There's an interesting New York Times article here about the disparity between the consumption habits of the developing world and those of the developed world. Perhaps you'd find it hard to believe, but the reality is that Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia consume more of the earths resources per capita by a factor of 32, compared to the consumption habits of the developing world.

When we look at rioting in Kenya, or attacks on oil rigs in Nigeria, it's perhaps a bit easy to become self-righteous, assuming that the anger stems from some sort of flaw in systems or governments, some sort of corruption. Maybe. But maybe it's a least partly true that places like these have grown weary of us consuming 32 times more than they do. Can't we help them rise up a bit to attain to lifestyles that result in access to clean water, education, basic medical care, and healthy food? And if it's incumbent on the developed world to simplify things a bit in order that this might happen, can't we cut back a little - living a little bit greener and simpler?

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Here it is, New Year’s Eve Day. Everybody I know is making plans of some sort to celebrate tonight. But as the day begins, I check my email, expecting only to delete the solicitations for online high school diploma courses and for erectile dysfunction medication. (How does the internet know that I’m 55 years old yet not know that I’m a college graduate?)

Imagine my surprise when I get an email from a pastor in East India. My church helps support a church-planting effort in that region. Hundreds of small Christian churches have been established in the last several years. There are over 78,000 Christians in those fledgling churches. It has been spiritually encouraging for me to see the growth of the Christian body in that predominantly Hindu country; and I’ve been pleased that my meager financial contributions have supported the effort.

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There are so many voices speaking out on behalf of or in defense of or in denial of global warming, that it's getting increasingly difficult to know where to land on this issue. On the one hand, you've got a certain Nobel Peace Prize winner preaching the gospel of imminent global disaster unless we band together as a global community and do something now to fix the problem.

On the other hand you have a semi-popular conservative television commentator saying that the whole global warming thing is a scam, and that we should all drive Hummers as a way of thumbing our noses at that Nobel Prize guy.

What we need to find is a reasonable middle between these two extemes, and so I want to start a conversation that will produce some thoughtful dialog. I have no expertise in this matter. I don't even have a strong opinion either way, except that it makes sense to conserve resources when it helps me stretch my household budget (buy a more fuel efficient car, use less water when I brush my teeth, get rid of my pet cow, those kinds of things).

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My condolences go out to the families and friends of the victims in the latest Colorado shootings. How horrible to end a Christmas party or a Sunday morning service with a hail of bullets. Nothing could prepare us for such shocking disruptions. How painful to see young lives stopped short.

Reports indicate that the shooter had some mental imbalance. In 2002, Youth With a Mission had told Matthew Murray he could not join them on a mission trip to Bosnia. YWAM leaders at the Discipleship Training School recognized Matthew’s instability (even if they may not have been able to get him the psychological counseling and help he needed). Evidently, he had recently sent a series of threatening notes to YWAM. He also expressed his anger online at the Association of Former Pentecostals, “You Christians brought this on yourselves. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you…as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.” Unfortunately, Matthew Murray was a product of the community he assaulted, having been home-schooled by what a neighbor described as a “very, very religious family.”

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I know that I'm told it's my patriotic duty to shop. I know that I'm told 'the terrorists win' if we don't keep the fuels of the economy burning. I know that people's livelihoods are ostensibly at stake if I don't get into the malls today and buy all things that, prior to today, I've lived without but which will undoubtedly make my life so much fuller and richer as soon as I purchase them.

And yet I'm not buying anything today, except perhaps food. I'm trying to make a statement that there is an alternative view to the patriotic shopping and the paranoia of what will happen to the world if we don't buy things we don't need. Our addiction to things has a pretty dark underbelly:

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I love this time of year. I'm not certain why it is so, but the interplay of light and darkness, the glorious riot of color amidst leaves and sky, the wind in my face, the rain, it all plays so well for me, inviting me to worship.

It happened yet again this afternoon as I delayed my morning run in order to catch the sunset. I had my i-pod on shuffle, just taking what the electrons served up and as I turned towards the southwest, and the sunset, Gabriel Faure's 'Requiem' began. The juxtaposition of physical and musical beauty with the power of the words (Grant them Eternal Rest of Lord, and May Perpetual Light Shine on them) was overwhelming. Recently, this very Requiem was played as a benefit concert for Darfur victims, and I thought of the...there is no word to describe it... the powerful, poignant interplay between beauty and tragedy that is all around us every day. I prayed for those victims, and other victims I know, in Kenya, India, Syria, Bolivia, Iraq, Seattle. And I thought, especially of the 2nd line: "May Perpetual Light Shine on them". Yes Lord, perpetual light. May they encounter the light of Christ.

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Literary icon Norman Mailer died last week, setting off a slew of retrospectives by literary pundits and cultural observers. Ironically, although he rejected organized religion (to his credit, he also rejected atheism), Mailer's last book was On God: An Uncommon Conversation. Here he pretty much sets up his own religious system and, in effect, reinvents God into his own image.

Supposedly one of Mailer's last quotes was something to the effect that "evil has triumphed over good." That's not exactly right, but it's close. Essentially he was reflecting the mood that seems to be overtaking a growing number of mainstream artists. In this day and age when atheism is enjoying new popularity, people are more skeptical about humanity's chances to make a bad world better.

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The hits just keep on coming, folks. Frieda posted a news story from the Tulsa World reporting that Richard Roberts, son of sawdust trail evangelist Oral Roberts and the president of the university founded by and named for his father, has been given a vote of "no confidence" by the university's faculty. No reason was given, except to say the vote was not connected in any way to a series of lawsuits that have been filed against ORU by former faculty members. No, this seems more connected to some alleged misuse of university funds by Richard Roberts and his wife. Evidently the allegations had enough substance to warrant Mr. Roberts taking a leave of absence from his position.

Is the faculty at ORU unhappy with the way Mr. Roberts has been using university funds? Hard to say, but the allegations probably didn't help. It seems that in this new era of economic instability, people are getting increasingly intolerant of leaders who use organizational funds to enhance their lifestyle. Whether it's a CEO making $50 million a year, or a baseball player asking for a contract worth $300, or a ministry leader driving luxury cars on the ministry's dime, people are tired of other people living excessively.

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Now that the fires in California are all but extinguished, there's a new weather topic to talk about: drought. We've actually been living with drought in the West for a couple of years now, but our situation is manageable when compared with the South. In Georgia, the lack of rain is so severe that the state is expected to run out of water by January. I didn't know a state could run out of water.

Of course, if I knew my history better, I would know that running out of water is not only possible, but actually happened in the fabled Dust Bowl in the 1930s. A prolonged drought in the Southern Plains forced 2.5 million people to abandon their homes and livelihood and seek greener pastures in the West. It was the largest migration in U.S. history and one of the reasons my home town of Fresno in the Central Valley of California has so many families with roots in places like Oklahoma and Texas (it also explains their Southwestern accents).

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