A Jester in the King's Court

As most of you know, my military experience is considerably minimal. I was never in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force or the Core. I don’t actually know what the National Guard does, and I still think the Coast Guard is the Navy’s AAA team. However, I play Risk now and then, I have seen Saving Private Ryan and Forrest Gump on numerous occasions and growing up had plethora of GI Joe toys. So, while I know nothing about the military, I think we can all agree that Parker Brothers, Hasbro and Tom Hanks make me more than qualified to address matters of a militaristic nature.

Last year, the season finale of Saturday Night Live had a skit in which Will Ferrel talks about a vacation to Vietnam. Every time he does, he breaks out into Billy Joel’s Vietnam War song “Goodnight Saigon”, even though he clearly was not in Nam. Well, the song is catchy, and for the last year I’ve listened to it fairly regularly. The other day it came across my iTunes in the midst of a rather frustrating situation with an old High School camp friend, and it struck me how sadly easy it is for my conversations about the friends from my youth to sound as though I’m a war vet talking about my comrades in arms who, to quote Mr. Joel, “Left their childhood on every acre.”

If you grew up in the church, you probably know what I’m talking about. A group of teens, bonded to each other with Christ as the central focus. You go to the same Bible Studies, memorize the same verses, go to the same camp, do the same youth activities. You all knew the answers to the questions the study leaders would ask and you could all say a prayer that earnestly moved any who heard it. Every now and then one of your battalion would stumble and fall, but that is to be expected, after all, war is difficult. Some may have even distanced themselves from the main group, but that’s okay, they still wanted to win the war.

Then something happened. Leaving High School was like the Tet Offensive, but your platoon didn’t respond quite as well as did the US did to the surprise attack. All of a sudden you look around and there are your fellow combatants strewn about on the battlefield, having decided that all the teaching and training they received was useless, or “just not for them”. Instead of evading the enemy, they allowed themselves to take shrapnel to the knee. Instead of jumping away from a grenade, they decided to pick it up, just to test their limits. Instead of fighting, they decided to surrender to a force that doesn’t take captives., it either destroys or assimilates, but never incarcerates.

The problem is, we knew this Tet Offensive was coming. Everyone warned us about “the real world” and it seems so few of us cared. We were all told about the importance of infusing our life with the theology we had been taught, but it was of minimal concern to the majority of our squad. And thanks to that apathy, whenever those of us still fighting meet each other, we all have horror stories about our close friends who we’ve lost “in the thick of the fight.” It’s sad that as a 27-year-old Christian, I can name so many people who have fallen. And that’s not to say that I don’t have scars and bruises all over me. That’s not to say that I don’t have limbs that might need amputated and have seen things that I can’t unsee. But it does mean that I, and those like me, have gotten up and pressed forward on the attack…like a soldier should.

When I sit with some of my compatriots who, though battered and bruised, still fight dearly for what we were taught in our youth…or when I speak with some of my old teachers (drill instructors for the analogy). Its sad to see how often the question of “What happened??” can be asked. I think back on all those I was connected with who have turned from the faith and wonder what would have happened if they had survived? What would churches look like today if the majority of their soldiers hadn’t fallen in battle right out of the gate?

The song’s chorus says, “And we’d all go down together.” I know that the “together” part was the mindset of my group of friends leaving High School. But somewhere along the line, “Let’s win the world for Christ” became “Let’s win the world” in the majority of their minds. The unity disappeared and suddenly it was just “We’d all go down” and rather swiftly at that.

I know it’s a bit of a melancholy post, but those of us still fighting the war, we should be encouraged we’ve made it this far, and be inspired to show a lost world that “We Didn’t Star the Fire” and let’s be creative about that by spending some time in “The River of Dreams.” Okay…no more of that, I promise...
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Piano Man

Ok, now I’m done:]

Everyone has a story about getting advice that looking back they wish that they had taken. This is not such a story. Its actually quite the opposite. In the Winter of 2005 there was a girl, who though cute and witty, asked me a horrible question that I only now am fully understanding the full implications of. At the time, the church I was Youth Pastor at would have events and play practices that involved an inordinate amount of set-up and grunt labor. Seriously, we were a church of barely 200 and yet we moved more plywood than a Home Depot in Black Rock, Nevada the week prior Burning Man.

Anyway, weekly we would have to move the sets for the play, or the chairs for an event, or tables for….an event (I should have used a synonym for effect, but “happening” seemed odd). I, of course, wasn’t thrilled to always be moving things, but some one had to, why not I?

Well, one night, assumably past midnight because that’s when guys in their early 20’s are on the phone with females they are trying to date, this girl said, “You move things at your church a lot.” I never really thought about it that much before. She returned to it, “You’re the Youth Pastor…why are you always moving things, like you never aren’t moving things.”

I will say, her assessment of me never not moving this was correct, but I had never really thought of it as a negative until that point. It wasn’t so much that I was the Youth Pastor so moving things was beneath me, at least not at first, it was more that I just hated that it was assumed that I would move things. I can’t say why exactly, just that said female’s statement sat with me, and I saw no reason that I should move things.

Fast forward to the past November. Here at Shoreline I was expected to help set up for Thanksgiving lunch since I’m on staff. I was not happy about this, but oddly enough that weekend I actually didn’t hate setting up tables. Nor stacking a billion chairs in a closet built for 8. Fast forward to March, I found myself in the same situation for the Noia Retirement Lunch, only I swear in was 2 billion chairs. Only this time, I actually loved doing it. Fast forward to May. I’m leaving my office after Shoreline’s Gradation and I see the gym is still being taken down, so I put more chairs away, and it was fun. Jump to tonight, and we see me setting up tables and chairs once more, but I truly enjoyed doing it. It was a part of the fellowship and worship of the day.

It might seem like an odd thing, but I’m rather happy that I like the grunt work at church again. The girl’s question about how often I moved things was not bad….but what I did with it was. I let it mix with my own resentment and arrogance and it made what should have been a fun act of worship and camaraderie a chore to be avoided. My response should have been “Yes, I get to minister in hat way a lot…and its how I keep my girlish figure;]” I dropped the ball there, but was reminded tonight how much I love having a renewed joy in this ministry.

100 Ways to Evangelize

1. Going door to door
2. Handing out tracks
3. Open air preaching
4. Reading a book of a theological nature in a public place and try and use it as a catalyst to engage people in discussion
5. Puppet ministry
6. Christian bumper sticker or vanity plate as a discussion catalyst
7. Take a pagan to see a movie with spiritual overtones and play “movie review” game
8. Watch Lost with a group of pagans and analyze it
9. Evangicube
10. Wordless book
11. Christian T-shirt as convo opener
12. Colored bracelet
13. Run sports programs out of the church for the community
14. Run Drama programs out of the church for the community
15. Hire a sky writer to put the Romans road in the air
16. Invite a friend to church
17. Invite a friend to hang out with Christians at a non-church event
18. Put on a Passion Play
19. Youth Scavenger Hunt for different types of people, points awarded for each person that comes to a party at the end of the event
20. Hand out water on a hot day at the beach
21. Volunteer at a soup kitchen
22. Pay for the food of the person behind you in the drive-thru and have the DT guy give them a New Testament or invite to church
23. Special event BBQ
24. “Chalk tag” the sidewalk all over the city to guide people to a website that’s evangelistic
25. Unite with a museum to give free tours through exhibits dealing with Christian history
26. Free car wash after a rain storm as a way of ministering to the community
27. Volunteer to host a Barnes & Nobel’s book club
28. Carry a cross up a busy street to start conversation
29. Hold up signs at sporting events
30. Put on a church sponsored Roller Derby contest
31. Men’s fishing trip to invite the unsaved to
32. Monday Night Football BBQ to invite the unsaved to
33. Buy season tickets to sport games to use to invite men to go with you and the pastor to games in order to build relationship
34. Booth at county fairs
35. Puppet show in local park
36. Sunday School driven evangelism
37. Leave fliers on windshields
38. Approach cultists as they are out witnessing and counter-witness
39. Go to the Ren Fair as monks and recite St. Francis’ sermons
40. Go to a hospital and ask the ill if they’d like prayer
41. Ask your waiter/waitress if she would like you to pray about something
42. Try to use evangelistic words when playing Scrabble
43. Halloween Alternative
44. Christmas events
45. Easter celebrations
46. Break dance competition
47. Talent show
48. Church School performances
49. Evangelistic bon fire
50. Evangelistic quilting group
51. Church sponsored dog training for the community
52. Bring quarters and detergent to a Laundromat and provide it to those there to start a convo
53. Public baptisms
54. Scrapbooking with friends but make sure you use church pictures
55. Invite pagans with you on a house building trip to Mexico…or Canada I guess
56. Teach your youth group about Intelligent Design and release them on the public school system
57. Youth all nighter
58. Church Christmas caroling
59. Play Christian parody band Apologetix around pagans and explain the songs after they realize they are listening to different words
60. Join in with a group of pagans making fun of a Christian cliché, and then explain why its wrong to take them off guard (i.e. “You’re right WWJD is stupid, Jesus would never have gotten drunk and beat His wife since He was sinless and not married”)
61. Christian sponsored car show
62. Evangelistic billboard
63. Hold a Bible study on the streets around the homeless and prostitutes
64. Run church counseling programs
65. Christian skydiving org where you ask, “If this parachute didn’t open, what would happen to your eternal soul?” as you’re falling at 32 feet per second while the pagan is strapped to you
66. Put on a Community Olympics during the real Olympics as a way of letting the community know that the church exists and build relationships
67. Sit on a college campus with a sign saying, “I’m Christian, prove me wrong”
68. Chili cook off
69. Sand castle building competition
70. 4th of July BBQ/celebration service
71. AWANA program
72. Door hangers
73. Revival Meetings
74. Church coffee cart
75. Christian social networking (Facebook, etc)
76. Blogging
77. Reading the Narnia stories to kids
78. Virtual churches or MPOG witnessing
79. Go to Comic-Con dressed as Nightcrawler or Daredevil and have your character expound their religious views (it’s Catholic, but close)
80. Hold a symposium when the next alien movie comes out about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. Tie that into a creationist/ID worldview
81. Buy a church dragster that you can invite pagans to come can drive with Christians as a relationship builder
82. Go around putting flowers on all the female graves at a local cemetery on Mother’s Day hoping to talk with he grieving family
83. Twitering for Jesus
84. Offer to help clean out landscape issues as a means of starting convo’s
85. MOPs program
86. Take your kid to the playground and try and start convo’s with the parents of the kids your kid plays with
87. Evange-Bowling League
88. Go to an atheist meet-up group and ask to just observe and wait for them to try and bring you into conversation
89. Agree to trade services with a cultist/other religion follower. You go to 1 of theirs, and they to one of yours.
90. Have a Bible Study meet in a public place to draw attention to their study
91. Stop to see if someone needs help when broken down on the side of the road, use it to start Jesus convo
92. Take a picture of a Crusader and an Arab fighting and use it as a banner to advertise a series of talk on the Crusades and Christian/Islam relations
a. Take a picture of a cowboy, Native American, a Crusader and an Arab hugging and giving the thumbs up sign with a banner saying, “The Crusades and Manifest Destiny weren’t that big a deal!”
93. Church sponsored weightloss groups
94. Host Socratic discussions where people can come and present their beliefs and interact with ideas
95. Stand next to a God’s Word Fellowship guy protesting at the Rose Parade or something like it and apologize to those next to him that Christians aren’t like this
96. Christian camps/retreats
97. Go speed dating and tell everyone that sits across from you that they need Jesus
98. Gospel presentation at wedding/funeral
99. Mention being involved at church and ask, “Do you go to church any where”
a. Go up to a stranger and say, “Knock knock” “Whose there” “Jesus, He’s knocking at your heart….okay that’s not what that verse means, but seriously, are you saved?”
100. Steal your friends phone and refuse to give it back until they are able to explain their outrage and belief that your action is univocally wrong w/o expressed appeal to a deity, or they capitulate to attending church

So, the idea of identity has been lost in the contemporary world. Or rather its changed. People no longer see themselves as something, but rather as something in relation to something else, or something manifested one way in some situation and in another in another situation. The self becomes less objective and more subjective as it were.

Some see this as a huge step forward. We are no longer bound by what we ought to be, or by what we seem to be, but we can define what we are. It’s a very Sartian view of the self. My essence, my identity is defined by how I see myself and what I will to be.

It seems that media has some contributing factor to this identity disassociation. The entire premise of the entertainment industry, at least as it was, is that people pretend to be what they aren’t so others can watch and relate/respond to what they present. The introduction of reality TV has changed this a bit given that now people do not need a character written before hand for them to act out, instead they manifest themselves in any manner they like on TV.

Further, news has been replaced by “infotainment” (which is a word according to spellchecker) in which facts aren’t presented, so much as spun. If Obama opens the door for his wife when going out to dinner, Fox News will say, “Obama is against women’s rights and thinks Michelle cannot open her own door” since they want to present Obama as the devil. On the other hand, MSNBC will say, “Obama is a chief humanitarian, full of grace and kindness” since they are in Obama’s back pocket. And clearly CNN will tell us what people are tweeting about Heidi and Spencer Pratt.

The world has moved in such a way that facts are not presented as facts, but rather as ammunition for supporting any understanding of the world one wishes to have. The postmodern/poststructuralist would be fast to say that everything has always been interpretation. Derrida’s claim is that we interpret the world around us and interpretation is merely all that we have. With this idea in play, one that I am not yet discrediting, it makes sense that “fact” becomes a dubious term, and identity becomes a less than concrete idea.

This leaves us with the question that Os Guinness has asked in many Vertias Forums, “How does one live in a world of hype, spin and lies?” I think that question is a good one for sorting out truth in the post-postmodern milieu, and is a trajectory for establishing one’s work with identity.

To be continued…

Principle #2: The Jet Li Principle

Topic: Identity (Part One)

Disclaimer: This post started getting lengthy and I realized that I better make it a multi-post topic. There is no resolution in this first entry…also considerably less laughs than I usually aim for.

Admittedly, I’ve never seen a Jet Li movie. Until I looked up his IMDB listing, I could only name one movie he had ever been in…ironically enough, that movie is named The One. I never saw it, but I heard many good things about it. The premise is roughly that this guy is able to travel through various timelines and find alternate versions of himself. Once he finds them, he kills them in order to absorb their life force. I don’t know if his plan worked at all, Wikipedia didn’t mention it when I cross checked to make sure I had the name right, though it did tell me that the Rock was originally cast for the movie. Huh.

Anyway, the plot roughly indicates that identity can be spread throughout the multiverse, with each person feeding off the same life force. Yes this could open up a platonic discussion, but that’s not where I’m going with it. Instead, I’m going with the idea that a person’s identity can be spread across a litany of places. I read an article a few months ago asking how people define themselves in an era where they can present themselves in various ways immediately thanks to the beauty of social networking. I don’t have the link to the article sadly, but what it said struck a chord with me.

I personally have this blog in which I am sarcastic yet attempt to say something of worth, I have a Facebook on which I post some topics to start debates, yet mostly quote TV and movies. I still have my old Xanga account in which I’m a completely sarcastic and snide college student, and I have a Myspace where 37 bikini clad women a day want to be my friend…and who can blame them.

Beyond that I have my friends from ECCU who know me in a professional sense, my CBU friends who know me as an engaged academician, my GGBTS friends who know me as a disinterested scholar and my church friends who know me as youth pastor and the guy that talks way to fast on stage when the pastor is out. Then there are the purely internet friends who I can believe anything about me that I darn well want them to.

Granted, in my case I’m pretty much always the sarcastic goof off that thinks he knows a lot more than he actually does, yet seems to actually know more than some people give him credit for. But, we live in a society in which it is completely possible to have nine or ten different identities that a single person presents. And, I personally believe that when a person becomes bifurcated to the umpteenth degree, its incredibly unhealthy.

How many times today do we hear about people having to go “find themselves”? That term makes no sense. Because you must be a “you” that is going to find “you” but what “you” are you already?

Next: Media, Hollywood and Identity Disassociation

The White Elephant Gift Exchange (WEGE on the street…i.e. “Let’s get wege tonight!”) has become a holiday tradition. If you are unfamiliar with this custom, it goes as follows:

1) Find something that you do not want anymore
2) Wrap it up
3) Go to Christmas party
4) Put your gift with the others under the tree with disproportionately nice ornamentation when juxtaposed to the “treasures” now laying underneath it
5) Draw numbers for the pecking order of junk taking.
6) Steal the nicest piece of junk…or the 1 nice gift because someone didn’t understand the rules
7) Go home with new junk

Now, I had the pleasure of trying to explain this to a person who is originally from a not-so-western country. The conversation was an interesting one. He asked me the amount of money that we should spend on the exchange, and I said, “No, its not like that…just bring something you might not want anymore, or a gag gift or something”….my friend seemed confused and asked, “So…I bring trash?”. I said, “No…not trash…just something you don’t want anymore”. This concept seemed hard for him to grasp…but he finally thought he got it and brought a Bible from the 1800’s…I tried…oh well….

I realized though…how odd is the concept of “Just bring something you have that you don’t want” to people from the second of third world? Could the WEGE be a more American/Western concept? Can you imagine a missionary in Zimbabwe explaining what the WEGE is to the Zimbabweans? “Just bring something you have that you don’t want” “Um…I don’t have anything….well, aside from AIDs and lice…can I bring those?” “Um…how bout we just skip the WEGE and just go see an actual elephant”

I personally love the WEGE, I think its hilarious, an I wish I was Jewish so I could have 8 crazy nights of WEGE….but I think we should at least stop for a moment and realize what it says about what we are blessed with to have such a surplus of things that we can view some of them as junk that’s good for a laugh…whereas so many people across the world don’t have water, food or shelter…3 of the 4 most important things to survival. The 1st of which is clearly air….and the top 5 being rounded out of course, by a good po-po-po-po-po-poker face.

Topic: Christmas Movies and Essences

Philosophy is funsies. In what other discipline can you use the sentence, “I’m sorry, but your ontological presuppositions leave you in a state where you are forced to affirm an epistemological infinite regress.”? I mean sure you use it every day if you work at Gymboree, but beyond that….

Anyway, another side effect of studying philosophy is that you end up applying the terms, principles and debates to everyday life. This is fun when you are talking with fellow philosophy nerds, but rather a bore at most parties. Then again, at most parties it just fun listening to the inebriated people repeat the word “monophysite” back to you after you use it to describe their inherent use of the phrase “Gimmie one more…” whilst at the bar.

Case in point for today’s seasonal discussion, what makes a movie a Christmas movie, as opposed to a movie that takes place at Christmas? This question started brewing in my head last year when someone said that “Love Actually” was their favorite Christmas movie. I reacted with a bit of disdain for that statement because, let’s be serious…as likeable as Hugh Grant is when singing Good King Wenslease, that does not a Christmas movie make.

In the philosophical world, there is a debate surrounding essence, and what makes a thing what it is. Classicalists tend to think that there is an intrinsic essence to all things that define them as what they are, Nominalists think that essences are projections of universals on the unifying elements of nature, existentialists think that essences are completely defined by the existing cogniscent individual defining reality and purpose as they see fit, and the consperiscists that believe the world is run by an illuminate, Obama was born in Kenya and that we never landed on the moon. This last group is not related to philosophy I anyway whatsoever, but are always good for a cheap laugh.

So, what makes a movie a Christmas movie? Is it something innate, or is it self-defined? Granted there are the hyperspiritual people that will say the only true Christmas movie is the Nativity because is about Jesus. Ok, true….as a Christian I am required to say that (seriously, its in our bylaws), but now that we are done with that, seriously, what defines Christmas movies?

When I watch Elf, or the Santa Clause trilogy (it’s the Back to the Future of Christmas) or Christmas Vacation, I classify them as Christmas movies without a second thought. However when I look at Gremlins or Love Actually and in some cases Home Alone, I don’t necessarily think “Christmas movie” I think, “Movie in which Christmas plays an accidental or secondary role” which translates from nerd to English as, “Movie that takes place during Christmas”

I think the reasoning is that Christmas is central to the plot of the former movies, and the changes in the characters are by products of “The magic of Christmas”, whereas the other movies could take place at another time of the year, or not mention Christmas at all, and I wouldn’t notice a real change to the movie at all. Granted, I can conceive of the Christmas Carol being the Easter Carol, or the only poplar in France, Bastille Carol, and yet I think there is something utterly Christmas-centric about the story. Is it that a person in the story needs to undergo some type of transformation in the movie? I’m not sure….what do you think is the essence of Christmas cinema?