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Look! I can do it too. I think my wife is smart and pretty. She's Prart! Woohoo! I coined a new word! Look at me!

What people mean by their new terminology is something that everybody already knew and understood how to communicate. Why create new words when everyone already has words to say what you mean?

Possible answers:

• because you don't know how to use the English language to express yourself
• because you want others to think you're cool for being brave enough to combine two words into one

No offense to the guy who recently took great pride in telling others he created the world 'glocal' to mean both global and local, but I just think coining words like this is dumb - at least if you tell other people about them.

Then again, you're not just telling, but also sharing. More of a 'Tearing' if you will. And it's not just..

This is in response to Don Miller's blog post and the comments it has received today here, in which he asserts that the 'culture war' our parents scared us about doesn't really exist, it's just a fabrication of the media. 'Culture war', Miller says, goes back to the basic meaning of 'war' - to kill.

It's deceptively simplistic to try to boil this all down to a straight metaphor of 'war' - killing, peace negotiations, the analogy doesn't fit. 'War' is used in all kinds of ways that don't fit with Don's definition of killing (until complete annihilation or surrender) like the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on crime' and the 'war on poverty' - no one is suggesting (I hope) that we kill all the poor people until the problem is solved.

In this discussion of 'culture wars', we've left culture undefined. This all seems to be an attempt to say "there can't be a culture war because there is no mass killing going on."

"Culture" does not mean politics, nor political parties, nor sets of laws.

A culture is like an ogre - or an onion. It has layers. Three of the most important from inside out are 1) shared beliefs that lead to 2) shared values that lead to 3) common behavior. We (as a group) behave in certain ways because of what we (as a group) value, which flows out of what we (as a group) believe. We often get so caught up in behavior we never ask what values are behind the behavior, and what our values reveal about our even deeper beliefs. For example:

An example (click on my name for my full example):

1) Belief: That people have a Creator (see footnote).
2) Value: Human rights not endowed by a government, but by God, superior to any government
3) Behavior: We fight for human rights (often even outside our own borders)

or

1) Belief: God created perfect humanity in a man and a woman and blessed their union.
2) Value: Marriage (and the subsequent family) is important and foundational to society.
3) Behavior: We have a special term (marriage), a ceremony, official recognition, and even rewards and incentives for marriage.

Under attack? All of the above.

There are many in significant positions of power and influence (the leaders of political parties, university professors, politicians) who are trying to rid the American culture of all of the above shared beliefs, values, and behaviors. Once they aren't shared anymore, the culture has changed, and only fringe groups share these beliefs.

True, Jesus didn't get involved in politics. He wasn't here be to a community organizer or a senator or a governor. He was here to die.

Paul, on the other hand, went to Rome to appeal to Ceaser to make Christianity a politically acceptable alternative religion. Judaism was legal, but now that non-Jews were becoming Christians, they were breaking the law, and Paul set out to change that on a political level.

Early Christians by their lives changed culture by saving lives of babies born alive and left outside city gates to die, and adopting them. Christianity has always brought about changes in culture, where some shared beliefs and values and behaviors die and others take their place. That's why cultures influenced most heavily by Christianity have some shared cultural values, even if the religious beliefs aren't there - values on human rights, and helping the sick and poor and orphans. Because of Christianity's influence, despite saying that we believe that we're all just random lumps of chaotic chance - the belief that humans are unique and valuable is still (for now) deeper and stronger (see the same footnote).

I think those of us who deny the existence of a war over the culture, while sounding cool and progressive, don't understand what 'culture' means, or we choose to ignore what 'culture' means and talk about political bickering instead.

Other short thoughts:

- When we change from one thing to another, whether political perspectives, religious affiliations, etc., we tend to become extremely critical of where we came from and very uncritical of where we are now.

- No media has ever been without bias, nor should we expect them to. We should use our brains and the discernment that God gave us and think critically. It's foolish to think you get unbiased news. They can only keep doing what they're doing if they keep their viewership/readership, so they make everything extreme, from vilifying the current president to only covering Iraq when it's bloody, to highlighting the stupid things that current candidates say. This holds true for tv, radio, and yes - even blogs.


Oooh, that footnote:
At some point we'll change our values and behavior because we no longer hold to the belief that God created humans unique. At that point human rights will suffer, and it won't just be those on the fringe of our culture who believe that two chickens are more valuable than one human.

Jott is a web service I've blogged on before. It provided free speech-to-text messaging and it would email you the message.

Instead of charging for new features as they come available, they've now declared that everyone using their services for the last few years have just been on a really long grace period, and now you have to pay or they'll severely limit what you can do.

Lots of companies do this - they try to get you hooked, telling you everything is 100% free, then their shareholders force the move that says "and now that you're using us, we'll disconnect you next week unless you pay us money."

Rather than doing this, why not just introduce amazing new features that are only available to paying customers? Don't take away what you said would be free, just offer new stuff that is valuable enough for me to want to pay.

Doing it this way just makes you look deceptive and stingy.

The high school student ministries we work with has a cafe for a few hours before events start on Wednesdays. We needed more varied music. Thanks to a discounted Creative Zen shuffle-equivalent and Spiral Frog, we're set.

• Creative Zen Stone (equivalent to an iPod shuffle) = $27
• 352 Songs from SpiralFrog = Free

To do this with an iPod it would have cost about $421 ( $69 for the iPod and $1 per song).

Spiralfrog is a subscription service, so it won't work on your iPod. Like other subscription services, your music expires in 30 days unless you renew. Luckily, the SpiralFrog website is ad-supported and the subscription is free. Not every artist I was looking for was there, but I've got 23 hours of music we'll be able to shuffle for quite some time.

Winning the lottery is contributing to and profiting from this system that manipulates people's weaknesses to their severe detriment. The same holds for casinos. They work to get people addicted to gambling, then they use that to rob the people blind.

But is all gambling/betting wrong?

If I invest in Google because I want them to use my money to build a better company, and get me a return on my money - that's not gambling. But if I invest in Google to buy-low-sell-high, then I am gambling on the market. Then I don't care what they do with my money, I just want to gamble on the market and pull some money out.

That's what happens with my IRA and your 401k every day.

What brought this up is the future markets at intrade.com . You can buy (you want shares to go up) or sell (you want shares to go down) on possibilities for the future. Today I could sell you a share of "Obama wins the election" for $6, and if he wins the election, you get $10 - a profit of $4 per share from me, or if he loses, I keep the $6 you paid me to buy the share. You can sell your shares at any time to try to make money or cut your losses.

Is that gambling? Seems to be. Is that wrong?

If it is wrong, doesn't that means it's wrong to have a retirement account that works the same way by trading stocks to try to make a profit?

Let me know what you think (comment form).