Dear Customers,
Please note that we have moved to a new location! Same town and same phone numbers.
Toy Wonders, Inc.
135 W. Commercial Ave.
Moonachie, NJ 07074
tel: 201-229-1700
fax: 201-229-1711
A few shipments arrived this week. If you log into your account at www.toywonders.com, before clicking on any of the links below, approved wholesale accounts will see wholesale pricing.
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Thank
you
Lu
Toy Wonders, Inc.
www.toywonders.com
201-229-1700
God and the Art of Toy and Diecast
Marketing
A Conversation on Marriage (part 2 of 2)
By L. S. Su
A few weeks ago, two of my high
school buddies came into town. It's a tradition that we started
a few years ago. We gather, play tennis, and head into NYC to
watch an afternoon's worth of US Open tennis. What continues
to bond all of us is tennis. If it wasn't for this sport, we'd
definitely see much less of each other. In our youth we had
all played on the same high school tennis team. Reflecting back,
our tennis team almost never came to existence; This was because
no teacher in our upstate NY high school wanted the position
as Boys Varsity Tennis Coach. Fortunately for three of us, one
older teacher with arthritic hips who knew next to nothing about
the sport stepped up and took the position. So wherever you
are now coach Lou Gannet (aka "the Skipper") -thank
you!
In the evenings, our conversations
over beer got very philosophical. What made the conversation
interesting is that one of my buddies is an agnostic, but not
the type that believes that God is unknowable; His attitude
is that if enough credible evidence comes up, he could be persuaded.
My other buddy has assembled his own spiritual belief system
from his own personal experiences. This buddy of mine will take
a week off just to attend meditation camps and seminars. Whenever
we contemplate God, he starts speaking like Morpheus in the
Matrix trilogy. Very profound sounding prose will come forth
and you are forced to stop listening in order to get your head
around what was just said.
He'll say a lot of spiritual sounding
things like, "Everything that exists was created by God,
therefore everything is part of God and everything is God."
A lot of new age philosophy use
this same type of logic, but usually substitute God with some
type of force or energy that seems to have a consciousness.
"Just because you create something
doesn't necessitate that it is part of you," I replied.
"That thing you design and make might reflect aspects of
your personality; but that object isn't you."
"How can God create something
that is not part of him?" my buddy asked.
For me there was a total disconnect
here. I think I was looking at the swing set in my backyard
at that time. Why does my buddy think that swing set is me?
Granted it's wobbly, creaky, and getting old and unattractive
(so it reflects what I am like) but the swing set is not me.
Why does my friend think that because God created us, we are
part of him and therefore we are God?
"There is a fundamental Christian
tenet that I accept as true, which prevents me from accepting
your conclusion," I stated.
"What's that?" asked
my buddy.
"God exists, and you're not
Him."
"Wow!" my buddy's reply
and I could see he was pondering this thought that directly
conflicted what he believed.
Later in the evening, the conversation
turned towards the subject of marriage. I think the Kim Davis
incident started us on this topic. For those of you who do not
know, Kim Davis is/was a county clerk down in KY who has refused
to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. This was despite
a 5 to 4 decision U.S. Supreme court made in June of 2015 making
same sex marriage legal in all states.
I remember there was a politician
who said something to the effect that Ms. Davis should resign
her position because she is unwilling to carry out one of the
responsibility that she's been hired by the government to perform.
I then wondered if that same politician would resign his position
that he worked most of his life to achieve, if faced with a
similar situation. A situation where something is made legal
and you are now compelled to do something you think is morally
wrong.
Something to the effect of, "We
probably need to keep one's own religious beliefs out of the
laws we make for the nation," was offered up.
I voiced my disagreement here.
The laws that we pass as a people reflect one's own beliefs
and morals. So if people in a particular area believe that say,
murder is wrong, the people of that area will pass laws and
mete out penalties in an attempt to protect its people from
being murdered. To exclude people from the law making process
because their belief that stealing is wrong also happens to
coincide with a religious point of view, would be discriminatory.
Is the belief that murder is wrong a religious or non-religious
belief? I would argue that murder is wrong whether there are
laws in the land making it legal or not. I would also argue
that murder is wrong whether religion exists or not.
Less than 75 years ago, it was
legal in Germany to murder Jews and take their property. Eventually
when men who where brought to trial on this, they used a defense
that the law in their land made it legal and they were simply
following orders as any good soldier should. Just because something
is legal doesn't make it right. But for this to be true, I've
concluded there must be a higher law in place that supersedes
all human laws and religious belief systems. So for example,
murdering your neighbor for not returning something he borrowed
is wrong, regardless of human laws and religion. But where does
this "higher law" come from? If there is no higher
law than what a sovereign country puts forward, then many dictators
should be acquitted and not even brought to trial.
For about an hour, we kept talking
in circles about the purpose of marriage. I knew why too. All
three of us had different world-views. A world-view answers (or
tries to answers) questions of origin, meaning, morality and
destiny. Your world view serves like a lens on a microscope
on how you see and see and later interpret things. And for this
particular object we were examining (marriage) all three of
us brought different lens.
So for instance one of my friend's
world-view was:
Origin: unknown and maybe unknowable
Meaning: purpose is up to the individual to define for themselves
Morality: right and wrong is up to the individual or people
to define for themselves
Destiny: unknown and maybe unknowable
With this type of world-view, an
individual's own freedom and happiness will take priority when
it comes to issues of right and wrong. And my high school buddy
has the attitude that as long as it doesn't harm anyone else
then the activity should be permitted. But embedded into this
view point is that every individual is a sacred being. Where
did he get that belief? My buddy needs the US Constitution in
order to believe that? I know my friend well by how well he
treats others that he doesn't need a document written a few
hundred years ago. So a higher law is also in place for him,
but he just doesn't know its origin.
The issue I have with this type
of morality (i.e. it should be made lawful as long as it doesn't
harm anyone) is that marriage will then become something more
self-centric and if your bar of happiness isn't met, then you
are going to want to ditch the marriage. Another issue I have
is that that this world-view doesn't take into account origin
(who made me?) and destiny (what was I made for?). And I totally
get it; If your world-view on our origin and destiny is unknown/unknowable,
then your purpose in life is not going to exert an influence
on your view point on morality. So in this particular case,
this buddy would also have great difficulty in telling me what
marriage is not.
I think it will be only a matter
of time before polygamy is made legal in our land, because the
exact same arguments used for the legalization of same sex marriage
can be used (i.e. due process and equal rights). We also deliberated
whether marriage could be defined outside of two persons and
talked about the movie "Her", which all three of us
saw. I think it was very well done movie about a guy who builds
a emotional connection and falls in love with a computer operating
system. The plot seems stupid, but I think the movie brought
up serious questions on what is love and what is marriage.
Though we did not come up with
a consensus on what the purpose of marriage is, we did agree
that the purpose of marriage is strongly tied into the meaning
of life. And then we wrestled with the question, "What
is the meaning of life?"
"Is the meaning of life up
to each individual to decide?" I asked. "If it is
then the answer is going to be different for everyone. Or is
it something that needs to be revealed to us?"
Since one's world-view (or lack
of one) influences how you see and interpret deep questions,
questions in life like, "What is the purpose of marriage
or the meaning of life?" will fall into multiple categories:
origin, meaning, morality and destiny. I felt because my two
buddies lack of a cohesive world view that gave them difficulty
in explaining what they thought the purpose of marriage was
for. I felt it was a kin to picturing marriage as this very
complex mathematical algorithm, but then also telling me that
the foundation on how numbers and operations like addition,
subtraction and multiplication work are subject to change because
there are no absolutes.
"So from what I am hearing
from both of you, one of the main purposes of marriage is for
your own personal happiness correct?", I had asked.
They didn't answer the question.
Maybe because to answer "yes" would sound too shallow
or self-conceited.
"What does the good book reveal?"
my spiritual buddy asked. My buddy that night had said that
he finds it very interesting that when we talk about philosophical
stuff, usually the first three worlds out of my mouth is "In
the Bible." He sort of said it in a way as a complaint
and said something to the point that we don't embrace the way
you do the Bible as the source of truth.
"What do you think purpose
of marriage is?" my buddy asked.
"I don't know if you are going
to like my answer, because it's rooted in the Bible which I
know you don't embrace to the level that I do," I replied.
"Then of course we would like
to know," my other buddy asked.
"The purpose of marriage is
directly tied into the purpose of one's life. God made us for
his own pleasure and for a purpose. And from my interpretation
of what the Bible says, that purpose is to......... glorify
God."
"How do you go about doing
that?" was asked.
"Seek to become like Him,"
I replied,
"How?"
"Be holy."
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