Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Rank
Pete Wilson Mar 26, 2010 7:09 AM - Show original item
Studies are proving we’re not really driven by the idea that “money buys happiness.” Somehow I think we all knew that as we connected the dots and came to the reality that more money didn’t really give us true happiness.
So what does motivate us to buy more, spend more, flaunt more.
It turns out it’s even darker than we originally thought. A new study shows that we’re really not that concerned with whether we make $50,000 or $150,000 as long as we make more than our friends, colleagues and people we went to college with. It’s not the money we’re really after, it’ status.
According to THIS ARTICLE the higher we rank above the people in our circles the greater the sense of happiness and self-worth we tend to have.
The higher a person ranked within his age group or neighborhood, the more status he had and the happier he was regardless of how much he made in dollars (or, in the study’s case, pounds). “What we’re trying to do is understand and explain why, over 30 to 40 years, the large economic growth we have experienced hasn’t made us any happier,” says Boyce. “If absolute income matters, as we increased our income, everybody should get happier at a national level, but we don’t seem to. So what we are showing is that in terms of life satisfaction, rank is a better predictor than absolute wealth.”
In our blinded desire to to beat the person next door we have absolutely secured the reality that enough will never be enough.
We’ll always find someone…
living in a bigger house
driving a newer car
obtaining a larger bonus
I think in some ways I’ve fooled myself into thinking I’m doing “really good” because money doesn’t matter to me. However, the truth is I’ve still given “rank” too much importance in my life.
At some point I’ve got to decide. When is enough, enough?
At some point I’ve got to come to grips with the fact that my identity is not based on what I earn, what I have, or where I rank.
At some point I have to realize this game is doing immense damage to my ultimate goal of Christ being formed in me.
Anyone else struggle with this?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Death of Curiosity from Without Wax
I used to be more curious than I am today. I’m afraid my curiosity quotient has gone down over the years not only impacting my leadership but also impacting the wonder and awe I have for my Creator.
Somewhere along the way I became seduced by words like instant and ambition. I actually started to think faster was always better. I started to convince myself that ambition was a way of life.
Last night I finished Sabbath by Dan Allender. It was a great book (more on this later) but he had a quote that I just can’t shake. He said,
“Ambition leads to the demand for the shortest path between points to gain the most in the least amount of time; wonder calls the heart to explore the unexpected, nonlinear paths that often create a new unity that could not be expected when one first began.”
My translation: Hurry + Ambition = Death of Curiosity
I want to be filled with…
More questions and less conclusions.
More mystery and less assumptions.
More wonder and less equations.
Are you living a rhythm of life that leads to curiosity?
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Interesting
Conservatives, Evangelicals, Haiti: Surprising Shifts on the Ground
Soon after the earthquake hit Haiti, I noticed something that surprised me. I studied things on the ground for a few more days before I commented because I wanted to be sure that my observation was correct. When I mentioned my observation on Twitter, the liberal backlash was fierce and I actually started getting hate mail, harassing phone calls, and more.
80% of the people on the ground that left the United States to bring help and hope to Haiti were conservative, evangelical Christians. They weren’t passing out bibles either. They were doing HARSH, horrific work. Unmentionable stuff in the early days and the hardest work around in the first few weeks.
I didn’t make this observation to brag. I am not a part of this group. I am a part of the shrinking minority that still loves President Obama :-) The observation surprised me. The American organizations on the ground that were getting stuff done ALMOST ALWAYS had evangelical roots -i.e. World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Compassion, etc.
One of my heroes, Nicholas Kristof (a beloved liberal journalist) just wrote about this same observation all around the world in the NY Times. In it, he offers some surprising observations and solutions for both sides. Here’s the article. It is a must read!
Learning From the Sin of Sodom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”
Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.
A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?
It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.
World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.
A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.
“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?
“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”
Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”
In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)
Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!
The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”
Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.
One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.
Interesting
Conservatives, Evangelicals, Haiti: Surprising Shifts on the Ground
Soon after the earthquake hit Haiti, I noticed something that surprised me. I studied things on the ground for a few more days before I commented because I wanted to be sure that my observation was correct. When I mentioned my observation on Twitter, the liberal backlash was fierce and I actually started getting hate mail, harassing phone calls, and more.
80% of the people on the ground that left the United States to bring help and hope to Haiti were conservative, evangelical Christians. They weren’t passing out bibles either. They were doing HARSH, horrific work. Unmentionable stuff in the early days and the hardest work around in the first few weeks.
I didn’t make this observation to brag. I am not a part of this group. I am a part of the shrinking minority that still loves President Obama :-) The observation surprised me. The American organizations on the ground that were getting stuff done ALMOST ALWAYS had evangelical roots -i.e. World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Compassion, etc.
One of my heroes, Nicholas Kristof (a beloved liberal journalist) just wrote about this same observation all around the world in the NY Times. In it, he offers some surprising observations and solutions for both sides. Here’s the article. It is a must read!
Learning From the Sin of Sodom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”
Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.
A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?
It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.
World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.
A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.
“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?
“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”
Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”
In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)
Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!
The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”
Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.
One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.
DIY Aid
http://www.shauninthecity.com/2010/03/diy-efforts-bring-aid-to-haiti-our-feature-on-msnbc.html
Test Blog
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