God Will Provide

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Near the end of my first month in Austria as a missionary, several financial disasters struck us that drained our financial resources. As I sat twirling the last Austrian shilling I had to my name in my hand wondering if I'd have enough money to pay for travel, feed myself, and make it to the monthly deposit, I heard a voice in my mind say, "You will always have enough." I keep that coin in the breast pocket of my suit, and often people will notice me twirling it between my fingers. What they don't know is that I'm doing it because I'm in the middle of a trial reminding myself of God's promise that those who seek Him can count on His help. We don't wait. We dont' trust. We try to do things ourselves. Sometimes we reject His blessings, but when we don't follow Him we certainly have no claim on them whatsoever. Satisfaction is not in things. Yes, when you don't have what you need, it's difficult to find satisfaction, but even Viktor Frankl will tell you that in the Nazi camps it was still possible to keep the faith and trust that God would deliver on His promises. If he could keep faith there, you can keep faith while you wander in your wilderness.

It is natural for people to struggle. Contrary to what you may think, to what social media creates as a perception, the natural and usual course of human affairs is trial. That's because nature tests us to first make sure we are fit and then to strengthen us for tougher challenges. Despite the rosy pictures paraded to Facebook, most people are suffering from something even if you don't know about it. Your trials may be more arduous than that, but any weightlifter will tell you that strength is gained against stiff resistance. Consequently, we worry, often about things that are actually of no moment to our growth as people even if they are very important to our life in the moment. People worry about money, jobs, cars, houses, retirement funds, entertainment, personal fitness and the like. We get caught up in the things of the world because we must also live in and deal with the world, and its challenges and requirements may at times feel overwhelming. Then there are all the other things we ought to do- pray, worship, serve in community organizations, help strangers, raise children, maintain relationships with friends and neighbors, improve our skills, keep learning, and be productive. It can cause burnout if you let it. We think WE must do all those things, and sometimes we think we are alone. We do not have to be.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like unto these. Far too much of our time, attention, energy, and means goes to things we cannot ultimately control. If your genetics decree, you may not be able to get a six pack or fit into that size 2 dress or look hot at the beach. If your employer is a jerk, you may not get a promotion or raise; you might actually get fired! If nature sends a hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, or volcano, you may find your resources depleted. If people break their promises, you may find yourself alone, and in some cases you may find yourself betrayed. For that reason, many of the happiest people are people who, when the going gets tough, turn to God. Lilies don't worry about economic recession, natural disasters, nearby plants, foraging animals, genetic mutation, etc. They simply do the best they can with what they have and rely on God to provide sun and water in the right proportions so that they can grow, bloom, and leave something behind that makes the world a better place.

Not everyone will be rich or famous or successful or live "happily ever after" like in the story books. Most people lead very quiet unassuming lives tending to their work, their families, and their hobbies. Most people seek and live a quiet, happy life. Not many people seek after things of eternal consequence. Yet, we have the promise that if we seek the kingdom of God, He will provide all the things you actually need. When the publicans came to Christ demanding Caesar's portion, Christ had one of his disciples pull the fish from the lake which had a coin in its mouth amounting to the sum of the tax. When Elijah came to the widow near Kidron and asked her for a cake, the barrel of meal and cruse of oil always had sufficient until the famine abated. When Jared and his family crossed the ocean, God made several clear stones shine in the dark so they would have light. God taught Noah to build an Ark. When Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, he told Isaac when Isaac asked about the ram that God would provide. Even after God told Abraham that he passed the test, God provided a ram in the thicket so that, as Abraham promised his son, there would be a sacrifice. When they needed it, they had what they actually needed. Knowing these stories, and sometimes having our own, rather than trust those promises, we seek to lay up treasure for ourselves but remain poor before the Lord. God will provide everything you need. Maybe not how or when you like or the way you prefer, but He does. Sometimes it's not as much as we desire; sometimes it's a single Austrian Schilling, but you know you have at least that.

So many of you know people who receive things they did not earn or deserve and ask why you don't receive in kind. Here is Jesus' answer: "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" ( Matt 6:25). Our lives, our money, our health, all of those things are given to us by God to build His kingdom. Sure, we ought to provide and take care of the things we get, but when it goes to obsession about health or weight or your retirement portfolio or your standing at work, you miss the whole point of those things, the whole point of why we live in the first place. The parents who sacrifice their health (their looks) and their wealth to provide for their children are rich unto God.  Caring for the things of the body in excess is as profitable as that same prosperous man who tore down his barn to store his goods only to die.  He who dies with the most toys still dies, and then who benefits from our excess?  Better to give of our bounty than have it rot away in storage; better to share our talents than have them rot in the dark.  Better to trust God will give us what we need and use what He gives to His glory.

We cannot make ourselves younger or taller, and we may be able to make ourselves richer or wealthier, but to what end? We have been promised that God will provide everything we actually need. He clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds in the sky, and He will lead those who trust in Him and guide them with His eye. If it serves His purpose for us to have good health, and we are trying to take care of ourselves, we will be healthy and fit. If it serves His purpose for you to be rich, He will provide you with wealth to help His children. If it serves His purpose for you to be famous or powerful so that you can help those who seek for Him, He will open doors so that like James the Mormon or David Archuletta or Eric Liddel or any myriad of people who gained fame from ignominy you will end up in the spotlight. If it serves His purpose for you to be the teacher they need, the friend they need, the parent they need, or the stranger whose voice you hear in a blog on the internet, it's very likely that nobody will see what you do except for God, but "the Lord who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly". Most people who write blogs or make youtube videos or create podcasts do it, not because they feel like it, but for some personal gain. Sometimes it's for affirmation. Sometimes it's for information, to communicate with friends and family. Mostly, it's for remuneration. If those things are important to God, do what He asks, and they will come. Christ taught in Luke 12:31 "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you."

We have that promise. The most important lesson we can learn in life is to find the will of God and do it wholeheartedly. It's not the natural thing. God often asks sacrifice, sometimes with no promise whatsoever, and even when we have promise, it usually doesn't make us rich or famous or powerful or validated. The widow woman didn't become rich for helping Elijah, and Jesus' followers barely scraped by until they became infamous because of their martyrdom! It's hard to trust God. He offers us a marshmallow and asks us to not eat it for a few minutes but that if we do we can have two or twelve. More times than not people take the single marshmallow and enjoy what is certain and immediately before them. We are not patient. We are not wise. We do not know the future or trust the wise. Maybe you are among that throng. Maybe you worry about what you'll do for a living or how well you'll do in school or, hopefully not, if you'll ever find someone with whom to share your life. Maybe you don't know if you ought to follow God's command and go sell all you have, give to the power, take up your cross and follow Him. Many people who claim to do so do so to get rich. They have their reward. Now a shilling may not be very valuable, but it reminds me when I hold it that I have always had everything I actually needed, especially since that day. Sure, I've had my share of dips and troughs, but He has always given me what I need when I really need it. I've been divorced, unjustly accused of crimes, investigated, injected, inspected, neglected, and rejected. I've been nearly penniless, and now I live in more comfort than I ever dreamed. God provides all that we need. I challenge you to trust Him and His promises, to act on what He asks and rely on Him to keep His word in His timing. I promise you that He shall give you what you need and that when it comes you will see His hand guiding you to a land of milk and honey. That has always been His promise even if you must first traverse the desert.

Industrial Espionage in Research

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Most regular people assume that scientists are ethical and trustworthy. When men in white coats walk in and declare their message, we assume they are objective. That’s an incredibly naïve attitude, and it costs us money, time, and trust, because people forget that scientists are also people. Scientists have agendas too, and all too often, this lack of integrity leads them to spy on others either to undermine them or beat them to the punch. Research is incredibly cutthroat. You publish or perish, and so scientists sometimes pull out all stops in order to scoop other labs on discoveries, evidence, or products so that they can get payments, promotions or preference. The reason you should care about this is that certain political movements rely on the premise that they exist in a vacuum. However, the truth is that American innovation and research makes most scientific advancement possible. Other people are successful because we did the work, and they stole it from us. I know that sounds rather Gollum of us, but it’s true. Someone has to innovate it, and research is exceptionally expensive.

During the summer of 2001-2002, I worked at ARUP Laboratories in Research Park at the University of Utah. That was my first exposure to research espionage. Seeing as I was the only member of research and development without a PhD, I was essentially the R&D technician, and so I used whatever workspaces were not currently in use by my superiors. Consequently, this mean I had no desk, no computer, and no permanent presence (I am not grousing, there is a point to this). Then, we learned in August that Roche AG was coming to visit our facility, and the head of molecular genetics came to me. They decided to entrust me with all of their materials that were especially cutting edge, secret, and vulnerable because the last time Roche AG came to visit, they stole things. Well, my work area looked like a tornado had touched down, so Roche came and went without getting a single thing, and my boss was happy that my impression dissuaded the scientists from Roche from any interest in or contact with me during their visit.

While working on my PhD in biochemistry, I became the victim of research espionage. At one point in my literature review early on in my project, I found a laboratory at the University of Guelph in Canada working on a similar project. I contacted the lab, got in touch with the graduate student working on that project, and offered to collaborate. When we reached a particularly critical stage, I sent him information. He stopped communicating. Then, we received word that a paper was being published, including the information we generated, but without any credit given to us for our work. That’s when the college legal counsel got involved and lectured me for naively trusting my compatriot (who subsequently graduated with his PhD and moved back to his homeland- Syria).

I learned a lot about research espionage in graduate school. I testified against a classmate in Animal Biotechnology who plagiarized research; admittedly I was probably overly sensitive and emotionally driven having myself been a recent victim thereof. She was expelled. My pharmacology teacher, who worked for Merck before becoming a professor taught us that most generic drugs, especially those from Canada, cost less because they don’t do the research. They steal it from other labs. The man who became my best friend at the time who worked for Rohm and Hass (A division of DOW) told me the same thing, that industrial chemistry processes were often stolen and then reverse engineered so that companies wouldn’t have to do trial and error. They already knew that Rohm and Hass products and processes worked, so all they had to do was find out how.

Someone has to pay for the research. Often, this money is coopted from tax money and spent in federally funded fishing expeditions on the auspice that it will be “beneficial to society”. Which society? I had an enormous operating budget at ARUP when I worked there. I was allowed to spend on my projects alone $25,000 per month because you have to beat someone to the discovery, so we paid other people to do menial tasks and purchased everything ready to go. In academia now, since the money isn’t ours, most people just fritter it away because it’s “use or lose” money, and then they go out and tell the granting agency that it will make pigs fly, horses dance and help you conceal the moon beneath the folds of your robe. A lot of research is stolen. A lot of benefits form the basis of “success” that are ill gotten gains representing the success of people distal to us in space and time. Many students hate James Watson, but they love Swedish health care (even though none of them have ever been to Sweden). Both of those benefit from stolen science. "Where does the health care technology come from that Swedish hospitals use? Where do the drugs and medicines come from? We are free-riding on the competition that goes on in the American system." Every organization is only as ethical as the people of whom it is comprised. If you’ve never worked on a PhD in science, you’ll probably unjustly ascribe virtues to us that we do not deserve, and if you’ve never lived in another nation it’s easier to lionize a situation about which you have no firsthand knowledge. Just consider that the Swedes themselves know that “by the blood of our people are their lands kept safe”.

Do You Not See What I See?

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I don’t often talk about certain encounters I experienced in Austria. Some of them are deeply personal. Some of them were things I was specifically advised not to discuss. Some of them involved evils that I would rather not remember. Some of them are relevant today. From the time I returned from my missionary service in Austria to the present President of the United States, I watched people bandy about the term “Nazi” without apparent understanding of the true nature of those people. Although I didn’t see the brunt of Eichmann, Goebbels, Hess and the like in their heyday, and although I know full well that Austrians are not Nazis, I feel continually distressed at how freely people vilify those with which they happen to disagree by the inappropriate denotation and indemnification of Nazi. However, it is completely normal albeit unacceptable human behavior to see the virtue in those you prefer and describe all others in caricature. The Nazis are really too convenient a scapegoat to be effectively and validly compared to any evil that has ever walked the earth. Consequently, unless you have ever really met and spent any time with a real Nazi (not just someone who was a party member during the Nazi regime or someone who is just a bigot and claims kinship with that ilk), your comparisons are largely emotional and almost always misanthropic. Consequently, since I had the dubious honour of meeting/encountering/confronting some real Nazis while living in Austria, I dismiss almost all comparisons to Nazis immediately. So should you, and here’s why.

With one exception, the Nazis I encountered in Austria were random encounters. As part of our missionary duties, frequently we went door to door knocking on every door and speaking to anyone who would speak to us. My first encounter was at the Nashmarkt in Vienna where, while shopping for souvenirs, a vendor pulled me aside and said, “I know what you really want” and then proceeded to produce an SS company grade officer’s cap. To my everlasting shame, there is a picture of me wearing it. I don’t think other people have it, but I know people who have seen it, and it is not something with which I desire to be associated, and so I do not have ANY Nazi paraphernalia. I do know the woman who owns the hat now; she is a proud liberal and clerks for a federal judge in DC and thinks it’s perfectly fine to wear the hat for Halloween (I probably have written evidence she does that in a chat log in my gmail account, but this is not an attempt to libel her). Most of the rest of my encounters came because we knocked on doors of former SS members. You could tell who they were relatively quickly because they would offer you propaganda (well, they offered it to me; they all thought I was a Dane). Before I knew, we knocked on this one door, offered the man a Book of Mormon, and he said, “I have a book for you” and returned with an original copy of “Mein Kampf”. When another gentleman offered me a copy of “Die Grosse Weisse Rasse”, I knew exactly who he was, and we left Seekirchen bei Wallersee to get away from him. I did not keep either book. I didn’t want anyone to think that, because I owned those books that I agreed with the authors. Then, we went to Braunau am Inn, where Adolf Hitler was actually born. I could not believe the hero worshipping fandom in which his sycophants engaged. A man ran up to us and asked, “Are you here to see Hitler’s birth home?” We weren’t but we went. As we left, we found the big statue (which I think has been torn down subsequently) of Hitler giving his famous salute. At the church, we were shown his family pew. It was, without a doubt, the creepiest place I have ever set foot on earth.

Not every Austrian was a Nazi. I remember sitting one evening in Innkreis listening to an old war vet drunkenly describe his absolute shame at having gunned down a bunch of naked women and children to save his own skin. I remember a woman in Neumarkt am Wallersee who was elated that the US Army had occupied her town instead of the Russians. I remember Rudolph Hirshmann, himself a Holocaust survivor, who owned the brownstone where some people lived that we knew. Then there was Hermann Dospil, who went to prison in a Russian camp; he was just a soldier. Sure, some Austrians pretend it didn’t happen. I think some of them can’t face the truth or own up to the shame of not having done something to stem the spread of Naziism. Not everyone was like a man I met in Innsbruck whose father was the mayor of Innsbruck who was shot down in the public square when he gave Hitler the bird. This man was the youngest of four sons who were sent to the Russian front and the only one who survived. Most Austrians are ordinary people, and the people who throw out the accusation of Naziism never seem to think all of them are unified, but they tend to unjustly ascribe that belief system to other groups, most of whom have never been to Austria and met a real Nazi, let alone agreed with him.

Almost every attempt to label someone as a Nazi is used as a trump card to beat down the opposition. Nazi is used to label and libel someone the speaker happens to dislike. I have not yet heard an instance where this accusation was leveled concomitant with evidence that the target of the euphemism actually shared Nazi philosophy. Normally it’s used to genuflect and turn the attention away from the accuser because being a Nazi is akin to being the worst kind of human being possible. It’s the ultimate form of yellow journalism all too often. Nazi is used to invalidate the ideas of someone the speaker opposes. I don’t know any people who think the Nazis were right or righteous of justified. If you can be guilty by association with an acceptably evil ideology, then in this reducto ad absurdium everything about you can be declared tainted and therefor invalid if the accuser can make it stick. Never mind if it’s true. The accusation alone is enough to condemn almost any man to ignominy. Real Nazis should be eschewed by EVERYONE, and anyone who remains confederate with them after the fact is as equally guilty as those worthy of the title. Yet, all too often, after the dust of the allegations settles, the accusers find no problem whatsoever making deals with those they betimes accuse of Naziism. I mean, imagine if the current president suddenly switched to agree politically with those who libel and slander him. His “sins” would be forgotten, because this isn’t about principles; using the term Nazi is almost always political. It’s almost always a ploy. It’s almost always wrong. Perhaps paradoxically, the accuser in many cases shares far more in common with the Nazi regime than the accused. It’s sort of how the old Federalist party was against federalism and the Anti-Federalists were against the Federalists but for Federalism. Conflagrate the issue enough, abuse semantics, and you can make good seem evil and evil seem good and confuse people until they act only on the information they possess and follow you blindly, just like the Nazis did to their people.

Coming home from these experiences, imagine my surprise at how easily Americans bandy about the libelous label of Nazi. At university, the parking enforcement workers were referred to as “parking Nazis”. In politics, the current president is compared to a Nazi, primarily because Fascism under the Nazis was a nationalistic idea, but the people who use the term forget that Nazi means “National SOCIALIST”. Of course, almost every republican is libeled as a “right wing extremist” because people don’t really have any idea what Nazis believe or just how extreme they were. I have actually met some Nazis, unfortunately, and so I tread carefully with this aspersion. I think most people use the term Nazi, not because they are morally superior, but because they are morally inferior. It’s not a problem with the principles of their opponents; it’s that they have a personal hate problem towards their opponents. Naziism is enmity incarnate. Nazis are people who hate other people, who find a way to dehumanize and delegitimize those they consider to be opponents and impediments as a pretense to remove them, as a pretense to righteous indignation. It’s insipid. Fortunately, I think the Nazis I met are now dead. Unfortunately, this means that you are never really likely to ever meet a real one, and so this parliament jester’s foist will resonate all the more readily with those who darken counsels by words without knowledge. They lack appropriate frame of reference. Most of you will not see a Nazi. You should be glad.