BITR: Sandy (and how she wants to go back to Texas)

When I go back and think about why I like Spongebob Squarepants, I’m reminded of an episode I saw when I first actually sat down to watch the show. The name of the episode is “Texas” and it is a story about how Sandy gets homesick and wants to return to her home state of Texas. The joke that got me hooked played out when Sandy was on a bus to leave Bikini Bottom and Spongebob and Patrick were trying to get her to stay. The way they do this is by making fun of Texas. Spongebob turns himself into the shape of Texas, turns to Patrick, and says “Hey, Patrick, what am I?” Patrick replies saying, “I don’t know, stupid?”

“No! I’m Texas!”

“What’s the difference?”

Classic.

Texas deserves to be made fun of because, in my opinion, there is way too much Texas pride in this world. Sure, we do have the song “Sweet Home Alabama” to hang our hats on here. But for some reason it seems to me that Texas has a bit of an ego problem, kind of like it is the state that takes itself way too seriously. Two sayings come to mind:

“Everything is bigger in Texas.”

“Don’t mess with Texas.”

Well, Texas, you just got messed with -- and by a childrens’ cartoon. How does it make you feel now? Do you even realize that you produced Joel Osteen and you’re proud of it? Just think about that for a second.

So I ask the question again: What is the difference between stupid and the state of Texas? The two may be more similar than you think.

30 Hour Famine: Are those cymbals I hear?

Tonight, after a very extensive nap, my mom and I went out to eat. She always likes to hear about the things we are doing at church and she has learned that the best way of getting that info out of me is to take me out to eat – otherwise I’m not talking. We got in the car and headed towards Oneonta, which from what a friend told me is named after Chief Oneonta (pronounced won-un-tuh) and the battle of Pinson Creek. After I told her a little bit about the Famine, she finally asked, “What do you want to eat?” With a slight smile on my face I replied, “Uncle Sam’s BBQ, I think I’d like some chocolate pie.”

After fasting from food for almost 30 hours, I’m in that mindset where I really appreciate every bite of every single meal. This will last maybe a day and then I will go back to taking my food for granted. Still, as I reflect on what we accomplished this weekend (and it’s not over yet), I can’t help but feel good. I can’t help but be proud of all the youth and all the adults who helped out and participated.

Last Wednesday I asked Andy this question: Is it possible to do a 30 hour famine out of love? I mean, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul talks about speaking in the tongues of angels, moving mountains, healing the sick, and all kinds of other incredible things. But his point is that if we do all these things and we don’t do it out of love, we gain nothing. We are nothing more than a clanging cymbal or a battering gong. So my question was how do we raise money and fast for 30 hours without sounding like a clanging cymbal?

It was said over the weekend that the person who raised the most money, at least unofficially, was Lee. He raised over $300. I think that’s a pretty amazing feat for a big, hairy 14-year-old. In fact, I see something very beautiful in that. There is something really special about a young teenager who realizes he has a higher purpose in life, and believes that to such an extent that he goes out and raises enough money to feed a starving kid for a year. Because of what Lee has done, someone in this world isn’t going to go hungry. And when I sit back and I think about how goofy Lee is, it’s so ironic and amazing to know that Lee may be the difference between life and death for some poor African kid.

I use Lee as an example, but there were so many others who took part in the Famine and made a difference by doing so. I think that by giving or raising money, or even by just showing up and denying food for a while, that everyone made the statement that they care.

I guess that’s what I’m getting at with all this. I mean, none of us know any starving African kids personally. I know that thousands of people die each day because of hunger and I never shed a tear about it. Truthfully, it doesn’t even make me feel sad – I just sort of accept it. But even though I sometimes feel like I don’t care, this weekend I could tell by my own actions and by the actions of those around me that there is love in this. We’re not just starving ourselves and banging on cymbals. It may only be a little. And while it may not be a personal love, it is a love of humanity, existence, and life. It’s about understanding that people’s lives are important, even if we don’t know who they are. And with our 30 Hour Famine we gathered together and said we will part with our money, with our time, and even with our own food for a few hours so that people we don’t even know can eat.

I feel good about this weekend. It makes me happy to know that I can make a difference in at least somebody’s life. And to everybody else that was involved I would tell them they should feel good too. Because it makes a difference. It really does mean something. To some foreign kid or family, it may very well mean everything.

BITR: Marilyn Manson

(Let me apologize in advance for the length of this blog. I guess I got a little carried away. In writing this I was exploring some things I've been thinking about lately, and I think I raised more questions to myself than I actually answered. So any insight would be appreciated.)


I find it funny that people really take Marilyn Manson as seriously as they do, especially nowadays. Before the subject came up a few months ago at church I don’t know when was the last time he came up in conversation or in thought. In fact, I half expect him to show up on a reality TV show with Danny Bonaduce and Vanilla Ice in the near future. Two words come to mind: “washed” and “up”. Manson is currently in a court battle with a former band mate over some kind of contract dispute. I don’t think America could care less.

I have a hard time figuring out how Marilyn Manson got to be so popular. He’s put out several albums, made a lot of money, been in movies, and he’s an icon for gothic culture. After listening to his music I sometimes wonder why, because it’s awful. And I don’t mean that because of his lyrics and his anti-Christian message, but because the music just flat out sucks. The best explanation I can offer for his success is that he built his career on shocking people and by connecting to a demographic of people who by some means identified with him.

Before taking on the celebrity profile of Marilyn Manson, his name was Hugh Warner. Part of his childhood included being frequently molested by a neighbor and going through his grandfather’s sex toys. It was during this time when Manson formed his trademark hatred of Christianity. His parents enrolled him in a private Christian school where he was basically an outcast, and apparently treated like one. Stemming from the experiences there, he went on to build a career based on bad music, shock, and a cultural war against Christians, parents, and conservative politicians; which in turn fueled his popularity even more.

With his music and his antics, Marilyn Manson has built a cult-like following which, surprisingly, mostly consists of white suburban kids. I listened to some of his songs and I noticed that a lot of his lyrics are built on a rebellion against people who may be considered good, successful, beautiful, and accepted. For instance, take this excerpt from the single “The Beautiful People”:

And I don't want you and I don't need you
Don't bother to resist, or I'll beat you
It's not your fault that you're always wrong
The weak ones are there to justify the strong

The beautiful people, the beautiful people
It's all relative to the size of your steeple
You can't see the forest for the trees
You can't smell your own [poo-poo] on your knees

I think that this kind of message appeals to people who are considered rejects or outcasts because in a way it validates them. And it does that by putting down the people who have put them down. I mean think about it, you’re a kid in high school and you feel constantly rejected by your peers. Your parents don’t pay much attention to you or maybe they are always unloving towards you, and then you go to school only to get beat up or made fun of. You feel like nobody accepts you or likes you as an individual. They make you feel ugly, awkward, and basically rejected. And let’s say you go to church and people just stare at you and they never talk to you. Or even worse, you get treated the same way you do at school. In fact, let’s take it a step further and say you somehow get the message that God doesn’t love people like you. If you experience this at probably any level, somehow you are going to establish a “Them vs. Me” mentality, and they will be the accepted ones while you are the outcast.

So Marilyn Manson comes along and he writes this music that is a rebellion against those people. He says that all those other people are fakes and hypocrites, and you don’t need them. You listen to his songs, which lift up and celebrate the “dirty”, flawed people – people like you. In a way, this is going to comfort you because it makes you feel better about yourself. It’s going to make you feel above all those people who have been putting you down, which is exactly what you want to feel. And so you are probably going to buy into this and become a huge fan of this guy.

(Let me go ahead and say that I don’t personally believe that in the world there are “good” people and “flawed” people. I don’t think these are true stereotypes because we are all messed up in ways and we are also good in other ways. The difference is in the perception – some people believe that they are the good ones and everyone else is bad. Other people believe they aren’t good and are made to feel like there are other people who are better than them. Unpacking this idea would be another blog entirely. I just wanted to clear that up.)

I remember one Sunday night at church watching one of Rob Bell’s Nooma videos. He was talking about the creation story and the fall of man in Genesis. Regarding the actual truth and accuracy of the story he said something like this: “I don’t think it’s important that the fall of man happened, but that the fall of man happens.” His point being that every day we eat the apple. Every day in some way we walk away from God. And whether the story has historical significance or not, we can’t deny the truth of it in our daily lives. Every day we are deceived by the snake, and we take a bite from the fruit.

I believe the story of Cain and Abel is the same way. In Genesis, Cain and Abel were the two sons of Adam and Eve. Abel was a shepherd and Cain was a farmer. This is how their story goes in Genesis 4.

“In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”

Now the Bible says the Lord went on to punish Cain for the murder, sending him away to the land of Nod, which means wandering. I think this story is extremely interesting because in its simplicity it is saying so much about humanity. You have two brothers who both bring their offerings to God, who rejects one of them and accepts the other. Now I used to think that God rejected Cain’s offering because he didn’t give his best. That was the Sunday school answer I was taught as a kid. But as I look at the text I notice that it never says why Cain’s offering was rejected and Abel’s was accepted. We don’t learn why God prefers the sacrifice of Abel over the sacrifice of Cain. The only thing we really have to go on is in Hebrews 11:4, which says that Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice by faith. Even with that answer, though, you can’t ignore the fact that Moses wrote the story without including why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice. And for thousands of years, until the book of Hebrews was written, people had no recording of why. What did they think of this story then?

Anyways, Cain’s offering was rejected. So how did he react to this? He got angry. I imagine that first Cain was hurt. If he didn’t care about pleasing God with his offering then he wouldn’t have reacted in such an extreme way. I imagine that Cain felt hurt, which probably developed into bitterness, jealousy, and finally anger. That anger built up and then one day when they were in the field Cain murdered his brother.

This reminds me so much of Marilyn Manson and many (not all) of his fans. Angry, outcast, rejected people who react with anger when they are invalidated by society. It’s the feeling of bringing what you have to the table and being rejected, turned away – just like Cain brought his offering to God and was rejected. And just like Cain reacted with anger, people still react with anger when they are rejected by their peers.

I think that more people in the world feel this way, more than just people who like Marilyn Manson. In fact, I think the feeling is universal. We all sometimes feel like Cain. Who hasn’t been rejected in some way or another? Who doesn’t know the feeling of bringing what they have and being turned down?

So what is the church to do about Marilyn Manson? People believe his music influences teenage suicide and school violence. In a small way I agree with this, but I don’t think it really gets to the heart of these problems. There was a father in a Senate hearing on the effects of music on youth in America who believed that Marilyn Manson’s music played a big part in his 15-year-old son’s suicide. Manson responded by saying, “If you want to blame music for someone hurting themselves, then you can just as easily blame Shakespeare writing ‘Romeo & Juliet’ which is something I was taught when I was a kid, and that's a story about two teenagers that killed themselves because their parents don't understand them and I think the key lesson is that parents don't understand their kids. If you take more time to talk to your kids, your kids are going to live happier lives." While I don’t know about the Shakespeare part of this quote, I actually agree with Manson on that last statement. A teenager does not kill himself because of a song. He kills himself because he feels miserable, unloved, ignored, rejected, alone, or all of the above. Maybe he is crying out for attention from somebody. The problem isn’t that he needed to trade in his Marilyn Manson CDs for Steven Curtis Chapman albums. My guess is that the kid needed love, acceptance, guidance, and companionship in his life.

In Ephesians, Paul says that we “do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” It may be easy as the church to think that it’s us versus Marilyn Manson in these sorts of things, but I think that is wrong. Instead I think we need to continue the work of laying down our lives, loving others, accepting those around us, and basically doing those things Jesus told us to do instead of trying to win a culture war against one man. Marilyn Manson is not a threat to us. Hate is. True evil is our enemy. And the Bible reminds us to not return evil for evil, but repay evil with good. Our duty is to love.

Someday down the road Marilyn Manson is going to die. He’s going to be buried (hopefully with all his recordings) and people are going to hold a funeral, say goodbye, and then move on. He is going to end. But I believe that what he represents -- the rebellion, hate, cynicism – all of those things are going to live on. Why? Because they exist not only in Marilyn Manson, but in all of humanity. They live in me and they live in you. The only thing we can do to ultimately win this battle is to live the lives Jesus wants us to live, and to preserve the things that he represents.

BITR: Richard Simmons (and why he is more of a man than Chuck Norris)

Somewhere along the time-line of human history a man came along and established the parameters for "being a man". I have no idea who this man was, where he was from, or what he liked to do with his free time. He was apparently a man of mystery, and very wise. The only thing he contributed to humanity was his unfathomable depths of knowledge in "being a real man". Before this individual came along we never knew that to be a real man you had to chop down trees and leave the toilet seat up. Men wouldn't even think to laugh when somebody farted. If not for this brave, courageous, and masculine human being we would still stop our trucks on the side of the road when we didn't close the door all the way, instead of opening and slamming them mid-drive.

But with these parameters this man set up, he also created a unique stereotype. Times changed, and as the people began to accept these parameters for being a man, they also became biased against those who were different. A shadow crept over the hearts and minds of good-natured people, and they became paranoid. Paranoia turned into fear, fear turned into hatred, and hatred turned into murder. Afraid little boys would stay inside their houses, lay down on the couch, and watch Spike TV while drinking beer. Numerous injuries occurred because boys as young as 6 years old were trying to shave facial hair they never had.

Things turned worse, and before you knew it the stock market had crashed. This wasn't the only problem. Global warming was melting the polar ice caps and sea levels were rising. Hurricanes and tsunamis were battering the coasts of countries all over the world, and earthquakes were ravaging inland. People started to panic, and along with panic came riots and looting. People became their own worst enemy, and before long people began to wonder if anyone would save them from their petty stereotype.

Occasionally a great man comes along that yanks us out of our own prejudices. Someone will look at the world and the people in it, and say "this isn't right." Martin Luther formed the Protestant church because he saw that they were taking advantage of an illiterate people. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up against racism and led his people to a more equal world. These two men are remembered for being revolutionary, tearing down the walls of oppression. Like these two men, there has come a person who has torn down the walls and shown us all what a REAL man looks like:



Richard Simmons has never round-house kicked anybody. He never "laid the smackdown". He never had his own action TV-show. And thank God no one ever decided to make a billion repitive jokes about how tough he is. You know why that is? Because Richard Simmon doesn't need to do any of that stuff to prove how big of a man he is. Look at his afro, and look at his chest hair and tell me that guy is not a man. You would have to be crazy.

If you're stupid you probably don't know this, but it's a known fact that Richard Simmons was born wearing a tank top and ultra-short exercise shorts. And he went on to be a legend. What has he contributed to humanity? Perhaps the most important thing that we Americans need: fitness. America is the most obese country in the whole world. We eat and get fat like nobody's business. Because of this, terrorist groups like al-Qaida call us infidels and want us to die. This should not be. Richard Simmons has contributed years to making exercise videos that teach you not only how to lose weight, but to be confident and believe in yourself.

Think about it. You're an obese, overweight loser whose life is going down the drain. You don't believe in yourself. But you know what? Richard Simmons does, and because of that, you can get through the day. Because you know deep down in your heart that if he can be successful, you can be too.

Blog in the Round: Gilmore Girls

I don’t know a lot about much anything in this world. I try really hard to learn. I want to be able to make smart decisions and have intelligent conversations with people. I read books and listen to people speak on things. I watch educational television programs such as Home Improvement and Temptation Island. You know, TV shows about real life. In conversation I sometimes try to drop a quote from one of these shows. I secretly know that nothing gets a crowd going like a well-timed, “Does everybody know what time it is? Tool Time!” reference. And I confess I didn’t know anything about real love until I saw an episode of Temptation Island where a girl left her so-called “husband” after a passionate and romantic afternoon with some tanned, blonde dude she just met.

But every now and then, as hard as I try, I miss out on something. There is always some tiny bit of pop culture knowledge that slips through my tangled little net of understanding. This is true for the show Gilmore Girls.

I didn’t believe it at first. I mean I really thought that somewhere underneath the wrinkles in my brain was a memory of an episode of this show that I might have watched. So I searched for it. I sat down and made an extensive, detailed list of everything I knew about Gilmore Girls. This is what I came up with:

1. Gilmore Girls is a TV show
2. Gilmore Girls has girls in it and (possibly) a boy, but I don’t think so.

Deeply disappointed about my lackluster knowledge of the subject, I went to work. I believe in knowing and understanding a subject thoroughly before sitting down to write about it. Let’s face it, you can’t write what you don’t know. You basically just have to make stuff up. Ask Jose Canseco if you don’t believe me.

So I put my college research skills to work and made a visit to the critically acclaimed and university-certified research site youtube.com to gather a little information. I looked up Gilmore Girls and absorbed it like a sponge. I watched all the “best scenes from season __” clips, which were all set to Lifehouse music. I also noticed that a particular movie I watched 13 consecutive times highlighted all the kissing scenes in the show, which, since the girls of Gilmore are straight means there are, in fact, boys on the show. But still it’s probably just the same guy in a different costume every show.

I watched one clip which was about 10 minutes long of some person’s favorite scene of all time from Gilmore Girls. I just knew that it was going to give me all the information and knowledge I needed about this show, so I clicked. This scene showed the girls talking about something that, to me, didn’t seem all that important at all. In fact, I already knew all I needed to know at that point: girls talk a lot. Nothing revolutionary about that. I fast-forwarded the scene and they just kept talking, and they talk fast which means there was a lot to listen for in that scene. I didn’t pay attention to any of it. In fact, I started forming a conspiracy theory in my mind about how Rory is really a communist spy and she is just being nice because she wants to discover plans to some top-secret, American cold war weapon. I’m sure if I watched the entire show to the end I would have found out I was right, but I stopped the clip about 3 minutes in, frustrated because I hadn’t seen any explosions or car chase scenes yet.

I think that to watch and be a fan of a show like Gilmore Girls, you have to have something really special that some people just don’t have. Kinda like how Chinese people are the only ones who actually believe dragons are real. They believe it because they are born with it, and while the rest of us may think dragons are cool and a great idea, we will never truly understand. In the same way, the rest of us don’t understand why Gilmore Girls is a popular show. But I offer the explanation that we just don’t have the one, special, God-given ingredient that makes people sit through episode after episode of girls talking to each other. That ingredient is estrogen.

Building a Bridge Across the Infinite

Tonight I happened to come across a blog on myspace written by somebody called "God is Imaginary." You can probably find this blog if you look. Myspace has a top 10 most viewed blogs today list, and this one is at the very top. It's called "10 Questions Every Intelligent Christian Should Answer." I looked it over and most of the questions can actually be answered easily, because this person apparently has a pretty narrow take on life. After reading over the blog I dismissed it and moved on to do something else, but I couldn't get it out of my head. It struck a chord with me and there's no Braves game on tonight so I decided I would jump in on the discussion.

God can defend himself. He's God, I have no doubt of that. But I feel like defending him like someone would defend a friend of family member. It's not because I want to argue over lofty and philosophical ideas, but because I love God and I hate to see Jesus attacked like that.

I don't have the time to go after all 10 questions so I'm just going to focus on one right now. It would be number 4 on the list and this is what it says:

"Question 4: Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? You have a college degree, so you know what I’m talking about. You know how science works. You happily use the products of science every day: your car, your cell phone, your microwave oven, your TV, your computer. These are all products of the scientific process. You know that science is incredibly important to our economy and to our lives."

I don't actually have a degree, but I'm going to at least try to answer this question.

I don't think that the Bible is an anti-scientific book. This person cites a few stories in the Bible, mostly in the book of Genesis: creation of the world and of Adam, the flood, and Jonah and the whale (not in Genesis). These stories do contradict modern scientific knowledge, which suggests the world is billions of years old. I actually agree with that. I mean I'm no expert on science and the methods and techniques they use to come to these conclusions, but it's a widely accepted idea in the scientific community. I'm fine with that because it doesn't destroy my faith to know that the world was not created in 7 days and is only 6,000 years old.

But it does create a problem, because the Bible says that God created the world in 7 days. The way that many Christians respond to this question is to either stop believing what the Bible says or try to discredit the scientific knowledge that contradicts it. And so therefore you get the Creation vs. Evolution argument and we say it has to be one or the other. But I ask this: can it not be both? Isn't it possible that the Big Bang theory is a look into how God spoke this world into existence? And even if evolution has taken place, does that necessarily mean that God didn't create the world?

Another thing that Christians have to deal with in interpreting the creation account is this: God didn't separate day from night until the 4th day. So how could the basis for which we determine how much time is in a day not exist until 4 days into time?

I think the reason that we have so much trouble with these questions is because we make the mistake of interpreting Genesis, and the Bible, as a science book. If you disagree with everything I've said so far, I don't think you can disagree with the fact that Bill Nye the Science Guy did not write the Bible. God wrote the Bible. And when you reduce it to simply a science book then you will miss out on a lot of truth and meaning in it that is communicated a different way.

It is commonly believed that Moses, divinely inspired by God, wrote the book of Genesis. In the first chapter, the literary style he uses is actually poetry. Now I don't know about anybody else, but I have never seen anybody try to explain any kind of scientific idea by writing a poem. Poetry is a very artistic, creative, right-brained form of expression. You write poetry to express how you feel, not necessarily to make a logical, rational argument.

Think about it this way. Let's say you're enrolled in a biology class. Your teacher tells you to study a certain chapter in your science book, and this chapter is about cell division. So you go home and open up your book to learn about cell division and when you turn to the right page, all you see is a bunch of poems about cell division and maybe a picture or two. And you read these poems and they just talk about how the cell splits and the one changes into two and whatever else happens during cell division. How odd would that be?

You never see poetry used to communicate scientific ideas. So why did Moses use poetry to express the creation of the entire universe? I think it's because Moses was not communicating how we are here, but why we are here. This is something that science cannot explain. Science cannot tell you why you're here. In fact science says that what people are actually doing in life is trying to survive and produce offspring, that we have all these survival mechanisms that will help ensure our species will continue on through the years. That's it. It doesn't explain why we exist. And if the only things in life that are true are scientific then life has no meaning at all. There is no reason for us to be here.

The Bible does explain why we are here. The account of creation says that this ultimate being, God, created a world and created people to be in a love relationship with Him. In doing this, he also provided a way out. Because it's not love if you don't choose it. It wouldn't be love if God forced us to love him. So he provided a way out, and we took it. We walked away from God. And just like a flower will die without sunlight, we will die without God. That's how we were made. We walked away from the very thing that gave us life. And we died. But like a good and true lover does, God came back for us and he gave us a chance to be redeemed. So instead of dying without God's love, we can return to the relationship we were created for.

Yeah, the world may be a little older than 6,000 years. And no, maybe God didn't create the world in 7 days. Maybe it did take a while for us humans to come along. But does that change the message of the Bible? No. Does that mean that the Bible isn't true? No, because Moses wasn't communicating how the world was made, but why.

So why do we tend to look at the Bible in such a logical and scientific way? Well, people didn't always see it that way. This view has only been around for a thousand years or so. It actually goes back to the enlightenment, which is called "the age of reason." This is the period of time that gave rise to science, and the way that we came to "truth" changed. In this period of time, truth became something that was tested, rational, and logical. So God went out the window. Because you can't use logic and reason to explain the being who created logic and reason. We can't fit Him inside our heads, much less a mathematic formula.

So the church, instead of attacking the meaning of truth, actually conformed to the pattern that culture was taking, and started to present their faith in this sort of way. Spirituality became a formulaic practice, and a lot of the poetic, artistic; and relational emphasis was lost.

Science is definitely an important part of life these days. It's extremely important because it helps us learn more about the world we live in and how we can use it to do things like cure illnesses and improve the quality of life. But science is limited, because it can only explain what fits into our little box of knowledge and understanding. Anything outside of this box will never be explained, and will always be outside of science.

God speaks to our minds but he also speaks to our hearts. And in offering Himself to us, He is not offering an explanation into every aspect of life--a logical and mathematical formula into making life work. Rather, God offers us love. Love like how a husband loves his wife and a father loves his children. To reduce all of His acts and all of His love to scientific explanation would be to narrow it all down. And life is a lot larger and more complicated than we can explain. We can't fit it all into our heads, but we can feel it with our hearts.

So don't assume that just because God doesn't fit into science that He doesn't exist. We don't have to constantly be at war with this subject because it seems to contradict us. There are a lot of things in science that help me believe in God. I think that "God is Imaginary" assumes that the Bible is anti-scientific because a lot of Christians are that way. I respectfully believe "God is Imaginary" is wrong about that.

Some recommended reading on this subject:

Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

...oh yeah, and the Bible