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.