Duke College

Duke University has this fellow coming to defend Christianity. Christianity needs no defense. We have a divorce rate that is the same as that of our society, about 47 percent, or atrocious. What gives? In some things, a defense is an indictment. The devil is probably smacking his gums like some lonely troll underneath a bridge, just waiting for the carnage that should begin to fall his way as a consequence of every renewed vigor we show in defense of the faith.

The best defense is a good offense, which for Christians is merely sacrifice, service and mercy towards others.

I up and bought me a kindle reader today, which makes me feel somehow more important than I was before. I wonder if a wide screen TV or a handphone would have the same effect. Perhaps so, but clearly less keen, it being my second fancy electronic device. The first one is special, I surmise.

My Little General, my wife and I went to NCSU today so she could monitor some classes as a part of the student teaching she needs for her university program. It was a long drive to the campus. I hope we do not have to do that again. While she was in class, I took my boy to see the North Carolina Museum of Natural History. He seemed to like it, despite some of the bigger animals being "scary" to him. Perhaps we will begin raising some poison dart frogs here before too awful long. Those littler critters are as cute as the day is long. God made a beautiful world.

Love, Nathaniel

Moral Agency Capacity

Dear Folks,

Today is our first day back to school, after a three-week period of vacation for our children. They go on a year-round schedule of nine weeks on and three weeks off.

I saw a video of a New York four-year-old running in the snow with only shoes and short underwear. People expressed alarm, and challenged the father's action, suggesting child abuse. The child seemed fine. That child may very well come as a Navy Seal twenty years hence to save me from unjust captivity in Iran, after Christian mission work I do there, merely for spreading the Gospel around where needed.

Here we have a discussion of an elderly lady on the Supreme Court and her alleged disregard for the U.S. Constitution.

I need to check the exchange rate, to see whether it is propitious to bring some money here from our stash in South Korea, Land of the Morning Calm. I like the interest rates there. I also like doing nothing with respect to money, but just focusing on my theological studies, as it were, per se. Nonetheless, it is only prudent to keep a regular check on the exchange rate.

I have been walking about with attention to erect torso carriage here lately. It feels unnatural, but something that I could get used to. I am also focused on drinking more tea in the mornings, two large glasses a day, if not four or more, from my evening tea binges. Sipping tea is a fine exercise, I find. It ennobles the common mind, tattered at the end of the day due to extremes of fatigue in quotidienne stresses from the normal man's working day.

Now-a-days we have perchance more stress than that sustained by our forefathers of yore, back when men were men and women were women here in America, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, as it were, per se. The field of procuring a livelihood for one's burgeoning brood is ever more complex with a move into a higher degrees of socialism, what with the contingent higher tax rates and greater governmental oversight. Many are carried away with the capitalist spirit of recent decades whereupon they blithely assume the rules have not changed, and large numbers of teens report the desire to "own their own business," as their primary life time goals. They are largely unaware of the greater costs and difficulties entailed in operating a business now and in the coming decades in the U.S. Our national debt burden has never been so high, greatly reducing the potential for a healthy low tax business environment.

At the same time, there has never been a better time for intelligent high-achieving Christians, those who graduate at the top of their high school classes, to contemplate pursuing a low impact career (with low requirements of contact hours, licensing, continuing education and soft-support such as boozing and schmoozing potential clients). Something as innocuous as a massage therapist could bring in enough to live on for a small family, while minimizing work time requirements.

Several factors help Christians to survive and thrive in this socialistic environment:

1. Being willing to eschew high consumption (frequent full baths, eating out, vacations, fancy clothes, and thus and such)

2. Having family money saved up to enable home purchases without debt.

3. Living in low income communities.

4. Doing home improvements themselves.

5. Barter and Trade with other Christians

6. Having larger numbers of Children and investing more time in raising them. Adoption is great for this.

More children means less tax exposure in spades, and qualifies one for Medicaid and Food Stamps for his children. Christians stand under a moral duty to carefully gauge the shifting political and social landscape to always see where they can best position themselves to optimize their moral agency capacity before God.

A Lawyer making 200,000 a year, but paying high taxes and living the "proper lifestyle" appropriate to that career, may be morally culpable when he gets to the Pearly Gates and is seriously asked why (given his fantastic upbringing and consequent strong work ethic and study prowess) he didn't just pump gas for 20 hours a week and give 100 hours a week to volunteer work, coaching soccer, living off the dole, and teaching Sunday school classes, studying the Bible like it was going out of style. What is he going to say?

If his tax goes towards building a culture of entitlement where weaker, less fortunate people (in their upbringing) are continually shielded from Christian influence, there is not much he can say.

This is not to suggest that people could feel morally clean to vote for socialism, or to advocate it, as that ineluctably introduces the concern of complicity in theft writ large, robbing Peter to Pay Paul, now that we the people are rulers, living in a democracy, and must carefully consider whether we overstep the mandate of government to reward good and punish evil, from Romans 13.

Naturally, you are not in any wise robbing Peter when you legally enroll your children in public schools and let them take up the tab for the education of your burgeoning brood. However, you put yourself in a serious "hot seat" of moral concern when you vote for or advocate the public schooling mandate, to be sure.

Similarly, you are not ipso facto culpable merely by virtue of working in the public school system, or in the government social services sector, provided you came about your job legally. However, if you had the means to avail yourself of a similar job in the private sector, you might have some prayer material to consider. It is far more easy to control the consumption of your money than to control the means by which you earn that money within any given society. Hence, moral culpability is less potent for the way you earn your money.

While it is clearly not an admirable profession, I can see no reason to blame a fellow for running a tattoo parlour, or for brewing whiskey for sale, if he earns good money to support his family and then takes his leisure time to invest it well in his family and missions work about the neighborhood.

Advocating socialism and learning to survive within a socialistic environment (with characteristic asymmetric power relations between the individual and the state) are two different entities.

Once the individual assesses the political and social climate and realizes that his moral agency capacity is impaired in by a colossal degree for each extra dollar he earns in a private business (for the government usurping his right to control allocation of his property, the fruit of his labor), then he incurs a moral duty to minimize tax payments, reduce his consumption (living in low income areas), and maximize his time with family, church members, Bible reading and study, and mission work in his low income neighborhood.

He should seriously reconsider the "Church vacations" where people take their money and go for short trips to impoverished nations to do mission work. This is a relatively huge expense, using after tax monies, and is perhaps best understood as a vacation for stress relief from his extensive work and schooling schedule.

Home schooling children, when done with attentive parents, gives better academic preparation for college and makes more efficient use of time. Public schools, with their long days and noisy classrooms, stress out young people, such that they "need" these Christian "do-gooder" vacations in order to handle their highly stressful lives, taxed, as it were, by the public schools.

Love, Nathaniel

Fine Evening

Dear Folks,

I just got back from a walk with my second son and my daughter. The evening was splendiferous, wet with moist air, cool from the winter season. We did not need jackets, but long sleeve sweatshirts seemed about right.

I read from a book just now, Theory of Paster's Wife, by D.D. Kim Hung Whan, a South Korean woman. Her book was published by 생능출판사 (Life & Power Press). ISBN 89-7050-516-4. Fourth Edition 2005.

Granted, it is easy to see how modern women from South Korea, Land of the Morning Calm, will quickly judge this woman to be lacking in wisdom relative to themselves (even though these modern women will probably never write anything relevant to Christ which a person will copy into his weblog decades later...), not only because of the woman's incomplete acquisition of English (She was born in 1928.), but also because of some of her statements regarding the submissive role of women, which these women would rather not adopt.

I will quote the astute elderly lady here below:

Beginning on page 22

5. The Posture of a Pastor's Wife

"A wife of noble Character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones (Prov 12:4)."

The pastor's wife's position is very complex in that she can always give a good or bad influence on church members. Church members naturally tend to accept the pastor's wife's behavior, and in response imitate her in their lives. Imitating good behavior is desirable but imitating bad one can be destructive to a church, especially when the unbecoming behavior gives direct impact to the members regardless of her intent.

6. The Pastor's Wife Responsibility

Pastor' wife has major responsibility to show good example in the church. Let us read Esther Chapter One and examine carefully what it teaches. Have you ever thought about the consequences of disobedience?

1) Woman:

She is not in the leading role but a submissive role. She is not in creating roars, but arranging it. She is not in teaching others, but in learning from others.

2) Let us learn obedience through Abraham (Gen 22:1-19)

(1) Abraham did not ask for reason, logic, nor seek any kind of discussion with God. Asking these is a sign of disobedience.

(2) He acted immediately. God's will demands immediate response.

(3) He did not complain (murmur). Complaint is provoking God.

(4) He did not worry. He trusted God, by believing him in all situation.

(5) He pleased God. He fulfilled the demand of God's will and completed the requisite for obedience.

3) One can learn in the Bible about submissive relationship between men and women.

(1) Obey even it is difficult (Gen 22:1-10).

(2) Obey even it is easy (2Kings 5:11-14).

Verse 13 is the recorded statement of Naaman's servant. "If the prophet had told you some great things, would you not have done it?"

(3) Obey at any time (even in a deep sleep at night) (Matt 2:13-15)

(4) Obey without condition.

Abraham: "Even though he didn't know where he was going" -- He obeyed (Heb 11:8).

A Centurion: "For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it" (Matt 8:9).

* There is no husband on earth who does not follow his wife.

In the time of Japanese imperialism, my uncle was a principal, and he went to Japan, and he received Japanese military drill. One morning a military commander said to the soldiers, If anyone follow the counsel of his wife all the time, Stand right side of the flag, and if anyone follow not the counsel of his wife, Stand left side of the flag. Then almost all of the soldiers rushed into the right side of the flag, but only one person moved to the left side. The military commander was surprised and came down from the platform, and gave a greeting to him, and told him "[Japanese phrase]", that means, You are a respectable person. The commander asked him, How can you not follow your wife? But this man said, "No, that is not like that, My wife said to me this early morning, Because I had some strange dream last night, Please do not go to the crowded place, That's why I did not go to right side." The commander heard and said, "[Japanese phrase]" There is no man on the earth who do not follow his wife.

4) Women should elevate their husbands and serve them like heaven.

There is a slight difference in Chinese character, describing husband(夫) and heaven( ).

Chinese character for husband(夫) is different from the character for heaven( ) slightly, by adding one stroke upon the heaven. This slight difference between heaven and husband makes it necessary for the women to submit to her husband like heaven.

This was the word from the Rev. Bea Min Su who served as a Minister for Agriculture long ago. He was the first agricultural minister in South Korea, whose meritorious deed in introducing farming life in the rural area was applauded by many, and he also established a school of farming in Daejeon -- South Korea. He initiated a new movement called "New life boiler, House Heating System."

Get a Job

Dear Folks,

People need to read the Bible, sing praises to the Lord, get a job and stop drinking hootch. I know of no other way to be a morally responsible man in modern society. Sure, a long time ago, there was no hootch. That does not excuse modern man from his whiskibility.

I met a woman a week ago at the student center on my campus. She was there merely for an awards banquet for the Home Schooling Football league. She told me that the first use of foul language results in the automatic ejection of a player from a game. That is as it should be. She also told me that there are over three thousand home schooling families in each of Wake and Johnston Counties, and the numbers are growing. I like that. The higher the percentage of home schooling and private schoolers we have, the fewer there will be to vote for the continuation of public schools. That would be a godsend to American society, to get a more moral structure to government.

Love, Nathaniel

The home schooling herald's husband runs a website that seems interesting: www.raisingrealmen.com. She said we were lucky that we moved here, as this was probably the best place in the U.S. for homeschooling, with much extra-curricular and academic support in this area. They have a full orchestra for home schoolers, a chess team, and a history club which competes in debates nationally.

I would like to start a padook team, math and logic club, and prayer circle with the same members for all four activities. We would need to consider a name to represent all of the activities.

Private Schools and Business

Dear Folks,

It is good to see growing respect in our society for unborn babies. I would like to have a few more children, but my wife is tired and does not want to go through the post-partum period, when she has difficulty walking for months. That's fine with me. I just hope I will not have resistance from her regarding my freedom to teach other children, the poorest in this area, on the other side of the railroad tracks. I first met them in 1990, when I lived here and delivered pizzas for the then-new Domino's Pizza Joint on White Street.

I miss delivering pizzas and always enjoyed it very much. It is a splendid thing to drive around all evening listening to good classic rock and roll and taking pizzas to people who very much want to have them. Walking up to their doors and ringing the bell is great, too, as you know they will greet you with genuine glee. A man could do a lot worse for income, to be sure. It's not even like you're working ... just bringing people a hot pizza or two. What's wrong with that?

I just checked the prices for study at two Christian schools, and even with the discounts, it seems to be too much for my wife to want to fork over. Raleigh Christian Academy and Neuse Christian Academy. It would have been better if we had purchased a home about 5 miles South of Wake Forest, rather than 3 miles North of town. That would have put me just about a five minute drive from these two schools. With my discounts from attending their churches (10%), and being a seminarian (maybe 20%), plus the 500 dollar reduction for each subsequent child, it comes out to be affordable, in my eyes at least. I wouldn't mind starting a business, if necessary, in order to pay for it.

My older sister recommended we start a mini-warehouse business, which would work fairly well for our situation. I would be happy sitting there waiting for people to come in and rent a space to store some stuff, so long as it is not anything like dead bodies, counterfeit monies, illegal drugs, contraband, and thus and such.

My oldest son would have space to grow his birds, particularly if we were a bit outside of town, with some farmland surrounding the lot for warehousing. We could raise some goats and make cheese, something I have long wanted to do. I would also like to grow some grapes on a slope (for drainage). That is about the only way to get good enough drainage here in all this red clay soil. But you can't start this sort of thing without some farmland. I believe it would need to be zoned commercial, too, in order to run the warehouse business there. We will pray about it, and see where it goes.

I need to finish up some papers for my two ethics classes. Studying at the seminary has been a golden experience for me these past few months. I hope to have a continuation of that charm this next Spring if not before. They have a winter class term offered in what you might call a "condensed experience," attending every weekday for anywhere from three to five hours.

Love, Nathaniel

Pretenders to Sophistication

Dear Folks,

We are pretending to be fancy today. We bought some brie for $4.97 a pound. It tastes good, but is usually out of our price range. We are smearing the brie on some free whole grain bread which we got in Sharing Shop & Manna Ministry, of my seminary. We don't really have class, but it sure is fun pretending with my children.

Last night, I took my children to an international dinner function at the Ledford Center, a social activities center in our school. I enjoyed it, but my daughter did not. Because of the way the noise of the gratuitously loud music grates on her, we will not do such a thing again.

It took all of three hours to get through. There was a lot of good food, which always sits well with me, even though I did not get to eat much of it, as I was attending to David and Christopher throughout the time we were together, and they keep my hands full, which, if you're not a father, I can highly recommend as a means of keeping you out of trouble.

Just now, I hear my two middle boys behind me playing, each with a padook board and some stones, making noises of armies colliding and weapons sounding off in the heat of battle. Occasionally, you hear the voices of commanders radioing information and the issuing of commands to their underlings, mixed in with terse utterances of dismay at being seemingly overwhelmed by the sheer size of the enemy forces descending on them at the moment, ensuring a battle of epic proportions.

My thematic question is this, "Why must mock battles in the minds of boys always be epic? Why can they not at least some of the time enact an imaginary battle wherein the two sides engage only in light skirmish ... or better yet, meet, have a parley, and decide to come to terms of peace, obviating any need for bloodshed on that day?" Soldiers could then engage in a pick-up football game, or if they don't know how to handle a pigskin, then perhaps they could enjoy a round or two of soccer.

After that, they could settle down to some tea and biscuits with blueberry jam and apple butter. It's always good to have at least two distinct flavors of jam available for your guests, in my humble opinion.

I started a new rule in my home last week, and that is this: The whole family must eat supper together at 7:00 p.m. every day. The International Dinner disrupted the embodiment of that rule for the first time, and I do not now believe it was worth the opportunity to meet people from different nations and eat a goodly variety of different foods, even with the music and dances thrown in the bargain.

When it comes to family time, little can trump a good, steady family meal together. Given the paucity of recipes mastered by either me or my wife, we pretty much eat the same stuff every time, but that's perhaps part of the enduring beauty of our experience.

Formerly, we rarely ate a meal together. In fact, in keeping with the triathlon training grazing routine I had been accustomed to following over the past few decades, we pretty much ate a little here and there all day long.

Though that seemed to work well, and served us well indeed when I we were all so much busier, especially with me working in excess of 60 hours a week of teaching English. It is wonderful to have the whole family sitting around a table. I will upload a photo of the first day we did that, about six or seven days ago.

Love, Nathaniel

Gutter Mind

Dear Folks, 11 September 2011

Well, whose mind is in the gutter? I just sat down at the computer upstairs, a Toshiba laptopper which has Korean fonts and a Korean operating system. We can use it to connect with our bank accounts in South Korea. My oldest son had been up here using the computer. I glanced at the title of the website he had in the front open browser, duplicated for the comfort of my dear reader below:

1. Dart Frog Breeding Questions

Perhaps you see this at a glance, just as I saw it. My mind was immediately concerned, reading "Dog Fart Breeding Questions." So then, again I ask, "Who's mind was in the gutter?"

I should face it; I have good kids. They have good manners in public. I feel blessed to have spent so much time with them. Too, I believe any child, with adequate loving attention will be what we generally think of as "a good kid." By no means does that ensure his ticket to heaven.

For the record, here are the other sites my son had open in his browsers:

2. Alternatives For Raising Obligate Egg-Feeding Tadpoles

3. The Wonderful World of Keeping Poison Dart Frogs.

In my Sunday School class today, our teacher, Steve, said that our church, Faith Baptist Church, is better understood as "a hospital for sinners than a hotel for saints." I like that very much. Jesus said he came to heal the sick, that the righteous had no need of him. But then, you have to ask, who is truly righteous? Answer: Nobody. We have all fallen short of the glory of God, in our sin.

My wife is playing the piano now. She has been playing for over an hour, while I cleaned the dishes, schlepped out the trash and compostables, and before that, cut little David's hair as he slept.

I can't wait until I can take Hebrew. I do not know when that will happen, but it seems now that it may come to pass. I was in danger there for a week or two, as my wife seemed determined to buy a couple of small homes (3 bedroomers) and rent them out for a bit of income here. We do not work. I have worked all my life in one capacity or another. So truly, I work now. However, as I age, I have revised my perception of work. Of course I never want to retire. Any healthy sincere Christian should never desire retirement.

Update: 18th September 2011

Public Services in Social Welfare:

I met a woman named Cheryl today at church. We talked for nearly an hour after Sunday School. It did not seem like an hour, but our Sunday school class gets out at 9:15, and it was 10:34 when I drove out of there. She deplored the state of our welfare system today, noting that the system should be primarily for older people, those who are unable to fend for themselves properly. I assume she would also include the truly handicapped. Anytime you forcefully expropriate property from citizens in the way we tax, and then seek to dole it out, you are going to have to make rules for limitations.

I told her that I believed the fault of such a system lies in those who advocate and/or vote for it. If we want, we can vote solely for a system which benefits the elderly and handicapped. I believe that you cannot fault individuals for accepting money to which they are legally entitled. I agree that developing a state wherein we foster "entitlement thinking" is wrong. However, the Bible is clear that Christians must submit to the governing authorities (Romans 13), and I believe the submission includes a corresponding right for the Christian citizen to avail himself of every legal benefit for which he qualifies so long as he that service is Biblically sound.

If you can show that accepting the services of public schooling or public welfare, then we should not be receiving those. Currently, I believe that it is immoral for one to advocate public schooling, and as well to vote for the expansion or maintenance of such.

Generally, that which is legal stands a much better chance of being morally acceptable, at least if you focus on the Ten Commandments, and their narrow proscriptions. I believe it is morally acceptable for parents to allow their children to be educated in the public schools if they so desire -- not only for the undeniable asymmetrical power relationship between the individual and the state. I feel the same way for public welfare.

Regarding the source of funds, I can see no qualitative difference between the public school system and the public welfare system. Both have the government as the primary provider, moving in to occupy a huge portion of the whole industry, skewing costs and quality standards, greatly impairing the ability of the private providers to compete fairly and to use their own standards of value to decide how, when, for whom, and where to provide the services. This diminishes their capacity to behave as responsible moral agents over the resources they "own." In fact, such deprivation of control marks a diminution of ownership. Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production.

Free Services and Their Value in My Life:

I have been tossing about a theme in my pumpkin head for the better part of a decade. I have come to acknowledge that the greatest value I render society is not necessarily that which flows from my paid labor, or other normal economic activity, such as my passive income from stocks or savings and thus and such. Hence, I have become ever more comfortable with the consideration of a future wherein I engage the world far less, as a percentage of my time, with paid labor and the paid use of my capital (bank interest, et cetera).

To wit, I let a fairly big chunk of my money sit in a South Korean bank at zero interest, when 4.5% was available, merely because I did not concern myself with eeking out every bit of income that I could from that source. In the process, I "Lost" several thousand dollars, but felt that fine in that I was able to focus my mind on other, unpaid, concerns in society and within my family (which is verily a subset of society). The online command to switch the funds from a zero-interest account to several one and three-month CD's would have taken probably an hour or so. My lack of concern with this "opportunity cost" is an excellent example of the increasing value I have come to place on my time as devoted to other, non-paid concerns.

I only wish that I had focused more fully on volunteer work and other careers which garner less pay earlier in my life, and I heartily encourage other, younger Christians to do so. One thing is sure: generally, the less time you spend chasing a paycheck in the U.S., the more social welfare you will be qualified to receive, and the more time you will have to devote to areas which you deem God highly values, teaching the Word, sharing communion with other Christians, and thus and such. Granted, this requires a greater degree of confidence and reliance upon God to provide for your needs, but God will come through. He clearly has for me when and wherever I elected to make myself more vulnerable and needy. Praise the Lord!

To be sure savings and stock ownership are valuable services inasmuch as bank savings clearly lower the cost of borrowing by increasing the supply ... and for stock, the greater demand to own stock supports prices, while ownership of stock supports the production of goods and services in the society, without which we would be hard put for goods and services upon which we all depend, diapers, desks, dictionaries, and thus and such.

I notice that my smiles and joy to others foments greater joy in the commons. I also notice that my life of not working for labor, which began rather recently, with our move to the U.S., has been quite valuable to society in my judgment, certainly not less than was my work prior to this. Merely raising children well is a valuable asset to society, and not only in producing future tax payers who should be ready and fain to pay back all the money we have allocated to our American European-Styled Welfare State (Hereafter AESWS).

I remember reading an article about the changes in Russian society after the moved from socialism to a free market economy, long about 1990, as it were. The article seemed to focus on representing the educated class, professors and intellectuals. Quotes had people lamenting the loss of time they had for long dinners with friends, drinking vodka, eating good food and much talk. Sincere adult discussion has much value, even if people are not always willing to pay for the full value of it.

The best single indicator of value a person contributes to society through his work (certainly his paid work) is perhaps the money voluntarily given in exchange for the products and services his efforts generate (as in a paycheck, or gross revenues of a business he owns), and this figure would be an even better estimate if one could remove the demand dampening effects of taxes on such products or services.

Had he grown up in Germany or France (which have much higher rates of government consumption relative to GDP) Bill Gates would scarcely have produced so much with Microsoft (if he even were to have toyed with the idea of giving his attention to founding such a company, and dropping out of Harvard). More likely, in these more thorough social democracies Bill would have merely remained in his college to finish a degree, deeming that proven route the best means of surely providing well for his future family. And who could really blame him?