- TexasAbuelo on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “After a lifetime of observing what ya’ll might describe as “Christlike” service of many anonymous Christians (LDS and other denominations) and others of other faiths and no particular faith at all – I wholeheartedly disagree with your initial assertion that such efforts don’t produce success, respect, or happiness. I have seen and felt these things myself, and seen it in many many others… assuming feeding the hungry, getting clean water supplies, tutoring kids who can’t read, helping girls & women access medical care, helping people access medical screenings or vacunas – thru persuasion – they knew nothing about or were averse to, repairing bikes, motos, etc, for better transportation to improve economic situation… just for starters…(assuming all this qualifies for your “Christ like service”) —- the helpers and helpees consistently come out happy…many of the folks I’ve served with, I’ll admit, come from dirt poor backgrounds.. we’ve gone hungry as children or wondered where our next meal was coming from; as adults some of us have found ourselves “between roofs over our heads..” or being on the hoping end of other poor people’s charity. We don’t carry around any particular middle class burden of guilt about any “prosperity “ we might have achieved or agonize or philosophize over what we are or aren’t doing… we’ll leave the hand wringing to the overthinking overphilosophizing gringos with lots of time on their hands. We serve who we can, when we can, with what we can. Donde comen 2 comen 3….Relax, “haz el bien y no mires a quien!”’como dice el dicho” Feb 17, 00:47
- on What Did You Think About Church Yesterday, 2/15?: “Our recently-released Stake president and his wife are now the service mission coordinators in our mission, so their presentation pre-empted Sunday School. The growth in service missions is one of the less heralded changes in recent years but it has the potential to have a big impact in terms of who can serve a mission and what the public face of the Church and its missionaries looks like.” Feb 16, 18:09
- on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “Thanks for the kind comments. To clarify again, I’m terrible at this kind of service, so this post is also a reminder to me. When I’m asked to do something like this or see an opportunity for it, or see other people doing it week after week, I have to resist the voice that says: Yeah, sure, but how is this going to pay off? By what metric is this an effective use of resources?” Feb 16, 18:06
- on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “Thanks for this, Jonathan, couldn’t agree more. The best service is the kind that can’t be returned.” Feb 16, 11:21
- on First Shall be Last and the Last Shall be First: A Didactic, Overbearing Parable: “Stephen C, You mentioned assimilation in Reform Judaism… Reform Judaism began in the early 19th century and over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries basically won all the growth races. In the U.S. especially, progressive Judaism (Reform + Conservatism + Reconstructionism) dominated orthodoxy in the face of claims that assimilation would kill the faith. Orthodoxy itself assimilated over similar time frames and modernized to the point where ultra-orthodoxy (what might pass as pre-Enlightenment Judaism) became vanishingly small. Having said that, Reform Judaism definitely became more anemic in recent decades, and orthodoxy more ascendant. I think my point is simply that Judaism doesn’t track on a straight line where progressivism equals less-devotion the way we think of mainline progressive Christian movements. It’s actually mature, still vibrant today, and heavily influenced orthodoxy itself.” Feb 16, 10:52
- on What Did You Think About Church Yesterday, 2/15?: “Here are a few of my reactions to my Church meetings yesterday (2/15): I was asked to also attend a branch in our area, so I got to attend two very different Sunday School lessons, both about Noah. I enjoyed both of them, despite how different they were: One focused more on the structural issues during Noah’s time—on the idea that the situation had gotten so bad that no one could learn. I like that take, because it acknowledges the way the social structures in our lives lead to assumptions about how things must be done. And these assumptions are sometimes quite evil. For me, this also raises the question of how do you face such structural evils? The other lesson focused on Noah’s role as a prophet, and the various tools available to us for discovering truth——prayer, personal revelation, scripture, talking with leaders, etc. In one of the lessons, the teacher suggested that it might be better to look at our path returning to our Heavenly Parents not as “the” covenant path, but rather as “your” covenant path. The idea is that so much of what we experience in life, which effects the timing of the elements of our path, is specific to us individually. The branch I attended was quite small — I think there were 25 people in Sacrament Meeting. Of course, passing the sacrament in a small unit like that is much faster. OTOH, it is also quieter, which made it easier to hear the bouncing basketball from the next room [eye-roll]. In both meetings I ended up thinking about the boundary between the structural things that push us toward actions and our personal responsibility for our actions. It seems to me that our actions come from a combination of the influences of these external, structural elements, and our own deliberate decisions. The more I think about it, the more I see that these external things push us to do things that we shouldn’t, and we usually don’t have the moral backbone to resist, often because the alternatives are poor. Do we really have the ability to make moral choices in such cases? And, perhaps more important, what do such situations teach us about how to act in the future? ” Feb 15, 20:08
- on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “Oh, this was clearly sincere, and written by someone who has done the work. (Probably more consistently than I have: I confess I have a pattern of getting involved, getting frustrated, being secretly glad when the person I was trying to help moves on, and then withdrawing for a while.) In the hope that the work is more sustainable when you don’t have unrealistic expectations, I’ll add my observation: Don’t expect to have normal friendships with the people you help. In a leadership seminar I attended for work some years ago, one of the adages was “Relationships are Currency.” Well, when you can count on your basic needs like food and shelter being met, you have the luxury of only thinking about your work relationships that way. The very poor sometimes have to rely on their social networks to survive, and often cultivate them (insofar as they are able) for that purpose. So don’t be disappointed when you feel like they’re primarily interested in you as a resource. Don’t get angry when they try to manipulate you. (You don’t have to let them succeed.) Above all, don’t react to them or judge them the way you would if one of your middle or upper-class friends behaved that way–you’d all do the same if you were in their situation.” Feb 15, 20:03
- on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “Half the membership of the Church lives in developing countries around the globe. While growth in Church membership in developed countries is stagnating, growth in Africa and South America is booming. And many of these members and their neighbors are living in poverty and could use our help. At the same time, the globe is getting smaller. Social media facilitates international communications. Cellphones have become almost universal. Air and other forms of transportation have made the world smaller. Technologies like solar, water treatment, wastewater treatment, the Internet, low-cost low-power computers, etc have made opportunities to help endless. We live in a wonderful time. Christ said love thy neighbor. And the definition of neighbor has expanded to include everyone living around the world.” Feb 15, 16:31
- on Feeding the hungry has negative ROI: “I hate the parable/story of the kid throwing starfish back into the water mainly because you don’t hear it about some kid throwing jellyfish back; and, both starfish and jellyfish would/will otherwise die on the beach, but the starfish are viewed as somehow more deserving of help. That said, if all you do is help one person or thing while a million more go unaided, that’s still not insignificant to the one helped–whether your help is acknowledged or not.” Feb 15, 07:34
