The Science of Pornography Addition

A very useful short video on the affect of pornography on the brain. Also worth checking out the fuller piece from Gospel Coalition's Joe Carter on 9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain.

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013

Getting Better, By Charles Kenny (A Review)

The economics of underdevelopment is big business. Books increasingly litter our shelves advising donors and poor governments alike on the best way to address the blight of global poverty. It is usually the case that the more negative and radical the message, the more the book sells. In recent memory we have become accustomed to negative views of the current state of global development, perhaps best exemplified by such pejorative phrases as “bottom billion”, “global south”, “new age primitivity"  and, most recently ,“dead aid”.

An underlying narrative in many of these books is that current development policies are not working and something more radical is needed. Some extreme voices have even urged aid freezes to break perpetual dependency on foreign aid. Charles Kenny’s Getting Better is a refreshing departure from the current pessimism and offers a more grounded perspective on global development.

According to Kenny despite many negative assessments, the developing world is making substantial progress. Rich countries may be getting richer faster than poor countries and though narrowing such income inequalities remains elusive, the developing world is not stuck in the Malthusian nightmare of ever growing and unsupportable population, with little to live on. Instead, things are getting better with those countries with the lowest quality of life making the fastest progress in improving it – across a range of quality of life measures. This progress is the result of global spread of technologies and ideas e.g. vaccinations, girl child education.

Suicides in the USA

Suicides among midde-aged Americans has been on the rise in the United States. More people die from suicides than vehicle accidents :

In 2010, an average of nearly 18 out of every 100,000 people aged 35-64 died from suicide - four more than a decade earlier. In 2010, motor vehicle accidents killed 33,687 people, while 38,364 died from suicide that year, according to the CDC, the government agency tasked with providing research and recommendations on US health and safety.

Among non-Hispanic whites and Native Americans, annual suicide rates leaped 40 percent and 65 percent, respectively. Nearly three times as many men as women in this age group killed themselves: around 27 men compared to eight women per 100,000 in 2010. And the CDC found that, while most suicides were committed with guns, the number of people dying from suffocation and hanging rose the fastest - by more than 80 percent - over the last decade.

Experts are not certain why suicide rates are increasing so markedly among middle-aged adults, but suggested that causes could include the economic crisis of recent years. Suicides have historically spiked in times of financial hardship. The authors also noted that the increase in suicides among baby boomers in their 50s may be a quirk of their generation, as they also showed unusually high rates of suicide in their teenage years.

This pattern is typical of most western countries actually. I was recently looking at UK data on suicides and it seemed to show the critical age is between 40 and 50 years. I was quite struck by that. More suicides are committed by that age group than any other group per capita (accounting for population differences). I think a key factor is loneliness. There's need for the western churches to reconsider how it seeks the lost and emphasise more a gospel that not only rescues sinners from sin but brings them into a family with a true sense of belonging. We have previously touched on this topic here.

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013

God of Diversity

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. (Acts 13:1 ESV)

God the Holy Spirit loves diversity and where He is at work diversity is always present in one form or another. Here in this single verse we see many forms of diversity in cosmopolitan church of Antioch :

(a) diversity of race

(b) diversity of geographical background

(c) diversity of social class

(d) diversity of religious background

(e) diversity of sinners

(f) diversity of spiritual gifts

Barnabas was a 'Levite from Cyprus’. Therefore Jewish like Saul of Tarsus. On the other hand Lucius of Cyrene, was most likely an Arab from from North Africa. Cyrene was a Roman province in Libya. That takes care of (a), (b) and (d).

How Should Christians Engage Society?

That is the question addressed in To Change The World : The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity In The Late Modern World by James Davidson Hunter. He is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. In short, a man who knows something about something!

The book seeks to address how Christians should engage themselves in the modern world. But it is more than that because within this book he explains to us how cultural change comes about. I was particularly struck by the simple but not so obvious idea that cultural change is not democratic but comes largely from overlapping networks. We certainly see this in both Amerindian and African independence struggles. We also see it today why many Zambians have failed to bring about a paradigm shift in thinking. The majority may want a different Zambia but the majority don't run the country. Equally vital are Hunter's perspectives on the nature of leadership, in particular how all of us are leaders in different spheres of influence and therefore inherently accountable for how we exercise those gifts and areas given to us by the Lord God.