stillhaventfound.org

I think the command from Jesus to give away all your stuff is so revolutionary that most of us think he’s not serious. We will think of a hundred different reasons of why Jesus didn’t really mean what he said, or he was actually trying to make a point, or it was only for rich men (which by the way, in our world, if you live in North America, you are most likely in the top 1-10% richest in the world, even at 10, 000 a year) or fill in your own excuse here. We are so comfortable with our stuff and our money that we have convinced ourselves it’s not a problem.

…I think most of us are called to live a lot simpler than we are right now. I think that we are so far from experiencing eternal life that we have made up our own climaxes and feel good feelings and we try to use those to replace what it will be really like to actually follow the words of Jesus.

…I have a feeling that most of us are so caught up in feeling good about ourselves by money and what it can do for us with our up-to-date clothing, fancy transportation and having whatever we want instantly that we probably think someone is going off the deep end now if they actually chose to live simple. So, I’m assuming you reading this, have like me, not sold all your stuff and given it to the poor. So my question is, why haven’t we?

(Nathan Colquhoun, Selling All, Giving to the Poor)

International Development:

1) The Center for Global Development has released their latest Commitment to Development Index which ranks rich countries on how they help poor countries in seven policy areas.

2) Bill Gates embracing the commons? Well, at least when it comes to AIDS research.

3) Are the US$100 laptops for the poor all its made out to be?

4) What’s wrong with all these happiness indexes? How about the fact that in the first place they are not measures of happiness.

5) I don’t support free trade with abandon (though I believe free trade is more of an instrument for good than most critics care to admit) but I do believe in buying goods from poorer countries. Oh, and I did request a free “I buy goods from poorer countries” wristband and have already received mine!

Politics & Economics:

6) Does left and right still matter?

7) Is this the end of Libertarian politics?

Progressive Christianity:

8) An eminent scientist’s plea for Christian environmentalism.

Others:

9) One woman takes 5.5 years to ride a motorcycle around the world. One man takes over a year to walk across America to lose weight and regain his life.

10) Psychology Today on what makes us happy?

The children involved need to be cute and not sick as this would be more attractive for the media.

- Vice-President of a large Multinational Corporation - the main sponsor a huge charity project I’m involved in - on the kind of children’s home his company would like the Media Conference of the project to be held in.

International Development:

1) The Stanford Social Innovation Review on 10 innovative technologies that seek to solve the world’s problems.

2) WorldChanging has a good article on the inspiring approach to ecotourism by Dos Margaritas. Check out also some guides to ecotourism: Green Globe’s International Ecotourism Standard and Transitions Abroad Magazine’s Responsible Travel Handbook 2006.

3) How China and Russia deal with Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs).

4) Institute of Development Studies (IDS) has summarized some of the seminal work in international development research published since 1947 by authors who are or were based there. These include articles by Hans Singer, Dudley Seers, Richard Jolly, Michael Lipton and Robert Chambers.

5) The Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC), the official examination board for Wales, offers an A Level course in World Development. The curriculum covers six themes: development, resources and global citizenship; poverty and inequality; perspectives of development; economic development; political development; and social development. How interesting! For more information on the course, click here.

Politics & Economics:

6) Just what is wrong with Economics?

7) Is morality on Israel’s side?

Others:

8) An interesting article on taking the humanities to wider audiences without dumbing it down.

9) Philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that in our globalized world, an arts education is more crucial than ever as a way to cultivate sympathy for others.

10) The secret to picking any lock? Potential Robin Hoods, check out this YouTube, read this document and do what you want thereafter, but never deviate from your calling to steal from the rich so as to give to the poor!

I don’t like to suck up to people, as in go there and tell them, ‘Oh, did you wait very long? I’m really sorry to keep you waiting.’ I’m not that type lah. I will just say, ‘Thank you for supporting me.’ That’s the most I feel is appropriate for me ‘cos I’m not that type.

I wasn’t all out to garner votes. I was just too much of being myself. But I’m glad that I left because I was myself. I wouldn’t want to be someone else.

…I can never be an Idol. I’m too hardcore, I’m too rough… I’m not clean enough, not safe enough.

…If I lie to myself, that’s when I really get pissed. That’s what I really don’t wanna do. I want to be me. What I seek, what I do, I wanna breathe me.

…I hope that the contestants would be a lot more sincere. All the love, the smiles and stuff, some of it may be strategic, some of it may be genuine… We mingle a lot, but somehow I feel that some of them aren’t exactly sincere about it. I hate the feeling.

That’s why I’m kind of relieved to leave the competition also. I sincerely cannot take all this kind of act.

(Rahimah Rahim, quoted from She’s hit rock bottom)

I hadn’t heard of Rahimah Rahim before I came across the above article while searching the MediaCorp TV website to see if the Liverpool vs. Chelsea Community Shield match would be televised on Channel 5. As of this writing, I still haven’t seen or heard any of her performance.

Yet, I don’t need to hear her sing to admire her. It is not her singing that I respect of her, but her strength of character. What do I mean? The above article says it all: she’s kind of an Outsider, and I think Meursault/Albert Camus, Howard Roark/Ayn Rand and Colin Wilson would agree.

I say kind of because a true Outsider would never seek to be the Singapore Idol in the first place. He would never seek the praises and acceptance of man, but live for truth - and that alone would be good enough for him.

Full credit to her though, for she tries to live like that. As the writer of the article said, she stands for honest truth. Not fame, not love, not money - but truth. A man of lesser character would seek fame, power, love of man and riches. Not her. Just truth will do, thank-you-very-much. Yes, she’s also got a bit of Thoreau in her…

My dear Rahimah, for the sake of living consistently according to your principles, for the sake of living life first hand and not second, for the sake of being true to yourself and your values, I’m glad you’ve left the competition. For if you had not, you’ll only face the temptation to win the approval of man stronger and stronger each week - i.e. the temptation to lose your soul to gain what cannot satisfy you.

Do not compromise. Live your life as who you are, live your life true to yourself. The world may not like what they see in you. They may even end up disliking you, hating you. But if you stand firm and live an authentic life, you will win in the end…

International Development:

1) The role of tourism in aiding development here and here.

2) Instead of disaster tourism, you now have relief tourism. Check out this interesting organization: Relief Riders International.

3) A couple builds their own mobile sustainable home, an urban caravan. Story here. Their blog here.

4) Another article on America’s agricultural subsidies.

Politics:

5) On the neo-conservative quandary in America.

6) Robert Wright on Progressive Realism - an American Foreign Policy that both Realists and Idealists should fall in love with. More on Progressive Realism for American Domestic Policy.

7) John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market, shares his thoughts on the freedom movement. He believes in freedom and prosperity, but not selfishness and greed. In another speech, he shares about his view of human development as a decline in egocentrism. Very interesting stuff by a very interesting guy!

Progressive Christianity:

8) In Sex and the Liberal Christian, find out the Liberal Christian’s view of Premarital Sex, Divorce, Abortion and Homosexuality.

9) Interesting articles here and here on how the Christian’s Quiet Time can actually become a bad thing - if done legalistically.

Others:

10) Yet another reason to hate love envy the good-looking: they do better in exams!

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of talk in Evangelical Christianity about being a marketplace or missional Christian. The former term is used more widely while the latter term is used mostly in Emerging Church circles. Whatever the nuances between these terms, to be a marketplace Christian or missional Christian basically means living out one’s faith in everything one does.

More specifically, the marketplace Christian is one who lives out his faith where he works - i.e. in the marketplace. Very similarly, the missional Christian is one who sees himself as being a missionary in his daily life.

One can derive two basic beliefs from marketplace or missional Christianity:

1) One can live a faithful Christian life without being in what is traditionally called full-time ministry (e.g. pastoral ministry). Indeed, lay people too with their many talents and gifts have an important role to play to further God’s kingdom. The implication that seems to be put across in all this is that it isn’t particularly more spiritual if one were to be a “full-time” minister. This isn’t something to be aspired to by all Christians - as if going “full-time” meant reaching a higher plane of spirituality.

2) Every Christian is a missionary and not just those who go overseas to do mission work. Indeed, we are all missionaries bringing the message of Christ wherever we are and through whatever we do - even if we do not go to a foreign land. There’s thus less of an emphasis on the need to go to a foreign land to serve God. After all, the point is that we’re all missionaries in whatever we do and in wherever we are. Therefore, there really isn’t anything special about going overseas to serve God and preach to the lost. We are to do that wherever we are. And the Christian who lives a faithful Christian life in his workplace is as much a missionary as the Christian who goes to Africa or Asia or the Middle-East.

What are my thoughts of this new way of thinking? I believe that, like any new ways of thinking, there are both positives and negatives. New ways of thinking occur because previous ways of thinking were lacking in some areas. The positive thing about this new way of thinking is in correcting such a lack and emphasizing the importance of something that was not emphasized before. However, a negative can result when the new thing being emphasized is overly-emphasized at the expense of other important truths. Responses to the lack in something can thus easily become over-reactions, the result being we remain unbalanced in our thinking in precisely the opposite extreme manner as compared to before.

In regards to the focus on marketplace and missional Christianity, the positive thing is that we’re being told we ought to live out our faith in everything we do, everywhere we go. Emerging Church proponents of missional living like to say that we shouldn’t be thinking of bringing non-Christians to Church. Instead, we ought to be bringing our faith and Christianity to the non-Christian - wherever they are. I think this way of thinking of Christian living cannot be anything but positive. After all, we aren’t called to live as a Christian just on Sundays or only in Church! We’re to live as Christians every single second of our lives! That exhortation couldn’t be more obvious on any reading of the Bible.

Furthermore, we don’t have to be a full-time minister to live a faithful Christian life. If everyone were to be pastors and full-time ministers, then how are we going to be in contact with and reach out to those who do not come to Church? Indeed, there is a role for Christians to continue to work in the so called secular world - there is nothing unspiritual or wrong about that per se.

Here comes what I see as a potential danger in the above kind of thinking. The danger is this:

As we start to recognize the possibility of living a faithful Christian life in our homeland and in a secular (i.e. non-Church) workplace, we can very easily lose the sense of urgency in what we traditionally call overseas mission work.

Indeed, as such a thinking becomes more widespread and accepted, many Christians are going to justify their lack of interest in going to where the much greater need is - i.e. in the developing world - by insisting that they are already a missionary in their own country and in their present workplace. And of course because of all this, it’ll be harder to tell whether such an indifference by Christians towards overseas mission work stems from their fear of sacrificing their high standard of living as enjoyed in the developed country they are living in or from the fact that God truly wants them in their country they are now in.

If the danger before was in thinking doing overseas mission work was the height of Christian spirituality, the danger now would be the opposite: thinking that doing overseas mission work is no big deal at all. And I think anyone who realizes the magnitude of need out there in developing countries - in terms of the the number of poor to bless and lost to reach out to - will definitely not think it’s ok to just be a missionary in one’s homeland.

International Development:

1) Boston Review has an excellent series of articles on Making Aid Work.

2) New York Times on Fighting Poverty with $2 a Day Jobs.

3) A UNDP report encourages infant industry protection for poor Asian countries, advising them to “do what Japan and South Korea did successfully in the 1970s and ’80s: protect key industries temporarily with tariffs before exposing them to foreign competition.”

4) Hungry Man Books has published two cartoon books satirizing aspects of development. Their latest book, There you go!, can be previewed at Survival International’s website here.

5) The Earth Institute at Columbia University (directed by Jeffrey Sachs) convened the fourth biennial State of the Planet Conference on March 28 to 29 this year. The topic was Is Sustainable Development Feasible? Sessions can be seen, listened to and downloaded here and here.

Politics:

6) What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? See Pulitzer Prize winning Chicago Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek’s A Tank of Gas, a World of Trouble.

Progressive Christianity:

7) I absolutely agree with this article from Christianity Today by Martin Accad. The guy’s spot on. The outrage and anger is totally justified - and indeed prophetic. My belief is that so much of Christianity (so influenced by the American Christian Right) is utterly wrong on their unconditional support for Israel and apathy towards the suffering of the Arabs and Muslims. This article was on response to David Gushee’s article here. Gushee’s follow up response here and Accad’s here.

8) A New York Times article on Pastor Gregory Boyd and how Disowning Conservative Politics is Costly for Pastor. Conservative Christian leader Chuck Colson fights back here. The issue of how much Christians should get involved in politics is no doubt a complex one. I disagree with Colson who seems to see things only from the Christian Right position. Gregory has many good things to say regarding the dangers of mixing politics and Christianity. However, Christians shouldn’t shun politics totally just because Conservative politics is not biblical. I think a Christian should not be afraid to take what’s right and biblical from both the Conservative and Liberal divide and support it. God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat.

9) The Southern Baptist Convention encourages abstinance. Nope, not of sex but of alcohol consumption! What can I say… Sangria, anybody?

Others:

10) Another amazing story of the power of the Net and blogging. With a bit of creativity, anything can be done, including trading one red paper clip for a house!

Even the good hearted wants to live a good life. Even development practitioners seek to have their cake and eat it too. Nobody wants to be a Mother Teresa. Hypocrosy reigns strongly even in one of the most selfless and altruistic fields of work.

ActionAid’s Real Aid 2 reported:

In Cambodia… typical adviser costs were found to be in the region of $200,000 per year, with similar costs observed in Tanzania. In Ghana, one UNICEF official said that $10,000 per month was usual for a highly qualified education consultant, which put them at the lower end of the pay scale, with the World Bank and African Development Bank paying as much as double this rate.

High salaries paid to expatriate advisers do not only raise questions in terms of value for money. They can also cause significant resentment among counterparts and the public in the south. In Cambodia, for example, adviser fees of $17,000 per month are several hundred times higher than the salary of a typical government employee, at only $40 per month. Salary differentials were raised as key concern by interviewees in Cambodia, Tanzania and Ghana. In the Ghana education service headquarters, government officials receive about $300 a month, what a relatively inexperienced Ghanaian consultant could expect to earn in a day, and a foreign consultant in a few hours.

Shocking, but not surprising.

The development industry is a huge business. It’s not merely about good will. Sad to say, it’s filled with some of the most hypocritical people in the world.

Yes, the development community is widely known and heavily criticized for not being to do an effective job of eradicating poverty. The benefits of foreign aid have been questioned. The effectiveness of many of the prevailing development policies and theories have been challenged. No doubt, these macro issues are important and need to be confronted. But so is the personal.

I’m not sure how any development consultant could think about accepting an utterly ridiculous amount of US$1,000 a day when most of the people they are seeking to help are earning less than a US$2 a day?

In low-income countries, the average income is only $500. This means that a typical western consultant will be earning twice as much in day as the average person living in that country lives on in a year. (Real Aid 2 key facts and figures)

Such astounding incongruity needs to be challenged…