Boots and Bibles

Accentuating the Negative - Part 1

It's hard for me to see the bright side. Some grim, fatalistic framework inside my mind keeps me from getting too upset about this, but from time to time, it grows worrisome. The brooding pessimist is usually a self-fulfilling prophet. He also tends to quickly become old and irritating, and he definitely has a hard time at parties.

Problem is, I'm always seeing people go to parties, and sometimes I want to be a part of it, too.

Take this one party I keep hearing about. There, prophets and preachers talk about God pouring out His anointing, showering us with blessings, and sending His message with grandiose power to the ends of the Earth. They talk about how this generation from my country is going to rise up and bring millions to Christ. I hear people talking about them, saying all these great things, and think, "Wow. That's really cool. I'd really like to believe that. I think that's probably why they've gathered those crowds of thousands – people would very much like to believe what they're saying."

Then I take a look around; I see the obstinance of the church. I see the depravity of the world's culture. I see the vaunting of empiricism, the draw of universalism, and the continual and contradictory rise of tribalism that crosses all cultures and creeds. I see my generation falling into a pit from which it truly would take a miracle to escape. Then, I also note how so many of the miracles purportedly performed at this party are faked, and it gets a little worse.

I open my mouth, I say what I see, and my invitation suddenly vanishes.

There's this other party too. The one where all the cool kids are talking about the future, technology, and humanism. They say that globalisation will overcome all cultural boundaries the same way those other guys talk about the Gospel overcoming all cultural boundaries. They talk about technology making life better, about religion being the source of the world's ills, and that if we can rise above this, make it to other planets, and keep abortion legal, all problems on planet Earth will cease.

And I think "Hmm, maybe I can sell them some land in Florida, too."

Y'see, I've heard all this before, the whole "better living through chemistry" and "physics is the way of the future" sort of deal. I tell the friends inviting me to this party to forgive my skepticism^*, but none of this really addresses the fundamental issues of the human condition, and furthermore, high-minded ideals like these leave themselves fairly open to corruption. I lost hope in the systems of human beings for bringing freedom and justice to people ages ago. Until you deal with the heart, I say, the society will never be well. And all your high-minded solutions and technological terrors do nothing to address that issue.

It seems no one particularly likes this sentiment. Politicised Christians openly resent it, and the Wired Magazine™ reading, porn addicted, hyper-rationalists who probably are our future policymakers resent it in a very closeted sense, but they still resent it all the same. When I mention things like eugenics, World War I, atomic weapons, and environmental disasters, progressives and futurists get nervous. When I tell them they'll get us no closer to Utopia than anyone else has, they suddenly have the same potential as anyone else to become downright spiteful.

I lose my invitation to that party pretty quickly, too, in the end. People want to think we're getting better. People want to think that the future is bright. People want to think a lot of things.

When my pessimistic arse tells them they're wrong, they don't like to think about that. Not one little bit.

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* - Yes, that's supposed to be irony. Laugh.

Talk About Yellow Journalism

I really can't stand the news media. Nothing new, right? Just figured I'd throw this out there to illustrate that my contempt is spread equally, whether it's Fox, CNN, the New York Post, the New York Times, or this one...

The Metro, which despite the claims of its initial ad campaign is one of the preachiest newspapers I've ever read, ran a full, front-page story this morning about a girl who died of diabetes while her parents waited on supernatural intervention instead of sending their kid to the doctors. Now, search that Metro front-page I just linked you to, and see if you can find a single reference to this article. I'll grant that I only skimmed the top stories and national sections, but I couldn't even see a blurb for it on the sidebar, let alone a feature on it. I had to go to Google News and search the AP wire.

Now, if you'll read the story, note a few things. First, the mother responsible for not taking her child to see doctors does not profess an allegiance to any organised faith or religion. The presentation on the front-page of the Metro seemingly aimed to sideline that fact. The mother confesses to believing in the Bible, but that's as much as we get. So theoretically, she could be either a Christian Scientist, a Word of Faither, some zany New Ager, or any number of other groups who horribly misinterpret what the Bible actually says about divine healing and miracles. (Article to come some time in the future, I'm sure...)

Second, the story wasn't even something from the Metro staff. It wasn't groundbreaking journalism. It wasn't even anything that affects New Yorkers' lives – this incident happened out in Wisconsin. It didn't go on any further than the front page, and was copied directly from the Associated Press. This all begs the question, why on Earth would this be front page news in New York city, especially when the New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Times, USA Today (the national newspaper!), Google News headlines and BBC headlines say nothing about it, and instead, have whole slews of newsworthy items?

Because the American public school system (and I'm sure they're not the only ones) typically limits lessons on rhetoric, logic, propaganda and poetics to about one-and-a-half weeks in students' junior year of high school, I'll assume most people could use the lesson here. This is called agitprop. It is a decisively un-newsworthy story, or perhaps even newsworthy, but blown out of proportion, that seeks to enrage and snarl readers on both sides of the divide. I guess, as this blog has shown, it's worked. Yet, agitprop typically has another goal in mind, and that is to promote a certain set of values or principles. Now, I ask you – a supposedly "progressive" newspaper launches a front-page article about parental neglect some 1000 miles away from New York City, blames it in the headlines on "prayer", and then throws it into the presses without ever mentioning it again; what do you think they're getting at?

If you look around the internet and purportedly progressive, intelligent circles, you start getting the feeling that all religious believers, especially Christians (especially Bible-believing Christians) are nutters, idiots and impervious to reason and intellect. Yet, we note that this is an isolated incident with a family that does not even proclaim to have ties to Christianity-proper. I, for one, know that just about every Christian out there – from Word of Faith believers to skeptical, Bultmannian Anglicans – will take their kids to the doctors if things are serious enough. It's Christian Scientists, who at the least have a rather unorthodox take on things, that abjure the practise of modern medicine. But what do headlines like these put into the public mind? What does it do for a society both yearning to avoid Christianity, and make itself seem holier than the holier-than-thous?

While I think the emphasis on the media's role in the decline of faith in the West has been overblown, I'm not going to say the argument is without merit. I suspect nonsense like this will continue to gain in popularity as people "liberate" themselves from Christian morality, and find peace, love, comfort and hope in...

Well, whatever new religion rises up to supplant us, I suppose.

How to Shake My Faith

Since Underground Church, NYC collapsed, I find the greatest challenge to my faith comes not from the rantings of skeptics, nor the quaint reassurances of New Agers, universalists and philosophers, but from Christians themselves, opening their mouthes, and then letting how little they do for anyone become massively apparent.

The insular mentality that by now seems a defining quality for those who actually believe what the Bible says about God, His world, His son, the Death, Resurrection and Life Everlasting has disconcerted me for years. In a period where I find myself asking "Was it all worth it?", I've looked to my brothers and sisters, hoping for slivers of encouragement, praying for little signs that God's Kingdom is a good thing to give to others.

I find Ted Haggard's face staring back at me. I see George W. Bush's legacy in the White House – still lauded by evangelicals despite pushing our country to the brink. I see Jesus Camp. I see idiots.

This isn't so bad though, right? You can be an idiot and be a nice person. Based on my own personal experience, I find that God's intervention in a person's life can actually bring out the brightest qualities of a limited mind. Some people can't help but be stupid. I'd daresay, most people can't.

It isn't just that Evangelicals are brainless in the name of God, it's that they're heartless too.

That, to me, undermines the entire purpose of Christ's arrival on this Earth. Jesus was the answer to the great question "How would God have us live?" And it seems no one wants to look to Jesus for that answer. They look to Paul's lists of who''s condemned and who isn't. They look at the Old Testament's demands of purity and uprightness. Essentially, the main concepts embraced are any that will let a believer say "We know better, so you can go to Hell".

We should have compassion for the poor, not contempt.

We should be skeptical of leaders in church institutions, not wholeheartedly trusting.

We shouldn't be "Taking this country back for God!" because all countries belong to God, yet none of them save ancient Israel can ever say that they were established in accord with God's will. Note too that eventually even God disavowed Israel as a nation-state^*.

This brings me to another thing that bothers me, this notion that God's providential hand has been on Western society to bring judgment upon evildoers. Even if this were true, it's not a good thing. God raised up Babylon and Assyria to bring judgment on Israel when they had fallen into sin. If we go throwing our armies around with this sense of divine right, we put ourselves at best on the level of ancient Israel (who ultimately failed to establish God's Kingdom) but more applicably, I think it puts us on the side of Babylon. Anyone who's read any prophetic literature knows exactly what God thinks about Babylon.

On the flip side of this – since we know God uses nations that are completely in rebellion against Him as a means of judging and bringing balance, who's to say God didn't raise up Al-Qaeda to bring judgment to the United States?

American culture has never defined Christianity. God save us if it ever does!

A giant church building and a family life centre does surprisingly little to reach out to the people Jesus commands us to in Matthew 25.

Don't hate on Jews and Catholics for having extra-biblical traditions and holy writings. From Augustine to Calvin to Lewis and MacArthur, the Protestant tradition is chock full of non-and-unbiblical notions and traditions.

Building your congregation from people who belong to other churches is kind of counter-productive. It's the people who'd never go to church in the first place that we should be concentrating on.

Franchising churches is a lot like franchising McDonald's – it makes a lot of money, makes people aware of the brand, but in the end, usually winds up peddling a product that's no good for anyone's health.

Rush Limbaugh is a right-winger; this does not make him a Christian.

In fact, if I were to assess them by their beliefs and behaviours, it seems most Christian leaders aren't Christians.

Your money isn't yours. It's the government's. That's why Jesus did that whole "give unto Caesar" thing.

Jesus says His yoke is easy, his burden light. Why do we feel so afraid, then, to use the government to ease people's suffering (social spending) but we have no problems using it to blow people to smithereens and tell them who they can't have a "civil union" with?

There. I've been wanting to say all this for a while. It doesn't necessarily feel better to get all of it out – but it might feel better if it gets someone else to say "me too", and thus reassure me that Christ's death on the cross was not in vain.

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* - Not as a people, I should mention. Nation-states are different from nations, if you understand me. I am not a supercessionist.

Why I Don't Really Care All That Much About Easter

According to the Gospels^*, Jesus was given over to the Temple authorities and the Roman government they worked in collusion with on the first night of Passover. Contrary to popular understanding, Pesach begins on the same day every year, 15 Nisan. Jewish lunar calendars don't run in accord with Gregorian solar calendars, of course, so to us goyim, it looks like it changes place all the time.

For reasons I'm about to get into, the early church^~ decided not to celebrate the Resurrection in line with Passover. Instead, they opted for the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

How... goy of them.

Usually this isn't a problem, but this year, it illustrates how far things have digressed in the Christian tradition, because Passover doesn't happen this week; it happens on 19 April.

It serves as a starting point for examining why I'm no tremendous fan of Easter. As it happens, Easter wasn't celebrated by the original church. In fact, they probably never thought to separate Easter celebrations from Pesach celebrations; this is reflected in how many Eastern Orthodox denominations still celebrate "Pesach" according to the Jewish calendar. Congruently, there was no special holiday for remembering Jesus' death and resurrection because every Sunday was a celebration of Jesus' conquering of the grave! Paul goes on at length about how to celebrate (and not celebrate) this in I Corinthians. The tradition is also attested by Paul's preaching in a house on "the first day of the week" where a kid falls asleep and plops out of the window.

So, the need for a special Resurrection holiday, separate from the celebration of Passover, is a little superfluous. I'll grant though that if anything in Christian tradition should be celebrated superfluously (and the weekly – not yearly – celebrations of the early church certainly attest to this) it should be the Resurrection. This aspect alone would not have me jaded on the whole Easter concept.

But there's more...

Y'see, initially, Christians celebrated a Jewish holiday. They used Jewish traditions to commemorate Jesus whom they thought to be the Jewish Messiah. Jewish symbolism of liberation and atonement became significant in remembering Christ's death. Terminology associated with Jewish temple worship is still central to remembering the Death and Resurrection.

Seeing a pattern here?

So when we commemorate a Lord who is so thoroughly Jewish, why do we celebrate a Pagan holiday?

Because people like Constantine really didn't like Jews, and here I quote:

And first of all, it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. For we have it in our power, if we abandon their custom, to prolong the due observance of this ordinance to future ages, by a truer order, which we have preserved from the very day of the passion until the present time. Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.

Never mind the horrific leaps of logic and historical chicanery here from the very people who established the New Testament canon and should have known better than to think that while Jesus was celebrating Passover He instituted a Germanic fertility ritual... but honestly? When you know that this is why the Church celebrates Easter in lieu of Passover, the Easter holiday loses its lustre.

The Resurrection should constantly be held in our hearts. It is the single greatest source of hope, not only for Christians, but the entire world. It is the establishment of what shall come some day to us all – life from the dead, an end to pain and suffering, the Redemption, the Last Day, and the making right of all that is wrong. It means that life does not end in the grave. It shows that Jesus is who He said He is. It is the fact upon which all hope rests. Without the resurrection, we only have the story of injustice, corruption, persecution and death. It is only the story of a good man meeting the end that every good men gets – death at the hands of an uncaring, meaningless universe, and a brutal, ignorant and stupid race.

Here's to the Resurrection. But forgive me if I don't celebrate it along with Easter.

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* - We'll ignore the issue of John putting Jesus' betrayal on the night before Passover. I have issues with John. But that's a whole other entry...

~ - Y'know, the church that wasn't early enough to stay free from Greco-Roman cultural influence, know the disciples personally, speak Hebrew, or consist mostly of Jews like its founders, but still early enough for soft-hearted reconstructionists and complete idiots to claim that they had some sort of insight on the truth that we don't have and can remain content with, while not having their challenges challenged by the Jewish sitz im Leben of the New Testament.

Our Dying World

Several matters have struck me as worthy of commenting upon recently, so instead of making multiple little bloglets about whatever's going on in the world, I combine them for your reading pleasure(?) presently...

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First, Bear Stearns is going to Hell in a handbasket, taking Wall Street, the city, the rest of the country and perhaps the rest of the world along with it.  To avert the crisis, our fearless leaders are discouraging intervention in things like the housing crunch that's causing all of this, and have instead decided it would be better to make money out of nowhere and subsidise Wall Street's outsourcing and executive severance bonuses. Not surprisingly, stocks have rallied today as the Powers That Be announced through their actions that they'll aid any other massive financial institution that needs it, regardless of how ethical their actions may have been, or how much more desperately everyday citizens could use it.

What scares me the most about this mess is how closely it resembles a dystopian premise I've been working with. As the story goes, the United States enjoys a period of unbridled economic success, pushed to the limit with credit and debt spending. Because everyone's depending on everyone else paying off their debt, it just takes one group of people not having the cash up front to make the whole system implode. In that vacuum, the corporate elite seizes on the panic, and slaps shackles on "life, liberty and private possessions." After a few decades of this serf-like state, people decide they've had enough, and rise up in a bloody civil conflict that once and for all ends the wealth and prestige America once enjoyed.

It isn't a housing-loan crisis that causes the depression in this story I'm writing, but it just as easily could be. What we have in both cases is a system utterly dependent on money that doesn't exist finally being forced to get cash from somewhere. When that money doesn't come, poof goes prosperity!

What also pisses me off is that I didn't get this story published beforehand, so now I don't get the official right to say "I told you so!"

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Feminism, in light of the sexual revolution, has officially turned things around 360°! It's good that women can be honest about their sexuality. It's good that women are not viewed as these inhumanly perfect, pristine little objects that must cater to their husband's whims. It's good that women have all these things that differ from the "traditional" expectations. But let's get it straight: pornography does nothing to liberate women. Whereas chivalry may have objectified them to being but precious possessions for a gentleman's keeping, this turn towards reducing women to sexual cattle, good for satisfying men's desires yet otherwise bereft of value, I daresay is a turn for the worse, perhaps the worst. This isn't Medieval patriarchy; this is stoneage barbarity.

And women are all right with it? They're fine with the idea that they aren't enough for their husbands and boyfriends? They're cool with being treated like pieces of meat? Is this what we're really reducing our daughters and sisters to, inundating them with wraith-like images of sexual perfection while undermining the only paths to emotional fulfillment they may ever get?

All this runs strangely in counter-point to the story of a couple who have been married for 83 years. It's odd that with all of these things occurring, none but a few are looking back on the Bible's mandates about lust, sex and marriage and thinking "Gee, maybe God's got a point..."

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And it is official, Starbucks is evil. Do something to help aid the U.S. economy and give these poor baristas an alternative. Support a local coffee shop.