So how can you love your enemy and blow them up at the same time? Hmmmm. It seems that you would have to do some pretty fancy biblical exegesis to get around that one...or you could just ignore it like a vast majority of American Christians.
Congratulations Obama on winning the nomination.
So how long before we hear the argument that he's really a Muslim? Let the racism begin.
I promised some pictures of my boys, so here you are. First, Ezra:
Now, a picture of Abram:
Ok, just kidding. But seriously, if he continues growing at his present rate, we're changing his name to Siddhartha and moving to India.
To say that I'm fortunate would be an understatement. Two beautiful boys.
I was watching a video clip of Bill O'Reilly today (I'm not sure why, because he's an idiot) and he was talking about the YouTube video of those girls beating up that other girl, and then he was talking about the recent pictures of the polygamist poster-boy Warren Jeffs kissing young girls. He was having a debate with someone over whether or not we should watch or look at these things, or whether we should just ignore them. As he's wont to do, he disagreed with the person, and then totally flip-flopped his view once the other guy handed his butt to him in the argument (this, however, is not the point of this post).
O'Reilly said something that just made me want to shout, "No! You've missed the point!" He said, "The Internet's not going to police itself, it's simply not going to do it. They're going to exploit every crack in the society they can." Did you notice what he did there? He referred to the internet like it was its own physical entity. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. It's a very subtle wording, yet it's loaded with meaning.
What he just did was take any responsibility away from people, and put it onto a network of information that makes its way onto computer screens. If I watch something on the internet that contributes to my downfall or the downfall of society (like porn for instance), that isn't the fault of an interconnected series of wires which transmit information onto my computer screen. The internet itself can not bear any responsibility for anyone's downfall or the downfall of society, because wires and information don't have a soul or the ability to make decisions. They are slaves to a person that tells them what to transmit.
The line of reasoning O'Reilly used there (in all fairness, probably unknowingly) was on par with a drug addict that blames the needle for his addiction, or the person who commits murder and says, "The devil made me do it," as if that somehow exonerates then. It's all garbage. We are the only ones who bear responsibility for our actions, no one else. To me, it seems that this line of thinking is actually what's damaging our society. No one takes responsibility for their actions. We're becoming a culture of people who want all praise, and no responsibility for our failings. This is dangerous because it just leads to endless finger-pointing without any solutions. Only when a failure is admitted to can it be remedied. Without an admission of guilt and responsibility, we live in a never-ending cycle of blame, in which the problems that face society never get fixed. A society with all problems and no solutions seems to be doomed.
I know that we see a lot of change in our lifetime. I know that we've been inundated with information and new technology to the point where we're numb to it, but seriously, we landed a rover on FREAKING MARS! The thing I find incredible is that pretty much no one is talking about it. There's a story here and there about it, but it isn't even front page news.
It seems to me that a culture who can't see the wonder of landing something on the surface of Mars, and having it send pictures back to earth, is doomed. Really, it's okay to be amazed by stuff, you have my permission.
Jesus gave a warning about this when he said, "Unless you become like little children, you will never see the Kingdom of God." This passage is loaded with meaning. One of the aspects of children is that they have an incredible sense of wonder. All I have to do is watch my boys for a minute and I see it. Ezra will hold up a seemingly useless object with a "dude, look at THIS" look on his face. That's wonder. These words of Jesus have nothing to do with going to heaven of hell. What he's saying is that until we see like little children, we'll never see where he's moving and working. In a modern day context it may sound like this, "If you can't see the wonder of landing something on the surface of Mars, you'll never see where God is working in this world."
I'm reminded of a favorite worship song of mine which has these words:
O God, give us new eyes to see
Give us new skin to feel
Give us new lungs to breathe the wonder underneath
The New Testament speaks extensively of Christians being a "new creation." This means completely new; new eyes, new skin, new lungs to breathe, everything renewed in Christ. Maybe Jesus had this in mind when he told a man that he needed to be "born again."
The Bible can be tricky. The thing about it is that there's almost always something more going on below the surface. Here's an example. In the book of Genesis (Hebrew meaning, "in the beginning") we read the story of our world's origins and the origins of the first cognizant humans. The text calls these people Adam (from the Hebrew "adama" meaning "earth" or "dirt") and Eve (which in Hebrew means, "living"). These two are born into a land of perfection, a land of sunshine and farts, as I'm fond of saying. God lays everything at their feet and says, "It's good, take it." The only prohibition he gives them is to refrain from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He kind of hints that if they eat from that tree, things will go downhill pretty quick. Of course they decide to eat it, because hey, don't we always like to do the one thing we aren't supposed to do?
Here's the thing I find fascinating. The text says that Adam and Eve are naked and they don't care. It literally says that they aren't ashamed. Think about that for a minute. Can you imagine what it would be like for everyone to be walking around naked. I don't even like being naked in front of a mirror, mainly because I'm afraid that the dashingly handsome man looking back at me might start hitting on me. This whole thing is why our first sexual encounters are so awkward, weird, and, to use a charming phrase, "clunky." We generally don't like to be naked in front of people.
The text then says that after they ate of this fruit, their eyes were opened and they immediately realized they were naked. We then read of the saddest words in the entire Bible; God asks them, "Where are you." Here's where if you study the Hebrew approach to Scripture (and not the Greek way like we approach it), you see that there's so much more going on here.
When you're naked, you're vulnerable. Everything is laid out there for everyone to see. Far from this text speaking of only a lack of clothes, it's deeper meaning is speaking of our desire (and now lack of desire) to be vulnerable and authentic. There's nothing to hide when you're naked, but we hide things all the time, and not just with our Fruit of the Looms and Abercrombie crap. We hide things all the time. We have secrets that we refuse to expose for fear that someone might see the real us. We all have a past, and very few people may know of it and how it continues to affect us.
The whole point of Christianity and all of this Kingdom of God stuff that Jesus spoke of, is to return the world to Eden before humans screwed it all up. We are living in a giant cycle, which you can see in the story of the Bible. The story begins in a garden, Jesus is mistaken for the gardener near his tomb, and at the end of Revelation, everything ends in a beautiful paradise where the world is put to rights. This is significant for this discussion because it tells us that we called back to nakedness. In the world as God desires, we are called to be naked before him and before one another. This means that secrets and blemishes are a thing of the past. The question, "Where are you?" is to be answered by each one of us with a resounding, "Here I am, warts and all. This is who I am, accept me for what I am."
Jesus calls his followers to be naked. Read the stories in the New Testament of the early Church. Talk about a group of people who were naked! They were constantly called upon to care for one another and be transparent with one another. The call remains today. So...who's tired of all this clothing?
I haven't written about my kids in awhile, so I thought I would give an update. So here's an update on each kid individually.
Ezra - He doesn't stop talking...ever. This is a good thing, unless you're looking for a spare three seconds of silence, in which case, you're floating up Poop Creek without a paddle (where is Poop Creek anyway? Probably in Mississippi.) Having him around is like having a painfully adorable parrot around the house. You really have to watch what you say around him, luckily IU basketball season isn't starting again until the fall.
He has the cutest little voice and he does some pretty adorable things as well. Every day when I get home from work, he runs down the hallway, hugs my legs, then looks up at me with his arms outstretched and says, "Hold you." How can I resist that? He's starting to articulate things better, which is good from a developmental standpoint, but bittersweet because it isn't as cute. For instance, he used to call monkeys "monk-mees," which, anyone would agree, is adorable. Now he calls them "montees." Not quite as cute.
He loves his little brother, affectionately known as, "beebee Ebroom." He loves him so much, however, we can't keep him out of his face, which poses a bit of problem when it comes to sharing germs (Abram has already inherited a cold from his big brother).
In closing, he's pretty much the cutest kid ever.
Abram - Huge. Fat. Adorable. Gassy. That kid farts louder than I do. He likes to lay on his stomach, which is apparently equivalent to Gas-X. He smiled at me this morning, which was a first. It made my day.
He spends his day eating, crying because he can't poop, eating, sleeping, eating, and eating. Seriously, my wife can't take much more of this. She feels like a dairy cow, as you can imagine.
In closing, I'm lucky. I have two beautiful kids. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can find the USB cord for my camera.
It's over. It's been over for a long time. I know that your last name is Clinton so you feel you're entitled to a victory, but...yeah...it's been over for about two months now. I'm sorry to break this news to you, but the only way you're getting into the White House is if you're invited for dinner.
Sincerely,
America
I had a weird thing happen to me this morning. I was taking my youngest to the doctor and there was a traffic back-up on the main highway. I decided to take some side streets through the town where I grew up and I ended up driving by my old elementary school (which is now a mall...as old elementary schools tend to be). I drove around the back of it on some roads where I hadn't traveled in years. As I drove, I had this flood of nostalgic emotion. I actually almost cried. I was telling my wife about it while we drove and she said she gets the same way when she goes to her old elementary school. We then had a discussion about why that happens. We basically landed on the fact that it makes us think of simpler times when we had no responsibility or care about anything. All of this got me thinking about nostalgia and how dangerous it can be.
Nostalgia is really just an illusion. I'll hear older people talk about "the good old days" (which is usually the 40s or 50s) and you get the impression that everything was sunshine and farts for everyone involved in those time periods. But let's dissect this and look at it a little bit. Would the 40s have been all that good if you were Japanese and were wrongly imprisoned in internment camps during the war? Would the 40s and 50s have been good if you were black? What if you a woman and couldn't vote, would you consider those times to be good? Probably not. Even my own experience of longing for the elementary school days carries with it some danger. Just because my early school experience was good doesn't mean it was good for everyone. What about the young child who is molested, or the kid who is constantly picked on?It certainly isn't good for them. One of the dangers of nostalgia is that it can cause to forget about those who are hurting and it can give us a very near-sighted view of life. "If it was good for me, then it must have been good for everyone else," is dangerous because it anesthetizes us to people's problems, which causes us to become completely ineffective to help anyone. You can't help someone that you can't relate to.
The second danger of nostalgia is that it can paralyze us and cause us to miss life today. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a perfect example. God destroys these two cities (and not because they were so overtly gay either, read Ezekiel 16:49), but before he does, he tells Lot and his family to leave and not turn back. Lot's wife turns back and the text says that she became a pillar of salt. When we long for the good old days, we are, in turn, saying that these days aren't good...or at least not as good as "those days." If we're constantly looking backward, we become a pillar of salt. We're paralyzed by our inability to see today as something with the potential to be good. There's nothing wrong with remembering fond memories, but don't dwell on them. There's life to be lived right now.
Hey everyone. April 25 is world malaria day (sounds nice doesn't it?). I don't usually spend time stumping for causes on my blog, but this is a good one, and one that is close to my heart after spending time in Haiti. I don't know how aware you are of the malaria problem in this world, but let me give you some statistics.
It's caused by mosquito bites
350-500 million cases of malaria each year
Malaria causes 20% of all childhood deaths in sub-Saharan Afr
ica
90% of all malaria deaths occur in Africa - nearly 1 million people a year
Malaria kills 3,000 children every day
And the worst part? It's totally preventable. $10 will provide a mosquito net to put over a bed. It also provides education on prevention and medicine. I believe it is the duty of Christians to eradicate problems like this. This one is easy to eradicate. Go to http://biteback.net and make a donation to this cause. If you're reading this and you have a youth group, get them involved and do a fundraiser. I'm doing one this summer.
This is close to my heart. When I was in Haiti we were helping
with a nutrition clinic, and a bunch of children came up to us, raised their arms and wanted us to hold them. One little girl came to me and climbed onto my lap. I knew something was wrong immediately because she didn't seem to have any energy like the other kids. She wouldn't smile. She eventually fell asleep on my chest. One of the guys on the trip was a medical student and he came by and immediately took her to the medical clinic. She was diagnosed with malaria. The doctors said that if she would have waited another few days, she would be dead. Here's a picture of her.
This the face of malaria. Please donate.
No seriously, I can't think of another country where someone would do this. Is it possible that a video about a horse could make all of the founding fathers simultaneously turn over in their graves? Yes, yes it is.
Oh, and here's a picture of my face as I watched it.
I can't even begin to relate to you the number of questions that that video begs in my mind.
America spends $250 million a day on the war in Iraq, and people in Haiti are starving to death because they can't afford food. If you haven't seen the news reports, let me fill you in.
Food costs in Haiti have risen 50% over the last year. The average Haitian makes around 50 gourdes a day (which is less than one U.S. dollar). People are rioting and looting (as I'm sure you would were you starving to death) and asking their government for change. Their government is powerless, because they don't have any money either. People are staving off their hunger by eating mud cakes, and yes, they are exactly what you think they are. And our country is doing nothing.
The next time I hear someone say that America is a Christian nation, I'm going to puke. If I had the money, I would buy plane tickets to Port-au-prince for the people who make this claim, so that they could have their minds changed about just how "Christian" America really is. If you study Haiti's history at all, you would see very quickly that the U.S. is one of the biggest reasons why Haiti is a mess. No Christian nation would spend that much money on violence while people around the world starve to death.
At 10:24 AM on April 7, 2008 in the year of our Lord, Abram Michael Polley was ripped from my wife's womb with extreme prejudice. He was none-too-happy about this fact. Delivered by Caesarean Section, he came out with a giant, round head. In the words of one of the nurses who took his vital signs, "That's one of the bigger heads I've seen in awhile." Thanks for making me confident that my kid is a freak. Actually, he's absolutely adorable, but don't take my word for it, here are some pictures.
In case you're wondering, in the first picture, that is, in fact, my wife's open thorax. Look at the cranium on that freak! The second picture is the first time he opened his eyes.
For those of you keeping score at home, he weighed in at 9 pounds, 9 ounces, and was 21 inches long. His head circumference is somewhere in the neighborhood of planetary. It has it's own orbit and gravitational pull. Quite impressive.
I am one of you. A pastor? Yes. A skeptic also? Yes. I have my doubts just like you do. I look at religious people (including myself from time to time) and cringe because of the hypocrisy, the violence masked as love and peace, and the intolerance masked as zeal just like you do. You're not alone. The Church is full of skeptics. "What about the people who seem so certain?" you ask. Sometimes they are the biggest skeptics of them all, but they aren't comfortable in their own skin, so they create a new (and false) skin to protect themselves.
I don't blame you for not wanting to follow Jesus. What you see on television, the big hair, the ridiculous promises of wealth, the violence, the fake smiles, gives you a good reason not to follow. I must caution you, however, that what you see on television isn't reality. It isn't the truth. Find the truth for yourself. Don't let the messengers ruin the message.
Has religion led to unthinkable horrors? Yes, but it has also led to many good things. Without religion, the civil rights movement would never have happened. Without religion, the Jewish people might still be enslaved in Egypt. Without religion, slavery would not have been abolished in England. I cannot apologize for my brothers and sisters throughout history that have portrayed the wrong message, all I can do is try my best to be better than the message they have portrayed. I leave you with the words of Francis S. Collins, a world-renowned scientist and believer in God:
"The church is made up of fallen people. The pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers, and the subsequent failings of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the faith itself, as if he water had been the problem.
Would you condemn an oak tree because its timbers had been used to build battering rams? Would you blame the air for allowing lies to be transmitted through it? Would you judge Mozart's "The Magic Flute" on the basis of a poorly rehearsed performance by fifth-graders? If you had never seen a real sunset over the Pacific, would you allow a tourist brochure as a substitute? Would you evaluate the power of romantic love solely in the light of an abusive marriage next door?
No. A real evaluation of the truth of faith depends upon looking at the clean, pure water, not at the rusty containers."
Signed,
A Rusty Container
I'm not sure I've ever seen a stranger story that this one right here. I'm speechless.
My whole life, I assumed that the gospel, or good news (Greek: evangelion) was that Jesus died for my sins, and was raised after three days. I remember having a hard time grasping how that was good news and what exactly that good news meant for my life. Here's the thing: Jesus dying on the cross and raising again isn't the gospel. Every time I hear someone preach that the good news of Jesus is that he died for my sins, I want to scream, "NO IT ISN'T!" In Mark 1, Jesus himself states very clearly the definition of the good news.
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The Kingdom of God has come near (some translations read: "is here"). Turn around and believe the good news!
Let's think about this logically (which I know is a stretch for a lot of Christians) for a minute. How much sense would it make for Jesus, while he's still alive on earth, to proclaim that he died and rose again? How much sense does it make for Jesus to send out his followers to proclaim that he died and rose again, when he was as alive as they were. It wouldn't make a lick of sense. If I walked up to you on the street and said, "I have some good news for you, I died." you would think I was insane.
So how was God's Kingdom coming to earth considered good news for the people of first-century Palestine? The first thing is to realize the political significance of this statement. Palestine was under the rule of Rome and Caesar. Rome was a brutal and oppressive empire. So for the oppressed people of Palestine to hear this grand pronouncement from Jesus meant that if God's Kingdom is here, then that means that he's actually in charge and Caesar isn't. Good news indeed. This still holds true for us. God's Kingdom is a place where his will is done. If God is the King, then all other empires (including the American empire) are invalid. It means that we don't have to rely on any empire to provide for us, because we can provide for each other. It means that empires hold no sway over us anymore. It means that they could kill us, and still never win a victory over this Kingdom. Why? Because this Kingdom is, first of all, internal. Our outward actions are all based on an inward Kingdom of love and peace. Nothing, including a sword or AK-47, can touch it. In the words of Ben Harper, "You can kill the revolutionary, but the revolution you can never bury."
The cross is the logical end to this type of thinking and lifestyle. The last thing a powerful empire wants to hear is that they are, in fact, powerless. The cross is where the Empire says, "We finally got you, you can't stand up to us." The Resurrection is where Jesus says, "Is that all you've got?"
That's good news. This empire in which I live ultimately has no sway over me. They can't defeat me with violence, they can't defeat me with money. They can't win, because this Kingdom in which I reside has love at it's foundation; and we all know that, in the end, love always wins.
I'm having one right now.
I'm tired of hearing about how this nation is color-blind. We're not. White people aren't color-blind, and neither are black people. None of us are color-blind. The latest controversy with Obama and his ex-pastor proves it. If this post sounds like I'm being racist, you can rest assured that I'm not. I'm glad that our country moved out of the dark ages and started giving people equal rights (unless you're gay or Arab, of course). But the civil rights movement didn't cure everything. Let's take a look at this.
Last week, a video surfaced of Obama's ex-pastor giving a vitriolic sermon on why Obama should be the next president, and not Hillary. In his sermon, he stated that, "Hillary's never been called a n*****." I watched the video and I thought, "You know, you're right, but how does that qualify Obama for the presidency?" Is this guy suggesting that this country owes it to Obama because he's black? Basically, he was saying that Obama's color qualifies him for the office of president. How is that considered color-blind?
Then Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter, opened her pie-hole up and said that Obama is only in this position (meaning the Democratic front-runner) because he's black. I can't understand this line of thought. Could it be possible that Obama is in this position because people like what he has to say? Could it be possible that he's in this position because people like him more than they like HIllary (because, let's face it, she isn't all that likable)? How is this considered color-blind?
Watch a comedian sometime (regardless of their race) and see how long it takes for them to stereotype a race of people (i.e. white guys have no style, Asians can't drive, etc.) I hear black comedians talk disparagingly about white guys all the time. I heard Dane Cook talk about how different races of people fight. There isn't a hint of color-blindness in this country, regardless of what bumper stickers people have on their cars telling you the opposite.
Here's the thing: color-blindness isn't possible unless you're blind. The fact is that when I see a black person, I see a person who has black skin. That isn't racist, it's just an observation. When a black person sees me, they see a pasty white guy. That isn't racist either, just an observation. We can't avoid seeing people's various skin tones. Our minds just don't work that way. The question isn't whether or not we notice someone's skin tone, it's about whether or not we start making all sorts of other judgment calls based on their skin tone. If I see an Asian, there's nothing wrong with thinking, "That person is Asian." There's nothing racist about that at all.
I don't think that color-blindness is even the goal of society. I think the goal should be to acknowledge our differences and be okay with them. Are you black? Ok, celebrate that. Are you Latino? Great. Are you Asian? White? Great, celebrate all of that. The question isn't whether or not a culture can erase the lines that make us different, the question is whether or not we can co-exist with our differences. We should be seeking oneness (something the Church is supposed to be all about), all the while acknowledging that we all have different backgrounds.
This is actually what I love about the Church. It isn't color-blind at all, it's never been about that. It's about different people realizing that although we may be ethnically different, we're still brothers and sisters brought together under the banner of Christ. We're one because he makes us one. The Apostle Paul said, "Now there is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus." The colors (and ideas) are all still there, but no one rules over another. No one is better than another. In Revelation, there is a beautiful picture of people "from every tribe, nation, and tongue" coming together to worship God. That's the ideal.
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