10.25.08
Halloween. Innocent Fun?
I’m conflicted when it comes to Halloween. Is it innocent fun or is it morbid, pagan, even evil?
I’m not going to ramble in this post. I simply want to throw out the question:
It’s fun. It’s time for kids:
Harvest time has been swallowed up into Halloween time to such an extent that we cannot separate the two. We carve Jack-o’-lanterns from pumpkins, eat candy corn, and celebrate the abundance and change of seasons with cider, hay rides, apple picking and such when we celebrate Halloween. It is about candy, fall festivals, carnivals, caramel apples, and pumpkin pie. So firstly, Halloween is about having fun and eating a lot of calories.
It is about death. Okay, fair enough:
I remember from History class that post-plague Europeans would keep human skulls in various places around the house. It was to remind them of the brevity and fragility of life. I think that 21st Century Americans have seen very little death on such a scale. We only see death as disconnected from real life, such as a violent crime, disease, or accident on TV or in a movie.
So, secondly, we are excited and curious about death. Simply tracing the roots of “Day of the Dead,” we can see that at least part of Halloween that intrigues us is our fascination with death.
It is also about less-than-innocent paganism: Read the rest of this entry »
10.19.08
The Most Offensive Or Encouraging 10 1/2 Minutes Of Your Day
Please forgive the suit and tie. Try, if possible, to hear him anyway. Dr. Oakley is actually giving his closing remarks to a debate, not preaching a sermon. The full debate against George Bryson held at the Anaheim Vineyard in Southern California is available at www.aomin.org.
My purpose in posting it here is twofold. Firstly, for me personally, I despised Reformed Theology before I knew what it was. In 1997, a guy named Michael Phillips asked me if I believed in Calvinism. That question and any similar question immediately raised my blood pressure. I was certain that after two or three of those Q and A’s, that any such interrogator couldn’t possibly be a Christian. I felt judged. 9 years later, I was reading about the Exodus of Israel and God opened my eyes. Read the rest of this entry »
Alliances Within Church Culture
Here’s what I learned from USA Today on the matter:
Experts see more troubling concerns than slowing growth: No measurable inroads on overall church attendance and signs that many churchgoers are spectators, not driving toward a deeper faith.
“You can create a church that’s big, but is still not transforming people. Without transformation, the Christian message is not advanced,” says Ed Stetzer, head of Lifeway Research in Nashville, which did the Outreach study.
Dazed and Confused
Regardless of its size, the church simply needs to monitor its life and doctrine closely. I take issue with seeker-model churches not because of their motive, nor because of their method, but because of their message. The issue I have with the seeker-sensitive church is very personal. Unfortunately, my story is not unique.
Once I hit 18, like so many, I not only moved out of the house when I went to college, I got the chance to begin “shopping” for a church that was my own. Today, 14-years later, when I recognize the scope of Christian anemia in my culture today, I point at the church, not the anemic Christians themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Alignments and Alliances
You may have heard me blog about alignments and alliances recently. In various ways we create calculated distance between ourselves and others that we want to disassociate ourselves from. Similarly, we write certain other names with larger letters to associate ourselves with who we favor.
Maybe you’ve read my recent post, “Opposites,” which talks about generalization and simplification as learning tools. The more we use it, the less we truly know about those we’ve used the tool on. Then, all we are left knowing about them is only the framed ideologies that have become for us the similarities or differences from ourselves. We only know them in terms of how they affirm or do not affirm us. It’s not about them, it’s about us and how we are using them to affirm ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »
10.17.08
Are You . . . “Caught”
I’m a new fan of Mark Driscoll. He is saying what needs to be said. He does not chocolate cover the truth. He is not running for office. And frankly, he doesn’t give a rip what people think. If you can handle it, he’s posted a free e-book online. Here is a clip from Chapter 3 of “Porn Again Christian” (A Theology of Pornographic Lust).
10.14.08
How Pastors Worship “Together” (Catalyst Conference 2008)
I just returned from Catalyst. If you watched the video above you might have noticed the message coming through some of the strobe effects and smoke:
“Jesus and the Church, His Bride, united, are unstoppable together.” In case you’ve never seen how pastors worship, maybe that will give you some idea. Read the rest of this entry »
10.08.08
What is “Human?” (The Disappearing Ego)
You’ve seen my first attempt to promote this fantastic book. This is my second attempt. You simply cannot be a critically thinking adult in Western Culture and not be engaged in this critical analysis.
We are already tragically mute, misled, and frustrated in virtually all areas of epistemology–science, religion, politics, history, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, etc. There is no reason not to be looking carefully at the dilemma of being human. We simultaneously boast to be divine while we relegate ourselves to such frailty and impotence. Let’s admit that we are quite small, limited, and unable to pull off half of what we boast. The other half is merely the result of manipulating the people around us–it all reeks of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” And yet, everyone that I know is boasting. Read the rest of this entry »
10.05.08
To Die By Sneezing (part Two)
It is the average and unexceptional matters of life that are crowded out when we chase the above average and exceptional. Instead of killing those parts of me that look like my surroundings, that which is most authentic about our lives is killed. Rather, what ought to be no longer receives any oxygenated blood flow—only the ordinary stuff is celebrated. If we strive to see ourselves as we truly are, then we are preparing for a tragic upset, loneliness, and regret. We will be always traveling, but never arriving. We will be always reaching, but never grasping.
For us to gain the affirmation that we crave, we have to become contortionists and morph into all sorts of odd shapes in order to fit into a mold of collective appeal.
Here’s the dilemma. Our environment is not static. We are all moving. Prosperity has given us a tickle in our nose and it has caused us one giant sneeze. It could be described as the movement of adjusting and readjusting. We, as a society, are as though asleep and stupidly shuffling and thrashing, looking for the more comfortable position than the last. It’s hard to hold onto things. We were grabbing while we were awake. We are grabbing while we are asleep. Now, I can’t tell one from the other. Am I awake right now? Am I even alive? Read the rest of this entry »
To Die By Sneezing (part One)
To Die By Sneezing (An Involuntary Suicide)
After a violent sneeze, a previously healthy 35-year-old man had severe left-side neck pain lasting ten minutes,” we read. He developed partial paralysis and sensory loss on his left side, plus other symptoms. After tests the doctors decided he had “unilateral upper cervical posterior spinal artery syndrome,” a seven-word noun phrase that’s about as close as you can get to German and still be speaking English. To put it in simpler terms, an aneurysm in the neck following the sneeze probably led to a loss of blood flow to part of the spinal cord, causing nerve problems.[1]
Strangely, I can identify with this guy. I’ve got the strange gene the causes me to sneeze when I come outside from a dimly lit restaurant into the bold noonday sun. I’ve sneezed hard enough to see stars. Isn’t that the sensation found in stories where the main character has moved from reality into make believe. There is a flash, and then a settling of stars, and then he looks around as if to identify himself or his surroundings. Who am I? Where am I? Read the rest of this entry »
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