Capitalism

When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” like a scientist he set out to try and explain how the world around him was operating.   Contrary to myth, he did not invent capitalism, he just described a process that was already going on.   He described why the system in operation was making people wealthy.  He described its flaws, and made suggestions for how to make people wealthier.

Marx did his writing a hundred years later, and when he wrote England was at the height of the Industrial Revolution.   It was Marx who invented the term “capitalism” to describe the existing system that he wanted to criticize.   Marx had many criticisms, but he had no solutions to them.  In fact, a little known fact is that he wrote almost nothing about socialism!  He simply spent his life criticizing capitalism.  The working class (or proletariat) which was exploited by the capitalists (or bourgeois) would rise up and overthrow them.    He thought capitalism was slavery because the capitalists could make you work long hours for low wages doing something menial and profit from it.    Any form of profiting from another man’s labor to Marx was exploitation.    To him, this exploitation could only be remedied by revolution.

Ironically, just the opposite happened.   Instead of conditions getting worse in capitalist countries, they got better.  And in places where Communism was adopted, they got worse! Why did conditions get better in capitalist countries?   Because the same environment economic freedom only arises naturally in societies where there is political freedom, which itself only arises naturally when there is a Christian foundation among the people.   The three forces together created a situation where owners felt religious conviction for treating the workers in inhumane ways, and the workers themselves had the power of the ballot box, and basic civil liberties.  All of these combined to limit the excesses of capitalism, without canceling the effect it has of making everyone rich.

Herein is another irony of capitalism — the countries that practiced capitalism became so rich that there isn’t any longer any real “proletariat” in the way that Marx envisioned.   Where are the factory slaves of the West?   We don’t have any factories, because we have shipped it to other countries where the labor is cheaper.    Our “working class” is mostly a “middle class” of working professionals and this leads to an irony — That in the 21st century, it is not the proletariat trying to overthrow the bourgeois, it is the bourgeois manipulating the poor to steal from the working class!

Nevermind all that, Marxists sill hate capitalism.  Not only are they are unable to see the simple fact that in countries with market economies everyone gets wealthier — they don’t care!  Because to them the great evil is that some people have more and some have less.  That some people profit from the labor of others, they cannot separate from being a form of slavery.   Nevermind that in Communism everyone is a slave and no one works!

Marx’s critique then was really a critique of the industrial phase of capitalism, when the temptation is to take advantage of the workers.   Even the Chinese have figured out that Communism doesn’t work and have made a fortune by letting people actually profit from their own work.   Which is the real stealing, having the person who gives you the job take some money from you or having the state take all of the money?    Adam Smith’s analysis though it has needed evolution over time has proven fundamentally sound, and has made those who practice it the richest countries in the world, while Marx’s ideas have made those who practice them poor.    Those countries like India and China that have discovered economic freedom are now “in the game” too.. the longer they persist in this, and the more the entire world passes the “industrial” phase of Capitalism, the more irrelevant his critique becomes because it speaks to less people.

Our society, however, is under attack because we have been convinced by Marx’s disciples that we have made our wealth by exploitation.   This is an attractive idea to the oppressed groups of society and the misanthropic children of the upper class, but not to those who actually earn a decent wage for a living.  This leads to the conclusion that the best defense from Marxism is to empower and reward people for working.    When you oppress people, you teach them that hard work doesn’t matter, and they look for a political Messiah.     When you raise children who never have to work, but lavish in money, they also learn that hard work doesn’t matter.   When you give them money instead of love, they learn to hate money.

Why You Might Not Hate the West

Today it is fashionable to hate Western Civ.  Even if you don’t set out to hate Westernization, you end up feeling super-apologetic about it because the average history classes teaches you all the mistakes of America, Europe, etc.   You graduate high school thinking American society is a black-hating, Indian-killing, culture-diluting, environment-trashing, religious nightmare.  You end up thinking not much differently about Europe.  This is just the way it is.

It is hard to feel real pride about Western society, given this appraisal.  And to be sure, not everything in Western civilization is something to be proud about.  But that is because *people* aren’t perfect… a society cannot be more than the sum of its parts.  So what we’re looking for is a society which can recognize its own perfections, transmit the need to the next generation, and treat them.  This is what we have in Westernization—the product of about 2500 years—and why we should praise and protect it.  Not only is the system a good one because it is corrective, but it has contributed so many easily forgotten components to who we are.

So are you really a West-hater?  Here are SEVEN reasons why you might not be.

1.  Science. While leftists would make you believe that Westernization has a sordid agenda of religious fundamentalism, mitigating against science, the opposite is true.  Westernization has permitted the most scientific and progressive institutions to arise and influence society.  While all cultures have forms of engineering and medicine, modern forms of science including Environmental science, demography, economics, and the social sciences owe a huge debt of gratitude to the rise of the western Academy.  No other culture fostered this sturdy form of dialogue, self-correction, application, and progression.  Are you ready to throw out the Academy?

2.  Logic. It is easy to forget that the whole way we think, rationalize, and theorize stems from the Western worldview, which sees things in terms of earhtly causality, logic, and category.  When we draw up models, charts, graphs, statistics, and plans, we are giving credit to the Western form of philosophy made famous most by Socrates and the Greek tradition.  When we evaluate based on morality, pragmatism, and statistics, we give credit to Western religion and science.  It is fashionable in other cultures to blur categories and booleans together, but this does not lead to a scientific, ordered, or logical form of thought.   It leads to societies which are most influenced by tradition, folklore, conformity, pressure, dogma, magic, or some other non-rational force (i.e. most of premodernism).  Are you ready to throw out boolean logic?

3.  Money. Many non-Western societies have had some form of barter or money.  But westernization created a capitalist economy—money and production on a scale never seen before.  While there are some good critiques of capitalism out there, most ideologically attack productivity and labor as intrinsically evil.  In reality, productivity and paid labor has increased standard of living and brought cultures into the world market universally.  Money and production has disseminated technology, medicine, educational resources, business, industry, and transportation avenues around the world.  It also makes charity possible.  While avarice must be checked, the Western view of money which says people must work to eat, wages are due, and things are regulated by supply and demand, is a view which decreases poverty and slavery, not increases it.  Without the increase of productivity and viable labor opportunity, cultures would still be isolated from one another, unaware of what world diplomacy and world markets had to offer.   Those who advocate one-world government and worldwide pacifism should definitely consider this before they attack the US and Europe.    Are you ready to throw out finance?

4.  Medicine. You don’t need Westernization to have medicine, but health never increased on such a scale until Westernization came along.  That was because science, economy, transportation, and charity all came together to make world health go way, way up.  Without modern western society, and its missionaries, most cultures would still be stuck in their premodern state where women died in childbirth, children were struck by deathly diseases, plagues ran rampant, operations were impossible, mental health cases were ostracized, and shamans were called in when nothing worked.  That’s not to say that there isn’t something to learn from alternative therapies.  It just means, are you ready to give up your nearby hospital, OTCs, and pediatrician?

5. Education. Probably the biggest difference between Western and non-Western society is the view of, and amount of, education.  Today we might argue this point because most societies have schools and universities.  But that is because they have copied the Western example, and many times, have joined in to compete.  China, for example, has great students.   But national education is still confined to cities, controlled by a communist government, and is often state-motivated as opposed to humanistically valued.  Moreover, they copied the western models of schools, university, and testing.  The idea and spirit of universal education is distinctly Western—part of that old vestige of “civilizing” the world and actualizing the human being—and modeled best in America where women, minorities, poor kids, and special needs kids were all eventually invited to join the system.  Where secondary education is getting more available to all, where there are both private and public options for specific convictions, and where there are aides and tests and tracks available for different kids.  Where many diverse subjects have made their way into the curriculum.  Are you ready to jettison the school system?  How about other forms of education like your blog, film, magazines, and Internet?

6.  Representative Government. Probably the biggest contribution of Westernization is representative government, based on law.  Most of us learned that America was a special experiment in representative government because the Founding Fathers had new ideas that they wanted to try out—that were too difficult to try in Europe, for example.  But most of us take this for granted, not realizing that our activism can change the system because of representative government.  And it can be transmitted to all people and all generations through law.  The beauty of America is not that the first crack at the nation was perfect, but the fact that we created a system that could shift with the views of the people.  That way, things that were not perfect could change as public sentiment about them also did.  This was in stark contrast to the revolutions and coups in the rest of the world.  this was in contrast to imperial Europe and primogeniture.  It was in contrast to Asian and Indian societies where there was no value to the vast population.   Westernization was able to evolve government from the influence of a few to the influence of many.  This is what we ought to fight most for, as centralizing forces today threaten to take away the voice of the many.  When that happens, the state-heavy systems of Communism, Islam, and Orthodoxy (just to name a few) will squelch the freedom and humanism we have.  Are you ready to give up your voice?

7.  Technology. There is anti-modern trend today that aims to get us back to our roots—become more in tune with the earth, with our place in it, and not so reliant on modern props.  To some extent, this is commendable.  At least, when our priorities are right, an anti-consumption mentality can be refreshing.  However, the environmentalists and primitivists who argue that premodern society is essentially healthier than modern society is, are missing the boat.  It is industry and business which allows us to create environmentally friendly products, it is industry and transportation that allows us to re-irrigate and clean up non-hygenic places.  It is technology which allows to travel and learn from new people, or institute new products on a massive scale.  If you’re unsure about whether technology has enhanced civilization, try a couple test cases… If you offered your tractor to a premodern Japanese family who slaved away in a rice paddy all day, would he want it?  If you offered an AIDS vaccine to a tribal African community where children were dying of the disease, would they take it?  If you went to Bali and offered a mom there a high chair or a grocery store, would she be grateful?  Even if you offered your dog a choice to sleep outside or in your climate controlled house, would he want it?  If we’re going to be honest about premodernism, then we have to admit that we’re pretty attached to our house, car, pets, cell phone, iTunes, and a contemporary way of life.  Are we ready to throw everything out and be more consistent?

There are lots of other institutions and tools given to us by Westernization to be grateful for.  We have to remember this foundation before we critique it.  Westernization has essentially given us the tools to self-correct, to propagate, to actualize, to share with others, to be merry.  Over the years, it has created freedom of choice, freedom to act, freedom to influence.  This is what is disappearing as the attack on Western civilization has advanced.  Let’s not deceive ourselves that if radical liberalism gets its way, everything will become controlled.  The freedom of information which allows us to evolve will become controlled.  Our freedoms of expression, assembly, worship, and speech will be controlled.  We won’t be able to create the family we want, choose how many children we’d like to have, celebrate weddings and birthdays, take vacations, change jobs, enjoy our homes, create a business, move, drive anytime we want, etc., because radical environmentalism, legalism, primitivism, collectivism, and central planning will take over.  So should changes be made?  Of course they should.  But we should use the tools Westernization has stood for—education, science, logic, medicine, technology, representative government, and economy—to make these changes.  Not criticize these foundations of society and pull the legs right out from under us.

Theology and the City of Man

Richard Niebuhr laid out perhaps the best known and most important modern framework for dealing with the relationship between Christ and Culture.    Are Christ and the church in, above, enmeshed with, or transforming culture?   This is one way of approaching what is perhaps the most fundamental element of the Christian worldview — the fact that we live in the City of God — a city which is not built with human hands, a New Jerusalem which is coming down from above, yet at the same time we live in the City of Man.    And so the question of the relationship between these two parallel existences becomes perhaps the most important question of the Christian life.     In evangelical theology the starting point is not culture or Kingdoms, but usually these are derived backwards from eschatology — your view of the end determines your view of the relationship between the two kingdoms, and between Christ and culture.     All of these things, however, are so closely intertwined, that it may not be fair to consider any of them a starting point.     The real starting point probably goes back creation, the fall, and the nature of Christ’s incarnation, our participation in that incarnation.

Different church traditions have taken the question in different directions, with dramatically different results.   The Eastern Orthodox church had and still has caesaropapism — the church was beholden to the state.   This is the political school of Eusebius.   This leads to an imperial, this worldly, model of political salvation, combined with an otherwordly mystical escapism.     The Catholics had the opposite — papocaesarism — the state ultimately is subject to the Church.    Kings looked to the Pope for moral authority to do what they did.   This leads to the church as an activist political organization. Augustine’s mentor Ambrose was a key father of this school.  Augustine’s masterwork, the City of God has been interpreted to support it, but I think it ultimately teaches something a little different — the City of God as a pilgrim through the history of the City of Man.   In that sense, you could say Ambrose and Eusebius were different kinds of postmillennials with a vision for the political authority of the Church, where Augustine was an amillennial — with a vision for the spiritual nature of the church.

The major movements of Protestantism grapple with the same issue.  The so-called “Magisterial Reformers” continued the tradition of tight relationship between church and state, and in doing so, continued it’s problems — namely that theological controversies become civil issues.   If you don’t agree with our theology to the letter, you become a dissident or enemy of the state.

The radical reformation and the Baptists take a different tack — the church is completely otherworldly.  It’s role is not to be involved in politics, it is to preach the Gospel.   All of other views correspond to infant baptism because infant baptism suggests that you are a member of the church by birth and or location rather than choice.   Membership by choice immediately leads one to a view that the states job is to give you the choice, rather than enforce orthodoxy.    In the Baptist approach, you are being Baptized into a different eternal reality.

Wesleyans, as an Anglican revival movement,  could be described as spiritual organism which supports the state.    Wesleyan Arminians say essentially if there is a problem with a person, and by extension on Earth, it is because of a failing of man that Christ can fix.   Now you can see quickly how this would lead to a belief that individuals and the Church can change the secular world, but that that is not its primary focus.   William Wilberforce did actually change the world based on Wesleyanism,

The Arminian core of Wesleyan theology merged with adult Baptism and eventually manifested in Pentecostalism.  Pentecostalism is the explosive worldwide Christian movement that says you can personally encounter God in a way far beyond your previous experience.    You can walk like Jesus walked.  Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead.    This means that by nature most of the Pentecostal movement is other-worldly in its focus.   Pentecostals tend to focus on the encounter with Christ.   In addition, however, Pentecostalism, unlike previous movements was much less culturally bound.   It’s primary founder is a black man and the idea of “speaking in tongues” is a fundamentally cross-cultural concept.    This, and the global geopolitical moment in which it arose gives it a distinctly different flavor than previous movements.   Now we have a global movement intent on bringing a dynamic other-wordly encounter with God to the ends of the Earth.   This starts to look like a City of God pervading the entire Earth — something Augustine himself might have cheered.

The great paradox is this however.   Those Christians who believe that the City of God should have nothing to do with the City of Man need to be physically protected by someone who believes that it should.    The pacifist Quakers of early Pennsylvania who were slaughtered by the Native Americans when they did not defend themselves and were eventually defended by the other members of the state perhaps serve as a telling example.    When the political defense of the Eastern church eroded, Islam overran it, and now there are no Christians in the places where Paul did much of his ministry and to which John wrote Revelation.    This is what leads us to the moral conflict of our time.   For those in American — we live in two cities both of which are in decay.    The Church is advancing in many ways, but also becoming less pure.   At the same time the Christian foundation of our society is being eroded.   So which should we fix?   You can’t be both Pope and Caesar.  We learned that already. So as concerned Christians, we feel torn between being politicians and prophets.

Does our theology inform us on this?  Of course if you are from the Catholic or from a High Church tradition, then the answer is in the political sphere, or the realm of ideas.   For those of us who have not accepted the Catholic view of Church and History or the Calvinist view of Church and State, what do we do?    As a Pentecostal/Charismatic, I believe in the powerful incarnation of God through me reaching out to change the world.    Is this only Spiritual?  Many believe so.  Just win souls or bring the glory down.   But what if it is both?   How can the Spiritual and Natural relate?  How can the two cities come together?

First, we must teach all of our children and the church the Christian foundation of our freedom.   This is not some political side-show.  This is part of our Christian heritage — the pillars of Freedom ultimately belong to the Christian religion.    We can make a lot of Christian converts, but if they think like slaves,  we’ll still be wiped off the map.   We must teach our Pentecostal, power encounter disciples,  what took 20 centuries to work out in history.  It’s not just enough to have a power encounter.

Secondly, while we refuse to make the political  “dominion errors” made by the Catholics, the East and the High church, we must refuse to “check out” of the world system too.    We are bringing the Kingdom to Earth.    This means we are bringing a power encounter, but we are also bringing transformative cultural ideas and political clout to back those ideas.   Sound scary?   MLK did not sit by while black people were abused by a culture which claimed a Christian basis.    He did something about it.   We need to be those who “do something about it.”    When we look back at history we see that Christ has done more than save souls,  He has actually changed culture radically to bless the people on the Earth.   We need to be in that business.    More on what that might mean later.

The Self-Hatred of the West

Western Civilization has a unique feature that is not, and has never been a feature of any other political framework — it welcomes internal criticism.  Now, on the one hand, this is a fatal flaw, because it means that it has to fight with a limp against other Civilizations.   Look at the Iraq war.    If Russia had fought that war, it would have simply suppressed criticism, and kept up a good face, and that would have been that.   In fact, that is exactly the way the Cold War was fought.  We hear a lot about supposed atrocities of American soldiers in Vietnam, but nothing about how cruel the Communists were in ever place they ever set foot.  This is because we believe in freedom of speech.  This means we have to listen to people within our own borders who criticize us right, and those who side with the enemy to slander and destroy us.    Not only do we believe in freedom of speech, however, we believe in guilt and conscience.    If a Muslim ruler executes you for blaspheming the prophet, they have nothing to feel guilty for.  They are acting in accordance with what they believe.   If we do the same thing, we are hypocrites, failing to live up to our beliefs about the value of human life.    Nietzsche’s talked about “will to power,” essentially that might makes right…  This may have been a scandal to West and basis for Nazism, but it really just describes the way the the entire world worked before the rise of the West.   If you believe in “will to power” you can’t very well be a hypocrite, can you?

On the other hand internal criticism (including freedom of the press), means that we can deal with debate and controversy without having a coup.  We can expose those who do wrong without having to kill someone.   And with democracy we can also change rulers without a lot of someones getting killed.

Now what is the point of all that?  This is to say that we have come to a point now in the West where we know nothing good about our history and we know everything that is bad about our history.   This is largely rooted in effective Communist subversion techniques of the 20th century which infiltrated our media, our institutions, and our governments throughout the West.    Thus although militant Communism is not on the march, it is very much still with us in the way we think.  In fact,  it’s getting worse.    Communist states never allow criticism, but we do, which means that we can easily end up allowing people to destroy us from within.   The Muslims have finally learned this trick, and have now decided to simply conquer Europe through immigration.

The West is in fact the greatest Civilization the world has ever known, bar none.  We rave about the advanced technology of the Egyptians, but it was nothing compared to oh say… space flight.  Nobody else ever put a man on the moon, and if anyone else ever does, they will do so with Western technology.    More importantly, we invented all of the technology that allows humanity around the world to not have to be tied to the field to work, or die before age 30 of disease.   This isn’t by accident, it’s because of the framework setup in our civilization by the religion it is based on — Christianity.  We not only are better at human rights — we invented them!  All of mankind has trouble with valuing the “other” but our foundational religious texts tell us that we must value them.   We don’t always do it, but when we don’t we’re acting in disobedience to something we actually believe.   In stark opposition to systems where being born right, or being “one of us” are criteria for being human, and that is perfectly OK.    If the Hindus treat the Dalits like sub-humans they aren’t hypocrites.  They are being consistent.  That’s what their religion teaches them to do.   Some are born better.  Our religious framework tells us that we are all created equal.  Jefferson didn’t invent that idea, not even Locke– the Bible did.

It just took a long time to get to the point of consistency, however.  Don’t expect the Turks to ever apologize for the Armenian genocide.  It’s not part of their civilizational belief  to feel bad about that.   The West feels bad about its Holocaust, however.   We even have major museums in places like Washington and even Germany itself.    It wasn’t the first holocaust, and in fact although it was numerically probably largest, it might not even have been history’s worst slaughter of the Jews.   Those slaughters of ancient history in 70AD and under Hadrian, were simply business as usual in the ancient world however.

So my point here is that the very fact that you know so many “bad things” that the West has done and feel bad about them, show how great the West is.   The bad things done by others are not only worse, they are forgotten and swept under the rug, just the way that Russia is currently sweeping Stalin’s atrocities back under the rug.

Western guilt is based partly in the fact that Christians actually believe in something called repentance of wrongs and forgiveness of sins — other religions primiarily propitiate their gods to keep them happy.   Politically however, it got root in the political tradition of the West when the great Ambrose of Milan when he refused to admit the Roman Emperor to mass after he had slaughtered 7000 people (small in Roman terms).    The Church is Caeser’s conscience.   This worked then because Caeser and the people believed that God’s authority was higher than his own.  Even in the Christian East, this idea never developed.   A great deal has been made about evil Popes and the church being corrupted by getting involved in the state, but the fact that there was actually anything other than a state is really the historically remarkable item.  Self-serving authorities with no accountability are the historical norm.

So we are now faced with a dilemma — we are the greatest Civilization in history, but we hate ourselves.   We’ve taught all of our young people that our sins are many, and other cultures are better than ours.   Even our missionaries believe this.   Is there any way out?

My Trip to India

I felt the need to write a few reflections about my trip to India. Maybe some of you might also be interested.

First of all the flight from Chicago to Delhi is long. It’s 14 hours over and 15 hours back. The good news is that I got almost a full night’s rest on both legs. I have always thought that I can’t sleep on planes, but I found that bringing ear plugs, a face mask, and sitting on the aisle helped a lot. In addition on these really really long flights, you are on it long enough that you will get tired, and you will have time to get a night’s rest. The 6 hour London or cross-country flight is much harder to sleep on in my experience . So that was a major positive travel surprise. I kind of wish that I had sat by the window on the way over, though. I would have loved to have seen all of the things we flew over.

Arriving in a foreign country you have never been to is always a little intimidating. Note to self — get foreign currency before you even leave the baggage area. You do not want to be out there in the big wide world without the money you need, as I found out later. I found the guy holding my name with a sign no problem and he took me to the driver. You definitely always want a driver pre-arranged by your in country contact, so you know you have someone trustworthy. This is even true if you are a foreigner coming to America. My Indian friend was robbed by the NY cabbie.

So I was quickly in the car and made it to the hotel no problem. Everyone was giving half-bows and calling me sir, which kind of made me feel like some elite westerner. So I felt like a jerk when I didn’t have any money to tip anyone. Maybe that is why my driver gave the job to his brother-in-law after that! The hotel was $200/night, but they put you up like that so you won’t have any problems that go with something a little lower end in a developing country. This hotel was a half step better than an American 4-star hotel. My room was smaller than a 4-star, but the furnishings were nicer, and so was the service. The included breakfast was really top notch including a variety of bars and breakfast to satisfy people from different places in the world.

Everything about India could be described as organized chaos. This is not a pejorative, this is actually a fact recognized by Indians. The driving is absolutely crazy even for a developing country. It is actually mesmerizing to watch. You can’t figure out how there are not accidents every second, yet somehow everything works just fine. It was the same when I asked a question of the class I was teaching. Everyone would answer at once, yet somehow a single person would get the floor and give the answer. It was a little hard to cope with at first, but after I got used to it, it actually seemed to work fine.

I was there for 2 days only, and that actually worked OK from a jet lag perspective since I was able to sleep on the plane. You leave and arrive around the same time, just one day later. Also, Indian work schedules are later in the day. My class for example was 11:30 to 7:30. So I ended up not sleeping much the first night since I had already slept on the plane, and waking up very early the second night because I had gone to bed early after being exhausted the first day… this meant for a lot of free time in the mornings and being a little too tired near the end of teaching the class. So the jet lag was a factor, but is was not over the top bad. The flight back basically puts you home 5 clock hours after you leave, but 15 actual hours which means that you just have an extra long night that night, and an extra long day the next day. Very manageable.

I was very briefly lost on my first day. I can’t think of a better way to really experience a country than to be by yourself with no idea where you are, and no local currency. The driver dropped me off at a building that he thought was the right one, but I found out it was the wrong one and the guy said to me that the right building was 15 minutes away by car. With my driver gone I was not sure how I was going to get there, since I had no money and I was not eager to try to get in a random car. So I started asking around about the location. Some people didn’t really speak English and I was getting a lot of different instructions, but someone seemed to think it was across the street, so I decided to at least try that. The “street” is nothing like you would see in America. It was a divided “4 lane” dirt road with everything from rickshaws, cars, and trucks with 50 people coming down it, and when I reached the middle I looked over and a very large cow was just getting ready to step into traffic. That was my “you are in India now” moment. After crossing the street and asking a series of additional people, I made it to what seemed like the right place and was waiting for the elevator when I heard “Hi Will.” This was the most pleasantly surprise I’ve had in a long long time. It was my European contact — they had arrived at the same moment I stumbled in. Now, not only did I know that I was in the right place, I was not alone. When you are in Europe you may feel different like you are the “American” but when you are in India with Europeans, that dissolves and you feel like you are the Westerners. So anyway, it wasn’t a huge scary lost event, but it was a little jarring, and obviously I was not properly prepared. I should have figured out how to use my cell phone to call Indian numbers ahead of time, I should have had money, and I shouldn’t have let the driver go until I was sure that I was sure it was the right place. I did keep him extra, but not quite long enough. I didn’t get too worried because there was visible security where I was, although the strange thing about all of the security guys I saw what that they were always about 5′6″ with the thinnest build you could imagine. When you go in and out of places the security procedures are very uneven too. Sometimes you are going through some searching ordeal, while other times they are waving a metal detecting wand at you, which even if it beeps they let you through.

There is not a heavy spirit in India like when I went to London. India is a country on the move. People are motivated, there is constant activity, things are being built, and they are open to you, at least on the surface. For those of you into end times escape scenarios, I think blending into the 1 billion people of India would be a much better bet than 100 acres in Montana. Plus it seems like a great mission field. Irony was that I bumped into a missionary at the airport on the way back. Actually he was a California youth pastor. We kind of clashed in the spirit. Although what they were doing was really radical, He was kind of a cool-Christian type, which obviously I’m not. He told me a story about the wonderful work that a church they are connected with in Mumbai is doing to help eunuchs who are forcibly castrated for some Hindu ritual, made to be temple prostitutes and then basically left for dead after 1 year. This prompted me to comment what a bad rap that Western missionaries get. To which he replied, well a lot of terrible things have been done. Which just left me speechless. Here is a guy who is proof that missionaries are a good thing, and yet saying that missionaries do bad things. Western self-loathing apparently extends even to missionaries who are the epitome of the West.

On the way back I was able to meet up with an Indian friend. Middle class people there have tiny little cars and full time drivers. He took me to a restaurant called “Mainland China” which was far and away the best Chinese food experience I could imagine. When we stepped in the door at 7:30 they were just opening the restaurant, and the managers were lecturing the wait staff who were all standing at attention. They then brought us a continuous stream of things including some outstanding kimche. (Yes, I know I thought that was only Korean food too!). The food was really really good. It was like a P.F Cheng in terms of the food style, but just at a whole different level.

My friend dropped me off at the airport, and I was in the wrong place, so he asked some baggage handler to take me to the correct place. I was wandering through some back doors and up a secret staircase and suddenly found myself among the herds of people waiting to enter the airport. While I was trying to figure out my way in a guy approached me and offered to take me to the VIP entrance. My spirit told me I shouldn’t but for whatever reason, I went along with it. It was a bit of a con which cost me $30. However, I did get in more quickly than without this VIP treatment.

I didn’t see anything outside of my business function while I was there in India, but honestly I wouldn’t have had the energy with such a long trip and it wouldn’t have been much fun by myself. It was 4 hours each way to the Taj Mahal and I was having a tough time imagining myself being happy at the end of that. What I really wanted to see in India was the people and the experience, and it was a great experience.

Thoughts on Western Civilization

So, perhaps because of my travels I have been more inspired to study history, and the “rest of the world.” The problem with telling people that they are “smart” is that they will believe it, and stop learning. Every time I learn something I realize over again how little I actually know.

Reading the “Clash of Civilizations” was definitely very good. Very smart thesis, although people hate to admit it. Huntington identifies the 9 core civilizations: The West, Latin America, The East (Orthodox) China, India, Islam, Sub-Saharan Africa, are the main ones.

This piqued for me an interest in the distinct history of these civilizations. In America we are taught almost nothing of value in school, even in college, so I was curious. I also realized that I knew very little actually of Western history even. So I watched the 6 hour story of India DVD after reading up in one of world civilization textbooks I bought. I watched a couple of documentaries on Barbarians. I studied up on the Chinese provinces and Indian States. For Islam, I read “Islamic Imperialism” by Efraim Karsh, which was hard to find, since all mainstream books about Islam are a whitewash. If you don’t think so, go and study the Zanj. I spent some time in the great geography text I got for $2 online, and generally tried to get my knowledge base into a more global framework.

I’m still working on it. My current book has been a history of Western Civ called “Worlds at War.” It’s one of the best written history books I’ve read. It’s really a history of the idea of the West, from the perspective of a secularist. So aside from the occasional silly anti-Christian remark, it’s a great book.

Why does this interest me? I think somewhere deep down I have felt that the Scriptural prophecies such as in Daniel and Revelation which are civilizational/spiritual might somehow inform or correlate to how we see the world functioning today. Sound like some kind of dispensational fantasy? It’s not. Even the secularist writer I was just referring to had to admit that Daniel’s prophecy of Rome did actually come to pass. I see Biblical prophecy not as foretelling events primarily as much as contours and trends, although certainly many events are foretold, even then the point is not in the foretelling of the event as much as in what it tells us about how the world works and where we are heading. After 150 years of ranting about 7 year tribulations and beasts, I think it’s time for a relook. I guess you could call it my “City of God” project.

As I’ve gotten farther into the Western Civ book, I can understand the secular perspective that Christianity is a crazy philosophy for building an Empire. And so in that sense, everyone of these Western secularists from Gibbon on down may be right. They see the gold and glitter of the Antonine emperors as a cultural zenith which Christianity hijacked. We need to return there and jettison the Christianity. You can see that if you look on the outside, but these same men are baffled why Christianity expanded. They have a variety of explanations, some of which are good, and some of which are bad, but rarely does anyone hit on the real reason — Christianity heals the wounds that empire causes.

After all of this study it is impossible to ever look again at something like the Great Wall, or the Pyramids and not see the tens of thousands of lives sacrificed to it. In fact, every great achievement of the ancient world is built on the back of expendable humanity. Only in Christ do “we the people” have any real hope. No great restoration of any empire will really offer us anything except more pyramid building for modern pharaohs. These visions of secular greatness seem great until you write yourself into the story, whether slave bureaucrat or ruler, you will be alone in the empire of sand, and forgotten by the sands of history. Only Jesus offers us an alternative future. Only He can be a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

As I read history, I come to believe that Christianity became western because the West became it’s political defender. Christianity had a strong grip in China in the early Tang period, reached India at a very very early date, and was a factor among the Sassanid Persians. Not to mention all of the lands that Islam eventually conquered. It was just that in most of those cases (except Kerala) it was wiped out by a political power. So it is not that Christianity is Western at all, or even that the West is fundamentally more Christian. It is that the West chose to enmesh its history with Christianity. The modern pagans are still angry about it. So angry that they would rather welcome Islam and ignore it’s obvious dangers just to finally end the Christian chapter of the Western story. And maybe they will succeed. Maybe there is another chapter.

What does this say about the other great civilizations? One thing I can certainly say is that there is much yet to be done. We live in a moment of the explosion of the worldwide gospel, yet 1 billion Indians are totally unreached, just for example. Huntington has called our moment the Clash of Civilizations, but in Christian terms, perhaps we live in the second apostolic moment, when all civilizations will again be visited by powerful Christian witness, and shake them to their core. Not just an underground movement of twos and threes, but a true groundswell in all of the Civilizations which threatens them to the core, just as Paul’s original mission threatened Rome to the core. That’s going to take some more time though, maybe a couple centuries?

I want to ride and understand and maybe even have a hand to shape history, but when I read the whole story and see the billions and billions, I just think “Thank you Jesus for letting me part of your story.” I don’t have to dance through life alone hoping to be feted at some gala or serve some idol that will only curse me. For all of the scorn it draws there is nothing more beautiful or more unlike the world than Christ and his cross. He is the truly different one who is worthy to follow, and he is the friend when you are alone in a hotel room in Haryana state.

America, The Church, and the Meaning of My Life

The America of today is such a hopelessly large place that it is hard to imagine impacting it’s future, let alone that of the world. When the Revolution was launched, we were a small string of colonies totaling 1 million people, now we are 300 million. Sometimes I feel completely dwarfed by this. How can one person have any impact? Or is it just that I have to live and observe the disturbing trends?

Many people are said to “change the world” but really few do. Most of these so called “world changers” are actually world builders, performing roles that someone would have performed if they had not. One of the few people who I believe actually changed the course of history was John Wesley. He was born into an England that was at a real cultural low, and he died in an England which he had almost singlehandedly redirected and renewed through the power of the Gospel. The history of the United States and Britain were different from there forward because he lived.

I don’t think I would dream of being like Wesley if we didn’t live in a “Wesley moment” when it seems that our culture is about to jump off the final abyss. Maybe I’d be happy just to be a pastor of some local church. But the reality is that the culture is jumping the tracks because the church is too.

Billy Graham and his backers had a major impact on history too. He renewed and reinvented the American religious scene in a way that had far far reaching implications. He has passed off the scene however, and now we have the second and third generation evangelicals running the show, and maybe “show” is the right word for most of what is going on out there.

When I was 16 I dreamed of being a pastor because I thought it was a really cool job to get paid to serve God. When I got older I thought I could be a pastor and change the church. Then I thought I could be a pastor and change the world. Now I think I’m down to “change the world.”

I feel that we are the last generation who will have any memory of what America “was.” When people didn’t work on Sunday, when divorce and living together were actually frowned upon, when there was a “closet” to come out of. When you felt proud to live in the “freest country on Earth” and George Washington was a hero. As this final generation we have an obligation to give our kids a better inheritance than the rebellious 1960s generation gave us. Their parents gave us a world free from Hitler and Japanese imperialism, they gave us LSD. Their parents gave us evangelical revival, they gave us “seeker friendly” church. Of course there are many individual exceptions, but as a grand trend, it’s basically a total cultural disaster.

Many younger Americans are down to “who cares” and “why should we think we’re special anyway.” This will be the predominant attitude of most Americans soon if it isn’t already. In fact, a lot of Christians I know feel this way. I happen to think that a place where I can be born and find Jesus and freely tell others about Him is a wonderful place. I happen to think that a country that basically funds and staffs the worldwide advance of the Gospel is worth defending. If I were secular I would say that I think a place where I can live in what historically speaking would be considered a “manor house” reserved for the richest of the rich, is something worth defending. Or I might say that living in a place that has almost never known war is a pretty amazing historical phenomenon. But since I’m not secular, let’s keep it to the church facts — Ultimately the destruction of America as we know it is a major setback for the church, there are no two ways around it. And for those of you who are watching, you are watching the end of our national experience as it has been.

Now I have a more global perspective, because ultimately God has a global perspective. He’s not an American, much less a white American. If we were changing to be something less “American” but more God-honoring I would rejoice. If I thought there was a better place in the world to pursue God, I’d probably emigrate. And in fact, I may still one day.

But what does John Wesley have to do with all of this? Wesley was a both traditionalist and a radical. He was a revivalist who saw the church as something to be renewed not something to be cursed. Most of the “radicals” I have met are practically useless for the cause because they spend their time cursing the established church rather than trying to renew it. Every Reformation must have its Karlstadts I suppose. But for his traditionalism, Wesley was still a radical. Puritan Calvinism had put everything on God to the point where even secular people reasoned that sinning didn’t matter since if they were chosen they would stop, but Wesley had the boldness to say that Calvinism made God out to be worse than the devil. More importantly though, he took the gospel to those whom Jesus originally had in mind — the poor, the blind, the lame.. Basically those whom the devil’s kingdom considers hopeless and expendable.

I do not honestly know enough about the global church to say what it’s trends are leading us toward — except a certainly more “Pentecostal” world. But I can say that the American church trends are leading us toward another apostasy. The Emergent church is already here to tell us that the Bible “may not be true.” And the sons of the evangelicals are out in full force as the new Calvinists, telling us that God chooses some and not others. The abuse of money in some circles would make John Tetzel blush. The Pharisees could have a learned a trick or two from some of these guys. The abuse of power is nearly as bad. But worst of all is our “big show” Christianity. This is where we build the big time altars so we can have our middle class programs, our comfy church, our professional preacher, and well shaded parking lot. Sure some great ministry does get done, but all in all, we’re losing a generation. Of course we’re fighting huge forces, but then the church has always been fighting impossible odds, and somehow manages to advance. We’ll wake up soon and find we’re not just a Christian minority, we’re more like a band of 12 disciples.

And I guess that is always what it comes down to in the end — a band of 12 disciples. I’ve been sold the lie that you just have to make disciples. It’s not true. You have to touch lost people, and make THEM into disciples. I mean people that do not like God. Those are the people we have to introduce to Him. And maybe we have a unique chance now because many of them today have actually never met Him. I’m tired of condemning tracts and radicals, big shows and big lies, I want the transforming power of Christ. It’s been proven to work for 20 centuries.

When Freedom Christian Fellowship sets a person free from their bondage, that is the real thing. You know it because they go and get all of their friends and say “you need ministry too.” That’s the New Testament Jesus, the one who feeds the hungry and does the miracles and can’t sleep because they are chasing him down. I like to feed hungry people. If we want a different future than the one that is unfolding, we’re going to have to get down to exactly that. No more false doctrines. No more big show. Big encounters. Big encounters with a Big God, who knows the number of hairs on your head. We’ve been praying for the power, fasting for the power, but the real power is not just what is going to strike from above, it is in the way we organize ourselves to turn souls back from destruction. We can’t just build a big altar and expect to change the world. We actually have to become different than what is going on. We live in the era of the “megachurch” and the “mini anointing” We have to be more like Wesley, Luther, Knox, Paul, and Jesus himself. I get excited when I see our team take a baby step toward that. Fix the doctrine, fix the spirit of it, fix the practice, and go after souls and maybe one day you wake up and you actually did “change the world.”

The End of America

I’m going to lose all of my friends writing this note, but I don’t care, today I am Honduran. Those who think that Zinn’s “People’s History” is a fair telling of American History can stop reading now. Also, I would like everyone to know that I do not like Right Wing radio, and do not listen to it. I find it incendiary and repetitive.

If this note makes you mad, welcome to the Matrix.

All of my life I have been proud to be an American up until today. This is the first day of my life I can honestly say I am not proud to be an American. It’s sad that it happens to be on July 4th. This is not Monday morning quarterbacking — it’s my confessional of where I was wrong.

I’d like to begin by lodging my official perspective that the Iraq war was a mistake. I’m truly sorry to say this because a lot of brave people died fighting it. It wasn’t a mistake because taking out Saddam was bad, or because the result for the Iraqis isn’t good. Actually I think from a purely “moral” perspective, I’m fine with it. From a political perspective, however, it was a disaster. It failed to deal with the real problem child of the region — Iran, and it created the “perfect storm” for a far left take over of the American government. Every day that I wake up, people in Washington are working feverishly to take away a freedom my ancestors risked their lives for and no one is there to stop them. And you know, I think I could actually live with that as part of the natural course of events. After all, it happened before in 1932. This leads to the second observation that George Bush was a failed president. He won some great battles — he did the right thing on the overall concept of the “war on terror” for sure, he kept us safe, and he got 2 non-ideologue judges on the supreme court. All major victories — but he lost the war. During his tenure, people came to hate Christians as they haven’t since the founding of America, or maybe the 1790s, because of his association of Christianity with his policies. Some people even lost their faith because of them. Even more importantly, he inspired the new hippie generation. The college kids who needed a cause found one in hating the Iraq war. We’ll hear from them again. And because of Iraq, he lost the capital he needed to do other things both with the American people and with the rest of the world. On the other hand, in his favor, he kept John Kerry out of office. Nobody who throws their medals and tells all of the lies about our soldiers that he did should ever be allowed to even hold office, much less run the country.

What I can’t live with is the sellout of a freedom loving people. Those of you that are reading the news and thinking that a “coup” has taken place in Honduras are still drinking the kool-aid. Do some more research. You will find out that in fact, all of the branches of the Honduran government were trying to stop their president’s silent coup, his complete disregard for their constitution and desire to set up a dictatorship. It’s all part of the Chavez-led reinvention of Latin America. Just a few non-Marxist non-Dictatorships remain in South America: Mexico and Colombia being the only major powers, and Mexico came pretty close in the last election from being on the same path. The loser after all had himself declared president even though he lost. Chavez is threatening to invade or otherwise cause chaos in Honduras and here is the problem lies all it would take to stop Chavez is a simple “no” from the United States, and an air craft carrier battle group. Instead, we are all probably about to witness something bloody down there.

Which leads to my second complaint. Sarah Palin was a bad choice for VP. Not because I think she’s a bad person, or a bad governor. But I have to feel that some Christian political activists anointed her and told McCain that if he didn’t pick her, they would not support him. She excited the white Christian base for sure, but she also alienated the vast American middle that was needed to win the election. That’s the regular Americans who just want to take their kids to soccer and buy a nice house, who are completely clueless that they live in a life and death struggle between two visions of America. Oh, and don’t be confused, this is not about who pays for your health care, this is about whether you are safe in your home at night. The Christian right wing power brokers missed it on every count in this election. Do not count me on the Sarah Palin 2012 bandwagon. The media will destroy whatever is left of her. If she is smart, she will run for Senate instead.

I have come to realize that our country in the Cold War was a very uneven partner. Really the Iran problem is our problem. We put the shah in when we were governed from the Right to stop a communist takeover, and we let the Islamists take power while we were governed from the Left. That’s a flaw of a free society. It allows criticism. This means that people who are against the country can run the country! Unfortunately, sometimes this leads to the death of Socrates.

I am ashamed to be an American today because today we stopped being a defender of freedom, and became a passive accomplice to the sell out of a people. Not that we haven’t ever done this before — a lot of South Vietnamese, and later Cambodians got murdered because a whole generation got high and decided they didn’t like war. Just this time, I am alive to see it, and this time, it seems to be the new direction of our country, rather than a failure in the course of trying to do the right thing. If we cease to be the nation that defends freedom, then I cease to be American in any real sense. My ancestors came here seeking and found freedom. My grandfathers both came within an inch of their lives defending it. I have the obligation to take up the same cause, because at heart I really do love my country. I love what we stood for, for the past four centuries. So for now, I am a patriot of every country and freedom movement that we fail to stand up for.

A note about Diet

OK, So for most of my life I just basically took the approach that getting overweight was something easily avoided by not eating too much. Then one day I found I could not fit in my size 36 pants. In college I had been a 34 but my mother said I was too thin at that point. I didn’t believe her until I looked back at the pictures and looked well… gaunt. It’s amazing how having no money and limited access to fast food will help you keep thin. So those size 36 pants are where I’d like to stay… loose in them that is, not just barely squeezing in. When I had to actually buy size 38s in order to go on a business trip, I decided I was too big. I was outraged. No way I was going to get any bigger.

Brad was talking to me about how he dropped his coke habit and it reduced his appetite. So that got me motivated. I was drinking crazy amounts of soda so I decided I’d drop that with the hope of dropping my appetite. I have gone off and on the soda habit at different times, so I didn’t really think much of it. But since I was combining with weight loss goals, it was hard. I didn’t just do it for weight though, I did it to get off caffeine. I have a hard time deciding I want to come to bed and go to sleep. I thought it was just a personality thing. I thought that caffeine never affected me. Until Jaime put the two together.

I never noticed the caffeine giving me a “kick” perhaps partly because I’m a large person, partly because I wasn’t paying close enough attention, and partly because I was never going long enough without to get it out of my system. The sites say that the caffeine gets out of your system in 3-6 hours, but I just think that is not true. If you really want to “come down” off of caffeine, you need several days of nothing. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually was able to go to sleep more easily. But more importantly — I never wake up feeling like I’m hungover any more. Yeah, they don’t tell you about that either, the caffeine hangover. You know that miserable wake up feeling? If you are sleeping 7 hours or more and feeling that way, it’s because of your caffeine. So what do you do when you have that miserable feeling? You get some coffee!! Thus the cycle continues and increases. Once I saw this cycle, I wanted off the wheel for good. I had always quit the caffeine before because I was drinking too much, this time I was quitting because I didn’t like the cycle and the feelings it gave me.

So I started by dropping the Coke and the Mountain Dew. I learned to perceive the “kick” that they give you and the let down you experience while your body is trying to purge it out. That was motivating enough to quit. It was really rewarding and I’m feeling a lot better. When I came downstairs one day and starting extolling the virtues of a cherry and how good it made me feel, Jaime knew something was afoot. I wouldn’t say that my “appetite” exactly dropped — what happened was that I stopped having “false hunger” that seems to come after drinking soda. I had a better sense of being actually hungry. This made it easier to “eat when I was hungry” because I wasn’t hungry all the time. So the whole thing was a win. I’m off and I feel great. And if I have a drink here or there, I’m fine because it just ends up reminding me of why I got off.

This leads to the religious overtones of the discussion. I’m pretty turned off when people starting making the diet the next thing to godliness. Jesus and Paul both explicitly contradict this way of thinking. When you start thinking that carrots will make you holy, you will end up in all kinds of food bondage. Praise God, the cross makes me Holy, not betacarratine. I am free to go back to eating junk, I just don’t want to. John Wimber was a “fat man on his way to heaven,’ I could be too if I wanted to.

I didn’t make my goals too expansive though. Jaime and I were learning that eating is a system. (Duh?) You can’t just switch to the asparagus diet. You need to actually change you body composition and lifestyle. Men do not believe in the perpetual diet. I just wanted something I could do to get my pant size back to 36 and keep it there. I needed a lifestyle adjustment so I could continue to enjoy life and food but not beef up. Any diet whose formula is perpetual starvation is not worth it. I’d rather be fat and die young. So cutting the soda was an easy first step, and I was glad to use any and all props that were available. Sweet Tea was a great prop to cut the soda. Yes it has caffeine, but it also has a lot of water with all the ice I like to chew. So it was a really good substitute while I was kicking the craze down. Kicking soda worked because it was a sustainable lifestytle adjustment. Bottled water was helpful to carry around and sip on too. Water actually makes you feel *good* after you drink it. I actually kind of wonder of Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” didn’t get sick because of the soda, not the McDonalds per se.

So I lost 11 pounds in the six weeks I was doing it (and maybe 5 more off my peak weight) I’m back in to my size 36 pants, and I look more like my old self. All of that is extremely motivating. I kicked back for a little bit but when I stopped feeling my pants get looser, I got motivated again. I love that feeling of sliding into my old wardrobe. Now I’m at 201 and I’m feeling like I’m ready to go for ten more and start to get into the permanently healthy zone. My next enemy: sugar

You see I realized from all of this that sugar was an even worse enemy than the caffeine. Drinking Soda is like mainlining sugar. So cutting that back was a great step in the right direction, but not enough… The Sweet Tea helped because it was high on the sugar. Our diets have become totally innundated with sugar in the past 20 years. Sugar levels have increased in everything we eat, and we eat less things that have no sugar. Again, seeing the ’system’ at work is the motivator. When you start to recognize the sugar “kick” and the subsequent “let down” it motivates you to “get off this train.” But it’s a much harder train to get off, because there is sugar in *everything*. Take your cereal. Unless you are eating grape nuts or plain cheerios for breakfast, you’ve got a good bit of sugar in your food. How about that “healthy” yogurt you are eating. It’s got 9 times as much sugar as a serving of corn chex. OUCH! I’ve never even really liked heavy sugar (such as fruit loops) but I realized I needed to cut down to as minimal as possible if I wanted off the “cycle.”

I started a couple of days ago, and guess what? Crazy energy. I was out last night running around the house at 10 PM because I had so much energy. I still feel like I want to go for a run and I don’t like running! Now I was completely irritable on the first day, but the energy is a good sign that getting off is going to feel just as good as getting off the caffeine. My prop: natural sugar. Jaime got us some fruit, and some juice. If I get a sugar craving I dive into a peach, or add a little juice at the top of my ice water. When you go down on artificial sugar you notice how sweet those things actually are. I’m eating my plum and thinking “WHOA” this is like a Maxell commercial. But it’s funny how you can’t really get addicted to the foods that God designed for eating. You just enjoy the piece of fruit and move on.

So my plan is kick the artificial sugar as low as possible using natural sugar as a prop, and then start adding no sugar foods to my diet. So this morning it was grits. I’ve always liked grits so they are an easy starting place for me. Man, those grits were GOOD. That little dash of salt Jaime put in tasted like it was sugar. Amazing. You can’t just “eat your vegetables” — it’s a miserable experience. You have to progressively change your palate until you can enjoy the pleasure of vegetables. You can’t do that if you’re high on sugar all the time. Once you are enjoying the pleasure of eating vegetables, you will keep eating them. If you see it as a chore, you will stop.

Which brings me to the personal growth learning that has come from all of this for me — life is about learning to love the pleasure of vegetables. Everything that is addictive has its reward up front and it’s fallout later. Everything that is “good for you” has it’s reward later. Learning to “eat our vegetables” in life isn’t about learning to do something miserable frequently. Or about doing something whose payoff is so far in the future it’s hard to care. It’s about learning to love the subtle rewards that come in the near future from doing the right thing.

The Family Vacation

I am at the age where, if they weren’t so crass, I could really enjoy National Lampoon’s vacation series. At least specific scenes and dynamics in the movies really speak to the actual experience of being a dad on vacation. (What do you think moms?) The whole concept of making a pilgrimage to drive to “Wally World” is a great representation of how I think as a dad vacation planner… Or the driving in London “Look there is Big Ben, Look there’s parliament” scene in European vacation as a representation of what trying to navigate your car “sightseeing” in a different city. Or the scene in Christmas vacation where the car is stuck underneath the truck and his wife is there saying “Clark, we’re stuck under a truck,” and he’s like, “you think I don’t know that?” There is something about family road tripping that seems to lead to this kind of dynamic.

Jaime does not really like to travel or be in the car – this she says is partly hold over from many experiences she had like this as a child, and partly related to the anxiety of trying to take the kids somewhere. At the same time, she does like to “get away.” Our first vacation after having kids was a road trip through Canada where we stopped in Ottawa at the rotating restaurant, Toronto, and then Niagara falls, before going to a conference in Ohio. This was probably my favorite trip, because it most closely mirrored my idea of a vacation – see something and move on. After that we went several years without a real vacation. This was partly because we didn’t have much money, partly because we were so busy, and partly because our kids were at an age that taking them somewhere could not really be called “vacation.” We mostly relied on day trips whenever the weather was warm enough. Living in Massachusetts, 2 hours will take you to a dizzying array of sights. We drove up Mount Washington (along with hundreds of mini coopers), we had fish near the Bush Compound in Kennebunkport… we drove up Mt Wachusett several times… we went to Northfield where D.L. Moody was from… and just a half hour from the house, we could get to Cape Ann, which meant that even on an early weekday in summer we could have a fabulous day trip complete with art shopping, Motif #1, lighthouses, rocks, beaches, etc. There is nothing quite like June-October in New England!

We restarted full vacations two years ago by renting a house/barn in Booth Bay, Maine. This turned out to also be a fabulous vacation. We rented after the peak season was over but managed to catch a spell of warm weather which made for a really fantastic time – things were open but they were not crawling with people. We were able to see a remarkable amount of the coast of Maine during that week including a day trip to Bar Harbor. What we found with the children was that you start to feel the need to get out of the house with them during the day or the baby sitting job becomes too big. So we had a habit of going out in the late morning, and having a late lunch while out, and then driving a little more before coming home. This worked well because every drive in coastal Maine is a scenic drive and as long as you like seafood, there are a thousand choices – my favorite I think was New Harbor where you watch the boats come in while eating.

Now that we are living in Ohio things have definitely changed. Although there are lots of scenic areas around where we live, they aren’t quite as breathtaking or memorable and the people do not maintain them in a very scenic fashion. It may just be an economic thing. This year, to try and meet Jaime’s criteria of not a big drive for the getaway, we went to Hocking Hills which is a little vacation area with a couple of cool caves, etc. It’s not quite like Maine because there aren’t really the quaint little places and scenic driving opportunities, but it is nice to get away. It makes me feel like a vacation where you are staying stationary should definitely involve going somewhere “interesting” even if you have to drive more to get there. Again, this is partly because of the kid factor. Getting everyone out for a little ride once a day makes for a more relaxing day than trying to make it through to the end all together.

One day I would like to take the big “cross country” vacation with everyone. (We’ll see if this becomes dad and kids or if Jaime is “up for it” by then.) In fact, I have 4 different vacation “loops” that I’m thinking about. If it works, out, we could make it a habit during those “golden years” when the kids are old enough to appreciate it but still in the house. It’s one of those times you don’t want to miss while you still have all of the family together. Once they are gone, it’s hard to get them all back together again, and when they do they’ll come with their own families and needs.

And then there is of course the issue of what constitutes a successful vacation? Visiting extended family, for example has special rewards, but is may not a true vacation because of the additional pressures it introduces. So certain scenarios can definitely lead to the “I need a vacation from my vacation” problem. For me, this time around, I took two weeks off – I’ve finally built up enough tenure at IBM to earn an extra week! First, I went with the ministry team to a church conference, then a week in the cabin with the family, and then the second week will be for me to try to slow down my own pace of life – although it’s funny the kinds of things that will compete for that “empty space” when you create it. Projects around the house, ministry needs, etc, will try to compete. So you see how different priorities fall into the bucket of “vacation,” when you have family. Rest may actually not be a natural byproduct!

This is all leading me to what is the “theory” of the vacation? Well first, obviously they cost money so should you do them at all? Are they worth the investment? I believe that the answer to this is definitely yes. You may not need or be able to afford a full vacation every year, but money is designed to be used in your life not just stored up “in barns.” You only go around once with your children and young wife, so put some money into making some memories and building the relationships.

Which leads to the second issue.. what are the goals of vacation? Well as a father, I think the first priority is really getting that special time with your wife and children that eludes you while at home. And as a “work at home” dad, I have to say that this is not just a physical factor, it is a focus factor. Go somewhere with there is no TV or internet and spend time with them. For the kids this means play their games, talk to them, take them on the little side trips. Be a part of their lives. For your wife, I think this means use the time after the kids have gone to bed to both talk about the big issues of life, and generally be in love. It’s a place where you have left the concerns of your “real life” aside for a week and so it’s an opportunity to focus on the things that matter. You can come back renewed because you’ve forged strategy or agreement in hard areas and because you’ve had time to lovingly affirm one another. So pick somewhere that you can do both! I think what you can really get from this vacation experience is a true resetting of priorities. So you re-enter the game with first things first again.

I think the extended family times meet a different kind of need altogether. You honor your parents love for you by letting them celebrate your family with you and enjoy the grandkids without having to do all of the hard stuff they had to do as parents. Everyone gets to feel a part of a larger loving community. However, these times will probably not address the other more fundamental needs that other “vacations” meet, so keep that in mind when you plan them.

In addition, you as a person need “time away” and so does your spouse. If you have the luxury of a two consecutive week vacation, you might be able to get it on the second week. Another alternative, however, is to separate your “time away” needs from your “vacation.” Rent a cabin for two nights for just yourself and do a “weekend away” where it is you and God. This kind of prayer retreat can really fundamentally alter and renew a lot of important things. You could also consider doing something like this or a special trip with you and a close friend. Both you and your spouse need this kind of true “time off” even if it is short in duration.

So the value of a “vacation” is ultimately about personal and relational health. The things you see and the place you go are instrumental to that. You are taking the time to sow into the relationship of those you are with. Make the most of it – it’s something you can’t put a price tag on.