But You CAN Win

Baldilocks has been giving her take on what “lucky” and “unlucky” mean. I agree with her when she says she doesn’t like describing life in terms of luck. God exists. So does Satan. So does free will. And then there are the countless spirits that affect our lives for good or evil.

I see life in terms of blessings and curses. The curses are more controversial than the blessings. A lot of people–even Christians–get mad if you say misfortune is sometimes caused by sin, or that God sometimes punishes people severely. There is a bizarre movement these days to portray God as Santa Claus. All blessings, no punishment. And of course, that’s silly and utterly wrong. God and his angels killed thousands upon thousands of people in the stories of the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit–yes, the Holy Spirit–killed Ananias and Sapphira dead as hammers, and that was in the New Testament. God gave people tumors, leprosy, blindness…he drowned the entire population of the world, except for eight people, and if memory serves, seven of the eight were spared only because of God’s regard for Noah. He drowned the Egyptian army. He burned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to death, and that includes women and kids. He caused terrible problems for his entire nation, because David took a census. Go ahead and tell me God wouldn’t give you VD or cancer or bankruptcy or whatever you want to name. That may be what Oprah believes. The Bible says otherwise. And like Ralph Richardson said in Time Bandits, God is “the nice one.” Bad behavior leaves you open to attack from less-friendly beings.

I believe your spiritual health consists of a certain number of blessings and a certain number of curses, and a lot of it can be traced to the things you or your ancestors have done in the past. Some people succeed at most things they do, even if they make a poor effort. Others can do everything right and fail time after time. Some highly disciplined people are fat. Lots of irresponsible, weak people are skinny. You can do a lot of things right and fail, and you can do almost everything wrong and succeed, depending on what you have in the spiritual bank. That’s what the Bible tells us, and it’s true. So you should always make investments in the bank. Pray, do alms, try to behave, tithe, find out what sins are closely associated with your family and repent of them, and so on. Sooner or later, the seeds will have to bear fruit. And presumably, the bad seeds you’ve planted in the past will eventually peter out and stop sprouting.

I sometimes find I’m doing bad things my parents or grandparents did, even though these are things of which I disapprove. They sneak up on me; they may take forms I don’t immediately recognize. I am doing my best to drop these practices as soon as I discover them. I don’t want this stuff bearing fruit five years from now.

I suspect that when the Bible says “charity shall cover the multitude of sins,” it means that charity can prevent many of your bad seeds from sprouting. Maybe you can spare yourself some punishment here on earth. Take a look at the 41st psalm and see what you think. The Greek word translated as “charity” is “agape,” which means a benevolent, selfless sort of love, so presumably, what we call charity qualifies. If the 41st psalm is correct, by helping the needy, you can literally make yourself lucky. This is what “he shall be blessed upon the earth means.”

Most Christians worry about going to hell, but they don’t think a lot about leading a blessed life. That’s unfortunate, because it means we end up accepting God and then going on with our lives almost as if he didn’t exist. Missing out on the blessings we were intended to have right here on earth.

Oddly, many of us think God owes us a good time. Most of us don’t tithe or pray regularly or try to avoid sin. Most of us do little for charity, which is remarkable, given the endless opportunity; I don’t understand why I did so little in the past. We do whatever we please, and then when bad things happen, we think God has cheated us, and we ask, “why me?” It would make more sense to look at the good times we haven’t earned and say, “why not me?” A lot of people refuse to believe in God, because they think life would be perfect if he existed. It’s amazing how many of us think we deserve perfect lives, just because God could spare us all unhappiness if he wanted. Apparently God is supposed to be a genie who does whatever we tell him, without requiring us to grow up. And if you love your kids, you’ll let them eat banana splits for breakfast, and you won’t make them go to school. Same thing.

I am trying to make myself more “lucky,” and it’s working. And I do not believe in Oprah Claus.

We Should all be as Heartless as Dick Cheney

One of the things that irks me about perceptions of conservatives is that we are somehow considered less compassionate and less generous than liberals. Of course, these things are not true. In fact, the opposite is true. We give more to charity. We are more likely to offer our lives on the battlefield. We support churches with more generosity.

Here’s some information from Charity Navigator, which is not a political organization:

Who gives the most in America: conservatives or liberals?

A. There is a persistent stereotype about charitable giving in politically progressive regions of America: while people on the political right may be hardworking and family-oriented, they tend not to be very charitable toward the less fortunate. In contrast, those on the political left care about vulnerable members of society, and are thus the charitable ones. Understanding “charity” in terms of voluntary gifts of money (instead of government income redistribution), this stereotype is wrong.

The fact is that self-described “conservatives” in America are more likely to give—and give more money—than self-described “liberals.” In the year 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on average, 30 percent more dollars to charity than households headed by a liberal. And this discrepancy in monetary donations is not simply an artifact of income differences. On the contrary, liberal families in these data earned an average of 6 percent more per year than conservative families.

These differences go beyond money. Take blood donations, for example. In 2002, conservative Americans were more likely to donate blood each year, and did so more often, than liberals. People who said they were “conservative” or “extremely conservative” made up less than one-fifth of the population, but donated more than a quarter of the blood. To put this in perspective, if political liberals and moderates gave blood like conservatives do, the blood supply in the United States would surge by nearly half.

One major explanation for the giving discrepancy between conservatives and liberals is religion. In 2004, conservatives were more than twice as likely as liberals to attend a house of worship weekly, whereas liberals were twice as likely as conservatives to attend seldom or never. There are indeed religious liberals in America, but they are currently outnumbered by religious conservatives by about four to one.

It’s bizarre. We are taken to task repeatedly, simply because we don’t support mindless, incompetent, counterproductive giving that is the result of governmental coercion. The fact that we give freely, on our own initiative, receives no press. And journalists don’t like to point out that a big percentage of the “generous” liberals who vote for government handouts are likely recipients of the money in question. How is it generous to vote for the government to take someone else’s money and give it to you?

Still, I wonder if we do enough. My impression is that Satan steps in wherever he can find a moral fault with believers. Marxism, which is unquestionably Satanic, got a foothold because the lives of the lower classes were so wretched. They weren’t getting an even break. Had the upper classes treated workers better, it would have been harder to motivate them to generate social turmoil by fomenting revolution. Like Fred Smith (founder of Fedex) once said, no company gets a union unless it deserves one. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but maybe the principle is correct.

I wonder if private giving is everything it should be. I tend to doubt it. For example, I’m fairly sure tithing is uncommon. If it were the rule and not the exception, a substantial percentage of American incomes–maybe five percent–would be going to churches. And they wouldn’t know what to do with the money; they’d spend much more of it on social organizations. Charities would be swollen with capital.

I wonder about this because we have a political crisis on our hands. People who have no idea how economics works are blindly electing leftists who will eventually ruin us with their false generosity. And maybe we could reverse this trend if the needy were being served better by private organizations.

On the other hand, much of what is characterized as “need” is actually greed. It may be that perceived need always increases with the availability of handouts. Maybe increasing our giving will increase demand. But there’s a difference between private and governmental handouts: private handouts can be distributed with competence. The government doesn’t care if you deserve money. They only care if you vote. Private charities consider themselves stewards. Like Hebrew National, they answer to a higher authority.

Interesting question.

Whatever the answer is, I think we should all hope to be as lucky as the much-maligned Dick Cheney, who has given millions to charity. Not only did he and his wife make huge donations; they made donations that were huge in proportion to their total income. I would love to approach the Pearly Gates with something like that on my resume. It must be wonderful to find yourself in a position where you’re able to do that much good.

The odd thing about all this is that conservatives are doing a pretty good job of giving, and liberals are not, yet the political fortunes of liberals are waxing while ours wane. And one diabolical result of the move from private to governmental charity is that the givers are losing their blessings. The Bible makes it clear that we are not to give out of coercion. It apparently pleases God very, very little when a government forces people to do charity. So we are still losing the money, but we are not getting the full benefit of giving.

Another problem is that people feel entitled to government money. It therefore corrupts them. They become spoiled and ungrateful. When you have to go to a private entity or an individual for help, you know you’re getting a favor. You realize help is not certain. That has to be less corrupting.

I am not generous by nature. I had to be taught. Here (again) is a helpful passage from the Psalms; I had it printed on a Cafepress mug so I would have it in front of me:

1 Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.

2 The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.

I consider that a set of promises, and I cling to it. I don’t believe God would put things like that in scripture, yet would not be willing to back it up. God does not give lip service. The Bible also says that when you give to the poor, you lend to God. And God always pays interest. You get something in return, and it appears that the best way to characterize it is to call it God’s favor. It’s not just a monetary transaction. You may be blessed with money, but the only thing you can be sure of is that he will take notice of you and watch out for you, as he did in the case of Cornelius the generous centurion. That’s how I see it at this time.

I don’t know if generosity can save conservatives from political failure, but I am sure it can save individual Christians from the curses that hit us as a nation. I suppose we are reaching the point where that will have to suffice.

Cancer

Sad news from Aelfheld, who blogs over at Operation Enduring Service.

He has a friend named Dan Howell. Dan is a firefighter in Beaumont, Texas. His sister Mary Ellen has cancer. It’s in her lungs and lymph nodes, and it has gone to her brain. Right now she is also fighting an infection. The family is asking for prayer.

Here is a link to OES. Here is a link to Mary Ellen’s page on the Caringbridge website. It’s a nonprofit-owned site that provides individual blogs for patients.

Except Maybe for Al Franken

Okay, I have a new Glenn Beck theory, and it’s starting to worry me. I hate to think my idol may be a total fraud, but I have to go where the evidence leads me.

1. He started the 912 project.

2. Half of 912 is 456.

3. The number 456 is divisible by 3.

4. If you divide the devil’s number, 666, by 3, you get 222.

5. Room 222 was a popular TV show back in the Seventies.

6. The star of Room 222 was Michael Constantine.

7. Constantine was the leader of the Holy Roman Empire.

8. Roman Polanski is a pedophile.

Don’t shoot the messenger. All I did was connect the dots. Let me know if you can help me with the last leg of the puzzle. I’m trying to connect this to Kevin Bacon.

I really hope Keith Olbermann doesn’t take credit for this.

By the way, I’d appreciate it if someone could identify the lube Olbermann uses to coat his hair, face, and eyeglasses. It looks like it would be great for machine tools.

More

I have an alternate theory.

8a. New York is the Empire State.

9a. The French word for “state” is “etat.”

10a. Louis XIV said, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

11a. In the opening run of Camelot, the song “C’est Moi” was sung by Robert Goulet.

12a. Robert Goulet once locked his wife in a car trunk.

Man, this one gives me chills.

Christianity Will be Blamed

I got some information about the Nigerian “child witch” crisis.

I contacted World Vision about it, and they informed me that they don’t work in Nigeria. So there goes that option. But I found a few other things.

First of all, there is an organization called Stepping Stones Nigeria, which specializes in helping Nigerian children. It appears to be a purely secular organization, but they are getting things done.

Second, a Nigerian man named Sam Ikpe-Itauma has started his own charity. It’s called CRARN (Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network). He began by taking a few kids into his house, and now he has a school and various projects going. He doesn’t have a donation link up on his site, but there are instructions that will allow you to transfer money. Personally, I’m a little leery of letting my bank information get to Nigeria, regardless of the purpose.

Third, Catholic Relief Services and ADRA work in Nigeria (ADRA is the charitable arm of the Seventh-Day Adventists). It’s not clear whether they are doing anything for these kids, however.

This isn’t just a Nigerian problem. It’s a Christian problem. The people behind this mess are Christian pastors. The most prominent is a woman named Helen Ukpabio. She has a big church, and she sells videos, including videos on witchcraft. She encourages people to bring their children to the church to be delivered. I don’t know whether it’s true that pastors are encouraging torture, murder, and abandonment, but they don’t seem to be doing much to stop these things, and their teachings on witchcraft appear to fan the flames. If Nigerian pastors are taking these kids in and helping them, they aren’t saying much about it on the Internet.

If Christians don’t step up to the plate and put a quick stop to this cruelty, someone else will. Once that happens, it will be very hard to defend ourselves from charges that we caused this problem and did nothing to stop it. We will be accused of approving of it. If our enemies succeed in tarring us as nuts who support the torture and starvation of children, we will find ourselves in a situation in which every Christian who comes forward with an honest testimony about witchcraft or demons will be treated like Josef Mengele.

One famous American Christian has already been sideswiped by this disaster. As you will recall, Sarah Palin was criticized because her church hosted a Nigerian pastor known for his opposition to witchcraft. A lot of conservatives and Christians hope Sarah Palin will do great things in the future, but now she has a Nigerian PR time-bomb waiting to go off. Most people didn’t draw a connection between the pastor and the persecution of Nigerian children, but sooner or later, the dots will be connected. Then she’ll be Sarah Palin the Child Inquisitor.

In God’s Name, no Less

Before I went to bed last night, I read something that horrified me. Drudge linked to a story about Nigeria’s “child witches.” These are kids who have been abandoned because they have been accused of witchcraft.

In Nigeria, Christianity has been combined with sick local idolatry, and the result is a religion in which people calling themselves pastors bring themselves prestige by exposing people they claim are witches. Many of the accused are small children. When they are accused, they are subjected to torture in hopes of correcting them. Many are abandoned. Some are killed. It is beyond belief.

I know the world is full of suffering. I am not ignorant. But when I read this story and saw these lonely kids sitting in a group, one of them holding a sign reading, “We are not witches or wizard [sic],” I suddenly regretted being single, because it meant there was no way I could apply to adopt any of them. I realize how crazy that sounds. Truthfully, I don’t like being around kids. A lot of single men pretend they adore kids, in order to impress women; I am too lazy to put up a front. I don’t know what to do with kids, and they get on my nerves. It’s pretty unusual for me to perceive a kid as cute, or to want to interact with it. I do not understand the urge people feel to hold other people’s babies. But I know how it feels to be a child who suddenly fears he can’t rely on his parents to take care of him, and to worry about being alone in the world, and I can’t even imagine how much worse it is when those fears pan out. And to have your parents participate zealously in your ostracism and persecution? I can’t think of a way to express my amazement and distress. I think that photo will be in my head for the rest of my life.

I sent an email to World Vision, to see if they would put a link on their site so people could send money to help these kids. I don’t know if they’ll answer.

Another item of interest: I keep thinking about Against All Odds, and the many stories of Jews defeating powerful enemies in the face of overwhelming military superiority. When you read stories like that, it’s easy to be encouraged. You think, “Look what God does for people he favors. This can happen to me.” But last night, I thought about the other side of the sword. What if you’re the Arabs, and you don’t even know it?

Think about those military battles. The Jews had fewer weapons. They had fewer troops. They had every reason to lose. I grant you, modern Muslims are generally sorry soldiers. Nonetheless, they should have beaten Israel by now. They did a lot of things right. They came in superior strength. They used surprise. And so on and so on. And they failed, utterly.

A lot of people, including Christians, are like the Arabs. They live under curses, for one reason or another. They do things right, yet they fail. Over and over. If God can help a few Israelis rout a huge number of angry Syrians, he can prevent you from getting a job. He can keep you from marrying or having kids. He can make your enemies win. The Psalms are full of this stuff. If you want peace and abundance–the lasting kind, not the fleeting or illusory kind some people get in spite of their bad behavior–you have to clean up your life.

I’m going to keep that in mind. I already knew wrong living would bring me problems, but somehow, looking at it like this makes the principle more real to me. Maybe it will be of use to you, too.

Not all Junk Mail is Junk

Today I looked over an annual report from one of my favorite charities, World Relief. Ordinarily I am tempted to throw this stuff out because I can’t imagine how the contents could be information I don’t already have, and I can’t see how it would change my mind about anything. But I felt I should take a look.

It’s remarkable. Two things struck me. First, the abject misery of many of the people they help. Second, the amazing things very small amounts of money are doing for these people.

As an example, let me point to their loan program in Burundi. They call the program Turame. The average first loan is $47, and subsequent loans range from $80 to $160. The report says 1% of these loans are considered at risk of default. Maybe they should be running Fannie Mae.

Loan recipients sometimes use the money to bulk up their small businesses, such as shops. One lady mentioned in the report added flour and soft drinks to her inventory, so now her earnings are up. And she supports five kids. That’s a great return on such a small investment. And it’s not even a donation; the money is going to come back to World Relief.

They have another program in Rwanda, where many of the men have been killed by genocide. World Relief has rounded up 200 widows, and they’re growing flowers for the essential-oil market. Being a widow is tough anywhere. In Rwanda, it must be a hellish existence. But these ladies are getting help.

In Mozambique, World Relief is improving irrigation and teaching people to grow things like papayas and mangoes. And they’re learning how to manage the soil so they have a future.

The report says 89% of their assistance goes to women. They cite several reasons. Women are more likely to be exploited in prostitution or human trafficking. Women have less access to banks and so on. But there’s another reason at which the report only hints. Many African families are fatherless. Fathers die in war and from AIDS, and there is also a serious problem with African fathers abandoning their families. It’s not PC to say it, but it’s true; Africans themselves complain about it.

Fathers are important. To people who say you can raise fine children without a father present, let me respond: you can also lead a long, fulfilling life with no legs. That doesn’t mean it’s how people should live. Some people grow up and prosper in spite of absent or inadequate fathers. On the other hand, many do very poorly.

Reading the stories and looking at the photos, you can see how little hope these people have when left to their own devices, and how much it means to them when someone shows up and enables them to help themselves.

The world is a peculiar place. One of the worst kinds of evil is to do someone else great harm in order to reap a small benefit. To pull an example out of thin air, think of a wealthy man who drives a family off of a small property in order to take the land and add a tiny percentage to his own income. On the other hand, sometimes you can do someone else a great deal of good by doing something that has a trivial cost to you. Forty-eight bucks? That’s dinner for two at Outback.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is also doing great work. They put $2 million into the restoration of 32 bomb shelters in rocket-plagued Sderot. They’re flying Jews to Israel from all sorts of miserable places. They send workers to help poor Jews in the former USSR, including elderly Jews who are alone and live in utter squalor. They’re helping West Bank settlers who apparently have more faith in God’s promises than in their government’s hopes of appeasing Israel’s hostile neighbors.

I had no idea how big their budget was. They took in around $78 million last year! And almost all of it came from American Christians who were thrilled to donate. It’s too bad the IFCJ can’t attract more money from Jews. Even the Israeli government acknowledges the IFCJ’s gigantic impact. They’ve made Rabbi Eckstein (the IFCJ’s leader) their goodwill ambassador to evangelicals in Latin America, which has traditionally been a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Now Christians down there can hear him on the radio, and they are sending support.

Here’s something weird: Rabbi Eckstein has a bona fide ministry…to Christians! He puts out DVDs explaining Christianity’s Jewish roots. They’re very good. What a strange time we live in.

Socialism, with its oppression, totalitarianism, and hatred of God, comes to those who deserve it. These days, when I criticize the government for taking our money and using it to addict the undeserving poor to vote-buying handouts, I am careful to remember that unless private charity steps up to the plate, Americans will look very bad, complaining about entitlements. In the past I haven’t done what I should. I’m glad there are so many opportunities to correct that.

Math Makes my Head Hurt

I just had an Oskar Schindler moment.

A while back I went to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews site, and I ordered one of their free DVDs. I always take anything that’s free. I watched most of it yesterday. Wonderful stuff, about the Jewish underpinnings of Christianity. And of course, during the breaks, they talked about what the IFCJ does. At one point, they showed Ethiopian Jews, walking off an airplane onto the tarmac at Ben Gurion. I think it was a mother and two small kids.

A thousand dollars. That’s about what they cost. It costs $350 per person for you to fly a Jew to Israel, via the IFCJ’s On the Wings of Eagles program, so those three people represent about a thousand dollars.

I was thinking about that a minute ago, and I thought of Eliot Spitzer, spending $5500 an hour on prostitutes. For the price of an hour you could bring about 16 people to Israel. Lives changed forever. Oppression, gone. Persecution, gone. Charitable operations that give people one-time gifts of food and clothing are wonderful, but those things are of fleeting value. Change a person’s nation of residence, and with one act, you’ve made a change that will bless that person every day for the rest of his life. What if Eliot Spitzer had decided, on ten occasions, to send Jews to Israel instead of hiring prostitutes? There would be 157 people in Israel now, who would owe him a debt they could never repay. So easy for him, so hard for them.

I know it’s a crazy way to think. Unless Spitzer is very unlike other wealthy Jews, he has given plenty to charity. And if he hadn’t spent the money on prostitutes, he probably would have spent it on some other selfish item, and we all do that. It’s part of life. But it’s fascinating to think of the very different ways in which the same sum of money can affect the world. An hour of stupidity and lust, or sixteen changed lives.

I guess this is why I like telling people about matching gifts. Just as money spent on prostitutes differs from money spent flying poor Jews to Israel, one charity dollar spent on one program can differ from money spent on another, if the second program has a matching gift. For a certain sum, you might buy ten pounds of rice for people in Africa, or you might buy a hundred and fifty pounds, because various corporations match your gift. Money is so strange. One sum can do so many different things.

The IFCJ’s program has something many charities lack. Measurable, substantial, final results. As I said earlier today, they say they’ve flown over 300,000 Jews to Israel. Think of that! One in twenty Israelis! It’s not like other efforts, like the one in Darfur. People give and give and give, and years pass, and it seems like nothing changes. The bucket has a hole in it. Obviously, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give to people with persistent, stubborn problems. But there is something wonderful and reinforcing about knowing you accomplished something that can’t be undone.

Other charities have opportunities that are equally quantifiable, if less lasting. You can use the Gift Catalog at World Vision and buy a certain number of named items for a given price. For example, Bibles at $18 each. If you were to spend $72, you would know that somewhere in the world, four people had Bibles you paid for. You wouldn’t wonder if your contribution ran out of a hole in a sack in a grain warehouse. You wouldn’t wonder if some local fat cat skimmed it off the top. You could make yourself a list, and whenever you got discouraged about giving, you could look at the list and see the things you put in the hands of individuals. You wouldn’t necessarily know who they were, but you’d know what they got. Charities often have a “where most needed” option, and that seems like the most logical way to direct your money, but maybe the reinforcement of knowing exactly what you gave outweighs the benefit of doing more good, because it might make you more likely to continue giving.

The Gift Catalog is very humbling. You look at the things World Vision’s beneficiaries are thrilled to receive, and it breaks your heart. A small fishing kit. A single blanket. A handful of seeds. Seriously. Go look.

I guess that when you decide you want to give, you have a responsibility to shop, the same way you would shop if you were buying a computer or a refrigerator. This is why I generally turn down people who solicit money on the street. I usually can’t make a sound decision in five seconds. And I guess that when you decide what luxuries you want to buy for yourself, you might be smart to think about how many blankets or fishing kits the money would buy. Maybe that’s the way to understand how blessed you are and how much you owe to God. I have a custom-made suit I have probably worn six times. Suddenly I’m ashamed of it.

Don’t start telling me I’m an angel. If you read this blog, you know better. God has done a lot of work on me over the last couple of years. God gives you the ability to be good, and then He gives you the pleasure, and then He gives you a reward for it. How wild is that? If I had had my way, I would have stayed the same or gotten worse.

Lately I feel better about being good. Isn’t that crazy? Why would anyone need to feel better about being good? I have absorbed a lot of garbage from my surroundings, and I have made it part of me. For many years, I tried to squelch the empathy and openness I was born with, because I was surrounded by aggressors. Maybe God is peeling that uncomfortable crust off of me.

I had an idea the other day. A way someone could do a tremendous amount of good with no exertion and no cash out of pocket. You could put up a blog–Blogspot would be adequate–and you could contact a few charities. You could ask them to email you when they had special opportunities or needs or matching gifts. Then you could post links every day or two. People could come by when they wanted to see what was available. And if they wanted, they could copy the code from the latest entry and repost it on their own sites. Pretty easy.

Turns out the domain “matchinggifts.com” is taken. But it’s not a very good site. I couldn’t get it to work.

Maybe someone more focused than I am will figure out a way to do it.