Category Archives: Mostly the arts

Psalm in the morning fog

Poetry, , ,

The fog was so deep the other day I could not even see the lake out my back window. As I prayed, I remembered another morning I shared with God as an elementary school boy. I wrote a psalm about it and decided to share it with you. I am thankful for all the ways God has been near to me from an early age until now. I look forward to new revelations in the new year.

I ran across the familiar playground
in the fog
until I reached the backstop in the far corner
and waited.
Others would soon have the same idea.
But for now I was all alone
feeling the warm, silencing muffle of the cloud,
the mystery of aloneness in Creation’s embrace,
the surprise of finding a unknown door.

I need muffling
but I am longing for sunshine.
I need silencing
but I am waiting for others to arrive.
I need waiting
and here is my psalm:

I will trust in this small wait,
this little silence,
this brief appreciation of the fog,
of you in the fog, of me in the mystery
because you are trustworthy —

certainly not because I expect great vistas again soon
when the pesky fog lifts,
and not because I will keep anxieties from crowding out your embrace
in the silence,
or because I won’t fill my life with people before it is too late
as I wait;
it is because you are trustworthy.

And even as a child in the fog
my moments with you taught me your presence
and all about my ultimate safety,
no matter what happens next.

Our evangelism nightmare: Hypermodern voices take over the airwaves

Doing Theology, Film/TV, The Mission, , , , , , , ,

I heard Dwight Schrute, I mean, Rainn Wilson, on NPR as I was driving around somewhere. What he said is stuck in my head. He is known for being an outspoken follower of the Ba’hai faith — it is the “outspoken” part that is stuck. At one point he said that people “threw up in their mouth a little” when he started talking about his life with God at parties. So it is not easy for him to talk about what he believes. He does it, but it is not easy.

Wilson’s claim to fame, The Office, began in 2005, about when we moved into our South Broad location. It makes me wonder if that TV show was riding the zeitgeist of dodging people who make you “throw up in your mouth a little” — like White Goodman (above) and Dwight Schrute. Christians (and I guess the followers of the Bab) started getting on the list of people who make you vurp — at least the ones who talk about their faith as if they actually believe it.

Old evangelism stories are out of date

I was telling old stories to Aaron the other day about talking to people as if you actually believe that Jesus will raise you from the dead, and such things of faith. At one point he looked a little uncomfortable. I don’t think he was vurping, but he reminded me that things have changed a bit since I was his age. Some of my stories seem out of date when I start talking about the Jesus movement, which might as well be the French Revolution as far as twentysomethings remember it. We are experiencing more of an evangelistic nightmare than easygoing chats about Jesus.

Twentysomethings were born into a profound philosophical discussion. Their churches, for the most part, were holding on to a Christianity that was conformed to philosophical paradigms from modernity like rationality and hierarchy. In the late twentieth century, postmodern thinkers came to the fore and staged a short-lived rebellion. They taught everyone to consider their “values” and argued that values have the meaning we assign them, but no meanings that last; we cannot discern truth but we can play with the nonsense. They wanted to emerge beyond modernity — stuck with its faith in progress and commitment to empowering the individual. We had “emerging churches” for a hot minute to match that movement.

The dialogue out there is all hypermodern

You can Google all this, of course. But you might not bother because you have become what many call “hypermodern.” Modernity and postmodernity are both the the past for you. They are, essentially, irrelevant because you believe that what took place in the past took place under “lesser” circumstances and is irretrievably different from now. You think artifacts from the past (like the Bible or “faiths”) that clutter the cultural landscape are to be reused to generate something better.

Wikipedia quote: Hypermodernity has even more commitment to reason and to an ability to improve individual choice and freedom. Modernity merely held out the hope of reasonable change while continuing to deal with a historical set of issues and concerns; hypermodernity posits that things are changing so quickly that history is not a reliable guide. The positive changes of hypermodernity are supposedly witnessed through rapidly expanding wealth, better living standards, medical advances, and so forth. Individuals and cultures that benefit directly from these things can feel that they are pulling away from natural limits that have always constrained life on Earth. But the negative effects also can be seen as leading to a soulless homogeneity as well as to accelerated discrepancies between different classes and groups.

So if you feel like people will consider you a Dwight Schrute at a party if you talk about Jesus, you might be right. You are acting like an historical artifact (Jesus) has meaning. You seem to be fighting the inevitability of change. You are saying that life on Earth has meaning and we don’t have to fight its constraints as if we should have power over it. You are standing out against the backdrop of gigantic institutions enforcing soulless homogeneity on us in the name of progress. And so much more.

It is an evangelism nightmare. Hypermodernity assumes everyone is an idiot if they are not hypermodern, like the cartoonist from Charlie Hebdo who responded to people praying for Paris after the recent attacks (above). For him, religion is modern, the past. Paris is freedom and joy, the future. Religion (a modern umbrella under which all “faiths” belong) is the seedbed of terrorism = faithful people are in bed with terrorists = You make me sick you Christians!

Jesus does not need to make people vurp

What to do? I’d hate to terrorize a party! I hardly want to stand in the way of progress. I don’t even understand all this philosophy.

Four suggestions, for now.

  1. Talk this over. Things ARE changing fast. We need to keep talking about what is happening, like I am talking right now about how Aaron was schooling me.
  2. Remember that Jesus is present, even if people try to make him an historical artifact. Even if people have repeatedly subjected him to the latest philosophy, the Lord rises in each era and has been incarnate in them all. You don’t have to argue the Lord into existence.
  3. Have a story and tell it. Jesus is going to be found in a loving relationship of trust in which God can be spoken of as the lover God is rather than a mere philosophical argument, a value, or political statement.
  4. Pray. Like right now. Jesus will be revealed and you will be inspired to live a life of creativity, free of shame and free to share.

“I can’t see you in it” : A heart is more than a performance

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, , , , , ,

Sorry to talk about Heidi again. But I learn so much from reality TV – like Project Runway. The producers are certainly not trying to teach me how to live in Christ, but they just can’t help it. For instance, one of the things the judges on PR frequently tell designers is this: “I can’t see you in this dress.” Or “You seem to have lost your voice. I can’t tell what you are saying. You’re collection does not tell a story.” I have watched enough clever people on this show by now that I totally know what Zac Posen is talking about when he is frustrated like that (God help me).

He is talking about insecure or lazy people doing what the design book says, or mimicking something they think will please the judges, or channeling someone else’s brilliant idea. That’s not good enough. To win the show, you need to be a creative designer who takes something in a new direction, hopefully one in line with the latest zeitgeist or your own aesthetic that you hope will become fashion. You need to show up, not just sew things. You need to create with a vision, not just plug what you’ve been taught into the design you imagine someone else thinks is right.

Fortunately, I never have to sit in the judge’s seat and rate the work of people in our church, or the church in general. (I’m plenty judgmental, but that is a sin, not an obligation). Because if our work got on the runway, I am sure I would need to say about some of it, “Your heart is not in this. Where is your inspiration? What makes this as creative as your creator?”

It is the age-old question to ask oneself, isn’t it? Some Pharisees came to Jesus questioning why his disciples did not bother to ritually wash their hands before they ate. Their question was not about hygiene, it was about keeping the rules for how to be ritually pure. Jesus did not answer, but asked them why they scrupulously kept other traditions that violated the law itself. More to the point, he quoted the prophet Isaiah

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” Isaiah 29:13-14

Like failing Project Runway designers of religion, the Pharisees were running out a collection that looked well-sewn and skillful, but it did not have any heart. They could apply the rules someone else had made up, but they could not create any rule-breaking new rules that reflected a heart-to heart relationship with the creator.

Jesus was trying to teach them to do that, just like he is trying to teach us. We live in a very rule-oriented society right now. For instance, Spectre which is all about who makes and follows the rules. The most recent James Bond film, is all about a shadow organization (like an ISIS that will sneak into Paris) which is out to destroy Democracy and the hero who breaks out of the bureaucracy to thwart it.

Box office could be half a billion worldwide by yesterday.

Spectre , the fictional organization, appeals to  fictional people who want tough laws and armed forces that enforce them. James Bond is all about breaking the rules to protect the heart of democracy — and at the end he finds his own heart this time around! Not to be too judgmental, but there are plenty of people in our church who would love a little more Spectre. They ask things like, “What are the ‘best practices’ for doing this? What are the regulations that apply to this? What is the protocol for doing that?” Or they are afraid of the people who might ask those things. Organization is good, but the organism is a lot bigger than what organizes it — especially the church, since it is held together by the Spirit of God!

People can do a “program” like the Sunday meetings or caring for children or even debt annihilation and not really be an effective, living part of what they are doing – nothing requires them to apply their heart. They could come to the meeting and not really even inhabit it.  I think some people perform the roles that keep the church organization going so they can stay committed to it in theory — but they don’t create it or inhabit it. The Project Runway people say “I want to see you in it” — and they are just talking about a dress! How much more would God say, “I want to see the true you in my church” since the whole point is for us to become more like Jesus all the time.

It has always been a temptation to follow the rules and not the Ruler, so we will need to deal with that just because we are human. In this day, however, it is even more tempting  to get better rules when we are all scared about getting blown up by a barbarian. Rather than growing an expansive heart like God’s, we can hide behind a big wall of laws and law enforcers until we can’t even see ourselves as anything better than law abiding.

Koinonitis and the bubble diagnosis

Building community, Film/TV, , , ,

I heard the bubble diagnosis again the other day. A friend told me they needed more time outside the “church bubble.” I did not pursue the thought too much so I am still wondering, “Did they feel like Pauly Shore in Biodome?“ They seemed to be taking an anthropologist’s view of the church and decided they needed some breathing room from the subject tribe.

Whether they were just inspecting us or not, I think they mostly make sense. If your congregation becomes a bubble and you are relationally stuck in it, something needs to change. Worse, if the rules of your religious social system are strangling your relationships with people outside of it, that could be toxic to you and to it. It could be “koinonitis.”

The leading cause of death among organic, relationship-based churches is koinonitis. The word is a spin-off from the Greek word koinonia, which means “fellowship,” or life in common. Fortunately, koinonitis has become a popular topic among us for the last few months. If we don’t see it lurking around every bush, it should do us some good to think about it.

Luke reports that the first church, “Continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship [koinonia], in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42, NKJV). Koinonia is the corporate experience of God in the midst of the body of Christ. It’s the common sharing of the Lord’s life, the shared life of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is primarily a shared experience. We often think of the Holy Spirit as someone we encounter as an individual (perhaps in our beloved contemplative prayer). But in the New Testament, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is almost always given in the context of a shared-life community where other believers are actively involved. There are, for sure, individual spiritual experiences. But the highest spiritual encounters are those that we receive with and in the Body of Christ. This is the meaning of koinonia.

Our church is blessed with deep understanding of the rare experience of koinonia. You could see it at our Love Feast last Saturday and hear about it in so many of the stories new covenant members told about why they want to take what has become the strange step of making a covenant.

When koinonia becomes koinonitis

Koinonia, however, can devolve into something quite pathological and poisonous. It can develop the disease: koinonitis. Koinonitis sets in when koinonia is ruled by the group’s processes rather than by Jesus. When the processes strangle the presence of Jesus the church dies.

In some places devolution happens when the community emphasizes being a community so much that the church turns insular, ingrown, and self-absorbed. For them, koinonitis is too much of a good thing. It is “fellowship inflammation.” Like high blood pressure, koinonitis is a symptomless disease. The church is typically unaware of it until it suffers a stroke.

In other places (and I think in our church) koinonitis can set in when the family system develops unhealthy patterns of relating. For instance, among us, there are people who protect others from relational or spiritual pain and impose a “niceness” or tolerance that keeps anyone from saying, “The Emperor has no clothes.” Jesus does not rule, the rule that you are not supposed to say anything that could spoil our sense that “everything is copacetic” or maybe “everything is awesome” rules. Koinonitis can set in when there is no reconciliation needed because people who cause “problems” are the ones who need to reconcile. They are bad because they violated the appearance of koinonia.

Like high blood pressure and dysfunctional family rules, koinonitis is hard to spot by the person experiencing it, but it is easy for outsiders to see. Here are some characteristics of this disease:

  • The church lives in a bubble. It has unwittingly built a barrier of difference around itself, not built of its vision, necessarily, but built of relational habits. Relationships get deified to the point where the members don’t feel comfortable having anyone else included who differs in mindset, beliefs, or jargon.
  • Even though the church desires to grow, in reality, it has an “us-four-and-no-more” mentality. The group has devolved into an ingrown toenail—an exclusive huddle of navel-gazers who are shortsighted by the view of their own bellies. (Have to give Frank Viola credit for that description :))
  • There is little to no numerical growth in the church over the long haul. People who visit feel awkward and out of place. More people leave than stay. The church can go on for years with little to no growth, yet few members wince. The thought never occurs to them that they may have something to do with the low volume. They say they don’t want to be about “numbers.”
  • A sense of cliquishness is noticeable by those on the outside. Visitors feel welcome to attend the meetings, but they don’t feel wanted. The church views them as intruders that may fracture the group’s warmhearted fellowship.
  • The church has little impact on the surrounding culture. Because the members are so absorbed with one another, they seldom reach outside their four walls.

How to be healed if the diagnosis fits

I don’t think we, generally, fall into most of these descriptions. But what should we watch out for? As an organic, communal people, we are prone to the disease. (And at least one person feels like they need to get out of the “church bubble.”). So try these things:

  1. Keep looking in the mirror. Some of us can’t help being a mirror; thank God we have not broken all of them, yet! Koinonitis is like acne. You can’t see it unless you look in the mirror. It is a kindness if someone shows us our reflection – if they do it kindly, and persistently so we will actually listen.
  1. Get an infusion of new blood. In John 15, Jesus pictures Himself and the church as a vine tree. If you look at any vine, the branches extend outward as the tree grows. So long as the tree is growing outwardly, it will live and continue to grow. Jesus Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. His nature is to grow outwardly. When a church suffers from koinonitis, it becomes a vine that stops growing outward, even perversely grows inward (an “unvine”). For that reason, the prognosis of koinonitis is living death Revelation 3:1. A new-blood infusion can reverse the symptoms.
  1. Get out there. When Paul planted a few churches in the major cities of a province, he considered the entire province to be evangelized (implied in Romans 16:18-27). Why? Because he planted churches in strategic centers and expected them to naturally evangelize their surrounding districts. Paul had built into the foundation of the church God’s heart for the world. The best thing we can do to prevent koinonitis is to explore ways to naturally develop relationships with people “outside the bubble” so to speak, and to find fresh ways of telling our story to them, including showing it to them acts of compassion and healing.

If getting out of the bubble means the vine is growing, that’s great. But if getting out of the bubble means you despise the miracle of being part of the community God has formed, that’s not so good. If getting out of the bubble means you want to be free of being in covenant with both the bad-rule-makers and discomforting mirrors, that’s not so good, either. Living within the constraints of love might feel like being in a bubble some of us want to pop. But every act of love or feeling of obligation is not “creeping koinonitis.” Neither thinking something is “awesome” nor saying something is “not of the Lord” is always bad just because one is not cool and the other is too hot.

We’re an organism of diverse parts enlivened by the Spirit. We are a work of God in progress. Like all organisms we can get a disease and die; we can wander into an environment that starves us and could kill us. We need to keep listening and obeying as God keeps us safe, renewed and useful in the cause of redemption.

New development: The practical beginning of the “second act”

Mostly the arts, The Mission, , , ,

Development is hard. For instance: The crew and I, led by the devoted foreman Ben Blei, are in the last throes of finishing the project down the street at 1226 S. Broad. All the details we missed are becoming evident. All the last-minute demands to meet the deadlines are irritating us. Relationships that need to work, but don’t work that well, are becoming obvious. Our limitations are also becoming obvious. There are a lot of problems associated with developing an old abandoned building. There are good reasons people don’t take on big projects like that.

As I was writing that line, someone emailed and told me they were as good as an abandoned building and God started developing them! But they had some good reasons why they did not want to get with that program: details, demands, relationship issues, limitations, etc, etc. It is exciting whenever I hear about someone who is in the throes of developing faith! Because the main development project people resist taking on is themselves.

That kinds of sums up the focus of my new job. I’m now the “development pastor.” It is a big idea for a job description, in that I am going to get practical about how we get from here to there as the whole church, Circle of Hope. But it is also a very small idea, in that I am going to have more time to be devoted to individuals, especially the leaders, as they move into their future in Christ.

I am excited. I even renamed this blog to make that clear!

I need to develop and I want to help others develop

That’s probably the same as you – we’re on the same team after all. I just get to lead in it. We all need to develop — we’re doing it one way of another. I want to follow Christ into my fullness.

To develop in Christ means one has some kind of experiential knowledge of spiritual things that moves them to action — not just book knowledge, or secondhand knowledge or even Circle of Hope knowledge. You know God and that relationship is developing. I first learned this when I finally read the Bible and saw in Romans 8 that people who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. In all our talk about our “second act” we have been devoted to risking that the people of our church will be led by the Spirit: we’re trusting Christ to be at work in all of us; we’re trusting each other to keep developing as people in Christ and to resist settling into some placeholder life.

The last time I spoke in a Sunday meeting I offered three basic things we all need to hold on to if we are going to keep developing as individuals in Christ and keep developing as the Lord’s church. Let me briefly list them again.

  • Take incarnation seriously

The finite manifests the infinite, the physical is the doorway to the spiritual — like Jesus the incarnate Son of God is our way to eternity. This is the way to that. There are not sacred and profane places or moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places and moments. Christ in YOU is the hope of glory. Christ in US makes us the incarnation of the Lord in the here and now. To develop, take that honor seriously. You and we are important, no matter what voice inside or big power from outside tells us.

love will always be key to our development

  • Practice remaining in Love

Only love “in here” can enjoy love “out there.” Fear, constriction and resentment make us blind and need to be overcome. People cooperating with their development let their inner darkness and fear rest in Christ. God’s gift of love in Jesus makes that possible. There is no law or moral code that makes you better than remaining in Love. Stay there no matter how many times someone wants you to prove the validity of what you know in your heart by the data, or they try to make you love the empty container of the law without the content of the Creator. “Remain in my love,” the Lord says – then you will develop.

  • Stay close to the cracks in everything

Jesus says, “The last will be first and the first last.” Paul says, “When I am weak I am strong.” It feels upside down. But when we stay close to this seemingly irrational crack in normality, we begin to see Jesus — out there on the edge of what looks like an abyss to us. He is always about to fall over the cliff into what people think is nuts or impossible. We need to stay close to that. This is the hardest for me and most of us because it means we need to stay close to our own suffering. We need to be one of “the poor in spirit” who are blessed. We need to notice our own cracks and not cosmetically alter them. Living with Jesus on the edge, where things are cracked and paying attention to our own cracks in health and relationships is the mother of spiritual development.

development area

We need to develop as a church in mission and I want to help

Our ambitious map for 2015 is full of what’s next. It is so packed, we will probably need to extend it beyond a year! It is a very practical doc but very focused on heaven. We are redesigning ourselves to match what God is telling us and changing to meet people where they are at now. I hope you share my estimation of us: we have what the world needs; we are the next church finding its way in a changing world. As believers with a beachhead in the megalopolis, we are incredibly well-positioned to be used by God — and we are being used.

I have already been at work helping us to refine who we are so we can move into who we are called to be now. We planted new admin at the Hub. We redeployed our pastors to “get out there” and not be a four-headed unit with too much responsibility. We deepened our reformed Leadership Team and turned the Imaginarium into a rolling Council meeting. We are retooling how we use our two corporations: Circle of Hope Inc and Circle Venture to let us relate to the powers in useful ways. We installed Rachel as a new pastor and released me to think bigger and act smaller. We are getting together the masterminds (and we have them) to imagine how we can be large and personal, prophetic and empathetic, active and contemplative, dispersed and focused, attentive and inclusive, communitarian and missional.

All my experience leads me to this moment of development, I think. While it is hard for me to change from being the day-to-day pastor of a congregation, I am excited for this new moment of opportunity. I have some good years of service ahead of me! Even more exciting, I think, is to be a part of Circle of Hope, now — when devoted, reconciling, ambitious brothers and sisters in Christ are moving into their second act and trusting God to do something even greater.

Awkward: Did you stop reading the Bible Jenna Hamilton?

Doing Theology, Film/TV, , , ,

I have been watching MTV for 34 years. (My devotion will not help the network’s pursuit of the 12-34-year-olds it targets). I watch it:

  • Because I am regularly entertained — like by my latest TV-binge Awkward,
  • I want to know what the youth of the nation are being fed instead of the Bible.

How many of the youth MTV is still feeding is under dispute. The network has been recently punished in the cable ratings — down 29 percent in 2015. But their Facebook fan base is 48 million compared to Fox News’ 10 million and Fox has a much bigger cable rating number. It is hard to measure what people are doing on their phones and computers. But it looks like they consume a lot of MTV.

THAT GIRL STILLS MTV LAUREN IUNGERICH
What made Jenna “that girl.”

MTV is not kind to Christians, most of the time, although one or two did come off relatively well on Real World, back in the day. In Awkward, the Christian girl has a closeted gay dad, a judgmental mom and is consistently stupid and fearful. But then the outlook of teens on Awkward is not kind to most people and sees most adults as especially useless. As far as these MTV teens are concerned, what is important is not being awkward, succeeding at something, and fitting in – and having sex. For instance, Jenna Hamilton, the lead character, has an unusual opportunity to have her first sexual experience with her impossible crush, Matty, and then finds out he wants to keep their relationship a secret because she is so uncool. She thinks: “With my v-card safely tucked away in his back pocket….he hit me with ‘but nobody can know that I like you.’ So…I was still Jenna Hamilton.”

So how does one get into a dialogue about the Bible with Jenna Hamilton? Just asking that sounds sort of uncool, right? Is she and all her friends fully plugged in and not listening outside their cocoon? Are they hypervigilant against anyone telling them that anything but what they feel might be relevant? Are all adults useless? I have a lot of questions that, well, make me feel awkward. Especially when I want to talk about the Bible, does that make me even more useless, like that Christian girl on Awkward? I probably am a Barney (a dork, a nerd boy, or a goober; guys with whom you don’t want to be seen with in public — there is a wiki).

I have to ask the question, however, since it might be true that MTV and all her media sisters have become more of a Bible than the Bible for many 12-34 year olds! MTV, in particular, is certainly a postmodern propaganda machine. You could say it is just channeling the zeitgeist and selling it back to kids. But it is also creating it and codifying it without an actual dialogue with what is being replaced (and what is being mocked to death, like opposing views were treated in high school).

Yes, this could have been resisted.

I can see why Jenna may have stopped reading the Bible. There are a lot of good reasons. For instance:

  • Christians got sucked into the Enlightenment/modern paradigm and all their teaching got boiled down to extra-biblical, “scientific-like” principles. (But not all Christians did that, Jenna!)
  • People, in general, are decoupled from their own history. They really do think they have no choice but to make it all up as they go along. If someone (like the Bible writers) tell them what to do they are instantly resentful.
  • Likewise, “science” supposedly says that 90% of what we are is hardwired. So finding your label is inevitable. You can fight it, but “it is what it is.”  So all the talk about choice and miracle in the Bible seems impossible.
  • The biggest reason to not read the Bible, of course, is the absence of the supernatural in the everyday life of most people. The teachers for the last 50 years have made sure that “nature” is free of God. Science cannot be tainted with the unmeasurable, so everything is now subject to the oversight of materialism. The Bible assumes that God and creation are intertwined, so reading the Bible can seem quite a leap, unless it becomes another story, like Awkward.

Did you stop reading the Bible for some of the same reasons?

It is kind of easy to never be too serious about much more than who will have sex with you, or not. Like this preview for an episode of Awkward: “Having survived the title of ‘that girl’ by the skin of her teeth last season, Jenna once again risks the label now that a former schoolyard indiscretion may have been caught on tape. ‘The Sanctuary’ [sic] behind the bleachers at Palos Hills High seems like it’s anything but in the upcoming episode of “Awkward,” and Jenna is determined to get to the bottom of things before Jake finds out about her fling-plus with Matty.” Yes, I saw that episode. I admit I was entertained. Even more, I was enlightened. Somebody channeled what was going on in the world and made a little chapter of the ongoing video bible they are writing. Who knows how many people interpreted it as inspired?

The different, weird, strange, confusing, mysterious church

Film/TV, The Mission, , , , , , , ,

Why did I miss diving into the Divergent series until now? It is totally my kind of thing: anxious twentysomethings/teens forced by the government and their colluding parents to choose an identity that doesn’t fit them. Watching Kate Winslet (symbolizing the authorities) have her hand nailed to a computer screen by a well-thrown knife — what could be more interesting?

There is just so much to talk about here! So much of what the movie’s (and books’) characters face is exactly what people are thinking and feeling in the church all the time.

For instance, in Divergent-world, people are assumed to be pre-programmed. So far, it looks like Tris just isn’t. And it looks like Four/Tobias doesn’t want to be. Isn’t that just what we are all talking about — am I just who I am, or can I be someone more? “Can I choose? Do I have to choose? What if I choose wrong? Who decides the choices? Can they make me choose?”

In that kind of atmosphere, people have a lot of questions about the church, too — which is all about choosing, after all, and all about taking on a new identity. For instance: “Are the pastors a bunch of Kate Winslets with secret plots to use us for their own purposes?” That’s a good question. But, more likely, the question is about choices. “Should someone else choose what I choose (like Jesus)? Are they just programmed differently? Can I say what the choices are? I like choosing more than I like what I choose — what about that?” There is a lot to think about.

A couple of weeks ago, we revved up the survey monkey and asked people to choose seven words they thought other people would use to describe Circle of Hope. One group of words (in the order of incidence) were “different, weird, strange, confusing, mysterious.” Many of us were delighted at this result, since we think anyone who doesn’t describe Jesus with those words isn’t looking at Him carefully. So if people think of us that way, great! Other interpreters were dismayed. Being all those things doesn’t look very user-friendly. People avoid people who seem strange, don’t they?

Tris bravely being the first over the edge.

Those are, again the kind of questions Divergent is exploring. “Is ‘being myself’ all that great?” But then, “Is being what others think I should be really that important?” And “Will I be left out one way or another?”

On the one hand most of the young people in the dystopian Chicago of Divergent seem totally ready to go with the program; they choose to take on the arbitrary labels assigned them and allow themselves to be trained into stereotypes. If you want to be a successful church, wouldn’t you appeal to that sensibility to get some butts in the seats? It works! Some people thought the survey responders were unhappy that our church is so different. They would never bring a friend to be a part of the meeting because it would be “weird” for them — it would be better if it were just like what everyone is already choosing. Even if they love the weird meetings themselves, they still think the majority of people would find them strange.

On the other hand, the only two people we really like in Divergent, in the sense that we would like to be like them, are Tris and Tobias. And everyone, including themselves, thinks they are “different.” The powers that be are hunting people like them down to kill them, they are so threateningly not conformed. Isn’t that exactly what the first church was like? The early Christians eventually got hunted down by a few Roman emperors because they were so divergent. (Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent novels, is a Jesus-follower, so she might be channeling that reality). So if people think we are strange, that might be uncomfortable (especially if they try to kill us!) but it is better than the alternative – chosen for mindless drudgery, manipulation by the man and being part of something that is going nowhere fast.

All these choices make people anxious or irritate the anxiety they are trying to keep in check. We are afraid to be different and afraid we can’t be different at the same time. I bring up the anxiety people are bringing to the questions because I think it might be the unnoticed psychological disease that keeps infecting our life and work together. Anxious people tend to think things (like how people might label our church) are much worse than they are. They also tend to be highly conformist, even though they fear the powers that press them into molds. They tend to be perfectionistic and don’t choose to do things they can’t do well. They are critical and fear criticism. So being part of the  different, weird, strange, confusing, mysterious church can take a lot out of a person.

Tobias being led upward to face his fear.

If any of this applies to you, congratulations! Like Tobias facing his fear of heights, you are facing your fear of being different, weird, strange, confusing, and mysterious as you follow a Lord who is  different, weird, strange, confusing, and mysterious. Face it.

I hope you can say, with Peter, who answered back to Jesus that time, ““Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” That was Peter’s response when Jesus was at his “weirdest” and truest. The Way, the Truth and the Life will always seem different, because He is different, thank God! Be brave.

Did Taylor mean to run over Jesus?

Music, The Mission, , , , ,

Taylor Swift was in town this past weekend. Thus caps off my ten-day meditation on Bad Blood. Now, of course, I love Taylor Swift like everyone else. But that does not mean I don’t want to speak some truth as part of my love.

I wrote in my Facebook page: “I think I am spending a week with this Taylor Swift vid — Mad Max meets Project Runway meets 50 Shades? What do YOU think this mashup means?” Some people taught me some stuff.

On the face of things, Bad Blood is just a very thin “I’m really mad at you” break up song: “Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted. Did you have to ruin what was shiny? Now it’s all rusted.” But it quickly moves to: “Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes.” 

It is OK to tell me I am over-reacting. But can I just point out how anti-Christ it is to deal with a broken relationship by renaming yourself “Catastrophe” and imagining getting together with your superhero friends for a fight to the death? Have we all become Lindsay Graham? Is this mentality running Jesus over?

The song is thin, but the video is lush (even though it is mostly devoted to model-like strutting with weapons). It starts in a typical high rise office floor (which many people might feel is worthy of blowing up). The action begins when a gray-suited man in a Zorro mask man falls on a desk. Catastrophe (Taylor Swift) cartwheels in and puts on lipstick. More suits meet two women dressed in plastic, one in black: Arsyn (Selena Gomez) one in white (Ms. Swift). They triumph, but Arsyn betrays Catastrophe and pushes her through a window and lands her artfully on a vintage car. Catastrophe is then dropped into an Elysium-like medical device for repairs and comes out more super than before. She begins to collect her crew of strong women mentors and goes to revenge boot camp.

The cast all chose their hero nicknames, such as Lucky Fiori. The Trinity straps on Catastrophe’s armor. She goes on to weapons training with Dilemma, Slay-Z (and her bulldog in a Hunger Games training center), Destructa X, Home Slice (the awkward ninja), and Mother Chucker. Cut Throat teaches her to knife a teddy bear. The Crimson Curse (looking like Leelo — Hayley Williams of Paramore) looks like an homage to Chucky (who was also out of his box in 1989). Frostbyte must be a salute to Elsa. Knockout teaches her some kickboxing, complete with moves for slicing off a man’s head. Domino (Jessica Alba) teaches her to ride motorcycles like in Tron. Then the older mentors come in to pass on their wisdom: Justice (Mariska Hargitay/Law and Order SVU/Jayne Mansfield’s daughter — danced at the concert Saturday) , Luna (Ellen Pompeo/Dr. Meredith Grey), and Headmistress (Cindy Crawford). The showdown occurs with flames and London in the background.

I’ve watched the video enough to collect the names (even though I could have found them in IMDB). It is entertaining. But I keep thinking there are points being made. If not, there is certainly influence happening. One fan got married before her concert Saturday and was treated to a close-up backstage. so that influence happened. This kind of relatablility and connection is a Swift trademark, which make mothers feel like she is a good role model for their daughters. So what role is Bad Blood modeling with all those models strutting in high heels toward their personal Armageddon?  I asked my FB friends to make some sense of this video for me, and they did a decent job.

#1 —  Although I don’t think Kahn executed the narrative well, I think it’s pretty clever that she paired what could have been written off as a “catty” diss track (some people wrote it off as one, using that language) with the huge vibe of the summer blockbuster. It is a diss track about another woman, but there are more images of women supporting each Swift as she trains for vengeance. It grounds the one frayed relationship with a woman, with all of the other positive ones she has (although, how positive can a relationship be if they are encouraging you to shoot bazookas at a former co-worker?) 
            It says, to me, that when women write about not liking women it isn’t because they are catty, it is because they are experiencing the range of human emotion. Swift isn’t letting Hollywood disregard her experiences because she is a woman. Fairly assertive idea, I just wish she would have hired a better director.

#2 —  I know the name Taylor Swift, but couldn’t pick her out in a line up or know any songs. I watched that video for some reason and my over-simplified thought is: it’s empty and all about sex. Some boys are turned on by seeing girls fight. S&M¹ has worked its way out of the sub culture into the mainstream. It’s pathetic and laughable to watch. Milky gals playing dress up and not fully grasping what’s going on. It’s like seeing the distortion, evolution, transformation, whatever you call it, of Punk. Nearly 30 years ago, someone with green hair and a nose ring was expressing and living out something very different than the folks who have it now, acceptable by everyone, suburban moms, etc.

#3 —  Pop culture mash-up. No intentional symbolism or purpose. Showreel ²–  20 bucks on Khan doing a studio picture in the next 3 years.

What do you think?

Taylor’s trucks would not mean to run over you, either, maybe.

I think Taylor Swift is an immensely talented songwriter, musician, and entrepreneur. You have to admire anyone who can amass $200 million by age 25 (!). She has thousands of devoted fans who feel like they know her. She may feel like she knows them, too. She’s a fantasyland on wheels. Not everything she does is bad of course (I like Shake It Off, too)! But, if nothing else, she encourages young people into even more delusional behavior, which usually works its way into delusional life-making decisions and works its way up and down the societal food chain into delusional government policies and popular philosophy, which runs over Jesus.

Could that be true? Is Jesus getting rolled over by who-knows-how-many concert trucks parked at Lincoln Financial (there’s an homage for you) Field? Maybe. Whether Taylor means anything by her songs and videos or not, they mean a lot when they are so influential they override the sensibilities of the impressionable. Do you think I am overreacting when I point out that an artist who makes an anti-Christ video with 192 million views (and counting) on YouTube should mean something? Isn’t the meaningless running over Jesus? Or do you think something else is happening here? Let me know.

¹ Sadism and Masochism — when used in relation to sexuality, the practice of using pain as a sexual stimulant.
² A short videotape containing examples of an actor’s or director’s work for showing to potential employers.

The Book of Mormon and Disney are suspiciously similar.

Doing Theology, Film/TV, , , , ,

We took our five-year-old granddaughter to Disneyworld. We enjoyed it. Our Princess Tiana room had headboards that sparkled when we pushed a button. When our plane got snowed out, the resort took us back at the Priceline rate, no extra charge. I missed the major snow storm while I was laying by a pool. I learned things. Good, good. I hope my granddaughter did not learn too much except that we really love her. But I learned a lot.

Hospitality and branding

Let’s be positive first. Disney knows hospitality. That is something to learn. If our church were as ready for visitors as they are, we would have more visitors at our meetings. The “cast members” are so well trained! — a little robotic as a result, but I am being positive. They gave my granddaughter an “It’s my birthday” pin to wear and fifty people must have noticed it! — get a corn dog and get special recognition from your waitperson! During the Mummerlike Festival of Fantasy parade, a dancer actually interrupted her routine to lean down and wish her happy birthday – it choked me up.

Disney connects people to their brand. That’s also something to learn. We met a family on the plane who were going to Disney for their daughter’s spring break (that is what she wanted to do). It was their thirtieth trip! In Downtown Disney (a shopping and eating village) there is a giant store devoted to Disney everything. People buy it and wear it. Witness the pink crocs with a Mickey Mouse logo lighting up when you see my blonde descendant. We should connect people to Jesus so effectively.

Ubiquitous, Mormon-like philosophy

We visited princesses. Only one of us dressed as one.

Then there is that other stuff, like the entire insidious philosophy behind the place. There’s a LOT to learn there! For instance, the welcome show is a good example of getting a dose of philosophy right off the bat. We got to the entrance early because we desperately needed to go visit Elsa and get our autograph book signed. (For the uninitiated: yes, you heard right). We did not know there was a welcome show planned for the several thousand people waiting for the gates to open. The essence of the welcome show is: “Today is going to make a memory you never forget!” The hidden message for your grandchild is: “Life is like an autograph book filled with the memories of getting something you really want and like.  Those moments are what we work for, even what we live for. — You can make them today! It is up to you.”

We visited Tinker Bell, too. She is the most obvious example of the “dreams come true” mantra one hears all day at Disneyworld. I think Disney thinks they are a dream come true, so look no further. But the idea is: “If we just believe, our expectations will be met.” I think more people might believe this “positive” piece of theology from Tink than believe Jesus is their Savior. I would not be surprised if many people who believe Jesus saves them thinks he does it because they believe it. My daughter-in-law sent me a clip from the Book of Mormon when I was marveling at Orlando [listen to the theme song]. She reminded me of how prophetic that musical is. Mormonism has the same foundation as Disneyworld – stories of sorcery and fantasy turned into a theme park in Salt Lake City. They believe.

The loving parent needs to do some brain-unpacking if their child shows signs of thinking the Disney myth has a basis in reality, don’t they? There is a witch behind every bush at the park. Boys are pirates and girls are princesses. Pretending it is normal to exist inside a giant machine that makes everything magical is considered OK there. Saying “have a magical day” is something people do. Stealing the essence of cultures by stereotyping their character and then making a movie and a theme park ride out of them is considered nice.

The empire mentality, just for fun

Islam also scrubbed of its essence and commodified

Let’s spend a little more time on that last one. Disney is the crown jewel of an empire mentality. You don’t need to visit the far reaches of the empire to experience “otherness.” It is collected, like thoughts in a thought zoo, in the theme park. The theme is, “We have stolen your identity and reduced it to Aladdin or the Princess and the Frog, then we sell it back to you.” (Isn’t that magical!) They even melodify our epidemic of isolation and solve the problem by advising we live “free” in an ice palace we created with the special power we used to hide. Our faithpushers have caught on to this technique and have constructed their own megachurch theme parks. Disney pushes this tourist view of the world with an Animal Kingdom and Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) in which they reproduce the exotica of far away lands that are safely caged in Disneyesque surroundings.

Disneyworld is hugely philosophical. The most redundant teaching has to be: in a “world” full of stories, the end is always boy gets girl (or now, vice versa), never child meets God. The place is scrupulously scrubbed of Jesus. What does a child make of that?

What is a Christian who lives in a Disney world to do? I am a pilgrim moving through. I can taste the sweetness of a well-intentioned “cast member” without becoming one. But I will have to have some healthy dialogue about every piece of propaganda that gets into my house. Most of all, I will need to build an alternative that makes more sense than Disney as it incarnates the living God.

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If I tell you not to watch Kingsman will it make you want to see it?

Film/TV, The Mission, , , ,

Somehow we wandered into the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service. Now we know it is another Matthew Vaughn, hyper-violent, self-consciously and darkly-pomo, comic-book fantasy. Director Vaughn gave us the snarky, swearing, pre-teen assassin in  Kick-Ass.

Are you picturing us in this audience? I suppose if you love me, you will start telling me which movies I can see. How did I not know what I was getting into?

Deconstruction with a nasty twist.

I don’t usually hate everything about a movie. But even the clever parts of this one are overshadowed by its generally vile nature – deconstruction with a nasty twist, a training ground for ISIS do-it-yourselfers — only they actually do what you are fantasizing. I hear Vaughn has a rabid fan base, or do his movies create the rabid out of the unsuspecting? (This is where you begin to pray, “Lord saves us!”)

In this unintended horror movie Vaughn does for James Bond what Kick Ass more or less did for Spider-Man. I think it might have been meant as playful. But this child needs play therapy fast, since it is nasty play — like some brutish sibling torturing you when the folks are away. That being said, the sets are great, the digital carnage is well-executed (what I could see through my fingers) and the tailoring is impeccable.

I think they were doing James Bond “today,” and we are so vile we would never understand the sweet 60’s, or even 80’s. At one point the two main antagonists, Colin Firth’s super-spook Harry Hart and Samuel L. Jackson’s baddie, Valentine, sit down to compare their love of the old Bond movies. They miss the certainty they had, the style, and the endearing silliness. Vaughn’s film argues those kinds of movies have gone out of fashion. He slices them up with so much vulgarity and violence that he makes sure only the slightest hint of their relative humanity is left. He makes me wonder. When James Bond movies are wistfully seen as the morality we once had, times are indeed rough.

Crude comic book

Samuel Jackson as Valentine

To my credit, I did get, from the trailer, that Colin Firth had been lured into a thin, comic book plot. I knew it was another recruitment movie. Her Majesty’s secret service are a man down, and the smart money is on Eggsy, a council-estate wild boy, to outfox the handful of upper-class creeps who think they’ve got the gig sewn up.  The gist ends up being that, these days, even a working-class lad can dream big and become a slick, womanizing, “male chauvinist,” dinosaur if he sets his heart on it.  I did not know the Samuel Jackson would do another weird role as the main villain, Valentine, a baseball-cap-wearing tech billionaire. His lisping delivery is a big joke at the expense of his old foe Spike Lee, but not a good one. He has a henchwoman with razor-sharp prosthetic feet, allowing Vaughn to indulge the kind of effects coup he has made his grisly trademark: she dances around unsuspecting foes and turns them into tossed salad.

About halfway through the movie, I realized I should have brought a scorecard. How many times will the word “fuck” be used in this movie? Am I so out of it that people actually use the word in that many variations? – enough so that the casual viewer in Japan will be able to figure out what is going on?  I needed to write down things that need further research, like whether anal sex with a princess is generally considered a reward for good job performance, like whether watching a church full of bigots in Kentucky be massacred provides a great number of people satisfaction, like what is it that made our audience laugh when heads began to explode all over the world?

I suppose my keepers would say, “Will you just stay out of those movies? Have you not heard of porn, or something? Do you not know that marketers are preying upon innocent, unhinged minds (such as yours, I suppose they would mean) to make a buck? Have you forgotten about evil – it’s mainstream?” They would be right. But it is also good for me to get a dose of what is going on out there. In Korea last weekend, Kingsman was hotter than Fifty Shades of Grey (that other horror film that tries to turn S/M into romance). Kingsman has already made $85 million. (Fifty Shades has made $500 million worldwide).

Last week we were talking about how to be more effective at getting out our message as Circle of Hope  — a message also tuned to speak to the times. One thing Kingsman did for me is energize me to get our message out as well as I can. I want to be one of the King of King’s men and keep putting myself in the path of the evils that are rolling over a lot of more-vulnerable victims than I am. I am the Christian Eggsy, only much less well-dressed!