Nepotism and age: Bad PR.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of businesses promoting themselves as family-run companies. (SC Johnson and Coors come to mind; and this morning I read about a local family-run fruit-packing company in the newspaper.) I’m sure they’re trying to project some sort of family-friendly image to the public; but to me, when I think of family-run companies, I think of nepotism.

I don’t approve of nepotism. I admit, I got a job or two because of it. I’d like to think I was well-qualified to do those jobs regardless of family connections, but I can never entirely be sure. I also lost a job or two because of it; the bosses preferred to hire family over someone who, while well-qualified, wasn’t family. Some of the worst pastors I have ever experienced were the result of hiring family (and some were the result of hiring someone with anointing instead of training; you need both, people!—but that’s another rant). The theory is that you’re hiring someone with an inherited knack for the family business. But for every instance of that being true, you have three instances of some inept idiot, who is forgiven for his petty mistakes (or grand larcenies) when anyone else would be fired, whose company’s success is more often because a CEO or board of directors really runs it.

I don’t care if a company is run by a family. I care more about whether the families who work for the company are taken care of. But you seldom see that in the advertising.

…And since I’m at it, I also don’t care about how old a company is. Disneyland is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Big deal. If anything, that’s not a good thing to promote; it implies the rides’ machinery is 50 years old, and after that roller coaster accident at Disney’s California Adventure, that’s not an idea you want to evoke.

To bring up Coors again: What strikes me as odd about breweries reminding us how old they are is that one has to wonder what on earth they were busy doing during Prohibition. Remember, laws against selling alcohol were written into the Constitution, so it seemed really unlikely that the law was going to change back. Yet breweries like Busch and Coors and Miller were ready to go as soon as the amendment was repealed. What’s up with that?

(I know what their “official” stories are; but don’t tell me they were perfectly happy to “get by” making malted milk products, rubbing alcohol, and near beer. It reminds me of all those rich “farmers” in Columbia that say they’re only growing “coffee.”)

A sabbath day’s rest.

Ah, rest.

I agree with the Seventh-Day Adventists in that Saturday is the sabbath, not Sunday. I know, centuries of Christian tradition has made Sunday our sabbath; but I don’t see any scriptural evidence for making such a switch. Likewise, there’s no evidence for the idea that Christians should meet on Sunday—Christians should meet daily perhaps, or several times a week, not just Sunday.

(In fact, I once got into a rather silly argument with an Adventist over it. “You’re right,” I told him, “we should rest on the Sabbath. But you don’t rest; you go to church and worship. Worship is work.” He really didn’t like that interpretation.)

The point behind Sabbath rest, of course, is rest. It has little to do with following the command. I look at the command in this way: God gave it for our good. Humans aren’t meant to work nonstop. It isn’t so much that we’re to spend the day meditating on God—we’re to spend every day meditating on God—or depriving ourselves of fun. It’s to rest. It’s to stop working ourselves to death.

The hard part is determining what “rest” means. The Hebrew term shabbat has an original meaning of stop; God created the universe in six days, then stopped. The connection between stopping and rest comes from the Ten Commandments; but stop is probably the best guideline. So what does that mean? Well, as I understand it: Whatever you normally do throughout the week, stop. Step back from it. Rest from it.

Since I use my computers pretty much every bloody day, I decided I need to include the computers in my rest. Even though I use them for fun, they’re really too connected to separate. So, off they go. I even shut them down yesterday instead of putting them to sleep.

I felt a lot more rested.

Malfunctioning computers.

When you leave it on for two months, it gets a bit wonky.

I have Macintoshes.

The unfortunate side effect of owning Mac computers is that many people become Mac evangelists. They have to get everyone to use Macs, they have to make fun of Windows whenever possible, they have to hate Bill Gates (even though lots of them use and love Microsoft Word), and they gloss over any problems that the Mac might possibly have. In other words, they become fundamentalist Mac evangelists.

My attitude, of course, is: Whatever computer works for you, use it. So I guess I’d be a liberal Mac evangelist… most of the time. Every once in a while someone’s computer will break down or get a virus or otherwise malfunction and I’ll joke, “Shoulda bought a Mac.” (Hey, it’s a hilarious punchline. Mac users know what I’m talking about.)

The dopey part is that there are such things as Mac evangelists. Granted, it’s a great computer; true, I spend a ridiculous amount of time using my computer; but it’s just a computer. It’s a tool. It’s an intelligent typewriter that plays MP3s and solitaire.

It is horribly frustrating when they don’t do what you want them to, though. My case in point is the microphone plug on my computer. It was working. For some reason, it wasn’t working this past month. So I decided to finally turn off the computer, which had been n on since May, and turned it back on, and it began working again. Why? I dunno. I don’t know squat about how the programs work; I just know what I can do with them.

So that’s working. Which is good, ’cause I was getting tired of recording audio through the built-in microphone in my computer (the computer’s fan made too much noise) or my Pocket PC (which took two minutes to save for every minute I recorded) or through my video input cable (which means I have to have the VCR on). Annoying, when one considers that the computer should do everything it did when it came from the factory.

Stupid Internet Survey: Model of the church.

What is your model of the church?

You scored as Mystical Communion Model.

Your model of the church is Mystical Communion, which includes both People of God and Body of Christ. The church is essentially people in union with Christ and the Father through the Holy Spirit. Both lay people and clergy are drawn together in a family of faith. This model can exalt the church beyond what is appropriate, but can be supplemented with other models.

Mystical Communion Model	72%
Servant Model	72%
Sacrament Model	72%
Herald Model	67%
Institutional Model	22%

What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
created with QuizFarm.com.

It’s an odd thing when I take a quiz, score the very same percentage on three items, and yet I’m supposedly one more than the others because of what I picked as a priority in the tiebreaker question.

I suspect I scored a 72 percent because the quiz used hymns to determine theology. The churches I attend don’t sing hymns very often, so it’s not accurate to say my church would sing one hymn more often than another. Besides, we all know that worship music is usually picked for the catchy tunes, riffs, and hooks rather than the theology.

If I were to pick a model for myself I would probably choose the Complex Organism Model. The church is the people of God and body of Christ; it is also servant to the world, evangelist to the world, dispenser of the sacraments and grace, and herald of the good news. It’s all these things. It doesn’t matter if I agree with one more than the other, or like one form of ministry most.

I suppose I scored low on the Institutional Model because I believe there should be no such thing as laity within the church; we’re all clergy.

“Lies that go unchallenged.”

Our culture’s lies contain some truth, otherwise they’d be lousy lies. So what are those truths?

I get the Christianity Today newsletter emailed to me weekdays. It’s one way of keeping up on items of Christian interest that I might miss otherwise.

They sell downloadable bible studies. If you don’t feel confident enough to put together your own bible study curriculum, you can go through theirs. This provokes two side-rants, which I’ll summarize:

1. Most of these are not bible studies per se. They are attempts to analyze one’s life or one’s surroundings with a “Christian” perspective. This presumes that the people in your study group have a Christian perspective, and they’re hardly going to develop one unless they study the bible, dammit.
2. That being the case, I strongly disapprove of making money off the stupid or ignorant.

This one, which you can download free, is adapted from Charles Colson’s BreakPoint radio commentaries. (That’s right, another one of Colson’s ghostwriters strikes again.) Again, it’s not a bible study; it’s a worldview study, and stacks the deck in favor of Colson’s worldview by listing seven “lies” that go unchallenged.

I’m not saying they aren’t lies; but I think it would be better if such a study began by first asking people whether they thought these statements were true. If lies are going to be effective, there has to be some truth in them, and perhaps it would be a good thing to extract the truth first instead of rejecting everything in the statement.

For fun, here are the statements. For my fun, they’re followed by my comments.

The bric-a-brac of late July.

My current events.

Mom’s trying to figure a trip to Disneyland for the family next week. Logistics are always a tricky thing: fly or drive, which hotel, visit relatives or not, accommodating Tim, the cost, the temperature, etc. I’m not particular. It’s been eleven years since I was last at Disneyland and I want another Goofy hat.

Been pounding out the last of the philosophy papers, but I took some time off between 11 and 4 (that’s p.m. and a.m.) to finally write, produce, upload, and post my current podcast. I was tempted to jabber about postmodernism again, but I decided I’d had enough of the subject (since I’ve had to write so much about it for the philosophy class) so I decided to go through the Things that Annoy Me About Living on Campus. I haven’t added to the list since February, and I don’t plan to; but here you can listen to me in full sarcasm mode. Website here. Podcast here. Or try iTunes; but make sure you have a solid internet connection because if you get cut off for any reason, you can’t fix the broken downloads.

I started subscribing to Blockbuster’s DVDs-by-mail service and have attempted this July to get more than my money’s worth by going through 30 movies in a month. I haven’t been successful; their system is a little too slow for me. It takes two to three days for the distribution center to receive my old movie and send a new one. But I can get 25 movies out of them per month, which puts the cost of the service at 60¢ per movie. So there’s that.

One of my cousins is frantically calling the rest of the family members. Someone claiming to be him has sent an email to everyone, “confessing” that he’s been having internet sex with 13-year-olds. Since he wants to be a P.E. coach, this is not the sort of thing one wants to become known for. Just a reminder: Don’t let evil bastards borrow your computer. But on the up side, if my cousin wants to sue this guy for libel, he’s got a fantastic case.

Another hot day today. I may have to hit the air-conditioned coffee shop. It’s a beautiful thing when the air conditioning is so good, you can order a hot coffee and comfortably drink it. I did that Monday. I may have to do it again today. We’ll see.

Stupid Internet Survey: Eucharistic theology.

Your eucharistic theology.

You scored as Martin Luther.

You’ll stick with the words of Scripture, and defend this with earthy expressions. You believe in an orthodox Christology. You believe that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Christ, but aren’t too sure about where he goes after the meal, and so you don’t accept reservation of the Blessed Sacrament or Eucharistic devotions.

Luther	100%
Catholic	75%
Zwingli	50%
Calvin	50%
Unitarian	0%

Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com.

Everyone makes a big deal about how Martin Luther was a sola scriptura kind of guy, but they forget his most famous statement:

Unless I am convinced by scripture and plain reason (I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other) my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.

In that statement from the Diet of Worms, Luther gave three sources of his theology:

1. Scripture.
2. Plain reason.
3. Conscience.

He might have coined the term “sola scriptura,” and he might even have believed that his reason and conscience had fully conformed to it. In that, he was fooling himself. No one’s theology comes from scripture alone. If that were true, we wouldn’t have so many contradictory theologies—Luther’s main complaint against the church. In fact we’d have no theologies. We couldn’t use reason to determine which of the things in the scriptures must be applied to our lives; we couldn’t use conscience to recognize the difference between truly applying the scriptures and manipulating the text to fit our selfish lives.

As I remind people all the time, postmodernism isn’t a recent worldview. It was always there, if repressed.

Yes I know the result is Luther, not Luthor. Laugh with me!