient, but being fooled into the lie.  When I finally go, I hope for nothing more than to be known as someone who lived the Truth, no matter how uncomfortable it was.

So what does this say about the nature of Truth?  In the world we live in, the Truth is a naughty word and an improper abdication of the right of everyone to determine their own independence.  But my question will always be, what effect does this have on the truth?  Does your level of comfort with an idea change its veracity in any way?  Can any hair change its color by your will alone?

The more I live, the more I start to realize that my emotions do not and never will have any impact on this terrible, amazing thing called the Truth, which makes the search for it all the more paramount for the existence of every human being: as I have said thousands of times, I believe more than anything that more than any responsibility that mankind holds, the responsibility to the Truth is the most important.

Today, I'm reflecting on the Truth that I find.  That the Truth itself became flesh.  That the Truth did not come with power, but with humility.  Was not born in a palace, but in a trough.  Accompanied not by celestial armies, but by farm animals.  Exalted not by noblemen, but by shepherds.  The friend of fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors, and foreigners.  Blesser of the meek, healer of the broken.  The Truth knew all, yet broke not a reed; saw all but uplifted the unworthy.  The One who saw us all for the filth we were, yet submitted to death; dying for its redemption, and rising for its invalidation.

Today, more than any other day, we celebrate the glorious Truth that undermines everything we know about power structures, that flips the world upside down in a terrifying and unbelievable way.  A way that makes rulers shake and mobilize the lowest of people to hope and love.  If we accept this to be true, than nothing is what it seems, and there truly is hope in the gutter, and love for the unloved.  It changes the nature of existence in a way that leaves many uncomfortable, but cannot leave anyone unchanged.

If we accept that God can come as a baby in a manger, can we ever be the same?

Today, we celebrate gifts, and I want nothing more than to live for the most important gift of all, regardless of its consequences: the Truth.

The painful, glorious Truth.  And the Truth will set you free.

Merry Christmas.
  
~Jared

Lolly Pop Jesus

This is a short post on something that continues to confuse me.

This is the story of "lolly pop Jesus."

Once upon a time, Jesus came to earth.

2000 years later, people start to read Jesus's teachings, life, and works through the Gospels but come to an interesting conclusion: "He was a good teacher, but he couldn't have been Divine."

Ok, then it seems to me you are facing a problem here.  Even the earliest Gospels record Jesus as making claims to divinity: "Son of Man," "God's One and Only Son," "I and the Father are One" "I am the Way the Truth and the Life."  He does not, as most Jewish teachers of the day did, speak in meager terms, but called it "My Father" "My Kingdom" which is no doubt why the Gospel records many times in which the Jews pick up rocks to stone him and finally send him to Pontious Pilate to be crucified for heresy.  Aside from that, most outside historical sources affirm that he was crucified for heresy and made such claims, many calling him a "sorcerer."  So how exactly do you address this?

"No, you see all that divine stuff was added in by later people who wanted to see him as God.  Really, Jesus was just a teacher."

Ok, now youve got another problem, and the most important one: you've made the bizarre and unbased assumption that all of the Gospels were originally a bunch of humble statements with no claims to divinity when, all the sudden, a bunch of scheming apostles come along and write in a bunch of Jesus saying divine stuff despite the fact that A) the Gospels name specific witnesses that would have been alive to testify against them and B) the Gospels make the apostles look like the dumbest people on planet earth, yet they didnt think of changing them to make themselves look good and C) the apostles changed their own fate from being simple followers of a Jewish teacher to cultic apostles that would all get brutally murdered later.  If the apostles did write these things in, they must have actually been the dumbest people on earth.

Despite the holes in that argument, the main problem is this: you've asserted that the Gospels have been tampered with and changed, so now you have destroyed the credibility of the same sources where you get Jesus's teachings.  If the Gospels were so obviously tampered with as youve asserted, then by no means can you say with any certainty that Jesus said "blessed are the poor in spirit" or "turn the other cheek."  For all you know, these are also just random additions by apostles, and possibly not even the same person (welcome to the Multiple Jesus hypothesis).  As it stands, there is no point praising Jesus's teachings and at the same time negating their authenticity.  At this point, Jesus's good teachings are no better than a feel good quote on an Urban Outfitters handbag, cited "anonymous" or would be better at home in a random quotebook of Hebrew proverbs than in any sort of organized biography.

Not only do I think this thought process is fraught with errors, but also just plain intellectually dishonest.  What historian would ever think its ok to ignore some of the things Plato said because you found some of it offensive?  What fervent atheist philosopher would be ok with you taking offensive passages out of Bertrand Russel's "Why I'm not a Christian"?  Is not picking what you want and discarding the rest intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of history?  So why does this differ with Jesus?

Funny enough, even after 60 years, the old Lord Liar Lunatic argument still readily applies here: people are always looking for the middle way with Jesus, a way to soften him up and make him more cuddly and cute and instead of the guy on the street corner who's claiming divinity and talking about hell; but the fact is Jesus is who He was, and denying that doesnt make you open minded, rather just makes you the fool who wants to look all day at the landscape he painted instead of going outside.

And this is the story of the lolly pop Jesus: a prophet that fits in your pocket, good for five minutes of enjoyment, and can be thrown in the trash can later. 

That is all.

~Jared

The Command of the Open Hand

This is a blog mostly inspired by this blog post from a good friend about giving; something that should shock and challenge us, but fails to.

"Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.  There will always be poor people in the land.  Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land" - Deuteronomy 15

"And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.  But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." - Luke 6

Giving is always a sort of tongue in cheek subject in the States: something we know is important, but doesnt ever seem to register too much.

One of my friends here in Chile is a Haitian man who I bizarrely befriended on the street one day (apparently out of all the people he would try to start a conversation with, I was the only one who turned around and responded).  Ivers has been in the country a little over a month now, and works at a bakery making a small amount of money.  One day, I saw him on the metro and said hi to him, noticing he's drinking a box of chocolate milk.  Without hesitating, he sees me, leads me back to a random snack stand and buys me a chocolate milk as well and then walks off.  This sort of thing, as an American, usually just leaves me flabbergasted.

Another friend of mine, Heyner from Peru, walked with me one day to go get an ice cream cone and bought mine without any hesitation.  I try to be polite and throw out a "oh no really you shouldnt" or "I'll pay you back" but its usually in vain, and just provokes some weird looks from any of my friends.  To them its normal to buy things for friends and in the end for them an ice cream cone or a chocolate milk is a small and expected cost to pay when you're with a friend.

Conversely, Im used to experiencing something like last night when I was in Valparaiso with some gringo friends.  As the check comes forward, all joyful conversation comes to a stop and we discuss business; "how much per person?" "whats 5600 divided by four?" "how much is that with tip?" "All put in this much, and you'll just owe me" "how much do I owe you again?"  The check dances around from person to person, as the amount that each person pays must be a carefully, crafted sum that neither cheats nor overly benefits anyone.  Once the check and the money given are carefully scrutinized by all parties involved, a satisfactory conclusion is reached and everyone can leave comfortable.

Its such a funny thing, isnt it?  I see myself so needlessly close handed for no other reason than that it is the way that my culture has raised me.  I try so very hard to fight against this, but my Americanness cant help but calculate the cost of everything, make sure I pay back everyone the exact penny I owe, and find non-chalant ways to remind people they owe me money.

Yet, my friends from other cultures seem to live in a way that is so effortlessly open handed about money, even when they give in need: both the friends I mentioned gave not out of their excess, but out of their poverty.  Charity out of necessity becomes much more than just the object itself, but rather a symbol of friendship and of love.  It reminds me of one movie, called Ushpizin about one Israeli Jew who hosts two escaped convicts at his house.  They abuse his hospitality constantly through the movie, yet he continues to serve them out of his poverty.  Those who have been in Arabic cultures know that it is extremely hospitable, possibly more than any other culture in the world.

Yet interesting how one ancient Middle Eastern text, the Torah, says very explicitly that God commands people to be open handed.  What we treat as a suggestion, a post-script, a good idea when the time is right, is, according to Deuteronomy, a mandate as strong as any other.  When Christ shows up on the scene, the idea is reiterated with the idea that you should not only love your enemy, but also lend them your things and never expect anything back.  I would hazard to guess that even for a Middle Eastern culture this would have seemed crazy, and for Americans its just plain ludicrous.

In fact, do an experiment for yourselves: show any God-fearing Christian that Bible verse and watch how the excuses will pour forth!  They will no doubt squirm and say "yeah, but," frantically reach for the book of Proverbs, hoping there's going to be some verse in there that says "thou shalt make wise decisions with your money and not give it to people who dont deserve it," and finish their justification by saying "well thats just not wise!"  And God wants us to be wise right?

The fact is, no one is comfortable with this verse: I've never heard a sermon on this verse, never see it held up at football games, and never see anyone write it as a Facebook status to get any likes from the youth pastor (because everyone is on facebook, dont you know).  There is something so ruthlessly brutal about the suggestion of lending to the evil that brings up every justification in existence to be able to shove it into a corner and never speak of it again.  Arab or American, Peruvian or Haitian, no one likes to see their money go to waste and no one is ready to be taken advantage of.  The command of the open hand, if actually followed, implicates a shift in one's life and philosophy that few have the stomach for.


But lets think about this, I mean really think about why Jesus might have said this.  What are the results of living a life that follows the command to be open handed and lend to the evil?  My take:

1. It invokes a serious change in how people begin to see you.  When you do something so brutally against everything the human race seems to be chasing after, there is no way that people cannot notice you, and no way that people can continue to equate you with any other person or culture.  You are no longer defined by your own cultural precepts, but by Christ alone.  It is no coincidence that Christ follows up this command with the promise of a new title: "you will be children of the Most High."

2.  If you truly follow the command of the open hand, it is impossible to be attached to any sort of material thing.  Can you truly have your work schedule depend forever on a rented car?  Base your life around a rented apartment that you must someday give up?  When we truly realize the command, nothing becomes your own, rather a good to be passed to someone else; we stop thinking of how long we can hold on to something and start thinking of how we can pass it on.  Nothing, as Deuteronomy suggests, can any longer be held closed in your hand, but you must be able to let go of anything at any given moment.  Still many will say this is unwise and will lead to poverty (and those looking for a justifying Proverb will only find 23:5 - "Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone"), but what does the author say?  "Because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to."

3.  The last, as my friends have shown me, is that when you learn to be open handed, wealth abdicates its lofty position and friends and relationships receive the due importance that Christ really stresses.  My grandfather is in the habit of stressing this, in a peculiar sort of way; we, his grandkids, loved to tell him hippy aspirations of living in poverty, but he would always look at us, smirk to himself, and declare the wisdom of Christ that too few people quote these days: "Make friends with unrighteous mammon!"  This verse I think hits home for alot of people in my generation who backlash from materialism and want to vow to poverty, cursing the result of greed rather than greed itself.  Wealth is useful, just not for the uses that we would like to think.  In the end, the wealth we receive is made to passed on to someone else, and only when we do this do we really see what material wealth was meant to be in the first place.

I can scarcely imagine what the world would be like if Christians (myself included) begun to really take this seriously.  So how can we implement this?  What are the practical steps we can take to begin living this way?

In my opinion, it seems to me one key is getting it in our heads as a command.  This is not a suggestion, Jesus isnt saying "oh gee wouldnt that be swell" and Moses isnt a passive-agressive mother sighing to you saying "oh dear, well I'd rather you listen..."  This is a command, just as serious as any other.

And last, Im thinking its like getting to Carnegie Hall: "Practice, practice, practice."  One ice cream cone, one box of chocolate milk at a time.

If youve read this far, then surely you wouldnt mine giving your own two cents in the issue.  What are practical steps we can take in getting there?  How should our view of homeless people, beggars, and the people we hate change?  Comment button is below.  Just sayin.

~Jared

The Eye of the Needle (Why I am an Abolitionist)

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" - Matthew 19
  

"Friends of Goodwill, be dissatisfied with your work until every handicapped and unfortunate person in your community has an opportunity to develop to his fullest usefulness and enjoy a maximum of abundant living." - Edgar James Helms, Founder of Goodwill

 This post is dedicated as a letter, specifically to my friends and future friends in Washington DC, Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship.  My hopes that the mere words I type into the web can somehow spread from here to others, and tell why the issue of Modern Slavery is important to me. 

Dear Friends,

As people of the 21st century, and most notably as people at AU, you are no doubt bombarded by thousands of ways to be charitable.  In a globalized world, there are now more than a million countries, projects, schemes, and funds that you can devote your time and finances too, whether its people peddling bracelets on the quad or human rights films in the Tavern.  As the issue of modern slavery just appears as one in a million, you may ask why this issue deserves your attention and effort.

As far as I am concerned, I would hardly be any person to lecture anyone about optimistic change the world schemes.  I have been a hardened cynic most my life when it comes to those who spout goals of ending poverty, achieving world peace, and ending world hunger ("but arent they going to just get hungry 4 hours later?).  Even as a Nietzsche totting agnostic until the follower of Christ I find myself to be today, I have never been a dreamer of that sort.  I always thought it impossible, until freshman year.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle"

I saw a film about sex trafficking in the Phillipine Islands two months into college, put on by some people from Chi Alpha.  I remember very clearly all the images on the screen, of 12 year old girls with sunken eyes and desperation dancing in every word of their speech, of the slums stretching for miles and miles and the dimly lit street corners littered with little girls soliciting every car that rolled by.  The images stuck in my head for days, and Im not sure they've ever left me.

For many people, this is where the story ends.  The images are disgusting, the reality is ugly, but for most it will fade back with the rest of the images we've been bombarded with of pot bellied children in Africa and never find their way to resurface.  The issue of sex trafficking has been a huge issue for many years, the fact of slaves has existed since the dawn of humanity itself.  What makes any of us think that it can ever be stopped?

"they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?'"

Many of us will shove this issue back in our mind, choosing to live in blissful ignorance of something so horrible because, as human beings, we hate the fact that it has no clear cut solution.  We want a snap ending, not an indefinite problem.  But we were not called to ignorance, but rather truth; and all of us have a duty to respect it, no matter how ugly it is.

However, the story doesnt end here; believing in Christ, whether I like it or not, makes me an idealist, even an optimist.  Despite my cynicism I firmly believe, with all my heart, that we can see an end to human trafficking within our lifetimes, and this is why:

1. Slavery was stopped once, it can be stopped again.
 When one British man dared to challenge the status quo and demand an end to the Atlantic slave trade, there was no good reason for anyone to believe him.  Slavery has existed nearly as early as humanity can remember, and anyone demanding an end to such a time honored practice might as well have been demanding an end to hunting and gathering: its simply something mankind has done for survival, and will likely always do.  As one historian put it, the question is not why did slavery continue, but why did it end.  Despite everything against him, William Wilberforce, driven recklessly by his own Christian idealism, dared to demand what no one else thought possible and, shockingly enough, brought one of the most decisive steps against slavery in the history of mankind.  In our world today, we not only must finish what Wilberforce started, but also confront the oldest profession in the world.  It wont be easy and may even seem impossible, but we have a reckless duty to try; without Wilberforce's reckless duty, who knows where slavery would be today.

2.  This is a backyard problem.
Unlike many charitable causes, this is as much an American problem as it is a Filipino or Cambodian problem.  You dont need to go to a foreign country to see the horrors of slavery and sex trafficking: simply look in your own backyard.  The United States Justice department recently recorded nearly 17,000 people being trafficked into the states a year.  10,000 of our population are forced laborers that we know of, and the number is probably much higher.  Atlanta, Washington DC, and New York all rank as cities with high levels of human trafficking activity.  Its happens in our cities, it happens in our restaurants, on our very streets.  This is not someone else's problem, this is our problem.

3. Awareness Matters.
Its a known fact that in America the most popular charitable causes are the ones that require the least amount of commitment; also known as "raising awareness" and waiting for the problem to go away by itself (see: Stuff White People Like).  However, human trafficking is one of the few causes where awareness is one of the principal challenges and the principal way of defeating it.  If human trafficking really happens in the house next to you or in the back alley of your route home, then one of the principal ways of bringing people to justice is simply to be aware of it and report what you see.  Many people in forced labor or prostitution are waiting for just one person who is concerned enough to call the police.  As simple as it sounds, awareness is no easy task as most people have trouble coming to terms with the fact that it happens in such a civilized country.  Therefore, the challenge begins with yourself: educate yourself, educate the people around you.  This is in no way the ultimate solution, but its the most practical step that people can take to clamping down on the problem.

For me, these are the three most convincing reasons why human trafficking, out of all the causes we are bombarded with, deserves your support and attention.  As a generation of millenials, we are in a unique position that no generation has ever been in before to effect change.  As Mordecai says to Esther: "who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?"  The only question is, will you be part of the solution?  What legacy can we leave to our children: a legacy of ignorance, or a legacy of reckless duty to truth?

 So my advice is this, similar to the advice that the founder of Goodwill gave:

Do not be content.

Do not be content with what is happening in our own cities
Do not be content with what is happening in far away nations
Do not be content with the millions suffering
Do not be content with apathetic empathy

And above all, do not be content with only trusting man for the solution; trust the One who gave you the idealism and the spark, trust the One who gives a truth to fight for, and trust the One who can do more than we can ever ask or imagine.

"Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'"

~Jared

The Age of Inundation

"When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power." - Mark Zuckerburg

“Over the course of the last generation or two, a variety of technological, economic and social changes have rendered obsolete the stuff of American social capital.” - Robert Putnam

Im sick in bed today, without much hope of doing anything else rather than express my opinions from a computer.  Regardless, trends in social networking and social capital have always interested me, and I feel that the recent changes in Facebook, an incredibly powerful company in this day and age, start to really reveal what it is people desire in both social networking and in social capital in general.

First of all, we should ask what is social capital.  Social capital, as defined by Collins English Dictionary, is "the network of social connections that exist between people, ... which enable and encourage mutually advantageous social cooperation."  Simply put, social capital is any and every way that people interact and build relationships with each other.  Social capital is anything from playing cards with neighbors to lending someone money, and the capital that we build is theoretically used just like any economic capital is used.  Its incredibly simple, despite any sort of technical jargon you add to it, but its role in development and poverty studies has only recently been realized and really respected.  Today, we actually begin to look at social capital as something as incredibly necessary as any sort of basic good. 

Leaving theory behind, the real question is what role social networking is playing in social capital.  Well, it sort of depends on who you ask.  Robert Putnam, a distinguished political scientists, wrote a whole book titled "Bowling Alone" to argue that social capital is on a steep decline in the United States and that technical advancements in social interaction through the internet is partly to blame.  Though he doesnt explicitly mention Facebook in the book (from what I can remember.  been a very long time since Ive read it), one can only imagine what he would say about thousands of college students and young professionals maintaining nominal relationships through their computers and doing less of actual social interaction.  For people of our generation and age group, more and more social interactions are taking place online instead of in person, and this is perhaps worrying to some people (including myself) but also supported by others who view it as augmenting social capital, not destroying it.  So which is it?

Electronic savior?

One thing is for sure, Zuckerburg is pretty sure of his own position.  The young billionaire, along with owning one of the most successful social websites in history, sets himself up as a starry eyed idealist who, rather than lining his pockets, seeks to revolutionize humanity and our methods of communication.  "The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently," he says.  

For Zuckerburg, at least this is what he claims, Facebook is a revolutionary idea that gives the voice to the voiceless, mobilizing the world and making people more open minded about sharing information.  And with this claim, who could really be the one to criticize him?  By blabbing on about democratic ideals of representation and transparency, Zuckerburg hides behind a wall of good intentions that assures all critics and naysayers that Facebook could not possibly be up to no good, but only has your best interests in mind.  Thus, when Facebook roles out new changes that open your information to new people in ways you didnt think possible, how are you going to be the one that protests to transparency and representation?

Despite Zuckerburg's lofty ideals, being in charge of a social networking site means that he is still accountable to the people that use his service.  He can only give them what they truly want and, if they dont like it, they are free to leave.  But if Google + has taught us anything, people are cemented to Facebook for the very same reason that people criticize it: a compromise of your privacy.  

Behind the lofty ideals of its creator, Facebook is un-sexual voyuerism, from its beginnings as "Facemash" to the giant database it is today.  When someone logs on Facebook, they are given the opportunity to scan thousands of people's preferences, pictures, and lives without anybody knowing that their watching.  The same inkling that sends thousands to movies to watch stories play out from a safe position and urges literally millions to watch porn on the internet is, at its basis, the same inkling that keeps people Facebook stalking for hours at a time.  Scanning people's lives from the comfort of your computer takes out the risk of social interaction, since you can gather information with no risks and, this is the best part, they literally have no way of knowing that you're doing it.  People can now know more about you than you will ever know, yet this innocent voyeurism isnt seen to be strange, because it is voluntary and widespread.  As Zuckerburg remarked once, people are sharing more and more information about themselves than they ever have before, and dont even seem to mind it.  In fact, trends show they are encouraging it!  Zuckerburg, in the end, doesnt claim to be in any sort of wrong with lowering privacy because, in the end, its what Facebook is based off and what people will always be seeking.

So how does this affect social capital?  In the end, and in my opinion, what we see is a dispersing effect, not an augmenting effect.  Facebook, though originally only intended to reflect the relationships that you already have in real life, has become a way of making friends in of itself.  So, one could argue, how is this any difference from having friends over e-mail, or even over letters?  Since Facebook has such a wealth of information about preferences, beliefs, and to some extent personality traits, it can partly satisfy needs for social capital in a way that nothing before it has been able to do.  By constantly feeding you information through your newsfeed, Facebook gives the user a feeling of being nominally connected to thousands of people which nearly eliminates the need for close connections.  Obviously, you could argue that Facebook is what you make of it, and that the people who want to maintain thousands of nominal connections will and those who want fewer, closer connections will keep them.  However, the changes in Facebook show that Zuckerburg and his team are not neutral in the matter: they know people want to see more and more information, become deeper voyeurists in a way, and will therefore make sure this happens by feeding people as much information as possible and to cement them into using their service.

Should we be panicking?  Too soon to tell.  Maybe the trend will begin reversing and people will want their privacy back, but whats clear is that this generation is enchanted by sensory overload.  All internet services in one way or another seek to inundate the user with information since its more available than it has ever been in the history of the world.  How this will affect how we interact with each other will be sort of interesting I think.


I have too much of a headache from sickness to continue this thought. 

~Jared