Liam Kinnon

Anne Rice apparently quit Christianity today.  She claims to still be a christian, but she does not like a whole lot of Christianity.  Leaving aside that I agree with a number of her points, I disagree with the larger spirit of what she was saying.

Let me start a little earlier than I was initially going to.  My faith, my Christianity, and my love of Christ remained with me through my late teens for one reason: logic.  I was confronted by two strong desires that were hugely in conflict.  The first was for freedom, complete, uninhibited freedom.  The second was for justice.  Don’t think these two conflict? Let me explain further.

The freedom I craved was the freedom from constraints.  I wanted to be able to drink whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted.  I wanted to sleep with whomever I wanted.  I also wanted revenge on a person who nearly ruined my family, by any means necessary.  That desire for vengeance held the key to the problem I was faced with.  I knew something wrong, something inexcusable, had occurred; yet to walk away from my faith was to allow that the two worlds, the one in which this person believed he was right, and the one in which I believed he was evil, were mutually exclusive.  I could not accept that.

It was in this realization that I figured out what sin is.  Sin is the catastrophic consequence of wanting things my way, applied universally.  To acknowledge the sin in this person’s actions also meant acknowledging the sin in my desire for vengeance, my desire to pass the hurt back.  Yet this is the cost of absolutes, that standards exist, standards I may not like, but that I am constrained to.  I take up the constraints with the hope and faith that Christ will eventually make sense of what I cannot.  I just can’t say I will always like it.

We are inDivisible.
Every cell coNtains our whole being.
Yet cut apArt we die.

Too much to do today, so I’ll leave Buechner’s memoirs to a later date.  Instead I give you my most recent graph.

Beard Graph.

This one is for Tyler.

With apologies to Demetri Martin

I’ve mentioned this a few times on Twitter, and I think I’m going to expand a bit here.  Fear-mongering is nothing new on the part of the media.  We need to be careful though when the New York Times throws a figure like 10,000 Swine Flu deaths since April.  10, 000 seems like a big number, and it would be easy to become concerned.  However, as I recently posted to Twitter, there have been 16,626 people killed in traffic accidents since the start of this year (as of October).

It strikes me that these two domains bear comparison.  After all, both are national statistics, both are more likely to occur in cities, and both can occur even if preventative measures are taken.  If one is going to panic over the swine flu deaths they might as well stay off the streets as well.  We need to be careful about what causes us to panic, or we might never leave our homes.

I’m not sure if this is an original idea.  I’d be surprised if it is.  I’ve just never heard any discussion of it before.  My idea is this, instead of yet another fare hike for the TTC, the City of Toronto finds a way to put tolls on the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway.  These tolls could then be pumped into the TTC and infrastructure in Toronto.  As well the tolls would serve as a City of Toronto tax on those who make their living in Toronto, but pay municipal taxes in the suburb cities.

For lack of being able to find decent usage statistics let’s say 50,000 cars enter Toronto on a given weekday.  If the DVP/Gardiner toll is $3.00, the price of commuting on the TTC, that means that each car will provide $6.00 a day.  That is a total of three-hundred thousand dollars being pumped into the Cities coffers every day.  Or Seventy-Eight million dollars a year.  If we use the toll technology of the 407, we do not even have to slow drivers down on their way into the city.

To save money on administration we could hold off on billing people until they reach a certain amount owed.  Instead of paying the fifty-two cents postage on a six dollar bill we would wait until commuters reach an amount owing of a hundred dollars. Anyway, that is a rough sketch of the idea.  Can you think of anything to add to it.  Or some glaring negatives for the city of Toronto.  Clearly this would annoy commuters, but seeing as people who live and work in the City of Toronto tend not to use the highways it shouldn’t be political suicide for the mayor or city councillors to try and implement.  And it would mean a reduced need to increase the fares on the TTC.  I’d suggest lowering them, but I won’t hold my breath for that.

Yesterday it may have seemed like I was picking on a church here in Toronto. I made a comment that I believe is justifiable criticism. Now I would like to say one very positive thing the pastor said, that I think more churches could learn from. His comment was that they were a church that had Arminians and Calvinists, among other groups that do not necessarily hold the same theological viewpoints.

It was a powerful statement, whether intended or not, as to what things are essential. Instead of fighting each other, dividing and splitting over obscure theological unknowables, we should be aiming for unity. Let’s be honest, we cannot sort out the paradoxes of theology. God is an infinite being who holds within himself everything we view as opposite. To borrow a phrase from a quantum physicist, if you think you understand God, you don’t. We are given powerful indicators as to his character, his goodness, and his love for us. But we will never know this side of heaven, and possibly the other side as well, how the paradoxes unfold together.

I attend a Christian Classics Reading Group, hosted by my good friend Matthew Hoskin and a few weeks back we were discussing the creeds. While discussing why we need them it seemed to me that they are powerful forces for unity. They are a test of orthodoxy if you will. Instead of asking if someone is a five point calvinist, or some other strange standard for determining their orthodoxy, should we not be asking instead if they believe the Apostles, Nicene, or Athanasian creed? If we accept Christ as the center of Christianity, theology should not be a force for division.

You see less kids these days in the parks.  Whether it is fear of germs or creeps who knows?  But if it is the former you could be hurting your kids.

From the New York Times:

In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

I just read a fascinating article by David Leonhart on the International Herald Tribune about the slow down of the American Consumer Culture.  There were two things that stuck out to me.  The first I will quote directly.

from the 1950s through the 1980s — Americans spent about 91 percent of their income, on average, and put away the rest. In the last few years, they have spent close to 99 percent and saved only about 1 percent. This simply cannot continue. For one thing, people need to pay down their debts and replenish their retirement accounts. For another, the psychology of spending and saving may well be changing.

Saving one percent just seems strange, and as tough as the transition may be Leonhart is right, this level of spending is unsustainable.  I have no clue what the solution to the current crisis is, but the prevention to the next seems to be don’t spend more than you have (also known as saving).

But here is the other fascinating thing.  A change of just one percent in American consumer spending represents $400 billion.  This is what makes me kind of ill about the consumer culture of North America (I doubt Canada is too far off from these percentages) I just watched a video at dashhouse about Advent Conspiracy, apparently the cost of giving clean water to everyone on earth is $10 billion dollars.  I’m not one for math, but this represents .025% of one percent of how much the average American spends on themselves.

Check out Advent Conspiracy

Ok, maybe I’m a little bit worried.  I mean black holes are scary.  Even if they are itty bitty ones like Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek says.  When I first heard there was a possibility that a black hole could be created when the world’s most advanced particle accelerator opened for business I assumed that meant the world could end.  Now I’m less concerned.  Apparently the black holes could not possibly do any damage.  There isn’t enough matter involved to allow this.  Read this article to have some clue as to what I’m talking about.