Strength is Weakness and Weakness is Strength

 Saint Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

...because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This verse seems to be a contradiction. How can one be strong when they are weak. Why would God give Paul a "thorn in the flesh" that would seem to make his work more difficult.  

    To illustrate why this is so,  I'm going to use two famous quarterbacks in the NFL: Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. When Tom Brady first auditioned for the NFL his statistics were not very good. The people at the combine noted that Tom was slow, didn't throw a good tight spiral, didn't look like he had ever been in a weight room, and didn't have a strong arm. By contrast, Aaron Rodgers got very good remarks at his first combine after college. On paper Aaron Rodgers is a much better quarterback than Tom Brady.  He is quick and can use his legs to get out of a jam.  He can really zip the ball and can throw it very far down the field if needed.  Yet it's Tom Brady who has seven Lombardi trophies Aaron he has one. Why is that?   I think the answer is that Tom Brady's weakness is his strength. He knows that he can't do it on his own and needs to rely on others on the team.  He works his hardest to improve those areas he is not good at, but in the end he knows that can carry him only so far.  He works hard to be the best team leader he can be both on the field and off the field.   Aaron Rodgers on the other hand does not do those things. He relies on his own capabilities (his speed, his throwing ability, his agility) to carry his team on the field.  While this has worked for him at times in the past, it has become his downfall as of late.  For example, this last spring he decided to sit training camp out and not spend time working with his teammates.  He clearly thinks he doesn't have to train with them and doesn't appreciate what his team does for him.  He has become puffed up and arrogant, to the detriment of his team (shown in their 38-3 pounding by the New Orleans Saints on 9/12/21).

So you might say Tom Brady's weakness is his strength and Aaron Rodgers' strength is his weakness.

So also it is with us Christians and our relationship to Jesus Christ. When we recognize our weakness and that we are incapable doing it ourselves, we see that we need to rely on him more and less on our own abilities.  Our weakness becomes our strength.  God gives us these thorns for a reason.  As with Paul, to remind us that we are weak and to prevent us, like Paul, from becoming "puffed up".  He doesn't want our "strength" to take our focus off the need for HIS strength.

EARN IT!!

     In life there are two kinds of earning.  One where we work a job, save our money and pay for what we want/need.  The other is where we are given what we did not ask for and use our lives to pay our thanks back.  Christians often mistakenly focus on the first and think that they must DO something to EARN their salvation, when it is really the second type of earning God wants us focused on.      

    In the gospel of John we have the following story of Jesus being confronted with a person caught in the act of adultery in John chapter 8:

2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

        The last few words uttered to this woman may seem harsh to those who don't understand the full context of the problem.   Was Jesus telling her to shape up or else next time I might not be here to save you??   Was it Jesus chastising her after everyone else is gone?  Was he saying her salvation hinged on her living a good life?

       Not at all.  It is Jesus who will be paying for those sins in a few days on the cross and he knows there is literally nothing this woman (or any of us for that matter) can do to repay God. 

       To better understand this let me use the following video clip from the WW2 movie,  "Saving Private Ryan".  For those who may have not seen this movie, Tom Hanks character is sent with a team of soldiers to find and send home a Private Ryan whose family has lost 3 brothers in other battles and Private Ryan is the sole surviving son.  In the end, Tom Hanks character is shot in a battle to protect a bridge from the Nazi's and his dying words to Private Ryan (Matt Daman) are:  "EARN THIS!"

The scene cuts to an old Private Ryan standing in a cemetery where his friend is buried

          In this scene the man talks to the grave-stone telling his friend he hadn't forgotten what he asked him to do and that he thought about him every day of his life.  He then asks for his wife to assure him he was a "good man".  He spent his life "earning" the gift given to him and paid for by others sent to save him.  

         Jesus was sent to save sinners and give us eternal life with him.   The gift is already paid for and given to us without our asking for it.  All Jesus asks is for us use our lives in thankfulness and to "earn it".  We have all been given much by God and we should let our lives reflect that great gift as well.  We do not live good lives to earn our salvation, but we live good lives in honor, love and respect for all God has done for us to give us salvation.

Just like Private Ryan.

Don't get a Cat!

 

My advice to anyone looking to get a cat is this: Don’t do it!

A cat will take over your house and your life.

To start with, your favorite seat will become their seat. You will get up to get something from the fridge only to find your seat taken and have them look up you like they have done nothing wrong.  "Were you sitting here?" they seem to say and you will find yourself re-locating to a new seat.

You will never eat another meal in peace as you will be constantly hounded to share your food with them.   They will hear from across the house you opening a can of "anything" to come see what they might scavenge from you. They will assume that any food prep in the kitchen must be for them and not for you.  They will bop their heads into your calves with much enthusiasm and affection as they can muster to increase their odds of having some morsel of food dropped from your hand to their waiting mouths.  They will sit next to you on the couch and look up with big watery sad eyes.  If you try to look away they will tap you on the arm or shoulder as if to say, "Hey! I am here!  Please give me some!"

Throughout the day, you will be beaconed to the door to let them out only to be called upon a few moments later to let them back in.   Ignoring them is fruitless.   They will scratch at windows or bang nearby blinds over and over again as if to say, "I can do this all day! I have nothing I would rather do than drive you insane!"

Their hair will be found everywhere. It will collect on your floors , your beds , your shirts and your chairs. It will fill up your vacuum cleaner almost as fast as your can replace the bag.   Invest in lots of lint-rollers and have them spread throughout the house as you will need them. You will be embarrassed when friends ask you,  "Is that sweater cashmere?" only to say, "No. I have a cat!" 

They will interrupt your sleep with cat-calls to rouse your from your bed to find that they had brought a “pipe cleaner animal” to your door as an offering of value as if to say “Look what I brought you!” They will jump on your bed in the middle of the night like a 3 year old child when the rare occurrence of lightning strikes in the night.  You may try to console them but that was not the purpose of them waking you.  The reason they woke you was to put YOU on alert for the next strike and they will be upset that you are not as scared as they are!

Speaking of displeasure, they will show their feeling to in a variety of ways: from hissing to scratching to even pooping.   Yes, that's right! Pooping. Leave them alone for an extended weekend with plenty of food and water and you may have to endure a random "gift" left on your bathroom floor as if to say, "This is what you get for leaving me all alone!"  

Your workspace will become their favorite sleeping spot. Whether it’s your desk or kitchen table, they will make going to work so hard to do. They will entice you too look away from your spreadsheets and emails to provide them with neck rubs and chin scratches.  For some reason they will determine your upper corner of your laptop screen is the perfect place to rub their chin on.  Who cares if it moves your screen up and down, you're not really working anyway... right?  Sometimes they will mistake your computer cursor for a fly and try desperately to kill it and you may have to explain later to your boss how the value in field D26 got put into F34.

Couches and chairs will become places for them to sharpen their claws no matter how many more “approved sharpening tools” you buy them.  But why would they?  A piece of leather works so much better than polyester carpeting wrapped around a piece of wood.  They do have their standards to keep up you know!

Speaking of standards, they will test your patience with your choices of food you buy them. Each brand or variety will be consumed with differing amounts of disdain or appreciation. You will find yourself oddly joyful when they consume your purchase with vigor and delight. But don't get too joyful for just when you think you have their food selection figured out they will test you yet again as they stand over their food and look up at with a look of "What?  This again?"

As they grow older their health will deteriorate and you will spend 100's if not 1000's of dollars on them and endure scratches and clawing as you try desperately to give them their medicine.  In the end you will agonize what to do about their last days with you. You’ll spend hours caressing them and cheering them on in hope their health will return. You will do this, all the while knowing it’s not likely to change the outcome.  You will forget all of the above and wish for just one more day with them.

So my advice to you is if you don’t want to feel a hole in your heart when they go and like a piece of you is gone with them then I advise you to not get a cat.  It will be the worst decision you will ever make. 

 

Approaching Zero

 
    We often hear politicians and various social advocates say lofty things like:

"One more death from ______ is one too many!" 

    You can fill in the blank with any number of reasons. 

• Gun violence
• Drunk driving
• Drug overdoses
• Bullying
• Terrorism
• Gang violence
• Sports injury
• Stupidity
• The list goes on and on....

   Of course no one wants to see a loved one killed or die ahead of their time, but is ZERO deaths due to drunk driving, guns, violence, terrorism, over-doses or just plain stupidity achievable?   If you think it is, then what rights and privileges are you willing to give up to achieve that goal?

    In Calculus you learn the concept of "approaching a value".    Some functions by their very essence can never reach or attain a desired value.   They can come very very very close, but never ever quite there.   The simplest of equations to illustrate this is :

                                                           Y = 1/X

   When graphed you see the following

As you can see the function NEVER touches the X-axis where Y=0.  It comes very very close but is never quite equal to 0.  In calculus we would say

"The function Y=1/X approaches zero as X goes to infinity"

Does this mean we can't solve for Y=0?   Not really.   What we can do is accept a value "CLOSE TO ZERO" as good enough.    In the above graph we might accept a value of 0.1 as close enough to zero and say that when X = 10 we reach a value near zero.

It's not perfect but good enough.

What does this have to do with our world and what can we learn from it?   Well for one thing is that perfection is never attainable but something close enough will often do.   Today we live in a world that is constantly striving to be "perfect" and never seem to be finding it.   Many politicians today are selling a notion that perfection is just around the corner if we just give up some of our rights as citizens.   We can end all gun violence if we register all of our guns or get ride of certain kinds of guns.   We can prevent all DUI deaths if we just give up our rights to not be breathalyzed.   We can have no more hate if we just give up our rights to speak what we want to say.

Of course none of these requests will ever deliver on their promises because we can never reach perfection, but that won't stop politicians and law enforcement from pushing the next law they want passed. 

Our founding fathers put the words "In order to form a more perfect union" in our Constitution.  They were realists.  They knew that anything created by fallible human beings itself would be fallible and less than perfect.   They did not think their system was "perfect" but instead "more perfect" or to put it in mathematical language:  "approaching perfection".   They were admitting they did not have it all right from the start and that we would never get it 100% right either.  Like the function 1/X, you need to accept an imperfect output to find a solution to the problem.

In the TV show "Blue Bloods",  Tom Selleck's character often quotes the following:

"The enemy of good is not evil!  The real enemy of good is perfect!"

It means that if we only accept perfection, we will never achieve the good we want.  Like the function of Y=1/X, if you don't accept 0.1 as "close enough to zero" you will never find X=10.  So also, if you wait for and accept only perfection you will never be able to find a solution to the problems facing you.

In our country our Bill Of Rights help us define that boundary of less than perfect.   Take for example, DUI arrests.  We know DUI car deaths are never going to be stopped 100%.  As long as their are cars and alcohol we will have a bad mixture of the two.   While no one wants to see a loved one lost in such a way,  we know that we want our own rights to not be forced to do something against our bodies or have our bodily fluids used to testify against us (5th amendment right).  There must be a balance and we must accept a solution that is close but not perfect.  Of course the rights of the drunk person might allow some to go free and possibly offend again, but without the Bill of Rights and the 4th and 5th amendments, there would be no boundary to stop a government from invading your privacy and forcing you to bend to their will.  The protection of your rights make it necessary that possibly some undeserving drunk goes free. 

The 4th and 5th amendments stand as our "good enough" (but no farther) limits. 

Does this mean we just stop striving?  No.  But we do need to be will to accept it can never be perfect.  The good will be trampled by those promising and expecting perfection.

Bounding the Problem

     Okay, I don't want to get tooooo mathematical on people here but I do want to get something across that is import to understand.  Please! I ask you to be patient in reading this.

     Let's start with a question.  Can mathematics solve ALL problems?

     The answer to that question is NO.  It can't.    Some problems are by there very nature unsolvable and those in mathematics know this to be true.   It's for this reason that all math theorems put boundaries on the issue they are trying to address.  These boundaries are extremely important in defining the solutions it can provide.  Some examples of this are:

• For every function of Real Numbers...
• For all positive integers....
• For all functions that are contiguous and homogeneous between x0 and x1

      In all of these cases we are defining the boundaries of the problem space so that those who try to use this theorem on problems that are outside this space will know not to waste their time trying to use it.  It doesn't just save time, it insures answers they might derive will be viewed as wrong by construction.   It also, says to those applying your idea on their problem that does fit this boundary that their results will be of use to them.

     The problem today in society is we fail to define the boundaries of the problems we are trying to fix and we jump right into the solution space.   To illustrate this, take for example Sacramento's recent decision to carve out $130 million in funds to combat homelessness.   If we were to put this into a mathematical form it would look like this:

For all homeless people living in the city of Sacramento, $130 million is set aside to build Tiny Homes for the homeless so they don't have to live on the streets or tents.

    So the boundaries of this problem are:

1. The homeless 
2. Living in the city of Sacramento

    On first glance it seems to define the boundaries quite well.  If you are homeless in Sacramento then you will be given a Tiny Home to live in.   But is that adequate?   Here is why it is not.

• What does it mean to be "homeless"?   
• Does having a backpack and a sleeping-bag automatically make me "homeless" ?
• How do I prove I am really homeless or just someone looking for a cheap place to live?   
• How do I show I have been homeless for a term of time you might require?   
• Am I homeless by choice or by life's circumstances?

     Next, we need to look at the issue of Sacramento being the boundary of where we are trying to fix this problem.  Again, on the outset it seems to be pretty clear.   We can draw on a map the city limits of Sacramento and say that bounds the problem quite well.   We are not solving homelessness for California or even Sacramento County.    Here are the issues that make this boundary not a boundary:

• How do you define a homeless resident of Sacramento?  
• By definition they have no residency because they have no physical home
• If someone hitchhikes from Roseville, would they instantly qualify for a Tiny Home?    
• How long do they need to be in Sacramento to qualify and how do you assess that time?

    Without proper bounding, this issue will not be fixed but will probably grow exponentially as more homeless will come from other areas to take advantage of this new program.  It will not SOLVE the problem at all.   Here it is not that the solution is "bad" it's just that the bounding of the problem is deeply "flawed" and will lead to more problems than solutions. 

     Of course we might just say we accept that people will abuse the system and disregard our porous  boundaries and do nothing to address them. If  you do that you might as well have no boundaries at all.   You might as well let the world know we are opening the Tiny-Town to all who want to come and use them.

 

When to Quit

   Other boundaries we fail to add to projects like this deal with results and when to end a solution.  In many mathematical theorems the concept of "until" often plays a role.   The theorem may require you to repeat a process either until a solution is found or there is found a problem from which the algorithm cannot resolve itself.  Often in combinatorial problems this can be the case.  We cannot try ALL possible combinations for some problems and the search algorithm we employed has tried skim through those combinations might spend too much time and has find no solution. We must QUIT and try something else. 

    When bounding our social problems we often fail to measure if any improvements have been found and quantify if those improvements were "worth it".    No one likes to fail, but it's part of the search process.   Edison tried over 10,000 different filaments before he found carbon-thread worked.  If he had kept trying solution #1 without quitting he never would have found his answer.  Tiny-Homes might be a solution for homelessness but it might not be too.  We can try it, but we need to be willing to admit our mistakes and move on to the NEXT solution no matter how married to that idea we might feel. 

   This often happens because people become emotionally and economically connected to the solution.  Take the Tiny-Homes project.  It will need someone to spearhead it.  It will take people to manage the property and the buildings.   It will take others to care for the residents and maybe extra law enforcement and security.    These peoples lives are economically connected to this never ending.   If it ends, they lose their jobs and thus lose their economic security.   They lose their objectivity in the process and will do anything to make it look successful or an absolute necessity to the community.

A Better Boundary

 I am not entirely opposed to this idea of helping people who really need it. 

    Maybe to better bound the problem, the solution should be written as this:

To combat the problem of homeless working families, who currently cannot afford decent housing. $130 million will be set aside to build low cost Tiny-Homes for a small rental fee to allow these families a temporary housing while they work towards better economic stability.   The project will be reviewed annually and if costs to the community outweigh the benefits to the community it will be shutdown

   Here we have bounded the problem to solve the problem of homeless working families first.  Second we have bounded the problem to those who can work but can't make enough to rent a place (work could even be provided to them if needed). The Tiny-Home site could also provide the "address" they will need to fill out job applications to employers.  The rental fee insures that people coming here will need to find and keep employment and also provide them with a sense of honor and value.

Conclusion 

   Does this fix ALL homelessness?  Of course not, but it solves one big piece of it that we care about a lot.   For other homeless bound people we might need other solutions.  For the drug-addict we need treatment facilities to get them off the drugs and re-connected to families and communities.   For mentally-ill people we need to get them back into mental health facilities and not prisons.  Those problem-spaces need much different solutions than tiny-homes.  The tiny-home solution will not work for them, but instead will probably exacerbate their problems and make things worse for those it would help.   Maybe for some who get the help they need, the tiny-home would be a step in the right direction for them, but they need to first get those other problems out of the way.

   We must resist searching for simple answers to complex problems.   They are as rare as unicorns.

   PS - this solution is not new at all.  A "shanty town" was erected in the middle of New York Citiy's Central Park in the 1930's to deal with the Great Depression's homeless problem.  Readers will note that it was a disaster and the cause of many deaths by violence and disease.


 

We should not punish people for crimes they have not committed

    Recently "60 Minutes" did a story on Red-Flag-Laws.   In their article they led with the story of a man who was mentally unstable and had a large assortment of guns in his apartment.   The police had dealt with him in the past, but never were able to hold him on any law he could be charged with.  In the story, he shoots several police officers as they were in the process of breaking down his door to investigate an issue and talk to him.  One office was killed by the man.   60-Minutes talked to a police-chief who was in support of passage of Colorado's Red-Flag-Law.   He believed it would save lives in the long run.

     How do Red-Flag-Laws work? 

     First you have to go to a court and issue a statement showing that a person has made "threats" to your life and safety.   The defendant is not required to be at the hearing, but if they are they can make counter claims to the judge.   The judge then issues a judgement of whether the guns should be confiscated or not.   If the judge does, then the police are sent to the persons home to confiscate them.  The person can come back in a period of time (30 days usually) to prove that they are not longer a threat and that they should be given back their guns.

     Sounds easy... right?

     Here is what is wrong with it. 

     First of all, judges will side with the threatened person nearly 100% of all the time.  Why?  Because it's safest for them, the judge.   If they rule in favor of the gun owner and he does shoot someone then that murder will be on the judge because they "could" have stopped it.   There is no upside to letting you keep your guns, but there is plenty of upside to take them away. 

     Second, you have not been charged with any crime, but you are considered "guilty-until-proven-innocent".    On top of that, you now have the impossible task of proving to the judge you are NOT a threat.   How do you do that?   If a judge asks you "Will you never use these guns to harm a person?" and you reply "Never, your honor!", then the judge has a choice to either believe you or keep your guns.  What is safer?   It is impossible to "prove" you will never ever do something.   Yet here you are, guilty of nothing, but punished for life because not only can you never get your guns back, you will never ever be allowed to buy another gun.   You can go before a judge a 100 times and declare you are no longer a threat to others but have no way to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It will always be in the best interest of the judge to keep your guns rather than let you have them back.

    It's a life-sentence without committing a crime.

    This is the biggest problem with Red-Flag-Laws.  They go against the most fundamental basis of our Constitution and Legal System:

 INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW.    

     Nothing is more sacred in our legal system than that.  NOTHING!   If we allow our legal system to do away with this in these cases we now have a legal precedent to do away with it altogether.  We cannot let that happen, no matter how many "lives it might save". It moves our legal system from one of trying crimes that have been committed to one in which we take away rights in order to prevent crimes that "could" be committed.  While we do have laws on the books to put restraining orders on people who pose a threat to others, those orders do not take Constitutional Rights or Property away from them or there ability to protect themselves.

      It reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie, "Minority Report", where people are tried on crimes that are "foreseen" by 5 girls who have precognition abilities.   It seems to work until it is found out that the girls "visions" can be tampered with to put innocent people away.  Our legal system must never become a system to prosecute people for crimes they "might commit", no matter how many lives it "might save".   . 

     That brings me to my final issue.  I take issue with the Sheriff who sided with the Red-Flag-Law, who claimed it would save lives.   It is the police officers who will have to serve these judgments.  They will be put into harms way to confiscate the guns.   In the story 60-Minutes used, the mentally ill man would have been met with the same police officers at his door who wanted to talk with him.  Only now, they would have had to tell him they are there to confiscate his guns.  Would he have handed them over peacefully?   I very much doubt that.  Instead, the might have wounded even more police officers and killed even more of them.  To me, the only people who would hand over their guns peacefully are mentally-stable-law-abiding-citizens.  But if they are mentally-stable-law-abiding-citizens, then most likely they were no threat in the first place and the issuance of the Red-Flag-Law is completely unneeded.

First they came for....

    Recently I was in comment-section at work on an article dealing with the future of the Automated-Car.   I had made the comment that I believe the "force" behind this technology is not the consumer, but the heads of corporations.  I say this because you hear very little support from your average person.   Google has tried automated taxis for sometime now and there has been very little increase in their usage.  The idea of letting go of the wheel and letting a computer do the driving is still unnerving for a lot of people (me included).   Our guts tell us that the world is a very complicated place and no programmer could think of every possible scenario. 

    This is why I said in my comment, "This is coming from corporations wanting to get rid of delivery jobs like truckers and home-delivery-drivers".   Another person from my work replied that these jobs will eventually go away but other jobs will take their place.  He ended it with "we should not worry about this".

    Of course he can say that...he's not a truck driver.  Tell that to a person is over the age of 40 and has 20-25 years left to work that he needs to change careers.   Look him in the face and tell him it's all for the better because now he can buy his stuff from Walmart even cheaper!   But what does he buy all that Walmart crap with???  His tears??

    My reply to him was that it's easy for us to say that... we are not truck-drivers.   But engineers have a target on their backs as well but don't want to face it.   I have written before how Moore's Law is shifting it's methods to achieve its goals.  For those of you not acquainted with it, it goes like this: The COST of the transistor will be cut in HALF every 2 YEARS.   In the past, we have had the luxury of a silicon process system where we could make transistors 50% smaller every 2 years (ie - double the number of transistors on a chip).   Year after year we grew the number of transistors on the chip and added more and more functionality.   Everything else could stay the same and our costs would be cut in half and Moore's Law kept marching on.  But now today, that is not possible.  Transistors are getting TOO SMALL and it's taking 4+ years (AND GROWING) to improve the silicon processes. 

    In order to keep the law going, focus is not on the transistor, but on those who put the transistors together to make new products; the engineers.  Some of this has been done by standardizing our designs.  By turning parts of the design into small "LEGO blocks" we can reuse them over and over again ( motto: design once and use many ).   But now the attention is focusing on the validation process.   What if I can write a specification in a way that a computer can read it and create validation content to verify it works or not?   I can get rid of teams of validation engineers. 

   Artificial Intelligence is the engineers "automated truck".   If you think it's too complicated you are wrong.   If I can have AI read medical documents and kick out cancer-treatment-recommendations I can surely have it read a design spec and kick out design-verification-tests.  What's really crazy is it's engineers who are putting these systems together.   It reminds me of a famous episode of the 1950's TV series "The Twilight Zone" in which a factory manager keeps automating more and more of his factory until all that is left is him.  Then on the final scene the board replaces the manager with a robot too.  We are designing our own replacements as we speak.

We should all pay heed to the old poem, "First they came for the socialists"

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Maybe a 21st century version would be

First they came for the Bank-Tellers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Bank-Teller.

Then they came for the Checkout-Clerks, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Checkout-Clerk.

Then they came for the Truck-Drivers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Truck-Driver.

Then they came for the Engineers—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Fighting over LAST place

      In week 9 of the 2019 NFL season, the NY Jets and the Miami Dolphins went to battle.   The Dolphins won the game with a score of 26-18.   The reason this game got little attention from the media was because both teams came into this game with a record 1 win and 7 losses. In a sense, both teams were fighting to not be in last place.  While at the end of the game one team was in last place, the other team could only claim to be in NEXT-to-last place.  Both teams were essentially mathematically eliminated from any Super Bowl or Playoff hopes for that season.  I seriously doubt either team was chiding the other at the end of the game with touts of "YOUR IN LAST PLACE!!" as their situation wasn't much better.   Nor do I think the players would have enjoyed watching a group of fans in the stands fighting with each other over the result of the game either. 

    In the long view, politics in our world is much like game between two last place teams.   In the end, God will bring an end to all political systems as they are not needed.    They have no future.  Yet we are like the fans in the stands fighting over our respective teams.  When seen from the long view it is quite ridiculous. 

    I believe this is why St. Paul doesn't mention Nero or the Roman Senate or issues with Roman Law and his predicament in jail.  Paul writes in Romans 8:18 

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

   For us, much our present sufferings is watching our once great country fall into hatred, division and basic lawlessness.   We must be like Paul and take to "long view" to keep our perspective.    Capitalism/Socialism, Left/Right, Democrat/Republican, White/Black, Male/Female will all be gone and relegated to LAST PLACE.  If that is the case, should we place such importance on these things as we live out our lives?

Molek lives on today!

    In Leviticus, God commands the children of Israel,

Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

   In other verses we find out that the children of Israel offered up their children as "burnt offerings" to Molek who was a fertility/harvest god.   For a long time, many archaeologists thought that this did not really happen and was Jewish folk-lore made to create hatred of the Canaanites.   However, as usual, the Bible is found to be right.  In the early 1990's an archaeologist found an altar littered with burned baby bones.   How could people do such a thing?

    Well, before you just cast them off as "primitive people who have no connection to you", let's look at what they were facing.  In their culture, there was no welfare system to fall back on.  If your crops failed, you starved and so did your family.   You were at the mercy of nature and if rain did not come, or your crops were destroyed by bugs or disease you were screwed.  A father looking at maybe his third year of failed crops and a starving family may be forced to take some very drastic measures.   Offering up his children may be a "two-fer" or "win-win" in his mind.   One or two less mouths to feed, a quick merciful death for his children and MAYBE this god Molek would be appeased and the rain would come back to the land.  It's a harsh reality but it's one that I am sure happened quite often.

    Today, we look back at people like this with some level of self-righteousness.  Certainly WE would never do something as awful as that!   If WE lived back then we would make other choices.   WE would know better! 

    But would we?

    Do we still make offerings to Molek today?

     I think we do.   No, he doesn't go by the name "Molek" anymore.  He goes by other names like:

• Abortion
• Career advancement
• Me-Time
• Entertainment

      Is the baby you carrying coming at a bad time in your life?   You're not ready to be a parent yet?  The child won't have everything other children will have?   The baby is not going to be perfect? The baby will not be a boy? (in China).  All these questions come to young mothers today who are faced with whether or not to allow this baby to be born.   Molek stands there with his arms open wide begging you to offer the baby up in return for what you want in life.   Alyssa Milano said in a recent pod-cast that she is glad she had an abortion when she was younger, because she wouldn't have been able to have the amazing career she has if she had gone through with the pregnancy.   Molek rewarded her offering with a chance to be on TV and Movies. 

      Molek, however, doesn't stop with aborted babies.   Children can be such a nuisance in our lives.   They are sooooo needy.    They need food, clothing, changing, teaching, training .... loving.  All this takes sooooo much of our time we need for ourselves.  Maybe it's a career.  The need to prove yourself to the world and staying home with a young child doesn't work towards that goal.   Maybe it's because you have this thing called a MORTGAGE (Another "M"-god) that demands you pay homage to Molek.   I once heard a woman say that she could never stay at home with her kids because she needed her time away from them. 

     But maybe you do stay at home and care for your children.   Do you also make offerings to Molek?   Maybe you need your "ME-time" (Another M-god), and the only way to do it is to employ inexpensive baby-sitters like smart-phones, tablets or PCs.   Children today spend 6-8 hours a day on these devices and studies are showing it is having a disastrous affects on their developing brains.    Oh, but it makes your like SOOooo much easier doesn't it!    On a long car trip?   It's easier to have them watch a movie, play games or watch YouTube than to teach them about the world or how to get along.   In the grocery store?  It's much easier to use the electronic baby-sitter to keep your kid entertained than to spend time teaching them about food and making good choices.    Score another offering for Molek!   While we don't set our children ablaze like people 3000 years ago,  little by little we scorch their growing brains in ways that will damage them for years to come all because we want our own little ME-time, or "Peace and Quiet". 

    I know this blog is harsh.  Personally I don't believe I would be ANY better than a lot of parents if I had to raise my kids today in our Internet-driven world.   I have my own problems dealing with today's screen-time-obsessed world.   I only write this to help raise the awareness to families today that are facing these problems.   Technology today is moving faster and faster than we can adapt.   Our children have little "bulls-eyes" on their brains that business-marketers, perverts and social/political-manipulators aiming for and we need to protect them from their constant onslaught of attacks.   We, as parents, need to make their needs a priority in our lives and stop sacrificing them for our own petty needs and desires.  There is no "win-win" when it comes to our children.  There is only "win-lose" at best and "lose-lose" at worst.
   

Contemporary vs Traditional

    You may not be aware of it, but there is a silent war going on today in many American churches.  Some call it the Worship-War others just see it as a difference in opinion.  My church offers both styles to their members (two are traditional and two are contemporary).   A church I attended for many years prior to moving to this church was clearly on the side of the traditional (or liturgical) style.   At that church, they still used acolytes, followed a liturgy which included the pastor chanting his part to the congregation and using only the hymnal for their music source (unless it was the choir singing).   At my current church they do much of the same except the pastor does not chant and much of the liturgy is gutted for a simpler and shorter worship form.

    There seems to be very little middle ground in the worship wars.   You are either for strict adherence to the traditional form or you view a more 'anything goes' form.  Each side views the other with a little animosity.   The liturgical side views the contemporary as falling into false-teaching and no one being held accountable.  The contemporary view the liturgical as stiff and unbending and pushing people away rather than bringing them in.

   What these two sides hold in common is that both sides feel theirs is more "spiritual".   So who is right and who is wrong?   Answer: both/neither (in my opinion).   It depends on what you call "spiritual".   To the traditional, spiritual is connecting with the ancient ways.  It's doing it the way Peter and Paul would have do it if they were here with us.  If they wore robes, then we should wear robes.  If they chanted, then we should chant.    To the contemporary, spiritual means "feelings".   If you feel closer to God through singing a certain song then that is more spiritual.  It's not what the words MEAN, but more about how they make you FEEL.  In a way, both sides have this in common they just have different ways of getting there.

   Let's look at the traditional side first.   An argument made by some on their side is that our early church was more "spiritual" and we should follow their guidance in worship.   But is that really true?  Does everything in the liturgy stem from a spiritual center or purpose?   All too often we have a limited view of what the early church was like.  We don't put ourselves into their 1st century sandals.  They were not stupid people who were by their nature more spiritual.   They were highly intelligent and practical.   They may have not had the science we do, but they knew what worked and what didn't.   They knew that putting a speaker up on a platform that was higher than the crowd would aid in projecting his voice over the heads of the crowd.  They knew that putting a curved wall behind the speaker would help amplify his voice too.  How do we know this?  Because early churches and synagogues were designed this way.   We also don't take into account that paper and printing was expensive.  They did not have hymnals like we do and so to lead a group in singing would require a simpler form which could be followed along.  You take ANY song and have a singer stand in front and break up the song into smaller pieces that the crowd can repeat back to him.  This is what they did and when you hear it, it sounds a lot like a liturgy.  Having the worship leader singing their part also makes sense in the early church because your voice carries a lot farther when you sing than when you yell.  Singing occurs in the chest cavity, yelling occurs in the voice box.  I am sure this did not go unnoticed by the early church either. 

     So why should we keep all these old methods when new technology makes them obsolete?  We have electric amplification now, hymnals and electric lighting.   Shouldn't liturgy, chanting and candles go by the way side?   Yes and No.   Yes, if you think it creates a stumbling-stone to bringing in new believers (the mission of the church).   No, if you are just doing it to be different or keep up with the 'jones'.    The reason to keep these ancient ways is not because they are more "spiritual" but because they bring us into Christ's church triumphant.   We come to church wanting to connect with the first church.  We want each Sunday to be as if it was the FIRST Easter Sunday.   Jesus resurrection was not 2000 years ago, but TODAY!  We in the Lutheran church view the church on earth and the church in heaven as ONE church.  We see Jesus' words to his disciples as his words to us as well as if we are sitting on the shoreline with him in the boat.  We connect our voices with theirs in the worship and holding on to the "old ways" serves us by helping our minds feel as if were are right there with them.  It's more psychological than it is spiritual.   Take for example if I took my wife to see Hamlet being performed and when we got their the stage was bare with no props, the actors wore street clothes and they spoke with American dialects.  Shouldn't I be racing fore the door to get my money back?   Of course I would!  The same goes for the church and it connecting us with the "host of all believers".   The robes, the candles, the music, the altar all serve us in worship.   As Jesus said, "That Sabbath was made for MAN, not man for the Sabbath".   The service serves US and not us serving the service.

    The contemporary side of the war views the old with much contempt.   They seem to ask the question, "Why should we be held back by ways that no longer fit with the modern era?"    Yes, it is true that we don't have just 5 string harps to lead us in worship now.   We have guitars, and electric pianos and drum sets.   We have wireless microphones,  fancy lighting and even fake smoke if you want it.    To them, old is just old and not more spiritual.  People today reject the argument: "We've always done it THIS way!".     Music should keep up with the times and serve as a replacement for "secular music".  In some ways, I do see what they are saying.   We do need to connect with our culture at some level and meet people where they are at.   Often they quote Jesus words to the Samaritan women, "God wants people to worship him in SPIRIT and in TRUTH".  From this, they believe that if your SPIRIT leads you to worship in a certain way, then that is OK because that is what God is looking for.    The problem is defining what is "spirit" and what is "truth".   If you define spirit as your feelings then you will come away with a different style of worship than if you define spirit, as God's presence in your life and in your worship of him.  Personally I don't think Jesus is opening the door for "anything goes" here.   First of all, in the context of his words to the Samaritan woman, they are debating the issue of "where to worship".   Samaritans believed it was on a mountain in Samaria you were to worship God and the Jews say it is in Jerusalem.  Jesus corrects her by telling her that Salvation is from the Jews and the right place for worship is in Jerusalem ... for now.... but a time will come when it won't be a place but the reason for worship.   This is where the TRUTH comes in.   It's not some wishy-washy New Age spiritualism Jesus is talking about, but a REALITY and a TRUTH that solidifies our faith and worship of God.   The truth that we are all horrible sinners deserving of death, but God has saved us by dying for us and taking 100% of the punishment on himself.   To me, as long as contemporary worship leaders hold to this TRUTH they will be fine, but too often this is not the case.   Too many churches choose to water down this message and not confront the sin that is very real in our lives.

     I do want to also say I have great concern for the WORDS that are sung in contemporary worship.  Music is art, but I believe words have meaning and should come from God's word.   Historically, from the days of King David, song has served as a way for God to bring his truth to our hearts and lives.    God knows that there is something about singing that resonates with our minds in ways we don't fully understand.  Words that are sung are more easily remembered.   Words that are sung are internalized in ways words we read are not.   So, music leaders in churches need to take their roles with urgency and respect.  As in the movie Spider-Man, "With great power comes great responsibility".   Song leaders must make sure their words are in keeping with the Gospel and in keeping with the Faith.  Historically this has been the direction of many of the great hymn writers of the past.  Some hymns would pull from a single verse while others managed to pull several verses from God's word together and serve as a teaching aid to God's people.  Sadly, this is not the path of many modern Christian music writers.   One song I heard in a church (and later on the radio) took a single non-biblical phrase and repeated it OVER and OVER and OVER again.    The words "mind-numbing" came to mind when I heard it.   Am I saying all songs should just come exclusively from the Psalms?   No.  But we do need to hold Christian artists to a higher standard.  (actually it's not just a Christian music problem but also very much present in secular artists too).   Just because you label yourself an "artist" does not preclude from being held to a high standard of quality.   We do the artist (and ourselves ) no service by applauding every song that comes out of their mouth.   There is no shame in asking them to "Go back and try again!"    If you don't like the song your "praise-band" performed or it was impossible for you to participate in then you owe it to them to let them know.

     What contemporary churches get "right" is their willingness to meet people where they are at spiritually much like Paul did with the Greeks on Mars Hill.   It may seem odd to some that people want a church that doesn't feel like "church" (which I think translates to old and stuffy).  Maybe its a product of the YouTube culture and wanting to be "entertained".  I don't really know, but I do know we must not let culture limit our ability to reach out to them.  This is what they get right.   If they can receive the gospel thought fancy graphics on big TV screens then that is what they do.   If it's offering ways for them to connect with each other outside of church, then they do that as well.  Most people are not into "sewing circles", "LWML" or "Ice Cream Socials" anymore and want instead "Running/Cycling groups", "Yoga classes", "Drone clubs" and the like.  Some wag their heads at this and call it "marketing", but even traditional churches "market themselves" when they put a sign out front with their name and denomination clearly shown.  Of course church members should come more than just connection.  Hopefully the spirit will lead these people to want a more meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ over time and they will move beyond spiritual "milk" as Paul talks about.

What should the Church do?

     What is needed today is BOTH sides to EMBRACE the other in LOVE.  We need to hear Paul's words in Romans 14,

5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. 

We could easily substitute "day" or "method of worship" and it would speak volumes to our situation today:

5 One person considers one way of worship more sacred than another; another considers every way of worship alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one way of worship as special does so to the Lord. 

     We need to accept all forms of worship as special and necessary and not put unnecessary restrictions on them.  In Paul's day, Jewish-Christians wanted to control who worshiped by adding additional requirements like celebrating various Jewish high festivals.  In a sense, they wanted to convert the Gentiles not only to Christianity but also to Judaism as well.  Of course, you can see how they must have felt.  They saw their heritage as a blessing and wanted the new Gentile converts to "enjoy" those blessings as well.   But that was not how it was perceived or received by them.  In some ways we do this today.   We don't just want to make believers in Christ, but also what we consider to be our variety of Christian.  Not everyone is a lover of Bach or liturgical style.   Bach's music may not be in your taste, but that should not be a reason you should not come to church.  You may like the message, but if the worship style puts you to sleep or makes it difficult for your children to participate you might think about going somewhere else that doesn't.   The world is changing whether we like it or not and we need to adapt so we reach the world with the Good News! We should not put "stumbling stones" (in ancient times stones were placed in a path to a house to cause people you don't want coming in the night to 'stumble on') in the way of people coming to Christ, even if those 'stumbling stones' are stones we like having. 

     But contemporary worshipers need the traditionalists as well.   They need them to help guide them and keep them from straying into teachings that are not in line with our faith.   Not all Christian music is "good" Christian music.  Music needs to be edifying and educational.   Worship needs to help train the believer in doctrine and faith.   The traditionalists serve the purpose of keeping the standard.  For the traditionalist, the benefit of using the liturgy/hymnal is that you don't have to concern yourself so much with the problem of false teaching because all that has been done for you.   But the contemporary worship leader is left all to their own vices.   They are left to make all these decisions all by themselves.  While this can be freeing, it can also be terrifying.  Traditionalists can help in these decision making processes by helping review song choices or methods of worship to keep things in check.   Traditionalists can also serve as a mirror to the contemporary worship leader.   Too often, contemporary worship falls victim to "concert mentality".   It too easily morphs into being singer-centric and not worship-centric.   The leader can sing the song, but the congregation is incapable of following along and ends up sitting as a concert-goer rather than singing along. 

    Maybe the church will end its worship wars and begin finding common ground once again and focus their energies on reaching our world with the Good News of Jesus Christ.





  
   

Do you like Maple Syrup?

    I love maple syrup.  I put it on pancakes, waffles, french toast and even scrambled eggs!  Maple syrup comes to you exclusively from the New England area of the US where maple trees are in abundant supply.    These trees not only supply us with a sweet treat for our breakfast meals, they also supply us with a beautiful array of colors this time of year that millions of people flock to every year to get a glimpse of.

    Ever wonder how New England became a bastion of maple trees?   If you thought it was some by-product of some ice-age phenomenon you'd be wrong!   No, the reason the New England area is covered in maple trees is all do to deforestation.   When New England was still owned by Great Britain, New England was covered with pine trees (and in many parts it still is) that Britain wanted for its ship-building.   Trees were cut down in large swaths for this purpose.   Later, dairy farming became big business as well and more trees were cut down to make room that as well.  When dairy farming stopped being profitable, many of these farms were abandoned and Mother Nature took over and filled in the empty regions with trees that were still left over.   That tree was the tasty maple tree.

    The mistake that many environmental purists make today is thinking that areas that are deforested never grow anything back in its place.   We think that the land will become a barren desert or wasteland.  It turns out, however,  nature is remarkably resilient and adapts.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  It fills in with something else.  Sometimes something even better than before but was not given a chance because of the abundance of another inhabitant. 

    So next time you are sitting in your favorite breakfast restaurant and enjoying a stack of pancakes dripping with maple syrup, be thankful for the lumber and farming industries that deforested the New England Area in the 1700 and 1800's.   It wouldn't have happened without them!

 

God jumps right into our messiness

      I love the show "Dirty Jobs" with Mike Rowe.   Mike takes on some of the most disgusting jobs there are in our country.   He has done everything from pig farming, sheep neutering, sewer cleaning, to worm farming. There seems to be no job too dirty for him to try at least once.  Often he will don a plastic hazmat suit and look at what he is about to encounter and say, "Well I guess I just have to jump right in!".  

   The Christmas story is in reality at story filled with dirt, filth and the outcasts of society.  We have cleaned it up over years and in the process have lost much of the message God is communicating to us.  

   First we have the angel appearing to Mary in the small town of Nazareth.  A town in northern Israel with a bad reputation. We know this because later when the disciple Philip is called to meet Jesus of Nazareth he comments “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”   A dirty little town with a bad reputation.  

    Next we have a Virgin who is pregnant.  Not even Joseph believes her until he is visited by an angel as well. A scandalous e relationship.  In todays world it wouldn’t even be noticed but in their day it was on par with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.  We have Joseph who needs to go to Bethlehem where his birth record is kept to pay a Roman tax.  Under normal conditions only Joseph would go and Mary , who is 9 months pregnant, would stay home with family to take care of her. Instead, we have both of them traveling to Bethlehem together.  Message: Mary is disowned by her family and she’s Joseph’s business now.  Upon arriving in Bethlehem the rejection continues as none of Joseph’s extended family has no spare room for either of them. Apparently the word about Mary has spread to there as well. 

    Second, we have the shepherds watching over their flocks by night.  It sounds so quaint doesn’t it?  It’s not.  Shepherding was not a glamorous job and it paid very little. These were the most likely the homeless of their world just trying to get by and survive.  Because of their constant handling of livestock they would be “ceremonial unclean” and unable to go to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Poor , outcasts and ignored by everyone.  Yet it’s these outcasts God makes his first Gospel declaration to.  

    Next you have the scene at the manger. In Israel there are very few trees , but lots of rocks and caves.  The barn we view in our mind is most likely a cave and the manger is not made of wood ,but instead is carved out of rock.  The scene of the shepherds visiting the manger with Jesus wrapped in swaddling cloths has more meaning than what meets the eye. To understand this you needs to understand Bethlehem’s connection to king David and their connection to the Temple. 

Bethlehem was the town of King David’s birth and growing up. Having this very important leader gave Bethlehem a unique position.  They became the main supplier of sacrificial lambs to the temple of Jerusalem.  These sacrifices were for the atoning of their sins.  But no ordinary lamb would do.  It had to be without blemish and so it had to be examined by the priests.  But touching a newborn lamb would make the priest unclean.  To deal with this the priests supplied the shepherds with “swaddling cloth”.   They would wrap the lamp in this cloth and place it in a manger for the priests to come in and do their examination.  

Do you see the connection now?  Here we have the shepherds present and Jesus wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. The message is unmistakable from God: “This is my chosen lamb without blemish to be the sacrifice for all the worlds sins”. 

   Finally we have Jesus wrapped head to toe with dirty cloth used to swaddle newborn lambs , making him ceremonially unclean as well.  

    So often when we start a new job or new endeavor we want a grace period. A time to get warmed up to the new environment or new people.   We want to "ease our way into it".    Most of the time we want this so if we find out it's not really our thing to do or not.  If it's not, then we can just exit without having been inconvenienced too much and go back to what we were doing before.   But not Jesus.   He doesn't ease his way with a nice birth and a nice middle-class upbringing and later expose himself to the more lurid parts of our world to see if it "fits him".   Instead, like Mike Rowe in “Dirty Jobs” “, Jesus jumps in with both feet to take on our filth and our separation from God.  He’s associated with scandalous people, the unclean, the unwanted and the unnoticed.  
   
      He does this to show you how much he loves you and how much he wants to help you.  He wants your filth. He wants it all.  Only then can he take it away as Gods own “sacrificial lamb” 

There's nothing you can do

  Okay! This blog is going to be very different from all the others I have done before.

   First of all, I need YOU to participate in this blog and not just read it.

   Here are my instructions:  (better if you can have someone READ them to you if you can)

1. Lie down in a quiet place (or sit if you can't lie down)
2. Close your eyes
3. Take 3 or 4 deep breathes 
4. Imagine you are soooo weak that you can't speak, move or even open your eyes.  The energy in your body is sapped.  
5. Now imagine you are on your death bed.  You are minutes away from taking your LAST    breath.  There is NOTHING you can do right now to earn your righteousness.  Nothing you can say or do.  You will be meeting God very soon.  All you can do is rely on your faith in his word that he has done it all for you.

Now open your eyes.   How did that make you feel?

The Bible says, "The Righteous shall LIVE by FAITH".    Yet for most of our lives we live our lives out feeling like we need to do something to earn that salvation.  However, on your death bed, when it all comes down to it, you have nothing to offer God and must rely on faith that he has done it all.

The same person who is reading this post now is the same person a few minutes ago was imagining themselves on their death-bed.  God accepts that same person, who could only breath a few minutes ago, who is now fully alive and awake.  There is nothing different between the two people they are one and the same.   God accepts you just as you are right now... not just on your death-bed.    He loves you right now!

Live your life by faith!
 

Nobody likes to see something good come to an end

    I remember taking a class on Roman history at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.  This class was so popular it had to be taught in the largest auditorium the school had on campus (known as the Pantheon because it was built to look like the Roman Pantheon).  Professor John Scanlon taught the course and he walked us through 1000 years of Roman history in just one semester.  I was enthralled with how much Rome was like the modern United States in its art, science, engineering, military might and politics.  I eagerly awaited each class and took detailed notes.

    Then on the last week of class he covered their eventual demise.  The long, slow decay of the once mighty empire.  He showed us how the Goths and Visigoths were able to cut Rome of from its water supply and that Rome surrendered without a fight. He covered how Rome had spent its wealth to hire mercenaries to do their fighting for them because they could not get enough of their own people to defend the empire. 

    I remember leaving the class that day feeling angry.   The dark ages were to come and the world would lose 1000 years of advancement.  Imagine us going to moon in 969 AD instead of 1969 AD.   Imagine where we would be now in technology. 

     But God had a better plan....

     From what I see today, our "advancement" does not always serve God's plan.  We don't become better but instead become worse.   Maybe God's plan was to slow our human-advancement down so his Gospel could "advance" throughout the world.   I am not saying this is the only reason, but it could be a reason for God allowing Rome to fall as it did and when it did. 

     But whatever the "reason",  God does it all out of love and we have to trust him.   I am sure there were many back in Rome that were dismayed as Rome had just become a Christian Empire with the conversion of Constantine to Christianity just 50 years earlier.   I am sure they were scratching their heads as well.  They probably thought the whole goal of God was to conquer the Roman Empire with the Gospel and then issue in some new age of a Christian Empire to advance the Gospel.    But their misguided hope was soon to be dashed to the ground.

   That is not how God works.   He doesn't need the Roman Empire to advance his Truth.  He also doesn't need the United States to advance it either.   God works through the hearts and minds of his children and not by politics or military/economic might.   Yes, God does make use of these things to save man from himself and give order to the world, but they are not end-all we want them to be.  They are tools he uses for his purpose.   Like this laptop I am using right now to write this blog.   It serves my purpose to get my word out for others to read, but eventually this laptop will be sitting at the bottom of a landfill someday as it will wear out and no longer be useful for anyone.   So also, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany ... and so on will no longer serve God's purpose and will be scrapped just like Rome was in 415AD.

   As believers in Jesus Christ we know our hope is not diminished when this happens.  God is still in control.   Evil may seem to be "winning the day" much like it seemed to the people of Rome when their water supply was cut off by the Goths.  God wins in the end.   Our victory is already certain because Jesus is raised from the dead.