Kethuvim

Go to iTunes and hit "party shuffle" and see what comes up from your list of songs. Let me know the first ten on your playlist. Here are mine:

1. Behind Blue Eyes - The Who
2. Hold On - Tom Waits
3. Untitled 5 - Sigur Ros
4. No Earthly Good - Johnny Cash
5. Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
6. We Win! - David Crowder Band
7. Thank You - Led Zeppelin
8. Dear Lord - Joseph Arthur
9. O Holy Night - Sufjan Stevens
10. Palm Sunday - Jerry Garcia Band

What are you listening to?

We had a much-needed day of relaxation. We took two walks to two different beaches. On the second trip, we walked about 3 miles and when we got to the ocan, we all just jumped into the water in our clothes. The Caribbean is beautiful. I've never seen water so blue. We walked the three miles back to the mission and I got chaffed in areas I didn't even know I had (Note: Never use Gold Bond with menthol on chaffed areas, I'm still screaming).

This country is so contrasted and strange. As I stood on the beach, I looked to the left and saw the ocean with a mountain behind it. I looked to the right and I saw a beautiful palm-lined coast. I looked ahead and saw blue water as far as the eye could see. Then I looked behind me and saw trash and indescribable poverty. It was a strange feeling. I've never seen a place that has so much going for it, and yet nothing going for it at the same time. That doesn't make much sense, but it just seems that since they have so much beauty in their country, that they could easily be a tourist destination, but the whole situation seems so hopeless. It was just an odd feeling to look in one direction and have a sense that everything was right in the world, and then look another direction and have the feeling that nothing was right and just in the world.

Except my jet plane, in this instance, is a 2002 Honda Civic. I'm off on family vacation all next week, so I'll continue my Haiti journal posts when I return. May God's blessings go with you throughout the next week.

The highlight of the trip, so far, occured at 4 a.m. this morning. We attended a prayer meeting in the village in someone's home. This Sunday, the group will celebrate 20 years of meeting 5 mornings a week. Five mornings a week for 20 years! That's crazy. Anyway, it was beautiful beyond words. As they prayed aloud, I didn't know what they were saying, and yet in some way I knew exactly what they were saying. They would pray and then they would break out in song, whose only musical accompaniment was a rooster across the street who was begging us to know that the sunrise was close at hand. We had a translator who would translate the parts of the serice that pertained to us. The Haitians took time to thank us for leaving our families to come and help their country. Then they prayed for God to bless us and for a safe journey back to the States. As they sang again, I found tears running down my face. How can they pray for us? The poor Haitians praying tat God would bless the spoiled Americans. I couldn't help but cry at how gracious they are to us, when we honestly don't deserve their grace. But, after all, I guess that's the nature of grace, you can't earn it. If you could, it wouldn't be grace, it would be a salary. One of the Haitian men named Gaston (great name by the way) stood and said, "We thank God for his grace and love. To wake up each day is a grace." I wish I could say that I see each day as a grace, but I would be a liar. God, help me to have a more Haitian way of viewing you and your gifts. Throughout the whole service all I could think was that we may be far wealthier than they are, but they're far richer.

I will never, as long as I live, forget this morning. I saw God's Kingdom appear like a pearl in the mud. I saw hope growing in the midst of a hopeless land. I saw what it meant to follow Christ and to be a part of his Church.

Later in the day we worked in the clothing pantry. It was total chaos. Each kid that came in was supposed to leave with two shirts, two pairs of pants, and a new pair of shoes. The problem was that there weren't enough pairs pants to go around. The reason for this is that Americans don't think before they donate anything, they just want it out of their house. What does this lead to? A room full of pants with a 40 or 42 inch waist that literally no one in the country of Haiti could possibly wear. This is so typical of Americans. We have too much stuff, we just want to get rid of it, so we dump it on someone else, not even thinking about whether it can actually be used or not. I actually saw fur-lined boots, sweaters, and winter coats. We're in the freaking Caribbean. It was a rough day, and I'm not sure there was anyone on my team that wasn't in tears at some point, including me.

I've come to the conclusion that we really don't have a grasp on what reality really is. I think of the problems I deal with at home, and suddenly they don't seem like that big of a deal. Reality is holding a three year old who has had malaria for three weeks. Reality is not knowing whether she will live or die as she puts her head on your shoulder and then looks at you through bloodshot eyes, silently begging for your help. As I clasped her to my chest, all I could think was that this doesn't have to happen. It doesn't have to be this way, this is a preventable disease.

God, show me where I can help. Give me the courage and the ability to change the world, one person at a time.

Today was much less strenuous, but we got a lot accomplished anyway. My group put bookshelves together and set up a library for the school here. It felt great knowing that the kids will now have a place to sit and read.

In the afternoon we spent time helping a guy from Georgia who came on the trip with us. He has come up with a new formula of ingredients to add to peanut butter as a supplement for children's nutrition. This formula is healthier and more cost-effective than current similar formulas. By adding vegetable oil, powdered sugar, powdered vitamins, and whey protein, he can give kids here the nutrition they need. He's here to conduct a research project on it for eight weeks to see if it improves the health of some of the kids in the village. If it does work, he will find a way to mass produce it, and ship it to develpoing countries to combat starvation. We helped him mix the ingredients in and he let us taste some of it. It's incredibly tasty, but not exactly a good idea unless you want giant love handles. Helping him today made me realize that my generation really can end world hunger in our lifetime. I heard a guy from an organization called "Kids Against Hunger" say today, "Jesus said, The poor you will always have with you,' but he never said, 'The starving you will always have with you.'" I had never thought of it that way before. World hunger is so simple to stop, if Americans would just stop using 80% of the world's resources to get fatter and richer. All God asks for is equal distribution of what he has created. When I get home, I will be doing what I can to do my part to distribute everything more equally.

I'm beyond exhausted. My crew was responsible for working on building the house today. We worked alongside Haitian masons. Not "masons" like the bloodthirsty American cult (for any Masons reading this, just kidding...sort of), but more of the brick-laying variety. They did the lion's share of the block-laying, but we were able to do some. We mostly hauled mortar (read: really thick and heavy concrete), and cinder blocks (read: heavier than mortar buckets). I estimated that I carried 400 or more cinder blocks in a five hour span. I also was able to hand-sift a mountain of coral sand which is a component of the mortar, which the Haitians hand-mix. The Haitian workers are machines. If I had a construction business, I would hire these guys in a second. Long story short, we got all four walls put up in one day, not a bad day's work.

The thing I noticed about Haitian buildings is that they choose function and practicality over beauty. This house will withstand a hurricane when it is finished. My house is beautiful, but a hurricane (or tornado, seeing as how I live in Indiana) would reduce my house to something less than rubble. There's the difference. In America, we build for beauty, in Haiti they build for function and strength. I'm beginning to see that it might just make more sense toi build the Haitian way.

I'm starting to adjust to the insane climate. Sweating has become normal, so it doesn't bug me like it did when we arrived. Same can be said for the heat.

I was challenged by the American guy who runs the Mission to try a Haitan pepper. They just call it "pepper" and it's about the size of half an Ibuprofen tablet. I like hot stuff, but anyone who does will tell you that the smaller the pepper is, the hotter it will be. I thought about saving myself the trouble and just going ahead and eating it while sitting on the toilet, but I decided to take a chance. Holy crap, this thing was hot. Ten minutes of pain and increased sweating. I nicknamed it "Satan's Tylenol."

Anyway, I'm calling it a night, I'm wiped out.

Haitian children are beautiful. We were working today at building a house for a family who lost theirs in the last hurricane and we drew a crowd, as a group of "blancs" tend to do. I felt a bit like a fish in an aquarium ("Don't tap the glass, whitey gets scared.") The crowd consisted mostly of children and teenagers. The kids crave attention. They will come up and just touch your skin, as if the lack of pigment somehow feels different. They'll hold your hand, and if you put your arm around them, they snuggle up to you. It feels so good to give them the physical contact that they are starving for.

We then took a tour of Grand Goave, the village where the mission resides. It's more of a town than a village. It's ver poor, like the rest of Haiti. The people are so friendly and so polite. Every once in awhile, you would a child's voice shriek, "Blanc, blanc ("white" in Creole if you haven't figured that out yet), photo." We took a lot of pictures and then showed them the digital picture. The loved it. They just giggled and giggled.

Tonight I had the privilege of preaching at a Haitian church in the small village of Jeaty. Their worship was amazing. It was a very surreal experience to be preaching in a dark hut, lit by one kerosene lantern. As I preached, I could hear the people saying, "Oui (yes)." I think it's the Haitian way of saying, "Preach it brotha!" They were very gracious and kind. Worshipping in a strange place and with people you don't know really gives you a sense of how universal God's Kingdom really is. I feel blessed to be a part of it.

I'm back, and as promised, will be sharing my journal with you from the trip. Thanks for your prayers for the trip, it was amazing.

I guess this place is everything I expected and nothing like I expected. I expected poverty, but what I saw was hopeless destitution. I expected everything to be a little different than the States, but what I got was complete chaos. The streets of Port-au-prince are hard to describe. Two to three million people, trash everywhere, guys just peeing in the street, people all over the place selling the same crap, and hoping against all hope that someone will buy enough for them to eat that night, taxis called "Tap-Taps" loaded with people and blaring music. It was like some crazy, impoverished street carnival that never ends, and always smells of garbage and sour milk.

So, the drivers are crazy as well. There are no stop lights, no stop signs (did I mention that there are between two and three million people in this city?), no road markers, and no rhyme or reason to the driving pattern. The only general rule seemed to be that the person with the biggest vehicle and/or loudest horn wins. To drive here, you have to be half-skilled and half bat-crap insane. We saw a cop giving someone a ticket. I had to laugh. What in the world do you have to do to get a ticket in this chaos? Kill someone? Drive while sober?

Shortly after we arrived at the Lifeline Christian Mission compound in Grand Goave (by the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ), we unloaded a huge 45 foot long shipping container full of supplies. It was good, hard work and we got to work with some of the Haitian staff here at the compound. I worked with one man named Juvel. We were hauling lumber together and he worked my butt off! We were hauling it about 40 yards and he kept hurrying me back to get more. When we were done, we talked with each other a little (very little considering his English sucks and my Creole is worse). He asked me if I had a baby, and when I told him "Yes", he said, "Very good, good job." I thought that was funny. Anyway, I'm wrecked already from a long day of traveling and work, and because I've been sweating since we got off the plane.

Clever title to the post huh? I couldn't think of anything else. Anyway, it seems like it's been awhile since I rapped at you (only 6 days or so, but it seems like longer), so I thought I would give the skinny (I have so much street cred, look at the clever use of slang) on what's going on in my life.

Almost a week from the minute that I typed this, I will be landing in Haiti. I'm very excited about the trip, though it will be hard to be away from my wife and child for that long, especially with no chance of talking to them until I arrive back in the states. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere doesn't have a fully functioning phone system? I can't even believe it. Man, Jesus, when you called me to go and do your work, couldn't you have called me to a more convenient place? Geez. Just kidding.

I'm over the flying thing. Hard to believe after reading my last post, but I've pretty much decided that I have no control over the whole deal anyway, so whatever. I'm just going to have a Vet shoot me up with about 100 CCs of Horse Tranquilizer before the trip, that should be adequate.

I'll probably post again before I leave this next Sunday. After that, it will be awhile.

I hate it. I hate flying. It may be "the only way to travel," but I'd rather have a car, or a hovercraft...I've always wanted to ride on a hovercraft. And forget that crap about, "It's the safest way to travel." If I get in a car crash, my chances of survival are pretty great, but if I get into a plane crash at 37,000 feet, I'm done. So spare me the psycho-babble about how safe air travel really is.

Anyway, I just looked at the plane I'll be throwing up in from Indianapolis to Miami, and it's actually not a plane, it's a Cracker-Jack box with wings. Not to mention that all 21 of us are carrying at least 100 pounds worth of luggage on board. Can this stinkin' thing even get off the ground with that kind of weight.

Did anyone ever watch the A-Team? You know how they always had to trick B.A. into flying and then they would club him over the head with a wine-bottle like a defenseless Harbor Seal? That's going to be me.

I don't actually throw up on planes, I just sweat profusely and my hands get all clammy and I sit and pray, "God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this..." Come to think of it, flying may be the best thing for my prayer life.

I don't get it, I'm not usually this bad about flying. It's never been my favorite thing to do, but I've never been this aprehensive about it either. Maybe it's because I have a kid now, who knows? Maybe it's because I only fly about once every four or five years, so I'm not used to it. Maybe it's because I over-think this kind of crap. I don't know, all I know is that June 10th can't be over soon enough.

1. I watched a show on the history channel about Hippies the other day. If you take away the massive amounts of drugs and promiscuous sex, a lot of their ideas were, at their foundation, strangely Christ-like. But, unlike Christians, their music was actually good.

2. Where has the book, "Les Miserables" been my whole life?

3. I got two bumper stickers the other day that now hang in my office. The first one says, "Jesus called, he wants his religion back" and the other one says, "If going to church makes you a Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?" Brilliant.

4. I wonder if they'll invent tele-porters before June 10, so that I don't have to fly to Haiti? I think our flight from Indy to Miami is on like a tiny chicken-freighter or something.

5. Speaking of Haiti...um it's hot. I looked at the Weather Channel website and at 10:00 am this morning, the heat index was 104. I will have no skin left when I return. I talked to a lady from my church that's been there before, in February she got a sunburn through her clothes. Sounds like a great place for a pasty white kid huh?

6. So...gas prices...fun huh? At least our government cares about it right? Is anyone else investigating the idea of buying a Vespa Scooter?

7. My kid threw up his whole dinner the other night, and then some. It looked like a bile-soaked grocery store exploded in our living room. My wife and I looked at each other and said, "So...what do we do?" We decided to burn the house down and start all over, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

8. I have to go to the bathroom, I'll be back in a few. Ok, I'm back. I feel much better.

9. Hey, we crowned a new American Idol last night. Can you hear that? It sounds like a new career already floating away in the breeze.

10. I've really been questioning my ministry recently. I don't know why. I sometimes feel like a dismal failure at what I do. I was up at 4:00 this morning because I couldn't stop thinking about this. Does these thoughts happen in other career fields, or is ministry exclusive in this one?

Here are the latest statistics/character taits/ummm...whatever else I feel like writing about my 10 month old.

Height: Somewhere in the 31" range. This means that we can officially have nothing laying on tables, chairs, shelves, etc. Also, it means that I've already contacted the NBA to let them know that the number 1 pick in the 20__ draft is already a done deal, this kid is huge.

Weight: 21-ish lbs. He's long, lean, and faster than I am.

# of teeth: 5. His two top teeth in the middle have a gap in between them, which makes him look like Spongebob when he smiles his big cheesy grin.

Walking?: He just took his first steps on Saturday night. He's up to a record of 5 steps before he falls flat on his face and cries.

Still cute: Umm...of course. Pretty much the cutest baby on the planet. I'm biased, I know. One of the high school girls in my youth group had this to say, "He's like 'magazine cover' type cute." I told her that if she would just wait another 17 years or so, she could have a "magazine cute" husband.

Favorite food: Toast with butter, ravioli, carrots, grass clippings, dried leaves, my leg, anything he can get his hands on. This kid will literally eat anything. Here's a mock conversation that would illustrate this kid's appetite.
Me: "Eat this Ezra, it's a cow sphincter."
Him: (insert Spongebob-esque grin) "Dadadadadada." (Fist goes into mouth ingesting said sphincter, followed by a grimace, followed by him smacking the table which is his way of saying, "MORE!")

Still pooping his pants?: Can you hear me gagging through your computer screen?

That's about it. I love this kid. This morning I asked him if he would just stay this size and not turn into a teenager. He just grinned. There was a hint of, "You just wait" in that grin.

On behalf of all Christians worldwide who are not former child stars and actually have a functional brain, I would like to apologize to the world for the whole Nightline debacle last week.

And, if by some odd chance, Kirk Cameron reads this post, I have something to say to him too. Um, Kirk...stop speaking on my behalf. You don't represent me. You may be a brother in Christ, but stop acting like you're God's new warrior and that all of us think like you do. You can't prove the existence of God. I'm sorry to tell you that, but you can't. If we could prove it inconclusively, we wouldn't need faith. Stop accosting people on the street in the name of Jesus. Stop going on national television and making idiots of us all. Go to church, do your thing, serve people as Jesus would, and keep to yourself. Thanks.

"Mama always said, 'God is mysterious.'" - Forrest Gump

I believe this to be true. But what does it mean? It means that God works in different ways at different times. We like to try and fit God into a nice and neat box, but he's just too stinkin' big to cram into our measly little boxes. Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to the wind, saying that it blows where it wills. You can't catch it, you can only live in it and, at times, allow it to guide you. If God is mysterious, then that means that he isn't going to work in the ways that we feel he should. He isn't going to answer our prayers in the niec and neat way that he would. If he did, he wouldn't be mysterious, he would be predictable (and miserably boring). Sometimes God acts in giant ways where it is pretty obvious that he is working. However, more often than not, his ways are more subtle, his actions more hidden. Most of the time, when God is changing us, the change acts like a fine wine, subtley evolving and growing in us until it reaches its full potential.

I'm reading a book right now called Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott. She speaks a great deal about God has changed her over the years, but it has been slow and frustrating. It's been a series of strikes and gutters, ups and downs. She says this:

"That's me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.
I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog. I grew up thinking the lessons should be more like the von Trapp children: more marionettes, more dirndls and harmonies. But no: it's slog, bog, scootch."

Exactly. Every major form of spirituality acknowledges that any change (if it be worthwhile change) comes slowly and not without great effort. I hate that though. I live in the age where anything I want, I can get with the click of a mouse. It just seems that our mysterious Father's computer runs more like a 1985 Apple, instead of a brand new Mac. It also seems that he's ok with that, I guess it's time that I start being ok with it too.

I saw a picture on CNN.com this morning of the devastation in Greensburg, Kansas. If you know nothing about the story, an F5 tornado (read: ridiculously large tornado 1.5 miles wide) directly hit a small town in Kansas, completely destroying it. The picture was of a guy standing in a ruined church building. There was only one wall left standing and on the wall was a picture of Jesus, still hung perfectly straight that the wind didn't touch.

Totally creeped me out. I know this kind of a situation leads to all sorts of questions about where God was and all of that. Frankly, I don't have the answers and I'm ok with that. However, looking at that picture, it was almost like in some mystical way, Jesus was saying, "I'm still here. Despite what it might look like, I'm still here, and I'm still in love with every person in this town." I don't know why God doesn't stop stuff like that from happening, maybe the miracle in the whole thing was that there weren't hundreds of people killed, who knows. I do know that the Bible makes it very clear that where there is suffering, there is a Savior. There is a Savior who suffered through life in many different ways. There is a Savior that is close to the suffering, offering hope, love, and a sense of peace through the crap. It took a picture in a ruined shell of a church to remind me of that.

On my way to work this morning, I was careening down the highway at a "please don't give me a ticket" type speed, when I noticed a small box turtle crossing the road. I saw it in time to swerve, so I missed it. However, I was thinking about the fact that the turtle didn't have a snowball's chance in the seventh circle of hell of making it to the other side of the road. It's a fairly busy highway, and I watched as this thing crept across the road, with semis and Honda Civics whizzing by it at breakneck speeds.

My journey with God feels like that sometimes. It seems like I'm trying to make it to the other side of the road, but I can't go any faster than a crawl. Meanwhile, there are a million things trying to derail and destroy me. Sometimes these things miss, but other times, they seem to hit their mark. At times I just want to tuck inside my shell until everything blows over, but for some reason I can't. I keep hearing God's still small voice encouraging me to continue. So I go on, all the while asking this still small voice, "Um, can't you just give me a little help and remove the stinking obstacles, make the road a little less busy so that I can make it to the other side?" To which the Voice responds, "Um, you know that if it was easy, it wouldn't make it worthwhile when you arrived at your destination, so no, I won't remove the obstacles."

As I continue across the seemingly endless road, what I find is that I was getting more help than I realized. We're all getting more help than we realize.

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, mainly how much I suck at it sometimes. The Church should be full of the most forgiving people on the planet, and, unfortunately, it seems to be the opposite in a lot of respects. The thing about forgiving other people is that, when we refuse to forgive someone, it doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts us. Forgiveness (in a manner of speaking) is a completely selfish act. It has to be, because forgiveness is more about us than it is about the person who wronged us. When we refuse to forgive, we become bitter, which ultimately leads to our destruction.

Writer Anne Lamott puts it this way, "In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poision and then waiting for the rat to die." I think that says it all. If someone wrongs me, it isn't the other person that suffers, it is I who suffers when bitterness eats my lunch. So who has wronged you? We all have wounds, and unless we clean them out by forgiving the person who wounded us, we'll become infected by it and ultimately die from the poison.

I don't know if you've seen the video of the Virginia Tech killer yet, but if you haven't, be ready for it to chill your blood. I watched it on cnn.com today and it almost made me sick to watch it. On top of that, I couldn't help but be filled with sadness at this young man who threw his life away.

As I watched, I couldn't help but want to reach out to the guy and tell him that it didn't have to be this way. I wanted to tell him that, although people can be jerks, killing them isn't the answer. I wanted to tell him that the only way to truly conquer the evils he had endured in his life wasn't to lash out with more evil, but to destroy it with love. I wanted to tell him that you can never conquer evil with evil.

I also couldn't help but think about the rest of his life. Every killer has a story, no one wakes up one morning and starts shooting. The thoughts that ultimately ate him alive and cost the lives of 33 people started a long time ago. Was he picked on as a kid? Did his parents hate him? What injustices in his life led to the hatred? Don't get me wrong, I don't blame society for what happened, the only one to really blame is the shooter, I just can't help but wonder if he had ever seen what real love looked like.

As we mourn the deaths of the innocent, may we never forget about the guilty as well and see if maybe we can't prevent another incident like this one by showing the love of Jesus to everyone we come in contact with. Real love, transforming love; the type of love that melts away bitterness and builds joy in its place.

Recently, Joshua Bell, one of the world's best violin players, was commissioned by the Washington Post to play his violin in a busy subway station in D.C. during rush hour and see what happened. This article in the Post tells the story. Read it here.

Incidentally, the article is long, but is honestly the best piece of writing I've ever encountered in a newspaper. This article says a lot about our culture. It truly made me want to cry.

When Ezra gets excited, he makes this noise when he inhales. It's a hard sound to describe. As you can tell by the subject of this post, it sounds like a squeal, but I'm not sure that this word does it justice. It sounds like a devastating hybrid of this:

and this:

Apparently somewhere in the storied histories of my family and my wife's family, a ringwraith mated with a velociraptor, which mucked of the gene pool in such a way as to produce this:

It chills the blood, doesn't it? Look at the steely glance, the wrathful smile, and the razor-sharp teeth, just waiting to attack the first person that tells it "no."

Seeing as how yesterday was Easter, I've been thinking a great deal about resurrection. I spent most of my life as a Christian talking about the Resurrection of Jesus in purely historical, and then future, fact. In other words, all I focused on was that the Resurrection happened some 2000 odd years ago to a man named Jesus, and then it would happen again to those who were faithful in the "Last Days." So what happened as a natural by-product of this was that I didn't really believe that the Resurrection of Jesus had any real impact on me as I live today. However, I'm starting to see that the Resurrection, far from being just an historical event, is really more about today than it was about 2000 years ago.

I can look back at my life and see that it is a series of resurrections. I can see times in my life where I felt dead inside, and yet God, in his love and mercy, brought life to a dead place inside of me. When I read the Bible now, I see that we serve a God who, if nothing else, delights in bringing life to dead places, and beauty from ugliness. He loves to take a pile of ashes and make them beautiful once more (incidentally, this plays out in his created nature; look at what's happened near Mt. St. Helens, the land s being resurrected from ashes). He loves to take a pile of dry bones (look at the book of Ezekiel) and make them live again. He longs to bring this world back to Eden and make it right and beautiful once more. In this light, the Resurrection of Jesus becomes incredibly real for this time and place. He longs for his people to bring beauty to this earth through a series of resurrections.

What he really desires is for his people to be involved in a universe-wide movement back to Eden. This means that we should find the poorest of the poor, and help them resurrect their lives, aided by the power of God. This means that we are to find single moms who are trying to get by, and help them to resurrect their lives. This means that we are to be good stewards of God's creation, and we should care about environmental issues. The list goes on and on.

I thank God that the grave could not hold Jesus, and I thank God that he longs to bring that same life to other dead places, places in you, and places in me.

Man, have you ever had one of those days? You know, the type of day where one thing gets to you and eats at you. The thing may not even be a big deal in the big scheme of life, but for some reason, it just gnaws at you. If you haven't guessed, I'm having one of those days. I need a hug.

I'm going to be gone for a few days, so I thought I would give an update, as well as some really adorable pictures of the boy.

That is all, I'll be posting next week when I get back from glorious West Virginia.

So here are some things I've been mulling over as of late:

1. Why haven't I bought every Sigur Ros album ever made?
2. Why can't Christians put out anything remotely as talented as a Sigur Ros album?
3. Why are Christians ready to accept death-bed confessions of faith, but refuse to accept a homosexual who is truly seeking God?
4. Why has homosexuality become the taboo sin for Christians? Could it be becuase Christians feel threatened by homosexuals, as if they're going to "catch gay" if they go to church with them?
5. Why can I not keep my 8 month old full? I mean seriously, he isn't that big, where is all the food going?
6. I've been doing Weight Watchers for 2 weeks now, ummm...why do I seem to be getting fatter?
7. Why is it that the more I learn about Jesus, the less I know about him? And why does that make me love him even more?
8. Why can't I get into a Lynyrd Skynyrd album like I used to? Why do I just find their music now oddly annoying?
9. Is there a better Jazz musician than John Coltrane?
10. At what point do you stop calling them "love handles" and call them "giant fat bags."

These are the things floating around in the ole' duders head these days. What can I say, I think I need counseling.

I was flipping through channels again this morning while I was feeding my boy (anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows where this is going) and I came across the same "Bible study" program that I spoke of last week. This morning they should have titled the program, "Same crap, different people." This time it was three ladies sitting around the table and they were speaking about demons. I guess when you have nothing to say about Jesus, you have to talk about something right?

They were all bantering back and forth naming all sorts different demons that seem to exist when one of the ladies says, "...and what about financial," to which one of the other ones says, "That's right, there's a spirit of poverty." By spirit, of course, she meant demon. I did a quick keyword search on BibleGateway.com for "spirit of poverty" and this is what it yielded:

Sorry. No results found for "spirit of poverty" in Keyword Search. Idiot.

Ok, so I added the "idiot" thing at the end, but you get the idea. This idea that some devious little demon lurks in your mind and makes you poor not only isn't biblical, it's completely ridiculous. What this leads to is the idea that, "I'm having financial problems, ok, I'll just rebuke that demon in the name of Jesus and, 'Voila!' everything is cool." I always believed that some people were poor because of bad choices, some because of injustice, and some just because they didn't have a chance to be anything but poor, but now I can add another reason...those darned demons. Maybe if I rebuke those demons tonight, Visa and Mastercard will go out of business thus eliminating my debt once and for all. Start praying and rebuking people.

I was flipping through channels this morning before work and came across a TV preacher. I know, I do this too much, and I need to stop. Everytime I see one of them, it makes me embarrassed to be called a Christian. Anyway, this guy was sitting around a table with his three adult children (who, incidentally, look and talk just like him), "studying" the Bible. By studying, I mean the three kids were sitting there listening to their father makes stuff up as he went and then throwing a vague and obscure Bible passage in for good measure. The whole scene was a bit creepy, but I digress.

He was talking about blessings and how when we speak them, God answers and blesses us. By blessing, he was, of course, speaking of monetary and health blessings. The statement that made me almost spit my eggs and hot sauce all over the lving room was this, "The power is in speaking the blessing. When we speak it, Jesus is obligated to make it happen, that's his job." WWHHHHAAAATTTT!!!!! Where did that come from? Since when is Jesus obligated to do anything we tell him to do? I wasn't aware that that's how the relationship works. Because God knows that when you love someone, you immediately start demanding that they fulfill your requests, right?

I'm not sure that we want to get into a game where we start using a phrase like "Jesus is obligated" and "it's his job." Maybe we should leave Jesus' job description up to God.

I just ordered a Sigur Ros album. They may be the best band to ever come out of Iceland. Of course, what competition do they have in that category? Oh yeah, Bjork is from Iceland...so like I was saying, they're certainly the best band to ever come out of Iceland. They're a partly-instrumental, ethereal type-music band (Good Lord, I am an amazing music critic). I listened to a couple of their CDs this past weekend with a friend and I was blown away. Here a few reasons that you should stop reading this now and go buy a Sigur Ros album:

1. My blog sucks and at this point you want to do anything but read it.
2. You're a follower by nature and you would indeed walk off a cliff if someone told you to.
3. Sigur Ros invented their own language called "Hopelandic," and they sing a number of songs on their albums in this made-up language (at this point, you should be saying, "Wow, that's pretty impressive, I'm going to go and buy their entire catalogue.")
4. The guitarist sometimes plays his guitar with a violin bow.
5. You think that I'm so freaking cool that you can't help but buy anything I tell you to.

Do you need any more reasons than that? My friend told me that he was talking to a friend of his while listenign to Sigur Ros and his friend said, "I think this is what death must sound like" (he, of course, meant that as a compliment). So, in conclusion, listen to Sigur Ros and it will make you want to die. No wait...I meant to say that if you listen to Sigur Ros, it will kill you. No wait...never mind. I ordered it from Amazon and opted for the free super-saver shipping, which means that I will receive my CD sometime between this Thursday and November 2009. Now go and purchase their CDs you lemmings!

Update because you care: It shipped yesterday afternoon.

I have a confession to make...I watched some of the Oscars (and by "some" I mean like 30 minutes on and off). It seems that this year the environment took center stage, what with Al Gore's documentary on Global Warming gaining so much attention. Let me state that I have no problem with environmentalism. I don't take the traditonal Christian view of the environment of, "Hey, let's destroy it, because Jesus is going to come back anyway." In fact, I'm trying to take some steps in my own life to be a bit more conscious. However, I get tired of celebrities talking a good game and then living something so seemingly different than what they profess. I find it interesting that Christians get accused of being hypocrites constantly, yet other groups of people don't.

I watched as celebrity after celebrity pranced on stage and mentioned something about the Oscar's being "green" this year (I found it odd that they never seemed to define in what way the show was "green"), and about how we should be more responsible. All of these comments gained applause from their peers. Did no one else happen to notice that pretty much everyone arrived in a giant limo? Are those eco-friendly now, did I miss the memo? I'm guessing a limo gets roughly the same gas mileage as a Sherman tank, so how can they justify it?

I read in the book of 2 Timothy (which, incidentally, comes right after 1 Timothy) the other day a passage that I can't get out of my head. Paul is writing a letter to a disciple of his named Timothy, hence the name of the book, and he lists off characteristics of people in what Paul calls "the last days" (by the way, I do think it's possible that Paul was speaking of something other than the second coming of Jesus when he used that phrase). Here are the characteristics of these people:
Lovers of themselves
Lovers of money
Boastful
Proud
Abusive
Disobedient to their parents
Ungrateful
Unholy
Without love
Unforgiving
Slanderous
Without self-control
Brutal
No lovers of the good
Rash
Conceited
Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Paul then says that these people have "a form of godliness, but deny its power." Then it clicked with me, holy crap he's talking about the Church! Then I started thinking, this list characterizes many of the aspects that I see in the American Church. Paul's final phrase keeps haunting me, "having a form of godliness, but denying its power." This phrase leads to many questions in my mind. Does this mean that the believers Paul speaks of to Timothy say all the right things, they know the doctrine, but when it comes down to it, they look nothing like Jesus? Have you ever met anyone like that? Am I like that? What is the power of true godliness? What does it look like? Do I look like Jesus (not literally, I'm much fatter than he would have been) to those around me? If I don't, what can I change in my life to make sure that I do?

Paul says in the book of Galatians, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." To my brothers and sisters in the American Church, please listen to the words of our comrade Paul. It doesn't matter what you verbally agree to. It doesn't matter what you say you believe. All that matters is whether you put in to action what you say you believe to be true. The measuring stick is love, the measuring stick is Jesus, how do you compare? How do
I compare?

Our first real vomit, how exciting. I was feeding mini-me last night, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to do, and we decided to give him rice cereal again. He had been eating oatmeal like it's going out of style, so we thought we would change it up a bit on him and go back to rice cereal periodically. Well, apparently he's a texture freak, because he gagged on every bite I gave him. I'm not going to lie, I laugh when he gags. He makes a noise like he's throwing up his toenails, and gets a classic "I'm throwing up my toenails" look on his face.

Anyway, after about five bites, I decided that maybe the rice cereal wasn't a good idea because he was gagging relentlessly with every bite. It seems, however, that five bites was one bite too many. He proceeded to gag about four times on the last bite and then he expelled everything I had fed him to that point, including peaches and green beans. It was a technicolor bile-fest as he coated anything within two feet of him with his stomach contents. My wife and I sat there for a minute, just looking at each other and asking each other, "So...what do we do now?" We eventually got him cleaned up and all was well. We've come to a couple of possible conclusions as to the reason for his puking. 1)He hates the texture of rice cereal and showed it by gagging until he heaved. 2)He realized that his Huggies weren't fitting quite like they used to, and he thought he would give bulimia the ole' college try. Who knows.

I was doing some thinking the other day (and yes, it hurt). I read the passage of Scripture where Jesus says, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul?" I've read that passage a hundred times in my life and given my lovely fundamentalist upbringing (Yea! Let's hear it for Fundies!) I always assumed that Jesus was simply stating that if you put anything in front of him, enjoy the fires of hell because you lost your soul. Because, after all, Jesus was primarily concerned with heaven and hell right (if you didn't read that with caustic sarcasm, feel free to insert it, and then re-read the sentence)? However, this time when I read the passage a question formed in my brain. What is the soul?

Over the last couple of years, I've read some fairly mind-melting stuff, mainly written by Jewish authors. It all of sudden clicked with me that the way the Ancients defined the soul vastly differs from what I've been taught. So let me give the two contrasting views of the soul.

Modern - We seem to have what I call a Tom and Jerry view of the soul. In Tom and Jerry cartoons, very often Jerry would whack Tom across the head with something heavy and Tom would "die." He would be lying on the ground and a foggy version of him would release into the air. This is, presumably, the cartoonists way of saying that his soul has left him. This view of the soul has permeated our way of thinking. To us, the soul is nothing more than a ghost who's only purpose is to determine where we go when we die. We view the soul as something that is ultimately disconnected from who we are. It is a separate entity from our body, mind, thoughts, and emotions. When we die, this soul floats out of us and enters either heaven or hell. According to Christians, the soul can be saved by "accepting Jesus" (how's that for a foggy description?). This soul, by accepting Jesus, is made perfect and is thus "saved."

Ancient - They saw the soul as the deepest part of your being. The soul (or known also as the "heart" in ancient writings) was your life-force. It was the thing that shaped who you were as a person. It was not separate from your physical, mental, emotional body. As the soul went, so did the rest of you. Your soul was ultimately who you are.

This would have to be Jesus' view of the soul. The idea of a soul being some sort of separate entity from the rest of you was non-existant in his day. So this has gigantic implications for all of us. If your soul is the thing that makes you who you are, then Jesus' statement above takes on a whole new meaning. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose himself? What good is it for you to strive to gain the world, and yet sell out who you really are in the process? Jesus' statement has nothing to do with the afterlife, but has everything to do with a quality of life to be lived here and now. Our country is full of people who are striving to gain everything the world has to offer and, in the process, they are losing their entire identity. They're selling out the very core of who they are for the bottom line. I believe that God is calling a people that will stop losing the deepest part of them for a bunch of crap that isn't going to satisfy or last anyway.

May you look to Jesus to find out who you really are created to be, and may you have the courage to make the changes necessary to regain your soul.

So, I saw this and thought for a second that it was a joke. Turns out that it isn't.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/tours/slimming/index_f.html

I'm not sure if I think it's funny or if there's something wrong with our culture when we have to have this type of effect on our cameras. This whole thing leads to a lot of questions in my head. Does this really help with our culture's image problems? Is it wrong to look at an image and state that it's "not pretty enough" and slim it? Does it lead to more laziness in people ("Why should I take care of myself, when I can fix it all on film?")? Any thoughts?

So if you watched any news channel yesterday or today, a great deal of talk centered on the euthanization of Kentucky Derby winning horse Barbaro. For those who don't know, Barbaro got his leg broken in a race shortly after winning the Derby. A broken leg in a human isn't a problem, a broken leg in a horse means shortly gracing someone's dinner table in the form of Jell-O or being ingested by a Kindergartner in the form of Elmer's glue.

For the last eight months, trainers have spent millions of dollars on surgeries and rehab so that the horse could live. The only comment I can come up with is, it's just a horse.

Do you realize that every 8 seconds, someone in the world dies of AIDS? This is, of course, something that doesn't get a great deal of press, because a vast majority of those cases are poor Africans. How can we mourn the loss of a freaking horse and not give a crap about the fact that millions of people will die this year of AIDS? Or how about the fact that 40,000 children die everyday of malnutrition. I like horses as much as the next guy (assuming you like horses), but what is the life of a horse compared to the lives of human beings? Where's the consistency?

We took Ezra this morning to get his six month immunizations. To say that he wasn't a fan would be a gross understatement. For all of you parents out there, is there anything worse than listening to your kid cry so hard that they miss breaths? It makes me want to cry to see the tears running down his face.

I think my son is afraid of the dark. At least he's afraid of the dark while riding in the back of a car. At any given time while riding in the dark, he will start to squirm and then start whining, which leads to crying. My wife and I have determined that he seems to be afraid that we're not there because he can't see us. Last night was one such episode.

We were all heading home from church and he started the aforementioned process. He was crying and crying until my wife turned on the light, turned around and said to him, "It's ok, mommy and daddy are still here." He could see her in the mirror that faces him and he stopped crying and immediately smiled at her. All she had to say was, "I'm still here" and he calmed down.

I started thinking, man, how often do I need to hear that? I don't know about you, but I go through seasons in life where I'm frantic, distressed, discouraged, and frustrated. I start the inevitable looking toward the clouds and wonder, "Just where is God?" It's in those times that I've come to understand and listen for his whispers, "It's ok, I'm still here." I can't tell you how it calms me, in the same way that my wife's gentle words made my son calm down and smile. It seems that our Creator knows when we need to hear it, the question is, are we listening for it?

Listen for his voice, the voice that speaks not to your ears, but to the deepest part of your being and says, "I'm still here, you're loved, everything is going to be ok."

That may serve as a tremendous disappointment to some, but oh well. I promise an update soon, I've been gone all week.

My kid is fat. Ok, actually he's perfectly normal sized, but he'll eat anything. He has yet to meet anything (other than a small dose of Benedryl) that he doesn't like. We decided a few weeks ago to start him on vegetables. We (and by "we" I mean my wife) decided to start him out on the nastiest vegetable we could think of, that way he could get the worst right off the bat and everything else is a step up. We started him on peas. I can't even hardly stomach peas, especially when they're pureed into a watery paste. Ezra, however, shoveled them down like they were going out of style. He couldn't get enough.

Adorable block-head, carrot face, does it get any cuter than that? Does anyone know of a good restraining device to prevent this type of thing from happening (Note: To anyone reading this who is my parent, grandparent, parent-in-law, child proctective services worker, etc., I'm only kidding...or am I.)? I can't wait for his 1st birthday (six months from tomorrow for all none of you who are counting) so that I can watch him shower our dining room with copious amounts of cake, icing, ice cream, and vomit containing all of the above items.

I just spent the morning at the local high school helping out the guidance counselors because a freshman killed himself this weekend. I was helping talk with students and listen to them as the voiced their anger, sadness, anguish, and frustration with the whole situation.

Fielding questions like, "Where was God when it happened? Why couldn't he/didn't he stop it? Do people that commit suicide go to hell?" all morning is not exactly the most fun way to spend a morning, but I always like an opportunity to do real ministry. I was thinking throughout the whole morning, what makes someone get to the point where taking their life is the best option? I can't help but feel sorrow for this young man because he didn't realize that there was life to be lived. Maybe he realized it, but he just didn't care, I don't know.

What goes through someone's mind in the last minutes/seconds before they take their own life? I kept getting an image in my mind all morning that I couldn't shake; I kept picturing Jesus saying to this young man, seconds before he hung himself, "It doesn't have to be this way. You may not feel like anyone loves you, but I do. Please don't do this, let's talk about it. It doesn't have to be this way, I can show you what life lived beautifully looks like."

I can't shake that image, and it almost brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. He didn't have to despair. He didn't have to die. He could have lived, really lived; lived in the way God intended.

I think I just created two new words, I'm so flippin' talented. Anyway, I was thinking about New Year's the other night as I watched Ryan Seacrest try desperately to hide his homosexuality behind a very awkward peck on the cheek with Christina Aguliera, and I was wondering why we get so excited about New Year's Eve. Think about it, New Year's is honestly just another day where we turn the calendars over to the next day/month/year because of the moon cycle and the planet's position around the sun. So why the excitement?

Sure, for some I think it's just another really good reason to get lit and wake up in a puddle of your own urine, but for most I think it goes much deeper than that. I think somewhere deep inside of us we desire to be new. There's an excitement to a new beginning, where for at least a minute/hour/day/whatever, we feel like we can be a new person. There's something inside most of us that screams to us that we aren't right. There's a deep discontent with how things are that most of us are afraid to talk about or even think about for more than just a fleeting second, so we bury it hoping it will go away. New Year's appeals to us, because it represents this feeling down inside of us that we desire to be new and different. This is why we make New Year's resolutions that we know we can't keep, but we like the idea of trying.

I think God understands this yearning inside of us to be different. I think he's responsible for wiring it into our DNA. In the book of Lamentations, the author says, "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions (some translations "mercies") never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Let that sink in for a minute and let it wash over you. With God, every day is a New Year celebration. You don't have to yearn to be new, you are made new because all of your screw-ups are erased and you are renewed in the love of God. I believe this is the mark of the Kingdom of God. It is a Kingdom built on love, with the ability to restore and renew all things.

The New Testament talks extensively about the idea that we have an old self that is replaced by a new self in Jesus. How did this happen? A man two thousand years ago made it possible because he was so full of love, that he couldn't allow us to live in the old self anymore. He knew that the old self was broken and fractured, and his great desire was, and still is, to see all of God's creation and his creatures made new. You don't have to be broken and fractured. Your old self sucks, maybe it's time for it to be replaced. In the words of the musician Joseph Arthur, "You've been loved all the way."

I've been working on patience the last year or so, with some prodding from my wife. I would tell you that I'm doing much better, she would probably say something different than that, but oh well, she's not writing this post, I am. Anyway, I say that in order to say that I've been wanting a few cds, but I have waited patiently to receive them for Christmas, or to buy them with Christmas money. Here's some of my new music that I'm currently listening to...


Come to Where I'm From - Jospeh Arthur
I've only recently been introduced to this guy. He's amazing, and he looks like John Lennon. The highlight of the album is "In the Sun" which happens to be the first song. The rest of the album is solid as well.


Redemption's Son - Joseph Arthur
75 minutes of ridiculously good music. A little more poppy than Come to Where I'm From, but very good. The highlights are: "Nation of Slaves" and "You've been loved."


Into the Blue Again - The Album Leaf
I haven't had a chance to formally absorb this one yet, but what I've heard has been great. Some of it is instrumental, and some of it has vocals. Give this cd a listen and then realize the fact that this leader of this band is also in a death metal band. Pretty funny.


American V: A Hundred Highways - Johnny Cash
Cash's final recording before his death. This is an infinitely sad, and yet incredibly beautiful album. Most of the songs deal with death, which sounds depressing, but it isn't when you listen to an old man's quavering voice speak of death as a welcome inevitability. If you want to know what it means for a person to die with grace, listen to this cd. The highlights: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and "I Came to Believe."


Seven Swans - Sufjan Stevens
I've waxed idiotic enough on this guy's music in past posts, so I won't go on more here. A very simple album. Beautiful acoustic guitar and banjo arrangements. This album may never leave my Ipod. Highlights: "Abraham," "Seven Swans," and "The Transfiguration."

Mule Variations - Tom Waits
I'm new to Tom Waits. I've always been turned off by his gravelly baritone, but I'm starting to really appreciate it's uniqueness. A friend convinced me to buy this album because you can't find his new album anywhere. I'm loving it and listening to it as I type this. Highlights: "Hold On" and "Chocolate Jesus."

That's what I'm listening these days. I'm tired of mainstream crap music, and I can't stand contemporary Christian music, so I'm finding alternatives to listen to. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that the New Year is great as well. Try not to drink so much that you can't remember your name.

I was flipping through my 10 channels this morning and came across the usual...you know, news channels all reporting the same thing, and a myriad of T.V. preachers blowing off their crap-cannons while sitting in opulent studios...in other words, just what Jesus intended.

But I digress, I came across a guy, who shall remain nameless, wearing a hideously Cosby-ish sweater talking about various passages of Scripture concerning the Christmas story. He was talking about Zechariah (father of John the Baptist). If you don't know the story, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. An angel appeared to a fairly old man named Zechariah and told him his wife would give birth to a boy who would be the forerunner to the Messiah. Zechariah proceeds to tell the angel that he must be mistaken because he and his wife are old. The angel says, "Ummm, yeah, I'm Gabriel, I told you this was going to happen, so it's going to happen" (from the New Polley Version of the Bible). The angel then tells Zechariah that he won't be able to speak until some time after his son is born because he didn't believe him.

The preacher then launched into a diatribe about how awful it is to question God and have any doubts. I've written extensively on doubt on this blog, so I won't go into my opinion much in this post, but I feel like the preacher was wrong. Do I feel like the angel's punishment was a bit much, considering the Bible describes Zechariah and his wife as, "well advanced in years"? Yes I do. Do I think that the angel had a reason for it, yes I do. It seems to me that doubt and questions have to be a part of a vibrant and growing faith. I can't stand when I hear any preacher (TV or otherwise) tell me that it's wrong to doubt and question God. You can't tell me these guys have never doubted anything before. The Scriptures are full of people who doubted and questioned, and God always resonded honestly.

For instance, God tells Abraham that he's going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abrham responds with this accusatory question of God, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" God responds with, "Sure. Find ten righteous people in the city and I won't do it."

I'm tired of self-righteous Christians acting like they never doubt anything that God ever said. I think they're lying and I think that they lie about it because they're incredibly insecure about their weak faith. They're afraid to let anyone know that they might be flawed. I made a promise to myself when I entered the ministry that I would be transparent with people, it's my hope that I have been and will continue to be.

I was feeding my son this morning, which has become a favorite routine of mine. He's so sweet in the morning. He lays back with his eyes closed and eats and plays with my beard at the same time. Anyway, I gave him four ounces, which is usually a good stopping point for a burp. I couldn't get one out of him, no matter how hard I pounded and pounded. I decided that I would just go ahead and keep feeding. That would be what experts call a gigantic mistake.

He took two more ounces and then started squirming. I sat him up and beat on his back for a minute. He burped and then showered half (this isn't a huge exaggeration) of the living room, and me, with everything in his stomach. As God as my witness, he was a head rotation away from being the star of the Exorcist. He's puking, and I'm looking for a crucufix and screaming at the top my lungs, "I NEED AN OLD PRIEST AND A YOUNG PRIEST! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU, THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"

I swear, I think he yacked up part of his colon. His duodenum is lodged somewhere in our Christmas tree. It didn't phase him one bit. After my wife and I hosed down our living room, I looked at him and he gave me a look that hinted at, "Hey idiot, that's what you get for not burping me the first time." He smiled real big as I headed for the shower. What a punk, I love him, but he's a punk.

I came across this the other day. It's called the "seven deadly social sins" as laid out by Ghandi. Here are the sevens sins:

Politics without principle
Wealth without work
Commerce without morality
Pleasure without conscience
Education without character
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

See if you can pick out how many of these America is guilty of. For extra credit, see how many the American Church is guilty of. For extra-extra credit, see how many I have broken. Ah crap.

So why is it that we, as Christians, feel like we have to offend everyone that isn't like us? We whine and complain about the world "going to hell in a handbasket" (never really understood that phrase, and I'm not sure it's necessarily true either), and then we decide to alienate and isolate everyone who doesn't subscribe to our ideology.

Let me give you an example. I was driving home the other day and I passed a new billboard on the way out of town that said this, "An educated person knows the Bible." My crap detector went crazy and I started thinking, "so what you're saying is, is that if you don't know the Bible, you're a complete dunce." I wanted to pull over, stop the car, climb up to the board and paint, "And a Christ-follower doesn't even think things like that, let alone say them."

I can't fathom this kind of a thought process. The Bible says, "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it..." If this be true, and I believe it to be so, then it stands to reason that any knowledge we have (even knowledge outside of the Bible) comes from him and thus is good. Do I believe that the Bible holds knowledge for living? Absolutely I do. Do I think that it is the beginning and end of God's revelation of knowledge? No. What I love is that Christians that believe that the Bible alone is knowledge, are the same ones with extensive libraries full of books on life and living. What's the point of having these books if the Bible is the end all-be all of knowledge?

Hey brothers and sisters of mine, can we please stop alienating everyone that isn't like us? Can we please start loving people instead of seeking to offend them into the Kingdom? I wonder how many times Jesus weeps for his Bride, the Church? I wonder how many times he screams from the heavens, "That's not what I had in mind!"? May we seek to show love to all of his creation and his creatures. May we seek to live as Jesus lived.

I thought I would give an update on Ezra, because I have a few pictures and whatnot to show off.

and this:




Finally, he had his first go around with Rice cereal yesterday. To say that is was funny would be a gross understatement. This picture should pretty much sum up the experience.

FATTY LIKES IT, HE REALLY LIKES IT!

Or at least he liked the 1/3 of a teaspoon that actually stayed in his mouth. This may be my favorite picture of him. Anyway, that about brings you up to date on the life of the boy. More updates in the coming days, weeks, months, years.

Sounds like a strange question for a minister to ask, but I'd really like to know. We get a glimpse from the gospels as to what he was like (i.e. loving, compassionate, full of grace, accepting, etc.), but I want to know more. Did he have a sense of humor? I would think he would have to, because if he didn't, he would have killed his disciples after about a year with them. Was he nice? We generally like to think of Jesus as nice, but frankly, some of the stories of him in the gospels show a man who said scathing things against the Roman Empire and against the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of Israel. Did he do stuff as a kid to earn the anger of his parents? Probably.

I've been thinking about all of this recently because I've been reading a book by Christopher Moore entitled, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's a fictional retelling of Jesus' life as told by his friend Levi, who is called Biff. Firstly, if you're a stuffy Christian concerned with correct doctrine, don't read the book. You'll miss the humor in it (of which there is plenty), and just get mad. I've read the book twice now and I like it because it causes me to think about what Jesus was like, especially as a kid. My guess is that he was mischievous like any other kid. He probably pulled pranks on his friends, had a boyhood crush, etc. Thinking of Jesus in this way only makes me love him more. I love to contemplate the human side of Jesus; the side that struggled with temptation, got into trouble as a kid, had his heart broken by his friends, that kind of stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed by the healer Jesus, the Jesus who could walk on water, the Jesus who could rise from the grave, but I'm more impressed with the Jesus who touched lepers because he loved them and ate in the homes of those who were hated by society. Think about Jesus as a human being, not just as divine, and I think you'll find a Jesus that you never knew.

I remember leaving Bible College over four years ago and thinking something to the effect of, "I'm not sure I believe much of anything that I was just taught." I was raised in an environment where it wasn't really encouraged to express doubt about God or anything in the Bible. This lead me to reject basically all of science and, in fact, saw science as a natural enemy of Christianity. Maybe I didn't reject all of science, just the parts that disagreed with my particular ideology. I wasn't just raised in an environment where it wasn't safe to question, I spent four years at Bible College where it wasn't safe to doubt and question either.

Basically, all of this led me to a point in my life where I looked out at the world in which I resided and realized that the faith I had carried with me for so long didn't really work once I started using my brain. I was lucky enough to have my brother and another really good friend dealing with the same sort of thing. Realizing that we would most certainly be branded as "liberals" (as if that's a bad thing or something), the three of set out to develop a faith that went beyond the fundamentalism we were all taught was true. I started realizing that the Bible, far from being an answer book (which is how it was presented to me my whole life), was really a book of questions. The more answers I sought, the fewer concrete answers I found, and the more questions I ended up with. Seeing as how my entire livelihood is based on teaching the Bible and being some sort of a pillar of strength and confidence, this naturally scared the crap out of me. Ministers aren't supposed to question, they aren't supposed to have doubts, they're supposed to have all of the answers.

Four and a half years later, I'm still searching, still doubting, still questioning. I feel like I'm playing a game of cat and mouse with my Creator, a game of divine hide and seek. The thing that scares me is the unknown of my whole situation. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to doubting and searching in the spiritual realm. I have no idea where my journey is going to lead me. Will it lead me to having to choose another career path? Will it lead me to dismantle everything I've ever known to be true? Will it lead me into the arms of God? I have no idea. Time will tell. There a few things I have found to be true in my searching. There is a being out there named Yahweh and he won't stop loving me no matter how hard I try to distance myself. This Yahweh is mysterious beyond anything I can comprehend. There was man named Jesus who walked the earth a couple of thousand years ago and he lived an amazing life of love and acceptance, which ultimately led to his enemies killing him. I believe that his resurrection brings me life everyday. Aside from these few truths, a lot is still up in the air for me.

So Ezra turns four months old this week (I like how I made that sound like a gigantic milestone), so I thought I would spew out some thoughts on the whole "being dad" thing. Actually, come to think of it, it is a big milestone seeing as how I somehow killed a Beta fish in six days while I was in college. From everyone I talked too, that's pretty hard to do, so naturally I was a little nervous about taking care of a human.

To start things off, I'm not sure how he's gaining any weight as much as he lets fly using various methods. There isn't a more helpless feeling than hearing him burp and looking around, only to find that there isn't a burp cloth in sight. God have mercy, this kid pukes more than a college binge drinker. He also loves to wait until he has a clean outfit on to unleash said vomit. He also pees more than a ninety year old in a nursing home, not to mention the fact that he poops more than his grandfather after thanksgiving dinner. Given all of these factors he should weigh somewhere in the range of 3-3.5 pounds, however, he's somewhere in the ballpark of 15 pounds.

Secondly, I love being a dad. Ezra has a smile that melts me, which is all well and good until he gets to the age where he figures out how to manipulate me with that smile. Anytime I've having a bad day, he seems to give a smile at just the right time to cheer me up. He's growing up too fast already. Part of me wishes he would stay this age forever, because he's the sweetest kid in the world, and I know he's going to go through the "terrible twos" (which, incidentally, aren't nearly as terrible as the "threes"), and he's going to grow into a teenager that tells me he hates me from time to time, and so on and so on.

Thirdly, I hate that my job takes me away from my family almost every night of the week. Seriously, in two weeks, we had one night at home. Last week, I was only home before 9:00 pm on one night, that's after going in at 9:00 am. I'm burning out and I hate it. I'm neglecting my family and I hate it. Sometimes I wish I had a job where I knew I was getting off at 5:00 and I could leave it and just be home for the night. Sounds nice. Someone who's new to our church asked me last week if what I did what a full-time occupation. I didn't know whether to laugh or punch him in the face. I laughed, in case you were wondering.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on parenthood and whatnot. As I learn new things, I'll lovingly pass them along to the masses.

Politicians are a bunch of babies. Seriously, if I see one more political commercial, I'm going to scream. Far from helping me choose who to vote for in this year's election, all of the negative campaigning has made me want to stay in bed an extra hour instead of going to the polls. I remember a time when political commercials were used to let you know what a candidate thought about certain issues. I haven't seen one commercial for this election that has dealt with what a candidate believes, they've all been about nothing more than smearing the name of their opponents. I'm tired of it. Republicans and Democrats are guilty of it. They're all jerks, they're all corrupt. I'm so glad that I've chosen to not align myself with any party, because I would be ashamed to be aligned with any of them. All of these politicians are making a mockery of our country. They're accomplishing nothing, all they're doing is calling each other names and bashing one another like they're part of a junior high clique. I deal with this crap enough in youth ministry, I don't need to deal with it every time I turn on the TV.

Here's some stuff I'm thinking about right now.

1. Can I possibly get any fatter?
2. Is there a more annoying singer than James Blunt?
3. How do you get a group of self-centered teenagers to really follow Jesus?
4. How did Jesus get a group of self-centered teenagers to follow him?
5. As a pastor, will I ever be able to read the Bible for enjoyment, and not just to get a teaching out of it?
6. Why is it not acceptable to be neither a Republican or a Democrat and be a Christ-follower at the same time?
7. How can a person be pro-life and not even blink at the fact that our country is responsible for killing untold thousands of Iraqi civilians?
8. When it comes to eating stewed prunes, is three enough, or four too many?
9. How can Christians speak out against gay marriage under the guise of preserving the sanctity of marriage, when the divorce rate among Christians is over 50%. Is that what sanctified marriage looks like?
10. Does listening to Simon and Garfunkel make me a pansy? Actually I'll go ahead and answer that one...yes it does.

This search engine that I found today will either help you with that problem or make you slip further into a crippling depression, depending on the popularity of your name.

http://ww2.howmanyofme.com/

There are 6 other people in this country that have my name. And, for your information, there is only one person in the USA named Seymour Butts. I am the pinnacle of maturity.

I always have people at church tell me that I'm such a good guitar player. I always respond with something to the effect of, "You obviously have never heard a good guitar player before." This isn't false humility, it's the truth. I'm a total hack. To prove it, I want you to watch this video of a guy named Trace Bundy.

http://www.AcousticNinja.com/videos/Hot%20Capo%20Stew.wmv

Now you know what an amazing guitarist sounds like. Incidentally, you can find more videos on his website: www.AcousticNinja.com.

I was thinking about something yesterday. That's an earth-shattering fact for anyone that knows me, but that isn't really relevant to this post. Being a youth minister, I think quite a bit about the nature of youth ministry, where it sucks, where it's going well, that sort of thing. I'm constantly trying to improve how I do youth ministry, I don't mean improve it by using flashy stuff, because I don't do that. No, I mean really improve it at its very core.

Anyway, I had a thought yesterday about how adults really don't want students to be a part of the Church. That's actually why I have a job at all. Parents don't want to do their job (biblically speaking) of raising their kids in the ways of God, so they ship them to me for an hour or two a week and then pat themselves on the back for sacrificing their time to bring their kids to church. It's nice and convenient, and they don't miss one down of the Colts game in the process. So what churches do is they hire a youth minister to develop programs that are both edgy (please pick up my sarcasm because I'm swimming in it right now) and x-treme (notice the "x" instead of "ex." I'm the coolest and most happening youth minister ever), so that parents can shirk their responsibility. This way, the adults don't have to mess with their kids and they can have big people church in peace without being bothered by the ones they decided to spawn.

This, however, is only part of the reason that I say that churches don't want students to be a part of the Church. I started thinking about all of this when a lady at my church told me that she had "a perfect project for the kids to be a part of." This "perfect project" was actually nothing more than a menial task that she just "didn't have the time to do." That triggered something in me. I started thinking that students in a church are nothing more than a scapegoat for people. Do you have something that will take up too much of your precious spare time? Call the youth minister and tell him that you have a good "service opportunity" for the youth group. So people are more than happy to have the students do menial tasks and call it "service," but ask if they can preach sometime or be a part of the leadership of the church and you will get something to the effect, "Oh, no they aren't old enough or mature enough for that." Don't get me wrong, my church does better than most I've seen at involving the youth, but I still get perturbed when they're constantly asked to do things for "service," when really someone was just too lazy to accomplish the task.

Don't think that the students don't understand what's going on, because I've had conversations with them before where I've asked them if they feel like they're a part of the church. They understand when people are just throwing them a bone. They understand that people only want them to be a part of the Church when they need something done. Kids aren't stupid. This kind of stuff has to stop. I think that this is a contributing factor as to why so many kids leave the faith when they go to college. They have no youth group anymore, and they were never connected to the Church, so why be a part of it now.

I have a quote on my office wall that I look at regularly. It's from Tony Campolo and I think it's fairly damning for the American Church today.

Jesus never says to the poor, "Come find the church," but he says to those of us in the church, "Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned," Jesus in his disguises.

I think the Church today is delusional. I think we're still assuming that we live in a "Christian" country. Looking back throughout history, I'm not sure this was ever a Christian country, but if it ever was, it certainly isn't now. I think the Church still assumes that people are just going to walk through the doors in droves when they realize the mess they've made of their lives. That may have been true at some point in American history, but certainly not now. You aren't going to find a great many homeless and poor people just waltzing into church on Sunday morning. The problem is that the Church doesn't understand this. We build our multi-million dollar buildings, throw a coffee shop in them, design elaborate programs, and then wait for people to show up. This is so contrary to the Bible.

It's time for a movement to begin in this country (and maybe it has begun on a small scale) where Christians will realize that they've wasted millions on buildings that don't matter, programs that make no difference in the lives of anyone but themselves, and slick worship "experiences" that just give people a fake temporary spiritual high, and go out and find the poor in their communities to make a difference. And when I say "make a difference," I don't mean just throwing money at them. I mean investing time into people to improve their lives and expand the Kingdom of God. Teach the homeless how to find a job, and keep it. Teach the poor how to be better parents. Help addicts get over their addictions and rely on Jesus who will bring them real life. This takes time, it takes patience, and it takes love.

As a minister, I'm tired of being forced to design programs. I'm tired of being expected to build a youth program or build a church. It seems like the longer I'm a minister, the more I have to stop following Christ's example of ministry and the less people I actually help. I can't tell you how frustrating that is. I just want to help people and I'm not sure I can as long as I have the tag "minister."

Great picture of my boy. I love the pensive stare, accented by the small bit of drool out of the corner of his mouth. He loves being in nothing but a diaper.

He almost has a bit of a "You talkin' ta me?" mafia look about him in this picture. Maybe I should start calling him "Drools," it could be his mafia name. Or maybe Ezra the Bull. Who knows. All I know is that if I find a dead union boss in my trunk, I'm going to be frightened.

I'm so sick of hearing about people like the lady in this article, I could just scream. Read this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15127464/?GT1=8618

For starters, I could understand making an argument that the book was trying to "indoctrinate children in the ways of Wicca" if, in fact, J.K. Rowling was a Wiccan, but she's not. Why would someone try to indoctrinate millions of children into something that they don't practice themselves? The answer: they wouldn't. So bye-bye to that argument.

Next on the list, show me a teenager that claims to be a witch or wizard because they read Harry Potter. I have yet to find one. If your child becomes a witch because of reading a piece of children's fiction, then you suck as a parent and your child had a number of issues to begin with.

Most of the people who claim that Harry Potter books are evil have never read them, and if they did read them, they read them with a pre-judgement of what the books were going to contain. Anyone who has read these books for sheer entertainment (like myself) will see that the books are, essentially, the story of good seeking to triumph over evil. That sounds familiar...where have I read something like before? HHmmmmmm...oh yeah, I read it in the Bible.

Lastly, the people who shield their kids from Harry Potter are generally hypocrites because they will let their kids read Lord of the Rings (written by a Christian) and the Chronicles of Narnia (also written by a Christian). Those books also have witches, wizards, and incredibly dark and evil people in them as well. What makes those books any different than Harry Potter? If you're going to throw out Harry Potter, then you have to throw out Frodo and Aslan as well.

The worst part of all of this is that people who don't follow Jesus see this and think that this is how all Christians are. I can't wait to read these stories to my son, if that makes me evil, then...well, I guess I'm evil.

So I realized yesterday that my son, who is almost 12 weeks old, is tougher than I am. We took him yesterday morning to get his first of what will be something like 8,000 rounds of immunizations. And by "immunizations" I mean, "extreme needle torture in which they inject your baby with a number of viruses." As we drove to the clinic, I had flashbacks from when I was a small child and my mom and a nurse had to literally chase me around the doctor's office to pin me down before I got shots. Seeing as how Ezra can't move enough to be chased, I didn't foresee this being much of a problem, but I was praying to our Lord in heaven that the experience would go better than that.

He was smiling all morning, obviously not realizing that he was about to be shot up with a few ounces of deadly disease. We got him into the room and the nurse was very nice. She had me hold him facing out, which was nice because he couldn't give me the, "I thought you loved me, why are you doing this to me?" look. She jammed the first of three needles into his thigh (at this point, it took everything in me to not jam the needle into the forehead of the nurse and scream, "How do you like it!!!???") and he let out a scream that I can only describe as something akin to the noise made by the Raptors in Jurassic Park. The nurse (mercifully) was very fast with all three needles. Then the funniest thing happened. Ezra stopped crying after about five seconds. It was at this point that my proud dad, uber-male instinct kicked in and I realized that my son is, in fact, Herculaen by nature. Whereas I still wince and almost vomit at the thought of a needle, my twelve-week old son cryed for about five seconds, then smiled as we put him back in his car-seat. It was a knowing smile; a smile that said, "Hey dad, you're a pansy and in a couple of years, I'll be kicking the crap out of you and your giant love handles." Ah, I couldn't be more proud.

I haven't posted a picture of the boy on here in quite awhile, so I thought I would indulge you.

Indisputably the cutest kid ever, except for the excessive vomitting and amazing amounts of poop. But I suppose I can handle all of that, seeing as how he's one of the most laid back babies I've ever been around.

I was reading in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance last night and I came across something interesting. The author was writing about enthusiasm and it's relation to doing quality work on a machine (i.e. the machine called "us"). He brought up an interesting point. The Greek word in which we derive our word "enthusiasm is "enthousiasmos." The interesting thing about this word is that it literally means, "full of theos" or God. So our word enthusiasm, which Webster defines as "strong excitement of feeling" was originally a word who's meaning denoted a strong fervor for God.

Think of the implications of this. The American Church seems to be at polar extremes on the enthusiasm scale. American Christians seem to be either religious nut-jobs who take the fervor thing to ridiculous extremes, thus looking like a bunch of crazies, or they are totally apathetic and go through the motions each Sunday. Isn't there a balance somewhere. The community I live in is totally apathetic towards God. Actually, let me qualify that statement a bit and say that they are excited about their churches, but not necessarily God. Try and engage in a conversation with your average Christian sometime, and what you'll find is that they will spout out a lot of facts that they know about God, but they exhibit little enthusiasm for really letting him change anything about them. However, if you mention the Indianapolis Colts game (and by the way, they're horribly overrated), and they'll show great animation as they speak of Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, and the like. I can't lie, I'm guilty of this from time to time as well. What's the source of all of this?

Could it be that we're not all that full of God? Going to church every Sunday doesn't mean that we will automatically recognize God's presence in us. Reading your Bible every day doesn't assure this either. Most Christians don't want to hear this, but to be full of God is to live like Jesus. It's to strive each day to live as he lived, not just learn what he taught. We've really screwed that up over the years. Our churches are full of people who know a ton about Jesus and about God, yet it's made no real difference in them. Thus they lack enthusiasm for God. What this yields is a crop of Jesus-followers that lack quality in their lives that Jesus came to model and show the world was attainable to all in God. It's time for the Church to be full of God. After all, it wasn't Peyton Manning who said, "I came that may have life, and have it to the full."