First Amendment for Christians too?

The following is quoted from the website of the Association of College Unions International:

Ohio Union Smudging ceremony

On Jan. 30, the Ohio Union at The Ohio State University closed its doors for the last time, but not before faculty, staff, and students gathered in the main lounge for a smudging ceremony, facilitated by the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio.

“Native American elders have taught that before something can be healed, it must be cleansed of negative energy and then purified with offerings of thanks,” said Heather McGinnis, assistant director of the union.

“The smudging ceremony was used as a way to purify the Ohio Union of negative energy as preparation is made for deconstruction of the current space and the future construction of the new building.”

During the ceremony, sage was burned to replace bad feelings with good ones and send up prayers with the smoke. A bowl containing sage was taken to each person and they fanned themselves with the smoke.

“Native American songs were sung during the entire ceremony. The audience was instructed to turn towards the different directions—north, south, east, west, sky, and ground,” McGinnis said. “A prayer of reflection was said and each person was given the opportunity to reflect on their own personal experiences in the building.” Around 200 people gathered to pay tribute to the union.

“Thanks to the Smudging Ceremony, the Ohio Union, empty as it may look, is now filled with positive energy and even more positive memories,” McGinnis said.

Where was the ACLU on this one? They made a point of protesting an event in which Christian groups wanted to bless a Columbus City school prior to the start of the school year. This event was to take place on Sunday, when school was not in session, but still the ACLU argued that it violated constitutional protections.

At Hilliard City Schools, Muslim students are permitted to leave class for prayer on the school grounds during Ramadan.

Why is it I am feeling oppressed?

First Amendment: Protection FROM Christianity

The following story was published in Hilliard This Week, April 26, 2007:


Prayer in the schools became an issue recently when a resident questioned the "disruption" of it during a regular Hilliard school board meeting.

The only thing that surprised Darby High School Principal Dave Stewart about Jim Slubowski's concern that students were leaving the classroom in the middle of a teacher's presentation to pray was the timing. "It is during a very specific period of time," Stewart said, "at a very specific time of day."

Typically during Ramadan, he said, students who are of the Muslim faith, or believe in Islam, seek out a room at the school to pray.

"It's only during Ramadan," said Stewart.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Moslem year and a time for 30 days of fasting as well as prayer.

"During that period of time for Muslim students, it is much more critical, according to their faith, that they pray at very specific times," Stewart said. "There is only one time during the school day that happens. This is not something that goes on on an ongoing basis all day long or all year long."

Ramadan was in the fall. Stewart was surprised to learn that Slubowski, a resident of Packard Drive, attended a meeting in March to voice concerns about the "disruption" in the classroom because of students leaving for prayer.

Michelle Wray, school-community relations coordinator, said the school district can neither encourage nor prevent prayer in school.

"I think a lot of people think that with the whole separation of church and state, that prayer isn't allowed in school," she said. "That is not the case. We can't endorse it, and we can't require it. We can't discriminate against anyone either, so we need to do what we can to make sure we are meeting the needs of students without disrupting the education of themselves and others."

Stewart said he has never had a request from anyone of the Christian-based faiths for prayer time, but schools in the United States are typically scheduled around the religious holidays of Christianity.

"With the Christian religion, you could be praying now, and I wouldn't know it," said Wray.

Students sometimes participate in "See You At The Pole," in which they gather at the flag pole to pray, but, Wray said, that is usually held before school starts for the day.

In the practice of Judaism, she said, students are granted absences to observe their religious holidays.

The litmus test, Stewart said, is based around the word disruptive.

"We do retain the right for a teacher to say, on a given day, that it would be disruptive," he said, referring to examinations or other presentations. "The Muslim students, that's the give and take, they understand that and respect it."

Slubowski said she is not sure what is taking place at the school.

"There is a lot of hearsay back and forth," he said. "That's why I am throwing this out to you and saying maybe we should look into this."

If the program is causing a material disruption of classroom procedures, Slubowski said, it should be ended.

Stepping out of the classroom for approximately five to 10 minutes of prayer, according to Stewart, is less disruptive than having to excuse students for an entire day. He said it is not uncommon for students to go in and out of the classrooms to use the restroom, go to the office, see guidance counselors or attend other functions.

The Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators issued a legal note stating that students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers as long as they are not disruptive.

An example used in the legal note is that students may not decide to pray as the teacher is calling on them.

"It is a minimal number of students who ask to leave for religious prayer," Wray said.
Fifteen to 20 students, both male and female, ask to leave the classroom to pray during Ramadan, said Stewart.

Once the obligation of prayer is fulfilled, he said, the students return to the classroom.
While Davidson High School probably has students ask to be excused, Wray said Darby has more Somalian students, many of whom are Muslim.

"Dave has worked with it more," she said. "I have never heard of a request at the elementary school."

A room at the school is not specifically designated as a prayer room. She said it is generally a space which offers some privacy for a brief period of time, before returning to its designated use.

--------------------------

There are just a whole bunch of undercurrents in this article:

• Thinking the best of him, we might believe Mr. Slubowski was be expressing concern that his child is being impacted by having the Muslim students leave the room. Except that Mr. Slubowski lives in the Davidson HS attendance zone now, and will remain there after the new attendance zones are put into effect. One cannot imagine he's trying to stand up for the Somali students and say their education is being negatively impacted by the customs of Islam. Thinking not so generously, it could be that Mr. Slubowski is simply objecting to the Somali kids getting what he perceives to be 'special treatment.' I can see a little of that. After decades of having their faith suppressed in school and government settings, it may be valid for Christians to ask if everyone is getting the same deal.
  
• The school officials defend their actions (which I think are reasonable by the way) by saying that they have never been asked by Christians for the same kind of latitude. I think the situation may be that the ACLU has been so aggressive in their war against religion (in particular Christianity) in public schools that no one thinks there's any a latitude at all. Read this article to get a sense of what I mean: the ACLU thought that having a Christian group come on the school grounds on the weekend was a violation of Constitutional protections. Why would any Christian think it was okay to do anything in regard to their faith during actual school hours?
  
• Ms. Wray's comment that "With the Christian religion, you could be praying right now, and I wouldn't know it" was perhaps not the brightest thing that could have been said. I'm sure her meaning was that it is impossible for schools to ban all practice of religious customs because one can pray without others knowing it. But it sounds more offensive to me, because it could be taken to mean that it is okay to ban visible Christian acts because we have a slealth mode available as well.
  
• I'm surprised that it is generally acceptable for students to get up and leave class. I'm sure things have changed since 1970 when I was in high school, when it was very very rare for a student to be pulled from class, or to be excused in the middle of class. I don't know how a teacher can be expected to complete a lesson if kids are coming and going as they please. Is it truly as common as the school officials would have you believe, or was did they give that answer just to head off further controversy?
  
• The reporter noted that this is an issue at Darby HS and not so much Davidson HS. This will only add fuel to the conversation that Davidson is better than Darby somehow. I tend to think the opposite by the way. The Darby kids are going to benefit from their exposure to and interaction with other cultures. And if we're not careful, the Davidson kids will develop a sense of superiority and of permission to discriminate which will not serve our country and our world well going forward.

The community of the Hilliard City School District now numbers over 75,000, with 15,000 kids attending school. Hilliard will continue to grow more diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion. We can either embrace that, or watch another cycle of 'white flight' in which the white folks who can afford it move out.

That's just what the developers would like to see happen by the way...

Evolution: Superbugs

Superbugs a growing threat to hospital patients

CTV.ca News Staff Updated: Wed. Sep. 13 2006 11:32 PM ET

Superbugs are a growing threat in Canadian hospitals, and better medication and infection controls are needed, a new study suggests.

The number of one powerful bacteria strain's resistance to antibiotics has jumped dramatically: From five-to-15 per cent to 20-to-50 per cent. That's a significant increase from previous estimates, according to the report by the Canadian National Intensive Care Unit.

Researchers examined 4,180 specimens from patients in 19 intensive care units across Canada. The resistance figures pertain to the most common virulent strain of bacteria, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is a major cause of hospital-acquired wound and skin infections. Scientists also found an increase in the resistance of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and E. coli, with levels at 6.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively.
"The stark reality in this country today is the MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria are posing a serious threat to our ICUs," primary investigator Dr. George Zhanel, a professor at the University of Manitoba, said in a news release. "People infected with these superbugs are more likely to have longer hospital stays and require multiple drug treatments to fight them off.
And even then, it's often too little, too late.” About 8,500 Canadians die each year from complications arising from infections acquired in hospitals, according to the Community and Hospital Infection Control Association. Zhanel says stronger infection control measures are needed to limit the impact of the superbugs. Strict compliance from patients for less complicated infections is also vital, he said.

Another disturbing trend found by researchers is the increase of MRSA acquired in the community, not in the hospital setting. The strains were found among athletes, soldiers and intravenous drug users, the study showed. At least seven cases of the community-acquired strains, usually found in drug users and First Nations communities, are currently being treated across the country, the report said. "In Canada, sporadic cases (of the strains) have started to appear over the last decade," said Dr. Tony Mazzulli, a University of Toronto professor and medical microbiologist and infectious diseases specialist. "They tend to involve different strains and different antibiotic resistance profiles than hospital-acquired infections."

© Copyright 2006 CTV Inc.

Above all, Gospels tell of God’s love

I really liked this article, and hope the Dispatch doesn't mind that I've saved it...

COMMENTARY
Above all, Gospels tell of God’s love
Friday, September 08, 2006
STEPHEN SMITH

I remember once asking a parishioner about his vision of God. "Who or what do you envision God to be?" I asked.
He replied by telling me that he thought of God as the one who keeps track of our rights and wrongs. We are punished for our wrongs by the consequences of our actions, and rewarded for our goodness. And God is always trying to steer us toward the good.
I agreed with his last statement but challenged the rest, saying: "You make God sound like a giant traffic cop in the sky. Where’s the good news in that? "
What happened to the Gospel, which is literally translated "Good News?" I always thought Christianity was meant to be defined by the Gospel. And what is that good news? That God loved the world so much he sent his only Son so that all who trust in him may have eternal life (John 3:16).
I do not remember the New Testament telling me that God sent his Son in order to be sure we always did right, or to keep track of all our deeds. In fact, much of Christian theology assumes that God sent his message of love through his Son because we humans were so often incapable of doing the right and the good.
In recent years, Christianity seems obsessed with right and wrong. As the religion injects itself into the public debate, it does so around hot-button issues like abortion and sexuality, and around party politics.
Increasingly, Christianity seems to be identified with being "right" on the issues or voting for the "right" party. As Christian leaders join the political discourse, they often sound just like politicians: attacking the other side (rather than loving our enemies as Jesus commanded) and giving the spin to a position (rather than speaking the truth in love).
Such public discourse divides people into groups of those who are right and those who are wrong. It also influences the way we envision God, turning the Deity into a bean counter. Where’s the Good News in that?
Early Christianity grew because of its strong message of love. In the dehumanizing world of the Roman Empire, the outcasts heard good news. Slaves heard that God loved them, even if they had no power or standing in society. In the church, slaves became brothers and sisters with those who were not slaves, and were called children of the God of the universe. A woman, living in a maledominated culture, where a husband or boyfriend could legally demand that she have an abortion, found herself treated as an equal to a man. The poor found dignity because they realized they were loved by God just as much as the rich. It was good news.
Christianity was not obsessed in those days with being "right." Rather, it was obsessed with sharing the love of God with all who needed it. And then, the church watched in awe and wonder as that love transformed lives. It was good news.
We live in a modern, dehumanizing world, where we allow ourselves to be defined more and more by our productivity, consumerism and accomplishments. I have found very few people who get up each morning fully aware of Christianity’s great proclamation that God loves them and each and every one us very much. And now the Christian Church fails to proclaim this, its own, most basic message, and instead joins in political bickering. Where’s the love? Whatever happened to the Gospel?
The Rev. Stephen Smith is rector of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Dublin, and a member of We Believe Ohio, a group that unites diverse religious voices for social justice.
revd.up@ameritech.net
Copyright © 2006, The Columbus Dispatch

The ACLU goes too far

I am really annoyed by the ACLU on this one -- this is stepping over the line:

This ceremony was held on Sunday, when the school was not in session.
No student or member of the faculty was required to attend
No religious object was left at the building

While the ACLU states that its mission is to monitor the separation of church and state, it seems to me that what it really wants is to prohibit religion entirely...

... or at least it wants to prohibit Christianity. I very much doubt that we would have seen a protest from the ACLU if there had been dancing and chants by a Native American tribe instead. How about if an African-American Muslim community had held a similar ceremony?
Our Bill of Rights does not prohibit religion -- it prohibits the government from mandating religion.
Don't let the ACLU prevail in this one!!

CHURCH SUPPORT AT MIDDLE SCHOOL
Blessing of school draws protest
Ceremony violated separation of church and state, ACLU says
Monday, August 28, 2006
Matt Zapotosky
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Pat Miller, right, and Carol Fry, center, of Karl Road Christian Church, lead about 180 people from four different North Side churches in a verse of Kumbaya outside Woodward Park Middle School. The group gathered yesterday to read a prayer and bless the school before the start of the school year.
About 180 members of four local churches surrounded a public middle school yesterday to bless the building and those who use it, despite objections from the American Civil Liberties Union about the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
Led by a minister from Epworth United Methodist Church, members of Epworth, Karl Road Christian Church, Karl Road Baptist Church and Ascension Lutheran Church joined hands and circled halfway around Woodward Park Middle School at 5151 Karl Rd. In unison, they asked the "great divine one, creator of us all" to bless each "student … teacher, staff and administrator" entering the building.
"Rain or shine, ACLU or not, nobody can stop those who have spirit-filled hearts," said Patricia Miller, who led the ceremony.
The nearby churches have an ongoing relationship with Woodward Park, providing supplies and other support. Miller said the ceremony at first was planned for inside the building and had the approval of the school’s principal, Jill Spanheimer.
Last week, Spanheimer said she didn’t remember that conversation and that the ceremony would have to be outside. Yesterday, she watched the ceremony from her yard, which borders the school grounds. She would not comment afterward.
The ACLU of Ohio sent a letter to Spanheimer and Superintendent Gene Harris last week, saying that permitting the event would violate the constitutional requirement that public schools remain neutral on religious matters. District officials responded with a letter stating the event was constitutional according to a U.S. Supreme Court case from New York state. In Good News Club v. Milford Central School, the court ruled that any group is permitted to rent and use public-school facilities.
"Anyone can walk onto the school grounds during the weekend," said Columbus Public Schools spokesman Greg Viebranz.
Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the ACLU of Ohio, said this event differed from the renting of school buildings, even those rented for a religious use.
"There’s not that appearance of endorsement by the school," he said. "There are worse scenarios that can be presented as far as being problematic from a church-state perspective, but this by no means is something that in my mind would pass constitutional muster."
Several participants said yesterday they did not think the ceremony, which lasted less than a half-hour, violated the separation of church and state, and some said they didn’t think church and state should be separated anyway.
Residents near the school who were interviewed by The Dispatch said they were not upset. In fact, they thought the event was a positive way to kick off the school year and benefited the neighborhood.
mzapotosky@dispatch.com
Copyright © 2006, The Columbus Dispatch

Life: Beginning and End

Abortion: I don't understand --
- When does that line gets crossed, and a zygote, becomes an embryo, then a fetus, and finally a baby? Why do some feel it is okay to abort a 'fetus' but that it's a miracle to save a 'baby' in-utero?
- When does a woman's Right to Choose change to a Requirement to Nuture?
- Didn't the woman have a right to choose when she had sexual intercourse? Pregnancy is a consequence of THAT choice. If you can't handle the consequence, don't perform the act. (I acknowledge that non-consensual intercourse takes place, but don't know what that means in terms of the status of the baby if pregnancy ensues)
- How can be it be okay for a mother to abort a fetus, but yet if that same fetus were killed without permission of the mother it is murder?

Death:
- We recently made the choice to euthanize a pet cat who has been a member of our household since it was born to a stray in our garage. He is 11 years old, but seems generally okay. However one day a few months back, we suspected he had lost his vision. The vet said he had hypertension and diabetes. We tried treating that with oral medications. He continued to lose weight (but did regain his sight). The vet put him on twice daily insulin, but the vet also offered to euthanize him rather than put us through the expense and bother of the insulin injections.

I expected the cat to put up a fight, making our decision whether to prolong his life an easy one -- he would be telling us not to torture him. But he accepted the shots just fine. However, the diabetes is still not controlled. The vet has kept cranking up the dosage. Now he has started urinating everywhere. It has became a choice of locking him in the basement for the rest of his life, with only closely supervised visits to our living quarters, or recognizing that he is an creature who has lived his expected life span, continuing to live only because we were literally pumping him full of medication and making regular trips to the vet to see if we were getting any level of control. The vet said we are only buying him a year max anyway.

We could withhold his insulin and let nature take its course. This was my first choice. You see, I have a lot of trouble deciding for a poor creature that can't talk to me that the time has come for his life to end. He's been a respected member of the household for a decade, and continues to be an affectionate pet. Who knows whether he is feeling good, or chronically yucky?

The wife said that withholding his insulin and letting him die naturally would be a slow and agonizing. She's right. Would it not be more compassionate to euthanize him now and allow him to avoid all that agony?

And what about the choice of continuing to treat him, but keeping him segregated from human contact so he can't 'mess up' our environment? Is it a good thing to continue to expend resources to keep him alive when he's going to die soon anyway?

I guess my problem is having the guts to make that decision on his behalf. It would be easier if he just died one day and took the decision out of my hands. Meanwhile, he's far too alive for me to end his life for my convenience.
(Update: Oreo was euthanized in Feb 2007 after a rapid decline in health brought on by advanced lung cancer. He had a good year after this piece was originally written).


How can I discuss abortion and pet euthanasia in the same essay? This isn't about equating a human baby to a pet cat.

But then, in a way it is.

In the natural world, the taking of life is a routine, normal, expected, and continuous act. Without exception, every species on the planet is prey to another. We humans even raise other species for no other reason than to consume them as food (I love the Douglas Adams commentary on this in the Hitchhiker's Guide -- where animals are raised not only to be food, but to desire to be food). To be sure, most of us are insulated from the act of walking a perfectly healthy animal up to the slaughter house and, in a matter of minutes, converting it from a living, breathing, sentient creature into a beheaded, gutted and skinned carcass on its way to our dinner table.

Other than the vegetarians of our species, we humans raise and slaughter untold millions of animals for no other reason than we like to eat meat. I like the comment: "If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?"

I'm a meat-eater. I also know that animals are sacrificed by the millions to test drugs, medical procedures and consumer products.

I have also kept pet fish, many of which were caught in the wild and distributed through the retail logistics system to get them to my local pet store. Many die on the way from their natural habitat to the pet stores. Sometimes one of them would die in my care. In some cases, the death was brought on by disease that that these creatures would not have encountered in their natural habitat. Other times specimens were eaten by other fish, perhaps because I put together combinations of animals that didn't encounter each other in the wild. Or maybe they did, and I was stupid enough to mix predator and prey. Either way, they died, and I contributed to their death.

I remember blubbering when our pet parakeet died back in the 1970s. Apparently parakeets don't live that long, and ours caught an infection, got sick, and eventually died. It was a very sad moment for me.

Guys are dying by the thousands in Iraq -- sent there by my government on my behalf. I had a part in their death, but show much less emotion hearing about the deaths of our troops than I did that watching that parakeet die in my hands.
You see, it's really all about relationships.

I don't know the cow that died for my dinner. In fact, I don't know any cows at all.

I never really had a relationship with the fish in my aquarium (although I did with one -- an Oscar). When they died, I mourned over the wasted money, not the animal.

But I interacted with the parakeet. He learned to make a few sounds that we took as words. It hurt when that interaction ended.

Our cat has been a good friend for a long time. Well actually, for most of his life, he stayed away from us and generally avoided interaction. He has a name the kids gave him, Oreo, but I rarely call him that. He is just "black kitty" to me. One day a few years ago, he decided to become social, and for the last year or so will jump up next to me on the couch and roll over so I could scratch his belly. It would hurt a lot to end that relationship. I'm not yet ready to make that decision. He's received a reprieve.

Abortion happens because the mother and father don't have a relationship with the fetus. I don't know whether abortion should be legal or not (my vote is not). But maybe a pregnant woman contemplating an abortion should have to watch a sonogram of the fetus so she knows there's a human being developing in there. Maybe in that moment, a connection will be made and the woman will decide to carry the baby to term.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter of birth control. But I prefer approaches that prevent conception. Birth control pills, condoms, abstinence and sterilization are all okay with me. We need to get the human population in control.

But once a human life begins, it's murder to end it.

Are We Tuned to the Right Channel?

You remember 'old-time' TVs that had the big knob for the channel selector?

Unlike today's TVs, with their electronic tuners, the old TVs had that big knob with all the stations on it, from 2 through 13. If you wanted to advance from channel 4 to channel 10, you had to click-click-click through 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 along the way. Most of the channels in between had nothing on them, so you got a screen full of snow and a bunch of hiss from the speakers as you passed through. Engineers call that 'noise.' After a few clicks, you get to your target channel, and there's a picture and sound -- a clear signal.

At some points in a church's life -- at its founding for example -- it tunes into a strong signal from God, and gets a pretty clear picture of what He wants it to be doing. Then after a while, we get bored with that channel, or don't like the style of the message, and decide to switch channels. Maybe we were tuned into Lawrence Welk on Channel 4, and want to watch Hulabaloo on Channel 10 (remember, this is before MTV). We grab the big knob and start twisting (I can hear my Dad yelling "take it easy, you'll tear up the tuner!"). We slowly move through the chaos and the noise of the channels on which God is NOT talking to us. However, with a purposeful vision that is leading us from Channel 4 to Channel 10, we get there, and once again find God waiting for us. It's a different, but equally clear connection to God.

But if we don't know which channel we heading for, we can get stuck in the chaos and the noise between channels, separated from God's word. Our we keep twisting the tuner looking for the show WE want to watch, not the one God is broadcasting to us.

I think this is where congregations and other church bodies get into trouble. They lose their focus, and end up arguing about which channel to watch. They keep flipping channels until everyone is mad or the tuner breaks. Meanwhile the signal-to-noise ratio is unfavorable, and they have trouble picking God's message out of the morass. Sometimes the argument gets so heated that everyone forgets that they were trying to tune into anything -- they just want to win the argument.

You just don't get a clear signal until you quit arguing with each other, and tune into God.

Habitat for Humanity for Whom?

An interesting phenomenon is happening here in central Ohio. Over the past several years, we have been getting an influx of immigrants from all over the world, and the rate of new arrivals seems to be accelerating. The largest groups are from Latin America and Africa. But even the homeless community is growing -- much faster than the rate people are becoming homeless in our community.

In more than one setting, I've heard similar comments for why this is. Perhaps the most succinct was by a homeless guy I was chatting with when our church group served dinner at one of the shelters downtown. He said, "Columbus is a great place to be homeless -- you guys have great programs for us" He wasn't a long-time resident of city who had fallen on bad times -- he was a professional homeless guy, and he migrated here to partake of our city's generosity!

I saw a broadcast of a community meeting where the director of social services for our city said that nearly all his clients were immigrants. At the same meeting, a representitive from the urban school system said that much of the resources of his department was being applied to dealing with immigrant kids who need language and socialization assistance.

If you go to one of the Dept of Motor Vehicles agencies around our part of town, it's like going to another country. The lines are full of immigrants seeking to take driver's tests and receive Ohio driver's licenses. It used to be that I could go to the local license agency in a nearby strip mall in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and find almost no line. Now there are lines all through the day.

Our church has become involved in two Habitat for Humanity house builds in the past year. The project we're working on now is a partnership of six churches. Both of these houses are being built in predominately African-American neighborhoods. In fact, one was built in a neighborhood that was formed by freed slaves after the Civil War.

Sounds like great places to build a Habitat house right? Except that both houses were 'sold' to immigrant families (the homeowner buys the house via an interest-free loan for the cost of the materials -- under $200 per month). What message is it sending to the African-American community when a bunch of white folks from uptown roll into their ghetto neighborhood, build a new house and essentially give it to an immigrant family?

I met a wonderful man last week named Jim Swearingen. He has built a ministry called CityVision in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city. His mission is to break the cycle of poverty in the African-American community, and he's attacking the problem through the children. He gets them jobs so they don't have to do deliveries for the drug dealers to make money. He brings in tutors to help the kids find success in school. He tries to be a positive male role model for kids who typically live in single-parent homes headed by their mother. He's getting results. His neighborhood showed the biggest decrease in crime over the past few years of any inner city area.

The immigrant families are just that -- families. They come as a family group, and have strong bonds in their transplanted community. They are often well educated (the father of the family we're building the house for now is a physician). Certainly, the places they're coming from are truly bad, and we Americans have long been a place that accepts refugees. Most of the African immigrants are Muslim, and are able to come here and immediately plug into a community of other immigrants who share their faith and culture.

But it's gotten to the point where it's as though a beacon has been lit up in Columbus, signalling from people all over the world that our city has a bounty of wealth that we're just giving away to all that come.

So I'll say it: I don't think Habitat for Humanity should be building any more homes in our city for immigrant families. Instead, I think the local Habitat chapter should team up with folks like Jim Swearingen and begin to use these houses as a tool in breaking the cycle of poverty and the culture of poverty in the African-American community.

Swearingen told us a story about a family where the kids were raised by a single mother, with the father pretty much out of the picture. Jim's ministry worked with the children, helped them be successful in school, and make a start in college. One of the boys in this family fell in love with, and married a girl he had met in the program. The example Jim and the kids set motivated the boy's parents to get married and raise the younger siblings in a two-parent home.

These are the folks I think we should build Habitat houses for -- the ones who a clawing their way out poverty. The immigrants are welcome, but there's some dues to be paid to our society before you get all the benefits of membership. They're coming to a land that is what it is because hundreds of millions of folks paid their dues -- many with their lives. Some in war, and some in slavery.

But most of us pay our way by just getting up each morning and doing something that someone else is willing to pay for -- that has economic value. Rather than being a burden on society, we earn our own living, contribute to the common good, and are the most charitable people on the planet.

I think we're being taken advantage of.

UPDATE January 2006
Just for curiosity, I drove past the home that our Habitat team build last year for a Mauritanian family. Right there on the side of the house was a brand new dishTV antenna. I think the cheapest Dish service is about $50/mo, plus the purchase cost of the equipment. I have to ask whether this family was the best choice for the Habitat house. They obviously have at least $50/mo of disposible income that they feel is better allocated to their TV service than to many other things I would think are higher on the list if they are trying to build a new life in a America. Now I'm sure we're being taken advantage of.

Going Out Gracefully

Twelve years ago, when our kids were little, an attractive, injured, and very friendly calico cat came wandering by our home in the farmland. The kids already had a pet cat, Peaches, that their babysitter had given us. I'm not a fan of cats, and even sent one to cat heaven with an arrow as a teenager when I caught it digging baby bluebirds out of a birdhouse my Dad and I had built. But Peaches was a nice cat who was very interactive and very little trouble. So when this beat up stray showed up, it didn't take a lot of convincing for me to agree to take it in.

So the wife hauled the cat off to the vet to get it patched up, and we were informed that it was pregnant (after one additional experience like this, I've come to believe that ALL friendly stray cats are pregnant). The kids wanted the whole experience of her having the kittens, and I thought it was a good thing too. So some weeks later, she blessed us with a litter of eight kittens as I recall. Then she promptly got nasty -- towards both the humans and Peaches, who by this time was a much loved member of the household. The kittens were a nice variety of colors and patterns. We told the kids they could keep one kitten, but the rest, including the turncoat mother, had to go. A few were adopted by friends, and the rest ended up on the farm of the babysitter's sister. I hope that nasty mother cat enjoyed eating farm rats the rest of her life.

The kids picked a long-haired black kitten with a white underbelly, naming him 'Oreo.' It wasn't the color that attracted the kids to him, it was his goofy behavior. As he grew into a mature cat, we became convinced that his goofiness was due in large part because he was missing something upstairs. He pretty much kept to himself for ten years, responding to attempts to pick him up or pet him with growls and bites. During that period, Peaches died (and was bured in a sunny place in our back yard), and not long after we took in another stray. This new cat, Dusty, was really nice and has stayed that way. So we remained a two cat household, but Oreo was mostly an invisible entity, making his presence known primarily through his prodigious production of hairballs.

Then suddenly a couple of years ago, Oreo started getting more social. It was like someone flipped a switch, and we've never understood the cause. Maybe something in his brain just changed. Whatever the reason, he became a good, if somewhat eccentric, member of the household.

One day about a year ago, I noticed that his pupils were dialated and that he was walking into things. He always kind of slinked around, but this behavior seemed weird even for Oreo. With a few experiments, I concluded that he was blind. Through some quick web research, I found that this kind of sudden onset blindness could be caused by hypertension, and that sight could be restored if treated quickly. So I ran him over to our vet, and a $100 or so later found out that it was indeed severe hypertension, and that he also was moderately diabetic. So the vet prescribed medicines for each malady, and now we have to get him to take two pills every day. The wife has figured out a technique for burying the pills in treats, so he takes them pretty well. His eyesight was restored and all seems normal. Except he added one more behavior to his repertoir: he now crawls up next to me every evening, and rolls over to have his belly scratched.

Over the last few months, he's been losing weight. It wasn't apparent because of all the hair, but one day when I was petting him, I noticed that he had gone from a large 15lb cat to skin and bones (and hair). Another trip to the vet and $200 in tests indicated that his diabetes had become uncontrolled, and he was going to need to go on injected insulin to thrive.

The wife and I had a discussion before we took him to the vet. The question was, "what if the vet says the cat needs a level of care which is annoying to the cat (like daily injections), intrusive on our lifestyle (with the kids out on their own, we are spending more time traveling), and expensive?" Our answer was that we would allow the cat to enjoy whatever comfortable life he had left, and either die a natural death in our home, or if in pain, to be euthanized by the vet (we had euthanized Peaches when the pain of her cancer became too much -- you could see it in her eyes).

Interestingly, at least to me, when the vet said the insulin would only cost about $40 for a three month supply, I backtracked and said we should at least see how the cat tolerates the shots.Maybe he'll do okay, or maybe he'll go berzerk every time. If that the case, then I'll feel like he's voted -- no shots -- and he can live with the consequences. If we're going to be gone for a week, he'll have to do without. This may cause a permanent degrading of his health, but he's living on borrowed time anyway as far as I'm concerned.


This isn't really an essay about cats. While everything I've said is true and factual, the more important conversation is what we as humans should do when our life reaches the place where Oreo is right now.

I believe we, as a society, need to develop the guts to accept when the final illness is upon us, and be willing to take the journey to our mortal end without selfishly -- yes, I said selfishly -- consuming resources that will benefit others much more. A friend who is a nationally known expert on health care economics recently told me that something like 80% of the total lifetime spending on healthcare takes place during the final illness.

This is a major contributor to our escalating healthcare costs. What gives us the right to consume all those resources which could otherwise be used by our children, or our neighbors? Legend has it that the custom of the Native Americans was for the old people, when they began consuming more than they contributed, to walk off into the woods and relieve the tribe of the burden of caring for them. It makes sense that such a custom would develop -- it certainly would improve the survival chances for the community. Most animal species allow their old and weak to be captured and eaten by predators. In some species, the predator may be another animal of the same species. Sounds grotesque, but it is better for one of the same species to make use of the protein than let another species have it. I'd like to think the old Indians die peacefully in their sleep, dreaming of past glories and eternal grace.

I'm not proposing that sick or old people be required to commit suicide, as in the movie "Logan's Run", or that we recycle human protein, as was the case in "Soylent Green." But when the doctors say, "you're gonna die in 5 years with expensive and debillitating treatment, or 2 years without", isn't the 2 year option the right one?

I hope I don't need to make this decision anytime soon...

Update: In February 2007, Oreo began to act weak and sluggish. We noticed that he had been losing weight, and guessed that his diabetes was out of control and his insulin dosage needed to be adjusted. He had also developed a raspy cough. So we took him to the vet, who took x-rays and blood tests to find out what was going on. The x-rays showed that he had advanced lung cancer, with a tumor is his right lung about the size of an apple. I think they expected us to euthanize him immediately, but he didn't seem to be telling us that he was suffering. So we brought him home for his last days. When he could no longer get up, and was struggling for breath, we took him to the vet and ended his suffering. He is buried next to Peaches. Thanks for sharing your life with us Oreo.

God vs Evolution

I don’t really see this as an either/or proposition.

The no-God people say evolution and natural processes explain everything about how our universe is today. Okay, then let’s imagine running the timeline of our universe backwards and see what happens:

• The current age of mammals (and insects) starts when an asteroid hits the earth and wipes out the bulk of the large lizard population. Before that...
• Dinosaurs are the result of a continuous cycle of mutation and evolution which begins with the first living and reproducing cells emerging in the primordial sea. Before that...
• The earth coalesces from matter circling our young star, the Sun. While there were still big pieces of stuff flying around the solar system, perhaps one of them hit the soft earth and tossed off a chunk that became our Moon. Or maybe the Moon coalesced independently. Other planets formed. Too bad for Mercury and Venus – they’re too close and too hot and it doesn’t look like any life emerged (I’m still holding out hope for Venus as the sun cools). The gas giants weren’t quite big enough to fuse into stars, and not warm enough to support anything we understand as life. Mars may have had its “time in the sun” (sorry) as the sun was cooling, but when its core temperature dropped and the magnetic field was lost, the atmosphere was swept away, all the water froze, and whatever life was there died. Or maybe they migrated to next warmer planet, Earth. Before that...
• The Big Bang occurs, and matter is sprayed from a single mother particle into the void, creating our universe and everything in it. Before that?

There are still a few unanswered questions, don’t you think?

• What caused the Big Bang to occur?
• Has it only happened once, or has our universe exploded, contracted, and exploded again many times?
• Are there other mother particles out there? Do they all explode at the same time, or are explosions and implosions going on all the time?
• Is there a higher realm of existence where entities ‘live’ which can control these Big Bangs?
• When we smash atoms in a linear accelerator (or a nuclear bomb), are we causing big bangs for the entities which live in a universe where quarks are planets and neutrinos are suns?

I don’t pretend to have answers to any of those questions, nor do I believe does anyone else. So I’m willing to leave room for the existence of beings of another realm that have a direct impact on our world. Not in minute detail (“your every hair has a number”), but close enough to step in with a broad brush as they desire.

Imagine a universe with only two dimensions and whose inhabitants were simple geometric shapes. Circles and squares and triangles wander around interacting with each other, completely unaware that their 2D universe coexists with universes of different numbers of dimensions. One day, a 3D universe intersects their 2D universe, and a sphere passes through right in front of a square and a star. What would they see? Perhaps first a point would appear which then turned into an expanding circle. Just as quickly, the circle contracted back to a point then disappeared. They would never say “hey, I bet that was a sphere” because they have no way of imagining a 3D object. They would probably say, "wasn't that a strangle circle?"

But maybe this wasn’t the first time a 3D object had passed through their 2D universe. Maybe it happened a few times before and a few of the more mystical 2D creatures began to suspect that the sphere wasn’t just a funny circle, but maybe something ‘supernatural.’ Over time, all kinds of mythology might develop as to the composition and purpose of the ethereal visitors.

And maybe the 3D creatures figured out how to communicate with the 2D creatures when the intersection occurred. The first communications would be simple. As the 3D’ers learned how to cause physical events in the 2D world, they might try to help them, or maybe exploit them. Later, as the 3D creatures got better at communications, they would learn to be more helpful (or manipulative). The physical interactions could get more sophisticated, even to the point to a sustained presence in the 2D world, appearing as a 2D creature.

So I’m not sure what God is. Neither is anyone else. But one working model for me is that God is an entity (or class of entities) of a universe which has dominion over ours. He knows how to interact with our universe. In the early days of Man, the interactions were crude. We were simple, and maybe God was just learning how to work the levers on his space/time machine. So we got lots of rules and extreme punishment. The interactions were like a parent talking to a toddler.

But then at least once, He made a projection into our space/time to interact with us in a more peer-to-peer manner, just like our sphere visiting the 2D universe. The advice we got then was more sophisticated, like a wise old sage talking to a young adult.

Personally, I think it was great advice.

Evolution

Originally published February 6, 2005

Evolution vs Creation; Evolution vs Intelligent Design; Creation vs Intelligent Design…

At least part of the problem seems to be that the word evolution is so loaded with emotion and confusion that there is no space to bring a religious component into the picture. So here’s an attempt to define evolution in a way that which perhaps creates some room for God.

My definition of evolution is that it is the collection of changes which happen to living organisms in an ecosystem in response to changes in the ecosystem and mutations of the organisms.

It’s the mutation category which most people think of when evolution is the topic. As a result of some damage to the DNA passed from the progenitors to the offspring, the offspring has a combination of traits which gives it a distinct advantage or disadvantage over its relatives. If the mutation is disadvantageous, the offspring is itself unlikely to reproduce and the effect of the mutation is lost. Otherwise the mutation is retained in that individual’s DNA, and may be passed on to its offspring (or perhaps emerge generations later). If the new traits give the individual a competitive advantage, it may provide for higher survival rates of it and its offspring (and broader access to reproductive partners), and gradually a population of individuals sharing this advantageous trait emerge. In successive generations, the DNA pool contains more and more mutations, and in aggregate they improve the reproductive and survival success of that line of individuals. Eventually the changes from the original species become so great that a different species emerges. This is the process which causes green slime to eventually become H. sapiens. It takes thousands or millions of generations for this to happen. That’s a long time for humans, but not quite so long for bacteria (only minutes elapse between generations). Nonetheless, it happens pretty slowly, and few of us get the opportunity to observe its results.

In business, you sometimes hear people say that evolutionary change isn’t fast enough, something revolutionary needs to happen. Those folks are thinking of evolution in terms of cumulative mutations. They miss the far faster and more dramatic form of evolution: the catastrophic change of environment. We know about the dinosaurs being wiped out by a dramatic change in the planet’s climate, perhaps caused by an asteroid strike. But not every reptile was eradicated, and not every mammal appeared after this event. When the climate changed, populations of species which could survive in the new environment carried on, and the rest died. Species which had the best bodies and brains for the old environment might just barely hang on in the new environment, and species that were marginal in the old environment might find that the sudden disappearance of their prime predators and competitors created a Garden of Eden for them. In one fell swoop, the planet went from domination by cold blooded lizards to warm blooded mammals. Of course, the change wasn’t really this binary. There are lots of organisms on Earth besides mammals and lizards. Some plants died out, and others filled their niche. Insects and bacteria and millions of other species survived, although the relative population sizes may have changed.

This kind of evolution is violent and sudden. Winners become losers and visa versa. The total population of individual organisms plummets, and the populations of those organisms better suited for the new environment begin taking over. This kind of evolution happens right before us. In fact, humanity causes a great number of the environmental catastrophes which drive these evolutionary changes. Here’s some examples:

When farmers spray their fields with insecticides, they kill large numbers of the target ‘pests,’ but not quite all. They also kill many of the predators who would otherwise kill those pests, as well as many other insects, some of whom may have been beneficial to the crops. Many of the population of target pests who survived the spraying did so because they were lucky enough to have a genetic makeup that made them resistant to the insecticide. The accumulation of mutations they had perhaps were never apparent or even useful before the farmer took his sprayer through the field, but on that day it was the key to their survival. If both male and female populations survived (because the necessarily mutations were expressed in both genders) they would happily go about procreating new generations of their species, many of whom would carry the mutation. Eventually, the population of this pest would approach that which it would have been had the pesticide not been sprayed at all. The reaction of the farmer is change pesticides. Same thing happens, except now the pest species has become resistant to both pesticides.

We do the same kind of thing when we take antibiotics, which are just pesticides for bacteria. Our body is a greenhouse for bacteria, most of which are harmless. And many of the bacteria which cause sickness can be defeated by a healthy immune system. But when we get sick, we want to feel better – right now. So we go the doctor and beg for antibiotics. The antibiotics are like a meteor strike to the population of bacteria in our body. Some species are wiped out altogether, some are weeded down to their lucky resistant members, and resistant specie now have the whole body to infect without any competition. If we’re lucky, the bad bacteria were part of the first group, and the bacteria who repopulate our body are the harmless kind.

But chances are, there were some bad guys who were resistant to the antibiotic. Perhaps we beat them down enough that they no longer cause a harmful infection, but the species did survive, and these particular members are resistant to this particular antibiotic. Our immune system may have them under control temporarily, but if we take ill for another reason, this population of bad guys can explode, and we might infect someone else. Now the resistant population is loose, and the antibiotic is no longer effective. With luck, the medical community has another antibiotic which beats down the population of bad guys. But eventually we get back to the same place. It’s just like the farmers with their insect pests.

Some agricultural experts have been saying that its time to just let pests and predators reach a natural balance. Sure some crops will be lost to the pests, but the theory is that the money saved in pesticides and application costs (e.g. fuel for the tractors) more than offset the loss of yield. But this isn’t just about saving money in one particular year. If we keep using more and more radical pest population control measures, the pest populations will just keep getting resistant to more things, until we have nothing acceptable left to kill them. Sure we can find yet one more way to kill the pests, but perhaps it creates genetic damage to the crops which results in undesirable effects on the animals that consume it. Maybe the next wave of a “mad cow” like disease will flow from cattle eating genetically damaged corn.

The “miracle drug” antibiotics of 50 years ago are all but worthless in western countries today. The species of bacteria they were developed to kill have become resistant, and now third and fourth generation antibiotics must be used. Where do you think the most resistant bacteria live? It’s not in cesspools and nasty ponds – it’s in major hospitals. Those rooms and their contents are constantly cleaned with antibacterial solutions to keep down infection. But you can’t kill all the bacteria all the time because some lucky few will have a mutated resistance. The bacteria which live in hospitals have survived the best we have to throw at them. If your body gets infected by one, there may be no antibiotic left which can beat it. If your immune system loses the battle, you die.

Yep, evolution is definitely going on all around us. H. Sapiens is enjoying what may well be the latter half of its time of domination. The catastrophe that changes the balance may well be of our own making.

When Jesus said, “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth (Mt 5:5),” he may have been talking about the bacteria and cockroaches.