Liberals have a habit of blaming conservatives for supposedly voting against their own economic interests by taking certain social issues — abortion and gay marriage, typically, but also affirmative action — so seriously as to allow them to determine their vote. But I don’t see many liberals who would be willing to vote for a pro-life, anti-same-sex marriage, anti-affirmative action candidate who believed in effectively addressing these problems of inequality and the gamed system. I wonder at what point the economic situation becomes so severe that cultural liberals and cultural conservatives (like me) are willing to vote for someone who doesn’t share our views on social issues, but who is on the right side of economic questions, and trustworthy?
While many high-growth technology companies have philanthropic arms, Apple does not. It does not have a company matching program for charitable giving by its employees like some other Fortune 500 companies. The company did donate $100,000 in 2008 to a group seeking to block Proposition 8, a ballot measure that would have banned same-sex marriage in California. But over all, Apple has been one of “America’s least philanthropic companies,” as termed by Stanford Social Innovation Review, a magazine about the nonprofit sector, in 2007.
Doing away with hell, then, is a natural way for pastors and theologians to make their God seem more humane. The problem is that this move also threatens to make human life less fully human.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
In a monastery somehow you realize the work is sanctified. How do we take that attitude into our lives in the world? If you’re slaving to support a family, it is an act of self-denial in order to serve others. How is that not holy? How is that not beautiful? And so often we think of that as drudgery. Or a young mother. What an incredible asceticism it is to be the mother of a young child.
From an excerpt of an address by Metropolitan Jonah, himself a monk and former abbot. I encourage you to listen to the whole 3 and a half minutes clip I have here, if not the entire address.
Do you hate your job? Good. At least, you’re not bored with it. That’s how Tim Ferriss looks at it. According to Ferriss, feeling comfortable at your job can be a trap. “It’s worse to tolerate your job than to hate it because, if the pain is painful enough, you’ll make a change,” he says. “But if it’s tolerable mediocrity, and you’re like, ‘Well, you know it could be worse. At least I’m getting paid.’ Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you’re allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing."
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
An audio excerpt from Metropolitan Jonah’s address, “Spiritual Maturity in Christ.”
The part that hit me the most:
When we can begin to approach accepting whatever it is that God sends our way, whether it be sweet or whether it be bitter, whether it be painful or whether it be joyful, then we’re on the road to dispassion. When we can do this, we begin to see clearly in our lives how we can unify our life intuitively with the will of God.
Definitely one of my struggles, accepting whatever God sends my way. And not just accepting it in a sense that there’s nothing I can do about it, but not even letting the bitter/painful things get me down. Which they do at this time.
Download the entire address (21 MB). The excerpt begins around minute 27:25.
