Boots and Bibles

A Holiday We Truly Deserve

Ahh...  I can smell the sweat coming from the foreheads of anxious moms...  I can hear the swearing and yelling as people grope for the next "big savings" purchase...  I see the dollar signs dancing around Macy's like sugarplums once danced through our heads...

It's Black Friday, once again!

With that irritating secular^* holiday out of the way where we more or less make an effort to edify the family, we can now be free to shop 'til we drop, engage in consumer frenzy and greed to our hearts' content, and run-riot over shopping malls and Wal-Marts across America!

Black Friday, whether it is officially sanctioned as such, has become something of a national holiday.  It has a name, a set day of the year (the Friday after the fourth Thursday of November), we get off of work for it, people have a definite set of "ideals" they carry into Black Friday celebrations; but what are those ideals exactly?  How do we celebrate the first holiday born from modern consumer culture?

Well, some stores are opening up at 4:00 AM so consumers can rush in and grab the deals faster than everyone else!  Mild-mannered men and women becoming slobbering monsters as the opportunity to appease the gods (read: spoiled brats and ungrateful relatives) presents itself.  "Sale!" signs go up on a shop's window, and the masses go berserk.  People lose sleep, comfort, health and lots of money in order to celebrate Black Friday.  We sacrifice and we give our all so that the things we truly value in life will be glorified; shopping, selfishness and material possessions.

I often wonder if I'm the only person sickened by the irony that all these Black Friday jubilations all more or less depend on the particular way we in the twenty-first century celebrate an inherently religious holiday.  In an effort to somehow thank Baby Jesus for showing up and ridding the world of cancer and super-criminals, we spend and spend on what in the great scheme of things is meaningless, trifling, and in all likelihood, will be completely outmoded and outdated in about six-to-eight months.  On the other hand, family togetherness doesn't really seem to be helped by this phenomenon.  Kids simply see their parents more and more as ATM machines and stuff dispensers.  Parents lose the joy of parenting in the midst of ungratefulness and consumer frenzy.  Churches are packed on that day, but I'm also forced to wonder how many people packing those churches give a rat's rear-end about what Jesus and the writers of the Bible actually said about materialism?

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

-Matthew 6:19-21

Hmm...  That says a lot.  "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Black Friday seems to speak great volumes about where our hearts are then.  But let's go a little further, shall we?

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

-Matthew 6:25-32

An odd thing there too — Jesus says it's pagans who go running after clothes, food and drink, much in the same way we (often literally) run after our material goods on Black Friday.  Are we feeling convicted yet?

While sadly, most Christians in this country don't seem to understand Jesus' commands about materialism and greed, there is a non-denominational (close to Universalist-Unitarian) street-performer who does.  The man named "Reverend Billy" has begun an activist/non-profit group called The Church of Stop-Shopping.  Many years ago, here in my very own town of New York, Rev. Billy saw what Starbucks, the Gap, and the Disney Store were doing to our fair city.  So, he started preaching.  He preached against consumer frenzy.  He preached against materialism.  He preached against exorbitant consumer debt and whimsical spending habits, and he has also been subsequently arrested for these activities.

Several weeks ago, I got to see his movie that has just come out, What Would Jesus Buy?^{^}  It's not as scathing as some documentaries on the subject matter such as Maxed Out!, but it illustrates its points cogently and with a great deal of flare and comedy.  This movie has also found rave reviews at Christian film festivals, so much so that the director said that Evangelical Christians received it with more excitement than it did at its debut at South-By-Southwest (SXSW for those who are "in the know.")  Reverend Billy never takes the potshots or low-blows at Christian hypocrisy and American stupidity that many come to expect from the activist crowd, but instead he focuses on what Christmas is supposed to be about, about how the greatness and freedom of America can be reclaimed from chain stores and mall-based monoculture.  In many ways, he's far more reverential to both Christ and this season than the vast majority of "Christians" are.

His movie disturbs me all the same however for one simple reason - Reverend Billy himself is not a Christian.^~  In fact, when I look for the Christian voices in the wilderness speaking against this greed and nonsense (and especially the near-idolatrous nature of it all since this is supposed to be a holiday celebrating Christ) I hear very little.  There's a Jim Wallis over there, a Stanley Hauerwas in the corner, maybe even a confrontational Greg Boyd stomping in the middle of the room, but for the most part we have Osteen, Jakes, Meyer and Hinn.  "Buy!  Spend!  Shop!  Money is awesome! It's God's gift to us for being so holy!"

It's probably too late for this message to really make it out to any Black Friday revelers today, but maybe soon you should check out What Would Jesus By? and ask yourself what all this is about.  Black Friday is not a holiday we should be celebrating — it is a phenomenon we should be mourning.  Even among devout Christians, however, I see no sackcloth or ashes.  Just credit cards, shopping bags, plastic smiles, and little tokens that say "Jesus is the reason for the season!"

Is He?

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* - A friend on Christianwriters.com actually pointed out to me that this is a holiday which has become secularised.  The idea behind "Thanksgiving" (Greek - eucharist) is that the Pilgrims thanked God for sparing them, and used the Native Americans as His instrument of mercy.  It's actually a very Christian holiday, but we never really hear about that, do we?

^ - For a more in-depth review of Rev. Billy and What Would Jesus Buy?, I reccomend Walter Bruggemann's November article in Sojourner's Magazine. (Registration required.)

~ - At the showing of the film that I was priveliged to take in, the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir actually came and performed, and an audience member asked at the Q&A how many of them were, in fact, Christians.  I can happily say two or three of them (including the choir director) rose their hands.

So, How Am I Doing?

Several individuals have posed this question to me of late.  Actually, it's almost uncanny how many people have asked me this within the past three weeks when compared to how many people have asked in the past year.  It probably has something in part to do with Facebook, and probably also has something to do with the one-year anniversary of my wedding having passed just recently.

For whatever reasons, nonetheless, I've had the equivalent to a small army division — a squadron if you will — ask concerning my present "status."  The e-mails, Facebook messages and blog comments have come too frequently for me to address each of them individually regarding such a poignant and involved question.  It's in my nature, I suppose, to take "How are you doing?" with utmost gravity.  Another fascinating rider to this question though, which is why I'm presently moved to answer this in a public forum such as the "blogosphere", is "what are you doing for ministry these days?"  This question, which arrived so often with the other, has been far more vexing and of much deeper concern to me, but the answers to both lay in the same long-winded rant that I presently submit for teh intarnetz' approval.

In the past year-and-change, I have seen to the end of a ministry that God called me fifteen-hundred miles from "home" to start, CBGB's has been shut down, I have gotten married, and I have watched as former congregants were dragged into lives of sin and unbelief.  I have seen the reports telling me that Coney Island will soon be a memory, winter may never come again, terrace culture may be down for the count in England, and the punk and hardcore subcultures to which I have owed so much will have nothing left to live on in the city of its birth.  I have graduated from college, nestled into a too-comfortable state of ignominious obscurity at a number of bland and soul-draining temp jobs, become slightly addicted to Lord of the Rings Online, and had to face parts of my past and my heart that I hope would never come back again.  I have looked into my soul and found hatred, violence, despair and wrath.  I have found myself utterly lacking in every department required for one who would be involved in ministry.  I have found myself questioning whether eugenics, forced sterilisations and abortion are really bad things; I have nearly decided that bringing children into a world that is this evil will only be a curse upon them and their parents.  I have been too afraid and ashamed to even show my face to other friends I had who were in the "outcast nation" church movement.  I have been so sickened with Christianity that I found it hard to even pray for all the filth and horror that Christians are responsible for deluging this country with.  I have seen the glories of Ireland and subsequently lost what remained of my patriotism.  I have held on to hopes of continuing my education with the barest strand of optimism.  I have convinced myself that I was a failure.  I have wallowed in depression.

Something changed a few weeks ago though.

My wife and I went upstate for her first crafts festival, and while we were up there, something was whispered into my ear:

The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.

This comes from Romans 11:29.  Now, the context for this verse is another issue that I'll let you guys explore on your own for now.  This isn't going to be an in-depth, academic analysis of the sitz im Leben behind Paul's letter to the Romans, nor is it to be a careful, inductive study of what "amëtamëleta" means, but I think the truth of this simple blurb is evident enough.  Irrevocable means irrevocable.  That means if God gave me a gift of being able to play music amazingly well, and I could perform like a maniac, but I decide to become a nihilistic debauched rock star, that "gift" is going to stay with me.  God might have given me that gift for some other purpose, but because it was given to me, it will not leave.  It will not turn its back on me.  In essence, it is irrevocable.  The greater question, in light of this, isn't do I have the gifts and calling that God gave to me but what am I doing with God's gift or am I pursuing that calling?

I looked at the shattered remains of what I fought those four long years to accomplish.  I looked at what five years in New York City — my city, the city on my heart, the city I love — had come to.  I contemplated the same gloomy realities that had bombarded me for the past year, but then realised that in the meantime I had lost nothing.  My gifts — whatever they were or are — remain.  My calling to preach, teach and help has never left.  Indeed, things in New York City may be crumbling to ashes.  It may be the time soon to "knock the dust from my boots", but who I am, what God made me for, the purpose to which I must attend has not changed one bit.  Those things are irrevocable; they can be misspent — pissed away in a cubicle or an online game, they can be hounded by frightful facts and domestic difficulties, but they do not go away.

Presently, I am praying and hoping to find exactly where that calling is leading me.  I am growing stronger in the meantime.  I am praying again.  I'm reading my Bible.  I can face people from the underground once more.  And hopefully very shortly, I'll also be figuring out just what I'll be doing to pursue ministry.

I'll add too that one of the most encouraging things that has happened to me in a long time is that so many people have asked me exactly how I was going about this.  People haven't asked "if", or "whether", or anything that would provide for an "escape clause".  The question has simply been how I'm doing it, and maybe an implied what am I doing or when.  I don't know those answers yet, but I have some good leads.  It may mean another time of wandering, of finding a new home, of going away from everything and everyone I care for and love.  It may mean different cities, different countries, different demographics, or all of the above.  It may mean picking up exactly where I left off, finding those punks and skins who don't know my Lord, and telling them how it is.  Prayers for guidance would be appreciated, as well as prayers for repentance and healing.

You wanted to know what I was doing, so here it is.  I am a desk-monkey at the Warner Music Group for the time being, but that's just something to bide the time, something that keeps a roof over my head while I go back to the prayer closet, while I get things sorted out; something to sustain me while I wait for His orders...  but all in all, I'm doing well right now.  Thank you very much for asking.  You'll hear more about what's going on as it develops.  In the mean time, stay gold, and God be with you all.

Celebrating Our Protestant Heritage

HAPPY REFORMATION DAY!

Okay, so this is technically a day late, but I figured this is better than never.  Besides, if I posted this on the day after I posted "On Atheism as Religion", I wouldn't have given that far more thoughtful post the opportunity to comment farm properly.  (Eric O - thank you, and I agree wholeheartedly.)

So, I was thinking about what made the Protestant Reformation so important the other day, and concluded in light of how Protestantism has denigrated back to just about everything Luther was attacking in his 95 theses (pastoral/spritual abuse, extra-biblical doctrines, salvation as a gift of God's grace - not something earned) I was hard pressed to find a real reason to celebrate Reformation Day as opposed to, oh, say, Samhain.

Then I got it!

Right now, we have a right, nay, an obligation to read the Bible translated into everyday language  because of what Luther did for us!  Why, you can find over twenty English translations at biblegateway.com alone!  Of course, C.S. Lewis sardonically noted on this point that it's "Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated."  And, again, if we actually knew the original languages, then maybe we wouldn't have all those erroneous doctrines floating about.  Ah, but nevermind all that rubbish!  Learning archaic languages for the sake of growing closer to God and understanding His word is outmoded and proposterous!  I mean, who does that, right?

Right?

So, in the vein of Jerome's Vulgate (ironically, a translation intended for the masses, but which eventually became so codified that Reformation-era translations often developed in opposition to it,) Martin Luther, and Eugene Peterson,  I provide you with a biblical translation in a language that the people of the coming generation will understand.  It is a translation for people who think that thirty-second commercials are twenty seconds too long!  A translation for people who spell like e.e. cummings, but are nowhere nearly as groundbreaking, or for that matter, intelligent.  Here is a translation fit for the new English language, as it will certainly always be, for another ten or fifteen years!

I give you the Power-Gamer Standard Translation (PGST) of one of the Reformation's linchpin verses, Romans 8!

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[*Paul] Look guys, ur not getting perma-banned if you’re cleared with +Jesus+, kk? The +Jesus+ modhacks and TOS exempt you from the perma-frag TOS. Because most of the @sshats out there are griefing, wallhacked lemurz, the old TOS didnt work. +God+ made an alt in +Jesus+, and played along with everyone else, and basically used an exploit to pwn those griefing DBs and make sure that us carebears will get to the infinite re-roll server. Griefing, power-gaming, goldpharmed, lewt-whores set their minds to goldpharming and lewt-whoring, but u guys are RPers, casuals, and old-school gamers – ur a dev’s bff! Those lewt whores are gonna’ get PK’d, but u guys are gonna’ power-level and be soloing super-elites!

The lewt-whore’s brain cant’ stop griefing the devs, because they get sick of the TOS, and because they can’t even comprehend enjoying the game for its own sake, they just QQ more and more! I’m telling u though, the mods hate lewt-whores! But you aren’t lewt-whores if you got +God+’s hacks, k? If you don’t have those hacks yet, you totally need to load that patch… Like, now! There are some bit-torrent sites where you can upgrade.

Just remember, +Jesus+ will keep your toon in the raid, even if you go linkdead. Look, the code that let +Jesus+ re-spawn on a perma-death server is working in you and will make sure of that! But, cuz of this, we have an obligation to not grief, to cheat exploits, to not roll “need” all the time, cuz if you roll that way, you’re totally getting perma-banned from the servers that matter! But if you’re taking out those wallhacks and totally rolling “pass” or “greed” except when you really need it, ur cool.

If you’re going with +God+’s hacks, then you can be in the guild. U don’t need to worry about getting kicked if you don’t make the raid on time, but you can solo your way to sixty for all we care, we just want you having fun while ur doing it. That’s what the latest dev-patch was made for, so we could be +God+ and +Jesus+’s guildies, and we’ll get a share of the phat lewtz. But tehy were griefed, so we’ll get griefed to, but that’s so we can go on to the inifite re-roll server where none of those DBs will be.

Look, the grief and bugs we’re getting now will be taken care of when we move all our toons to the new server, and I cant wait! Everyone’s been waiting for the chief devs to open that server up, but the devs knew they couldn’t let any pwnzoring WoW kiddie in on that stuff, so we get the free trial here, kk? The devs wanna’ see who they can trust with infinite re-rolls and open RP. They want the right guilds in there. Right now everyone’s QQing, crying “Nerf!” “Buff!” “Mezz!” “Tard!” and for crying out loud, the freakin’ games going nuts on us sometimes! We get server lag and rubber-banding all the time! And like u guys even get sick of it. It sucks! But teh awesome thing is we all get keys to the new servers when it opens, and we all know it’s gonna’ rockz0r, rite? I mean, we get the preview client (awesome, eh?) but we still don’t really know what it’s going to be like on the infitite re-roll server… We just hope and keep hoping – but hope that is seen isn’t hope. We hope now because we know how AWESOME that new server’s going to be!

[[Announcement]] +Jesus+ PWNS the Griefers and Server Lag!

[*Paul]In the same way the modhacks help us when we’re getting pwnd – cuz we don’t know what were doing all the time, but +Holy_Spirit+ has us covered. And the chief-dev has the chatlogs for all that stuff too, He knows what kind of buffs we need, so He’ll hand them out when He knows we’re ready.

We know that +God+ uses the storyline and even the PvPers exploits for good to His guildies so we can have the best server party ever! He’s had flags up on the guys who’d QQ and lag, and teh guys who just need some teenking. When +Jesus+ upgraded to the new server, +God+ wanted to make sure the entire guild came with Him. So, the guildies who are picked get invites, and the guys who get invites get buffs, and the guys who get buffs are gonna’ have epic gear! FTW! If +Jesus+ is your guild leader, you’ll never wipe! The chief-dev didn’t go KSing with his alt, but became the main-tank for the entire faction, and he took the worst PvP ganking ever for our sakes. U think +God+’s gonna’ lewt-whore on you? Who can even /report us? If +God+ upgraded us, who can really grief us? Who can kick us off the server? Well, +Jesus+ can – and He has every right to after getting ganked like that! But even still, He’ll give you faction rep if you do the right quests and RP, and He’ll make sure the chief-dev doesn’t boot us.

What can separate us from +Jesus+’s kick-downs? Server downtime, instance lag, griefing, node-ninjas, debuffs, elites, or PvP raids? Just like the RP log says:

WERE ALWAYS GETTING PWNED, PWNED LIKE NOOBS!!!!11!!1

But we totally take the map when we grind rep for the Kingdom! I am convinced neither frags, nor wins, nor devs, nor haxx0rz, nor the current version, nor the upcoming patch, nor routers, nor clipping-errors, nor crashes, nor anything EVER can separate us from +God+’s teenking in +Jesus+, FTW!!!!11!!11!

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Isn't it great being a Protestant?

Special thanks to the forum trolls at the Lord of the Rings Online who inspired the original endeavours in the PGST translation.