08.28.06
hello godless sodomites
Just wanted everyone to know that I am, in fact, alive. However, lately I’ve been trying to look like I’m studying. That and I don’t really have anything to write about.
08.14.06
pat robertson, environmentalist
This frustrates me.
It’s not so much that Pat Robertson was once firmly against the environmental wingnuts, and now he’s talking about how global warming is some huge problem. Pat, if he wishes, is allowed to change his mind.
The problem, as I see it, isn’t so much Pat’s newly found position in support of the environment and the dangers of global warming. The problem, rather, is what Pat needed to change his mind. Here’s an excerpt from the above-linked article:
Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said on Thursday the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States has converted him into a believer in global warming.
“We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels,” Robertson said on his “700 Club” broadcast. “It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air.”
This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was “the most convincing evidence I’ve seen on global warming in a long time.”
So, let’s be clear. A bevy of REAL scientists have, for the past 20 years or so been very concerned about global warming. They’ve produced a bevy of research, and have made a bevy of converts from that well done science. But, Pat wasn’t convinced by the liberal academic elitists.
No. Pat Robertson was convinced by the flimsiest, most biased, and generally most flawed of any evidence. Pat was converted to the “global warming cause” because he was hot. It’s concerning, I think that people take up this recent change in Pat as something signifying a change in evangelicalism.
It’s not a change in evangelicalism, or Christianity for that matter.
Rather, it’s a sign that the same sorts of attempts to engage with the science that Christians have been at for hundreds of years are still alive and well. For whatever reason, Christians seem to display a contempt for the scientific. Favoring, rather, evidence that supports their previously held assumptions about human and animal behavior, anatomy, the world, and the cosmos.
Rather than seeing a vehicle by which to explore God’s created order, Christians see a scary, out-of-control machine. A machine that is as uncontrollable as it is unholy. Rather, Christians–and their method, judging by Robertson, seems alive and well–tend to rely on their own (unavoidably biased) perceptions.
From this we see new converts to global warming if for no other reason than that it has been hot out.
It leaves me to speculate a few things.
If it were unseasonably cold this winter, will Robertson change his mind about global warming?
If the Pope were to try to walk around the planet, not quite make it, and see only flatness, would he change his mind about the earth being round?
I’m personally glad Pat decided to become a supporter of environmental stewardship. I think it’s great, really. It just concerns me a tad that all it took was a few hundred degree days.
And, perhaps more concerning, why, after seeing pictures and visiting the poor all over the world, are Christians reticent to do anything about it? I mean, we see it, but don’t do much. And, in fact, many times we lend our unwavering support to the very corporate entities that have caused such abject poverty to begin with.
It seems that just like HEARING about the heat isn’t quite enough to an environmentalist make, it’s also not just SEEING poor people that makes people committed to the ideals of eradicating poverty.
I suppose that’s why the verse tells us to sell all we have and give it to the poor, rather than to form a big-ass mission trip to Jamaica, complete with a scheduled beach-day, for the local youth group. We need to experience poverty to care about it.
But, I don’t see Pat Robertson committing himself to a life of poverty anytime soon just to convince himself that we need to be serious about eradicating poverty. I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with environmental stewardship.
08.10.06
what’s that smell?
**sniff…
sniff…**
Hmmm…yes, I think I know what it is.
That’d be “Teen Spirit.”
All together now:
With the Lights out it’s less dangerous
Here we are now entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now entertain us
A mullato an albino
A mosquito my libido…
08.08.06
a fundraiser
During our time in Europe, Jen and I got to see some fantastic relics from the middle ages. It struck me as odd that St. Mark’s in Venice and the Vatican museum in Vatican City were now the home to numerous pieces of artwork and artfully made ancient artifacts from the ancient times. Some of the art was early Christian art, but some of it was decidedly not. Much of their loot was proliferated from ancient Egypt or Muslim strongholds during the crusades.
I found this to be fascinating and troubling.
It was rare that we would be invited to see such ancient antiquities without paying a hefty entrance fee. For example, Jen and I dropped about 12 euros each simply to be admitted into the Vatican museum (which was only about 50 percent open and had Europe’s rudest security guards.)
As we strolled the aisles of looted treasure I got to pondering something, since a lot of what’s in the Vatican museum is stolen, and, judging by the gargantuan line of visitors, since it seems that the Vatican is pulling down a massive chunk of change with their museum, it seems only fair that some other Christian churches should get in on the mix. I mean, most of their procurements came BEFORE the reformation, after all. When Protestant churches left the Catholic church, they couldn’t have known the extreme revenue potential they were turning down.
So, I propose a fundraiser. Here’s how it will work.
We’ll round up some of our hickish Christian School students. Now, I’m not talking about the pansies that go to those liberal Christian Schools in the city, either. I’m talking about rounding up the high school boys that drive trucks and whose truckbeds are lined with spent Mountain Dew bottles. The kinds of students who wear cowboy boots and belt buckles and tote a 9mm handgun, just in case.
Once we’ve got a thousand or so of these folks we’ll charter them a plane to Rome. It’ll be great.
Then once they arrive in Rome, they can ransack the Vatican museum and haul the spoils back to good ole’ Grand Rapids, Michigan. We’ll build a big ass museum somewhere near “the Pentagon” (aka the Christian Reformed Church’s headquarters on the corner of 28th street and Kalamazoo Ave). Then we can display ancient treasures from all periods of antiquity, charging a hefty admission fee, of course…perhaps something in the 20 dollar per person range.
We can hire our own rude security guards, and perhaps, we can even see if we can get some Canadian mounties to wander around in some sort of silly uniform–just like the Swiss Guard.
And we’ll be wealthy. Oh, will we ever be wealthy.
We can build huge churches, and buy 50 thousand dollar sound systems, and have preachers that dress in elaborate robes rather than cheap 50 dollar suits from the sale rack at Marshall’s. We could have one staff member per church goer and maybe a few spares for visitors, our budget could swell beyond imagination–with no fear of cheque overdraft fees. Our Churches could be outfitted with pools, and gymnasiums, and life-sized replicas of the River Jordan for immersion baptism, hell, we could even have 10 acre parking lots paved with 24 karat gold.
It’d be like Vegas, baby. Only Christian–so like Branson, Missouri, I guess.
After all, what’s a Kingdom without a castle?
