Application of justice

A while ago, a news story came out on CBC, of a lady that handled OHIP cheques for doctors. Instead of depositing them in the doctors' accounts, she channeled it into her own account, stealing over $400k, and had a lavish lifestyle. In the article, she was quoted crying, terrified that she would go to jail. Curious to see what people would think about someone stealing from the 'rich doctors', I scrolled down and read the comments...

...and perhaps unsurprisingly, people were not sympathetic, and the general consensus is that she should pay it back (which, of course, she can't) and that she should go to jail, for stealing from the public. No pity at all (and perhaps she doesn't deserve any, given that she spent the money on herself), and in many cases, stated that the 9 month jail sentence she was handed to be too lenient. 10 years, they cried. Justice must be served, says them.

Justice and grace
Once in a while, I would think about the principle of grace. Even though this is a while collar crime, and evidently, didn't hurt the doctors enough that they didn't even notice this until after 4 years, people were outraged that someone could've done something like this, and that "The bottom line was ... some things you just can’t do. No matter how sorry we feel for people personally, we have to uphold the law as it exists." The public agrees that the law must be upheld, regardless of how much the perpetrator insists that the crime wasn't that bad.

I think that's the point that people miss when they ask why a loving God punishes the unrighteous. It isn't that God enjoys dishing out punishment. What parent enjoys punishing their children? But a God that judges to perfectly uphold the Law to ensure perfect justice must punish the perpetrators (else justice is not served). So how can one shout "justice must be served", and still stand against punishment from the Judge?

Perhaps they feel that the laws outlined by God is false and invalid. But even if we don't look at the greatest commandments of the Christian (Love your God, love your neighbour), people agree that there are a common moral standard that people uphold. For example, tenets that's common between Christianity and other faiths, such as Buddhism. But we can never do enough.

But what if someone paid back the $400k and took the jail time on her behalf? But it is precisely that no one is righteous that we need to be bailed out.

Backtracking

I think a good trait of leadership is to acknowledge your mistakes. To accept that we're not perfect, after all, and being humble enough to listen to criticism and to know your limitations.

Communities past
Over the years, co-op has brought me to many cities. Along with it, I got my hands involved in many churches and communities. With that, my email got added to numerous mailing lists that I left intact so I can hear about what's going on with various communities that I was once part of.

A while ago, I got an interesting email from my church in Toronto. It seemed to have involved a pastor criticizing some members of a fellowship for attending normal fellowship events, but apparently skipped fellowship when it was a prayer meeting. It turned out that the said members did not skip, but was simply late. The pastor later on apologized when he found out what happened. To a bunch of high school kids. Don't see that everyday.

Qualifications of an Elder
But the story that's been burned into my mind is one I read a long time ago. Don't remember where anymore, but it went along the lines of something like this: there was a teenage son who's dad was an elder at their local church. The teen did his share of teenage rebellion. Can't remember what he did, but it was probably something serious. Although the dad has tried to speak to his son on several occasions, he wasn't able to get him to listen.

Finally, he sat his son down and told him this: "I know that I can't make you see things my way. I can't force you to listen. But if you continue to behave like this, I am going to have to quit my post as an elder."

The son understood the implications immediately. The two verses that applied to this situation would be...

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. 

- Ephesians 6.4

[A man that desires to be an elder] must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 

- 1 Timothy 3.4-6

The dad tried to follow Ephesians, and upon failing, risks violating 1 Timothy. The thing that shocked the son the most is that his dad takes the state of his son more serious than his reputation, is acknowledging that his life isn't perfect, and is acknowledging that he isn't perfect. It was enough to make the teen reconsider his ways.

Recognizing that we're not perfect, and putting our pride on hold, is always difficult. But it is every part of growing, being a Christian, and Biblical living.

MATLAB

And MATLAB crashed (seg fault) at 2.40am. I think it's a sign to go to sleep.

And Canucks won. A Canadian team making finals for the first time in four years. I'll refrain from commenting too much, just another bandwagon jumper. Haha.

News comments

After reading news articles on CBC or Globe and Mail, or wherever, I typically spend some time to skim through some of the comments as well, just to see what people have to say. A few things I've noticed, or stood out in my mind...

General Comments

• I've been listening to some Youtube bands recently, like Boyce Avenue, Kurt Schneider or Kina Grannis...and appreciate the lack of auto-tune in their songs. If you think a given group sucks, I don't know why you would go to their page to obnoxiously point that out. No one is making you listen to it...  trolling doesn't really get anyone anywhere.

Canadian Politics

• General disdain - People on opposing sides really don't like each other. I've read countless comments about how dumb Liberals are or how stupid Conservatives are. Canada has 33 million people. It's not easy to manage that much people. Give them a break sometimes. Also, don't expect to have more public services when you're clamoring for for tax breaks. At least they're trying to do something about it. Someone on the forums noted that the boards are becoming increasingly mean spirited over the years. I can't help but agree.
• Party leaders - Harper isn't the most likeable person, but honestly, no one else could've done better during the Recession. Ignatieff isn't the most likeable person either, but he happens to have more education than more of us. I'm not a Liberal, but I'm glad he's staying in Canada to teach.
• Voter apathy - 61.4% voter turnout. As I was leaving high school, one of the biggest things drilled into me by my World History teacher is that I need to work towards being a good citizen. That means I should read the news and vote, as a duty of democratic citizen. If you're not voting, you really shouldn't be complaining. I was happy to note that more university students came out to vote this year. Not so impressed about lack of attention that party platforms gave towards students and research, but that's another rant altogether.
• Long-form census being long - Is it really hard to believe that tax dollars are distributed according to census results? How about public services and policy making? Sigh...

 British Monarchy

• Queen Elizabeth II - The amount of bashing Canadians have of the Monarchy is shocking. No Canadian taxpaying money goes to England, so why are people so upset that that the Queen is our head of state? She's cooler than our recent arrays of Prime Ministries anyway, as a representative. Being a Commonwealth country is part of Canadian culture. How could people so quick to reject immigrant cultures and promote "Canadian culture" and be so quick to bash one of our biggest culture symbols?
• Governor General - I didn't really follow much of Michaelle Jean, but when David Johnston was appointed GG, I looked up his background...to find that he was actually pretty ownage (Order of Canada, was dean of law at UWO, principal of McGill and president of UW, among other things). When Harper nominated Johnston, he noted that Johnston was among "the best of Canada." It's hard not to agree. I think it's pretty awesome to have someone of his caliber representing our country.

Religion
It seems like people just enjoys going to these pages and rant against religious intolerance, without realizing that they're behaving intolerantly themselves, against religion. Isn't no faith a religion itself?

• Muslim extremists - I am friends with some Muslims. They're pretty nice people. Extremists happens everywhere. Atheists (ie Stalin), Christians (ie Ireland)...apparently, there's even Buddhist extremists. 
• Anti-Christian sentiments - Unsurprisingly, I spend a large amount of time browsing Christian articles and pay more attention to moral/theological impactful news articles. Like the Rapture claims, or the Bountiful polygamy case. I found it surprising that people would log onto a newspaper like Christian Post and bash general Christianity. Makes me wonder how much they actual know about Christians  and what causes these sentiments.

Perhaps too much of an opinion piece today. 

Elections

Motivation
High school education was mostly a blur (actually, undergrad classes were a blur too, now that I'm thinking about them). I remember some minor details about organic chemistry. A bit of physics. Some biology. Almost nothing about calculus (XD). But in terms of direct life impact, Social Studies has had the heaviest direct lasting impact on me: regular reading of the news, and being a more aware citizen. Social Studies has repeatedly attempted to drill into my head that voting and being an aware citizen is a responsibility of a citizen in a democratic country. Democracy only really works when its members participate. Voting is a privilege, like drivers licenses. When I voted in the 2008 election, that was my biggest motivation to vote.

But since, I've gained another reasoning: my faith. I've realized that Evangelicals tend to crowd amongst ourselves. "What? Unchristianly influences? Lets pull out"...as William Craig noted in his article:

Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas?

...For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.

- Charles Malik (Quoted in In Intellectual Neutral)

[...our seminaries] produce pastors, not scholars, is that it is precisely our future pastors, not just our future scholars, who need to be intellectually engaged and to receive this scholarly training. Machen's article was originally given as a speech entitled "The Scientific Preparation of the Minister." A model for us here ought to be a man like John Wesley, a Spirit-filled revivalist and at the same time an Oxford-educated scholar. Wesley's vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy, and the science of his day.

- William Craig (In Intellectual Neutral)

What he is trying to say is...Christians are so focused on just a single field (spiritual stuff, for example) and not about science or archeology, that we're propelling the stereotype that Christianity is scientifically backwards and not intellectually viable in today's day and age. As a result, when Christians pull out of scientific debates (and, given the context of this post, political/philosophical debates as well), which simply allows the "rest of the world" to continue as is, without Christian influence, which just allows the world to become more secularized. That's the reason he gives for his participation in religious, scientific and philosophical debates. That's also the reason why we should go out and vote.

Details about the Election
Since I'd be in Waterloo anyway between terms, I thought it would be interesting to sign up to work at the May 2 election. Coming from Electrical Engineering (at Waterloo, ECE is like 50% asian, 45% brown), you don't often walk into a room that's 90% filled with old Caucasian retirees...but I guess that's the typical demographics that can work on a Monday election. Maybe that's why they stuck me at the UWP polling station. Haha.

You should've gotten a Voter Information Card in your mail that tells you what your voting station is, based on your home address. Vote there. If you're not in your home region on May 2 (like myself), you could still register in KW, as long as you have a photo ID and proof of local residency (so like a utility bill or something). If your KW residency region is voting in UWP (you can check here), you can use your VIC as proof. Though, I'm guess that stuff will get lost in the mail between terms, so I'm not really expecting that much people using VICs as proof of residency at my polling station. Thus, the best thing to do is to participate in advance polling at your home region (which starts today, till the coming Monday).

Links and information
Rick Mercer (of "Talking to Americans" fame): video link. Apparently his videos are the instigator of "vote mobs" that's been popping up around universities all over the country. It's a short video with a simple message: university students need to go out and vote. He's right though. Not that much platforms addresses us, the university students. And no one cares about NSERC (funding agency for university research). Sighs.

In case you didn't want to look at everyone's platforms and figure out who's standing for what, CTV and Globe and Mail both have a platform summary of the major parties. And if you happen to be in Waterloo on May 2, your vote is pretty critical. Peter Braid, the current Kitchener-Waterloo MP, won by just 73 votes (though, it says 17 votes in the Waterloo Record) in 2008.

Elections Canada links: Information for students. IDs needed for voter registration at polling day (also applies if you're not in your home region).

Okay. Enough soap box for a day.