A God outside of Time

I spent parts of today and yesterday reading Time magazine, one of my favorites. Time was started by two overachieving Yale graduates who wanted to take all the news in the world and condense it into something manageable and visually appealing. They wanted to save their readers time by telling them everything they needed to know about the nation and the world during the week in just one place. That mission continues today, and I think Time is a great place to go to keep up with major events in politics, the world, and culture. It has great storytelling, analysis, and photos especially. And it’s a heck of a lot easier and fun than reading the newspaper every day.

One of Time’s signature approaches is that it focuses on people. This, too, goes back to when the magazine first started. The founders latched on to what would become the hidden ethos of the 20th century, that people are always interested in other people – that people are the center of the world, of the events that intrigue us. To an extent, their approach even supported the burgeoning acceptance of secular humanism, where people are not only the center of the world but are also the aim for all that is good. The advancement of people is the advancement of the world, and as such, the human race should be rooting for the success of people, and believing that all people are basically good and that the human spirit will win out in the end.

This brand of human optimism is now commonplace in modern culture. Whether we state it overtly or not, I think plenty of us in modern America agree with it. Even if we don’t buy into secular humanism or think that people are intrinsically good, we do make people the center of our world. And we often root for people to be triumphant. We find great hope and encouragement in human accomplishment.

I certainly grew up with some of these beliefs nestled into my subconscious, and that may be why I was always so attracted to Time. I loved the profiles and the interviews, the power shots of the people who were changing the world. Issues of the magazine dedicated to the 100 people of the year, or the one person of the year, made sense to me. Lauding a world leader or a musician for making this world feel like a better place didn’t seem odd.

But now that I’m a bit of an adult, and now that I’ve spent years studying the world and human behavior via my profession (journalism), I’ve found I’ve taken a different view of Time magazine.

I still read it every week, and I love it, but the issues focused on people and people alone are no longer my favorite.

This week’s issue was the 100 people of the year for 2012. As I sat and read the entries, which are written by some other "noteworthy" person who comments on the person who made the list, I became fatigued. The same thing happened last year, although I remember being annoyed then by something else: that the authors writing about the Time 100 were more prone to talk about why they themselves were important.

This year, as I passed through paragraph after paragraph of why these people were incredible and how they were making the world so wonderful, I felt myself shrugging more than feeling enthralled. For all the human good, this world is still such a messy place. I want a little more awesome than that.

If this is the pinnacle of human life, I thought, we are a bit doomed, because this doesn’t do much for me. Is this the highest I can hope? What does it mean to be on this list?

For some people, landing on a list like that will be the height of their achievement. Whether it’s the Time 100, an Oscar, a Pulitzer prize, or another great award, that’s how human success is measured.

But even the greatest human success doesn’t make much of a dent in this world.

At that point, something a friend once said crossed my mind. When talking about God and philosophy, she once said that God is outside of time – that He isn’t related to time the same way we are. We see life as a series of events, a this leading to that, a timeline. But the very idea of God is that He is a Being Who defies those parameters, Who just sees us as us, unfettered by time. Time doesn’t exist to Him except as a tool, an object to be used for different purposes.

Now, that’s a pretty deep topic, and one I don’t have a lot of formed thoughts on. But at its root is the idea that God – in the true sense of the word – is much bigger than this world in so many ways. The way we think this world works is very small compared to how He can use it.

When we see injustice, He can bring grace, and not just the kind of grace where a good person does a good deed but gets trampled in the end. His grace wins; His love wins; His redemption wins. He is outside the hurt and decay in this world, with the power to make all things new.

When we see achievement, we can only go so far. We can only reach a certain degree of success, and many people who get a rough start or hit unfair points in life can never get that. But God is sovereign and outside it all. When He wants something to happen, it happens.

A lot of times, we don’t give God the credit of being God. We deify Him into being partially powerful, or somewhat capable. But if He’s truly God in the real sense of the word God, He has control over everything and can do what He wants in all things. He is outside of it, in control of it all, and not able to be swayed.

God is outside of time, but that doesn’t tell us much, especially if we don’t really understand what it means. But God is also outside of Time, and that means a lot.

God is bigger than the Time 100 and all that it represents. That means that when our list of 100 people who are changing the world still leaves us with an ugly, hateful, spite-filled world, good remains. That means that when the Time 100 don’t enthrall us but rather leave us wondering what the point of it all is, hope still lives. That means that after a century of picking out people and trying to elevate them enough that it could save the world, we don’t have to rely on them to carry us through. Humans don’t have to be the center, and they don’t have to be the best reservoir for our dreams.

God is outside of Time. He raises and lowers world leaders. He gives inspiration and dreams, and He takes them away. He is the care for the broken, the answer to the dark questions of this world. He is the One changing it and making it worth reading about. These people are just who He is using right now. Some of them know Him and glory in His living through them. Others pursue traits that reflect Him so much, whether they know it or not. They live His truth, His goodness, His perseverance, His triumph. Still others are there for a moment, thinking that for some reason human something has gotten them there. They, too, will fade as the grass, with only what God has done through them remaining.

It’s sort of amazing how little of this world actually involves anything we do, and how all of it involves our huge God. If anything, that’s made me more excited about the Time 100.

A kid can dream of making that list, or seeing it organized in beautiful colors enough that she gets psyched about where this world is going.

A semi-adult can realize that, even with all the treachery in this world – and all of her own personal faults – God could still use her enough that she’d make that kind of list. Or, better yet, that God could redeem the world despite all of us. It could all become good, and the top 100 wouldn’t even know how it happened.

Un-real reality

James Poniewozik hits this one about reality TV dead-on. Great writer, great read.

Bipartisanship: Change Obama no longer believes in?

Some gleanings from Joe Klein's column in the Feb. 1 issue of Time magazine (released before President Obama gave his State of the Union address).

-I love the idea of killing partisanship, of everyone getting along, of politics getting tossed out the window...but I've always been concerned with how Obama thinks that's actually going to happen. From early on, his way of making "change" and "hope" happen always went back to people, and as he's seen in his first year of office, people like the way those concepts sound on their ears but don't necessarily know what they'll look like in reality (or like them when they do show up in reality). Or, if they're politicians, this happens:

[Joe Klein writing] "I asked Obama how he thought his Administration was perceived by someone in the Boston suburbs who had supported him a year ago, looking for "change" — and now saw the President making deals with everyone from Joe Lieberman to the labor unions to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (whose special Medicaid deal was a public embarrassment) to the pro-life forces, not to mention the drug and insurance companies. 'When I promised change, I didn't promise that somehow members of Congress weren't going to be looking to try to get a project in their district or help a hospital in their neighborhood,' the President said halfheartedly."

-Klein points out that Obama hasn't done much this year to see people in their current plights, experiencing economic hardships. I agree. The ever-present campaigner hasn't been hanging out with everyday Americans very much, and what ever happened to him being like FDR and using the Internet to have fireside chats with the American people all the time?

-The health care agenda Obama so vociferously pursues is "peripheral to most Americans, who have relentlessly told pollsters, by huge majorities, that they are happy with the health care they currently receive and far more worried about other things." Exactly. Why the heck is Obama still letting Pelosi run rabid on this one? It's not like he birthed this bill himself; it's an amalgamation of all he says he hates about Washington, waiting for his signature. And the people don't even want it.

-"His has been a serious and substantive presidency. But the question, a year in, is whether it has been politically tone-deaf — and why the best presidential orator in a generation finds it so hard to explain himself to the American people." For all the things the Republicans are complaining about, has anyone noticed they're not complaining anymore about how he woos people with his words?

-One of Obama's biggest obstacles was that, even if he did want that bipartisanship thing, he wasn't even getting token participation from the elephants in the room:

"Obama came to office attempting bipartisanship. The Republicans weren't buying. 'The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus,' the President said, 'and finding out that [minority leader John] Boehner had already released a statement stating, We're going to vote against the bill before we've even had a chance to exchange ideas.'"

If John McCain was the President, those Republicans would have wanted the Democrats to jump on board, since the economy was in the crapper and needed some kind of fix. But the Republicans were playing us-against-them from day one (and the Dems have been, too).

-And the clincher: Is bipartisanship the kind of change Obama no longer believes in?

"By August, the President was saying privately that he didn't know if bipartisanship was possible when the polls said that a third of the opposition party didn't even think he was an American citizen."

-Obama's comment on a question about the Middle East peace process is telling as to how his perspective has changed:

"...if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations so high."

Whew.

My gut reaction is that Washington is going to stay partisan, and the Republicans are going to remain critical (of his policies, his star power, his speaking) — so why doesn't he just do his best to connect with the people? Because if they want bipartisanship enough, wouldn't they vote for others like him?

(Or did he blow that chance by being, ahem, partisan and pushing a very liberal health care bill through?)

Year two will be interesting.

Shades of Brown

When I first moved to Boston, I wondered if would ever understand the area: How these people thought, where their convictions lay, and why they supported what they did.

Sixteen months later, I think I can say I do understand quite a bit, and that's why I want to comment on the Scott Brown election.

The election of a Republican to "the seat of Ted Kennedy," in "the bluest of blue states," has jolted the nation, and many are saying it's the end of the Democrat's upswing and a new surge of support for Republicans.

But, as with most political issue, this is not red or blue. There are shades of purple, or in this case, Brown, here.

A proper understanding of the state will help with realizing what really happened when Brown won, and it will aid anyone looking to make definition assertions for elections in the future.

First of all, understand that Massachusetts is still as Democratic as ever, and this vote does not mean that Bay Staters don't want health care or don't support Democratic ideals. That's the last thing you can draw from this election. Instead, consider this: Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts three to one, meaning that you can count on a 75% blue vote to 25% red. So, in order to even that up, all you need is one-third of Democrats to jump ship (not the entire state) to even up an election...and that's not even counting independents.

Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans in New England run in varying stripes. Yes, Massachusetts has been electing Republican governors like crazy in the last half-century (as duly noted by all the fast-breathing media voices). But those are extremely moderate Republicans, and it's because even Massholes know that they need some kind of balance in government (or so my Democratic friends tell me).

So, it's not like this attention was once-in-a-lifetime. Statistically, it could happen. And the main reasons it did, and the ones that should be scrutinized going into future elections where Republicans hope to pull upsets, are two-fold:

1. Bay Staters are liberal, but they're not blind.

Massachusetts-dwellers have seen the mess that's been happening in Washington as the Democrats try to push health care through, and they're not happy. The senator from Nebraska got free Medicare for his state, and the Maine senators have been courted more in a week in Washington than they were in all of high school (reference Google images). It's corruption, and although Boston love corruption as much as the next sin city, this corruption hasn't resulted in much good for anyone. The bill that has been produced is a mess; it's not very likely to help people; most people oppose it; it's super-expensive.

Forget Ted Kennedy's legacy; I think most Bay Staters were happy they had a chance to shoot
down this albatross. This isn't what Ted wanted, some think.

On top of that, NEWS FLASH: Massachusetts already has universal health care. So, this is not a vote against liberal ideology; it's a message that this form of liberal ideology isn't sufficient.

If the current health bill passes, Massachusetts residents would see their health care costs increase, and, worse yet, they'd have to start shelling out money to welfare-ize the tobacco-chewing, french fry-eating other (read: Southern) states whose governments are so conservative that it's going to take serious money to get health care plans going.

It's simple math, and Massachusetts voters didn't see why they should have to pay for having the foresight to do this idea a few years ago.

[Side note: The Massachusetts plan has yet to be financially profitable, much less balance out. That's a bit of a harbinger.]

[Another side note for red-staters: You know who the governor of Massachusetts was when his administration pushed health care through? Mitt Romney. That's right, as in I'm-running-in-2012-and-likely-speaking-against-ObamaCare-as-the-crux-of-my-campaign Mitt Romney. I'm telling you, Massachusetts politics isn't as clear-cut as you think.]

2. Martha Coakley blew it.

Now, my red-state friends have been saying, "It doesn't matter if Massachusetts was voting against Coakley; they were still voting for someone!"

Well, yeah, but let me explain the concept of "the lesser of two evils" here.

Martha Coakley led by 30 points in the polls one month before the election. Martha Coakley blew three other decent senatorial candidates away in the Democratic primary months before the special election and had the majority of observers wondering why she was still campaigning at all. Martha Coakley was to Ted Kennedy what Cape Cod is to...well, cod. Martha Coakley was endorsed by Ted Kennedy's widow, a blemishless figure in the Massachusetts lexicon whose last public appearances before the endorsement included her standing outside all day thanking the thousands who came to Ted's wake.

They're not calling her "Chokely" around here for nothing.

How could she blow it so bad? Just think of the worst possible things you could do in a campaign, and she probably did them.

Falsely accuse your opponent of not helping rape victims? Check. Suggest that Curt Schilling, the man who bled through his sock to lead the Red Sox back from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees and break an 86-year curse, was a Yankees fan? Check. Go Beacon Street on everyone, looking down your nose at your hard-campaigning opponent and ask, "What am I supposed to do? Stand outside Fenway Park? Shake hands? In the cold?"

Yes, Martha, that's what you were supposed to do.

Completely out of touch. She also suggested that there are no terrorists left in Afghanistan.

I don't care if you hate George W. Bush, if you think the wars over there are a mistake, if you're anti-Cheney, anti-Palin, anti-involvement. You're still scared about America being threatened by terrorists, especially after somebody tries to bomb the country on Christmas and the woman who's running for your Senate seat is taking the day off (and assuming Afghanistan is full of poor, lovely, peaceful poppie farmers).

In summary: Massachusetts is more purple than you think; Bay Staters are still liberal but want sane liberalism; and Martha's campaign is now the biggest choke job in New England's history, supplanting even that game against the Giants in 2007 (I won't utter the words).

The lesson I take from all this, though, is that as much as I want to explain this race and say what effect it will have on future voting, we can't really know until those races come up. There's a lot of time until then. Sure, the Democrats have ticked off enough people to get a backswing.

But isn't that what always happens?

Here's my point: Instead of Karl Rove saying there's going to be a Republican majority forever (2000ish) or pundits saying the Democrats are in charge for a while (uh, 12 months ago?), why aren't people focusing on what the people are actually saying?

The election of Scott Brown was not a mandate for right-wing Republican policies. The guy is an environmentalist and supports Roe v. Wade. Yeah, that's right.

(Although his quickness to shout about the availability of his young daughters does make me think of several Christian college campuses where I have lived.)

The election of Scott Brown was a message from a liberal state that the Democrats had gone too far, overplayed their hands a little bit.

I think it was the same with the 2008 election: People were sick of the Republicans doing whatever they wanted and forcing their way on people.

What do people really want? It's in the middle, of course...a shade of purple. And instead of declaring Republican mandates and Democratic mandates, let's back away from swinging from one side to the other and let the balance stick sit for a minute, waiting to see where the bubble slides to. On some issues, the American people may prefer a more liberal approach. On others, it will be conservative issues.

(It's safe to say most Americans are not happy about health care, but many Americans also want a liberal-like equality when it comes to controlling the financial sector. Purple.)

Finally, I want to take a shot at the national psychos who have been trying to pigeonhole the Massachusetts election: Get your facts straight.

I think the Boston Globe did a great job of covering its home turf well, and much of what it reported lined up with what I was hearing from my friends (a mix of conservatives, Republicans, and "I vote for whomever has the less annoying adds").

But the national media (here's pointing at you, Fox News and MSNBC) once again played partisan and blew it out of proportion. And unfortunately, many people I consider level-headed took the bait.

It's not red state versus blue. There are layers here, and it's worth the time to look at the layers.

[I will note the Time magazine article especially, which was mostly correct and had a great headline ("Mass Mutiny") but incorrectly reported that Brown's daughter was a four-year starter on the Boston College basketball team (she still is, not was) and engaged in hyperbole when talking about some voters drawing Brown's nickname in a snowbank in a photo caption. Oh, and they acted as if Brown's early advertisements comparing himself to John F. Kennedy were a good idea when anyone within a 200-mile radius of Boston will tell you they most certainly were not taken well, and were stopped a month before election day.]

Scott Brown's win was a big one, and it had big implications. But in a world of Roves, Palins, Pelosis, and Reids, the sane people cannot lose sight of the other 300 million people who don't necessarily want to dump their lives into the farce that is politics, of all its manipulation and bargaining and half-accomplishments. They just want their actual concerns to be heard among those with the power and the money.

Brown kept saying it was the "people's seat," not Kennedy's. What I'm interested in is how this new senator will help the Bay Stater I have recently become.

We're a state, and a nation, not of red and blue. What will Brown do for the purple?

Integrating Church

Time magazine has gone and run a piece about Pastor Bill Hybels, who runs Willow Creek church and is best known in Christian circles for being an innovative youth pastor. Hybels' most recent concern has been in changing the demographics of his church; that is, making his sanctuary welcome to all ethnicities and the styles of worship these people are used to.

The article does a pretty good job of what an article should do: It tells us about the situation and ties it in with what the Bible says. (No one comes across as crazy or bigoted, either, which is always a good thing when Christians end up in the spotlight.) It's an interesting story about what big churches are dealing with, in a world where integration has always been seen as political, and when belief systems aren't just a plaque saying to love everybody but actually a practice where everyone, skin color aside, is in this together.

Time magazine on airplane security

This article in Time magazine about airplane security hits on several important points, the biggest being that government cannot keep everyone safe at all times, nor should it be called to. Part of what is great about living in free America is that you are truly free, which would not necessarily be true if extraordinary measures were taken to try to ensure safety.

The key sentences, after President Obama promised more safety: "He forgets that Americans have never really wanted the government to do 'everything in its power' to keep us safe. That would make this a terrible place to live."

The article also notes that terrorism, with more of a goal of scaring everyone (a psychological threat) has already triumphed. The way to fight back is to stop that scaring, not try to stop it altogether (a hard, if not impossible, goal).

Read the whole article here.

Newsweek doctoring

Let me start by saying that my intention is not to bash Newsweek as much as possible. But the revamped newsmag just keeps giving me opportunities to chirp. I find so many problems, or just under-par production that Newsweek almost begs me to complain about itself, whereas its competitor, Time magazine, never hits me the wrong way (but wait until Joel Stein gets me riled up again).

This week it's one of those massive photos that Newsweek runs with no refer or other note of importance — basically a standalone photo that carries tons of questions and no answers. This photo (seen here, with the original photo), of Dick Cheney slicing up some meat at home with his family, was doctored to emphasize a quote that was superimposed over it — a quote about torture.

I've already talked about hating these huge, standalone photos, and this photo embodies everything that is wrong with this Newsweek practice. It's misleading, sensational, and has virtually no news value — especially if it doesn't refer to a later story where the facts can be explained.

Newsweek has said that its new version will be better journalism, and less celebrity- and general-life-focused, but these photo debacles show they've really taken a step back.

NYT subscribers, not advertisers, are funding the show

As the New York Times publishes its quarterly profits report, it looks like the Gray Lady is making more from circulation (suscribers, newsstand readers) than advertising.

This means two obvious things: (1) Advertising is nose-diving, and fast. (2) Charging as much for the Sunday Times as it costs to drive across the state of Massachusetts was apparently worth it.

While newspapers as a whole are having trouble figuring out how to remain profitable, the Times has an interesting angle to work: it has a loyal, high-end, well-educated readership. Traditionally, this meant it could count on advertising dollars. But now it also means that the paper may be transitioning into that era that has been theorized in journalism classrooms but hasn't seen daylight thus far: readers being willing to pay more for a specialty publication.

It's no longer mass media time, with the Times reaching out to the world and expecting a wide swath of readers to peruse its pages and pull in its advertisers. The Times' readership has become a distinct group, and many have been clear that they're willing to pay the outrageous subscription prices to keep getting the top-notch newspaper.

(If you think jacking up prices is a mistake, I would say you're right for most papers. But the Times is a unique product. Think about how much more people pay for a specialty periodical than their typical off-the-rack Time or People magazine...around 150-175%. So, the Times can get away with it because it's going for that up-scale slice.)

(But also remember that if this transition does happen, the Times still may lose readers in the process as it separates the wheat from the chaff.)

Could it be that this is what the Times missed all along? That the way to fund its paper was to, in fact, charge the people who really wanted it?

Whether the Times comes out as a smudgy broadsheet, an Internet edition, an online TimesReader edition, or in comprehensive reports published by the best reporters in the world, it will have readers. To stay afloat and fund this content and reporting, now all the Times has to do, apparently, is charge them more.

Redesigned Newsweek doesn't get the bump it hoped for

This article from the New York Observer reports that the redesigned Newsweek did not get the bump in circulation it was hoping for.

Newsweek retooled its coverage to be less up-to-date and instead have more heavy reporting and analysis. But from the beginning, the intention that was voiced by Newsweek was that the magazine was aiming to be more highbrow, and attract more affluent readers that advertisers could target to, than be a hot mag off the rack.

I hardly know anyone who sees The Economist on the newsstand and grabs it as an impulse buy; Newsweek is moving in that direction, rather than becoming more People-like (or Time-like, for that matter). (Note: The NYO article also looks at how The Economist is doing compared to a year ago.)

Why marriage matters...sort of

Time's recent cover story about why marriage matters was interesting, well-written and a good read altogether. But I'd like to think that marriage is more important than just because there may be kids involved (could there be a higher calling for this human race than to reproduce effectively?). Read the article here.

Enjoyable Snippets

Some of my favorite and thought-provoking bits from recent reading. (These fall halfway between the status "extremely interesting," which sparks essays and full-length books in my head, and the label of "blah," which I will never write about.)

Awesome articles (a rarity) from Sports Illustrated:
The May 4, 2009 Kelly Slater profile — one of the best profiles I've ever read.

The May 18, 2009 explanation of why Rafa is surging past Fed. A taste: "The answer lies in the regal language always used to describe Federer. Born to rule, he has never been interested in fighting for power; that's why in his current exile he looks less like Napoleon plotting on Elba than like the puzzled Czar Nicholas II waiting for the world to right itself and restore his throne."
The May 18, 2009 brief on Twittering . I am still anti-Twitter for many reasons, but I do like that it lets athletes hop over their polo-shirted PR representatives and just talk to the people.

Some things I enjoyed from the Boston Globe recently:
Film reviewer Wesley Morris, reviewing "Angels and Demons" and describing characters in Dan Brown's books: "information kiosks masquerading as characters."

Peter Funt opines about what big name commencement speakers are telling graduates. A sample: Vice President Joe Biden: "You all have the potential for greatness. But let's be honest, you might fail. In fact, you might fail miserably. I'm not saying you will fail, I'm just saying
that you will all be tested, and many of you will fail that test. But don't give up, and, whatever you do, try to avoid airplanes and subways."

And from Time magazine (these may be less fun):
On an article about tension in Pakistan, with much of the problem being that the majority of people support moderate Islam, yet the radical Taliban stirs up trouble: "Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, pulls up on his laptop the pages of a first-grade primer distributed in private religious schools. 'A is for Allah,' he reads. 'B is for bandook, or gun.' T, for thakrau, collision, is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames, while Z, for zenoub, the plural of sin, is depicted with alcohol bottles, kites, guitars, drums, a television and a chess set."

On autism: "In the late 1960s and early '70s, autism was considered a rarity in the U.S., so uncommon that many pediatricians believed they had never seen a case."

(Also interesting in this article is the story of the many different living facilities the parents took their autistic son to. He's now 42 years old and still needs help, but they're too old to take care of him. They finally found this place, which sounds like an innovative option and a hopeful sign for the growing community of people with mental illnesses who need care: "Noah lives in a two-bedroom house with a roommate, a 'normal' person, whose rent is partly subsidized in exchange for the attention she must pay to Noah when she is home. A rotating series of caregivers take Noah to the park or for walks or to fast-food restaurants during the day.")