Head Hunters of Borneo

Idyllwild is an artsy kind of town. There are eleven art galleries.  There are gift shoppes with an emphasis on New Age and magic. So I was not surprised when I caught snatches of conversations at the local coffee emporium. “Head Hunter of Borneo ...”; “He was raised in the Belgian Congo ..”; and “You have to understand that Shamans ...”

I was curious, so when talk turned to a seminar about living a more sustainable life I asked where it was. While the seminar was too far away to attend, it gave me an opportunity to talk. I mentioned that I was blogging on related issues from a Christian perspective. Someone earlier had mentioned fighting the “system” so I summarized my blog this way: I talk about how Christians need to leave the system which the Bible calls Babylon the Great. He asked me about this scripture:

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 

Of course he did not know the exact scripture. He asked me if Christians wanted “dominion.” This is a popular jargon word among certain Christians. My answer was that if I had dominion over my living room, I did not dump trash there. He understood. 

We both left satisfied with the conversation, we had emphasized our areas of agreement not where we disagreed. This was a good lesson for me as I usually do not do this. 

This conversation got me to thinking as my family and I walked home. Were there things I needed to “take dominion” over? Do I need to empty the trash, or trim the bushes? What do you need to do to be a good steward over what God has given you? If we want more physical things, or more importantly more spiritual things, should we not first take care of what we have? In one of Jesus parables he told us what happens if we are good stewards:

Mat 25:23  “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’”

Aren’t these the words any Christian longs to hear? 

Fool Me Once ...

The current mania about the imminent end of society reminds me of a scene from Star Trek where Scotty gets deceived.

From the Wikipedia summery of the episode 40 Friday's Child:

Meanwhile the Enterprise receives a distress call from the S.S. Deirdre. Mr. Scott takes the Enterprise out of orbit to find the ship, but when it arrives at the coordinates, he finds nothing. He notes the call strangely asked for the Enterprise by name, and no civilian ship would have direct knowledge of the Enterprise's whereabouts. Realizing he had been duped he races back to Capella IV, but receives another distress signal along the way, this time from the U.S.S. Carolina. Scotty ignores it saying "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."

Have you ever been fooled? I was in the early 70's about the end of the world. I read books like Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive? by William and Paul Paddock,  and The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich.  These books predicted that millions would starve during the 1970's. Only America could save some. Mostly they proposed that America "write-off" countries that were doomed--countries like China and India. These very countries are now booming and this is now a big problem for the good ol’ USA.

No doubt 100 years from now there will be books that declare:  Famine 2075! China's Decision: Who will survive? Here is the first sentence from Erlich's book:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate ...

A decade later Paul Ehrlich made a bet with futurist Julian Simon. Ehrlich picked 5 metals. He "purchased" $200 of each of these metals. At the end of ten years Ehrlich discovered that the prices of the 5 metals had declined and he sent Simon a check for $576.07. The doomsters have been consistently wrong for 100 years, although few of them failed as spectacularly as Paul Ehrlich.

Oddly enough, the main reason that Simon won the bet had nothing to do with the issues he and Ehrlich disagreed on. It was more a function of Paul Volker's monetary policy. I expect that if a similar bet were placed today the outcome would be quite different, especially factoring in the inevitable inflation we will have over the next few years. Ben Bernanke is no Paul Volker.

The irony is that while Ehrlich would win that bet in 2021, he would win for the exact opposite reason that Ehrlich predicts (he still fights the "good" fight of the 60's). It will not be because of the poverty of India and China, it will be because of the millions who are entering the middle class in these countries, and they want meat (well maybe not the Hindus). They want iPods (and the Chinese make them!). It is the wealth of these countries, not their poverty, that will raise commodity prices.

Fear the Boom and Bust part II

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

A fun music tribute to the debate that is going on now about the economy. 

Flee From Babylon?

A friend on a private forum asked me if I thought he should flee. He was not serious, but I thought it worth a look. The passage he had in mind is in Rev 18:

(Warning to Escape Babylon’s Judgment) 

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “‘Come out of her, my people,’  so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; 5 for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.”

Does this mean that one should sell everything, move to a remote area, and wait for the apocalypse? Some say yes. While the answer for me is no, there is some historical information that favors a yes.

Jesus said this in Mat 24:

15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.”

And this in Luke 21:

20 “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city.”

Historically this was fulfilled in the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Suddenly the Romans armies surrounded the city, trapping everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, in the city. Just as suddenly, they left. The revolutionary Zealots rejoiced, for God had delivered them! Christians had a different opinion. They left immediately and journeyed to Pella across the Jordan River.  Jesus' command not to take possessions was good advice because of the political situation.  In addition to the need for haste, it would have been viewed as "unpatriotic" to leave Jerusalem at the height of her victory and God-ordained deliverance. So loading up a wagon would have been dangerous. Instead, Jesus was advising haste and secrecy. Most Christians obeyed and left quickly. Very soon the Roman armies returned, Jerusalem was put under siege, and the people inside the city starved—some even ate their own children. This echoes Rev 6:

5 When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. 6 Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, and six pounds of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

When the city fell, any survivors were enslaved. The number of slaves was so large that the price of slaves dropped to bargain levels for years.

One should not interpret this the way one church did in the early 1970s. They were absolutely convinced that they too would flee to Jordan. Not flee from the troubled Judea, but flee from America to Jordan. They never explained why Jordan would allow 144,000 people to suddenly arrive there, although the leader of the church had many meetings with various dignitaries in the Middle East. Nor did they explain the logistics. One prominent minister suggested that DC-9s would be used.  A fleet of these had all been recently grounded because of metal fatigue which had resulted in 9-inch cracks in the wings. He suggested that the church could buy the fleet at rock-bottom prices, and God would provide 10-inch angels to make the planes safe. The same kind of foolishness is advocated by some religious leaders today. Flee from the wrath to come!

In my next blog post I will explain why I did the exact opposite of what these pundits recommend, and moved from rural Missouri to a community 3 hours from Los Angeles