Douganator!

Good old fashioned family values

I don't think that people are supposed to structure themselves the way our society does. Relationships and families were never intended to fall by the wayside. You really can't replace raising children, marriage, friends and relationships with consumption. I don't think one can really get much at all out of life without having close relationships with the people around you. Though beyond the relationships of immediate family and friends there is something to be said for community. This ambiguous concept which gets thrown at anything which involves a group of people is being lost to consumption and economic growth.

I don't know where my views and values would be if it wasn't for the Christian community. Aside from the glorious discovery of a loving creator and his plan for the salvation of his people through Jesus, I've discovered the joy and benefits of community. I come from a nuclear family, mum, dad, and my sister are all the family I really have, and I’m very lucky and blessed to have them. However four people essentially don't lead to much of a community, we all have jobs and commitments and our family is more of a system of coexistence at the moment rather than co-dependency. I've never really had to look out for anyone else but me. That’s not a selfish thing, its just a fact, everyone in my family is healthy and pretty much problem free. It is a blessing for us to be like that as well.

The technological revolution doesn't really help us either, we are all wired to computer screens most of the time. One thing that I’ve come to appreciate that i used to hate is family meals. We usually have the TV off and sometimes conversation is good, sometimes its not, sometimes its awkward, sometimes its fun, sometimes its just a tad off, and others its just an all out payout festival. Still its this gathering is a symbol that in spite of our coexistence in the same household we are more than just room mates but part of something bigger, a family I guess. I don't have anything against technology either, its enriched my life dramatically I do think however we delude ourself insofar as the extent which it can be substituted for real care of one another and spending time with one another.

I don't have older relatives I’ve seen my gramma about 6 times in my life, my other grandparents I never really spent much time with. Relatives are mostly strewn out across the world and as a result i have virtually no contact. This doesn't make my life any worse per se, I’m happy and satisfied with it, however I think without the Christian community I would be even more selfish than I already am. Without community one doesn't really need to be other person centred, if you don't know the needs of others you won't end up fulfilling them or feeling a desire to help others out. Consumerism has brought me up as much as my parents have. Most of us come from a class of people who are money rich and time poor. What ends up happening is a substitution of care onto the economy. I've been in after school care, I’ve known both my parents have worked for as long as I’ve been in existence, and I've never really thought twice about it coming home to an empty house is just what happens.

My reaction for most of my life towards marriage and family has been to shudder and run a mile. Kids, a wife these come with responsibilities, tie you down, mortgages, financial burdens and generally impede the hedonism that is permissible with advanced economies such as Australia. Our society has structured further and further away from one that supports families. Further education has been made more and more essential, to become competitive in the labour market not only is higher education essential, but in some fields even post graduate degrees. I don't know if i'll be fully qualified even by 25. I always just accepted this there is no way that forming any sort of life and family was feasible till late 20's early 30's so it was never even worth considering. I always laughed at Christians when i first entered the community when they would talk about their future wives at 17,18 even 19 it was just a joke, i'd think "who thinks about this stuff and who thinks like this, how'd I ever get caught up with these people?".

I think the bibles model for human existence is one of community, people helping each other and making each others lives better. I think a large part of "utility" and "living standards" (terms politicians, economists and academics love to throw around), is made up from the community, from a sense of self worth and belonging to something bigger than yourself, your job and the crap you are constantly buying.

I aught to be helping out the elderly to have a comfortable existence in their senior years, as well as having the opportunity to learn from their wisdom and life experience. However we've tucked them away in aged care homes so i don't have to deal with them tottering about and demanding more blankets. The economy wins again??? I also aught to be sharing in experience of seeing other peoples kids grow up. Taking younger guys off to play sport or jump off rocks or to work together for the greater good of the community. Community forces us to become other person centric and value things above consumption and self betterment. the things which my life has reflected up until recently.

Fertility rates around the world have dropped. We just don't want families any more. We don't get married till later. And while sex before marriage has crumbled greatly in society, marriage and babies still go together. When people aren't marrying young i.e. under 27 there just isn't the time to have that many kids, things start to get a little bit more difficult after 35 as well, or so I’m told. In Australia we are at 1.72 kids per couple and the Japanese are bottoming out at 1.38. Considering you need at least over two to replenish the population we are for the first time experiencing declining populations. All developed countries are experiencing population decline and the phenomenon of the ageing population. I think this is kinda sad that there is a decline in the desire to have kids and families because of their impediment on consumption, career and a general hedonistic lifestyle. Its really quite a humorous sign of things gone wrong when the government in Singapore has to create a public online dating service, and adds calling people to get into relationships with slogans such as "in Singapore we take romance seriously", these should be the most natural and intrinsic processes in the world not things that need to be forced by government

I think God intended for us to be in families so that we would learn to be more Christ like. Your family is your first port of call when it comes to ministry. I don't think I’ll ever really know utter selflessness until I have a kid. Someone I’d be willing to sacrifice everything for. I think at the moment I’m still wrapped up in the world of individualism. It hurts to give, every time, it never gets any easier. Every time the church plate comes around or the opportunity arises it always hurts. That’s a night out I’m giving up, or 1, 100th of a plane ticket to somewhere, it means that I won't get to be as self indulgent this week. Even though i know that the people the money goes to will get far more from it and things they really really need like um, food, that I ever will or can imagine. It hurts to give up my time to, I could be earning money, or skating, or doing that all important uni work rather than doing whatever rubbish someone else has asked me to do. Something’s wrong here

Relationships for the 18-20somethings are getting screwed up. There's alot of loneliness out there. I don't know about other age groups but I’m feeling it for this age group. I think our friends can sometimes be viewed in the same light as everything else in our lives, expendable. People come an go, they become useless to us and we move on. Same with intimate relationships, people are running around jumping from person to person looking for a connection, and utilizing these relationships until the first sign of hardship comes and then its easier to start something new than fix something that has gone a little astray. I think the structure of society has alot to do with the rise of promiscuity. We are having sex with more partners than ever but having fewer babies than ever? That seems paradoxical, but it’s happening. I don't think its making us happier either.

I think in some ways alot of people are searching for what’s been lost in communities, in romantic relationships. A place and a sense of belonging, to know that someone out there cares for them even if its only one. Someone who cares for them even more than they care for themselves. I see people all the time getting screwed up because they end up sleeping with person after person in the hope of finding something real and something of what we lost to materialism, but they end up just being more lonely. When they have a partner there’s always something wrong and both parties are to scared to commit to each other or be vulnerable because at any second either party could run away. All the while people allow themselves to become as vulnerable physically as one can get in very short spaces of time, sometimes even one night! Clearly this is going to be painful. Even Christian couples are susceptible to this as many of my friend and people I know have ended up sleeping with people because they felt as though they were missing out on something. Most if not all end up regretting it, it doesn't really seem that going our own way yields real lasting benefits compared to going God's way. Though i wonder if we had more guidance and a better structure of mentoring so that we would be able to see and interact with model Christian couples would help. Unfortunately most of us seem to end up muddling our own way through while falling into traps and self delusions.

Most of the time we just don't have the relational skills to deal with the hardships of relationships and caring for others because we've always been able to buy happiness and solutions to our problems. Sexual immorality I believe would halve if we had better community. People would marry younger and there would be support for them. People wouldn't feel as lonely because of the community supporting them and the consumption of porn would decrease dramatically. I think we'd live lives more like God intended. God isn't a god of consumption, sure he makes nice things, the world is amazing, I don't really need to tell you that, all you need to do is look out your front door and you will see what our creator does when he breathes. The bible is filled not of his love affair with creation and his wanting for solutions right here and right now. No. The bible is filled with God's love affair with humanity, with his heartache and anguish over our relational state with him. How he didn't give up on us at the first sign of anguish but rather made a sacrifice to fix things at what I am told in the bible was great cost to him. This sort of way of relating to others with complete selflessness is what we need to practice so much more in our own lives and global community

I can't fix these problems and in some way I’m still trapped into the societal system that is in place. I do find it ironic however that our short-sightedness again has screwed us over as we have the epidemic of the "ageing population". As a result of having let family fall by the wayside we are left to look after more of the previous generation than is feasible and end up being forced to take a cut in the living standards that we have given up community for. The hunter becomes the hunted.

I'm blessed to be a part of the Christian community, and its been such a great sub-benefit of becoming a Christian. The lessons I’ve learnt from them are almost as invaluable as the ones I've learnt from the bible. I really hope and pray that governments begin to value family more than growth in the near future. Again Ironically its going to be family and environment that lead to long term sustainable growth, not raping and pillaging the earth and making it beneficial for people to stay single to support their lifestyle for as long as possible. God’s way really does appear to work, both on the individual level, the community level, the national level and the glo

posted by Douganator @ 8:20 PM 5 comments

The blog lives huzzah

Haha while writing this i got distracted and read an article on behavioral economics, which is basically a school which takes phsycology techniques and aplies it on a mass scale to try and explain the economy. The article states that there are only two groups of people who act rationally economists themselves and phsycopaths. look out people i may be the next phsycopath hehe.

Music i'm listening to

First off i really wanna recommend an album by a new band called "mika" truly stunning stuff, the first single "Grace Kelly" which is getting alot of airplay on the radio atm, captured my attention with the lead singers' awesome falsetto (very queenesque, he even references freddy mercury) and interesting lyrics. Heres the clip for the vid from Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzA0nG_PurQ

However while this fun flirtacious ditty initially captured my ears, i'm really liking the more soulful grooves found on the rest of the album. High energy, fun songs that make you dance around the room, are hard to make, and i'm always happy to stumble upon these gems. However what i find very rare are artists that can produce slow ballads that aren't just plain boring. However mika has hit the nail on the head with "any other world" and "happy ending" nice piano melodies and string backgrounds make for very full sounds that are making me happy at the moment :). Another noteworthy tune for the more thoughtful melodic genre that has been gracing the curcuitry of my Mp3 player has been "arithmetic" by brooke fraser. Its a nice escape from the world to remember that really the only thing thats certain and desirable is Jesus. That while the world is big and vast and confusing, that God can't be nailed down to science or logic, but only to a wierd transcendental spiritual relationship with his creations, nnnoooice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D23sjATRmQw

I've been thinking about sin and satan alot recently. As a bible believing Christian it my duty and joy for me to live God's way and to submit to the bible. However while it is a total blessing to be guided by God, we don't always live up to our own expections and fail to meet God's constantly. I am at times at a lose to explain why I continue to sin, both intentionally and unintentionally. Why i place worldly goals and values above those of Gods and live in a way that conveys that i prioritize materialism, self indulgence, popularity and gluttony above the kingdom of God. Of course this is illogical and irrational. It stems from the phenomenon of what economist have dubbed the "myopic tradition", i.e. we are short sighted. All of us as economic entities have made decisions which have given us a very short benifit such as meaningless purchases which compromise our future useage. People choose to live in the now, rather than doing is what is best for themselves and others in the long run. Global warming, hyper-consumerism, negative savings, huge trade deficits and the majority of environmental problems such as acid rain are the macro results of our species myopic nature.

Now getting back to sin, before i lose half of my readership for ranting on about economics for to long... I was thinking to myself what actually causes me to sin. I wanted to try and nail down, as a thought experiment, I started trying to nail the roots causes of my dichotomous life. Why there is such tension between my foot in the kingdom of God and the world?

Trying to figure sin out through a model

The point and essence of any model is to create a framework with which to better understand the world. To model a problem you can use maths, anecdotes, graphs, charts and whatever other analytical tools at your disposal that tickle your fancy. It The truth is that while most people retract when they hear the word "model" unless its followed closely by words such as "lingerie", "super" or "car" they've been using models their whole life and the bible is chock full of them. Mostly though with biblical models one has to stay within the anecdotal framework because the ideas and concepts dealt with are mainly qualitative rather than quatitative.

The three things which I feel that sin stems from in my life are these:

Myopicism
Apathy
Cynicism

conviently they lead to the handy acronym MAC, perhaps that is an omen which proves once and for all that Pc's are better than macks *cough* you know its true *cough*.

Myopicism
There are real and definate gains to be made in this world by sinning. I've studied a bit of gametheory, and the justifications for cheating share an eerie parrallel to the justification for sin. Short term the gains are there to be made, but at the compromise of your relationship with all other participants in the game with you. In the first round you win, the second, third and so on, you lose, people basically screw you over for screwing them over indefinately. Lifes kinda like that with God, you can cheat, you can screw people over, you can indulge in all the consumerism, debauchery and worldly desires you so choose, but come period two, the guy whose been in charge of the game the whole time has one or two things about your actions in the first round. People still cheat because they are myopic, people still sin because they are myopic, long term you lose.

Its hard to trust the long term to God, sin in the short term delludes you with its sweetness, proverbs says that the words of the adultress taste like honey but go down like gravel. Sin is similar, it delludes you into believing that the gains to be made outweigh the long term costs of compromising a relationship with God. I know this, I say this, yet every day I sin in a myriad of different ways. If it was purely a case of short term gains played off against infinitely greater gains long term i would have rectified the problem, but the nature of sin mean that there is more to it than just making adjustments and continuing on in a more merry way

Apathy
Apathy is the disease and curse which plauges me and i would imagine the majority of the human population. We see things that need doing and have lots of "shoulds" and "coulds" in our mind but relatively few of these ever come to fruition. I find myself regularly loosing momentum. I just simply don't do christian things. There seems no rhyme or reason to it, maybe i'm wrapped up in economics, maybe i'm just tired, who knows but my relationship with God falls by the wayside, the trials and tribulations of life take over and sin begins to creep back in. There seems to be a slow breakdown of the systems that one places in ones life to deal with sin. Things you swore you were over once and for all and old demons seem to rear their head after a while and your back in a dark place you though you had left. I think apathy can stem from feelings, when you feel down and antisocial, church and bible study seem like a chore. I know i've missed both for no reason, reading your bible just convicts you of your own sinfulness and so apathy slowly starts to strangle your faith. The great partner of apathy is cynicism very rarely will you find one without the other

Cynicism
When the minister who eventually convinced me that Christianity was seriously worth a go, left my church he had ten points, i remember that in the top 3 one of them was "cynicism sucks". When your own looking for loopholes and flaws you will find them in the bible, even if they are not there. The classic pygmallion effect of what you believe becomes your reality, though in this case not actual reality. The image of God gets transformed from loving father to a despot who wishes to hold out all the fruits of life and make you miserable. Rather than being joyful that God chose you at all, all you can see is the millions who haven't been chosen and find nothing but anger and at times even hatred for your creator. Sometimes the more poetic language can feel frustrating and economic rationalism, science and one own way of living becomes more appealing. In the end mine and i'm sure most peoples cynicism gets so bad that the motivation to refrain from sin is just killed. I end up prioritizing spending money on going out rather than giving to church, the 3rd and 4th beer seem to go down just a little to easily. In the end whatever identity you convey to others its certainly not Christian. Of course you aren't going to feel like going to church either and those short term tangible gains from sin are starting to look pretty good. Thus this cycle of MAC traps you, one leads to the other leads to the other, until you no longer feel like you are living for Christ or being distinguishable as a believer either. The will to stand out and be an alien to this world diminishes as your citizenship becomes more and more firmly rooted to the world rather than God's kingdom.

I guess the point of all this is that in knowing how and why i spiral, and I assume others spirals also have similar elements, one is better equipped to tackle sin and reverse the trend. Obviously heaps can be written for each one of the three elements i identified, but thats just a short summary of what i've been thinking about recently in relation to sin. I think there is alot to be said to forcing yourself through not feeling like doing things. I haven't felt like going to church or bible study for a while i've probably only attended 50% of what i should have in the last couple of months for various reasons some valid some not. Though the times when I have gone i've actually got alot out of it. I had one of those blessed talks where it fits in exactly with what I'd been thinking about 2 weeks ago. All week my internal voice kept saying "I want forgiveness to seem real" and then we had one of the best talks on forgiveness i've heard in a while. 10 points for God for hooking that one up.

Random side point

The idea of being alien in the world has held rather true this week. My parents think that i feel superior and that i'm arrogant for taking the bibles words as truth over all else and being unwilling to compromise it. We've had some rather heated discussions about judgement recently, its hard to explain and hard to put in a way thats loving and helpful to them. They keep asking me, "do you think such and such is "damned"?" or "such and such should be punished for not doing XYZ even though they did ABC?" its hard, my bible says that the only way to God is through christ and that we need God and Jesus in order to be saved. I really want to tell my parents that the people they talk about will be in heaven and that being good is good enough. They corner me regularly into trying to make me say things in a way that isn't what God is all about, when i'm forced to say 'yes if they haven't fulfilled what God has asked of them in order to be saved then they will not be' they look at me disgustedly. My dad thinks that this is the most arrogant thing anyone can possibly believe and thinks that i'm being stupid and ridiculous for even bothering with Christianity at all. I just pray that maybe one day they might see the truth in it. When they talk to me like that though it makes me want to give up praying for them, I love them, I want them to be in the right place for eternity. At the moment however chrisitanity just seemed to have placed a divide between the kids and parents in our household. They don't get what or why we do the things we do, so they make remarks such as "have you solved the worlds problems yet?", or "are you saved yet?". Its hard to not rise to the subtext as these are clearly intended to belittle mine and my sisters faith, its more often (thankfully) its directed at me, because i can handle it better. Also i think there is an expectation for me to "know better" and to use the logic that they brought me up with to figure problems such as suffering, death, wickedness and injustice out rather than turning to solutions which seem at best unscientific. I spose I'll keep praying about it, though its hard to imagine God would change hearts that already seem so hardened.

YBIC Doug

posted by Douganator @ 9:05 PM 4 comments