In order to be vital and relevant, Christianity must be able to demonstrate a metaphysical core for spirituality and holiness—not merely a behavioral, psychological, or moral philosophy. A Trinitarian metaphysic, a philosophy of the nature of being, provides just such a vibrant and inherent foundation. Trinity is and must be our stable, rooted identity that does not come and go, rise and fall. This is the rock of salvation.
.. most Christians reversed the original Trinitarian use of the word person—as one who is a dynamic sounding-through—to an autonomous self that is separate and independent.
.. Most Christians have focused on overcoming the gap between Divine Personhood and human personhood. It largely became a matter of viewing sacraments as magical if you were Catholic or Orthodox or a transactional notion of strong belief or moral behavior if you were Protestant
.. God clearly loves diversity! It is only we who prefer uniformity
.. Unity is diversity embraced, protected, and maintained by an infinitely generous love.
.. Uniformity can be achieved by coercion, shame, and fear. Unfortunately, most churches have confused uniformity with true spiritual unity for centuries. But church formed in this way is by definition not the church. As Catherine LaCugna says, “The nature of the church should manifest the nature of God.”
Ask HN: How does diversity improve product development?
One of the recent emails said diversity improved products. I’ve racked my brains and can’t think of how this can be the case–on the whole.
I could understand having someone with cultural knowledge doing UX. But, say, a programmer? Does, for example, a Welsh person create better APIs by virtue of being Welsh? That doesn’t follow!
Not having people who represent your main/large user groups does seem problematic.
I don’t think it calls for automatic diversity, still. Instead, a definite consideration of who is using the product.
The other thing I will suggest is that in order to have diversity internally, you need a certain level of general respect for people of a sort that fosters good communication. If your people are too similar, the odds are really good that there will be implicit bias showing in how you word things or whatever. This implicit bias will be something that seems innocuous to insiders. Most people are not very welcoming of hearing that the way they do things smacks of implicit bias. This feels really ugly to them, so it is incredibly hard to change such things. Even if someone is willing and able to point it out, most people will not only not listen, they will actively deny it. But if you have a lot of implicit bias, most people won’t even try to tell you that you are doing this Thing that excludes them and others like them.
I do blog a bit about such topics and would be happy to pull up a relevant post or two from my blog if you are interested. I have a track record of promoting diversity in online forums and I appear to be the highest ranked openly female member of HN.
Trump convinces fewer and fewer Americans that his administration is ‘a fine-tuned machine’
The latest Pew poll reveals that “Trump’s overall job approval is much lower than those of prior presidents in their first weeks in office: 39% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove.” He remains a divisive president, with “75% either approve or disapprove of Trump strongly, compared with just 17% who feel less strongly.
.. Trump would have us believe no one cares about his ethical problems. That is false:
Four-in-ten say they are either very (24%) or somewhat (16%) confident that Trump keeps his business interests separate from the decisions he makes as president. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they are either not too (15%) or not at all (43%) confident that he is doing this.
.. Young people and highly educated adults express particularly low confidence that Trump is keeping his business interests separate from his decision making as president.
.. “Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in the U.S. makes the country a better place to live; fewer (29%) think growing diversity in the country does not make much difference, and just 5% think it makes the country a worse place to live.”
The lesson of the years we have spent fighting terrorism since Sept. 11 is that every time we depart from our values we worsen the very problem we are trying to contain. We must never allow our values to become the collateral damage of a search for greater security. Shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer. Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength.
If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire. We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against.
.. we do it to uphold the United Nations conventions and standards we fought so hard to build after World War II, for the sake of our own security.
If we Americans say that these obligations are no longer important, we risk a free-for-all in which even more refugees are denied a home, guaranteeing more instability, hatred and violence.
If we create a tier of second-class refugees, implying Muslims are less worthy of protection, we fuel extremism abroad, and at home we undermine the ideal of diversity cherished by Democrats and Republicans alike: “America is committed to the world because so much of the world is inside America,” in the words of Ronald Reagan. If we divide people beyond our borders, we divide ourselves.
The lesson of the years we have spent fighting terrorism since Sept. 11 is that every time we depart from our values we worsen the very problem we are trying to contain. We must never allow our values to become the collateral damage of a search for greater security. Shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer. Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength.
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