Monday, April 24, 2006

I've been neither funny nor clever in recent days, and as much as I'd like to post my shopping list and a copy of my insurance policy, I thought I'd post something of real content.

This is a blog entry from someone who I don't know who that someone is. Another someone sent it to me, and I thought it was both brilliant and sort of stupid at times. I thought the collective you might like it.


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When you build up a structure and slap the word church on a sign out front, it becomes very easy for people to forget that church is not a place to go once a week, but rather something that we are.  Uh oh, here I go...
Forgive me, but I dont need a weekly program of rehearsed hooky tunes followed by a barrage of announcements and a puffy theological dissertation.  I dont need cell groups, home groups, singles groups, young married groups or mens groups.  Frankly, I'm pretty grouped out.  What I need is fellowship.  Not "Fellowship Bible" or "Fellowship Community" or "Fellowship Covenant" or "Fellowship Baptist."  I need community.  Not "Christ Community" or "Faith Community" or "Real Life Community."  And dont get me started on grace.  God knows we need that, but not in the form of another catchy church name.  I don't need to read another trite quip on a marquis telling me that a church is "prayer conditioned" or that "regular bible check ups prevent truth decay."    And I don't need to be professionally greeted at the door of the sanctuary.  I need to be known, not counted and alphabetized.  After all, Mr. Greeter, is it really nice to see me, or are you just happy to see another seat filled?  No, I don't want a bulletin.  Associate Pastor Whats-His-Name is going to read it all to me during the prayer-slash-announcement time anyway.  Besides, it's a good way for him to squeeze in some face time between "worship" and the offering.  Oh excuse me, I mean "tithe"  (the word church leadership uses to ensure Gods promises will be fulfilled to His people).  The "freedom isn't free" sales pitch:  Freedom comes at a cost!  And that cost is 10 percent of everything you have.  But if you're a guest, please don't feel obligated to give (only members should feel obligated).  Excuse me, do you not see that we are clinging so desperately to these laws that Jesus [admittedly] lived to fulfill, but also bled and died to free us from?  James says if you take on one law you must carry the weight of the entire law on your shoulders.  Brothers and sisters, that is not a burden we were meant to carry in light of the finishing work of Christ!  Tithe is merely a control device for leaders who can't trust the work of the Holy Spirit in the Body if Christ (or who don't understand that we have been freed from those regulations and rules).  It's the same thing they did back in the early church with circumcision.  Am I saying we shouldn't give?  By no means!  The apostle Paul has plenty to say about that.  He said that we should excel in the grace of giving just as we excel in the other good gifts (he also had a teensy weensy tiny bit to say about the end of the law too, which includes the mandate of tithing).  I didn't want to get started on tithe.  Guess its too late for that.  This is not merely a piece on tithing.  Rather, it is a satirical challenge issued to the prodigal church of America.
You see, we don't need churches with schedules to keep, fundraisers to promote, and people to reintroduce to life under law.  No thanks.  I'm over that.  What I need is a safe place for people who know each other intimately and, at a moments notice, can lay hands on one other and exercise their gifts with confidence and without fear.  Gifts like prophecy and healing.  It isn't wrong for me to desire a place where I can come to be prayed over without the formality of a scheduled altar call at the end of a service.  Besides, what kind of service is it to erect a building and obligate everyone to come and help pay the utility bills, outrageous mortgages, expansion funds, and salaries (for a staff who claims to equip, but mostly enables laziness amongst the members by doing all the work for them) when there are congregants who can't find healing from a common cold, let alone afford to pay their own rent?  And when we do attempt to reach out to those people, we stamp our church brand all over the project and piously advertise our "mission."
Is that authenticity?  Yes, it is very authentic.  But I can take you out in my back yard and show you something very authentic that my dog left behind - and no amount of clever marketing will make it stink any less.  We don't need authenticity.  We need truth.  And truth is not a marketing strategy.  It is not programmed.  Truth is only a formula when it is math.  The gospel is not math.  It is not an equation.  It is mystery - mystery revealed in the person of Christ our Deliverer, who never prepared a four point sermon, rented out a billboard, or handed out a tract.  He taught, he corrected, he rebuked, he interacted, he had compassion, he healed, he prayed, he studied, he believed in others, he cared for the poor, he had close friends who knew him well, and he looked people in the eyes simply because he took the time to.  But most of all, he loved.  And that's the truth.

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What do you think?

Peace,
Justin

Monday, April 10, 2006

I just had a terrifying dream.

I tend to dream vividly, and, fortunately, I tend to demonstrate no hint of a gift for prophecy in my dreaming. Which is comforting when you have the dream I just woke up from.

Bear with me...it may be hard to follow...

I dreamt that I was on a gameshow. I don't remember much about the gameshow, other than at the very end, it was possible to run up a giant ramp and grab a big TV and slide down with it. (Your prize was that you got to keep the TV). My brothers and I were competing as a team on this show, and I was the last to go. I ran as fast as I could, I grabbed the TV, and I got it back before the buzzer. (This is not the bad part of the dream). I handed it to my older brother and we all celebrated.

Then, something happened. I don't remember precisely what, but something. Somebody criticized me for not doing it fast enough, I think. I was hurt, and yelled back. Fine, no big deal. But the conversation escalated into a full-blown argument, which escalated into a full-blown fight. Once again, I don't remember why, and I don't think it matters much why. All I know, is I felt a rage boiling up in me, and I'm pretty sure that's why I had the dream in the first place...to address that feeling. Our verbal fight soon became a physical confrontation, and my twin brother, at this point, was smart enough to walk away. That left me and my older brother. I felt like he painted me into a corner...he had called me irresponsible and foolish, and had threatened to prove it to everyone I knew. The only thing I had left was my weight to push around, so I did. I attacked him, and I did so viciously. It was a good fight, and it should have been a fair fight...it was on paper, anyway. I did not significantly out-strength or out-skill him...it's just that I was so angry, I went nuts on him...and really hurt him. And I was glad.

...I wish the story ended there. I love my brother very much, and that was bad enough. But it didn't end there....

...On the way out the door, as my brother lay beaten on the floor behind me, I ran into a friend of mine. My friend is a she and she is a good friend and a good person. She asked what was going on, and I tried to explain why what had happened was totally reasonable and how I was pushed to it. She became frightened and angry and...worst of all...disappointed in me. She began to yell at me and even worse, I could see in her eyes that she didn't trust me. (BTW, I'm fairly sure she represented Stacy...because while I like this friend and all, I don't have the sort of heart investment in her that would make this dream as scary as it was. My guess is that my subconscious couldn't handle the thought of this being Stacy, so it made the nightmare more bearable by making it someone else). She saw me as a different person, and despite all of the relationship equity that we had built up over the years, it was all forgotten because of one bad choice. She threatened to tell everyone what a monster I was. I felt painted into a corner. I was angry, hurt, and felt trapped. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) She tried to leave...so I hit her.

...I couldn't believe it. This strange gameshow dream had turned into a horrible nightmare...and it wasn't a nightmare where I'm chased by a knife-weilding psycho or confronted by an armed mugger on a dark street. In this dream, the psycho was me, the mugger was me...and that was even more terrifying.

I hit her twice. She fell to the ground, bruised and a little bloody, and yelled for help. Nobody came. As soon as I had done it, I knew it was wrong, and I immediately begun to apologize. I tried to help her up, but it was too late...she wouldn't let me come near her (and with good reason). She called the police from her cell phone. My she called my twin brother, and my parents, and even a couple of friends of mine who are much, much bigger than I am...just to protect her from me. They showed up, they comforted her, and they told me how despicable and disgusting I am. They stared at me with disappointed and hateful eyes. A couple of the men threatened to kill me if they ever heard that I did this again. In short, they did what I would do if I heard this about someone I knew.

The last thing I remember is my twin brother looking at me with a hurt, anger and disappointment and saying, "you're disgusting." That's when I woke up, and that's when I started to write this blog entry.



...please bear in mind, I have NEVER hit my wife. Nor any other woman. I haven't even been in a fight with another man for years. I am, for the most part, a gentle person who keeps his fists reserved to the punching bag, not for hurting others. I have never hit a woman, and that's part of why this bothered me so much. Why would I have a dream like this? Am I secretly a wife-beating husband? Am I harboring some deep resentment I don't know about? Am I truly dangerous?

This was a horrible dream. I woke up sweating and scared. I want to dismiss it and forget it, but my mind doesn't work that way. The best way to deal with it, for me, was to write it down. So I have.

I scared myself this morning.

Peace,
Justin

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

I'll give you... a space western is stupid.

...That's why it surprised me so much when I fell spurs-over-lasers in love with one.

Truthfully, I only kind of like cowboy flicks (save for Young Guns II and Tombstone...pseudo-cowboy, but fine filmmaking), and I really can't tolerate science-fiction. Star Wars makes me angry, Star Trek bores me and Star Crunch tastes like chocolate-covered boogers. (OK, I like Star Crunch, and it tastes nothing like boogers, but points are best made in threes).

So, when my friend Allan told me to pop in a DVD of a failed TV series from 2002 called "Firefly," I kept waiting for the punchline. However, it was better than editing the video I was supposed to be editing at the time, so I tuned in.

Holy....




...




....shit.



I have never loved a television series more. I have never had more heart investment, more head investment, and more wallet investment in a television series. I've bought the series DVD set twice, I bought the movie version twice (which we'll get to in a minute), I bought the comic book, and...good lord...I even bought the action figures. I love each of the ten principal characters with an interest that borders on perversion, when you consider that all of them are fictional, and when you consider that one of them is a spaceship. I've found myself using words like "Warp drive," "Grav-boot," and "Pert Near" in casual conversation. I've even cussed in Chinese once, which may seem odd, but it makes sense when you see the show. I listen to the podcasts about the show, I keep up with websites about the show, and I'm even a member of a couple of them.

I...am...a...geek.

I didn't mean to be. I've actually been in a six-month-long get-cooler regimen, including new clothes, frequent haircuts, and a scented spray I'm told is made of toilet water. This regimen isn't actually making me any cooler, but at least it's expensive. But this whole "Firefly" thing is really screwing things up.

It's the writing more than anything. The writing is so....so....so well-done. The writer, Joss Whedon, writes like I would if I were twice as smart and thrice as clever. It's deep...it's meaningful. Like, actually meaningful...it's about God, it's about family, it's about love, it's about trust, fear, gender roles, free speech, prostitution, God, the government, and sometimes it's about guns. The acting is almost entirely brilliant, with some exceptions, and even those exceptions are poorly-acted resucitated by well-written.

The show was cancelled because nobody watched it. Nobody watched it because it was on against something that was apparently much more interesting, and because Fox made them play the episodes out of order, so they made no sense. It also failed because "Space Western" is a pretty stupid idea.

But it worked. It totally worked. It is powerful, and it is profound.

The show failed, but the fans spread the word. They did such a good job, that the DVD sales of the failed show (it lasted less than a season) blew away expectations. They had to do a second and a third run...they flew off the shelves, and as word spread, they did more flying. They sold so many that Universal Studios picked up the failed (now extremely profitable) TV show and did the unprecendented and unthinkable...they made a big-budget movie out of it. The movie is called "Serenity," and it's a phenomenon.

Please please go rent the movie. If you can't rent it, borrow it from me. If you don't know me, buy it on Amazon. Better yet, buy the series. Watch at least three episodes. If you don't like it after that, I'll buy it from you.

I hate science fiction. I love Firefly. Go see Serenity, go and buy Firefly.

Now, I have some geekdom to get to.

Peace,
Justin