Nathan Key

Micah, Christopher, Jeff, and I have been having an excellent conversation surrounding Nietzsche, Progressives, Irony, and the Kingdom of God. I loved Micah's articulation of this idea which you should read over on his blog: End of History and Kingdom Come (parts 1-4).

Chris & Jeff had their own questions/comments, while mine were regarding Terry Eagleton's book which outlines that the New Atheists, Humanists, and Progressives are certain of humanity's ability to rise above oppression, poverty, and violence through legislation or cooperation. I've been involved in a spiritual community that's been heavily focused on social justice- they call it "Bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth" and I thought that our own doctrine was eerily similar to this humanist approach to social justice.

Now, don't get me wrong- I strongly believe that we should continue these efforts. My community (and my heart as an extension) is set on making the world a better place and I think that's a good thing- an important thing. Jesus almost always met immediate physical, emotional, or relational needs before moving onto spiritual needs. But we also need to come to terms with the fact that there's a problem in the world that's not going to simply go away with a lot of hard work and cooperation- there's a soul problem. A sin problem.

Poverty is caused by sin. Violence is caused by sin.

We, as Christ-followers need to help the victims of poverty and violence, sure, but we also need to address the root issue- that the hearts of men are set against God and against each other. Until hearts change, the poor will always be among us and war will always be a reality. And as much as it pains us to admit it, heart change is something beyond the scope of human accomplishment. We can't really do in our own strength. There's no amount of Human Progress that will clear the way for men to let go of hate and fear.

Only God provides the sort of kindness that leads to repentance.

God alone can usher in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yet, He’s allowed us to be a part of the process. And when we participate, we get to know God better and we get to be with God. That’s why it’s so important for us to engage in social justice and heart change. As Jeff mentioned: “I’m supposed to work to bring about God’s kingdom not because God needs me but because I need God.”

Today I'm going to post a slightly embarrassing revelation about myself:

When I'm around someone (especially other men) that I feel the need to impress, my voice gets higher.

It's a nervous tick, I'm sure, but it's a dead giveaway that I'm feeling intimidated or unsure of myself. I noticed it a few years ago, but this week it's been more obvious than usual because my new boss has a voice with a particularly low register- quite a bit lower than mine to begin with- and this makes my own nervous intonation all the more obvious to me.

But, I wonder if this is actually something bigger than mere nervousness?

I ask this because as I've had the opportunity to experience and interact with different cultures, I've found a common denominator of respectful positioning seems to permeate them all. What I mean is that each culture has some sort of respect tradition that gives those with experience or skill a visible indicator of honor. Some are a bit more obvious- like bowing or shrinking down to make the honored more prominent. Others are a bit more subtle- like deferring to the senior person's judgment or waiting for the honored person to respond to a question or action before making one’s own response. But whether they are minimal gestures or grand posturing, each culture has some sort of honor that they bestow on those who are seen to be experienced or skilled or respected.

I think that this idea of honor and respect is wired into all of us, as humans.

Of course Westerners would like to think that this sort of thing is behind us- that we've outgrown these sort of positioning games- but I really doubt that we can ever put something that's so fully tied to humanity completely behind us. Even as we thwart the more visible respect cues, subtle and subconscious ones inevitable take their place. So, I’ve decided that this is what my voice change is all about. I think it’s anthropologically aligned with the ideas of honor and respect rather than a mere nervous tick.

Here’s why:

Consider the differences between men and boys. There are many, of course- strength, hair, muscles, and sexual maturity (among other things). One very obvious difference is the tonality of a man's voice versus a boy's. The deeper, booming voice is an indicator that a boy is growing up- that he is coming of age. It’s one indicator that we are becoming "manly" rather than “boyish.” Boys who haven't hit puberty yet have much higher voices than men, more feminine voices like their mothers, and so this change is an powerful indicator of identity. They are becoming more like their fathers- they are becoming men.
 
I can remember very clearly the first day back in school after the summer between fifth and sixth grade. Everyone remarked that my voice had changed. Of course, I hadn’t noticed until then. For me it was a gradual thing that happened over the duration of summer break- I didn't even have the cracking voice. But my friends hadn’t seen me in three months and so they picked up on it immediately.

It made me feel special! I felt like I was more mature and grown up than they were since most of them were still still singing alto in concert choir.

If I take my own experience of growing up and couple it with the idea of cultural respect traditions, I’m going to make a leap and assert this: When I’m around men that I’m impressed with, a subconscious indicator is triggered, signaling my body and my heart that I feel immature or less important than the person I’m speaking with. And if I'm somehow less of a man than this other fellow, I take on a subtle, more "boyish" tone, indicating that the other man is more mature, more manly, more respected.

I believe that this has less to do with nervousness and more to do with the fact that in Western societies, we've tried to cut ties with visual respect signals and are now bound to subconsciousness ones.

Anyhow, as embarrassing as it may be for me to reveal this about myself, at least you've now got a good measuring stick for how comfortable I feel around you. If I'm speaking to you in a high tenor tone rather than baritone- you can be sure that I find you a bit intimidating…

I don't really think that humans were created to endure alarm clocks.

When we lived in Seattle I had the wonderful opportunity to work for a company who didn't really care that I was "in the office" at exactly 8:30. They were more concerned with whether or not I was coming up with good ideas within my deadlines. So since I didn't have a bus to catch or the requirement to be at work at a certain time each day, I got into the wonderful habit of sleeping until I woke up rather than according to the alarm clock.

Something amazing happened.

I found out that I usually woke up within 15 to 20 minutes of the same time each day so long as I went to bed around the same time each night. The difference was, sleeping until I needed to wake up rather than being awakened felt more natural.

I felt more rested.

I was on my game.

All this changed again when I began working at Advantor last month.

I didn't want to begin my career by coming in later than the official 8:30am office opening and so I began setting my alarm clock to make sure that I was getting up on time. And even though I began going to bed at a reasonable time, I found that I was much more tired and exhausted because of the artificial wake-up time.

I'm not entirely sure what to do to thwart this, because I obviously can't risk going into work habitually late... but I'd like to go back to my body's needs rather than something external. I just don't know that my new boss is going to be happy if I come in late every once in a while because I'm trying to "go natural."

Anyone have ideas on how we can meet the standards of Western Work Schedules and also trust our own internal clock rather than technology to wake us up?

My good friend Tom and I don’t agree politically very often- so I’m really glad to be in his corner on the issue of the evils of the bailout money and the tragedy that our government is spending our tax dollars to salvage really awful, shortsighted, and greedy decisions within the financial district. I’m glad that we can also agree that the government has no right to keep a failing US Car industry afloat by stealing money from its citizens after they chose to support non-US brands instead.

While it’s shocking to me that we can throw out $700 billion at the financial district, I don’t really think that most people truly understand numbers this big. Billions of dollars are simply so much money that we can’t wrap our minds around it. We simply can’t garner the mental capacity to understand how much that really is.

And because we don’t really have the ability to wrap our mind around numbers that big, the media takes advantage of the situation and pulls data that makes us even more angry about the situation. Take, for example, the recent bonuses that AIG gave their upper tier executives. When we heard that they gave their executives Millions of Dollars in bonuses (paid out of the billions of bailout funds), it turned into hysteria.

Now, they’re reporting that $22 Million have been spent lobbying the government to relax some of the very restrictions that have been put in place to keep these sort of things from happening. We can’t help but freak out at this point. They’re seriously using MILLIONS that WE gave them to LOBBY for GREEDY ENDS?

-- HANG ON: I need to interject a side comment here for a moment to remind readers that I’m very much against restrictions and government intervention in the market, I think that Federal government should keep its head OUT of the private sector. But I also believe that corporations and big businesses have no right to buy off congress, either. When the government sticks its head into the market it’s almost always results in the kind of socialism that results in stagnation and poverty. When businesses (or religions) stick their head into government it almost always results in fascism and corporatism that results in stagnation and poverty. So, both are terrible. I wish they’d leave each other alone. :END of RANT --

OK, before we get too carried away, let’s stop our anger for a moment and put these monies into perspective.  $22 Million is a lot, right? Here’s what it looks like numerically:

$22,000,000.00

It’s a big number. More than any of us will probably see in our lifetime.
But let’s see how it stacks up against $700 Billion? Here's the two amounts next to each other.

$22,000,000.00
$700,000,000,000.00

OK, so $700 billion is obviously a lot bigger, right?

But these numbers are still so much bigger than the sort of money we're used to exchanging that it's still a bit hard to put these into perspective. So, let’s go back to 7th grade math for a moment and kill some of those extra zeros. This will result in a proportional set of numbers that are a little smaller- a little closer to what we might expect to interact with in our lifetimes.

$22
$700,000

These two sets of numbers are a little more manageable. I’ve spent $22 dollars within the past week.

But what about that $700,000?

I still feel like that sum is a little too big. It’s the cost of a really nice house rather than the sort of money that I’d be able to exchange on a frequent basis. So let’s make this number $700 instead. That’s more like the amount of money I might get in a paycheck (or paychecks depending on job).

$.02
$700.00

When we make these numbers comparable to what normal Americans interact with on a daily basis- it turns out to be about the same as a guy who takes his $700 paycheck (or to make the analogy even more pertinent takes a month’s worth of unemployment claims) and tries to put in his “2 cents” worth to a senator or representative.

Of course, the principle remains the same- “why would any of these businesses spend money that wasn’t theirs to begin with on things that are just going to make the public enraged?”

But when we put it in perspective these sums should actually beg a different question- Why does anyone need $700 BILLION dollars? What on earth did they do to get that far into debt that $22 million dollars of lobbying is comparably 2 cents- a sum so small that it doesn’t even seem to matter?

But another story here is that we need to be careful lest our heads and hearts and opinion be swayed by manipulated data from the media. Given the right perspective, it’s easy to believe things about certain individuals or governments or situations that aren’t actually the reality.

Take for example the “Swine Flu” thing that’s going around. Sure, we need to be careful because it’s a potentially lethal disease. But so is the regular flu. In fact, the regular flu kills off thousands of humans each year in the United States alone. So far there haven’t been ANY substantiated fatalities in the US from Swine Flu.

Which one is more dangerous? Which one should we truly be scared of?

Apparently, that doesn’t matter. The media needs to find a story that will make us tune into their broadcast. They need to create emotions and so they feed us swine flu hysteria and bring on their experts to remind us that the evil financial district is spending huge sums of money with the bailout we gave them.

Don’t get sucked in; do the math and check the facts.

And don’t freak out.

Taken from a letter written by Studdard Kennedy to his family during WW2 :

"The first prayer I want my son to learn to say for me is not, 'God, keep my Daddy safe', but 'God, make Daddy brave, and if he has hard things to do, make him strong to do them'.

Son, life and death don't matter, but right and wrong do.

Daddy dead is Daddy still. But Daddy dishonored before God is something to awful for words.

I suppose you'd like to put in something about safety too and Mother would like it too. Well, put it in afterwards, always afterwards. For it really doesn't matter as much as doing what is right."

* * *

Studdard Kennedy was a chaplain during the war. An unarmed para-military person, working on the front lines with the men who served our country during the Second World War.

Now, I've heard about the sort of firefights that went on during WW2 thanks to my grandfather's stories (as well as an endless supply of cinematic displays from Spielberg and others who are passionate about war movies) so I'm fairly certain that being a medic or a chaplain must be some of the most nerve-wracking roles in the military. You faced the same dangers as the rest of them- without being able to defend yourself against attack.

That's guts.

And I'd honor those guys even without letters like the one above. But when I see the contents of Kennedy's letter- I'm shaken. Oh to be like the men who place honor, goodness, bravery, and strength before safety. They want to be safe, sure- but never at the cost of the aforementioned attributes.

* * *

I don't know that I'm ever going to be in a war situation, but that doesn't lessen the impact of these words on my life.
I truly hope that my son will want me to be brave and strong rather than safe.
And even more than these- I pray that he'll want me to be good.

And I pray that I will be.

I’m sure that every community in the world is full of paradoxes and contradictions.

When we lived in Seattle, one that blew my mind was that the same folks who liked to attend Labor Union Rallies with slogans like “Cut a Tree, Save a Job” were also adamantly against cutting down trees because of the impact that harvesting lumber has on the environment.

What paradoxes and contradictions do you see in your own community?

Unlike Bradley at Ethical Exhibitionist, I think Susan Boyle matters.

When Susan Boyle walked onto the set of Britain’s Got Talent, she was 47 years old.

And she looked it.

When she told the judges that she had dreams of being a professional singer, the cameras panned over to select faces in the audience that thought it was a joke. They did their best to suppress their laughter, but it was useless. It was obvious to them that what was about to happen would be an epic failure.

We can’t blame them of course- it's classic talent show stuff to couple a few wonderful acts with an awkward, fumbling fool with illusions of grandeur. And this frumpy old lady with her round face and dated hair captured the image of comic relief. Everyone was certain that they were about to witness a train wreck. They were certain that Susan Boyle’s fifteen minutes of fame would be achieved by butchering a song in front of millions of viewers.

So when she dazzled them instead, the room exploded in joyful shock.

I’ve never seen a standing ovation that began within seconds of a song’s beginning. But here it was, only four notes into the song and the grand cheers began erupting from the crowd and here and there the audience began to rise from their seats in surprise and pleasure until the majority of the room was standing in awe of her performance.

Lisa Schwarzbaum, from Entertainment Weekly is still watching the youtube clip over and over again- weeping for joy each time. In a recap article, she writes that “Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time.”

In an age where we often judge people by their looks and their ability to persuade us by how well they present themselves to us, I think Susan Boyle is a much needed wake-up call to the reality that beauty is more than aesthetics.

Within every one of us is a song or an idea that’s unique and wonderful to behold.

The fact that Boyle’s performance is one of the most-viewed videos up on Youtube (over 40 million views, at the time I’m writing this) is evidence that a story featuring something beautiful tucked into the most unlikely corner of this world is theme that resonates with all of us. It's why we also like Rudy, Cinderella, Princess Diana and every other narrative where the average person gets to be a hero. As we hear these stories, I think it causes us to reflect on our own, and we begin to understand that we have something worth sharing as well.

That's why Susan Boyle matters and that's why we want her to win.

My generous thanks to Richard Dahlstrom out in Seattle for finding/posting the following quote. He was our pastor when we were living there and he continues to be a great source of intelligent and spirit-filled instruction.

* * *

The following note was found on the body of dead child in the Ravesnbruck concentration camp in Germany:

"O Lord, remember not only men and women of good will, but ill will. But do not only remember the suffering they have inflicted on us, remember the fruits we have brought thanks to this suffering; our comradship, our loyalty, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to judgment, let the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness. Amen. Amen. Amen."

When I read this quote the other day, it shattered me to the core.

You see, for the majority of the world working toward goodness, righting wrong, and acting ethically is either a social or religious imperative. Most of us follow a set of moral or philosophical rules that are supposed to make us better people and most of us also do our best to invite the world to follow suit. Sometimes its through proselytizing our beliefs, or education, or even through force- stopping others from "evil" by the sword or the pen or the law and causing them to end their wickedness and move toward something better.

But that’s not really grace.

Grace is that child who witnesses the horrors of war- sees his sisters raped, tortured, and burned alive in a furnace and then earnestly prays to God that the patience, comradship, loyalty, courage, generosity, and greatness of heart that has grown within him are enough to cover the evil of those who enacted such violence against him.

In other words, it sort of like forgiveness by proxy- unattached to any sort of change of heart or behavior on behalf of those who need it. In this case, grace is not so much that the ill-willed oppressors repent, but that they are forgiven despite themselves, or even in spite of themselves.

Grace is the Son of God, dying on two planks of wood and crying out “Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

And this is the aspect of Christianity that I find most compelling.

Grace, is ridiculous.

It's completely against human nature.

And yet, it’s undeniably one of the more important elements of Christ’s Spirit and the heart that He has for the world. Without it, I'm afraid, we'd all be sunk.

Micah Tillman and I were having a conversation about a new economy the other day- one that's been brought to life by Google's Ranking Algorithm.

It all began when I attempted to put a link to his website on my sidebar, but ended up linking to my good friend Seth instead. It was a little embarrassing, but seemed easily corrected. All I needed to do was update the link, publish the site, and everything was back to normal…

Except that it wasn't...

You seen, my site is ranked by Google as a definitive site for 'Nathan Key' (which is good, because I like being the definitive source of info about myself).

Now, I don’t think too many people are looking for me, but since I have fairly regular traffic here, Google respects me enough that their little webcrawlers use my site as a legitimate source of information. Therefore, when they saw me link to Seth’s site (and call it Micah Tillman's) they assumed that I knew was I was talking about. So now when you search of Micah- Seth’s site comes up toward the bottom of the first page as a potential option…

Yikes. That’s not right.

While Micah was pretty cool about it, my mistake sparked a short conversation about traffic economies which, of course, got me thinking about ethics.

What I mean by ethics is this: Since part of Google’s algorithm includes visits and links in & out of a site, it follows that any site with a lot of traffic also has the ability to influence Google’s ranking system. They have the ability to tell the world where searchers should go to receive definitive information about a certain topic.

And since information is power and “with great power comes great responsibility,” it seems to me that we need to be awfully careful what we’re linking to and how we’re linking to it.

"Could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of its history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck...."
-Ron Paul

* * *

Each and every year on April 15th, everyone I know becomes a libertarian for the day. All the government programs and federally funded programs don’t mean jack when it comes time to cut a check and pay for it out of their own salaries.

All year long, my friends on the left rail on and on about the wonders of government programs and how incredibly horrific our country would be without them- but they don’t want to pay for them anymore than the next guy. If they did, they’d be putting a little extra money into the coffers of the IRS rather than looking for the loopholes.

Here’s my challenge to my Democrat, Socialist, and Lefty friends out there:

If you truly believe that the government is the best entity to provide for the needs of this country, go ahead and pay extra taxes this year.

But if you don’t- if you’re looking for ways to minimize your own tax obligation, please join me in reconsidering the role of government. Because from where I stand, if you can’t give them more than they ask of you, then it's pretty clear that you don’t really believe, in the depths of your heart, that government is the answer to the world’s problems.