Finding love

From Sherry Turkle, the author of the book Alone Together, about the effects of the rise of personal technology on human society and relationships (I found the quote at the Futurisms blog at New Atlantis, but the whole interview with Turkle at IASC is also worth reading):

"People are so vulnerable and so willing to accept substitutes for human companionship in very intimate ways. I hadn't seen that coming, and it really concerns me that we're willing to give up something that I think defines our humanness: our ability to empathize and be with each other and talk to each other and understand each other. And I report to you with great sadness that the more I continued to interview people about this, the more I realized the extent to which people are willing to put machines in this role. People feel that they are not being heard, that no one is listening. They have a fantasy that finally, in a machine, they will have a nonjudgmental companion."

Isn't that truly what people want? We want someone who will love us unconditionally, regardless of what we say or do - someone who will be there when we need a friend, listen when we need to talk, and make us feel as though we have some value and worth. In the hidden depths of our hearts, we're terrified of reaching the end of our lives only to realize that we have accomplished nothing meaningful and are going to die alone and unloved. If we can have some kind of affirmation and companionship as we go through life, it helps to assuage those fears, and if we look to some non-human source for that affirmation and companionship, whether it be animals or robots, we can satisfy our emotional needs (or at least dull their ache) without having to endure the risks, pains, and fears of human relationships and meaningful work.

Ultimately, of course, pursuing intimacy and meaning in that way is bankrupt; it may give us comfort for a time, but it stifles our emotional growth and prevents the deepening and maturing of our hearts, and in the end we are left unfulfilled and despairing. But as my brother wrote (in an unpublished document; you can read more of his writing here):

"We are a world devoid of love, a shadow land, hiding itself from the true light, and so we must cast open the windows - no, tear down the very roof. Love is the great irony, the caustic force that banishes the dark and drives out the meaningless. [...] The answer must be to love and love only. The answer must be to live from love, for all action to emanate from love."

What I see in the desperate terrified longing of so many people in our society, in the deep desire for intimacy coupled with the intense fear of pain and worthlessness, is an open invitation to live out the love of Christ in our world - to be the human being who listens to the sorrows and worries of our neighbors, who stands with them through their joys and their troubles, and who loves them unconditionally and without condemnation. In a world where everyone is withdrawing to the comfort and convenience of computer-mediated relationships and robotic companions, we can change lives and bring the gospel into our communities simply by loving, always loving, in all that we do, with genuine, face-to-face love.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The dilemma before us is not whether an individual has the right to pursue their own happiness, but whether they have the right to pursue that happiness at the expense of the well-being of other people; that is, is every road permissible, or are some barricaded for the good of society and the protection of the innocent?

Here is a practical example of what I mean (based loosely on a real story). A woman (let's call her "H") has been with her current husband, "M," for about 10 years. They've been married for 8 of those years, and have 3 children together. But "H" is starting to become tired of the situation. Life has been a hard grind for her the past few years - they've drifted in and out of unemployment and homelessness - and she doesn't see much hope for the future. Honestly, she hasn't been happy in a long, long time, and she's thinking about leaving. Her husband is a nice guy, sure, but she wants more. If the right man appeared, he would seem like a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel she imagines stretching into the years before her - he would seem like a ticket to happiness.

If divorce would truly make "H" happy, does she have the right to take that option, even though "M" had never actually done anything wrong? Does she have the right to hurt him simply for the sake of her personal happiness? If they were dating I would say yes; after she has vowed to stay with him for life and he has built his life around that commitment, I would say no. She has burnt that bridge; she has blocked that road. She is still free to pursue happiness, but not by those means. And what about their children? Does she have the right, in the pursuit of her own pleasure, to split apart their family and destroy their security, to set them up for poverty and broken relationships in their own futures? As their mother, is there some duty that constrains the avenues she is allowed to travel in the pursuit of happiness?

Society suffers when personal happiness is elevated above moral duties and relational responsibilities, because personal happiness is not a strong enough glue to hold families and communities together. It is widely acknowledged that in order to accomplish something wonderful it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice something incredibly valuable; what is not so widely recognized is that it is sometimes also necessary to make that sacrifice in the simple attempt to be a decent human being and fulfill one's duties. And because the task and the goal can seem so mundane - so trivial and ordinary - the sacrifice can be even harder. There is no glamor or glory attached to it, and the dreams of happiness one must surrender sparkle so beautifully (and deceptively) in one's imagination. But when one thinks of the broken hearts and homes that an unbridled pursuit of personal happiness leaves in its wake, it is clear that these duties are not trivial and these sacrifices are not pointless.

So yes, we have the right to pursue happiness, but we do not have the right to pursue happiness with whatever means we choose. Our past choices narrow our future options; our moral obligations further establish the set of paths on which we may travel. But this limiting is what gives strength to the fabric of civilization - and if we work to create happiness on the paths we walk, whatever they may be, that limiting has also given strength of character to our souls.

A reaction to the Economist debate on the "place of women"

Where do you think a woman's "place" is?

Should a woman be in the home, as traditional Western society has stipulated? Or should a woman be in the workplace, as modern feminism argues? (hat tip to Network of Enlightened Women).

Over at the Economist, as linked above, a woman argues that women as a group belong in the corporate working world, and that the choice to remain at home as full-time mothers and homemakers is undesirable for both the women themselves and for society as a whole. That a woman who chooses to remain at home is choosing to leave her potential unfulfilled and to hang as a consumptive deadweight on the beneficence of her breadwinning spouse. That such a woman hurts the "cause" of all women worldwide by her refusal to take up the "responsibility" of every modern woman to work outside the home throughout the entire course of her life. That because men can do something, women shouldn't be allowed not to do it.

Feminism has changed course, or is at last revealing the dark heart of their movement. The cry is no longer for the freedom of any individual woman to choose to work full-time and be respected for that work; now the cry is to remove that freedom to choose by making full-time, life-long participation in the labor force an expectation for every woman. Career-minded women, I have no objection to you pursuing your careers wholeheartedly! It is your life, and you can choose your priorities. But please don't say that, just because it fits your ambitions, it is the only noble goal a woman can have, or the only role she should play. While you fulfill your private dreams and help increase the nation's GDP, I intend to invest in the next generation. I intend to teach young minds to see the world with wonder, to help them learn to love other people, to give them a secure and stable home, and most importantly of all, to train them to follow God. Will my contributions be felt monetarily? Probably not. But I believe and hope that they will be felt through the fabric of society, as I weave in to my small section of it the strong threads of love, faith, and belonging that the family is best equipped and designed to provide.

Race, intelligence, and the love of God

Many people who have studied race and intelligence come to the conclusion that certain races of the human species are more intelligent than others (Asians are at the top, if you were curious). A century or so ago, that conclusion paired up with the newly-popular theory of materialistic evolution to lead to some rather despicable practices and beliefs - like eugenics (particularly racial eugenics, which is simply sanitized genocide), colonialism, justification of race-based slavery, and social darwinism. Even in the US, in the 1910's and 20's, these type of ideas were taking hold and growing quickly. In the next few decades, however, in the wake of German Nazism, these beliefs faded to a hushed undercurrent in the scientific community.

But the ideas didn't go away. Ideas don't, usually. People stop talking about them out of fear, or to maintain a good image, or to help themselves win approval and career advancement, but they still harbor their true beliefs in their hearts and heads. So in the 1960's we see a resurgence of all the old racial prejudices; in particular, one study questioned the value of remedial education for African American children who had been disadvantaged during segregation of schools, claiming that those children were innately less intelligent and would never succeed academically despite receiving additional support and teaching. Needless to say, this sparked quite a debate, that continued through the 90's with publication of books, articles, and rebuttals from both sides. It is interesting to realize that even as the government was striving to do more to promote racial equality in society, scientists were debating about the mere existence of biological racial equality in the first place. More recently, world-renowned figures like James Watson have postulated that the continued poverty and chaos in Africa is due to lower average intelligence of the people there. Some people (most of whom are white supremacists) go even a step further, and suggest that different races also have different moral norms - that Africans are inherently more violent because of their genetics, for instance.

When I read these kinds of theories, it makes me intensely angry. In the first place, it is extremely hard to separate environment from heredity in many of these studies; looking at Africa again, as an example, how would be one be able to be sure that poverty is caused by lower average intelligence and not that lower average intelligence is caused by malnutrition, disease, and the emotional trauma of living in an insecure and war-torn land? And there can be even less certainty with regards to ethical mores! The people who believe that theory forget that their own culture has been steeped in Christianity for centuries - don't you think that might affect where we are today as Western society? In many developing countries, even where Christianity has technically been present for a long time, it has been assimilated into previous modes of thought and operation, leaving them unchanged, and has not in the majority of places been woven into the tapestry of life. True change takes time and the work of the Spirit, not an outward veneer of religion or modernity. Finally, it angers me because it is used as an excuse to withdraw resources and aid from people in these racial groups or from nations consisting largely of certain racial groups. I have read blogs where people argue that because Africans are less intelligent and more violent, we should let them kill each other off in Africa and do nothing about it, regardless of the human suffering involved, and it sickens me.

I don't think that our behavior toward other people, as Christians, should be affected by the truth or falsehood of these theories. Compared to God, we are all unintelligent and full of sin - and yet what do we see in His behavior toward us? He loves us unconditionally and He suffers for our redemption, restoration, and transformation; when He was walking around the earth He provided healing and food for the poor and not always very bright crowds that followed Him and listened to His teaching, and He knelt down in humility to serve the ones He created. So no matter what science or pseudoscience would have us believe about the nature of other people or groups of people, we need to remember that in Christ we are reconciled together in one body (Eph. 2:14-18) and that we are called to consider others as better and more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3-4). There is no permission, in our faith, to condemn others or to consider ourselves superior to others. If they do not know Christ, then our heart's desire should be for their spiritual salvation as well as their physical well-being, and if they do know Christ, then our hearts should break at their suffering for they are our brothers and our sisters. Remember what our Lord said to His disciples at the end of His ministry?

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for on another." - John 13:34-35

I think that might be a good principle to strive to live by, don't you? We cannot rank people (whether by wealth, power, intelligence, or morality) and attend only to those at our level or love only those who are superior and can benefit us or interact with lower than us only with scorn or pity or condescension! We are simply commanded to love one another, with no limits or qualifications.

Racism and eugenics and similar beliefs about the nature of humanity ultimately stem from a worldview that is in outright opposition to the one we claim to hold as children of God - a worldview that would have us believe we descended from apes and that some of us are closed to that ancestor than others, a worldview that would make us think that what seems advantageous in this life (intelligence, health, money, or power) is all that matters because this life is all there is. Believing as we do that humanity was created in the image of God, in beauty and meaning and worth, and that we have an eternal home and purpose, we can look at the human species in all of its diversity and in all of its sinfulness and learn to genuinely love and value each member of it (insofar as we are able with the constraints of time and space and resources) by the grace of the God who first loved us. I'm not saying that this is an easy or a simple task - I am currently finding it quite difficult to respond with love to people who speak callously of the atrocities in the DRC and wish the Africans would destroy each other, for instance! - but it is the task we are called to and it is our responsibility to discover what obedience to that commandment ought to look like in all the situations in which we find ourselves.

Hope in the darkness

I've been struggling to write about anything lately, partly because I've been reading too much too quickly without enough accompanying rumination (and partly because what I have been ruminating about isn't in line with what I try to write about here). I do apologize for that!

With that said, today I still do not have a specific thought or topic in mind, but I do have a general feeling or mood. I've been reading about the state of the DRC, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, about the aftereffects of feminism, about famine and disease across the world, and about finance and economics here in the US, and honestly it's been rather depressing. Everywhere one turns, it seems, the world is rife with sin - really horrifying sin in some places, and in every place sin that is entrenched and unchallenged - and filled with pain. If death is the payment for sin, pain must be the benefits that accompany the salary. In the face of all those problems, especially knowing that they will necessarily become worse if the world follows its current course, it can be hard to remain hopeful about the future. What is there to be hopeful for? Will the DRC, along with other struggling nations in Africa and elsewhere in the world, find healing and restoration? Most likely not, at least in the near future, without a dramatic intervention by God. Will people in the US learn to take responsibility for themselves and the consequences of their choices, and rebuild a stable society? Perhaps, but it seems like at least half of the population is bent on destroying any long-term society in the name of short-term peace and prosperity, so I wouldn't count on it.

Everywhere I look, people are pointing out the problems in the world, and finding someone or some group or some ideology to blame those problems on. Problems in Africa? Blame the blacks (not linking the article I read here as it was really hateful), or Western interference, or the environment! Problems between the sexes? Blame the women who live for their own pleasure and "fulfillment" at the expense of their husbands and children - or blame the men who live with their parents and play video games and overall refuse to "man up"! Problems with the economy? Blame the ones who make irresponsible choices and don't want to live with the struggles they've made for themselves - or blame the ones who sit in power and wealth and increase their gain with corruption and greed! While the articles I linked tend to be courteous and respectful about their arguments (I picked ones I liked, for the most part), there is a lot of blaming going on elsewhere, and the general atmosphere of it is hard to escape. Even when I agree with a point or an argument the net effect is incredibly disheartening (and my recent reading list hasn't even included directly political issues, religious issues, or education issues, which I know from past experience can be even more discouraging to me).

My friends, if we want to change the world, we have to start on our knees. Anyone who chooses to open their eyes can see that there are problems, and anyone born with a sin nature knows the incredible strength of the human desire to follow our own lusts and emotions regardless of the consequences for ourselves or for other people. Problems aren't going to be solved by pointing them out to the people responsible because, all too often, they simply don't care. They have chosen that path, they have seen the consequences, and they have continued to walk down it. The world might go to hell in a handbasket, but at least they did what they wanted as it went. We cannot look to other people for hope, because the basis for hope is not found in humanity but in God.

This is where the dark mood of this post begins to change: in God. While we are not capable of redeeming and restoring the world through our own efforts (witness many generations of attempts and many billions of dollars spent towards these ends throughout history), God is capable of that task. He begins in the heart of each individual and works up from there to restore society, to create beauty, to build stability, and to renew love in community. Looking at the state of our world, it is obvious that this will not be a quick or easy fix - but the Lord of all the Universe has already given His own Son towards the work and we can be sure that He will not fail at what He has begun. There will be restoration, and all things will be new! If we hold on through the darkness to the hope we have received through Christ, we will see that hope fulfilled.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors together with birth pangs until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?" - Romans 8:18-24

I urge you (as one weak and easily discouraged herself, and much in need of her own advice) not to become disheartened and discouraged as you see the world falling apart around you. It has been falling apart ever since man fell first, and only the common grace of God is keeping it together now, and only His saving grace can fully restore and make it right. That is why it is so important, if we truly want things to change, to pray about those things, to lift up those needs and that darkness to the Lord! For we have this promise, in which we hope: that He will accomplish that end and that, in Him, one day, the earth shall be full of joy and love and glory as it is now full of sorrow and bitterness and cruelty. That hope is reason to smile even when faced with the darkness and sin of the world, because we know it will not last and cannot conquer.

The Kingdom comes

I am filled with sadness over the way the world goes, and where it goes, and how it hastens toward evil in the name of good. It's hard to write when there seems to be so little hope.

The problem doesn't lie in a single law, or even in the multiplicity of laws and policies that have accumulated through the years. At one moment the government is regulating adoption in a way that has caused several faith-based agencies to close down rather than go against their consciences; at another they are mandating "free" contraception (including morning-after pills) in a way that will similarly affect those Christian hospitals that desire to serve and provide health-care in accordance with their moral standards. The root of the problem is not in those policies, but rather in the worldview that birthed them, in the ideas and beliefs held by so many people in our nation. Those ideas - that children are an inconvenience rather than a gift; that marriage is a convenient manmade institution rather than a sacrament designed by God; that personal pleasure and convenience are higher goals than self-sacrifice, submission, humility, and love - those ideas have consequences, and we are beginning to see and understand what those consequences will be.

So what ought we to do? Well, first of all, we pray. We pray without ceasing for the hearts and minds and souls of the people of our nation, our city, and our community. More mundanely, we continue to pay the taxes that are required of us, because we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar's, even if those taxes are used for something we disagree with. No one supports the use of their taxes 100% (one could argue that this was particularly true for the people to whom Jesus was speaking). And finally, because we are in a country where we can lift our voices to try to change things, we should not be silent, and because we have a free will and a conscience we ought to make the choice to do what we believe is right, no matter the cost. Just as someone could be a conscientious objector to a war, so we can object on conscience to abortion and contraception. If we are mocked and misunderstood, so be it. Many through history have suffered ridicule and mistreatment for causes far less worthy.

On those issues and on others which have come up before and will arise again, it so often seems that there is nothing that can be done but quietly resist, and suffer in the resistance for the sake of Christ, if God so deems us worthy. It may not seem like things will ever change, or that the world will ever get better. But still we can endure because we know that the victory is already won, hidden though it may be by the fogs and black mists of this world of sin. We cannot often see clearly here, but we can trust with a faith that goes beyond sight. In that faith lies the hope that we will need to cling to when all seems dark and desperate.

In the words of an old children's book, Tales of the Kingdom (as best as I can remember them):

"How goes the world?"

"The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes!"

The fixed points of human life

A very old but very insightful thought:

"I could fill this book with examples of the universal, unconscious assumption that life and sex must live by the laws of 'business' or industrialism, and not vice versa [...] a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful." [...] the hopeful one concludes by saying, 'When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared, are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. [...] Motherhood, they feel [they being men like the hopeful man], and a full childhood, and the beauty of brothers and sisters, are good things in their way, but not so good as a bad wage. About the mutilation of womanhood, and the massacre of men unborn, he signs himself 'Hopeful.' He is hopeful of female indignity, hopeful of human annihilation. But about improving the small bad wage he signs himself 'Hopeless.'" - G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

At Chesterton's time, abortion was just beginning to be more widely advocated, so he could see the philosophical and social problems that gave it a foothold: how the laws of business and industry (which at the time involved a few business men becoming quite rich on the backs of many others who were quite poor), being elevated above the good that is marriage and family, became a justification for the evil of abortion. The elite, not wanting to change their way of life, came up with a solution that allowed them to believe they were improving the lives of the poor, and cared not that it was abominable. Abortion may make people more well-off financially, but it makes them morally poorer and robs them of the riches of loving that unborn child.

Aborted from the mind

I recently read a NYT article about elective twin-reduction abortions (first through the Mere Comments blog, and then through the recommendation of a friend). It is so sad :( Basically, these women discover they're having twins and decide that they can't handle it - they don't have the time, or money, or emotional capacity, etc. So they have one of the twins aborted, and carry the other one as a single pregnancy. Can you imagine what that surviving kid would think and feel if they ever found out?

Honestly, to me this sounds like the same old argument for abortion. Why should we make a pregnant, unmarried teen carry her baby when she doesn't have the money to raise him, or the time to care for him and still make it through school or find a job, or the maturity and life experience to know what to do? So we feel sympathy for her (which is right and good) and allow her to have an abortion (which is not right or good).

The degree to which we as a society approve of abortion goes up as we feel pity for the mother's plight and goes down as we lose that pity. This was noticeable in the NYT's comments on the article above. Those who felt that raising twins was horribly difficult and not worth the fatigue and labor and inconvenience it brought to the mother's life were much more in favor of twin-reduction abortions (and they tried to make it sound morally acceptable by talking about how much more love and attention the mother would be able to give to the remaining child, as if love came in fixed quantities - oops, I gave my first child 100% of my mother-love, so now if I have a second one I'll have to love the first one less! - which is false). Others, who noticed that most mothers opting for this procedure were on the wealthy side, felt that the choice was purely selfish and unnecessary, and thus had far less pity and far less approval.

But none of the commenters (at least none of the many I read) judged it by an objective moral standard. It seemed to come down to whether or not they could justify it somehow, and "feel comfortable" with the procedure. None of them clearly said that the other twin - the one who was killed - was just as much a person as the second. The only difference was that the mother only wanted one child, not two. She had a picture in her mind of a single beautiful baby, and the presence of a second one overwhelmed her and clashed with her desires. Patrick Henry Reardon had it right when he said that "children are now being aborted in the flesh, because they have already been, in large measure, aborted from the mind" - that our culture "has largely stopped thinking of children as gifts from God."

If children are gifts from God, then we have no right to kill them. If they are our own creation, intended to satisfy our own desires, merely "potential" human beings as long as they are still dependent in the womb, then there should be no problem. Why it is any more or less morally reprehensible to abort a single pregnancy than to abort one of twins?

A dangerous worldview

I read an article today about Michele Bachmann, from the New Yorker (hat tip Mere Comments); it was interesting. I don't really know what I think about Bachmann as a political candidate, but that article really made me think. The author was quite obviously not impressed with Bachmann, or rather, quite obviously hoping she wouldn't win and doing everything in his power to give her a negative slant while appearing open and unbiased. Anyway, I think my favorite aspect of the article was the way in which he alternately tried to make her appear laughable or dangerous for having a Christian worldview rather than a merely religious and personal Christianity. So many people who claim to be Christian are only so in a very private way, and act like everybody else on the outside - even when we don't agree with things like abortion, same-sex marriage, pornography, evolution, government welfare, the anti-family bias of schools and society, no-fault divorce, and so on (whatever we think the Bible disapproves of), we try to stay quiet about it so that we aren't laughed at or so that we don't offend those who have no problem with these things. Even when we feel very strongly about the importance and value of things like the family, the home, the Bible, church, truth, global missions, adoption, and even when we think there are better and more Biblically sound (and thus more true to reality) ways of dealing with poverty and broken lives, we stay quiet about it because it is uncomfortable to be vocal for our beliefs when people have already decided they're wrong or foolish. I personally am very prone to this kind of timidity...

Bachmann, apparently, is not so very timid. It seems that in every area of life, both personally and in the public political realm, she has formulated her views based on her faith. Honestly I think that is how it should be. What one believes about the world - about the nature of man, the existence and nature of God, and so on - should fundamentally affect the way one thinks about all the issues that come up in life. If you believe that there is a God, who designed men and women physically and emotionally for each other in the institution of marriage, for example, then you're going to be against homosexual relationships, especially when they're given the name of marriage. (If you also believe that we are all sinners before God and that you are just as much in need of grace as anyone else, the way you express that opposition will be very different than if you are self-righteous and proud.) Similarly, if you believe that there is no God and that moral standards should be created and dictated by society, holding fast to such concepts as autonomy, solidarity, and beneficence, you won't see homosexuality as an issue at all, but rather as something to fight for, so that these people can fulfill their desires just as easily as you can fulfill your desires. Obviously there's way more to say on both sides of that issue; I'm just using it as an example of how one's worldview does and ought to influence their position on current issues.

In addition, if you have one worldview, and someone else has another, it is very likely indeed that you will perceive them as dangerous and threatening, and attempt to discredit them in some way so that their worldview will be discredited by association. This was in large part behind the birth certificate controversy of Obama's presidency, I think - people felt threatened by this man whose worldview was so very different from theirs, and who did not pretend that he wasn't going to make choices based on that worldview, so they tried to discredit him. The author of the New Yorker article is attempting to do the same thing to Bachmann. I wonder if she counts it as an honor, to be mocked because she is considered a threat on behalf of her belief in Christ. It is an honor I think I would like to have... it's this timidity in my personality that keeps getting in the way.

Sisters of Life

Reading the Touchstone Mere Comments blog this morning, I came across a link to a very encouraging article about a group of nuns in New York City who are providing a home and resources to unwed mothers, as an alternative to abortion. They give them a place to live for up to 6 months before the baby is born and up to a year after, which allows the women to study or work and gives them the support they need during a time that could otherwise be extremely hard both emotionally and financially.

Anyway, it is really awesome to see an example of people living out their faith in selflessness and commitment, making a profound difference in the lives of others, so I thought I'd pass it along :)

Thoughts on tornadoes and what follows them

During lunch, I always manage to catch up a little on what's going on in the world because the TV in the break room is left on, and I also am subjected to a barrage of advertisements. I appreciate the former; the latter, not so much! Understandably, the recent/current tornadoes in Missouri and Oklahoma (and really throughout that region of the country, I guess) were the dominating topic on during lunch. The power of a tornado is terrifying, and the devastation it leaves in its wake is so saddening. I've never seen destruction like that in person and it's hard to imagine it being my life, my town, or my home in that situation.

What I found interesting on a somewhat tangential note, though, were a couple commercials that aired during my lunch break. In the first, the camera pans over a scene of destruction - a building is crumpled and torn, with personal belongings strewn randomly over the wreckage, and a family is looking at what had been their home with shock and grief. In the bottom left corner of the screen, this whole time, is the name of an insurance agency, and the commercial ends by saying that this agency is not just a company, but your friend, and will be there for you even in that kind of disaster. The second was a typical commercial for a law firm, pointing out all the opportunities you might have for a lawsuit if you had suffered in the recent storms.

Both of them made me so angry! The first made me more upset, honestly, because the second one verged on being ludicrous. But the first used and manipulated people's emotions - people who have just lived through that devastation or are in immediate fear of it happening to them - simply to gain business. These companies don't air ads just to help other people. After all, they are businesses and they need to gain a profit (I have no problem with that). However, I think they should be honest about that instead of taking advantage of people who are hurting or afraid. It seems like the ethical thing to do.