Evangelism

The Rescue of Moonbase Asimov – The Real Story

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If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, the story of Christian ethicist and professor Tom Killian and his presidential meeting to decide the fate of Moonbase Asimov, read it first and then come back to this post.

So, what did Tom Killian tell the president’s advisory committee? As a Christian, his worldview gave him a good reply. You may have your own ideas, but I’ll tell you what I think his reply would have been.

Clearly, the economics involved in maintaining the moonbase made for problems, the biggest of which was that the moonbase could not sustain itself without a series of expensive transports routinely bringing in food. The price spike in food that resulted led to rioting at the moonbase that had to be quelled through military intervention.

From a strictly rational viewpoint, sustainability is the 800-lb. gorilla in the room. In truth, sustainability is ALWAYS a primary consideration for any human endeavor. Want to climb Mount Everest? You can’t do it dressed for the beach, with only a handful of granola bars in your pocket. Want to have a moonbase that houses multiple thousands of people? Then you must find a way to address the very simple requirements of food and water. If you can’t, then you either watch the denizens of the moonbase die or you keep shoveling good money after bad to support an enterprise that has no future.

Many spiritually sensitive people would employ the tactic of Dahlia Winters, the leader of the Phos cult. While it is a laudable idea to minister to the needs of the people at the moonbase, adding more people only decreases sustainability further. Such thinking runs counter to common sense, only accelerating the moonbase’s problems.

Sending counselors to the moonbase is especially ill advised when other options exist. Evacuating large portions of the moonbase’s population until it reaches some level of sustainability makes the most sense. If at that point a religious group should desire to minister to the remnant, then fine. The religious group would have just as many options to minister to the evacuees, too. Better to meet their needs in a sustainable environment than in a nonviable one.

Does this make sense? It should. Yet many Christian leaders aren’t tracking with that kind of sense.

Moonbase Asimov is not that far-fetched actually. In many ways, we on planet Earth have our own unsustainable “moonbases.” We call them cities. And some well-known Christian leaders are telling us we can’t be good Christians unless we consider the plight of the city.

In truth, they are absolutely correct. We must consider the plight of our cities. And we should have a Christian response to that plight. Unfortunately, the most Christian response bears little resemblance to the one being advocated by those Christian leaders.

Our cities today are like Moonbase Asimov because they cannot sustain themselves. They are bastions of consumption that fail to produce the most basic element necessary for human survival: food. Is it any surprise then that major cities across the world are seeing riots over the unavailability of food? You can’t bring millions of people into an area and eliminate all its food-producing acreage then expect people to have access to food. That’s insanity. Yet that is what we have done in large cities around the globe.

Our entire world is changing. No longer will people be able to afford food trucked into a region from vast distances. Prices of food are skyrocketing. Much of that skyrocketing comes from our dependence on factory farms displaced into regions far outside population centers. Those industrialized farms rely on massive amounts of costly energy to raise their crops and even more to ship them to distant cities.

While some would claim this to have been a successful model for years (though I would argue against that notion), we cannot sustain that model. The model of the modern city is failing and its failure will be epic.

To send Christians into the heart of an unsustainable model is akin to asking them to board a sinking ship, comfort the occupants, and then go down with the ship. Only a madman would endorse such a plan.

The wiser plan of action would see the Christians board the foundering vessel and get as many people off that ship as possible before it sinks beneath the waves. During the rescue and its aftermath, they can still provide succor, but the end goal is different because it is sustainable. Thousands of survivors beats thousand of people serving as chum for sharks.

One reality we must all face is that our food must be locally grown. In an age of skyrocketing energy costs, we can no longer afford to truck in our food. It must come from nearby sources. Unfortunately, the modern city has all but destroyed farming within or near its borders.

In Bible times and for long afterwards, civilization’s answer was to build walled cities for protection while ensuring the area immediately outside the wall stayed farmland. That made sieges hell as you were cut off from your food supply, but in normal times the food was right outside the wall. A farmer might live inside the city during the perilous nighttimes when robbers and raiders were about, but he could still walk outside the gate of the city and step onto his pasture land. While that kind of city was not perfect, it could still function.

However, today’s cities have no nearby ring of farmland and none inside its incorporation zones. Productive acreage has largely been relegated to far-off outposts hundreds or thousands of miles away from the cities. You simply can’t walk to the gate of the city and step outside it into farmland. And that’s a serious problem. A Moonbase Asimov kind of problem.

I firmly believe the answer to the unsustainability of the modern city is for us to rethink the small family farm. I also think that rather than sending Christians into the city to live, Christians should be helping city-dwellers get out of our unsustainable cities. It only makes for further stress on the system if Christians add to the unsustainability of the city model by moving into it rather than living elsewhere and helping others get out of the cities.

Helping people transition out of our cities rather than moving Christians into them has no negative effect on our ability as Christians to minister to those people’s souls and to share the Gospel with them. If anything, it helps: We show the foresight and desire to “rescue those being led away to death” by offering a radical response to a very real and quite terrifying problem. As many people ministering to those in the city know, city-dwellers are facing enormous pressure on their incomes when it comes to food. Again, riots are breaking out in major cities all over the globe due to this issue. And the problem of food prices and availability will get far worse before it gets better (and that’s IF it gets better).

I believe it is possible to find ways to improve the sustainability of cities, but the entire concept of the city and how it is laid-out for food production will have to be rethought. And that will take decades, time many in the city may not have if the course of our world continues as it is. Sadly, wise urban planners of the past who attempted to build-in food production greenspace were often shouted-down. In this case, though, no one wins when those insightful planners are vindicated.

One famous Christian leader (who shares his initials with Tom Killian) has repeatedly bashed those who believe that a return to agrarianism is our best solution. I would contend that it’s not only our best solution, it may be our only solution in short order. In fact, it’s the only solution that epitomizes the Gospel’s desire to lift people up out of their dilemma into a life of abundance.

Because it’s very hard to be spiritually-minded when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.

The Rescue of Moonbase Asimov

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The early morning sun already baking the pavement, Tom Killian trudged past the White House guards, a swipe at his dripping forehead misinterpreted as a salute by one young Marine.

“Hot day, ” Killian said to Steve Bishop, President Park’s press secretary.

Bishop stood at the entrance, his face like wax, jowls drooping in the heat. “They’re all hot.

“This one seems hotter  than most.”

“Yeah,” Bishop said. “You could say that.”

Killian caught the distance in Bishop’s eyes, the steeling for “what next?” that set firm the jaws of the wise in Washington. A dozen years ago he’d known that feeling himself as he watched his flock dwindle. First went the artists. The intelligentsia followed, then the families. Most threw their allegiance to Phos, the rising new religion of those who classified themselves as seekers. Phos found a way to blend the world’s ancient faiths and make believing easy. This truth Tom Killian knew: In demanding times, people were dying for easy.

He also knew the route to the meeting, having traced it a dozen times before. Park didn’t call him as much as in the early days of the administration, so he knew to expect something big. An ethics question, certainly. As one of the only Christian ethicists left on the East Coast, Killian got the nod time and again. Now out of the pastorate, he attempted to support the faith at Georgetown, but not only had Christianity taken a blow, so had ethics. In the last four years, he’d noted the erosion: a pandemic of empty seats in his classroom.

“Sir,” said a page. “Not here.” The young woman wore the classic navy blazer, the uniform color broken by a small pin. Killian knew the tiny jeweled torch wrapped by twin snakes. She was a Light, an adherent of Phos.  Directing him to toward the elevator, she added, “The lower level.”

Killian attempted a brow raise, but she anticipated.  “The media. They train UV lasers on the windows and track everything said from the vibrations on the glass, you know. It’s a precaution.”

Killian ran a hand through his once-full, gray hair. The page could’ve been his own granddaughter. Smiled like Keisha, too. That gold medal, trophy smile. All Phos followers sported that plastic, defiant look, like something out of Deutschland 1938, complete with a soul-in-a-coma stare.

He complied with the outstretched hand, then turned to glimpse the page as the elevator’s doors sealed him inside. One ping later, his temporary imprisonment concluded, he stepped out on the royal blue carpet, where he picked up a military escort.

“This way, sir,” said the lantern-jawed Marine. The soldier directed Killian down a white-walled hall devoid of art and into a meeting room the size of his classroom. An ebony table twenty feet long hunkered in the middle, angry clawed feet tearing into the floor. Only two chairs remained open. He took the one at the foot of the table. He knew who took the one at the head.

Killian recognized most of the players. Thirteen souls sat erect, waiting for Lee Park to arrive. Dahlia Winters, dressed as if speaking at a Mary Kay convention, thrust out a manicured hand and said, “Thomas, how good to see you again.”

Killian loathed to take it. Wrapping the regional leader of the Phos cult’s hand in his was like shaking hands with Mephistopheles. He told himself to remember the Golden Rule.

“Yes, Dahlia, it’s been—”

“Since the chimera meeting,” she finished. “And we’ve already seen the fruit of that medical research, haven’t we? That the president saw the necessity of our position and elected to push his executive order through… well, now millions have taken advantage of replacement organs harvested from chimeras.”

“Animals with human genes, you mean,” Killian said. He tightened his muscles, preparing for her retaliatory strike, but a shuffle of feet and the military bolting erect cut everyone off. In mid-sit, Killian overcorrected to get back to his feet and felt his lumbar muscles spasm.

President Park arrived in a flurry, sprinting to his chair. Known for his go-get-’em style, one that enamored him to the voters, the president’s every movement cried action. The first Asian president, he’d been one of the first born an American citizen to parents who’d fled the fall of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. His was the Horatio Alger story, but with an intriguing twist that appealed to the pastor turned professor. Park once confided in Killian that 25 years ago he’d soaked the altar at a backwoods Pentecostal church in tearful repentance.

It’s why Park’s Phos tie clip bothered Killian so much. May have been nothing more than a gift from Winters worn in appreciation, but who could tell. No matter the case, play with fire, get burned.

Bishop said a few words and everyone sat.

Park spoke, “Kimball, what’s the situation.”

Kimball Johnson adjusted his girth in his chair, but did not stand. Radish-faced and prone to arrhythmias no pacemaker could correct, the head of NASA stayed in place and said, “We’ve got a situation on Moonbase Asimov.”

Killian checked himself. With the past year’s media leaks, he’d received no briefing, so he didn’t know the topic except to guess at an ethical question. But now he knew: more intersections of science and ethics. It seemed the only battle he fought anymore. Except here he had to fight it from within the subterranean bowels of the White House rather than in a press conference. At least out there a few friends rallied behind him. Here, it was sure to be a hostile crowd.

“As you all know,” Johnson continued, “we’ve had the base in place for two decades. Nearly 10,000 Americans call it home, not to mention another 22,000 from other nations. For years, the population at the station has been expanding—”

“Ever done it in reduced gravity, Kimball?” asked Michael Maloney, FAA chief. “Helluva lot of fun.”

The group chortled and nodded, Winters adding the most volume. Killian stayed mum.

Johnson rolled his head and continued.

“—the station’s population has risen sharply and we find ourselves in that nightmare scenario: consumption outweighs production. Studies show population outstripping the food supply.”

“But how is that possible with the lunafarming techniques the Department of Agriculture established?” asked Lillian Stephenson, head of the FDA. “We had assurances that we could scale back supply flights in light of expenses. Are you now asking for more?”

Scarlet rose in Johnson’s face. “Options are limited. Food production never attained projections. It’s not exceeded 30 percent for the last five years.”

“Thirty percent?” Stephenson said with more fervor. “I have the statistics right here, Kimball, and you’ve been tossing out nearly 90 percent for what, three years now? Are you revising your figures?”

“Revising is the polite term,” Maloney said with a huff.

Park raised a finger. “Past statistics or not, the real problem is that we have more than 30,000 citizens of this planet who are facing insufficient food supplies in the near term.”

Defense Secretary Fisher Morgan inserted, “We sent up a battalion ten days ago to quell rioting, and—”

“I’ve heard none of this,” said Roger Biggs, head of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Not your jurisdiction, Roger,” Morgan replied into his steepled fingers.

“It is mine, though.” A slim reed of a man rose to his feet and caught the attention of everyone. His face was lined beyond his age, Killian thought, though on reflection he had no idea what age Rafael Rotar might be. The Treasury chief moved toward the president, each step filled with gravitas. He paused at Park’s side, blinked twice, and said, “Economic conditions at Asimov have been deteriorating in light of commodity price inflation. It’s essentially unlinked from economic issues here, which have been challenging enough, and has crashed the lunar marketplace. The curtailing of supply flights continues due to stress on this country’s financial infrastructure, exacerbating the problem. In short, we need a solution.”

The president nodded, shortly followed by everyone at the table save for Lillian Stephenson. She instead rose up as high as her five feet of height would take her and said, “I see no other option than to remove as many people from Asimov as it takes to get the moonbase to sustainable levels. If the food production’s not there, then we simply can’t house a population on the base that consumes more than it produces.”

“Replenishment,” Maloney began, “what are we talking about cost-wise?”

The color in Johnson’s face darkened. “We peg food transport costs at just under $805 billion dollars.”

“What’s the time frame on that amount?” Maloney asked.

The hue change continued in Johnson. Like a deflating red balloon, he said, “Over the next eighteen months.”

Silence.

“I know it’s a great deal of money, but costs are up,” Johnson continued. “High-grade sources of plutonium are tougher to come by. Fusion reactors are on the drawing boards for all lunar fleet vehicles, but we have to make do for the next few years.”

“With no support from the Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Senegalese or anyone else, I’m sure,” Stephenson said leaning into the table on her knuckles. “Do we have a difficult decision here? With all due respect to Mr. Johnson, that figure’s ludicrous in light of the nation’s current economic crisis. We either send up a half-dozen transport ships and get the majority of inhabitants out of there or we let things stay as they are and watch Lord of the Flies play out a quarter million miles away.”

At that moment, Dahlia Winters got to her feet. All heads craned her way.

“Have we considered the spiritual ramifications here? Whether production levels are or are not meeting the needs of people on the moon, riots point to a far deeper spiritual issue. These are empty people who need guidance and direction in difficult times. Phos has an answer, which is why I propose that we Lights put together an expedition of all available counselors and ship them to Moonbase Asimov. The answers to all Man’s difficulties are found in spiritual truth. I’m sure if we approach this problem with truth in mind, we Lights and those sympathetic to our cause,” she glanced around the room at those assembled, carefully avoiding Killian’s face, “can bring lasting solutions to the good men, women, and children on the moonbase.”

“Is that a joke?” Stephenson asked. “If it is, no one’s laughing, Miss Winters. Your expertise in this area is questionable at best”—she said this while casting a glance at Park—”and to suggest that we find metaphysical solutions to what is clearly a problem of stark material lacks borders on the inane.”

At this, everyone froze except for Rotar, who left the president’s side and returned to his seat. Park began to speak, then caught the eyes of Killian. He paused, leaned back in his chair, and finally said, “Tom, what are your thoughts on this?”

Killian gazed at the tiled ceiling of the room, out past the famous house overhead, to some distant place, searching for words. The room still, with only the occasional creak of a chair, he sought a better answer. A silent prayer later, he found it.

The former pastor stood to his feet and said, “This is what I believe we must do….”

***

What do you believe Tom Killian told the assembled cabinet members as they debated the future of Moonbase Asimov?

Stay tuned for the conclusion.

Thursday Thoughts and Miscellaneous Ramblings

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When your child comes up to you and sighs, “Dad, are you ever gonna get off the computer?” you know you’ve been crankin’. Work has consumed my every waking second the last ten days, thus the cobwebs and crickets on the blog. It’s great that business has recovered from the lull I experienced the first half of the year, but I’ve actually got a case of tendonitis from spending too much time interfacing with my anti-ergonomic office setup. Heck, my desk and chair are the same ones from when I was 13-years old, so what does that tell you? (Hey, don’t laugh. Ethan Allen is good furniture, unlike the sawdust-board junk coming out of China today.)

Anyway, I’m still hoping to post on genuine revival someday. Got another post that will probably get me delisted from a number of blogs, too, called “The Rescue of Moonbase Asimov!” Genuine storyline in that one. Now if I could just find the time to write them both.

When I don’t have time to write something well-researched and filled with gravitas, I toss out various disconnected thoughts, the kind of sampling that goes on in my head every 1.5 seconds, so it’s true to life, even if it is a bit scary to the uninitiated.

So here goes:

Many of you know that I’ve been advocating a low-glycemic diet. I’ve lost 30 pounds on that diet and kept them off. I’ve even added back in a few “no-no” foods and still kept the weight off. Very cool. What’s uncool is that I finally realized that the three bouts with kidney stones I’ve had in the last seven months are…well, due to the diet. Seems that switching to healthier foods and substituting foods with a lower glycemic index means eating more foods higher in oxylates, calcium oxylate being the primary ingredient in the most common kind of kidney stone. In fact, I checked what I eat and almost every single item is high in oxylates. Some people don’t tolerate that well, and I just happen to be one of those people. Any urologists out there with some advice? Ugh.

If you’ve got an old, unused PC sitting around that might have a 1GB 168-pin PC100/133 ECC DIMM, and you’re willing to sell the DIMM for a cheap price, let me know. I need one badly.

I’ve been too busy to keep up with all the comments on my Lakeland posts, but thanks and welcome to all the first-timers who came and commented. Things are a bit abnormal around here right now blogging-wise, but I hope to get back to my normal schedule soon.

Thank you also to all the people praying for my family in the wake of some of the illnesses we’ve endured recently. Those prayers are still coveted. What’s happened in the last few months is a major reason the blogging continues to suffer.

A number of regional banks are in deep doo-doo, including one I banked at for years, a bank considered in the industry to be one of the best run. In fact, three of the largest banks in my area are in trouble. The problem? Collapsing hedge funds coupled with turmoil in the mortgage industry. In fact, if I were you, I’d be very careful about where you have your money right now. Some big name banks may go belly up. As someone who is familiar with this (I had money in the savings & loan that precipitated the savings & loan crisis long ago), I know the signs. Be careful out  there. Don’t rely on FDIC. We’re in for some nasty bumps ahead.

This continues to be the rainiest spring I can recall. Great sleeping weather, though. Now if only I could find some time to sleep!

Do social networking sites actually DO anything for you? I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, but I’m mystified at what it brings me. Any LinkedIn gurus out there who really know how to play that network?

As a child, the neighbor’s collie used to bite me constantly. When you’re being routinely attacked by Lassie… well, it can scar you for life. Nonetheless, we became dog owners recently.  RosebudWe come to ownership reluctantly as our new mutt (pictured right) was unceremoniously abandoned on our property by yet another heartless fiend. See, we live a mile off a rural highway out in an idyllic spot, and people love to dump their puppies and kittens on our property thinking we’ll take care of them. Here’s a clue: most die. Feral dogs and coyotes mangle the kittens for fun (or else the furballs starve to death) and puppies wind up roadkill or diseased. It breaks my heart that some people are so thoughtless, but then again, even Jodi Minivan is capable of atrocities done in the name of expediency and personal comfort.

More than just about anything else, I want to believe that the American Church is healthy. The facts prove otherwise.  I am weary of people pulling out the “touch not the Lord’s anointed” and “so-called ‘discernment’ is nothing more than divisiveness” trump cards. But hey, what people want to fill themselves with is between them and God. I just want to add this: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” That’s worth memorizing.

Any other men out there at that strange age where you realize that the attractive businesswomen in their early twenties that you run into in the course of your day, the kind you would’ve chatted up in your single days, are now young enough to be your daughters?

I’m old enough to remember that presidential nominations occurred at the party convention. Anyone else remember? You didn’t have a presidential candidate tabbed until then. Quaint, I know. This is why I am deeply disturbed by the events unfolding in the Democratic Party (as if the party isn’t disturbing enough already). You’ve got two candidates that split the vote right down the middle, yet it’s as if one never existed. In another time, Obama and Clinton would’ve both gone into their convention flying high and no one would have thought it unusual to have two viable candidates to choose from in a real, gen-u-wine nominating convention. Instead, you’ve got this travesty of superdelegates that has usurped the people’s vote. And what craven political monsters those superdelegates are. You can bet that most are just trying to save their political futures and alliances rather than thinking about what is best for this country. But hey, I’m in a flyover state, so what do I know.

Man, is there anything more time consuming than trying to switch automatic checking account debits from one bank to another? I’ve spent almost ten hours following up on a dozen of these things and I’m still not done. It’s a great convenience when you don’t have to pay the bills, but the act of switching may undo all the time you saved!

In that same vein, the older I get, the more I see that all our time-saving devices don’t really save us time. They only make life more frantic trying to pay for and maintain them.

With age also comes this serious question: How do most people live? (Darned if I know.)

The box of store brand chocolate-chip cookies that was $1.29 last year is now $2.19. I don’t know who these economists are who keep talking about the slow, meager rise in consumer prices, but going from $1.29 to $2.19 in a year is not “a slow, meager rise.”

We’re seeing wild turkeys on our property regularly. I never saw turkeys around here until just the last few years. Now I see them everywhere.

On the other hand, the rural highway near us looks like a deer abattoir. Talk in the insurance industry has insurance companies ditching payment for accidents involving deer. Nice.

The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of record in the Edelen household, could not be any more schizophrenic than it is right now on the topic of the economy. Every day they print a flurry of editorials talking about the fact that the country is NOT slipping into recession (or worse), yet their business pages are filled with one company after another reporting massive downturns in revenue or declaring bankruptcy outright. My take? Too many rich pundits are out of touch with how “the other half” live.

Considering all the spurious commentary on my part so far, I want to end with a serious question: When was the last time a stranger came up to you and asked whether you were born again? Used to happen to me all the time more than a decade ago, but almost never now. Now we can say that’s because people found that form of evangelism to be unproductive, but are we just lying to ourselves? Maybe we’re not really all that interested anymore in evangelism and where people spend eternity. Does any legitimate reason exist that you and I can’t help lead at least one person to Christ each year? Honestly?

Have a great weekend.