A Nice Place to Sit Out World War III

Albert Einstein is quoted, though never firsthand that I can find, as saying that while he did not know what weapons will be used in World War III, he knew that World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.

Two possible roads from WWIII to that conclusion come to mind. The first is that WWIII will simply bomb and radiate all of humanity back to the Stone Age. The other, and perhaps the one more likely to be taken, is that those on the periphery, after watching the survivors of combatant nations envy their dead, will decide that it is better to settle issues by lot, or by soccer game, or by a one-on-one battle à la David and Goliath (1 Sam 17:9)—anything that will enable people to continue to make a living—than by an atomic version of “might makes right.”

For a G-rated version of what will be an R-rated event to which the unwilling as well as the willing will be admitted, grab some popcorn and watch the 1983 movie The Day After. (If you want to skip the introduction of the characters, start watching at about minute 40.) Is the “freedom” to subsidize ethanol, abortion, homosexual marriage, and “too big to fail” banks really so precious that you would put yourself and your neighbors through that?

I am writing this from Nepal, where I have been enjoying the company of pastors and other committed Christians who are providing resources for their countrymen who want to translate the Bible into minority languages. The dust and pollution and trash are horrific, not only in Kathmandu but even here, some miles away, around an ashram built by the Jesuits in the 1960s. Making a living is difficult for most people. And many of the men here have told me of being beaten and imprisoned for their faith, though I have also heard how they have found ingenious methods of getting the message out.

But when some of my new friends asked me yesterday if I would like to return to Nepal, I immediately said yes. The people I’ve had connections with are friendly and the food is good. However, lover of ease that I am, the reason I thought of first was that Nepal will probably not be part of World War III. Yes, I think the same God who decided that the sin of the Amorites was full and ordered their complete destruction at the hands of the Israelites, and who decided that the sin of the Judahites was full and ordered the complete destruction of their nation at the hands of the Babylonians, would be acting consistent with his nature to destroy the USA.

I thought the fall would take place at Y2K, the dawn of this century, but it didn’t happen, so I’m not going to make predictions. But the establishment darlings, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, are itching to push the button. Bernie Sanders is toast. And while Donald Trump seems to be the closest thing to a peace candidate with a shot at the White House, I remember that Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all ran as peace candidates—need I say more?

The next president will believe, as Randolph Bourne said, that “war is the health of the state.” How do I know? Because he or she will be a Keynesian, and Keynes taught that disasters like war, earthquakes, and the like are actually good for the economy because they enable governments to raise taxes and put people to work rebuilding. Keynesians credit Hitler’s and Mussolini’s massive public works projects with pulling their respective economies out of depression, Roosevelt’s projects with putting people to work and getting them through the Great Depression, as well as the wartime spending that ended the Depression for good, and Reagan’s massive increase in federal spending with ending the recession of the early 1980s.

With the US economy headed for hospice, godless (and, alas, “godly”) Americans expect their Führer “Do something—anything!” So the next president will need to take drastic action to increase public spending. What better action than war? War in Syria! War in Ukraine! War in Nepal!

Oops.

The fact is that if God wants me to go through World War III, there will be no place to get away from it. And the American survivors of World War III are no less (though no more) deserving of a chance to hear the gospel than are the Nepalis. Beatings and jail time are not the only way for us to show the world that God’s “grace is sufficient” for us.

I see no way I could live here without being a burden to someone. Furthermore, the work to which God has called my wife is tied to a suburb of Philadelphia. And there is much to be done there before the dark days come when no one can work.

My prayer for the Nepali church is that she will not make the same mistake we have made in the West of trying to use the world’s means—political power—to accomplish kingdom ends. May Nepali believers take Jesus’ command not to be like the kings of the Gentiles seriously and so to please the Lord, to show themselves to be the children of God, and to allow God time to make their enemies into not only their friends but his friends.

And after World War III, may they know how to make peace without resort even to sticks and stones.

The Trumpster’s Job Monstrosity

Part of what makes Trump a monster, and the centerpiece of his appeal, is his stand on immigration and jobs: “Foreigners [or manufacturers] are stealing American jobs!”

My question: can anyone really own a job?

Linguists call some nouns in some languages obligatorily possessed because they describe a relationship and so cannot exist apart from that relationship. A father is a father because he has a child, so the words for father and son and daughter are all marked for possession: “my father,” “his father,” “my son,” etc. Same with husband, wife, cousin, grandfather, et cetera. This is how it worked in the language my wife and I learned in Papua New Guinea:

	my _____	your (singular) _____	his _____
wife	naka apäki	ntaka säpa	kanka kayäpa
father	naka äpo	ntaka sän	kanka kän
grandfather	naka täito	ntaka säwo	kanka kayäwo
mother’s brother	naka aamo	ntaka saamo	kanka kayaamo

A given tree may or may not be owned, so trees, rocks, and the like had no such markings, nor did things like houses or clothes, though it’s not impossible that a language somewhere would mark manufactured items as obligatorily possessed.

But what about a job? Can a job ever really be possessed?

If I can speak of “my job,” it’s only because someone has asked me to do something with the understanding that I will somehow be better off (or suffer less) if I engage in a specified activity than I would if I did not. Implicit in that relationship is that the other person is the one who determines whether I “have a job” or not. One could say that our language expresses the idea backward from the reality: if anyone truly possesses a job, truly controls the situation, it’s not the person who does the work; rather, it’s the person who gives the job, the one who pays the salary (or, in the case of prison administrators, lessens the punishment).

So to say “the corporations are stealing American jobs and sending them overseas” is nonsense. They are taking what in reality and in every aspect except language are their jobs and giving them to whom they please.

Americans bitch about the “unlivable” wages paid by Walmart, but when people much worse off economically than we are jump at the chance to earn those “unlivable” wages, we need to consider the possibility, however remote, that part of “American exceptionalism” includes a worldview that is backward from reality.