The Way It's Meant to Be

So I'm in a Harrisburg, PA hotel room this morning getting ready to go take a training class. I'm half-listening to ABC's morning show, and they announce that super-rich Warren Buffet is giving 85% of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation. I also heard last week that Gates was stepping down from day-to-day obligations at Microsoft to focus on philanthropy.

The female anchor is interviewing this "Warren Buffet expert" and says something about "is it possible that these billionaires are getting better at helping poor nations than our own government?" and I'm thinking duh! Not only are they better at it, they're the ones who are supposed to be doing it!

In a perfect world, as society matures, we should have more and more Warren Buffets and Bill Gates doing the philanthropy thing. The rich and powerful should step up to the plate and help the weak and poor. That's kinda the point of being in a society.

Unfortunately, human beings are evil in nature, and the vast majority of the wealthy have only one thing on their mind - getting to be more wealthy. Now don't get me wrong, I have NO problem with wealth, and frankly, I tend to favor the idea of having it. But those with wealth should use it responsibly, and part of that use should be caring for the sick and poor and downtrodden.

This is NOT the government's job. It is NOT the government's responsibility to take MY money and redistribute as they see fit. The government is there for national defense, treaties and dealings with other nations, national infrastructure, stuff like that. Philanthropy, charity, all of that stuff - that should come from the private sector.

Not only is it not the government's job to redistribute wealth, they are amazingly bad at it. Congress people are just like the wealthy - they see big numbers and they want more of it. They are inefficient. And they use money for things like multi-million dollar bridges in Alaska that benefit 50 people who have gotten along fine for a very long time without a bridge. These are not the people to be trusted with millions and billions of dollars of charity and financial aid.

So three cheers for Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Warren Buffet's investing prowess helped businesses grow, open new stores or expand product lines, which in turn employed more people, meaning more people were eating in restaurants and taking vacations, which means more restaurants and hotels were hiring, and everybody was paying taxes. Microsoft has changed the way we live, made us more productive, opened up lines of business of which we never dreamed, and in doing so created jobs around the world. Both of these men earned every penny by creating jobs and helping our economy and economies around the world.

And now they're using all that wealth to help the poor, the oppressed, the uneducated, the sick, and the starving. They are examples of societal leaders heading in the right direction. I hope a lot more of the wealthy and powerful follow their lead.

Democracy in Iraq: Will it Work?

PC warning: the following post is not in any way, means, shape or form politically correct. Liberals and anyone not from America will also find themselves screaming "arrogant American" before they get even half-way through the post. You have been warned.

As discussed in previous posts, I have no problem with us being in Iraq:
- Bush did not lie, he was going off the same intel info that other world leaders had, they all believed Hussein had WMDs, and everybody was surprised to not find any.
- Hussein had blatantly violated 18 or 19 UN resolutions, including ones that clearly stated that he was gonna get his butt kicked if he didn't comply. (Unfortunately, the UN didn't have the guts to back up the resolutions itself, so we did it.)
- Hussein was a ruthless murderer and needed to be taken out. If we hadn't done it, the very same people who are whining about us being in there would be whining that we weren't using our power to stop him from killing thousands and thousand of Iraqis every year.
- Terrorists were attacking us on our soil as well as abroad. The Taliban supported terrorists. Hussein supported the Taliban. He had to go.

As long as the mullahs are allowed to weave hatred of everything non-Islam, and especially hatred of America, into the education system, the area will continue to be unstable and a breeding ground for terrorists. The Arabic royalty give the mullahs free reign in return for their support. The only real way to combat this is our representative republic means of governing. In other words, I agree that we need democracy in the area, to open up freedom of thought and speech, and combat the brainwashing of the mullahs.

My only concern is that the area simply isn't ready for democracy. A representative form of government requires a certain, um, societal maturity. I'm not convinced that the societies in that area of the world, or at least in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at the point where they can handle debate, compromise, study of issues, consideration of all viewpoints, and all the other things that go along with voting for leaders and having them represent the populace.

Many people in America simply do not understand the Arab/Muslim society. It cannot be compared to ours. We're not talking apples and oranges here, we're talking apples and elephants - WAY different way of life, WAY different sense of right and wrong, WAY different set of values, etc. A lot of people don't understand why Sunnis and Shias are going after each other - they're both Islam, right? Just different denominations, right?

Wrong.

Christian denominations get along because Christ never commanded that anyone who doesn't believe EXACTLY the right way MUST be killed. He basically said that if you don't get it right, things won't be pleasant, but He didn't say "kill the infidel." However, this IS the Muslim take on things - if you don't believe EXACTLY the right thing, you must die - even down to what we would consider to be ticky-tacky differences between Sunni and Shia.

But wait, doesn't the Koran say "tolerate the Christian and the Jew", etc.? Well, that part of the Koran was written when Mohammed's new religion was a tiny minority surrounded by lots and lots of other people of other religions. He was telling his followers to play nice so as to survive. But later in the Koran, after Islam had grown and had some muscle to flex, Mohammed suddenly changed his tune and headed down the "kill the infidel" path.

Oh, c'mon, Doug, Islam is all about peace and love and the ones doing all the killing are just radical extremists that the average Muslim detests. Really? Then why doesn't the average Muslim rise up in outrage and turn these people in? Why doesn't the average Muslim say, "Hey, you're giving the rest of us a bad name, and you don't stand for what we believe, so we're taking you out ourselves."? Remember, silence implies consent, and when you think about all the heinous things terrorists have done around the world in the last 30 years, the average Muslim has been amazingly quiet.

So what we have, if we drop the pretenses and political correctness, is a barbaric, tribal society, bent on "my way or the die way", where insults are remembered (and retaliated against) for hundreds of years, where decisions are made by strength and force - and we're trying to introduce a means of governance that relies on compromise, rule of law, fair treatment, etc. Can they handle this? I doubt it.

What would the Arab world be like if they didn't happen to be sitting on all that oil? Do you know that the Iranians can't even refine their own oil? They don't have the technical know-how. They ship the crude out and import gasoline. The only reason that area of the world has any technology whatsoever is because they can buy it. I would love to see what their society would be like if they hadn't stumbled onto pretty much unlimited wealth, and therefore were of no interest to the rest of the world at large.

So we were justified going in, we're doing good things there, and I think that many Afghanis and Iraqis appreciate what we have done for them and what we are giving them. But until they police themselves and remove the trouble makers who are still living in the medieval ages, they won't be ready to take the step forward into democracy.

God? or Coincidence?

I'm putting together a band called the skywire project. I've been posting for musicians for about 8 weeks. I have had a lot of responses from drummers (including a response 20 minutes after I put out the very first posting!) and also connected with Leah, our lead vocalist, in short order. My daughter Chelsie plays rhythm guitar, so we had enough of a band to start practicing relatively quickly.

However, the lead guitarist and keyboardist positions were a lot tougher to fill. I got no lead guitarist responses for quite a while. Suddenly a couple of weeks ago I got three of them, but none of them worked out. Finally I heard from Mark, who sat in with us last Saturday and was a joy to work with; he's coming back this Saturday to continue our audition of him and his audition of us.

And just in the last couple of days did I get a response from a keyboardist. It's the only keyboardist response I've gotten the entire time. Jesse sounds great, very excited, and we're going to work together this Saturday.

What I'm thinking about is this: What is God's role in all of this? One thing I heard all the time, and spoke it myself on several occasions, was "be patient - God will bring the right person at the right time." Did He really? If so, why did He wait? Is it possible that maybe it just took this long for these musicians to stumble across my postings? I know that God is blessing this band, I can feel His favor upon it, but is He micromanaging to the point of directing specific people to be in it? Or is He happy as long as we have competent musicians who play music that honors Him and He really doesn't care who specifically is in the band? Could it be that it took 8 weeks for a keyboardist to reply simply because there aren't that many keyboardists in the area who wish to be in a Christian band, and not because God was trying to teach me some kind of lesson in patience?

If God is such a micromanager, why did He give us free will? If He's going to direct every little aspect of our life, what do we need a will for? Or is He directing certain critical things, but otherwise He's given us the Bible with His set of instructions, and wants us to use them to live a life pleasing to Him - and the details are up to us, as long as we stay within His general will?

But then again, why not? Why couldn't or wouldn't God be involved with individual believers on a minute-by-minute basis? He certainly has the power to do so; after all, He created everything that exists, He's all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-hearing, all-everything. And we were created because He desired to have a relationship with us. He walked hand-in-hand with Adam and Eve in the garden, talking and laughing and loving with them one-on-one. Why would He create us just to ignore us or only be involved with us on an occasional, high-level basis? Is He some kind of voyeur, watching from a distance? What fun is that?

The corollary to this is: Is everything bad that happens attributable to Satan? Well, in the long run you could technically say "yes" because Satan tempted Eve and introduced sin into the world, but I'm thinking more on a case-by-case basis. For example, the praise band at my church was going through a great deal of turmoil at one point. Certain people were all "we're under attack from Satan, he doesn't like what we're doing and he's trying to bust us up." But I'm thinking, maybe it's just because some members of the band simply didn't like each other, there were some egos and jealousies involved, and maybe we just plain ol' behaved badly. I'm sure Satan took delight in it, but do we really need his direct involvement and guidance to screw things up?

Honestly, I don't think so - I think we can do a fine job of sinning on our own. I think blaming Satan for every bad thing is a cop-out and an abdication of our responsibility for our part in the situation. There needs to be a little less "Satan is attacking" and a little more "I was a real jerk, I need to apologize, and then I need to make some behavioral changes" going on.