(considering) 8:28

Politics: Apparently, the fact that Bible quotes were put on a US defence secretary’s briefings was a bad thing. After doing some reading, I’m still unsure why.

Geekdom: Wolfram Alpha, the computational search engine, goes live today. (VERY fun to play with)

Language: An Interview with Dr. John Woodbridge about the definition of the term “fundamentalist”.

Culture: Charlotte Allen bewails the whiny nature of modern superstar atheists.

  Sorry for the silence, to any who have been reading my blog. I’ve been in the midst of moving to the other side of the planet, and I now live in Cheongju, South Korea. My uncle who apparently was here during the Korean war thought that this place was backward. Of course, a lot can change in 50 years, especially with much of the world now using devices designed in Korea by Korean corporations (Like Samsung, LG, Hyundai, or Kia).

I am living in a town with a population about the same as the province of Newfoundland, and work as the new English pastor for the International congregation at SangDang Presbyterian Church, a fairly large Church by my standards, pastored by a very good preacher who is also apparently quite funny…. I will need to work on my Korean.

Since I arrived on Friday, I have been going nearly constantly (or at least as constantly as 12 hours of jetlag will allow me to), getting introduced at services, preaching my first sermon as a church leader, getting to know far more people than I am going to be able to remember, and again spending time with people who I knew from the last time I was in Korea, and I am still not done any of that. Today I also get to run the many errands that are part of relocating to a new country.

What has been interesting in all of this, though, has been how I feel somehow connected to people I often do not even share a language with. When believers in Christ become the new creation that is referred to in the Bible (2 Cor. 5:17), we also get (re) born into a new family with a myriad of new brothers and sisters. I am here away from the culture I am used to and was raised in, but at least I am here also with family.

Indeed, both in Canada and here, I am away from home, but as with all travels, the pilgrimage of life is made sweeter, since we travel it with family. 

I’ve been treated to several blogs talking about the difficulty of being a parent (in this case a mom) and the fact that motherhood does not in itself give joy. Indeed, more commonly it is a difficult and hard road that shows the parents’ insufficiency for these things.

Whether it is dealing with the development of a newborn, or the dealing with the many scrapes and difficulties the child has while growing up, or even dealing with the child making a life far far away from the parent, it is a hard road.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I do not have any children, nor am I married. so what I am about to say is largely theoretical, but I believe true.

I think of parenthood in much the same way I view marriage itself, and indeed many of the major milestones in life. They play a role of sanctification in our lives (they work on our failings), helping us to learn individually and corporately what it is to be a person of character.

Parents are unable to raise their children perfectly, and their children will often face pain that the parents can’t protect them from 9or pain they’d like to protect their children from if only their children would listen). There are few things that thus accent our actual role as humans who, as the Bible says are like grass, here one day, and thrown into the fire the next. It shows that we need to trust God over and above ourselves (because we can’t fix everything), and it makes us understand what it is to love someone other than ourselves totally with the full knowledge that that love will outlast

The joy of  parenthood is thus an indirect joy, that comes only as parenthood is seen as part of a larger story, and a story that is not about us, but ultimately (like everything else) is about the glory of God, to our everlasting joy.

Today I had an epiphany, a change of heart, a flash of enlightenment so to speak.

I have decided to no longer worry about Human Rights law. Indeed, in order to show my love for the stalwart defenders of all things correct, I have decided to file my own complaint.

Allow me to explain. I am right now at a local Starbucks where, honestly, one of the most beautiful women I have ever laid eyes on (well, at least for today) seems to work. Additionally, she seems to not be dating anyone at the moment. Unfortunately, for some reason she does not seem to be interested in me, but rather would like to date the younger (age), less conservative (politics), less fundamentalist (religion) and less weight-challenged (disability) guy also sitting here getting coffee.

It is in this context that I read the Newfoundland Human Rights legislation in a new light. Look at this section:

6. (1) A person shall not deny to or discriminate against a person or class of persons with respect to accommodation, services, facilities or goods to which members of the public customarily have access or which are customarily offered to the public because of the race, religion, religious creed, political opinion, colour or ethnic, national or social origin, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, age, physical disability or mental disability of that person or class of persons.

Now, I am pretty sure that I can call the experience of having dinner and a movie with this girl “a service”, and since she is openly showing interest in another guy apparently also a member of the general public, I can claim that this is something to which “members of the public customarily have access”. Heck they seem to be exchanging phone numbers now.

Finally, if this is anything like that BC case where a woman was considered to be discriminated because of disability because she couldn’t wash her hands while working at McDonalds, I’m sure that I can call whatever it is that makes this girl uninterested in me a disability. Heck, even if she were a lesbian flirting with another girl, I could file because she is discriminating against me because of sexual orientation.

So I think I’m going to file a complaint against her. So what if this is antagonistic and more than a little creepy? I can get the Human Rights tribunal to make her specifically stop discriminating against me, and go out with me.

A wise person once said that many of the cases before Human Rights boards could be better solved over coffee. That thought is simply more literally true in this case….. or maybe over dinner and a movie.

I really can’t wait until someone actually rules that “marriage” is a human right.

As many of you dear readers know, I will soon be leaving Canada for a position as a preacher in South Korea. Perhaps it is this coming move that is giving me some courage in letting out my inner conservative (conservatism being slightly less acceptable in Newfoundland than a love for Quebec). But I wonder about the sanity of my beloved homeland in any case.

Today I decided to renew my driver’s license. It will expire on my birthday this year, and I will be in Asia by the time that happens. So, I went to the services office to get the license renewed, foolishly believing this would be a simple and sensical process.

I arrived at a small building (that had once been a local bar) to get the work done, somewhat pleasantly surprised that I would be the next person served (my number was the next one). It was this soon hope that kept me mollified for the next 30 minutes as I waited for the next available agent to serve me.

When I came to the counter, however, I was told that I could not renew my license until 45 days before my license expired. Okay, assuming that there is a reason for this, I asked why. I was given the reply that it was “because the computer won’t accept it”.

Somehow sure that the agent was having fun at my expense, I asked again for the reason that I could not renew my license. Again, I got the somewhat testy reply concerning the computer system.

Now, to explain to some who may not know why I was struck by this, my question was not as to the reason for the agent’s inability to do something, but was rather as to why the system was designed this way. No answer was forthcoming to this query, even when the agent got her supervisor to respond.

So what was I to do with a system that would not let me renew yet? The agent said that I could 1) get my picture taken now, so that it would be on file, 2) fill out the form now so that the information would also be on file, and 3) send someone down to pick up the license near the end of June and then mail me the driver’s license in Asia. I did all this, and now they are all ready to print up my license at the end of June when HAL decides that I am allowed to have it. But what possible advantage is there to the system for making me wait? If anything is to change between now and 5 weeks from now, the people at Newfoundland Services aren’t going to know. I’m not going to be there to get my new license.

I was drawn to think of my job as a lowly call centre agent while I was waiting for a posting. While I fixed internet for people, I was often asked questions as to why, for example, a person had to wait 30 days to get back an e-mail address once it had been deleted. I always needed to have an answer beyond “because the system won’t let me”, even when the underlying reason was stupid. I was trained to give these answers in a complete deadpan because if I didn’t, the client would go to the competition whose agents had a better understanding. All the while, my pay scale hovered slightly minimum wage (a good deal less than agents and supervisors are paid at Newfoundland government services).

And people wonder why I oppose the government having as much of a role in our lives as they do……