Culture and Faith: Go Together Like A Horse and Carriage

My girlfriend recently returned from a short-term mission trip with T.E.A.M. Of course, how anyone can deem a 5-month trip as "short-term" is beyond my understanding. In any case, she travelled to Zimbabwe, Africa to serve in a hospital as well as a primary school. She's back in the States now, and it has been amazing to spend time with her. After listening to many of her stories, seeing literally hundreds of pictures, and simply noticing how she has changed, I have learned much. There is one thing that I have learned that I haven't been able to escape. I keep returning back to it.

God is bigger than America. Before you draw your conclusions, before you decide that you've already heard what I am about to express, please stop. When I say "God is bigger than America" I mean it in the fullest, most grandiose way. That is, I'm not trying to comment on God's "bigness". I'm not saying "Ooohh, God is bigger than my problems. Gee shucks, isn't that nice to know?" No. I'm saying that American culture instills in us certain ideas that cause us to form our own view of God. The way Americans view God, worship God, experience God, and live for God is unique. Therein lies the problem. God is bigger than America.

See, what many Christians don't understand is that their faith is defined by their culture. Sometimes, they are not worshipping God as much as they are (unknowingly) worshipping the "idea" of God. This idea of God is the product of a soupy mix of history, literature, art, science, etc. that is found only in that specific culture. It's difficult to wrap one's head around it, but it's true. How Zimbabweans (which is a word) experience God is markedly different than how Americans experience Him. How the two groups view Him and worship Him? Also, very different. And you can bet that America and Africa have very different cultural backgrounds.

So why am I spouting all this garbage? Because I'm fed up with how America views God. I mean, yes, we have some wonderful authors out there who write some very inspirational books that revive and change lives. We have music artists, pastors, directors, planners, and dramatists who can dream up and actualize successful ministries and outreach tools. However, I have a question (and this is really the crux of the whole thing that I learned that I can't escape). Does the utter lack of all these things in Africa make the African Christians' faiths any less beautiful than ours? Any less intimate and deep? Of course not. And I hear you saying "No one said it did." That's just it. No one said it did, but they bought into it anyway. "My faith can only be really deep if I play by the rules. I have to listen to Jeremy Camp, or read a Beth Moore book, or go to a Christian college.

Whose faith is more real? The guy who can buy an "Abercrumbie and Fish" shirt to show his faith, or the guy who lives on crumbs and longs for fish, but still believes? Lastly, don't be fooled. You know as well as I do that the song "The Change" by Steven Curtis Chapman is a freakin' caricature of itself.

I Want To Do Stand-Up Comedy

I've decided that I want to do stand-up comedy. I'll start just like all the greats did. Doing open mic nights until I can get a set at a real bar/club. Just do sets like that for like 5-10 years until I get noticed. Get a spot on some obscure cable program. Maybe that lands me a Letterman appearance. Then people start booking me like crazy. Maybe Fox offers me a sitcom deal, but the sitcom never airs. In any case, I have some real money, so I put out my first major CD. You know how it goes.

If you do stand-up though, you have to be patient if you have any grandiose dreams of becoming famous. Most comedians do comedy for 10 years or more before they start getting noticed.

What inspired this decision of mine? Well, I listen to comedians over and over and over. I study their delivery. I study their chosen styles. Over the past several months, I've dissected Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Regan, Lewis Black, David Cross, Dave Attell, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Dane Cook, Mitch Hedberg, and my recent favorite, Mike Birbiglia.

I dream of being on a list of names like that. Will I ever get there? Well, that's why they call it a dream. You don't know it's unreal unless you wake up.

"Propaganducation"

When I reflect on my time in class at North Central College (which, as my peers will tell you, was neither long nor frequent), I find that my Economics classes were strikingly different. And I'm not going to paint North Central as the "bad guy". That's not the idea here. There are no good guys or bad guys. Just "guys".

Anyway, I always felt like my NCC Econ classes really championed free markets with unwaivering support. The overtone that resonated above all my Econ classes seemed to be "Free markets are awesome. Government intervention screws things up. Teh End." And yes, "teh" is intentional. Of course, I felt I could tolerate this. After all, NCC is a private college. Hence, I was attending a very pro-free market school. I guess the unsettling thing about it was that I felt like North Central was a political breeding ground in that way. That is, I often felt like some of the things I was learning in my classes was "breeding" Conservativism in me. I guess that's no crime. Every prof has a bias. I should be equally as concerned if NCC was breeding Liberalism en masse. Colleges ought to be fairly objective in regard to politics in the classroom. Of course, they're not. All you need to do is look at University of California-Berkeley or University of Colorado-Boulder or Wheaton College....I think it's pretty obvious that politics are alive in the classroom.

I guess my beef with the whole thing is that I don't like being told what to think. I don't like being told that I must view something a certain way and hear only one side of the story. Is that really education at all? It's more like (and I made this word up just now) "propaganducation". And I can point to many times where I felt like both sides of a certain issue were equally represented in class. But I think it needs to be a hallmark of every school. I think schools need to stress it more. Schools should abide by this saying (and I just made this up just now)..."We won't teach you what to think. We will teach you how to think." Because isn't that what colleges/universities should be doing? Am I totally off-base here? Well, that's enough for now. Until next time, I'm robbymcdobby saying, "Always tip your local pizza delivery boy."

Health Care, AIDS, and Starbucks

Okay, let's talk health care for a bit. If you are currently employed as an insurance executive or have parents who work at an insurance company, then you're not going to like this.

Remember the Clinton days? Clinton had a dream of a national health care plan. Some plan that could make health insurance affordable for all Americans. Well, he never achieved that plan, and it still remains unachieved today. As it stands, insurance and pharmaceutical companies are still private and are r(e)aping ridiculously huge profits. I'm not foolish enough to say that profits are inherently bad, but I do think that these particular companies' profits have risen to the point that we should be concerned. In other words, something stinks.

Lots of people are obsessed with the "single-payer" idea. I kind of like it, but I think that it won't deflate the ridiculous profits. It will actually make health care suck because there will be no market in place. And no, I don't think single-payer is the unholy will of the evil, pinko Communists. Additionally, single-payer will cause deductibles to increase dramatically. Which begs the question...."If we're trying to make health care more affordable, then why are we jacking up the deductibles?" And I understand how insurance works. Higher deductibles mean lower premiums. Yay for lower premiums! There was much rejoicing! But what about Johnny Jobhopper who makes $12,000 a year? How is he going to pay that $1000+ deductible? Hmm? All I'm saying is that, in the realm of national health care plans, we can do better than single-payer.

That's enough of that.

Here's an interesting article about AIDS in Africa. It reports that previous U.N. estimates are exaggerated. This kind of makes me mad. Yes, the numbers were wrong, but we're not talking about a big difference here. When U.N. studies show that the AIDS rate in Botswana is 37% and the DHS shows that they're closer to 34%, that's not much to report. AIDS is still one of the biggest health risks in Southern Africa. This article almost seem to say, "AIDS isn't as big a deal as we thought. Don't worry, it's all going to be A-OK". Dangit, Washington Post.

In other news, I drank one of those Starbucks Frappuccino Coffee Drinks today. They remain delciously tasty. Teh End.

ENG 145 Must Die

Dear Writing Class, I hate you with ever fiber of my being...and some fibers of other peoples' beings. I hope that you die. Never before have I taken a writing class that was so useless, time-wasting, and illegitimate. You make me exponentially more enraged with each passing day. I maintain the position that I held earlier in the term. That is, I would rather get my fingernails pulled out with a pair of pliers than take this writing class. With boundless hatred and loathing, Rob