Fantastical and Debilitating Electricity

          In the media I have been seeing conflicting messages about electricity.  On the one hand, there appears to be ‘fantastical’ electricity out there that is going to solve our climate problems.  This fantastical electricity is what is going to power all the electric cars which are replacing cars running on fossil fuels so that there will no longer be emissions from our beloved automobiles destroying the atmosphere. 

          On the other hand, just read an article on ‘bigthink.com’ about debilitating electrical use.  In our air conditioners.  It is a vicious cycle.  The world gets hotter, so we run our air conditioners to stay cool.  That does three bad things.  First, it cycles the hot air out into the atmosphere, adding more heat to the total equation.  Second, it has the potential to vent atmospheric-damaging chemicals that are used in the cooling cycle.  Third, they use debilitating electricity that is generated at power plants that use fossil fuels, just think of car exhausts but magnified exponentially.

 

          A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will just use those words some place else.

          So here’s the thing.  The whole truth is not out there.  What are the real costs in fossil fuel burning to power our electric cars?  How do power plant emissions stack up against automobile emissions-fossil fuel for fossil fuel?  How much better can we make the system if we prioritize cars over air conditioners?  Or the other way around?

          Why do we care?  Unless we are Christians who have dismissed this world to go on the days of destruction as we await the return of Jesus, the Bible tells us its our job.

          In Genesis, the Creation, humanity was made the steward of God’s creation.  We were tossed out of the garden, but that mandate was never revoked.  However, in some translations, the mandate is very much in line with our exploitation of creation.  We are told ‘to subdue’ the earth.  Which we have, very effectively.

          But here’s the thing.  If the mandate to be God’s stewards on the earth has not been revoked.  And if the language of ‘subduing it’ was issued before we sinned and fell from grace so it has been corrupted by sin, just like everything else…that means our stewardship is one more piece of our humanity that comes under the redemption of Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross.  That means 'subjugation' comes under the mandate of God's perfection and not human sin.  It is a very different picture.

          So we need to care about what happens to the earth.  We need to be able to evaluate the media when the development of electrical cars is spoken of almost joyfully.  We need to educate ourselves on what we are doing to the world.  Because that is our job. 

So here’s a bit of speculation.  When the end does come and the promise of a renewed heaven and a renewed earth are fulfilled, and we are called home to the promise of eternal life in the love and nurture of our God, what if stewardship continues to be our job?  Sure, God can maintain the creation, whether it is the Garden before the Fall, or nature that groans under the weight of sin in this present age, or the renewed nature in the life to come.  What if the joy of Heaven is tending to what God has created that is now redeemed, uncorrupted by sin?

So, God made us to tend to God’s creation.  I like what the Westminster Catechism teaches us about the purpose of humanity.  We are created to glorify God forever.  Makes me think that glorifying God is going to include something about tending to the creation.  Makes me believe that the expression of our glory to God in this life includes the care of this creation.  Makes me hope that heaven is more than the cartoons that portray people in togas and angel wings flying about playing harps.  But back to the present.

There is no fantastical electricity in competition or distinction to debilitating electricity.  It comes from the same source.  It is our responsibility as Christians to work toward making the production of electricity ‘planet friendly’ or, if we prefer, ‘creation friendly’.  It is our mandate as stewards of God’s world.  I believe that the work we do for the creation now is but a reflection of the work we will have the joy to perform in eternity.

Rev. Peter Hofstra

The Squid Game: Implications to Faith

           “The Squid Game” begins with a recollection from childhood, friends playing the Squid Game.  It’s a running around game, something integrating elements of ‘Tag’, of ‘British Bulldog’, something to be remembered fondly.  That opening sequence is probably the only part that I would suggest that kids watch.  Because this show is brutal.

          It is also compelling, original in its brutality, and very well done.  From one article I read, it is apparently even better in the Korean in which it was written and produced.

          Okay, SPOILERS AHEAD.  Four hundred and fifty six people, all in desperate need of money, are selected, screened for their acceptance of physical assault in pursuit of money, and then thrust into an arena to compete for a fortune.  It’s a variation on the gladiatorial games.  It hearkens back, for me, to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-the final movie in the franchise BEFORE the reboot.  There was the arena-Thunderdome-and the chant.  “Two men enter, one man leave.”

          In this case, four hundred and fifty six enter, one leaves.  And it is not a combat arena.  Rather, the contestants are subjected to kid’s games, like “Red Light Green Light” (and a very disturbing doll) or playing with marbles and so on.  But to lose is to die.  If the game is not rigged to kill you, the anonymous guards will do it, shot and executed.

          It’s a tale of what money will drive people to.  One of the more horrifying moments comes when, after the first game, after the deaths of half their number, they have an option, by majority rule, to end the game.  Which they do-the contestants do, without retribution.  But after some time in the ‘real’ world of their former desperation, the vast majority, when given the opportunity, return.

          It is not just a tale of what money will drive people to do when they do not have it.  We meet the VIP’s, the rich and bored of the 1% who gather to bet on these games.  They have money to do anything they want and they derive pleasure from watching the poor fight one another.  It is the boredom of the rich that pays for this entire enterprise-but that is one twist I will not spoil here.  It got me.

          Okay Pastor, why do you watch stuff like this, Pastor?  Is it to see how the faith is portrayed?  Well, there are a few moments where Christianity (which is the dominant faith in South Korea) is focused upon, and it does not come off well. 

          The more I watched this, the more the beginning of Ecclesiastes echoed in my mind.  “Meaningless!  Meaningless!  Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless.  What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” (New International Version)

          This book of ‘wisdom’ carries a theme that the pursuit of the pleasures of life are ultimately useless in and of itself.  And the author, according to the introduction to the book, is King Solomon, the richest and the ‘wisest’ king of Israel’s history.  (Yes, the book does not mention him by name but verse 1 beings “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem…”

          Why is “The Squid Game” so popular?  It is the latest manifestation of that ultimate burden of life and wealth.  It is meaningless.  People will die to get it.  People who got it will watch them dying to gain distraction.  Audiences will watch ever more brutal and violent portrayals of what ‘could happen’, like a world in which “The Squid Game” occurs, for the same reason.

          As I said, while Christianity takes its lumps in this vision of who we might be, that was not the emotional gut punch for me.  No, that came with the married couple among the contestants.  And the game with marbles.  I will not spoil what happens, except to say that that this was the moment when the pursuit of money swept over even love and affection. 

          In a world of boredom and desperation…I can hear the narrator speaking those words in a deep bass tone.  This is where real faith is so necessary.  “The Squid Game” is well done, very well done.  It touches something deep in the culture of the world.  I have to admit that the only thing that truly let me down was their attempt at a hopeful conclusion.  It struck me as a rather forced hook for Season Two.

          So what do we do about this?  Wake up.  Realize how the ‘important’ things in life have been defined for us by the culture around us-the sinful culture around us.  There is an “AHA” moment in this for me.  Sunday’s service is based in the second half of John 14 as our Scripture lesson.  While not the focus of the sermon, there is one line in there, spoken by Jesus, “I cannot talk to you much more, because the ruler of this world is coming.  But he has no power over me.”  Obvious reference to the devil, I would think.

          Consider this.  “The Squid Game” portrays the world as it becomes under the present ruler of the world.  Consider the twisted, malevolent, evil guiding the culture of the world that gets audiences to be transfixed by this ‘what if’ possibility.  Consider how much we need to plumb the depths of our Christian faith, of the love and peace and forgiveness we are taught by Jesus to stand up to that ‘reality’.

The “Old Rich White Guy”: Considering a Four-Fold Path of Privilege.

          Have you heard of the pancake/waffle conundrum on social media?  I get on a social media platform and speak of how I like pancakes.  The first comment comes from someone asking why it is that I hate waffles.  The presumption of exclusion, one of the things that makes social media such an unstable platform for the exchange of meaningful information.

          I start there because I fear I am going to get a lot of the pancake/waffle conundrum going with this blog post.  In our nation right now, there is a powerful movement about deconstructing ‘white privilege’ in order to create a better tomorrow.  This is an incredibly important discussion to be having.  There is a huge corrective in the way things are in America that will come from its deconstruction.  But its only one piece of the puzzle.

          I was watching some Hollywood “high-lister” (I do not know who rates what in the alphabet of Hollywood lists), self-identifying with white privilege, a brave and personal decision to come out with, speaking with the conviction of solidarity with all who are white, that all have this privilege, that all must come to terms with it.  That kind of blanket conclusion, that all who are white must now surrender their privilege, it only works in some kind of social experiment where one of the presuppositions goes something like “all other things being equal.”

          If we can control for age and economic status and gender and what other factors that I am not cognizant of, then we can justify someone making this kind of blanket pronouncement, under ‘laboratory conditions’.  This is commentary on the old rich WHITE guy.  But this isn’t the lab.  Privilege is not one dimensional.  And a rich person telling people who are poor that they have to give up their privilege-no matter how they couch that word-smacks of hypocrisy to me.

          There is a privilege to being rich that we rarely talk about in this country.  Because that’s the American dream, isn’t it?  Build enough wealth and we are free to do ‘whatever we want’.  But how small a minority of the people hold how much a majority of the wealth?  And isn’t there an inherent conflict within communities, however they self-identify, between the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have-not’s’? 

          With the Old Rich White Guy, that is two of the four folds of privilege.  Now if you think I have spoken inadequately about white privilege and the evils of racism, addressing the privileges of age in a culture with an ever-heightening awareness of age discrimination is really going to start some fires.  Being old certainly does not mean being wealthy.  But wealth itself is often older than the current generation.  What was the line, “I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it?”  Being old is a double-edged sword in this country.  On the one edge, you may be part of that group of wealth holders.  On the other edge, you may be forgotten and warehoused in a care facility.

          We also live in the age of the Internet zillionaires, ‘young ones’ with buckets full of money, money not made over generations.  But for every ‘young’ zillionaire who makes the news, how many…chronologically advanced individuals are there who hold disproportionate amounts of power and influence?

          And let us not forget the privilege of gender.  Being male has all kinds of privilege wrapped up in it.  But this privilege is also influenced by skin color.  I have read feminist essays speaking of white male privilege and womanist essays speaking of black male privilege.  And I am wholly unqualified to speak out on such a topic, except in the broadest summary.

          Privilege of life experience, privilege of economic status, privilege of race, and privilege of gender, that is simply my ‘four-fold’ path of privilege.  I have privilege in all four categories.  What I am saying is that privilege is more than a two-sided argument, that we need more clarity of the nuances of privilege and inequality if we are going to meaningfully implement change.