05.15.07
Posted in faith, culture, life at 4:22 pm by Brandon
Perusing technorati.com you’d think it was Christmas. Frankly, I was a little shocked over the content of many entries I noted today about how very happy people were that Jerry Falwell had passed on. Even Christians (at least the progressive kind) seemed overjoyed that Rev. Falwell had passed.
I have to say, that sickens me a little.
If grace is true, then grace extends beyond my little political world.
If grace extends beyond my political world, God probably loves those who disagree with me politically, morally, and socially.
If God loves those who disagree with me, then God probably wants me to love them too.
It’s hard to remember sometimes, I think. I’ll admit, my first reaction upon hearing news of Falwell’s death wasn’t to be sad. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, I think we all need a reminder that death–no matter whose–is the enemy, not a solution.
Tags: falwell, Jerry Falwell
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03.10.07
Posted in culture, pet peeves at 2:24 pm by Brandon
***Disclaimer: The below represents my opinion, nothing more.***
Almost 2 years ago, I wrote a post about what I perceived to be racist practices at Blockbuster. It’s still my opinion that Blockbuster engages in racist practices, specifically their posting of a theft deterrent message in English and Spanish but not providing any other Spanish language translations on any other materials for their customers. But there’ve been quite a few folks who have wished ill on me for daring to speak my opinion about Blockbuster, others still think my understanding of the facts is incorrect. Fair enough, I have my opinion, they can certainly have theirs. The latest opinion, however, really struck me as, well, a bit amazing. Here it is:
Ok listen….i am a store manager at BBV. We put the signs up in both languages because it is required by law…ok BY LAW. So dont think BBV is racist, it is our government. I think you all should realize really quick that the same thing goes for all businesses with a safe on the grounds. I have to agree with our government. The statistics do show that most roberies are done by some sort of ethnic group other than white. Im not racist but if a bunch of mexicans looking suspisious walks into my store i will follow them and make sure my presence is known. This world is ran on diversity, just deal with the racism.
So here we have someone claiming to be a Blockbuster Video store manager. Interestingly, this person claims that signs are posted in both English and Spanish because the law requires this of places of business with safes on the grounds. I find this claim to be curious on a number of levels. First, I’ve noticed that there are video stores, some larger and likely have a greater daily fiscal income per store who are also likely have safes on the premises, but do not post this legally required sign. Second, if what this self-proclaimed blockbuster video store manager says is true, one should notice these signs ALL over the place. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, this is not the case. Now, I don’t know where this person claiming to be a store manager is from but I highly doubt that Grand Rapids, Michigan requires that all businesses with safes on their premises require theft deterrent signs to be printed in English and Spanish.
The statistics do show that most roberies are done by some sort of ethnic group other than white.
I’m curious to know which statistics you’re citing. Where can I find them? What organization or academic completed the research? In which peer reviewed journal did this work appear? What specifically are you interpreting as evidence that people of color commit more crimes than white people?
To me the most disturbing claim is this:
Im not racist but if a bunch of mexicans looking suspisious walks into my store i will follow them and make sure my presence is known.
Wow. I didn’t really expect to have my point made so well. Now, I must reiterate, I have no other evidence that this person actually works for Blockbuster other than their own admission that they do. However, if what they say is true, you’ve just witnessed a Blockbuster employee openly praising the practice of violating the civil rights of hispanic patrons.
I’d be curious to hear an official Blockbuster statement. Furthermore, if any Blockbuster representative would like to do a bit of fact checking about the rogue employee who posted on this blog, I’d be more than happy to turn over any information about this individual (i.e. IP address, email, etc).
Tags: Blockbuster Video, Racism
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03.05.07
Posted in faith, culture at 12:23 am by Brandon
It’s spring break. Perhaps that will mean that I’ll post a time or two, maybe not. We’ll see. At any rate, I’ve been thinking on something lately that I think I’m right about.
It strikes me that scientists and preachers have a whole lot in common. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they basically have the same job. Here’s what I mean:
A preacher spends her or his existence attempting to help us understand the truth about the world as it’s been specially revealed to us in scripture. A scientist spends her or his existence attempting to help us understand the truth about the world as it’s been generally revealed to us in creation.
If one accepts God to be a creator and sustainer of creation, it basically follows, then, that both God’s general and special revelation of Godself tell us truth about God. Right? You follow me?
So, you’re thinking to yourselves, “Hey, Brandon, what’s with the waxing esoteric about science and faith all of a sudden. You’re being a big buzz-kill.” You’re right, I am. Sorry. But, as of late I’ve been bothered by something. It seems to me that when preachers give sermons they like to extend their scope beyond the special revelation of scripture. Preachers, especially ones with fundamentalist-ish roots, have a few favourite whipping-boys when it comes to sloppily preaching about things outside of their purview. As a soon-to-be-internet-researcher, my area of study is a favorite whipping-boy. (Myspace is causing the world to end up in hell, etc.)
So what if a preacher or two gets a tad pissy about the internet in a sermon? Who cares? Well, frankly, I do–and I’m guessing God agrees with me (he regularly does; I’m rarely wrong.) I care because the folks who talk bad about the internets have rarely read the work of those who have spent time trying to understand the way God has created humans to use the internet as a tool. In short, many of the people who would love nothing more than to demonize a whole medium of human communication, haven’t spent a lick of time reading the academic literature about it.
Imagine if a scientist, in his or her writing, made sweeping claims about faith without having read the claims of the documents about which they were proclaiming judgment. Such claims would be met with faith-wide outcry of a scientific prejudice about faith. Why then, are scientists who claim faith so damn tolerant of faithful prejudice about science?
So, are we to require that each time a pastor gives a sermon that they’ve read all of the extant literature relevant to the domain about which they hope to speak. I think not. (Although, a bit more research couldn’t hurt.) Rather, I would argue that the Church needs to stop being a failure at teaching its people the skill of application.
The skill of application is, to me, a major missing component to what it takes to be a church-member. We’ve so sanitized church in the hopes that any 4-year old without a church background will feel comfortably that they’ve been able to fully digest each aspect of the sermon, that our parishoners have lost the skill of being able to apply what they hear. Sure, I’ll blame MTV, too. Our culture has consistently and progressively been willing to engage of more of the cognitive processing (read: thinking) for its audience…and the Church has followed suit.
If the Church could process the messages it heard, there’d be less need for pastors to go out on tenuous limbs and whack at the whipping-flavors of the month. Rather, people could hear the truth as revealed in scripture, and (wonder upon wonders) do the work of application to their own lives.
It’s just a thought.
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11.13.06
Posted in culture at 4:07 pm by Brandon
Seriously, I’m curious.
Why do people read blogs?
Discuss amongst yourselves…and if you wouldn’t mind doing me the favor of sending all your friends here to satiate this little curiosity of mine, I’d appreciate it–yes, I’m being a link-whore, deal with it.
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07.18.06
Posted in faith, culture at 3:14 pm by Brandon
Ah, it’s a beautiful day here in internet-avoiding-the-finishing-touches-on-my-Master’s-thesis-land. It’s funny, all joking about avoiding work aside, how we internet-happy blog-surfers tend to think of the internet as a real place. Almost as if we could reach out and touch our fellow internet surfers.
I was just reading a piece at Stupid Church People about the idea of a community of internet-Christians being a church. It’s an interesting, even intriguing thought, isn’t it?
I admit, I like the idea of being able to be a part of a community of believers, no matter the medium by which we interact. However, it’s an idea that I just don’t think I can buy into.
Now, at the outset, I must admit that I wholly think it’s possible to be part of THE Church in a particular internet community. But the idea of being A church is what I’m not sure I’m on board with. Being a part of the Church is something you take with you everywhere you go, I think. So yeah, having a community of believers interact is a good thing. Probably something that needs to happen more often.
However, becoming a church is another thing entirely. I think in American society we Christians have fallen in love with the pat answer about a church being about the people, not the building. The thing is, proximity IS a big part of what makes A church “a church”. The church is a body of believers called together at a specific place.
Why does it matter? Well, I think it matters for a few reasons. First, being bound together by proximity creates a community whose first tie is not ideology. I think there’s a real danger in church communities whose ideologies are their binding characteristic. Now, that’s not to say that it’s entirely a bad thing to be involved in all ideologically driven communities, it’s just dangerous for churches. An ideologically driven church will necessarily single out and endivinate (no, I’m not sure that’s a word) specific ideologies–such as conservative, or liberal ones. Everybody else is sort of left out to dry. In fact, if you’re reading this blog and empathising with what I’ve written about here for, say, the past 2 plus years, you’ve probably been hurt by an ideologically driven community.
Another thing that lacking proximity does for religious communities is that it disallows them to do things. I mean, sure, we can have a computer mediated discussion, and we’ll even be more likely to be incredibly satisfied with that discussion…but the bottom line is that we don’t shake hands, celebrate the eucharist together, serve at a soup-kitchen together, or go visit the sick.
Being a community of proximity also allows us to contact people of multiple generations. If you hadn’t noticed, most of us in the blogosphere–at least those of us who I usually interact wit–are basically my age. Sure, there’s the odd 50-something (no offense intended by the “odd”) but for the most part, we’re in our late 20’s through our 40’s. There’s no elder stateswomen from whom we can glean pearls of wisdom, nor are there many (any?) children whose faith the scriptures tell us hold the key to the very moorings of our faith.
The people with whom we discuss (read: argue) often hide behind a hot-headed rhetoric of youthful-righteous-indignation, and to be honest we (read: I) often respond in kind. In a community of proximity, we wouldn’t do that. We wouldn’t berate, belittle, or any of those other awful “be”’s because, frankly, we’ll be seeing them throughout the week.
Now, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t involve ourselves in online communities. Far from it. They can be a place of solace, fresh thinking, and a place where the soul can be rebuilt. We can use these communities as a place to be THE Church.
I’m not sure the article in question was advocating a position that the online community can REPLACE a church; however, I fear that some of us can start to think that way from time to time. When we get frustrated with the current state of the Church of proximity, we like to think that there’s another, better option. I fear, though, that that option isn’t really “better” at all, it’s just different. I think it’s human nature that the grass will probably ALWAYS look greener, no matter where we are.
I don’t write this to be adversarial, but I do write it to point out that it is important to be reminded that despite all the angst we’re caused by the church’s antics, it’s important to remember that antics exist everywhere.
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07.13.06
Posted in politics, culture at 8:31 pm by Brandon
Why, friends, do we insist on labeling ourselves? Why the rigid adherence to giving ourselves an identity? I mean, I’m one of the worst; I admit it. Religious, Liberal, Religious Right, conservative, baptist, conservative Christian, activist, pacifist, Dutch, Jew, bad, good, intellectual, anti-intellectual, realist, cynic. Let’s be honest, we’ve got a love affair with putting ourselves into boxes.
To be fair, it’s sometimes a matter of simplicity. I’ve identified, here, as a liberal so that people could easily determine whether or not they’d like to read on. But, the cold hard truth is that calling myself a liberal is mostly misleading. Sure, if you’re a conservative you assume we don’t agree on politics…but if you’re a liberal, you assume we do agree on politics. And, sometimes–even a lot of the time–we don’t agree on politics. That’s ok, really. Agreement isn’t some sacred golden calf, but why should I put myself into a box.
You may say, “what’s the big deal? Who cares if you’re in a box as long as you know what you believe? What’s the harm of being in a box of your own placing?”
I’ll tell you. The harm is that you begin to associate more with the box you’ve placed yourself into than you ought. You let your self attributed categories do your thinking for you. By labelling yourself, it’s quite simple to let those labels define you. If you’re not careful, you really cease to be yourself.
People that define themselves in their labels aren’t hard to pick out of a crowd. The “conservatives” will be spouting off “Bush-rhetoric”, and the Religious Left will be off in the corner waxing eloquent about how wonderful Barak Obama is…what a man of faith.
I have a hypothesis. It’s not supported yet, but one day it might be. It goes like this:
The powers and principalities of evil want us to label ourselves, because in doing so we become so caught up in the work of rhetoricalizing ourselves against the “evil-other-side” that we forget about the work of the Kingdom.
So, friends, here is my apology to you: I’m sorry for labelling myself a religious liberal. Will you please forgive me?
Frankly, I’m tired of being one.
I’m sick of caring how the latest bullshit from the “religious right” is “ruining the image of Christianity.” I’m tired of trying to defend Democrats who are sniveling, whiny, people panderers with more concern about getting re-elected than they have any real concern about the disenfranchised. I’m really just over hearing Jim Wallis prattle on about how poverty is a moral issue–rhetoric really aimed at deflating the religious right, and not at “making poverty history.” I’m even more tired of feeling like, because I’m a “liberal” I somehow need to respond to assholes like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, do we really even have to respond anymore–I mean, is anyone who really matters listening? I’m even tired of Barak Obama and his ilk of Democrats who feel like faith is a thing to be co-opted as an instrument by which morality MUST be legislated…as if the right is any less of a faithful position.
So, I hereby un-claim any political, religious, socio-economic, or any other activist labels. They’ll no longer do my thinking for me.
Sure, that leaves the blowhards on the religious right without an answer about their contention that there’s no such thing as a progressive Christian. But, let’s be honest, who cares? Who cares if no one’s there to respond to the Brannon Howses of the world? Frankly, our response of, “Yes, there is such a thing as the religious left!!! Look we’re supposed to love the poor!!!! Jesus was a liberal!!!” is a tad sophomoric. It launches us into a bitter rhetorical battle in which the only certainty is that the Kingdom of God loses. As I reflect on this war between the right and left, I can’t help but think that old Uncle Screwtape must be ordering his victory fireworks. Powers and principalities of evil are, after all, notoriously good at the powers of distraction.
Whilst we argue and claim the moral highground–whatever our side–people continue to be ignored, hungry, hurting, and lost.
In closing, I just have to say that I really wonder sometimes, if we create the very culture-war we claim to fight. We claim to be Emergent, and fight with our elders or more conservatives. We claim to be liberal and fight with the right. We claim to be capitalist and fight with the socialists.
What if we didn’t claim to be anything? What if we just loved God and our neighbor as ourselves? It seems to me we’d rather run out of people to fight with. What a pity.
Tags: Labels, Progressive Christian
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07.11.06
Posted in faith, culture at 1:18 pm by Brandon
Jen and I were in Amsterdam about a month ago. Now, before your mind gets to racing about all the debauchery in which we were enaged, let me assure you–we didn’t do anything more immoral than usual.
We were in a small group a number of years ago at a relatively local mega-church. At one, rather memorable, meeting a couple who travelled through Amsterdam on their way to a mission trip to India quipped, “Yeah, we got off the plane in Amsterdam–you could just smell the sin.”
I was justly confused, then, when just a month ago my schnoz was incredibly active desperately in search of the “smell of sin” and I just couldn’t detect it. Admittedly, I was probably absent the day they taught the “good Christians” what, exactly, sin smelled like. I imagine it smells a little like a Kerusso T-shirt–fresh from the sweatshop, but I can’t be sure.
What we found, instead, was a city of wonderful people. Probably some of the kindest people in Europe that we ran into. To be fair, the wholesale lack of a language barrier probably helped. Still, I was on the hunt for sin in Amsterdam–surely I’d missed some orgies and the like.
Everytime we encountered a new person, I expected to see some sign of Satan–you know, maybe in a moment of indiscretion they’d slip out their forked tongues, or reveal that they actually had two sets of eyelids or gills or something. Imagine my shock when on a worshipful Sunday morning canal boat tour we cuised past a church that was–gasp–just getting out of service. Imagine that, a church, filled not only with grandmotherly types, but young families. Quietly sipping their coffee (an after church ritual) and chatting–pausing only momentarily to kindly wave to friends passing by on their Sunday morning boatride through the canals.
Sure, a prostitute in the red light district asked Jen and I if we’d like to “do it”, but when we politely replied, “maybe next time” she just sort of let us go on our way.
In west Michigan (and in Christianity, too, I think,) we like to think of Amsterdammers and their ilk as the embodiment of Beelzebub. We speculate that any Christian who supports liberal Marijuana laws can’t really have Jesus living in their heart. No people who make a space for, and–again, gasp–protect and care for their prostitutes could have Jesus living side by side with them.
This is not all to say that all Amsterdammers go to heaven and all Americans go to hell. Far from it. There, like here, there is a pressing need for the love of God to touch people. We all have a need to be transformed.
Transformation.
That’s the tricky bit. Here in America we tend to surmise that transformation moves us in the direction of wealth–what with streets paved with gold and all. Yet, I’m not so sure wealth is the direction of God’s transformation. The Dutch seem, knowingly or not, to be on to something with regard to being transformed by God’s grace. They get that working 60 hours a week in search of something approaching upward mobility, may just be moving us backward. They get that just sitting on the front porch eating dinner with friends and sharing a bottle of wine isn’t such a bad thing.
In short, the Dutch understood the meaning of rest. That rest isn’t so much something to be done passively–so that we can store up our energy to head back into the grind. They understood that rest is something to be done actively…riding your rowboat down the canals, sharing a dinner with friends, and generally stopping to smell the roses.
So, I guess I went to Amsterdam in search of the smell of sin. What I found, however, wasn’t sin–at least not in any more abundance than I find here. I found the smell of delight, the smell of patience, indeed, I found out what the roses smell like. And that, my friends, is not a smell I’m likely to forget.
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07.05.06
Posted in culture at 1:46 pm by Brandon
After taking a trip to Europe for about a month, Jen and I are home. There are lots of things that, in Europe, aren’t inalienable rights that we’re now quite glad to take for granted. For example, free tap water and larger bathrooms. And, while there are a number of good conveniences here in the U.S. of A. that we enjoy, and do in fact make life just that much easier, there are some bad conveniences in the States as well.
I’ll probably be writing a bit about both in the weeks to come.
Today, though, what strikes me are the people we met while travelling abroad. Now, we weren’t so outgoing as to have an adoptive Dutch family take us in and show us the Amsterdam ropes, and we didn’t find any long lost Italian mother-types. But, wow, did we ever meet travellers. Americans, Brazilians, Kiwis, Austrailians, Brits, and even Texans, you name it, we probably shared a train compartment or dinner table with them at one point or another.
One thing that struck me about the people we met while travelling was how quickly and how well we got to know each of them. Sometimes we just shared a meal, other times it was a 7 hour train ride. It occurred to me on our plane ride back from Zurich that while we were travelling we REALLY talked to people. There was something about being in a place in which we shared the experience of being out of our cultural comfort zone that really made us get to know one another.
In reflecting further on this (it was, after all, a 9 hour plane ride) it became clear that we got past asking questions about what others DID and focused more on who they were, and what they believed. It makes me sad, a little, that I’m back in the States, enjoying the incredible space we’ve all come to take for granted. When I sit at my little coffeeshop (American not Dutch) table and type this, I’m struck by the physical space separating me from the next table over. And even when close to others in proximity the walls I erect to keep me from interacting with the people around me are frustrating. And, when I do interact, I ask “what do you do” kinds of questions–the kinds of questions that really only hint at the more important and interesting “what do you believe” kinds of questions.
It strikes me that we desperately want to be known, and yet we strategically–even systemically–live in a society where asking the kinds of questions and talking about the kinds of things that allows us to be known is taboo, or at least awkward. Some of us turn to online media for those relationships. And, I fear, we fool ourselves into feeling known without really being known. Eventually, we feel let down when that fantastic online community we call “home” (or even “family”) lets us down.
So, in the interest of being known–really known, that is–I’d like to tell you all a little less about what I DO and give you a short list of the things I BELIEVE. I’d encourage any or all of you to play along.
I believe:
…that an evening meal should include at least 3 courses.
…that we should walk more and drive less.
…that the Kingdom of God is present and that I’m a part of it.
…that socialism got a bad rap.
…that some of the French really are jerks.
…that Jesus died because of my sins.
…that Rome isn’t as “filthy” as the Americans who refuse to walk a quarter of a mile to drop their used water bottle, rather than to just dump it in some pile.
…that all people are worth knowing.
…that science is worth engaging.
…that cats are worth loving, and that loving a cat well is a part of my calling as a Christian.
…that “scrubby” artist types are often more interesting to know than Aber-christians.
…that no matter how much Aber-christians annoy me, belief number 8 still applies.
…that I’m worth knowing.
And you. What do you believe?
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05.16.06
Posted in faith, culture at 2:47 pm by Brandon
Amidst the DaVinci Code hype, Christians are, once again, whining…loudly. In that spirit, I’m offering this letter to Christians:
Dear Christians,
Brothers and Sisters, it seems that many of us have become taken up in righteous indignation with the recent popularity of Dan Brown’s popular work of fiction The DaVinci Code. In adult Sunday school classrooms across the country, we’ve riled yourselves into a righteous tizzy over the “heretical nature” of this text. It seems that now that the subversive Sponge Bob Squarepants has been uncovered for the gay that he is, our collective attention needs, now, to turn to other subversive influences.
Indeed, we Christians need to pay close attention to this grave threat to our very existence. The future of the religion, no, the future of the world does indeed depend upon our ridicule of this text.
Some in the so-called “progressive Christian movement” have tried to claim that the DaVinci Code isn’t very harmful to Christianity. We must be strong in our insistence that this heretical perspective be stamped out in all of its forms. It’s all well and good, to them it seems, to be offended by our President George W. Bush (praise be upon him), but when we, the upright, holy, God-centered, religious right are offended by attacks upon Christ himself–then the progressive eyes start to roll.
Their idol of progress has blinded them to the call for Christians everywhere to be offended by the attacks on the very celibacy of Christ present in the DaVinci Code. Further, their claims that Christ wasn’t a white middle class Republican is nothing less than repugnant. As if you needed more evidence of this heresy, sheesh.
Some of those godless bastards even have the gall to claim that the DaVinci Code doesn’t represent a direct attack on the central message of Jesus Christ. They claim that Christ’s central message was something about the Kingdom of God bringing about a New World Order of social, economic, and religious justice. More reviling still is the claim that we should be more offended by the so-called lack of air time we righteous members of the religious right (including our President George W. Bush–pbuh) pay to issues of social injustice.
As you all know, the central message of Jesus regards personal salvation, the God-given right of men to have dominion over women, and the hellish realities of socialist regimes at the expense of holy capitalism–nothing more and nothing less. Some of these progressive Christians–if they’re really Christians at all–have been secretly trying to subvert our collective attention from the awful realities of the DaVinci Code and insist that we pay attention to this “New World Order”. Such new-age schemes must be opposed at every juncture.
I write you this message, Brothers and Sisters, that you may stay strong in the light of the evil and repressive force of progress. These self-labelled progressive Christians are nothing more than a hip and dynamic attempt of the evil one to bring down the true Kingdom of God being brought about by God’s one true leader, George W. Bush (pbuh). Such evil attempts at anarchy must be squelched.
In time, it’s certain that the DaVinci Code will become just another blip in our collective memory, it will be unveiled for the fiction that it is. In this dark hour, however, it is vital that we remain strong, stay the course, and pray unceasingly that our attention not be diverted from the true goal of forwarding the principle message of Christ. The Kingdom of God (that is, the United States) will win. It’s only a matter of time: 23 years 14 days to be exact (see the LaHaye & Jenkins study Bible’s end times timeline.)
In Christ,
Brandon
Tags: The DaVinci Code, Satire, Christianity
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05.01.06
Posted in culture, life at 12:21 pm by Brandon
Last Friday night, Jen and I found ourselves on the way to the mall. After we’d been walking around for a while–and after I took an upper of anti-nausea medication as a result of my collapsing into the fetal position resultant from a fit of “consumerist nausea” as I entered the temple of Mammon (aka Rivertown Crossings Mall)–we happened by a new Hollister store. We didn’t actually go inside the store, we just walked by.
If you weren’t farmiliar, Hollister is a store affiliated with the Abercrombie and Fitch brand.
What was really interesting, was the scene that was going down OUTSIDE of Hollister that evening.
There was a father holding his infant son. The baby in question was screaming uncontrollably. Not crying, but screaming, wailing, gnashing his gums. This little one looked like he’d seen Satan himself.
Curious enough to eavesdrop, Jen and I slowed our pace just enough to hear that this little tyke had been scared shit-less (though, to be honest, I didn’t check) by being inside the Hollister store.
And now, I’ll end this post with a scripture reference, Psalm 8:2 :
2 From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
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