It’s okay not to like stuff!

I don’t generally write rants here. Not because I don’t like a good rant now and then, but you can find a lot of them online and I don’t need any more space in my life to complain about stuff. So forgive the next 200 words or so.

Matthew Paul Turner has a post on not liking Third Day on his site and he’s received many comments both for and against their brand of Christian generi-pop. (I just made that up. In case you need an explanation it’s a combination of “generic” and “pop.” Music writers, you can have that one for free) All in all a civil and somewhat humourous conversation on the merits of the music of Third Day. Until the inevitable happened.

The “nice” Christian showed up.

You know this person. They go to your church, or they work in Student Life at a Bible College, or they write letters to the editor for a living, and they will always let you know when you’re in danger of stepping outside of their piety. In this case it was roughly “I don’t know if it’s edifying to write about what we dislike about a Christian band, they are worshiping and playing the gospel, blah, blah, blah,” topped off with a whopper like “A better question would be what would Jesus think of Third Day”

Well, since you asked, I think he would find their music bland, inoffensive, and boring. I am just guessing because the gospel accounts unfortunately don’t give us a playlist for Jesus’ iPOD. (although as we speak some Christian Music Executive is planning a promotion, an ipod pre-loaded with Jesus’ music. God help us all) I also don’t think that just because a band has the adjective “Christian” in their genre they are exempt from criticism. When we begin to follow Jesus we don’t have the opinion part of our brains cut out. It’s okay to like some stuff, and by the same rule, it’s okay not to like other stuff, even if lot’s of Christians like it. I’ll show you with a short list of things I don’t like that other Christians like:

1. Settlers of Catan- This game takes like four hours and nothing really happens. It’s like Risk without pot.

2. Come, now is the time to worship – it just bugs, and it takes like four hours too.

3. Tony Campolo – I’m sure he is a lovely person and he has does amazing things for the Kingdom, but I find his speaking style really annoying.

See how easy that was? You may like them, I don’t. None of these opinions, or my expression of them, in any way affects my ability or disability to love God and neighbour.

But I’m going to go a step further, nice Christian person, I call bullshit.

You don’t really care about what is edifying or good, you only care about propping your own lagging confidence by establishing your spiritual dominance over others. Your main motivator is fear. Fear of being wrong, fear of being foolish, fear of your inability to control the people and world around you. You don’t trust that God is good and in control, so you have to be.

The problem is that the rest of us just nod our heads politely rather than taking you on because we’re afraid that you’ll play the victim and we’ll look mean, not nice and spiritual like you. You do damage to people by misrepresenting what it means to be a Christian, and the rest of us allow it by refusing to take you on. You make people feel small and inadequate and like the Gospel is not good news. You act as if the Body were yours and you better believe it’s not.

People of Earth, know this. You can be a follower of Jesus and not like stuff.

Why I am a Sports Atheist

I got the term from Bill Simmons, of whose writing I am a big fan. Basically he uses the term to refer to those who follow and love pro sports without declaring allegiance to a specific team. I’m splitting hairs a little bit, but a more accurate term would probably be sports pluralist. The sports atheist would be the humourless Noam Chomsky sort who believe that pro sports are the new opiate of the peoples, as if we would solve world hunger and cure cancer if we got rid of the NBA. I agree with them to a point, what fun are they at a party? I’ll take some friendly NASCAR fans, thanks. The sports pluralist, however, stands back from the scene as a supposedly impartial observer. We delight in sport for the sake of sport and while we appreciate how insane fan-dom adds to the colour of our experience, we are unable to choose just one object of devotion.

For Simmons this is ridiculous idea. He was born and bred in Boston and lives and dies with the Boston area teams. The joy of pro sports is for him the emotional roller coaster ride being a fan can give. While this brings joy (the Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees, The Celtics crushing the Lakers in game six) it also brings pain (the Patriots being upset by the Giants, Spygate). In his mind, without a team, you’re not truly a fan, you’re a watcher.

I became a sports pluralist honestly. I grew up in Charlottetown, far enough away that I didn’t have any clear geographic ties and the only sport my Dad really followed was NASCAR, or more accurately, what was then Winston Cup. Free agency helped, as there were no real ties for the players anymore, so why should I have those ties. Video games were part of it as well, as it made no sense to keep playing Madden with my favoured Bengals because they were terrible.

But the biggest issue I think is protection. I didn’t want to be a fan because what do I do when they lose? That sucks, and no one wants to be the bandwagon jumper. Who likes the guy who shows up on Tuesday wearing the SuperBowl winners hat? That guy is a jerk. After a while it was easier and seemed cooler and safer to maintain distance.

This is all in direct contrast to my faith life, where I am not a pluralist. I have pledged allegiance to a team and I believe that the only way to truly follow is to believe in our team exclusively and if our team “loses” (sports analogies fail) I will go down with the ship. I am all in to Jesus. As a person of faith I believe the religious pluralist to be in a sad position. While they aren’t subject to the discipline of following a faith path, they don’t really get to experience the joy, comfort, and connection that comes with choosing to follow the One.

There are times when I feel the pull of real sports fandom, but like faith, at some point it has to happen to you. I can’t wake up tomorrow and decide to be an Oilers fan, on some level the Oilers have to happen to me.

Come, Sam Gagner, Come

how to read the Bible #3

Part 3 in a bible reading series

why we read the Bible

A blessing for the listen bird person

I’m a graffiti fan. Not so much if it’s on my house or fence or car, but I do appreciate it if there is thought and effort put into it. I’ve never done it, nor have I really done any of the other elements of hip hop, but it’s an integral part of the urban landscape.

In Edmonton we are priveleged to have the Listen person. That’s one of his or hers in the banner up top. I don’t know if listen is his or her street name or even if it’s one person or more, but there are listen birds all over the city. Everyone knows them.

I’ve taken to using them as a personal liturgy. Every time I see listen bird I stop for a few seconds to pay attention to God and what he’s been saying to me. I’m trying to be pass myself of as super pious guy, I don’t drop to my knees every time I see one, but they make me pay attention. I believe that’s half the battle to having any kind of life following Jesus.

So, thank you, listen person, whoever you are. You make me stop and shake off my self absorption for a brief moment and remember that the creator of the universe has and wants to talk to us. I don’t know what you believe but I give you the best blessing I’ve got:

The LORD bless you and keep you

The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you

The LORD show his face to you and give you peace (Numbers 6)

Stuff I read

I’ve been reading GQ for the last five or six years now. They’re hit and miss like any magazine, but I’ve come to trust on of their writers, Andrew Corsello.

Here is an article he wrote and an interview out of it.

The Other Side of Hate

Interview

Book Update… no seriously, a book update

Okay, A couple of people have been asking, so here goes. I am writing the book. It’s coming okay. There’s other things going on, so it’s coming.

Please remember, the point of this deal is for me to right the book, not to publish a book. If I can actually write and finish the bloody thing I’ll be shocked and amazed and will be able to say my children I wrote a book. That’s the main thing I’m going for. Also, it’s sort of an obedience thing.

I’m not going to tell you what it’s about because, well… I guess I just don’t want to, and really the main reason I’m mentioning it publicly at all is because I need the accountability of having on record that I said I’d get this thing done.

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my…

Heart?

A couple of blocks from our house is a very cool little grocery store, the Italian Centre (make sure you check out their web page) We go there fairly often because it’s close and it’s possibly the coolest grocery store on the planet (they sell Proraso for you straight razor afficionados) and they give my daughter Zoe a lollipop whenever she asks politely.

Zoe loves the Italian Centre for this. Whenever it’s mentioned she begins, every ten seconds, to declare “I can have a lollipop”

“Yes, and we need a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a stick of bu…”

“… and I can have a LOLLIPOP”

You get the picture. Anyway, when we get to the store Zoe rushes us through everything so that she can can politely ask for a lollipop and when the magic moment comes and the cashier reaches for the bucket Zoe literally begins to vibrate. The actual lollipop never lasts that long because she crunches them like her mom, which I think is incredibly weird, but what really amazes me is that her excitement and pleasure over this lollipop never wanes. We’re at this place a lot, they know Zoe by name, but she is still as happy with that lollipop as the first one she had. She doesn’t feel entitled to have it. She’s not bored with it. And what’s more, her pleasure is contagious, because we love going to the Italian Centre just to see her get this silly lollipop.

I wonder if that is part of joy; the capacity to receive the same gift over and over without boredom or entitlement robbing us of it’s pleasure. I make love to my wife, play with my kids, preach God’s word to his people, drink cold fresh tap water, fill my lungs with air; each of these an incredible gift that I am capable of ignoring or taking for granted

The Bible, which I tend to think is important, says that joy is part of the Fruit of the Spirit. It’s in Galatians 5 and basically the gist is this: If we’re living by the Spirit the inevitable outcome is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Which begs the question: if I don’t have these, if I’m not growing these in myself and those around me am I living by the Spirit? I should be growing in my awareness of and pleasure in all the things God is giving me, right? I’m not always great at this.

But I’m better than I was four hundred and thirty-one words ago.

There are more important things about who you are than how you feel about penises or What I wish I had said to the girl on pride day

I said that in a sermon not to long ago. Yet another reason why I like church planting. I can say the word penis with fear of reprisal.

On Pride Day this year Bridgepointe Church went down to Churchill Square to hand out bottles of water. Now, while I realize the silliness of bottled water and myself am a fan of tap water, bottled water is way more convienient to hand out to revelers on a hot summer day.

Earth Water, an Edmonton company, gives 100% of their profits to the UN for water projects so If you have to drink bottled water go to them. Anyway, we went down to the Pride celebration to hand out bottles of water. We attached to the bottles a card that had our website and a video I did. There were a lot of reasons why we did this, but mostly the driving impetus was that we wanted to be obedient.

There is a huge gulf between the homosexual community and the church for reasons that have been talked about ad nauseum by people more intelligent than me and that gulf isn’t getting smaller. we felt God telling us to so something about this. The best thing we could come up with was to give water to hot and thirsty people. I don’t know if thats the best way to bridge that gulf but it’s a start. We can paralyze ourselves by making sure that we get a message perfectly right, and making sure we offend no one, but at some point we just have to take a step toward the other. We say “Here is a bottle of water. This is either the love of Jesus coming from the Body of Christ, or its just a bottle of water, or it’s something in between that. Whatever it is to you, here you go.”

Back to the penises. Anyway, everyone we met was very positive, and thirsty, so it was a good experience for us. The only hiccup was one young lady who looked at the card and asked if we were a Pro- Gay or Anti-Gay Church. I tried and failed to clever my way out of it by saying “We’re a Pro-Jesus Church.” She, politely, pushed a little bit and I stumbled and mumbled something about not fitting into categories, and she was unsatisfied and reminded me that this was a Pro-Gay event. (Really, I was wondering why all these dudes were wearing buttless chaps. Who knew?) We both moved on. I don’t know if she drank the water.

This is what I wish I had the time and courage to say:

“I’m sorry that you assume that as a person with a Church that I have to fit into one of those two categories. People like me, Christians… we’ve earned your distrust and you have every right to think and say whatever you want about me. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. We’ve sinned against God and against you. We’ve failed to be who we have been called to be.

That said, I can’t fit what we think into a thirty second sound bite… I can honestly say that I don’t fit into either of those categories. I don’t think I even know what gay fully means but I do know this: there are infinitely more important things about you than who you’re attracted to. I reject the idea in our culture that who we are is intrinsically tied to what we do with our genitals, and who we do it with. That is not the defining characteristic of a human being, because long before you or I are gay or straight or whatever labels we accept we are a unique creation of the Living God.

We are also incredibly broken people in an incredibly broken world and the fact that we have to have this conversation is testament to the fact that we have no clue how to live with each other, let alone God, and I believe that Jesus was God, who came here to save us in every way that we need to be saved, and what you do with Jesus is way more important than what you do with anything else. I believe Jesus knew you were worth dying for, and in the light of that, what I think is sort of irrelevant.

But in the midst of our inability to live together well, we want to bring water, and I don’t know if you’re gay or straight, but I know you’re thirsty. It’s a hot day. Pro-gay church, anti-gay church… I don’t know… today we’re an Anti-thirst church.

Just for right now, in this moment, can that be enough?”

How to read the Bible #2 : Where to start

#2 in our Bible Reading series

Amazon, I love you

Thank you, Amazon. You are never ending source of books and amusement. Thank you for recommending this book

because I own this book

keep the recommendations coming