Drive about an hour into Mexico City, and you’ll come across the beautiful Xochimilco Ecopark. Actually, we just went again this past March, and I was a little sad. What had been a somewhat “wild” overgrown place was now very developed. Yes, developed as a park – it’s still beautiful, but to my taste it isn’t quite what it was.
Ten years ago today we were there with Hannah and Nathanael. I think this is when they were doing some “wetlands” research for school. We had the place almost to ourselves – except for the many kinds of birds and bugs and plants.
Here’s one look – click the picture for a bigger version.
10 years ago today, we were at Kidzania with our friends the O’Briens. Kidzania is a Mexican kids’ theme park, actually a mini “city”, where kids can go to work at popular businesses, or be involved in common services (dentistry, fire fighting…). Since its founding, it has expanded to several other countries.
So – one of the places the kids “worked” at was a Sabritas factory. “Sabritas” is a Mexican snack company, probably most known for their potato chips (sabrosa=flavourful, fritas=fried, hence the name). Of course, after manufacturing a bag of chips, the snack was theirs!
Actually, mixing with missionaries isn’t something that we do all that often! But as you saw from our newsletter, it’s been a bit of a theme in the early weeks of 2023.
We enjoyed, for example, a visit from two couples from the US who are part of our mission (at two different times). We had some fun time to hang out and chat.
We recently enjoyed some “cultural orientation” time in Mexico City, and, of course, some fellowship, with a missionary family who has been on the field for a few months (but I had not yet met them) (picture above). So we saw the sights and had some tacos, and then we all came back to worship with our church on Sunday.
A tradition has been “MK Camp” every spring, and this will likely be the last one for a while for Nathanael! We’re there right now. 🙂 Shari is the counsellor for the younger girls.
We’re in prayer for our church, and other churches in Mexico City, as this week is also a youth camp! Due to previously mentioned conflicts, we’re not there. But I’m sure they would appreciate it if you join us in prayer for the youth and the leaders and organizers. They’re there at a camp out of state until Saturday.
And then – Resurrection Sunday! If everyone coming back from all their camps is still awake to celebrate properly. We’re looking forward to the weekend, which gives us an extra reminder to meditate on and celebrate our God’s great work of salvation for us.
So a bit of a breather over the weekend before plunging into a few weeks of absolute chaos. But we won’t talk about that right now! Just stopping by because I realized I hadn’t updated you all for a while.
We’ve been looking at some biblical principles for art – and in a wider sense, creativity and communication. These are good things created by God, that the world desires to twist to its own purposes.
So, what does the world do? It takes what actually belongs to God – creativity and communication. It denies any dependence on Him. It changes their purpose. And it mixes truth with error.
The world wants to change the truth – hide it – suppress it (Romans 1:18).
And here, concepts like art, communication, technology and justice intersect. CGI technology. Deepfakes. Virtual reality. Social networks. Chatbots. The more we make our lives “digital”, the easier it becomes to lie to everyone. The easier it becomes to build a “world without God”, without any consequences for sin, an imaginary world. Built by human imagination.
We all must have a smartphone – or better, wearable technology. And today we talk about “the internet of things” – connecting more and more things to the network. Adding convenience, but also making everything easier to control from – elsewhere.
If the internet can be controlled, if art and communication can be controlled, it will be so much easier to control everyone.
We saw something fascinating happen over the past few years in many countries. Governments informed us that it was really no problem to have our religious services online. No worries. It was just fine to meet with our families online. Step one.
Step two. Invest heavily in technology. Make it so that more and more people can connect to high-speed internet. (Do a little digging and see what your government did – you might be surprised!).
And then, step three. Find ways to control what’s happening online. Technology, information — communication.
I could give some examples, but I’ll let you check them out for yourselves.
Back in 2021, when I was first working on this topic, all of the news feeds were exploding with the story of Frances Haugen, a former Facebook manager. She was expressing her concerns, certainly some valid concerns, about Facebook and Instagram.
What was fascinating about this was the solutions that the headlines proposed. Here’s one from Mexico (La Jornada) (my translation): Facebook Whistleblower Calls for Regulation of the Company before the US Senate
Another one – EI Universal: Facebook Whistleblower calls on US Lawmakers to Regulate the Social Media Giant
How about the CBC? Ottawa urged to crack down on Facebook after bombshell whistleblower testimony before U.S. Senate
What’s the solution “everyone” is all of a sudden pushing for? To go to “the Lord the Government” and ask them to take control.
It’s not surprising that if people with an unbiblical worldview want to take control of creativity and communication, injustice and lies will follow. Truth will be mixed with error, and God’s truth will be ignored (suppressed). What truth? The truth about the world in general, the truth about judgement, truth about salvation, truth about Christ.
In the USA, President Biden did something in 2021 that had never been done in the history of the country. Something that you probably wouldn’t guess.
There is a commission that is in charge of the design of official buildings in the capital. Upon becoming president, Mr. Biden got rid of more than half of the people on the commission and replaced them. Unheard of! Why was this such a huge priority? Because – a revolution in the culture requires a revolution in its art. In this case, in architecture.
For example, there has been a movement in architecture to make buildings look “anti-natural” – in some cases, even intentionally ugly. And so you have a structure which essentially says, “There is no order in this world. There is no God.” And then, of course, you have engineers who must use God’s order to make sure that the building doesn’t collapse!
You see, architecture has a purpose. It has its own message. In Mexico, we have the National Palace, for example. It’s both a symbol of government and a functional place where business is conducted. It was originally built in 1711, and hasn’t changed much since the Independence. It uses European elements, showing the connection between Mexico and Spain. It’s built on land used by Moctezuma II and Hernán Cortés, showing a continuity of power.
It also uses a style known as “baroque”. This style emerged from Roman Catholicism in Italy, as a way to fight against the Protestant Reformation. It was a new and awe-inspiring style. And so even Roman Catholicism is represented in the National Palace. And we could go on and on. Art has a purpose.
But let’s not make it sound like art is like a functional machine – one of the “purposes” of art is to be simply enjoyed. We enjoy beauty, because beauty is from God, and glorifies Him. Enjoying the beauty of Creation is part of its noble purpose.
But remember this: Art, like anything else, is under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
We’ve talked a little about purpose, truth and dependence in creativity and communication. Next time we’ll talk specifically about how we can evaluate or judge art.
I mentioned in the last post that we were catching up on a lot of personal things – and that has meant a lot of travelling around. And that is not always simple, as you might imagine…
(Edit: If you get our email update, you know some of what has happened over the past few days. It’s probably appropriate to note that this was recorded earlier.)
Of course, we don’t believe in coincidences. If things “just happen”, then there’s really no reason to worry about right or wrong or the past or the future because nothing really matters.
But after last evening’s earthquake in Mexico, the memes of “Wake me up when September is over” were flying all over social media.
Of course, the Mexico City earthquake by which all others are still measured is the quake of ’85. It was the 19th of September. And it seemed that everyone knew someone who died.
In 2017, a massive quake hit on the 7th of September, shaking Mexico City enough to close some buildings until they could be assessed for damage. But of course for the big city the most memorable quake was later the same month – on the anniversary of the 1985 quake – once again on the 19th of September.
Which actually was a mercy, because there had just been an annual quake drill that same morning, so everyone knew where to go and what to do.
Although we have experienced other quakes through the years, the earthquake last night does rate as one of the strongest we’ve felt, although this time there was no (noticeable) damage in our house. It’s strange how different quakes move things in different ways – back and forth, up and down – and it’s hard to predict what kind of damage it will do. Thankfully, this one – although rated as a 7.1, and very close to Acapulco – did very little damage.
We actually received other earthquake warnings last night – one about an hour before this one hit – but this was the only one we felt. We went outside to join the neighbours in the (light) rain.
Knowing that we were in the Lord’s hands, we were even able to be amazed by “earthquake lights”. Earthquake lights refer to a rare and not completely explained phenomenon when you see lights (or even balls of fire) during a quake. Although we’ve seen video of these from past quakes, this time we had a good view. The power quickly went out, and it was dark. And in the sky were brilliant flashes of blue/green light – similar in colour to northern lights, if you’ve seen those. Quite beautiful, actually! If you do a search on social media, you’ll likely be able to find some video. And various related conspiracy theories, no doubt.
The power was off for three hours or so, leading to the challenge of trying to remember which lights we had left on in the house, before going to bed. We almost had them all right – we left one light on, and for some inexplicable reason the TV came on when the power came back on.
The social media crowd also pointed out another coincidence – yesterday was the day in which the supreme court in Mexico decided to decriminalize the murder of babies in the womb, proclaiming that criminalizing some types of murder is “unconstitutional”. Well, I think that these days God could pick any day He wanted to remind us that His final judgement is coming, and it would have been a fitting day. But Mexico City is especially jittery – the day before the quake some areas had drastic floods – floods that literally swept cars down the street.
As you may know, Mexico has also been affected by this year’s hurricane season, destroying homes closer to the coast.
Little reminders to look up, and think about who God is, and listen to Him for a change. And yet, so many talk about the “end times” – but get on with their God-rejecting lives as quickly as possible.
Anyway, we are thankful that those that we know of are safe here. With all utilities functioning today, it was a normal work day for us! So I’d better get back at it.