I Used to Be Smart.

Yesterday, I pointed everyone to this site, but I didn’t comment much.

If you didn’t read it, here’s the deal. A group of evangelicals has decided that the Republican party does not line up with their definition of what Christianity should be (my first impulse is to be thankful for that). They believe that the Republicans haven’t gone far enough. So they’re organizing a takeover. This takeover starts in South Carolina. Their plain is this: to move as many like minded people as possible to a certain area of Soutch Carolina to slowly create a majority in the population, and a significant constituency (is you is or is you ain’t my constituency?). With an expanded base, they plan to take over political positions. They’d like to start slowly — school boards, city councils, etc. However, their goal is gain enough influence and power in the state of South Carolina, that they can secede from America and become their own Christian nation (Fort Sumter, anyone?). They hold the standard evangelical positions — anti-abortion, pro-public displays of the Ten Commandments, a state infused with their kind of religion. They wish to run their entire nation this way — as a “Christian” nation.

I really don’t know to all of this. I don’t ever see it being anything significant, but I’m worried about something. The minority in South Carolina. The Muslims (I know they’re there somewhere), the liberal Christians, the folks who just don’t care about religion. Can Christians justify a position in which they force their morality upon those people? Is it “Christian” to legislate everyone into our morality? I understand the position that these people think their ultimately doing good for the non-Christian population because legislating what they believe to be how God would have us to live, and that is the best way of living. However, is forcing that onto a unwilling population justifiable under a Christian ethic of love? Is coersion into a Christian morality justifiable?

I can’t answer that question in the affirmative. Coercing people into a specific, ultimately contextual morality by means of a political majority is a tactic that lacks humility. It asserts that we are DEFINITELY right, and contains no hint of the ability to admit that we might be wrong about the way that we see morality. I can’t get on board with that. A true Christian seems to me to be a teachable attitude, and one that is humble enough to admit that is made mistakes in the way it has construed morality. Furthermore, does love coerce? If you’re a Calvinist, I guess you think so, but I’m no Calvinist. Perhaps a loving parent coerces her/his children, but there are no children at stake. They are capable, rational adults.

I won’t attempt to argue with the Christian Exodus’s construction of morality. I think that’s all beside the point. My problem is that Christians wish to coerce others into being just like them. That doesn’t look like how Jesus rolled to me.

South Carolina, beware. Your state may not be yours for much longer.

Christian Exodus.

Poke around there, I’ll comment more later.

The burden of having to be someone is too much.

There’s a Bright Eyes lyric: “I’m happy just because I found out I an really no one.” I used to feel sorry for the guy singing that lyric. I thought it sad that he thought himself to be no one.

Then I realized I was wrong.

Being no one is the most liberating truth.

If I have to be someone, then we’re all in very deep trouble. The truth is, I’m always going to let you down. It’s a little sad, but it’s totally true. I may do okay sometimes, but eventually, I’m going to let you down again, and again. I’ll need more than a second chance. To quote another Bright Eyes lyric, “but me I’m not a gamble. You can count on me to quit.” That’s the way it goes.

If I stop there, then it is all terribly sad. It’s “The Empire Strikes Back” without its “Return of the Jedi.” The truth is, I can be nothing because God is everything. Forgive me for turning into a Sunday School teacher, but its truth. The God of the Universe is everything, so I can be nothing. It’s Galatians 2:20 — the somebody who will always let you down gives way to the nobody who can be filled up with Christ. That changes everything. When I don’t have to be anyone, there is space to let God make me into whatever it is I should be. It is the reality that I am no one because the God of the universe is EVERYTHING. God’s attributes are so good, are so patently above and beyond anything I can produce and imagine that I am nothing in comparison. The goodness of God is so good that I’ve got NOTHING, and I don’t have to have anything, because I just can’t.

I’ll be no one, and I’ll be fine with it.

There’s a song by a guy named Matt Redman called “Undignified.” It goes a little something like this:

i will dance i will sing to be mad for my king
nothing lord is hindering the passion in my soul
i will dance i will sing to be mad for my king
nothing lord is hindering the passion in my soul
repeat
and ill become even more undignified than this
(some would say its foolishness but)
ill become even more undignified than this
repeat

i will dance i will sing to be mad for my king
nothing lord is hindering the passion in my soul
i will dance i will sing to be mad for my king
nothing lord is hindering the passion in my soul

chorus

na na na na na na hey!
na na na na na na hey!
repeat

We sang the song and church tonight and (I bet you can guess this next part), I started thinking about it. The whole concept of being undignified became compelling. The song has one definition of being undignified — people singing and dancing and doing things that generally look foolish for the sake of God, and that’s fine. Most people in the place were perfectly fine with being “undignified” for a few minutes. I, of course, stood with my arms crossed. Thinking.

I decided that being undignified is actually a pretty damn cool concept, and thinking about how someone would live a life as undignified for the sake of the gospel is actually something that makes quite a bit of sense. I am convinced that the gospel turns the world on its head. It takes what it is deemed as important by the many, and renders it utterly useless. In turn, it takes what is utterly useless to the many, and renders it utterly vital.

Here’s the hook: to live a life rooted in the gospel is to live a life undignified. I qualify all of this by assuming that the “world” is defining dignity. In their eyes, we will lose all of our dignity. The gospel is crazy. Following it probably means that people will call us weird. It means that we will make decisions and take stands that people (even people in the church) find utterly inexplicable. It gives us an edge that makes people percieve us people who are off kilter, because we don’t buy into the system that they do. We don’t buy into the desire for power, or consumption. We do crazy things like major in Religion, or quit seminary, or go to law school for years for the sake of doing low-paying work that benefits the poor. We give up jobs that pay enough to give us all the staus and dignity we need for the sake of following the gospel. The list goes on and on. We do things that make people whisper and wonder.

The world will never understand that. We will always be questioned. When we pass by, people may say things about us. We might just be the subject of Sunday afternoon lunch conversations, even we’re not around. That’s what happens when we get crazy enough to follow the gospel, we get a little undignified.

But that’s not the end of the story. For in losing that version of dignity, we find all of the dignity in the world — the true dignity, rooted in following the gospel and realizing the kinds of people God has called us to be, and the kinds of people that God makes us. That is gaining far more than we have EVER lost.

I’m cool with that.

So this morning, I slammed on America again. Scroll down, read it for yourself.

I slam on America a lot, and sometimes, I feel bad for it. I feel like I’m being unduly hard on her, and that I’m not appreciating all of the great things there are to speak about. So, I offer a disclaimer.

I’m hard on America because:

A) It’s a hell of a place. Gender equality, racial equality, social mobility, and the like? They’re all amazing, and I’m glad that they exist. That’s a big deal. America has some great things going for it, and that makes its black eyes that much nastier. The potential of what it COULD be is juxtaposed with what it too often is — celebrity worship, irresponsible consumption, powerbrokering. Those all look nastier when compared with the things that America CLAIMS it stands for. Similarly, it’s what frustrates people so much when Geroge W. prattles on incessantly about the need to spread “democracy” (which is thinly veiled code for “how we do things in America”) throughout the world when the American way is not always satisfactory to all people. Because of the amazing thing it all COULD be, it’s difficult to deal with how things are.

B) Its great claims to faith. Religion has pervaded American life in a way that hardly exists elsewhere. For years, it’s been an obsession. And while increasing plurality threatens that obsession, religion still remains in the forefront of American culture. Living in the South, I hear voluminous rhetoric about America’s status as a Christian nation, and I hear from the Whitehouse how God is guiding this administration, even in foreign policy. That’s all fine with me. I think everyone would benefit from a little Jesus. I just can’t see where anyone means it. I don’t think it’s unfair to hold those who wish to use the name of Jesus to a higher standard. And though I may be a horrible example of what it means to be a Christian, I usually try hard, and I will doggedly insist that those who use the name of Christ to justify the things that they do show me something that at least LOOKS Christlike, or, at the very least, admit that what they are doing is not Christlike, and approach their decisions with some type of humility. If America claims to be a Christian nation, Christians have to hold America accountable. It is unacceptable for us (to borrow phrasing from Bono) to simply be the apologists of American Christian. We have a responsibility, and a duty to be the conscience of that nation as well. Those in civil power hold no sway over truth, and those of us without position must realize our own duty to pursue truth for ourselves, and to critically and honestly engage the rhertoric and the actions of the powers that be rather than simply seeking to accept and defend whatever crumbs fall from the tables of the mighty. (I stole that imagery from System of a Down. My unoriginality is thereby proven.)

That’s by no means a mea culpa, hopefully it’s some insight.

I had a dream last night about heaven. It was heaven created in my own image. There was a huge house, a three story bar, all of my friends were there. I had a waitress and I could order any kind of food that I could imagine. It was quite amazing, really. But when I woke up, I started thinking about the whole heaven thing, and how much I created heaven in my own image.

I started to wonder how often that happens. I’m pretty convinced that Biblical language about heaven is not much more than a “best guess” — an attempt to take what is utterly unexplainable, and parse it down to something that we can talk about it. Because of that best guess, and the inherent subjectivity of language, our preferences and desires often get read into the imagery we choose. To say it more concisely, pictures of heaven are contextual. In The Revelation, there is a picture of heaven has a great wedding feast — a huge banquet where the supply of food is endless, and none go hungry. This would have resonated deeply to the first century readers, in a place where supplying an adequate food source was often difficult, if not impossible. The image of heaven as a place with an abundant food supply would have been good news.

I kept thinking. What’s an American heaven like? American consumerism makes me think that most people would think of heaven as more stuff (a sin of which I’m clearly guilty). It would be an extension of American capitalism, where people would believe themselves to be fulfilled by having more and more stuff. But is that good news? Does that sort of consumerism have any solutions to any sort of problems? Can that sort of consumerism ever bring us significant completeness?

I doubt it.

So what I began to think about is this: is good news for Americans a larger slap in the face? Is our heaven a place of scaling back? Of finding out how little we actually need to subsist? Of finding out that we deeply NEED God? Of seeing that God is not simply another convenience? It seems somehow fitting that heaven would be a place where we have less, not where we have more. There’s a good chance that’s what we really need.

But just like always, I’m hypocrite #1 when it comes to all of this.

I’ve been thinking about this question. “Are we not men?” It’s intriguing.

Are we not men?

Obviously rhetorical, what the question wants to invoke is obvious. We ARE men, and there is something important in that assertion. Answering the question positively isn’t an affirmation that I have a certain set of sex organs. Answering the question positively is an affirmation that I have some deeper thing, some thing that makes me be able to say, “Yes. We are men.”

I’ve kicked all this around before — what it means to be a man. I always come up with some different answer, and that answer is never complete. So the question remains. “Are we not men?”

Usually, I try to supply answers. This time, I think I’m going to leave the question open.

What’s it mean to be men? What is that “thing” that makes us men (not THAT thing)?

Last night, Fenner and I watched “A Perfect World” on his amazing new tv. A lot of this movie wanders around the topic of what it means to be a man, and shows the process of an emasculated young boy having his masculinity bestowed upon him by another man — that man tells him he is capable, he can make decisions, he lets the boy know that he CAN be a man, and he empowers him to be a man (it’s really a great underrated movie, checking it out is worthwhile). There is a moment (which I won’t ruin), where it is clear that Phillip is empowered and is embracing the ways in which he has been empowered, but what is it? What is that thing that transforms Phillip (the young boy) into a character who can become a man? What thing is it that allows us to move from boyhood to manhood?

Another favorite (and all my friends will attest to this) male empowerment moment is from Swingers. It works like this (adult language ahead):

Trent: You know what you are? You’re like a big bear with claws and with fangs…
Sue: …big fucking teeth, man.
Trent: Yeah… big fuckin’ teeth on ya’. And she’s just like this little bunny, who’s just kinda cowering in the corner.
Sue: Shivering.
Trent: Yeah, man just kinda… you know, you got these claws and you’re staring at these claws and your thinking to yourself, and with these claws you’re thinking, “How am I supposed to kill this bunny, how am I supposed to kill this bunny?”
Sue: And you’re poking at it, you’re poking at it…
Trent: Yeah, you’re not hurting it. You’re just kinda gently batting the bunny around, you know what I mean? And the bunny’s scared Mike, the bunny’s scared of you, shivering.
Sue: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs…
Trent: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs, man! And you’re looking at your claws and you’re looking at your fangs. And you’re thinking to yourself, you don’t know what to do, man. “I don’t know how to kill the bunny.” With THIS you don’t know how to kill the bunny, do you know what I mean?
Sue: You’re like a big bear, man.
Mike: So you’re not just like fucking with me?
Trent: No I’m not fucking with you.
Sue: Honestly, man.

Honestly, man. Bears. Claws, teeth, raw salmon, the whole deal. But what makes us bears? What gives us those claws and those fangs?

Why are we drawn to Steve McQueen? John Wayne? Clint Eastwood? Samuel Jackson? Michael Jordan? Spiderman? Batman? Superman? John McClane? Maximus Decimus Meridius? William Wallace?

So, have it.

Are we not men?

(Girls most definitely allowed, and even encouraged.)

So there I was.

I stopped in the mall to browse around (but not to buy anything). I was wearing one of my favorite shirts ever. I found it at a thrift store in Georgetown. It’s amazing. Any shirt that says “All-Stars for Jesus” deserves to be called amazing. But that’s not the point.

You see, the shirt is one of my favorites because it always fit so well, and it was so freakin’ comfortable. It was a perfect shirt. However, due to recent developments, “All-Stars for Jesus” doesn’t fit like it used to. It’s too big now. However, I don’t always realize that. “All-Stars for Jesus” is a good friend. We’ve been through a lot together. When you have something like that, it’s hard to let go. But it’s true, “All-Stars for Jesus” is too big. I realized this walking by a mirror in GAP. I realized then that my shirt was too big, and that it looked sloppy. I couldn’t really get around it. Maybe nobody else noticed it, and maybe it was because I was GAP, but I felt like I looked HORRIBLE, even though there was a good chance that NOBODY else noticed a thing.

Right then, my confidence was wrecked, because my shirt was too big and I thought it looked sloppy. I started thinking about how silly that was that my confidence could be so wrekced by something so simple, but as hard as I tried, I could not shake it. I couldn’t shake that since I probably didn’t look so great I didn’t have a reason to be confident. For the rest of the night, I became increasingly frustrated with myself, and though things eventually got better, I couldn’t get the question off my mind. How is it that we base our confidence on something more than how we’re percieved by others? How is it that we find something deeper and more lasting on which to base our confidence so that even a sloppy shirt does not have the ability to shake our self-image?

I know all of the stuff about God, and who God says I am, and all of that is very true. However, it usually doesn’t help when my shirt’s too big.

It’s quite possible that I have created one of the greatest mix cd’s ever. I mean that. Ever.

It’s tentatively titled, “about a girl,” though that’s unoriginal and may change.

If you want a copy, tell me, and I’ll burn/send you one, because it’s that good. But, be warned, it’s “Bobbitt music” through and through, I made no apologies or concessions in picking the songs.

But damn, they’re good.

I woke up an hour early this morning. My intention was to have time to eat a good breakfast and watch the news for a little while. I fixed some eggs, grabbed a plate and a glass of milk, sat down, and turned on CNN. Only the second “N” was missing. It wasn’t news. It was some Teen People editor on some Good Morning America style morning show talking about skin products or something. So I tried Fox News. It was some pretty actress with a dog talking about a sitcom. So I tried Headline News. I knew their news was too in depth, but I knew it was news. I was wrong. I had to watch Tom freakin’ Cruise and his proposal to Katie Holmes. So I turned the channel back to an old friend that never lets me down, and I watched Sportscenter for 30 minutes. I was looking for something significant. I settled for baseball highlights.

What in the world happened to the news? When did the news become ratings oriented? When did the flow of information become secondary to Nielsen numbers? I could rant about it for hours, and indict capitalism, and American celebrity worship, and a hundred other things, but I won’t. I’ll just be disappointed, and watch Sportscenter.

Last week, I asked this question:

Why do I think that buying stuff will make me feel any better about anything? Why is it that I feel that I’m not a whole person unless I am consuming?

I haven’t come up with any answer to the questions, but I have decided to do something about it. My buying stuff has been out of control lately. For the next week, I’m not going to buy anything that’s not food or gas. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna spend money on “stuff” as soon as the week is over, but I gotta start somewhere.

The truth is that I know that I don’t need all of the stuff that I buy, and I know I don’t need all of the stuff that I buy, and that such consumption is irresponsible, and probably sinful. So this is my attempt to do something about it.

Feel free to join me in “Don’t Buy Stuff” week.

Back to the cheese sandwich. Why in the world is genocide a cheese sandwich?

What’s a cheese sandwich? It’s nothing. It’s the most nondescrpit thing we can imagine. White bread, orange slices of Kraft. Yellow mustard. Who cares? Eat it, throw it away, feed it to the dog, it does matter a whole lot. Nobody cares what happens to a cheese sandwich. It’s blase, it’s mundance, it’s useless and unimportant.

That’s what genocide is to most people. It’s a story on tv that doesn’t matter. It’s a bunch of Africans in a mass grave that aren’t important. Throw them away, feed them to the dogs, let it all keep going. That’s Africa, and that’s genocide to America and the West. That was the American’s point in the story.

Genocide, like a cheese sandwich, is of marginal importance to most people, and the Genocide Convention was such lip service, and such an ineffective joke that it wasn’t much more than wrapping a cheese sandwich in some fancy blue saran wrap and saying how pretty it is. Nobody cares. It doesn’t change anything.

I can’t describe how that makes me feel — how it sickens me that people are marginalized to the point of utter nothingness. “A million people died on the news tonight,” and we slept soundly in our beds. How in the hell can we, as Christians, let genocide remain a cheese sandwich? How can we let the marginalized continue to marginalized and exterminated? How is it that we’re able to stand for that, and stand completely apart from the effort to find justice for the marginal?

Genocide (and not just genocide) should be far more than a cheese sandwich. The marginalized and jeopardized should be a shrill siren in our heads that won’t let us sleep well at night or focus on much else.

Because, after all, “Jesus thrown everything off balance.”

So, I bust on America a lot, and I like to rip on “the way things are.” But I have to give credit where credit is due.

I got my oil changed today. I don’t change my oil, I get my oil changed. I pulled the beauty and the power that is the Dodge Stratus into Valvoline, and I started looking around. Every Valvoline employee that I could see, including the (I think) manager, was female. I realize there were other people under the cars working, and I have no clue as to their gender, but every employee that I could see was a woman, a couple of them were attractive women. When you realize that this would’ve been laughable 50 years ago, and that Archie Bunker would’ve never taken HIS car to be serviced by women (and I’ve known a lot of Archie Bunkers), and that, in most of the world, such a thing STILL wouldn’t be a reality, I thought it was all pretty damn cool.

“Jesus thrown everything off balance.” That’s what the Misfit tells us in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

“Jesus thrown everything off balance.” The Misfit is right. The only character in the story who makes any sense just happens to be the ringleader of a gang who murders a family. He’s the only one who gets it. I never really understood just how clearly the character understands what Jesus did until very recently.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m so damned weird. I can try to deny it, but it’s true. Most people don’t care at all about the music that I like the most. Most people don’t have any desire to read the books that I read, or to talk about the kinds of ideas that are in my head. It’s not a big deal, it’s just the way it is.

The reverse is also true. I don’t care about the things a lot of people care about, I don’t do the things that they do. I don’t have their vision of success, or their view of the opposite sex. We don’t share any of the same passions or desires. I’m weird.

And when I ask myself why, I can only come to one conclusion. “Jesus thrown everything off balance.” It’s true. Jesus changes everything. Taking Jesus seriously should make us weird as hell. We’ll have a different vision of succes. We’ll have different priorities, different passions. We CAN’T be like everyone else, because we’re this minority of people who have been thrown off balance by the life of Christ.

Reflecting on my own oddities, I like to think that Jesus is at the root of them. I like to think that being impacted by Jesus’ life is the reason I won’t date just any girl, or participate in the hookup culture. I like to think that I love the movies and the music I love (which are not usually “Christian”) because of Jesus. I like to think that I’m interested in certain things because of Jesus — that social issues motivate me because of Jesus, that genocide compels me because of Jesus, that the marginal are important to me because of Jesus.

Most of the time, I’m a pretty poor example of what it means to be impacted by Jesus and to be thrown off balance by his life. But I am weird. And if I have to be weird, I’ll blame it on Jesus.

I saw Cinderella Man this weekend.

It was okay.

Here’s why.

(Yeah, if you haven’t seen it, I’ll probably ruin it for you. If you don’t want that quit reading.)

To cut to the chase, the movie wasn’t true enough. It WAS based on a true story, and Jim Braddock really did have the career that the movie depicts, and he really did defeat Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world. But that’s not important. I’m not questioning the movie’s accuracy. I’m questioning its value as truth.

The story is sentimentalized for Hollywood and for mass consumption. This much is true. I won’t blame anyone for this desire to have far ranging appeal. It’s understandable. And, judging the movie by those standards, it was a fine film. However, I can’t stop there. I have to keep going.

Cinderlla Man is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, but the Depression is only a means to an end. It’s only the vehicle for the events that lead to the sentimentality. In my opinion, the Depression IS the story. And in that story, not everyone becomes the heavyweight champion of the world. Far too many people never do make it out of the Depression. That was human existance in the Depression — despair without hope. The movie glossed over what was truth for the sake of sentimentality.

If you’ve ever read Steinbeck, you’ve read the Great Depression through lenses of truth — the stories that don’t end well. The stories that are difficult to even read. They are, however, true. They may be fiction, but they are hung with so much truth that you can’t see anything BUT truth.

Cinderalla Man, while sentimental, contained little truth. It told all of the wrong stories. It could’ve just as easily been the story of Max Baer, and the way he was tortured over killing a man in the ring, the way he had nightmares and cried often, the way he put that man’s kids through college. Instead, Baer is turned into a villain for the sake of the story and it’s sentimentality. The truth that good is rarely as good as it seems, and that our enemies are more human than we know is swept away in order to ensure that we’re squarely in Braddock’s corner for the last fight. There is no chance we might actually want Baer to win.

I have a real problem with truth is traded for sentiment, and then paraded as something laudable. I would rather see truth that upsets me, that makes me cry, that disgust me, than a million “feel-good” stories that are sentiment chosen over truth.

Maybe I’m just no fun, and maybe I just think too much. I don’t know, you tell me.

“I hear you’re interested in genocide,” the American said. “Do you know what genocide is?”

I asked him to tell me.

“A cheese sandwich,” he said. “Write it down. Genocide is a cheese sandwich.”

I asked him how he figured that.

“What does anyone care about a cheese sandwich?” he said. “Genocide, genocide, genocide. Cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich. Who gives a shit? Crimes against humanity. Where’s humanity? Who’s humanity? You? Me? Did you see a crime committed against you? Hey, just a million Rwandans. Did you ever hear about the Genocide Convention?”

I said I had.

“That convention,” the American at the bar said, “makes a nice wrapping for a cheese sandwich.”

–Philip Gourevitch, “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda.” pp 170-171.

Chew that around for a little while. I’ll be back.

(I’ve been an updatin’ fool lately, don’t miss the other new one I wrote today.)

So tonight, I was running. I had my iPod with me, and it was on shuffle. Flipping through the songs, I came to the entire fifteen minute recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I finished up the run, listening to King talk about the promissory note that had been sent back marked, “insufficient funds.” Absolutely exhaused, I made it to my back porch, where my iPod and decided to lie on the deck for a few minutes. Lying there, Dr. King got to the part about the white folks in the crowd, and how their fate was inextricably tied to the fate of African-Americans.

So I started wondering. How in the world does an overweight white kid lying on his deck at midnight, sweating profusely, in the middle of nowhere Kentucky, listening to a 40 year old speech on a $300 gadget fit into this story? Do I fit into the story at all? This is where the hero in question enters, stage left.

Doing a Google Image search, I can’t even find a picture of Will Campbell. If I could find it, you wouldn’t be very impressed. he probably looks a lot like your grandfather. He was born in 1924 in Mississippi. That would put him squarely in the time of the movement for civil rights in America. Will Campbell is white. Because he felt such a call from God, and such a strong need to align himself with the radical thing that is devotion to Christ, Campbell participated heavily in the civil rights movement.

It’s easy to imagine the backlash of a Southern white man fighting on behalf of African-Americans. However, Campbell, because he could not help but participate in the way he saw God working in the world, endured that backlash, and fought the fight for justice for all people. Campbell wouldn’t ever call himself hero, and if he ever read this post, he would probably laugh at me for considering him a hero. However, looking at the man’s life, I see a man who was willing to be weird for the sake of the gospel. He was willing to be ostracized and considered a fool for the sake of being faith to what God was calling him to do in the world. That’s pretty damn heroic if you ask me, and way that I could only hope to live my life.

If you’re at all intruiged, you can check out this link:
Will Campbell online exhibit
Or these books:
Brother to a Dragonfly
Soul Among Lions
Forty Acres and a Goat

Is makeup a problem? Even a sin?

Besides the double standard it creates, is there something inherently destructive that makeup lends itself to fueling? The more I think about it, the more I see it as a problem that women feel compelled to (and are told to) paint their faces in order to be complete. Why do women wear makeup? To impress guys? To enhance personal confidence? Is there something screwed up about the idea that women have to apply paint to their faces in order for men to find them attractive or in order to feel confident? If I think that makeup is wrong, can I still think that girls shaving their legs is okay? Because I like that.

Ladies? What’s the story? (Guys can comment too.)

I found these at the store today. I would tell you what it means America has come to, but on these, I’ve got NOTHING.

(And this would be the second update today. Just so you know.)

Should I taste one?

Today at worked, I walked by a table, and I was SHOCKED. A little girl sat at the table with her mother and her grandmother. Perched near her was a portable DVD player, and some cartoon about dragons was playing. I couldn’t believe it. The overstimulation of America was complete in that second. A little girl couldn’t sit and wait patiently for her food, and her parents lacked the patience to teach her to wait patiently. The little girl couldn’t go 15 minutes without being entertained. Furthermore, the entertainment she had to have was the product of someone else’s imagination, someone else’s creativity.

Why are we so noisy? Why don’t we have the virtue of patience and the ability to be silent? Has this consumer culture turned us into people who must constantly be in the presence of some external stimuli? Have imagination and creativity been outsourced and rendered obsolete? Maybe I’m grandstanding a bit, but it makes me wonder.