On a lighter note...

Check out the temper tantrum this minor league manager threw...Geez! Reminds me of my former days.

P.S. Thanks, Mark Malone, aka "Ahab" for challenging me on my anger meltdowns and the reality that they were ruining my capability to lead. It took the NC State/MWC rugby game and Mark having the stones to challenge me afterwards that provided the impetus to change how I handled my anger. Maybe this guy needs to talk to Mark.

Here's the beginning of the article...there's also a video.

Minor league manager Joe Mikulik had a major league meltdown.

To say Mikulik -- skipper for the Asheville (N.C.) Tourists -- lost his cool Sunday in a Class A South Atlantic League baseball game against the Lexington (Ky.) Legends would be a gross understatement.

"That was incredible. That's gotta be on ESPN or something," Legends starter Tip Fairchild told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "I've seen coaches go off, but that was pretty good. ... He used everything -- bases, the resin bag, the hat, the dirt. Everything."

The link is here.

On the rootless (post)modern human...

I've been reading Henri Nouwen's incredible book The Wounded Healer, well, since yesterday, and he's really been laying it down hard! Here's a few of his musings on the state of the modern person:

"Crucial for nuclear man is the lack of a sense of continuity, which is so vital for a creative life. He finds himself part of a non-history in which only the sharp moment of the here and now is valuable. For nuclear man life easily becomes a bow whose string is broken and from which no arrow can fly. In his dislocated state he becomes paralyzed. His reactions are not anxiety and joy, which were so much a part of existential man, but apathy and boredom.

Only when man feels himself responsible for the future can he have hope or despair, but when he thinks of himself as the passive victim of an extremely complex technological bureaucracy, his motivation falters, and he starts drifting from one moment to the next, making life a long row of randomly chained incidents and accidents."

Now listen to this:
"When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberative power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man's historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip." (Quotes from pp 8-9)

The last part, especially, is what has gotten me thinking. I think the post-modern person (whom Nouwen was describing unwittingly) IS ahistorical in terms of the value of the past and hope for the future shaping who they are TODAY. There are so many things that look like they're spinning out of our grasp in the world today, along with a dizzying advance in technology, etc etc that lead us to a place of confusion and doubt that God's really in control of history. It seems obvious to me that into this vacuum of trust has stepped the modern nation-state, which has (for all intents and purposes) assumed the position of God in our society: requiring some percentage of our monies, time, and energy to perpetuate, demanding ultimate claim on our lives, carrying the "meaning" of history. I'm not surprised that most of the people I know (including Christians) uncritically endorse the decisions and actions of our country simply because we believe it can do nothing wrong.

How do we emerge from this apathy to re-engage our brothers and sisters in Christ with the reality that God IS in control, and that it is not only possible, but necessary that we recover a vision for the church as the bearer of the meaning of history?

Giving everyone room to dream....

I was flipping through the pages of the Next-Wave Ezine (figuratively speaking, of course), and came upon this beautiful article written by Dan Kimball (crazy hair!!), a fellow serving Christ in a community of Christ-followers called Vintage Faith in Southern California.

In his opening comments he says this:

"We just wrapped up a teaching series at Vintage Faith Church where we were talking about "church" being people and not a building. As part of the series, we had little blank white post cards in every bulletin and asked the question of everyone "What do you dream this church could be?" and then had them fill in the black on the card, "I Dream Of A Church....." and then whatever they might dream of. We are really trying to create a culture where the church is not about just the pastors dreams and hopes but the people of the church, who are the church, are the dreamers of what God could do in us and through us as a church. I got the responses and it was really amazing and humbling reading the several hundred responses that were turned in..."

As intrigued as I was? Click on the link to read more.

Here's the link to the article.

This is just great!

Forget that Christianity is considered by many (including many "Christians") to be merely a system of morals. Here's a little clip from the Colbert Report of an interchange between Colbert and Congressman Lynn Westmoreland over the displaying of the Ten Commandments in "public" places. Suffice it to say that both main parties (Dems and Repubs) have issues that garner them votes that they really could care less about. What are the Ten Commandments again, Congressman? And what was that again? "So, you can't think of a single other building that might be better for the ten commandments?" "No."

See the video here.





p.s. Just so you know, I feel the same way about Stephen Colbert I do about the Dan Patrick Show, the Simpsons, and Family Guy. Incisive commentary at times (with the Simpsons, most of the time), but incredibly offensive (edit to add: blasphemous) at other times.

Are you kidding me?

The Left Behind series (fiction, right? right?) is terrible. Terrible writing, terrible interpretation, and terrible for letting people run with it thinking it's the gospel truth.

Now, the terrible has hit your video game store. See a link to a review here.

To be honest with you, I'm more and more disenchanted with "Christian" producers, directors, and idea-folks trying to harness the machinery of Hollywood and culture for "good." More often than not, in seeking to be relevant to the greater culture and present a different message, the striving for relevance becomes the end, rather than the means to an end of greater dissemination of the gospel. T.D. Jakes tossed out a movie rated R for significantly different themes than the Passion of the Christ; churches applauded. The Left Behind series has gotten significant readership; people use their form of interpretation as the only one, and we've got one of those good ol' "Late Great Planet Earth" revivals like the Hal Lindsey-ruled seventies.
I'll give props to the Passion of the Christ and the End of the Spear; beautiful and convicting movies...I'm not trying to say there isn't a silver lining here.

But now we've got a video game where there's justified violence in the name of the extension of the kingdom. I may be young, but I know enough to know where this is going. Suffice it to say I pin the label on a lot of "Christian" music, books, and movies that my mom told me about Silverchair's album Frogstomp in the late 90s: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. More than ever, those of us who find ourselves in a Christian bookstore have to be extremely discriminating about the things we read, watch, and listen to; and retain the knowledge that more than a few aspects of secular culture carry more significant themes about what Christ would have us be and pursue than whatever's on the bestseller rack at Family Christian Bookstores.

Hauerwas gets it right (most of the time)

As an addendum to my semi-rant just below, I thought I'd toss in an accurate characterization of the approach of Stanley Hauerwas as given by one of his critics, James Gustafson. The main thrust of Hauerwas' writings are a primary concern for faithfulness; not pragmatism or realism or any other "ism." He's concerned about the reality we all will face at the judgment seat one day before an all-consuming, holy, righteous God.

"In Hauerwas's case the "Church" gives shape to our characters. Our characters are expressed in our deeds and actions. Further, the narratives of the community give shape to the way in which we interpret life in the world. So far this is a description. A turn to the narrative takes place. Since we belong to the Christian community its narratives ought to shape the lives of its members. In Hauerwas' case, for example, this means that Christian morality is not based on a concern to be responsible participants in the ambiguities of public choices. It is based on its fidelity (to) the biblical narratives, and particularly (to) the Gospel narratives. Thus the principal criterion for judging Christian behavior is its conformity to the stories of Jesus."

from James Gustafson, "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church, and the University."

The reason I quoted this to further my musings is because I believe with all my heart that our Christian communities are meant to be the place that primarily shapes our identity: one that is largely counter-cultural in multiple ways: radical forgiveness, sacrificial love, etc. Because of this commitment, I am terribly disquieted that our churches by and large are producing Christians who are unable to see the glaring inconsistencies between what we say we believe (heart) and the reality of what takes precedence over our commitment to Christ on a daily basis (job, family, nation, etc). Yet, people like my friend Matt, strangely, read Matthew 7 where Jesus admonishes us, "those who hear my words and put them into practice are like the wise man who built his house on the rock," and come to the conclusion Jesus really means what he says!!!

Who's (or what's) right, societal demands or Jesus?

Some thoughts (maybe some interaction with others?)

My friend Matt Murphy is a prolific blogger over on Myspace; I wish I had the work ethic to be as disciplined on mine (blogging helps me sort out my scattered thoughts). Matt about a half a month or so ago posted a blog I found interesting. I'll attach both his thoughts and mine, but before doing that, I've got a bit of a preface that's been rolling through my head recently (most directly related to Matt's approach).

Matt is not your typical evangelical American Christian. How do I define typical evangelical American Christian? Most often, I find them to be hypocritical in belief and lifestyle and logically incoherent. Keep in mind I'm saying this as a Christian too (and that I, from time to time, am both hypocritical and logically incoherent, but work with me). I continually find myself intrigued that Christians can in one breath talk about love, forgiveness, and God's grace and in the next talk of folks next-door or across the globe as if their lives are nothing more than dirt. It seems to me the prevailing message we get in our churches is typically something that leads to a split in us; as if you or I could "love" someone in our hearts but beat to a different drum in our actions. As a simple example, somehow we've been taught that we can "love" God and others and "forgive" others while simultaneously serving in the military and killing those who disagree with us (using the most obvious case) in the name of "justice." This logic goes further for those who don't serve directly in the military but engage in the cult worship of military "heroes" or our American governmental leaders that usually takes place the Sunday closest to every Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, or Independence Day where we celebrate their sacrifice to maintain our "freedom." Acknowledging that reality could spawn some more writing here on that subject, but I think it's important to focus here on the false presumption that we can "believe" certain things while our lives and primary motivations completely contradict what we say we believe in. It's wickedly humorous to me how supposedly mature Christians in times of relative peace and comfort say all the right things, yet when things happen that destabilize the norm, they line up with all the other good American citizens and toe the line of uncritically accepting the decisions of G.W. because he's a "praying man" or the nation at large as if we're the pure, perfect light of freedom and justice in the world or some other such nonsense. This applies to any modern nation-state (especially in the West) where fealty to the state usurps faithfulness to Christ as Lord.

What has "love" become in our society? What about "justice" and "peacemaking" and "discipleship"? It's manifestly obvious to me we value Jeremy Bentham, George W. Bush, or H. Richard Niebuhr's opinions on these subjects more than Jesus or Paul. Is that a problem? (tongue planted firmly in cheek) I say all this because Matt (as a relatively "new" Christian) has a deeper awareness of the aforementioned concepts of love, discipleship, justice, etc than 99.9% of my friends or acquaintances that call themselves Christian. How has this hit Matt between the eyes and not them? My deeper question is: how can we recover a reading of the teachings of Jesus with a plain understanding that they are intended to be the center of what it means for you and I to be disciples? Call me crazy, but love doesn't make sense if we don't define it by Jesus' example, teachings, and further (second-level) New Testament musings. The proper pursuit of justice doesn't make sense if we don't define it by Jesus' example, teachings, and further (second-level) New Testament musings, etc etc. Matt seems to have this awareness (along with a willingness to be dynamic in dialogue about the secondary issues that stem from his pursuit of discipleship in the way of Christ). I think that should be applauded.

Anyways, here's what he said on his blog (keep in mind my perception of Matt's approach comes not from this post alone, but from reading multiple posts that seem to reflect a consistent motivation):

I have opinions that my friends don't like.

Soldiers go door to door killing. For what? Are the citizens of Iraq suddenly going to come to my house and try to kill me or my family? Probably not. Its a good thing we have a constitution here that generally prevents the killing of malcontents. Have any weapons of mass distruction definitively been found? No. Did Iraq threaten us prior to our invasion of their country? Depends on who you talk to. Have we rooted out any Al Qaeda members in Iraq? Not definitively. When we did invade, for the purpose of human rights, did we assist refugees? Not really. Is the US Government moving to make more strict laws against torture of prisoners? Negative. Wait, isn't torture of Americans one of the things we are upset about? How many innocent have died? A lot. How many American soldiers have died just from being over there (vehicular accidents, friendly fire, etc.)? A lot. In the first Iraq war, more Americans died from just being over there than in the war. Is Matt ever going to vote Republican? My sources say no."

And my response:

"Some further questions I think are important:

How does a secular sense of justice match up with a Biblical sense of justice 1)in general and 2)specifically in the case of Iraq?

How do we as the church maintain a distance from the actions of the state and take action in our own unique way that provides an alternative witness in times where the actions of the state are clearly unjust?

In recognizing the ultimate futility of staking our complete interest in the actions of the state (empires rise and fall, right?), how do we move beyond secular political pigeonholing (liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican/Green/Libertarian) to recognize that the Politics of Jesus will make some label us as conservative in some areas and liberal in others?

In connection with another of your blogs, it seems to me we always have the temptation to make the easiest move towards the most comfort in our lives. I think that relates to:
1) our politics...its easier to toe the line of whatever party we agree most with and we end up defending their entire platform because we think they're "right" and the other "wrong", and
2) how we relate to the society as the church...we've passed off much of the responsibility of the church to impact the society for good (who started widespread education and the helping profession of medicine?) on the state; that way we don't have to do much other than go to church on Sunday and sit on our hands the rest of the time.

That makes it a heck of a lot easier to sit in our armchairs and talk about why the poor just need to quit being lazy and do something about their lives when we don't have any direct connection to those who are poverty stricken; or talk about why single mothers shouldn't get abortions without actually working directly in their lives so they know not only their lives are important, but the lives of their unborn children, etc etc. I'm continually frustrated by how selfish I am in this respect (in a vacuum, I'd choose the armchair), and how much potential we have for grassroots change as the church that's being wasted in front of televisions between the four walls of our residences."

Penny for your thoughts (and willingness to read this longish post)