cute

I mentioned not long ago that a lot of words have different meanings to men and women. I don't have a good way of judging how well this applies to all men and women, but one word that has stuck out to me, especially when I was growing up, is "cute." It is completely possible that I am alone on this, but that word has devalued a lot of compliments in my life. The following example uses my grandmother as an example, and I have chosen to use this since she has passed and so will not read this some day in the future with embarrassment.

I like to share things that I think are funny with others. So, if I come across something I think is genuinely funny I like to share it. More than once when I was at my grandparents' house I read some joke I liked out of a Reader's Digest to my grandmother, to which her response was to say it was cute. It wasn't a huge deal because I knew it was supposed to be a compliment, but that was never the response I wanted.

I think "cute" is a go-to generic compliment for a lot of women because the word implies the sort of thing a lot of women want to be or that they want to own. In my life I've heard a lot of women say things in the vein of, "You look cute in those earrings," or "Those shoes are so cute," or "You have a cute baby," or "You two look cute together." In most contexts; though, the word is feminine. I haven't heard many men use the same sort of compliments, and it sticks out like a sore thumb when a man actually does say something like that.

The real problem is that a compliment is only effective if it makes the recipient feel how he or she wants to feel about himself or herself. Giving a man who would prefer to be masculine feminine compliments or a woman who would prefer to be feminine masculine compliments drains the value from those compliments.

In thinking through this I realized that I do not know which compliments men give that aren't really compliments to women. Is there a reverse version of "cute" that I am not aware of? I should probably learn before I start giving Golden or CD compliments that mean less than I think they do.

temptation

Recent news regarding research performed at the USC Marshall School of Business indicates that positive reinforcement is more effective at getting people to avoid temptation than guilt. It doesn't sound like the research was extremely thorough, but the conclusions make a lot of sense to me.

An example of this that was mentioned in the story dealt with people's ability to resist eating cake. Three different groups of people were left in a room individually with a piece of cake and told they that they could eat it if they wanted to. One group was informed that they should contemplate their pride at resisting this temptation, one group was informed that they should contemplate their shame at eating the cake, and one group was the control group who did not receive positive or negative reinforcement. The group of people who were told to contemplate their pride at resisting temptation did better than the other groups, especially the one told to focus on shame.

The article gives three reasons why guilt is ineffective.

1. Guilt focuses thoughts on the temptation rather than on self-control. If you're thinking a lot about the object of your temptation you are more likely to cave to the temptation.
2. Guilt makes you feel bad in general, and this damages your resolve to fight the temptation.
3. Guilt makes the tempting thing seem more pleasurable, and therefore makes it more difficult to resist.

This aligns well with how I have learned that you are supposed to guide small children to right and wrong. For example, rather than yelling at your kids not to run inside, it is better to tell them that they should walk. This concept is very difficult for me to implement as a parent because I don't always know what behavior I want in my kids as quickly as what behavior I don't want. This concept goes further than parenting; though, and seems like it is very relevant to addictions.

I have never been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but if the movies are to be believed, people who share with the group tend to open with a positive: "Hi, my name is Dust and I am an alcoholic. I have been alcohol-free for seven months." While it may sound like a downer, the focus is on acceptance within the group despite your weaknesses, and pride in the success of resisting temptation for a period of time. Obviously, there is more to Alcoholics Anonymous than this, but if the meetings consisted merely of visiting speakers berating them for their weaknesses instead of allowing people to think about their successes I'd bet it would be far less successful at what it does.

I think this points to an area where much of the church is ineffective. The churches that I am used to are good about doling out the guilt for things that are wrong. I have started asking myself the last few years whether this truly does any good, though. Certainly sin should be called sin, but if spiritual nagging makes people more apt to fall to temptation, then there has to be a more effective way of helping people get out of their addictions. Of course it is through God's strength that we have freedom from sin, but we are to help bear each others burdens (Gal 6:1-2). If that is the case, then we have a responsibility to assist in the most effective way we know how.

So, if you are helping someone avoid temptation how would you go about doing it? Here are the steps I would follow.

• Pray.
• Praise successes.
• Maintain humility throughout the process (Gal 6:3).
• Praise successes.
• Encourage the person to visualize success and imagine how good it will feel to overcome than the temptation.
• Praise successes.
• Analyze failures to see what went wrong, but don't dwell on them.
• Praise successes.
• Encourage the person to listen for the Spirit's guidance (Gal 5:16).
• Praise successes.

holocaust stories

We are going through The Hiding Place in our Sunday morning class at church right now. It is a very powerful and well-thought-out book, and so it is a good choice. I don't think I am the intended audience, though. This got me to thinking about who is the audience for a story about the Holocaust.

Several people close to me have gone through periods where they were strongly interested in the Holocaust. I have no intent of invalidating that interest, but I do not personally understand it. My reaction to these sorts of stories is due to the fact that it is sadness and loss piled onto more sadness and loss. Even when the story has a happy ending I feel exhausted by that point. I do have to admit that there are some sad stories I am drawn to. Holocaust stories are simply not among them.

I don't want to imply that my perspective on this is the one that is the most valid, though. If you have an interest in Holocaust stories or think you may have some insight into their draw leave a comment. I'd love to get a fresh perspective.

metaphor in toy story 3

There are spoilers in this post from Toy Story 3. My assumption is that at this point you will have seen the movie or you won't care if part of the movie is spoiled. This is a heads up nonetheless.

Over the last nine months or so I have watched Toy Story 3 countless times with the kids. After seeing it so many times, I have come to the conclusion that it is meant on some level to be a metaphor for Old Testament Israel or Judah, which does make some sense if there is near the Jewish influence in modern media that a lot of people believe there is.

By my interpretation Woody is a prophet, akin to Isaiah or Jeremiah. Also, Andy is God, Buzz represents the nation's ruler, the rest of Andy's toys represent the nation, and the kids at daycare represent other nations' false gods. One representation that I think is intentional, but that I am less sure of, is Lotso Hugging Bear as Satan.

As the story is introduced the toys (the people of the nation) are trying to find ways to get Andy's (God's) attention. This is because they (the nation) have needs that aren't getting met and they feel like Andy (God) is ignoring them. Events occur to exacerbate that feeling, and so all of the toys (the nation) except Woody (the prophet) want to turn their back on Andy (God) and stay at Sunnyside Daycare with all of the younger kids (false gods) until they understand the implications of their decision. Buzz (the king) ultimately makes the decision that the toys (the nation) are not Andy's (God's) any more in the face of Woody's (the prophet's) argument that they will always be Andy's (God's).

Lotso (Satan) makes the children in the Caterpillar room (false gods) sound like an appealing option, then traps them in their decision to stay with the children (false gods). The children (false gods) mistreat the toys (the nation), but the toys (the nation) are stuck because they have forsaken Andy (God). In the process, Lotso (Satan) corrupts Buzz (the king) who in turn holds the toys (the nation) hostage.

Woody (the prophet) appears with information from the outside and hope for freedom. He also has information on Lotso (Satan) that he is a fallen toy (demon) because of what happened between him and his kid (God). The toys (the nation) agree that Woody is right (repent) and decide to attempt to escape the daycare (false gods) and return to Andy (God). During this time Buzz goes through his own transformation (repentance) process.

Toward the end, the toys (the nation) are almost condemned to destruction at the dump (Hell) as Lotso (Satan) taunts them with the question, "Where's your kid (God) now?" While the concept of Hell is more New Testament and Christian than Old Testament and Jewish, it could also represent destruction at the hands of the Assyrians or Babylonians. Regardless, the toys are ultimately saved.

The metaphor is not perfect, and so there are a lot of holes you could poke in my theory if you wanted. For example, once you introduce Bonnie you are introducing polytheism, which is stridently inconsistent with Old Testament theology. While the kids in the Caterpillar room are representative of false gods, what about the kids in the Butterfly room? If you follow the metaphor too strictly, it sounds like Ken and Barbie stayed with the false gods, and this wasn't portrayed as a bad thing. Perhaps most importantly, Andy (God) plays only a very minor role in ultimately assisting the toys.

I understand that you can make almost any story fit into any structure you want to illustrate whatever point, but I have to believe that at least one of the writers was attempting to implement either a Christian or Jewish perspective into the framework of the story by including a series of related Old Testament themes. That's what it looks like to me at least.

marital communication

Partly but not entirely because two of the groomsmen from my wedding are getting married or have gotten married this year, I have been thinking about marital relationships a lot lately. It amazes me how fundamentally different men and women are, and how God not only allows, but also ordains, that the most important relationship that the majority of people have is with someone so incredibly different from them.

I see it in other marriages and even in my own where the couple can have a conversation and each person in the couple can walk away with a completely different understanding of what was just discussed. Words like romance, happiness, contentment, love, hurt, respect, security, power, worth, trust, and thousands of other words are all loaded and have different meanings to different people. When people talk about communication being one of the most important things about marriage they seem to downplay that the real complication is getting both spouses to the point where they agree what the meaning of the word, "is," is. I have seen plenty of relationships where at least one spouse was completely unaware that the other spouse essentially spoke another language, so merely encouraging communication may not always suffice.

So, if there is something that I wish I had known better when I got married it is that I needed to pay more attention for what Golden and I each meant when we were discussing something important. A lot of things that seem benign to one spouse are deeply tied to some inner need of the other, so what inner needs were being discussed that only one person at the table even understood was the basis of the conversation? Of course, this only illustrates how much I still have to learn.

I have one question for the married people out there. What is something you wish you realized before you got married that you know better now? Obviously, make it something that wouldn't embarrass you or your spouse.

journey

I can't believe I was so naive when I was a teenager. How stupid I was in my early twenties. I can't believe the issues I had five years ago. It seems like as I look back in my life I always feel myself superior to my prior self and am a bit embarrassed of what a numskull I was then. To be sure, I have done, said, typed, and thought a lot of unintelligent things in my time. It seems crazy that my future self won't look back in five years and think the same thing of me now.

When I was a kid I never really appreciated the description of life as a journey. What I am today may resemble what I am tomorrow, but I am still slightly different on those two days, for better or for worse. Before, time was so short that I had not changed much. Now, I see my past (still short) life as a meandering path of discovery (and a fair amount of stupidity). People who knew me at one stage of that path might not really know me now.

When I hear anecdotes about famous or non-famous people or read what they wrote or said, I don't always appreciate the context of where that person is in their life. Actions they may perform or positions they may take when they are at one stage in their journey may not be what they would do or believe at a different stage in their journey. Luther in 1510 was a different person from Luther in 1530. Lincoln in 1850 was a different person from Lincoln in 1865. Einstein in 1920 was a different person from Einstein in 1950. However, in each of these situations if I hear a quote from one of these men I expect it to be from the later version of them that has gone through the life-changing experiences rather than the less-experienced versions of themselves.

The Christian take on this is that life's journey is part of what God uses for sanctification. We're given time on earth to allow Him to break us and begin His work in us so that what we are at the end of the journey is what He intended for us to be. Christianity is not the only belief system to take into account the fact that experience changes us (for example, the Buddhist belief in slowly improving toward Nirvana is similar), but it is the only one that puts the responsibility for the changes squarely in God's hands.

The current me is still on the journey to perfection and nowhere near there. That leaves me having to look forward to the work that will be done rather than take pride in already being at the end of the journey.

a moral question about death

I have given a lot of thought recently to the idea that things that happen early in your life have the potential to significantly impact the quality of your life later on or to lengthen or shorten your life. I don't have detailed statistics here, but I have heard that the life expectancy for football players, for example, is dramatically shorter than the average, and this is probably largely due to the physical toll the game has on players' bodies. They may be in extraordinary physical shape at 25, but taking hit after hit after hit comes back to haunt them at 50 or 60.

Something that hits more closely to home is that, since I have chosen a career and overall lifestyle that is on the more sedentary side, there are some serious risks to my health later in life. I don't really like the ways that I can mitigate this (eating right and exercising), but I still have to strongly consider their value right now.

This whole line of thinking got me on the track of how this might create some moral dilemmas that we don't often think about. Let me pose a few theoretical and necessarily morbid scenarios to illustrate.

First, going with the football theme, imagine a receiver catches the ball and is tackled, but a second defensive player lays down a late hit that results in the receiver getting a concussion. The late hit is penalized, but it was strategic. The strategy does not carry the intention of trying to injure the receiver, but rather to make the receiver gun-shy the next time he reaches for the ball and reduce the receiver's confidence to catch the ball on future downs. Further imagine that the concussion was the tipping point that later caused the receiver to fall into dementia unlike he otherwise would have and also die three or four years earlier than he otherwise would have.

Second, imagine a driver who is not fully drunk, but who is impaired by alcohol, and runs a stop sign and strikes a pedestrian who happens to be jaywalking. The pedestrian does not survive.

Third, imagine two twenty-something friends climbing a tree for whatever reason when one unintentionally bumps the other causing him to fall and badly damage his leg to the point where it never heals properly. That friend is then less physically active than he otherwise would have been throughout the rest of his life, and this leads to a less healthy lifestyle and an earlier death than he otherwise would have had.

Fourth, imagine some people jump their neighbor's fence and use his pool when the neighbor is on vacation. In the process, imagine one of them drowns.

Ethically and/or morally, are the defensive football player and the driver any different in scenarios one and two? I know that it is difficult-to-impossible to map one incident earlier in life to an early death later in life. Since the aggressors in both scenarios had reason to believe that their actions were somewhat unsafe, though, is the badness or goodness of their actions on the same par? There is a good chance that the driver in the second scenario would face manslaughter charges for his recklessness. Regarding the first scenario, though, many defensive football coaches would expect their players to occasionally deliver a dangerous and even illegal hit simply due to the nature of the game.

Ethically and/or morally, are scenarios three and four any different? Is the friend who bumps his cohort better or worse than the neighbor whose pool is broken into? In real life, the person who owns the pool will probably be held more legally responsible for the death in his pool than the friend in the tree will be for the eventual death he causes. Is there any real difference between them at a moral or ethical level, though?

In case it is not obvious, it is my opinion that scenarios one and two contain the same moral value and that scenarios three and four also contain the same moral value. The disregard for human life is the same with the football player and the buzzed driver, and the negligence is the same with the the friend and the pool owner. For practical reasons, the law does not see these scenarios equally. My question is do you?