The Good News?

Alternate title: A rambling semi-ranting, partially coherent post about church in the media here in Quebec.

More than 100 churches in central Nebraska canceled Christmas services, CNN affiliate KHGI-TV reported.

The decision for safety's sake could put a serious dent in some churches' finances.

"The Christmas collection in a parish typically is very important," the Rev. William Dendinger, the Roman Catholic bishop of Grand Island, Nebraska, told KHGI. "We hope those people who don't make it that day will be there New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and make those kinds of contributions."

Although that particular quote is from CNN (here), that's the only kind of story we hear of church and religion up here. We get similar stories, where above the importance of people actually going to church on Christmas to worship God, show appreciation and be in community on the day which represents the incarnation is money and church greed. It's partly the media's spinning and it's partly what we see with our own eyes if we ever do set foot into lavish, wasteful, usually empty churches here.

We also get stories like this, where four priests are complaining that there is too much English in services here. In a place where pews are empty, where churches are being turned into condos and where the overwhelming majority has been burned by the church in some way, it is just incredible that four priests would be so openly apart from the cause they are supposed to be for. Instead of bringing the good news, they're bringing bad news, badness and even more resentment for an already poorly viewed church. It's horrible and the media loves it.

If there was any accountability at all, these four would be sent to a gospel bootcamp to learn what it is they should be fighting for. But alas, as the people here have seen clearly over the years, there is no accountability. Molesting priests are given funding by the church to attend university, an opportunity for education most people here can't afford, and one which the priest in question obviously did not deserve according to the informed public (sorry, I can't seem to find a direct link to that story online at the moment).

Stories like these are the ones we hear about. They're all we hear about when it comes to anything religion. Four preachers from all across Canada abusing and destroying the people they are supposed to be serving. And that's just in one week.

Even more positive stories, like this one, in which they interviewed a priest who has a reputation for giving great sermons discourages me, albeit in a far more subtle way. The Montreal newspaper journalist had to leave the city of Montreal, cross a bridge and drive a good fifteen to twenty minutes (without traffic) to another city to find a preacher worth publishing a story about? What does that say about the situation here?

I just want to grab somebody in some sort of position of authority and shake them and say, "What the hey are you doing?" But there is no person of authority. Well, unless you count the pope, and it seems somebody already tried to shake him this week.

How are people supposed to hear the good news when all they hear is bad news? Overwhelmingly horrible bad news at that.

The sad thing is if there ever was some sort of governing body that could and would go defrock the baddies, it's likely that eventually it'd become a boys' club, and would start to select for the wrong reasons.

So this is how it's going to be? False prophets abound, pain and hurt rampant, separation from God instead of reconciliation? This is all there is?

Why did God let Noah live? So Jesus could be born? So that we, the descendants, could tarnish His image, lead His beloved sheep astray and slaughter them? Why? Why would God create us to begin with? Why would He allow such horrible, selfish, ungrateful beings to exist?

I can't answer why he created us to begin with, but I'm guessing the reason He hasn't gotten rid of us is due to the incomprehensible grace, mercy and patience He has for us.

Sometimes, I kinda wish He didn't.

Then we would cease to exist and finally stop hurting each other so much.

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3)

No matter what we do, we just can't fix ourselves. Not as individuals nor as a collective.

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2)

Merry Christmas.

Anirniq.

In Tim Keller's "The Reason for God", chapter nine, titled "The Knowledge of God" talks about the knowledge we have of God that seems to come innately. As he puts it, "I think people in our culture know unavoidably that there is a God, but they are repressing what they know." (p 146 in the hardcover version)

But what if believing in the Christian God represses what we know to be true of a different God or a different set of truths? Or what if there is more than one truth?

While watching "The Snow Walker" the other day, I felt immersed in Inuit culture, even if for just a small fraction of time. Everything has a spirit. Everything works together in a certain brutal harmony. Everything is important and the spirits must be respected. I won't get into too much detail, both because I don't know most of it and because I don't want to be disrespectful and write things out of context without doing them adequate justice. But the principles in the movie, which were very influenced by the Inuit people in the making of the movie in an effort to be accurate, are the principles I know and have always known.

Ever since I was little, I've been an animist. As far back as I can remember, my soul felt connected to the moon somehow, as though it was watching over me. When I was young, probably around four, one of my earliest memories was rejecting the moon and feeling alone in the universe for the first time. But the moon still affects me. I can't pretend it doesn't. On a warm summer night, when its blue glow hits my skin, there's something different about it.

And as I studied biology, one recurring question or idea bothered me: how do we know what they think or why they do things? How do we know they aren't making concessions for us?

The analogy I used to use jokingly was of a bear. We think we're smarter than a bear because we've invented things like guns. Throw a man naked into the woods and see how long he survives. Are we really smarter than bears? Or do they just not need guns and cars? It wouldn't occur to us to invent tools and arms if what we were given physically was adequate for anything other than hiding.

Another example is the dog. There's a poem going around about a dog who gets rejected because he snapped at his owner and the owner reacted badly to it. I am the alpha in my house. I rule over my dogs. They listen to me. And if they don't listen to me, there are consequences. But my big dog's mouth, when fully opened, could fit the majority of my face. He definitely could fit my neck in there. Those jaws can snap beef leg bones in half. And my little girl? Her jaws aren't all that big, but she's agile. She could probably go for my jugular before I had time to react. But why don't they? Because I've trained them not to? I doubt that. I never pulled my dogs aside and provoked them to go after my jugular in order to correct them. "Never! Never touch my jugular!" No. Why don't they?

Obviously, there are stories where the dog gets aggressive towards its human, but usually, those stories follow years of neglect or other abuse, a traumatic incident or a head trauma. Dogs don't just "turn".

But I play with my dogs fairly aggressively and more often than not, I end up hurt in some way and they stop immediately and wait to see if I'm ok. They can't not know they're more powerful than I am. My big dog certainly knows he's smarter than I am and uses his intellectual powers for evil, so why not his physical strength?

How do we know what they think? How can we be so arrogant as to presume we understand their thought processes?

One morning, a dog kibble rolled under a closet door. My little girl saw it go under and tried to get it but wasn't able to. A few days later, when I'd totally forgotten about it, I got something out of the cupboard and walked down the hall, leaving the door open. My little girl wandered behind me and the second she had totally passed the closet door, I saw her remember. You could see her eyes change and she stopped and retrieved the kibble from inside the closet. Did she smell it? Or did she really just remember? If she remembered, she had to have a thought process about it.

Another time, I said something really quietly to her, something like, "Do you want to go out?" or "Do you want a cookie?" and she didn't fully hear me, so she stayed laying there, her eyes shifting around the room. About a minute after I had said that something, she suddenly got up and ran to whatever it was I had asked her (either the door or the cookie stash, I can't remember which it was). It was like when we humans barely hear something and then replay it in our minds trying to figure out what it was we'd heard.

My point being, as a child I was raised in the woods and spent hours alone in the forest or with my dogs and I could always feel them. I could feel the trees watching over me. I could feel my dogs doing the same. There was something very spiritual for me when I was young and surrounded by living beings who weren't human. It wasn't a God-human relationship though. It was more of an earthly partnership- we're all in this world together. We all have a certain level of suffering and of joy. We may as well share it and share the burden.

Maybe it's just shared energy rather than spirits. Maybe it's the way our molecules interact. Maybe it's anthropomorphism. Or maybe, as Tim Keller accidentally suggests to me, it's something my heart just knows is true.

But how does it fit with Christianity?

I'm a scientist. The major stereotype and prejudice against Christianity up here is that only irrational people can believe in it. And so, as a scientist, it wasn't easy to believe it. I had to work out all the kinks and loopholes and apparent inconsistencies. One of the means by which I did that was by acknowledging that if God (and consequently, the Bible) is the truth and science is the truth, then they must match. Of course, sometimes, the science we know to be true today is wrong tomorrow, but some things stay constant. Like... constants. So it's never either/or for me. As a simple example, if science points to evolution, somehow the Bible has to fit.

The same idea can be applied to animism or the sort of nature-based spirituality I've felt my whole life and Christianity. If I know one to be true and I know the other to be true, they have to match.

At first, I thought it'd be a fruitless endeavor. Christianity was on the right and animism was on the left and getting the two into an area of common ground seemed impossible. But it had to work because these are my truths and letting one go would mean letting Christianity go and I could not do that.

Why Christianity?

Because it's the one that comes least naturally to me. While my soul loves both, I can't deny the things I've felt and experienced that led me to animism so early on. I will always feel them and remember them and know, deep in my soul, that they are true. But in the same way, after months and months of research, prayer and reading, I feel God too. I feel Jesus in my life. I know Him to be the truth now, although the process for me to come to that was not nearly as fluid, especially since it has always been far easier for me to reject Him.

While animism feels inherently natural, there are times when Christianity feels like a human concoction. There are aspects that are so quickly converted to religion and duty and those things consistently rub me the wrong way. The world is chaotic, yet ordered. It's beautiful, yet brutal. It's fantasy and reality all wrapped into one intense, powerful package that we get to experience for such a brief time. We do put too much pressure on the temporary to make us happy, but at the same time, we often don't experience the world for its awesomeness. Animism kind of allows that. It allows us to feel the world as a soul among many, as one togetherness, as Creation- the way God intended.

Earlier on, in the Intermission section of Tim Keller's book, he talks about how if you were forever a character in a play, you wouldn't know about the playwright unless the playwright wrote himself as a character in the play. And in our story, God did write Himself in, as Jesus. So we know about Him because He became a part of the story.

Elsewhere in the book, Tim Keller refers to the analogy of the elephant in describing truths. He says (although I believe the idea is attributed elsewhere) that often people look at the truths of the different religions as a group of blind people would experience an elephant. One would grab the trunk and say, "An elephant is long and flexible," while another would have the foot and say otherwise. They're all parts of the truth, but only the sighted observer from afar has the superior knowledge it takes to see the whole truth (which is impossible, really, and quite arrogant, but I digress).

But if we look at said elephant along with the fact that Jesus wrote Himself into the play, would it not make obvious sense then that each group was given a piece and all the pieces put together would form the elephant? "I am He," Jesus says when they come to arrest Him (John 18:5-6). What if God put people all over the world, in places isolated from the words of Jesus, to give us an idea of what the shadowed side of the elephant looked like while we were on the sunny side, or vice versa? What if we know it's an elephant, but the size of it and the complexity of it make it impossible for us to know all there is to know (and understand) about it? What if while Jesus told Israel He was God, God was elsewhere telling other nations truths also? The only way, apart from God Himself showing us, that we would know the whole truth would be to all come together and share what truths we know. Some perceived truths might be proven otherwise. And others might fit together in a perfect puzzle of complements, which, from the Christian perspective, would end up ultimately pointing to Jesus.

Apparently (according to the ever accurate wikipedia :D), the predominant religion among the Inuit is Christianity, but the Inuit have managed to intertwine their natural spirituality into Christianity. How did the Inuit, who became isolated from other societies so early on, somehow develop a spirituality that could line up so naturally and profoundly with Christianity? What are the odds that a nature-based belief system and a humanity-directed faith in Jesus could complement each other that peacefully and gracefully?

And so, thus far, I have no choice to make. For God so loved the world, not just the humans. He created all of it, and as I am but a mere human who will never fully grasp the greatness of God, I can't take for granted the partners He's given me to share in this earthly life.


Anirniq: Breath, spirit of life.
p.s. this book looks interesting.

Inspirations.

In this blog post on the Resurgence site, Matt Chandler discusses what stirs and robs him of affection for Christ.

I started asking what stirs my affections for Christ. What, when I’m doing it, when I’m around it or dwelling on it creates in me a greater hunger for, passion for and worship of Christ and His mission? [He lists eight for this one.]

I don't really feel like posting a neat, brief list. I'm not a brief kind of girl. But I'll put numbers just to satisfy my need to adhere to rules. :D

1. Prayer - the importance of prayer becomes apparent for a lot of people when they've suddenly lost control of something or feel helpless. For me, it's the other way around. Prayer forces me to admit I am helpless on any regular Thursday. Or in the car on the way to get groceries. Or in the shower. Or lying in bed at night. The only time I don't really pray is in the morning. Somehow, because I am already not a morning person, praying in the morning makes me irritable.

When I was in therapy for anorexia and panic attacks for a few years a few years ago, my shrink eventually discovered that if she booked me early enough in the morning, she could get at my core reactions a lot quicker than she would later on in the day. I'm vulnerable in the mornings. My guards are down and my only way of protecting myself is through anger and irritability. I am just not in a loving place in the morning, rather it becomes the time when all my wrongs, fears and traumas bubble up to the surface. I guess maybe that's why depressed people don't get out of bed in the morning.

The bottom line is, I don't pray in the morning because I'd rather not start my day as a puddle of goo on the floor. I need to build up a certain measure of strength before I can become powerless and vulnerable, as ludicrous as that sounds.

Either way, praying throughout my day maintains my affection for God and for Jesus, and I'll be honest, it helps that my prayers are answered so awesomely so often. But at the same time, God and I know that the day He doesn't seem to answer one of them, I'll still be ok and I'll still love Him because the only reason He is answering them is because they were the right things to pray for, they were things that glorified Him through my prayers and their fulfillment.

2. I'll steal one of Matt Chandler's- Walking through cemeteries - This one is new and it might not be the #2 of importance or anything, but it's fresh on my mind after two trips to the cemetery in under a week. My reasons are different than Matt Chandler's though.

First, I've always been an animist. I believe that everything has a soul, or at the very least, shared energy. I believe that we have the capacity to transmit strong energy to things outside of us. I believe the power of the mind and spirit is a lot stronger than we realize. We just don't take the time to understand it (or at least try to). Being in a cemetery affects my soul that way. There's something about it that stirs me in a particular way nothing else does. It's like there's a collective energy in there that our soul connects with deeply.

Second, it makes very evident the separation between living souls whose body has died and living souls whose body hasn't. It feels like a divide rather than an absence. And if our souls do separate and we end up with God alone, rather than together among other souls then it would only be natural to feel that divide until we are fully reconciled with God. It would be natural to us to feel as though our soul is apart from something it used to be in togetherness with. Cemeteries ignite affection for Christ in me because they stir up a desire for a bridge.

3. No escapism - I'm already the most sober person I know. I have been sober since 1996, after sitting on my front porch with my brother on a hot summer day and drinking my ceremonial last beer ever. I'm also the kind of person who tries to confront everything as it comes rather than giving it up to the usual defense mechanisms and coping strategies. I face my demons. But another thing I learned in therapy is that you can only get to the deeper issues after you've dealt with the explosive and vivid current issues. By watching movies, tv shows, fidgeting on the internet too long or even playing with my dogs, I sort of deprive myself of a much-needed quiet time and reflection time. When I'm overly busy, overly worried, or overly numbed, my mind can't sit still long enough to stay focused on what I'm reading, writing or praying. I need that time of just being that allows me to pursue soul matters more actively simply because I'm better prepared to venture into them.

4. Blogging - I do love to blog. I tend to clash with a lot of people in "real" life, and blogging is my outlet for just being me. It's like prayer in a way- it's just honest. I don't cater to an audience. I just hash out my thoughts in the most explicit way I can communicate them, which I've found to be through text on a screen. I type as I think and I generally don't plan out posts and the ones I do plan out always end up in my drafts, never getting published because I just don't have the passion for them as I do when I'm typing as though I am talking. But when I blog about God things, I am forced to research (which I'll admit, I haven't done much of lately) and I'm forced to really try to think things through, and when I'm done, all of my thoughts are laid out in front of me to reread and understand better. It also captures a moment in my head, which is kind of what some of the Psalms David wrote are like. He'll switch back and forth from doubt to certainty, just like any normal human would, just like I do. These posts, all busted up and cynical, are my psalms. They might not be all cheesy about trumpets and singing praise and all that... They might have more of a "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying," kind of message. And I am. I'm trying to work through all this and I'm doing it out in the open because that's who I am. Basically, it's a way of sorting out the scary parts of God in a realm of my life that I'm very comfortable in, and that encourages me.

5. Traffic - It's true. Sitting in traffic all those hours when I was working gave me time to think, to pray and to listen to endless sermons. Without that commute, I'm not sure I'd have a foundation laid down as strongly as the one I have (or that I believe I have). I love me some traffic. Flowing rivers of brake lights that suspend time, obligation and control.

6. Migraine-free days - I had a migraine for two years straight until very recently and I am so grateful for these days when I wake up and don't feel like I've been punched in the face repeatedly while I was sleeping. It's a distraction that creates crazy amounts of self-pity, self-loathing and pain and without my migraine, I've got a lot more free time and energy. And truth be told, it stirs up affection and gratitude because I prayed for it.

7. Reading blogs, books and even tweets by pastors and listening to sermons - not the dry writings though, but the ones where their heart is exposed. I think the best pastors are the ones who humanize the Bible by making it relatable, by allowing us to watch it in action through them and by hearing it passionately from their mouths. It's like listening to somebody read poetry to somebody they adore. Their genuine love and adoration for God stirs up my love for God and inspires me. I think I'm a fairly empathetic person and by feeling that affection through somebody who is passionate, I can be opened to new avenues of affection within myself.

Man, I could go on and on- folk music, my beautiful doggies (past and present) and their unconditional love, Christmas... I'll just skip to the next question before it's suddenly 4AM. :D

I also wrestled with and paid attention to what robbed me of affection for Christ. What, when I was doing it or spending time around it created in me an unhealthy love for this world? [He listed six for this one.]

1. I want to start with church. While it doesn't create an unhealthy love for this world, it does rob me of affection for Christ. Religion, obligation, serving in a capacity outside of that which I am comfortable, feeling the constant pull between legalism and not obeying- a lot of the time, after going to church, I'll go for waffles with my brother and sister-in-law and the first thing out of my mouth will be, "Man, I suck at church." I end up feeling so discouraged and out of place that if that is what it takes to be a "real" Christian, then I just am not a "real" Christian. I get into this cycle of negotiation, teetering towards giving up. Pastors I listen to online are all, "Just Jesus," but in reality, it's never "just Jesus." It's always, "If you have an affection for Jesus, you need to show it by serving in and being a member of a church." And if you put up a fight, tell people a bit of your past so that they might understand why this is such an issue, they always reply, "Jesus can redeem all that, but you have to be a member of a church." I'm not sure of what God wants for me in particular, maybe He wants my body to be my temple? But either way, your bullying me isn't helping. I was agnostic for 28ish years, and if but by the grace of God am I saved, then thank God, but if God chose me and then will create for me an eternity without Him because I suck at church, so be it. I'm doing the best I can, and that's not good enough, whether I somehow serve or I never find the way to be able to. But by the grace of God am I saved, not by submitting to peer pressure and bullying...

Anyhooooo.

2. Les Boys - I can't do both. I can't actively pursue relationships and be close to God. The way I've been trained by the society around me to pursue relationships is so not godly and the men I attract generally aren't either. And the end result is that I am distracted in a bad way towards bad things and God ends up sort of shut off. I assume that eventually, I'll find a balance that is healthier, but for now, there is nothing healthy or godly about my pursuit.

3. The opposite of #3 above about escapism.

4. Excessive sleep - Again, it doesn't create an unhealthy love for this world, but it does make me crabby and intolerable. I'm ok with sleeping in. If I wake up at noon, that's ok with me. I don't feel as though my day is wasted because the best part of my day is now (i.e. when the world sleeps). But what I can't stand is when I wake up at noon after going to bed early. That's annoying and does waste my day, which is one of the reasons I end up staying up late also. If I stay up late, I don't need as much sleep. If I go to sleep early, I wake up at the same time but have wasted the better part of my night asleep. In the end, this robs me of affection for God because not only am I all irritable and hating everything, but I tend to get it in my head that I have to cram an entire day's worth of stuff in a really short amount of time. The being busy part causes me to lack focus and distances me from anything that draws me closer to God. I am not a busy person. I am quite lazy actually, so when I say I'm being busy, it's not that I'm actually accomplishing things so much as panicking about accomplishing things. It's a circular path to nowhere.

5. My laziness - I don't know how to fix that or even if it's a bad thing, but the societal pressure to constantly produce gets to me often. I'm a ponderer rather than a doer. In my head, the way I am draws me closer to God in being, but not in doing, and it's the doing part that I think I need more of, maybe. I don't know. That's the thing- I never know if I'm supposed to be doing what I'm actually fond of and good at or if I'm supposed to break myself apart to try to fit into the roles I'm not good at. I'm good at explaining and understanding things (or vice versa I guess would make more sense) and I'm good at living it in my own life but I am not a hard worker in the conventional sense. I'm not ambitious and driven. I'm not all, "Oh, there are poor people in the world, I need to help now!" and hop in my car and slave away somewhere. Is that a bad thing? It feels like a terrible thing, but even if I was to hop into my car and go slave away, I know I'd suck at it simply because my heart is not into it. If my heart is into something, I'll put in the time and effort needed and then some. But should I wait for my heart to be into it? Do I let myself get too comfortable in this world full of worldly comforts? I don't know. But that feeling of sort of self-loathing because I believe I'm lazy is not a motivator and does not stir up affection and drive to build God's kingdom.

6. Aimlessness - to be honest, in Matt Chandler's question, he points to an affection for this world over God and Jesus, but aside from my #2 in this section, I don't really have all that much that I would not give up in a heartbeat. I grew up undeserving and unentitled and unloved, really. Even if you took away my dogs, my babies whom I adore and whose love and friendship helps get me through the worst times, I'll be sad, I'll be broken, but all I have is me. I've felt for the longest time like a nomad, without a home, without attachments, without normal drives towards the pleasures of this world. I do like some things, but if you take them away from me, I won't die. Everything I have and/or have access to is a privilege. It's all a gift. My dogs are a gift. We aren't entitled to gifts. They are gifts. But like the laziness above, what this does is create an aimlessness and lostness that leaves me sort of stranded without direction. I don't know if I glorify God better when I'm aimless and have nothing to move toward but better understanding. I don't know if I glorify God more when I am forced to work out a plan based on my smaller passions because the doors to my bigger passions have slammed shut. I just don't know. It affects my affection for God because if God is really in control and this aimlessness is what He wants, then these doors will just keep slamming and after a while, it becomes harder to stay passionate. Constant rejection wears a girl thin after a while, and so I ask for guidance and more doors get slammed shut, but none open in consequence. Do you really want me to be this aimless, God? Or is there no God at all, rather a string of mediocre luck mixed with self-fulfilling prophesy? Aimlessness does take a toll.

But hey, among all this aimlessness, laziness, lustiness and church rejection, God still is providing for me. I am so grateful for everything I have been given, including faith and a passion for learning, for prayer and for God.

p.s. I'll post this now and edit it tomorrow when I have eyes again. :D

How many?

I don't have a lot of outspoken ideas lately (not any that are publicly blogworthy anyway... :D), but I stumbled upon a blog post about this verse from Mark ch 14:

24 And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”

And the blog author was thankful for the sacrifice, as is the usual response from Christians to this passage, I guess.

But my response?

Many? Why many? Why not all?

On Atheism, hopelessness and hope...

I am really crabby tonight. Not for any particular reason, and definitely not for any good reason. Just crabby.

And so I saw Mark Driscoll (or his assistant?) posted this link on facebook:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv3TFg9SJb4

It's a video explaining the "hope of life" of atheists. Basically, he quotes an atheist as saying the foundation for life is "unyielding despair". From an atheist's point of view, there is no God, there is nothing after this life, there is no meaning to this life, there is nothing but nature and survival of the fittest. He goes on to say that that ideology is utterly depressing and that is why so many teenagers are cutters, why people commit suicide, why the highest selling group of drugs is anti-depressants.

But if the majority of Americans classify themselves as Christian in some way (right?) then who is buying all these anti-depressants? Is Driscoll implying that if we know the gospel we can't get depressed?

In theory, that's true, because we should rely on God and be satisfied in God, etc etc, but in reality, the first humans in the Bible failed miserably at that. What makes us better? What makes us more able to love God in such a whole way when we are surrounded by way more stuff than Adam and Eve were. They just had a snake. We've got explicit sex everywhere, ostentatious entertainment, endless material lures and so on and so on. Our world is just as broken as its always been and humans have been failing at being satisfied in God enough to let the glitz of this world go since the "always" of humanity began.

So yeah, even Christians end up in the hopeless clutches of depression. *shrug* It's not just an atheist thing.

But I digress...

Driscoll (or his assistant) captioned the video on facebook as, "A Video for Dawkins".

My reply was this:
I can kinda predict the response of the atheists I know though... "Of course the world is a darker place when you discover that Santa Claus isn't real, that your dad isn't perfect and that you really are all alone, but just because they're hard truths to accept doesn't make any of them any less true."

So how will that video bring atheists any closer to Jesus? I just don't see it.

Maybe it's my crabbiness or maybe I feel this way on a regular day, but it seems like Christians believe that hardcore atheists will just "click" one day and love Jesus. Like, they'll press play on this Driscoll video because some Bible-thumpy Christian acquaintance will trick them into thinking it's about Dawkins, and they'll endure the seven minutes of it and at the end, when the video carousel shows up, they'll be all looking up at the heavens crying, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. And if it does, if you know somebody to which that has happened, it's likely that deep down they believed anyway.

Why am I so cynical about this? Because as Driscoll points out, it IS a depressing doctrine. It is hopeless. Really. And when you adopt that hopelessness as your fundamental truth of the universe, the implications are that you are so cynical about God and religion that you cannot be moved by "inside" words or by "inside" thoughts. By inside, I mean stuff that stems from Christian religiosity- the terminology.

If you tell an atheist they are hopeless, what does that mean? That this life is meaningless and they'll die and that'll be it? Well... yeah... They know that already.

If you tell an atheist the only way they'll be saved is through our savior Jesus Christ, what does that mean to them? It means the only way to go through life with permanent rose-colored glasses on is if you adopt a delusion of being loved by an imaginary friend. It's meaningless.

In my experience, everything Christian is meaningless to an atheist except Jesus Himself. You can't preach hope or salvation or sanctification or hellfire. None of that means a thing. And if you preach repentance? Well, now you're just a self-righteous religious person that they've already encountered time and time again. It's not going to work.

But the soul things do work. The things we all feel. Like when a relationship ends. Up here, it's likely that that relationship involved sex. And so, talking about what God intends for sex in those moments, how sex is a way of bonding the souls of two people, in order to explain why it hurts so much when those souls rip apart, hits the soul a little bit. Why? Because it's true and because that particular kind of pain is really a soul pain rather than a superficial, every day life kind of pain. We feel it. We know it's something deeper than other hurts we experience. Why do we call it a broken heart? Why do we imply even trivially that we're shattered in our core? And from a Christian standpoint, that is one of the reasons why God wants us to wait. He doesn't want us to feel this soul-rippage. He wants to protect us from that.

Another thing that gets in is forgiveness. Active, open forgiveness. Letting go of grudges. Seeing past the brokenness and the hurt and loving them anyway. It's something that Jesus taught and it's something that goes completely against our basic human instincts. But in our hearts, we long for the ability to let go. We long for the ability to understand that love is more important than anything else. We long for it not because we do it but because we wish for others to embrace it towards us. We wish to be forgiven. We wished to be loved unconditionally and eternally.

Love. It gets in too. Active loving. Sacrifice and enduring profound friendship.

Being humble. Passing off the glory, letting go of selfishness, lifting those around you up- that gets in.

Justice does too. Fighting for those who need us to fight for them. Fighting for the basic needs and rights of individuals.

Caring.

Loving those who are hardest to love. Loving your enemy.

Honesty- being a prideful person takes any mission out of you. Be honest about who you are and what your stumblings are. Be honest about your failures. Be honest. You're not perfect. You're probably farther from perfect than the person you're evangelizing. Never forget that. You might think you're saved, but sanctification is a lifelong process.

And most of all, practicing more than preaching. What good is God's word coming out of your mouth if you don't know what it means? What good is it if you don't live it? What good is it if you don't know it well enough to explain it to somebody who isn't a Christian? What good is it if the only way you know how to explain it is in Bibley terms?

Teach it from the heart. Live it from the heart. And love with it. That is the hope we're trying to get people to understand and that, to me, is the only way to get an atheist's attention. Don't just say the words. If Jesus is in your heart, show them your heart.

Otherwise, it's all just hopeless.


And not to let the atheists off the hook here (even though if there are any reading this post, they'd probably have quit by now, right?), in my comment on Driscoll's wall, I mentioned Santa, imperfect dads and being utterly alone. And when I didn't know God, I did seem to base my ideology on the worst case scenario.

The world is a hard place. Survival of the fittest is brutal. The only person who will ever truly look out for you is you. When you look at ideas like those, which are sort of true really, it makes sense that we're only here by chance and that there's no deeper underlying meaning to all this.

But why do we choose those things on which to base our philosophies?

Why not look at opposite things?

Survival of the fittest might be brutal and unforgiving, but look at what it has produced. Look at the awesomeness of survival. Look at the miraculous adaptations creatures around us have developed to edge out the competition, to protect themselves and even to procreate. It's incredible and so precise.

The only person who will ever truly look out for you is you, but you know those rare times when a friend completely blows you away with kindness? They just show up out of nowhere and just leave you in awe. They might not have even appeared to care about you and then suddenly, there they were, helping you up when nobody else even knew you were down or nobody else knew how you needed to be picked up. It brings tears to your eyes to remember it.

The world is such a hard place- natural disasters, suffering, brokenness, poverty, loneliness... But what about beauty? What about love? Why do we have these powerful things to give us a glimmer of hope? Why do we keep going? Something here has to be worth it. The world is a hard place, but somehow, we were born with an attachment to it anyway.

And that dad who isn't perfect? It took you how many years to figure that out? Is there anybody in your life who has sustained perfection as long as that?

My dad kills bees with his bare thumb. Just his thumb. That's just crazy. But that's why he's my dad: it's not because he does these things to protect me and to make my world less scary, it's because I look to him for that. I want him to be that. I want him to play that role in my life. But like all dads, he eventually failed. I started to see his humanity and his mistakes. But when he's here at my house and he kills a bee with his thumb, that feeling in me is revived, even if only for a brief moment. That's God. That feeling.

Let me explain... There are these things we feel innately that there is no reason we should feel if our existence was merely based on survival of the fittest. There's no reason these things help us survive. Like this desire to feel protected. If we're the only ones who can protect ourselves, how does this innate craving of reliance help us survive? And love? If it was just about procreation, we wouldn't fall in love. We'd mate and move on. And beauty? Doesn't it distract us and make us vulnerable to predation or injury? And the example I mentioned above about the hurt we experience in a break up. Lying fetal on your sofa in your pajamas for months because somebody decided they didn't love you is definitely counterproductive to our survival. And yet, we feel it. We feel our soul torn apart. And if there is no God and no eternity, what benefit does it serve to be aware of our soul at all?

There are these things, these heart things, that deep down, no matter how much we stifle them, just don't fit. And as an agnostic, I was fine not knowing the answers. But then stuff started to make sense. And if there's anything a rational person craves, it's to make sense of stuff.

So make sense of it. Or at least try. *shrug*

Religulous: a play by play...

Alright, so I'm watching Religulous. Being that my tv screen is my computer screen, I won't see what I type as I watch this movie... Unless it sucks, then we'll resort to the picture in picture dealy. Yey technology!

Ok, here we go.

FYI, lotsa spoilers. I go through the whole movie as I watched it. Ok? Ok.

And DISCLAIMER: the opinions expressed in this here blog are mine and only mine. If anybody should have a problem with the quotes and or content in this blog post from a copyright/legal standpoint, feel free to let me know. I have no ads on my blog and I have, like, three readers, so this isn't being massively distributed or anything. It's just for fun. I've tried to get the quotes right wherever there are quotes and where there aren't quotes, assume paraphrasing. No animals were harmed in the typing of this blog post.

*presses play*

Is it wrong that I'm already looking at all these producers and sponsors and wondering if I should ever support them again? Yeah, unbiased, my ass. Sorry already.

He starts out about self-fulfilling prophesy and the end of the world as described by religion. And you know the first thing to come to mind is always nuclear weapons, but they won't destroy the world. They'll destroy the cities and human infrastructures, maybe. They might kill the animals and destroy life on earth. But we humans don't yet have the ability to actually destroy the world itself. Just sayin'.

He says religion is too easy because it tells you what happens when you die, which would otherwise be something we'd absolutely freak out about. I've already blogged about that. Being agnostic for 28 years, I never was worried about death or where I'd go when I died. Even now, I don't worry about death itself. So my seeking God had nothing to do with that, really, and if anything, believing in heaven and hell is a lot scarier than believing it just ends.

He set out to make this "documentary" to "understand" why people who are otherwise rational can believe on Sunday that they're drinking the blood of a 2000 year old God. (The quotes are mine, not his. I'm not sure he set out to understand, nor set out to make an attempt at an unbiased documentary... if that's at all possible. If he did set out to do both, at some point in the "documentary" he would have explained that the blood was symbolic. It's not real blood. Nobody's that moronic. We all know what blood tastes like...)

I used to really like Bill Maher when he had his political late night show back in the 90s. I thought he was smart, really good at arguing and had a lot of knowledge. Somewhere between there and now, he decided that his knowledge was God. Of course, that's my opinion and it is probably wrong. But like Tim Keller says, sometimes, when people are successful in one endeavor of their life, they let that sort of arrogance of accomplishment permeate throughout the rest of their life, making them feel successful and all-knowing in all aspects, not just the one. Bill Maher, having mastered the art of negotiation and rationalization, seems to believe he can rationalize away God. But you know, from the perspective of somebody who had done that as far back as I can remember, rationalizing something away doesn't make it stop existing, nor does it actually constitute exploration of it. To go into learning when you already know all the answers sets you up for failure in learning and success in maintaining your current point of view.

But I digress...

He gives us a little history. He grew up in a churchy family, but his mom didn't go to church (she was Jewish, dad was Catholic).
Religion wasn't relevant to his life.
Superman was and baseball was. (Gives you an idea of the gospel message vs religious message effect...)
Quit church at 13.
Mom says it was because of the church's opinion on birth control.

Maher: What do we believe?
his mom: I don't know the answer.
Maher: That's my answer.

So he's agnostic.

Virgin birth story came only from two gospels and the bible was written by men. That's a reason to doubt its truth. The way I've learned it, the gospels do differ, they were written at different times by different points of view and they don't cover identical aspects of Jesus' life. The fact that they are flawed because they were written by men though clashes with the idea that God guided the men in their writing. In a way, I believe God did guide them because the writing is way too complex (imo) to have been written by people of their education level. Then again, they might have had ghost writers- who knows? Either way, the fact that some details aren't in one gospel or another, to me, is not a reason the entire gospel is debunked.

"Why is faith good?" he asks. It's not about it being good. We all do have faith in something. We do. It's undeniable simply because we don't have the answers to everything and not only that, but the things to which we feel we do know the answers to rely on faith a lot too. We trust the information that is given to us is true. We have faith that gravity will be the same tomorrow as it is today. Why would it be? Because it's a constant? Why is it a constant? Because it relies on other constants? Everything is just so and our survival depends on it staying that way. We wake up every morning with faith that the sun will not burn out, with faith that we have enough knowledge about the consistency of the sun that we can predict when it will burn out. Right? We do have faith. In a lot of things. We just don't realize it apart from religion.

"If you're being good just to save your ass..." he says to the room full of churchy men. If that's the only reason they're doing it, you're right- that's religion, not the gospel.

He says he's promoting doubt. The other guys are promoting certainty. He's a proponent of agnosticism. A preacher of agnosticism, if you will...

But does doubt include doubting your doubts? Or is it just limited by the first level of doubt?

Being without faith is a luxury, he says. How can smart people believe? If we were in trouble, we'd have to rely on faith, but because he in particular is not, he has the luxury of being faithless. Luxury. Interesting phrasing.

"Thank you for being Christ-like and not just Christian," he says to the church folk in that tiny church. What he means, I'll infer, is "thank you for being gospel-centered and Jesus-centered rather than religious." Instead, he says something like, "thank you for being like Christ and not a follower of his teachings." It just goes to show how tarnished the "Christian" title is. So, so tarnished. And yet, Jesus... isn't.

Corruption in the church- obviously, there is disgusting corruption in multiple disgusting ways. All I have to say about that is when you create an environment of trust, somebody will always be in line to take advantage. Always.

"What does it say about religion when you can be a minister at ten [years old]?"
In theory, the Bible says little kids can be saved, and being that they can know the gospel, they probably could share it. But kids are not leaders. They need leadership. They need fierce guidance. What does it say about religion? Honestly, whoever ordained that kid needs a headcheck. That really is religion in the worst sense of the word, imo.

"I think I could find more morality in the Rick James Bible."
Yes, the Bible's got some bad people in it and some pretty gory and twisted stories. But Mr Bill Maher (you're not a doctor either, are you? Just checkin'. I don't want to be disrespectful...), Christianity is following Jesus. Try that first. Live by the "red letters" and see how that goes for you. Just for fun. And then once you nail those, explore the rest.

And now we're onto the gay thing.

No, the Bible doesn't say there's no gay gene. *shakes head*

"reformed" gay guy: They're people who are really not complete in who they are as men or women.
Bill Maher: That's quite a judgment as a Christian.
rgg: It's not a judgment.

Well, yes, it is, and it's not a judgment just as a Christian, but as a busted up, broken human being. Black kettles and pots and such.

Ch 4:
What the hey are they laughing about? I dunno. Inside joke? On both sides? Dunno.

Ch 5:
When he got broken up with as a teenager or something, he sought out some sort of "imaginary" friend out of desperation. He considers that seeking God, I guess.

One old guy tells lame-ass stories about his version of miracles (it rained?) that were answers his prayers-- the thing is, God shows you Himself in a way where you will see Him if you ask to see Him. If I tell you my stories of how I saw God or what I saw God through, you'd find them lame also. They are lame. But they touched me, just like how my favorite movies touched me and are ridiculous to other people. Like the movie "17 Again". I consider myself smart, and I can in no way rationalize why I adore that movie the way I do. It's a ridiculous and predictable movie, but somehow, the feeling it gives me changes me and brings back a childish idealism into my life right now. Other people who've watched it get a twinge of something nearly insignificant, but it moves me. It makes no sense, but then that's what emotions are- they're provoked, they're evoked, they're spontaneous reactions. Relationship with God is a personal thing. Nobody can tell you how to do it, what to expect from it or how God will show up in your life. It's something you have to explore on your own and if God decides to open your heart, you'll probably find Him through something lame and cheesy that nobody else understands but that moves you tremendously and profoundly. It's just how it goes.

But yeah, that old guy was a bit of a doof. I'll give Bill Maher that. Even though he probably wouldn't have made it into the documentary had he not been a doof.

If after death, we go to a better place, why don't we just kill ourselves? he asks.
Aside from the fact that that's kind of "playing God" and that it is totally not Christian because it brings suffering to those we love meaninglessly, because it goes against Jesus' message of preaching the gospel to the world and because it's a completely selfish act... Um... What was the question?

Now, we're onto God and state.
Personally, I am of the opinion that when Jesus said give to Caesar what is his, he separated church and state. He didn't come in to radically change the government as everybody had expected. He came to radically change hearts and those hearts in turn change the world. Not with hate, but with love. So chances are, I'll probably agree with Bill Maher on this section of the movie...

"That is not a message I can ever see that Jesus in the Bible, even when he was in a bad mood, would say."
Exactly, Bill Maher! What Jesus says and intends and what "Christians" do are not the same message. They should be, but they aren't. By looking to Christians to decide whether Jesus is worthwhile, you're looking at a busted up review of an image of Jesus through their warped eyes and twisted perspective. Not a good way to learn something important, I'd say.

16% of the population has no religious affiliation and compared to other minority groups which are smaller in size, get nothing.
What are they supposed to get? As an agnostic, I never expected anything. I didn't care. Call it Christmas, call it Hanukkah, whatever you want to call it, go for it. Part of my responsibility in maintaining my own religious freedom is to grant others theirs.

How about we take mother's day instead since that's a touchy subject for me? Every commercial on tv around mother's day implies that everybody has a mom who loves them dearly. It's a load of crap and it makes me want to throw things at my tv. *shrug* I get offended by the implication that everybody has a mom who loves them dearly. But so what? Some people have a mom, some people don't. It's just not my holiday. Same with single people on Valentine's day. In my case and in the Valentine's case, it draws attention to something we're lacking. When I was agnostic, I wasn't lacking anything. Maybe that's why I was ok with Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah and Passover. Forgive me if I don't know the words for holidays outside Christianity and Judaism. They're what I grew up with. "Festivus for the rest of us." hehe.

What about the ten commandments? First four are about God and his jealousy.
Don't include child abuse, torture, rape.
We're in a different culture.
[All that isn't in quotes because I'm not sure what the direct quotes were and I'm not going back again. :D]
So basically he's saying the Bible is outdated and the commandments don't cover the real baddies. Technically, I'd say a lot of it is covered by adultery, idolatry and um, murder, but the rest is covered in the NT pretty clearly by the love thy neighbor commandment and the whole "love one another as I have loved you" part... But yeah, point taken.

Then they argue that even without religion, we'd just know that killing is wrong. We don't need religion to tell us that. (I think that was with the senator?)
Actually, in Tim Keller's "The Reason For God", he argues just that- that our sense of justice stems from us being image bearers of God, that we are set apart from animals simply because we do have that innate quality that comes from such a close tie to God, who is just. That idea, as I've blogged about before, goes against the whole survival of the fittest idea of evolution because in protecting the weakest and helping them to survive while potentially putting us at risk is not beneficial to our own survival and yet, we do it because we have this yearning for justice.

He goes on to talk about how the US is the most religious of the industrialized modern nations. (Ch 6 on this DVD.)
"A recent study found that among 32 countries more people in this country doubted evolution than any other country on that list, except I think it was Turkey."
How come Canada wasn't on that list? I paused it twice and couldn't find it. And not to beat a dead horse, but believing in evolution is having faith in evolution and faith that the scientists behind the evidence were truthful and didn't hide anything or alter anything. It's believing in something you didn't and probably can't prove for yourself. Most of us don't have explicit proof of evolution from beginning to end in our own hands. Evolution is still considered a theory. It feels right, yes, and the evidence points to it being right but in the end, it feels right nonetheless.

Anyhoo...

Random Bible-thumpy museum guy basically says the scientists that are saying that evolution happened are sinners going against God's word or whatever and Bill Maher answers, "All these scientists are sinners?" and the guy shrugs and is out of answers. So lame. Probably trick editing, but even if it wasn't, yes, they're sinners. This museum dude is a sinner. You're a sinner. I'm a sinner. The point is we're all sinners. But that's not why the scientists believe in evolution. Facts are facts, right? :D

Ok, so then he has Father George Coyne, PhD from the Vatican Observatory in a full priesty wardrobe talking about how the Bible and modern science occurred in two different eras of history. The Bible contains no science, he says. It's probably the smartest thing so far. He just forgot to say that that doesn't imply the two can't coexist. And that little timeline they put at the bottom of the screen is off a little too. Aristotle, Plato and a few other BC scientists and philosophers did sort through some scientific things in Biblical times. And in my opinion, the Bible does have more science in it than we give it credit for. It's not a science manual, but within texts, there are some things that are scientifically true, information they may or may not have access to at the time of those writings (I haven't researched enough to know specifically other than the bone marrow issue I had with Job a while back).

But of course, he has to intertwine the logical explanations of Father Coyne with the completely illogical ramblings of that guy with the museum where displays mix the humans with dinosaurs. Obviously.

"That's really the Vatican," he says, standing in front of it. "I ought to know. I just got thrown out of it. [..] Apparently, I've been on the Catholic shitlist for a while."
Aren't we all? hehehehe.

hehe...

"Does that look anything like anything Jesus Christ had in mind?" (still about the Vatican)
He talks to Father Reginald Foster, Senior Vatican Priest, and he agrees that the Vatican doesn't match Jesus' message at all. He's obviously not a religious priest, pointing out how Italians were surveyed about who they pray to when they have problems and Jesus was number six on the list. "Talk about your cafeteria Catholics," he says. Who knows what he really believes, but he did engage Bill Maher, which is more than any other representative so far (aside from Father Coyne, I guess).

Eek! Ben Folds! Oh, bad memory music. Why, Bill, why?! Yeah, so it's fitting, but still! Bad memories. Kind of funny that the Ben Folds song Jesusland reminds me of a time when I got trampled by a nominal, evil "Christian". Go figure.

Time for the Jesus funland part or whatever that theme park is. I don't know how people can dress up as Jesus and be ok with that. I'd be so afraid of my every move.

Why doesn't God obliterate the Devil and evil? Maher asks the fake Jesus.
Good question. Christians like to make up a lot of answers for that one. I haven't really liked any of them enough to stick with me so far (the answers, I mean, not the Christians who make them up).

Bill: What was the Holocaust? Why was that good?
Jesus actor: God has a plan for that. Maybe it's to-
Bill: I wonder if you'd feel that way if you were one of the people being pushed into an oven.
JA: It's like explaining to an ant how a tv works. God's ways are so much higher than ours.

If God is good and the Holocaust was obviously inexplicably, disgustingly evil, why would we assume that that's God's work? What if we do have responsibility for ourselves and our actions in this world? What if our evil, our selfishness, our greed and so on and so on are not Godly? What if our wars that we wage against ourselves, whether we claim them to be in God's name or not, are our wars and only our wars? What if, like a kid who has to learn things the hard way, we learn things the hard way on a proportionately massive scale of brutality? Evil done in the name of God is still evil and if God is not evil, it (evil) is not God, it's not about God and it's not for God.

Maher totally makes fun of the Jesus actor guy for relating the Trinity to water, as in water can have three forms- water, ice and steam. I think that bit got to him a little. You can see it in his face as the pretend Jesus is explaining it. It's kinda funny. He's so awkward and obviously blown away by the explanation. So of course, he has to totally bash it in the car afterward. :D He did say it was brilliant though right before bashing it, you know, to keep himself seemingly humble. It was fun to see the actor Jesus say something so worthwhile that didn't get edited out though. I wonder why it didn't.

We're then presented with the story of Horus from the Book of the Dead written in 1280BC, whose life is identical to Jesus', right down to the resurrection on the third day. Of course, I didn't know that story (hey, newbie... I'm still learning here...) so I looked it up and found this bright yellow thingy. Dunno if it's accurate or not, but it does have a link at the bottom to the Book of the Dead. But I'll read it more later. This movie is taking way longer to watch than I intended. :D

Yeah, so the tourist people taking pics of the bloody Jesus is a little weird.

Cut to crazy folks, including dressed up scientologist, Bill Maher. :D

Now onto Mormons. Um... No comment on that. Hoooo.

Gotta get me some of them protective undies... Um.

Neurotheologist guy Dr Newberg says when we pray, meditate or speak in tongues (wtf), there are specific changes that occur in the brain. And then they show a crazy lady and that farting preacher (youtube) guy (who, I'm sorry, needs a fierce beating).

Rabbi guy who is anti-Zion totally takes over the conversation. Very pushy. Maher leaves. I wonder if he'll interview a real, normal Jew later [not really].

Rabbi Strauss explains Sabbath.
Bill: It does seem that you are, to a degree, trying to outsmart God.
Rabbi: If the lawmaker never makes a mistake and still there's a loophole there, why is that loophole there? To be used in a situation of need.
subtitle: Because the people who wrote the Bible fucked up?
hehe, that's so not Christian as far as I know. :D Not the swearing, I mean how squeezing through loopholes is a heart issue if I ever heard one. :D

Back to the neurotheologist to say anybody who has heard the voice of God is crazy- if people who hear voices are crazy.

Oh, no, bring on the crazy evangelists... I hope Matt Chandler doesn't watch this part. Chapter 12 on the DVD. Don't watch it, Chandler!

The guy says he's Jesus. And doesn't believe in hell or sin. Oh, dear. That guy's gonna get some wrath... Look out!

Maher asks why God, all-powerful God, chooses one person to convey His message rather than just telling everybody. Dunno. Good question. Probably because of the whole seeking thing. Kinda like how when a good-looking person adores you suddenly, you question their sanity. We like the hunt. We like to believe we're in control and act independently.

He goes on to say he wasn't born skeptical and that he used to make deals with God all the time and was glad he had "God" in his life. (His finger quotes not mine.) Um. Is that belief in God? Or is that wishful thinking? "If you give me this, I'll believe in you." It's our way of controlling God and surprisingly, it doesn't work. Go figure.

Reverend Ferre van Beveren of the cannibis ministry says his ministry is not based on weed but uses weed to open up the spirit or something?

Onto a filmmaker who was assassinated for making a film which was considered offensive by Muslims. And a rapper-type guy who seems to be a bit of a know-it-all which clashes, obviously, with know-it-all Bill Maher...

Then Geert Wilders, Dutch parliament member, discusses Muslims... Um. Scary dude. You know those guys who think they're right, but are really bigots? That.

And then onto the two gay Muslim guys, who Bill makes awkward and uncomfortable in about thirty seconds (he brings up anal, like, right away).

Back to the weed guy for a joke...

Not sure what the fast jumping around is about. I guess his beef is more with Christianity and free speech than Islam? He can't seem to focus in this slicey part of the movie.

Now he's wearing a white hat in a mosque in Amsterdam, asking about the violence in Islam.

Back to the weed guy for more laughs.

And then onto the mosque built on top of Solomon's temple (I think?) where Jews are forbidden entry. That part was actually interesting. A little history and culture clashing that I didn't know about.

He makes an analogy relating religion to how the English maintain a sort of crop circle of a naked dude on a hill even though they don't know what it means and then jumps back to Christians talking about the end of the world. He believes that religion's prophesies about the end of the world might ultimately cause the end of the world.

His ending thoughts:

"Religion must die in order for people to live."

"Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slaveholders keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows humans who don't have all the answers to think that they do.
[...]
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion but doubt. Doubt is humble and that's what man needs to be considering that human history is a litany of getting shit dead wrong.
[...]
This is why rationalist people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves."


Ok. First, Bill Maher has to read Tim Keller's writings on faith, because imo, he's asking us to have faith in doubt instead of religion. Faith is faith. Faith answers our questions about the unknown, he says, which is what makes it easy. But saying, "I'm ok with not knowing the answers," is an equally faith-based assertion that also is a conclusion about the unknown. It may not seem that way, but as an agnostic, I felt far, far more certain about the world than I do now as a Christian. Things were more certain because I made them so. I was far more in control of my life, my destiny and everything else could be explained away by nature's chaos, by life being unfair, or by life itself.

When you're agnostic, people get cancer because that's just how life is. Our DNA messes up somehow, either because of our lifestyle, chemical exposure, radiation exposure, etc, and we grow tumors instead of "natural" human flesh. As an agnostic, I did not believe that we grew tumors to show us something about ourselves, about the world, about faith and about love. Tumors were just glitches in biological processes. Nothing more.

As an agnostic, the world was here for my viewing pleasure. Mountains towering above me, the ocean crashing at my feet, the stars flickering all around me- all of it was just kind of accidental and beautiful. It was nature. It was part of this chaotic universe we live in. Chaotic in spite of its necessary constants all lining up to allow life to form. It wasn't meant to stir up a feeling of eternity in my soul. It wasn't meant to ignite a passion and deep desire for the eternal and infinite. It wasn't meant to point out the place deep inside me where the innate sense of purpose and meaning lay trapped in a shroud of cynicism and independence.

Agnosticism, as I've said before in the blog, was far, far easier than Christianity.

And I think Bill Maher's little eternal place deep in his soul knows that. While he mocked the virgin birth, how His teen years weren't recorded and maybe a little of the walking on water, he didn't mock Jesus' teachings. If anything, he mocked religions abuse and lack of Christianity. He put down Christianity often for not following Jesus, but he never, as far as I saw, took a jab at Jesus Himself. It makes me wonder what would happen if Bill Maher sat down with a gospel-centered, anti-religion Christian, like, say, Matt Chandler or Tim Keller or Tyler Jones. It makes me wonder if he, like me, was exposed to the "Just Jesus" type of faith, what would happen?

Jesus has a radical way of moving through people's lives no matter how atheist or agnostic they are. As Tyler Jones used to say, Jesus is other. He's different in ways you can't even describe. And somehow, I really think that deep down, Bill Maher knows that, but isn't brave enough to explore it. Imagine if he found Jesus at this point?

He'd be, like, the next Paul. It'd totally ruin his life...

(For the better...)

Being at home in Sehnsucht...

When we were young, we lived in the mountains and had no neighbors across the street. It was just a swamp that led to a forested hill. Every year at Christmas, we'd grab a saw and head up into the woods across the street and cut down the biggest tree we could find. Totally barbaric in hindsight, but being that we were little, the biggest one was probably not all that big... Well, except the time we needed a sixteen foot ladder to put the star on top...

But I digress.

Christmases were always filled with anticipation. We always got crap gifts and had a crap time, but every year, it was the same: we expected a "Griswold Family Christmas", even though, not only was our family way too bitter, judgmental and greedy to ever actually be a postcard family, but the postcard we were wishing for was equally dysfunctional.

Anyway, that feeling we anticipated that never came was home. Our family was such a mess and somehow, I guess the three of us just expected everything to stop for that one day so we could just be that kind of family that sits beside the fire and eats Christmas desserts and laughs about memories. Instead, it would end up in fearful slavery, trying to put our best fake family face on in hopes we wouldn't set off my dad's temper later. Instead of having the family Christmas, we had to work like crazy to give off the illusion of having one.

But every year, as Christmas got closer, my brothers and I would find ourselves hoping for the same thing again.

And no, Christmas wasn't about Jesus. We didn't believe in God, so Christmas was just about this one thing, this feeling of home thing.

Page 92 of Tim Keller's "The Prodigal God" describes exactly that:

The memory of home seems to be evoked by certain sights, sounds and even smells. But they can only arouse a desire they can't fulfill. Many of the people in my church have shared with me how disappointing Christmas and Thanksgiving are to them. They prepare for holidays hoping that, finally, this year, the gathering of family at that important place will deliver the experience of warmth, joy, comfort, and love that they want from it. But these events almost always fail, crushed under the weight of our impossible expectations.

There is a German word that gets at this concept- the word Sehnsucht. Dictionaries will tell you that there is no simple English synonym. It denotes profound homesickness or longing, but with transcendent overtones.

(I hope I don't get into trouble for such a long quote... You should read the book. It's little and full of awesome, so there's no excuse not to... Just sayin'.)

He goes on to quote C.S. Lewis who says that this homesickness is "no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation."

Tim Keller then asks, "Why would 'home' be so powerful and yet so elusive for us?"

Biblically, our home was the Garden of Eden. We were meant to be home with God. We were meant to live with Him. But we chose independence over God and somehow find ourselves coincidentally with this constant longing for home.

You grow up in a house and sometimes you get whiffs of home but as you grow older and experience the world more, the strongest memories of home can never be met in the present. You can go back to that childhood dwelling, but somehow, it's different. Somehow, it really doesn't live up to your expectations.

The town I grew up in was a resort town, and within five years of us moving out of there and into the city, the town boomed. Three shopping malls sprouted and endless condo developments scattered the once forested landscape. A few years ago, I brought my ex there to show him where I grew up and after taking the road I'd biked my entire childhood, everything had become so different that I thought I'd taken a wrong turn. Housing developments were everywhere. When I was young, there were a few houses here and there, and the rest of the road was lined with trees, but this road was the opposite. I felt like I had never been there before.

The house my parents built is now a different color. They replaced the wooden exterior with vinyl siding. They rearranged the landscaping that my dad had done by hand. To flatten out the lawn, he used to make us sit on a metal ladder and drag the ladder across the lawn like a workhorse. It was the best ride ever. :D Now, it's a massive, paved driveway.

But no matter how clear the memories are, that home is unattainable. And in the moment, those moments I now look upon with a nostalgic feeling of home, it wasn't actually there either.

Every time I went to Banff, it was the closest I'd ever come to feeling at home in the present. The moon bluing the snow on the mountains. The overwhelming wildlife. The turquoise lakes. Nature at its most awesome. That felt like home to me.

Why is that home and the place where I grew up not?

If Tim Keller and C.S. Lewis are right, and God is our home, then it makes sense that wherever we're closest to the infinite and closest to real unconditional love and closest to a united soul, we will be closest to home. In the awe of nature, the love of family and the bonding that we expect to occur at Christmas, we are as close to home as we can get here on earth. But we just can't get there entirely.

I find it funny that after all these years of feeling this longing of home at Christmas, never once did it occur to me that maybe there was a deeper reason for it. Maybe our soul feels something around Christmas time that we feel the need to explain away in human terms. Maybe our soul knows something we don't. Maybe our soul is trying to say something.

And maybe if we start to listen, we might feel closer to home a little more often.

On God and Sex...

I finally got to listen to the entire talk Matt Chandler gave at The Village called, "God and Sex" as part of their Culture and Theology series. At about 1:34:29 according to my ipod (which is probably the wrong time because it changes every time I hit pause...), he answers a question from somebody asking if they're wrong for thinking they don't deserve a virgin to marry if they've already had sex. First, Chandler goes on about how "deserve" is irrelevant because we don't deserve anything but God is infinitely gracious and beautiful and gives to all freely and then he goes on to say:

Please don't punish yourself where Christ has not punished you. Why would you do that? Why would you go, "Oh, she's a virgin I can't"- no. No. All things new. That guy is dead, he was nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ. All things are new. All things are new. Yes, you're wrong. You're wrong. There's grace for you.

That answer hit me hard for a few reasons.

First, there's this idea in the back of my head that since I've already had sex, since I've already basically lived the life of a married person only without the commitment, since I've already joined souls with people who are not my husband, the damage has been done and therefore, if I slip up again, it's not such a big deal.

Second, after years of abuse and trauma- even though Matt Chandler took issue with the word "deserve", I'll use it anyway- I feel I don't deserve what God wants for me. I feel I don't deserve the husband who loves me intimately and on a soul level. I feel I am not worth that. I'm not good enough for God's plan for my life. And by "good enough" I don't mean in deeds and whatnot, I mean the [poor] quality of my person. I am not adequate, and therefore, to subject some poor innocent boy to my brokenness for an eternity just seems... well, there's no boy who would subject himself to that much pain and suffering. I am far too broken.

Third, I had pretty well resigned myself to always being the more broken person within any couple in which I might find myself. And I hate that. I hate that I will always have more stories of suffering, of brutality, of pain than anybody I might date. I hate that. I'm using the word hate here about that. I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be the one that makes people say, "I feel bad because all that stuff happened to you and I had it easy." I don't want to be that person, especially not to the person I marry, if I ever do get married. And the fact that I will always end up that person means I just can't get married.

Fourth, being that I live up here in Atheistland, what are the odds that I will find somebody godly and gospel-driven to date, let alone marry? I think I know one Christian guy and he's in a passionate relationship. And even he denies his Christianity when confronted. He's a youth pastor, who was heading up a music program for a church, but when asked, he tells people he leads this music youth group. He takes the Jesus totally out of it to make it politically correct. And to our mutual friends, he's the fundy. What are the chances that I will find a real Christian man to marry up here? Like, zero. So all that means is if I wait until I marry, I am not likely to have sex ever again. And that, for a girl who grew up in this culture, where sex is more of a staple than milk, is unfathomable.

But those four things leave out one important point that Matt Chandler nailed in his reply: I have been redeemed.

The brokenness that is my past, the brokenness that is my person, the broken things that have happened to me, are all redeemed.

First, I might have taken for granted what God intended for me with sex, but that doesn't mean it can't be redeemed and I can't experience the intimacy that God set up for me.

Second, I am a child of God. I might not deserve anything at all, but God loves me personally and completely. I am no more nor no less deserving than any other person. I am in need of God's grace and mercy, just like everybody else. But I have value and wholeness as a child of God.

Third, I am not the most broken person in any relationship because I have been redeemed. Nobody, after the lashings and beatings and hanging on the cross and ultimately death, would say Jesus is the most broken in any company. Maybe if He hadn't resurrected, we would have something to argue, but that's not the case. He was made whole again by the righteousness of God. I died and came alive again in Christ when I was baptized and I probably will do so over and over again, every time I need to be redeemed.

And fourth, where is my trust? It's obviously in sex as an idol or if not that, something, anything, other than God. If marriage is what God wants for my life He will open my eyes to it. He will set me up for it and guide me into it. But only if I trust. I have to trust. I have to let go of what I feel will satisfy my soul and trust that what God wants for me is far more than anything I can create for myself. I have to let go of the pleasures of this world, the temporary satisfaction, self-worth and value that sex represents for me and trust that God's intention for it is much greater and better for my soul.

A life with [unmarried] sex is all I've ever known, I tell myself. But a life without God was all I ever knew also and God changed that too.

I've compartmentalized the redemption in my life along with the focus on idolatry. I've acknowledged that Jesus redeemed all the things I'm ok with facing head on, but the things I still look to for value, the things I haven't yet given up and refuse to face, I have not yet allowed Jesus to enter into. And as long as I keep doing that, keep compartmentalizing everything and hiding from the stuff I just can't let go of, I'll keep falling down, keep crushing my own life and I won't let Jesus redeem it all the way only He can redeem it and I won't let Jesus change my heart in the way only He can change it.

I have to trust that being a child of God gives me more value than any sort of false value that flattery, manipulative flirtation, a successful hunt and ultimately sex might bring with its brokenness, superficiality and temporary satisfaction.

Faith without trust makes a mockery of everything Jesus died for. Faith is a privilege. It's a privilege that I don't want to lose because I stubbornly and deliberately choose a path apart from God or because of something so ridiculous as to make sex into a golden calf from which I can't loosen my grip.

I am a child of God. I have to have faith that that's more than enough and all that I need.

On the moment of salvation...

Ok, so I might get judgmental, make generalizations and make my perceptions seem like facts. *shrug* Just take this as a warning, I guess, because it's nearly 2AM and I don't want to add a politician, please-all finish to this post. I just want to get it out.

I grew up atheist/agnostic, mostly agnostic, surrounded by atheists, proclaiming atheism. When I was a teenager, a cousin of mine got married and sent a card to all the families within our extended family, and all of the other families got "God bless!" at the bottom of their cards and ours had, "Take care!" or something similar. I laughed and said to my dad, "It's so funny how everybody knows we're atheists. Everybody else got 'God bless', but because they know we don't believe in God, they put 'take care' in ours." My dad got kind of sarcastically angry. "We believe in God, you twit! What the hey! You better believe in God!"

Now, ten or so years later, he's the atheist and I'm the theist. Go figure.

Anyway, it was so clear to everybody around us that we didn't believe. It was clear to me that my friends didn't believe, even though I never asked them about it. It's just not something you bring up when you don't believe in it. It's like talking about unicorns. You don't just sit around sipping coffee and blurt out, "Hey, so how does everybody feel about unicorns?" It's just absurd. So were the potential discussions about God.

Granted, back then I didn't realize that I knew just as much, if not more, about unicorns than I did about God...

There's a Catholic tradition here though. French people swear in church. Not in the building, but the language. The more syllables in the word, the more four-lettery it becomes. The tabernacle is far worse than the host. Tabernacle, pronounced tahbarnak here in Quebec even has it's own fudges. There's tabarouette (your wheelbarrow), tabaslack (um.. that one doesn't translate. It's just syllables), and just tab, when you're too lazy to come up with anything more creative. When you have babies, you have to get them baptized in the Catholic church to make your grandparents happy. And if you decide to get married (which very few do here in Quebec), you might get married in a Catholic church, but usually only if the parents are chipping in enough money to fill it.

That was my experience with religion. That was life. Religion was swear words, a stale wafer, some wine followed by jokes about what the priest does with the leftovers, and some traditional, meaningless mumbling on special occasions.

Community was built on common ground- atheism and mockery of religion.

I think of some of the things I've said in the past and I get that reaction, you know? The one where you close your eyes because the humiliation coming from within is just so overwhelming that they close automatically while you try to grasp onto an inhale? You let out this vocal sigh of disappointment and the return to breathing just stalls and shuts your eyes. You open them again, feeling like a total ass, hoping just the expression you have on your face might send waves of remorse through the universe and right the wrongs you've committed ignorantly. That reaction. I get that.

But back then, when I made those comments, I was the norm. I was the open-minded, enlightened norm.

I cracked open the Bible and you know the rest, but I found myself still in this norm. The norm I grew up in, the hurt I caused, the stereotypes of religion that were everywhere, all of it was suddenly on the other side. All of it was suddenly directed at me.

Fine, I'm a strong girl, I can handle it. Right? And then my friends were also on the other side. And my family. And my strength, without God, would never withstand that kind of rejection and disappointment. But I did have God.

After a while, my people came around. Well, most. Ok, some. :D But one by one, they opened the door a little and caught glimpses of me and realized that maybe even with a lot more Jesus, I might still be me. I might even be more me than I was before. So one by one, I got my people back. Or rather, I'm getting my people back.

I think the way in which I found God is instrumental in it though. God chose me. God picked me, beat me into submission and I had very little say in it. Nobody had any say in it. Just God. So it's very hard for me to be a thumper of the Bible when what got me here was not thumping at all. It was just God. So all I do for my people's salvation is answer questions, right misconceptions and pray. And they're generally surprised by my lack of thumpiness and lack of forcefulness and also with my striving to actually learn about it, to read the Bible and to live out what I read, that all that combined leads them into a greater interest for it. I don't have to push at all. I just have to live it and be there.

But the best resources, I've found, tend to be in the Bible belt. The best sermons, the best pastors, the best talks... And so often, I hear stories of salvation and to be honest, a lot of them bug me. I know they shouldn't. I know I should be all, "Yey! You found Jesus!" but part of me gets all squinty, confused and speechless.

The story that baffles me the most goes like this:

I grew up in church and I loved God and I read my Bible and I was a member of the church, but I still did terrible things. I had sex with people I wasn't married to. I abused my body. I didn't live in the Lord. And then one day, I woke up and realized my life was a mess and I turned to God, and that day, I was saved.

Of course, they don't say it like that. They leave out the "loved" part at the beginning. And I sit there thinking that loved is there. It was there all along and even if you did bad things and rebelled against God, it was still there. You just weren't ready to be good yet. You know?

Yes, Jesus redeems. And maybe He redeemed all your sins and changed your sinning ways. Or maybe you're still equally broken today as you were yesterday, but you realized it's a one way ticket to being unfulfilled?

Like a pastor said, and I already quoted in the blog before, "It's not about trying not to sin, but about being satisfied in God." So you get that now. But then push comes to shove and times turn badly for you, and you seek the pleasures of this world to help bandaid your wounds. And then you repent, apologizing to God for not trusting Him and so on and so on.

But my problem is this: If you believe that you can't lose your salvation, and you did love God and believe in Jesus even if you didn't know all about what that meant and even if you didn't feel it in its entirety, what makes you saved now and not way back when? And what makes you think you know what it means now? What makes you think you really understand what it is? What keeps you from proclaiming salvation again later when you get beaten down by God again later, find a clearer understanding of God later and feel even closer to God later?

I guess my point is growing up without God at all was difficult. I didn't know it then, I didn't know what I was missing because I'd never had God, but from this perspective, to have had God when I was enduring the things I had to endure probably would have made them a lot less overwhelming and if I had believed I was a child of God who was to be treated with value, some of the things I endured might not have happened at all. But then I hear these stories where people grew up with God but didn't fully appreciate Him, and it bothers me. Not because of their lack of appreciation in the moment, but because of their lack of appreciation NOW.

I look back at my godless life and there is God ALL over it. All over. There are times when I somehow had strength that I was not capable of. There are times when things could have gone terribly wrong and should have, but didn't. There are times when I was clearly protected and literally saved when I should have died. There are countless times when I stood back up again when any normal person would have just stayed down.

Just the fact that God made me phobic of every possible method of suicide was a gift in itself. It still is.

I had no God growing up, but God had me anyway. God took care of me. I was God's child even when I wasn't seeing Him at all. I was God's child when I was bashing Him and laughing at Him. I was God's child when I was mocking His believing children. I was always God's child.

It is so hard for me to hear these stories where God isn't there because the person in question isn't in control of their belief. They loved God. They knew He existed. They knew He was watching over them. But they didn't reciprocate appropriately and therefore, they must not have been saved yet.

Tell me what that says about the grace and mercy of God?

And now, they're saved, and talking about the Gospel. They're saying how they weren't saved by deeds but by God's grace. So why now? Why now rather than way back when you were not good enough for God? Why now rather than when you were a rebellious, unrepentant sinner?

Because chances are, you'll hit a point in the not-so-distant future where you'll realize that this you, the you of this moment right now who is so sure of your salvation, didn't know God at all. And you'll panic and bow down before Him and repent and apologize and pray for mercy and grace. And you'll tell the arrogant, self-righteous Christians around you that but by the grace of God are you saved. And you'll be humble, and you'll have that reaction I described above where you close your eyes after a deep, vocal sigh of disappointment at your past self and vow never to be so arrogant as to take for granted God's mercy and your salvation again.

And it will happen over and over and over and over as long as you live and love God.

So how do you know when you were saved? How do you know which one of those moments is the one?

How about we let God decide? How about we quit worrying about when it happened and work on what it means?

I went from not believing at all to believing and I can't really tell you when it happened. I know when I finished reading the book of John after the book of Matthew, I had tears in my eyes because John so loved Jesus and that love was a beautiful thing for a beautiful person. I know that that was the first time I really felt an emotional connection to Jesus. But was that empathy for the character of Jesus in a book? Or was that an emotional connection to Jesus Himself? I don't know. All I know is that God decided the path in which I would find Him. And the end result was that I found Him. The end result was that I found a love for Him that was strong enough to endure the harshest criticism and abandonment by nearly all of the people I loved and depended on. I found a love for Him that has endured some of the hardest trials in my life so far.

I found a strong love for Him which six months ago I thought couldn't get stronger and today, blows that love out of the water. I found a love for Him that grows with everything I learn and fires up the passion in me to learn more.

Does it really matter when it happened?

If I say I was saved on such and such a day, to me that adds a control factor in there. It's like saying God and I weren't united because I wasn't ready. But we were. I just didn't see it. Just because I didn't see it, doesn't mean the bond between us wasn't there.

I haven't spoken to my mom in a few years. She doesn't know where I live because that's how I want it. We are separated. But that doesn't mean we aren't still bonded. I can deny it all I want. I can hate her, I can banish her from my life, I can disrespect her, I can rebel against her, but whatever I do can not change the fact that I am her child. She might not love me, she might not love me in the way I need to be loved, or she might love me entirely and I just reject it. Regardless, I am her child. Nothing will ever change that. She might not be a mom, she might not be mother material, she might be neglectful and broken, but she still gave birth to me and there is a bond there. I grew inside of her. Her body sustained me. From her life grew mine.

Jesus reconciles us with God and when we realize the power in that, it's a beautiful thing. But that bond was always there. We are God's children. We broke the relationship, but we are His children. We broke our end, but if God is God, He can do whatever He wants. Even if we're far from Him, He can choose to be close to us. He can be in our lives even if we don't want Him to be or don't acknowledge Him. He is God. He can.

So why have a salvation day? Why have a salvation story around a specific event? Why not wonder if maybe the moment it dawned on us that Jesus is God and we need Jesus was not the actual moment of our salvation? Why not wonder if maybe God had been working for a long time to get us to that point? Why not appreciate the presence of God in our lives before the moment we decided to give up control?

Why not quit feeling so prideful about the moment we felt something and just let God be God?

God is God and only He knows my heart, my future, my soul and the true state of my salvation.

But by the grace of God am I saved.