Happy birthday, Black Jesus!

Some people make too big a deal about what color Jesus is.

“His head and gis hair were white like wool, like snow; gis eyes like fire’s flames; gis feet like white bronze, like metal burning in a furnace; gis voice like the sound of many waters; having seven stars in gis right hand; from gis mouth came a sharp double-edged saber; gis face shone like the sun in its power.”

That is the only description of Jesus’s appearance in scripture, from my translation of Revelation 1.14-16. The only other thing we have to go on is a description from apocryphal gospels, some hearsay from various saints, and visions people have had of him—and usually in these visions they spend so much time focusing on his eyes that they really can’t describe him otherwise. When you talk about physical description, people usually point you to Isaiah 53.2 (again, my translation)—

And he rises up before his face, like a sprout,

and like a root in dry earth.

He has no beauty, and no honor,

and we don’t see his appearance

and delight in it.

—which isn’t a description of Jesus’s physical characteristics so much as it’s a description of what the Messiah will be. Isaiah never actually saw Jesus either, and yet we have some idiots preaching from this that Jesus was an ugly man. I dunno; maybe he is; but this verse is no evidence.

I would simply presume that he looks middle eastern. The historian in me figures he grew up in Israel, had Israeli parents (though it seems he got all his genes from his mom) and spent a lot of time outdoors, which would make him at least tan, if not dark tan. A far cry from all these pictures of White Jesus that we see all over the United States and, strangely enough, the world.

In 1999 I was editor of Countryside Post in Grass Valley, and decided for our Christmas edition we’d have a picture of Christ on the cover, appropriately enough. I didn’t pull it off the internet; I got it from our clip art. (It’s one of those 20-CD packages that has thousands of images, and you find that most of them are poorly drawn and totally unnecessary, but you don’t usually know that when you buy them.) The clip art was of Mary holding an infant Jesus, and it had a stained-glass quality that I liked, but the problem was that they were white and Jesus was blond. But that was easily fixed by opening the file in Illustrator and tweaking the inaccurate skin color.

I should have used a Pantone shade, but instead I eyeballed it, and sent it to the press, and didn’t see it until the issues were printed and ready to send to the Postal Service for delivery. (We distributed it by mail.) Mary and Jesus were a nice, deep brown. I’d gone from one historical inaccuracy to another.

We got complaints. Some were wondering what kind of political statement I was trying to make. So I wrote this in the next issue:

But it isn’t historical accuracy that generated the complaints. Sure, that’s what people claim the problem is… and yet they’ve never once had a problem with the portrayals of a white Christ. … When I point out that Christ wasn’t white either, people shrug this fact off: “Well, of course he wasn’t white. But he certainly wasn’t black!” Is a black Christ less able to save than a white one? Must we have God conform to our own image rather than have us conform to His? Is it that we whites prefer that Christ look like us, or is it that we whites have not adequately dealt with our attitudes about blacks? For if we didn’t, this would be a non-issue.

If we truly believed, and didn’t just claim, that it’s not the color of one’s skin but the content of one’s character, our first thought when seeing this picture of Christ should be, “How appropriate for this time of year, when we remember the birth of our Lord,” and not, “He’s black.”

I’ll tell you though, the Black Jesus stuff on the internet is fascinating… and for the most part political. While the art is very good (and just as historically inaccurate as the pictures of White Jesus) I really can’t say I approve of the motive behind it. It’s exactly like the white supremacists who insist that you buy an image of White Jesus, because his being white somehow ennobles the white race. It’s a twisted form of the truth—that his becoming human ennobles humanity—designed to encourage some of the more evil impulses in our society.

My savior is from a different race than me. He is a Jew; I am a Gentile. He is one of God’s chosen people; I am one of the dogs that get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. (Mk 7.28) Claiming him for my race is a delusional form of pride, and he doesn’t even like legitimate pride. He chose to become a person from a despised race so that we could learn to deal with our prejudice, not so we could change his race and use it as an excuse for more prejudice.

I appreciate the Black Jesus art because it’s another reminder that he’s not like me… and that doesn’t make any difference in the way that he loves me and I love him.

Happy Christmas.

Amusing comic strip: Reason for the season.

You Damn Kid! by Owen Dunne.

Watching the 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 finale.

I used to watch The Apprentice when it first came on. It was good TV. Still is, for the most part. Amazingly enough, it's managed to create Donald Trump fans. I don't think anyone would have imagined such a thing twenty years ago… but then again, nobody's guesses about the future ever turns out the way they expect.

This season, I didn't make time for it. When I did watch TV at 9 p.m. Thursdays, I watched CSI. There are very few shows I make time for; I could count them on one hand, and two of the fingers are shaky. So when I saw the promotions for this season's finale, I decided I could at least watch that. Plus, I didn't have much else going on.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it's best to ignore TV series when they're on television, then wait for the seasons to come out on DVD and get them from Blockbuster. You get to skip commercials, pause to go to the bathroom or make a sandwich, and you don't have to wait a week for the cliffhanger to be resolved. In the case of The Apprentice, you can get a feel for the entire season by watching the inevitable "catch-up" episode in which Donald explains all the important points of the season. I saw that over Thanksgiving; and I saw the finale. That was really all I needed to see.

The finale this season was much better than the finale last season, which went on much too long, and hired Regis Philbin for no good reason. The final candidates were very qualified. The show focused on that, which was much better than drawing out Donald's final decision, which anyone could have seen coming.

Donald actually wanted to hire both of them… and he would have, too, if the winner, Randall what's-his-last-name, hadn't suffered from a giant lack of magnanimity at the end. "There should be only one Apprentice," he said. As a result, his opponent Roberta don't-know-her-last-name-either, now has to go looking for employment, which sucks. Dude, you won. Shafting your opponent out of a great job doesn't mean you won any less. If it had been me, I'd have fired the guy right there and switched it over to Roberta. That was just petty of him. There are enough petty people in business. Hopefully Donald hires her on the side anyway, now that the cameras are off.

Enough ranting about TV. More important things are out there.

Iraqi elections.

I appreciate the fact that more and more people are voting in the Iraqi elections. I look on it as a good sign.

Terrorism, for the most part, happens because people feel they don't have any say in the way things are. If your government won't let you have any say in it—if you're deprived of your freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly—then violence appears to be the only way you can make a statement. The reason free countries have so much less terrorism is because, by and large, our citizens believe they do have a say.

There are some exceptions, naturally. There are those people who really have been deprived of a say in the way things run—the Indians, the African Americans, the inner-city poor—and there are the people who only think they've been deprived, like the militia members, the hippies, and the Klan. The one thing these groups have in common is that when they become desperate, they get violent. But the one thing that diffuses the violence is when someone finally takes them seriously and talks to them—which is, after all, what they really wanted in the first place.

So in the case of Iraq, I'm quite sure that the more people vote, and the more they recognize that their votes actually stand for something, the less violence and insurgency there will be in that country, and the less need they will have for our troops. Thank God.

Lying to children.

It’s the most lyingest time of the year.

A whole lot of lying to children goes on this time of year. You know what I’m talking about: The whole Santa Claus thing.

I have no issue with Santa per se. I like the Santa stories; The Santa Clause was particularly hilarious, although the sequel was stupid. Santa makes a great decoration. But convincing children that he actually comes to their house on Xmas Eve and leaves presents behind…

Every year, dumbass newspaper publishers around the country reprint Frank Church’s “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” letter from 1897, in which Church heartwarmingly lies to an eight-year-old reader of the New York Sun. Every year, people watch Miracle on 34th Street and see how a judge manages to twist the law in order to justify calling some loveable nut “Santa Claus.” Even the U.S. Postal Service lists guidelines about sending things to Santa. Want some hard proof that our government lies to the citizens? Here y’are. Adults across America get involved in this giant conspiracy to deceive children.

I see absolutely no justification in misleading anyone, especially children. I know it’s meant to be innocent fun, but there’s nothing innocent at all about deliberately deceiving anyone. Especially children. They’ll believe anything. Lying to them about Santa takes advantage of their innocence, all for the sake of some adult fun that really has nothing at all to do with actual childhood wonder. Real wonder is when a kid discovers amazing things like falling stars and butterfly cocoons and newborn kittens and how Kool-aid powder makes water balloons more interesting. Santa is all about artificial wonder.

Amusing comic strip: God needs better press.

Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida.

Oldie but goodie.

My editor wouldn’t let me run it at the time. It was too truthful.

Some of the files in my computer are 15 years old; articles and columns I wrote years ago that I kept and never got around to deleting. I came across this one recently because I was looking for something else. It was something I wrote for The Dixon Newspaper (yes, that was the actual name of the newspaper; it’s now called The Independent Voice) in January 1995.

At the beginning of every year, I wrote a column introducing me to people who were new to the paper. Debra, my editor, was already sick of the idea; this one she absolutely hated and refused to let me run it. You might figure out why once you read it. I titled it “Worthless columns.”

Column topics are easy to come up with if you just pay attention to what’s going on around you. And if you’re me (which I am) what you have around you is five or six people saying, “You know what you should write about…?”

That and other things made me write this, a now-yearly feature in which I’ll explain just what I hope to accomplish with this column. So here we go.

Spoiler alert!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has a happy ending.

Was there ever any doubt? Violent battle scenes aside, it is after all a kids’ movie.

In the articles I’ve read about that particular movie—and many a movie, for that matter—reviewers always feel it’s necessary to contain spoiler alerts. ’Nother words, they’re going to give away a major plot point or the ending, and thus “spoil” the movie for the readers. So you, the reader, have to decide if you want to read on, or be surprised.

Since I hate surprises, I go right ahead and read the bloody spoilers. And—wonder of wonders—the movie isn’t spoiled. This is because most movies are mindlessly predictable; with the exception of the occasional M. Night Shyamalan movie (not counting The Village) I can kinda guess halfway through the movie how it’s gonna end. For the most part it’s gonna be a happy ending; very seldom is it otherwise.

I know one of you is gonna bring up Titanic. Need I remind you it did have a happy ending? At the end of the movie, Rose chucked the diamond into the water and died, and got to spend eternity in hell with Jack on an exact replica of the Titanic’s stairwell. A happy ending… I suppose.

I’ve found it especially dumb that the reviews of The Lion, et al has spoiler alerts. The book was required reading for me in grade school; it was required for many a Christian household who approved of Lewis when they wouldn’t approve of Rowling; and the crowd I saw it with Thursday night obviously was familiar with every scene. We knew who was gonna die and who wasn’t; and most of us knew that everyone will come back when the producers make The Last Battle. (Or maybe you don’t. Oops. …Aw, screw it.)

Our inconsistent death penalty.

We don’t execute enough, and when we do, we stupidly execute the reformed.

California really doesn’t execute enough prisoners. We have a lot of people in prison who have no interest in rehabilitating themselves, in making restitution for their crimes, or in anything other than themselves. If they’re ever let out of prison, they will return to crime and continue to make life miserable for themselves and others. The appropriate thing to do in their cases is to humanely end their lives and make the death penalty an actual deterrent, instead of the ceremonial waste that it currently is.

The current prisoner up for execution, Stanley “Tookie” Williams, is another example of how useless and wasteful California’s death penalty is. Of all the guys that should be executed, Tookie isn’t one of them.

Yes, he started the Crips; yes, he killed four people that we know of; no, he hasn’t helped prosecutors get other Crips members. But Tookie is doing something productive for society. He’s trying to discourage kids from joining gangs. He’s using what notoriety he has to promote worthwhile causes; I may not agree with all of them, but that’s beside the point. I also don’t think he should be released from prison either. That’s also beside the point. The death penalty should be reserved for people whose very existence has been proven harmful to society. Tookie doesn’t fit that description anymore.

No church service on Christmas?

This Xmas falls on a Sunday. As a result, a few megachurches (and some minichurches, like Sojourners) have decided to not hold Sunday services. They’ll have Xmas Eve services on Saturday night, but nothing Sunday morning.

This has caused a little controversy among some Christians who see Sunday worship as sacrosanct. Let me quote you a little something from Ben Witherington’s blog:

Our culture does not need any encouragement to be more self-centered and narcissistic or to stay at home on Sunday. It is already that way. Christmas above all else should be a day when we come together as the body of Christ to worship and adore the Lord Jesus. Christmas should be the day above all days where we don’t stay home and open all those things we bought for ourselves INSTEAD of going to church. Christmas should be the day when we forget about ourselves for a few hours and go and honor the birthday of the great King, our Savior.

And on he rants. Note he refers to the presence as “all those things we bought for ourselves” rather than those things we bought for others. I don’t buy Xmas presents for myself. Xmas, to me, is not a self-centered narcissistic holiday. It certainly can be, especially if your parents have conditioned you to be self-centered by putting more emphasis on what you want for Xmas, Santa getting it for you, and never demonstrating proper Christian attitudes about giving. Xmas is about giving; it’s about God’s gift to humanity in Jesus; and the way we celebrate it best is in giving to one another. The greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor; and sad to say, most church services have little to do with loving one another. Especially in megachurches.

However, this wasn’t really the reason why Sojourners decided to not have a Xmas Day service. It was actually because we asked ourselves the question: ”Is anyone actually gonna be there?” All the Bethany students in the church will be visiting family and friends. The local families would have to hurriedly rush through unwrapping presents (or postpone it) to get ready for the service. So rescheduling the worship to Xmas Eve (worshipping on the Sabbath, for once) allows people to both worship God in the church and worship God by giving to one another.

The part that I find the most antithetical to everything Jesus tried to teach us: In order to conform to our tradition of worshiping on Sunday morning, we ignore the very people that God loves most. Sunday morning worship was made for humans, not humans for Sunday morning worship. The megachurches have got it right, for once.

Happy Xmas.

Xmas doesn’t take the Christ out of Christmas, but it does reveal the ignorance in the complainer.

I thought I had ranted on this before, but I couldn’t find the rant. So here I go.

A lot of idiots complain about the use of the contraction “Xmas” because it “takes the Christ out of Christmas.” I used to be one such idiot until I learned the history of it; so let me share it with you. The “X” in Xmas is not meant to be the Latin letter X, but the Greek letter hi, which is the first letter of Χριστος, or Christ. It is a contraction, not a removal, of Christ.

When bibles were copied by hand, monks felt it was convenient to use contractions for Christ, for God, for Jesus, and various other words (usually names) that were going to be written over and over and over. So Χριστος was shortened to X with a line over it, Ιησους was shortened to I with a line over it, et cetera. Eventually someone realized that the best way to contract the word Christmas (which is after all a long word) was with Xmas.

Now the real idiots who want to take Christ out of Xmas are the people who are trying to get all the Xmas stuff renamed “Holiday” stuff. Fr’instance, in Boston they’re calling their downtown Xmas tree a “holiday tree.” Exactly which other holidays decorate a tree this time of year? The whole “holiday tree” title is insulting to Christians (it’s our holiday, after all); it’s insulting to Jews, who don’t have holiday trees; it’s insulting to Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and any religion that doesn’t have a regular December holiday; it’s a title that’s just generally offensive to everyone except people that have no religion, and what business do they have in dictating to the Christians what we’re to call our trees?

But let’s not be stupid about the use of Xmas. Feel free to wish one another a happy Xmas or a merry Xmas, and for fun, go to your local department store and start loudly complaining about the lack of menorahs and dreidels in the “Holiday Decorations.”

The lion, the witch, the wardrobe, and the fans.

C.S. Lewis has a lot of fanboys among Christians.

A bunch of guys in my hall have decided to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when it gets released Friday; they’re going to try to make the midnight showing, finals week or no finals week. I may go along with them. It looks like it might be a good movie.

Christianity Today, particularly their online component, has been gushing about it ever since the movie was proposed. They’re big C.S. Lewis fans there. So am I; but I tend to think of myself as more of a fan than an adherent. In other words, most fans of Lewis see him as the last word on literature, theology, and mythology; anything he did is great, and everything he wrote was brilliant. They see him as inspired by God, even to the same degree that St. Paul was inspired by God. They’re going to be very disappointed with the movie, then. In order to make a movie of any book, changes are inevitable, and they’re gonna nitpick these alterations to death and suck all the fun out of the movie. They’re already doing it, in fact. Some of them have posted an old letter of Lewis’s in which he didn’t care for the idea of a TV production of his Narnia books. Understandable, considering the technology in 1959; but the purpose of publicizing this letter is not to do anything other than attack the existing movie. (Trailers of it are here.)

Amusing photo of the day.

Silent night.

It is not a silent night today; somehow people are squeezing out enough spare time to participate in Cheetah Chase in the rain. If people think something is important enough, no matter how frivolous it actually is, they will not let time, weather, or anything else get in their way. But of course they're all too busy to participate in evangelism, outreach, fellowship, or anything else that Jesus has called them to do… and lucky for them (and their eternal souls) he doesn’t fire anyone.

But D was singing, then humming, “Silent Night,” so I had to say, “How on earth was it a silent night?… A billion angels singing ‘Glory to God in the highest’? Anyone who reads the bible can see that it was anything but silent.”

Most of the problems, I’ve since discovered, have to do with “Silent Night” being a lousy translation of “Stille Nacht.” I found a better one:

Silent Night! Holy Night!

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon godly tender pair.

Holy infant with curly hair,

Sleep in heavenly peace,

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent Night! Holy Night!

Son of God, love's pure light

Radiant beams from thy holy face,

With the dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus, Lord at thy birth

Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

Silent Night! Holy Night!

Brought the world gracious light,

Down from heaven’s golden height

Comes to us the glorious sight:

Jesus, as one of mankind,

Jesus, as one of mankind.

Silent Night! Holy Night!

By his love, by his might

God our Father us has graced,

As a brother gently embraced

Jesus, all nations on earth,

Jesus, all nations on earth.

Silent Night! Holy Night!

Long ago, minding our plight

God the world from misery freed,

In the dark age of our fathers decreed:

All the world redeemed,

All the world redeemed.

Silent Night! Holy Night!

Shepherds first saw the sight

Of angels singing alleluia

Calling clearly near and far:

Christ, the Savior is born,

Christ the Savior is born.

It still wasn't silent. I think a better translation of “stille” is “satisfactory,” but then again I don’t know German and I’m depending on translation software. Oh well. More carol nitpicking later.

Creepy internet image of the day.

Creepier if he was still holding the knife he used to carve it.

Notice that the rest of the family isn't in the picture. What’s up with that? …Oh yeah.

Cool video of the day.

It was impossible in Vacaville to keep up with the podcasts I usually listen to. Trust me, you don’t want to download a simple 11MB show over dial-up. So I figured I’d wait until I got back to Santa Cruz, and hopped back onto the high-speed. Man, a week’s worth of podcasts is a lot to catch up with.

One of the cool things is this video from RocketBoom. It’s of someone who went a little nuts with the Xmas lights this year. Very cool-looking… but it’s gotta annoy the neighbors. Download it here.

Update, 12/7/2024: Carson Williams of Mason, OH synced his house’s lights to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter,” and after the video went viral, TSO made it their official music video. So now you can watch it on YouTube. Or, of course, right here:

Back from Vacaville.

Vacaville was fun. Good food, good family. As I’ve said before, I don’t tend to rant when I’m on vacation because I’m enjoying myself too much.

I did avoid the Friday Xmas shopping, which most of the family decided to put up with anyway. So while they were out, I watched the news and some movies, ate leftovers, and polished off the rest of the pumpkin ice cream. Then the others showed up to eat leftovers too.

Saturday I came back so that I could go to church and do my part to keep the service going. With all the Bethany kids missing for Thanksgiving, I was also curious to see how much the service would shrink… but we actually had a decent turnout, and it’s nice to have Willy Snow back.

He preached today. I don’t know that I agree with his interpretations of Jesus’s parables; I’ve been studying them myself for my devotional blog (which I’ve also not been posting to). He made the common presumption that Jesus was speaking in code; fr’instance when “seed” means “the word of God” in one parable, it means “the word of God” in every parable. Thus, since in the parable of the seeder [Mt 13.3-9] “the birds of the air” represents the devil [Mt 13.19] if we follow the code, “the birds of the air” in the parable of the mustard seed [Mt 13.31-32] also represents the devil, which nests in the mustard tree’s branches. Thought-provoking; it’s quite true that when a church reaches a certain size, the devil tries to tempt its members to apathy. But I don’t know that this is what Jesus was trying to say in that parable. I think, rather, he was pointing out how a tiny plant from the herb garden can get big enough for birds to nest in it.

I’ll tell you though; I see plenty of apathy in small churches too. But that’s another rant.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 wasn’t the way to stop global warming.

Just some more evidence that causehead entertainers don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Over the weekend I watched Earth to America, a celebrity-filled special on TBS about global warming. ’Twas another example that celebrities really don’t know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to big causes. They only know how to entertain, so in this special, they entertained. The song-and-dance number at the beginning of it was stupid; the stand-up comedians were funny; the actors did some announcing (except Tom Hanks, who also played guitar)… and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came out to talk about how you, too, could get involved.

How? With a “virtual petition.” Hop on the internet and add your name to the bloody thing, and people will therefore know that you are against global warming. Even though you still drive a car that gets 12 miles per gallon, still use incandescent lights (and those ever-popular halogen torch lamps), run the heater whenever the temperature drops below 60° and the air conditioner whenever it’s above 80°. (And I won’t even talk about the overuse of Christmas lights.) Add to this that the special was taped in Las Vegas, a city that uses so much electricity that the sun becomes irrelevant. The irony wasn’t lost on a few of the comedians.

The reason it’s called a “virtual” petition is because it’s not a real one. And even real ones are worthless. Honestly, nobody cares that a lot of people have signed a petition for something… unless it actually carries political weight, like a recall petition or signatures to put a proposition on the ballot. I’ve covered many a government meeting where petitions were presented and subsequently ignored. Besides, everyone knows that talk is cheap. Internet talk is even cheaper. (Including, and perhaps especially, this blog.) So I’m not linking to it.

If celebrities actually want to do something against global warming, I would recommend a few things they could do. They have the money, so they can afford to do all these things. But they won’t, because they’re hypocrites.

1. If a Las Vegas hotel can’t show that its electrical output is decreasing every year, boycott it. Do no shows there. Don’t stay there, don’t go to events that are staged there, don’t even gamble there. And tell everyone why.
2. I don’t care that they drive expensive stretch Hummers; but they should customize every last car so that the engines get at least 45 miles per gallon. And carpool. It makes no sense to have your entourage follow in a caravan when your limo seats 12 comfortably, even in the hot tub.
3. I don’t care that they have giant houses. In fact, that makes it more effective to install solar panels on the roof. And if they get cold, wear sweaters, dangit. Bill Cosby shouldn’t be the only sweater-wearing celebrity in America.
4. Stop heating the pool. Move it indoors.
5. Stop using private planes. Part of the reason why the airline industry isn’t doing well is because too many rich people are switching to private planes. That’s the worst form of not carpooling. I don’t care if your precious schedule is inconvenienced; talk the airlines into more direct flights, and offer them more money to do it. They’ll accommodate you. (And what’s with the idiots who gave John Travolta his own personal 747?)
6. Stop using drugs. You realize how much energy it takes to produce a kilo of cocaine? And that all the money is going towards a drug lord who pollutes more than you do? (Notice how polluted their countries are.) Unless the drug lords cut down their own electrical and gas output, boycott them too.
7. Scientologists need to get audited less. E-meters use electricity, people.

Joking aside, one of the interesting bits in the special was where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (really, Robert Smigel with a terrible French accent, with his hand up a rubber dog’s ass) interviewed a bunch of Republican congressmen who weren’t big on this global warming idea. They described it as questionable science. However, none of them being scientists, I think they perceive the difference between good science and bad science is that “good” science contributes a lot of money to their political campaigns, and “bad” science asks them to do inconvenient things without paying them to do anything. Or at least giving them a free vacation disguised as a symposium, like the pharmaceutical companies do.

Ever hear of Pascal’s Wager? It’s a bit of logic that Christians try to use on non-Christians, forgetting that humans aren’t logical:

• If God exists, and hell is for those who don’t follow him, then you should follow him.
• If God doesn’t exist, and there is no hell, then you don’t need to follow him.
• But since you don’t know for sure, it’s better to act as if God exists, since following him is a good way to live anyway. Because if you don’t, and you’re wrong, you’re going to hell.

I bring this up because I think these congressmen need a version of the Wager for global warming.

• If global warming exists, and chaos is the result of pollution, then you shouldn’t pollute.
• If global warming doesn’t exist, and there will be no chaos, then you can pollute.
• But since you don’t know for sure, it’s better to act as if it does, since not polluting is a good way to live anyway. Because if you pollute, and you’re wrong, there’s going to be chaos.

Since some of them think of themselves as Christians (which is odd, because Christians are required by God to take care of His planet) this argument might work on them. Or it might not, in which case they’ll realize how ineffective Pascal’s Wager is. It’s worth a shot.

Back in Vacaville.

I had no pressing responsibilities at school this week, so I went to Vacaville. May as well start Thanksgiving early.

This means, unfortunately, that I am back to using dial-up. Ah, dial-up, how I loathe thee… let me count the ways.

• Gmail has gone from being instantaneous to a thirty-second wait between screens.
• A five-minute podcast now takes 25 minutes to download. Forget about the half-hour ones.
• Oh, yeah, I started subscribing to a video podcast. The latest episode is available tomorrow. Guess how many hours that one’s gonna take?
• Forget using Skype, my internet phone service.
• Forget multitasking on the internet: Reading news sites while downloading news podcasts.
• The news sites likewise take 30 seconds. Unless I open more than one page at the same time. Then they’re longer.

All the minimal wait times that I used to ignore… now are multiplied by 50 or more. Dial-up sucks. Guess I’m going to the coffeehouse a lot this week.

But that is my only real complaint about being in Vacaville. Thanksgiving should be fun… except they’re talking about playing board games as part of the Thanksgiving entertainment. Games? A nice idea, but I expect to do what I usually do for Thanksgiving: After eating three desserts and telling the family and assorted guests what I’m thankful for, I get to sit in a big armchair and watch a few movies in a L-tryptophan-induced stupor. Oh well; maybe my brain will be active enough to answer a few low-intelligence trivia questions.

On freedom of speech... in the church.

Pastors should be able to talk politics without outside retribution. (Inside retribution is kind of up to you.)

“If Jesus debated Senator Kerry and President Bush” was the title of George Regas’s sermon on Oct. 31, 2004. I don’t care for the premise.

Both Kerry and Bush claim that Jesus is Lord. The idea that Jesus would debate them implies that Jesus is on the same level as they are, and that either Kerry or Bush could refute, critique, or oppose his comments. You have not accepted his Lordship if you tell him no. I think American Christians tend to forget what the title “Lord” means. Well, that got the mini-rant out of the way up front.

Regas is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA, and in his sermon he critiqued the then-presidential candidates two days before the election. As is his right as the shepherd of a church. Pastors should critique the wider culture we live in. I wish they would do it with as much fervor as they critique their Christian subculture… or that they’d even do it in the first place. In my experience, they either preach about the nature of God, or they exegete a passage and don’t bother to relevantly apply what they’ve learned to anything that’s currently happening. Regas’s sermon is a proper critique of the attitudes behind the candidates. True, he’s coming at it from the position of the Religious Left, but so what? The Religious Right has said worse… and said it with much less compassion.

I bring this up because the IRS is threatening the church’s tax-exempt status because of that sermon. Supposedly Regas endorsed Kerry in that sermon. I read it; I don’t see that he has. Most of Regas’s critiques have to do with the Iraq war and the fact that neither candidate discussed poverty in their elections. Regas is pro-choice, but if you consider that an endorsement for Kerry by default, then you’re a single-issue voter, and out of touch with reality by default. (Besides, though I don’t agree with all of Regas’s positions on abortion, I do agree in this: This nation’s poverty rate and its abortion rate are connected. If we do something to decrease one, it decreases the other. And it is much easier, and more Christian, to help the poor than to change people’s minds about abortion. Save the born children, not just the unborn.)

Churches preach on politics all the time, and pastors regularly endorse candidates in everything but the literal words, “Vote for [CANDIDATE] this Tuesday.” I say since freedom of speech and freedom of religion are in the same amendment, pastors should be able to say the literal words. If Regas thinks Jesus would vote for Kerry, he should be able to freely say so.

The argument is that pastors shouldn’t be able to do so because they unduly influence their congregations. This idea obviously comes from someone who doesn’t attend church. My pastor has been preaching on evangelism for the past month, and how many people showed up for the evangelism outreach last Saturday? Five. Including him. The rest, including everyone else (but one) involved in the church’s leadership, didn’t show; and some are actually grumbling that he’s been preaching about evangelism too much. If that’s their attitude about something that Jesus obviously makes a priority, does anyone seriously thinkthat a pastor’s interpretation of Jesus’s politics is going to sway anyone?

Well, the IRS does. And I hope this thing goes all the way to the Supreme Court, and the IRS’s gag rule on churches is declared unconstitutional.

Read the sermon yourself here. Listen to it here.

Stupid Internet Survey: Which revolutionary am I?

What Revolutionary Movement Leader Are You?

Nelson Mandela. You are Nelson Mandela. Your rise from prisoner to President in the long struggle against South African apartheid is an inspiration to the world. You prefer non-violent methods like boycotts, marches and other direct action, but you will use sabotage and other acts of violence when forced to do so.

What Revolutionary Movement Leader Are You?
created with MyYearbook.com.

Phooey. I was shooting for Gandhi. Oh well. Mandela’s not bad.

Errand running.

This has actually been the first time I used the local bus system since the strike was over. The service hasn’t improved any; the bus to downtown Santa Cruz was a half hour late. Missing the bus back was entirely my fault, so I’m killing time in Borders, typing this entry for upload later since the evil T-Mobile pigdogs have taken over their wifi.

I finally got access to the church’s host, but the school’s network won’t let me FTP anything. (In English: The school’s computer system will not allow me to see or alter the contents of the server where the church’s web pages are.) There are a lot of things the school’s network won't allow, simply because the school doesn’t want to be liable for anything illegal that hackers might do with unlimited access.

So the school has a Net Nanny site-blocker to filter out the porn (which I actually appreciate, because it’s frighteningly easy to stumble across the stuff; every unrestricted Google or Altavista image search inevitably brings up something). It won't allow file-sharing. It won't allow BitTorrent. And, I’ve discovered, it won’t allow FTP, anonymous or otherwise. Yet it will allow iTunes sharing; probably because the IT guys don’t yet know how to block it.

So that meant I had to go to a coffeehouse to upload to the server. I had to go to a coffeehouse. (For those of you who know me, you know that’s not much of a hardship.) I didn’t have to buy the egg nog latté, but since it was there…. God bless the holidays.

Starting 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 blog.

I already have a blog. Actually, two of them: this one, and my devotional blog. And now I have a third. My small groups blog.

Exactly why I now have three blogs is because I was trying to talk Sojourners Church into recognizing the value of blogging. In fact, I thought it would make the church’s site a whole lot more interesting if they simply turned it into a great big blog and let people post things to it that way. It was a cutting-edge idea, and I definitely believe the church as a whole should be on the cutting edge of every society God puts it in.

Except if you’re too cutting-edge, you scare people. And that idea did. “Who,” they said, “is going to maintain that thing?”

Well, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? …Actually, not really. Once they realized that there was no guarantee that I’m going to be around after May 2006, it feels like they’ve been slowly phasing me out. So my replacement will have to maintain the thing, and it’s a little hard to find people with my skillset that won’t charge them a lot of money. (Unless they’re teenagers.) Plus pastors, by and large, are control freaks, and there’s just enough control-freak behavior in our pastors to make them wonder how they could ever regain control of their website if it joins the blogosphere.

Phil Keaggy rocks.

If you’ve never heard of him, it’s not surprising. Talent doesn’t rise to the top in the Christian market.

My friend James introduced me to Phil Keaggy about 10 years ago. Not literally. This was when I first met James, and he was (and still is) a huge Phil Keaggy fan. And at the time, I was completely uninterested in Christian music because it was (and still is) predominantly crap.

“Oh, you gotta hear him,” said James, and proceeded to find me some Phil Keaggy to listen to. And when Phil came to Santa Cruz later that year, James dragged me to the concert.

Ten years and 21 compact discs later, I am still not as huge a fan as James is (because I don’t know if that’s possible) but I’m up there somewhere. So when I found out he was playing in Los Gatos tonight, I got the tickets as soon as I could find out who was selling them.

My sister emailed me afterward to inform me of something that the Phil Keaggy website hadn’t—that there was a jam session with Phil, before the concert, for aspiring guitarists. I told James about it, and he had to be there.

To get in, you had to raise funds for the Christian Guitar and Bassist Conference, so James did that. He got a lot of sponsors. I wound up being one of them—of course, I didn’t offer to sponsor him; he just put me down on the list, so I shrugged and ponied up the dough. Turns out he raised the third-largest amount of money. So he was a shoo-in for playing with Phil, in case of time constraints.

We fans sometimes overestimate crowds. That’s why I got my tickets early; I expected a sold-out concert, but the building was only half-full. At the jam session, there were actually only seven guitarists out of the 10 expected. (And maybe four or five spectators, including me.) Each of the guitarists got about 10 minutes apiece with Phil, playing either one of their own songs with him, or one of his, or Phil would just make something up and off they’d go.

So I watched that for about two hours. Then we took a dinner break and went to the concert, where Phil was brilliant as usual. And I wound up buying another Phil Keaggy CD. Really, I can’t afford to keep up with his output. The guy cranks out about three CDs a year. He says he’s slowing down; good, I might actually have a chance of catching up! But you’d never know it from the amazing stuff he can do with his guitars.

No, I didn’t get his autograph. I stopped asking for them years ago, when I realized there was no real point in owning them. My memory is more than adequate… but they did make a DVD of the jam session, so I suppose I could borrow James’s DVD when my memory gets faulty.

Update, 11/30/2024: Back in 2008 I borrowed James’s DVD, extracted the bit where he and Phil played together, and stuck it on YouTube. Wanna watch it? Here ya go.

Phil’s entire discography, plus outtakes and concert recordings, is on sale on his Bandcamp page, which lets you listen to everything. Can’t find an out-of-print disc? It’s there. And now I’ve lost count of how many albums of his I own.

Picking on “Victory is Mine.”

♫ Victory is mine

♫ Victory is mine

♫ Victory today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For victory today is mine

Should we even have a worship song where Satan gets mentioned a whole bunch of times and Jesus doesn’t ever get mentioned once?

♫ Love is mine

♫ Love is mine

♫ Love today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For love today is mine

For that matter, I'm not in the habit of praying to Satan either. I already ranted about that.

♫ Joy is mine

♫ Joy is mine

♫ Joy today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For joy today is mine

For that matter, the bit where Jesus tells Satan to get behind him [Lk 4.8] is a textual variant. The other instances, in which he’s calling Peter “Satan,” is better translated, “Fall in behind me”; in other words, “You follow me and not vice-versa; otherwise you cause me to stumble.” [Mt 16.23/Mk 8.33] If Jesus did ever actually say that to Satan, it would mean the same thing. Those of you who have read the Old Testament understand that Satan is supposed to be working for God, not rebelling against him and trying to trip him up. I ranted about that here.

♫ Peace is mine

♫ Peace is mine

♫ Peace today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For peace today is mine

Likely this is another one of those worship songs that aren’t well thought-out, but they’re catchy, so people sing them. Maybe it’s meant to be sung by Jesus. (Except for the bits where we switch the word “victory” with other things.) Considering that Jesus promised us persecution, maybe we should likewise sing about that:

♫ Persecution is mine

♫ Persecution is mine

♫ Persecution today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For persecution today is mine

Except that’s not as catchy, and a bit of a downer. But more biblical.

Happy holidays?

In order to not single out any one religion, many advertisers have decided to say “Happy Holidays” so that they don’t single out Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, or whatever winter religious holidays happen to come up outside of Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. (This is also in order to not exclude any one religion. God forbid they advertise Christmas shopping so much that they miss out on any of that sweet Hanukkah-gift action.)

The silly part is that there’s a lot of unthinking behavior that goes along with this “Happy Holidays” behavior.

Case in point: I was watching TV this evening when a Lowe’s commercial came on the air. Not once did Gene Hackman (who does the narrating) mention Christmas; it was all, “For your holiday decorations, shop at Lowe’s.” Followed by images of Christmas trees, Christmas greenery, Christmas lights, Christmas baubles and trinkets. You don’t decorate your house with this stuff for Ramadan; you don’t decorate your house with this stuff for Hanukkah. It’s all Christmas stuff.

Even so, Lowes wishes you a happy holidays.

Now, I’m not offended by this as a Christian. I could care less if Christmas gets mentioned, because all this commercialism and greed has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. But if I were Jewish or Muslim or pagan, I would—and should—be offended. The bloody stores claim they’re inclusive, but aren’t carrying any other holidays’ stuff. Where’s the Hanukkah menorahs? Ever found one at Walmart? I haven’t. Where’s the Ramadan ornaments?… that’s right, Ramadan doesn’t have any. Where are the pseudo-African flags for Kwanzaa, at least? Does anyone sell that stuff other than specialty shops?

Inclusive, my pasty white arse.

Illogical apologetics.

It’s much easier to argue in favor of Christ when you’re actually composing both sides of the debate.

I was listening to Chuck Colson’s “BreakPoint” show this morning and he was plugging a book, written by Art Lindsley, called C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ. In it, Lindsley discusses Lewis’s viewpoint about Jesus. How he does it is by making up a fictitious book club, and the members of the club represent all sorts of non-Christian individuals with different viewpoints. The club leader, John, then responds to those viewpoints like C.S. Lewis would. And the non-Christians all respond to Lewis in positive ways.

That’s how you know it’s fiction.

In logic, we call this “the fallacy of the straw man”: When you want to prove your point, you don’t debate a real human being. Real human beings aren’t logical.

Seldom do we have opinions because we’ve thought things through, and come to a rational conclusion. We have them because our opinions appeal to our emotions. We want to believe they’re true.

• Rich people want to believe the poor are inferior; this makes them feel better about not doing anything for them.
• Stoners want to believe using drugs is a victimless crime; that way they can justify their selfish behavior.
• Christians want to believe God loves us; God would suck otherwise.

Whatever logic we might use to back up our arguments comes secondary to that original desire. No debater starts with the logic; they start with the proposition they like, then find any logical arguments available to prove the proposition.

So when you’re dealing with non-Christians, you’re largely dealing with people who want to believe

• Christ is a hoax;
• his followers are either suckers or con artists or total hypocrites;
• Christ’s teachings might be good but are ultimately impractical;
• Christ’s commands aren’t realistic, and there are other, easier paths to God or enlightenment;

and so forth. You aren’t dealing with purely rational humans. There is no such animal. (And not even God is purely rational: He regularly allows his love to supersede his sense of justice.)

Now, apologists—people who like to use logic to prove the truth of Christianity—are regularly quick to point out when a non-Christian isn’t being logical. So I think it’s only fair to point out when Christians are doing likewise. I figured I’d email Colson’s show and make that point.

By creating fictional characters whose questions are countered and rebutted by “John’s” referrals to Lewis, isn’t this book simply a variation of the “straw man argument”?

We Christians get on non-Christians’ cases all the time about how their arguments only appear to hold up because their hypothetical opponents are not real human beings who, in all fairness, would phrase their questions in different and unexpected ways. However realistically a fictional character might be written, the fact is that they exist simply to be set up and knocked down by the apologist.

It seems to me that if it’s not right for the non-Christians to argue in this manner, it shouldn’t be right for us Christians to do likewise—even if it’s in the support of truth.

Colson doesn’t write his own commentaries; no one with his busy schedule could. It’s written by ghostwriters, and he just reads it for the radio. So it’s somewhat appropriate that one of the ghostwriters responded to my email.

There is a resource available that puts this scenario into a framework where real individuals with different worldviews meet for nine different discussions on many of life’s greatest questions. The story is set behind the back drop of the lives of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. The title of this resource is call The Question of God. It can be ordered on VHS or DVD at the link below. Thank you and God bless.

Yeah, I watched The Question of God off the PBS website. It’s interesting; and the discussion groups that are part of the show are real reactions to Lewis’s views, not just some artificial made-up versions as Lindsley put together. I’d recommend the video over the book.

The response, however, still doesn’t deal with the fact that a book-length straw man argument isn’t appropriate. But here’s where the logic comes in. If the ghostwriter disagreed with me, her job would make her free to say so. If, however, she agreed with me, her job doesn’t make her free to say so—you have to stay loyal to the boss, you know. Therefore she said nothing in defense of the book, and instead provided me with a resource that fulfilled my requirements.

Logic can be fun.

You want more ranting?

The following is specifically to those people who emailed:

What do you mean, you want me to write stuff? I’ve got tons of old stuff on this site that should take you several hours to get through. Plus I’ve got the new blog, and I think you’d benefit more by reading that.

Besides, what you seem to have forgotten is that I write this blog for me. Not you. Not for your entertainment. I write it to entertain myself, or to get things off my chest. Me, me, me. That’s why I don’t ask for comments. I warned you I was an egomaniac. So piss off.

Sloppy curriculum.

Calvary Chapel Christian Schools, in Murrieta, CA, is suing the University of California because the UC won’t accept their high school units towards admission.

I don’t find this entirely surprising.

Not from a First Amendment point of view, which is what CCCS claims this is about. They say they’re being discriminated against because they’re Christian. I think it’s more likely because their classes are sloppy. UC rejected the classes because they lack content. The literature classes don't read enough literature; the history classes don’t contain enough history.

I taught for four years at Christian Life Center Schools in Vacaville, and saw firsthand how easy it is for Christian schools to teach nothing and make it look like you’re teaching something significant.

Our textbooks were garbage. They were produced by two different Christian textbook publishers, both of whom were more interested in perpetuating Christianity than in providing educational content. A history book is supposed to teach history, not Christianity. Yet our history book regularly left out valuable historical perspectives in order to talk, for example, about the strong Christian faith of Christopher Columbus (a greedy, genocidal maniac), George Washington (a deist, not a Christian; yes he prayed, but not to Jesus), and Stonewall Jackson (a Christian, true; a brilliant general; nevertheless a traitor against the United States, who fought for the right of Virginians to own slaves).

A science book is supposed to teach science, yet nearly a fifth of the book was spent refuting the theory of evolution. I deliberately skipped the section and taught a unit on logic instead. Then there was our Science Fair, which according to ACSI rules had to have a bible verse included with the project—which encouraged kids to take scripture out of context because they constantly found there aren’t any verses you could quote in context. So in the interest of science, we teach sloppy hermeneutics. Yep, Christian schools often won’t even teach the bible right.

Ah, bible classes. At CLCS most of those classes consisted of a weekly memory verse (or a whole bunch of memory verses), and a daily sermonette from the teacher. One of them in our junior high consisted of the teacher saying, “This week we’re going to study love. Find out how many times the word ‘love’ is in the bible. Use a concordance.” It’s better than nothing, but not by much!

You should have heard the uproar when I announced my bible classes were going to have textbooks (which I had to write; the curriculum we were provided was Sunday-school crap, and John Drane and Millard Erickson don’t write at a sixth-grade level) and tests.

Now, this was that school. It was still, by most standards, a good school. Mainly because we had good teachers who recognized the curriculum was crap, and worked around it. I spent half a year avoiding the science textbook until my principal ordered me to use it. I was trying to teach the State of California's standards, not creationism pseudo-science that ranks somewhere with UFO sightings and the search for the Loch Ness monster. Half my history classes were spent refuting the textbooks, which the students greatly enjoyed; and I had to take away the books while teaching the Protestant Reformation because the book was written by rabid anti-Catholics—and half my students were Catholic.

Unfortunately, not every Christian school is going to think like I do, and they’re going to feed the students the crap we find in those textbooks. As a result we’re gonna create a lot of undereducated students. They really won’t be prepared for the UC. In their very first history class, they’ll be astounded by how evil all these “great Christian founding fathers” could be towards their slaves. In their literature classes, they’ll be horrified to discover there are a lot of classics which contain naughty words, adult situations, or double entendres that must be interpreted as such. In science—well, don’t get me started. I’m pretty sure we Christians can’t screw up algebra much, though.

Oddly enough I am in favor of school vouchers. I think parents should be given alternatives to the public schools. But I think the private schools should be required to at least meet the same standards that public schools are (which I found easy enough to do); and I think it’s more important that teachers demonstrate Christianity with their actions, not through Christian propaganda inserted into fourth-rate textbooks.

A whole lot of downloads.

I was poking around Myspace recently because someone had told me they posted something on my page. I never look at it, so first I had to go through about five different emails and passwords before I finally remembered which one I had registered under. And even then, I couldn’t find my bloody page. So I had it search for “kwleslie.” It didn’t just search Myspace; it searched everywhere.

Sometimes it’s a scary thing to find out how many people have been reading or listening.

One of the top responses was to a podcast I had done some months ago. I had never really kept track of how many listeners I had on the thing; I always assumed it was about five or six, because that’s all the emails and comments I got about the show. So out of curiosity I decided to actually find out how many people had downloaded the show. The lowest number of downloads: 9 (from a show I had re-posted once I discovered a sound glitch.) The highest: 24,717.

That’s a lot of losers!

As I’ve said before: I don’t have a lot of respect for the fans of my dumber stuff. I don’t consider my yammerings worth getting all that excited about. They’re mildly entertaining, perhaps, but that’s all. Even so, there have been people who have indicated to me that the stuff I write is the greatest stuff ever, and the only reasonable response to that is they must not read much. Or they read crap. Okay, compared to crap, I’m amazing.

24,717 downloads? That’s gotta be a glitch or something. The next most downloaded show was only 4,045 times; and maybe by that point people realized the show wasn’t really any good and stopped paying attention to it.

Well… there’s no figuring people's tastes. If William Hung can produce a Christmas album, I suppose people may as well listen to a podcast of my rehashed rants. At least they’re free. People have to actually pay for Hung’s tone-deaf, barely intelligible moaning. Thirty seconds on American Idol was amusing; two CDs is like getting a colonoscopy with a toilet brush.

Same with my rants—after a point, I can’t read any more, and I’d hardly expect you to.

Amusing Comic Strip: Gifts quiz.

Electrocuted pastor.

Electricity and water don’t mix. Even when you’re doing the Lord’s work.

I had heard about the death of Kyle Lake over the weekend. Lake, a pastor at University Baptist in Waco, and one of the contributors to the emergent church movment, was electrocuted when he grabbed a microphone while standing in a baptismal.

Of course I’m sympathetic to his family, friends, and church, and the 800 people who watched him die. It’s a tragic loss. But lets face it: He was standing in water and he grabbed an electrical device. Am I the only one who recognizes the utter stupidity in this? I would never touch a mic if I were hip-deep in water. I’ve been shocked too many times to not have a solid respect for electricity. Lake obviously didn’t think a thing about it, and… well, sometimes we can teach people the most through our mistakes.

I remember in the early days of Macintosh computers, when the new computers had their on-switch built into the keyboard. It was a good idea; previously the on-switch was in the back of the computer, which makes no practical sense. But the trouble with those first computers is they weren’t well-grounded. One fellow employee accidentally spilled a Pepsi into the keyboard and the resulting fireworks display was spectacular… and ruined the computer, blew out the circuit breaker, and shut down every computer in that section of the building.

This was in the days before we’d heard of “surge protectors” for the computers. So not a single computer was plugged into any such thing. When we got the power back on, they worked just fine; the only data lost was the stuff people had been working on when the Pepsi got spilled. So I suspect the whole surge protector deal is a giant scam, especially since if a spike is powerful enough (like a lightning strike) that computer’s getting fried, surge protector or no surge protector.

Microphones, of course, have no surge protector.

Christianity Today has posted, ironically enough, an except from Lake’s book on God’s will in which he discusses how “everything happens for a reason” is a misinterpretation of Paul’s statement, “We know that everything works together for good—for those who love God, those called for his purpose.” [Ro 8.28] People like to drop off that second clause and forget that stuff happens for our benefit. But you can read his except yourself.

Starting the devotional.

Another distraction from posting here.

So now I have another weblog: my daily devotional, which I've titled “Towards a fuller understanding of God.”

It’s not that I won't occasionally give my interpretation of the scriptures in this weblog, but that one is going to be nothing but interpretations. So if you want to understand my thought processes as they pertain to scripture, check that on a regular basis.

Where do I have the time? Well… I already do daily devotions; I just haven’t posted them on the internet in the past. Now I do. Maybe you’ll find them valuable; you obviously waste enough time reading my weblog, so reading my devotional wouldn’t hurt you either. Go check it out.

Update, 11/30/2024. There was a link to it in this article, but I took it down ’cause all it’ll do is redirect you to “Christ Almighty!”, and you’ll just go, “Wait, I wanted the other blog,” and try it again, and get redirected again, and get frustrated, and… yeah, let’s just not.

’Cause I decided to blog more than just my devotional stuff. So I created a new blog, “More Christ,” and the “Fuller Understanding” stuff began to overlap too much, and I decided to just consolidate them—and this blog—into “Christ Almighty!” Everything redirected there. Until I decided to turn this blog into a publicity site… then put my old blog back online. And here we are.

Thirty years.

It was at church this morning, before we were called upon to pray for one another, that one of our pastors got up and began talking briefly about when he became a Christian. “It was 30 years ago when I first came to Christ,” he said.

Holy crap, I suddenly realized, me too.

I was four years old in 1975. I don’t remember exactly when all this happened, but in my memory it was colder than usual, so sometime in the winter. We were living in Hayward at the time, and Mom had recently recommitted herself to Jesus. (She usually refers to this time as when she first became a Christian, although she had followed Jesus ever since she was little. But it wasn’t until she was 25 that she actually began to understand him. I don’t know that understanding is necessary for salvation. Repentance, maybe, but not understanding.)

So, as a newly-committed follower, she realized it was necessary to share her faith. She tried Dad, who wasn’t receptive. Then God directed her to me.

“He’s too young,” she protested, “he won't understand.”

As I said, I doubt understanding is part of it. But God kept directing her to me. So she sat me down and explained to me, as best as one could to a brighter-than-average four-year-old, that Jesus loved me and wanted to save me.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll ask him into my heart.”

But Mom was worried she might have pressured me a little too much on this salvation business, and asked me to think about it for a little while. It had to be something I really wanted to do, not just something that I was going to do to make Mom happy. Most Fundamentalists would have a conniption at the very idea of putting off a faith decision, but I agree that following Jesus is not something to enter into lightly.

I put it off for a few days. Then I came back to Mom and said, “Remember what we were talking about? I still want to do it.” And I did.

Campus Days crap.

Yesterday and today were Campus Days. This is when church youth leaders from all over California and Nevada come to Bethany University, with their high school students in tow, to show them the school. Many of the church youth leaders went to school here, and they feel it wouldn’t hurt their kids to go here too. So they come.

They take a two-day tour of the campus, visit some professors, spend the night in what passes for dorms, observe what passes for entertainment, eat what passes for food (my Lord, what were they thinking? You can’t serve stuffed turkey and salad and expect high schoolers to be impressed. Barbecue, you fools, barbecue!) and attend what passes for chapel.

Parents frequently attend as well because they want to feel good about the school their children might attend. And once they discover that Bethany University is a college with the atmosphere of an insulated Christian camp, they’ll love it. “Wow,” they’ll say, “it’s like living in a bubble. Perfect!” And there y’are. They’re sold.

As you might tell, I’m not impressed by Campus Days.

I went to the equivalent, at Biola University in southern California, when I was in high school. I’ll write about that.

The funny sounds coming from next door.

You know how I have a tendency to not refer to people by name? Well, screw that. I’m naming names in this instance.

I live next door to Fermin Cabral. Every so often he indulges in a little practice that he’s doing right now: He puts on make-out music and sings along to it. Here I am, in my room, trying to read my bible and think about Jesus, and I have to listen to him beg for nooky.

(Okay, I’m not currently reading my bible, but sometimes I am, and he’s still at it.)

I lived next door to him last year too, so yes, I had to put up with it all last year. At times it’ll be gospel music, and I have no trouble with that. Other times it’ll be Stevie Wonder, and as a fan I’m solidly of the opinion that nobody but Stevie should sing his own music, because everyone else just screws it up. (American Idol contestants especially.) But the other songs, which I call begging-for-nooky songs (’cause that’s what they do)—I don’t listen to that sort of music anyway, just because it strikes me as desperate, in a Spike-Lee-playing-Mars-Blackmon way. But Ferm likes it, and sings it, and… oh thank you Lord, he just stopped.

Some of it might have to do with the fact gospel (well, not white gospel) and R&B have been virtually the same music ever since Ray Charles started secularizing gospel to sell records. And that too much recent gospel music have taken the begging-for-nooky formula and turned it into begging-for-Jesus. Scary.

Anti-Bethany-social.

I was feeling… well, not anti-social yesterday. More like anti-Bethany-social. I wanted to hang out with rational adults. But sometimes you just can’t find that on campus. Some days the Bethany kids are just determined to act like goofy adolescents. And I am just not in the bloody mood for that. (I could provide examples, but I don’t need to fuel the school gossips.)

Someone made the mistake of asking me why she never sees me on campus, outside of church functions. Well… it’s because whenever I see her at non-church functions, she’s acting like a goofy kid. So I avoid her. This is actually because I don’t want to develop a bad attitude about her, which will inevitably happen if I did spend any time with her. But of course I can’t tell her that. (Fortunately if she ever reads this, she’s probably just dense enough to not recognize I’m writing about her.)

Yet oddly enough, today I went into town, and got into a goofy conversation with some junior highers who were getting out of school and at a local coffeeshop. Which is just strange. Why can I put up with goofy behavior from actual children, yet I can't put up with it from college students?

Maybe I expect too much from the college students.

Boys are from Mars. Girls are from Venus.

Yeah, men and women are different. So is everyone.

John Gray wrote a book some years ago called Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, in which he used the metaphor of men and women being from entirely different planets to state something ridiculously simple: Men and women are different.

Society has been so focused on equality—on the idea that women can do the same things that men can, that women are just as good as men, et cetera, ad nauseam—that we appear to have forgotten that men and women are different. They think differently, they act differently, and of course the plumbing works different ways.

Well, duh. Yet sometimes all you need to do to create a marketing bonanza is to create a very simple thing that catches on, then sell a bunch of spin-offs to go along with it. So now we have his book, various book-inspired calendars, day planners, secular devotionals, board and video games, and even an obnoxious TV show.

People on the Bethany University campus are currently attempting to use Gray’s premise to point out that men and women are different. Again, duh. But what’s worse is that, on this campus, we aren’t dealing with men and women. Most of the time, we are dealing with boys and girls, neither of whom are mature enough to date, but think they are because they’ve managed to live for a certain number of years. I’ve ranted on this before.

And what’s also worse is that Gray’s metaphor isn’t comprehensive enough. It’s not just that men and women are different. Everyone is different. Two men aren’t going to think exactly the same way about anything, much less women; and trying to say, “All men think this way” is to make the same mistake John Elderidge did in his piece-of-crap book Wild at Heart. And, from my experience, let me tell you that it’s definitely true that no two women are alike.

The sad fact is that the reason why people have unsuccessful relationships is because they’ve never yet had a healthy one. So my advice to all of them is: Work on your relationship with Jesus first, before you screw up another relationship with anyone else. If that relationship is working, everything else will fall into place. Because Jesus is the only completely healthy person in the universe. True, he has the inconvenience of being invisible most of the time; but sometimes that’s actually a convenience. (As you get to know him, you’ll realize why this is.)

In the meanwhile, it’s interesting to read the comments Bethany students have been scrawling all over a swath of butcher paper in the café. They’ve been encouraged to leave comments about the opposite sex. So most of the boys’ comments are about girls being too difficult, and the girls’ comments are about boys being too immature. I would say these responses reflect the fact that they’re all still children.

Someday they may grow out of it… one would hope.

Gmail is cool.

I like it, anyway.

The guys whose podcasts I listen to have been gushing about Gmail, which is Google’s new email service. Since I don’t tend to gush about my email services, I figured I should find out what all the hoo-ha was about and went to Gmail’s website.

And to my great annoyance, I found they won’t let people sign up for it.

It’s still in beta. That’s nerdspeak for “We haven’t got all the bugs out of it, so we’ll let you play with it as-is, and you find all the bugs for us.” This way they can release a buggy first version, and people don’t scream their heads off about how buggy it is—it’s in beta so of course it’s buggy. Beta’s a great way of getting away with posting half-done crap on the internet. Google just keeps things in beta for years, just so whenever people complain, they can use it as an excuse: “We’re really sorry it caused your hard drive to burst into flames, but you know it’s still in beta, right?”

So because Gmail is in beta, they don’t want 10 million users clogging their system, so you can’t sign up for it. Instead, you have to find someone who already has a Gmail account, and beg them to invite you to use it. Gmail is invitation-only. Existing users are allowed to invite 16 others to use it, and that’s all.

Well, it isn’t hard to find people with spare invitations. In fact, the person who invited me had more than 90 invitations she could offer. (How’d she get so many? I didn’t ask. Obviously you can just create 16 more Gmail accounts for yourself, which would give you 272 more invitations, so there y’are.) She wanted me to ask in haiku, so I figured that was reasonable and dashed off a 17-syllable request, and now I have Gmail.

If you want an invitation from me, sorry; I’ve already invited my family. I got a big family.

So what’s the big deal? Well first of all, you can search for things in your email, which makes it a lot easier to find old stuff. Second, Google bunches email by “conversations,” so you can keep track of your mail and its replies and re-replies and so forth. Third, Google gives you 2.5 gigabytes of storage space, which definitely comes in useful; I spend way too much time deleting bigger-than-average files because I’m always in danger of maxing out my storage space. (I even found some hacker software that’ll let you tap that storage space like a hard drive.) And last, its sorting system is a lot more practical than sticking stuff in folders.

So I like it. So far. It’s still in beta, after all.

Evangelism at my church.

Church at Sojourners this morning. I would hyperlink to them, but they never update their website. I know this because I’m in charge of their website—or at least my job title says I am. Except I’m not. You can’t be in charge of something if you’re never given the passwords to the server. But I’ll save that rant for another time.

The sermon this morning was on evangelism. Brian, our pastor, has been speaking a lot on evangelism lately. Mainly because Sojourners consists mostly of Bethany University students. And if it’s going to have any viable future, it can’t consist mostly of students. Students come and go with every new semester. They have “home churches” in their hometowns they have more allegiance to. And most of their focus while in college is, well, college. Thus you can’t base any long-term stuff on college students.

And I say this, ironically enough, as the church’s small groups leader (and tech guy; I have lots of titles) who also happens to be a student. Come May 2006, I’ll graduate, God willing, and then what happens? I don’t want to leave Sojourners in the lurch, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that I’ll still be living in the Santa Cruz area after that point. My family will likely want me to move back to Vacaville. But I have no idea where I’ll get hired to teach—anywhere in California, I suppose—so if I’m being realistic, part of my job is to find my replacement. (Heck, if we’re all being realistic, the church is supposed to replace itself every generation or so. I know this puts a lot of older leaders into great fear, considering the fresh young idiots who will be doing the same things they did back when they were fresh young idiots. But it’ll do fine without us, so long as Jesus is still around.)

So Brian talked about evangelism, and about how our usual expectations in evangelism involve the dramatic instant conversion—someone whose life is crap, who turns to Jesus, gets “saved,” and turns completely around. Except that isn’t ordinarily the case. Most people come to Jesus through a lifelong process of recognizing they need to follow him… then then don’t, then something happens where they follow him a little more, then a little less, then a little more, and so on. We might call them wishy-washy, but such people do make up the bulk of the church. I’m one of them. And that being the case, why do we spend so much time in evangelism aiming for the dramatic cases?

There’s all types of ways to evangelize, which I know full well. My usual way is through service; I’m not a door-to-door guy, and I think apologetics only good for convincing Christians they already made the right decision. Not for convincing others Christianity is true. (The stats back me up on this; very few people come to Jesus for anything other than emotional reasons. That too is another rant.) Some prefer street preaching, tract-passing (always a great way to annoy people on Halloween night), or interpersonal contact—which was Jesus’s method, which we don’t try enough.

Brian encouraged us to pray about which way we might evangelize. “The only problem,” I told him afterward, “is that people will now probably avoid praying, because they know what God’s gonna tell them.”

Of course there’s another problem: The listeners were mainly college students. They have no interest in the long-term growth of Sojourners because they’ll be leaving; and thanks to midterms they’ll be “too busy” to start. They’re already “too busy” to show up for worship practice…

Obviously I have way too many side rants that I want to get out of my system. Better stop now.

Stadion?

You would think that, due to the complete lack of interest in this thing last year, they wouldn’t try having a “Stadion” again. But the fliers are up again.

Stadion (Greek for “arena”) is a game. It’s supposedly a giant race, with various games along the route. You pay $10 to participate, with the winners receiving cash prizes. Supposedly it will inspire people to work together, produce teamwork, blah blah blah….

Since no one’s actually done one of these before, and isn’t entirely sure what it is—let alone what it takes to win—and, for that matter, didn’t participate in it when it didn’t cost $10 to enter—it hardly makes sense to charge $10 to do it. But sometimes you can’t dissuade organizers when they’re convinced their idea is a good one.

Aw, who knows. It might actually get participants this year.

Not me though. I’d rather spend $10 on a jazz CD than on the opportunity to be out of breath, frustrated with myself, and annoyed that someone else is winning the cash prizes.

Missing the wedding.

My aunt is getting married this weekend, and I have a Saturday class.

So that sucks. Not the class; the class is a good one. But because it meets only three times a month, attendance is a huge chunk of the grade, missing classes creates huge setbacks, and all the stuff discussed in it is hugely practical, I can’t afford to miss it. Add to that my church responsibilities and I’m stuck on campus.

Well, on the upside, they’re going to play country music at the wedding, and force my sister to sing one of the songs. But that’s just a few minutes out of the whole ceremony; I suppose I can keep my food down during that time.

Except I can’t go. Dangit.

The 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦. (𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨? 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦?)

The first issue of the student newspaper came out this week. It’s called the Dialogue. It might also be called the Dialog; they spelled it both ways on the cover. Its spelling varies, depending on the editor. I used to be its editor long ago.

It really didn’t contain news. Most of the stuff in it, we knew already. They interviewed an RD, wrote up a piece on the death of Chief Justice Rhenquist, mentioned that the school offers another Masters in Psychology, discussed hurricane relief—old news, but typical fare for student newspapers. They also ran out of news, so they filled two pages with yearbook-style candid photographs.

I don’t expect much out of student newspapers. (And, after working for professional newspapers, I really don’t expect much out of them either.) But I think those in charge should first begin by asking themselves, “What sort of service can we provide the school with our newspaper?” And if they seriously thought about that—and didn’t limit their answers to typical school newspaper behavior—I think they might become something a lot more valuable than a few minutes’ distraction over dinner.

Not 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 Left Behind movie!

The third in a series of movies about how God’s supposedly gonna play magnifying-glass-and-anthill with the unrepentant.

And yet they’ve made a third one. This one isn’t even from one of the books, either; it’s an entirely made-up one supposedly based on book 2, Tribulation Force, which was supposed to be the basis for the last steaming pile of corn-infested poo they made (which I was forced to watch with my junior high students as part of their chapel).

Expect the Christians to win at the end, even though that’s not how ">Darbyist premillenial dispensationalism is supposed to work. I have enough problems with that particular branch of lousy End-Times theology, but if you’re gonna base a movie on it, you should at least be consistent with it. But no. The filmmakers go along with it only until they reach the ending, which has to be happy, so they chuck it and there’s some kind of minor victory involved in which the forces of good-but-stupid succeed somewhat.

Christianity Today bothered to interview the clueless director, Peter Lalonde, and I call him clueless because he has no idea why his previous movies did poorly. Listen to the excuses:

• He actually thinks the bad reviews of his previous two movies were because of the message. “We pretty much knew that mainstream critics were going to hammer us just because of the message,” Lalonde said. Then why do most of the reviews complain about the one-dimensional characters, poor writing, lousy special effects, and bad acting? James Bearardinelli wrote the review I agree the most with; but you can also find less-than-enthusiastic reviews in Rotten Tomatoes, where it has a 16% rating.
• He thinks if people could have done a better job, why didn’t they pony up the dough to get the rights? Well, if you’ve ever read these novels, you’d realize there’s not a lot to work with.
• He thinks the first movie did poorly (making $4.2 million) because it had been pre-released on video. “We were asking theaters to do something they had never done before,” he said, “We were asking them to play a movie that was already out on video.” Obviously he’s forgotten about George Lucas, whose re-release of the first three Star Wars movies didn’t do too shabby. But there’s a big difference: Poor writing aside, Lucas can make good movies.

Instead of distributing his new piece of crap to the theaters—who, considering previous ticket sales, likely won’t bother unless they’re owned by Christians—Lalonde is distributing this movie to churches, who will inflict it upon their unsuspecting congregations. Sadly, it ought to do well. Not because it’ll be any good, but because Christians are overwhelmingly forgiving about their entertainment when it’s produced by well-meaning Christian producers. That’s why PAX-TV stays on the air in spite of all the junk it produces. (Or re-runs.) We don’t hold Christian movie producers to higher standards; we’re just happy they’re working. So of course they’re gonna make garbage.

And I could expand this into Christian pop, Christian fiction, Christian magazines… but I’ll be ranting too long.

Unpodcasting.

Sunday afternoon I was reading Mark and thinking to myself, “Hey, don’t I need to do a podcast this week?”

Nah. I got nothing.

Yes, I can produce three rants an hour, but I don’t really have anything I feel like regurgitating into a podcast. Once I rant about it here on the weblog, it’s out of my system. This kinda shows when you listen to the podcast; I’m not anywhere near as annoyed as when I’m first pounding the entries out. It sounds like I’m reading. (Which, half the time, I am, because I’m just regurgitating stuff off this site.) Well, that’s just boring. I don’t want to make a boring show. The novelty wore off. So I’m gonna stop making ’em.

I may start it up again if I think of a new premise for a show, but right now I got nothing. So, to all three listeners: You’re just gonna have to read this weblog. Deal with it.

Conformity in the emergent church.

Here’s a mind-blower for some:

As you know, I consider myself to be a postmodern Christian. And I live in the suburbs of Santa Cruz. One of the nationally-recognized leaders of the “emerging church conversation”—a growing movement of postmodern Christians to understand how the church should function in this generation—is Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz.

Yet I don’t go to his church, because I find it boring and shallow.

People are horrified whenever I say this. (Especially people who love Vintage Faith Church and find it fascinating and deep.) What, they wonder, is wrong with me?

For those of you who don’t get it, follow my logic: Postmoderns don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all faith. Yet you act as if Vintage Faith is the one-size-fits-all church for all postmoderns.

I’ve been to several churches like Vintage Faith. My family currently attends one. Years ago I had the opportunity to decide to join that church. In the end, I decided not to. It reminded me too much of my high school youth group.

When I was in high school, the Gen X church movement was just beginning. You see, senior pastors had given their youth pastors a lot of leeway in the manner in which they had church, and as a result the youth church was way different from the adult church.

While the adults were slowly making the transition from hymns to choruses (and from organs to synthesizers), the youth had already made the leap to electric guitars and drums. While the adults were used to slow, careful, sometimes boring exegesis, the youth were treated to dynamic multimedia presentations that juxtaposed pop culture with scripture so as to make it relevant to the world they were enmeshed in. Within the very same church building, two very different congregations were being developed.

Division was inevitable. As soon as the youth became adults, they demanded that the adults worship the same way that they were used to. The adults would have none of it. So the youth began their own churches, and now they can have all the rock ’n roll and multimedia they want.

Because “Generation X” is now in its thirties, they have to call it something different or they'll lose the youth. So, call them what they’re doing; which is, supposedly, trying to emerge from the insulated, self-isolated Christian subculture. Call them “emergent.” That sounds young and vibrant and certainly not thirtysomething.

Ultimately, the emergent church is what was going to happen when the youth leaders took over the church. Anyone could have seen it coming. But here’s something I find fascinating: In order to reach the youth of right now, the youth leaders of today have to be more relevant. More out-there. More engaging of the culture. More everything. It’s gonna create a really interesting cultural shift in the church in 10 years. I’m curious to see what form it’ll take.

But I, like I said, am a postmodern. I don’t care about trends so much as I care about God working out a relationship with every individual that is unique to that person, and in that way the person can work towards their potential in God.

Now, that could involve rock ’n roll worship, and maybe multimedia. I have no issue with either. Where I do have an issue is all the fools who think rock ’n roll and multimedia automatically make you postmodern.

They have completely missed the point. How on earth are people going to be unique if they all look alike? Is an authentic postmodern church one where everyone sings the same songs? Prays the same way? Dresses alike? Looks alike? No! God created everyone to be different. Absolute conformity is what hell looks like.

I have to give Vintage Faith props for encouraging people to express their creativity, but the trouble I’ve always had is that I see so little true creativity. Going through labyrinths and the Stations of the Cross, while novel to many Protestants, is simply the recycling of ancient modes of spirituality that could be meaningful to people, but not when they’ve been homogenized so that the masses can try them out. The art all looks the same; the music all sounds the same. And when that happens, sad to say, you know that the movement is dying.

Part of the reason I haven’t joined the same church as my family (though I do visit it when I visit them, mainly out of laziness) is because, sad to say, conformity is encouraged. They worship leaders are actually going for a certain “sound” in their music, so that they all sound alike. I hope my sister’s efforts in starting a choir shake that up a lot; I really do. The more they sound alike, the less they sound like heaven.