saint jamie’s blog

procrastination

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:56:01 -0400

I have always been a major procrastinator and thus am usually in some kind of tense relationship with my work. In the end, I always get it done. I’ve done some reading on this subject and I find that I alternate between being a good and a bad procrastinator.

A good procrastinator is one who puts of things that need to be done but have less value that the thing one may be doing instead (absent minded-professor sort of thing). A bad procrastinator . . . well we all know what that is: putting off important things while doing lesser things.

In reality, it’s not an issue of time management. A primary cause of the bad procrastination is anxiety. Usually anxiety as to whether one could actually do the task, or whether one could do it on the level expected, etc. This is why people who go on anti-anxiety medication often report being more productive.

Anyway, I have listed a few different articles on procrastination in the student resources section for your reading pleasure . . . if you can get around to reading some of them, that is.

Virginia Tech Massacre: A Revelation of Hypocrisy 2

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:40:28 -0400

It's difficult to imagine the personal reality of those who were there watching Cho walk around and kill their classmates. It's also difficult to imagine that worse horrors than this occur every single day outside of our relatively safe borders. If we are at all sympathetic to the victims (dead and living) of Virginia Tech, let’s also be mindful of those people who suffer this kind of tragedy every day.

Last year the first scientific analysis of the Iraqi death toll announced that as many as 655,000 people died as a result of the invasion, which is an average of an extra 2519 people per week attributed to our presence in Iraq (33 people died in Virginia). Even if the figures are not universally accepted, we're still speaking about ridiculously large numbers of people.

In the last two years, somewhere around 300,000 people have been killed or died specifically due to the violence in Darfur. Currently, two million Sudanese people from Darfur are displaced and living in aid-dependent camps in Chad, many dying from abject neglect.

So sure, Virginia Tech is a tragedy, no doubt about it . . . I want that kind of thing to stay as far away from me and my family as is possible. But our reaction to it, in the media in particular, demonstrates the inequity of our concerns for human life. Christianity is supposed to be a global concern for the entire human race. At one Christian university I know about, they had a prayer vigil for the people at Virginia Tech, and I’ve seen numerous churches holding prayer vigils for the Virginia Tech people.

I only mention this because it seems to be a fairly standard response by churches and Christian organizations and it is indeed a good and proper response. But, I’m yet to see popular prayer vigils for the literally millions of people who have suffered because of our presence in Iraq, or for the two million displaced from Darfur, almost all of whom have lost loved ones due to the violence there. I’m yet to see popular prayer vigils for the millions of people world wide adversely affected by our economic and environmental practices. Frankly, it’s abject hypocrisy.

What I walk away with here is that Virginia Tech and other tragedies like it evidence that popular Christianity here in the US has a deeply seated materialism (big surprise!): it’s only worth praying about if it could happen to us. If it’s happening elsewhere and there’s no danger of it hurting us, then we can put it out of our. There’s no prayer vigil necessary.

Virginia Tech Massacre: A Revelation of Hypocrisy

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:50:16 -0400

The Earth God Made: The Politics of Christian Responsibility

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:11:39 -0400

Christians readily confess to “not being perfect, just forgiven.” Of course, there’s a big difference between reluctantly accepting our weaknesses as humans and happily ignoring our responsibilities. These days, most Christians are unaware of the theology which undergirds our behavior as a culture when it comes to our resources.

The theological condition of our cultural behavior is called the “cultural mandate.” It’s based on Genesis 1.28 “. . . subdue [the earth] . . . ” Here’s how the argument goes: since God told us to subdue the earth and since environmental concerns apparently have no similar theological basis, concerns about the environment are not Christian concerns.

So the cultural mandate has been used to legitimize how we assume we can go about using the resources of the earth. But is it really the case that there is a biblical mandate to do whatever we feel like with the earth God made? That is, is it the case that while, according to the Bible, humans are given authority over the earth, we can therefore abuse it? Think of it like this: parents have authority over their children (also a biblical principle), but does that mean that the parent can do whatever he or she feels like doing to the child? Of course not, the Apostle Paul even warns against it.

Surely it’s reasonable for us to assume that just because we believe we have “authority” over the earth, does not at the same time mean that we have no regard for the well-being of the earth.

Here’s another way to think about it: why not?! Why not bother to care for the earth? There’s only one single reason: selfishness. And let’s note that selfishness is the behavior most disdained by the teachings of Jesus and the behavior most opposed to dominant biblical ethic: love.

This selfishness manifests itself in our personal laziness, insofar as we simply do not want to be inconvenienced. We have a standard of living we are just not willing to give up, so we deliberately choose to ignore all the Christian ethics that question the legitimacy of that standard. The worst, though, is the way our selfishness manifests itself in the alluring green hue of the mighty dollar. This is where it gets insidious.

Currently, it’s the “Christian” (mainly evangelical) position to support political candidates who don’t support environmental concerns. Why? Because such political candidates tend to be politically conservative (whatever that means), and Christians equate conservative politics with Christian values. The same candidates, to the degree to which they reject environmental concerns, support the very corporations doing the most damage. Furthermore, these politicians (the ones assumed to be supportive of Christian values), use their political muscle to protect these corporations from having to either change their practices (which costs money) or invest in environmentally safe processes (which costs money).

Note these two things: (A) just this last week, the Supreme Court decided that the Federal Government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, (B) last week, the most dire report on the environment came out from a prominent panel of scientists from around the world. The big point of this report was not so much that the earth is warming and that much damage has already been done, and that there are countless tangible and measurable results (that much we already knew). The big point was that the effects of all this are going to hit with the greatest severity the poorest people on the planet. That is, the wealthiest are creating conditions which destroy the conditions of the poorest people. Surely we really don’t have to point out how profoundly un-Christian and unbiblical this is?

The United States is five percent of the world’s population (300m out of 6B). However, we produce twenty-five percent of the world’s green house emissions. Now, we also produce things for other parts of the world, but even so, the figure represents a certain poverty of global stewardship. If American Christians claim that we should be a Christian nation and influence the world thusly, then are we not all the more responsible to take care of that over which we were given stewardship? And let us note: we’re talking about the “whole earth” not just the USA.

You’d think so, but after the Supreme Court ruled this week, what was George Bush’s response? It was that (A) we’ve already done enough and (B) we’re not doing anything until polluters like China do. What kind of global leadership does this exhibit? More importantly, is it the Christian norm to say “I’m not going to stop sinning until that sinner over there does”?

Why would someone have this deeply selfish attitude? Let’s note it clearly: this is not at all a Christian perspective. This is about money and the power to make more money. It is not about right and wrong. This is not a moral or ethical issue for George Bush. It is simply and only about money. Admittedly, Bush and his advocates might attempt the feeble claim that this is about national security, which, in the end, only means they equate money with national security, because for Bush, security and peace come from power. These are not the politics of Jesus.

We’ve been given the earth (however we may understand that), and what an infinitely wonderful gift it is. But what kind of depraved people would we have to be to take that gift and destroy it before the one who gave it to us?

Is it really that difficult to accept that the gift of the earth comes with the responsibility to care for it? If we don’t accept that as a biblical mandate, can’t we at least accept that it’s not a bad idea to take care of a gift so deeply precious. And even if we still cannot even accept that, then surely we have to accept that to deliberately and knowingly hurt another human being is contrary to countless biblical mandates, since this is what we know our disregard for the environment has been and is doing at this very moment.

my rights / your rights : a christian perspective on American individualism

Fri, 6 Apr 2007 10:25:03 -0400

All "isms" are fraught with uncritical assumptions. Individualism in the US is no different. When I first arrived in the US , the notion of individualism as it related to individual rights was immediately marked off in my mind as problematic. I'd never really given it any further thought until just a couple of years ago.

My first encounter with this issue was listening to a (rabidly blue-collar, right wing AM) radio show where callers would call in and complain about this and that. One woman, however, made the mistake of calling in to complain about hunters hunting in the woods (legally) adjoined to her own premises. Apparently they would start shooting in the wee hours of the morning and wake her up. The response of the radio host surprised me: “it’s their right to hunt in those woods and you can’t infringe on their rights.” To which she immediately responded with, “what about my right to sleep?”

I’m not sure either of these “rights” are actually included in the Bill of Rights, but I know that at least in most parts of the US there are legal statements to the effect that no one is allowed to disturb the “normal” lives of those around them (whatever that may mean). For me, I tended to side with the woman, but noted no one was breaking the law. Although, if they were hippies having a party in the woods and playing music loudly, rather than exercising their “right to bear arms” by killing animals for fun, I’m sure the radio host would have had a different view.

On the surface this looks like an impasse: each person grabbing for his or her respective rights, but to do so requires the other one to surrender his or her rights. This is where the notion of rights gets caught in the sticky “ism” part of individualism. Neither of these are actually rights, but the “ism” allows us to cook up all sorts of ways to define individual rights which in the end amount to one person insisting that another person does or does not do what another person wants or doesn’t want that person to do.

Basically, the “ism” factor allows us here in the US to act childishly but to coat that childish demanding behavior with a veneer of legitimacy. But it’s only apparently legitimate, it’s not actually legitimate. Playing the “you’re infringing on my rights” card is actually just a way to make it sound like you’re not just in an argument with another individual, you’re actually challenging the history and cherished values of the entire United States of America. But really, you’re likely not going to be in that situation unless you try to stop someone doing something expressly stated in the US constitution and its amendments.

The pursuit of happiness is an idea stated in the US Declaration of Independence. Some people think therefore that anything they do, so long as it makes them happy, is in harmony with the founding ideas of the USA. But clearly, we already infringe upon that popular notion the moment we condemn a pedophile for raping a child. One person’s pursuit of happiness may cause harm to another. I think we should be thinking of this pursuit of happiness in broader terms: i.e., the national/social pursuit of happiness.

Along with that, I think it’s time for us to rethink our approach to the “ism” part of individualism. Not to get rid of it (can’t be done) but to rework it and produce what I personally believe (after reading through some early American lit) is something closer to what the early Americans were aiming for.

In a nutshell, we want to shift the idea of individual rights away from something we grab and make sure we get, to something we ensure other people get. That is, individual rights can only work as a popular system (an “ism”), if it’s about our making sure another person’s rights are respected and not about our making sure our own rights are respected. This is the Christian path to social peace and a well articulated New Testament ethic (Philippians 2:1-4 clearly says to consider other people as more important than yourself.)

The problem is that we tend to forget that an individual is always networked into a society. Promoting the well-being and interests of a society therefore promotes the well-being of the individual. To assume that we should pursue individual interests over and against society’s interests is to deny your own interests as a human being. America is what it is today because the early Americans thought in terms of the individual’s responsibility to society. The pursuit of individualism over and against that ideal is a recipe for social and thus national decline (why China is heading for a meltdown).

The sooner we make life about making it better for others, the sooner it will be better for us. If we then revisit the radio call above, the conversation should have been: “I respect your ‘right’ to shoot at defenseless animals for fun early in the morning and rouse me from my sleep,” or “I respect your ‘right’ to sleep without being woken up by my seeking personal enjoyment through killing defenseless woodsy creatures with my guns.”

Of course, this all connects back to the previous blog in which we considered the blight of the over-involved psyche. The vigorous pursuit of self-validation is malignantly eating its way through Western society. The shift in American culture from a focus on the rights of others to a focus on our own rights is a part of this development. And the contemporary church, which is (A) profoundly uncritical but (B) thinks it’s more philosophically engaged than ever, has of sung about itself all the way on to the bandwagon.

The Christian perspective, and by that I mean the New Testament perspective, understands that the only way to secure your own interests in this life, is to secure the interests of others (Phil 2). This is the Christological or sacrificial disposition. That is, one is most like Christ when one sacrifices one’s interests for the sake of others.