Finding Jesus on Wall Street

I don't know whether to laugh or be offended at the question posed by some CNN reporter: "Would Jesus Occupy Wall Street?"
Of course, from a practical, spiritual standpoint, if you believe Jesus is indeed God incarnate, then He is already occupying Wall Street. God is omnipresent, meaning he is everywhere. I always laugh when I hear preachers or missionaries talk about "taking God to ... " where ever - deepest, darkest Africa or Pakistan or China or Hollywood. Because the truth is, as I once heard Andre Crouch say, "We brought Jesus in here with us, only to find out once we got here that He was already here!"
But of course, that's not what the question posed by CNN reporters and others really means.
The premise is, can those who are involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement find validation in their actions in Jesus?
Which is funny in that, like so many of us, CNN only seems to bring up Jesus and what He would or wouldn't do when it suits their purposes. I mean, you don't hear Anderson Cooper asking "What would Jesus do ..." about education, political scandal, environmental disaster, or in his New Year's Eve ridiculous banter with so-called "B"-lister Kathy Griffin.
Just imagine how different our news would be if Chris Mathews or Bill O'Rielly or Diane Sawyer approached every newscast with a sincere, "What would Jesus do?" approach. Even if they don't believe in Jesus, just to sincerely ask the question.
Or, for that matter, what would Mohammad do? Or Buddha?
I don't for a minute think that any of them could give a solid answer to the question, but I do think the dialogue would be healthy for all of us. After all, as founder John Adams once wrote, "religion and virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society." Or, as another signer of the Declaration, Dr. Benjamin Rush, said, "the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."
Of course, to have that conversation, they'd need to actually read things like the Bible, or the Qu'ran, or the Torah, so they could have a basis on which to talk.
But that's the thing, particularly when most of us start to talk about Jesus - it's so much easier to just say what we "think" He would do, based on the image we have created of what He was/is like.
Of course, a God who is created in our image is not much of a god at all.
But a God who is bigger than us is frightening, because how can we even begin to understand His ways? What if He doesn't like what it is we want to do?
Let's be honest here: what if CNN asked the question, and the answer was clearly, "No, Jesus wouldn't occupy Wall Street." Do you think that would change the attitude of the news reporters toward the Occupy movement, or cause the Occupiers themselves to suddenly go, "Oh! Well ... never mind" and just slink off back home?
Even those of us who say we want to "know" Jesus approach that knowledge with some trepidation (if we're honest) because we don't change Jesus to fit our image; He changes us to fit His. And sometimes that's very uncomfortable.
Donald Miller, when he isn't waxing eloquent over sunsets and starlight and the way a Volkswagen bus rambles through the Western countryside, said of "spirituality" that "All great spirituality is subversive, including the spirituality of following Jesus. Jesus was poor because the truth is there is more to life than money, and money is only a tool. Jesus did not cower to the power of religious authority, because the religious authority was corrupt and misrepresented God. Jesus did not take a wife or even a girlfriend because there is more to life than romance and sex. Jesus did not associate his identity with a specific fashion because clothes themselves cover the truth. ..."
Basically, when we follow Jesus, Miller says (and I agree, even if I don't live it like I should), everything about our lives should become subversive because we stand against the things the world around us holds dear.
Because we humans have by nature take the good things God has given us and focus on them so strongly - like the child that is so enthralled by the birthday gift he fails to consider the giver - that we lose sight of their purpose. We focus on wealth and sex and beauty and brains and health and become obsessed with them - even with trying to make sure everyone has those things - rather than what Jesus said we should focus on, which was "glorifying God."
 It's hard to glorify God when we're so caught up in glorifying humanity (which is to say ourselves).
How much of our pain is caused by worshipping those things that ultimately have no power to help us, no power to save us, no power to do much of anything but consume us?
Perhaps the most dangerous thing we can do is try to argue that God (or Jesus) is on our side. The fact is, I don't want God on my side; I want to be on God's side!
It's an interesting question, though. Would Jesus Occupy Wall Street? Would Mohammad? Would Buddha?
How would we know?
Here's one idea: read the book.
You want to know if Jesus would Occupy Wall Street?
Read the Bible and find out for yourself.

Why I still love the BCS

Every year - and remember, I was a Harris Interactive Poll voter from its inception until I left the business two football seasons ago, a Heisman Trophy voter and an AP voter before that - about midway through the college football season there will be something like 10 undefeated teams, and some sportswriter (or sportswriters) go into a panic.
"There's going to be 10 undefeated teams this year!" they'll write. "This is why we need a college football playoff!"
Now, we're down to eight. Of those eight, Alabama and LSU will play each other in two weeks; Oklahoma State and Kansas State play each other that same weekend. That will eliminate two of the eight.
Of those six, Houston doesn't matter. Hate to say it, Cougars - I love ya, I really do. But the league doesn't carry any cache, and neither does the program. So good luck to you, hope you go undefeated, and we'll see you in the Sugar or Orange or Fiesta, but not the BSC Championship Game.
Of those five, Boise State shouldn't matter. The only difference between Houston and Boise State is that Boise State plays an even worse schedule that Houston, but Boise State has built up personal cache because they beat Oklahoma in a major bowl game that only mattered to Boise.
Stanford still has to play Oregon. Clemson seems to have a very good chance of going undefeated (personally, I hope the Tigers do) but still has South Carolina at the end of the year.
All I'm saying is that, as usually happens, by the end of the year we'll probably be down to only two undefeated teams that matter, and those teams will play for the BCS title.
And once again, the BCS will work.
Even as I write that, understand I'd like to see a four team playoff. We've already got the format, with the BCS championship game played a week after the "big four" of the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, and Rose bowls.
Here is what I like about college football: every game counts.
Every game in the regular season is like a playoff game. You lose just once, and you know you're in trouble. Lose twice, and except for the rare occasion, and you're pretty much out of it.
I know playoffs are exciting. And I know that professional sports realize it makes good business to expand playoffs. As a fan, I love the 'second chance' of wild card teams as much as anybody.
But let's be honest - no matter what you say, it does make the regular season less important.
If you know you can lose, if you know you can finish in second or even third place, and still get into a playoff, then winning a division or league title doesn't matter nearly as much.
I point to the NCAA mens' basketball tournament. Coaches who are honest will tell you that winning the conference title doesn't matter nearly as much as playing your way into being one of the 65 - or more - teams in the NCAA Tournament. Heck, the truth is, virtually every conference has a post-season tournament, with the automatic bid going to the winner.
So coaches know everything that happens between November and March is only to get ready for post-season play. Shoot, you could go 0-25 (or however many regular season games your team plays) but if you get hot at the right time you could then win, say, four games in the conference tournament and six in the NCAA Tournament - 10 straight games - and be crowned national champion.
That's why I love college football the way it is. I love that every game matters.
And its hard to look back over the last 19 years of college football actually trying to manufacture a "real" championship game (Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, Bowl Championship Series), and say it hasn't worked. Oh, there have been teams that got left out of the championship game that probably belonged (Auburn, 2004), but it's pretty hard to argue with the teams that have wound up winning the crystal trophy.
I don't care that Boise State and Houston get left out. We all know year in and year out, the best teams play in the best conferences. If anything, I wish they'd just create that often-discussed but never acted on "Division 4," made up of the top programs that actually make money.

By the way- this idea proposed by NCAA President Mark Emmert, about conferences being allowed to vote to give scholarship athletes an extra $2,000 on top of their scholarship for spending money?
Who do you think can afford that? Only the top conferences, the SECs and Big Tens and so forth.
So where will the best athletes go? Same place they always have - where the money is.
The same place the National Championship Trophy always winds up.

A Do-Nothing Government

Right up front, let me apologize if you thought, from the title of this missive, that I was going to attack the current government as a "do-nothing government;" nothing could be further from the truth.
This current government, like so many before it, is far from "do-nothing."
Very far, I'm afraid.
I know this will offend the people who are concerned about the poor and feel the government should be doing more to help them; the people who believe the political system is corrupt and the government should do something to fix it; and the people who believe the economy is a mess and the government should do something to straighten it out.
But quite honestly, at this point, I think the best thing that could happen is that the president and congress stay deadlocked, unable to get anything done.
See, I have this great faith that, eventually, people will fined the best solutions.
I've seen it over and over. Go back to the horrible tornadoes that ripped apart much of north Alabama last spring. Go through north Alabama now and you'll find the people who are still waiting for help are those who are waiting for the government and FEMA, while the areas where things are getting done - where houses are being rebuilt and lives put back together -are areas where organizations like Christian Service Mission (just to name one of many) organized churches and volunteers and regular people from all over the country and provided the means to get started successfully rebuilding lives and communities.
Visit the gulf coast of Mississippi, ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. While New Orleans - which wasn't devastated by the actual hurricane but by a levee that broke because government hadn't taken care of it - still complains about people not moving back and government not keeping its promises to rebuild the communities, in places like Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis and Long Beach ordinary people organized by civic groups and churches came in to clean up and start the rebuilding process. Every day it seems like a new road is being finished and a new business being opened. As Biloxi mayor A.J. Holloway said, "This is going to be the year of ribbon-cuttings."
In 2008, a flood in destroyed huge parts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. FEMA predicted that 40 percent of the city would be never recover. But Cedar Rapids is back on its feet today because citizens stepped up when needed and united to save property, rebuild, restore, and get the community back on its feet.
After World War II, the poverty rate in America consistently fell, until in 1969 it was at the lowest point in almost a century at 12.1 percent. But in 1965 then-President Lyndon Johnson instituted the well-meaning War on Poverty, and despite spending more on this war than in all the wars from the Revolution to the year 2000 (roughly $16 trillion), the poverty rate has not been affected.
I read a story the other day that was written to point out the unfairness of the state of Alabama's tough anti-illegal immigration law. In it, the owner of Max's Deli in Birmingham spoke out, saying that out of fear of reprisal even his legal immigrant workers had quit. But then the story goes on to say "To replace his legal workers, who he says feel compelled to leave because of the law, (deli owner Steve) Dubrinsky said he offered one job to a woman who wouldn't take the work because she would lose her food stamps. He also said he offered a job to another person who worked two hours before quitting. 'It's easier said than done,' he said of finding new workers."
Did you get that? A unemployed woman wouldn't take the job because she would lose her government benefits! With the government providing so many free benefits, many people simply choose not to work.
And can you blame them?
Maybe you remember reading about activists in Pennsylvania who believed government should provide the poor with free cell phones. And then there is this story where Connecticut's U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro wants government to provide free diapers.
Talk about your "nanny state" - this, to me, robs people of their dignity; the dignity that comes from being able to take care of yourself and your family.
Yes, I know the argument is that these people are not in a position to take care of their families if they wanted to.
But we've seen that all the good intentions of the government to take care of people over the last 60 years has only taken care of government employees, because it creates processes that create government jobs that enrich those people who get government jobs but only continues the cycle of poverty for those who find being taken care of by the government is easier than actually taking jobs (like working in Max's Deli) that could lead to self-sufficiency, dignity, and the beginning of the end of the poverty cycle.
That's why I'd like to see a "do nothing" government.
It would hurt for awhile. But eventually, I'm convinced, good people would step up and do what they should have been doing all along, what they used to do in the 1700s and 1800s during the times of the First and Second Great Awakenings when charitable organizations sprang to life all over the country to care for the poor.
We could learn from our forefathers. From 1818 to 1824, New York's "Society for the Prevention of Pauperism" annually printed its top causes of poverty. The first three causes were ignorance, idleness, and intemperance; then came "want of economy," imprudent and hasty marriages, and lotteries; then three specific institutions: pawnbrokers, brothels, and gambling houses.
And as hard as it would be to preach those nine issues now, even in the early 1800s the 10th reason for poverty might surprise you: "charities that gave away money too freely." (Taken from "The First Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York, pp 12-22).
Even then, too easy subsidy of people's lives was seen as destructive, both morally and materially.
Somewhere, I read the story about a former advisor to one-time presidential candidate Michael Dukakis who said he did not give money to beggars because "I pay taxes for social workers to determine who is truly needy."
As long as government says it will solve the problem, citizens won't have to.
That's why if government would just stop, I believe even more good people would join in, and then we'd really see something good start to happen.

Random thought

As I watched the parade at The Citadel last week, I couldn't help but think of this quote from George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." And this isn't a statement on war or peace, but rather the feeling the most men (if not most people) get when they see such a parade ....

"The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war is glorious after all.”

― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Why stop at Wall Street? Let's Occupy art, baseball, football ....

The voice on the other end of the phone shouldn't have surprised me, but it always does.
Gadsden Jevic was back.
Gadsden is one of my oldest, and closest friends. Over the years, we grow apart, but somehow he always manages to find me and it doesn't take long before we're like twin sons from different mothers again.
Anyway, Gadsden had been off doing what Gadsden always seems to do, which is find himself in the middle of something. In this case, it was the Occupy Wall Street protests, although I'm not sure he ever actually made it to Wall Street. He might have been in Atlanta, or more likely Greensboro.
But as always, he came back having gone off the deep end - again.
And I mean, waaay off the deep end.
Gadsden came back preaching about the evils of corporate America. For example:
- CEO's should, by law, not be allowed to make more than 20 times that of the lowest paid employee of the company. For example, if your lowest employee makes $40,000 a year, the CEO can't make any more than $800,000 a year. And if the CEO wants to make more, the company has to raise the salary of the lowest-paid employee first.
-- Banks should, by law, not be allowed to have any more than a set amount of assets that is appropriately in proportion to the smallest clients. Gadsden hadn't thought this one out as well as he had the first one; or maybe he just didn't explain it to me well enough for me to remember.
But then .... then .... THEN ...
"We shouldn't stop at Wall Street,'' Gadsden said. "It should apply to every day situations. No one person is better than another. Everyone's talents and gifts should be recognized as having equal value."
Which means? Again, in Jevic's words:
"You go into the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and see all these paintings considered 'masterpieces,''' he said. "I think they should be side-by-side with some of those from those 'starving artists' you see who sell their stuff from a rented ballroom at a Days Inn. Or with the pictures from elementary school kids who could be inspired by seeing their art hanging in a famous museum. Imagine the sense of self-worth that would give them!"
It didn't end there.
"Let's take baseball,'' my buddy went on. "What's considered an excellent batting average? .300. But this year, Detroit's Miguel Cabrera hit .344. The Mets' Jose Reyes hit .337. I think baseball should make a rule that every hit a guy gets that puts his average one point over .300 should be credited to someone who isn't hitting anywhere close to .300. What would Delmon Young have given for another couple dozen hits that might have gotten him closer to .300? A new contract, better able to take care of his family, improved sense of self-worth.
"Or football. You love college football. We know once a team wins seven games it's guaranteed a winning season and a bowl game. That's all that should matter. So take LSU or Alabama or Oklahoma- every win above their seventh should be credited to Ole Miss or Kentucky or Kansas. That way those coaches don't lose their jobs, those players feel good for giving good effort. The Alabamas and Oklahomas can continue to play hard and win games, but those wins are credited to the needy and less fortunate!"

As bizarre as Gadsden began to sound, I could see his thinking as the logical extension of the Occupy Wall Street nobody-is-better-than-anybody else mentality.
Here's the thing: I knew Gadsden didn't go to hang out at one of those "Occupy ...'' movements because he believed in it. He saw it has a great place to pick up girls. That's one of the great traditions of protests: the girls are always passionate about the 'movement,' while guys realize passionate girls are emotionally vulnerable and ... well, at least that's what I've heard.
Have you listened to the way these protesters communicate? Repeating everything the 'leader' says? The first time I heard it (at the rejection of Civil Rights legend John Lewis at the Occupy Atlanta movement - see it here ) I couldn't help but think of that scene from Monty Python's “Life of Brian”  where Brian, who has been mistaken for the Messiah, shouts to the crowd, “You are all individuals!” And the crowd shouts back: “We are all individuals!”
It's ridiculous, of course, like George Orwell's Animal Farm  come to life.
"We have a process!" Gadsden said he chanted, along with the protesters.
Unfortunately, of course, no one knew what that process was.
Except the leaders. Of which, technically, there should be none because that would lead to the same mess the protesters were protesting.

The lesson from Stephen Garcia's father

Today's Father of the Day has to be Gary Garcia, father of now-former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia.

The younger Garcia, who was a fifth-year starting quarterback for the Gamecocks, was kicked off the team this week. He'd had a very volatile relationship with both Gamecocks' fans and the South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier, a man who has always been notoriously hard on quarterbacks (possibly because none of his ever seemed to be as good as he was and he couldn't figure out why).

Garcia had a troubled career at South Carolina, both on the field (where he could be brilliant one game and abysmal the next, never quite able to settle into either role) and off (where he'd been suspended for a variety of issues, including allegedly failing drug tests).

Garcia was finally benched after yet another horrible performance in an SEC game (completing just nine of 23 passes with two interceptions in a come-from-ahead loss to Auburn). The story is that, after being benched for Connor Shaw, he apparently failed a drug test.

However, Garcia texted a reporter who follows the team to say he was "shocked and completely flabbergasted to be honest” by his ouster.

Most people would have said they expected it, that he'd been given more than enough chances as it was, and were ready to turn their backs on Garcia - although, let's be honest: fans turned on Garcia more for his frustrating interceptions and inconsistent play than anything he may or may not have done off the field.

Garcia's father?

First, what would you do in this case if it were your son? What would your public response be?

I've seen Little League dads blow up when their son was pulled from a game, much less the father of a starting quarterback in the SEC.

Yet Gary Garcia said of his son: “He kind of made his own bed, and this is the culmination of some of those earlier mistakes.  ... This has got to be the worst two weeks of his life, but it’s not going to be the worst two weeks in his life going forward, I can tell you that.  You deal with trials and tribulations, and you learn from it.  Hopefully, he continues to learn and grow.  We’ll let the dust settle for a couple of weeks and then look at what his options are.”

Here, to me, is the key phrase: "it's not going to be the worst two weeks of his life going forward, I can tell you that."

For most of us, losing the position of starting quarterback on the college team would seem like the worst thing that could happen.

And yet the father recognized this was only a game, that his son had a long life ahead of him, and the father hoped the son would recognize the consequences for his action and learn from them.

As much as some of us think college football is the be-all, end-all of life, the truth is, there has to be more for these kids. Having spent half my life around college football, I do know kids who made their years as a college football player the high point of their lives, and everything after was either looking back, or trying to keep those days alive by capitalizing on whatever fame they'd been able to cling to from that experience.

Garcia's father knew - and certainly hoped - that Stephen's life would go on and Stephen would have a chance to accomplish so much more. And he, Gary Garcia, hoped that Stephen wouldn't become one of those people whose reaction to stress or disappointment was to hurry off to find a bottle of Jack or a dime bag of pot to dull the pain.

Lord knows there are enough "adults'' out there who do.

It won't be easy for Stephen. Chances are very good that he will never be the center of attention that he has been for the last few years, that nothing he ever does again will garner the kind of public adoration - and truthfully, even the scorn simply reflected the adoration - he has had.

Once you've had that, it's easy to feel like you're not measuring up when later successes are done in the relative obscurity within which most of us live.

The lesson I pray my kids learn is that they do not measure their own worth or measure their success by the attention they receive or the reaction of the people around them.

I pray they learn it, because Lord knows their old man struggles - and he wasn't even a starting quarterback in the SEC.

Are cheap dates really a sign of progress?

I just read it in the New York Post: the price of sex has dropped to record lows! (see cheap dates).
It says (and I quote): "Women are jumping into the sack faster and with fewer expectations about long-term commitments than ever, effectively discounting the “price” of sex to a record low, according to social psychologists."
Tell me that doesn't get your attention!
Now, I hate to quote myself (yeah, sure), but this fits in exactly with something I wrote back on March 11: Inflationary Sex.
In an effort to simply save time, I'll give you the highlights of that blog:

Sex is everywhere. And it's very appealing.
And we tend to think sex is happening everywhere except, perhaps, where we are. Certainly it seems to be happening a lot more than it used to.
And maybe it is.
But a lot of things happen more than they used to. I remember when I was a kid, it was a big deal to be a  millionaire. Back then, it meant something. Now, there are so many millionaires that, quite honestly, it's not as big a deal as it once was. Oh, don't get me wrong; it's still nice. I wish I was one. But being a millionaire isn't quite what it used to be.
Maybe  that's because so many more people have so much money, causing money to have lost some of its value.
And you know that's true. Call it inflation. Or the devaluing of the dollar.
Economies are based on the exchange rate of the dollar, and we like to keep the value of the dollar high. But there are disagreements over how to do that: do we save it, or do we need to spend it? Yet deep down we recognize that the more dollars that are out there in the market, changing hands, the less value the dollar has, even though some people say that's the best thing for the economy.
Do you see where I'm going?
Sex is like the dollar. (In fact, there are places where you can exchange dollars for sex, but that's another story).
Back in the old days, sex didn't seem to be quite so easy, so it maintained a certain value. Oh, we talked about it, and dreamed about it, and lied about it - just like we did when it came to how much money we made - but because getting it was so elusive, it really meant something.
Which is the way God meant it to be.
Think about all those books and movies and TV shows that picture people "hooking up,'' seeking and having sex with as many people as there are episodes in a season, making sex seem about as special as finding a penny on the sidewalk.
For all that activity, in the end what almost every one of those people want is a meaningful relationship with someone. They want something special with someone special that is shared only with the two of them (and I know you can find exceptions to this idea, but even those exceptions I'd argue are people who somewhere along the way lost the ability to have a real relationship with another person; we can argue about this one later, if you'd like).
What it means is that - to borrow a phrase - we have to learn the value of the dollar.
It's not easy, because so many people think they understand the value of the dollar. They'll do anything for a buck, while at the same time throwing money away on things they believe to be "necessities'' that really aren't; things our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents never even dreamed of and got along quite fine without.
Try getting someone to "save" today, when most of us live paycheck to paycheck, or even start our lives in debt, hoping we'll get caught up someday, down the road. Economists tell us that people in America just aren't saving the way we used to, and that's a major concern for the future of the economy.
And so the dollar is cheapened and loses its value. We can see what that has done to the country.
The same thing happens when relationships between people are cheapened, and sex is traded like a commodity.
If we saved money and treated it carefully and with respect, how much better would our economy be?
If we saved sex and treated it carefully - just decided today that we'd be monogamous for the rest of our lives - think of all the trouble, not to mention disease, that would end within a generation or two. We'd be so much healthier.

This is honestly why I worry far more about the purity of my sons than my daughter. I don't know how a young woman thinks, but I know all too well how a young boy thinks, and its the exact same way young boys have thought probably since Adam first saw Eve in her birthday suit and said, "Whoa! Man!"
(Later shortened to "woman").
I know, the feminists would say it's just women behaving just like men have for thousands of years.
To which I say, yeah -- and you call that progress?

Need more? Check this out: Why do so many young women drink themselves to oblivion