Longing Logos - Page 6 of 8 - God | Life

April 25, 2020April 30, 2020

Reality Bites 2x for 2 Gens: Gen X & Y

Let us retreat briefly to, by comparison, Generation X’s halcyon days of latchkey, Prozac, grunge and a general, somewhat melodramatic, malaise. Compared to their prime working years, the ages of 25 to 54, Gen X’s childhood and young adulthood seem rather romantic in retrospect.

Their parents sucked up to corporate management, with big hair to match big heads, eager to ascend the corporate ladder and stroke their egos along the way. Their children, now in broken homes, had to fend for themselves. Television became their best friends, maybe Mario Brothers, and there were the occasional bike rides with friends to the local candy store. Summers were spent outdoors, avoiding dysfunctional adults as much as possible.

Cutoffs for Gen X and Gen Y

The cutoffs for generations are not hard and fast, but for this purpose, Generation X were people born between the years of 1965 and 1980, and Millennials were born between 1981 and 1995. Placing the financial crisis in the year 2008, the oldest Gen Xers have or will turn 55-years-old this year, which means they turned 25 in 1990 and 43 in 2008. The youngest Gen Xers have or will turn 40-years-old, which means they turned 25 in 2005 and 28 in 2008. By comparison, the oldest Millennials have or will turn 39-years-old, which means they turned 25 in 2006 and 27 in 2008. The youngest Millennials have or will turn 25-years-old this year, the start of their prime working years.

Younger Gen X and Older Gen Y Hit Hard

As one can see by the breakdown, the generation that was the most affected in terms of prime working years by both the financial crisis and the present coronavirus crisis is Generation X. In fact, it is the most negatively impacted generation in other respects also. Both Gen Xers’ and Millennials’ parents are typically Boomers.

However, as the Boomers’ wealth increased over time, Millennials generally had more resources available to them than their Gen X siblings or counterparts. This gave Millennials a financial advantage as well as a social advantage, as the divorce rate stabilized, and their single mothers who had entered the workforce were better able to manage both work and family.

The resentment that these two generations, Generation X and Millennials, feel toward the Boomers is not just about the fact that the Boomers have effectively directed available resources for their benefit as described here, it is also that crises are, obviously, intensely destabilizing and damaging, particularly for those for whom it overlaps with their prime working years. Generation X and Millennials are the only two generations that have had their prime working years impacted by two crises. These crises also occurred in relatively short succession, a little over a decade apart.

It is quite different to try to weather a crisis after establishing a career than while entering the workforce or while still in the early part of one’s career. The younger Gen Xers and the older Millennials were still relatively young when the financial crisis hit, and they bore the brunt of the damage in terms of their careers. In fact, many younger Millennials might not have been nearly as impacted as older Millennials since many of them were still in school. The youngest Millennials were 13-years-old at the time of the financial crisis.

Gen X and Y – Resentment and Request

Although the Boomer generation has been a catastrophic failure, there is something rather simple that they could do that would help their children, if they care at all about them. They could retire. (We understand that there are some Boomers who sincerely cannot afford to retire at the standard age.) Many Boomers, however, remain in the workforce out of greed, power, and ego. Perhaps some Boomers think the world cannot manage without their genius and expertise, but we assure you, it can. We can quite reasonably argue that it might actually thrive again.

More generally, the Boomers’ “leadership” is entirely unwelcomed by younger generations at this point. Their generation’s management of the country has been an abysmal failure. Under their watch, there has been a deterioration in every aspect of American life: family, faith, work, the economy, societal bonds, political stability and on and on. And there have been two catastrophic crises.

The Boomers need to retire and allow other generations to lead and to fill their often coveted positions. We will do a better job than they did because there is nowhere to go but up. Our society is guaranteed to improve. So, Boomers, you have damaged our country and our careers enough. If your egos can possibly manage it, please retire. Trust us – we got this.

April 24, 2020May 1, 2020

Hard Truths – Boomers Brought Us Here

There are so many pieces on how the Baby Boomers have destroyed America, it is hard to choose which ones to highlight here. These articles are sometimes written by Boomers, the ones who can actually speak of the shameful, hard truths and not resort to callous defensiveness. They are the ones who can actually weigh the truth about the negative impact their generation has had on every subsequent generation as more important than their own personal feelings or the need to whitewash their generation’s awful legacy.

Perhaps the most entertaining piece written by a Boomer, although he does not want to be grouped with them, was Paul Begala’s (2017) essay, in which he states, “I hate the Boomers. I know it’s a sin to hate, so let me put it this way: If they were animals, they’d be a plague of locusts, devouring everything in their path and leaving but a wasteland. If they were plants, they’d be kudzu, choking off every other living thing with their sheer mass. If they were artists, they’d be abstract expressionists, interested only in the emotions of that moment—not in the lasting result of the creative process. If they were a baseball club, they’d be the Florida Marlins: prefab prima donnas who bought their way to prominence, then disbanded—a temporary association but not a team.” You get the idea. It is not a flattering portrait.

Boomers’ Defensiveness

Many Boomers, however, when confronted with these hard truths and unflattering realities about their legacy, react not by extending understanding and solidarity with the generations who have to live with the painful consequences of the Boomers’ decisions and actions, but rather, in a predictably egotistical and narcissistic fashion, by expressing outrage and hurling insults at those who have the temerity to call them out for their hypocrisy, selfishness, immorality and incompetence.

As Lewis (2019) wrote, “The 63-year-old—yes, Willetts is a Boomer himself—is well aware of the subject’s emotional resonance. Mostly, though, he is surprised that the rage tends to come not from Millennials, who feel disadvantaged, but from the Boomers, who feel attacked…. When we have all this power, we shouldn’t be surprised when younger people are rather resentful,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised they aren’t angrier.’”

Actually, we are angry and resentful. It is just that every time younger people express their justified outrage, either through calculated arguments or organic memes, such as “OK Boomer,” at the injustice we have experienced for the past about half a century under the Boomers’ tyranny of the vote and governance, the Boomers, like locusts, to use Begala’s imagery, swarm down upon us in an attempt to suppress our First Amendment right and silence us into submission. We will not be silenced.

Boomer Socialism

The Boomers have chosen to never make any sacrifices and instead have insisted on voting based on what is exclusively in their interests, without any regard to the interests of future generations, a consideration that prior generations paid to them. The ramifications of the Boomers’ decisions are evident in all aspects of our lives: housing, the economy, climate change, health care, education, child care; you name it, the Boomers have shaped the policy to their benefit and to other generations’ detriment.

The most obvious specific examples are in health care and housing. To point out the obvious, it is the height of hypocrisy to want Medicare for oneself but not for others, as this voter (granted a bit older than a Boomer but still reflective of the generation) expressed, Glueck and Tavernise (2020) “‘I don’t like Warren and I don’t like Bernie because they want “Medicare for all,”’ said Alan Davis, 80, dismissing the single-payer health care system promoted by Senator Bernie Sanders, 78. ‘I’m totally against it. I have a good health plan.'” In other words, socialism for older people, not to mention, for the rich and for corporations, but capitalism for everyone else.

As Thompson (2020) wrote, “The federal government already guarantees single-payer health care to Americans over 65 through Medicare. Senior citizens already receive a certain kind of universal basic income; it’s called Social Security. While elderly Americans might balk at the idea of the government paying back hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt, they are already the grand beneficiaries of a government debt subsidy: The mortgage-interest deduction, a longtime staple of the federal tax code, effectively compensates the American homeowner (whose average age is 54) for their mortgage debt, thus saving this disproportionately old group approximately $800 billion in taxes owed to the federal government each decade. The economist Ed Glaeser has likened these policies to ‘Boomer socialism.'”

In addition, with respect to housing, it is not just the mortgage-interest deduction, but as Lewis wrote, older people often actively prevent more housing from being built, which increases its cost; “Often, Willetts would…then head over to a local residents’ association meeting, where he would talk to ‘completely decent people’ in their 50s and 60s who owned their own home but wanted no further houses to be built in their neighborhood.”

More generally, the Boomers ushered in the era of “greed is good” under Reagan. This period was the beginning of the end for the country and for the labor movement that had been considerably strengthened, essentially during the Bretton Woods period. The new era corresponded with a focus on consumerism, with consumer demand becoming the driver of the US economy, along with it, a trade deficit, financialization, and these changes among others created gross imbalances in the economy, particularly between the haves and the have-nots, which inevitably also meant between old and young, and contributed to the destruction of the planet. The Boomers are also the reason that the nation, really the world, is suffering under Trump and his corrupt, incompetent administration.

Pew’s Maniam and Smith (2017) found that “In 2016, as in recent years, Millennials and Gen Xers were the most Democratic generations. And both groups had relatively large – and growing – shares of liberal Democrats: 27% of Millennials and 21% of Gen Xers identified as liberal Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. By contrast, Boomers and Silents were the most Republican groups – largely because of the higher shares of conservative Republicans in these generations. Nearly a third of Boomers (31%) and 36% of Silents described themselves as conservative Republicans or Republican leaners, which also is higher than in the past.”

Boomers’ Political Dominance

The unfortunate reality is that the sheer size of the Boomer generation has distorted our politics. As Lewis said, “Boomers have bent the gravity of politics toward themselves and their needs.” Some have claimed that this is ageism or a phony generational divide. It is not. It is based on reality. It is based on facts. It is based on statistics. It based on hard truths. Deal with it. The real impact that an extremely large, selfish and short-sighted generation has had on American politics and economics is ultimately, as we are witnessing now, to the detriment of all Americans. After all, it is older Americans that are most vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic, and they are also the ones who put an entirely unfit president in the White House.

The Boomers are the single worst generation in, at least recent, American history. No amount of outrage or defensiveness on their part is going to change that reality or assessment. They are the reason our nation is at this absurd point, and they need to own it. Despite their reflexive defensiveness, the Boomer generation needs to be held accountable for their actions, including their vote. We will not participate in the whitewashing of what is obviously a terrible legacy, their complete failure in judgment, decision-making and governance.

Unfortunately for the rest of our society, we are also facing the reality that we have to deal with or clean up their mess. The only way to end their political dominance is for younger generations to vote in large numbers based on their own interests. A fair and well-functioning democracy reflects the diversity of its constituents, and one of those important factors is age. It is as legitimate a consideration as any other aspect of one’s identity. Let us make sure our interests are being represented at all levels of government. Gen X, Y, Z – let’s band together, and let’s vote and run for office. Let us define our destiny.

Lehman’s Lasting Legacy on the Federal Reserve

It has been only a little over a decade yet it feels like a century ago perhaps because it also feels like the latest iteration of the Gilded Age. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. In (this summary of) his paper, Laurence Ball (2016) asks, “Why did the Federal Reserve [Fed] let Lehman Brothers fail?” He follows with, “Fed officials say they lacked the legal authority to rescue the firm, because it did not have adequate collateral to borrow the cash it needed.” He (p2) writes, “According to Bernanke (FCIC testimony, 2010): ‘[T]he only way we could have saved Lehman would have been by breaking the law, and I’m not sure I’m willing to accept those consequences for the Federal Reserve and for our systems of laws. I just don’t think that would be appropriate.’”

Ball (p2) disputes the Fed’s official line and Bernanke’s explanation. Instead, Ball concludes “that the explanation offered by Fed officials is incorrect, in two senses: a perceived lack of legal authority was not the reason for the Fed’s inaction; and the Fed did in fact have the authority to rescue Lehman.” He argues that, based on a de novo examination of its finances, Lehman did have enough collateral and that the Fed prevented it from using the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF).

The sensitivity around this question is that Lehman’s failure was a cataclysmic event for financial markets and for the global economy. If the Fed had allowed it to fail on dubious grounds, it would reflect a gross error in judgment and even incompetence. Ball (p3) states, “The record also shows that the decision to let Lehman fail was made primarily by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,” even though this is the Fed’s purview not the Treasury’s, and the decision was made presumably considering political sensitivities. (You might also recall that Paulson was the former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, a competing investment bank, and if there were any ulterior motives, that would have been corruption.)

Therefore, the primary questions are: Why did the Fed not rescue Lehman? Did it have the legal authority to do so? Did Lehman have adequate collateral available? Were there political or other reasons for the decision?

The Complexities

In fairness to the Fed, it can get sued, and it has. Most notably, it got sued by former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who after a fair amount of drama lost his case with the court ruling that he did not have legal standing to pursue it. Instead, AIG did, and it had declined to do so. (In case you are interested in listening to Greenberg’s side of the story.) The prior ruling, in June 2015, had ruled in Greenberg’s favor but awarded no damages, and as Moyer (2017) reports the court stated that “the Federal Reserve had overstepped its authority in taking the stake in A.I.G.”

Thus, if the Fed indeed had legal concerns, the ensuing events would suggest that they were reasonable and legitimate. Also, in the United States, rehypothecation of collateral (repledging) is limited by Rule 15c3-3 of the SEC, but the United Kingdom had no such restriction. Lehman’s bailout would have included its foreign subsidiaries including its UK-based broker dealer. Thus, in terms of the counterfactual, had collateral been posted, it is uncertain who or which institution would have had final claim to it: other holders of the collateral or the Fed.

This potential concern for the Fed seems supported by Ball’s (p5) description of its actions, “The entity that Barclays almost purchased on the 14th, and which famously filed for bankruptcy on the 15th, was Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI), a corporation with many subsidiary companies. Most of these subsidiaries also entered bankruptcy immediately, but one did not: Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI), which was Lehman’s broker-dealer in New York. The Fed kept LBI in business from September 15 to September 18 by lending it tens of billions of dollars through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility; after that, Barclays purchased part of LBI and the rest was wound down.” Also, LBI was heavily involved in the repo market, with its book still relatively intact perhaps due to access to the PDCF, and LBI’s disorderly unwinding might have been detrimental to the important money market.

Prior to Lehman’s failure, the Fed managed the sale of Bear Stearns, another failed investment bank, to JPMorgan Chase. The Fed subsequently set up the PDCF. (Another question that remains perhaps even more of a mystery is why Lehman did not avail itself of the PDCF earlier when its insolvency would not have been in question.) The Fed’s intervention in AIG involved a considerable equity stake, as the corporation was effectively nationalized. Thus, these two outcomes, managed sale and nationalization were not bailouts in the sense of what was to come.

Lehman – The Lesson Learned

Lehman’s bankruptcy triggered a credit crunch, and the Fed’s reaction was an alphabet soup of “special facilities,” including ones for the money market mutual fund industry, which experienced a run, and commercial paper, which froze. The Fed effectively backstopped trillion-dollar industries and provided trillions of dollars in additional support to various institutions. The knee-jerk reaction suggests that the Fed and others underestimated the impact of Lehman’s failure, and in its aftermath, decided to dramatically reverse course to a “whatever-it-takes” approach.

Lehman – The Lesson to Unlearn

The last lesson needs to be unlearned. As it turns out, what we have really learned is that moral hazard is a serious concern that has not been adequately considered or appreciated. The correct approach is to either allow firms to file bankruptcy or truly nationalize them. The focus of bailouts should be people not corporations. The American people’s tax dollars are not a piggy bank for irresponsible corporations. They are its collective contribution to build a better society for themselves.

Dramatically reversing course from what was once a more free-market ideology to a bastardized version of Keynesian economics takes the American economy and people from one extreme to another. This legacy of Lehman’s downfall is rearing its ugly head as the Fed bails out entire industries and corporations with no restraint and no accountability during this present crisis. It was irresponsible and immoral then, and it still is now. The American people deserve better.

Symmetric Storm, Asymmetric Shock and the Immorality of Fed Policy

Some have called it “the great equalizer.” In some ways, this is an accurate description. The pandemic does not discriminate, although certainly some people are more vulnerable to the disease. One could also describe the coronavirus pandemic as a symmetric storm, one that is howling across the world so fiercely that some are wondering if they are, in fact, hearing the harbinger of the apocalypse. However, the effects of the pandemic, like previous crises, are not symmetric but instead, have resulted in an asymmetric shock.

The response of the “technocratic class,” in true elitist fashion, has also been anything but symmetric. It has been a moral failure of monumental proportions. However, this is nothing new; it is just a new low. For decades, the elite in the United States and around the world have been more preoccupied with advancing their own political, academic and professional careers than about the people they are privileged with the responsibility of serving, the people whose interests they have a moral obligation to protect and to promote.

Instead, central banks and other institutions around the world have created policies that cater to the powers that be, multinational corporations and the rich. Understandably, monetary policy is difficult for many people to understand beyond basics, such as the lowering and raising of interest rates, its theoretical effects on inflation and unemployment and, perhaps, a general understanding of the mechanisms with which central banks implement the policy, what was, in the United States, known as open market operations.

Fed Response 2008

In response to the financial crisis of 2008/9, the United States central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), started using a set of monetary policy tools that fall under the umbrella of unconventional monetary policy. One of these policies is known as quantitative easing. It should be noted that these are experimental policies (the Japanese experience notwithstanding), and the experiment is clearly failing. Prior to the financial crisis, the Fed maintained a balance sheet that was around 800 billion.

After hitting the zero-lower-bound, meaning interest rates could not be lowered any further (aside from negative interest rates, a topic for another day), the Fed resorted to quantitative easing. They began purchasing assets not to target short-term interest rates, money market rates, such as the fed funds and the repo rates, but to lower longer-term interest rates.

Fed – Interest Rates and Morality

The Bible clearly prohibits usury, more precisely, charging interest at all; for example, “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest,” Exodus 22:25, and “Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest,” (Deuteronomy 23:19).

McCleary and Barro (2019, p11) in their book, The Wealth of Religions (support your local bookstore), wrote the following with respect to the secularization hypothesis: “Secularization applied to some aspects of John Calvin’s city of Geneva and its regulation of economic activity, especially the distinction doctrinally made between interest and usury. Interest was an economic necessity for commercial and financial transactions and was allowed by the authorities. The maximum interest rate, set at 5 percent, was regulated by the Genevan government and the Consistory, a corporate religious-moral committee of the government whose judgments were enforced by the city council…”.

Interest rates above the regulated rate were considered usurious; however, they explain that this was raised to 6.7 percent while Calvin was still living and to 10 percent after his death. With these and related actions, the city of Geneva apparently liberated itself from the theological restriction and began what they describe as “the secularization of economic activity in Geneva.”

Another way to describe it would be, thus began the unleashing of unbridled capitalism. The immorality of usury is obvious. One only has to look at its modern manifestations, such as Payday loans. Even the actions of the recently deceased former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker who raised interest rates to control inflation, an action which predictably led to a recession, should be reexamined to possibly find a better approach.

The immorality of the opposite of high interest rates, low interest rates, particularly for an extended period of time, has not been adequately discussed or perhaps even considered. Volcker’s successor, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan depended on this form of management to prop up financial markets and, arguably secondarily, the real economy, which has had various negative effects, such as asset price bubbles, excessive speculation and crises among others.

Fed – Bailouts

In more recent years, financial markets have become dependent not only on perpetually low interest rates but also on eye-popping amounts of central bank intervention, trillions of dollars, often in the form of “special facilities,” financial/legal vehicles that the Fed has been using to circumvent its requirement to hold only government-issued (T-bills, Treasuries, etc.) or government-backed (Agency MBS) securities. (The exact totals of “bailout” money, regardless of whether it is on the balance sheet or in special facilities, depends on how one counts it and what the Fed has been willing to disclose. It should be required to disclose it all.)

Not only are the Fed’s policies causing imbalances and other issues, but the key question is: why are the very corporations that have been causing our economic and financial problems being bailed out with trillions of dollars while the American people are suffering and being abandoned by the institutions that are supposed to be serving them? These central bank actions (both here and abroad) are exacerbating the asymmetric shock on the rich and the poor, on richer and poorer countries.

The Fed will attempt to provide pacifying, pseudo-intellectual arguments to justify these grossly immoral actions. They cannot obfuscate the truth. The institution is failing the American people whose taxes are being used in ways that are detrimental to their interests and contrary to how they should be used. This exploitation of the American people and corruption of the Fed needs to stop. The American people and people around the world deserve better from their institutions, their leaders and the “technocratic elite.”

Between the Scylla of Shut Down and the Charybdis of Open Up

Between the Scylla and the Charybdis — Johann Heinrich Füssli – Odysseus in Front of Scylla and Charybdis

Christians have historically navigated between the Scylla of legalism and the Charybdis of license. The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis, and God basically gives Adam and Eve one simple “law” to obey. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed him and thus began mankind’s odyssey.

Scylla of Legalism

As we move further into the Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, there is a proliferation of laws. As Father Longenecker (2014) explains, “For the first time obeying a law code was the way to make God happy.” Perhaps it was also a way for Moses and Aaron to keep an unruly, disobedient and ungrateful caravan of freed Hebrew slaves from angering God and from exhausting them any more than they had.

Then comes Paul and Christianity. Longenecker says, “Unfortunately, the law is not enough, and St Paul unlocked the riddle by telling us that the whole reason for the law was not to make us good enough, but to show us that we could never be good enough. The Christian religion was another innovation. Instead of living by the law, we are called to live by faith in a dynamic relationship with God.”

Charybdis of License

Most people, even Christians, might ask: what does it mean to be “called to live by faith in a dynamic relationship with God”? It does not provide any real guidance. Although Christians have forgotten or ignored much of the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments continue to have a simplicity and practicality that is conducive to obedience. It is much easier to follow laws if one can actually remember them. License on the other hand requires no memorization and no restraint. Its potential destructiveness is also obvious.

Scylla of Shut Down and the Charybdis of Open Up

Today, as we debate the Scylla of shut down and the Charybdis of open up the economy, we would do well to remember that the safest passage in this crisis is navigating between the two extremes. The left seems to lean toward shutting down, maintaining stay-at-home orders, and the right seems to lean toward opening up, returning to normal.

There are economic consequences to maintaining restrictions that are too strict that go well beyond the stock market but affect ordinary people in real and painful ways. We need to be sensitive to the financial precariousness of their lives and understand that their economic vulnerabilities can quickly develop into other problems, such as domestic violence, child abuse, inescapable poverty and debt.

On the other hand, no restrictions at all would almost certainly exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus, which would bring with it not just illness and death but also economic ramifications, as people would be required to go to work and would feel compelled to do so even if they were feeling unwell.

This is not a matter of right versus left, legalism or license, shutting down or opening up. It is a matter of assigning proper weight to the risks associated with veering too much in one direction or the other and finding the correct middle path. Jesus’s perfect navigation between the extremes of legalism and license is often underappreciated. He never actually lowered the standards or diluted “the law.” In many respects, he raised them. However, he simultaneously extended tremendous compassion and generosity.

We would do well to adopt his approach to the extent we could – strict but compassionate. Ideally, our government would have acted faster and with more preparation and planning, in particular, making sure that we had adequate tests and medical equipment and were tracing any people suspected of having come into contact with the virus. They would have had to follow stricter self-isolation guidelines, i.e. quarantine, while the remainder of the population could have continued life under a laxer set of preventive measures. Alas, neither competence nor compassion can be found in the present administration.

My Brother’s Keeper

For the rest of us, let us live in faith in God and in each other. Let us be our brother’s keeper and think of others’ interests as well as our own. Let us remember that some among us are more vulnerable to sickness and death while others are more vulnerable to poverty, which can also lead to sickness and death. Let us not judge others for their particular fears or frustrations, but instead let us pray that our leaders will arrive at a reasonable set of guidelines that avoids both the health and economic dangers to the greatest extent possible.

April 13, 2020May 1, 2020

Forty-Eight Hours of Breath

Reverend Dr. William Barber recently asked the question, “If you knew you had only forty-eight hours of breath left, what kind of world would you use that breath to fight for? What kind of world, what kind of nation?” It is the question we should all be asking ourselves everyday of our lives. However, many people will never ask it. They will breathe their last in the same stupor or, worse yet, sin in which they lived their lives.

They will care more about death walking through their locked door, instead of passing over it, than about the fact that while living they did not use their time or their lives well and did not treat others the way they ought to have, the way Jesus taught us. They will not have stopped to examine their lives or their conscience. Perhaps because if they had, they might not have liked what they found.

Forty-Eight Hours – As Carnegie Lay Dying

Approximately 100 years ago, as World War I, which had ravaged the world, was coming to an end, only to lead to the economic consequences of the peace and World War II, Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world, who had amassed a fortune by the cruelest possible treatment and exploitation of his fellow Americans, his workers, lay dying.

How did he choose to live his last hours? Standiford in his biography, Meet You in Hell, says that Carnegie sought reconciliation not with God but with someone possibly even more sinful than he, his once friend and partner turned foe and competitor, Henry Clay Frick. What was Frick’s response? Standiford writes, “‘Yes, you can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him,’ Frick said finally, wadding the letter and tossing it back at Bridge [Carnegie’s personal secretary]. ‘Tell him I’ll see him in Hell, where we both are going.’”

Redemption Cannot Be Bought

In his later years, Carnegie had decided to become a philanthropist. His foundations are numerous, as we all know since they bear his name, and his legacy, Standiford describes as follows: “To this day he is often credited with having established the precedent of corporate philanthropy; as one commentator observed, when Bill Gates makes a gift of some of his hard-earned millions, it is probably the ghost of Andrew Carnegie that guides his outstretched hand.”

I would hope not, for the Gates’s and for the world’s sake. Despite all his philanthropy, Carnegie did not seem to get it even at the end of his life. Perhaps motivated by guilt, fear or legacy, he was determined to remake his image from a brutal plutocrat to a benevolent philanthropist.

One of Jesus’s final acts before his crucifixion was the Last Supper, during which he washed his Apostles’ feet. It is one of the most emotional aspects of Jesus’s life for Christians around the world. It was a profound act of humility and love. I have witnessed many people cry during its reenactment.

By contrast, Carnegie’s final exchange reveals his preoccupation with the world. It hounded him until the end. What do others think of him? Well, he got his answer from Frick. Standiford says, “And all’s well since it is growing better and when I [Carnegie] go for a trial for the things done on earth, I think I’ll get a verdict of ‘not guilty’ through my efforts to make the earth a little better than I found it.”

If Carnegie thought he could buy forgiveness or redemption, Frick disabused him of this notion, and just to turn the sword, confirmed with pleasure that, indeed, Carnegie would end up in hell. Forgiveness is granted by victims and by God. Christians believe that salvation comes through faith and/or works, with their relative measure in debate. The simple and, likely, most honest understanding is that redemption and judgment are God’s purview, and it is best to just live according to the Way, love, trust and surrender to God.

The Last Judgment

I argued that annihilation is the greatest punishment. It is nothingness; it is to be without a soul. Some might have found this surprising. How could nothing be worse than eternal damnation? Well, if hell is an eternal, boiling cauldron of perversity, Frick seemed to relish the continuation of their earthly torments in hell, and better yet, perhaps he hoped that Carnegie, in his final days, would be tortured by yet resigned to this outcome.

This brings us back to the present. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare many unfortunate truths. One of these is that many of our nation’s people and policies are callous, even cruel, particularly towards the poor and vulnerable. If Carnegie dreaded hell, as he seemed to indicate toward the end of his life, perhaps the larger question is: why did he choose to live a life on earth that he would find miserable in hell? The question for all of us is: if you have forty-eight hours or even forty-eight years to live, what and who are you breathing for?

April 8, 2020April 30, 2020

Who Is a Christian?

It is a harmless question. Are you a Christian? Yet, it invites responses that are not harmless. They are often judgmental and inappropriate. Christianity started as a Jewish sect, and it retains features of this origin in numerous respects. One of these is related to identity. People often identify themselves as Christian if they come from Christian families. In fact, the concept of religious identity as part of one’s lineage can be found in numerous faith traditions.

When some Evangelicals speak about being born again, they often refer to John 3, and I would argue without actually understanding what Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus. The author of this post declares, “No one, however, is ever automatically a Christian by birth.” In case the author is confused, no one person decides these matters. The church, in its entire body, does, and ultimately, God decides.

John 3:5-8 “Jesus answered [Nicodemus], ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’”

Christian – Societal Definition

Children born into Christian families can definitely claim to be Christian. They are Christian by birth. Many of them will have been baptized, i.e. born of water, as infants, and they will often have received Christian names. (In this context, Jesus might mean “born of water” with a double meaning, baptism by water and born of the womb. The latter is supported with “flesh gives birth to flesh.”) Their parents are choosing to carry on their religious tradition, to define them as followers of Christ, as their own parents might have done for them. This is the societal and literal definition of Christian, and it is an entirely valid one.

Christian – Spiritual Definition

Jesus was talking about a spiritual definition when he added “and the Spirit.” He was talking about a transformation that occurs within the person in response to the grace of the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit is a mysterious force, and it is entirely possible that a person goes through his or her life, living piously, without ever having a noticeable or profound experience with the Spirit.

Would Jesus say that this person is not a “true follower”? I will leave that up to him to determine, but some Evangelicals seem to have already decided that for him. They might consider that we do not always recognize the Holy Spirit at work. In which case, how would we be able to ascertain whether one meets this criterion of being a Christian or not? On the other hand, one might have been born again only to fall away again.

The following statement, like many of Jesus’s statements, can be hard to understand: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” I understand it as the nature of the Holy Spirit becomes manifest in the person, and depending on one’s relationship with God, one might be called to take unpredictable paths to fulfill his will. You hear God’s voice. Whether or not you can tell where it is coming from or where it will take you is not important. What is important is that you can hear it.

Becoming Christian

I am a nondenominational Christian and consider myself born again. I have no vested interest in the answer to this question. However, I do care that the Christian faith is protected and that it welcomes others with open arms. To become a Christian in a societally defined sense might involve some steps and some time, which are determined by each denomination. To become spiritually Christian, however, is determined by God and God alone, no matter what others might claim.

For a different interpretation of the last verses quoted: Piper (2009)

April 7, 2020April 29, 2020

Monasteries and the Art of Quieting the Disquieted Mind

For those who are struggling with self-isolation, they might consider that this life has been the choice of many deeply spiritual people for millennia, such as Christian (cloistered nuns or) monks, who still live in monasteries around the world. (I highly recommend visiting them, particularly for a retreat.) Granted, a house full of noisy children and/or pets is hardly conducive to quiet reflection. However, one can adopt many of the monks’ daily habits. From what I could tell, their days are quite structured and oriented around prayer and productivity.

Quieting with Prayer

Praying is centering. If there is one thing I highly recommend practicing, and it does require practice, it is prayer. For those who struggle with it, as I did and still do, just to a lesser extent, I suggest having a prayer that you like, memorize it, and start praying regularly by reciting it. My “go-to” is The Lord’s Prayer. I have known it by heart since I was a child, and it is like the “comfort food” of prayers for me, deeply familiar, complete, and I can linger on each word as if Jesus were saying them with me. The Hail Mary is another familiar prayer.

Praying a rosary, which includes both of these prayers and some others, is another way to pray by recitation. Since the structure is laid out, one does not need to think about it. One might need to get used to moving through the rosary’s beads without looking, but it will come with practice.

Our own prayers, “free form” prayers, can be about anything. They are actually just one’s communication with an omniscient God, so there is no point in trying to hide anything. Just speak your heart, mind and soul to the Lord. Praying with scripture, which I would describe as mediating on the Word, is one of my favorite ways to pray. Catholics call it Lectio Divina. I actually made up my own style of it.

Quieting with Art

One of the things I used to do quite often was look at art, and I was reminded of how infrequently I do so now when I read this post. I used to even copy others’ drawings, which creates a certain intimacy between the original creator and the copier – you.

Your hand, temporally removed, tries to trace outlines that originated in their minds, which could be some of the greatest there ever were, before making it onto their canvas or other material. It is not just an artistic exercise but also a spiritual one that connects us to ancient friends and to a past to which we should always try to belong. It is our collective history, our memory of some of the best aspects of being human: the true, the good, and the beautiful.

As an example, the story of the Good Samaritan can be rendered in a myriad of ways, and whichever way the artist chooses provides insight into the person while also, hopefully, illuminating the Way. Biblical art is really an artistic rendering of the Word without words.

Quiet Unity

I could tell you that the Good Samaritan is a story about prejudice and compassion, or you could gaze upon the image of a man struggling to lift another helpless, vulnerable man and wonder why did he do it. Why did he help someone he was taught to hate and who was taught to hate him? The artist chose to depict the physicality of the moment, which heightens the solitude of both men, the difficulty of a sole man to lift another, and simultaneously their unity.

One could describe the art of quieting a disquieted mind as finding unity in solitude. It is the art of binding our fragmented mind, weary with worry, distracted with stress, with the rest of our being, and bringing our entire being into a quiet state of unity with our creator.

The inspiration for this post: Oakley (2020)

April 6, 2020April 30, 2020

Songs of Trust Spoken by Children

Our children, meaning all of the children on this planet, are our future and our light. Many children around the world are suffering because man can be evil. Adults are betraying our little angels. As we move through Holy Week, one that is particularly emotionally intense, let us try to be more like the most holy among us; let us cherish their innocent grace and emulate their natural resilience; let us live up to the trust they place in us.

Psalm 23 from the Hebrew Bible has been translated, reworked and interpreted numerous times. The words bring comfort to the reader not necessarily because of the language or the structure of the psalm but because of what it declares – trust in God. A simple message that transcends the song and the original context. Better than a harp, a child’s voice can elevate the psalmist’s trust with its delicate musicality.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Losing Trust

However, David, the psalmist, became sinful and fell from grace. He lost trust; he betrayed God. Like Adam and Eve, he did not dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Societies from time immemorial have feared the gods, which they often regarded as petulant and easily provoked. Contrary to some opinions, the Christian God is not fickle. We are fickle, and Jesus knew this.

John 2:23-25 “Now while he [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.”

Become Like Children

We are called to love God unconditionally and to follow the Way, and if we do so, we will have no fear and no want. God will not betray us. Instead, we sin over and over again. We do not follow God’s commandments. Additionally, we expect and condition our love, mainly on matters related to our earthly existence. Who are we to expect anything of God? God is God, and we are but mere sinful mortals. Jesus taught us complete trust and love, and we have reminders of him everywhere in our children, in God’s children.

Matthew 18:2-4 “He [Jesus] called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”

Becoming like a child is not to abandon the reason, knowledge or wisdom we might have gained over the years, but it is to render our spirit open and accepting to the Lord. It is to give without asking, to pray without expecting, to love without conditioning. It is to be God’s child again.

As Easter approaches, let us pray for peace and remember that we have a responsibility to our children, the innocents, to protect and to love them because they belong to God. No matter where we may dwell, they still dwell in his house.

https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/extremists-killed-her-mother-but-hearing-this-young-girl-read-psalm-23-inspires-hope

April 2, 2020May 1, 2020

A Great Awakening: ESG Investing Edition?

This post is part of a broader subject that very much deserves public attention and discussion. Capitalism as it has been practiced since 1776, the year Adam Smith first published his book The Wealth of Nations, coincidentally, the same year as our Declaration of Independence, is failing. It is time to accept this fact and create something different – something better.

Moral capitalism is a term and concept that has been bandied around for a while, and its full realization in all aspects of our economy, including financial markets, is long overdue. A shift to one aspect of moral capitalism has been happening to a certain extent in, of all places, the investment community, driven mainly by the demands of institutional investors.

ESG Investing

Faith-based institutions have played a considerable role in the advancement of Environmental, Social, (Corporate) Governance (ESG) investing, also known as sustainable investing, since they are particularly sensitive to the companies or industries included in their portfolios. For example, with Pope Francis’s release of the environmentally oriented encyclical Laudato Si, the Catholic Church would do well by putting words to action and decarbonizing all of its portfolios.

Although ESG investing has been gaining steam, asset managers, traditional and alternative, have been too slow in truly implementing it. Partly, this is due to a lack of data, although the EU is now leading the data collection effort, but it is also due to the managers’ lack of foresight, knowledge, skill and genuine commitment to sustainable investing.

Some investment managers have their regular funds and similar ESG funds that exclude the companies and industries that would not meet the UN PRI or the manager’s ESG criteria. This could be acceptable in the interim, until the investment community as a whole fully transitions to ESG investing, as long as managers are not simply repurposing an old fund with an ESG label and engaging in “green washing.” (Note, the institutional investors have gotten wise and can tell.) The managers need to change their underlying investment processes and, ideally, their entire culture to a responsible, long-term investment focus.

The hedge fund industry, active managers with higher fees and often a focus on absolute returns, would be wise to adopt ESG investing, since it would be a real value added, particularly as the industry needs to justify its raison d’être in a time of passive investment.

Also, a good hedge fund manager, like a traditional one, minimizes exposure to systemic risks and acts as a shield against what is often mislabeled as a black swan event. It would be hard to categorize the effects of climate change, which has been documented for at least half a century, as a black swan event.

In fact, the financial crisis was often referred to as such, when truly savvy investors saw it coming. If one was looking at the economy, the proliferation of certain financial instruments, the data, and the historical frequency with which crises have beset capitalist economies, it was hardly a black swan event.

Some might argue that many institutional investors need alpha/pure performance and any potentially “compromising” considerations, such as ESG, should be secondary at best. The premise of this argument would be that alpha and ESG are at odds. Let us consider. If all of the alpha generated over some extended period of time is wiped out as the “black swan” takes over the lagoon, then all those fees paid were effectively a waste of good money, particularly when pensions funds cannot afford to lose any money.

Additionally, the governance factor is low-hanging fruit. There has been inadequate pressure by institutional investors on management and on corporate oversight to lower executive compensation, improve the treatment and compensation of labor, include other stakeholders, such as labor, on the board of directors and to the minimize the short-term focus, including share buybacks, i.e. quarterly capitalism. I would argue that the mismanagement of these companies is often directly related to the investors’ underwhelming returns.

Nonetheless, the ESG trend is positive. Let us keep it moving forward and fix our economy so that it serves everyone. That would be moral capitalism, and that would be a great awakening.