Everything Is Window Rebuilding
I've been so consumed with and subsequently exhausted from work and home and family running-around-with that I just haven't been able to post much here recently. But sometimes I see something that just cries for me to say something about. Since I'm still pretty tired I can slip it in here quickly.
Today I caught Caroline Baum's blog-like piece about the "benefits" of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami disaster. She initially makes a great point about how things like earthquakes are actually bad for economies in spite of Keynesian minded pontificators blapping about how helpful they are -- you know, providing jobs to get the rebuilding going and all that.
She quotes Bastiat, and it seems anyone who channels Bastiat is worshipped as a prophet with the most sublime wisdom of some sort. The oft-quoted truthism she references is the one about broken windows. If you remember, it is his refutation of those who say broken windows are good because they provide window makers with gainful employment. Bastiat posits that we just can't know what good would've come if we could've used the resources to go to other more productive items.
My question here is, what exactly are those other items? My refutation of the considerably flippant "Well we could've planted 57 bazillion trees with that money" is that
Everything is window rebuilding by its very nature.
If you're going to go off and plant 57 bazillion trees with the wonderfully available funds not used to repair serious glass damage because some dingleberry stickball batter couldn't hit the ball in fair territory, aren't you then still spending resources to do the metaphoric "window rebuilding"? Aren't you indeed working hard to alleviate the "barren landscape" problem? Or the "stale air" problem? Or the "unsightly skyline" problem?
Or how about "We could've educated 219 gazillion kids with that money"? Aren't you then trying to take out the ignorance problem? How about just not having ignorant kids to begin with?
"Harumphh," some people might say. "You're making light of the earthquake and such awful events that really hurt people." No, on the contrary, I don't like there to be earthquakes either, especially if they are going to hurt people.
Thing is, God made a world that requires earthquakes to move stuff around for whatever reasons He needs. Yes people may die, but then what? Have you repented and made your peace with Him by the blood of His Son? Then you have nothing to worry about because by His love He has you in His grip no matter what happens.
And if you complain that some -- well, quite a lot -- of the bad things are done by evil people, then what are you going to do about that? Do you have it in you, or, perhaps Him living in you to go change that? To love someone else with His love so they'd be less likely to do evil things?
Furthermore, what do you do if you're bopping about when all around you there is suffering from earthquakes? Or people breathing nasty air? Or people doing foolish things because they didn't listen in class?
The fact is window rebuilding is all that people do when they live and work and breathe throughout each day they walk the earth. If fires happen firefighters put them out. If people get hungry bakers make bread to eat. If cars get smashed up a car body guy is there to patch them up. Even if you're sitting on the couch snoozing you're repairing cells that will soon be getting your body to do something that really is, essentially,
Rebuilding something in a fallen, broken world.
I guess the real question from that is, what are you doing that for? And who are you doing that for? Ahh, there's a question for you. Do you know who that is?
Or Who that is? (with the cap there, if you didn't quite see it there...)
__
I've written a whole home page piece on who people follow, it is here if you're interested. Some stuff about what it means when terrible things happen to people, even if those things kill them, is in the gospel of Luke, there in chapter thirteen. (I also used the term "truthism" very deliberately, because all the World's plap is all about "truthiness," and even Stephen Colbert's version of truth -- derived from the World as it -- is just as much about truthiness as much as he uses it to skewer the World foolishness.)
Today I caught Caroline Baum's blog-like piece about the "benefits" of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami disaster. She initially makes a great point about how things like earthquakes are actually bad for economies in spite of Keynesian minded pontificators blapping about how helpful they are -- you know, providing jobs to get the rebuilding going and all that.
She quotes Bastiat, and it seems anyone who channels Bastiat is worshipped as a prophet with the most sublime wisdom of some sort. The oft-quoted truthism she references is the one about broken windows. If you remember, it is his refutation of those who say broken windows are good because they provide window makers with gainful employment. Bastiat posits that we just can't know what good would've come if we could've used the resources to go to other more productive items.
My question here is, what exactly are those other items? My refutation of the considerably flippant "Well we could've planted 57 bazillion trees with that money" is that
Everything is window rebuilding by its very nature.
If you're going to go off and plant 57 bazillion trees with the wonderfully available funds not used to repair serious glass damage because some dingleberry stickball batter couldn't hit the ball in fair territory, aren't you then still spending resources to do the metaphoric "window rebuilding"? Aren't you indeed working hard to alleviate the "barren landscape" problem? Or the "stale air" problem? Or the "unsightly skyline" problem?
Or how about "We could've educated 219 gazillion kids with that money"? Aren't you then trying to take out the ignorance problem? How about just not having ignorant kids to begin with?
"Harumphh," some people might say. "You're making light of the earthquake and such awful events that really hurt people." No, on the contrary, I don't like there to be earthquakes either, especially if they are going to hurt people.
Thing is, God made a world that requires earthquakes to move stuff around for whatever reasons He needs. Yes people may die, but then what? Have you repented and made your peace with Him by the blood of His Son? Then you have nothing to worry about because by His love He has you in His grip no matter what happens.
And if you complain that some -- well, quite a lot -- of the bad things are done by evil people, then what are you going to do about that? Do you have it in you, or, perhaps Him living in you to go change that? To love someone else with His love so they'd be less likely to do evil things?
Furthermore, what do you do if you're bopping about when all around you there is suffering from earthquakes? Or people breathing nasty air? Or people doing foolish things because they didn't listen in class?
The fact is window rebuilding is all that people do when they live and work and breathe throughout each day they walk the earth. If fires happen firefighters put them out. If people get hungry bakers make bread to eat. If cars get smashed up a car body guy is there to patch them up. Even if you're sitting on the couch snoozing you're repairing cells that will soon be getting your body to do something that really is, essentially,
Rebuilding something in a fallen, broken world.
I guess the real question from that is, what are you doing that for? And who are you doing that for? Ahh, there's a question for you. Do you know who that is?
Or Who that is? (with the cap there, if you didn't quite see it there...)
__
I've written a whole home page piece on who people follow, it is here if you're interested. Some stuff about what it means when terrible things happen to people, even if those things kill them, is in the gospel of Luke, there in chapter thirteen. (I also used the term "truthism" very deliberately, because all the World's plap is all about "truthiness," and even Stephen Colbert's version of truth -- derived from the World as it -- is just as much about truthiness as much as he uses it to skewer the World foolishness.)
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