Current events.
My heart and prayers go out to the ten Americans, and their families stateside, being held and charged with kidnapping in Haiti. However, while I pray that the best of conclusions is reached in this difficult situation, I feel that our countryfolk being held must be some of the most ignorant, uninformed missionaries in recent memory.
I've considered how I, myself, might have behaved had I been down in Haiti, working to help orphans. I concluded that I would not have even remotely considered removing any number of children from their home-country at all, and if the decision to remove them from their country was deemed important and necessary, I would make every attempt to go through the proper channels. I know, I wasn't in their shoes. How can I judge?
I've taken into consideration circumstances that we may not be aware of. Were the children in immediate mortal danger? Were they being sexually, mentally, or physically abused? If those were real dangers that the thirty-three children were facing, then I would not consider it any problem to break national or international law to protect them.
But, if these children were not facing these specific dangers, then this group of missionaries, is either, at best, extremely uneducated and careless, and at worst, guilty of believing that the Will of God promotes sweeping orphans out of their Haiti Hell into the luxuries of the American Way. If these people and the church that supports them are truly convicted about helping Haitian orphans, they need to commit to a lifetime of support, in Haiti.
I don't believe these Americans were trying to steal these children in order to put them on the black-market. I believe they were honestly trying to act compassionately and justly. But, whether due to Baptist ideology or a collective gap in common sense, these folks behaved recklessly and foolishly.
To help these children, and the thousands of others, along with the millions of adults in Haiti, what Christians, Agnostics, and Atheists must do to help Haiti, or any other desperate state, is to aid in building the basic infrastructures that offer the basic necessities of life. Clean water, clean food, clean shelter, basic medical, and basic education. Evangelical opportunities will be best served by contributing to the physical and mental salvation of desperate people. You can't save the soul of a hungry person.
We need to teach people how to fish, not catch the fish for them.
Now, switching channels.
If you're not a tech person, or aren't aware of, or don't care about the high theater of the Apple Empire, the iPad was released on the 27th of January. If you're not aware, the iPad is a touchscreen computer tablet. It's coming had been gushed about for months in the press and Apple fans everywhere watched the calendar in anticipation of it's release.
Even the Fuhrer could not escape the fervor. Below is a profanity lace reaction to the newly released iPad by Mr. Hitler.
Caution:
This video is extremely funny to my sense of humor, however, it is rife with foul words, not to mention the fact that any performance, satirical or not involving Hitler, makes me squirm.
But, it's still funny.
Yes, technology can disappoint, especially the first generation.
Speaking of which, I've taken up an utterly unimportant cause. A personally specific disappointment I have in technology, is the business model used by the companies who control television media.
Cable companies sell a product so poorly constructed and conceived, that, of all the great wool-pulling schemes in consumer history, cable TV offers the worst product value for the money. i.e. You pay X-amount of dollars to receive 100 channels, of which, you watch 6. Why can't we pay only for the channels we want?
In coming weeks, as our house moves closer to completion, I will be building our wireless network to handle all of our internet and television watching needs, without the waste of a cable subscription. This will be done legally of course, and I'll share the results.
Side note:
I'm suspicious that parts of my posts in the past two weeks have had a slightly stormy air. I'll work to remedy that. Next week, nothing but gentle sarcasm and irony.
Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glenn,
Dave
