Youtube Crystal Ball

I believe I may have been granted a glimpse into my future.

*Update* Youtube keeps trying to take this video down. Perhaps they are scared of it's mystical powers. So here she is:

Eschatology of Being Right

I hope entering into heaven (eternity, the new heaven and new earth) is a transformative, revelatory event, and does not simply afford me the opportunity to say, "I told you so."

This Really Is Our Baby

Amy and I just got back from our first ultrasound. We are told (by the Doctor herself and the caption on the pic) that this is our baby. There is only one. Which is both a relief and letdown.

We also heard the heartbeat.

It was sort of a liquid percussive sound. It was strange. And that little thud just changed my life. This whole thing just got a lot more scary and a lot more beautiful. In other words, a lot more real. This isn't life in the abstract "vote pro-life" sense. This is an actual peanut-sized life inside my wife. And I helped put it there. How ridiculuous is that?!

Father's Day

As you all probably know, this Sunday is "Father's Day." I could rant about how such holidays (holy-days) have no ontological reality, but are grounded in a secular ecclesiology, being simply manufactured by rebellious authorities in attempt to co-opt our bodies and souls into a narrative other than the Christian story.

I could. But I will not. Because I want to celebrate it. And I want you to congratulate me (or even send me presents). Because I'm going to be a dad!

Yes, my motives for celebrating and sharing are entirely selfish.

Amy and I have had our first doctors appointment. We're about seven weeks along and everything looks good. No, that is not our ultrasound. But we are having one next week to see if we're having twins, since they run in my family (sort of).

Our due date is January 29. So, we're enjoying every Friday and Saturday morning (our days off) we can between now and then, because after that, it doesn't matter what day it is, sleeping in will be a rare treat, like being moved by a Cameron Diaz movie.

Well Give You Six Bibles For Your Homes and Gardens

"When the European missionaries came (to Africa)...the Africans had the land and the Europeans had the Bible. The Europeans asked the Africans to close their eyes in prayer. When they said amen and opened their eyes, the Europeans had the land and the Africans had the Bible. But the Africans got the better end of the deal (Tutu) concluded, because the Bible then gave them the rational to ask for their land to be returned and their rights to be respected."

- Desmond Tutu, as paraphrased by Brian McLaren in The Last Word and the Word After That

From Our Cold Dead Hands

"Sometimes the value of a thing lies not in what we get by means of it, but in what we pay for it - what it costs us."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

I have no doubt that the way I am about to use this quote is unfaithful to the way Nietzsche originally intended it. But little bones of scripture have for years been lifted from the ribcage of a lamb and used as vertabrea to build a serpent. So I am claiming this method for the lamb.

What does Jesus, what does Christian discipleship, cost us?

Nothing. It is a free gift.

No. This Jesus who requires nothing of us is indeed an idol. Nietzsche was more right than he knew. Let's get beyond the easily regurgitated Sunday School answers and the abc's of salvation. What does it cost us? What does it take from us?

Our sinfulness.

The gift of God's Son wrests this from us; and yet it is so precious to us.

Movie Meme

Wil's meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
Iron Man

2. One movie that made you cry
A Thief in the Night (I was in first grade at a Christian school in Texas when they made us watch this terrible - yet, to a first-grader, terrifying - precursor to the Left Behind dribble).

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Raiders of the Lost Ark

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Pulp Fiction

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
Music and Lyrics

6. One movie you hated
Almost Heroes

7. One movie that scared you
The Descent

8. One movie that bored you
Doomsday (Neil Marshall, I thought you were better than this)

9. One movie that made you happy
Tender Mercies

10. One movie that made you miserable
The Serpent's Egg

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
None really...unless you count high school boys trying to sneak into Showgirls. I wasn't down with that.

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
James from Ratcatcher

13. The last movie you saw
The Black Dahlia

14. The next movie you hope to see
8 1/2

15. Your favorite movie (I added this one)
Persona

Death Metal Puppy

My description line above promises some metal. So every now and then I have to come through. Enjoy. Throw your neck out.

Perception is Fickle

Velocity Meadows
by Mark Strand

I can say now that nothing was possible
But leaving the house and standing in front of it, staring
As long as I could into the valley. I knew that a train,
Trailing a scarf of smoke, would arrive, that soon it would rain.
A frieze of clouds lowered a shadow over the town,
And a driving wind flattened the meadows that swept
Beyond the olive trees and banks of hollyhock and rose.
The air smelled sweet, and a girl was waving a stick
At some crows so far away they seemed like flies.
Her mother, wearing a cape and shawl, shielded her eyes.
I wondered from what, since there was no sun. Then someone
Appeared and said, "Look at those clouds forming a wall, those crows
Falling out of the sky, those fields, pale green, green-yellow,
Rolling away, and that girl and her mother, waving goodbye."
In a moment the sky was stained with a reddish haze,
And the person beside me was running away. It was dusk,
The lights of the town were coming on, and I saw, dimly at first,
Close to the graveyard bound by rows of cypress bending down,
The girl and her mother, next to each other,
Smoking, grinding their heels into the ground

Truly Free Market

I am part of a group within my church that has recently been looking for creative, and, most importantly, fundamentally Christian, ways of sharing our faith. This led us to ask questions about what our faith truly is (or, what/who it is in). How can we share the gospel if we don't know it?

I am in no way claiming to exhaustively "know" the gospel. But we did quite a bit of hard reading, discussing and praying and came to appreciate that the gospel is so much more than being able to recite the four spiritual laws or walk someone down the "Roman's Road." The gospel is about the inbreaking of the Kingdom. Christ ushered in a new rule that is now mixed in with the here and now. It is about allegiance to a King, and this is about a total way of life.

This King is an entirely different kind of King, so, as his subjects, we are called to live an entirely different kind of life. Sharing the gospel is living in such a way that it invites others to come and participate in the Kingdom of God, in the here and now, in the ordinary parts of everyday life, as we wait for the Kingdom to come in its fullness.

This is a big task. So, again, I am in now way claiming that we have figured out how to do this perfectly. But I think we're headed in the right direction.

We realized all this means that the gospel even has something to do with economics. How we value, buy, use and get rid of stuff. So we came up with something we decided to call the "Truly Free Market."

Here's how it worked/works: First we asked our congregation to go out and buy some new clothes for us to give away. We didn't ask for anything ridiculous, simply that when people went out to buy something for themselves, that they think of someone else as well. We also asked for new stuff because we wanted to show people we loved them, and old underwear full of holes says, "here, you throw this away," not, "we love you."

Our congregation responded with incredible generosity. We received hundreds of articles of (good) clothes and over $1,000 in monetary donations we used to buy more clothes (Old Navy clearance rack is awesome for kids clothes, by the way) and diapers, toothbrushes, bottles etc. We then took all this stuff down to a pre-school and set it all up like a garage sale. Except nothing was for sale. We gave it all away.

I was a little surprised how reluctant people can be to receive a gift. We are so conditioned to think something must be earned. One lady even started yelling at one of our girls, saying "Liar! Nothing is ever free!"

She said, "Except maybe this stuff?"

However, not all had such a hard time realizing what this was all about. Once people accepted that we simply wanted to give gifts the responses were as much a gift to us, perhaps more so, that what we gave them.

Especially the kids. You could tell they were used to getting second-hand crap. My wife, Amy, would begin to walk them around to "shop" and they would be all detached and jaded, until she would hold something up and they saw that it really was cool stuff. At those moments, the looks on their faces were worth more than all the stuff we gave away combined. They then went into a funny little exercise of picking up just about everything and asking, "How much for this? How about this? Is this free too?"

Now, I'm not saying that everyone there thought about the event in terms of economics. But, whether they realize it or not, everyone involved learned something about the economics of the Kingdom. It is one based not in shortage or supply and demand and the "freedom" to use this for one's own benefit, but in abundance and grace and therefore in the exchange of gifts for the good of another. Our Lord is one who gives amazing gifts, so we desire to be a people who give gifts too. I pray that as we do this people will come into the sphere of the Kingdom.

UPDATE:
If you're interested, Eric has a nice little post with some good links that deal with the economics of the Kingdom and gift giving here. There is also an insightful little comment that links economies of gift with sustained relationships. You know, FYI.

Not Really Funny Anymore, But I'm Going For It Anyway

You were cool again, in a David Hasselhoff sort of way, about two years ago, for about 6 months (don't worry, all those qualifiers don't diminish your former coolness a bit). And while the rest of the world may have moved on, I have not forgotten you. Happy 68th birthday Chuck!

That is all.

Rapture

Have you ever heard me go, "WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" in delight like a 3 year-old girl? No? Sorry. Had you been with me three minutes ago when I first watched this you would have...in fact, if you want to hear it, give me a call before you hit play and we'll watch it together. That would be fun.

Lenten Prayer

I waffled a bit as to whether or not I should post something about my lenten prayers. After all, isn't this supposed to be a time of repentance and humility? And couldn't this be seen as the type of boastful praying on the street corners that Jesus warned us about? But then I got embarrassed and didn't really want to share anyway. So now I am, because now it is an act of self-mortification.

I have recently taken to praying the rosary, tough in a slightly tailored fashion. Instead of saying the Hail Mary on the smaller beads I say the Jesus Prayer and I change the focus of some of the Mysteries (mainly just the last two Glorious Mysteries - I understand that the Catholic veneration of Mary is more nuanced that most people think and I believe we need to rediscover more female heroes of our Faith, but there are still some things I am just not comfortable with). If you are unfamiliar with the rosary and all I'm talking about, here is a good summary of the whole thing.

During Lent the Sorrowful Mysteries are said every day (the agony of Jesus in the garden, Jesus scourged on the pillar, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus carries his cross, the crucifixion of Jesus). The other day, while meditating on Jesus being crowned with thorns, I thought about how at this point, when the world was mocking his Lordship, he was more Lord than ever. He was as much Lord then as he is now at the right hand of the Father and as much as he will be at his second coming. At this stage, in this type of humiliation, we see what type of Lord rules the Kingdom we have been called to be a part of. Here, crowned with thorns, is our King; this crown of thorns is indeed a crown. He is a different kind of King, so we are to be a different kind of subjects.

This expanded what had been a pretty self-centered prayer time into the corporate realm. Almost without realizing what I was doing I changed the Christ Prayer on the following beads to "Lord have mercy on us."

Indeed he has.

Just Good Writing...In A Way

You may have already seen these on another blog or in an email, but that is ok. It's no trouble for me to write these things to you again, because they're funny. I'm not too sure how true the story is, but is goes that these were all taken from High School creative writing assignments.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.



2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.



3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.



4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.



5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.



6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.



7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.



8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.



9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.



10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.



11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.



12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.



14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.



15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.



16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.



17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.



18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.



19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.



20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work .



21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.



22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.



23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.



24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.



25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.  

The Coolest Thing I've Found In a While

Heard of the Human Genome Project? Well, there's a Music Genome Project to. And it rocks way harder. Everyone should go to Pandora Radio and set up a free account. You create your own radio stations (up to 100) based on artists you like, and it plays others in a similar vein. Right now, I'm listening to my own Iron & Wine station. It's awesome, but don't take my word for it. Go experience it yourself.

I'm Always Up For Some Star Wars Humor

Darth Vader won't just blow up your planet or magically strangle you from across the room, he'll humiliate you too.

This Film's Intense Like Sewing Your Own Stitches and Admitting Your Wounds Are Self-Inflicted

The work of two of my favorite living artists, Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers, (yup, counting the Coens as one artist, because the work would not be the same without the collaboration) comes together beautifully (in a strange sense) in No Country for Old Men. There is not one moment in this film, about the tide of wickedness flooding the world, where the tension is diminished. The Coen's dry, witty humor does appear. But there is no comic relief. These instants only wind you tighter as you begin to care more about this character only to worry about what will become of them now that they've made you smile. And as you worry about these characters, you worry about this world, and this feeling is further intensified by Tommy Lee Jones' amazing performance, which puts your concern on the screen for you to see.

While I do not ultimately share the worldview of the Coens' or McCarthy, there is much truthfulness in their work. Especially this one. Our God is one who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, and while this is the case, the world will never be easily divided into us and them, good and evil. The good will suffer at the hands of the evil and the evil will benefit from the work of the good - which is portrayed masterfully in the next to last scene in which a ruthless murderer is helped by a boy on a bike. The lines between good and evil cut right through each and every one of us, and the only thing that puts on on one side or the other is not chance, but the choices we make. Lets just hope that because of the love of Christ more people will be compelled to go on ahead "and make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold" than these artists think will.

The Church and It's Self-Subversion

There is much discussion, and arguing, and outright yelling going on right now about the church and her formation of doctrine. It is not a new criticism that says the church and her doctrine as we know it is simply the result of Constantine and his political co-optation of the church. That Christianity is what it is because it has been power-hungry from its formal inception. But, thanks to a terribly written novel, an even worse movie and some grumpy atheists, these arguments are finding a larger audience.

Today, I revisited Alan Lewis' "Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday," and found something I wanted to share. He does not deny the role that Constantine and his politics played in the formation of the church's doctrine. However, because of the incarnational nature of Christian theology - basically because God uses people, even the ones who suck royally - truth could (did) still win out, and Constantine ended up, on an eternal scale, shooting himself in his very foot that pressed on the necks of the lowly. But Lewis says it better:

(Forming doctrine is an) uncertain struggle to speak as truthfully as possible, though always fallibly and with penultimacy, (that) happens not in a vacuum of intellectual and spiritual purity, but in the midst of and affected by webs of ecclesiastical, political, and social circumstance. How extraordinary, then, in this case, that it was the doctrine of the Trinity and thus a God of vulnerability and lowliness to which the church's authorities gave clear endorsement in the years and decades following its triumph - however disastrous that establishment of Christendom may have been for the followers of Jesus, crucified by Pontius Pilate. The church did not stop thinking now about the nature of the gospel, theologically anaesthetized by the elixir of political power. RATHER, AN UNDERSTANDING OF GOD WAS SEALED WHICH POSITIVELY CHALLENGED THE VERY NOTIONS OF EARTHLY POWER AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITY WHICH THE CHURCH IN PRACTICE WAS ENJOYING.If ever there was a moment to preserve for its political effect belief in God as monad it might have been when Constantine brought church and state together under a single dominion: "one God, one emperor, one church." In the face of such a claim upon divine monarchy, the ultimate sanctification of earthly sovereignty, the church chose to reject monistic unitarianism for plurality and community within God, the sharing of rule among interdependents rather than its imposition by a single, superior, self-sufficient governor upon inferior subjects. Whatever might be true of the church, of pope and patriarch, of God the church's doctrine said that majesty and glory are revealed in the lowliness of mortal being; that almightiness and power are exercised not ultimately from on high but in the powerlessness of a crucified and buried one; that transcendence and distance do not negate but find expression in vulnerability and intimacy, and in the depths of flesh and loss and death. In such contradictions of the external context, AND SUBVERTING ITS OWN BRIGHT MOMENT OF POWER AND GLORY, the church of Jesus Christ gave birth to a new doctrine which, in spite of everything, bore witness to the scandalous story of the cross by which foolishness, weakness, and nothingness bring to shame all that has existence, might, and wisdom. (emphasis mine)

Here, doctrine seems to provide its own nice critique of those who attack it, as well as those who form it.

May we always be open to the critique of the truth, and remember that it is not ours to own, but rather that by which we are to be owned.

I Really Wanted To Put A Curse Word In This Title

I was fooling around on the net and came across the George W. Bush fansite on myspace and found this little treasure:



I know my blog is extremely insignificant and as much as Charlie, Scott, Pastor John and other like minded bloggers carry out our little cyberspace war, civil religion will persist. But I simply cannot let this go. My conscience would harass me and I'd go home and be curt with my wife and neighbors and dog and would be too distracted to work on my paper that is due before Friday and none of this would be any good for anybody. So let's take a little look at this shall we? This will at least let me think I've done something.

"The thing that separates the American Christian..."

- Wow. In seven words George Washington has succeeded in rending the Body of Christ that Jesus gave his life to establish. It is fitting that he does this in seven words (seven being the biblical number of completion) because he has completely set American Christians above and against every other Christian in the world (remember, England was a Christian nation too). This is a classic (in both senses of the word) example of the powers that be using peoples' faith to subsume them into a nationalistic identity and agenda. If people can be made to believe that their government is the only one that truly sides with God then they will do anything for that government. Even kill other Christians. Because they are no longer seen as true Christians. Because the are not American Christians.

- What really separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is those who understand themselves as AMERICAN Christians have bought into exactly this type of rhetoric. It is no longer our identity as a part of the redeemed, as one of those from every nation and tribe who have been washed by the blood of the lamb and bought with a price (Revelation 5:9; 14:6), that allows us to see others who are radically (culturally, ideologically) different than us as brothers and sisters in Christ (Romans 10:12-13; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11), but our being born into or submitting ideologically to a specific, divisive, nationalistic agenda that estranges us from our Christian brothers and sisters. (FYI: most Christians is the Holy Land are Palestinians. How close are we to them?) This is supposed to be a good thing? That American Christians are better than all other Christians?

Whatever happened to the catholic Body of Christ? Precisely this type of evil. The sheep no longer recognize the voice of the Shepherd, so we answer the insatiate calls of the wolves.

"...from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees."

- Now, forget restricting this to being an issue between Christians. This gorgeous little bit elevates the issue to a whole new level of ethnocentrism. It separates us "FROM EVERY OTHER PERSON ON EARTH?" Seriously? What about the slaves who initiated rebellions (The Stono Rebellion, The New York Slave Insurrection of 1741, Nat Turner's Rebellion, etc. etc. etc.) against the white American Christians that forced them to live on their knees? What about the 1851 Indian Tax Rebellion in San Diego? Or the Texas-Indian Wars, et al?

Well...sorry. My emotion got the best of my pragmatism and I got off track there. Obviously they were inferior to the American Christian's who rebelled against England because they lost to said American Christians. Butt-kicking = verification of truthfulness. Job was soooo wrong. I can't wait to tell him in paradise.

- And I said we'd forget this being an issue between Christians, but I cannot help but ask, "What about the Christians in the colonies who were against rebellion? Some who formed their stance on their Christian beliefs?"

Oh, sorry, I made the same mistake twice. They lost.

It's not like Christianity was founded on losing or anything. I think I'm starting to come around and see how much of a good thing it is that we no longer follow a gospel that is foolishness to the world, that confounds the wise, and uses the weak to shame the strong (I Corinthians 1:23-31). Who wants a gospel that doesn't guarantee us bloody victory over our enemies of flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12)?

Read What Words Cannot Express

"God of all grace, whose thoughts toward us are ever thoughts of peace and not of evil, give us hearts to believe that we are accepted in the Beloved; and give us minds to admire that perfection of moral wisdom which found a way to preserve the integrity of heaven and yet receive us there. We are astonished and marvel that one so holy and dread should invite us into Thy banqueting house and cause love to be the banner over us. We cannot express the gratitude we feel, but look Thou on our hearts and read it there. Amen." - A.W. Tozer

This prayer comes from a little book I've been reading entitled, "The Knowledge of the Holy." Sometimes Tozer's modern Calvinism throws me a bit (e.g. what exactly he means by us being accepted "in" the Beloved - that little preposition bears huge interpretive options and theological consequences). However, Tozer usually escapes many of the pitfalls of modernity by immersing himself in the writings of the Saints. In this small book (124 pgs.) he quotes and interprets through "The Cloud of Unknowing," Miguel de Molinos, Julian of Norwich, The Athanasian Creed, St. Anselm, Novation, and Nicholas of Cusa. We are all, to a great extent, products of our environments, and it's refreshing to see someone, especially someone who had recieved no formal education, intentionally choose to expand their formative context to include the faithful who worked from a completely different set of (often more truthful) assumptions. One would be hard pressed to assemble a group of influences any less modern than the above. (Especially Nicholas of Cusa: Attaining a knowledge of God through the divine human mind that was unattainable through the senses? Calling the knowledge gained through the senses "learned ignorance?" Come on now! Enlightenment be damned!)

Regardless of these little bits here and there that cause me to raise a post-modern eyebrow, Tozer's work indeed "breathes a spirit of devotion." Hold Warren or Olsteen's work up next to Tozer's and they look like a corpse next to an Olympic athlete.

Maybe that was a little to harsh...No. It's about right. Just look at the last two lines from the above prayer, unpack them, then let them rip apart your modern assumptions that reduce faith and worship to linguistic systems and propositions. Oh, and while you're at it, let it draw you into deeper communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I believe one of the signs of a truly faithful Christian thinker and writer is that their own work in one line or paragraph will criticize itself in another section. If this is true, though Tozer is definitely no Augustine or Anselm, he is indeed in line with the writers at whose feet he intentionally sat.