holiday busyness

I am well-documented in expressing my distaste for all of the responsibilities that come with the holidays. It is supposed to be a joyous time of year, but you have to jump through fifteen different hoops just to have done things right for the holidays. Christmas cards, decorations, gifts are all stresses more than they are things to bring families closer together or emphasize the importance of Christ, which are what the focus of holiday time should be anyway.

I remember really looking forward to Christmas as a kid, but the reasoning for that was pretty sound. It was one of my best opportunities to get toys and games, I got time off school, and I usually got the opportunity to play with cousins. I had no real responsibilities with the holiday, so the adults got to deal with all of the stress.

I have a theory that twenty percent of those who celebrate Christmas are holding the other eighty percent hostage. I think that twenty percent of people are so into the holidays that they are the ones listening to carols all year and putting up huge Christmas displays in their yards the day after Thanksgiving. They are the ones who put hours into creating their Christmas cards and send them to everyone they ever met. They are also the ones who figured out the popular gifts for the year in August and had them purchased before the rush (probably not as relevant this year, but you get the picture). I think that this twenty percent of people for whom this is a hobby rather than a responsibility sets the bar for the other eighty percent of the population.

To the eighty percent of the Christmas-celebrating population I say, "Enough!" Rather than describing people who would prefer to spend time home with their families watching TV or playing games than in a chaotic mall or holed up in the back room writing Christmas cards as apathetic Scrooges, we should aspire to be more like them. Of course, I say that as an apathetic Scrooge.

prayer

I have never felt like I was any good at prayer. At different times it has felt like one of the three following things.

1. Patronizing, because God already knows He is great and knows that I know.
2. Selfish, because I seem to go to Him most frequently for less than altruistic purposes.
3. Boring, because what do you say to the One who knows everything?
   

Something about a lot of prayer and the emphases I have seen on prayer has always felt a little off, and it typically was related to one of the three impressions above. Since I know that prayer is important, possibly the most important element of a Christian's life, I have never felt too comfortable going in a path that might lead me to take some weird anti-prayer stance. In retrospect, I do not think that has ever really been a danger, though.

I have long felt that the key to understanding prayer is in Matthew 6:5-15, copied below from the NIV. I have also long felt that the emphasis that I have often seen placed on prayer in church environments has conflicted with what I read in this passage. Until recently, though, I had not taken the time to parse this and give it proper thought.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. "This, then, is how you should pray:" 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

What follows is how I break down and interpret this passage. The first few points have to do with the act of praying more than what is actually said.

"...when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father..."

Don't make a show of it. This seems elementary, but when you think of a good prayer do you think of one that is a good speech or one that is humbly directed to the Father? I think that the emphasis on turning prayers into speeches has done more to discourage everyday people from praying than anything else because those oratory prayers make us think on some level that the quality of delivery is what matters.

"...do not keep on babbling like pagans..."

Length for length's sake is pointless. A genuine three-minute prayer is better than a fifteen minute prayer with no real communication with God. Prayers cannot and should not ever be judged purely on length.

"Do not be like [the pagans], for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

To an extent this addresses my second and third annoyances from the beginning of this post. I can take my needs and wants to God and He will address those things that are really needs, so selfishness is not necessarily rewarded. Furthermore, God does not want me blathering on into boredom in an attempt to be heard. I can beseech God as long as I need to, but there is no obligation to pray into the point of boredom.

At this point Jesus gives an example prayer, opening it with the command, "This, then, is how you should pray." So, the Lord's Prayer which follows is an example of how I should pray. I think it is also important to note that since this prayer is meant as an example of an alternative to babbling like the pagans we should be careful not to just mindlessly rattle off the prayer without really meaning the words. Otherwise, we are babbling like the pagans and violating the very spirit of this passage.

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name..."

I am praying to and should acknowledge God. He is great and holy. To address my earlier concern in point one that God already knows that He is great and holy so why bother saying it, I think much of the value is in my understanding it through my saying it. Do I think about how great God is and what that means enough? Do I think about how holy God is and what that means enough? I should stop and consider this every time I speak to God.

"...your kingdom come..."

I should pray for God to do the work that He said He would do. Jesus spoke at great length about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom represents the true Church, so I would interpret this as a prayer for that true Church to remain strong and to grow. Since the teaching in the Gospels about the "Kingdom" is relatively complicated, this is something that could be investigated further.

"...your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

I believe this is an indication that we should not be praying for what we want to happen, but for whatever God's will is to happen. Jesus provided the perfect illustration for this in Gethsemane: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." I think there are some people who, if they were in Gethsemane with Jesus that night, would have chided Jesus for a lack of faith in not believing that the cup would pass.

"Give us today our daily bread."

I should request daily provision. Few things scare me more than this because comfort and luxury are not implied in any shape or form in this request.

"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."

I should request forgiveness for my shortcomings. Importantly, I must also not be harboring unforgiveness when I pray this prayer. I actually read this more as a focus on us forgiving others than a focus on God forgiving us.

"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."

I should pray that God guides me throughout each day and throughout my life. I should also pray that, in that guidance, I am steered clear of evil. If I had to choose, I would say that this is the most important part of the prayer.

"...if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

It is part of the same passage and it bears repeating. The prayer itself is a meaningless charade if the person performing the prayer harbors unforgiveness. Your standing with God is a charade if you harbor unforgiveness.

only in america

One list that I have come across several times in my time online is a series of things that could happen, "Only in America." A typical representation of the list is here, and common observations are that pizza can get to your house faster than an ambulance and that there are handicap spaces in front of skating rinks. The observation that has always stuck with me is the following, though.

"Only in America... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet Coke."

It sounds good at first, and the reason it initially stuck out to me was that I thought it was more insightful than the other observations in the list the first time I read it. Upon further introspection, and the fact that I have started drinking diet cola with more frequency, I now believe that this observation not very insightful at all.

The implications with the observation is two-fold. First, someone who orders double cheeseburgers and large fries truly has little self-control. Second, diet Coke is a lazy and ineffective means of offsetting the calories consumed in the burger and fries. I believe that both of these assumptions is false, so I would like to address them.

Double cheeseburger and fries
Is this really that much food? On a calorie for calorie basis I know that a burger and fries tends to be more expensive than most other equivalent entree options, but this does not mean that ordering the food equals a lack of self-control. Everyone splurges on some things, which can be healthy when it is controlled, so splurging on the double cheeseburger (rather than the triple cheeseburger) does not seem like such a big deal. It is a big deal if someone with a sedentary lifestyle orders the burger and fries every single day, but that scenario is not implied in the joke.

Diet Coke and calories
While I am sure that a diet Coke contains many things that are not good for the body, a twelve-ounce diet Coke contains just under 200 calories less than a regular Coke of the same size. The average adult would have to walk almost two miles to burn that many calories. Doesn't it make sense that the person who should order the diet Coke to trim those 200 calories should be the one who is splurging on the double cheeseburger rather than the person ordering a salad?

I like to think of this in budgeting terms. Let's say that I have budgeted to spend 800 calories this meal. If my double cheeseburger and fries gets me to 790 calories, I would have to drink the diet drink or a water to stay under budget. This is the same concept that if I have $800 to do repair work around the house, once I hit my budgetary limit and spend my $800 I have to only repair the things that can be repaired for free. It is not absurd to cut back in spending on one part of a renovation project to offset splurging in another part.

Why do I care? Because only in America... are the burgers so good.

smokin'

Gallup released some data last week stating what is probably obvious, that smokers as a whole have a statistically lower quality of life than non-smokers by several different measures. While one could argue that low quality of life causes cigarette smoking, I would have to say it works the other way too. This does not surprise me and it should not surprise many other people, but what perplexes me is what the appeal of cigarettes are.

As I understand it, most people who smoke as adults started as teens, possibly under peer pressure, then stick with the habit because it is hard to break later. What I do not understand is how this specific vice has caught on. I assume that most people who are smokers and started since our culture has been inundated with information about how unhealthy smoking is are more short-term thinkers who do not picture themselves at age fifty with emphysema or lung cancer.

When I was in high school I worked as a cashier and a bagger at a grocery store. Probably the majority of the observations I have made about cigarettes and smokers came out of the experience of that job. Since I was frequently the person who had to retrieve customer's cigarettes from the locked display case, I got a good sense of who was buying cigarettes. Granted, no one was quite young enough to be in my age group because I was under eighteen, but my observation of the general cigarette purchaser demographic did not make me think that I would be more cool if I smoked. I am sure that I was heavily influenced by a strong correlation that I saw between people who used food stamps and people who bought a multiple cartons of cigarettes. I am not saying anything about those who have to turn to food stamps. I just did not want to emulate the lives of those people in that situation.

That grocery store had a small break room where most employees spent their breaks and where it was not yet illegal to smoke, though it probably would be illegal today with the lack of proper ventilation and all. If there was any question about the impact that cigarette smoke can have on lungs a person would only need to look at the walls of that room. The originally white walls had been turned what I assume was a brownish yellow. They were repainted while I was there and very quickly started to look dingy again. Of course, this illustrated what everyone in this country knows, that cigarette smoke will damage whatever it comes in contact with over extended periods of time.

One of the managers at the store once was illustrating how old he was using the price of cigarettes as an example. He noted that he had given up on cigarettes in his younger days because the habit was too expensive at fifteen cents a pack. At the time a typical pack of brand name cigarettes cost about two dollars. I do not know what a pack of cigarettes costs today, but I do know that in Pennsylvania where I had that grocery job that the taxes on a pack of cigarettes is now more than two dollars, which would imply a price approaching four dollars a pack. At more than $1400 a year, who has the kind of money to be able to afford a pack-a-day habit? I certainly do not.

A final thing I noticed when I worked at the grocery store was that, whether I was judging them fairly or not, the middle-aged to older people who bought cigarettes nearly always looked noticeably worse for the wear than those who did not. A few had severe creases around their lips where they had pursed them to hold their tobacco container of choice. A handful had obviously damaged their voice boxes in some way. Who wants to start a habit that almost guarantees they will appear an aged fifty or sixty years old rather than an attractive fifty or sixty?

Of all of the vices there are, smoking is one of the ones that I just do not understand. There are many addictions I that I understand how someone could get sucked into them because they offer a fleeting but significant endorphin rush. I guess that smoking must too, but as someone who has never smoked I just don't see it.

I have heard some people claim that smoking is a sin, but I do not think that is necessarily the case. It is an addiction, and those are the sorts of things that have to be dealt with as we prioritize Christ. It is not necessarily any more sinful than other addictions that people see as benign, though, such as to a specific food or television show.

Even if I did not have all of these reasons not to smoke, I would probably still have to pass on it. I already have a dependence to a chemical substance that stains my teeth, ruins my breath, impacts my mood, and is associated with relaxation. I drink my share of coffee every day and that is good enough for me.

nazis

Not long ago I watched a silent movie from 1927 called Metropolis. It was supposed to be a science fiction move set in 2026, but it was more of a political story about the plight of the lowly worker than it was science fiction. Since I believed it had been made in the United States as I was viewing it I was a bit amazed because the slant did not match my understanding of the political environment in the U.S. in the 1920s. When I investigated after watching the movie, though, I found that the movie was made in Germany. This gave the flick a bit of extra historical value because it presented a view into the general mindset in Germany during the time between the two world wars.

My perception of this film aligns with my interpretation of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will that the real appeal of the Nazi party was that it was a workers party. The German super man that Hitler pushed was presented as the typical German worker who was superior to the typical workers of other nationalities. Rather than saying, "Germans are superior to other races so let's systematically eliminate non-Aryans," Hilter emphasized the strength of the German workforce.

The reason I care to post about Hitler is that there are few lazier or more insulting tactics than comparing an opponent to the Nazis or to Hitler, but they are made with amazing frequency. It bothers me that people take the tactic of pinning Nazism to opponents rather than genuinely searching for the real reasons that the Nazi party was able to take hold and learning from them. Sometimes valid comparisons between the Nazi party and some situation in modern times but we cannot learn from those because all of the erroneous comparisons have dulled the effect of a good comparison. It also bothers me that people minimize the evil perpetuated by others from the past century such as Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein in focusing so much effort on Hitler, but that is a discussion for another day.

I believe that the warning that Hitler and most other bloodthirsty dictators offers is more simple than people realize. When the masses follow their wallets in bringing a leader to power, and they nearly always do, this is when a nation is most at risk of accepting things from their leadership that they might not otherwise on moral grounds. I do not believe that, had they known of the atrocities committed against the Jews and other "lesser" groups, most Germans would have supported the regime. That said, since the Nazis offered the best economic hope to most Germans, a critical mass of Germans believed what they needed to about what was going on so that they could continue to enjoy relative economic strength.

My real point in this is not to take an anti-labor position. To compare organized labor to the Nazis would be to go to the extreme that I am lamenting. My real point is that the most sure way to allow a Hitler into power is to care solely about our what our leaders are doing for us financially than whether they are leading society down a proper course. Since I personally believe that most members of society do not spend enough effort understanding the economics of different policy positions this may seem odd, but I do believe that our social principles should trump our economic positions when there is conflict. History and general observation tell me that most people rationalize their social principles based on what will economically benefit them rather than the other way around.

As a final point, it is possible that someone could read this post as some sort of indictment of the current or the previous White House. This is not my intent, though. I am just saying that the warning that Hitler provides is simply that we should be wary of the political revolutions we support because just because what we have at any given point may be bad that does not mean it cannot get worse. Sometimes it is better if the bad leadership isn't booted.

tech insecurity

I think that in economic times like the current time people tend to appreciate that they have jobs more. I don't know if this has a general impact on whether they like their jobs, but it certainly has an impact on how people value them. For my part, I definitely appreciate that I have a job, but I probably appreciated it about the same before the unemployment rate doubled.

I have been thinking about this because I think I assume something that most people do not assume. I figure that it is inevitable that I will be laid off at some point in the future. It could be tomorrow and it could be thirty years from now. It could be from my current employer or some other employer far in the future. Given the nature of modern job markets and the way I see various industries trending I do not see how I can avoid it indefinitely.

Most of the people who read this have been laid off or fired at least once. I am certainly among that number. The last place where I was laid off was especially tough because I lost a bit of trust in the experience. Against my better judgment I had been convinced by senior management that the consulting firm that I worked for would maintain enough work to employ me at least for a few years. Within a few months of that I was informed that my contract would be terminated four months later. I was one of the lucky ones who could not be immediately replaced at the customer site.

In technical fields I think it is just assumed that specific jobs will not be there forever. Certainly the required skill sets change enough that the nature of jobs today are not the same as the jobs a few years down the road. There is not as much call for a mainframe administrator or COBOL developer as there once was. Straightforward technical jobs also have a tendency to migrate offshore. Since I chose to pursue working in a technical field I should accept that this comes with the territory. It can still be a bit scary, though, because layoffs typically happen at times when few other companies are hiring. Also my skill set is broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep. This is good in my current position but it is the opposite of the ideal in a job search for anything other than an entry-level job.

My expectation causes me to approach things a little different than many other people. As an example, a coworker was talking to me about how a specific new vehicle would only cost a certain amount of money a month with a good-sized down payment and I noted that I was not comfortable having another monthly financial obligation. "Oh yeah," he replied, "You think you're going to be fired." I explained that this was not true, because I do not think that I am going to be let go in the near future. Since I figure it will happen some day, though, why get buried in even just a little debt?

While I think job insecurity is inevitable going forward, I do not think it should have to be. I think that most layoffs can be traced back to one of two things. The first is poor forecasting. During good times some companies probably grow a little too irrationally fast. The second is the myopic view on Wall Street that ignores that statistical variance for revenues and profits is unavoidable. Eventually, even the best companies are going to have bad quarters. It's only the Enrons and the Madoffs that don't. The street should not expect layoffs any time a company misses on earnings. Unless the market as a whole addresses two issues most industries will continue to be insecure places to maintain a career. I hope they get to work on that soon.

formality

Today was the first day that our church went back to one service from the previous setup of two services. There are good and bad things about it. On the good side, it puts less of a strain on church workers and it encourages people who would otherwise be going to different services to get to know each other. On the bad side, it strains the church's facilities and forces me to get out of bed on Sunday morning earlier than I have been. There is one other thing that I mark as a negative even though it probably is not a big deal. I have really enjoyed the casual nature of the service that I was attending, and I feel a little awkward now that I am ushering in something less formal than a three-piece suit.

I have made no bones about the fact that I like a casual environment more than a formal environment, but since I know a lot of people who disagree with this I have invested some thought and observation into this. I believe that most people are either in the category of those who get serious pleasure out of being in a formal setting (or having letters after their name, or something like that) or they are in the category where they are seriously uncomfortable in that sort of setting (or with listing PhD after their name). I could be wrong, but I think the group of people who are indifferent about this are in the minority.

In my analysis (well, that is what I am calling it) I am excluding the people who just like to wear nice clothes every once in a while to be seen in what they are wearing. For example, girls who look forward to wearing a new dress to the prom are probably less interested in formality than they are in people noticing them. My main focus is on comparing those who see real value in formality to those who see formality as a waste of time or worse. Since my main clashes with those with whom I have disagreed were generally that of receiving a bit of judgment for a lack of respect, I responded by also being judgmental for a while. I used to believe that those who like formality desire it for its ability to act as a tool to discriminate against less civilized inferiors. While there is no doubt that formality has been used in this manner (a lot), it was certainly an improper judgment for me to make because it probably does not describe most people drawn to the formal. As a bit of a confession, I still struggle against this line of judgment.

I now think that there is something different in foundations of the mind between those who strongly favor formality and those who disdain it. I am sure that environment plays a role, but I think the urge is more basic. My best guess at this point is that someone is more likely to appreciate formality if he or she more comfortable with cultural norms that have an appearance of being arbitrary, regardless as to whether they are. For example, to accept that a tie should be worn with a suit without much explanation because it does look better in the ensemble appears to require an acceptance of a social norm. Someone who does not accept the norm will appeal to how arbitrary that article of clothing seems because its only apparent purpose is to limit blood flow to the head. As another example, my experience is that people who believe that formality is important will often point to the importance of respect or dignity or something else like that while people who do not believe that formality is important will respond with the question of whether formality truly adds respect or dignity or whatever. Since it the subject matter is subjective, no headway will have been made in that debate.

The only way I can really get a feel for what makes someone like or dislike formality is to ask. How do you feel about formality? Are there specific reasons that you like or dislike it? Do you believe my line of reasoning is flawed?