iPandora

787 Dreamliner

Conservatives are often accused of being pro-business while Liberals consider themselves more pro-people and therefore the better of the two.

As a conservative, I accept that accusation and wear it proudly. I am pro-business.

Liberals, in their desire to be more pro-people than pro-business, though, haven’t the foggiest idea they’re actually hurting people more than helping them.

The illustration today comes from the far north-west corner of the contiguous 48, Seattle.

Boeing has just decided to not build it’s new 787 Dreamliner factory in Seattle. The taxes and regulatory environment is simply too taxing. It costs Boeing too much money to expand their operations in Seattle, and so they’ve moved to North Carolina.

In Seattle it would have taken years to navigate the permit process to build the massive new hangars. In North Carolina, it took days.

Because the government of Seattle and Washington state have failed to make it easy enough for businesses to begin, run, and maintain operations, thousands of jobs will be lost directly, or moved to North Carolina, and the myriad of dependent suppliers and small businesses which were supported by the employees of Boeing will lose most or all of their income.

So the liberal mind says “Yes! We showed that polluting monster who’s boss!”. And the conservative shakes their head.

Many people will move from Seattle to North Carolina now to continue working. These are productive and well-payed people who likely paid significant taxes on their income to Seattle and Washington state. With even less tax revenue the city and the state will have to decrease social services to the unproductive public teat slurpers.

Now that can’t make the liberals happy. So they’ll raise taxes on the poor saps left behind so they don’t have to lose any of their bought-off voting bloc.

North Carolina is directly benefiting from increased construction in the short term, and a massive influx of highly skilled jobs as well as the necessary social structures and new markets for delis and theatres and parks and playgrounds. By being pro-business North Carolina will reap the benefits of massive growth in tax revenue without even raising their tax rates.

There’s nothing pro-people about an anti-business environment.

There are caveats or qualifications to 100% business centric government that I believe are reasonable and necessary.

First, I don’t agree with any government, federal, state, or local, applying special tax breaks and exemption from processes for the purpose of attracting a single company. North Carolina has pushed through a deal that makes it easier for Boeing to operate in that state than an average business started by Joe Entrepreneur. Overall, the state is still much easier to work in than Seattle, but I believe, on principle, that the fact the state government had to scramble to build this special package should have indicated their overall regulatory and business environment isn’t quite what it ought to be for everybody.

Second, government regulation is often pro-specific-business rather than anti-general-business. Al Gore profits measurably from “green” technology. He’s put his money where his mouth is. Pro-green regulation benefits him directly as companies will work with his outfits to implement the required changes.

Regulation can also be pushed by large corporations which will still effect them, but because they are so much larger, the monetary penalty will be a much smaller percentage of the large company’s operating costs than for a small company. The small company will no longer be able to compete as the regulatory costs hit them hardest.

Regulation can also be used to stifle competition and build artificial barriers to the self-regulating abilities of the free market. Network Neutrality is an example of this. Google and other large content companies are the primary supporters and lobbyists for network neutrality. They are dependent on the infrastructure companies, such as AT&T to actually get their content to the end users, and they want to use the bludgeon of federal regulation to protect them from free market pressures brought by the carriers.

With the caveats that pro-business should mean, in an ideal world, pro-all-businesses, we find that a pro-business government environment is directly pro-people as well.

If governments realized the nature of this, there would be a race to the bottom in taxation and government leanness as states vied for the privilege of being the best for business. And the growth in business would mean more employed people, higher standard of living, and more tax revenue.

The final question is: are they willfully or ignorantly blind?

Previous articles on the free market:

• Chipotle And The Beneficent Free Market
• Walmart And The Healthy Free Market

I, Pandora has had a mixed history on Network Neutrality.

Network what?

Network Neutrality is one response to fears that infrastructure and service companies, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, spell doom for the freedom of the internet as they inevitably begin controlling access to content, enhancing access to content they own, control, or partner with, and limiting access to content they deem contrary to their best interest.

The majority of Network Neutrality supporters want the FCC to step in and set rules requiring the infrastructure/service companies provide equal access to all content and forbidding them from interfering in any way with the freedom of the internet.

Sounds good, right?

As with any other debate, you have to get to the deeper issues. And this debate is rife with deeper issues.

When I first heard of Network Neutrality I was gung-ho for it. I did not understand the goals at the heart of this push.

“Don’t be hasty, master Hobbit!”

There was a reason liberal Democrat leaders were more for this program than Republicans and conservatives. Liberals dream of more regulation and control and private and free systems. The freer the system the stronger the urge to a liberal to regulate it.

My confusion over Network Neutrality did not continue long. I supported it in March of 2007, and by August of that year I wrote about the inherent conflict between government regulation and innovation.

Government regulation is the enemy of innovation.

In the arguments over Net Neutrality, I feel for the plebes. I don’t want my traffic throttled any more than it already is by the ISP. But is it the government’s responsibility to control this? And if we allow the government to say who can access the internet and at what speed, where is our moral authority when the government wants to say who can’t access the internet?

Perhaps I am more libertarian than I like to think myself to be.

Later I quoted Rep. John Sununu (R – New Hampshire) regarding the slippery slope of wishing for government interference:

If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that it’s pretty presumptuous to predict what the future will be. We should be very, very cautious about imposing regulations based on what we think competitors will do in the future and how we think consumers will respond based on what we think competitors will do.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

Oh, yea. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a 60 minutes spot on healthcare and specifically Medicare and Medicaid’s extremely high levels of fraud made perhaps the most blind statement regarding human nature I’ve ever heard from a lawman:

People didn’t think that something as well-intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract um… fraudsters.

People not thinking. Not considering the implications of what they want.

Just because it’s well intentioned doesn’t mean it’s right and good and free of the failings that so plague us mortals.

Are Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast completely good in their actions so far regarding the internet? No.

Comcast has been slapped once for purposely throttling connections to certain types of content during peak times load times.

But is the government the solution?

In my article regarding regulation versus innovation I make it clear that while there is a place for regulation, that regulation is best applied to the government itself, limiting it’s ability to tamper with our system of free enterprise.

There is a question I’d ask of anybody regarding this issue. If Thomas Edison were alive today which entity would be the greatest enemy of his innovation: Government or Business?

Sonia Ericson, writing in TechNewsWorld today provides a meaningful and realistic and proven alternative to network neutrality: private control.

ICANN is currently the organization closest to being “in control” of the internet.

It’s a private organization which controls the distribution and changes to the domain names which make the internet navigable.

(A)sking the FCC to “protect” the Internet means inviting government oversight, which injects more politics — not less — into the operation of the Net.

Sonia then talks about someone I’ve met:

Ashwin Navin, cofounder of BitTorrent, also says he doesn’t support government regulation of the Net, even though his name appears on an OIC letter. He says he’d rather see Internet service providers come up with a self-regulatory plan based on a pledge to keep the Net open and the creation of a third body to arbitrate. Indeed, Navin says that his own company’s scuffle with Comcast was ultimately solved without formal rules after a netizen noticed that Comcast was degrading service and brought the matter to the public’s attention.

“The problem is disclosure,” Navin says. “Consumers need to know if the ISP, which is the most invisible layer in the stack, is responsible for an improved or degraded experience for any of the services they use.”

Geek Out Alert!

In my days working for Fry’s Electronics, Ashwin’s step-dad hired us to build and repair his wireless network. He introduced me to Horchata and I watched the Blue Angels practice over his backyard. Ashwin and his brother came by once while I was there and I basked in the presence of those gods of the internet, the business minds behind BitTorrent.

But Ashwin has a point. A good point. A point I may elaborate on further in the future.

Suffice to say that information is the grease for the wheels of the free market and capitalism. And the internet, above all else in the history of markets, has enabled the dissemination of information more efficiently and the finding and gauging of information more easily.

Why do we trust the government to act in our best interest when it comes to such a powerful information force as the internet? The government has no competitors to blow the whistle on it’s misdeeds. The government self-interest lies in a dearth of information.

Trust the government and be taken for a fool. I’ll not be joining you in your foolishness.

Some things just fail on their own

The best counter to moral relativism is still the quip “is that so?” delivered with the appropriate raised eye-brow.

Any sufficient response to that query must consist of a positive statement of an absolute value which proves moral relativism to be a fraud at best.

While academics and other invested relativists insist that such verbal slaughter falls far short of fully discrediting their preferred viewpoint, they must first dismiss the truism that any philosophy that is internally inconsistent cannot be truth.

But just in case one needs more proof, consider the idea of FGM.

Female Genital Mutilation, or Female Circumcision, is a barbarous practice found exclusively among cultures whose religions require extreme subservience of their women.

The ugly process ensures women will derive no pleasure from sex with the supposed goal of guaranteeing the servitude of that woman to her man in all matters of sex and children.

The side effects are pain during intercourse, increased pain and damage during childbirth, and increased chance of infection.

There is no way this practice is moral. It produces no realistic, practical, or natural good for the woman, and who could argue successfully such enslavement of women is good for the men?

In America, we can fix this. We can remove the terrible effects of this mutilation. We can restore pleasurable sensations during sex and lessen the pain of childbirth.

That is a moral good.

Now, if some still want to argue that all cultures and individuals can find their own good which may or may not also be good for someone else, let them defend FGM. Let them defend the pain and the suffering. Let them say that action of mutilation is the same, morally, as the American action of restoration and healing.

Sexual Shamelessness

Andrew Klavan on PJTV has an excellent video skewering our culture’s libertine sexual shamelessness. Klavan tends to fall on the libertarian side of things, but I have to agree with the gist of his arguments here. After successfully lampooning Letterman and Polansky, showing them for the shameful cad and the predator they are, respectively, Klavan points out the real result of sexual shamelessness:

A world without sexual shame soon becomes a world not, unfortunately, of endless physical pleasure, but of unrestrained predators, victims without recourse, and children without hope or support.

But why read my description? See it for yourself (Caution: this does deal with mature topics and current events and uses some slight innuendo):

Why can’t we have more men in the media spotlight of the caliber of Paul Newman?

Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?

Psychology and an increased understanding of human nature and design supports the fact that the best relationships, sexual or otherwise, always occur when there is the most trust. When there is not an expectation and trust in fidelity, in honest and open communication, in the primacy of this relationship before others in a natural and acceptable order of hierarchy, there cannot be true intimacy.

In other words: the more we know, the more we can trust what we’ve always known.

Experiencing wonderful intimacy inside my marriage with the wonderful and amazing Grace, I can only feel sorry for those who deceive themselves and cheat themselves out of the wonderful possibilities.

ACORNs Still Falling

ACORN claimed the reporting duo who brought the monstrous organization to it’s knees last month would never release the tape from their encounter in Philadelphia. The MSM carried their water, as usual.

And yet. And yet. And yet…

This video was not necessary for the slaying of the ACORN dragon. It was necessary for the further delegitimatizing of the MSM. ACORN is already discredited, defeated, and, short of some miraculous event, dead for all intents and purposes. But the MSM was caught with their pants down, their hands in the cookie jar, and with egg on their face in this video.

In Bill Whittle’s assessment of the original take down, he likened the assault on ACORN to a battle where the scrappy underdog takes out the monolithic giant using feints and parries to draw him into a vulnerable position, and then destroying him.

This latest video is yet another blow to an enemy already weakened and yet too full of it’s own self, too invested in it’s own lies, and too spiteful to recognize their own death knell.

See how the mighty have fallen.

In Other News

Mark Steyn points out that when Rush Limbaugh does not say something racist, he’s a racist and ought to be vilified and and run out of town on a rail, but when Anita Dunn, the President’s Media Czar, says something insane and dangerous to free people everywhere, it’s a non-story.

Rush Limbaugh’s remarks are “divisive”; Anita Dunn’s are entirely normal. But don’t worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem.

Read Limbaugh Bad, Mao Good.

Cal Thomas, in World Magazine writes:

The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.

Read “Radio Free America”.

Neil Simpson, always a reasoned and reasonable man ready and willing to do verbal ambassadorship with those with illogical or incorrect views, is dealing with a fresh source of readers and their questions (let’s see if he picks up a hint from the choice of words above…):

The moral: Look to the reasons behind the beliefs.  If you have good reason to question the motives of the person in question, that is different.

Read this week’s Roundup.

Wintery Knight, spoiling for a good debate, points out the transcript of Hugh Hewitt’s (the best talk show host, period.) radio debate with Richard Dawkins. The good bits:

HH: Well, you repeatedly use the analogy of a detective at a crime scene throughout The Greatest Show On Earth. But detectives simply can’t dismiss evidence they don’t want to see. There’s a lot of evidence for the miracles, in terms of eyewitness…

RD: No, there isn’t. What there is, is written stories which were written decades after the alleged events were supposed to happen. No historian would take that seriously.

HH: Well, that’s why I’m conflicted, because in your book, you talk about the Latin teacher who is stymied at every turn, and yet Latin teachers routinely rely on things like Tacitus and Pliny, and histories that were written centuries after the events in which they are recording occur.

RD: There’s massive archaeological evidence, there’s massive evidence of all kinds. It’s just not comparable. No…if you talk to any ancient historian of the period, they will agree that it is not good historical evidence.

HH: Oh, that’s simply not true. Dr. Mark Roberts, double PhD and undergraduate at Harvard, has written a very persuasive book upon this. I mean, that’s an astounding statement. Are you unfamiliar with him?

RD: All right, then there may be some, but a very large number of ancient historians would say…

HH: Well, you just said there were none. So there are some that you are choosing not to confront.

RD: You sound like a lawyer.

HH: I am a lawyer.

Read Wintery Knights analysis.

If one does not choose to worship God while they are on Earth, how does one expect to be able to worship God when they reach Heaven?

Christianity is a choice. The choice to accept God’s gift. The evidence of that is a worship of God. If people purport to be Christian but choose not to worship God on Earth, then why do they think they would choose to worship God in Heaven? Worship will still be a choice . . . and the consequence of not worshiping will be no different.

Adventure awaits

Two tousled boys roll sleepily out of bed, pull on their clothes quietly and fill their waterproof bag with Costco muffins.

It’s early Monday morning. Very early.

The fog lies heavy on the lake as they push the canoe into the still, mirror-like waters. The shore recedes quickly and is soon hidden in the pressing cloud.

The mirrored surface shows ripples only from where the canoe has passed and the paddles have gently broken it. The boys, hushed reverently in the tabernacle of nature, speak softly and dip their oars gently.

A duck is seen and quickly lost again.

The lake is large, several miles long and maybe a mile wide at it’s widest, so there is plenty for the boys to explore.

And explore they do.

In one finger of the lake they find a rock protruding scant inches above the surface of the water. The shore is nowhere near. The boys stand on the rock, austerely surveying the surrounding water and the unique situation of standing on such a small patch of land surrounded by so much water.

Several hours have passed now and the sun is now burning away the fog. There are others on the lake. Fishermen and kayakers and people with money enough to pleasure boat on Monday now join the boys and their small canoe is rocked in the wake of the madly rushing power boats and early morning skiers.

There is no more mystery to the lake as the fog is no longer shrouding them, instead it is awash with adventure as they must pilot their frail craft across the sparkling and dancing lake through the increasing traffic on this beautifully sunlit morning.

But now time calls. They must return home to continue with the day’s plans.

With deep regret and great satisfaction the boys pull the canoe clear of the water line and return to the house.

Looking back, this is perhaps the most iconic event of my life and I’m not even really sure why.

It was a good morning of young manhood with an acquaintance I’d not really spent much time with before. But we became friends that day, and in the week that followed we were pals.

The freedom and adventure of the canoe, the lake, the fog, and us surmounting all to stand successful in our achievement of adventure are all crystallized in my memory.

I miss that day perhaps more than any other in my life.

I’m glad that day happened and that it’s a good and powerful memory to me.

With my children I hope to create such memories, and yet not be selfish enough to believe they can all be with me. There are many good times for a father to create memories with his children, and yet perhaps even more powerful are the times the father allows his children to make memories on their own.

My dad was nowhere near when I ventured on the lake with my friend, and while I treasure many memories with my dad, he played no part in that particular one.

Love & Respect

Love & Respect, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, attempts to address the imbalance in communication between married men and women.

Starting with Paul’s admonition that men are to love their wives and women are to respect their husbands, Dr. Eggerichs addresses the differences between men and women and how, in our culture post-militant-feminism has built most communicated love around the women’s primary love language and methods.

I can attest to the accuracy of Dr. Eggerichs ideas in my own life and marriage. I appreciate and desire the love my wife shows me, but I’m most hurt when she, even without malice or intent, does not show me respect. And I’m most fulfilled as a husband when she tells me how she respects me for who I am, and what I attempt and accomplish. Her respect gives me energy and willingness to try all the harder.

In the live-action Peter Pan movie, when the children are furiously trying to raise the gate to escape the castle, Tiger Lily kisses John full on the lips and John, recognizing her respect for him rolls up his sleeves and raises the gate single-handedly. That’s how my wife’s recognition and respect affect me.

The other side of the coin is the love a husband is commanded to show his wife. The different languages of love and respect are neither easy nor natural for the husband and the wife, respectively.

Love & Respect is a good book, overall. The writing is as simple as the premise is profound. Dr. Eggerich uses a large number of anecdotes he’s collected from years speaking and teaching on the subject and counseling couples.

I was personally off-put by his frequent references to his seminars and their success in people’s lives. However, the stories of successes from the seminars are tailored to the specific point he’s making and so necessary, to an extent, to the illustration of his argument. This is a small quibble for an otherwise very worthwhile book I would heartily recommend to anyone married, regardless of the state of their marriage.

Improv Everywhere is funny.

Mixing flashmobs and mass social comedy, they create random acts of… randomness… with the goal of brightening the lives of people around them.

Where’re the headlines?

Interesting

Reason.org reports on a study published in October 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association which busts the balloon of “common knowledge” regarding who clogs emergency rooms and doesn’t pay.

Show of hands: who believes it is the uninsured who use a disproportionately high amount of medical care in US emergency rooms while paying a disproportionately low amount of their bills?

I did. In the face of a lack of public evidence to the contrary and because it sounds plausible. It passed the “stink” test.

Well, it’s deodorant is wearing out and the reek of the rotted corpse is becoming harder and harder to conceal.

(R)esearchers at the University of Michigan … concluded that “available data do not support assumptions that uninsured patients are a primary cause of overcrowding, present with less acute conditions than insured patients, or seek [emergency room] care primarily for convenience.”

(P)atients with public insurance, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are more likely to crowd into emergency rooms for minor complaints than are the uninsured. Only about 17 percent of E.R. visits in the United States in the last year studied were by uninsured patients, about the same as their share of the population.

Additionally:

A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”

Read the whole story here.

In other words, it’s the people already on that paradigm of balanced care, the public option, that are the dead weight on the system. They are leeches. They suck eagerly at the public teat like so many thirty-year-old, basement dwelling, XBox playing nerds living off their own mother’s inability to to force their children to grow up.

In nature the parent birds push their own children out of their nest in a fly or fall choice.

We humans have compassion and a sign of a healthy society is more likely found in their care for their poor rather than the lack of the poor. But to forcibly take from the productive members of society and play the enabler to the myriad sponges found around every willing and leaky faucet is not to help but to kill.

“Where are the headlines?”  a friend asked.

With the wonder of the internet and the example of Big Government and the slaying of the beast ACORN in recent weeks, we must embrace this truth about a fundamental change in our society: we are the 4th estate.

Each and every one of us have the power, through viral spreading of messages through the networks of facebook and youtube and twitter, myspace and orkut, blogs and the wider web, to build a story, however under-reported in the mainstream media, into a tsunami which cannot be ignored by those we’ve sent to do our bidding in DC and statehouses across this nation.

Are you doing your part in this brave new world?

Government Is Big

Bringing home the glory in the Duh! category today, the Washington Post, reporting on Obama’s Executive Order mandating federal agencies monitor and decrease their greenhouse emissions and environmental footprint, noted the government is big.

Administration officials said they could not estimate the federal government’s carbon footprint, since it has never been measured before, but the government ranks as the nation’s largest energy consumer. It occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles and employs more than 1.8 million civilian workers.

Read the whole story here.

Very big.

500,000 buildings?

Five Hundred-Thousand buildings?

What in heaven’s name have we allowed the government to do in order to meet our needs for an accountable system of government?

I feel like Frankenstein’s creator: “It’s ALIIIIVE!”.

And well I should. After all, as an involved member of this greatest nation on God’s green earth I’m one who votes and talks, exercising the rights guaranteed by a Constitution won with the blood of thousands and defended by the blood of millions. And therefore I’m responsible, maybe not for the problem directly, but for the solution certainly.

I’m not one to get into the whole green thing. The clerk at Bed, Bath & Beyond said she wanted to use the bamboo kitchen utensils I was checking out because she’d heard they were more environmentally friendly. I told her I used them because they work better than regular wood utensils, nothing green about it.

But here’s something real greens and conservatives and concerned citizens across the country can all get behind: cut back on the footprint of the government by cutting back on the government.

In a galaxy far, far away…

…where President Obama lives. He was joined recently by the members of the Nobel Prize Committee.  It’s probably more true to say they’ve been there all along, considering who they like to reward.

But breaking information regarding the nature of that world has come to light courtesy of a small, fuzzy friend”

The Real Winner

Ironic Surrealism has the lowdown on the real winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:

The real Peace Prize winner.

Aslan: No Tame Lion

This Sunday’s sermon was another eye-opener for me.

Pastor Todd has been taking us through a series on changes in life, God’s purpose for them, and the tools He’s made available to us in dealing with those changes.

The primary example for changes God walked people through has been the story of the Israelite’s release from Egyptian bondage and subsequent travels and travails to the land of God’s promise.

This Sunday we dealt with the subject of God’s provision for us, using the example of God’s providing manna in the wilderness.

In the timeline of the Promise Land journey, this event occurred just two months after God’s parting of the Red Sea, and only about 2 weeks after God had led His people to an oasis with 12 springs and 70 palm trees. In other words, God’s provision in greater and lesser (though still great) ways was fresh on the minds of His people.

Or was it.

Exodus 16 opens with the people grumbling.

And not just the regular travel pains, this is specific whining and wanting for the comforts of Egypt. God had shown them the Egyptians low regard for their lives. He’d shown them His own supremacy over and above the greatest kings of this earth. He’d shown them his tender and remarkable hand in the smallest of details by leading them to a symbolically perfect place of provision.

And they were already complaining.

Ingratitude is a morally despicable attitude and an ingrate is an ugly person. Yet here was the entire congregation of Israel grumbling at their want in this wilderness and wishing for the meat pots of Egypt.

If any of us were in God’s position, we’d consider ourselves quite justified in being incensed at the complaints of this recalcitrant and backward people. We’d rail at the ingrates and give the whole nation a dressing down they wouldn’t soon forget.

But God doesn’t.

And that’s where it is most true that this lion is no tame lion.

Huh?

How’d we get to Narnia already?

Instead of taking a human approach, and even an approach He took other times in berating the buffoons, God chose instead to prove once again His mighty hand waxing strong on behalf of his wayward and ungrateful and yet fully loved and fully cherished children.

The expect response to the complaints from below would be a diatribe about the history of the universe such as Job received, mixed with the venom of the most vicious Psalm.

The actual response:

“Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you…

At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.”

The closest God came, in His words with the Israelite ingrates was that He was setting this as a test and a reminder:

“the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.”

John Calvin himself had a great issues with the narrative:

It is probable that Moses passes over much in silence, because it is not consistent that the insolence of the people was left without even a single word of chastisement. For, although God in His extraordinary kindness gave food to these depraved and wicked men, who were unworthy of the sunlight and the common air, still He was without doubt unwilling to foster their sin by His silence, and, whilst He pardoned their ingratitude, sharply reproved their forwardness. But Moses, passing over this, proceeds to a history especially worthy of narration, how God fed this wretched people with bread from heaven.

Calvin cannot believe God did not speak out in wrath against the grumblings and murmurings.

And yet, we know that God’s ways are not our ways, nor are our thoughts God’s thoughts. Not even the ways and thoughts of theologians of impeccable repute and highest authority of man come close to the ways and thoughts of God.

So we know the how and the what, but what about the why?

What divine lesson did God have through this surprising and incomprehensible story?

That He is not at our beck and call.

God does not come running when we call because of our call.

God is always there and chooses to act upon our call because He it is His nature to provide for His children.

As a mother cannot refuse the cry of her child, and yet, it is not the child’s cry that commands her but her own design that compels her nurturing response.

As the mother does it for her own peace, God does it for His own glory.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and praise Him forever.

The chief goal of God is to bring greater glory to Himself forever through everything from the vast sweep of the universe to the plaintive cry of His willing children to the grumbling whine of his most wayward lamb.

God does not act based on our need, our willingness, our spiritual health, our closeness to Him, our distance from Him, our height, our weight, our gender, our color, or anything else that binds to us as an attitude, quality, measurement, or idea.

God acts based on His own sovereign will and unchangeable character.

Which is a great relief.

Were God to be like the insurance company you failed to pay premiums to and deny you coverage in time of need because your account with Him wasn’t up to date, he’d be no God worthy of trust and respect and honor and lives sacrificed to Him.

Instead, God works in us at His good pleasure to carry out His divine will and bring about His greater glory.

Does this leave God open to abuse?

From our meager human perspective, yes it does. And the Bible tells stories rife with unfaithful people failing to give God his just desserts until that moment when He brings about the deep darkness necessary to chase those unwilling souls back into His path and He is there, willing and ready and waiting, because He wasn’t waiting for the needy to call, He was waiting for the precise moment when His greatest glory would be achieved.