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Josh Allan Dykstra
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Josh Allan Dykstra
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Jim Wallis: American Gangster

February 5, 20088Comments
I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jim Wallis speak at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena last night. He just released a new book called "The Great Awakening," and has just started a book tour to promote it. (I haven't read it yet, but I will soon!) I'm a regular reader of Jim's work, and almost always love what he has to say. But I gotta admit: he's even cooler in person. Or as my friend Jon said, "He's pretty badass." We sat in the second row, about five feet in front of Brother Jim, amongst probably 150 grad students, and listened intently as he brought hope to an otherwise rather dismal Super Tuesday. As of right now, 7am "the morning after," we don't yet know what will shake out from yesterday's primaries, but priliminary reports are saying that Mr. Hundred Years in Iraq McCain is leading the GOP (seriously, do we have to still call it that? It ain't so Grand anymore, folks!), and Obama and Hillary are tied on the other side (does anyone else hate that we have sides?). But Mr. Wallis gave us some hope last night. Hope that despite whatever madness may occur between now and November, the real winner this year is CHANGE. We hear it everywhere, from the mouths of every candidate, from Democrats and Republicans, from reporters and journalists. And the reason they're saying it is because they heard it from us, the American people, first. There's a social movement going on, and no matter what happens on Capitol Hill, it is US, the true grassroots force for change, that will make the difference. Jim said that he started his book tour last week at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, and they were showing a movie after his talk. Up on the marquee it said:

J I M _ W A L L I S A M E R I C A N _ G A N G S T E R

Ah yes, I believe so. //

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What’s 3 Trillion?

February 4, 20085Comments
  • Written out, a trillion is a one followed by 12 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000. That's a million times one million, or a thousand times one billion. Multiply that times three and you have 3 trillion.
  • Counting to 3 trillion at a rate of one number a second would take almost 95,000 years.
  • One would have to circumvent the globe 120 million times to travel 3 trillion miles. Similarly, that would be some 17,000 round trips to the sun. The universe, 15 billion years old at the outside, would need another 200 such lifetimes to reach 3 trillion years.
  • A trillion is a figure more commonly used when talking about outer space. A light year, the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a year, is about 6 trillion miles.
  • There are about 6.8 billion people in the world, meaning that every living person would get $441 if $3 trillion was divided up. If the money was split among the 300 million Americans, everyone would take home $10,000.
  • A person given $1 million a year to spend would need 3 million years to blow $3 trillion.
But mostly...
  • Three trillion dollars is about what the federal government will spend this coming year for domestic and defense programs and benefit entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, according to President Bush's latest federal budget proposal Monday. ($3.1 trillion, actually).
Source: Associated Press UPDATE: Want to see what a trillion dollars LOOKS like? Click here. UPDATE #2: Just heard this fact: 1 trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years. //

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The Rich Young Me

January 29, 20080Comments
I had coffee last week with my friend Greg, and, as always, we had some great conversations about church, life, and the meaning of basically everything. In the Christian Bible, there's a story about a rich young man who, one day, approached Jesus, wanting the inside track to the Kingdom. Jesus responds by reciting a bunch of commandments to follow, and when the young man says he already does all those things, Jesus tells him that he has one more thing to do: go sell his stuff and give it to the poor. The man was rich; he couldn't do it. It's in this context where Jesus introduces that timeless sticky idea we've all heard about a camel trying to squeeze through a needle's eye, in reference to how difficult it will be for the wealthy to actually find his Kingdom. If you grew up in the Christian world of "church," you've probably heard this story a million times (I know I have). And outside of painting a pretty cool picture in my head -- "As hard as that big 'ol camel tries to suck in his camel-fat, he can never fit! Haha!" -- I never take too much away from it, honestly. But today, Greg turned me into the rich young man. I typically don't think of myself as rich. I look around and notice the wealth of the world, and, honestly, I don't see me. I see a lot of other people, and strangely (or not), they're all probably the same people you see when you think "rich." But the fact is (and you probably already know where I'm going with this) that compared with the rest of the world, I'm pretty stinkin' wealthy. Take a look at this clip from Rob Bell's NOOMA entitled "Rich": The fact is, I think I often don't value truth very much. I make comparisons all the time, but only when they're in my favor. I compare UP when it benefits me ("I'm nowhere near as wealthy as Mr. Gates!") and then compare DOWN when that works better ("I'm giving a full 10% of my income to my favorite charity. I'll bet they don't even give at all!"). But this is ignoring the whole truth; I'm disregarding most of the facts. Once in awhile, I think it's good to compare in the direction I'd rather not -- UP to, say, a Mother Teresa. Or DOWN to kids in Rwanda. Might be good for me. Otherwise I start to look at lot like that stupid, fat 'ol camel. //

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