by Ron Carlson
I never pondered all the implications of living in a shrinking global community until I read Mark Leibovich’s hilarious column in the Washington Post exposing the recent explosion of superficial sub-communities springing up in chat rooms near you.

His unmeasured response to social organizational overload invites other beleaguered world citizens to join “the ‘tired-of-the-word-community’ community.”

I never pondered all the implications of living in a shrinking global community until I read Mark Leibovich’s hilarious column in the Washington Post exposing the recent explosion of superficial sub-communities springing up in chat rooms near you. His unmeasured response to social organizational overload invites other beleaguered world citizens to join “the ‘tired-of-the-word-community’ community.”

Sign me up, Mark, and please send my official club card! I love being in on the ground floor of something really big.

I laugh at folks who belong to the “rat terrier community,” the “refrigerator magnet community,” the “red-haired, stumpy-stepchild recovery community,” and the “I’ve been done wrong by the cowboy’s love-song community.” But then I consider my own community involvement, and I recognize I’m just as goofy.

I belong to the “baseball glove collector’s community” (hey, we got our own newsletter!), the “virtual Still’s Disease community” (everybody needs somebody who gots what you got!), the “I can never find my handy pocket-pal organizer community,” the “I cook without a recipe community,” and the ever-expanding “we think the Yankees stink community” – important, all of them.

Human nature is such that we like to congregate with folks who like what we like. Birds of a feather flock together. We’re inclined to hang out with people whose interests and perspectives resemble our own. We bond with fellow pilgrims who march to our beat. We tend to commune with people who share our common beliefs.

Community is clearly a big deal. It often defines us. It’s hard to shake the nerd image if all your running buddies are nerds. The same goes for geeks, jocks, and preppies. We’re wired to believe there is strength in numbers and security in attachments.

Community rules.

Recognizing the central role that community plays in our socialization, we agonize over the trivialization processes at work. It pains us to see community made artificial and token by cheap imitations of the genuine article. There has to be more to community than sharing a favorite ice cream flavor or favoring one brand of pot-licking mutt over another. How low can we go?

Leibovich shares the same concerns, though his parody disguises it well. He quotes sociologist Amitai Etzioni (a charter member of the “no wonder no one can pronounce my name correctly community”) who muses that “community [now] evokes a sense of warm fuzziness on a group of people who have only the most superficial bonds.”

“Sadly,” I might add to the George Washington University scholar’s comments.

He continues by noting “authentic community must include both genuine bonds of affection and shared moral values.”

Now, we’re talking common sense (a community on the obvious decline). Better yet, we’re moving closer to the heart and soul of common-unity.

Genuine community unites, inspires, empowers, and generally brings meaning to the life experience. In many ways, it represents the essence of human relationships.

We need community so badly that we often compromise genuine, authentic community for a cheap, synthetic substitute. In popular terms, we might call many of our contemporary attachments, “knock-offs.”

Sometime in the next few months, America will surpass the three hundred million mark. We’re getting bigger without question. The real question regards our ability and willingness to get smaller at the same time. In other words, can genuine community develop and mature in a highly secularized, pluralistic culture?

Sociologists are having a virtual field day calculating the many factors that fragment and isolate one human being from another. The consensus states we are a fractured populace void of traditional moorings and shared values. We are far more divided than red and blue and black and white.

The traditional “ties that bind” have been left behind. “All for one and one for all” appears to be little more than a historical footnote. We have evolved into a giant country of little special interest groups competing for a shrinking slice of turf. Community has been replaced by special interests and both civility and brotherhood have suffered.
We lack a shared vision.

Since we can’t agree in principle or mission or purpose, we fight and bicker and jockey for position. Such behavior undermines our pursuit of meaningful community.

America displays many of the symptoms of a culture in decline. How long can we sustain an attitude of “every man and woman for themselves?” If we keep cloning Shallow Hal and Phoney Mary Baloney, how can we foster renewal? What will be the consequences of greater self-consumption and decreased concern for our neighbor’s best interests? What is going to happen if we totally abandon our commitment to the common good? A “me first” mentality insures a last place finish.

Why is “Desperate Housewives” the most popular television show in prime time? Is it because life in their cul-de-sac accurately represents fallen community? I’m afraid these desperate and sick creatures are closer to truth than fiction or fantasy. Has hell on earth moved closer to reality?

The booming trend of superficial communities ought to be a wake-up call to the church. We need to look honestly and candidly at ourselves and consider the health of our own faith communities. Are we what we need to be and doing what we ought to be doing? Are we living in contrast and conflict with mainstream insanity? Are we offering a viable alternative to mainline, self-centered culture? Are we providing community for victims of a fragmented and divisive society? Does our common-unity attract hurting, lonesome, anxious folks?

Church is the ultimate community because it links broken people to a healing God. Church is the grace place, a hotbed for reconciliation and redeemed relationships. God says church is about serving others and caring about the common good. Jesus wants His church to be a model of true and genuine community – in His name.

We need to get busy.

http://youtu.be/AKxmqMH4w_A

Philippines tightens net on African arrivals
2012-03-17 13:10

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Manila – Philippine airport immigration officials have tightened monitoring of arrivals from Africa after a spate of arrests of drug mules from the continent, a spokesperson said on Saturday.

The increased vigilance at all airports was imposed after two Ghanaians were caught on March 13, bringing to eight the number of Africans stopped at Philippine airports in three weeks while trying to smuggle in illegal drugs.

“This is not discrimination. They will not be treated poorly. We are just asking our immigration people to be a bit more vigilant,” said Bureau of Immigration spokesperson Maria Antonette Mangrobang.

If a new arrival cannot fully explain why he or she is coming to the Philippines, immigration personnel can bar them from entering, she said.

Mangrobang said she could not say why so many Africans, including nationals from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Guinea, had recently been caught trying to smuggle illegal drugs into the Philippines.

The drug enforcement agency said it has arrested 38 members of African drug syndicates since last year, and information obtained from them led to the capture of 14 accomplices abroad.

Most of these have been caught trying to smuggle the illegal drug methamphetamine hydrochloride, popularly known as “ice”, into the Philippines.

–

by Ron Carlson

Christianity begins and ends with a spirit of intentionality. “In the beginning, God….” signals that an intelligent force acting on purpose sponsors all that we can see and know. Design, balance, and order witness to our logic that things hold together by a power greater than us.

Our inherent concept of beginnings testifies that our something didn’t come from nothing. Striving to gain the upper hand in an age of electronic disobedience persuades us that the One who keeps the stars in the air and our feet on the ground must know more about celestial engineering than the local scientists down the hall in research and design.

We know enough to know it’s a good thing that we are not in charge of the universe. We can thank more than our lucky stars that the Master Planner is not A.D.D., directionally challenged, or addicted to chocolate. Where would we be if The One who made it all forgot where He laid His keys or left the oven on? What if the sun forgot its morning appointment? What if the tides forgot to roll? What if the rains forgot to come? What if they forgot to go – again?

What if rhyme got crossways with reason? What if north met south without permission? What if the hummingbird couldn’t get a VISA and had to winter in Ontario? What if you were really lost in the cosmos and no One cared? What if your days weren’t numbered?

What if you had crawled from the slime pit without eyes to see, ears to hear, tongue to taste, nose to smell, and skin and hearts to feel? What would your world be like then? What if you were ill equipped to laugh, learn and love? What if you happened to happen before evolution got the bugs worked out? What if you were a bug, an ugly bug, with cockroaches as cousins and fire ants for neighbors? What if the universe decided to squish you?

What if you were anything but God’s kind intention?

From before the beginning until after the end, anything that is anything is solely dependent on God. There is but a single source. There is really no debate about the meaning of is, now is there? It is what it is and we are what we are because life is grounded in the Great I AM. God Is.

God is intentional, and since we are “made in His image,” we are the ultimate manifestation of His intention, and thus the objects of His intentional love. “God is love,” declares His Spirit, “and He first loved us!”

Love, by all accounts the universe’s premium expression, is intentional, and by design a verb. Love acts intentionally, without failure.
Perfect love became perfect intentionally when “God became flesh and dwelt among us.” He “acted on our behalf.”

Jesus is no accidental Savior. “Before the foundation of the world,” God purposed our salvation and completion in the missionary love of His eternal son. God didn’t make us for nothing.

Jesus willingly surrendered the power and glory of heaven and entered space and time as a space and time bound man on purpose and with purpose. Love demands God’s all and nothing less. Thank God that His loving will can’t be deterred!

We need the constant reminder that heaven and earth run on schedule and that life is anything and everything but random. God doesn’t make mistakes. He can’t err. Our Creator and Sustainer never bumbles, bungles, or blunders.

God is ultimately reasonable, though to us capricious characters, He is frequently misunderstood, misrepresented and misquoted. We often misdefine our own weaknesses and character faults as manufacturing defects, somehow trying to cover the tracks of our sin. We tumble deeper into denial with every round of the blame game. To realign ourselves with truth, we must first recognize and admit that we are the ones out of kilter. We offend God and His perfect creation with our rebellious unintentionality.

Words can only partially explain the attributes and ways of God. The best description that human tongues can produce regarding the nature of God is “perfect.” And since the human mind interprets reality in terms of comparison, our fallen understanding of “perfect” is warped. We simply can’ t grasp “God-perfect.”

When the opening lines of the Bible tell us that God surveyed His creation and pronounced it “good,” it is declaring all things “God-perfect.” And a major component of “God-perfect” is pure intentionality. God waited until the sixth day to forge His ultimate creation, and it was by divine design that humans are crafted in “the image of God.”
Make no mistake, we are no mistake. “Perfect” prevents miscues.

How you view your world and how you understand your origins dramatically affects the way you think and live. If you accept the false notion that you are without design and purpose, life is ultimately futile, and despair will surface as your only alternative. Conversely, if you embrace the great Biblical truth of creation, life finds meaning and you discover your true identity as a child of God constructed with eternity in mind.

The choice boils down to random selection or intelligent, intentional design. Which alternative best represents truth, reason and love?