Quote

"Seven hundred thousand out of a total Lebanese population of 3.5 million, 20 percent of the population, mostly Shiites, are now being cared for and given refuge by mostly Christian schools, churches, and other humanitarian organizations. This is the story of the Good Samaritan at a mega scale! And to think that this is the outcome of a strategy that meant to rouse anti-Hezbollah feelings among the Lebanese population and government. Talk about a failed strategy! Of course, this has happened so many times before that any thoughtful tactician would have learned the lesson by now, but military muscle is always too hedonistic and narcissistic to listen to the voice of reason and history."

- Dr. Martin Accad, academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary of Lebanon.

Donald Miller and Western Faith

In Donald Miller’s book Through Painted Deserts he writes about the “how” questions vs. the “why” questions. He refers to “how” questions as being less important than the “why” questions. To my friend Don “how” questions sound a bit like this; “How do I get money, how do I get laid, how do I become happy, how do I have fun?” But “why” questions seem to be much bigger. They are the questions that underlie existence, nagging at us as we stare back at the cosmos and wonder “why?”

I have been taking a religion class that I finished today actually. In the class we reviewed the “big boy” religions of the east and west, starting with western ones and moving on the eastern ones. I have written a few posts that I will just never publish about that class due to my stupid frustration with western religion and especially Christianity. When I was writing these posts my words got caught somewhere between my brain and my fingertips (clogging some major arteries) so I gave it up hoping that the unexpressed would never need an outlet. Then I read some of Mr. Miller’s words and it helped me understand a bit. Don says that “[Christianity] did seem to stem from something beautiful, for sure, but it had been dumbed down and Westernized. If it was a religious system that explained the human story, its adherents had lost the grandness of its explanation in exchange for its validation of their how lifestyles, to such a degree that the “why” questions seemed to be drowning in the drool of Pavlov’s dogs.”

As the course moved from western religions to eastern religions my frustration subsided, I stopped referring to my professor as a Nazi, and the blood began to course through my veins again. I studied the east and began to have strange thoughts about Christianity. Thoughts like, “I bet if Christianity had been an eastern religion then Christians would actually be able answer some ‘why’ questions and not be such a joke to scholars.” Religion and daily life in the east are joined together in inseparable beauty, a thing of beauty that another hero of mine, David Crowder, applied to Christianity in his book Praise Habit. Christians have their church life, their church friends, their church clothes, all of which they use to successfully to mask themselves. Westerners have a kind of commercial, American version of spirituality. Again, Donald Miller to the rescue with a great example; “’What is beauty?’ I would ask. ‘Here are the five keys to a successful marriage,’ I would be given as an answer.”

In my religions class I saw Christianity through the eyes of the world and it terrified me. I have found out that the world has no idea what Christianity is because it got buried in western commercialism. Western Christianity focuses on the “how’ questions threatening to swallow us all in a bottomless greedy pit. “I needed God to be larger than our free-market economy,” confesses Miller, “larger than our two-for-one coupons, larger than our religious ideas.”

Legalism Also or Grace Is For Freeloaders

When legalism is the motivation a person can get pretty self centered, being very concerned with what they are doing that is wrong or right and not so concerned with loving people. A different friend of mine (different from the last post) was telling me the other day about how he had been helping a lady clean up her yard, but all the while he had a bad attitude about it. But even still, he couldn’t say that Christ’s love wasn’t shared then. He told me that would just be giving himself to much credit. I’m like that. I can concern myself with questions of right and wrong all day long and get nothing accomplished. I am sick of "right and wrong" and I am sick of being concerned with myself. I want to look past myself.

Legalism: harness the savage beast and go skinny dipping

I grew up with a legalist. That kind of implies that I was not buried in the confines of Christian legalism but you know, I was in it deep too. We were both in it deep so that escaping from it was just pure bliss. Older friends of ours who we looked up to in our young Christian faith started swearing, a Christian no-no, as a joke. Our rationale became; they swear so it’s ok just as long as non-Christians don’t hear us. So my legalistic friend and I would walk home from school cussing each other out with strings of swear words that didn’t make any sense together just to have a good laugh. My legalistic friend would laugh so hard at me that he wouldn’t even be able to stand up. I would try and keep a straight face while spitting out the nonsense swear words and he would pretty much fall over and pee his pants. I always admired him for that. I admired that he laughed harder than me. I got to the point where I may have been fake laughing a bit just to keep the game going because, hey, it feels good to make someone laugh so hard that they just pee everywhere. I’m pretty sure nothing else is better for one’s confidence levels.

My friend and I grew up some. We stopped swearing (I think it was because we got really convicted of it and not because it got old) and we started to drive cars around the age of 16. My friend had a beautiful heart and he still does. One of the reasons it was so beautiful then because of his stupid legalism and how it reared its ugly head when he drove. I say it was beautiful not because I appreciated it then, cause I hated it then. If the speed limit was 20 mph, he went just a hair under, so not to break the law. I mean he was 16 years old. He was supposed to be getting speeding tickets until they revoked his license. Now, I appreciate my friend and his legalism because he was doing what he thought was right no matter what. He was intensely doing something he believed in no matter what people thought about him and I think there is a beauty in that.

My favorite example of this was when four of us guys went out to the lake one night. It must have been about two o’clock AM and we are all jumping off the dock, naked, into duck poop pond, except my buddy. I remember being up on that dock, looking over at him and seeing his tears. Crying usually stops such fun being that crying means that someone probably stepped on a broken beer bottle or something else tragic had happened. My legalistic friend explained to us, the best he could through his sobs, that he was pretty much hating himself at that moment because we were all having such a good time and he was afraid he legalism was going to ruin it for us. See, the park we were in was closed after sunset, so we really weren’t allowed to be there and legalism was just destroying my buddy because he was there and yup, it was after sunset. We didn’t have to leave then but we did because it was obviously killing my buddy inside and since we wanted to be with my buddy we all left.

I don’t think I will ever forget that. It seems a pretty silly thing to remember; a guy crying, naked, on a dock, in the middle of the night looks pretty funny in hindsight. He tried to go against his legalistic nature and it just destroyed him. The guy couldn’t have fun the rest of the night.

That guy and I are still great friends but he isn’t legalist anymore and I am grateful for his sake. He is getting to taste freedom and grace and it is beautiful. He is an even more amazing guy because of it. Simply everybody wants to be friends with this guy. But something in me misses his legalism. I am the most tolerant I have ever been in my life right now. I am working for freedom from things that confine me and confine the work that I believe Christ is trying to do in me, and somehow I look back at my legalistic friend and I see a savage desire to do what is right that is attractive to me. I have lost that desire in my pursuit of grace. Sure, I want to do good still and to be good, I want it really quite badly, but “I want to really bad” just isn’t driving me like legalism drove my friend. My own past legalism and even the present legalism isn’t impressive to me and I am sure that my friends past legalism isn’t attractive to himself but I am just attracted to the degree of his desire. If I could just have that desire but somehow not be legalistic then I wouldn’t have to be sickened by my own selfishness so often.

The interesting thing is that my not-legalistic-anymore friend does even better at “doing good” now that he is not legalistic. In his freedom, he is awesome at loving people and it is because of a new “savage desire.” From somewhere, he got this crazy desire to love. It comes to him naturally. This new desire that my friend has harnessed quite unwittingly daunts me. It challenges me to love people like he does but I am afraid to try, I am afraid to fail, I am afraid of what people might think. I am stuck not wanting to challenge myself, always defending myself with the argument that if I challenge myself I’ll just fall back into that legalism.

The next season of my life will tell me a lot more about how I can reconcile all of this. This is just one of the reasons, reasons that keep popping up, for me to go and figure this stuff out. I am planning a move to Kansas City and when people ask why I give different answers depending on who is asking. Sometimes I say travel, sometimes I say to visit friends, to try something new. I think people label it as “He’s going to go and find himself.” Maybe that is true but more than anything I think I just want to go and learn and be a freak’n huge sponge to what’s out there. Hopefully, I learn a habit that I’ll never stop. Hopefully I learn to love people better. Hopefully I am on the right track.

-oholic

I used to get all offended about people smoking, especially as a kid. I was mean just like all kids (kids really say some of the most hurtful things, it’s true) and I would start to cough fairly obnoxiously when I smoker passed me by. I grew out of that. What developed though was a distain for people who smoked, and yes I was defiantly better than all smokers. My logic was undeniable. Smokers have this terribly weakness; they’re addicted, and the way I saw it I was not and therefore, I was better. It really makes sense if you look at it in that Aryan/white supremacy way.

Well, I got over that probably around the same time I found out that C.S. Lewis was a smoker. Who knew right? Or maybe it was around the time I started smoking cigars. I did that on and off for a few years until one made me puke like eleven times. What can I say; it was a memorable experience for all who were involved (the involved parties remind me of it incessantly).

Currently, I have a new reason not to look down upon someone for an addiction they may have. I don’t know too much about addictions or how they happen all I know is I have joined the ranks. I am not an addictive person, and by that I mean I don’t get addicted to things really, but the alternate meaning is probably true as well. But it appears I have become addicted to coffee. It caught me off guard really. I didn’t even think I drank all that much but man, if I don’t get a cup of joe in the morning I get a screaming headache and I get shaky. It's bad.

I don’t write this to say that I am above any other addiction, because I am told being addicted to coffee is kind of a minor thing. I write this to point out a lesson I am learning about myself: I am not above anything. I am finding I could probably be led to do just about anything. Present me with the right propaganda at the right time, or paint me that deceptive picture in my head and tell me it’s the truth and I’ll bite. I’m addicted to coffee and by becoming addicted I have realized I can become addicted to anything. God is teaching me that I am no better than the next guy.

Just hold my hand

When you wake up in the morning feeling vexed you can bet something is up. I’m struggling to recall the word that a friend so aptly called it . . . conflicted, that’s the word and that’s what I felt last night and this morning.

Media has that intriguing ability to take your emotions and run with them wherever. It doesn’t even have to make sense logically but media or, more specifically, a movie or television show can just run you through the gauntlet of emotionally messed up plots. The plot, the characters can be experiencing completely misguided, incomprehensible feelings or emotions and yet, we are right there with them, feeling the exact same way, buying into the whole thing. Somewhere in the depths of me I feel the discomfort as my better judgment screams “How can he be feeling any sense of loss right now!” And when it is all said and done I think, “That was a weird movie.”

I felt that way after I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest” yesterday. In a way I felt cheap and easy for enjoying it, but, then again, I was entertained. Therein lies the reason for my confliction. I missed the characters from the last film in this film, not that I am a huge fan of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, and I am not really trying to write a review here, but if I were I would say that the plot was overloaded with a complicated plot that didn’t justify itself and that the characters could never justify their actions or feelings either. I lost all sense of the good in it. Good referring to the hero, or the romance, or just plain truth, anything virtuous at all. Thus, I was left trying to put the pieces together after, because I wanted to like this movie but in doing so I would feel used I guess.

The sad thing to me was as I walked to work this morning, trying still to put feelings into words (an important thing to me, I’m finding), I was picturing friends of mine liking it, not even recognizing that there is an absence of good, or I could imagine friends calling what exists in the movie “good.” It is a complicated feeling that I can’t currently articulate but it sure made me feel the weight of the distance between me and the next closest person. We are all so close to each other, believing that there is good out there. We wanted to look at each other and cry for help but we were to busy concealing our bleeding wounds to take the time.

It has something to do with a song by Bright Eyes that tells the story about how he ran into a doctor who was looking a little sick and when the doctor asked him for help he replied, or the song goes like this; “’There’s nothing that I can do for you you can’t do for yourself.’ He said, ‘Oh yes you can, just hold my hand, I think that that would help.’ So I sat with him a while and I asked him how he felt. He said ‘I think I’m cured . . .’”

Answer Me Buddha

I made yesterday's post in a hurry, in fact I had to go back and add some stuff later in the day because, upon reading it, I found that it really was incomplete and lacking something. Sense maybe? Not to surprising considering who wrote it. Anyway, I was checking the links and whatnot and in doing so delved deeper into the outrageous silliness of the Answer Me Jesus site. Thus, I was led to find Answer Me Buddha, who is equally entertaining if not more so (but only because it’s the fat Buddha.) I also found that I might have been misleading in my previous blog. Apparently, Answer Me Jesus doesn’t “say” things like “Ask again later.” His responses are basically church lingo. “Have Faith” and such. There is a trial page on the site where you can find out what Jesus would do to get the idea of how he might respond to your unyielding questions. So yeah, Answer Me Jesus and Answer Me Buddha, coming soon to dorm rooms everywhere.

Answer Me Jesus

If I were to write a youg adult novel, I might start it like this:

Krista Sheen is the girl next door. She epitomizes that image. Think Meg Ryan in junior high school and you have Krista Sheen. She’s the head of the seventh grade class at Bradley Junior High, she’s a popular cheerleader, a princes at all the school dances, and is dating the cutest boy in the whole school: Jarred Powers. However, that’s not her reality. All Krista has on her mind is her parent’s recent divorce and the malicious rumors that her “friends” have started about her. As she lies in her tear stained bed on a cold Thursday night she realizes that thins is in fact the end of her proverbial rope. “Can things get worse?” Krista questions the darkness. That’s when she looks up to her shelf to see “Answer Me Jesus”. The eight ball Jesus had been a joke given to her by her friend Macy for her last birthday. They had asked “Answer Me Jesus” questions about who liked who and if Teresa was ever going to get together with Taylor, but that had been the end of it. Now, in an act of desperation, Krista grabbed “Answer Me Jesus” from the shelf and shaking him wildly asked what she really needed to know in her time of need. She needed God more than ever as her world was obviously falling apart, or at least it was really bad. She heard the words slip past her lips “Do you really exist God?” She turned “Answer Me Jesus” over and the words slowly lifted themselves out of the blue; “Ask again later.”

Yeah, I guess it needs some work. There goes my career in writing teen literature. I had such high hopes too. Books like “Dragon Land Is No Democracy” and “Gossip Killed Mrs. Jones and Not actually A Meat Cleaver” will never be published now. But really my intension was to give Answer Me Jesus a little blog space. When I first saw him in Urban Outfitters the story above kinda popped into my head as a possible real life scenario. To me it’s one of those stories that edge on the side of either funny or sad. Oh, and I took a picture of him with my cell camera. The picture included here is infinitely better though.

The day after independence

It’s July 5, 2006, which can seem pretty humdrum being that it follows the excellent Independence Day USA. I was told that the spectacular holiday’s image is tainted by beer and fireworks but that really doesn’t bother me being that neither are particularly sentimental to me. What bothers me is that I did not get to be in Seward, AK for Mountain Marathon a fairly amazing race for the completely average citizen. So yes, today could seem dull, however, my encouragement is that this 5th day in July is not a boring day at all, even in lieu of yesterday’s fanaticism. Behold . . .

Live now France is playing Portugal for the chance to plat Italy for the World Cup. I must say that I am quite torn for whom to root for. Granted, it would just be neat to see Portugal win the World Cup and it would not be so neat for France to. I am told that it would give France even larger egos, and besides, they have other things going for them. On the other hand, the French players have fun names like “Henry.” Not that cool in America because we just shorten it to “Hank,” but say it in French and vous l'aimerez.

Almost as exciting is the "Running of the Nudes." I don’t know if that is so much exciting as it is intriguing. Essentially what happens is instead of running bulls around the Pamplona, Spain (because it’s mean, not to people but to the bull. I guess most people didn’t care about being chased by bulls so much) people run around naked for animal rights. The truth is I wonder about the integrity of it all. Nudity in public is something that I frown on, but I did read once about how nudity in public really isn't what you'd expect; it isn't sensual as much as it is silly but honestly i don't have that much experience with it.