Dear Friends,

If you feel like you are living in an alternative universe, your perception is spot on. What we are being surrounded by is an inversion of the basic concepts of right and wrong and the complete leveling of the meritocracy. Discussion and debate have been replaced by denunciation. Reason and Truth are derided as tools of the oppressor. The idea of a color-blind society has been replaced by race obsession, persuasion with public shaming and the rule of law replaced by the fury of a mob. So, individuals no longer rise to positions of leadership or authority based on their abilities, gifts, talents, accomplishments, hard work, or contributions to a community but rather based on their oppressed status or disadvantages as defined by radical activists.

Dear Friends,

Sometimes I think we should rename Thanksgiving Day to “Lord grant me grace to accept my blessings” Day. Too often we fail to realize all that we do have or we assume we had something to do with it and cut grace out of the picture. Sometimes we look with suspicion on the opportunities presented to us and rather than seeing the wrong turn we made as a chance for something new, we just see it as a way to get lost.

Sometime ago I saw a headline that read: “Scientists say Universe should not exist”. True enough. It’s outside the realm of scientific inquiry to answer “why” the universe exists or to put it another way, they can’t really tell us why there is something rather than nothing. Our under-standing of the world and ourselves is too often constrained by an insistence that only science can give us knowledge. By doing so we cut off knowledge from other sources, such as theology or philosophy and the world becomes meaningless and life is at best the instinctual will to survive.

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, It may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. “Gotta Serve Somebody” by Bob Dylan

The values we hold and the choices we make reveal to others who we are serving. The problem we face is that left to our own devices we tend to rationalize and justify choices that are really self-serving. So we need something outside of ourselves to hold us accountable for our choices. Being part of a community helps us to that but only if we are willing to use the community of the Church to measure our choices so that they are made not by a self-deluded standard but by the standards of Christian service.

Dear Friends,

One of the harder ideas to shake from our thinking is that the amount of wealth that can be had in the world is basically a zero-sum game. In other words, if someone gets rich it is because someone else got poor. But this way of thinking has for centuries kept people in poverty. Today many economists are challenging this way of seeing wealth and the free market by pointing out that there is in fact a nearly infinite amount of wealth that can be created and in which everyone can participate in its creation and benefit from it. Markets tend to reward those who excel by serving others well and meeting the needs and wants of customers. Economic activity then should be pursued as mutually beneficial exchanges and not the domination of the strong over the weak. In this view each of us then is a potential producer of wealth and resources for others.