A View on the Separation of Church and State

Speaking from a sociological perspective, it is a good idea to have separation of church and State. The two are totally different entities. This does not mean that a State cannot be based on or supported by the doctrine of a religion/church or faith. However, it is important that these two social institutions remain separate because they are fundamentally different. The State is an entity called government, whether by the people or not, reins in or controls society in order to benefit the common good which in many societies observed throughout history this has been the case; and quite often those in government positions have a family history of being in government and or are members of the ruling elite. Given that, to impose upon people what you think is good or right is to their (ruling elite) benefit then and not the churches.  Most people reading this are passionate spirit believers and cannot accept that the real strength in bringing people to Christ is to rest in Him and that is faith which is about accepting God’s grace. Living under the law was removed at the cross.  All too often, Americans turn to the law (listen to Dr. Erwin Lutzer’s program on Basis for Morality, What the Cross can do and Politics Can’t - online radio program 'Running to Win') The fault of Americans is the idea that suffering is bad and hence we turn more and more to the law to end suffering. We rally together to stop suffering.  That is why we have lobbyists... groups lobbying for law to stop suffering that we feel we are undergoing and if only given power in the State our suffering will end... Hebrews thought and did just that in the past.

Our Founding Fathers experienced opposing views on the role of the State and thankfully realized that as long as the State does not take control or take sides and allows for all people in the State to practice free market and what they believe, that life will be as fair as it possibly can in this fallen world.  That is why, any State funded public facility or place cannot show favoritism toward any one religion over another. They can all be represented equally or not represented at all by the State.

Can people of the State go into public facilities, ministering? Based on the above, the answer is no.  Is this problematic for the Christian? Yes and No. Yes, because he/she is required to minister the word of God. I would argue that one can do that through behavior which sends a message that can be as clear as a bell of any scripture; and therefore, it is not problematic for the Christian. As I Stated above, rest in the Lord.  I would add though and even stress that it is problematic for the Christian who is a zealous in his thinking and even repenting as this often leads them to think that by his/her own works and pressing upon others his/her view of scripture is doing the will of the Creator.  Handing out shoe boxes, even to children, is not the same as the ‘roadside Samaritan’ which shows us that situations will come to us or be made available to us in which we should be prepared for and thus will know it is the right situation to minister.  Many ministries today seek to radically change the individual’s situation.  Is that their job? Christ Jesus is the Savior.

Many will argue that this is what we are called to do. I know from my own experience that radical approaches do not work.  Neither does the approach to go with gifts. There is no benefit for the Christian or the non-Christian as such offerings can lead to the receiver believing  more in the bearer of gifts than in the message intended which is to tell everyone that they (by themselves) can reach out to the Lord. 

As a child, I believed in Santa Claus and did not want to accept that my parents were the ones giving the gifts.  One could argue that ‘Santa’ is like Jesus and the missionary like the parents. I also know that as a child, getting those presents from ‘Santa Claus’ was special. Did I truly believe he was the provider? No, because I already had a Christian background. I was able to appreciate that my parents were the ones behind the scenes as I knew that they were spirit filled and chose to give gifts. Yes, this is the missionary’s idea too. But, they forget that if the receive does not already have a Christian background, the message can be received differently. However, children are exceptional in that they can often see past the veil of deception and they see the true spirit in people. That’s my opinion.  What worries me is that such gift giving could turn parents and children against each other as the parents could be insulted by the missionary who is doing for his/her child.

Yes, we want suffering to stop. Feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, including children, is a job to be done by all; but, we as Christians have to be and should be most careful as to how we go about doing it. Why?

 Ask yourself, are you a Christian because a missionary/pastor/neighbor gave you gifts every year at a certain time or are you a Christian because you were introduced to the Creator of Heaven and Earth simply through His word you gave to believe in the Lord God Jesus Christ, without candy/gifts.  Give a Bible and tell those who can read to Read Acts 17:24 to all who cannot. People need to be encouraged to reach out to the Lord and seek a relationship with Him.  Like Mike Brown says “you think about that.” 

Get Your Facts Right!

 The Social Imagination is Fascinating

 Get your facts right

By Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) - Italians and Americans score worst when it comes to correctly assessing basic facts of modern life, such as what proportion of the population are immigrants or Muslims and what percentage of teenage girls get pregnant.
Swedes and Germans do best, although even they consistently get things wrong, according to a survey of 14 industrialized countries released on Wednesday.
The analysis by market research organization Ipsos MORI shows how far perceptions stray from reality across a range of issues as people struggle to get a precise handle on aspects of society that are seen as risks or worries.
Levels of immigration -- a hot-button topic in many developed countries -- are overestimated everywhere but the United States veers further from reality than most, with an average guess that 32 percent of the population are immigrants when the reality is 13 percent.
Italy fares even worse, with an average guess of 30 percent against a real figure of only seven percent.
Italians are also spectacularly bad at estimating the number of old people in the country, believing that 48 percent are over 65 years old. In reality, the over-65s make up a fifth of the population -- a relatively high figure but no higher than in Germany and considerably lower than in Japan.
Teenage pregnancy is another issue where people everywhere get the sums badly wrong, reflecting the difficulty of assessing occurrences that are relatively rare.
Americans think 24 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year, when the real figure is just 3 percent, and even the sensible Swedes are badly out, believing the annual teenage pregnancy rate is 8 percent compared to the actual 0.7 percent.
"People are just not very good at math and they find it particularly hard to make estimates about very large numbers or very small numbers," said Bobby Duffy, global director of the Ipsos Social Research Institute.
"It seems people remember vivid anecdotes about things, regardless of whether they are describing something very rare."
Health experts have bemoaned similar perception problems in the current Ebola outbreak, where public alarm over a handful of cases in the United States is at odds with the real risks. This topic was not covered in the survey, which was conducted in August among more than 11,000 people across the 14 countries.
RELIGIOUS DIVIDES
Estimating religious groupings in society is another area where perception is seriously out of kilter with reality. Like other controversial topics, it is a subject where media coverage is likely to play a role in exaggerating misconceptions.
People hugely overestimate the proportion of Muslims living in their country, with the French putting the figure at 31 percent, when the real figure is 8 percent. The British guess at 21 percent (real figure 5 percent) and Americans estimate 15 percent (real figure 1 percent).
Even in countries such as Hungary, Poland, South Korea and Japan, where fewer than one percent of the population is Muslim, people put the figure at four to seven percent.
By contrast, majority-Christian countries tend to underestimate how many people count themselves as Christian.
The ramifications of widespread ignorance about basic measures of what is happening in society are unclear but they could potentially influence behavior and undermine rational political debate.
If, as the survey found, people routinely underestimate the proportion of the population that votes in elections, there may be a persistent downward drift in voter turnout.
Similarly, if people are not accurately assessing the impact of policies in areas such as immigration, then action by governments may not influence the political debate as expected.
Much of the disconnect may be down to "emotional innumeracy" when answering, according to Duffy, who believes people may be sending a message about what is worrying them as much as trying to reply to the questions correctly.
"Cause and effect can run both ways, with our concern leading to our misperceptions as much as our misperceptions creating our concern," he said.
(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Action Observation, What does it Mean for the Social Imagination?

I learned about an interesting experiment called "Action Observation Circuits in the Macaque Monkey Cortex." I provide here the. Abstract: In both monkeys and humans, the observation of actions performed by others activates cortical motor areas. An unresolved question concerns the pathways through which motor areas receive visual information describing motor acts. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we mapped the macaque brain regions activated during the observation of grasping actions, focusing on the superior temporal sulcus region (STS) and the posterior parietal lobe. Monkeys viewed either videos with only the grasping hand visible or videos with the whole actor visible. Observation of both types of grasping videos activated elongated regions in the depths of both lower and upper banks of STS, as well as parietal areas PFG and anterior intraparietal (AIP). The correlation of fMRI data with connectional data showed that visual action information, encoded in the STS, is forwarded to ventral premotor cortex (F5) along two distinct functional routes. One route connects the upper bank of the STS with area PFG, which projects, in turn, to the premotor area F5c. The other connects the anterior part of the lower bank of the STS with premotor areas F5a/p via AIP. Whereas the first functional route emphasizes the agent and may relay visual information to the parieto-frontal mirror circuit involved in understanding the agent's intentions, the second route emphasizes the object of the action and may aid in understanding motor acts with respect to their immediate goal. What does this mean? Well... it means that the topic of action observation/recognition received increased attention after the discovery of mirror neurons in ventral premotor cortex of the monkey (area F5), a class of neurons discharging both when a monkey performs a goal-directed motor act and when it observes another individual performing the same or a similar motor act. *See - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/10/3743.full 
As a sociologist, it means, if I can put it into lay terms, that even as we watch a performance, (or action/activity) even before doing it ourselves, our brain recognizes this and records that information. Simply, in the part of our brain that would be responsible for that act/performance, when that action is viewed, our brain is stimulated as if actually doing the 'act'. This is how we are embedded from infancy with information in that babies respond to parents (mother) in all she does and what she does and how she reacts gets hard coded; so that when it comes time for baby to do it, he/she will do it automatically or without hesitation. This hard coding is a safety mechanism (for survival) inasmuch a social tool to be used for future. interaction. Which means that we better think about what we do in front of our children and what we as parents say is ok behavior. We can also consider the effects of social media (television) as producing negative results in society. A healthy society should monitor the violence and sex on television as well as what we sell each other in adds. What do we see out there today in terms of advertisement - Sex and Drugs and the law as a means to make money. As I reflect on this study I am horrified. As I see through the prism of my education that society is moving in a dangerous direction. It is being programmed to do damage rather than to do good. There is a tool used called the Sabido Methodology which I know I have written on before. It is a tool of social engineering developed by Miguel Sabido. The Sabido Method is based on character development and plot lines that provide the audience with a range of characters that they can engage with — some good, some not so good — and follow as they evolve and change. And it is change that is the key to the Sabido methodology. Characters may begin the series exhibiting the antithesis of the values being taught, but through interaction with other characters, twists and turns in the plot, and sometimes even outside intervention, come to see the value of the program’s underlying message. Yes, of course, it is and or was designed to benefit society. Which level of society? and what change does that level want for all others??? As Steve Brown says, "You think about that".

Brad Wilcox on Marriage and Family Life

Prof. Brad Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University and the Brookings Institution.

In his book, "Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives, we can read
essays on biological and social scientific perspectives that seek to evaluate the transformative experience of parenthood for today's women and men. They map the similar and distinct roles mothers and fathers play in their children's lives and measure the effect of gendered parenting on child well-being, work and family arrangements, and the quality of couples' relationships. Contributors describe what happens to brains and bodies when women become mothers and men become fathers; whether the stakes are the same or different for each sex; why, across history and cultures, women are typically more involved in childcare than men; why some fathers are strongly present in their children's lives while others are not; and how the various commitments men and women make to parenting shape their approaches to paid work and romantic relationships. Considering recent changes in men's and women's familial duties, the growing number of single-parent families, and the impassioned tenor of same-sex marriage debates, this book adds sound scientific and theoretical insight to these issues, constituting a standout resource for those interested in the causes and consequences of contemporary gendered parenthood. Wilcox in an interview with Denis Rainy on family life, clearly stated that gendered parents as in best practices even in our modern society for raising children are male/female gendered households. There are changes in our modern society regarding women's roles and Wilcox recognizes that a lot of women today work outside the home and thus feel on equal footing in respect of financial provision and this is 'equal footing' is expected in the household concerning daily routine/tasks; I work, you work and we both work at home is basically the gist of his research outcomes. However, those maybe the expectations, marital quality is not improved by those expectations/practices.  
      The companionate theory of marriage suggests that egalitarianism in practice and belief leads to higher marital quality for wives and higher levels of positive emotion work on the part of husbands. Our analysis of women's marital quality and men's marital emotion work provides little evidence in support of this theory. Rather, in examining women's marital quality and men's emotional investments in marriage, we find that dyadic commitment to institutional ideals about marriage and women's contentment with the division of household tasks are more critical. We also show that men's marital emotion work is a very important determinant of women's marital quality. We conclude by noting that her marriage is happiest when it combines elements of the new and old: that is, gender equity and normative commitment to the institution of marriage.
The new we know - I can be whatever I want to be and be a mother/wife. The old - I want to feel protected, secure, adored, raised up as the 'biblical' queen in your life... the old ideal is still vivid. As we can read in Ephesians 5.  Such a conclusion is due to our socio-christian heritage, whether modern women believe or not, this heritage has been embedded information given and passed on and continues to be passed on as what is to be expected and striven for.  The social imagination of family life is based on role relationships, males and females have distinct features both physical and emotional. Because of that, there are then expectations as to roles- who is best suited for what and why. Since, women are biologically designed/prepared for motherhood, it makes sense that they have babies and nurture them and that father too is involved but that his role is different and cannot be exactly the same. He is expected to lead, to protect and to be the head of the family. Of course, we can argue that the female can be both mother and father. She can bear children, raise them and protect them. But the question then is who protects her? Why would a man be expected or asked to protect her if she can do it all herself. We can argue that he would do it. However, to protect a strong woman would require a strong man, stronger than her in order that he can do the job. Otherwise, she might as well protect herself and him. Some say that is ok ... but what then is the man's role? He can't be the mother as he cannot bear children. Point being, men need a distinct role. They cannot be confronted with a partner that can do both roles, do his role and do it better. What is his role in the family? To be lost in the background, to be the 'same' sex / gender, to pretend to be a woman or be both? As a Christian, and a sociologist, I agree with Prof. Wilcox, marriage needs to be gendered and that has to be clear. It means that one person is designated to be one gender and the other person the opposite; which means that they have different roles and those roles are respected and applied in the household with continuity so that family stability ensues. As far as I can tell, we already have designated genders. So, why are we trying to re-create what already has been created as a best practice?

Follow Up to Agreement Reality Dictates

Tim Muehlhoff is a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California where he teaches classes in family communication, interpersonal communication and gender. Tim is the coauthor of  The God Conversation: Using Stories and Illustrations to Explain Your Faith  and  Authentic Communication: Christian Speech Engaging Culture. I really liked his approach to understanding diversity and differences in social 'imagination' reality.  Why? Because, it follows my previous post on agreement reality dictates. If you recall, I stated that in order for social reality to exist whatsoever, agreement between people's observations in terms of meaning need to be the same or similar in order for any individual and or group to be cohesive, sustainable and stable. This agreement usually occurs through experience of social interaction in a place. Since places differ across the country and globe, people have different social interaction in them and what it means to them in that place regarding survival especially. Though Prof. Muehlhoff did not talk about agreement reality, he did indirectly. His view on Christian communication is exactly based on the 'art' of finding neutral ground for what could be common among us regarding empathetic social interaction in order to achieve agreement when it comes to encountering differing aspects of different social realities.
Basically, it requires as Charles H. Cooley called the Looking Glass Self experience which was very similar to George H. Mead's Standing in Someone Else's Shoes experience.  We are assured that we don't have to be sympathetic but empathetic which means to understand that differences exist as this is what makes cultures diverse. We can also embrace this 'understanding' as what is common among us... even if and when we don't agree.