real.faith blog

…or are we just full of it? I don’t feel like writing an actual blog tonight, so just enjoy this hilarious bit of comic relief.

Let’s take a brief and scary look at the worldview espoused by many of our southern “brethren” in the Lord…

• “Damn scientists teachin’ all that evolution crap. They don’t know nothin’.”
• “Damn journalists. They’re just all puppets of the liberal media. They’re just ignorant.”
• “Damn doctors. Who needs their voodoo medicine. God made natural herbs and treatments. We don’t need medication. We have prayer and if you have enough faith, you’ll be healed miraculously.”
• “Damn college professors. They don’t know nothin’ despite all their purty little degrees they got on that there wall.”
• “Damn politicians. They wouldn’t know how to run a government if King David himself came and taught ‘em how to. All they want to do is raise our taxes, steal our guns and keep us from buyin’ Jordan Rubin’s latest miracle remedy. What they need to focus on is Sunday alcohol sales. It’s an abomination, I tell ya.
• Now, that Pastor Billy-Bob fella out there at First Righteous Church, he’s got it together. He really knows his stuff. If Pastor Billy-Bob ran for president, he’d have my vote. Granted, he has no political experience and he didn’t go to no fancy seminary, but gulldarnit, God called him and he answered.”

They say common sense ain’t so common these days and it seems this adage couldn’t be any more true than in the church. Fear not though, in response to the overwhelming lack of understanding that has led the misguided among us to take their right to bear arms to mean they have a right to play God and commit other less serious but equally embarrassing acts, I have decided to offer an eight-week seminar this summer called “Common Sense for Christians.” Here is our course outline:

• Week 1: Being Pro Life- Believing that life is precious and has value means all life is precious and has value. You cannot bolster your shiny new gun and go out killing people you disagree with. You also shouldn’t blow up their places of business. Also, if you believe in protecting the second amendment, that’s great—but you might want to consider why a person who is pro-life would want to own a device that can take life. Oh, and if you are pro-life, you may want to really look into the annoying contradiction of calling yourself pro-life while supporting the death penalty.
• Week 2: Marriage- You can’t go around telling homosexuals that marriage is a sacred spiritual bond between a man and a woman until you start treating it as sacred. Fix your own marriages and bring your own divorce rate down, have fewer broken families than the rest of the world and maybe the rest of the world will be more apt to listen to you. Change always comes from within.
• Week 3: Poverty- Politically, you may have a point about it not being the government’s job to meet everyone else’s needs. However, as a Christian, Christ has commanded you to give your money to the poor. So, whether you give in the form of taxes or donations, you’re giving. Hoarding is not an option that is available to you.
• Week 4: Stewardship- All you have belongs to God. All you have is going to burn one day to make way for a new Heavens and a new Earth. When Jesus says don’t store up treasures on earth, there is a very good chance He means that if you have two houses, one of which you only use for a few weeks out of the year and there are people in your community who don’t have any houses, you may have a bit of a stewardship problem.
• Week 5: Politics- Jesus did not come to set up an Earthly kingdom and He didn’t send you into the world to set one up either. We serve an eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Political involvement is important, but it is always secondary to the Kingdom of Heaven, which operates under completely opposite and paradoxical rules than the Kingdom of this world.
• Week 6: Judging- If God had appointed you as the judge of the world, you’d have been born with a black robe, an tacky wig and perfect. If you didn’t pop out of your momma’s womb with these three attributes, then you are a worker in Christ’s field, which means you must sow the fruits of the spirit. In case you forgot, those are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Week 7: Sin- It does exist, and you do it too. If everything in life is a psychological problem we have no control over, or if everything we do wrong is just something society needs to learn to accept, then there is no need for a Savior. If there is no sin and there is no Savior, then we really don’t need to read the Bible or go to church anymore. We could instead devote our lives to debauchery, which is much more fun.
• Week 8: Unity- We don’t have to agree, but we should get along. Somewhere in the New Testament we’re told that we are all parts of one body. A body doesn’t function well if the hand is continually punching the nose or the right foot won’t stop kicking the left behind.

Get it? Got it? Good. Class dismissed.

Do you know someone who is?

Here are the rules: The movies listed below are produced by Christian filmmakers and studios. They are listed in no particular order and the selection of the five movies were limited by movies I have personally seen. They are also the five that popped immediately into my head. This does list does not seek to deny or change the fact that at least 95 percent of all Christian movies are cheesy. These however, are worthy of mention.

• THE JUDAS PROJECT: This movie isn’t actually that bad. It is little-known though and suffers from horrible special effects, long musical interludes and poor acting. It is the gospel told in a modern (early 80’s) setting, with a man named Joshua as Jesus. Despite all the negatives, it has two strong points. The first is that the Jesus character is one of the most likable I’ve seen. The movie does a good job of showing what Jesus would have been like to the people of his time by giving a contemporary equivalent. The second positive, is the totally cool Grey’s Anatomy-esque crucifixion scene. The camera doesn’t cut away and the screams are horrific.
• LEFT BEHIND: This is almost too easy to pick on, because it wandered unrecognizably far from the book. I don’t remember the special effects for this one being as bad as they could have been, but the strangest part was the lack of special effects for the rapture scene, which was a rather big part of a movie called “Left Behind.” It also suffers from a common ailment among Christian movies, called “Hey! We’ve Got Kirk Cameron Syndrome.” If you’re a Christian filmmaker and you get Kirk Cameron, nothing else matters. Forget about music, special effects, camera work and even plot.
• LEFT BEHIND II TRIBULATION FORCE: Same as above, only the “Hey! We’ve Got Kirk Cameron Syndrome” has gotten worse. In this one, they actually go a little further with the special effects, which results in some over-the-top attempts at making the Antichrist look like something out of a horror film. If you thought Christian filmmakers should stay away from special effects altogether, you’ll agree that the last thing they should do is attempt to pull off horror effects.
• THE CHAMPION: Carman should have left boxing well enough alone after his song, also titled “The Champion.” If Christian filmmakers should stay away from special effects, Christian musicians should stay away from Christian films, especially those Christian musicians who don’t actually sing. I don’t remember the plot of this one. All I remember is there was boxing, a wedding and it was bad.
• THE RIOT MOVIE: Not to pick on everyone’s favorite non-singing songwriter too much, but this novel idea fell flat on its face before it even went out the door. Carman had the “unique” idea of packaging the music videos for his popular RIOT album inside a 2 part movie. This allowed him to a.) test the waters for a feature film, b.) star in his own movie and c.) make $40 off of his music videos instead of $20. The latter one seems to have been the most important aspect here. Aside from these issues, the dialogue is forced, the acting is worse than most infomercials and the music videos between each scene break whatever momentum the film may have had going for it.

Lord Jay-sus,

We thank you for our guns,
for this big bucket of KFC,
for the new Wal-Mart that opened up over yonder,
and for the liquor store we runned outta town.

We rejoice that you have brought the Swine Flu
as judgment on the illegal immigrants who are stealing all our jobs.

We thank you for Sarah Palin, the next president of this great land.
We thank you for dying on the cross so that we could live in this country.
We ask for your condemnation on all those wretched sinners.
Please help us protect ourselves against our enemies.
Amen.

…and Jesus wept.

I’ve been getting into a lot of conversations about contentment lately. Despite my usually ranting blogs, I am usually content with the direction my life is heading in and I’m thankful for what I have. I don’t live in what most would consider excess and I generally don’t want more. I may not always be happy, but I am usually content.

In my conversations with others on this topic, I find that the words of the Apostle Paul on contentment being a learned secret ring true. Most people, no matter how hard they try, cannot be content in their circumstances. It’s almost as though contentment goes so against the grain of modern culture that it is a foreign concept in our goal-oriented, always-striving-for-bigger-and-better society.

I saw this clip a few moments ago, and it humorously drove home what I’ve been thinking on this subject for a few weeks. Enjoy!

• Walk around the sanctuary with a microphone, spot unfamiliar faces and ask, “And you sir, why do you only attend church on Christmas and Easter?”
• Have an invitation at the end, but keep holding out for “one last sinner” until the nice restaurants have stopped serving brunch.
• Announce that we are going to continue our yearly tradition of crucifying one attendee. “We’ve been successful at raising them from the dead all but twice. Any volunteers?”
• Deliver the entire sermon in a bunny costume for no apparent reason.
• Throw the offering money back, angrily denouncing it as “blood money.”
• Refuse to begin preaching until the Holy Spirit shows up either as a dove or as tongues of fire.
• “Ladies and gentlemen, our Sunday school teachers have hyped your kids up on sugar. They’re outside paving the parking lot and will be released to you very shortly. Now you’ll know how their teachers feel the Monday after Easter.”
• Have an Easter egg hunt in the middle of the service.
• Lock all the restroom doors in the church and inform the congregation that the church is under budget and we would appreciate their help watering the lawn.
• When a parent is unable to control their small child, accidentally let it slip that the Easter Bunny isn’t real.

Lent has already started, and being the procrastinator I am, I missed the start of it. Since at this point I would only be giving a partial effort, there really isn’t much reason for me to actually give anything up. Afterall, that would be cheap and artificial and I’m all about costly and authentic, so it would not be “above reproach” for me to pick something to give up this late in the game. (Not buying it? O.K. how’s this… I’m afraid of failure, so I seldom give anything up for lent.) At any rate, if I were to participate in this yearly rite, here are a few things I would like to give up for lent.

• Television weather reports. I can look outside and I can feel if it’s hot or cold.
• Worry. I’ve become a bit of a worry wart lately. Don’t get me wrong, I know and love the fact that God is in control. But, I’m having some trust issues and the result is I worry more than I think I ever have and I don’t like it.
• Saturday Night Live Reruns. What is the deal with SNL this year? They have had more repeats than actual shows, and they’ve willingly missed some important events. A new president was elected and the next Saturday, they aired a rerun. Obama was inaugurated and the next Saturday they had a rerun. How about we try to go 40 days with new episodes? That’s not even 6 weeks. You can do it.
• Stress. Or at least, I think I’d like to give up stress. There’s a part of me that thrives on it and—sadly enjoys it.
• Neck pain. I must have pulled a muscle I didn’t know I had in my neck. It’s been annoying me for about half-a-week now. I want it to go away, but I suppose it’s better to feel my neck than to not feel it.
• Facebook. Surely there are more productive ways to spend the time I have already planned to devote to using my trusty laptop. I could do something productive. But alas, I am weak and lack the willpower to ditch this addictive social network.
• Feeling drained. My energy level has been though the basement for longer than I’d care to admit. I don’t feel as though I have any energy-sapping illness, so I’m either doing something wrong or aging before my time. Aging too fast might explain the crankiness.

Well folks, I’m feeling tired now so I’m going to go to bed. Maybe I’ll hibernate for the remainder of lent, apparently I have some sleep to catch up on.

As promised… If you’re going to do a church sign, do it right.