Month: September 2025

Years ago, while working a summer office temp job, I met a guy who had just graduated from a mainline theological school (this was before I had even thought of going to one myself). We hit it off immediately.

But we disagreed (amicably) on certain theological matters. He had been taught, for instance, that the main mission of the church was to address the injustices implicit in the outward structures of society – in short, the Social Gospel.

Partly because I was a child of the 60s, I wasn’t buying it. I had learned to question the reliability of such “worldly” solutions and instead sought to delve into the soul in search of life’s deeper meanings.

My prior search, defined mostly by the urgencies of the counterculture, had led to its inevitable dead-end. In its aftermath, I began exploring other avenues of enlightenment. I became interested in psychology and philosophy; then, finally, biblical Christianity.

Continue reading “Champagne Dreams and Caviar Wishes”

In a recent interview, Richard Werner, the noted economist who, among other things, coined the term “quantitative easing,” tells the story of how Deng Xiaoping, shortly after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, went to Japan hoping to learn from their economists how to fix China’s then moribund economy.

According to Werner, Deng was asked if he wanted the “official” version of the truth or the “real” one. Having spent considerable time in Japan, Werner notes that the Japanese as a people are remarkably honest and eager to speak the unvarnished truth. Yet their culture, curiously, demands two separate versions of the truth.

Werner goes on to suggest that one of the reasons Japanese businesspeople spend so much time together after work, often in bars and restaurants, is that the “real” truth can be spoken, rather than the “official” version required at the office.

Continue reading “Discomforting the Comfortable”