More photos in the album to the left.

More news as it breaks….

UPDATE ~7:30 a.m.

Yesterday I linked to Andrew Osenga’s post (his site appears to be down, but I have copied the relevant text here at the end of this post) about the differences between Live8 and a gigantic Christian music festival being held the same day. Some comments have already started to surface about this, and I decided to move my responses from the comment section to here. To be fair, I’m not trying to go at anyone in particular. I don’t think the comments that prompted this post are unique or represent an uncommon perspective in the American church. So, I’m not picking on my commenters. I’m picking on a lot of people, including myself. I’m not very good at what I’m about to preach about, but I’m wrestling with it almost every day, and I’m praying that my life will be transformed in this area.

First, it wasn’t Andrew’s point (or mine) to exalt the motives or lives of the celebrities at Live8. There’s plenty of silliness in that whole scene. But here’s the deal – I’m more inclined to reserve the label of hypocrisy (which is the common and completely understandable response for many of us when we see Brad Pitt and Snoop Dogg talking about how wealthy countries should help poor countries) for Christians, or at least to apply it more rigorously in that context. Why?

Live8 rock stars aren’t under any particular mandate to do what they’re doing. If their motives aren’t entirely pure or their words and lives terribly consistent, well, who’s surprised? Obviously not us. In that way, they have the luxury of posing for a good cause before chartering the private jet to Cabo.

But here’s what I think matters: Christians do have a particular mandate in this area, and Americanism and conservatism have mostly neutered this part of the Gospel. They have made us more concerned about being irresponsibly generous than about actually feeding, clothing, and housing Jesus. Yes, Jesus. He said it, not me.

Again, I’m not preaching at you any more than I’m preaching at me. I’m just saying. It’s in the Bible: Feed hungry people. He doesn’t attach many conditions to this command to give and live generously. He doesn’t say, "feed them as long as they prove they deserve to be fed." You think he didn’t know lazy people existed and would continue to exist? That seems unlikely, yet we think we need to add all sorts of caveats and conditions to his teaching. Jesus didn’t coin the "teach a man to fish…" maxim. That doesn’t mean it’s a categorically bad idea; it just means it’s time for us to stop using the folks who take advantage of generosity as a crutch for ignoring one of Jesus’ most common and most consequential teachings.

Listen, do we really pay attention to the fact that all the "feed, clothe, and house me" talk is buried in a passage about sheep going one way and goats going another? He actually tells people who neglect the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick, and imprisoned to Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Are we really so willing to continue to hedge on this?

One other note which has been acknowledged in the previous comments: Applying the standard arguments about irresponsible American welfare recipients to the global poverty discussion is a really, really bad idea. Read a little on global poverty first. Even if you think those arguments work for Christians and the poor in this country (and I’m not nearly as convinced as I used to be that they do, or that being poor in the U.S. is always a choice), global poverty isn’t the same animal by a long shot. Over 1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. Another two billion have about twice that. That’s not because they happen to be the 3 billion laziest people in the world or because the art of fishing has eluded them. In most cases it’s because they have zero opportunity to change their circumstances (and it’s hard to fish where there’s no water). There are millions of men, women, and children in the world working at least twice as hard of any of us just so they can starve slowly instead of all in one week. This isn’t Sally Struthers cheese. It’s the world we live in; the world God gave us.

Why are we taught to spend more time thanking God for all the many ways He has "blessed us and our nation" than living out the reality that we’ve been blessed to bless others? In all of our years of good Christian training, why have we never been encouraged to ponder the biblical reality that Jesus generally seems to take a much greater interest in "the poor" (and the oppressed, neglected, unpopular, and unclean) than he did in the responsible, tax-paying good citizens?

So yeah, there’s a difference in the point of Live8 and the point of a hundred thousand Christians throwing a party on July 4th weekend to entertain themselves. And, frankly, that difference is the point.

Continue reading →

• I like bacon. A lot.
• In five days or less, I will begin using phrases such as "my daughter" and "the kids" and "Wow, having two kids really is twice as expensive as having one" and "Hey drooling punk, quit staring at my daughter….yeah, I’m talking to you over there in the blue stroller." [For those who don’t know, Amy will be induced on Monday if the baby girl hasn’t made her own way into the external world by then. And no, she doesn’t have a name yet.]
• I’m not interested in your suggestions about what we should name our child.
• I am so Lance Armstronged out. Seriously, we get it. All the cancer left his body, he has an oversized heart, and he rides a bike faster than anyone else (especially in the mountains). Congratulations, Lance. You’re the best bike rider ever. Hey kids on blue and yellow Huffys all over America – give up. You can’t be as awesome as Lance (unless, of course, you contract and subsequently heal from a fatal disease, then ride your bike faster than anyone else in France 42 years in a row). Can we be done with it already?
• I have a diagnosable split-personality disorder triggered almost exclusively by incompetent and inconsiderate drivers, who turn me into a profanity-prone cliché of a man. Newsflash America: When you are in a left-turn lane and you see a round light approximately this color, it is not only your right but your responsibility to pull out into the intersection so as to be ready to make a swift left turn when traffic clears (and before the light turns approximately this color). If you choose instead to sit safely behind the white line, you will most likely cost both you and me the opportunity to turn left until we all sit through another full cycle of changing lights. Why is this so difficult to understand?
• I think Ricky Gervais is one funny Brit. Don’t miss his Live8 bits.
• I think Andrew Osenga’s thoughts on the contrast between Live8 and the Christian uberfest he played the same day are pretty important.
• Weird things happen in my mind. For instance, I visualize days of the week and months of the year. Monday has a particular static look in my head. So does Friday, and it’s a different look. February looks one way, October another. These aren’t associated seasonal images. These are unique visualizations that connect to the days/months before and after them to construct a whole that also has a particular look. There are others. If I were actually capable of doing something impressive with these weird things in my brain, I’d try to pass myself off as a savant. Sadly, I think I’m just weird.
• Other weird things happen in my mind. For instance, I’ve recently (and mostly involuntarily, if you can believe that) found myself repeatedly thinking about the following question: "If you had to choose a small number (say 20 or 30) of recorded songs for your personal listening collection and surrender the ability to listen to any other recorded music in any other form for the rest of your life, what songs would you choose?" Let me reiterate that I didn’t intentionally come up with this question. I delete the emails asking me to list my favorite TV shows and describe my first kiss. I scoff at lists of the "Top 20 <whatever> of all time." I don’t know what in my disturbed, juvenile subconscious produced this question, but there it is, rattling around my skull over and over for the last few days. And, for the record, the question didn’t ask the Top 20 recorded songs of all time. It asked what songs I’d want to preserve for myself. There’s a difference. Some of the songs I would want to hang on to would never make a Top 20 list of any kind. I doubt I’ll ever actually make the list, but a few songs have consistently come to mind along with the question. My hope is that outing them will rid me of this nuisance thought pattern for good. In no particular order:

North Dakota, Lyle Lovett; Hard to Get, Rich Mullins; In Your Eyes, Peter Gabriel; Lonely Moon, Kevin Smith; Suspicious Minds, Dwight Yoakum; Carolina in my Mind, James Taylor; Easy, Lionel Richie; Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn; At Last, Etta James; Sleeping to Dream, Jason Mraz; Let’s Get it On, Marvin Gaye; The Man from Snowy River Soundtrack (some medley of a couple of instrumental tunes); Coming to Life, The Normals; Why Should I Cry for You, Sting; You Move Me, Susan Ashton; Fast Car, Tracy Chapman; One, U2.

I’m sure much of the list would change if tyrannical music terrorists really forced me into such a predicament, and I’ll probably laugh at a few of these when I read this again in a month. Blame it on my weird brain. Oh, and a note to those of you in my life who record music for a living: Since the tyrants only seem to be interested in infringing on recorded music rights, I assume I’d still have you around to sing and play to me in person. Consequently your brilliant recordings are lost in the mass audiocide. It’s sad, I know, but oppression is a bitch.

• Once in a while I use words like the last one in that last paragraph, especially when linguistic rhythms make anything else seem inadequate. No sense in pretending otherwise.
• I like my life. I like my wife. I like my boy. I like that, though I’m scared to death of having a girl, I’m more excited than scared about seeing her face. I like my family, blood and covenant. I like writing. I like Jesus. I like the idea of "what’s next" for me in terms of how I spend my time and make my money, even when "what’s next" doesn’t seem clear enough or close enough. I like getting to write here, and I like when you write here.

Scot McKnight, who I quoted in last week’s confessional post, is now talking about something else I continue to struggle through – my desire to make sense of what I hope is an increasingly holistic understanding of my identity in Jesus in a political system where I am conflicted about how to behave and who to support.

His commentary apparently addresses the dangers of pursuing social justice to the end of legalism, but I believe he’s really talking to all of us who vote and politic with religious and moral motive. No clear answers here, but I believe he has added something meaningful to the conversation.

I’m thirty and Michael Jackson is, at least legally speaking, innocent. Quite a day.

Aside from the obvious cork-popping over Michael’s acquittal, my 10,950th* day of exposure to the world’s pains and pleasures has been mercifully uneventful. Believe it or not, thirty doesn’t really seem to be phasing me, and I’m not a big birthday celebrator anyway. I’m all for celebrating and loving-up on people, but let’s be honest — we were all born and we all have a birthday every year. So, I’m happy to be wrapping up my 30th birthday sitting on the couch, eating the remnant shards of tortilla chips in the near-empty bag, enjoying a cold beverage, watching Dave (who just did a genius bit on the absurdity of celebrities who whine about privacy in between crack-backs on MJ and the jury).

[I also just saw a commercial where apparently someone claimed Madagascar is the funniest movie of the year. Please be advised that this is not true. I haven’t seen many films this year, but Madagascar was decidedly unfunny, both for me and my almost-three year-old son.]

Nicole Kidman is on with Dave, and she must be using extraordinary quantities of botox. Which reminds me, I am conclusively uninterested in any aspect of the romance/alleged romance between Scientologist Tom Cruise and Scientologist Katie Holmes. Everywhere I turn it’s Tom Cruise acting the fool on Oprah and Katie Holmes giggling with Regis and Kelly Lee. People are starving and living in fear of a genocidal demise all over the planet and this is what corporate media outlets choose to cover again and again (and, apparently, what many of us want to hear about)? I mean, really? No wonder half the world hates us.

And while I’m discussing serious tragedy, I should mention that it occurred to me recently that I will be very sad when Dave retires. No matter that he was snubbed for the Tonight Show, Dave is my generation’s Johnny Carson inasmuch as there is such a thing. Sure, he’s not as popular or universally embraced as Johnny, but he has character and presence and he’s become more human and relatable over time. Anyway, I’ll be sad when he quits, and I have a feeling that we’ll have very little warning when it happens.

So, as I was saying before, I’m thirty and happy. I have an amazing family — a loving, beautiful wife who is an exceptional mother to our children (including the one she’s going to hatch in a month or so, for whom she is presently suffering a great deal) and my faithful best friend and biggest fan; this unreasonably warm, funny, charming kid who makes every one of my days brighter and better just by being alive; and a baby girl who I haven’t met, whose name I don’t know, but who is certain to revolutionize our lives all over again very soon. I have parents who love me who have done me far more good than harm; brothers and sisters who are true friends; friends who are like brothers and sisters; and a church community who is, indeed, our family. I know a God who gave me all of this, who sustains me in ways I don’t deserve, and who will hold me in ways I can’t imagine. If there’s anything else, surely it’s completely superfluous.

_____________

*Dear math nerds wanting to tell me that I’ve actually been alive a few days more or a few days less. I didn’t bother with leap year math. It’s my birthday. Leave me alone.

3X CLEANGUARANTEED

That’s what the container of Old Spice brand High Endurance Body Wash in the basket suction-cupped to the wall of my shower is shouting at me every morning. Oddly enough, this bottle has been there for weeks, staring me down each time I shower, and I never noticed its bold and delightfully confusing promise until today. Apparently this particular brand of chemically-engineered, perfumed gel-like substance will cause me to be three times (3 times!) cleaner than…well, than something. The bottle doesn’t bother to specify, but I can only assume that before starting to use Old Spice brand High Endurance Body Wash, I was only one third as clean as I am now, probably wandering around, smelling up the world and generally grossing people out.

This morning when I discovered that I was now beginning each day with this  tremendous strategic advantage over the rest of the disgusting, unwashed vagabonds I interact with every day who use some other kind of body wash or, heaven forbid, bar soap, I was reminded of something Amy and I noticed yesterday morning on our way to gather with our little community of unwashed vagabonds (where we probably don’t get anyone three times cleaner than they’d get at other churches, and where we certainly don’t guarantee anything like that). Anyway, as we drove up the avenue named after our current president’s paternal father person, Amy chuckled as she gazed out the window on her side of the car. I glanced over and immediately knew what she’d seen, because I see it almost every day on my way to work. It’s a sign that says this:

Hillel Foundation

The Friendliest Jewish Student Center in the Nation

I’m not sure why that always strikes me as funny, but knowing that it was funny to Amy gave me a little more reason to doubt my own insanity. Now listen, I have nothing against the nice folks in the world who adhere to Judaism [A phrase
which almost always indicates that one does, indeed, have something against the
person or group of people to whom s/he is referring, but which does not
indicate such here for this reason – I don’t know many Jewish people and,
beyond the obvious, I confess to knowing very little about Jewish religion and
culture. If anything, I’m igno-Semitic, but certainly not anti-Semitic. If Jews
run the media and the global economy the way all the paranoid bigots think they
do, I’m none the wiser.] Anyway, as I was saying, I’m all for Jewish Aggies
having a nice place to gather, worship, and enjoy one another’s company. And,
for all I know, this could really be the friendliest Jewish Student Center in
the Nation. I’m just wondering how they know and, moreover, why they feel
compelled to market themselves against other Jewish Student Centers in other
locales. I mean, why not a slogan like, “The Friendliest Religiously-Oriented
Student Center at Texas A&M” or something of the like? What sort of
competitive advantage do they gain by telling Jewish students (who, as far as I
can tell, have no other designatedly-Jewish place to hang out in this community
of gentiles) that This Jewish Student Center is Better Than the Jewish Student
Center at that God-Forsaken university in Austin.

Part of my curiosity is probably rooted in the fact that I just didn’t
realize other religious tribes had entered the murky waters of theistic
marketing that we professing Christians have become so comfortable in. We have
a new non-denominational church in town that recently held its grand opening.
They mailed out fliers to everyone in town that, between production and
postage, certainly cost them several thousand dollars. The fliers, despite
several glaring grammatical errors that made me crazy, were colorful and laded
with stock photos of lots of handsome folks of varying ethnicities, most of
whom have likely never been to Texas or spent any time thinking about whether
people in Texas should attend a new church with exciting worship and relevant
teaching about how to have better families and manage their money better
and….anyway. I guess this is all considered reasonable and necessary these
days, but surely we can come up with some real photos of real people who really
go to your church. I’m terribly tempted to walk into the church, flier in hand,
and ask to meet the nice elderly black couple in the picture. Anyway, we have
another church in town that just started a fifteen minute service on Sunday
mornings for “busy people on the go!” Handy. I’m getting off track.

I’m not angry at any of these folks; I just confess I no longer understand
the desire for those of us who identify ourselves as participants in God’s
Kingdom to put flashy labels on our bottles. What sort of pressure do we feel
to grab our share of the market? Why does the Hillel Foundation need to be the
Friendliest in the Nation to be attractive to its constituency or be confident
in its identity (both bad assumptions about motive, I’m sure)? Why do our
churches invest so much time, money, and identity in developing pretty packages
with labels promising things we can’t guarantee to people who generally don’t
think they need what we’re selling?

I mean, until Old Spice brand High Endurance Body Wash told me it was
already getting me three times cleaner than ______, I hadn’t felt a burning
urge to find a way to be three times cleaner than I was. And, let’s be honest,
there’s no one who works for Old Spice brand High Endurance Body Wash (or its
parent company, the devil worshipping Procter & Gamble) who has the
wherewithal to investigate whether or not I am, indeed, three times cleaner
than when I use my normal routine of Lever 2000 Pure Rain (which, I assume, is
made from lye and, well, pure rain collected somewhere beyond the acidic skies
of the U.S.), so that guarantee probably isn’t worth the manufactured plastic
it’s printed on. And, frankly, by the end of the day, the Old Spice smell is
long gone and I’m no cleaner than the rest of you hosers coated in soap scum.
I’m not sure our churches, by and large, are doing much better than the body
wash people. We’re generally trying to convince people that we can give them
something they’re not really looking for, only to offer more perfume than
power.

Or something like that. It made sense in my head.

[My apologies to the local Hillel Foundation for dragging them into my
musings about gentile religious silliness. I’m confident it’s full of
exceptionally friendly people, and I hope our paths cross sooner or later.]

I beg of you, take two minutes and watch this.

ß over there. These are especially for those of you unhappy with us for peeling the boy’s head. Enjoy.

The latest update on his blog. My original post (if you missed it) is here. The link to help with medical bills is also at the top over there à­­­­­­­.