The Mattitude

The New Mattitude

2010-02-17T22:25:00.002-06:00

So Blogger has frustrated me one time too many and I have decided to relocate to Wordpress. This blog will still be here but any new posts will be published on the new blog. You can read the new one at themattitude.wordpress.com.

2010-02-07T22:00:00.003-06:00

Not that long ago I went with my sister and her friend Jake to see Donald Miller. It was at this church out in Hoover. We made sure to get there early enough to get good seats, and we did. We got seats in the second or third row, right up front. Before the show started, Stephanie wanted to go get something out of my truck. So she and Jake eased out of the pew and I told them I would save their seats.

After I said it, I heard the woman behind me turn to her husband and say, "Saving seats in church? Hmm... that's interesting." Wondering why this lady said that, it didn't take very long for me to gather that she deemed my action not very Christ-like. Being at a Don Miller event, it's not surprising that some of the people in the audience were a little critical, perhaps cynical, of church or other Christians. But that comment made me mad. I thought about it, tried to be open-minded, tried to see how reasonable her point actually was, but in the end I couldn't see it. Who in the world cares if I saved a seat for the people who came with me?

It made me wonder if that lady was one of those people who can't go into a church without finding something she doesn't like about it. Or if she is somebody who watches carefully what other Christians do, judging - waiting for them to make a mistake so she can catch them and make a sly comment about it.

It made me wonder if this lady is exactly like me.

I know I can be critical of Christians. In fact, I think my whole perspective towards the church is now one of watchful skepticism. Even the pastors and authors I like, I still read or listen to with hesitance; because it's hard for me to really trust anybody who talks about God like they really know what exactly is going on.

I think a lot of the criticism is justified, though. I'm really tough on Christian radio, but I think they deserve it. I think a lot of churches and people are absolutely absurd, and I won't back off on that.

But I don't want to be one of those people who just goes around looking for things to criticize. I don't want to judge people for saving seats in a church, and I don't want to take cheap shots at Christian institutions just because I'm bitter. I'd rather be more constructive than that.

I really just think that I do this because I have serious issues with my faith. God has traits and does things that really puzzle me. The other day a guy I work with was telling me about the TV show 'Lost' and he said, "Every time they answer one question, it just raises four or five more." 'Lost' sounds a whole lot like God to me.

There are things about God that really disturb me too - things that make me wonder if this God is really the true God at all. For instance, I can't at all reconcile these two statements:

1. God is good.

2. God kills people.

I can't do it. I have no idea how to explain why a good and loving God resorts to violence so many times in the Bible. Any time I see a person or a nation use violence as a solution to a problem I wonder, I hope, that there is a better way. But the great flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the many times God sends Hebrews into battle to slaughter others - that tells me there's not. Because you would think that if there was an all-knowing and all-powerful God, then that God would know a better way. If people get in your way, then they have to be annihilated. I don't understand that.

I guess I'm at the point where if I am going to continue to grow, I need to get over my disgust with some of the Christians out there. Just like anybody else, Christians (for the most part) have always been messed up. There's nothing I can do to change that. Now it's time to start to deal with this God character and leave the rest to handle itself.

A message to people who freak out about stupid stuff

2010-01-14T17:54:00.004-06:00

I've had a little something on my mind lately that's been annoying me a little bit. I saw Avatar like a month ago and I loved it. I thought the movie was great all around. People always talk about how great it is visually, and it is, but what I liked even more than that was the actual story. If you want to liken it to a historical situation it would be closest to the Native Americans when the Europeans came and over the process of several years, forced them off their land and took it. Of course, the outcome is different in the movie, but it would be hard for anyone with any kind of historical knowledge of the "discovery" of America to not see the parallels.

What's been bothering me is a comment that somebody made when I was trying to tell them how good the movie was. It goes along the lines of the people who freak out because Harry Potter has magic in it. Essentially, this person said that they are not going to see the movie because it promotes Pantheism. Since the people or aliens on Pandora have such a strong connection with the nature on their planet, and that force helps them ultimately defeat the humans, this is apparently a bad movie for Christians to see.

My message to people who think this is DON'T GET YOUR PANTIES IN A WAD. No, this movie is not the Passion of the Christ. Jesus is not going to come through the clouds of Pandora at the sound of a trumpet and rapture every alien who has accepted him as their personal savior. If that's what you're looking for, then you should look elsewhere. But does that make the movie entirely bad? Or perhaps, can we interpret Ehwa (the Pandora god) as a metaphor for the actual God that we believe in?

While I don't think that worshiping nature is the correct way to practice religion, I think that a worse thing to do is to completely disregard nature and have no sort of reverence for it whatsoever. God created the world. God made the world beautiful, and I believe he did that for the people who live in it. If this is true, then why do we just want to make a parking lot out of the place? Why do we get so arrogant as to think that nature is there just for us to mine for resources so that we can make money? (This, of course, is exactly what the humans in Avatar want to do).

Also, I think that for people of faith, instead of feeling like this movie is attacking your personal belief, you should instead feel like it is supporting your belief in a powerful deity and attacking the notion that no God exists whatsoever. In the movie, the humans (the bad guys) mock the idea of the aliens' god. They arrogantly assume that their power, weapons of war, and machinery are going leave them to exhort their will over the creatures on Pandora. What happens is the opposite. The aliens, who put their faith and their hope into their god, ultimately come out on top. They are rescued.

Avatar is a great movie. I think it was 2009's Dark Knight. I am probably speaking to a small segment of the population who actually wouldn't see this movie because of Pantheism. There is a lot of good stuff about this movie, and a lot of good lessons that can be learned. (Plus, you get sweet glasses!) But all I am saying is that people, and particularly Christians because they are bad about this, need to take a chill pill. Not everything is an attack on your personal beliefs. Quit being so defensive.

Spring Semester Preview

2010-01-03T18:39:00.003-06:00

So I just finished signing up for my last class of the Spring semester. It's a little late, yeah, but I got it done. I wrote down on an index card the schedule, the times and days of when I have to be where and I've been staring at it for several minutes wondering if I've gotten in over my head.

It's not really the schedule that awful. There are just a few things that I can already tell are going to be a challenge for me. First of all, the earliness. Three days a week I have classes that start at 9 am. That doesn't sound so bad, but I have to drive nearly an hour just to get there. Since I am a night person and not at all an early bird, this is going to be tough.

The observation hours are going to be a pain as well. One of my education classes requires that I do 25 observation hours in a classroom at some point during this semester. This won't be all that bad if it's handled the right way. In other words, if I don't procrastinate and put it off until the end.

The driving is going to suck. I'm looking at around 2 hours in my S-10 each day. I've been thinking about how I can make use of all that time. Audiobooks is one idea. My iPod is definitely going to keep me company, and that will leave plenty of time for Podcasts (Rob Bell, now I can listen to your long sermons in one sitting!)

I can see the various pitfalls that might come up. The long drive will tempt me to skip class. Burnout will be inevitable. I will try to take short cuts. My truck might break down. And of course there is always the unexpected.

In spite of all this, I'm looking forward to the challenge. I know that I am going to get more out of this experience, and that it will mean a lot more when I finish, if it's hard. The first thought that popped into my mind when I looked at that schedule was that I am going to have to have more discipline than ever before. I can't be the student I was in the fall, I have to be something new.

And that's what this is all about, preparing me for a career that is going to be difficult and demanding. The question is if I am going to rise up to the occasion.

My Favorite Albums of 2009

2009-12-29T20:13:00.002-06:00

So I know it's been a while since I've posted anything. Tradition called for me to post this and when tradition calls, I answer. Here ya go.

5. Thrice - Beggars

It seems like anytime Thrice puts a new album out they are guaranteed a spot on this list. Beggars didn't release with the fanfare that The Alchemy Index did, but it turned out to be a pretty great album. Thrice moved away from the more electronic elements found in TAI and Vheissu. Still, all the songs are well written both musically and lyrically.

Best songs:

In Exile

Circles

The Weight

Wood and Wire

4. The Fray - The Fray

Yeah, I know, it's The Fray. I didn't become a fan until this year. I didn't listen to much of their previous album, but I picked up the new self-titled and I gotta say it's a good listen.

Best songs:

Absolute

Say When

Ungodly Hour

3. Relient K - Forget and Not Slow Down

This is shaping up to be one of my favorite Relient K albums they've released. It definitely strays away from their punk rock sound, but you can still listen to it and tell it's Relient K. It's a more creative and mature album than they have ever released, which compares more to Mmhmm than any other. Also, there are no cheesy, made-for-radio style songs that ought to be skipped on a regular playthrough.

Best songs:

I Don't Need a Soul

Therapy

Over It

2. Derek Webb - Stockholm Syndrome

Two albums stood out above all others this year. Stockholm Syndrome is one of them. It's great to see an artist out there really taking a stand for the things that he believes, especially when it might not be a popular stand, and Derek Webb does exactly that. He even had to release two separate copies of the album (one "edited" copy leaves out a controversial track called What Matters More). The real genius of this music is in its message. With compelling lyrics and cool, techno-style beats, this is definitely one of Derek Webb's best.

Best songs:

Cobra Con

What Matters More

The State/The Proverbial Gun

Jena and Jimmy

1. Brand New - Daisy

Ever since The Devil and God are Raging Inside of Me, Brand New has been one of my favorite bands. I was glad to see that they continued with their darker, more mature sound with Daisy. Still one of the most intense and dynamic bands I know, Brand New's music has become more compelling and interesting than any other. And the religious references in Jesse's lyrics are really cool:

"There's too many saviors on my cross again, I know I'll never be a perfect man."

"I don't think that you've got to pretend, I see God in birds and Satan in long words."

"If everyone's a structure where their own savior sits, then I'm a little red house and no one's living in it."

So many good lines. I love this album. Love it.

Best songs:

At the Bottom

Sink

Bought a Bridet

Beggars

2009-11-16T20:52:00.001-06:00

by Thrice

All you great men of power, you who boast of your feats -
Politicians and entrepreneurs.
Can you safeguard your breath in the night while you sleep?
Keep your heart beating steady and sure?
As you lie in your bed, does the thought haunt your head
That you’re really, rather small?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

All you champions of science and rulers of men,
Can you summon the sun from its sleep?
Does the earth seek your counsel on how fast to spin?
Can you shut up the gates of the deep?
Don’t you know that all things hang, as if by a string,
O’er the darkness - poised to fall?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

All you big shots that swagger and stride with conceit,
Did you devise how your frame would be formed?
If you’d be raised in a palace, or live out in the streets,
Did you choose the place or the hour you’d be born?
Tell me what can you claim? Not a thing - not your name!
Tell me if you can recall just one thing,
That’s not a gift in this life?

Can you hear what’s been said?
Can you see now that everything’s grace after all?
If there’s one thing I know in this life: we are beggars all.

I just love this band.

Asimo takes a tumble

2009-10-26T21:11:00.002-06:00

Here's a little good old Japanese hubris for you.

These videos never get old to me. My astronomy professor said the other day that in 20 years, robots will be able to out-think human beings. I don't believe that. Sure, they may be able to do math problems better and quicker. But I don't believe any robot will ever create for instance, a beautiful painting or song. I don't think a robot could write a poem or inspire an audience with a speech.

But of course, they won't need any of that when they rise up and enslave the human race. So I guess this is not important.

Roll freakin' tide

2009-10-24T22:19:00.003-06:00

There is nothing like going from the possible worst outcome of a situation to the best outcome in a matter of seconds.

It was my first Alabama game. Ever. And with less than a minute in the game to go, it felt like it might have been one of the most disappointing experiences of my life. After Mark Ingram fumbled for the first time in his career, after Tennessee drove the ball down the field and scored the only touchdown of the game, and after they recovered their onside kick, here we were about to see our undefeated season be taken away from us. And by the freakin' Tennessee Volunteers at that, the team I hate more than any other with the head coach that I already hate more than any other.

Then, after that snap and after the ball was kicked, I watched as the ball was knocked down. I heard the thud with my own ears, and watched as the ball sailed off in the other direction. And then maybe one of the best feelings of my life, a feeling that was part disbelief, part joy, and part adrenaline rush that no combination of energy drinks could ever match, hit me and the rest of the Crimson Tide fans as we went nuts in the stands. It was a swell of emotion that is rarely matched. We were still undefeated, still in the NCAA title race, and best of all, we didn't give Volunteer nation the satisfaction of tarnishing our undefeated record in our house.

I am so glad I was there (thank you Kevin and Aimee!), and I'm so glad that I got to be part of the yelling, the clapping, the Rammer Jammer-ing. I'm glad I got to give out hugs and high fives after the game, and enjoy the heart-pounding ending that made a mediocre game one that will be remembered for a long time. I will never forget this for the rest of my life.

Yep, today was a good day.

I love this picture

2009-10-19T22:06:00.003-06:00

My Miracle Drug

2009-09-28T18:26:00.004-06:00

The mind can be a poison. Sometimes I wish I could turn mine off. I wish it had a switch that I could flip off when I needed to, when my thoughts turned negative, or simply when I needed to enjoy a Vin Diesel movie.

This morning I missed class because all my work pants were in the washing machine still soaking wet. When I found them it was too late to dry them and then leave, so I put them in the dryer and tried to make use of the extra time. I already didn't feel very well since it was Monday, but I grabbed my notebook, went out on the back porch, and started looking over my algebra work in a patio chair. It was nice outside, sunny but cool. I went over factoring, absolute values, and inequalities making sure I had the process down in my head for figuring out each type of problem. After about 10 minutes of that my mind started to wander and in my head I was far away from that porch and that notebook with the math problems.

I thought about my life and, just like my mind does sometimes, I seemed to pick out all the times I've failed and remind myself just what kind of stupid things I'm capable of. Funny how the bad things always stick out over the good things, like they somehow carry more weight to define us as people. I don't really believe that but I thought about all the relationships in my life that aren't what I'd like them to be, the length of time it's taking me to earn my degree, and all my various character flaws. I thought about how my goal, my ambition, is to become a teacher. But even when I did that I doubted if I could really do it.

Do you really even want to be a teacher? I don't think you want it bad enough, you probably won't even graduate. And even if you do, you'll probably hate it. And you probably won't even be very good at it. And by the way, you are majoring in history, so you might not even find a job.

It wasn't a very good morning for me. Instead of actually studying, I spent a lot of my time wondering if what I was working for was really worth it. I paced around the house, half-bored but not wanting to waste the hours I was gaining from missing class. I stared out of windows, only to walk to the other side of the house and stare out of another window. My mind was in a bad place and I just felt lost.

I even walked outside onto the porch where our dogs were. Bilco was laying on his back with his feet up against the wall. He has a knack for making himself look like he has the IQ of a gnat. I looked at our old German shepherd, Foster, who is 16 years old now and looks every bit of it. He looked up at me but didn't wag his tail. Several years ago he got hit by a car and broke his hind leg. Now that he is older, he has arthritis and that leg is almost useless to him. I watched him try to stand up. He propped himself up with his front two legs and then tried to lift the rest of his body with only one leg. He got about halfway up, straining the whole time, and then gave up. He eased himself back down. Every minute or so he would try and eventually he got up and limped down the stairs to where he could lay under some shade.

He laid down and as I was watching him I started thinking about getting old. I wondered if the right thing to do would be to put Foster out of his misery, but I knew I could never decide to do that. He only had one life to live - might as well leave him to enjoy all of it.

I say this because I felt crazy this morning. Between the doubting, the staring out of windows, and my old dog who reminded me that even though I'm 23 I am still going to grow old and die one day, I didn't feel sane. I felt like I should feel better than I did, not standing around wondering about my future or the philosophical consequences of euthanizing a dog.

I have been through clinical depression before, a few years ago when I was a student at UAB. It was easily the worst few months of my life. I didn't have any enemy that could harm me as bad as my mind did. It was hell. Last year I read an article that said J.K. Rowling's dementors were based on her experiences with depression. She described it as "that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad." I very much agree.

The only way I coped with it was to pray and write. In fact, I looked forward to nothing at all except the end of the day when I would shut myself in my room, turn on some older Andrew Osenga music, and write down my thoughts for an hour or two. I found that if I could get out my thoughts by writing them down on paper, I had a lot more success in dealing with them. In fact, I could look them over and see that I was often being irrational and extremely unfair to myself. If I talked about anybody else the way I talked about myself, I would be an enormous jerk. It was at that time in my life, that dark time, that I learned that I could make it through hell as long as I was able to write it down.

One of my many favorite U2 songs is called Miracle Drug. I have a live recording of them playing the song in Chicago on their Vertigo tour. As Edge starts playing the opening guitar riff, Bono says this:

"I fell in love in Chicago. I fell in love in a hotel room in Chicago, listening to Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. I didn't understand Jazz, I didn't understand Miles Davis or how his music could make me feel until, sitting in this hotel room looking out the window at this city, an Irish boy 24 years old. Just looking around Chicago I kind of understood Miles Davis and I understood his music...

"We don't really look back that much in our music. We don't look at the past. The best bits of the past we try to bring with us. They're our songs, songs like Pride (In The Name of Love), Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name. They're the best bits of the past and we'll take them with us. Because we're interested, we're excited, and we have faith in the future. That's where we're headed. So for a city of the future, this is our music... we think that we are strung out. This is our drug, Miracle Drug."

That really meant a lot to me hearing that because I could think about times when I had a rough day, a day full of setbacks, and then I heard a song and it just completely changed how I felt about things. My problems didn't change one bit, but because of that song I felt like I could make it through - I felt a little bit of hope.

I feel the same way about writing. In a way it would be my miracle drug, I suppose. This morning I stopped the pacing around the house and the looking out windows, and I finally sat down to write. I channeled all my thoughts down onto a piece of paper, and it was like the weight that they carried was lifted off of me. And I was able to dismiss the awful ones as nonsense. It's true, I would never speak or write half the thoughts that come into my brain because they are ridiculous. From the 20 minutes I spent writing, I realized that I was still sane. I wasn't losing it, and I wasn't the failure my mind was telling me I was. I also realized that I was human, and that everybody feels this way at some time or another. And after that I was alright. I got some food, went to work, and had a great day.

I guess everybody has moments when they seem to lose their sense of up and down. Life doesn't make sense, we doubt our own abilities, and even wonder what it's all for. We cope with it in different ways. Some of us try to escape through alcohol or drugs. Some of us go completely cold and numb. Some of us try to bury those feelings by buying new products that will only make us feel better for a little while. I think that my miracle drug is pretty good for dealing with things. Those notebooks will always be there (unless they get lost or my house burns down or something) as reference for me to go back and read in the future. And they've already helped. This is my drug, my Miracle Drug.

Hey, want to read a good book?

2009-09-25T15:21:00.005-06:00

I have to say, I am loving this book. Got it in the mail Monday and I'll probably finish it before the weekend is over. That never happens for me with books. Usually I become uninterested and start reading another book, and end up reading about 3 books at a time. But no, not this time.

I would recommend this book to anybody. It's an easy read, the chapters are short, and it will make you look at your life a lot differently.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

%$#@!!!!!!!

2009-09-17T10:46:00.003-06:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Scoldplay

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

I missed this for the last 3 weeks. The 10 pm to 10:30 pm time slot was a lonely, desperate time for me. But now that The Daily Show (and for that matter, The Colbert Report) is back on, I can satisfy my frustration from politics through the mocking of government and media. And oh man, it feels good.

Of course, my last post was making fun of Glenn Beck and various other right-wing extremists who made all too much of the president's speech to school kids. And while that was targeting crazy Republicans, it was more about people who put partisanship and political gain ahead of doing what's best or the people who live in this country.

It goes both ways, which is why Nancy Pelosi is one of my least favorite politicians in Washington, and she is a Democrat. From a few months ago when she said she had no idea that the Bush administration had authorized torture, and then later when she actually did know but couldn't do anything about it, and then when she did know and could have done at least something, but chose not to - to now when she says that the house of reps is past the Joe Wilson "truth-tourettes" and then 2 days later passing a resolution to make him apologize on the house floor.

I may be naive to think this is possible, but can we please stop with the petty, selfish partisanship? Can we at least avoid stupid, meaningless actions like forcing a Congressman to apologize after he had already done so and said apology been accepted? For crying out loud, there are regular American citizens with more sense than some of these people. Get something done that matters, and stop trying to seize every opportunity to squeeze all the political points you can out of one man's mistake.

My Audition for The Glenn Beck Show (or anything on Fox News for that matter)

2009-09-08T18:14:00.005-06:00

President Obama is at it again. Everything that he is doing is somehow storming up a flurry of controversy, and the latest is something that hits very close to home - a speech given directly to our school children. I was skeptical of the controversy at first, the right-wing critics who were outraged and declared that Obama was taking this opportunity to indoctrinate our youth with socialist ideology. I dismissed it as no more than an overblown media/political circus. But that was until I did a little more crack... research...

I read the original speech as it was posted on whitehouse.gov. Everything seemed fine on the surface. It was just stuff about staying in school and working hard, which appears harmless. Not to be outwitted by whitehouse.gov, I actually posted the speech in Google's socialism calculator* and I was shocked at the results.

Just take this excerpt from the President's speech as it appears on whitehouse.gov:

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things."

Pretty normal, right? But this is what came out when I pasted the same statement into the socialism calculator:

"Ich weiß, dass manchmal, Sie bekommen das Gefühl aus dem Fernsehen, dass man reich und erfolgreich sein kann, ohne harte Arbeit - das ist Ihr Ticket zum Erfolg wird durch Klopfen oder Basketball oder eine Realität TV-Star, wenn die Chancen sind, Sie werden doch nicht zu jedem dieser Dinge."

Are you shocked yet? Or are you afraid? Maybe you should be, because this statement reeks of socialism. Notice the word "reich." Hmm... that sounds familiar. 3RD REICH maybe???? Also notice the character ß as well. What is that? You would probably have to be a socialist to know.

Here is another example written in free market capitalism:

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best."

But how does it come out in the socialism calculator?

"Die Geschichte von Amerika ist nicht über Menschen, die beendet werden, wenn es hart kam. Es geht um Menschen, die laufenden gehalten, der versucht, härter, liebte ihr Land zu viel, um nichts weniger als ihr Bestes zu tun."

HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD. It says "Die... Amerika." And somebody better warn Beendet Werden and Laufenden Gehalten as well, if they're not already dead.

How can we allow this in our great nation? Obama must be stopped. We should all boycott the speech. If this gets into the minds of our children, it may be the end of the world as we know it.

Glenn Beck, please let me be on your show.

*By socialism calculator, I actually mean that I used the Google English to German translator.

The Road to Glory

2009-09-06T17:37:00.003-06:00

Fantasy Football Draft Picks:

QB: Drew Brees
WR: Anquan Boldin
WR: Chad Ochocinco
WR: Vincent Jackson
RB: Brandon Jacobs
RB: Clinton Portis
TE: Anthony Fasano

Bench:
Eli Manning
Lance Moore
Lendale White
Le'Ron McClain
Michael Vick

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get Brady this season, even though I won without him last year. Still, Drew Brees slings the ball around with the best of them, so I'm happy with him. I really like my running backs. I like the guys who score lots of touchdowns, so I'm pretty happy with all four of them. I took a chance on Chad Ochocinco, hoping he'd have kind of a comeback year, and I got Lance Moore because I always like to have a receiver on the same team as my QB for double points. Also, I know I'm going to take a PR hit with Michael Vick but he was my last pick in the draft and I figured, What the heck?

I've been waiting for fantasy football to start for weeks now. I have a 2 year championship win streak going in my league, and I'm pretty excited to defend it. It should be a fun year.

D-bag of the Day

2009-09-01T22:07:00.003-06:00

At work, one of the things that my coworkers and I have invented to deal with the stresses and frustrations of working in retail is invent an award for the one person who has seemingly gone out of their way to make us have a crappy day. Whether that person is a customer, fellow employee, doner, or some schmuck on the radio, if they turn a good day into a bad day or a bad day into a worse day, they are considered a serious candidate for this award. This unique individual, if chosen, is cemented forever in history as that day's douchebag of the day.

It's the guy who comes in the store 5 minutes before close and buys a set of sofas and a large desk to go along with it. It's the person who takes a slam in the toilet and throws in too much toilet paper, thus clogging it for one of us to fix. It's the couple who brings a trailer load of pure and utter junk that has been rained on to us as a reasonable donation and then puts $1,000 on their tax receipt. I could go on and on.

But today, the d-bag of the day award goes to a person who went especially out of his way to earn this honor, and his name is: Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog.

Ok, so I don't know his real name. But his name doesn't really matter. Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog essentially waited until night time to pick up one of our family dogs, Bilco, and apparently take him away to his own house just a few miles down the road. In other words, he stole him. Now, the dog may have wandered off, but he never goes far, and he doesn't resemble a stray at all. He even has a collar. So, GWSMD took Bilco to his own house, put him in his fence, and removed his collar (because of course without his collar we wouldn't able to identify him). At this point, I suppose the man assumed that Bilco was his dog.

But it gets worse. My dad actually had a friend who noticed our dog at this other guy's house, and when he ran into my dad at a gas station, brought it up. They went over to GWSMD's trailer and found Bilco laying on the front porch. It was obvious by the poor dog's looks that he wasn't being fed. His ribs were sticking out more than normal, and his fur didn't look quite as healthy. No one actually came to the door when they knocked, probably because they knew they deserved a beatdown, and so my dad and his friend took Bilco and brought him home.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't mess with a person's dog. I don't know what would make any sane individual see a healthy dog with a collar out somewhere and immediately think he had a right to take it for his own and then not even go as far as to feed it, but it happened. And it makes me mad, because we've had the dog since he was a puppy. I mean, that's the dog that sits beside me every day when I go in out in the front yard to read a book. That's the dog that Stephanie and I ran through a freaking lightning storm to rescue from our dad's shop. It's the same dog that gets scared to death every year when we shoot fireworks on the 4th. And it's the same dog that wouldn't stop jumping on me once, and so I tossed him into our pond. And you're just going to steal him? Douchebag...

But I am glad that Bilco is back. Even if he is a stupid dog, he is our stupid dog. Last night when I was going to bed, I really hoped that I hadn't seen him for the last time. You can imagine how relieved I was when I pulled into the driveway and heard his familiar bark (the same one that wakes me up in the middle of the night because he is barking at a leaf or something).

A Quick Life Update

2009-08-31T21:24:00.002-06:00

If you happen to be out driving tomorrow, and if you happen to pass Mission Possible and see a red S-10 in the parking lot, don't bother asking whether or not that's my truck. Between 12 and 6, you will be right in assuming that it is. And you will probably think, Hold on a second... he is living in Huntsville now. What is he doing back here? Well the explanation is very simple: I came back.

Manny Ramirez cuts off throws to the infield from his own position in outfield. He goes (went) into the Green Monster to use the bathroom between innings. He does (did) steroids. They have a saying for this, that it's "Manny being Manny." Regarding my coming back from UAH, I guess you could say that it's "Matt being Matt." I go to college, I take classes, I transfer, I change my major many times, I transfer again, I drop out for a year, I go back, I transfer again... this is in essence my college years crammed into one sentence. And so if you are shocked right now at the fact that I stayed at UAH for a few days and then dropped out and returned, you really shouldn't be. A pig returns to the mud, a dog returns to its vomit, Gomer returned to the street corners and well, I could probably have chosen better examples, but I returned to my habit of not sticking to the plan.

Seriously though, the best explanation I can give is that I got up there and stayed a few days only to realize that living on campus is not for me. It might have been good right out of high school, and there are definitely people out there who love it, but not me. I withdrew from all my classes, gave back my financial aid money, loaded up my truck, and came home. Not once have I regretted it since, and immediately the next day I went to register for whatever I had left to take at Jeff State. Even though I changed colleges, I still fully intend to finish my degree in History and Education and get a job as a teacher. This hasn't set me back or discouraged me one bit.

The one thing I am going to miss about Huntsville is the church that I had the pleasure of attending once. It was called Weatherly Heights and I found it on the Faith and Justice directory on the Sojourners website. At its surface, it was a Baptist church that didn't seem very Baptist at all. Ministers wear robes during the service, the sermon was about 20 minutes long, and women are permitted to be in positions of leadership. During the worship, I couldn't hear the music minister over the voice of the entire congregation, which is always great for worship. Also, the prayers, the sermon, and the entire order of the service were deep and very well-thought out. The pastor preached from Leviticus, and actually provided historical context for what he was talking about. It wasn't some watered down self-help message repackaged for Christians, but actual rich, bare, Biblical theology presented in its context.

I really liked that church, but a minimum 1 hour commute is too much for me to be able to attend now. I'm back in the B-ham area and I'm on the market for a new church. Some might be wondering if I am going to go back to Hilldale, but I'm going to have to say here that I'm not. I like Hilldale, and I really like the people there, but I'm sorry to have to say I'm going to be moving on.

You see, things get a little complicated when I talk about church. After the crap that happened at Hopewell, my take on church changed. Not that it was all Hopewell, but more or less that situation combined with observations on several different fronts (not least of these being WDJC). And somewhere along the line, I lost my faith in church. Church as usual doesn't work for me anymore, but the problem is that I don't know of any churches here that aren't church as usual.

Because I want to start believing in churches again. I want to start believing in God's people to be more than people who simply listen to a different kind of music and don't cuss. But the solution to that is not just more modern worship music. It's not a bunch of lights or the obligatory hip pastor-with-fohawk. It's not wrapping yourself in a watered down Christian subculture where you cut yourself off from the world and wait on Jesus to steal you away to heaven, or at least that's not the way I believe it should be.

But anyways, I did say this would be quick. That's essentially where I'm at now. Peace.

2009-08-27T14:33:00.001-06:00

"Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock. Jesus is the ultimate such point. We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him." -N.T. Wright

Don Miller told me to do this, so I did

2009-08-25T15:21:00.002-06:00

The Mentoring Project - Elephant Musth Cycle from The Mentoring Project on Vimeo.

A couple years ago I read this great book by Donald Miller called To Own a Dragon. In it, Don details his life growing up without a father and his experiences with several different mentors, or male role models in his life. Growing up without a father, or with a bad father, can wreak havoc on a young boy's emotions and mental state. In fact, an overwhelming majority of men in jail grew up without fathers. This is no coincidence. The family is supposed to work the right way only if a mother and father are both present, but sadly our generation is seeing a crisis in fatherhood. Men aren't sticking around to raise their kids. Some dads are abusive towards their kids or wives, and this leaves the children with what we like to call "issues."

Fortunately there are people out there like Don who are undertaking the daunting task of trying to fix this fatherhood mess. His organization partners with churches so that they can start a mentoring program to give young kids good role models. Their efforts are going to help lots of kids grow up with positive influences in their lives, and that is something that will make a huge difference.

Also, speaking of Donald Miller, I am getting extremely excited about this.

Bible Questions Are Fun

2009-08-20T23:58:00.003-06:00

I get so frustrated with the Bible sometimes. It's such a complicated book. It seems like I can't read a chapter without at least one question coming up about something that doesn't seem to make sense or something that contradicts something else. Tonight I decided I would read Jesus' sermon on the mount. So I read it and, as always, something jumped out at me that doesn't really make sense. Unable to come up with a satisfying answer on my own, I thought I'd try to put this question up on the blog and let anybody who feels like it weigh in.

My question comes right after the Lord's prayer when Jesus says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15). What I am wondering is this: Is Jesus putting another condition on salvation when he is saying this?

I noticed that when I was reading through the sermon on the mount, Jesus seems to be warning people that they need to watch what their actions are, or they may be in danger of hell.

"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire" - Matthew 5:22

"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." - Matthew 5:29

This is where it gets tricky for me because I have learned that it doesn't matter what we do, it matters that we accept and believe in Jesus. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," as it says in Romans. So if I insult somebody, look lustfully at somebody, or even kill someone, I can still be saved by God's grace and forgiveness. But Jesus says that if I do these things, I will be "liable to the hell of fire." He doesn't say that "if you don't believe I am the Son of God you will be liable to the hell of fire." And it gets even more confusing when he says that if I don't forgive others for their trespasses, God won't forgive mine.

It's kind of like that old formula for becoming a Christian, the A, B, C's - Admit, Believe, and Confess. Does that mean it's Admit, Believe, Confess, and Forgive? Jesus did say I won't be forgiven if I don't forgive others. And if I'm not forgiven, how can I be saved? (By the way, I don't really believe that salvation is something that can be confined to an ABC formula - a three step process that gets you automatically a place in heaven. But that's another blog entirely.)

I guess it's just odd how the Bible actually treats the idea of "going to heaven." Like it sometimes is treated like a "how to get to heaven" book, but when I dive in the book it doesn't actually read that way. For instance, if I was someone who knew nothing about the Bible, but I wanted to make sure to get into heaven, I would be completely confused by it. Like I would open up to the first page and there is this poem about the creation of the world and a story of the fall of man, and then it goes into this guy Abraham who had a baby even though he was really old and his wife was barren. And then it follows the lives of his family. Finally, I would realize this wasn't what I was looking for, and I would flip through the book. Stories of slavery and wandering around in the desert, history, poems praising God, words of wisdom, writings of prophets, the story of Jesus, letters to different churches. I'm not saying that how to get to heaven is not in there, I'm just saying that it's really hard to find. And it seems like that is a very critical part of our faith, which is why this is so strange. You would think God would put it in there, highlight it, and make the ink glow on the page. Or that there would be a table of contents at the beginning that would say "For information on going to heaven, turn to page 1142." But that's not in there. Even the Romans road, which many Christians are taught to use to lead people to Christ, is several separate verses ripped out of the book of Romans and made into a formula of salvation. Not even Paul actually put them directly together, step by step.

Anyways, this has confused me lately. Is there more to salvation than simply believing and accepting? Can I go to heaven without forgiving others, even if I do believe? And why doesn't God make the way to heaven more obvious?

Any thoughts?

Seeing Past the Donkey and the Elephant

2009-07-31T11:24:00.004-06:00

In one of those vague childhood memories that is still with me, I can recall my first "discussion" I had on politics. It was with my mom, while we were going somewhere in the car. She was driving and I, being what I'm guessing to be around 10 years old, sat quietly in the passenger seat with my belt buckled. We had been to the polls to vote for governor or something like that. My mom was telling me that she always voted for the Republican candidates, straight ticket. That was why she didn't have to fill in all the boxes on the form. As a little kid, I just assumed that when I got old enough I would continue voting the way my parents did, and so I asked my mom, "What's the difference between Republicans and Democrats?" My mom, never being someone who really got into politics and who was faced with the difficult task of explaining the issues to a 10 year old, simply said, "Well, the Republican is the more Christian party and the Democrats are not."

That settled it for me. After all, I was a Christian and I knew I wanted to vote like a Christian when I turned 18. So without further questions I went on to vaguely support Republican politics through my teenage years. I formed a healthy dislike for Bill Clinton when all I really knew about him was that he cheated on his wife and that somehow that made him a terrible president. I supported Bob Dole when he ran against Clinton and all I remember is him falling off a stage while he was trying to shake somebody's hand. I had no idea really what either candidate stood for or wanted to do for the country. I just followed the Republican or Democrat label and that decided for me who I would pull for in elections.

My first chance to vote came in 2004 when I had just turned 18. At the time I was going to a church where it was preached from the pulpit that the Christian thing to do was vote Republican. Again, this was at a time when I really didn't care much for politics. I didn't question why we were at war in Iraq and I didn't really think too much about Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest people along with other issues that were coming up at the time. The only person at my church who had a different take on politics was Andy. Andy talked about politics a lot. He voted for John Kerry that year. He and April were probably the only two church members to do so. But I have to admit I tuned him out a lot of the time because I really wasn't that interested. And it's not a pleasant thing to disagree on politics. I did, in fact, end up voting for Bush that year.

I say all of this because through all of those years I bought into a lie. It was a lie that my mom believed, my church believed, and I believed to be true. And that lie was that Republican politics and Christianity were one and the same. It's a lie that has been perpetuated through Christian communities in America for decades, and because of that politicians and talking heads have tricked Christians in order to get their votes. It has led to Christians in high percentages supporting policies like torture, an unjust war, and economic strategies that leave out the people that Jesus taught us to care for the most - the poor and vulnerable.

I think that this happens because a lot of times when we follow politics and vote, we get caught up in the game of partisanship and in doing so, we lose sight of the things we really stand for. When issues are split along party lines, it's easy for a person to see the other party as constantly wrong and their party as always right. For Christians, this is dangerous because neither party comes close to maintaining consistent Christian values, but we really act like they do.

I remember last month at my church when we had our annual 4th of July service. We sang all our patriotic songs and pledged allegiance to the flag. At the end of all the national praise it finally came time for the sermon, Pastor Ron went on stage and he said as calmly as he could: "I am a patriot. I am a God and country person. But, we have to make sure that it's not more about our country than God."

Pastor Ron was my hero that day. He was dead on. I have seen many times Christians getting caught up in politics, and the thing that ultimately decides their position on a particular issue is not their faith, it's their party affiliation. For instance, one morning last week I was at work and they had WDJC playing. On the morning show, they were taking callers to give their opinions on the "beer summit" in which Obama invited Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt James Crowley to the White House to have a beer. This was in response to Obama's comments that Crowley "acted stupidly" in arresting the Harvard professor.

So people called in and many of them said that the president should not invite these men over to drink a beer, that as president he is a role model and by drinking beer he is setting a bad example. If you have ever read the Gospels, this should be probably striking you as ironic right now. Jesus, who is the ultimate role model and example for us Christians, drank wine. He once went to a wedding, and when the wine had run out he took some water and turned it into more wine, which was even better wine than they had at first! So what happened was Christians were criticizing the president as being a bad role model for doing something Jesus, the lord and savior, did himself.

What I'm trying to say here is God does not play along party lines, and so neither should we. The Republicans are not the most Christian party, and neither are the Democrats. Some people try to present that lie in both obvious and subtle ways. We should be careful that when we cast our ballots and decide what side to take on certain issues, we are not just playing the party game. The Bible says nothing about limited or expanded government, trickle down economic theory, or who you should or shouldn't tax but it says a lot about helping the needy, protecting life, caring for the environment, and maintaining peace. On these issues we should look beyond the red and blue, the donkey and the elephant.

On Being Mediocre at Halo

2009-07-24T21:49:00.003-06:00

Well I just noticed that it has been almost a month to the day since I wrote my last post. I knew it had been a while, and as I have checked my blog page from time to time I have slowly grown tired of the male enhancement thing being the post that comes up. It's actually amazing that I haven't written anything this month, because SO much has happened and there is SO much to comment on. Andy is resigning, Steph is moving away, the Roberts are looking for a church, I'm about to move away to a new place, and WDJC is just as awful as ever. It's almost a situational overload, but I haven't found my way to the keyboard to type my thoughts. Maybe it's because it's all complicated, hard to encompass how I really feel. I'm sure it's a lot of things, but I can say one thing for sure, and that is that Halo 3 has played a big part in it.

You see, I play video games a lot. I always have since I was about 3 or 4 years old. And there are some good games out there, but I have gotten to the point to where I don't really get consumed with them anymore. When Perfect Dark was a new game and I was a middle schooler, I would pop that cartridge in my Nintendo 64 and literally play for hours and hours. This is a good thing now because I have a job and school to deal with, and I sometimes have a bad time prioritizing. But every now and then a game comes along that is fun and has so much replayability that I have a hard time pulling myself away from it. For a few months, World of Warcraft had my soul. Now, the game is Halo 3.

Don't get me wrong, Halo is not near as bad as WOW was. I can take Halo in spurts, but after a while it gets a little old and I get motion sickness from all the camera movement. It's a heck of a game, and a whole lot of fun to play. I've gotten to the point where I only play it when my friends are online, because I take it too seriously when I play alone. My buddies help keep me grounded, and they have been perhaps the most enjoyable part of the game. I get to keep up with Kevin and Aimee down in Tuscaloosa on an almost nightly basis because we can play and chat over X-box live. We always catch up for the first few minutes until the first match starts, and then we have to stop talking because we can't chat and kill folk simultaneously.

I have also been able to rekindle friendships with the Neelys over X-box live and Halo playing. Since we left Hopewell, I have only seen Sam at Best Buy where he works and haven't seen Daniel at all. Some nights the four of us play for several hours, and this is where the nerdy part comes in. Halo 3 has a feature where you can go back and watch all the recent matches you have played, make video clips, and take pictures of the action. And so after everyone goes off to bed or to do something else, I head to the theatre and watch all the matches over again looking for highlights and good photo ops. Yeah, it's incredibly dorky, but I enjoy it.

In Halo, I don't know if anybody can ever be good enough to be truly satisfied. Somebody who is better than you is always out there ready to no scope you or hit you with a sticky grenade from all the way across the map or kill you 20 times with only a pistol. It happens, and it sucks when it does. I used to get mad, to want to really get good at the game so that I would be the one dealing out all the punishment instead of the one constantly respawning. I've gotten pretty decent, I would say, but I've learned that I'm nowhere near being able to play with a lot of the serious Halo players out there.

For instance, last night Sam and I were playing a 2 vs. 2 match where you could only use pistols and sniper rifles. We are pretty casual players, but unfortunately we were paired up with some professional Halo snipers who were ready to no scope and head shot their way to an unquestionable victory.

But we gave it a go. The game started and we moved out cautiously, trying to keep our eyes out for our opponents, hoping to see them before they spotted us. We made our way down a corridor and one of the guys on the other team headed our way from the other side. Shots rang out, and I got hit but not in the head, so I didn't die. Everybody headed for cover. I moved back around the corner to get a shot and the red team (we were the blue team) was waiting for me. A shot rangs out, and I was dead. 1 to nothing, and as I respawned I heard another shot ring out and Sam went down as well. 2 to nothing.

So I started to move again, ever alert for my red foes. I moved into an opening and spotted red armor, one of them standing there aiming at something and not moving at all. I raised the scope to my eye and positioned the reticle right on his head and BANG, I was dead. Before I could take my shot my target's teammate took me out. This was basically how the match went. I would be walking, searching for someone to kill, and a shot would ring out and I would be dead. I would have no idea where it came from, no idea how. Sam and I had a little success. I got a few head shots on the red team and Sam gots at least one kill. But by the end of the game, the score was 25-7.

It hurts to get beat like that, and most proud men are competitive. That's hard to take, even if it is a meaningless game. And I could give you example after example of times when stuff like that happens. Games where I have never been close to winning. But I have to settle for that and when the emotion and the anger subsides, and my competitive spirit simmers down, I realize that I am perfectly fine being as mediocre as I am at that game. Because some people are too good at things that are that trivial. People have made fun of me before because I can't whistle or blow a bubble gum bubble, and I just respond with, "Why would I want to do that?" Halo is a game, it's meant for fun and entertainment, and I want to make sure I keep it that way. It's not cool to be THAT good at that game. Because, what do you give up to put so much into a video game? Sunlight, a social life, etc. Video games are great, and the most fun video games are even better. But they all have their place.

That said, does anybody want to play some Halo now? My gamertag is mathius100.

Dumb Male Enhancement Commercials

2009-06-25T14:59:00.004-06:00

So last night I was eating a pizza in front of my TV. It was a Tombstone, pepperoni pizza and I overcooked it a little bit. Lacking the patience to wait for it to cool off, I burned my mouth on the sauce and cheese, and today my tongue still hurts because of that. I don't remember what I was watching on TV, but it was during the commercial break and I was basically ignoring the ads like I always do. A Cialis commercial came on, and I ignored it, but one phrase snapped me back into reality quickly and, I will say, almost produced extreme projectile vomiting.

They were advertising some new Cialis pill that you could take for your "male enhancement" and the announcer asked a question that I thought was rhetorical, but unfortunately it wasn't: What's your favorite part? Next thing I know, some old couple pops up on the screen and the woman says, "My favorite part is when it lasts really long."

I almost spit the pizza out of my mouth. The last thing I want to know about while I'm enjoying my dinner is some old lady's favorite part of her and her old husband's old "activities" together. I hate those commercials, even more than I hate just regular commercials. And there are some things about them that I don't get. The Cialis ad comes on with the porn music and all, but what's with the bathtubs? Maybe my education about "the act" has failed me in some way, but what does an old man and woman sitting in separate bathtubs, outside, on a hill, while the sun is going down have to do with sex? Is that a metaphor for something? It would have to be, right? Because nobody ever says, "Now, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they take off their clothes and go outside to their separate bathtubs that sit on the top of the hill in their back yard, which overlooks a meadow..." (If any of you know the answer to this, please enlighten me.)

And there are the commercials with that weirdo guy, I think Bob is his name. I guess those are supposed to be funny or something. Like Bob's neighbors are jealous of him because he takes a "male enhancement" drug and there is the most memorable shot of the guy standing there holding his water hose as it starts to slump and the water runs out. That along with other innuendos are in commercials like this. Bob is dressed up as Santa Clause at the mall and all the women there want to sit on his lap. And of course, there's the one where Bob is driving the race car, but I don't really get that one either.

My favorite (and by favorite, I mean quite possibly the most ridiculous) of these ads would probably be the Viva Viagra commercials. Because there's nothing better than getting together with your best friends in your old garage and singings songs about the pill that lets you have sex longer. I mean, I know that's what I do when I hang out with my friends... doesn't everybody? In fact, the only songs I know on guitar are worship and praise songs, and songs about Viagra. (I hope you are picking up the sarcasm here.) And don't get me started on the side effects...

I just hate these commercials, they're so stupid. Even with all the lame phone dating service ads and ones about downloading ringtones, the Cash-4-Gold commercials, and the Tag body spray, I would say that the male enhancement ads are the worst. Next time I'm eating pizza or any other meal, I hope I don't learn more than I want to know about an old couple's sex life. I don't care, don't want to find out, so please get it off my TV.

A Conversation

2009-06-08T19:50:00.004-06:00

Quick... interesting or unique thought or observation...

Go... now.

Ok, um...

um....

um... I don't know. I got nothin'.

Come on, Matt, you have to have something you want to say.

Not really...

Just think about something that happened today and elaborate on it. You know, be thoughtful and all that stuff.

Well, I did go to the dump today.

Ok... did anything happen that would make a good lesson or... maybe something interesting... or something that will generate some comments?

Nope, although it did smell like coffee beans mixed with diarrhea. Maybe I could make that a metaphor for how the money for some people's coffee addictions could go to preventing African kids from dying from diarrhea.

I don't know... is that really even a metaphor?

I don't know.

Well, don't you have anything to say?

Can I complain about Christian radio?

Don't you already do that enough already?

Well, can I write about Barack Obama?

Look, why don't you try to take it in a different direction... you know, write about sports or your life, or Jon and Kate Plus 8?

I don't like writing about sports, I like talking about sports. My life isn't interesting, and here's my blog post about Jon and Kate Plus 8: Who effing cares?

(sigh)

Look, can I just post that YouTube video of Ashlee Simpson getting booed at the Orange Bowl or something?

Matt, that's lazy and you know it.

I don't care, voice.

You're a douchebag.

Shut up, I'm going to play Halo now.

2009-06-06T00:55:00.003-06:00

I just found this article which gives accounts of some soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. I thought I'd share it, because it really moved me. Not only the bravery of the men who stormed the beaches that day, but the horrors that they experienced and how they had to stop thinking just to keep it from getting to them. When nations wage war, these men and women bear the brunt of it, and I think we have to do whatever we can to avoid good people having to give up their lives if at all possible. Anyways, here's the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/03/dday.stories/index.html

This is the world I see

2009-06-04T22:08:00.004-06:00

I was talking to somebody I know the other day and he was telling me about how he had been reading through the Old Testament, specifically the book of Daniel. "Man, there's some scary stuff in there," he said. I agreed. The prophetic book has all kinds of strange imagery that can evoke fear. But this conversation has stayed with me because of what this guy said next, which is something along the lines of what I've heard preachers say for years now - that if God doesn't judge America soon, he is going to have to apologize to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Of course, that's not in Daniel. It's in Genesis, but the Old Testament gives accounts of God judging the world and punishing people for wickedness. There was the flood. There was Sodom and Gomorrah. There was all the tribes who inhabited the promised land that the Israelites were promised. All of these people faced God's wrath, and so what of America, whose people are committing some of the same sins today and yet we haven't been invaded or led off into slavery? We haven't been destroyed with a flood or fire raining from heaven.

While I personally don't believe God regards the United States in the same way as Israel in the Old Testament, my issue here is not really a theological one, but a question of perspective. It's about believing whether or not our nation and the world we live in are getting worse and worse, more sinful, and more corrupt each day. Of course, certain end times theology that includes the rapture and destruction of the world as we know it (which I believe has been debunked by N.T. Wright) has contributed to this outlook as well. People are going to become more corrupt. They are going to turn away from God and practice more and more evil. It's supposed to happen this way...

But I wonder that even though things are extremely far from ideal, is it really true that we are getting worse? I mean, the present may not be all that great, but what makes anybody think that America's past is so much better than its present? At the countries founding, we had stolen land from the Native Americans. We forced them off of their land, fought wars against them, and killed them in the name of God when we were motivated by nothing more than greed and selfishness. We also imported human beings from Africa who had been literally ripped from their lives, homes, and loved ones. We shipped them across the Atlantic Ocean on ships in the worst of conditions, bought and sold them as property, and forced them to work for nothing. And then there was the fact that at our nation's founding, you had to be a white, property owning male to vote.

It seems to me that while lots of things in this world aren't great, we are at least in many ways making progress. You would think that if God was going to punish us, it would be for the things we did to blacks, Indians, and others. The fact that we might allow gay people to get married has got nothing on that. For those that long for the "good old days," when everything seemed to be nicer, simpler, and more Christian; remember that these weren't necessarily the good old days for everybody. Is there a black man or woman who would look back to the 1950s as a better time? I think not.

But, I assure you this: If tomorrow there is a loud trumpet blast and we Christians are zapped up into the air to meet Jesus in the clouds, or if some other nation invades and hauls us off into slavery, or if a terrible natural disaster (global warming? That would be ironic...) were to wipe us off the map, I promise that I will eat crow.

Trading Your Soul for Security

2009-05-15T22:08:00.003-06:00

Love your enemies, unless they withhold vital information from you.

That is how it goes, right?

You would think so, with the way that the torture debates have been going over the last several weeks. President Obama released the torture memos detailing the various methods that were used on each prisoner: Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, varying forms of physical abuse. Subsequently, all backlash hell broke loose when conservatives were quick to criticize the president’s action. Now, on television, radio, the internet, and in coffee shops and Jack’s restaurants, people are asking the question: Should we torture?

Torture.

Just roll the word around in your head for a second.

Torture.

What kind of images, feelings, and impulses does it conjure up?

Torture.

A necessary evil? According to many, yes it is.

While we don’t want to torture, we must do so in circumstances when lives and our national security are at stake.

Ok, I understand that torture is something that we don’t want to do. I understand the “what if” scenarios that so many conservatives bring up when debating this question. What if a nuclear weapon is going to detonate on American soil and we have detainees that can give us information to stop it? What if we can use torture to save lives? I understand that people believe that in order to stop terrorists we must be willing to do some of the things that they do, to “break the rules” a little bit in a Jack Bauer sort of way. But what I don’t understand is the stance that many evangelical Christians take to not only defend the use of torture, but the action of advocating for it.

On the Christian radio the other day (I can hear some of you moaning “oh God, not again” at this point), I caught a piece of a segment in which a DJ from one of Crawford Broadcasting’s conservative talk radio stations was on and was criticizing Obama for his decision to release the torture memos to the public. Ronnie Bruce, the daytime radio host, simply agreed and stated that we are living in “scary” times and that Christians should be praying now more than ever. Indeed, things are getting a little scary.

But the scary part is not that we have a president who is willing to make the ethical stand against torture. The scary part is that we have Christian radio personalities, pastors, political leaders, and public figures who are going on the airwaves and in pulpits and advocating for it.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9

You see, when I think of some of the great religious heroes throughout history, is isn’t those who believed in resolving conflict by means of violence and torture. It has been people who advocated love and peace. For instance, Mother Teresa, who gave her life to the act of loving, living with, and caring for the world’s poor and diseased. Or Ghandi, who championed peace and nonviolence in India. Or the great Martin Luther King Jr., who stood up for equality in the form passive resistance.

In this sense, I find it kind of strange that many of those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace are the very ones saying we should use torture to interrogate terrorists. The religious conservatives who claim to hold the moral high ground in American are often the ones defending the use of torture. But what is moral about this? What is ethical about strapping a human being, made in the image of God, to a chair and pouring water up his nose until he almost drowns? Even if you think it’s necessary, do you really think it’s right?

Do not repay evil for evil. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:17 and 21

As a person who believes in Jesus’ teachings, I can’t support that. The position against torture is easily the high ground, no matter what kind of “what if” scenarios they come up with. True ethics don’t go out the window just because a situation changes, because our security is being threatened. In these kinds of circumstances, it is more important to cling to our morals and values than ever.

I think that the church, as a community of faith, should look at itself and reexamine this issue. Shouldn’t we, as believers in the God who is the great force for good in this world, be the ones taking the moral high ground in these cases? Should we really be the ones who are criticizing the leaders who decide to do away with torture, or should we rejoice at the fact? Is it really worth it to trade away our souls for our security?

Maybe we should just ask the great question:

What would Jesus do?

Or how about a better question:

Who would Jesus torture?

30 Hour Famine 2009

2009-04-23T18:54:00.003-06:00

So what are you eating for your last meal? That is, if you are doing the 30 Hour Famine, what are you eating? I personally am glad that the last meal will consist with the most important meal of the day (and my favorite), breakfast. But for your last meal, you have to make it count. This is going to be what sustains you for the next 30 hours. You don't want to make the mistake of putting a hot pocket or a Pop-tart or anything from Taco Bell inside of you. You want something that is--oh what's the word... nourishing. If I had the time, I would be at Cracker Barrel tomorrow morning gobbling down a Mama's Pancake Breakfast, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to go with plan B which consists of sausage biscuits, eggs, and grits at Ken's BBQ.

I can't believe it has already been an entire year since last time we did this. I have been anticipating it for a few weeks now and it's hard to believe that it's already here. Last year I remember asking myself if we could do the famine in a 1 Corinthians 13 sort of way. In other words, couldwe fast, raise money, worship and pray, and everything else with real and authentic love? Could we do this without sounding like just a clanging cymbal? Because I have never shed a tear for a starving African child. Though sad, it doesn't really grab me because it's the world we live in and I mistakenly assume that it has always been that way and it always will be.

Sitting in this luxury box that is America, it's easy to give in to apathy. It's easy to keep our "headphones on", to not listen to the stories of those who are suffering, to eat and drink and laugh without the slightest notion that the world is groaning with pain. We hear statistics all the time that are alarming. 26 million kids die each day from hunger or hunger-related illness. On and on and on, the staggering statistics. It seems like such a painful burden, one that we don't want to take.

I think that I might know one way that can help us from becoming clanging cymbals. Sure, it's easy to look at the problem and judge that it's too big and do nothing, but that's only an excuse. In my opinion, a great way to prevent apathy from setting in is to put a face with those numbers.

On the Monday after the famine this year I will be giving my last speech of the semester. The goal is to try to get the audience to either do something or stop doing something. It worked out really great because, without knowing that the famine was this weekend, I planned at the beginning of the semester to do this specific speech on aiding a child who is lacking food, education, and healthcare. Today I went to the library to work on that speech. I found a table in an empty spot of the room and set down my bag. After I had pulled out my notebook and a pen, I finally grabbed from one of the pockets a small picture of a young, African boy.

Kashala Mujinga is his name. He lives in the Congo and is 6-years-old. His parents work on a farm as regular laborers, and he has 4 sisters and 1 brother. His favorite hobby is, in his own words, "playing the football." I got this picture right before Christmas of last year, and I cannot describe to you how it felt to see this kid who is receiving food, education, and healthcare because one night at a WorldVision event, I made the commitment to send money to fund all of these necessities. It was unbelievable.

As I opened my notebook to jot down some ideas and plan my speech, I set Kashala's picture to the side where I could see it. Every now and then I would stop, pick it up, and just look at it for a minute or two. I wonder what he's doing right now, I would think. I wonder how his parents felt when they found out that their little boy had a sponsor. Of all the speeches I've done this semester, this one is different. It's a labor of love. It affects real people and real lives... it saves lives. It's personal.

Which takes me back to the cymbals. Whereas last year, apathy was a concern of mine, I know that this year it's not. I haven't even thought about it. Why? Because instead of hearing numbers and statistics, I've got a face to go with them. Instead of thinking, If I don't do something, some African kids are going to die; it's more like If I don't do something, Kashala will die. It's a real kid who goes to school, plays football, does chores, and just regular things that people do.

After over a year of supporting Kashala, praying for him, and sending and receiving things such as Christmas and Easter cards, I am all the more pumped up for this famine. Because yeah, it's going to suck when I've been at work for 8 hours and haven't had anything to eat. It's going to be just as bad trying to go to sleep on an empty stomach. But you know what? Because we're doing this famine, that's a feeling that several kids aren't going to have to experience. Because of our church doing God's work, kids aren't going to waste away because they can't fill their stomachs.

Finally, I just want to say that if anybody hasn't considered aiding a child in need, maybe you should look into it. It costs about 30 to 40 dollars a month (which is how much I spend on my X-box Live and Gamefly subscriptions). It's a great way to put a face with the many numbers and statistics that are out there and it's a great way of taking care of people who truly need it. I couldn't recommend it more. Give it a try, save a life.

See you guys at the famine.

There and Back Again

2009-04-19T20:52:00.003-06:00

Mark this day down on your calendar. Circle it, put a star around it, and highlight it with blue, pink, and yellow. Get out your planner and make a note about today. Make sure that you never forget that today is the day that I got my acceptance letter to the University of Alabama in Huntsville...

...for the second time.

I guess it doesn't really have as much of a punch the second time around. I've had a year to strengthen my resolve, discover my ambition to go um... somewhere, and test the academic waters to make sure I'm not the same slacker I was a few years ago. The truth is last year I wasn't ready to make the transition from working a full time to job to quitting, moving away, and taking on a full load at university. But now I think--no I'm sure--that I am. I'm 23 for crying out loud! I'm ready for anything!

Of course an acceptance letter doesn't mean that much to me at the moment. I'm really happy but I was expecting it. It felt good to tear open the envelope, read the letter, and let my mind fill with hope for what the future may hold. But it doesn't mean a thing unless the money comes through. That's what messed up everything last year.

It has to come through this time. If not I think I'm going to have to do some serious rearranging with my life because it's been the same old, same old for so long and I can't take it much longer. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm an adult and still living with my parents, working the same hometown job I've been working for over 3 years, and wandering around in an academic maze that has seemingly gone nowhere for almost 5 years.

In my entire being I am anticipating a change. I think this is more than just in my head or something that I have to do in order to grow up. It feels like the entire rhythm of my life is pushing me to go on. It's like I've become so restless being stuck in the same places for so long. I need to finally get that feeling that a person gets when they go to their boss and say, "Only two more weeks for me." I need to be able to see Locust Fork, Pinson, and Center Point in the rear view mirror and have that nostalgic feeling in my chest as I drive away knowing that I will return but things just won't be the same. I need to finally be able to say so long, dad. I need to find a church that is interested in providing ministries and activities for people my age, not just those who are older or younger than I am. And I need a place where I can invite friends to come over and just hang out, watch a ballgame or play some X-box. I don't have that luxury here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want to be away from all the amazing people in my life. I love my friends and family and because of those special people, it is going to make leaving that much harder. I have no intentions of ever breaking contact with any of my friends in my life. What I'm talking about is just the fact that I have to make a life for myself and that's going to take some sort of journey, a story that requires that things must change even if only for a little while.

Because a guy can only load furniture into cars for so long until he says I can't take it anymore, I was made to do more than this. A guy can only eat his mama's cooking for so long until he is embarrassed that he can't make anything more than a cheese sandwich or frozen pizza. People in general don't like walls. We don't like cages. We have to get out, stretch our legs, and sometimes run as hard and as fast as we can just for the sake of doing it. We have to, because we are people, and that's what we are supposed to do.

And so I am praying that the money comes. I am praying that my future lies somewhere... else. Because here isn't bad, but for a stagnant 23-year-old, it just doesn't hold the same glamor as there.

Behold!

2009-04-13T19:01:00.003-06:00

...the most amazing, wonderful candy ever, the Skitburst!

"What's the son of a duck? It's a duck."

2009-04-10T07:06:00.002-06:00

Guy claims Bible is not true, and gets owned by Colbert.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bart Ehrman

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Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

This is a Good Thing

2009-04-07T16:35:00.003-06:00

I find this video pretty encouraging. Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners, which is a Christian magazine and group that focuses on social justice and addressing humanity's greatest problems such as poverty, war, the environment, and basic human rights. I've been reading his new book lately, and from the Sojourners website I found this video of President Obama's new Faith-Based Council. Like I said, it makes me more optimistic about faith and politics, and I'm looking forward to seeing what these guys do to work on these crucial issues.

First of all, I like to see the cooperation and harmony between these three, all representing different religions on this Faith-Based Council. We've seen in the past so many media interviews with evangelicals on TV being the opposite of humble and arguing about gay marriage, abortion, or whether or not God wanted Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 to happen. Instead of highlighting their differences and creating an ugly scene of bigotry and intolerance for all of America to see, these leaders are finding common ground and trying to use each of their own different faiths to bring a better world.

CNN probably wanted them to argue, because that gets them better ratings and thus more money. I'm still not sure why the interviewer asked the Muslim guy what he thought of the number of Christians in America dropping by 10%. Still, it was refreshing to see religious leaders coming together to try to find ways to help people and not just argue over their differences.

I also liked how Rev. Wallis completely dodged the question about Tony Dungy being on the council. So what if he won the Super Bowl, who cares whether he's on the council or not? Wallis made a simple comment about not knowing who will be on the council and moved on to an issue that actually matters--poverty. Will it net CNN high ratings? Probably not, but it will make a big difference in the world and in peoples' lives.

This is good to see. When there has been so much religious polarization and discrimination in the past, especially in the media, it's good to finally see people of different faiths working together for the common purpose of helping people.

Anyways, I really like this Jim Wallis guy. I was going to post an interview he did on The Daily Show but it wouldn't work. I'm posting the link below. I think that if you can watch it, you should. His message is something that is refreshing and all Christians should hear.

Jim Wallis on The Daily Show

Keeping Myself in Check (Part 2)

2009-04-06T20:49:00.005-06:00

I was on twitter before it was even popular. Does that mean anything at all? I don’t know, but all I remember was my sister telling me to text “follow steph23” to the number 40404 and create my own account for her to follow. If I remember correctly, we treated it only as a joke at first, texting the stupidest and most monotonous things to 40404 to which the other sibling would receive the update. Later, after I found out more friends had it and we started to weave our web of twitter friends and followers, I didn’t notice that this 40404 thing seemed to grow into a tool that I along with lots of others used often for purposes both good and bad.

It was the new perspective from Kevin’s blog post about twitter that really made the difference. As I got more friends and a few kids from the youth group (who I also consider to be friends) to follow me on twitter, I think I let it go to my head a little bit. I don’t know what it was, it’s not that I was proud that I had a whopping 12 followers. Steph has much more than I do. Maybe it wasn’t pride at all. Maybe it was just a little boredom throughout the day mixed with a direct feed from my life to the phones of my friends. Maybe it game me a sense of empowerment, I don’t know, but something about how I used it doesn’t sit right with me and it has revealed a bad flaw in the way I view my relationship with my friends.

I updated my twitter a lot. I would do it before class at school, on my way driving to places, in the library while I was reading a book, several times while I was at work, and in many more of each day’s circumstances. Like I said, a lot of it probably had to do with simple boredom. Sometimes some older “tweeters” would get a little upset because the younger “tweeters” were updating their twitters so often that the older “tweeters” got tired of their phones going off every 30 seconds with new text messages. This is understandable, but when some of the older “tweeters” (let’s just call them Aimee Gilbert and Stephanie Benton) sounded off via twitter about a younger “tweeter” (we’ll just call her Kaylea Roberts) updating too often, I spoke up by saying that I liked getting all their updates and I thought that everyone should update more often. It never annoyed me because I always liked it when I was in a boring lecture or at work doing some monotonous task and my phone would go off, telling me what a friend was up to or what they were thinking at the moment.

In this sense, I love twitter because when I go to work or school I still feel in a sense connected to my closest friends. I don’t feel like I’m going off into some foreign world all by myself. I can at least send and receive messages so that I know someone is still out there.

But the negative part of this, the part that Kevin hit on in his post, is that I let twitter fuel my narcissistic tendencies. This is one reason I like to read a lot, because it never hurts to get someone else’s take on things. I used twitter as a sort of “bully pulpit,” sending my opinions about Christian radio or politics or just anything out to my followers. I did this often in the heat of the moment right as the thoughts and emotions came up in my mind, and I think it put off my friends a little bit. Being able to send out little 140 character messages completely about me made it easy for me to slip into a selfish tendency to view myself as the center of the universe and be less considerate of others. It wasn’t like I didn’t care about anybody else, but it led me to take up a “me first” attitude that is never good.

Since I realized what I was doing, I feel like I have grown up a little bit. I’ve taken a step back, examined myself, and looked at what I was doing closely. Now, when I update my twitter I try to think about the people who are receiving my updates and not just the “me, me, me” attitude that I take up all too easily. I try to include them somehow, and sometimes I don’t update at all but rather text one of them. Truth is, it’s so much better that way. I realized that for a while that in my own little world I was looking at my friends as fans or followers and not friends at all, which is scary. In a sense, I placed myself above them, and I shouldn’t have done that.

Of course, half the time I was still just a bored guy with 5 hours left to go in his shift, or a bored guy in a library who missed his friends and would like to send out some sort of something to communicate, or somebody with a great joke or quote and nobody to tell.

Also, nothing beats being able to hijack someone else’s phone and update their twitter for them. There is just something satisfying about letting another person’s followers know that said person is:

“cannibalizing children”

“taking a dump in the yard”

“gay”

"in love with Chris Lombardo"

“eating baby fetuses and drinking embryo juice”

“eating zombie brains”

“pregnant”

And finally, my favorite…

“pooping in the turlet”

If you know somebody who has a twitter, never miss an opportunity to steal their phone and use it to completely ruin their life. You won't regret it.

Christian Radio (and why I can't take it anymore)

2009-03-28T01:38:00.006-06:00

I feel like writing this post because my friends who know me well and those who don’t know me quite as well have probably noticed that I don’t have many good things to say about Christian radio stations. They are exactly right. The best way to sum up my feelings about listening to Christian radio is to say I’d rather be fed to a rancor. Or I’d rather be stabbed in the tooth by a pirate and then tied up and thrown into quicksand. I would even rather ride the Georgia Cyclone at Six Flags than listen to Christian radio. I think you get my point.

It’s not that I am trying to be mean or ugly about it either. It’s just that at my job I am forced to listen to this stuff all day long and I can’t take it anymore. A lot of people take this perspective that Christian radio is this holy thing and that since it is “God’s” music then it is good for you to listen to. I actually think that in some ways it can and has had a negative effect on the church. To me, listening to Christian music on the radio is not spiritual at all, it doesn’t bring me closer to God, and more often than not it embarrasses me that as a Christian, this is the stuff that is representing my faith to the world.

So just hear me out, because I want to sum up a few general problems I have with the radio stations as they are now. I’m not trying to offend, and would like some feedback from anybody who agrees or disagrees with me. This is just how I see it.

General Concern #1 - The overall quality of the music is poor

Ok, so maybe I already lost you here. If so, let me tell you this: I like it just a little better than country music.

I know this is subjective and it’s just my opinion that this music is that bad, but I think that most of the general public would agree that the music played on Christian radio is 2nd rate, and that is being nice. Most of the time the stuff you get is dumpster trash like this:

Still not convinced? Well, take a gander at this “new” worship song that seems to take every worship song cliché and cram it all into one super-unoriginal song of praise:

Note the references to hands being lifted high and hearts bowed. How many worship songs have this? Haven’t we all heard this in church services and at camps and retreats hundreds of times before? What about the words of the pre-chorus calling every creature and every tongue to worship? Worship songs like this were being written 40 years ago; the only difference here is there is a distorted guitar playing power chords.

Now it’s not always bad. Sara Groves always has a good single on the radio, and once every two or three weeks you might hear a Caedmon’s Call tune. Chris Tomlin is hit or miss, sometimes good and sometimes bad. David Crowder Band is alright but even they get annoying after a while, and he apparently is going to beat to death the trend of making modern versions of old hymns. That’s been done again and again and again, and frankly it’s getting old. I’ve heard some Andrew Peterson, Jars of Clay, and Robbie Seay Band as well, which is good. But for every one time they play a good song, they play Paul Colman’s new “If I Was Jesus” twice—which is the musical equivalent of chewing on tin foil.

Nashville singer-songwriter Andy Gullahorn has this song called Holy Flakes which tells a story about a grocery store that has some old cereal that stays dusty on the shelf because nobody ever wants to buy it. When a new manager comes in with some fresh ideas, he slaps a picture of the pope on the box and calls it Holy Flakes. He also puts a little slogan of the pope saying, “If you’re a Christian, act like one and eat your Holy Flakes!” Before long, the customers abandon the other cereal to buy the Holy Flakes. The point of the song being that people will buy crappy cereal just because they believe God wants them to, when really it's just a marketing scheme.

The marketers trying to sell the music know that people will listen to it because it has the Christian label on it, and I think they use this to their advantage. Of course God wants you to listen to Christian radio, and if you do then you will be closer to God during the day. Even if you don’t think the music is that good, you still ought to listen because it’s God’s music. But what looks like good spiritual advice may actually be a scheme to put more money in the pockets of those in the industry.

Don’t believe it? This is coming from the same people who charge admission for a concert and then ask for a love offering in the middle of it. Which brings me to my next point…

General Concern # 2 - Christian radio is a business

One time when I was listening to the local WDJC station, I heard something that seemed just a little odd to me. Between songs, the station ran a quick sound byte that said “WDJC: Alabama’s #1 Christian music station!” It never occurred to me before this moment that Christian radio stations were actually competing with each other, ranking themselves as being better than the other Christian radio stations. We’re Christians, aren’t we all in this together? Does it really matter if my radio station is better than the one down in Montgomery? Does God give you a bigger reward in heaven for that?

The other thought that occurred to me in this moment was, “Why are they telling me this?” Why would a listener care if their radio station is the #1 station in the state? It’s not like I’m going to brag to my friends telling them that I listened to the #1 Christian radio station in the whole state of Alabama. Listeners don’t really care about that.

But advertisers do. The way radio stations make their money is through advertising. If a station has more listeners, then it can charge more money for ad slots. So while I don’t care if WDJC is Alabama’s #1 Christian music station, Express Oil Change does. Just like any other radio station, you get annoying commercials all trying to get your attention and sell you products. The traffic and weather reports are both sponsored, and even Don Crawford’s political grandstand is paid for by an advertiser.

The funny thing about listening to ads on a Christian station is that the businesses try to tweak their commercials to appeal to religious people, and they do so in some humorous ways. Bible verses are used to gain a consumer’s trust. Financial institutions promise to offer a Biblical approach to dealing with finances, which is hilarious to me. Do any of these companies give the advice, “Go, sell all your possessions and give to the poor”? I doubt it. My favorite, though, is an ad by a plastic surgery practice with a little jingle that sings, “Clinton plastic surgery: Revealing beauty, not creating it.”

Christian radio is a business, and the point of business is to provide a good or service and receive a profit. I can’t have any sort of spiritual experience while an advertiser is trying to sell me car insurance every 10 minutes. It doesn’t help that WDJC is promoting itself as being better than the other Christian stations in the state. It just makes me wonder what their real motive is. Because in business, what matters the most is the bottom line. How does that go along with the Kingdom of God?

General Concern #3 - Christian radio is too political

I have actually expressed my frustration with this before on this blog, but I think it deserves revisiting. As a form of mass media, radio stations have a tremendous amount of influence on public opinion. Christian radio stations probably have even more influence because people tend to associate the views expressed on these stations with God. This being the case, I feel that the radio stations are sending the wrong message and that the owners are using this power to promote their own political causes.

Listen to WDJC for an hour and you will probably hear 3 or 4 advertisements that aren’t about God, Jesus, or the Bible—but are about America. Sometimes the two are tied together. For a Christian radio station, does that not seem a little strange? When listening to the radio, I often feel like they are telling me how to be a good American rather than how to be a good Christian. And according to them, the way to be a good American is you agree with right-wing politics and vote for the Republican candidate. The pre-recorded bits between songs are political, the commentary by the DJs is sometimes political, and even the prayers are political. A political undertone is constantly running underneath everything the radio station does—and it really shouldn’t be there at all.

The United States is not a Christian nation. In fact, there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Jesus talked about the coming of the Kingdom of God, which is entirely different from the nations of this world. In the past, countries set up Christianity as the official state religion, and the church suffered badly for it. America was founded on the principle of religious freedom, and it does not endorse any one faith as the official state religion. If you really believe that America is a Christian nation, then you have to assume that it was God’s will that the land was so brutally and wrongfully stolen from the Native Americans—something I’m not willing to believe. The idea that God is especially fond of America and that he fights for us and against our enemies is absurd, selfish, and as far as I know has no Biblical support.

In this way I find it odd that a Christian radio station would be so nationalistic. WDJC literally brands itself the “God and Country” station and one of their slogans is “WDJC: Our America, Our God.” First of all, America doesn’t only belong to Christians. Second, God doesn’t only belong to America. This may come as a shock, but God bless America is found nowhere in the Bible. The idea that the Kingdom of God and the nation of America are one in the same has to be done away with because it’s simply wrong. What if America as a nation does something morally wrong? (Which, it does.) What if this country doesn’t always go along with the teachings of Jesus? (It doesn’t.)

Don’t get me wrong, I think patriotism is a good thing and I believe in supporting your country. I’m not saying it’s wrong. But what I don’t get is why do the owners of Christian radio take it upon themselves to promote nationalism? When did that ever become the job of the church? I believe that these radio stations should stay out of politics altogether, and just offer spiritual and Biblical music, etc. Politics has a place with the church, but it shouldn't be promoted through Christian media in such a biased way.

So there you have it, my beef with Christian radio. Again, I am not trying to offend. I just think it could be so much better and that so much good could come from it if it was done the right way. I believe that the powers that be in the Christian music industry have failed miserably, and I hope that somehow things can change in the near future. I really hope it does because, like I said, I seriously cannot take it anymore.

"Return the Call to Home"

2009-03-05T23:46:00.003-06:00

"If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there; first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there and; third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there." -John Newton

Last night I felt pretty bad for something I did during the worship service. I finished a song and, feeling the need to say something, I went into a little sermonette about how life’s beauty is good evidence for God’s existence. I cited the snowfall we had here last weekend and the simple things in life like a sunset or a good conversation with a dear friend. These are all things that point me to believe in God, and I said it so confidently standing in front of the youth group during a Wednesday night church service. Later, while I was driving home, the subject came up again in my thoughts and this time it was much different. I thought about life’s beauty and the things I had said in church, and I began to wonder if I really even believed them at all.

I’m going to go ahead and make a confession: I am a doubter. If you asked me I would tell you straight up. I don’t have the faith in God that I would like to have. I believe the things that the Bible says and I accept them as true, but when it comes to actually placing faith in God’s word and standing on it, I am much more uncomfortable. I get frustrated sometimes because I want God to stop being so elusive and vague. I want him to speak clearly; to stop being off in the heavens somewhere and instead be right in front of my face, drinking coffee at Starbucks with me and having a heart to heart conversation. I want that, but I don’t ever get it.

Last night didn’t go very well for me. For the rest of the night I felt pretty bad about the whole situation. I felt bad because once again doubt reared its ugly head and I felt like I was standing on shaky ground. I also felt bad because I stood in front of everybody and said this stuff like I was so absolutely sure of it. Whenever I get up in front of people in church, especially to do worship music, I feel like I have a responsibility to lead them towards God. But also I feel like I have a responsibility to be honest and truthful, not fake. Reconciling the two can seem difficult sometimes, if not altogether impossible.

I just have so many questions that go unanswered. It would be arrogant of me to act like I have all of this figured out. But I think about these questions all the time. I wonder about God all the time, about if he really exists and if he really loves me and if there really is a life after death. I turn to the church for answers, or at least reassurance, but many times church people cause me to question God more than anything. Just today I was driving to class and right down the road from my house a small church was changing their sign. A man had his pickup truck backed up to the sign and he was standing on the tailgate adding new letters. His message was halfway complete. It said, “Try Jesus. If you don’t like…” and that was it. I finished off the message in my mind, knowing what the rest of it would say: “Try Jesus. If you don’t like him, the devil will take you back!” Surely enough, when I came home tonight the message was confirmed. I’ve been around this kind of stuff way too long, I thought.

Arrogant signs like that from the church just send the wrong message. It’s not the message of love and acceptance that I believe the church should put out there. It’s more of a “my way or the highway” kind of attitude. Follow Jesus or go to hell. That stuff is a spiritual turn-off if you ask me. It only pushes people away.

The positive side to these situations is that the tension I experience in my faith causes me to be more diligent in finding ways to resolve it. Whenever I have a day when I don’t feel right and things just don’t seem to go the way they should, most of the time I simply dismiss it as a bad day. Normally this works great because people really do tend to make more out of their problems than they should. But last night it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t shake that feeling, and I didn’t really know what to do about it.

People of faith, who believe in a higher power who exists out there… somewhere, often feel like God is trying to communicate to them something, somehow, for some reason. Many times we are searching, tuning in for some kind of divine message that comes through in a song, a prayer, something a friend says, or some kind of wordless signal in the form of nature. Today I was going through my normal routine, just driving to class listening to the new U2 album. At the end of it they have this amazingly haunting song called Cedars of Lebanon (you can hear it here). I’m not exactly sure what is Bono’s intended meaning in this song, but to me it paints a picture of this sad and broken world we live in and asks the question where is God in the midst of it all. And in between the half sung, half spoken verses of the song is this eerie harmony that comes across like the words of an Old Testament prophet calling out to the people:

“Return the call to home.”

Hearing it, thoughts came to mind of all the times that I let my doubts interfere with my relationship with God, the times when I consciously pushed God away. It reminded me of the moments when I got so confused at the thought of it all that I got fed up and decided not to deal with it--the days when I wrestled with the questions that had no answers and I became apathetic because of it.

I believe that God is out there, and I believe God cares about me. If this is true then it is very likely that God could be calling out, even pursuing me in some way. Interestingly enough, I got on the internet and I don’t know why but I looked up a guy named N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham who I had heard quoted in sermons from Rob Bell’s church, Mars Hill. He was also quoted in a book I just finished reading about the historical accuracy of the story of Jesus in the gospels, and also I saw him once on The Colbert Report (the Colbert bump works once again!). He is supposedly the world’s leading New Testament scholar.

Well, he has just written a book about heaven called Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I watched a brief interview of him talking about it and he said some interesting things. First of all, he said that the general idea that the church has about heaven is wrong. Of course, it’s always interesting when generally accepted religious concepts and ideas might be wrong. I personally don’t buy into the whole Left Behind, rapture, and tribulation stuff anyways; but my idea about the afterlife is basically this: Who knows? Stumped by the weirdness of Revelations and the vague, metaphorical language, I have a hard time figuring out what God is getting at with all of that stuff.

According to N. T. Wright, the Biblical concept of the afterlife is that once we die, we go to heaven. But then, there is even sort of an afterlife to that in which God restores the world and there is a new heaven and a new earth and God returns people to his creation with new bodies to live out eternity the way God originally intended. This means that no longer can we regard the world as a sinking ship in which we must only save souls and then get the heck out. Instead, we must work to improve this world and in doing so play an active role in bringing forth the new heaven and new earth.

I decided this has got to be worth checking into, so I went out and bought the book tonight.

I’ve only read the introduction so far. It’s going to be a project over the next few weeks, but just buying the book and being introduced to a new idea about what heaven is like has got me thinking about heaven and the afterlife in a way that I haven’t conceived of it since childhood. And I go back to the prophetic words of that song:

“Return the call to home.”

I have realized that in the past couple of years, when my faith has been on edge and doubt has creeped in, I put all thought of heaven, of home, out of my mind. It always seemed so far away, and too good to be true. Rather than let myself hope and dream a little, I said to myself, “Why spend time thinking about a place that may or may not exist?” And for about two years or longer I never really thought about it.

But what a person believes about the afterlife has a major impact on how that person lives his or her own life in the here and now. It determines values and actions. It illustrates what is important to that person. Being the doubting Thomas that I am, I think this might be a good place to start trying to fix things. It might be good to try to learn what I can about home. Because if I have learned anything I know that if God doesn’t have a home for me then I have no home. It certainly doesn’t exist here.

I think it may be time to return that call.

Give Him The Ball!!!

2009-02-24T21:09:00.008-06:00

For almost my entire life I have been a fan of the NBA. You don't find enough NBA fans in this part of the country, but I love it. I started off by watching Michael Jordan deal out finals losses to the Utah Jazz way back in the 90s. Now I am partial to Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. As in any sport, there is always that team that you hate. You hate to see them do well, you hate to see them win. For me, this has always been the Lakers. I tend to root against the teams who are over-hyped and over-covered by ESPN. In the NFL it's the Cowboys. In college football, it's USC. In the MLB, it's the Yankees and the Red Sox. And in the NBA it's the Lakers.

Star power is a big reason for these media favorites to get the attention they do. For a long time I hated Kobe Bryant. He was and is a great player, but I hated his attitude. He was a bad team player, always wanting to take every shot. He couldn't get along with Shaq, and he was arrogant. This always rubbed me the wrong way, and when Shaq left for the Miami Heat, I delighted in the years when the Lakers struggled. I was glad the Heat won a championship for the sole reason that Shaq did it before Kobe did.

While I'm still no Laker fan at all, I think I'm starting to come around on Kobe Bryant. I still don't really like him, but I think I'm starting to understand him better. I read a poll in Sports Illustrated the other day where they asked other NBA players who they would want taking the last shot with the game on the line. Like 74% of them said Kobe Bryant. That is a huge number, especially with all the stars in the league. No one can deny the talent that Kobe has, even if his attitude isn't the greatest. And when I really think about it, if I was that good, I would want to take every shot as well. If the team lost and I didn't get the ball enough, I would probably be upset too. Now, Kobe is showing that he is even growing out of this. Today I heard a statistic that said something like the Lakers are 29-2 when Kobe takes less than 20 shots. Instead of trying to be the superstar among a group of 5 good basketball players, he is actually playing within the team. And the Lakers are probably the favorites to win it all this year.

It has been said that in sports a real superstar has to want the ball in his (or her) hands when the game is on the line. When it's the 4th quarter and there are only 10 seconds left on the clock with no timeouts, the greatest players always want to be the ones to take the last shot. Anybody who ever watches the Lakers knows that the ball is going to Kobe. If you are Phil Jackson, Jack Nicholson, or any other Laker fan you want the basketball in Kobe's hands. And if you're Kobe Bryant, you want the ball in your hands. You want to be the one who puts up the shot, with everything on the line, and either succeeds or fails. You are the one who is willing to risk the pain of defeat and failure to achieve victory.

As I was watching Barack Obama's address to Congress tonight, I kind of felt this way about our new president. You would almost think he's crazy, because he looks way too comfortable and calm to be in the situation he is in. He inherited a nation fighting two wars with an economy that's going in the toilet. We have an enormous national debt, and across the world our reputation has sunken very low. Partisan divides are running deep in Washington; and while the Republicans and Democrats fight over what should be done, people are continuing to lose their jobs.

Tonight in his speech President Obama looked confident and he highlighted some key directions that the nation needs to move in order to improve things. He talked about the stimulus bill that just passed and how it will create jobs for the economy. He said that healthcare needs to be made more affordable, and even claimed to aggressively pursue a cure for cancer. He also wanted to make it easier for Americans to go to college, which is a huge deal for me. Among other things, he also said he would reduce the national debt by half by the time his term as president is up. Remember, this is not on the campaign trail. He has been elected. He isn't trying to get more votes this time around. These are actual goals President Obama is trying to acheive.

I knew that Obama was ambitious, anybody who runs for President of the U.S. is. But this is beyond even that, and this is one of the main reasons why I am so comfortable with him being my president:

He wants the ball.

When it's the fourth quarter and the game is coming down to the wire, he wants the ball in his hands. He's not afraid of being the man sitting in the highest office in the land when disaster strikes. He's not worried about the pressure. No, he is confident in his ability to make the shot.

I can't tell you how many times I have watched a Lakers game, or at least the highlights of a Lakers game, rooting for the other team, and then watched in disgust as Kobe Bryant sank a 3-point, game-winning basket as time ran out. He literally does it all the time, and I can't stand it. But that is what makes him so great. He wants the ball in his hands when it matters, and so many times he delivers. Barack Obama hasn't done a lot yet. He has only been in office for a little over a month. But it's not hard to see that with the financial crisis and everything else going on with our country right now, he wants the ball. He wants to be the one taking the shot. And for the man who will be leading the country on into the future, that is one quality I like to see.

Sickness and Music (pretty much rambling)

2009-02-18T22:09:00.003-06:00

So if you are one of the people who is subscribed to my twitter or if you are a facebook friend or even a real life friend, you probably know that I am sick and have been since last Friday. What I call "The Perfect Storm" of disease hit me and this photo shows what it did better than words can tell.

I probably shouldn't have drank that Pepsi from 1999. We found it at work, among some items that some folks had donated. It was a 1999, bottled, Elvis-edition Pepsi still sealed and full. Joseph said he would give me a dollar to drink it. I asked for more, and we finally settled on two. I wouldn't normally do these things, but at work I get so bored I will do lots of things just to make the day go by. The deal was for me to drink half of it in order to get the money. I actually drank almost all of it, to prove my manhood or something. I told Joseph to take a sip but he wouldn't do it. Wuss.

The next morning the Pepsi from the last millenium caught up to me at the same time as a sinus infection. The perfect storm of disease had hit and now, almost a week later, I still am fighting it off.

Which hasn't been fun because the week has included two tough history exams, an informative speech, and a rough draft for a poetry essay that needed to be written (but hasn't yet). Normally, I would be complaining; but if something like this doesn't happen at least once a semester I think I would try to pinch myself so I could wake up from my dream. College is just like that. Stuff goes wrong at the worst time and you either rise up to the occasion or things get messed up. It's one of the hardest lessons learned for many students.

And so this week I have been fighting through my assignments while also trying to keep my nose blown and my body hydrated. I've been trying to make sure to take all my pills at all the right intervals, before or after the right meals. I haven't seen a lot of improvement since Friday when the food poison finally went away (I won't say how). Now I'm just kind of tired and my face hurts from all the sniffling and coughing. I have been laying down so much that laying down is even uncomfortable. I had to miss church tonight and I didn't want to. Tomorrow I have an essay rough draft due and I haven't even started it. And this congestion doesn't seem to be going away.

Just a few minutes ago I did something that I don't really do all that much anymore: I got out my guitar and just started playing some of my favorite songs. I wasn't practicing for anything. I wasn't preparing any songs for church. I just picked out a couple favorites and played them for the sheer joy of being able to play my favorite songs and sing along to them as well. And my mind began to wander back to days when I made music a much bigger part of my life.

I have been leading worship songs for church since I was in the 11th grade. Before that I played drums in a worship band. At the same time I played drums in a rock band with some friends from that same church. A few years later, after I started college, that same band (with some member changes) started playing local shows. They were very small, but if we kept at it we might have gone somewhere. Of course, everybody had their own ideas about how they wanted things, and we eventually went our own separate ways. But we had some good times.

Ask anybody who plays music and they will tell you, there is something about cranking the amps up, banging on the cymbals, and as a unit of band members playing a song that you love. That's a feeling you can't get by playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band. It's a reward for the hard work and practice. There is something about taking a solo, or coming up with a great riff, or a sweet drum pattern.

I miss it, and as much as I like sitting in my room strumming the 6-string, that's not enough. I'd like things to be a louder, and more full. I'd like to feel the energy in the room when you have the guitars, bass, vocals, and drums all going at the same time--and I want to be in the middle of it.

Either way, I've noticed that there is one place I go when I'm sick, lonely, down, or whatever else. I always go to my guitar. I don't know why that is, but I always go there and it makes me feel better. Today, with all the coughing and hacking, the public speaking assignment, the feeling of wanting to be anywhere else but on this same couch, it's no surprise that that's where I found myself once again.

Yes, it's another video

2009-02-14T15:29:00.003-06:00

Hey everybody, sorry for all the non-original posts I've been putting up lately. I'm really going to try to get back to writing something eventually. This video I couldn't pass up because it seems so funny in light of the recent news regarding A-rod and Michael Phelps. Enjoy!

Best. Video. Ever.

2009-02-12T22:36:00.001-06:00

Road Blocks

2009-02-09T21:59:00.004-06:00

Tonight, after I got home from work, I spent about an hour of my time typing out a blog only to scrap it in the end. This has been happening a lot lately and I'm not sure why. My drafts have gone up from 90 to 103 in the past month while my posts have hardly increased at all.

I would like to get some thoughts down, but I keep hitting road blocks. My ideas don't make sense or I don't write it clear enough and am too lazy to clean it up. Maybe I'm taking this too seriously.

Either way, while I am dealing with said road blocks, I offer you this nugget of brilliance by my favorite author Donald Miller. He's got a book coming out late this year, and I can't wait. This blog post reminded me why I'm such a fan. Hope you enjoy!

Andrew Osenga Trashes Twilight

2009-01-31T19:30:00.002-06:00

I was just casually browsing the web while devouring some pizza when I came upon this blog post that absolutely made my day:

http://www.andyosenga.com/2008/12/18/twilight-a-negative-rabbit-room-review/

What an awesome dude.

I'm a nerd

2009-01-24T15:53:00.003-06:00

I read this today in my history text and thought it was pretty cool. It is about ancient and medieval architecture:

"Classical architecture reflected the belief that the world centered on the human being. A Greek temple, like Athens' Parthenon, was meant to assure people that the world was an intelligible place that affirmed human nature. The principles of its construction were not intended to be mysterious or awe-inspiring, but immediately obvious and comfortable. Vertical pillars supported horizontal lintels. Stone did what stone was expected to do.

"A Gothic church creates the opposite impression. To convey Christianity's faith in a transcendent reality quite different from our own, it offers an experience of a supernatural world. A Gothic church encloses a divine space where nature's laws appear to be transcended. The Gothic architect conceals the principles of his building's construction so that the logic of its design is hidden from those who enter it. Vertical lines dominate the interior and pull the eye upward. The ribs of the vault seem to converge at infinity, and far overhead tons of rock apparently float on walls of light. There are windows on every side. However, their tinted glass prevents the worshiper from connecting the interior with the ordinary world outside and fills the sanctuary with unnatural light. From the engineering point of view, a Gothic church is a supremely rational structure, but one that uses reason to create the experience of irrational space. It is a place where nature, by seeming to behave supernaturally, fulfills Suger's mandate and turns the intellect from the seen to the unseen. A Gothic church is not just a place to hear about God's transcendence; it is a place to experience it."

2009 AD

2009-01-07T14:59:00.003-06:00

Today I woke up at 12 'o clock noon. I had set my alarm clock last night to go off at 9 am. I had ideas about getting up early and doing something productive or something like that, but when it came time for me to make good on those ideas, I said screw it. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. Justifiably so, because spring classes start tomorrow, and what could one more day of getting my required 10-12 hours of sleep hurt?

Christmas break went by very fast. That time of year gets so busy and we always complain about how hectic the holiday season is, but looking back I kind of miss the business that it brings. I made lots of good memories in the past 3 weeks or so, from eating a fruit pirate ship at Konomi's for my sister's birthday to the New Year's Guitar Hero blowout at Jeff and Jennifer's house, and so many other events in between.

That's why January is one of my least favorite months of the year. It's kind of like when you're a kid at Chuckie Cheese and you're having fun playing the games and watching the mechanical animals play songs, and then your mom makes you leave and go home because you have to go to school the next day. And in Christmas I get so much joy out of all the parties and spending time with friends, church services remembering the birth of Christ, and even the shopping when people are out looking for gifts for their loved ones. When that all ends, and we take down the tree and store it in the basement, it can be a little sad for me.

And so life goes on. New Year's comes and we turn our attention to the upcoming year. Some of us resolve to live better lives, take more care of ourselves, or strive to be something more than who we have been. The hope of starting fresh is enough to motivate me to let go of the Christmas spirit and move on into 2009. I have four new classes that I have to make A's in starting tomorrow. I'm taking speech and I hate making speeches. Maybe this year I can get over that. I have to get to UAH this fall, now is the time to work towards that.

Not to mention all of the good things that are coming: the Guitar Hero parties, good meals with friends, new music that will be coming out, books waiting to be read, trips to new places, my birthday, new episodes of The Office, summertime, heartfelt prayers, college football starting again, Halloween, and on and on and on...

Here's to the hope that a new year brings, and to the hope that we are moving toward something, and to the joy found in the moving...

Favorite Albums of 2008 (1 through 5)

2008-12-23T17:03:00.002-06:00

5. Andrew Peterson - Resurrection Letters Volume II

Five Star Songs:

Invisible God

I like Andrew Peterson because he writes good folk music about faith that is deep and epic at the same time. When I listen to Resurrection Letters it makes me feel like I am outside in the woods, in a cave, or out in a field experiencing something very ancient and spiritual. I don't know if that really makes sense. Maybe you just have to listen to AP to know. The theme of resurrection in the songs on this record really came at a good time in my life. I needed to be reminded that nothing truly dies. Every end is just a new beginning, and we see it all over - from a seed being planted in the ground to the sun coming up each day to a man finding grace and renewal in Jesus. Resurrection Letters tells this over and over again in a very beautiful way.

4. Thrice - The Alchemy Index Volumes III & IV (Earth and Air)

Five Star Songs:

Come All You Weary
Broken Lungs

If I made of special award for "Album worth digging into the most," The Alchemy Index would definitely get that award. With most albums I don't get out the liner notes and follow along with the music. I would but I don't have the time. For Thrice's new album I read the lyrics along with the songs and I even looked up words I didn't understand. It seemed that within the words of each song was hidden some sort of mysterious, divine truth. This was very rewarding because I am terrible with literature and poetry, I rarely ever see the deeper meaning in anything. When I took a closer look at the music and lyrics of The Alchemy Index, I found more than music that just happened to be cool because the earth CD sounded earthy and the air CD sounded like wind.

The Alchemy Index is deep, which is important because Dustin Kensrue writes songs about faith that are poetic and meaningful and not shallow. He makes the song "I Am a Friend of God" look like the alphabet song. It just isn't fair how good Thrice is.

3. Counting Crows - Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Five Star Songs:

1492
Cowboys
When I Dream of Michelangelo

Counting Crows is a good band to listen to when you are sad or feel like being pessimistic. I got on a big Counting Crows kick last fall, and it carried over into spring of this year. They were my favorite band for a really long time, not because I really felt like being sad or anything. Adam Duritz is just a really honest and open -not to mention talented- songwriter. His singing voice is incredible and CC's folk rock sound is exactly what I like to spend my time listening to. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings packs more of a punch than other CC recordings. It starts out fast and hard but mellows out after about song 6. A very solid record, I listened to it probably too much.

2. Ben Shive - The Ill-tempered Klavier

Five Star Songs:

She Is The Rising Sun
4th of July
New Year

Faith and doubt have sort of been a recurring theme in my life for the last couple of years. I have been doing a lot of questioning. Ben Shive's album sort of represents how I believe God communicates to people through art and beauty. Nowadays, everybody puts so much emphasis on reason and rationality when really the human brain is designed so that we make decisions holistically. People seem to think that something is only true if it is measurable and tangible. I took a sociology class this semester with a professor who had a PhD and was really a pretty darn intelligent guy. From what I gathered, the guy's personal religious beliefs were agnostic. He said once that he goes to church, but only because his family does. I liked listening to his teaching, we had discussions about all the really touchy subjects in his class - issues like politics, race, and religion. I remember sometimes I would leave his class after a really deep discussion wondering if God really existed at all. It was good because it forced me to think about my faith, and I think that I've come out stronger for it. But some days I would really be perplexed.

After one particular class I walked out and put my iPod earphones in. I was thinking and wondering about some things, feeling some particular doubts that haunt me every once in a while. The song that came on my iPod at that moment was a song by Ben Shive called "Rise Up" and these are the lyrics I heard in this particular moment:

Every stone that makes you stumble
And cuts you when you fall
Every serpent here that strikes your heel
To curse you when you crawl
The King of Love one day will crush them all

And every sad seduction
And every clever lie
Every word that woos and wounds
The pilgrim children of the sky
The King of Love will break them by and by

And you will rise up in the end

It was just a cool moment for me because at that very moment I probably couldn't have heard something better than that. Looking back it was a key moment for me because now I'm coming to the point where I feel pretty safe in my belief again, and it has been a gradual process with moments and happenings such as this over a long period of time.

The Ill-tempered Klavier is a beautiful and unique album. Ben Shive's songwriting is brilliant, and his lyrics are both captivating and thoughtful at the same time. It is a really great CD.

1. Relient K - The Bird and the Bee Sides/The Tennis EP

Five Star Songs:

The Lining is Silver
Up and Up (acoustic)
Who I Am Hates Who I've Been (acoustic)

When I was thinking about making this list, I decided what would be the #1 album before I ranked any others. Relient K's new release was basically a clear choice. It has (I think) 26 songs total, and not just songs that are alright but songs that are REALLY GOOD. I could listen to this CD all the way through and not get tired of it because truly it is good all the way through, even though it is more than an hour long in its entirety. And it's more than just a bunch of good punk songs. There are some acoustic versions of songs, some new songs that are acoustic or piano-driven. "Curl Up and Die" is definitely not your typical Relient K song, but it is one of my favorites on the whole album. Over the months that I have actually owned the CD, it has been one of those go-to albums that I could listen to no matter what I was doing or what kind of mood I was in. It's good for singing along to, listening to, playing with friends, etc. It is truly a great all-around release and I've had a lot of fun listening to it.

Favorite Albums of 2008 (6 through 10)

2008-12-22T20:04:00.006-06:00

Not that you care, but for the few people out there who might (and in the interest of keeping with tradition), I've made my list of my favorite albums for 2008. While I am no elitist when it comes to musical taste, I did go through a friend's iPod today and was horrified at poor musical choices he has apparently made in his life. Whether you consider it good or bad, I love the music I listen to. I won't force it on you, but I highly recommend it.

This year I included the songs that I gave a five star rating on my iPod. iTunes allows you the opportunity to rate your songs, which is one of my favorite features. 5 stars is the best and 1 star is the worst. I included the 5 star songs to show my favorite songs of 2008.

So that being said, on to the list:

10. Sandra McCracken - Red Balloon

Sandra actually had two albums released this year. One was the Ampersand EP which she co-produced with her husband Derek Webb. It released on Valentine's Day, which was appropriate since it was a CD full of love songs. If not for having only 6 songs, it probably would have made the list as well. Red Balloon, however, is much more experimental and original than her other releases. Just like all her albums, it took me a while to actually start enjoying the songs. But every now and then I would find that one of her songs was stuck in my head and I didn't realize it. While Red Balloon has some good songs on it, there isn't that one song that I have to listen to over and over - that "Portadown Station," that song that floors me every time I hear it. Still, the album is very strong and Sandra has proven again that she is one great songwriter.

9. Norma Jean - The Anti-mother

The Anti-mother is the first Norma Jean release since Bless The Martyr, Kiss The Child that is both brutal but at the same time equally appealing to listen to. This album has a raw, chaotic sound that I haven't heard anywhere else or from any other band, though my days of listening to hardcore music are mostly behind me. I have had a lot of fun listening to this CD, though. Some days I just pop it in to my CD player in my truck and turn it up way too loud. Of course, I can only take that for about 4 or 5 songs. I'm getting old I guess, but it still is a lot of fun.

I really like where Norma Jean is going with their sound. It seems like the songwriting is just plain better. It's not so focused on being too technical or too heavy. It's just good, and I like it, and that's all that matters.

8. Matthew Perryman Jones - Swallow the Sea

Five Star Songs:

Save You

I have never found anybody who could write songs that were simple and catchy, yet sounded original and deep at the same time. MP Jones writes choruses that are so easy to get into that I find myself singing along sometimes without even knowing it.

7. Andrew Osenga - Letters to the Editor: Volume 2

Five Star Songs:

Good Things Always Are
Let Us Know You

An EP inspired by ideas from fans, Letters 2 is simply vocals and electric guitar, except for one track where Andy O let fans record themselves singing and/or playing a part in the song and then send it to him to add. This album is a great tribute to just how talented Andy O is and how he can write good songs as well as execute them with only guitar and vocals. When I posted my iPod Top 25 Most Listened To Songs, tracks from this CD were all over it. Letters 2 would probably be the soundtrack to my fall semester of college. I listened to it at school more than anything else, and in a year or two when I stumble upon it again, I know that the songs are going to remind me of the last few months.

6. Copeland - You Are My Sunshine

Five Star Songs:

The Grey Man

I really like listening to Copeland's "You Are My Sunshine." I don't think I can even explain why, I just like it. The Grey Man is one of my favorite songs to listen to, and has been for a while. Copeland's sound is just so original and unique, it has been a breath of fresh air in a year when not a lot of good original music has come out.

"I don't know" is such a bad thing to say these days

2008-12-10T15:23:00.002-06:00

Life is such a great mystery. I think I’m figuring that out the hard way. The other night I got home pretty late and when I got out of my truck I looked up at the stars and was amazed at how bright and clear they were in the night sky. I was so caught up in the sight that I walked around to the other side of my house where there are no lights to get a better view. It was incredible. I live out in the country, but even where I live there is a lot of light. In spite of all the lights, a remarkable amount of stars were visible. I could see the big dipper and Orion, two of the three constellations I can correctly identify (the other being the little dipper).

Even from what little bit I know about stars, I was still filled with a strong sense of awe at their sight. Stars are huge, bright, burning balls of gas just like our sun. The stars we see are part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. They are so far away from us that it takes like millions of years for their light to reach our humble planet. I tried to put it in perspective from what the ancients knew. They believed the earth was flat, that it was in the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around it. From their perspective this was the right way of looking at things. Even though they were wrong, it is clearly easy to see how they made that mistake.

Still, now that we know that we aren’t in the center of the universe and all that, it doesn’t take away the mystic and awe-inspiring quality from looking at the stars. They are a mystery to us, and even though we have a better understanding of what’s out there, we still are grasping onto crumbs of the actual truth of what it is.

I think that in approaching life people have to embrace that mysterious quality of it - that “we don’t know” factor. It’s great that so many people are out there researching, thinking, and trying to unlock some of the mysteries that the universe holds. In the last century people have made tremendous gains from an increased amount of knowledge and understanding. We know more about the world we live in, and greater technology has provided us with things like better medical treatment and automobiles.

But we are becoming a people who only accept the concrete, the explainable, and the provable. The mystical understanding of the world that the ancients had is starting to fade out because we think we really know the world we live in. We know what stars are and how they got there. We have an idea of how our world got to be the way it is. And because of what we do know, sometimes we use that to keep us from believing that life may be something more than atoms held together by gravity.

In high school and college I have learned a lot about old scientists, philosophers, and thinkers who formulated certain theories about all sorts of things. And what they do in these theories is try to offer an explanation of how the world works. Lots of times these theories deal with ideas that can’t actually be proven, but are generally accepted based on the evidence that we have. That’s how their theories end up in our textbooks. I noticed that when approaching a subject, a text won’t just give you one guy’s theory and say “this is the way it is.” No, they usually give you multiple different theories that all sort of explain things but not quite. It’s like these brilliant thinkers were able to offer an explanation that sheds some light on a problem, but doesn’t exactly nail it.

I don’t think that people, no matter how brilliant, can use what we know to offer some universal theory that encompasses all of life and the universe. We just don’t know enough, and we don’t have all the information. With what information we have, we have to break it down into formulas, rules, and laws that make it simpler so we can understand it. We are only a small group of organisms who understand only what we can observe and try to apply it to the whole of existence. We are trying to make something way too small encompass something that is way too big.

It would be kind of like being a person who lives in a primitive African village. You never wander more than 15 miles from your home. Your people hunt, fish, and grow food. Your clothes are made from animal skins. You don’t have TV, the internet, transportation, or any other convenience of modern life. Now imagine being dropped in the middle of New York City. Upon returning to your small, primitive tribe, how do you think you would be able to describe New York City to your villagers? You would have been exposed to new sights, people, and ways of life that you have never experienced before and probably didn’t have a word in your vocabulary to identify. How would you be able to understand New York City, much less communicate it to your fellow villagers?

Chances are you would probably use metaphors. That skyscraper was like a mountain, or that plane was like a bird. You might even invent other ideas by reasoning that because the people wore extravagant clothing they were gods. Either way, the fact remains that with your primitive, tribal understanding you wouldn’t be able to come up with anything that sufficiently explains New York City. In fact, you may have to just tell other tribes people “You have to experience it for yourself.”

This is why science can be a flawed way of looking at the world. We have to see things more holistically. It is useful and it does teach us important things, but science can’t encompass all of it. Any person who reduces life experience to what some scientists discovered in a laboratory is throwing away a lot of important information.

With religion, I think people also make the same mistake of trying to offer too much explanation on things that we really don’t understand. We have a really hard time even using the Bible to explain the intricacies of God, but we still try to. How does an all-loving God send people to hell? Why does the God of the Old Testament seem different from Jesus? What is required of a person to be saved? How can Jesus be a man and God at the same time? I could go on all day long. Do we ever get any crystal clear answers to these questions? Aren’t churches and denominations divided over some of these very issues?

We are using our own human logic and language to try to understand God, and it’s not working. In fact, it seems counterproductive. The Bible does more pointing to God than it does explaining Him. That’s why it includes so many metaphors, stories, and poems. Jesus told parables, his miracles were called signs. They were pointing to something bigger, something Jesus liked to call a “kingdom.” But they weren’t the kingdom themselves. They were just there to show the way.

I’m a person who is hardly ever sure of anything. I have found that when I try to act like I know a lot and throw my opinions in other people’s faces I sometimes look like a complete idiot. Sometimes I would be better off saying I don’t know. I think a lot of people should come to this point. The jury is not in on a lot of things, and I think that rather than trying to explain away everybody’s questions when sometimes it can be futile, I would rather let my life point to what I believe in. And I use that word believe because I don’t know. I simply believe. And what I believe in will never fit inside my head, and I can’t write it down on paper. So all I’m going to do is simply live and point.

A Pre-New Year's Ramble

2008-12-07T21:37:00.004-06:00

I'm really glad that it's one of my favorite times of the year. Today I just finished putting lights up on my house and my thighs are very, very sore from climbing on the roof. My goal is to make the Christmas season as "Christmas-y" as possible. I'm trying to go the extra mile this year by putting up lights, getting people gifts, and trying as hard as I can to be kind and cheerful to people.

But to be honest, what I have been waiting a really long time for is not Christmas. I love Christmas and I'm going to enjoy every minute of the season for the next few weeks, but for at least 2 months now I've been thinking about New Year's.

I like the end of the year because it is a good time for a person to reflect on the year, what they did and didn't do, what they were or were not able to accomplish. I really like songs about new year's such as Death Cab's "New Year" and Five Iron Frenzy's "New Year's Eve" because they are reflective. My favorite episode of the old Nickelodeon show "Pete and Pete" was the episode about new year's. It's good for me because I have this habit of getting way too caught up in the moment. While that's good in some ways, it has been bad for me because I tend to lose sight of long-term goals and directions. I'm that guy who puts the short-term goal of taking a nap over the long-term goal of studying to get an A on a test. New Year's is a chance for me to step back and try to remember what kind of person I'm trying to be and where I'm trying to go with my life.

Last year my only new year's resolution was to not be a douche bag. Did I achieve that goal? You tell me. I think that has always been kind of an unsaid goal of mine - don't be a douche bag. Sometimes I can be. I try not to. It's very hard.

This year instead of having one resolution that is basically a given at any time in my life, I have come up with a laundry list of things I would like to do better. And that list goes from things like "play music more and videogames less" to "be more optimistic" to "stop sleeping so much." I really am going to have a lot to live up to in 2009. Changing is so hard sometimes.

But there is one specific thing that I am really going to have to key in on next year. One of my biggest struggles and hardest things for me to do in life is to care about anybody other than myself. If there is one thing I really hate about me, it's that. I can be so selfish and self-centered sometimes, completely unaware of the people around me without even realizing it. I'm sure I've hurt a lot of people at one time or another by acting like this, and just know that I hate it.

But I'm going to try to do better. This past year I put a lot of emphasis on trying to learn and understand life a little better, and if I've learned anything it's that I truly don't understand anything. The mistake I think that I made is one that I think a lot of people, and a lot of Christians, make at times. It's like I tried so hard to be right that I forgot that I'm supposed to be good. I don't think Jesus came to earth and died so that he could make us all right. I think he died so we could know him, and that along the way he taught us how to be good people.

I'm going to still try to learn and do well, but more than that I'm going to try to do good. I may misunderstand God, life, culture, politics, and religion sometimes, but hopefully I will learn how to be kind to my neighbor. Maybe I can learn how to forgive my enemies, give to the poor, and take up my cross. Maybe I can learn how to lose my life instead of spending every single day trying to find it.

iTunes 25 Most Played

2008-12-05T23:57:00.006-06:00

So today I just discovered that there is a playlist in iTunes that records the Top 25 Most Played Songs on my iPod. Since I have owned my iPod for almost a year, it has been pretty interesting to see what songs got the most playtime. Just for fun, I thought I would post my list. I was really surprised by some of the stuff that's on here. Some of you probably will be too.

1. Andrew Osenga - Good Things Always Are - 19 plays
2. Andrew Osenga - Let Us Know You - 17 plays
3. Thrice - Broken Lungs - 17 plays
4. Counting Crows - Monkey - 15 plays
5. Andrew Osenga - Staring Out A Window - 14 plays
6. Andrew Osenga - House of Mirrors - 14 plays
7. Counting Crows - A Long December - 14 plays
8. U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday - 14 plays
9. Andrew Osenga - Four Horses - 13 plays
10. Andy Gullahorn - Original Cliche - 13 plays
11. Brand New - Not The Sun - 13 plays
12. Five Iron Frenzy - Give Me Back My Sandwich - 13 plays
13. Brand New - Jesus - 12 plays
14. Jimmy Eat World - Just Tonight - 12 plays
15. Caedmon's Call - Expectations - 11 plays
16. The Killers - Mr. Brightside - 11 plays
17. Secret Country - Andrew Osenga - 10 plays
18. Andrew Osenga - Marilyn - 10 plays
19. Andy Gullahorn - Desperate Man - 10 plays
20. Andy Gullahorn - That Guy - 10 plays
21. Brand New - Degausser - 10 plays
22. Caedmon's Call - Sacred - 10 plays
23. Caedmon's Call - There is a Reason - 10 plays
24. Counting Crows - 1492 - 10 plays
25. David Crowder Band - (Repeat/Return) - 10 plays

I already knew I listened to Andy O a whole lot, but I was a little surprised to see FIF's "Give Me Back My Sandwich" at number 12. I honestly did not see that one coming.

Anyways, that's what I listen to the most. Anybody else want to share their iTunes Top 25 Most Played?

Not-So-Sad Semester

2008-11-30T22:52:00.002-06:00

It's hard for me to believe that I have only two weeks left for the fall semester. Even knowing that it always seems like semesters go by much quicker in college than they did in high school, this one still seems fast. Pretty soon the fall of 2008 will be history and I will continue my journey towards a bachelor's degree with a new slate of classes to take.

The last few months have actually gone much better than I expected. This semester has gone by with absolutely no burnout and very little stress. Since both of these conditions are as common to college as textbooks, this comes as a major surprise. I haven't even thought about changing my major, and if anything I am more reassured that I have made the right choice. For the longest time, I changed my mind on what I wanted to do literally every few days. I never was sure about anything, but now I wake up in the morning and I look forward to studying history. What could be more reassuring than that?

I think taking a year off really made all the difference. A person can't get through college without motivation, and back then I didn't have very much of that. I found excuses to not go to class, put assignments off for way too long, cut corners, and never studied. I developed a lot of bad habits, and while I was never a bad student, I was never a good one. After I realized I had been to college for 3 years and had little to show for it, spent over a year working a job that I didn't like, and saw my high school peers graduating and going on to bigger and better things while I was left working at a thrift store I obviously gained my much-needed motivation.

And it worked. I made up my mind that it was time to grow up, time to own up to my responsibilities. A specific turning point that set my head straight was the day that I found out my financial aid fell through and I wouldn't be able to attend UAH this year. I took lunch that day and walked over to Jack's, frustrated and disappointed. Nothing had gone right for me. I sat there and, upon realizing that I would be taking a step back to community college for a year, made up my mind to not settle for anything less than excellence. For the first time in my life I actually set a goal: A's in every class. I told myself that the subjects I would take that fall would become my life focus.

Looking back on it now, I may not actually reach that goal, but I am going to be very close. Some people just learn things the hard way. And I know that this semester I've made some mistakes. Sometimes I neglected my studies, sometimes I procrastinated too much. Other times I let my mind wander in class, I got lazy, I let myself lose focus. But it encourages me that I've been able to correct a lot of problems I had before and, even with my mistakes, I'm still doing very well.

So on that day (if and when it ever comes) I get my degree, I am going to be very happy. I may be up to my neck in debt for college loans, but I will still be happy. It will be worth it.

The Alchemy Index

2008-11-25T00:19:00.005-06:00

I thought that I would post some song lyrics on here in case anybody felt like reading some pretty thoughtful and profound poetry. I find lyrics to be way too simple, cheesy, or abstract sometimes, and many times I don't even pay attention to the lyrics to songs. It is uncanny how much I like these lyrics though. I posted one song earlier this year. They were written by Dustin Kensrue of Thrice. Each is from one of a set of four discs, and each disc is based on one of the four elements - fire, water, air, and earth. The final songs on each disc are all similar in their structure and they kind of sum up the entire album. If anybody has been wondering when I was going to take a break from all the cynical, political posts, this one is for you.

The Flame Deluge (Fire)

I feel that I was meant for something more;
My curse, this awful power to unmake.
And ever since you found your taste for war,
You've forced me onto those whose lives you'd take.

While Guernica in peaceful valley lay,
And Dresden dreamed of anything but death,
The day was turned to night, and night to day;
You let me loose upon their fragile flesh.

And so I hid among the smallest things;
You found me there and ferried me above.
The flame deluge is waiting in the wings;
The smallest thread holds back the second flood.

And who will stand to greet the blinding light;
It's lonely when there's no one left to fight.

Kings Upon The Main (Water)

This lesson you'd do well not to forget.
Your life could be the one it's wisdom saves,
At sea, when you're beleaguered and beset,
On every side by strife of wind and waves.

Despite the best of maps and bravest men,
For all their mighty names and massive forms,
There'll never be and there has never been
A ship or fleet secure against the storms.

When kings upon the main have clung to pride,
And held themselves as masters of the sea,
I've held them down beneath the crushing tide
Till they have learned that no one masters me.

But grace can still be found within the gale;
With fear and reverence, raise your ragged sail.

Silver Wings (Air)

From tender years you took me for granted.
But still I deigned to wander through your lungs.
While you were sleeping soundly in your bed,
(Your drapes were silver wings, your shutters flung)

I drew the poison from the summer's sting,
And eased the fire out of your fevered skin.
I moved in you and stirred your soul to sing;
And if you'd let me I would move again.

I've danced 'tween sunlit strands of lover's hair;
Helped form the final words before your death.
I've pitied you and plied your sails with air;
Gave blessings when you rose upon my breath.

And after all of this I am amazed,
That I am cursed far more than I am praised.

Child of Dust (Earth)

Dear prodigal, you are my son and I
Supplied you not your spirit, but your shape.
All Eden's wealth arrayed before your eyes;
I fathomed not you wanted to escape.

And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel.
Uprooted flow'rs and filled the holes with blood;
Ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells.

A child of dust, to mother now return;
For every seed must die before it grows.
And though above the world may toil and turn,
No prying spades will find you here below.

Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet,
Here I will teach you truly how to sleep.

The Abuse of Power

2008-11-14T19:54:00.002-06:00

I live in a dry county. Businesses can't sell alcohol here. On election day, we had a chance to vote on whether to stay dry or not, and by a 60/40 percentage margin we voted to stay dry. Before the vote, a person couldn't drive down a road in Blount County without seeing either a "vote yes" or "vote no" sign. It was obvious where the line was split: churches were saying no and gas stations were saying yes. Some of these signs are still lingering around on the sides of roads. Yesterday I was driving on 231 and I saw one that said "What would Jesus do? Vote no on alcohol sales Nov. 4." I was confused. Jesus drank wine. He even turned some water into it at a wedding. Is it really that obvious what Jesus would do? Would he really go to the polls and vote for Blount County to stay dry?

I bring this up because I think that people should be careful about pairing up their own causes with the cause of Christ. You can definitely control people if you can get them to believe that God's will is the same as yours. This is especially true when it comes to politics.

I have said before that it is hard for me to listen to Christian radio without getting angry. Since I work at a place where Christian radio is played almost all the time, I can't avoid it. I have several reasons for my frustration - some good, some not - a lot of it probably has to do with me being forced to listen to it all day and then needing to vent. It's true, I am a little bitter, but I do have reasonable complaints.

It's no secret that I have supported Barack Obama in this election. I'm not surprising anyone there. If you were to ask me I would tell you that I voted Obama both in the election and the Democratic primary. But let me make it clear that what I am saying is that I support Obama. I am not speaking for anyone but myself. And while my faith has a lot to do with my decision, I am never going to say that God supports Obama.

Christian radio, at least the station I listen to, is different. During the weeks and months when John McCain and Barack Obama were campaigning, WDJC would occasionally have a report or ad providing coverage. Every time I heard one of these reports, it was always slanted in favor of John McCain. He was always the clear, good guy. He was our guy - the Christian guy. And Barack Obama was that shady, liberal, other guy. From the coverage I heard, WDJC might as well have come out and officially endorsed McCain. It was that obvious.

I have a problem with Christian institutions supporting candidates like this. So many people around here listen to Christian radio because it's Christian radio. And of course they associate Christian with Jesus and therefore the DJs, advertisements, and songwriters might as well be speaking for God. When you, as a Christian radio station, support a politician like that you are basically saying to your listeners, "Vote for so-and-so because he is the Christian candidate. If you are a Christian, then this is your guy."

The problem with this lies in the ownership of WDJC. I'm not talking about God, I'm talking about a man named Don Crawford. Crawford Broadcasting is the corporation that runs the station. WDJC may be a ministry in some ways. You can call it whatever you want - it's still a business. Not only does Crawford Broadcasting run Christian radio stations all over the country, but it also is invested in another type of radio genre - conservative talk radio.

While there are those who think these two are one and the same, they're not. Christians come in a variety of flavors. Some are conservative, some are liberal, some are in between. Some say to-may-to, some say to-mah-to. All have their own Bible-based reasons for their own views. God lives and loves and works inside of them all.

On the radio, everyday during the commercials, Don Crawford has one little segment called The Crawford Stand, which is basically him talking about and promoting conservative ideals - on a Christian medium. It would be like a company with a liberal owner also controlling a Christian radio station and using it to promote liberal ideals. Both situations are bad. The masses are given one take on things and it is presented as the Christian take on things. There is no rebuttal, no counter-argument, no antithesis, and no one to object - because the guy pulling the strings is in control of what the listeners hear. And the guy at WDJC is an intense conservative. During the election process there was no hint of the possibility that Barack Obama, or Ralph Nader, or any other candidate other than the Republican would have possibly made a better president. Christian listeners all around central Alabama were presented with only one viewpoint.

That's not teaching you how to think, it's telling you what to think.

God is not a Republican. He is not a Democrat, or Independent, or even American for that matter. He doesn't work on a campaign trail. He is God over the entire world. A person may act and choose and vote based on his or her faith, but that does not mean that God always supports that person's cause. He is much bigger than that.

If WDJC can't be fair and objective, then it shouldn't cover politics at all. Just keep playing the music, promoting concerts, and giving out t-shirts as prizes for stupid games. Don't promote an agenda, don't tell people what to think. Let us pray and talk and decide on our own. Being at the head of a mass media company is a powerful position to hold.

So stop abusing it.

So I hear Canada's nice this time of year...

2008-11-05T10:33:00.003-06:00

Right now my clock says 10:33 am on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. Next to me, laying on my bed, is a copy of The Birmingham News with a giant portrait of Barack Obama and a headline in giant, bold letters that say "OBAMA WINS." This is sort of the moment I've been waiting for, ever since I made my decision to support the Illinois Senator back in the spring, voted for him over Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday, and finally cast my ballot yesterday at the local town hall.

Last night, after most of the votes were in, I watched John McCain give his concession speech. I thought it was a great speech. I thought that the way the senator carried himself was remarkable in light of the circumstances. He showed dignity, respect, and humility. He quieted the crowd, whiched booed at the very mention of Barack Obama's name. He admitted to mistakes, taking all the blame on himself, even though it wasn't really his fault he lost. He made no attempt to show any kind of bitterness, selfishness, or anger. And he did his best to promote national unity after a long election process that got ugly at several points. Even though he lost the election, I am glad that John McCain still has a place in the Senate.

Now, just hours after Obama has been declared the President-Elect, and I've seen what some of John McCain's supporters are saying, I have come to the conclusion that all these people didn't vote for John McCain so much as they voted against Barack Obama. A person would almost think that this is the end of America from what many people are saying. All of a sudden gay people are going to run rampant in the streets, terrorists are going to invade our "weak" country, faith and morality will cease to exist, communism will make a comeback, and a turban-wearing President Obama will declare himself dictator and fly his dragon through the night sky of Washington D.C.

Now that I think about it, no one has told me why they like John McCain. It has all been about why they don't like Obama. And most of the time it hasn't been about policy. It's been things like, "I just don't trust him" or "He is way too liberal" or (my favorite) "You can't be a Christian and vote for Obama." (Well I can, and I just did.) Rather than stating what good John McCain can do for this country, people have just been stirring up fear of how Barack Obama is going to trash it. Not only is that insulting to Obama, but it is unfair to John McCain.

I am glad that when I cast my ballot yesterday, I actually voted for somebody. I can safely say that I wasn't motivated by fear, by the illusion that the other guy is inherently evil. It is my honest belief that Barack Obama is going to make the United States a much better country. Instead of being an international bully, we will become a nation that champions justice and rational decision making when it comes to war. Instead of being a polarized society with an enormous gap between the poor and the wealthy, we will be a country of opportunity.

All the rest of you, enjoy your time in Canada, or Italy, or wherever else you claim that you're moving to.

You Are My Sunshine

2008-10-22T21:18:00.003-06:00

Aaron Marsh sings like a girl. This is something that is regarded as true, especially lately. Just ask my sister, who burst into laughter after hearing only a few seconds of Copeland's new album You Are My Sunshine. But I don't care. While liking Copeland may not add any points to my manliness scale, I still can't seem to keep myself from being transfixed with their music.

Not that I am trying. I have been a Copeland fan for several years now, ever since Beneath Medicine Tree was my favorite album for whatever year it was that it came out. For the longest time "When Paula Sparks" was the best song I had ever heard, and the rest of that album was almost as good. But that was way back when Copeland was more of a rock band. That was when crash cymbals and distorted electric guitars were heard a lot more than piano and other keyboard-like sounds. Even back then, I still remember thinking they were a much heavier band live when we saw them live at Furnace Fest.

But as time has gone on and their sound has evolved, Copeland has gone from a rock band to a genre that I don't know if I can name. I just don't know what to call it. They've gotten a lot softer and developed their own sound. Aaron sings even more like a girl, and he uses his high falsetto voice more than ever. They have written a lot more slow songs and have effectively defended the title I give them as "band most likely to make you fall asleep."

That's not a bad thing, though, and that's what I'm trying to get at. I bought the new CD the other day and I find myself constantly going back and listening to it. On the same day I bought You Are My Sunshine I got Anberlin's new album New Surrender, which is more rock/pop and a heck of a lot catchier. But I haven't listened to Anberlin nearly as much as I listened to Copeland. Why is that?

Originality.

Over time I have learned that what I value more than anything in my choice of music is the fact that it's unique or original. This is why I am such a big fan of bands like Lovedrug, Counting Crows, mewithoutYou, Norma Jean, Caedmon's Call, and Copeland to name a few. All of these bands have a unique quality about them that I haven't found anywhere else. And while they are all capable of writing good music, they also are so creative and unique in their sounds that I find myself drawn to their tunes more than just a catchy, typical rock band.

This is one of the reasons that I am so turned off by current Christian contemporary music, especially what's on the radio. There is absolutely no originality and little creativity in many of these songs. The lyrics are cliche, the tunes sound like something that was good 20 years ago trying to fit in and be cool with the modern music of today, and it just isn't working.

But I digress. I just don't want to hear the same stuff recycled and fed to me over and over, and that's why I like bands like Copeland who continue to experiment and evolve their sound. I really didn't expect to like their album nearly as much as I do.

Aaron, thanks for singing like a girl. Not many males do it but you do it and you do it well. I'd rather hear that than Mac Powell's overrated voice any day.

Taking the Low Road

2008-10-17T01:13:00.002-06:00

So we are finally reaching the home stretch of this election season. I'm kind of glad. It's been fun and exciting the whole way, but it will be nice when all the political tension goes away. I'm looking forward to casting my vote, getting my "I voted" sticker, and waiting to see what happens. We have some fireworks left over from the 4th of July and I've never figured out a good occasion to finish shooting them off. Maybe if things turn out the right way on November 4 then I will have a good reason.

I've been watching the debates and some of the coverage and I just want to ramble some thoughts really quick while they are fresh on my mind. So here goes nothing...

First, I'm getting the feeling that the McCain campaign is trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator these days. The polls are showing that Obama is leading and many people believe he will be our next president. I'm not comfortable with this because this kind of coverage may get the McCain supporters to rally and possibly make a late push before the election. Even with that possibility, the Straight-Talk Express does seem a little desperate now.

Maybe you have seen the footage, maybe you haven't. I've seen it a few times. It's of some of the McCain-Palin rallies. While the candidates are giving their speeches and getting the crowd (or maybe you could call it a mob) pumped up, some vocal McCain sympathizers are shouting things like "terrorist" and "kill him."

Really?

This is coming to that?

Now I have to give John McCain credit in showing a little disgust in this sort of behavior. But I haven't heard him officially come out and condemn those kinds of statements. Sarah Palin, who was giving a speech while things like this were being said, made no attempt to rebuke her audience. This kind of thing is offensive, over the line, and very dangerous. Barack Obama is not a terrorist. He is not Muslim, Arabic, Jewish, or whatever other stereotype someone can draw up from his name/appearance. I was talking to a friend the other day and he told me he believes Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist. I asked him why and he said because that's what Obama said. I said, "Where did you hear that?" He said he read it in an e-mail.

An e-mail.

I don't want to come out here and say that the McCain campaign is encouraging this kind of stuff. I honestly don't think McCain is that kind of person, he is better than that. But it does make me wonder when Sarah Palin is quoted saying things like, "We're gonna find out who the real Barack Obama is." And I don't think anyone can deny that this has been a major focal point for their campaign lately.

In my opinion, this kind of stuff appeals to the lowest common denominator. If you're voting for John McCain, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But vote for John McCain because you agree with him on the issues, because you think he would make a great president. Don't vote for him because you are buying into this garbage about Barack Obama being an Islamic Communist terrorist who wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners.

There's a higher road than that. Take it.

Some open-ended thoughts on story

2008-09-30T21:40:00.001-06:00

Over the last two years or so there have been various subjects that I have been learning about. These are subjects that keep coming up in my conscious thought, either because they are current issues and events that everybody is dealing with (i.e. the election) or because they are just something that seems to be personal and meaningful to my life, and I’m trying to sort them out. What I’m talking about now could be both, because I am hearing more and more talk about it in the Christian community and also because it affects the way I look at the world, and my role in it. I am talking about story.

Today I read this blog by Don Miller and I found it both funny and compelling. There are certain things that get under my skin so easily. For example, Christian radio gets under my skin very easily. It is hard for me to listen to it without getting angry. In the same way, teenage TV shows annoy the living daylights out of me. I couldn’t watch an episode of Hannah Montana or any of these other similar shows without getting mad. They always seem very shallow and superficial, emphasizing “cool” based on the stupidest things – how good you look, who you are dating, etc. Every character, especially the most important ones, are attractive and the parents are cool and the worst problem a kid could have is whether they have a date to the school dance or not.

This is not reality.

But how much influence do these shows have on kids nowadays? Miley Cyrus can go on tour and probably sell out a show in any city she wants. I see kids all the time with Hannah Montana apparel. Teens and kids alike love this stuff. My question is how much does a show like this affect a kid’s values, outlook on life, and self-perception?

With this in mind, it’s interesting that Don mentions one of my favorite TV shows, House, and mockingly calls it a documentary. I had to laugh at this, because clearly House is not a documentary. It’s a compelling show, but the “reality” of this show is brought into question by a few various occurrences, a few of which I’ll go ahead and point out. One of House’s nurses looks more like a supermodel than a medical professional. This is not to say that there aren’t hot nurses out there, but it does lean more to the fact that this is a TV show. And because it is a TV show there is no chance of an ugly nurse getting a place on House’s team. That’s just how it is. Also, in season 4 House stuck a pocket knife into a plug outlet to see if there was an afterlife. He died, was revived, and by the end of the show we find out that there is no afterlife. Thanks for clearing that up for us, House. Add to that an overly dramatic bus accident that left a woman with a leg impaled by a metal bar and you have the beginning of a list that illustrates that House is not as close to reality as I might like to think sometimes.

It’s funny because over the past year I have watched every episode of House I could get my hands on. And after watching this show I have to admit that it has had a certain amount of influence on me. It’s crazy but by viewing this show it’s like a part of it gets inside of me and adds to this growing soup of influences left on me by people, books, songs, etc. I can see it in how I act and how I look at things. I even look at the world in a different way, partly because of this show.

Another example of this is in my other favorite TV show, The Office. One of the characters, Dwight, often starts to ask a question by saying something like “Question – What is the easiest way to track a bear?” A few times, without realizing it, I have needed to ask somebody a question and just like Dwight I have said something like “Question – What did we eat for dinner last week?”

It’s no question that the things that I watch, read, and listen to leave an impression on me, but I have been wondering lately which of these impressions are affecting me in a positive way and which ones are affecting me in a negative way. Like a kid watching Hannah Montana, is the impression that is left on me something that is positive or is it something that is making me a worse person? For example, is it bad that I like a character who is an outright atheist? Or is it harmful for me to look at reality through the lens of The Office, which is a show that is funny and entertaining, but doesn’t represent the whole of reality?

The interesting aspect of this is that all of these TV shows tell stories. Whether it’s Hannah Montana, House, or The Office, they are all telling stories. And it’s interesting to me because all good stories follow a universal set of principles that are in place and we have no idea where these principles came from. For example, all good stories have elements like setting, characters, conflict, and climax. Without these elements, there is no story. We have these elements in our everyday lives but stories are powerful because they bring these elements together in a way that is meaningful. In fact, Robert McKee says that stories give meaning to our lives. I think this is true, because what is life? Is it a set of random facts and occurrences that ultimately lead to nothing? Or is there an overall narrative that streams everything together in one universal story?

Another interesting aspect of stories is their ability to resonate with people. I love watching the Lord of the Rings movies. I would watch them more often but they are just so long. But whenever I do watch them for some reason I want so badly for the stories to be real. I really want to believe that somewhere there are hobbits, elves, and dwarves fighting orcs over some majestic landscape in an ultimate battle between good and evil. I watch the great wizard Gandalf defeat a Balrog, an ancient demon hidden in the depths of Moria, and so badly I want to be brave, wise, and powerful like Gandalf. Great stories just seem to stimulate something inside of people, and where does it come from? How did that get there?

Once, several weeks ago, I was sitting in church and it was church like any other Sunday. Sometimes I like to look around at other people sitting in the pews. Do they look bored? Are the engaged? Are they asleep? Like I said, this was a Sunday like any other Sunday, and many people looked bored and kind of tired. The sermon wasn't bad or anything, but I noticed that not everybody seemed to be all that captivated by it, and neither was I.

But then Pastor Ron started telling a story. And he is a great story teller, really able to tell a story in a way that it makes you want to know what happens next. I don’t remember what this story was about but I remember that it had really caught my interest. I was alert, my head was up, and I wasn’t off in La-la land thinking about something else. When I looked around at others I noticed that they were all captivated too. Their heads were up and they were more alive, not sitting there like lifeless bodies in a pew. The story had us all. We cared; we wanted to know what was going to happen. How was this story going to end?

What I’m wondering is this: if story is a universal and powerful way of communicating meaning to people, then are all stories good? Or can stories be used to promote ideas and viewpoints that are harmful? Can they glorify things that are bad and make good things look wrong? If so, does this speak to a universal good vs. evil or does it depend on the values and belief of the person hearing the story?

I left this one open-ended because 1) I don’t know the answers to these questions and 2) I would like some input. So if anybody has any, it would be nice. Maybe we can sort this out together.

We Need a Montage

2008-09-23T17:28:00.005-06:00

Question:

What do you do when your first round draft pick and fantasy football Jesus goes down in the first quarter of the first game of the season with a knee injury?

Answer:

NEVER.

GIVE.

UP.

A few years ago the answer would probably have been try to join a new league or start getting ready for fantasy basketball season. In my regrettable, not-to-distant past I have been known to bail on a few teams. But this year was different, I made a commitment to stick this one out, and that's exactly what I am going to do.

I wish that after week 1 I could have created a montage (with the Team America song Montage playing in the background) to footage of me adding and dropping players in my league. It would be even more inspirational than when Rocky runs up those stairs at the end of his training montage. I could just see myself clicking the Submit Roster button and then jumping up and down on my bed in victory. We need a montage...

Anyways, enough about my daydreams. Jay Cutler was at the helm this week. And by helm I mean the QB roster spot, and he did not disappoint. With 264 yds and 2 TDs, Jay Cutler along with Seattle's Julius Jones both put up 20-burgers on the fantasy scoreboard, leaving me with my second win in a row.

Tractor: 99
Hardcore Honky 2.0: 85

But the biggest surprise of the week is the fact that my highest scoring "player" on the team was not a quarterback, running back, wide receiver, or tight end. It was my defense. Allowing only 10 points and getting 5 sacks and 3 interceptions, Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, and the Baltimore Defense propelled Tractor to victory. Can this be expected every week? Probably not. But you know what they say about defense and championships and how they win them.

Scoring 99 points this week, Tractor is mowing through the competition, moving from 7th place to 4th. Only 1 team scored more points this week. The only problem facing me now is figuring out how to win even though 5 of my starters have a BYE this week.

NEVER.

GIVE.

UP.

Guts, Glory, and Team Names that are Odd

2008-09-15T19:15:00.004-06:00

So I don't know if anybody has noticed, but in case you haven't heard, football season is here. Yes, the fall is coming and the pigskin is being tossed around all over America and I couldn't be happier. The Tide has started off the season 3-0, which is great. But instead of writing yet another blog about how exciting it is that Alabama football is here (I have a few friends who are way better at that than I am), I would like to turn your attention to the tales, the ups and downs, the drama of Team Tractor and their quest for Fantasy Football supremacy. Never heard of Team Tractor before? Maybe not. But you may know the team manager. In fact, right now you are reading his blog.

I am not the kind of guy who is so into fantasy football that I get angry when a running back takes a knee at the goal line to run out the clock. I don't read all the fantasy reports and keep the numbers in my head of how many points a certain player is projected to get this season. But I do enjoy some friendly fantasy football, and in the past I have actually been pretty good at it. I have won at least as many leagues as I've lost, which is something worth bragging about.

I like fantasy football because it is such a great way of keeping up with the NFL. It is rare to find many NFL fans here in Alabama, but I have to say I am one of them. In the NFL I don't have a team that I always pull for every year, through good times or bad times. I like certain teams, but there is no Crimson Tide or Atlanta Braves - you know, that team whose success is directly correlated with your mood for that day. Fantasy football gives me the chance to keep up with the season with a little bit at stake. I can root for my players, and pay close attention to the ticker for any news of how the fantasy QB or RB is doing.

Last year I had a great season. I nabbed Tom Brady in the draft and later acquired breakout Pats receiver Wes Welker as a free agent. With that combination I cruised straight into the playoffs and all the way to a championship. While Brady, Welker, and the Patriots were busy going 16-0, I was racking up hundreds of fantasy points and celebrating yet another fantasy victory.

However, this year has been a different story. It started off the same, but things have taken a turn for the worst. Once again I managed to get Tom Brady in the first round of the draft and Wes Welker in the fourth. Along with some other notable pickups such as Plaxico Burress, Clinton Portis, Hines Ward, and Dallas Clark, I was ready to go for another fantasy gold... until disaster happened.

In the very first quarter of the very first game of the season, Tom Brady went down with a knee injury. He stayed in long enough to get me 76 yards of offense and ultimately 3 fantasy points. The news was not good: a torn ACL and MCL. Just a few minutes into the first game and Tom Brady's season was over.

And apparently, so was mine. I got obliterated by my friend and fantasy rival, Keith (whose team name is Wolfpac, by the way). He beat me by an outrageous 115-63. I posted the 7th lowest score in a league with 8 teams. This was not good. Last year, the Golden Boy was absolute gold for my team. He was so good I didn't even worry with making sure my best players were in the game every week. Sometimes a bye week would come for a couple of my starters, I would forget to bench them, and I would still win. It was one of the most low-maintenance teams I ever had. But now, with Brady gone, who would be able to fill the shoes of one of the greatest quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen?

Enter Matt Cass- er, Hasselbeck.

I dropped Brady and went to the waivers to see if I could find a new QB. I picked up Philip Rivers, adding him to my roster along with my draft picks of Hasselbeck and Jon Kitna. Unsure of who to start this week, I went with Hasselbeck because I thought he could do some damage against the 49ers. I was wrong. Hasselbeck threw for 189 yards with 2 interceptions and 0 touchdowns. I got a total of 4 points from him. Rivers threw for 3 touchdowns and Kitna threw for 2.

The bad news is that my QB didn't do so well. The good news is Tractor actually won 80-63, in spite of Hasselbeck's poor performance. Even better news is that no one in the league had Aaron Rodgers or Jay Cutler, two of the NFL's best performing QBs at the moment. This morning, I picked up both of them, dropping Matt Hasselbeck and Jon Kitna in the process. So now my QB roster is made up of Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers, and Jay Cutler. Kind of a young bunch, and they may never match the experience, poise, and skill of Tom Brady. But I'm holding out hope, and I'm feeling pretty good about rebounding from a week 1 disaster.

Man I'm glad football is back. It's going to be a fun season.

LET'S GO TRACTOR!!!!

Keeping Me in Check (Part 1)

2008-09-08T20:22:00.004-06:00

It happened again. As I’ve said before, the presidential election is getting closer and closer, and now people are starting to really look at the candidates. More importantly, now people are starting to talk. Back when Huckabee, McCain, Guiliani, and all the other Republicans were battling for the nomination spot, not a whole lot of people were talking. When Hilary was clawing for any possible way to stop Obama’s surging campaign and trying to hold on to what she thought to be her historical Democratic nomination, only a few people were talking. When Mike Gravel was raving about how every soldier in Vietnam “died in vain,” still I didn’t hear much talking. But now it’s September and with the election only 2 months away, people are starting to talk.

And I am starting to talk. This whole time I have been quietly following the candidates and the issues, listening to what columnists, analysts, bloggers, preachers, writers, and friends have to say about the election. To be honest, I was kind of afraid of what was going to happen when the time got closer and the topic of politics came up in conversation more. I knew that around here my decision wouldn’t be the popular one, a decision that would surely be challenged, and I didn’t know if I would be able to defend it. I figured that my mind would go blank and I wouldn’t be able to think of something to say – something that happens way too often with me.

But the other day I told somebody I was an Obama supporter (not Faye). This lady was a McCain supporter, and we actually had a really good conversation about the election. Even while we disagreed on our candidate, we found a lot of common ground on what we wanted out of the next president. We both wanted change, but we just disagreed on which person would be more likely to bring that change.

Today I got into another conversation about the election, with someone who is also a McCain supporter, and we got into more of a friendly argument. I explained to him a few things I like about Obama and then he came back at me with criticism, and then I explained more and he criticized me more. And so I criticized him and he explained himself and then criticized me some more; and we went back and forth for probably a good half hour. Even though it was annoying at times, and difficult to get my point across to someone who didn’t see it my way, I was really glad to have that argument. I used to think I would be afraid of doing this, but today I learned I actually like it.

There is a Jimmy Eat World song I like called “Carry You” that has a line in it that says this:

It’s easy feeling righteous when removed
All you get is what you want to hear

I like this line because it speaks a truth that is sometimes so hard for me to accept. It points out that it is so easy for us as people to surround ourselves with other people who are just like we are and agree with everything we say - people who never really challenge us or make us think about what we believe. If I’m a voter this year and I am voting Democrat, it is so much easier for me to talk to somebody who is voting like I am than it is to talk to somebody who completely disagrees with me. And it would be easy for me to give in to that, to not engage in a debate with someone with a different point of view, but would it be a good idea? I don’t really think so. If I only talk to people who agree with what I say and I’m not challenged by other peoples’ perspectives, then it is very likely I will be wrong about a lot of things and be deluded because I will think I’m right. And I will walk around with some sort of self-righteous sense about me. But without having my beliefs and ideas challenged, the flaws will never be exposed; and instead of believing the truth, I will be deluding myself with a half-truth or something that isn’t even true at all.

What I’m trying to say is that I need to be challenged.

I bought season 4 of the TV show House a couple weeks ago and I’ve been watching it a lot lately. In the first several episodes of this season, Dr. House has to hire a new diagnostic team, a team of doctors that discuss the symptoms of their patient and help figure out what’s wrong with him/her. He finally selects a team of 3 doctors and starts training them as they learn how to work with a doctor that is as rude and quirky as House is, and lots of times his training involves making them play weird games and perform crazy tasks. In one episode, House makes his team do some absurd task that has nothing to do with the case they are on, and his team actually goes and does it without any questioning. All the while, House tries to diagnose his patient virtually by himself. So eventually, after they have finished their task, his team comes back and tells House that they did what he told them to do. So what does House do? Well, he chews them out.

Kutner, one of the doctors on the team says, “But we did what you told us to do!”

And House replies, “Well, I didn’t want you to do it. I need you to stand up to me!”

Later on in the episode, while they are trying to figure out what’s wrong with the patient, Kutner suggests a certain diagnosis and House just insults him and tells him he’s wrong. But then Kutner keeps going and stands up to House, and in doing so he forces House to consider another perspective and House solves the case because of it.

Even a genius, fictional doctor can make an error if he is allowed to come up with his own ideas unchallenged. When he was selecting his team, he chose people who were different than him – people who would think differently and react differently. In one episode, a possible team doctor comes up with the same brilliant theories as House does, and at the end of the episode House fires him. He doesn’t need a doctor to tell him what he already knows.

One thing I like about my sister is that I can tell her something I’ve been thinking about, and if it’s absurd or stupid in any way (and a lot of times it is), she won’t hesitate to tell me. And if I’m talking about something and not making any sense, she will always tell me. Sometimes the challenge will force me to explain myself better, or to think harder, and then other times I realize I’m an idiot for thinking some of the things I think and then drop it completely. But if it wasn’t for her challenging me, I probably wouldn’t realize how ridiculous I can be sometimes.

People have to be kept in check. Sometimes this takes an unpleasant argument, or a discussion where a person feels a little dumb at the end, but these things are necessary. It’s been a few months since the evolution discussion happened, but this is a great example. My conclusion is still the same as it was then, but because of the argument, I realized that my reasoning did have some flaws and weak points. It took other people pointing them out and criticizing for me to see them, because I was blind to them. Sometimes this is just what it takes to come up with right ideas. If they stand up and make sense, then they might be right. But if they fall under criticism then it exposes the weaknesses and it’s back to the drawing board.

I’m glad to know that my political ideas are standing up. Every time I voice my support for Barack Obama I feel less like an idiot. This should happen more often, it really should.

Coming Out of the Closet

2008-09-04T20:45:00.003-06:00

Today was a long day. These happen once every week or so – brutal, lengthy days full of classes, studying, and thrift store work. Sociology at 8 am is followed by an hour and a half of studying, then U.S. History and then English to wrap up the academic portion of the day. Then it’s onward to work. Today was a little different. It was Constitution Day at Jeff State, and for extra credit in both of my history classes I skipped English to attend a talk by Alabama Congressman Artur Davis about the constitution. After this was over I left campus and drove to work to perform my part-time thrift store duties.

And that’s when it happened.

I knew it would happen eventually, and I’m actually surprised it took this long. It is something I wasn’t looking forward to. It was inevitable, especially since we are getting closer and closer to November. Well, today, September 4, 2008, it happened.

“Hey Matt! Have you been keeping up with the conventions?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Did you see it last night? Sarah Palin was amazing!”

“Oh, was she? I didn’t see it.”

“Oh yeah she did so great.”

And then someone else heard what we were talking about and joined in on the conversation.

“Yeah I watched that. I thought she did real good!”

“Did you hear how those liberal Democrats tried to attack her? And the media? She really showed them, didn’t she?

“Yeah, and did you see Fred Thompson the night before, when he was talking about the buckets? I really liked that!”

And so on…

You have to understand that as a guy who is going against the grain and voting Democrat in the upcoming election, I am a rare breed working at a Christian non-profit located in the heart of Alabama. This is a place where WDJC is played all the time, and I mean ALL the time. Harry Potter books are not allowed to be sold. The majority of workers in the store are churchgoers who are Republican, and I think that because of this everybody just assumes I am that way too.

I have never been very vocal about my political views at work. The subject hasn’t even come up much at all. But I knew that one day, as the election got closer and closer, I was going to get caught in a situation where it would come up. The lady I was talking to today, let’s just call her Faye, is an intense conservative. I have used her as an example in a few blogs before, simply to demonstrate our contrasting viewpoints. I like Faye because she is an extremely nice person who is very passionate and serious about what she believes in. She is very informed about the election, although I think she is mainly informed by those who support her viewpoint, but nevertheless she is informed. We get along very well, but today I think we may have strained our relationship a tad bit.

About 10 or 15 minutes into the conversation (which was more of a monologue by her, I couldn’t get a word in), after some Palin praising, Obama bashing, and comments about how liberal the media is, I had to tell her. I finally had to drop the bomb.

“Would you hate me if I told you I was voting for Obama?”

Once, Faye told a fellow employee at the store that she thinks Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Oh, snap. Did I just say what I think I said?

“Faye, would you hate me if I told you I was voting for the anti-Christ?”

Was it stupid? Was it brave and courageous? Was it the right thing to do? I haven’t figured that out yet. Still, I said it. And I’m glad I did.

Tensely and carefully Faye replied, “No I don’t hate you but I don’t see why you would want to vote for someone who supports killing babies.”

And so tomorrow, the entire body of workers at Bargain Center #2 is going to know that I’m “voting for a baby-killer.”

This is what we talked about, after I dropped the bomb. Abortion, abortion, abortion. How can I vote for somebody who is pro-choice?

Well, I think that there are a few reasonable points that need to be made on the subject of abortion. One is that most Christians think that the only way to deal with this problem is to win a “moral victory” by outlawing abortion completely. We have been going at this for about 20 or 30 years and nothing has happened. Even with a Republican president who opposes abortion and has been in office for 8 years, what has been done to actually outlaw abortion? How much closer are we now than we were 8 years ago? And what in the world makes anyone think John McCain, who is not as right-wing as many voters would like, is going to do anything about it? I know that Sarah Palin is intensely pro-life, which is great, but the Vice President doesn’t have as much power as we might think. And I’m not at all convinced that she wasn’t picked as VP just for political reasons – to try to get the female Hillary Clinton supporters, and to counter the excitement over Barack Obama’s historical run for the White House.

Today I was talking to a friend about this, and she reminded me that before Roe vs. Wade, when abortion was illegal, women were still finding ways to get it done. Even on the slim chance that abortion is outlawed, it’s still not going to stop abortions from happening. Granted, it would significantly reduce the number of abortions, but girls would still be seeking this procedure in ways that are a lot more dangerous and harmful than we have now.

I think that Obama’s got it right when he says he wants to find ways to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and work to help women who are impregnated because of rape. If it’s easier to support these children, then we can significantly reduce the number of abortions happening every year. I heard once that the least amount of abortions took place while Bill Clinton was in office. Why? Because Bill Clinton worked to help programs that provide support for people in this situation. Maybe, if we can quit spending $10 billion a month on this ridiculous war we’re in and actually focus our tax money on things that are happening inside this country, problems like this can be helped. They won’t be eradicated or abolished, but they will be significantly helped.

Whenever I let someone know that I’m voting for Barack Obama this November, the abortion issue always comes up. And while abortion is a very important issue, it is also important that we remember that it’s not the only issue we are dealing with here. During the election in 2004 we picked a president who opposes abortion but also wants to legalize torture. Do you see the double-standard here? We can’t just key in on one or two issues and then ignore the whole picture. There is more to deal with here than abortion and gay marriage. We have 2 wars going on, the economy, health care, the environment, immigration, and those are only a few. Are there very serious moral implications for how we deal with the war in Iraq? Absolutely. Is it important for us to consider the poor when we elect a president? Of course it is, and on these issues I don’t side with John McCain. I side with Barack Obama.

That conversation I had with Faye was tame, but tense at the same time. We agreed to disagree and I had to go back to work because we had been going at it for about half an hour and my assistant manager was right there. The presidential race is heating up and I think everyone is getting more and more passionate about it, including me. I don’t think that it will ever divide me against the people that I see every day, as long as the conversations stay tame and don’t become personal. I just think our country could do better, and I think that Barack Obama would be great in leading us that way. Tomorrow, when I go to work and everybody knows that thing about me that hasn’t been revealed until today; I guess I’m going to have to defend that belief.

This just gets more fun every day.

Jesus is a Friend of Mine

2008-09-01T17:04:00.003-06:00

This is my second post in a row without actually having something to say but I couldn't help it. I just happened to come across this little nugget of delight and I had to put it up. I'm so surprised I haven't heard this on WDJC yet.

Awesome... I don't know how else to put it

2008-08-27T21:26:00.000-06:00

Just some stuff about the Bible

2008-08-26T22:07:00.002-06:00

I feel like I’m delving into to ancient mysteries that reveal deep and profound insight into the meaning of life. I’m puzzled by these things, but I’m glad to be thinking about them. For my history class, I’ve been reading my textbook and right now it is talking about some of the ancient civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Sumerians, that existed back in Old Testament Biblical times. By studying this, I am getting some tremendous insight and perspective on the world and life at the time when the Old Testament was written. It is fascinating to me, and while my studies are for academic purposes, it’s true that I am looking for the spiritual meaning too. This is as much a search for spirituality as it is a quest for knowledge and understanding.

Today I read through a section in my textbook about history and the Bible. It went over briefly what historical and archaeological evidence suggests on the validity of the Biblical history of Israel. On the negative side, it does call into question the truth of the historical accounts of the Hebrews. The Bible paints them as a conquering, militaristic people but history suggests that they were not so much this way. It makes me wonder if part of the purpose in writing the Bible was to preserve and glorify Hebrew tradition, making up stories and fairytales of past glory in the process. I am skeptical of this position, because there is probably just as much evidence in the Old Testament to show that the Hebrew people were fools as there was to suggest they were great warriors. And the Bible is clear that anytime they won a battle, it was because of the Lord, not because of their own heroic efforts.

Even with the questions that have been raised, I did note some peculiar things about the history of this unique group of people. First of all, Israel’s God was revolutionary. In a world where polytheism ruled and where gods had very human qualities, the message of a loving, all-powerful Creator who existed outside of space and time was rare if not altogether new. The polytheistic gods of this time were often identified with various elements and things like that. So there would be a god of agriculture, a god of fertility, a god of war, a god of death, etc. The Hebrew God existed outside of all of that, laying the rules and foundations which the entire natural world follows. In these ancient cultures, there would be myths and legends explaining that these gods exist and how they came into being. One interesting thing about the Bible is that it just automatically assumes that God exists. It doesn’t address the issue of whether there is a God or not, it ignores the question altogether. It shows that God exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist forever.

Another fact that interests me about the ancient Hebrews is that they are the only ancient civilization that has succeeded in maintaining its identity in the modern era. In the ancient world, many powerful empires and nations rose to power only to decline and disappear centuries later; or to go through drastic cultural change. The Egyptians are still around, but I don’t think they still believe in the gods that their ancient ancestors did. The Mesopotamians, Sumerians, Hittites, and Babylonians are all gone, and yet the Jews still remain. Throughout centuries of persecution, conflict, exile, and countless other problems, they still exist with the same cultural identity that was created thousands of years ago. This is remarkable because as quirky, different, and unsettled as their past has been, they still managed to preserve themselves as a people and a civilization. In reality, they probably should have been wiped out a long time ago. It also is worth noting that throughout the Bible, the Israelites are referred to as God’s chosen people. Is it possible that the fact they still exist today as their own nation is a strong bit of evidence that shows they truly are God’s chosen people?

I know that some of you are probably reading this and the answers to these questions are probably obvious to you. Of course the Jews are God’s chosen people, the Bible says so. I understand where you’re coming from. It’s just that I am a person who is trying to understand the Bible while remaining true to the context that it’s put in, and to the reality that I have become familiar with. If there are inconsistencies between the Bible and common knowledge, then I want to know. In the same way, if there are consistencies that point to the Bible’s truth then I want to know that as well. I like to see evidence of things that took place in the Bible, because after all the Bible did take place in our world.

Anyways, just a few quick thoughts to chew on.

BITR: What Animal Would I Make Out With?

2008-08-23T19:19:00.015-06:00

(The formatting for this blog is totally messed up and I don't feel like making it perfect, so just ignore that part of it and imagine that these are actually lists that go from 5 and count down to 1.)

Before I even get into this topic I want to clear a few things up. You are probably thinking, “Wow, it’s disgusting that this guy would even write about this.” And you’re probably right. It is disgusting. I had to actually put some thought into this, and what person in his or her right mind puts any kind of thought into the kind of animals he/she would like to make out with? An Old Testament Jew would have probably been stoned for that. Fortunately for me, I am not an Old Testament Jew. I am a 21^st century white guy in

America

, and we have almost no rules on what we can or can’t make out with.

Still, I want to point out that, going along with the Blog in the Round rules, someone gave me this topic, which means that someone actually wants to know. And to that certain sick individual who wants to know (stephbenton.wordpress.com), I just want to say that I think you are disgusting and wrong and immoral for giving me this topic. Evil people like you should be purged from the land, because you are scum.

That being said, I went ahead and made a list of 5 animals I would make out with, because I couldn’t narrow it down to one. And then, just for fun, I made a list of five animals I would NOT make out with. So here we go:

Animals That I Would Make Out With

Angelfish – Any animal with the word “angel” in its name can’t be all that bad, and certain types of angelfish look pretty attractive. Making out has more to do with looks than we would like to admit sometimes. I wouldn’t be caught dead making out with a grouper. An angelfish, however, probably wouldn’t be that bad.

4. Owl – Once again, owls are beautiful creatures. They are also mysterious because they only come out at night.

3. Animal from Sesame Street – Because that wouldn’t be
boring.

2. Chicken – Because it probably would taste good.

1. Ladybug – This is the most heterosexual thing I could think of. Ladybugs are kind of nice. They have the whole “red with black spots” thing going on. The only drawback is that they sometimes smell really weird, which is kind of a turn-off.

Animals That I Would NOT Make Out With

Octopus – I couldn’t ever imagine any kind of scenario where making out with an octopus would be appealing in any way. Tentacles? And what about that humongous, lumpy, weird looking head? I wouldn’t be able to even find its mouth, and that would be awkward.

Blue whale – Blue whales are the largest mammals on earth, usually the length of 3 to 4 school buses. This just wouldn’t work…

Woodpecker – For obvious reasons.

Sea bear – Flashlights are their natural prey, but still I don’t think a make out session with a sea bear would be that much fun.

1. Black widow spider - After sex, black widow spiders eat their male partner. Now I don’t expect to get past 2^nd base with a black widow, but if home plate means certain death, just leave me out entirely.

BITR: The Rapture

2008-08-17T03:13:00.004-06:00

I used to go to a church where every now and then the pastor would preach on the end times. He would get up behind the pulpit and go through the prophecies, proclaiming that the signs of this age are all pointing to the return of Jesus Christ. Every time he preached this sermon he would say, “And I believe you and I are living in the end times." He actually believed that this generation is going to be called up to meet Jesus in the air, and that death is something that we won't be experiencing. We have our tickets to ride on the "good old gospel ship" so to speak.

I am very hesitant to get into end times theology. I am not a fan of the topic. In fact, I am almost apathetic towards it. I have read most of the Left Behind books, and heard the basic messages preached about the rapture, the tribulation, the millennial reign of Christ, the anti-Christ, etc. Still, I have lots of reasonable doubts about the subject. This is not because I don’t have faith or anything, but because the foundation that this kind of theology is built on is shaky at best. And if it is taken too far, it can be downright destructive.

For centuries, there have been groups of Christians who believed that their generation would see the end times and the return of Christ. The idea of the rapture has only been around for about 200 years, and it came about because of the dream of a little girl. Most Christians in the world don’t even believe in the rapture. This belief is held almost exclusively to conservative Christians in North America. It is also a belief that is never really appropriately addressed in scripture. At best, we get small glimpses or hints. But what some Bible prophecy theologians do is come back through the text, string together a few separate Bible verses from separate parts of the New Testament and then say, “See? This means that the rapture is going to happen.”

I think it’s worth noting that when God gave us the text that we use to interpret the last days, he purposely gave us an extremely confusing, extremely vague and hard-to-understand bit of information. Exiled to the isle of Patmos, John the Revelator had a dream and then wrote down what he saw. And in that dream he tells us about beasts with certain numbers of horns, bowls of God’s wrath being poured out, angels wiping out a third of the world’s population – all kinds of elaborate imagery that indicates lots of woe and upheaval. Even when Jesus told his disciples about his return, he wasn’t very specific about it.

But what some people try to do is go through the text, make a chart, and say “This is how God is going to wrap things up.” I don’t think it is possible to figure this out, and I don’t know if God is even interested in telling us how. I think that at some point we just have to come to a place where we say we don’t know what God is going to do but we still trust him. I have heard that many theologians believe Revelations speaks of events happening in the first century after Jesus’ death and resurrection. In 70 AD, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. Christians were also under heavy persecution, and Revelations was a book that spoke about those events, but also offered a great hope to those who were enduring them. Although I don’t really know a whole lot about this view, it would make sense in light of the circumstances of that time.

One issue I have with modern end times theology is that it can influence a person to be apathetic towards the present needs of the world. It can cause a believer to do absolutely nothing to try to make the world a better place, since he/she believes that the world is just spiraling down until Jesus comes back anyways. It can also give a person a reason to want war in the Middle East, since that will lead to the return of Christ and the battle of Armageddon. Sometimes I wonder it these kinds of people should be allowed to vote.

I once read an old preachers’ adage quoted by David Chagall, the host of a Bible prophecy show called The Last Hour: “We Christians are placed here not to clean up the dirty old fishpond of the world but to fish people out of it." I don’t think that this is what Jesus was saying when he taught us to care for the poor and love our enemies. In fact, Jesus even said that the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is now. Not in the next life when the church is raptured and we are all reigning with Christ, but now.

Another drawback to this kind of thinking is obvious in what’s going on with the current election. A lady I work with got all bent out of shape the other day because she heard on the news that Barack Obama said something about uniting the nations. Of course, we all know that that’s what the anti-Christ is going to do, right? And we also know that the anti-Christ is going to be a good speaker. Barack Obama is a good speaker. Therefore, he must be the anti-Christ. The way I see it, if your faith causes you to go against a person who wants to bring peace and unity, then you might want to take another look at your faith. Jesus himself said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

One more problem with this kind of theology is that it promotes the tendency for Christians to scare other people into becoming a Christian. I don’t believe in this kind of evangelism at all. The Bible says there is no fear in love. To try to use fear to bring someone into a relationship with Christ would be like using fear to get a person to marry you or be your friend. It just doesn’t work that way. We all know that relationships built on fear are not good relationships at all.

I personally really like the book of Revelations. I think it’s a beautiful book. For almost the entire book John gives you all kinds of images of woe and upheaval, destruction, battles, and horned beasts. It’s pretty downright frightening at times, and very mysterious. But at the end you get a beautiful image of a new heaven and a new earth, and a voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

I am not going to pretend like I know what God has in store for us. I have no earthly idea what is going to happen or how it will take place. But the Bible does tell me that I was created to be in a relationship with God and that somewhere along the line that relationship got broken. Now I live in a world where I am separated from God, living in shame, and outside of the love that I need in order to live. And one day I’m going to die. My hope is in Jesus. And because he gave himself, God no longer sees my sin but he sees his son. No matter what I do, I will always be loved by God. Books like Revelations give me hope that when all is said and done, I will be with God. And that is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

BITR: Why Barack Obama Will Be a Better President than John McCain

2008-08-11T19:01:00.001-06:00

DO YOU SMELL WHAT BARACK IS COOKIN'?!

The Land of the Thundering Waters (Pictures from Niagara)

2008-08-08T12:17:00.027-06:00

Here are some of the pictures we took while we were in Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls actually consists of three separate waterfalls all coming from the same river. The water flows out of Lake Erie and into the Niagara River. The river is separated into different waterfalls by Goat Island. This is a picture of the Horseshoe Falls, aptly named because it looks like a horseshoe from above. We took this picture on our Maid of the Mist boat ride, which took us right up to the bottom of the falls and got us very wet in the process.

The American Falls come from the water that flows on the other side of Goat Island. All of the rocks at the bottom are from a giant avalanche of these falls several years ago. The picture below is also from our Maid of the Mist tour.

The American Falls (above)

Tourists

The Horseshoe Falls from the view of an observation deck.

My one complaint about Niagara Falls is how the people had built it up into basically a tourist trap. Attractions are built right up to the sides of the river, and they sometimes go on for miles. I was hoping that the area would have a really natural feel to it, but it didn't. Even when we were in a boat right in the middle of the Horseshoe Falls, you could still see all the hotels and casinos that had been built next to the river for money-making purposes. Even though the falls were amazing, to me the experienced was cheapened and robbed of its majesty by this.

Can you tell I'm not the real subject of this picture?

The Horseshoe Falls from the view of the Skylon Tower buffet restaurant. That blue dot in the middle is a Maid of the Mist boat.

The American Falls. That small waterfall on the right is the third waterfall. It is called the Bridal Veil Falls. The blue Great Lake in the distance is Lake Erie.

My family next to one of the "barrels" a daredevil used to take the trip over the falls.

The guy who used this barrel survived the fall, but suffocated inside the barrel because the water pinned him to a place under the waterfall. Rescuers couldn't reach him before his air ran out. On the bright side, he took his pet turtle along with him and the turtle lived.

The Niagara River Gorge

The beautiful Toronto skyline.

The CN Tower in Toronto, the tallest observation tower in the world. Really, this thing is huge.

On the plane from Buffalo to Chicago.

Coming home!

BITR: What Scares the Living Daylights Out of Me

2008-08-05T20:59:00.000-06:00

The Itch

2008-08-03T21:11:00.003-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, for the first time in my entire life, I got the chance to take a trip out of the country (barely) and into Canada. We flew to Chicago, then to Buffalo, and then we drove over the border and into Niagara Falls, Canada. The trip took 4 days, and most of our time was spent on the Canadian side. I got to see all kinds of Maple Leaf souvenirs, Canadian flags, Canadian money, and all kinds of other Canadian things. I got to hear people say things like, “So you’ve seen the falls, eh?” and “We’re aboot to go to the wineries.” We bought gas by the liter instead of the gallon, and the speed of our car was measured in kilometers per hour rather than miles per hour.

I think that being outside of America did something to me. Subconsciously I think that something didn’t feel right about being outside of the country that I’m used to. I didn’t realize it at the time, but something must have been different about it. So in response to being absent from America for a while, the day after I came back to the United States I went out and did the most American thing I could possibly do. I bought a 32” flat-screen HDTV. Did I need it? Not really. Sure, my old TV was an old 17” television with a decent picture. But did I really need to spend all of that money on such a nice TV? The answer is definitely no.

However, I don’t really regret making the decision that I did. It’s a nice TV, and I definitely enjoy watching shows and movies on it. But it has got me thinking about how a lot of the time we Americans get some kind of itch or longing or discontentedness – I don’t even know what it is but I’m guessing that everyone knows what I’m talking about – and the way we try to cure the itch is to spend money on something. The day after my trip, I woke up and before long the possibility of getting a new TV was on my mind. It lingered there in my head and I couldn’t keep from thinking about it. In the shower I tried to reason with myself to see if I could afford it. Throughout the day I went back and forth, thinking it was a good idea one minute and a bad one the next. Ironically, that same day I watched a show on the Science channel that talked about decision making, and how usually people don’t make rational decisions. People may think they do, but most of the time they don’t really weigh all of the pros and cons of the decision; and a lot of times they just do what they want to do regardless.

Well, that day I don’t know what it was, but I was set on buying a TV. I could afford it, but truthfully the money could have been better spent elsewhere. That night I went to bed watching a show on my new high-def screen, and even though I knew I would be penny-pinching for the next few weeks, I didn’t care.

Like I said, I don’t regret the decision, but the issue of spending money just to try to cure that itch has been on my mind a little bit. I see this all the time in my life. If I’m bored, or kinda down and in need of a pick-me-up, sometimes my cure for that is to go spend money on something. I’ll buy a videogame, a CD or DVD. To tide me over until the itch comes back, I’ll go out and get something that most of the time I don’t need. Then, when it does come back, I just go out and buy something else.

This bothers me because I could be spending my time so much better. If I’m bored, I could pick up my guitar and learn some new songs, or dive into another book. I could read my Bible or pray, or call up a friend and hang out. I don’t have to spend money to do those things, and when it comes down to it doing things like that are going to make a greater difference in the long run. If I take the time now to play the guitar instead of a game, then a few years later I’ll be a really good guitar player. New TVs and other material things aren’t as valuable as the joy of being able to play a song or draw a picture or something creative like that.

When we were staying in Niagara Falls, my sister and I went into a gift shop that was full of all kinds of carved, wooden ornaments. The shop had various items such as carved masks, statues both big and small, and even some musical instruments made out of wood. We saw a few weapons, some staves, bows, and a couple of blow guns. It was a really neat place to just look around. The woman at the desk told us that most of the carvings were imported from India and Asia, in areas like that. And from the Buddha statues and faces I could tell that the art definitely had that kind of influence.

I bought a piece from that store. It’s a section of the trunk of a small tree with a face carved into it. It is carved in such a way that above and below the face you can see the bark from the tree. So you can see where the artist carved into the tree and started to make his or her design. It’s really a beautiful thing to look at. Our dog Dixie was afraid of it when I first brought it home; she wouldn’t stop barking at it. Regardless of what she thinks, I think it’s nice.

When I bought this carving I didn’t really buy it because it was of any use to me. Since I have been back it has just sat in my room, all wooden and creepy looking next to my guitar amp. I didn’t buy it because it would be fun to play with – it’s not. In fact, the thing is basically useless to me. But when I was in that store and I saw all the carvings and the work of various artists from the other side of the world, I found it beautiful. And I bought the carving because it was beautiful and because I wanted to support someone who could make something like that.

I imagine some poor man in India who lives in a small hut with dirt floors. And maybe he lives with his family trying to make enough money to eat and pay for the basic human needs. This guy doesn’t have an X-box to keep him entertained. He doesn’t have a high-definition TV screen or a blu-ray disc player or an iPod. He has none of the everyday distractions in his life that we Americans do. And so what does he have? Well, he has his family, and nature, and his art. Sure, he probably gets bored sometimes, but when that happens he can spend his time carving. He goes out in the woods and cuts down a tree, and then he chops it into pieces and starts to carve. And as he perfects his artwork and refines his skill, he carves a human face out of a piece of wood. Maybe sometimes he carves people and other times he carves animals. The sky is the limit, and really all he has to use is his imagination and his hands, picturing something incredible in his head and then using his hands and his knife to make it real.

I’m going to enjoy sitting on my couch and watching college football on my HD screen this fall. I don’t doubt that. But deep down I do feel like I may be missing out on something. Even though I have so much more than my imaginary poor Indian man has ever had, it might just be true that he is really the one who is rich and I’m the one who is poor. Maybe he is the one who is blessed and I am the one who is cursed. My TV is going to break or become outdated. The picture is going to fade and maybe get a little fuzzy. I’ve got a feeling that over the long haul, his cure for the itch is better than mine.

And so as I live out my life and decide how to spend my time and money, I really hope that when I get that itch I will learn to be a little wiser in how I react. I could just buy the latest toy, or maybe instead I could pick up a guitar or a pen and try to play music better or write better or be a better person. Maybe I could work on my golf swing. I have a feeling that when all is said and done, spending my time doing constructive things like that are far more worth it than using what little money I have to satisfy a longing that is simply not going to go away.

BITR: Aliens and Ghosts

2008-08-01T23:17:00.003-06:00

When I was a lot younger, I used to love watching shows about aliens and ghosts. Mostly aliens, because those kinds of documentaries came on more. Whenever I saw a program about UFOs, Area 51, or extraterrestrial aliens on TV, I would usually watch it. I know all about Roswell and the Bermuda Triangle, and I have probably seen all of the most popular footage of blurry UFO sightings. I also like movies about aliens. Independence Day is still to this day one of my favorite movies. As a kid I was fascinated with aliens because they were always a subject of great mystery. Are UFOs and aliens being kept at Area 51? Is the government covering them up? Did aliens teach ancient civilizations how to do things like build the pyramids? The possibility that we are not alone in the universe is fascinating.

I didn’t see as many ghost shows as a kid, but I saw enough to teach me about some sightings, beliefs, etc. I have seen the shows where the producers go to a site that is believed to be haunted and the take along a psychic. They walk through the house or graveyard, wherever it is they’re at, and in one area the psychic always gets excited because she can feel great “energy” in that place. And I have seen where they take radios and instruments that let them pick up electromagnetic fields and such.

It’s interesting that everything I know about aliens and ghosts came from watching TV. I’ve never had any sort of encounter with either of these beings. I haven’t read about them. I know people who claim that weird stuff has happened to them, but nothing that points directly to a ghost or an alien. It’s possible that the idea of these creatures is promoted by TV, since these types of shows get pretty good ratings. If you are a person who watches shows about ghosts or aliens and you experience something you can’t explain, you are much more likely to say that it was one of them. And the way that people tend to exaggerate, lie, and believe whatever they want to believe, it is more than possible that someone could see light reflecting off of an airplane and call it a UFO.

I am open to anything being possible in this world. I have learned to not really limit my beliefs about it just because I haven’t experienced something. Not really a whole lot surprises me. It is perfectly reasonable to think that extraterrestrial aliens exist. The universe is a vast, enormous, mysterious place; I can’t emphasize that statement enough. To think that somewhere out in the cosmos is a planet in some other galaxy with the ability to produce life is completely reasonable. In fact, it’s possible that lots of these places exist. We once thought that the world was flat and that we were the center of the universe, but we were wrong about both of those things. Isn’t it possible or maybe even probable to believe that we are wrong about being alone in the universe?

However, if I must give an answer then with all of this in mind I am still going to say that I don’t believe aliens exist. I say that not because I have so much trouble believing in aliens, but solely because of spiritual reasons. I believe what the Bible says, that God created humans in his own image, that humans are eternal but fallen creatures, that God became a human and lived here on earth for several years, and that he died to save humans from death. If intelligent life exists on other planets, then all of a sudden we have a lot questions that need answering. Are they created in God’s image or are they like plants and animals? Are they fallen creatures like we humans are? (I guess the best way of answering this is simply by seeing if they wear clothes.) Did Jesus die for them as well? If so, why did he come to earth to dwell among humans?

If I do believe in alien life existing on other planets, I would say that they are not intelligent creatures like we are. I would say that they exist as some sort of bacteria or maybe some type of primitive or maybe even advanced animals. But they don’t have a spirit, the breath of God breathed into them. I don’t think they would have the intelligence or the ability to build spacecraft and travel across the universe to observe us or try to invade our planet or anything.

As for ghosts, I am really not sure what to say. Have I ever seen a ghost? No. I know of people who have claimed to see dead relatives or hear their voices, which really creeps me out, but there is really no way of knowing whether that is true or not. I find it a lot easier to believe that people are either delusional or deceptive than to believe the ghosts that they have seen are actually real.

However, I do think that it is possible that ghosts might exist. I don’t think I will ever see one in my lifetime, and maybe they are completely impossible for us to see. Maybe they aren’t the white, transparent apparitions that we believe them to be. Maybe they exist as something outside of everything we can comprehend, some kind of creature that is not bound to the dimensions and laws that exist in our world. I do believe in spirits, but whether or not they wander and haunt various places on earth, I do not know. And whether they try to communicate with old family members I don’t know either.

In a very unusual and strange Bible story, King Saul and the Israelites are at war with the Philistines. Saul becomes very afraid when he sees the Philistine army, and he inquires of the Lord, but doesn’t get any kind of answer or response. So then he disguises himself and travels to Endor to consult a medium there. The Witch of Endor brings up Samuel, the Israeli prophet who had recently died, and Saul actually has a conversation with him. In this conversation, Samuel’s spirit predicts that the Philistines are going to defeat the Israelites, and that God is going to take the kingdom from Saul’s hands and give it to David. Both predictions come true.

There you have it, in the Bible of all places, an account of a medium consulting a spirit and nothing about this story suggests that the medium was false at all. Samuel really was summoned, and Saul really talked to him.

Either way, no evidence exists that I know of that would prove that either aliens or ghosts exist. I am definitely a skeptic, because I have never experienced anything like that and because it is easy for people to misinterpret all kinds of things, believing in something just because they want to. However, I am not a reductionist either. I’m not going to limit the world to just what I can perceive with my own senses. I believe in spirits, and so technically you could say I believe in ghosts. I don’t really believe in aliens, but I am definitely open to the possibility. Although, if they do show up on earth someday, I think God is gonna have a lot of explaining to do.

BITR: One thing that annoys the living daylights out of me

2008-07-15T15:23:00.001-06:00

Ever since I got the job of riding on a truck for 10 hours a day, I haven’t had any trouble sleeping. It’s a lot of riding, I know; but that really can take the energy out of you. Not to mention loading and unloading the truck several times a day. The first time I ever rode on the truck for a full day, I came home and just laid on my bed until I fell asleep. This was at about 8 pm. I woke up later at about midnight with my lights and my work clothes still on. After I had changed clothes and turned the lights off, I immediately went back to bed. The next morning I got up at 9 am, feeling like I had slept for an entire epoch.

Maybe I’m just really weak or something, but the job always keeps me ready to hit the hay every night. On weekends I tend to sleep about 10 hours at night and then take a nap on the afternoon of the next day (unless I have to get up for church in the morning). I can fall asleep almost anywhere, and many times at home I don’t actually fall asleep in my own bed. But I do get there, eventually.

I love sleeping, though. I love being able to close my eyes and zone out of consciousness, fulfilling my body’s need for rest. That’s why I get so angry when my ability to fall asleep is somehow taken from me. I do all the right things. I drink milk, get a little snack, make sure the temperature in the house is right, and find a TV program that is watchable but not so entertaining that it keeps me awake (ESPN, The Weather Channel, or an educational program usually do the job). Sometimes I start reading a chapter of a book and that almost always makes me fall asleep. The methods are out there, but sometimes none of them produce any kind of results.

I say this because apparently over the last few days I have been afflicted with some kind of plague or something. It started as a Sunday afternoon post-nap headache, but as of last night it was the thing that was keeping my body from its desired rest. Sure, I fell asleep initially. But at 3 am I awoke to the burning pain of cold air passing through my inflamed nostrils and throat. Unless I figured out a way to breathe out of something besides my face, or simply not breathe at all, I wasn’t going to be sleeping anymore. And about 13 hours later, I still haven’t.

Of course, affliction isn’t necessarily the only thing that can keep a person up at night. Christmas, for instance, is sure to keep me from my REM goodness. On Christmas Eve, I’m always so excited about opening presents in the morning that I have absolutely no desire to rest. It’s all about getting that Nintendo 64 out of the box and playing Super Mario 64 for the first time ever. Nothing else matters. I’m 22 and I still feel this way.

Lying in bed without being able to sleep is just about the most annoying thing imaginable. When I’ve already watched Elimidate 8 times, memorized the local forecast (on every 8 of the hour), and seen the same old MLB highlights of Josh Hamilton going yard 28 times in the first round of the home run derby, I start moving towards borderline insanity. Then I look over at the clock and realize I’m supposed to get up in an hour, and there’s already some light on the horizon outside my window. This is a bad thing.

I hate not being able to sleep. I hate it with a passion. I love rest like I love a great meal at Cracker Barrel. When I can’t get it and, worse than that, when I have to lie in bed and think about how I can’t get it, everything in my world goes wrong. It doesn’t happen all that much anymore, but when it does, it sure does make me thankful for the nights that I lay my head down on a pillow and go to sleep almost instantly.

(p)age after (p)age

2008-07-05T23:33:00.003-06:00

Tonight I was on the Target side of Trussville walking down that big strip of stores right by the highway. I was by myself, walking the sidewalk from Target to Books-a-Million. Observing the parking lot scenery as I walked, I noticed that a few of the smaller stores were already closed for the night. Most of the lights were out inside, and dark silhouettes of chairs and shelves rose from the floors and stood still in the middle of the dim shops. A light was left on as they always are left on in these places, I never have understood why. What is there to see and who is there to see it anyway?

Closed businesses look very strange at night. All the people who work there in the day are gone and the building is just left there by itself to wait until the next day when the people come back to work again. Sometimes when I drive home at night, I go by the place I work and glance at the all-too familiar thrift store with its long aisles of clothing and furniture, all dimly lit by the lights that have been left on. In the daytime, customers are going in and out, walking up the aisles and looking for junk they can buy. At the cash registers, Joan and Fannie are checking out the customers, taking their money and giving them change. Every now and then a customer will give them a tag, and they will call over their radios to a Royal Pine guy, who comes to load up the customer’s furniture for them.

The workers who price the merchandise come out from the doors in the back every now and then with buggies full of more items to sell. They push their buggies to their respective departments in the store, stopping every now and then to put something in its proper place. Sometimes they will get caught up in a conversation with a customer, and after several minutes of gossiping and speculating on what this world’s coming to, they will get on with their duties.

At the back, where we take in donations, sits a pile of unusable junk along with broken furniture and stained mattresses. Eddie and I, on our Mission: Possible Bargain Center box-truck, routinely bring in loads of new items and then haul off all the garbage to the landfill. Eddie eases the truck in to the loading dock while I stare blankly ahead, waiting to get out and go grab a bite to eat next door at Jack’s. We make our way in, making small talk with everybody we meet on our way to the time clock. On good days, when we are feeling well and have plenty of energy, we stop and get into elaborate, detailed conversations. On bad days, or even just normal days (and believe me, there are more of these than good ones), we muster up a “Hey, how are you?” or in Eddie’s case a low, “Alright man” and just keep walking. The only real goal here is to finish the day and go home.

The other day, after everything was finished and nothing was left to be done, Seth and I took a golf club out behind the store and practiced our swings on a few glass whisky bottles. We made a complete and total mess, and I couldn’t help but cringe at the crunching sound the cars made as they pulled up to the dock and right over the tiny pieces of glass strewn out in the lot. I left at 6 pm that day, making sure to avoid the broken glass as I drove around the building to take the side road out to the highway. The sun crept down in the sky and an hour later Seth left along with everyone else. And when we were all gone the place became still and quiet.

For two and a half years I have been working at that thrift store. I stay there until evening on the days I work, and then I return in the morning to do it all over again. Two and a half years. I’ve become pretty familiar with a lot of things that go on there. I know that every time Eddie and I get back with a load, Charlie, who works at the back door, is going to ask if we are going to the dump. I know that almost every night, the same customers are going to come in 30 minutes or less before we close and wait until exactly 7 pm to pay for their items. I know that every Monday morning we are all going to complain about what a mess it is in the back, and about how people who leave their garbage there while we are closed are evil, worthless, trashy, selfish scumbags who should take their crap to the dump where it belongs. And of course, I know that every morning I am going to find a way to get to Jack’s so I can get my morning sausage or gravy biscuit, medium sweet tea, and daily newspaper.

It’s been two and a half years. When I first signed up for this I never thought I would be here for this long.

But I’m still there, and no end is in sight. Sometimes it seems to me that in life you go through seasons and periods where things change but they don’t really. It’s like you are reading a book and there is page after page but you keep wondering when this chapter is going to end and when the next one is actually going to begin. When I graduated high school, I really did begin a new chapter in my life. A lot of things changed then. I had to start accepting more responsibility, I no longer got to see my friends every single day, I had to get a job, my dog died, I started college, and so many other things happened that made life different. But that chapter is still going on, partly because of my indecision and mistakes that I’ve made, but also because of circumstances beyond my control.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my job. I get a lot of privileges there that I wouldn’t want to go without. But I guess a person goes down a certain road for a substantial length of time and he gets tired of that road and starts wanting to travel a new one – especially if he knows that the road he’s on was never going to take him anywhere in the first place. I think I’m that guy.

So here’s to the day when I drive by the thrift store, see the dim lights on with no cars in the parking lot, and think to myself, “Man, I remember those years I spent there.” And then I will think about Charlie, Metal Man (Ron), Eddie, Wanda, “Black Santa Clause,” Bobby, TeLisa, Seth, all the Royal Pine guys, and everybody else who made my first job a little more interesting or frustrating or tolerable. I will smile to myself, thinking of all the TVs that were busted with bowling balls, the funny looking hats that were tried on, and the many accidents that happened because of carelessness. And I will remember that the years that went by at that place really weren’t bad at all, but the years to come proved that leaving at the right time was the right choice - and the perfect setup for a brand new chapter.

Please Pray for Andy's Father

2008-07-01T17:10:00.002-06:00

Some of the people who read this blog probably already know about this, but in case you don't know, Andy's father had a massive heart attack earlier today. From what I heard, he is going to be alright but is currently in ICU at the hospital.

Andy has been a dear friend of mine for a very long time. I guess he is not necessarily my "youth pastor" anymore, but either way he is definitely THE spiritual leader in my life right now, and has been for the last several years. Andy has shaped me perhaps more than any other person I know, and has clearly made a giant impact on my life in many ways.

I am positive that Andy's dad played a giant role in the person he is, so I ask you to please pray for him. Pray for Andy's dad and Andy and their whole family as they go through a very scary circumstance. May God take care of his health and that whole family in this difficult time.

BITR: Leprechauns

2008-06-30T19:19:00.002-06:00

"It could be a crackhead that got hold to da wrong stuff!"

What is a leprechaun exactly? We are all familiar with that green character with the four-leaf clover on our Lucky Charms boxes, but where did this guy actually come from?

Well, the truth is leprechauns come from Irish folklore - usually very brief tales attached to local names and scenery. The tales were told in conversation, and leprechauns always have very unique characteristics about them. For instance, leprechauns are almost always associated with gold. If one day you happened to capture a leprechaun, chances are the leprechaun would try to offer you gold to let him go. When you actually did let the little man go, he would probably trick you and disappear. It is said that you must always keep your eyes on a leprechaun because right when you look away, they can vanish.

Leprechauns are also generally shoemakers, and one interesting fact is that prior to the 20th century, they wore red coats, not green.

So there you have it... leprechauns. Fictional characters in old Irish folklore that are completely made up and couldn't possibly be real.

OR COULD THEY???

Not knowing nothing about anything

2008-06-27T20:32:00.004-06:00

Over a year ago when I decided to take some time off from college, I made up my mind that even though I would be out of school, I wasn't going to stop learning. I needed to find out what I was interested in, what kind of things I liked, and what I felt like I was able to do. Of course I didn't go to the library and check out all of the career books on the shelves. Instead I read books that somehow captured my interest, from Harry Potter to Steinbeck novels to books about God - and several others as well. On the bookshelf to my right is a book written by an agnostic journalist about the Christian belief in the end of the world. This book is also stacked right next to a book about ninjas called "REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book". The subtext on the cover of the book says this:

"Hi, this book is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This book is awesome. My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet."

A few books down from that is a book called "Prayer" by Philip Yancey, who is definitely among my favorite of Christian authors. On the other side of this shelf sits my collection of Donald Miller books, maybe my favorites of all. And next to these books are my three Bibles.

It's not just books either. My favorite channel on television is the History channel, and usually in the rare moments when I actually sit down to watch TV, this is what I watch. I also have a few podcasts I subscribe to that basically help me learn about certain things while I'm on the go. To keep up with current events, I read the paper every day. My favorite section is the editorials, because it's fun when locals say ridiculous things publicly. And it's even more fun when other locals respond over the next few days... publicly.

I don't consider myself a particularly smart human being at all. I was in the "gifted" class as a child, but barely. When I was in 5th grade my teacher got me to take the "gifted" test and I failed it. Somehow the same teacher persuaded the people in charge of the "gifted" program to let me take the test again, so I did and passed it the second time. To this day I don't understand what difference it made in my life. I got to leave class every now and then, but what I remember the most is how my peers made fun of me and called the R.L.C. program I was in "Retarded Little Children." Being gifted is good and all, but like I say it didn't make much of a difference to me. I still made mediocre grades. I got a 24 on my ACT in high school, which is good but not great. And I can still remember the D, near F in pre-cal, that almost kept me from graduating my senior year.

I say this because I want to point out that I'm a very average guy who is trying to make sense of life. If I'm going to have any kind of knowledge about anything, I'm going to have to earn it. So this past year I have simply tried to observe and take in any sort of experience and knowledge like some sort of red-headed sponge.

The thing about learning is that once you know something, you can't un-know it. You can't really take it back. Once you learn something like the fact that your country was established by killing and forcing native Americans off their land, or the fact that REAL ninjas fight ALL THE TIME, or the fact that it takes the light from the stars millions of years to reach the earth, you have to do something with that understanding. It becomes hard to ignore. And unless you have some sort of concussion or brain-altering accident, then it's impossible to un-know. And what happens then?

Well, it changes you. It may not change the fundamental characteristics of who you are, but it alters how you look at things, how you say things, and how you act in certain situations. Roughly a year after I walked away from UAB, Hopewell Baptist Church, my old house, old friends, and a few other things in my life, I am still Matt Benton. But I'm not that Matt Benton anymore. I'm just not the same guy anymore. Why? Because since then I read a book, had a conversation, went on a trip, heard a song, read a blog, heard a sermon, watched a TV show, read something in the Bible, heard a story, wrote a blog, had another conversation, and experienced a certain thing on a certain day. From this random soup of experience and observation I have shaped myself. And that shape is different from what it was in January of 2007.

But sometimes it seems to me like the more I know, the more I realize how much I don't know. Answers are highly overrated, because when you find an answer to a question, a lot of times you will find a whole host of new questions for you to ask. And the process just continues again.

Tonight I don't think I know anything at all. I have my way of looking at things, and there are people out there who think that what I believe is absolute rubbish. A lot of times I look at other things that other people believe and I think they couldn't possibly be true either. Putting your faith in one thing and then discovering that there are a lot of people out there who are completely against what you put your faith in is a frightening thing. It makes you wonder if anyone is really right and anyone is really wrong, or are we just separate groups with opposite opinions?

When this happens I guess it's important to let what you've learned settle in, be humble, trust your own judgment, and then move on the next day. Dive right back in to the mess of contradicting knowledge and ideas. Somehow these things are going to be sorted out, and I might as well play a role in it. Truth may be a very elusive thing to find, but I don't suppose a little more knowledge would hurt.

BITR: How Would I Choose to Die?

2008-06-17T17:59:00.001-06:00

I would pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

I was at work today and I happened to notice a book that a co-worker of mine was going to buy. It was titled something like “What You Need to Know about Global Warming and Environmentalism.” Upon further inspection I gathered that what you really need to know about global warming and environmentalism is that they aren’t actually true, or at least global warming is not. Apparently it is a myth created by the crooked media, the money-hungry government, Al Gore, and/or mad scientists who want you to think that the planet is heating up, which would result in very serious consequences for us people.

What an excellent way to die.

If I could choose the manner of my own death I would go back and borrow that book from my co-worker and I would read every single word of it, then I would read it again. I would take in every idea, every fact, all of it. And then after I believed everything that was said in my book, I would go numb to anything else that told me differently. When a news story about climate change would come on TV, I would change the channel. When I would see an article in the paper about it, I would skip over it. “Propaganda,” I would say and then smile to myself because I knew something they didn’t know. I would be on to them.

When I could afford it I would buy a Hummer, even though I don’t have to drive off-road over a mountain to work everyday. I would buy it and cruise around in Trussville all the time. I would leave it running when I stopped anywhere, to keep the a/c cold. After eating a drive-thru Rally’s burger I would toss the bag and wrapper out the window because I don’t want to get my Hummer interior dirty. Besides, it’s not my job to care. The earth is my domain; nothing is going to happen to it.

I could live however I want and not have to worry about how much carbon I am emitting or about how much energy I am using. I wouldn’t care if some corporation was polluting a river somewhere, if an oil spill killed off miles of sea life, or if the sea level was rising year by year. The rapture is going to take me before the world ends, so why care? I could live the way I want to. I am an American, after all.

As I live my life, drive my Hummer, and vote against legislation seeking to help the environment, I would slowly dig mine and everyone else’s grave deeper and deeper. The earth would heat up, the ocean would rise, the polar ice caps would melt, species would go extinct, and I would ignore all of it. Maybe one day when it was too late, when the damage had already been done, I would start to figure things differently. But eventually, after I had raped and plundered God’s creation to get all I could out of it, it would do the same to me.

And I would die and be buried in its mud.

BITR: I would punch a toddler for ______.

2008-06-10T18:57:00.003-06:00

What in the world could I possibly want so badly that I would punch a toddler? I think a better question is what wouldn't I punch a toddler for? Look at this kid. He is mean, arrogant, whiny, and extremely self-centered. There is only one cure for that - a very serious butt-kicking.

Spare the rod, spoil the child. That's what the Bible says. But this isn't about my personal parenting convictions. This is a blog about what I want, and what I would do to get it.

I will tell you exactly what I want: world peace. I'm tired of all the violence in this world. I'm tired of the wars and school shootings. Why in the world would a child shoot another child? It is both sad and extremely frightening to know that I live in a world where these things take place. Parents stuff their kids in closets and leave them there for years and sharks eat their own young. That is just plain sick if you ask me.

I want to see a world where we all live in peace. I want a world where President George W. Bush can sit down with President Mahmoud Ahajiamiadnineig7eghjad and talk peacefully about bombing their enemies. A world where the American can get along with the al-Qaida terrorist, and the people who go to church can get along with, well, the other people who go to church. I believe in a world where peace reigns over war and where no one will be oppressed regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, social status, etc. I believe in a world where parents do not beat their children for no good reason and where the kids on the playground don't bully each other. Children are precious to this world, the sign and hope of our future. If we try to do anything that would hurt them then we are only hurting ourselves.

So you say, "Matt, what would you do to bring peace to this world?"

I tell you, I would do anything. I would do anything within my limited abilities to make this world a better place.

"Would you even punch a toddler?"

You better believe I would, twice if I had to.

BITR: Why I Believe in Jesus

2008-05-31T10:23:00.003-06:00

If everything goes according to plan (and it usually doesn’t), I will be going back to college this fall. This will be my 5^th year out of high school and it will be my 4^th official major - hopefully the final one. I have chosen history this time, and I don’t think many people think that will stick either. We’ll see I guess. When I tell people I want to major in history, a lot of times they will respond by saying, “Why history?” And then I give them a bunch of reasons that are part of my decision but I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone the real reason I want to study history. The real reason I want to study history is basically because I want to gain perspective. I have become fascinated with what people have done, how they lived, and things that have happened to them in the past. I think that studying these sorts of things can help us with life now and as we proceed into an unknown future. Plus it’s really interesting.

In order to prepare for my upcoming studies of history, I subscribed to a few dorky podcasts about the subject. Podcasts are helpful because I can download them to my iPod and listen to them at work. It works out really well because I can get paid while learning about Napoleon and things like that.

I say this because the other day I was listening to a podcast about the Roman Empire. This specific podcast was about a guy named Marius, who rose to power and became a great leader in the army at that time. It talked about how he rose to power and how he reordered his army’s basic units to make them more efficient – you know, interesting military stuff like that. In one battle Marius did battle with an opposing army of about 300,000 men and defeated them. After doing this, he left a portion of his army hiding in the mountains knowing that another separate army would be coming after him. Surely enough, this other army charged and Marius’s troops retreated and were being pursued until they passed the place where more troops were hidden. When they passed this spot in the mountains they turned around and began to attack. As this happened, the hidden troops came out and attacked the other army from behind. The result is that this other army was obliterated.

It’s pretty interesting stuff to hear about how these great generals won battles and the things they did that made them successful. But after hearing about this, my mind went in a different direction. I started thinking about what it must have been like to have been one of the men in the army that got destroyed. What kind of horror and dread did they feel when they realized they had fallen into a trap? And how horrible was it to be ultimately beaten down, fatally wounded, and slaughtered there by a group of men who were, as an army, stronger?

As I was thinking about this I started to take a broader look at things and see humanity as a whole. I mean, if you go back through the past and look at the nature of human beings, it seems like humanity just constantly seems to struggle with itself. There’s a war going on now and there was one going on before this one, and you can really just chronicle history as far back as we can remember and I don’t know if there was a time when there was no war.

You can find wars that start for all kinds of reasons too. People fight over land, culture, religion, ideals, values, freedom, control, revenge, power, and the list could go on and on. Wars between countries are just large scale versions of conflict between human beings. It could be as small as two little boys fighting over a toy or a church splitting up. It could be over something as small as a lie that was told, a disagreement, or misunderstanding. Or it could be as big as an idealistic terrorist group flying a plane into a building. Conflict just always seems to find us, or maybe we always seem to find it.

Science would tell us that we live in a “survival of the fittest” world where the strong survive and the weak become prey. If you’ve ever turned on the Discovery channel and seen one of those shows where a herd of lions chase down, kill, and eat some little gimpy antelope then you know what I’m talking about. Nature can be absolutely brutal sometimes, and people can be just the same way. Last summer I read a book about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda where basically one large race of people attempted to literally wipe another race off the face of the planet. They did this by killing them with machetes and guns – brutal, face to face murders. It is estimated that around 800,000 people were killed in about 3 months. It was fastest systematic killing in the history of the world, even faster than the holocaust. This is just one of many examples of how humanity can brutally struggle against itself, how we can fight and kill in a “survival of the fittest” sort of way in order to preserve who we are and what we value.

Take our current war on terror, for example. The terrorists are a threat to our way of life and so what we are going to do is kill them to protect our freedom, values, etc. It’s survival of the fittest, and I would be willing to bet that the reason they attacked us in the first place is because they saw us as a threat to their way of life. And so what happens in the end? The strong survive and the weaker group is killed off. The ones who have the most power are preserved.

It would seem that what is important in this world is to be strong, have power and control. It would be good in this system to have influence, fame, and wealth – anything that may be a sign of strength.

Looking at it this way, it is interesting to me that Jesus came under the reign of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was in control of Israel at that time and so Jesus and all the other Jews were technically under the rule of Caesar. If you know anything about this empire, then you know that it was about power. They had the best armies and the strongest leaders. They had more land and control than anyone up to that point in the history of the world. The Romans actually perfected the practice of crucifixion, and in some accounts they would crush a rebellion and crucify the rebels on roadsides just to make an example of what happens to people who try to go against the power of the Roman Empire.

And so Jesus – God as a man – arrives during this period of time and starts to teach his message to humanity, and what does he teach us? Wednesday night at church, Andy pointed out in our study of the gospel of Mark that what Jesus was telling people to do when he first started to preach was to repent, which in its original language was a military term for “about face.” Jesus was basically telling people to turn around, to turn from their ways. Jesus was saying that wherever you’re going now, turn around and start heading in the other direction. He was telling people to turn away from their human nature.

We see this in Jesus’ teachings all the time. He told people that when they get punched in the face, instead of returning the favor they should turn the other cheek. He said that if a man takes your coat then give him your shirt as well. If he tells you to go a mile with him then go two. If you want to be great, then you must be the least. You are blessed when you mourn. There is no greater love than when you lay down your life for your friends.

Jesus apparently didn’t understand our way of doing things. Either that or he was completely above, beyond, and outside of our human nature. While we were constantly struggling with ourselves and fighting each other, trying to survive and preserve ourselves, Jesus was teaching us a way to live that is exactly opposite. The world would say that if someone tries to step on you, hurt you, or kill you, then you should do the same to them. Jesus says to turn the other cheek. In fact, he tells you to love your enemy. This is definitely not our way of doing things. This is not how you survive. This is not how you preserve yourself. It would seem that there is absolutely no power in this at all.

At one point in my life not terribly long ago, I wanted to walk away. God didn’t make sense anymore. I didn’t understand a lot of things, and the easiest way of dealing with that was to just walk away – to say God wasn’t real. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I wouldn’t have to wonder if God was talking to me when I prayed, I wouldn’t have to pretend I had any idea what God was doing or what his will was in my life and in the world. I could simply let go of all that.

Well, I was wrong about that. I couldn’t let go. Maybe God just wouldn’t let go of me, but I got pretty close. There was one thing I couldn’t get passed, one thing I couldn’t resolve. I caught a snag whenever I thought about this, and I fell to my knees whenever I felt it. That one thing was this:

Love.

I couldn’t get passed it.

For a while now I have held strongly to the belief that love is the strongest, most important thing in the world. I know that sounds kind of cheesy, but I really believe it’s true. Life isn’t worth living without love. Every single person wants it and looks for it. If you’ve got it then at times it is almost like a heavenly state, and if you don’t then it’s like a cold and lonely hell. We all want to be loved, and some people will do the most ridiculous and crazy things to try and get it. To be loved is a wonderful thing because the very nature of love is not self-seeking at all. In fact, it is completely focused on the “other.” For instance, if you are or have ever been in love with another person then you know that you would probably do anything for this person. You value this person even more than yourself. You would even give up your own life for this person.

If you’ve ever felt this way then you will know that this is a very real feeling. I mean love between a man and a woman or a parent and a child is an extremely strong thing, and when it is at its highest form then I don’t know if there is anything anyone could do to break it. I couldn’t get passed this because I knew that it was real and it was good, and when Jesus came to earth he absolutely lined himself up with love. In fact, the Bible goes as far as to say that God is love. So Jesus came and he talked about love a lot, he taught people to love each other, and he did it himself. He loved and accepted people that no one else was willing to accept, and his love carried him all the way to his own death. He died for the people he loved. And I knew that one of those people was me.

Sometimes I wonder if God lets us feel love in order to reveal to us what he is like. I mean, when I think about someone I love and about how I would do anything for this person, I try to make myself understand that God is like this only a million times more. And just by feeling that way and connecting that with God I know that God is someone I can trust. If he really loves me like that then I know he will take care of me. Jesus even said that we can relate to God as a father, and the Bible calls us the bride of Christ. God uses these relationships to show how we relate to him, and if you know anything about those kinds of relationships you know that there is a lot of love involved.

Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. When he came to earth as the savior he did not go out and wage a war trying to overthrow the Romans and conquer the world. He did not try to rise up in the hierarchical system of the day and gain power so he could control people. What he did do, however, was love people. He talked to people and often ate and partied with them. He cared about them, and a lot of times he was hanging out with people that the world had rejected. He taught about God’s kingdom and eventually he submitted himself to death. You could sort of say he submitted to the hands of the Roman Empire. He was crucified by Roman soldiers after all.

Almost 2000 years later, look at where we are at now. People are still following Jesus, and how long has the Roman Empire been gone? Jesus has made more of an impact on the world than anyone in history, and because of his way of life and who he is (God) we can know that there are things in this world that are more important than power and control. That laying down your life is more important than killing someone who is different from you, and that dying in itself is not the end. We can live by a pattern that is true and good, and is completely opposite of our nature.

I believe in Jesus because he has shown us that way. He walked it and he invites us to walk it as well. It may not bring glory and praise by the world’s standards, but ultimately it will save the world. It will make the world more than this dog eat dog place that we inhabit. And that means a lot to me. It makes life worth living, and it shows me that I can do the things that Jesus talked about and it will matter. It will matter because it’s eternal. It won’t end out on some battlefield somewhere. In fact, it won’t end at all.

Good Theology

2008-05-27T06:03:00.002-06:00

This is a conversation that my family and I were having in the car the other day. That's my grandma in the back, my mom driving, my sister holding the camera, and the guy with the terrible hat hair is me. I think you will agree that our theological conclusions are nothing short of profound.

My apologies to all Methodists, Jews, homosexuals, liberals, conservatives, women, and pretty much everybody else.

BITR: The Hilldale Hookup

2008-05-25T16:01:00.002-06:00

Springtime is here and love is in the air at Hilldale. As the trees and flowers have started to bloom outside we have also seen love (i.e. mutual attraction or something like that) blossom throughout the youth group. At baseball games and in the middle of worship services we have seen the drama unfolding right in front of our eyes. Yes, just like a worn out, daytime soap opera we have watched teenagers fall in and out of love (mutual attraction or something like that) while others seem to be left on the outside looking in, hoping that maybe someday they can get in on the hormone carousel that is the Hilldale Hookup.

I have thought long and hard about what kind of insight I could add to this subject. I have lost sleep at night over this. There is such consequence, so much of a burden to bear when you are dealing with this. So after deliberating in my head for a couple of weeks I have been able to sum up my feelings on the Hookup in this one sentence:

If you play with fire, you're gonna get burned.

Child of Dust

2008-05-23T20:32:00.003-06:00

A band I like called Thrice embarked on quite an impressive project for their latest recordings. They made a 4-disc collection with 6 songs each, all based on one of the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. Each disc represents one of those elements, and therefore the music and lyrics all follow that theme. For instance, the water CD has lots of songs that mention the sea and things related to that. The music also has a very unique "water" element to it. It's a really cool musical experience.

I say this because a couple of days ago I was listening to the earth album while I was sitting in my truck on my lunch break. I was reading the lyrics along with the songs and I came across one in particular that brought me to the brink of tears. I decided I'd put it up here on the blog. Who knows? It may make you want to cry too.

Child of Dust
Lyrics by Dustin Kensrue

Dear prodigal, you are my son and I
Supplied you not your spirit, but your shape.
All Eden's wealth arrayed before your eyes;
I fathomed not you wanted to escape.

And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel.
Uprooted flow'rs and filled the holes with blood;
Ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells.

A child of dust, to mother you return
For every seed must die before it grows
And though above the world may toil and turn
No prying spades will find you here below

Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet,
Here I will teach you truly how to sleep.

The End

2008-05-21T20:32:00.002-06:00

I think this post is a pretty interesting read considering how it was written only a few days before the evolution thing started.

I was planning on writing another blog about this whole thing. I guess you could call this it, but it's not what I was intending to write at first. The argument is over as far as I'm concerned. I have a pretty good feeling that if we keep going back and forth, then in the end it will get us nowhere and at best we will be bitter towards each other. It's clear that we disagree on this issue, and I don't think that anyone is going to be convinced otherwise.

People have commented and raised their concerns about the issue, and I appreciate all that. I appreciate people reading and taking the time to comment. But it becomes a problem when you make assumptions about my character when you don't even know me - when you say that I came to my conclusions because I'm stubborn or not open to being wrong. If you have a problem with my argument, then attack the argument. But if part of your point is that I have a character flaw that makes me come to these conclusions, then leave it out - especially if it's an assumption. The reason it sounds like I believe what I've been talking about is because I believe what I've been talking about. You could make that criticism of just about anyone involved in this argument and be right.

I have found that the only reason I would continue this argument is because of pride, which is not a good reason at all. I value relationships a lot more than I value winning arguments, and I don't want to do anything that will strain those relationships. If this keeps going, that may happen. We can agree to disagree. I think that would be better than going back and forth, tearing down each other in the process.

I hope I haven't offended anybody in this whole thing. I apologize if I have. We are all trying to follow Jesus here and we all have good intentions, but I just think it would be best if we left it alone for now.

At least that's what I'm going to do.