Some Links Are Not Yet Active!
This space will be dedicated to ideas and impressions from our daily lives in Japan. It will not be strictly about just mission or the church or about religion. Life is more than any of these issues and often seemingly unrelated items have strong confluent impressions on our spiritual lives. Sometimes it will be chatty. Sometimes analytical, sometimes only a reporting of events which seem either interesting or likely to have some long range effect. Please let me know if you like it and if it should continue to have a place on The Front Porch.
1. Epson Cameras, Digital Revolutions, the IRS and ME TOO
Last night while having dinner with a group of my good friends, Mr. Okuma showed me the digital camera which he had just used to take a few pictures with. Most of you know that I like gadgets, and so he took some time to explain the camera and then said that the next version would incorporate some things which he had been asked to design. He has his own design company with offices in Nagoya, LA and London. When I said it looked like the camera I had been waiting for, he suggested that I would like the next model even more. It will apparently be in the showrooms in a year or so. You know that even this simple model would once have been considered < magic > , don ´ t you!
That is the story of our lives here. It is a lot like life everywhere though. The future is always upon us, but we can ´ t have it yet. The Church has new hopes and greater opportunities than ever before, but only the patient will see the fruit of patience. We are like the prodigal son. We want to run ahead of our time. We want the future now! I have often pointed out that you can spot a Japanese anywhere in the world even if you have never seen one before. He is the one who pushes the < Close > button on the elevator before he pushes the floor button. Japan breeds impatience, and yet if you do not have patience, you will go out of your mind here.
My wife happened to be leaving the US just as the stock market began threatening disaster and thought I might like to read the latest financial news. She picked up a copy of Barrons and brought it back in her carry-on luggage. Barrons carried an article about the new Director of the IRS. He has also seen the future, and it too is digital. Perhaps he is fooling himself about the rapidity with which he will be able to use that future, but it at least seems he is leaning in the right directions so far. His own manual is 18 month out of date. Presumably he has the latest version.
The only way to keep law and order there is to go digital. Everybody should have access to the very latest manual at least, even if you do not like what is in it! Everybody, not just some new hire behind a desk with a manual with laws and interpretations which are completely out of date! Digital may not every be 100% either, but should be better than what we have now. That was an interesting article. He sounds like someone who is interested in truth and justice to me.
Truth and justice are always issues here too. And life is always in flux. I have been feeling that society is in the midst of a massive change in Japan. I picked up the Shikoku Christian College < Treatises > and discovered that the Sociology professor there was writing about just that. One article from March 98 is entitled in English < A Study on the Family Change in Modern Japan > . He developed his theme based upon the < traditional > home and deviations seen today. Traditionally the man is the breadwinner and the wife is responsible overall for the household. That includes her role as treasurer of the family. Society and life is full of discontinuities, of course, but the most obvious and widespread show a family structure in change. Women are moving into the workplace here too.
Those of you in the US struggling with how to reach people in our modern world structures with all its flux and change have been already dealing with this for some time now, but we are still in the early stages here in Japan. It is going to affect the Church here and its structures. It is difficult to ride the waves. It is difficult to stay ahead of the curve, but we really do need to think about such things, and can use any help in identifying mission structural changes which will be healthy. They will have to be applied to Japan of course, not just extrapolated, but we always have that problem when thinking globally. I presume you at home are thinking globally! We are already living in an age identified as the age of the < premature arrival of the future > . Part of that future is not only digital, it is also global, and these futures are intertwined. If the future is not digital, it will also not be global. And if it is not modern, the new family will not work. But neither also will the old family structures. We need to remember all the time that it is not tradition which is central, it is truth. It is not old or new it is fair. It is not my way of your way, it is God ´ s way. And God ´ s way may not be digital, but I think I can guarantee that it will be (actually already is) something even more wonderful and unbelieveable, and it is not magic either. God is above all that hocus pocus stuff. He is even more unbelieveable, but true. (9/15/98)
That is the story of our lives here. It is a lot like life everywhere though. The future is always upon us, but we can ´ t have it yet. The Church has new hopes and greater opportunities than ever before, but only the patient will see the fruit of patience. We are like the prodigal son. We want to run ahead of our time. We want the future now! I have often pointed out that you can spot a Japanese anywhere in the world even if you have never seen one before. He is the one who pushes the < Close > button on the elevator before he pushes the floor button. Japan breeds impatience, and yet if you do not have patience, you will go out of your mind here.
My wife happened to be leaving the US just as the stock market began threatening disaster and thought I might like to read the latest financial news. She picked up a copy of Barrons and brought it back in her carry-on luggage. Barrons carried an article about the new Director of the IRS. He has also seen the future, and it too is digital. Perhaps he is fooling himself about the rapidity with which he will be able to use that future, but it at least seems he is leaning in the right directions so far. His own manual is 18 month out of date. Presumably he has the latest version.
The only way to keep law and order there is to go digital. Everybody should have access to the very latest manual at least, even if you do not like what is in it! Everybody, not just some new hire behind a desk with a manual with laws and interpretations which are completely out of date! Digital may not every be 100% either, but should be better than what we have now. That was an interesting article. He sounds like someone who is interested in truth and justice to me.
Truth and justice are always issues here too. And life is always in flux. I have been feeling that society is in the midst of a massive change in Japan. I picked up the Shikoku Christian College < Treatises > and discovered that the Sociology professor there was writing about just that. One article from March 98 is entitled in English < A Study on the Family Change in Modern Japan > . He developed his theme based upon the < traditional > home and deviations seen today. Traditionally the man is the breadwinner and the wife is responsible overall for the household. That includes her role as treasurer of the family. Society and life is full of discontinuities, of course, but the most obvious and widespread show a family structure in change. Women are moving into the workplace here too.
Those of you in the US struggling with how to reach people in our modern world structures with all its flux and change have been already dealing with this for some time now, but we are still in the early stages here in Japan. It is going to affect the Church here and its structures. It is difficult to ride the waves. It is difficult to stay ahead of the curve, but we really do need to think about such things, and can use any help in identifying mission structural changes which will be healthy. They will have to be applied to Japan of course, not just extrapolated, but we always have that problem when thinking globally. I presume you at home are thinking globally! We are already living in an age identified as the age of the < premature arrival of the future > . Part of that future is not only digital, it is also global, and these futures are intertwined. If the future is not digital, it will also not be global. And if it is not modern, the new family will not work. But neither also will the old family structures. We need to remember all the time that it is not tradition which is central, it is truth. It is not old or new it is fair. It is not my way of your way, it is God ´ s way. And God ´ s way may not be digital, but I think I can guarantee that it will be (actually already is) something even more wonderful and unbelieveable, and it is not magic either. God is above all that hocus pocus stuff. He is even more unbelieveable, but true. (9/15/98)