Albinism is a genetic condition in which an animal---including humans---lacks the usual amount of skin pigmentation.(This often presents an albino animals as white, grey, or pink instead of its normal color.) Elephants, too, can be born albino, a condition that lasts the animals entire life.
Albinism is rare in any animal species. Nonetheless, white elephants are born in South and Southeast Asia, where elephants in general are considered a holy animal. In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the elephant figures in many tales as a spiritually significant beast. Only kings can afford to raise a white elephant, a symbol of his power. (In Thailand, especially, kings would present a white elephant to a member of their courts, but this was actually no gift.) Courtiers who annoyed the king might receive a white elephant, which superficially appeared as a great gift. (Raising an elephant actually requires a lot of space and food, making the "gift" more of a curse than a blessing.) The term "white elephant" is applied in English to any object, business venture, or facility that seems grand but actually is of little value.
Take, for example, airports which were tremendously expensive to build but ended up not being used much because of their location or change in passenger service. (Spain, Canada, and the United States all have such nearly useless infrastructure.) The same is true of highways, bridges, and malls that, when conceived, were expected to bring a great fortune to the communities where they were built but ended up being debt-ridden. Japan, Germany, and Russia at one time or another built super-expensive military ships, tanks, or fighter planes that were nearly obsolete when finished, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. In recent years, stadiums built for the Olympics in Brazil and South Africa have been little used after that sporting event. (These, again, cost much more than they were worth.)
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Editor’s Note:
Launch Your Life is a practical guide for twenty-somethings to navigating life’s twists and turns, and to achieving success in all you do. This excerpt is a great encouragement for people in any season of life who are looking for a local church to call home and a community to embrace as family.
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So, you’re in a new city or a new town and you need to find yourself a good church, but how do you do that?
If you grew up in church, picking one was pretty easy; you just went wherever your parents went. Even if you left your parents’ church for a new one, you probably chose the church the majority of your Christian friends went to.
But perhaps you’re a new believer and you’ve never had to find a church before at all.
No matter our background, we’ve all got certain traditions we’ve grown up with and particular styles we’ve grown accustomed to. For many of us, those styles have served us well, so we hold on to them for dear life. For others, those situations really rubbed us the wrong way, so we oppose them with everything we’ve got.
Which is right? Which is wrong? What about doctrine? Certainly, what a church teaches is critical, but a lot of churches don’t exactly agree with each other on what the Bible teaches. Differ as they may, a great many of those churches still abide by what could be rightly considered their own faithful interpretation of Scripture. |
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