It is I who am the ding-dong — for not even bothering to explore the issue far enough to learn that one could opt-out of this Orwellian invasion of privacy. SoCal Edison didn’t mail me that info — although I’m sure I could have found out about ‘opt-out’ if I’d gone to their website when they hit me with this several months ago. Nice research, Brian, in spite of the fact that you got an equally Orwellian response to your inquiries. SoCal Edison now has profiles on all of us — when we go to bed, when we get up, when we leave for work, when we come home, whether we stay home on weekends or not — knowledge your state/federal government can lay their hands on in an instant — with or without a warrant — in our 4th-Amendment-free, post-9/11 socialist dictatorship. It is my understanding that the new meters have the hardware enabling selective de-energization of individual circuits in your home. This isn’t new — you could optionally sign up for this and get a break on your rates. SoCal wanted to incentivize your giving them this authority in your home so they could shut off select circuits during high-power-demand periods. It isn’t so optional any more! I predict the bait and switch game is just getting started: SoCal will get governmental authority to selectively shut off power WITHOUT your permission very soon. The first step, of course, is to get the hardware installed before the ignorant masses — with their filthy carbon footprints — act to stop them from taking over their private lives. And it doesn’t end there: the ability to hack your computer THROUGH ITS POWER CORD is just around the corner. Put that capability together with the new “Smart meter” . . . Edmund Burke had it right — “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing . . .” Good job, Brian — and sorry for being one of the ‘do nothings’ on this. (If it makes you feel any better, I am stockpiling long-life incandescent light bulbs though . . . )

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson presented a raft of data showing how social ills — including homicide, mental illness and limited social mobility — are much higher in countries with stark levels of income inequality. “If Americans want to live the American dream,” Wilkinson said, “they should move to Denmark.”

Our society doesn’t handle dynamic range very well. This could explain a lot of conflict in the world these days. Pushing everybody into the norm (minimizing standard deviation) is seen as a good thing.

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson presented a raft of data showing how social ills — including homicide, mental illness and limited social mobility — are much higher in countries with stark levels of income inequality. “If Americans want to live the American dream,” Wilkinson said, “they should move to Denmark.”

This could explain a lot of conflict in the world these days. Pushing everybody into the norm (minimizing standard deviation) is seen as a good thing. http://blog.increa.com/2011/live-in-the-norm/

I was surprised that the book took a position that the elite and rich are intentional about what they’re doing to the middle class. Not just intentional, but intentional to exploit and hold down the middle class, believing that a wider spread in wealth is the appropriate end game.

I think I follow your third paragraph, although I’m not sure what you mean by a government following a “personal responsibility route”. I think there is a relationship between the government and a corporation that requires responsibility and some oversight. However, I was thinking about a different relationship as I wrote the words in the original post.

The author’s paradigm that raised my concern was his description of the relationship between the government and the people. He described a situation where I am obligated to pay the government for clean air just as if I had eaten half of a candy bar from a store. If allowed to continue, that paradigm could mean I owe the government for every desirable thing in my life. Notice, this paradigm IS coming out in ObamaCare. Again, doing nothing more than being born and life, I am now being obligated to purchase health care program mandated by the government. My thought: being born here shouldn’t obligate me to pay or serve the government. The government exists to serve me. Part of that service may include relationships with corporations. However, constitutionally, I am more interested in getting the relationship between government and me correct.

“Corporations … strive to take over a would-be democratic government.” Considering the leveraged power of Lobbying, it’s hard to deny this too.

“f you breath clean air in America by being born here, the money in your pocket is obligated to the government for having ensured your clean air.” It is fair to say the gov’mint is usually guilty of ‘unintended consequences’. It is also a fair argument to say of those polluting … didn’t … that is they took the fabled personal responsibility route .. then gov’mint intervention would not be needed. As but a small sampling, keep in mind the movies “Erin Brockovich” and “A Civil Action” were based on real events.

You asked about what life view might take the place of a Pachinko theology… looking for what might be the “instead way”. Maybe there is not a specific alternative, instead a tremendously open field. Kind of like the Garden of Eden was. Avoid the one tree, and there’s an unlimited good around you. Maybe obedience and resultant wisdom take us places of God’s purpose. So maybe in this discussion, per se, there is no alternative …just something to avoid.

Remember, when you invert something, you don’t change it into something else, requiring a replacement of the original item. You don’t need to change it to something else. Your life is still your life and you don’t have to change out what God has given you. Instead, it is …well …inverted. I think Mormons have it right when they claim our detour into a physical world is to be a growing experience. We are not to dodge or remove ourselves from the world’s ways, rather it is good to ~see~ differently. The retinal image of the world inside your eyes is upside down. Your brain adjusts and you live through the world normally – you no longer know the image is upside down. Similarly, when you see the world “through God’s eyes” you haven’t changed the world. Instead, you accept an inversion as normal, and – just like your eyesight – move through a world with spiritual agility.

Similarly, the action of bouncing the ball on the Pachinko board stays the same. One view centers on all the little bounces. All the little nails could be bent, or adjusted, in some way. This compares with how many people try to get their life right – one event at a time. Another possible view requires creativity and seeing the entire issue differently, and understanding innately about gravity vectors, sines and cosines, etc. Only with this different view can a person see that tilting the board causes better the effect a poor craftsman was trying to fix one nail at a time. An inverted world view can see the effect of board tilt. A normal world view goes busily about bending nails.

Contentedness can drift into “I don’t care” laziness. Think of people that would sit absorb the work of other’s hands (aka consumers). This contrasts with contributors who see something to be better or more, and take action to work toward that. A Christian cares about things and strives to better themselves – wanting to change, yet content with what is. Applied to jobs, this drives me toward the phrase “doing work God provides” rather than “my job choice”. For example, my life in recent years has had nothing close to “job choice” – instead driven by huge and powerful forces beyond my influence. Yet, I find myself drifting more and more toward contentedness, and action toward the future.

How does a person know when they’re taking from other as a consumer, vice contributing toward others? It’s not just about dollars and material value. It’s not just because someone sanctions or supports the action. Remember about seeing the world differently. There is bravery of the individual soul to stand up and speak/live truth. Seeing the world differently introduces different currency, and different metrics. I believe the key to adjudicate my participation in life is God’s word with a tight reading, desiring that it would hold and constrain me to God’s will – not as a rule book defining edges to explore.

Thank you for your observation that I advocated avoiding decisions, and then your specific notice that I bounced back to them. I’m always trying to communicate better. By putting the quotes into one paragraph, you made me think about what I was trying to say. I noticed the word change from decision to choice. I think a decision is something you think about, collect information for, and decide. It’s something you didn’t have, and then some later point in time you do have. A choice is more about the way you are. Choice is about free-will and how you exercise it. You can do it at a wider range of times. Do you decide to pursue God or choose God? The big table tilt is about choosing a new way and biasing all of your life.

You commented that all the little small daily choices make you who you are. Oh, I think it is reverse in a wonderful way! Visit our blog and read the article titled “Atomic Love”. Briefly, in the article, I claim that love is not built from all sorts of things you can do. Rather, all those little things you do spill out from your love. More explanation in the article. This is about a character of God. I don’t think we can build it up. Rather, it’s a gift from God that we get to spill out onto others. In a similar way, our choices and life fall out from belief and who we are.

Your image about a little string left behind everywhere the bouncing ball traveled is vivid. You end up with the conclusion that, “it’s still our choices and decisions.” Hmm… your conversation is good because it’s making me think. Maybe there is a different way to see this if I pull you away from the vocabulary “our choices and decisions”. Maybe at some point, it’s not the individuals’ decisions as much as you think. Think of Biblical passages where Paul writes about being “dead to sin”, “reborn”, etc. When the entire Pachinko board tilts, maybe it’s not so much our decisions any more. Maybe we are living into rhythms of God’s Kingdom. Think of Jesus preaching. In a number of examples, he tried to say, “The word operates this one way, but in the Kingdom of God, operates in this other way…”

Yes, your thoughts about making plans are significant. Understanding the subtle difference between good planning and bad planning is maybe about granularity or specific-ness of plans. In other words, maybe “live Godly” is a good and suitable plan that does not bind you up or discourage or distract you. Yet, a detailed, down-to-the-minute dictation of what should happen tomorrow is rightfully distasteful to you.

Actually, this guttural response to yourself is a witness that God’s spirit is active your life. God’s word speaks of working like ants to lay up for later seasons of life. At the same time, God’s word speaks of using language that does not assume the future. If you spend too much time on the specifics and not enough on the bigger, global, “pachinko board tilts”, then you feel something is amiss. Something doesn’t click right. The way you’ve seen things done and planned to the nth degree concerns you.

My suggestion? Immerse yourself in a culture and be around people that have the big picture right (witness it with their life). This is not robotic mimicking of others. You’ll find HUGE diversity in how it’s played out with decisions of life, while staying consistent to a larger “board tilt” theology.

The opposite is also true: remove yourself from culture and people when your heart feels tension and wrongness. You don’t critique the other people, and there is no personal press to correct or fix them. You would be available. You would help them if they ask and desire to be better, but mostly you need to be protective of life and heart and Godly spirit. Be away from weights that would re-tilt your table the wrong way and then distract away their life and the life of others discussing how to bend the nails. This was the critique to Pharisees who concerned themselves with the little bits of law, but missed the big picture.

Hmm.. I just had a thought. Maybe spiritual decisions appear as choices in the material world. Spiritual choices appear as decisions in the material world. It’s like the mathematical transfer of functions from the time and frequency domain into the complex s-plane when studying aerodynamic stability. The same thing shows up differently in the two domains. Wow. Even mechanical aerodynamics reflect God’s truths.

I read your Pachinko God thing and it really intrigues me. I’ve heard bits and pieces of this before, but never in such a coherent and condensed version. I think I agree with you…. to a point. The conclusions that the “pachinko” view would lead you to are particularly unsatisfying and force you to either choose one “big” choice as the point of salvation (like the fundamentalists) or select some imaginary line, and those people who land to the right of it can be considered saved (like the catholics). Neither of these seem like a good way to go through life and it makes me want to throw out the entire pachinko view, just as you did.

However, I struggle with the “instead…..”. The pachinko view is wrong and so instead…… ? You talk about tilting the entire board, inverting the entire view. But to what? I can understand what life shouldn’t be, but I don’t get what you’re trying to say life should be.

For example, you talk a lot about a marriage vow so I’ll stick with that metaphor. Despite the fact that you are attempting to throw out a view that places utmost importance on decision making (the pachinko God), you repeatedly talk about decisions. “Only the little daily choices to stay in a marriage are what become reality,” “zillions of little commitments that dovetail with the big one,” and “let your day to day choices exhibit your cumulative faithfulness.”

I think that it is a cumulation of our small daily choices that make up who we are. It’s not really the big decisions that define us, those these do too. I don’t think you would disagree with this based on what you wrote, but I’m confused as to how this is different that viewing life as a pachinko board with TONS of little pegs. Where we end up may not matter so much, but the path we took to get there does. The choices and decisions along the way paint a picture of what kind of person we are (picture a little string, or colored paint following the ball’s path). Our little choices help paint a picture of who we are just as much as the “big” ones do. But it’s still our choices and decisions.

I really, really like your quote “There is no job choice. There is work that God provides you so that you can provide for those you love.” I agree! But doesn’t this speak more for contentedness in whatever situation you are in than it speaks against the importance of making a job choice? I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer, especially in terms of choosing work, but that doesn’t mean the decision is not an important one, or that the decision won’t help define who you are. There IS a choice. But no matter what that choice is, it will be the right one as long as you live and work within a context of seeking to serve the Lord. Some decisions might help you serve Him better and some might make it more difficult. Not to say it’s not possible in either one.

In my particular circumstances, I think that no matter what kind of career path I choose, I can make my life about the important things. If life does lead me down a path to become a successful career women, I think I can bring glory to God by constantly giving Him credit and learning not to lean on my own intelligence. If life keeps me a nomad, jumping from place to place and job to job, I might be able to give Him glory by trusting Him to keep providing those jobs (and a retirement) as they disappear. If life leads me to becoming a teacher, I can worship God by teaching others about my passions. If life provides me with a husband and family, my love for them can be a testament to God’s grace. Do you see what I’m trying to say? As much as I believe the end goal doesn’t really matter and no matter what decision I make will turn out good, I am still stuck here and now making a decision. I don’t think one will be right or another wrong, but I still think the decisions are important.

I would like to comment briefly on the one issue specifically, because you said something that echoes something others have mentioned. There is a very fine line between working to keeping a door open and taking the issue on myself. I don’t want this to be my own crusade. I want it to work out if it’s God’s will for me. But what does it really look like to give a cause to God? And so that’s what I’ll work on now. In the practical sense, what does it look like if I am really willing to go one way, and more importantly, willing not to go in that direction?

I really struggle with your closing words. I like to have plans and I think this might be a weakness. I need something long-term to anticipate, something to look forward to. It doesn’t really bother me that much when those plans don’t work out, but it really bothers me not to have them to begin with. Does this make sense? Unfortunately, my planning for the future often out-competes my living in the present.

I question the rules at this higher level, but what about at a lower level? I see the nine pillars as creating a foundation for building a website. I see it as more of a methodology for creating something. I don’t know if I would call them rules, but maybe more of a set of guidelines to go by. My question is do we question that process as well? It seems to me that working with the pillars would give you the freedom to develop whatever it is your developing and not get lost in the world of mumbo jumbo rules on how your supposed to design it. The problem with the web is that its not definable. A website is not just a jet, but a tank, and a car, and a pillow, and a fruit basket, and, and, and. Its everything, anything, and nothing. Yet some how the all encompassing title of website suffices for all of it. Every website is this unique thing that needs to be figured out. The pillars should be a system or methodology for answering the question of what each unique website is. There is no one way websites ought to be done. However there is at least one way for this specific website, for these specific users, and for these specific reasons it ought to be done. Do you become a technology leader by getting the answer right for the one website? If so, at what level do you not follow the “whims” of others? Or do we become a technology leader because we give up making websites completely and go build something else that entirely new?