“Outing” Joel Osteen.

Most of the bloggers out there exist only to rant about stuff they don’t like. How will adding Osteen to their lists change anything?

I don’t know if you know who Joel Osteen is. Possibly not. He’s the pastor of Lakewood Church, which produces a weekly TV show that features him. I first came across him a few years ago, when I was eating breakfast one Sunday and watching TV church. (I’d usually watch Charles Stanley, who isn’t bad theologically, although I’d like to hear him actually do a real exposition of a passage for once, and I wish he’d stop trying to sell Alaska cruises.) Anyway, Stanley was over with, and some other not-so-good preacher’s show was starting, so I flipped the channels and came across Osteen’s show.

I figured it was a church show because it is, after all, broadcast Sunday morning. It struck me as… kinda useless. More useless than many of the other TV church shows. He wasn’t going into detail about any passage of scripture. He wasn’t trying to make a profound theological point. He wasn’t foaming at the mouth about some bizarre End Times conspiracy or about how “the homosexuals have taken over Hollywood.” He was just blithering about how God wants us to have happy, prosperous lives. Then there was a commercial about how they were moving the church from the large, cavernous building they already occupied (which I at first thought was a rented auditorium) into an even bigger building (which I later discovered was the Compaq Center). So he’s got a big giant church. No wonder he has his own TV show.

I didn’t think much about him after that, until I found that Christian Book Distributors was selling a book of his, Your Best Life Now, in which he announces that God wants us to have happy, prosperous lives. Just look at Osteen: He has a happy, prosperous life. And if he has one, surely God wants everyone to have one, right?

’Cause if you don’t have a happy, prosperous life, there’s something wrong with you. Why, look at all those unhappy, financially unprosperous Christians in China that are too busy hiding from the government to buy themselves Lexuses and thousand-dollar suits. There must be something wrong with them. And those missionaries! What’s with them giving up comfort and financial stability for God? Surely he would rather they stay home, living in air-conditioned comfort and eating bon bons; by that example people will just flock to Jesus.

…Okay, I really gotta cut back on the sarcasm.

Midterm elections #4: Pressure on the pastors.

Why do Christians keep falling for the claims that politicians will help us?

I’m looking forward to reading Gregory Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation, in which he discusses separating church and state in the pulpit. (You can read an excerpt of it here.)

There are unfortunately many who see the evangelical church as another wing of the Republican Party—both in the party and in the church—and it strikes me as nuts that the church which claims to follow Jesus, seems to have paid no attention to Jesus’s rejection of political power. Didn’t they read this?—

Taking [Jesus] up

and showing him all the kingdoms on Earth

in an instant of time

the devil said to him:

“I will give you all this power

and all their honor

for it was given over to me

and to whomever I want to give it to.

If you prostrate yourself to me,

everything is yours.”

Answering, Jesus said, “It’s written:

‘You will prostrate yourself to the Lord God,

and him alone will you worship.” [Lk 4.5-8]

But you’ll notice how often everything is thrown away in the pursuit of political power; how it all too frequently becomes a god to those who chase after it, and how like so many idols there is a devil behind it, accepting the worship.

Because it’s power. Political power is simply human power, seized from God in the very same way that the devil tries to seize power from God, from us, and from anyone who gets in its way.

And if the church goes along with it, the church will get political power. Remember the Moral Majority? What did the Christian Right do once it was given political power in the early ’80s? That’s right; it squandered it. What did it do again once it was given political power in the mid ’90s? Squandered it again. The Christian Right constantly is told, and tells its members, “Elect us and we’ll fix all the moral problems in the country.”

Now we have a president and a Congress that claim the Christian Right as their constituency. How’re they doing? Well, they haven’t done jack squat about the moral problems; seems they’ve invested all their time into this excuse for their re-election: “These things take time. I’ll need another term to do it in. Don’t vote for the other guy, okay? I really do believe in all the things you do. I can prove it if you give me another term.” It’s like a wife-beater begging to be taken back; and the American people, particularly the Christian Right, are the suckers with low self-esteem who do it.

More ranting later.

Amusing Comic Strip: “Are we even cavemen?”

B.C. parody. B.C. by Johnny Hart.

Johnny Hart didn’t actually draw this.

B.C. has got to be one of the most useless comic strips I’ve ever seen. It was a lot funnier before Johnny Hart became a Christian and felt the need to Christianize a strip which is after all about people who, as suggested by the strip’s title, live before Christ.

Every Easter strip has to be a message about how Jesus is risen (despite not yet being born), and every Christmas strip has to be about Jesus being born. Yet the strip’s events precede the Exodus, the nation of Israel, and the Roman Empire. It’s primarily about a bunch of guys in black shorts with one suspender apiece, assorted talking animals (including dinosaurs and a race of super-intelligent ants), and a proto-human caveman who is apparently a ball of fur with a mouth and feet. It’s always been that. The only things that changed after Hart became a Christian is there are less inventing-the-wheel type jokes, which he ran out of.

Instead, the strip contains lame puns, recycled one-liners, and occasional anti-idolatry or anti-evolution jabs that often don’t even make sense. (Being anti-evolution, in spite of his proto-human caveman character, never did make sense.) And the women in the strip have the rather less-than-Christian names of “the fat broad” and “the cute chick.” Hart’s Christianity is displayed on his sleeve, but you can’t find it otherwise in his strip.

Why, then, does this strip run at all in newspapers? Because American Christians like the fact that Hart displays his Christianity on his sleeve. They like a Christianity that’s all talk and no inward change. It resembles theirs.

So Hart’s strip will stay in newspapers until he dies, and if you’re a fan of irony it will be ever so amusing when the syndicate hands off his strip to a pro-evolution non-Christian who starts telling caveman jokes again and infuriates B.C.’s fan base.

Update, 12/13/2024: Hart died in 2007, and his grandson Mason Mastroianni produces the strip now, with the help of his brother and mom. It’s still kinda Christian, ’cause the Mastroiannis are Christian, but way less preachy. It’s even, occasionally, funny. And the women were finally given proper names; “Fat Broad” became Jane, and “Cute Chick” became Grace.

Why we don’t want Bethany students at our church.

Actually, we do want Bethany students… but we’ll pass if you fit this description.

And let me preface this by saying this stuff is generally true of Bethany University students, and college students at most Christian schools. If you’re an exception, ignore this. Otherwise, here’s why we don’t want you.

1. You’re too flaky. Part of the point behind college is that you’re figuring out what to do with your life. And you should. You should avoid commitments until you’ve had lots of time to figure out if you really want to do this with your life. But you don’t know how to take the necessary time you need to figure stuff out. You just commit. Then you discover it wasn’t the right decision, and bail—often after doing the same dumb thing as before, and committing yourself to something else you hadn’t thought through. You need to slow your decision-making process down; and we need to stop accepting your commitments as if they were rational decisions.
2. Your real commitments are elsewhere. But honestly, you aren’t in the Santa Cruz area because you’re looking for a home church. Few people, other than professional clergy, choose to live someplace because of a church. You’re here because of college. College will take priority. You say God is your priority, but really it isn’t. Until you recognize this, you’re an idolater, and the church has enough idolaters.
3. You confuse your education with anointing. (I especially recognize this because I’ve been guilty of this.) Just because you’re a college student—and the others aren’t, and they don’t know the newest and latest and greatest things in academia—you cop this attitude of, “I know how things should go, and you don’t” or “I still have my ideals intact, and you sold out years ago” and crap like that. This is particularly found among bible majors (like I was) and typical of people whose ideals take precedence over people, like college students.
4. You confuse your adulthood with authority. Now that you’re old enough to vote, you often assume that you’re mature enough to take charge of things. You want to lead the youth ministry, or the food ministry, or an outreach, or a class. And you shouldn’t. The church model of leadership is servanthood. You need to shut up and wait for authority to be given to you instead of seeking it out. But often college students don’t want to wait for that to happen; they have résumés to compile.
5. You already have a home church. And it isn’t ours. So, when Easter and Christmas and the other important times come along, you’re never there. When Christmas break and spring break and summer break come along, you’re never there. Once you graduate, you’re gone. We can’t make any significant or long-term plans that include you. God help us if we put you into a position of leadership. It’s great for your résumé, but the ministry often becomes a shipwreck once you leave; instead of seeking a capable successor, you were more interested in going out with a bang.
6. You don’t tithe. Your money goes to your home church. Those of you that can tithe don’t understand how tithing works, so you keep your money because you “can’t afford to tithe,” or give a fraction of it. It’s not that we need your money, ’cause it honestly isn’t enough to pay the bills; it’s that your tithe represents your real commitment to the church, and it isn’t there. (Same with the licensed Assemblies ministers who give all their money to the district instead of the church. Where your money goes, so goes your heart. If you cared, you’d go get a waiver from the district so you could contribute to your church, but you don’t; so it’s not really your church, no matter what your résumé says.)
7. You don’t give time to the church. College is not a 24-hour vocation, but you treat it like one with the after-classes social events, the afternoon naps taken so that you can stay up until 2 a.m., and all the other artificial functions that mean you “don’t have time” for midweek church functions. You can make time for movie night with your buds, but you always have homework to do during Wednesday night prayer. And when midterms, finals, and major socials roll around, you’re gone.
8. You think your spiritual needs are already met with morning and evening chapels, dorm devotionals, the occasional bible class in your general ed package, and your extracurricular ministries. I’ve often heard it said that you don’t need to go to church because the school is the church. That’s bull-flop. The school resembles a church, because it’s full of Christians; but can you go evangelize new converts, take them to the school, and get them baptized and discipled? Not unless you pay tuition. The fellowship in the school is entirely dependent on whether you’ve paid tuition, not whether you have a relationship with Jesus. It’s based on Mammon, not Christ.
9. You’re a bunch of gossips. When you meet outside of church, the conversations always turn to, “The pastor should do this,” or “The leadership doesn’t know what it’s doing,” or “The sermon sucked.” The pastor is criticized for being too human and making normal human mistakes; the church is criticized for not having things exactly the way you like them; but you’re too “busy” to step up and fix things. You never say any of this stuff to the face of the person who needs to hear it. Instead of offering help, you spend most of your time bitching. Shut up.
10. You’re a bunch of spectators. To this point, I’ve talked a lot about the people who do contribute time to the church; but the bulk of you contribute nothing to the church, because you’re only there Sunday mornings, and that’s all. The rest of the week, we don’t see you, we don’t know you, you speak nothing into our lives, and you’re only there because you like the worship or the preaching. You take and don’t minister. You’re parasites, just like 80 percent of the church as a whole, whose faith has no works and is dead.
11. Your presence deceives the leadership of the church into thinking, “Hey, look at all the people we have. We must be doing something right!” And so we don’t do anything. We wind up putting all our time and effort into busywork, ministering to people who won’t change, won’t grow, won’t contribute, won’t learn, and will render us impotent, weak, and distracted. Just like the devil wanted.

So depart from us, you who work iniquity. Come back if you grow up.

What you owe to yourself.

Plus Mexican restaurant endorsements.

Ten years ago, when I lived in Scotts Valley, there were really no good Mexican food places in town. For a guy who grew up on Mexican food, that’s some serious withdrawal I had to go through. I just had to live through it. (Taco Bell, by the way, is not a substitute. Confusing Taco Bell with Mexican food is like confusing McDonald’s with barbecue.)

So when I moved back to Scotts Valley a year and a half ago, I still had that attitude of “There are no good Mexican places in Scotts Valley.” It didn't help after going to Tucson Taqueria. Their slogan is “Mexican food made by real Mexicans.” That’s not a good sign. Real Mexicans cook at Café Bethany but they still can't make proper Mexican food. I suspect it's ’cause they learned to cook from culinary school, not mamá. Anyway, after eating there, I didn’t want to eat at any other Mexican places in town for a while. I'd eat in Felton, which has even more honkies per capita than Scotts Valley, before I’d eat here.

Last year I discovered El Faro Taqueria, which is located dangerously close to Taco Bell, but is an excellent restaurant. It had taken me a while to try it because I mentioned the place to H, and he said, “Oh, I’ve been there; I didn't like it.” So I stayed away. And that was actually pretty stupid of me, because I’ve since discovered that H has absolutely no taste in food. The man’s favorite restaurant is Scotts Valley Diner, for crying out loud. (SV Diner used to be a Denny’s, but went independent. Now, most of the time I’ve found when a chain restaurant goes independent, it's ’cause the owners want to do a better job than the chain will let them… but in the case of SV Diner, the food’s actually become worse, and Denny’s is pretty abysmal to begin with. Yet H still chooses to eat there. I actually had to talk him into eating at Quizno’s once… But I gotta cut it out with these tangents.) Long story short: H has no taste, El Faro is great, and go eat there. Seriously. 243 Mt. Hermon Road #A, Scotts Valley. Okay. NOW to my point.

So this evening I was on my way to the library, and I was trying to determine where to eat dinner, and now that I’m willing to try other local Mexican restaurants I considered eating at Taqueria Los Gallos. I hadn’t been there before; I figured I’d give it a shot. “After all,” I told myself, “you owe it to yourself to try all the Mexican places in town, just to see if they’re any good.”

Then the other part of my brain said, “Owe it to yourself? Owe what to yourself?”

What do I owe to myself? This is a saying that our culture uses all the time, but honestly, what does it mean? I owe myself what? What, exactly, did I deprive myself of that I deserve to get back? I don’t feel deprived. I certainly don’t deprive myself of Mexican food. If anything, I am deprived of the money I would save by not going to a restaurant.

But do I really “owe it to myself” to have a lot of money in my bank account? I don't owe myself any money. I owe my mother several hundred dollars; I owe Citibank several thousand dollars; and in two weeks I will owe my landlords some more rent. I don't owe myself anything; and if I deprive myself of anything, it's because I need to deprive myself of things. I’ve been depriving myself of Cheez-its for the past two months because I’m trying to eliminate trans fats from my diet; it sucks but I don’t want to have a heart attack in my thirties. (Thank God for goldfish crackers.) Plus the bloody things are $3 a box. So it’s for budgetary and health reasons, and I don’t “owe it to myself” to violate those reasons.

Yet that's a phrase that’s thrown around all the time, especially in advertising and psychology. “You owe it to yourself to…” and fill in the appropriate commodity. Psychology uses it more legitimately than advertising, but from what I’ve experienced in my own therapy sessions, not by much.

I owe myself nothing. I have two jobs I enjoy, an income I can live on, and I drink all the decaf I want. I went to Taqueria Los Gallos and ate two very good fish tacos, and I’ll likely eat there again. Not because I owe it to myself. Because I can afford to.

(And you should eat there too, because the tacos are great. 18 Victor Square #A, Scotts Valley. Compared to them, eating at Taco Bell is like eating out of a wet diaper.)

Enormous penis.

Yeah, I knew that title would get your attention.

There’s something just bizarre about the spam I’ve been getting lately. Usually they fall into the following categories:

• Requests to refinance a mortgage I don’t have.
• Invitations to join their multi-level marketing scheme.
• Invitations to get a free tchotchke, like a video iPod or PSP, if I just complete five offers, which combined will cost me more than the tchotchke.
• Offers for discount, possibly pirated, software.
• Offers for cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals.
• Offers to enlarge my penis.

Most of the offers are, in fact, to enlarge my penis. I don’t see any reason to do so. But every time I see the badly-misspelled headers for penis enlargement (misspelled so that they can get past my spam filter, which catches them anyway) I’m reminded of Eric Idle’s joke about it. He once said he answered “yes” to every one he got, and now he has a nine-foot penis.

I began to get tired of the spam, so instead of simply going to my spam folder and deleting them, I began to send email back to them. Something simple: “Stop sending me spam.” Some of the time it gets back; most of the time the spam’s address is some undeliverable emailbox that’s only used for flinging their crap like so many monkeys.

The down side to this tactic is that I have to open the message to send the reply, and I’ve been noticing something odd about the sort of spam I get. A lot of it (if it’s not in Chinese) consists of unintelligible English sentences. Below is the text of one of them that I’ve received today. I kid you not.

find you anybody steps embarrass drew? steps light gym am few he. again gym miserable corner? leader wife promised across turning, embarrass here friends how? appearance music nothing? reference mentioned shining night. sandwich social taught. fascinate teach development reading, fire profession how already. benefit am reply my is.

And there’s no link to click so that anyone can buy their penis-enlargement stuff; it’s just gobbledygook. It's not haiku. It might be code to their Communist operatives in America; I have no idea. Why, if they’re going to all the trouble of sending me penis-enlargement spam, are they sending me this?

It’s not even purposeful crap; it’s just completely useless. At least with penis-enlargement spam, I can laugh at all the sad losers who are gonna buy the stuff and then (if it actually works) they’re gonna discover that they’re never gonna find a pair of undershorts that fit, and that using a toilet is going to become horrifically unsanitary. (If you don’t know what I mean, think about it. Or don’t, if you’d rather not be put off your lunch.)

Ah well, since I’ve been writing about penises so much I may as well end this post with a link to the song “Enormous Penis” by Da Vinci’s Notebook. Enjoy.

St. Patrick’s Day inconsistencies.

I ranted once before about St. Patrick’s Day—how St. Patrick did not bring Christianity to Ireland so that a bunch of stupid Americans can get falling-down-drunk on his feast day.

There was some additional foolishness this year, as St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday during Lent. Observers are supposed to not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but a lot of Irish people are going to insist on corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, and so we have to decide what’s more important: A fast honoring Christ Jesus, or a day honoring one of his disciples.

I remind everyone that Lent is also not mandatory. If you’re going to practice it, you get to choose how to practice it. In my case I simply give up something; I don’t include the meatless Fridays because I didn’t give up meat this year. I also understand that fish is meat, and everyone who says fish is an exception is a hypocrite; if you’re giving up meat, then you’re giving up meat. I don’t care what the bishops say.

It is in that spirit that I object to the several local bishops who decided to give everyone a free pass to violate it for St. Patrick’s Day. I found this article particularly disturbing, mainly because of the sloppy theology throughout.

Bishops claim they can give dispensations so the church can lift Lent’s “rules.” I remind you if it really is a rule, handed down by God, no human-produced dispensation can lift jack squat. You can’t get a dispensation to blaspheme, worship idols, murder, adulter, and refuse to love others. Any bishop who says otherwise should be defrocked.

Lent is voluntary. It is a tradition, handed down by the church. As such, we can practice it, or not. God didn’t say the church as a whole has to practice it. God might order individuals to fast, or give up things; but he never ordered his people as a whole to fast every year at any other time than the High Holy Days—which Christians violate all the time.

Bishops can order their congregations to fast for Lent, but the people have the freedom to ignore them if they don’t feel their consciences are violated by ignoring. Bishops can also determine the rules for their versions of Lent, and the congregations can agree, or not. But if they didn’t order the practice, they have no business ordering a change in its rules.

The practice of Lent is between the worshiper and God, and no bishop should get in the way of that unless God orders an intervention. And I hardly think that God would make a special exception for corned beef.

Amusing comic strip: Our spiritual age.

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, 3/16/1995.

What are you, franking nuts?

Incumbents sure do like to abuse their perqs in their re-election.

The governor’s race has begun already. I’ve seen my first commercial for state treasurer Phil Angelides, who’s running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger. Check out Angelides’s biography page on the treasurer’s website, which, in the section under “What Others Are Saying About State Treasurer Phil Angelides,” is one of the most wholly inappropriate misuses of a government-funded website. It’s almost as bad as the franking privilege abuses we see from Congress every year.

For those outside the United States, I’ll explain. To “frank” is to send things through the Postal Service for free. Only members of Congress get to do it. Everyone else, including the president, has to pay for postage. (They made an exception for Martha Washington once, which is the only exception I know of.)

Franking is supposed to be used for official government business only. But every election year, I get something from my local congressman explaining all the wonderful things he’s done over the past year, and inviting me to these “town hall” meetings in which he wants to talk about all the wonderful things he still wants to do. Once he’s re-elected.

This is a campaign ad, of course. But it’s disguised as a newsletter from my congressman. So he can argue it’s not really a campaign ad, but the only reason he’s sending it out (and having my tax dollars pay for it) is to get me to vote for him again. Which I’ll only do if he doesn’t suck worse than his opponent. But he already sucks, because he’s misusing his privilege for personal gain, and making me pay for it.

Angelides is doing the same bloody thing with his state treasurer’s website, and it’s all been part of his plan to eventually run for governor. He’s made no secret of this; he’s run before, and usually lost in the primaries to someone who’s better connected.

I don’t want to vote for Schwarzenegger, but I really don’t want to vote for Angelides. The guy’s campaign tactics have in the past been vicious, petty, and insulting to the public’s intelligence. I expect to see more of the same in the upcoming primary election. Visionary though he may be at times, I still expect politicians to treat their opponents with decency even when they disagree with them, and I won’t vote for someone who can’t do that. Unless he shapes up in this election… nah, it won’t happen.

Comparisons to Hitler.

I’ve been reading a bit about Jay Bennish, a Colorado history teacher who got into trouble for bashing George W. Bush. One of his students recorded his classes, and the recording got into the hands of talk radio hosts, and now Bennish is on administrative leave while administrators try to figure out how to not fire him but make it look like they’ve showed due concern.

’Cause that's all they can really do. You can’t fire a teacher for speaking his mind. You can try, but every civil liberties lawyer in the country will come after you, and you can’t win in the courts. The only way to fire a teacher these days is to catch him doing something illegal, and it’s not against the law to compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.

That’s the part that I find particularly stupid. Bennish compared the president to Hitler. Nothing makes people insane faster than when you refer to Hitler. You could compare the president to Satan and not get so strong a reaction.

But what’s so wrong with comparing people to Hitler? I could compare anyone to Hitler. I could compare Jesus to Hitler. Jesus loves the Jews; Hitler not so much. See? That’s a comparison.

But all someone now has to do is take it out of context, say, “Did you hear that Kent compared Jesus to Hitler?”, hand it off to talk radio, and get me excommunicated.

Bennish’s comparison was a valid one, in fact. Hitler believed he was right and everyone else was wrong, and that he should spread the German style of government everywhere. Bush believes likewise. I could find other things to compare: Hitler was against abortion; so is Bush. Hitler’s government built internment camps to house undesirables, and refused to put them on trial; so did Bush. Hitler’s troops tortured prisoners; so has Bush’s. There are lots of ways in which Hitler and Bush are unalike, but it’s the similarities that most of us find disturbing.

The reason people get so riled up about criticisms of Bush is that ultimately politics is their religion, Bush is their messiah, and criticism of him is blasphemy. Even totally valid criticisms, and totally valid comparisons with Hitler.

Coffeepot in the office.

It’s awfully nice to have a coffeepot in the office.

I stole one out of the Vickery Center on Friday. There were three coffeepots in there; the one I used regularly, and two others that I used whenever someone else was using the one I used regularly.

Yes, someone else in the center occasionally made coffee. I could have drank it, but I don’t trust it. I drink decaf, and I insist on it being made with good beans and filtered water. Most office coffees are made with Kirkland (a cheap coffee brand found at Costco) and with Scotts Valley tap water (which tastes like it was squeezed through an armpit). So I bought a filter for the office, and until recently I was drinking Safeway Select beans.

One Monday I discovered that one of the weekend classes had used all my beans. They probably didn’t care for the Kirkland stuff either. I don’t blame them, but I did find it annoying that I had to drink Kirkland decaf that day. I took a great deal of comfort in the fact that my unlabeled bag of coffee beans was decaf, and that they likely didn’t know that, and suffered from it. Serves ’em right.

Since I was out of coffee, I just grabbed my 26-ounce can of Trader Joe’s French Roast from home… and realized Saturday morning that I had no more than two espressos’ worth of coffee beans at home. All my coffee was at the office.

And that’s usually the sign that I need to go to the grocery store. I don’t go when I’m out of milk; I don’t go when I’m low on vegetables; I go when I’m out of coffee. Until then, I slowly empty my pantry and think to myself, “Well, at least I have coffee.” But now I can’t think that. Must get more.

I do not have an addiction.

Doom and gloom.

Ah, secondhand information. Such a wonderful source of crap.

Technically it’s gossip. If you didn’t see it yourself, if you weren’t personally authorized to spread the word, it’s hearsay. It's of little to no value. That doesn’t stop people from spreading it around anyway.

Some interesting bit of it got spread to me, and I temporarily lost my head and ranted at length about it. Not that my ranting was of any value either. Ranting on gossip is just as useless as the gossip itself, and most of the time it just produces hurt feelings on the part of the person who was gossiped about.

But the point is still valid, so I'm gonna make it anyway. I’m just not gonna use any names so that I don’t slander any undeserving individuals. The circumstances, as I understood them, were these.

Someone had recently prophesied a natural disaster. Maybe The Big One (you know, the earthquake that’s supposed to be so powerful that it causes California to split away from the rest of the United States, which will then slide into the Atlantic). This caused a lot of people concern, and now they’re having two days of prayer. Maybe fasting.

I don’t know what they're praying—for God to spare all those poor non-Californians, for God to stop the earthquake, for God to only kill the unrighteous. As I recall, it takes a lot more than two days to get God to change his mind about stuff. Two days is nothing. You don’t even need two days; you just need one righteous person who God talks to regularly to talk him down to an earthquake of 3.4 magnitude. (That’s like a garbage truck driving by.) And since it’s Lent, some of us are already fasting anyway.

Here’s the part what I don’t get: What spiritual discernment has gone into accepting this prophet’s message?

If God is warning people in advance a disaster is going to happen, he’s not just going to warn one guy. He’s going to warn a lot of people. Historically that’s what he’s done. Not everyone listened to them, but that’s beside the point. Nobody paid attention to the prophets who warned us about Hurricane Katrina; and being humble, these prophets didn’t spend a lot of time screaming “I told you so!” after the fact. Unlike some false prophets who tried to grab some notoriety afterward.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the prophets because I live in northern California. Levees break here all the time and it only affects the fools who are dumb enough to live in flood plains. I underestimated the disaster. So did everyone. But I have to admit the prophets were right. I never said they were wrong; I just figured we’d wait and see, and turns out they were right.

But I haven’t heard about this giant disaster thing from anyone else, except maybe the occasional Kurt Russell science fiction movie. So naturally I’m skeptical.

Back in Old Testament days, we used to stone false prophets to death. I say if this person’s disaster doesn’t happen within the next year, we ought to at least tar and feather the dude, okay? Let’s not kill him. But let’s at least hold him accountable for any unnecessary panic he generates. Prophecy isn’t something to be taken lightly, and we ought to tack some obnoxious consequences onto anyone who claims to speak for God and isn’t.

Lots and lots of audio.

I am, unfortunately, the guy who's responsible for putting the sermons at Sojourners Church on the website. That means I have to listen to them, get rid of most of the pops and crackles (as much as I can; the recordings suffer from a lot of static), edit them into a final form, and upload them.

After I preached Sunday, I had a few friends and family members say, “So can we download it?” and I had to point out, “I have four other sermons to upload before I get to mine. It’s not fair to just upload mine and skip the others. This isn’t the First Church of Kent after all.” (Not that the First Church of Kent has sermons to download anyway.)

Anyway. The sermons are finally uploaded. I'm done. Until Sunday.

Update, 12/14/2024: The First Congregational Church of Kent does have YouTube videos though.

Midterm elections #2: Gotta be famous.

If they know you, they’ll vote for you… provided they don’t think you’re nuts.

In California, we have a long history of people spending ridiculous money in order to win elections, only to lose them because Californians aren’t impressed with money. They’re impressed with celebrity. That’s why two actors (Reagan and Schwarzenegger) have managed to get elected governor in spite of never getting elected to public office before. The more famous you are, the better chance you have at getting elected—provided you aren’t infamous.

In the mid-’90s we had two Republican idiots run for the U.S. Senate against our incumbent senators. Both had a lot of contributions. Both had a lot of support from the die-hard conservative Republican base. Both personally had a lot of money. Neither got elected. Why? Not famous enough.

Sounds superficial, but you can also apply this to a whole lot of national elections. Which candidate is more famous? Which candidate has received more name recognition, face time in the press, or even jokes about him on the late night talk shows (provided the comedians take him seriously even while they’re making fun)? Unless the guy who’s the most famous has managed to annoy more people than his opponent, he’s gonna win.

So there’s Kent’s Handy-Dandy Guide to Getting Elected. (1) Make sure everybody knows who you are. (2) Make sure they don’t know you’re a nutjob.

Guaranteed 81.4% accurate.

Amusing comic strip: Guess the burp.

Garfield by Jim Davis, 2/28/2006.

Stupid Internet Survey: My church model.

What is your model of the church?

You scored as Sacrament model. Your model of the church is Sacrament. The church is the effective sign of the revelation that is the person of Jesus Christ. Christians are transformed by Christ and then become a beacon of Christ wherever they go. This model has a remarkable capacity for integrating other models of the church.

Sacrament model	89%
English	83%
Herald model	72%
Mystical Communion model	72%
Servant model	56%
Institutional model	28%

What is your model of the church?
created with QuizFarm.com.

Naturally, internet quizzes are seldom scientific, particularly QuizFarm quizzes. This one was less scientific in that it used typical hymns that people would sing in your church as one of its ways of gauging your model. My church really doesn’t sing hymns. Occasionally someone might drop “Be Thou My Vision” or “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed” into the mix, but most of the songs are worship choruses, and I really don’t remember too many of the hymns from my childhood because our worship leaders often stuck to their own Top 40 list. So the reason I didn’t score higher is because I disregarded the hymn questions.

I do believe one of the main reasons for church is the sacraments. They can’t be done alone. You need other Christians to baptize you, share communion, disciple, confess to, witness a marriage, or pray with. I don’t limit the number of sacraments to two or seven; anything mystical and allegorical and involving God is a sacrament. And most sacraments require other people. Therefore we have the church.

I don’t believe, contrary to the Catholics, that the church is the person of Christ. Jesus is the person of Christ. The church may be his body, but he is the head… and sometimes the body acts as if it belongs to a paraplegic. It doesn’t always do what he wants it to. It will someday, but to say the church behaves exactly as Jesus wants it to is to disregard or misrepresent centuries of killing, stealing, and destroying when evil men took power within it. The church can and must become better, and it will if Christians will spend more time serving in it and less time ripping at it.

As to the other models, I agree with them somewhat, of course. Not so much the institutional model. Government is a necessary evil, and that’s even true of church governments. We’re all supposed to be answering to God, and if we did that, we’d actually love one another, support one another, and submit to one another… instead of the usual knee-jerk attitude of “Who are you to tell me what to do?” that we so often see in Americans.