On Dogs and Free Markets

I want to talk about free market economies, but first I want to talk about dogs.

Dogs in the City

Dog-owners who live in cities and don't have yards know that they have to walk their dog once, sometimes twice a day.

Dogs are remarkable creatures. They're highly intelligent and blessed with sharp natural instincts as well. Their senses are far superior to ours and pound-per-pound, they are much stronger and faster than us, but, the city isn't their natural environment.

Owning a dog in the city means using a leash. The leash prevents the dog from walking in front of a moving bus, going into a sewer drain, after another dog, into a garbage can or humping a cop's leg. It keeps the dog safe and healthy and keeps the owner out of trouble.

The leash needs to be long enough to allow the dog some natural freedom of movement, but short enough to keep the dog out of dangerous situations and keep the owner out of trouble.

Dog owners will tell you that, at first, dogs hate the leash, but pretty soon they grow to love just the sight of it because it means they get to go outside.

Markets are like Dogs.

Markets are like dogs. They're remarkable creatures, but stable societies aren't their natural environment. Markets are made up of human beings, but they, themselves are not human and they require human supervision and control to keep them out of trouble.

Think of government regulation as a leash for markets. They prevent the market from wandering in front of a bus, chasing after squirrels or humping a cop's leg.

Completely free markets are like dogs in a city without a leash. They're free to run around and have a great time, but there's a really high risk they'll end up as road kill, getting lost, or getting the owner in some sort of trouble, so responsible owners invest in a leash.

Regulation isn't necessarily anti-capitalism. Its a recognition that, unlike ants, human beings clearly aren't more intelligent when they act in groups than they are individually and need some sort of guidance to prevent them from doing something really stupid.

The Passing of George Harmon

Now that I've gotten over the shock a little bit, I feel like I can write something about the passing of George Harmon.

I say shock because Dr Harmon always worked on staying in shape and a week ago was in far better condition than most people his age. He died from a blood infection from a scrape on his arm which just goes to show that no man knows the hour of his passing.

Dr Harmon came to Millsaps at a fairly low point in the college's history. We were a small, liberal arts college, awash in a sea of small, liberal arts colleges, with nothing to distinguish us from the others.

Harmon's idea was to build up the business school. We didn't even have a business school at that point. We offered accounting and economics, but nothing that you could call a business management curricula.

That actually put us at an advantage. We didn't have a business school, but neither did most of the schools we competed against. By putting one in, we were in the position of an early adapter which gave us a considerable head start on the competition.

The move didn't come without controversy. There were those who saw it as abandoning the liberal arts roots of the college and bringing in a business school meant bringing in conservative thinkers who would clash with the school's more liberal base.

The plan worked though, and a rising tide raises all ships. Pretty soon enrollment was up, the school became more financially stable and we were building new buildings. As a result, the liberal arts program went from barely surviving by the skin of its teeth, to being fairly stable, although less populated than the business school.

Harmon had an unforgettable personality. He was relentlessly aggressive, which sometimes got him in trouble, but most often made him a bulldog at accomplishing his goals.

He didn't socialize with the faculty much and they were often at odds, but something many people didn't know, he was dearly loved by the maintenance department who would invite him when they had barbeque's or other social events.

Dr Harmon was perhaps one of the more controversial individuals ever involved in Millsaps, but there's no way you can look at the college when he came and compare it to the college as it is today and not think we were much better off that he came.

He is survived by two daughters, Mary and Beth, a son, George and his lovely wife Bessie.

The Moses Rebellion

I've always had my doubts about the story of Moses as told in Exodus.

Suppose a Muslim Jihadist came to George Bush and said that everything from Katrina to the stock market crash were signs from Allah that America should release the detainees at Guantanamo, get out of Iraq, stop supporting Israel and take ham off the menu at Dominoes.

Would you believe him? Probably not. Likewise, I think Pharaoh just shook his head every time Moses came to town trying to blame whatever recent misfortune befell Egypt on his mysterious god who was angry because the Hebrews were slaves.

The Plagues

The truth is, if you know anything about that region, then you know that whatever hell Moses rained down on Egypt isn't all that different from the hell that rains down on them most of the time anyway. It was an ecological disaster that prompted the Jews to move to Egypt in the first place.

Pretty much all of the plagues that befell Egypt fall into the category of normal but unfortunate ecological disasters. All, except one.

The Angel of Death

The last plague, the death of the first-born, finally tipped the balance and freed the Jews. One interpretation of this is that an angel of death moved among the Egyptians in the form of a green mist, killing children. This is what you see in the movie with Charlton Heston.

Would a loving God condone the killing of children, even if they were pagan children and their parents were persecuting the chosen people? Probably not.

"First Born" can mean children, but it can also mean the head of the household. Many cultures at that time passed their wealth down to the first born male. That would mean that many of the wealthiest and most powerful adult men in a culture were "first born".

You can read this part of the story as God acting in mysterious ways, but you can also read it as a slave rebellion. A clue as to which is the correct interpretation might be the blood on the door.

The Jews were told to paint lambs blood on their doors as a sign that whatever was out killing the first born should pass them over. Now, the angel of death (whatever that is) probably wouldn't need a sign to know who to kill and who not to kill, but an army of rebel slaves going through town killing the heads of the households would.

When this country still had slaves, we also had slave rebellions. The most famous was led by a man named Nat Turner. None of the American slave rebellions ended in anyone being freed, but they were very similar to what we see in exodus in that they featured slaves, going through the community, killing the male slave holders.

For Nat Turner's army, it was easy to tell who was the enemy: they were white. For Jews living in Egypt, the racial or biological differences wouldn't have been nearly so pronounced. They would need some sort of sign to know who not to kill. The blood on the door was just such a sign.

Free at Last!

After a night of such killings, the next day the Egyptians would have been completely unable to prevent the Jews from leaving. At that time, most cultures didn't have a standing army. It took some time to bring an armed force together, which gave the Jews a significant head start in getting out of town.

Once the Jews were clear of Egypt, we're told that Pharaoh had a change of heart and sent chariots after them. You could say he had a change of heart, but you could also say that it took him some time to raise an army to go after the rebels.

Another clue that this was a slave rebellion is that the Jews took Egyptian gold with them. They would use it later to construct the golden calf idol while they waited for Moses to return with the ten commandments. It's unlikely the Egyptians would give up their gold willingly. The Jews would have to take it by force.

The Battle of the Red Sea

The same holds true for the miracle crossing of the Red Sea. Exodus doesn't give a very precise location for the crossing. Historically, people have placed it in the south at a particularly deep part of the sea. If that's where it was then their crossing would have to have been a pretty impressive miracle.

Suppose it was farther north though, in the Sea of Reeds? This area was more like a broad marsh than a deep sea. Strong winds and low tides would take most of the standing water out of the marsh and the Jews, traveling on foot with their flocks could easily pass through it, but the Egyptians, traveling on chariots would have been hopelessly stuck in the mud.

The Jews could hide in the tall reeds and pick off the bogged down Egyptians from a covered position. So, was the crossing of the Red Sea really a battle and not a mind-blowing special effect kind of miracle? It seems more likely.

Chariots were like the stealth fighters of their day. With them, a smaller group of Egyptians could conquer a much larger army on foot. But, with their chariots stuck in the mud, the Egyptians would have been sitting ducks.

What about God?

So, does this mean there was no God and the story of Exodus was just the act of men? Not necessarily. Throughout history, very few slave rebellions ended successfully. Nearly all slave rebellions ended with the slaves being returned to slavery and their leaders executed. That this story ended with the slaves going free could be a sign of God's intervention.

Exodus tells the story of Egyptian society weakened by a series of natural disasters to the point where an organized slave rebellion could beat the odds and enforce their own freedom. I have no trouble seeing the hand of God in that.

Conclusion

It's not as beautiful a story as the version presented by Cecil B Demille in his movie, but by telling the story more realistically, it also becomes much harder to dismiss. It also tells us that God still works in our lives even without the special-effects type of miracles we see in the movies.

The Candy Cane Myth

This time of year, many of you will come across the Legend of the Christian Candy Cane.

It's a beautiful story unfortunately it's not at all historically accurate.

See http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/candycane.asp for the true story of the candy cane.

The thing is, if you take out the inaccurate stuff about some unknown guy in Indiana and just say "one can find some beautiful christian symbols in a candy cane", then the story still works.

For me, it's a much stronger testament to know that these symbols are there, even though nobody intentionally put them there.

Christian symbols show up randomly and beautifully in all sorts of unexpected places. Like the sand dollar which even has christian symbols inside it's bony shell or Passiflora Incarnata, known in the South as the "passion flower" or "May pop" that grows wild along fence lines and roadsides.

It's important for Christians to steadfastly maintain the difference between parable and fact. The world and its events don't come to us prepackaged with Christian ideals. It's up to us to take the real stuff of life as it comes to us and make some sense of it from a Christian perspective, and to do that, we must maintain the difference between the two.

Jesus himself often used fiction to illustrate greater truths. We call them parables and they're part of our tradition. Jesus never meant for us to believe that the Good Samaritan was a real person who we could go and find and talk to. If he had, he would have given us his name, but that doesn't keep the story of the Samaritan from being an incredibly important part of the Christian life.

Candy canes are just candy. There's no hidden symbols in them, but that shouldn't keep Christians from teaching their children to take the ordinary stuff of life and reinterpret them from a Christian perspective. You have to do it honestly though, without trying to sneak in mysterious confectioners from Indiana without explaining that he is a parable, and never really existed.

It's all about the strength of the house you want to build. Parables are houses built on stone, but parables presented as historical fact are houses built on sand.