Tag Archives: World Tomorrow

A will to change

Last week was really busy for me. On Wednesday I took the ferry to the mainland to meet with my distributor. We needed to discuss our next step to find the right broadcaster for our HD documentary about the iconic B.C. painter E.J. Hughes and the art conservator Cheryle Harrison, who literally worked wonders to restore one of Hughes’ rare surviving murals that had been walled up and forgotten for 50 years. After that business was discussed we started talking about my next possible documentary project.

For weeks now my mind has been mulling over one of Canada’s most visible and serious social problems. This is a problem that has just gotten worse despite Municipal, Provincial, and Federal governments throwing BILLIONS of dollars yearly in failing attempts to lessen much less successfully solve this deadly social dysfunction that is spreading throughout Canada’s civic body. The city of Vancouver alone presently spends $360 million annually to deal with it. But the problem just refuses to go away and everybody knows and sees it. So why do our government bureaucracies continue with what is evidently a losing “game”? Why are they so intractable?

The problem, of course, that I’m thinking of tackling for our next documentary is: drug addiction, homelessness, and social marginalization. This is a depressing insidious mix if there ever was one. But in a perverse way this mix of social evils has become a real sustainable growth industry here in Canada. And it  has been employing increasing legions of police, social workers, and medical personnel. Why?

How effective can a government program be if it locks down the facility at night so no one can enter or leave, but during the day people can come and go as they please and on “Welfare Wednesday”, when the cheques are passed out, some of the project’s residents head for the streets and the waiting drug dealers? After a few days of totally wasting themselves they stumble back to the project for a place to sleep and food to eat while they wait for the next distribution of money from the government. Government sponsored city-centre harm-reduction programs like this have a very, very low “cure” rate. And even when they bother to keep statistics government finds that  only 5 to 15% of such clients ever break free from their addictions.

In contrast to such a faint hope, band-aid type of program there are functioning therapeutic communities. These mostly private programs have “cure” rates in the low to mid 70 percentile, meaning that about 75 of every 100 people who enter such  programs get a new life! A key difference between  harm reduction programs and therapeutic communities is the will to change. About 2,000 years ago Jesus of Nazareth taught this truth foundational to human change:

“There was a man who had two sons. the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you…” (Luke 15:11-18 NRSV).

Jesus’ teaching in the story up to that point was that change could not, and did not occur before the dissolute young man came to himself and found the will, the motivation to turn his life around. Then it was the turn of the caregiver, his father, to extend mercy and to help. To extend mercy without a motivation to change by the one being helped tends to merely perpetuate a destructive cycle.

It’s not just the addicted who need to change, so must the caregivers. They need to learn to practice  tough love when assisting people with severe problems. The goal should be to help them get a life rather than merely making them more comfortable while they not-so-slowly kill themselves with their dissolute, destructive habits.

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Haiti’s tragedy: what does it mean?

January 18, 2010

By Jeff Patton

The news stories about the effects and aftermath of the monster earthquake in Haiti make for sober reflection. The best word to describe Haiti’s present situation is “tragic.” The current calamity, however, seems just the latest episode in a national tale of gruesome violence, oppression, missed opportunities, hardships, poverty, and heartbreak for the 206-year-old republic. What was once one of the richest places on Earth, “the Pearl of the Antilles,” is now one of the most destitute.

Haitians, who are mostly a deeply religious people (the majority practice a mixture of Roman Catholicism and African Voodoo), see the hand of God in their destruction. Many Haitian religious leaders say they believe that God wants them to change. Some place the emphasis on God’s judgment on their notoriously corrupt ruling elite. Others take a more apocalyptic perspective proclaiming the “end of the world is near.” Some, embittered by their losses, struggle to understand how God could do this to them, or draw the conclusion that “there is no God.”

What are we to make of such a tragedy, religiously speaking?

The fact is that human life on this Earth is fragile, rather short, and subject to all sorts of tragedies. Jesus of Nazareth made this point when it comes to untimely death and suffering:

“4Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them—do you think that they were more guilty offenders (debtors) than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally” (Luke 12:4-5, Amplified Bible).

Jesus’ point is that we should put first things first. One of the constant refrains of His teaching was that we should seek to practice on a daily basis the spiritual values and righteous lifestyle taught by the Bible.  Prayer is an important part of a godly lifestyle. Jesus specifically mentioned in the famous “Our Father” model prayer that we should pray:

“And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from evil,” (Matthew 6:13 NRSV).

Truly we have a great need to remember this point because this current society and physical world in which we now live is full of serious dangers. Jesus said so! He even prophesied that these troubles would get much worse before they get better. Notice the type of problems that we can expect:

“6 And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. 7 Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. 8 But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come” (Matthew 24:6-8 NLT).

It makes no sense to say there is no God when the bad things He predicts come to pass! Our present age is not a godly one. In fact one can properly say this is a rebellious age that makes a show of worshiping God while insisting on doing its own thing. In most of the Western world our actual practice embraces the twin idols of materialism and sexual immorality. Still, we want to look good on a token scale and appear “spiritual.” But we don’t want to do good every day of the week in every aspect of our lives. We, the Canadian people, are not better, morally speaking, than the Haitians. We are not immune from disasters and suffering on a Haitian scale. We need to change our minds and amend our ways or we, too, will likewise perish.

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Who can you count on–always?

January 10, 2010

Seventy years ago Canada, Britain, and the democracies of Western Europe—nations that thought of themselves as Christian nations—were in the beginning stages of WWII. They had been unwillingly thrust into a life or death struggle with what Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King called “Pagan Nazism” in his Canada at the side of Britain address. (http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/second_world_war/clips/8669/)

Neville Chamberlain—that iconic symbol for all present and future spineless appeasers who proclaim “peace in our time” while blithely signing away someone else’s freedom—was still the PM of the United Kingdom 70 years ago. William Manchester in his book The Last Lion noted that during the 1930s most of the political and social leaders of the United Kingdom (including the upper classes, the BBC, and The Times newspaper) were people of deceit, moral corruption, and even conspiracy, who had sold themselves to the principle of the appeasement of evil.

It was to be five more months till May until Winston Churchill would be chosen as PM. But that only happened after the disastrous consequences of the policy of appeasing evil became fully realized. In the spring of 1940 Norway, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands all collapsed under the brutal Nazi blitzkrieg. England would now face the Nazi dictator’s wrath directly. But, of course, it would be the ordinary people of Europe, North America, and Russia who would make most of the payments in blood and sorrow on appeasement’s debt. We, the people, always pay for tolerating our leaders politically correct duplicity and lies.

In an appeal to his people to summon courage and faith during that physically and spiritually dark time of 70 years ago, King George VI strove to rally his people as a new decade, the 1940s, and the struggle for survival as a free people began. He encouraged them with these words.

I said to a man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown, and he replied, go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God, that shall be to you better than light, and safer than the known way…

As we begin the decade of the 2010s, we, the free peoples of the West, are facing extremely sobering problems, vexing problems. Problems that ought to be dealt with speedily and effectively. But, are we, too, stuck in appeasement mode, trying our best to ignore and pretend that our day’s evil adversaries—both foreign and domestic—will be nice and just disappear.

Will the U.S. dollar crash this next year or the year after that or the year after that due to the USA’s mega-gazillion dollar debt? When will the Chinese finally tire of holding increasingly worthless U.S. Treasury bonds and shout in disgust that the Yankee Running Dogs Have No Clothes? What follows? A violent re-alignment of the world’s political order? Chaos? Civil war? Could some survive with no more trips to Vegas or Disney World?

And what of the Iranian dictators and their pursuit of nukes? Will the West find the courage to stand up to them before they have the Bomb that they’re dying to drop on Tel Aviv while they blackmail the rest of us? Don’t hold your breath.

So, in whom can we put full confidence and trust to lead us? Where is our Winston Churchill, or our George VI? What can we learn from the past to help us today? Who can be counted on to be trustworthy, consistent, diligent, loyal, and firm? Consider what the Apostle Paul had to say in his first letter to the Corinthians:

11-12These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.

13No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it. (1 Corinthians 10:11-13, Message translation).

In the years to come it will be essential to remember that the Bible’s God is faithful even when our human leaders are not. Should all become darkness, when you must go out into the unknown, just put your hand in His and He will guide you.

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Have a “good” New Year?

From reading various local newspapers published here on the Island  during this start of a new decade you would think the most important personal self-improvement needs to consider for our New Year’s resolutions would seem to revolve around losing weight and getting more exercise. I love it. We’re seen by the scribal class as just a materialistic crew of irresolute fat slackers obsessed by timbits and hdtv sets! Whatever happened to reflection about our need for improvement in what goes on between our ears? How about making some resolutions about who we are and our need for some real growth in our spiritual selves?

It is the tradition in the Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking world on January 1st to wish family, friends, and the supermarket checkout lady a “happy” new year. But in the Jewish world, on the Hebrew calendar’s new year, a well-wisher traditionally calls out, in translation, have a “good” year. Hebrew culture, having been around for a few thousands of years longer than ours, realizes that what is good for somebody may not always make them happy—at least not immediately.

Why? Because resolving to do and be good can be a tough resolution to keep and we may not be happy with what we discover along the way about our innate human selfishness.

The Judeo-Christian scriptures are all about resolving to seek Creator-assisted spiritual improvement. After all, God is only mildly interested in the fact that most of us could stand losing a few pounds.  But Heaven knows that there is no shortage of room for real spiritual improvement in each and everyone of us.

The Apostle Paul once wrote up some ideas in his letter to the Ephesians that would still make great New Year’s resolutions in 2010.  He suggested:

1) “No more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.”

2) “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry [There’s a lot to get angry about in this world, isn’t there?]—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge [Don’t be a jihadi]. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.”

3) “Did you use to make ends meet by stealing [or selling street drugs]? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can’t work. [After all, that’s why we give to charities and pay taxes].”

4) “Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift [Just think about how much you can lift up those around you who need an encouraging word].” (Message translation, Ephesians 4:25-29)

You know, happiness is just a by-product that comes into the lives of those who learn to practice what is good. If you focus on having a good year of spiritual growth, then your chances of having a happy one will be increased immeasurable. So, have a Good New Year!

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