Liberal Arts Education for Pre-K through College

My children's school district superintendent recently published a piece titled, "The future of our educational system is being shaped today." He posits that the district's mission is to help students be "effective critical thinkers, problem-solvers, researchers, communicators, and responsible citizens, is right on track," and I agree with him. However, he prefaces the topic with recounting a trip to China where he met students who said, "American students don't work very hard. We're going to take your jobs." The implication was that an important part of the motivation for this mission is for our children to be able to compete for jobs against their peers living in China.

I recently had the privilege of listening to Andy Crouch speak at Gordon College. Andy is Executive Editor at Christianity Today and popular speaker and author on sociology and Christianity in America. One of his themes was that a Liberal Arts education is about developing whole human beings who are able to bear the burden of responsibility that comes with being a free (liberal) person. He goes a step further in saying that this valuing of the whole person implied in the Liberal Arts tradition stems from a recognition that all people are image-bearers of God. At its foundations, it is this perspective that motivates the Liberal Arts tradition. Without it, as reflected in college demographics today, the Liberal Arts tradition will fade away.

Our school district is one of the best in the country and has gone above and beyond what we would have hoped for in caring for and training our children. We are very thankful to be part of this district and we believe its mission is aligned in many ways with this Liberal Arts focus on developing the whole person. I worry, however, that the mission is in danger of becoming skewed if its underlying motivation is to create graduates who will be able to effectively compete for jobs with the Chinese. I hope instead our district's mission will continue to build on its roots in the Liberal Arts tradition, simply honoring the reality that all students are "fearfully and wonderfully" made.

The Dulles Brothers - a System of Global Governance

Influential in American Foreign Policy and the global political economy for over four decades, the Dulles Brothers, Allen and Foster, reached the pinnacles of their power in the 1950s as Director of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively.

They arguably played a critical role in not just fighting the Cold War, but starting and escalating the Cold War in a way that likely would not have happened without them. They very directly deposed foreign leaders from Guatemala to Iran and were instrumental in leading the US into the Vietnam War. A fundamental principal of their approach to US foreign policy was a belief that the world is and should be run by a cadre of international elites.

As Foster told the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in 1937, "It is a well ordered domestic economy which provides the greatest assurance of peace, and the problem of international peace is but an extension of the problem of internal peace." They were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations whose one-word Latin motto "ubique," meaning "everywhere," spoke volumes of their belief that it was only through international capitalism tied into all workings of society in all corners of the globe that international peace and stability would be achieved.

None of the above is necessarily flawed reasoning. But regardless one's worldview, a governing system left unchecked in the hands of humans will become corrupt. It is only by a set of values that transcend the governors and the governed that a system will be just. As James Madison, America's fourth president said, "You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

In the name of effective (probably even "just" in their eyes) global governance, the Dulles brothers perpetrated fraud and supported cronyism of epic proportions. They made policy that directly benefited their business clients and their friends or made it in retribution for slights of their clients and their friends. Those on the right side became incredibly wealthy and powerful in the process. Those on the wrong side were deposed and bankrupted or on a grander scale died in unjust wars or suffered poverty through a flawed system.

Then is the right answer to work to remodel global political economic systems around universal truths? A topic for another discussion, but this I believe is the definition of a society and the reason societies have been birthed and the way they have been governed from time in memorial. Yet we still are where we are today, so there must be something more to the answer that we have yet to fully grasp..

Much of the thinking above is derived from Stephen Kinzer's "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War"

Ironman South Africa 2012

185 participants didn’t finish the 2012 South Africa Ironman. I so easily could have been one of those people. You have 2 hours and 30 minutes to finish the swim or you are disqualified. I finished the first half in 45 minutes, then the winds and currents really picked up. At less than half way into the 2^nd lap of the swim, I realized I was already at the 1 hour 30 minute mark and that I wasn’t making much progress swimming against the current. I started pushing harder and turned the corner to be able to at least swim cross-current and made it back to finish the swim in 1 hour 50 minutes. One of the professional’s described the swim as “cruel,” saying it made her feel like she hadn't even trained.

Getting into the bike was actually pretty encouraging as I took it relatively easy and finished the 1^st third averaging over 16 mph which would have put me at 7 hours total bike time. My goal had been 6 to 6.5 and I figured I could make up time on the next laps. Starting up the hill at the beginning of the 2^nd lap, I realized I had been seriously deluded and that I would be lucky to finish the bike in the total time allotted. Pros ended up taking an hour longer than previous years on the bike because of the wind. We would literally be riding uphill into the wind, then make the turn and start a long downhill only have to pedal against the win to actually pick up speed on the downhill…not to mention the 45 kilometer per hour (kph) sideways gusts that knocked a few riders over while going downhill. My second lap was 15 minutes slower than my first and my third was 15 minutes slower than my second. A couple flat tires and a little slower ride and I wouldn’t have made the bike disqualification cut-off time either.

I laughed after talking to my friends in Kigali who had completed an Ironman when they told me that the best part of the race was after the bike when you realized that all you had left to do was a marathon. But having finished the bike and started the run, realizing that I could still be considered a finisher even if I ran/walked 16 minute miles, I appreciated what they said.

It doesn’t sound very spiritual, but the true driving motivation throughout the different legs of the race was that I wanted to just get that particular leg finished. On the swim, I felt OK physically throughout, but I had drank so much salt water and was so sick of being tossed around by the waves for almost 2 hours that I just wanted out of the ocean. On the bike, similar to the swim, my legs and lungs actually felt OK, but my morale had been beaten down by the wind and rain and I was so saddle sore that I never wanted to look at my bike again. Finally on the run, with the rain and the dark and a slightly pulled Achilles and swollen knee, I just wanted to be done pounding the pavement which motivated me to push for 12 minute miles instead of the 16 that I could have finished with. I had about three miles to go before I was done and my only thought was that I wanted this thing to be over with so I picked up the speed from there through to the finish line. And miraculously for those three miles, my Achilles and my knee didn't bother me at all.

There’s no doubt that the Ironman is mostly a mental game. I knew that if I started walking on the run, I would end up walking most of the run so I didn’t even start. But I did drag super slowly on the first lap (of three) going uphill. It was there that I literally felt like people must have been praying for me because I just flipped the switch and decided not to mope about how I felt and instead get back on a good pace so I picked it up and held that same pace for the rest of the run.

The fact that I trained at much higher altitude in Kigali, that I never had the extra buoyancy from a wetsuit or from saltwater during my training and that I was generally training in less-than-ideal conditions (lots of hills, lack of nutrients and water, lots of traffic, etc) really helped me do OK with the difficult conditions of the race.

I didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the “why” of doing this before I did it and I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing so now. All I know is that I wanted to and had wanted to for a while and the desire to do it hadn’t gone away. Ultimately it felt like a "natural" thing for me to do, as opposed to something forced or contrived for some ulterior motive.

I think what this race reconfirmed for me is that life is about being who I am. And that it’s really not by might nor by power but by His Spirit. And that it’s when I’m being who I am that I have the chance to realize that it’s not by might nor by power.

So…genuine Glory to God and thank you to my friends and family who supported me throughout this last 9 months and particularly for all the prayers that carried me through a really long day in South Africa on the 22^nd of April 2012!

Capitalism Requires that we Love Our Neighbors

Today I listened to a podcast on faith and justice from Bill Moyers and a number of philosophers talking about the seismic shift in the global economic system. A common theme was that we were in the midst of a “transitional moment” in economic history. They claimed that the market has failed us.

I side with another philosopher, Ecclesiastes, who said, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Since the beginning of time, people have traded with one another in order to achieve higher levels of utility, or in other words, to get more of what they wanted. The blacksmith and the cobbler and the doctor all had different levels of training and different levels of compensation, but what they had in common was a desire to make themselves individually better off and they traded their particular service with the other in order to achieve this. Some traders took great risks to achieve great utility or benefit to themselves, but in so doing, they also produced great innovations and great benefits to others in society. Economic history is littered with boom and bust cycles because of our human nature to achieve more and more and more for our own personal gain. But those who take this too far are often destroyed by that motivation that had made them so successful. This is part of the cycle of life itself, the process of creative destruction, the process of learning from our mistakes, the process of survival of the fittest that makes our society and world stronger and stronger and stronger over time.

But in the midst of this, there is destruction of the weakest and poorest and oldest and least intelligent. In this process there are those who manipulate and take advantage and abuse those who, in economist speak, are less well endowed with the capacity to achieve higher levels of utility. Prior to Adam Smith ever codifying any form of definition of capitalism, the earliest of societies realized this and put in place systems by which to control and limit power of some and increase the power of those who had less. Adam Smith defined a market system in the context of having these controls in place. He and others have defined specific areas where the market system fails and requires some form of intervention in order to correct for its failures.

The following are the areas where the market is destined to fail:

- When products or services are Public Goods. When there are products or services that cannot be efficiently provided by the private market because the public benefits from the product or service and because no one can be excluded from the benefits of the public good. Examples of these products include lighthouses, national defense, bridges, air, and fish in the ocean.

- When a Monopoly/Oligopoly situation exists. When an entity becomes so powerful that it can dictate the total output volume and price of products or services for an entire market.

- When Externalities exist. When benefits and costs of certain activities are not able to be priced by the market and are not directly borne by the producer or consumer of those activities (pollution, parks, etc), leading to inaccurate pricing of those activities.

- When there is no effective system of Property Rights. Without just and accurate definition of who has the right to buy or sell certain assets, there is implicitly no market.

- When people have Imperfect Information. When buyers or sellers are not aware of all of the information relevant to the conduct of a transaction, leading to artificially high or low prices.

So not only is the global boom and bust that we have experienced recently not unique in history. It does not portray the failure of capitalism or the market system. It is the market system. The market system is built to fail. The market system is defined by the existence of these failures. There is no market system without these failures. This recent boom and bust cycle does not indicate a transition from thousands of years of human nature. It is not a “transitional moment” to some new third or fourth or fifth way. The market is the most efficient system of allocating goods and services to benefit the greatest number of people, if and only if the above market failures are properly managed.

The market system demands that some governing body intervene to correct for these market failures. And that is where the fault lies in the suffering and injustice being experienced today. The governing bodies have failed miserably to intervene and correct for these market failures.

The tragedy is that the government would rather blame someone other than itself for the current suffering and injustice. And in representative governments, the citizens are the government. If our politicians produce ineffective legislation, it is because we want them to; because effective legislation requires sacrifice on the parts of the governed in order to correct for the market failures. We might actually have to pay more for products if we want to decrease pollution. We might have to endure higher taxes if we want to recognize the societal benefit of a baseline level of medical care and education for all. We might have to pass up opportunities to take advantage of insider information related to a particular transaction.

Here’s a revolutionary thought from the late President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

The Evolution of Calling

"Calling" to me used to involve me deciding what I would do with my life based on some of my primary motivators: wealth, power, security. Looking at my old essays from applications for colleges and scholarships, I read about how this applicant is going to follow a very detailed plan that will result in having great influence and doing much good in the world.

As I grew in my faith which is inextricably intertwined with my culture, "calling" became a secure framework through which I could view the world. If I knew that what I was contemplating was aligned with the "will of God," then I could have confidence moving forward in it. And if I knew that it wasn't, then the opposite would be true. That paradigm, however, left me second guessing myself depending on the outcomes.

Most recently I am landing on a definition of "calling" partly based in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes Chapter 9, verses 7 - 10:

"7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

So I've decided not to use the word "calling" anymore as it relates to my vocation or even my day to day decisions about what to do and where to go in life. There are two reasons:
1) I don't know what the will of God is for me or anybody else in any given situation. God does speak and I am indwelled with the Holy Spirit so I do have some inkling, but seldom do I know the entirety of God's will. Unfortunately, however, historically I have acted as if I did see the entire picture.
2) It makes sense that a Father would give his children a lot more freedom than the structure I had previously associated with God and "calling." I try to instill values in my daughters. Beyond that, I'm going to simply encourage them to be whoever they want to be and to do whatever is aligned with the verses in Ecclesiastes: those things that bring them joy, that involve working hard, that include living righteously. I'm not going to present them with some predetermined path that they have to go down for fear of an alternative leading to disaster. That said, I will also try to keep them from disaster, not from failure. So it makes sense that a loving Father God would treat me similarly.
3) "Calling" in the Bible is usually referring to a "calling" to some quality of character or sense of belief as opposed to some function. We have twisted the definition to fit our own lack of faith and need for security.

In just the recent days, I have already found so much freedom in this new view of "calling" and I have seen how much of my everyday language and living was informed by a skewed view of "calling."

Theology of Sacrifice

When someone asks a Christian, "why did Jesus have to die?" the response is typically one of two things: 1) "because there had to be a sacrifice for sin;" or 2) "because God loved us." Or when you read Chapter 3, verse 16 of the Book of John in the Bible, there are two ways to read it: 1) For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life; or 2) For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Why do you think Jesus died? Where do you put the emphasis in the verse, John 3:16?

Imagine being a son who has a very wealthy father and you work your fingers to the bone in hopes of winning his approval. Then you have your younger brother leave the family early with his inheritance and squander it on fast living. But your brother comes back hat-in-hand and your father lavishes more riches on him. How would you feel. Angry? Bitter? Absolutely.

Your father sees your emotion and you tell him about your sacrifice and lack of reward. He responds with, "but I never asked you to sacrifice. You are always with me and everything I have is yours. You could have just asked for whatever you wanted and I would have given it to you; no sacrifice required." Then how sad and frustrated would you be at your "wasted" sacrifice.

The only sacrifice that the Christian God asks of people is a "broken and contrite heart." He wants us to acknowledge that we need Him. He wants us to love Him and know His love. There is no other sacrifice required. As was the elder son with his father, we are always with God and everything He has is ours.

Big Three Bailouts

Why the big three? The front page of USA Today on November 17th showed GM canceling its car show and cutting down on office expenses. Let's see, that's approximately two years after the economy started to slow down and it's decades after the last oil shock that would inevitably be repeated and its years after Toyota and Honda were pouring billions of dollars into R&D for more fuel efficient vehicles. In my company, from employees to owners, we started taking pay cuts two years ago to be able to get through the coming tough times. Did we have great foresight? No, as a matter of fact, we were late. How could GM with all its analytical and leadership ability claim that there was a precipitous fall in revenue. Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, said in the November 27th Seattle Times article, "when you have your sales volume and revenue come down so much, you can't cut costs fast enough to survive." In the car industry, it has been coming for almost forty years, since the last major oil shock. They missed it because of the same reason I missed it for my company (got closer than GM did), because of greed and a hope that things would continue to go up.

Hind sight is 20-20, but what matters is where do we go from here. The big three are too big to disappear, but not too big to fail. They have already failed. Everybody who has anything invested in them should lose every penny that they have invested. Debt holders should get pennies on the dollar for their loans. Management should be sacked and the companies assets (capital and human) should be used as a foundation to rebuild great globally competitive companies. The simple question is what is the best way to execute the above. Is it through the bankruptcy process or through some other government led means. All the hype about "bankruptcy" and "too big too fail" is just political hype. The stark reality is what I've described above. I hope that our government leaders have the wherewithal to execute on it.