failure

I am a failure.

I have failed my friends, my family, myself, my God.

I have betrayed more people than I can count, for my own purposes.

I am a liar, an adulterer, a fraud and a coward.

My biggest failure though? I fail to embrace my second chance.

I refuse to believe Jesus when He cries "It is finished".

Still I strive to prove myself, to stand out from the pack... to be known for my successes and to desperately hide my failures.

I have stopped believing that the cross is enough. I have tried to add another chapter to God's law. I heap these coals on those who observe me.

I am forgiven.

I am a forgiven failure.

I am going to fail again...

and again...

and again.

But I will be forgiven forever.

I will be free forever.

I am a free, forgiven failure.

That is better than being a success any day.

a story about peace

Do yourself a favor, open up a Bible. Go ahead, it will be worth it. Read John chapter 1 verses 1-18. Read it again.

And again.

And again.

Let it change you. Let perspective overcome you. It will be worth it, I promise. Untie some of the convoluted language. Take it plainly.

Let your heart rest in the reality that through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

The whole of history, the drama that we live in, the trials and the tribulations of our lives all boil down to one simple truth.

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

In Jesus is found life or as John puts it, "the light of man". We are unlit lanterns, Jesus is the match.

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

As I read through the first few chapters of John this morning, I felt myself being unwound. Weeks of stress and weighty obligation began to lift and in its place came life giving perspective.

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

The ridiculous simplicity of it all makes me want to chuckle at my last few days, days of stress and insecurity. Days in which I have felt all too important and all to unqualified.

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

Throughout scripture Jesus will call me servant, worker, disciple, teacher and friend. All important roles, all carrying a certain degree of responsibility. But they never overrule a simple and life-giving truth;

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

Rest in that truth friends. Remember who Jesus is. John calls him the "One and Only", other times he is called "the beginning and the End".

If we can slow down and make ourselves stop and dwell in that truth, it will change us. I am trying to allow it to change me. The weight of expectation can slip away. The ridiculous clamoring of doing everything right can finally begin to slow down. The guilt of what we have done and have not done can begin to look small in the light of Jesus.

So please, rest with me in a simple truth...

Through Jesus the world came to be and through him the world is restored.

tv can inspire

I want to create something.

I have been watching "Freaks and Geeks" lately. It's one of the best pieces of digital entertainment that I have ever seen. It is funny, heartfelt, awkward, it is just a pitch perfect show. Every once in awhile I see something that does more than entertain me, it actually makes me want to jump in and do something. Too often I think that we limit ourselves to thinking that we can only be inspired by some classic book or epic movie, "Freaks and Geeks" is just a high school dramady, but I feel creatively juiced by it. It makes me long for the nights when Patrick, Dylan, Aaron, Nick and Adam and I would just run a muck with video camera. I am sure much of what we created was unwatchable to many people, but some stuff was just plain good. I want to make something good again.

Any else ever feel like this?

nice guy

I have a confession to make... I am a nice guy. I say "thank you" often, I want to be helpful, I would prefer if none of you reading this never were offended by me and I will apologize for things that are not my fault. I like to be liked.

I also hold grudges when people can't tell that I am offended, dread conversations with people who might be upset with me, don't stand up and tell people to back off when they're wrong. I pretend everything is okay, even when it so very much not.

The funny thing about all of this though is that most people I really respect are not all like me. When I was a kid my heroes were Wolverine, Snake Eyes, the wrestler Ricky Steamboat, not exactly the greatest negotiators in the world! But they were just. They knew justice, they fought for justice. They sacrificed their safety what they knew to be right. As I got older I changed, but the heroes were just new versions of the same theme, replace the old list with Martian Luther King, Daredevil, Jesus Christ, William Wallace, again heroic people who are willing to lay out for justice. Sure, MLK and William Wallace practiced very different methods in their fight for freedom, but both risked in spite of their own relative comfort and both died at the hands of their oppressors. In fact the theme is the same throughout history, especially church history, some people need to step out of line and challenge the structures that oppress others and rob God his glory. This is how God uses people to change the world.

And I believe how God chooses to change our individual lives. Bus boycotts are heroic. So are blistering sermons against corrupt leadership. And so is swinging your sword in the right circumstances. I believe this is practiced everyday. When I choose to reconcile with a friend instead of just swallowing back my frustration, I think I am taking one step closer to becoming someone God can use. When I choose honesty instead of empty flattery, confession instead of justification, Godly conflict instead of avoidance... all of these are muscles that need to be developed.

These are the workouts that I am trying to practice. So invite all of my nice friends to join me. Are you also sick of having the desires of your hearts be so inconsistent with your day to day life? Do you feel like life should be an adventure and instead has become a chore? Let us join together is prayer that God can make us like his prophets, his people. Let us have the hard conversations and confrontations. Let us be radical in our love and forgiveness, but also in our honesty and forthrightness. People will get upset. Harmony will be shattered. But I also believe that our friendships will become deeper and our relationships will become more real. Is that worth it?

I'm betting that it is.

interesting

Each month I receive an issue of the videogame magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. I enjoy the magazine not because I am a hardcore gamer, but more because it is well written, funny and offers a very in depth picture at an industry that is rapidly growing. One of the writers for this magazine is humorist by the name of Seanbaby. In the most recent issue, he is wrote a very funny article about the simply bad ideas that came out the E3 game show. One of these ideas that got the treatment from him was a Christian Worship rip-off of Dance, Dance Revolution, called Dance Praise. His quote concerning the game was; "In the end all I learned was that Christian anything sucks more than Regular anything. Which knowledge I think we all had before this ordeal of mine began". I would like to point out that Seanbaby's "ordeal" was pretty a heinous example of a Christian (or at least someone promoting a Christian game) being extremely defensive and judgmental, and I do not blame Seanbaby for his frustration. But that is not the point of this blog, what is the point of this blog; is Seanbaby correct? Is Christian art simply derivative drivel that insults the intelligence of its audience?

I am not sure. For the longest time I would avoid all Christian music like I avoid the Lifetime channel. It all seemed so phony. No one ever seemed to have any problems, and if they did have problems they all seemed to resolve the songs four minute runtime. Now, I do listen to it, mostly because I can relate to the theme of trusting an all-knowing God. However I must confess, that I have had to tone down some of my objective standards for musical quality to enter into the Christian music scene. With a few very notable exceptions, much of the music still rings hollow and a little disingenuous. Also some of it is just bad. I am not talking about lyrically and I am certainly not implying that I am offended by it. I mean it is simply low-quality pop, that is over-produced. But why is this? Shouldn't Christian music be the most vivid and the most honest music there is? When singing about an infinite God, shouldn't things to say be, well, infinite? When basing your life on Jesus, shouldn't your art be as edgy as he was? Wasn't he edgy enough to get himself killed?

A popular Seattle Christian music station brags about its music being non-offensive. I simply don't believe that is something to brag about. Jesus is offensive.

Let me repeat that, Jesus is offensive.

A living, breathing man saying he is God is an offensive concept.

A man who walks into churches and flips tables and drives people out by using chords as whips, is offensive.

A man who tells parables about comfortable, rich people going to hell for not taking care of the poor around them is offensive.

A man who tells you to get over yourself and that until you do your not fit for the Kingdom of God is offensive.

And if that offends us, it is time to get over ourselves.

Becky Manly Pippert is a popular Christian writer. I saw a video of hers where tells a story about telling a man on a plane that she is a Christian and him giving her a look implying that she as a result must not be very intelligent. This video was filmed in the 80's and I am not sure the intelligent piece is all that relevant anymore. Now I think it is about being interesting. I think it is the perception of the world and even the lie that Christians often believe about themselves, that the belief in Jesus makes us less interesting. That it is the work of God to remove everything that makes us unique and maybe controversial, in order to make us "good Christians". The lie is that God wants us to be "safe" and to "well-behaved".

Well I am sorry to say that is not what I signed up for.

When I relented to Jesus, it was because he was the most radical and scary thing I had ever encountered. And it is an insult to God simply try and "Christianize" the things around us. When we say yes to the freeing grace of God, our art and our lives should be the most vivid and real thing this world has ever seen. And I pray that by the grace of God that we get from wherever we're at, to that place soon.

Madrox

Last week I went to see X3 with Donan and Sean. Donan and I had seen it already, but Sean had not and it was being shown at our local cheap theater. I actually enjoyed the movie more the second time through, my nerdy qualms have mostly been dismissed. I however struggled more with one character than I did my first time through; Jaime Madrox, "Multiple Man".

As one can guess by the code name, Madrox is able to create duplicates of himself. No one is really sure how many he can create. In the movie, he uses these duplicates to rob banks and to fool the police into thinking they had found a giant mutant camp. That's it. That is all we get about my favorite comic hero of the moment (obviously, on film he is not heroic).

Madrox has he is portrayed in the comics, is infinitely more interesting. For one he is not a petty bank robber, but a hero. He leads a team called X-Factor, who function as a mutant private detective organization of sort. While teams like the X-Men focus on the global issues, X-Factor lives in a place called "Mutant Town", where less glamorous mutants live in a slum-like community. These are the people X-Factor serve. They rarely save the world, instead they save the forgotten and neglected members of their own minority population.

Madrox's power is also more interesting in the comics. While the movie gets it basically right, it leaves out all of the good questions that arise when you are truly a "Multiple Man". Madrox's dupes are not exact duplicates, they are actually physical representatives of his own personality. So one duplicate can be fool-hearty, but brave hero. Another, a complete coward. Still another, an over-sexed ladies man. When they return to Madrox they bring with them all of their experiences, memories and knowledge. One dupe became a lawyer. As a result of all of this extreme multi-tasking Madrox is one of the most intelligent people on earth. He also is an Olympic gymnast. He is a martial arts master. Not bad skills for a one man army! This comes at a cost though, he is borderline insane. He doesn't know what thoughts are his own. Some of his duplicates have done some villainous things. But what does that mean? Doesn't the evil that leads to those acts come from his own soul? And what happens when your power is to create duplicates, but you are not even sure if you can trust those duplicates?

Madrox is the reason that I love comic books. I have these same questions about myself. I can I long to do good, yet commit evil? How can I be drawn to things I view as wrong? How do I sometimes surprise myself by doing something brave? Just what is going on inside of me?! As Paul puts in Romans 7:15; "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do". I am a conflicted person, trying to do right, but often desiring and doing wrong.

In comics these questions can be given a dramatic platform to be asked in. In comics you can create Jaime Madrox, a normal and conflicted guy, trying to fight evil around him and inside of him at the same time. You can create a character capable of doing great good and great evil. You can create the most vividly human character that I have ever encountered in any form of fiction.

superman returns

A few days ago I saw Superman Returns and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was relevant to today, had top notch acting and a compelling cast of characters. The effects were done very well and the new Supes did a decent job (though at times he seemed to be doing a really good Christopher Reeve impression rather than putting his own spin on the character). The movie did make Superman's life a lot messier and I think the film is better off for it. The dude is so freakin powerful I want him to have daddy and relationship issues. I guess I am cynical. I am ready to finally admit that it was a LITTLE long, but in the theater I hardly noticed. I was in Metropolis and I think that is all that really matters.

a really good story

A couple of years ago, when I was still in school, a friend asked me an important question. To some degree it is the question that the rest of my life revolves around. It is a question that has determined my vocation, the major that I had in school, the decision to date and ultimately marry Donan. The question was, "so how does the whole Jesus dying on the cross thing work? How does that forgive sins?". I froze. I was ready to talk about Jesus' heart for the poor. I was ready to speak volumes about how Jesus doesn't belong to a political party. But this question? I truly was stunned that I had nothing to offer. I told my friend, one of the best friends that I have I might add, a jumbled bit of nothing. I think I rambled about the Jewish people having a system of sacrifice or something like it. And that was the end of the conversation.

As I reflect of this, I think it is too easy to say that I was scared, because to be honest I wasn't. I wasn't scared, like I said this is a really good friend of mine, no matter what I said that wasn't going to change. It is also to easy to say that I had been equipped to answer that question he would've been excited or accepted the answer, because me and this friend debate everything under the sun. The biggest problem is that I believe that the cross and the resurrection, are the most important events in human history. In those three days I believe that for the rest of time and whatever happens after time, we can know that God cares. We can be assured that we can spend time in God's presence. All of the doubts about our worth can be healed. Every question can be answered, every injustice can be reversed and our hearts can find the home that they have thumped in our chest for and longed for everyday since we left our mother's wombs. That is huge. That is really good news. I think it is important that I am able to articulate that, at least as well as I can articulate why Empire is the best Star Wars movie. So here it is, three years late I am going to try and answer my friend's question.

The bad news; all people, everywhere, anytime are sick. Really sick. It is why we fight wars. It is why we rape and murder. It is why we are jealous of each other, objectify each other, feel insecure, blow off each other and ultimately act wrong to each other. We also all are on some level aware of this sickness. We try and cure it with a lot of self-discipline, we try and justify it with humanism and we try and self-medicate by getting drunk and stoned until our heads finally shut up. But it doesn't work, ever. With this sickness our world and our hearts will never know peace. Ever.

This sickness separates us from God. This is the uncomfortable, but ultimately unavoidable reality of our condition. When we try and self-medicate or deny our condition, we are denying God and his power. We are choosing our own. And when we die (which we will, another part of this disease) this good God will not force Himself on us. We are truly sick and need healing to enter the presence of God. Our sickness, uncured will separate us from God. Forever.

Okay so the good news. God was and is not pleased with this reality. So he did something about it. He became a person, Jesus. He lived and taught a better way. The best way. He taught against a rigid and futile self-disciplined and proved it didn't achieve anything. He dwelt with the self medicators and showed them a freedom they never knew. Then he died. He died because as God, he knew that his very real death would work as an antibiotic for our soul sickness. That shed blood is necessary to change our lives, now and forever. Then something even more amazing happened, Jesus did the one thing no one had done since the sickness entered the world, he didn't stay dead. He rose again and told others that they could do the same.

Jesus died, so that we could live. Jesus died to offer us freedom for ourselves. Jesus died to clean the slate, to make us right with God and to give us freedom from our profound guilt. The only condition is to let Him lead us. Follow his way, to give up all of our little tricks and listen to him instead.

That is the answer to the question. That is the case the Bible makes and that is the reason I am who I am and live as I live. That is why I care about justice and care about this world. As the old creed goes;

"I did not make it, for it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the creation of any man."


*The terms sickness and antibiotic are borrowed R. York Moore. I thank him for his help in articulation.

a quick thought

A Christian writer named Eugene Peterson holds to a belief that the act of worship is essential to people. That we are made for it and our lost without it. That our focus cannot leave ourselves and that we our enslaved to to our feelings of shame without worship that invites us to look out and see God and realize how ridiculous it is to ever suppose that we could make ourselves okay to begin with. In this process we find that we have immense value in the very fact that we matter to this infinite and amazing God. We also recognize how much we need God and our illusions of self-sufficiency begin to fade away.

I am dependent on this process. Without I begin to see myself as far too important and far too much of a failure. I lose my ability to see God and to be astonished at who He is. The world becomes about me and I become very depressed indeed.

I think maybe this is why I am a Christian. Without worship my life spirals out of control. Worship is north on my compass (so I have never actually used a compass, but people who do seem to find it terribly important). I can only worship something that I truly believe to be greater than I can ever strive to be, which is why human heroes always fell short. This left God. A God who cares and a God who allows Himself to be accessible.

I think I am being called to get back to the simplicity of my younger faith. God is good. Worship is something that He deserves and brings me great satisfaction to do. Inviting others into this life is good is good for both parties.

This seems simple and to be honest is not a complete theology, but I think this is all I can truly cling to in this moment.

Worship is maybe the only truly free thing I do. Maybe that is why Eugene Peterson argues for its importance.

Thoughts?

my thoughts on brokenness

A couple of days ago I posed a question about why my church placed the most famous failures of Peter and Paul on their stained glass. Here are my thoughts a to why and what that means about the Christian faith.

First I considered that maybe the inclusion of the rooster and of the scales are an example of a society that loves to tear down its heroes. Think about it, we love the National Enquirer, more people know about John F. Kennedy's relationship with Marilyn Monroe than his civil rights bills, we love to see heroes fall. So maybe these windows are just an example of that morbid fascination with failure. Maybe the mistakes of these men make us feel better about ourselves. Maybe those who installed the glass found Peter and Paul easier to relate to than Jesus, with all of his being God and such.

I cannot deny this train of thought outright, it is too intriguing and has an element of truth in it. It does comfort me (as I am sure many others) that Peter and Paul were people and that there was no attempt to hide this by either the early church or my own church. What I do reject though, is the modern cynicism that revels in their failures as some attempt to justify myself. The failures of humans cannot be something voyeristically fascinating for a Christian. Peter and Paul cannot become ancient Brad Pitt's or Ricky Williams', they need to be our models. Try as we might, perfection is not something that we are going to stumble upon or cultivate with rigid discipline. Our mistakes stay with us, follow us, hound us and mock us. The answer to this dilemma that I often see in our culture is to revel in and celebrate these failures. If you struggle with lust the answer I hear is; "Great! It is your natural nature, don't deny yourself!", if you are liar, the response seems to be; "What is truth anyway?". I think the response to these thoughts are displayed in those windows, your mistakes to matter, those scars remain.

Of course this is not the only response we have to our failings. There are also those who take every mistake as evidence that they should never again try or never again step out. If we are a generation that is marked by being great justifiers, we are also a generation that feels profoundly guilty, that is essentially not able to believe our own bullshit. Deep down, everyone I know, Christian, Buddhist, Agnostic, atheist or other, is riddled with a profound sense of guilt. Whether our exterior is marked with our intense discipline, or if we wear our hair long and our tattoos proudly, we are all unified by our shame. Their is a seemingly universally unsettled nature within us that counts our failures and we are internally mocked by them.

Here is where I once again find hope in the glass. Peter was a coward. A man who was so bold that he stepped out onto the water with Jesus, yet was so fearful that he hid with shame his affiliation with Jesus from a slave girl. Had he allowed guilt to dismiss himself from service to the early church, then the church would've suffered a great leadership vacuum. Instead he excepted the grace offered to him by a resurrected Jesus and stepped with boldness as a leader. He was what Henri Nouwen would describe as a "wounded healer". A man who had a well-known and shameful past, but represented Jesus by living as a free man. He was not shackled to his failings, thus people saw Jesus in him. I like to think that fearful people were the ones most drawn to him. That rooster is a picture not only of the man that Peter was, but also the gospel truth that we can become more than slaves to ourselves, that there is hope for even the most broken among us.

I wonder what would be on my own stained glass. What failings of mine, past and present would be up there? I also wonder whether I have accepted Jesus' invitation to reject justifying my acts and to reject guilt. This freedom is the most counter-cultural invitation that has ever been offered. It is simply my prayer that I would accept it and begin to live.

Still in Madison

Still in Madison, and feeling a bit tired. I have an idea for a blog topic, but since I am too tired to write about it, I thought that I would just leave it as a question, then fill in my ideas tomorrow.

At my church we have some amazing stained glass. The Prodigal Son is depicted. So is Jesus. However, my favorite two windows are the one depicting Peter and Paul. Peter and Paul are the two most influential fathers of Christianity whose names aren't "Jesus". In these windows these two giants of faith look distinguished and wise. These are worthy depictions of two strong and heroic men. The actual pictures of them don't really interest me though, it is what else is on their windows. Peter has a rooster on his window, an illusion to his three denials of Jesus before the coming of morning. Paul has three scales (like that of a lizard) on his window, representing the scales that fell from his eyes when his Jesus caused blindness was healed.

Why? Why do these windows depict the most famous failing of these men? Why choose to display Peter's most cowardice moment? Why show Paul's spiritual blindness?

Why are those images so compelling?

Please respond.

ONS Day 2

So this is going to be another short blog. The problem is that they are keeping us quite busy here, so I am pretty wiped come bloggy time.

God is doing some really good stuff. For those of you in the know, I have had a long journey to this conference and going on staff in general. So much trust has been restored to me this week. I am falling in love with IV again.

I will elaborate more later. This is a good place and I glad to be here. I will try and give an update tomorrow.

Hopefully.

Madison, WI

I have arrived at Orientation for New Staff, here in Madison, WI. For those of you not familiar with InterVarsity speak, basically I am receiving my introductory training on staff work and fund development for the next week and a half. Should be fun. I have already met staff from around the country, which is pretty cool. My hotel is pretty swanky, and definitely more roomy than my tent or the back of the car.

I will write with more substance later, I have dinner coming up and I would like to turn my brain off for a little while.

Peace.

June 18th
Bismarck, ND

Sorry for the long gap in writing, I have one blog that didn't post and one on the hard drive that won't paste. Keep your eyes open for that one.

My impressions on my travels so far are like this:

• Wyoming is beautiful. Literally is one of the most awe-inspiring states I have ever visited.
  
• Montana is pretty in spots, but once you get east it gets pretty ugly.
• North Dakota is pretty much like Eastern Montana. Except for the Badlands. WOW. The Badlands should be required viewing for everyone, everywhere

Listened to a book on tape about Vince Lombardi. Amazing coach, amazing drive, personally terrifying to see the cost on a family when a man makes his work his mistress. I appreciate his heart and even his theology (he was appalled by self-focused thought and believed that the point of scripture was to see how we as a community of people are to relate to God. Ultimately this is why he loved team sports), but when he died it was his players, not his children who knew him best. Tragic.

Spiritual musings have been mostly focused on the role of criticism within Christianity. What do you do with your critical mind when you become a Christian? Are you supposed to turn it off in the name of "humility"? Can you ever call a fellow Christian wrong? How do you know when you should critically evaluate someone else's leadership and when you should just humbly receive their teaching? Is their a way to actually do both?

No answers yet. My gut tells me I still need to be critical and yet somehow remain teachable. The problem is I am usually a doormat when I am teachable and a pain in the ass when I am critical. Which I guess reminds me I need Jesus.

Hopefully deeper insights are coming.

I think that I am going to sign off for now, I am worried about this posting, and I don't want to re-type too much, see you in Minnesota!

My Grand Plan

So I realize that I am the greatest of all blogging slackers lately. As a a result of my recent suck-a-tude I am going to attempt to make amends to all two of my faithful readers, I am going to do a road log. I am going to be traveling for the next month. I will be spending a week on a High School mission trip in Wyoming, a week and a half in Madison, Wisconsin getting learned by InterVarsity and about a week and half seeing Donan's family. I will be driving the whole time (in the new wheels...yeah). During my travels I am going to take some time every night to record my observations and points of curiosity (I am anticipating a lot of curiosities while traveling through Montana...). I can not promise to post everyday because there are like two wireless hotspots in Wyoming and Montana combined, but once I reach the Midwest, I will post everything.

Much love, hope inspiration finds me on the open road.

I know, I know, long time and no bloggy, I am slacker. I also can guarantee that it will be more than two weeks before I am back in the blogging game. I am going to an urban mission project named Summit. I am very excited to be back in the staff game and will update when I get back.

Reflection on a Concert

I just got back from watching a buddy of mine's band, Ether Hour (myspace them and buy their CD). The show was great. They sounded smooth, people were responding, the band was chatty with the crowd everything that a quality live show has.

Then the lead singer forgot some lyrics.

My favorite part of the show. I love quality mixed with a dash imperfection.

Happy Easter!

Fear

No, no, this blog will not be about the short lived MTV reality series about ghost hunting. This will actually be about fear. The kind of fear that paralyzes you. The kind of fear forces you to put up defenses. The kind of fear that slowly takes over your life, even without your conscious knowledge and leaves feel slightly dead and empty.

And hopefully this blog will be about how great it is to wake up from it and start to live again.

Last month I went and gave a chapel talk at the Christian high school that I graduated from. It is always an odd experience walking those halls and seeing kids yelling in the halls and slamming their locker doors. High school, for me, like most others, was a confusing and somewhat difficult time. I didn't really know who I was, what I believed or what the hell I was going to do after I graduated. I honestly believed that everyone else had it together and I was just faking it. So I became many different people while I was there; the jock who didn't actually play in sports, the preppy who didn't want to iron his clothes, and eventually I graduated as the funny, sarcastic guy who didn't really believe in anything. So I decided to speak on this period of my life and eventually how I found who I really was in Jesus.

I was set. I had written my talk ahead of time (a true feat for me!). So the night before when I practiced it for my parents, I knew that it was going to go well and that all of my former teachers would have no choice but to adore me. So I practiced the talk and my parents did enjoy it. They laughed when they were supposed to laugh, they gave sympathetic nods when they were supposed to sympathetically nod. Everything was great except the fact that I hated the talk. Loathed it. Threw away the outline hated it.

That night I left my parents house having no idea what had gone wrong, what was so bad about the talk? I went and drank coffee and prayed (two things that go amazingly well together) and felt God tell me not to be a clown.

A clown?

I was at first a little angry. I am most certainly not a clown. Right? Right? Maybe I am not. Most of the time. But the more I prayed and reflected, I realized that I am indeed very clown like when I feel the need to protect myself. At my high school, with all of those former teachers watching, in the gym where I used to agonize where the "right" place to sit was, I had become a clown. I had decided to not speak with conviction about the great value of following Jesus, but instead to speak on my sense of humor. To make fun of myself and then smile a dimpled smile and hope that no one noticed that I was not living out this great identity that I was speaking about.

So when I gave the talk I tried to be honest and direct. I still made jokes, but stopped apologizing about the fact that falling Jesus is counter-cultural and can be hard. I choose to face my fears and step out in belief that doing the will of God is better than making 200 high school kids and a handful of teachers like me.

God has not let up in this whole fear thing. He has pushed me to be more faithful and stop apologizing about fundraising. He has pushed me to re-establish friendships with people I have lost touch with. He has asked me to call out the sin I see in myself and in those around me. Specifically He has challenged me to actually teach and lead and care a lot more about His will then making everyone my biggest fan.

It is so freeing.

My palms have been sweaty. I have pushed send on emails and had the thought "what did I just do?". But it has felt like freedom.

Too often I think that all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike live as though Jesus called us to Bake Sales and Sunday morning sermons. That the greatest challenge that we will ever face is trying think "pure thoughts" in a fallen world. Yet when we actually read and react to the challenges that Jesus lays before us, we see that Jesus calls to nothing less than to partner with Him to save the entire world. To risk a lot more than funny looks and the occasional strained friendship.

This in not the first time in my life that fear has stopped all of my momentum. But the reality is that when I have sought Jesus and been willing to follow Him in the places that scare me most, my life has been the most exciting and costly times of my life.

They have also been the times I have felt most alive.

Whatdya know? This is a little creepy... Your Scholastic Strength Is Deep Thinking

You aren't afraid to delve head first into a difficult subject, with mastery as your goal. You are talented at adapting, motivating others, managing resources, and analyzing risk. You should major in: Philosophy Music Theology Art History Foreign language

What Should You Major In?

I'm not entirely sure how I got here. It's an odd experience being on a strange street corner with no recollection as to the details of your arrival. I feel like I should be more worried about this, and maybe I will be once I am able to figure out where I have arrived. It looks kind of like every street corner I have ever been on. It has buildings, shops, people, the occasional car zipping by. There are differences though, not differences that are overly striking at first glance, just minor differences that serve to remind you that this no ordinary street corner.

Like at any street corner I can see what is front of me, to the left of me and to the right. I even can see behind me, but I can only presume I came from that way, so somehow that seems less interesting. In front of me looks vaguely like a scene from movie filmed in Chicago. I can see the "L" in the distance, there a pizza stands littering the side of the road and (I'll admit this is a little strange) when I stare long enough, I swear I can hear the most amazing Blues that has ever been played.

When I look to the left, it seems as though I am back in China. Now believe me on this, I am not talking about Chinatown here. There is not a sign in English to be found (though, at the risk of overusing the word, I stangly can read the Mandarin signs, this trick fooled me into thinking for a moment that they were indeed in English). Where on the Chicago street there were some little carts for pizza, this street was literally littered with carts, all smelling delicious I might add (apparently I not only have the ability to hear extremely well and read new languages, but my sense of smell has also been greatly aided). The men are riding quickly on their bikes, the children are playing soccer on the street and I am feeling something pull me over there. I fight the urge though, I still have another street to look down.

When looking the right, I didn't even need to stare before my super hearing kicked in. As soon as my eyes even glanced down that street my ears were filled with salsa (I might add that my hips were enjoying the salsa as well). What was odd is that this street, didn't really look like a street. It was actually a family farm, with a hot, but inviting sun beating down. Children were laughing, playing and dancing to this incredible music. The father was on a grill cooking up some asada, the mother was stirring something on a pot. An old grizzled man was strumming a Spanish guitar and singing with a raspy, yet beautifully worn voice. As I focused on this old man the blaring salsa disappeared. All I could hear was his voice and sparse chords of the guitar. He was singing in Spanish, but the longer I listened the more I was able to discern his words;

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound"

With all of my heart I wanted to go down that street, but my thoughts and my insecurities betrayed me. That family seemed too perfect, too, too, oh this seems like the right word I guess, too home. I would feel like an intruder. So with that raspy voice still ringing in my ears I walked into Chicago.

to be continued...

Barry Bonds

99% of the time sports stories get me fired up for about a minute in half or roughly the time it takes for me to encounter something more important. The Bonds story that is floating around right now is not in that 99%. If you have managed to avoid the media storm, here is the gist of it; two San Francisco journalists are about to release a book outlining the steroids regime that Barry Bonds has used for the past eight years. Of course this is still alledged, but there is enough evidence here that even Cochran would've avoided this case. On the eve of the season that Bonds is going to take a run at Aaron, he's busted.

I think the MLB has to go after Bonds hard. They have to do everything that they can do to provide the evidence of foul play. They need to do the same thing to Sosa and McGuire. And to the Giants, Cubs and Cardnials organizations. I hear a lot of people saying that too many people cheated and it's not fair to just go after the big name. BS. It's not about going after the big names, it's about going after the record holders. For the future of the game, it doesn't matter if a second basemen used the juice to hit 35 home runs instead of 15 (Boone, Brett), but it does matter of Maris fell beaus of a bunch of needles and cattle steroids. It will matter of Hank Aaron, one of the classiest and patient men in the history of the game loses the all-time home run record to Bonds simply because baseball decided to look the other way for the sake of a profit.

Also, it is worth mentioning the reporters who are publishing the book and have gone after Bonds and steroids in baseball. Too many, sports journalism is about nothing more than screaming into a mike on the radio. To some, it is real journalism. It is about seeking truth and persevering through lies and red tape. Tom Verducci, bravo for pushing this story ever since your interview with Ken Caminiti. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, thank you for living in San Francisco and asking the obvious questions about Barry Bonds. Without this kind of journalism there would be no congressional hearings, no public outcry and no chance a record book with any integrity.

Been a Long Time

The title says it all, huh? My absence can be explained by a lack of time and a lack of ideas. Not to say I have any ideas now, I just miss processing in this wired, trendy manner. So here are so quick hit thoughts:

• Watched the Oscars. Jon Stewert is the man. Dolly Parton sung a Christian song, while wear $4 million worth of diamonds. To think, some people think Christians are too materialistic. Crash was an amazing and important movie. Proof that real world issues push art into amazing places.
• Seahawks resigned Shaun Alexander. Amen. Hope it works out better than the Sonics ponying up the dough for Ray Allen.
• I am too lazy to keep up with Fantasy Baseball, so what do I do? Sign up for another league! Take me away doc.
• Mariners on the radio, I feel so warm and fuzzy.
• I am buying comic books again. Budgeting only two books. Keep me accountable about this! (By the way, I am going to write about Multiple Man. The most intriguing character I have seen in any medium for a long time)
• I am going to be speaking at a chapel service at my old high school this month. A truly bizarre thought.

So there is a look into my head. I am going to try and write something more substantial this week. Thank Aaron for pointing out my lameness of late.

Death

I have been told by many, many people that death is all part of life. That we live and we die. Just like the grass. Just like the rest of nature. That we shouldn't really mourn death, because its all part of (as the Lion King would describe it) the circle of life. Somehow I am supposed to find it amazing that someday we all become fertilizer and thus grass becomes greener. It's all natural.

Bullshit.

I am sorry, I don't really like to swear. I do figure though, if you are going to do it, make it count.

Death is not natural. It is the most unnatural thing that I can think of. Breathing is natural. Kissing is natural. Sleeping is natural. But death? Anything but. It doesn't matter how religious or how pragmatic you are, when someone dies it just feels wrong. It feels empty. It doesn't feel at all natural.

My friend Julie passed away on Monday. I haven't actually seen her face to face in three years. Yet nothing feels right today. Nothing. Everything feels a little bit off. Nothing feels natural or normal. I miss her. I want to see her. But I can't. There is something blocking me from seeing my friend. From giving her a hug. From telling her how much her friendship, her smile and her honest and authentic way of living changed the way I see God and the purpose of my life. Not being able to tell her these things is not natural.

A lot of people have tried to tell me (Christians included) that the story of Eden is in some way an analogy. Sorry, can't buy it. Without Eden, nothing makes sense. I need to see a perfect creation. One without flaw. Without sin. And without death. I have to know that Eve and Adam ate that fruit and that result was death. I have to know that there was a curse that came with "wanting to be like God" and that with that curse came sin and that death is sin. And I need to know that the corruption of that fruit was ACTUALLY reversed at the cross of Jesus. That at the cross, death went from the end to the beginning. I need to know that death is not natural. I need to know that life is.

Julie, your death was far from natural, yet the resurrection and life that you are now living is. It is more natural that anything that I have ever experienced. I miss you. I cannot wait to see you again and to experience what you are now experiencing. Thank you Jesus, for reversing the curse and bringing things back to the natural order.

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have high extroversion.You are outgoing and engaging, with both strangers and friends.You truly enjoy being with people and bring energy into any situation.Enthusiastic and fun, you're the first to say "let's go!" Conscientiousness: You have low conscientiousness.Impulsive and off the wall, you don't take life too seriously.Unfortunately, you sometimes end up regretting your snap decisions.Overall, you tend to lack focus, and it's difficult for you to get important things done. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness.You're generally a friendly and trusting person.But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism.You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism.You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic.Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy.Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high.In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas.You'll try almost anything interesting, and you're constantly pushing your own limits.A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Prayer

Okay so if it isn't obvious by now that I am on a little prayer kick. Prayer is powerful, it is the only thing in the entire world that gives us permission to dream big. One of the reason that I am so into comic books is that there always seems to be insurmountable problems that somehow get beaten. I never see that in the world though. I lack hope in humanity I guess. While I believe that I may see AIDS cured in my lifetime, I completely lack the faith to think that people will ever really care about people who are not like them dying.

That is until I pray.

When I pray I am a kid again. When I pray I believe in miracles. When I pray I believe in change. When I pray I hope.

Why?

Because I have seen it work. I have seen peoples lives change. I have seen people healed. I have seen people released from oppression. And what I haven't seen I have heard about. I have heard stories of entire communities changing and being blessed by the power of God. And that just leads me back to prayer.

I work on a college campus, it is my daily life to see people excluded, mocked and wasting potential. I hear about suicides and rapes. I see people using others and themselves to feel good for a moment.

I know my own heart. I know the things that I think about. I know how mean and spiteful I can be.

But in prayer I believe that my Father can make things all better. Just like a kid again.

Tonight InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is starting a week of 24/7 prayer. It is just like it sounds, we are going to pray for one week, 24 hours a day (we will be taking shifts, someone's gotta sleep!). Our hope is simple; to meet with and to ask God for help. Help to see justice. Help to live like Jesus. Help to see a campus and community of Shalom (the Hebrew word for peace). We will be keeping an online prayer journal at www.ivpalouse.blogspot.com. Please stop in and read what God is saying and please pray for our time. I am excited to report how things go.

Love for Seahawk Fans

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/pete_mcentegart/02/07/ten.spot/index.html

Perspective

Sorry about the long time between blogs. As a general rule, if I am quiet I am either not doing well and don’t want to admit it, or life is going too well and I don’t have time to reflect upon it. In this case it has been both.

I have spent the last week trying to think like Satan, doubting if I was supposed to do campus ministry, weeping on a floor, feeling more excited than I ever have about campus ministry and contemplating the power of prayer. Confused? Welcome to my world. Humorously, I remember whispering a prayer about wanting a life worth writing about. God has a sense of humor. Look at the platypus (if you have seen Dogma you are rolling right now).

Okay, so the Satan part. At a meeting that gathered all of the InterVarsity staff from the Inland Northwest I was asked to take part in a dramatization about that little voice in our heads. I was asked to be that voice. My instructions were pretty simple, re-tell the lies I believe about myself. So with a dear friend of mine bound to a chair, blindfolded and his lips duct-taped, I proceeded to tell him that he was not cut out for campus ministry. That he wasn’t making a difference. That he wasn’t doing enough. That it was time for him to get a real job. Even while writing this I am feeling sick to my stomach.

After my friend was untied, and we all told him that he was actually a great guy, we reflected on what happened. Actually to be honest everyone else reflected, I wallowed. How could I say those things? How could I be so cruel? Then came the kicker…weren’t those things true of me? I finally choked out how I was feeling to my friends and for the first of three times, they told me that wasn’t true and that I was where I belonged. I remained unconvinced.

Later that night I spent some time talking and praying with some men from that group. Once again I was told that I belonged. Then we prayed. In prayer they again affirmed that I belonged. This was the second time that I was told that the little voice was lying. Yet still I remained unconvinced.

The next morning we all reconvened, after a good night sleep I felt better, more in control of myself. I was convinced that I was going to make it without needed a whole room of people to look after me.

And then we prayed.

The prayer sounded familiar. I was told I was called here. That I was called to staff. All things that I could control. All things that I could handle. I nodded my head, I whispered “Yes, Jesus”. Then came the word and the power. The word “peace” was uttered. Peace. Peace. Peace. It rang in my head. I felt weak. The next thing I knew I was on the ground. I was crying. Weeping actually, if that is what it is called when your chest feels like it is going to explode.

Peace.

Peace from the insecurities.

Peace from the doubts.

For the third time I was told that I belonged.

I finally was convinced.

Prayer is something I don’t understand. I can do it seemingly a hundred times without really feeling much. Don’t get me wrong, it can seem important and even true. Yet my mind will wander. At times I will even wonder if I am being listened to. Then all of a sudden I am crying on the floor. Who is this God I serve? Doesn’t he realize that He is supposed to stay on the page so that I can study Him in a rational manner? Of course He doesn’t. He is too busy living and changing me.

I have been thinking about evil a lot lately, writing about it as well. I still am woefully short on answers. I know this though, Satan wants me sitting and thinking I am worthless; Jesus wants me up and alive. Satan wants to remind me of all of my failures; Jesus wants me to get back into the game. I am sick of reflecting on all that I have done wrong. I am sick of letting my past and my fears define my future. My future belongs to the one who knocked me on my butt. I am going to jump ahead to Easter Sunday and proclaim that “Jesus is Alive”!

More shocking though… so am I.

Another Note

I received an email today from a friend who I have not heard from in over three years. She informed me that she has cancer and has been given about one year to live.

I still am struggling for words to express what I am thinking about this news.

What was even more odd was her optimism. Not optimism about a cure or a miraculous healing, her optimism about the life that she has had. Her optimism about her belief that this has brought her closer to Jesus and made her more faithful for each day that she has been given.

I will continue to pray for a miraculous healing, and continue to be amazed about the miracle of hope that has already occurred.

Something to Ponder

I arrived to discover a mini-revival among all of the local Goths, punks, tree-hugging, tie-dyed crusties, and dreadlocked "alternatives" in town. Guys with chains from their ears to their noses, girls with mohawks, pretty much anyone with a weird haircut in town had recently become a Christian or firmly rejected Christ (italics added). There was manic worship led by a guy with "Sex Pistols" written on is bass guitar. There was deliverance, drugs, Satanists getting saved, spectacular backsliding, eating disorders, self abuse, and yes, there was evidently drug overdoses too.

-Chapter 2, Red Moon Rising

Rocked by Evil

I am shaken as I write this. Like most students, I feel as though I am remarkably able to detach myself from reality, to be able to separate my head from my heart when the situation calls for it.

Today I utterly failed at that task.

The book Red Moon Rising on one level a book about the power of prayer. On another level, it is about the power of death. The first chapter plunged me deep into the world of teen and young adult suicide. My hands were shaking as I read about Kurt Cobain's suicide note expressing that he felt "guilty beyond all words". I was fighting back tears when I read about a teenager named Markus being found by his parents, dead, with only the Beatles song "Let it Be" playing on repeat serving as any explanation.

What the hell did Kurt Cobain have to feel so guilty for? How can Markus expect others to simply let it be? How long are we going to let it be?

I am 24 years old. I realize that most of you reading this are about my age. I am not okay with the fact that if someone I know who is my age dies, their is a better chance that they killed themselves than by any other cause. I am not okay that suicide is worse among us in the western world than any where else. I am not okay with the fact that with all the money, entertainment and time that we have, we still struggle to find a reason to carry on.

And I am not okay that I don't have any answers.

Recently I read an X-Men comic, which should be no surprise to anyone. In the comic, a teenage boy named Wing had recently been "cured" of his mutation that allowed him to fly. Wing was struggling mightily with who he was if he wasn't able to fly. What was his identity? His purpose? He felt like little more than an anonymous face. Wing walked to a high cliff on Professor Xavier's property. He was with a friend. He asked his friend what she would do if she lost her powers. She coldly answered, "I would jump". Wing took her advice. Later in the comic it was revealed that he was not on that cliff at all. It wasn't real. His friend wasn't real. It was all created by a holographic chamber called the "Danger Room". All that was actually real was his feelings of anonymity and his body laying dead on the ground.

Who is telling us to jump?

Less than a minute after reading this section on suicide, the radio at the coffee shop I was at began to play the song "Let it Be". The song awoke me from my thoughts. I felt like all of my questions, my anger and my sadness had been heard. Some will call this a coincidence, but not me. I feel like God encouraged me to keep asking these questions, to keep caring. I truly believe that this evil is not unconquerable. I still have questions, anger and sadness, but I was also reminded that I have hope. I have a reason to pray.

A Trip to Middle Earth

Confession time, I am NOT very knowledgeable about the Lord of the Rings. I like the movies. I liked the books, but I only read them once and honestly, it took me about three months and I probably won't make the commitment again. I don't speak Elvish, have no idea how the whole heritage of Aarogon works, or how he can be the king that returns so mightily. Put me in a room with ten random people, I may know more about Middle Earth lore than nine of them. Put me in a room with LotR fans, I will be sent away with a Hobbit-sized imprint on tushy (Hobbits have big feet they tell me...). I do, however, believe that J.R.R Tolkien was an absolute genius. He really did craft a tale that is one of the best ever written and created two absolutely compelling villains, Sauron (the big fiery eye) and the seemingly innocent, and I should add, inanimate ring. These two wildly ambitious and compelling pictures of evil strike a chord that few villains can match and do an amazing job of explaining a hard to explain world view.

If someone can email my high school English teacher that thesis, I would really appreciate it.

First the eye, that was once a man who created a bunch of rings. When old J.R.R. first told his friends that his main villain was never going to utter a line, combat with any hero or even directly impact the area around him, I imagine that his friends responded with the kind of enthusiasm that I reserve Creed music (read: none). That just isn't the way that villains work! They give away their plans and cackle. They utter cheesy lines that are repeated by college students for years. They do...something. Tolkien's villain looks at things. And looks some more. Even with all of the effort put into keeping the ring from him, we are never given any real insight into what exactly would happen if he got his ring back. Would he gain a body again? Would his big eye get bigger? We simply do not know. So what is exactly so special about Sauron? It's that he is a corrupter. He is a liar. He is an intimidator. Without a word, or awesome armor, he can control thousands and scare a thousand more. I have to admit, it's kind of cool. Saruman looks into his seeing ball (wow, I am so bad at Tolkien terminology) and sees Sauron, in all of his power and this wise and powerful wizard changes sides. Pippin looks into the same ball and the poor Hobbit can't speak for awhile. These kings come under his spell and who knows how many years later, after Sauron's evil has consumed their bodies and souls, they are still following his bidding. All of his followers are best remembered for who they were before coming into contact with him. The orcs were once elves, the ringwraiths were the kings of old, Saruman was the wisest wizard. Look at what happened to the kings of Gondor and Rohan! One goes insane by looking in the crystal ball, the other seemingly becomes possessed by Saruman working with Sauron! Sauron corrupts whatever he touches. Such is his way. He is not just evil though, he is patient. He comes back into the scene only after he is forgotten. When he is no longer part of the world dialogue, when legends of his first defeat are no longer told, he emerges. It is so important to remember though, he waited until he was invisible. Basically I like Sauron (as a character) because he is give me the willies evil.

The ring is an equally hard to fathom villain, but it is a villain nonetheless. The ring's purpose is not unlike Sauron, it corrupts those who encounter it (see the haunting Gollum), what is unique to the ring though, is that it holds the power to make those who encounter it believe that they can control it. Isildor doesn't destroy it when he has the opportunity to do so, Boromir dreams of using it to save his people, Frodo proves to me not as incorruptible as he first appears, Gollum finally is destroyed trying to maintain control over it. It finds the evil that lurks in the heart of all those who hold it (or even come near it). It seeks out vanity, greed, shame, fear and it uses those emotions. It destroys trust and intimacy. It consumes good intentions. It Sauron in disguise. Ultimately it sounds like a fruit I have read about and a promise that one bite would make you like God. Adam and Eve's apple, hanging from the neck of a Hobbit, tempting all to take it. Daring them, prodding them, assuring them that they can really handle them. Ring of power indeed.

The portrayal of evil in the Lord of the Rings is a huge and slippery thing to detect and to explain. Is external? There is Sauron, he is lying and intimidating. He wields a giant army, one that brings fear to all who lay eyes on it. He is the risk to the world after all. But couldn't it be internal? Aarogorn can't touch the ring, because he is only human. He is knows that his imperfection is breeding ground for that ring and its power. Boromir struggles with insecurity and anger before he sees any ring. The elves bemoan the greed of man, they do not trust the more internal evil in man's heart. Tolkien refuses to place his hand in either the internal or external camp. Middle Earth does indeed have an ultimate evil, but others can't use that as cop out for thier own faults. Conversely, evil is more than a character flaw, it is an external threat and it wants to consume the whole world. I am stuck, as a Christian, this is what I was always taught (of course I was also taught the LotR was evil because it had wizards, but that is neither hear nor there). I was always told that evil was out there and in my own heart. I don't hear that much these days. I hear that evil is out to get us, in the forms of other people usually. Or, I am told that I am greedy and bad, but fix-able. If I focus, or try real hard, maybe I can be okay. Tolkien buys into neither. He saw evil in his world and his own heart and that emerges in his book. I say "bravo". I think we need to remember this.

After all, I read this book once about people who forgot about evil. I think it might of had a ring in it...

Mystique

Villains, villains, villains. It almost makes me feel dirty to write about villains all of the time. I remember reading that C.S. Lewis had a difficult time writing Screwtape Letters because he had to think like a demon all of the time. I am not sure I have had the same problem. I write about villains and I simply keep realizing that evil is worse than I ever imagined it, but also more familiar. With that though, I am going to press on with Mystique, who I have been very excited to write about. Hope that this is much fun as I hoped it would be.

Mystique never goes away. In comics, she might fade from the forefront for awhile, but she works her way back into the story at the most unexpected times. In the movies she and Magneto represented the only follow up villains and guess what? She's back for round three this summer. The woman is fascinating. For those who have managed to miss seeing her, she is a very blue woman, who can look like whoever she wants to. She usually sticks with other petite women, because it is easy for her maintain a shape like her own and because her second most potent weapon is that she is a woman, a weapon she wields well. She is also very mysterious. What's her real name? She goes by Raven Darkholme, but that is generally excepted as an alias. How old is she? Old enough to be Nightcrawler's natural mother and foster mother to Rogue. Where has she been in the past? Who has she been? How many lives has she led? Whose life is she living right now? If Magneto is the most morally consistent character in the Marvel universe, Mystique's is the hardest to come to grips with. Who is she?

She doesn't know.

Really. She doesn't anymore. She has lived to many lives, wore to many masks. She has been to fluid to have any "character" anymore. She no longer is who she once was, she is now simply her characteristics. She is manipulative. She is cunning. She is very sexual. But she isn't a real person anymore. She is never successful at settling her life down, because she always tries it as another person. The fraud is always discovered. Whoever she once was has been lost forever, whoever she is now is always is flux. To Magneto she is one person. Another to Rogue. Another to the next man who decides to settle down with one of her characters.

Mystique's evil is one of the most tragic that I have ever encountered in any fiction. She is evil because she has been willing to kill off all of herself in order to gain acceptance. She becomes who men most desire, but how can the question of whether any man could ever desire her go away? She becomes what her business associates need, but how can she shake the question of whether they ever needed her? She has never been able to be a wife or a mother for any length of time, because eventually people needed a real person, not a forever changing figment of their imagination. Sure she is dangerous. She may kill you in your sleep, kidnap your daughter or assassinate a world leader, but I cannot help but wonder who is really committing those crimes anymore?

If we're not careful, we all run the risk of becoming Mystique. While most of us lack the ability to literally change our skin, most of us are perfectly able to become someone else when we sense someone else wants us to be so. I have played so many characters in my life. I have been the perfect son, boyfriend, friend, employee all because something inside of me has sworn up and down that no one wants anyone like me. I have needed just a few simple alterations to become what people have wanted me to be. What happens after a year of that? Five? Ten? Fifty? You become Mystique, simply a conglomeration of someone else's desires.

Evil cannot create. It simply cannot. It can only corrupt. Slowly, it twists, distorts, steals and lies to leave a mangled thing left. A thing that once was a person. A friend or child that has lost everything that once made it real. When I first became a Christian I tried to make my faith just another identity, one that I could put on my shelf next to the student, the drunk and the ladies man. Jesus wasn't satisfied to gain only one of my persona's. He instead wanted me. He wanted me to become who I was created to be. It is not always fun. "You've changed", "You're a sell out", these phrases have actually been said to me (I just thought they were used in bad teen movies). Some of these have been said by some of my best friends. So of those friends have left my life now, never to return. Others left and now are back and our friendships actually mean something now. All I can say at this point though, this is way better. Way better. It's not over though. The trip from phony to authentic is slow and sometimes painful. Yet something amazing happens along the way, the pervasive fears start to have less of a hold. The fear of being alone becomes weaker. The fear of being discovered no longer grabs my throat it was the Reaper. It's simply a better way to live.

A Short Note on MLK

Martin Luther King. Jr is simply one of the most complete and remarkable American's ever. This country, like so many others, has so much to live down, a history of racism being at the top of that list. From slavery, to Jim Crowe, to "Separate but Equal", to racial profiling and today's ethnically divided slums. We need this holiday and we need to keep dreaming. We also need to keep acting on this dream, to keep living it. If we stop challenging racist institutions and only pat ourselves on our backs for what has been accomplished, then it is time to stop celebrating. Finally, as we celebrate this day, we cannot forget that MLK's conviction not only came from his life, but also from his faith. Let's have the guts to ask God for the eyes he gave King. That is a risky prayer that just might lead to a world that looks more like a fulfilled dream.

Cool New Band

My friend Jacob is in a band named Ether Hour. They are way cool and I have been listening to the music pretty much non-stop since he told me about it. So click on the link below and give them a listen, you'll be glad that you did.

www.etherhour.com

Subscribe to Gen 26

The above link will give you the option to subscribe to my blog. I have not been able to get it to work with email yet, but you should be able to set it up to work on quite a few different homepage options. Give it a shot if you so desire.

Race Dynamics in Sports

Watch Hoop Dreams.

Read this article http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/060111

Thank God that at least some people are willing to talk about race. It is sad that normally when race is brought up, we immediately slip into PC shells, never acknowledging that we have stereotypes and misconceptions, thus never getting to a point where we can attempt to address and get over them. We don't learn, because we are trained to never say anything. Under the shield of sports, here are two relevant entries into a real discussion about race.

Amen.

(I'll be back to bad guys soon, I promise.)

Magneto

"...Every heel [bad guy] needs to believe he is justified in his actions, no matter how wrong the logic behind those actions may be." - Mick Foley, page 222, Foley is Good.

Yes, that is a quote from a professional wrestler autobiography being used to introduce a post about a comic book character. I am dork. But if you have been reading this blog for more than a week, you know this already. This quote is necessary in order to understand Magneto, and I think even to understand some ugly parts of ourselves.

First though, I need to address those of you who have no idea who I am talking about. Magneto is the arch-nemesis/occasional partner of the X-Men. On the surface he is just old guy, who feels comfortable wearing purple and can bend some metal. In reality (or the comic book version of reality) he is one of the most powerful people in the Marvel universe, has a loyal following of powerful friends and he views himself of some sort of messiah to mutants. He is an old man in a young man's body (don't ask), in fact he is old enough to have been a child in Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. Which would mean that the "master of magnetism" is a Jewish-Mutant, a member of two minority groups with histories of persecution. His parents were killed in Auschwitz, his wife left him when she learned of his powers. He is a close friend of Professer Xavier, though is the ideological Malcolm X to Xavier's Martin Luther King Jr. Magneto is a world criminal (terrorist?) who has on more than one occasion actually saved the world. His philosophy is not complex; humans need to get out of the way, it is time for mutants to rule the world.

So what can be made of a character who has endured, but also has caused so much pain? It is impossible not to sympathize with the pain that the man has endured, to be imprisoned and rejected for not what you have done, but instead for who you are would and has caused many good people to give up trying to act justly and instead act with one's own interests in mind. Yet Magneto has hardly become selfish, instead he has become fanatical for his people, the mutants. His desire has become to create a world where his pain will no longer become the norm. He is the product of the evil of man. Of the hatred of man. Of the brokenness of man.

Unfortunately, he is not simply worthy of our sympathy, but if we are to put ourselves into the shoes of the people who occupy the Marvel universe, he is also the object of our fear. He is a weapon of mass destruction. A weapon with every reason to not believe that peace is possible. What evidence has he ever seen of different people working together? Living together? He knows no peace, yet his power will always be there to tempt him into believing that he can make peace.

Magneto is sympathetic and dangerous, but he is also and equally so, compassionate. He cannot stomach the pain of mutants. He has witnessed to many mutant genocides than he can bear. He has seen the world of man go back and forth, from seeking peace to mutant eradication. He has seen death and broken promises. Many times he has retired to a new country or a new space station, only to be brought back into the fight, not by his own desire for power, but instead by suffering mutants, begging him to return, to save them. How can his conscious allow him to do nothing?

The final characteristic of Magneto that cannot be ignored is his moral consistency, he is the most morally consistent character I have ever encountered in comic books. While other characters violate the ethics that guide them constantly, Magneto remains steadfast. He is for mutantkind, by any means necessary. While the human governments go back and forth and the X-Men follow the whims of those governments, Magneto stays the course, steady and straight. As a result, he can be an ally or foe to the X-Men or to any other character, depending on the situations that surround him. It also should be noted here that X-Men comics have explored parallel universes and alternative futures often, Magneto is rarely a villain in any of these universes. In these universe's bigotry and hatred has won, humans have sought the death of all mutants and Magneto has never backed down, he has stood strong by his persecuted people. He has been a hero.

So why is he part of a study of evil? How can this sympathetic, compassionate, morally consistent character be evil? Is it simply that he is dangerous? No, we are all dangerous, more so than we realize. Magneto is evil because I cannot believe that good and evil are only determined by the the situation that surrounds us. Magneto be a hero when the world has been at war, but that doesn't make him good. Good and evil can't be that shaky, that fluid. Magneto is evil because his convictions, as consistent as they may be, are born from a desire for revenge. His pain cannot make his methods morally acceptable, because methods born from his desire for revenge will never end the cycle that has created Magneto. Revenge, like all other evil is insatiable, it can never be quenched. Magneto can never truly retire or succeed, because no matter how many Nazi's, human bigots or politicians die, he will never be whole. The true danger of Magneto is not his mutant power, no matter how prolific it may be, it is the desire for revenge that cannot be filled.

I want to make Magneto a hero, because I see too much of myself in him. I want to keep my grudges. I want to keep my hatreds. I want to be justified in my anger against people who have crossed me. I want to allow myself to driven to succeed by people who have had the nerve to question whether I can make it. This is abstract I realize, so I will attempt to make it more real. Every time that I feel doubted by anyone, letting go of that has been extremely difficult. Even as I type this blog, I can feel old hurts resurfacing, whether those hurts are from high school, or even about deciding to go on staff with InterVarsity. I feel tempted to derive my strength from proving others wrong. Ironically, these motivations of mine, only serve to prove those doubts to be more founded than I want to believe that they are. I have to choose, that there is a better path to follow, than the one that is defined by people, whether they are right or wrong. I have to believe that call of Jesus is more important than what I am good at or bad at. More important than proving anyone right or wrong. With Jesus I feel like I have hope in being more than I am, which is necessary for me to ever be of any service to anyone.

Without Jesus, I am Magneto.

Lex Luthor

A quick note for people who care about such things, when discussing LL I will be referencing many iterations of the character, including the television show Smallville. If such things matter to you, congratulations, you are the person who has less of a life than I do.

Imagine, you are a writer who is faced with the challenge of constructing a villain for Superman. This cannot be pleasant. So the enemy can't be faster that Supes. Or stronger. Or more indestructible. Essentially, it is off-limits to make this character more super, than the man himself. Fun. So the next step must be to examine the weaknesses that Superman does have, which appears to be one, kryptonite (a rock from Superman's homeworld, Krypton). Unfortunately, making a character that is completely made of kryptonite seems a little impractical and since it would look ridiculous, more than a little unprofitable. At this point your writer brain would probably be a little worn down, you might even be desperate enough to resort to making another Superman, who has his "S" backwards (oops, they did that one). If you are a really smart writer though, with a keen grasp on human nature, you would look at Superman's other "weakness", his morality.

Enter Lex Luthor, Superman's greatest foe.

Lex is not intimidating physically. He is bald. He is pudgy. He has NO powers. Not one. Ziltch. What he is though, is smart. Brilliant actually. He is a strategist, taking each challenge, be it in the boardroom or on the battlefield and treating it like the epic struggles he was raised learning about (Lex is short for Alexander, which Smallville portrays as the name given to him in honor of Alexander the Great). Oh, and his brilliance doesn't end with strategy though, he is also a scientist. The first portrayals of Lex are appropriate for the 1960's when they appeared, he was a mad scientist. Lex is not just some scientist general though, that would be to simple of a foe for Superman, he is a rich scientist general. Oh and he has been the President of the United States of America. And he loathes Superman.

Superman is an alien to earth. It doesn't really matter though, what he really is an idealized picture picture of man. He is big and strong. He has a strong sense of justice and of course he will fight for freedom. He is ethical beyond anyone's doubts. You can always trust Superman, he saves the day. Oh hell, we mine as well acknowledge that there is a clear (though I would argue poor) Christ analogy to him as well. His father sent him off from a different world in the sky. He arrives on earth and is raised by humans. He is fully Kryptonian and fully human. He has the power to move mountains, yet remains as American as apple pie. Everyone loves him.

Except of course Lex.

Lex can't bear Superman, because Superman is everything Lex is not. Superman is idealized humanity, Lex is fallen humanity. Superman is who we pretend to be when we are kids. Lex is who we are afraid we are becoming as adults.

In so many ways, Lex is all right. He went to the right schools. He is successful in THREE fields (science, politics and business). And to look at things with complete objectivity, he has been able to seriously challenge the most powerful man on earth with only his mind and his influence over people. Unfortunately, for all of his talents, relentless work and human power, he has lost his soul to his own pursuit to be the master of all that surrounds him (think I am being dramatic? He literally DID sell his soul in the funny books). His lust for power drives everything that he does and poisons every gift and talent that he has. Lex in Smallville is a perfect example of this, Lex battles his own lust for power every episode, every victory is shallow for the audience, because we know the eventual tragedy that his life will become.

Listing the evil acts of all of the Lex's that have graced comics and film would be too large of a task. The more interesting question, is what is the evil that drives him? The answer I would answer is that Lex worships himself. He wants to be lord over all that surrounds him and ultimately over his own life. But what does a modern day Alexander the Great do in the face of the power of a Superman? He must destroy it. He must destroy anything that assert more authority than he can. This is not just a theme of Lex and Superman though, this is the theme of good and evil that has plagued the world since the beginning. The Bible will tell us that Satan was thrown out of heaven after trying to overthrow God. The Bible will then tell us that Eve will eat the forbidden fruit, so that she can be like God. We will read history stories about world powers fighting over small chunks of land, simply to say that it is theirs. Tomorrow we will drive to work and get mad that someone would dare cut us off in traffic. Sooner than I would like to admit, I will get mad at my wife for an off hand comment, that will make me feel less intelligent than her. Lex is our own reflection. He is the dirty marriage of insecurity and desire for control that lives in all of us.

And he is the only enemy that worked for a Superman.

Evil

How is it possible to talk about evil and to not judge? Intuitively I know that evil exists. I have seen it. Felt it. Experienced it. I also have been utterly taken by it. I have believed that certain things have been evil, only to have a massive change of heart later in life (don't laugh, but Lord of the Rings fits into this category for me). How do I not take on as my job to decide what is evil, but still take a stand when I see it? Should I ignore calling things bad, because I may be wrong? I have seen how good intentions have destroyed people, groups and nations. This only has been magnified when it has been the church that has led these movements against evil. But doesn't it have to be true that some things are simply not right? And that there are times to take a stand?

I love superhero stories. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Daredevil, the list goes on and on. The theme that takes me in is good vs evil. Men and women, not willing to sit idly by and watch the innocent be destroyed. I want my life to be lived in a similar manner. I want to stand against evil, not for my own ego (at least I hope that is not my goal), but so that evil will not be able to destroy. I know that when loneliness consumes a person, and they are taken in by the little lies in their head about how worthless they are, that is evil. I know that when someone works 40 hours a week in back-breaking labor and cannot feed their family, that which works against them is evil. And I know that the reasons these examples and millions like them exist, is because the world that we live in is not what it was intended to be. That it has been corrupted by what is evil. And I know that when I am apathetic to that condition, when I simply stop caring, that is evil inside of me.

But how can I ever trust me own fervor? On what level can I believe that even know when or how to fight the evil that I know exists, yet can often be hard to find? To be honest I wish I had a Joker, Magneto or Green Goblin to point at and say "you are evil!". Instead I am given two unsettling realities, 1) that this worlds enemy is not flesh and blood and 2) that if I want to find evil, I have to look no further than myself. I cannot ever separate myself fully from evil, and I can never separate anyone else from the potential to be good. After all, I know from experience that I am capable of so many awful things and I know from faith that even the "worst" person I know is created in the image of a perfect and good God.

So I will examine evil the best way I know how, by studying villains. I am going to write about my favorite "bad guys". Characters like Magneto or Lex Luthor. How are they unsettling like us. And where does it all go wrong?

Church

I want to go to Jesus' church

The one with all of the sinners
The one that meets in the worst people's homes, on mountain tops, in sinking boats and on street corners

I want to go to Jesus' church

The one with the prostitutes during the day
And the pastor's who only dare come at night

I want to go to Jesus' church

The one that has no organ or acoustic guitar
That has no building, stained glass, fancy robes or powerpoint

I want to go to Jesus' church

The one that will make me angry, make me cry, make hope, make me fear, make feel

I want to go to Jesus' church

The one with no lease, or gym, or youth room
The one I have to follow, seek and run to

I want to go to Jesus' church

Coherence

Alright I have written and deleted three posts today. So I will try and make a quick point here; I have more questions than answers right now. I feel like I should only blog about things that I understand or have processed, unfortunately, I am plum out of those things right now. So I will list the questions I have right now. That seems more productive.

How can a life be authentic and disciplined?
Can the Seahawks really win a playoff game?
Is Jesus happy with the state of the American church?
Is liberal a dirty word?
Is conservative?
Do they have any place in the church at all?
Is entertainment bad?
Should I be more weary of the "world"?
Do I need to understand the "world" more?
Am I going to be with InterVarsity in five years?
Does it matter if I know that?
Are the Mariners and the Red Sox ever going to complete the Reed for Clement trade?

What is better to have a lot of questions or answers?

Superman

Last night I dreamt that I was Superman. It was a weird dream, everyone needed my help. People were falling off of things, drowning and constantly yelling for help. It was my job to save them. My duty. Being powerful is an odd thing I guess. Sure its odd to be faster, stronger and less tired than everyone else, but honestly that didn’t feel to odd in my dream. What felt odd was how often people got themselves into trouble. It was constant. I couldn’t get anything else done! It was as if my power made everyone else around me more vulnerable.

Being Superman wasn’t too much fun.

Later in the dream, I met someone else with identical powers. While I was saving someone else, my father (not my real father mind you, Superman’s father), needed saving and I couldn’t make it in time. But my equal could. My equal swooped in and saved my father’s life. Immediately my father and I knew that I had an equal. Someone else knew my plight, he knew the way I lived, he knew me! It was great. Great, until my equal became my enemy. Turns out, he didn’t like saving people all the time. He felt like he was allowed to rule them. So we had to fight. He got away. Something else to worry about.

Being Superman wasn’t too much fun.

Often in dreams reality and fantasy become very blurry. I guess that is why when I was on my way to save some people that were trapped inside a sinking ship I encountered my friend Zac on a bridge. You see, Zac didn’t know I was Superman, he only knew me as Jeremiah. Zac is an old friend. I haven’t seen or spoken to Zac in a long time. Zac have not been doing well for a long time. Zac needs help. He needs a friend. But I wasn’t Jeremiah, I was Superman and their were people dying that only I could help. So I told Zac I couldn’t talk to him then. I jumped off of the bridge, dove into the water and saved the dying people. But I didn’t have time for my friend. I hope he didn’t jump.

Being Superman wasn’t too much fun.