It has been a few days... 9:29 PM

Yes, it has been a few days since my last post. Moving back to Calgary and throwing myself back into school has made me a bit too busy to write in a context outside of "assignments." That being said, I'm enjoying my "assignments" and am nerding out in regards to all the awesome new books I get to read. Is it wrong that I love the library? I hope not. Either way, I don't really care if it is.

Also, I'm taking a break for about two minutes to say a few things:

1. Cats are funny. The place in which I am living has two cats. Their names are Broccoli and Cheddar. Every morning I wake up and Cheddar assaults me because she wants attention. Broccoli has thus far remained a bit distant. She's the alpha cat, I guess, so I suppose that means I have to put a bit of time in before she lets me pet her. Anyway, just wanted to say that cat's are funny. Especially when they do the worm - I couldn't even describe this in words if I wanted to - and play soccer with their food before they eat. Also, it's funny to watch what happens when you sneak up on a cat and make sudden and loud noises...

2. Books are awesome. Read this book. It may wreck your mind because it's all about ecclesiology and the Trinity and Volf is a tough nut to crack, but I was seriously up until 1:30 AM last night reading this because I couldn't pull myself away. Maybe it'll do the same for you:

3. Read the Psalms daily. In fact, don't just read them, study them. If you want to know what I mean by "study them" ask me and I'll give you some resources. Trust me on this one.

That's all for now. I'm sure I'll have some long winded opinionated piece for all of you very soon.

Oh, and one last thing. On the topic of cats, my friend shared this handy clip with me. It explains the art of "cat massage:"

Eyes to See, Ears to Hear... 9:22 PM

It is beginning to seem as if I am going to be unable to escape the outpouring of cynicism these days in regards to Christians and "how they do things." I thought retreating back to school in Calgary might give me shelter from the proverbial cynicism storm for awhile, but much to my dismay, no dice...

The phrase "Christians and how they do things" might appear as a pretty vague statement, so I'll try and zero in on what I mean.

Essentially, I mean that people - both Christan and non Christian - have become considerably frustrated with the way in which Christians proclaim a certain belief and choose to reflect that belief through the way in which they live their lives (i.e. the choices they make, the Churches they attend, how they spend their time, what they consume, and so forth).

Of course, at the top of the list of complaints is "Church." A close second - or maybe even a tie for first - is the way in which "Church" and Christians are reaching out to people.

I could share anecdotes about the way in which people have expressed their anger and frustration on this subject, but that's not what I want to get into here.

The main point I want to get across is that people are angry, and this anger leads to the resolution to "check out."

Now "checking out" may look different depending on the person and what they believe, but I've found two main ways in which people are checking out (and it usually is related to what they believe about Jesus).

The first type of "check out:" an individual who believes in Jesus, has attended a church for at least a short span of time, but has reached a point in which conventional church just doesn't speak to them anymore. Because they are frustrated with the conventional North American model of contemporary churches they respond by not going. They complain. They take an individualistic approach. Note: this type is not to be mistaken for people who choose to form a "home church" or choose to "do church" in a less North Americanized format. There are many Christians who approach Church in a way that lines up with scripture, but whose model for worship, preaching, discipleship, etc. does not match up with a conventional contemporary Church service. I'm not really here to judge what constitutes a church. What I am here to do though, is say this: 


If you aren't actively part of a community that gathers together to worship Jesus Christ, study scripture, pray, do life together, take communion, and baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I encourage you to find a place where this happens. Most, if not all, of the people reading this blog live in North America. That means you can worship freely without persecution; that means there a thousand different ways to "do church" and a thousand different places out there that honors God and all you have to do is show up and participate!

The second type of "check out:" an individual who doesn't believe in Jesus, may have been to church once or twice, but is looking at the state of the North American Church from an outside perspective - usually atheistic or agnostic - and is doing nothing but laughing, mocking, scorning, spurning, satirizing, condemning, and on, and on, and on.

Here's an example of a second type of "check out" that a friend shared with me today. Just a warning and disclaimer: I don't read this blog, so I can't promise that it's content/language/general perspective on life is something that is valuable or appropriate. I am sharing this link to illustrate the way in which Christians are being viewed by many people today; I am not sharing it so that you become a regular subscriber to that blog.

Anyway, whether it's the first or second type, I have this question that has been nagging me and I can't ignore it anymore: do I get angry when I hear these people speak/read their writing because they are wrong, or do I get angry because they are right?

Honestly, I can't arrive at a solid answer to the question.

In some ways, I think they are "right."

In another way, I think their response to "being right" is completely erroneous and out of line with scripture.

Two verses helped relieve a little bit of my stress and anxiety on this issue today. The first is Jesus proclaiming that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled:

"For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them." (Matthew 13:15)

The second is the Apostle Paul writing to Christians struggling to figure out how to "do it right:"

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." (Phillipians 2:12-13)

Now what I have gleaned from these verses is the following: though there may certainly be many things wrong with the way things are being done today as far as Christianity goes, it is not an appropriate response to "check out." Rather, the appropriate response is to continually be seeking God for an answer to the question "how do we do it right?" If love something or someone, you invest in them or it. You don't check out when things get messy or difficult.

We cannot allow our hearts to become dull. We cannot close our ears and eyes because we are sad that there isn't a church out there that lines up completely with the way you think it should be done. We cannot passively discover the salvation that Christ freely offers; discovering and receiving this gift requires active, pursuit, passion, adventure, fear, and trembling. It is not a journey that is meant to be done alone thankfully. It is a journey that God will guide us on if we only humble ourselves and ask Him to.

If you call yourself Christian, you are called to do everything you can to make Church, the Body of Christ, as strong and as beautiful as it can possibly be. You are not called to take your ball home and sulk because they wanted to play CFL rules, and you only watch NFL; because they call it "soccer" and you call it "football;" because you wanted to be shortstop, and they made you play first base.

If you aren't Christian, I pray that your ears and eyes would be opened to the beauty that is Jesus Christ and the life He has to offer you.

Surrender 2:52 PM

sur·ren·der (redefined):

It is often the case that surrender appears to be our last option. As in: "I will only give in when I run out of options; I will only quit trying to be in charge when (insert circumstance here)."


Could it be that we have a skewed vision of what "surrender" is? I think in many cases yes. We often view surrender as weak, as a shameful admittance that we are not in control.


Here's what's been on my mind lately: maybe surrender is not such a shameful thing; maybe it should not always be viewed as a last resort - at least not when it is God who is involved in the equation of us surrendering.

What is Hip? 5:37 PM

Throwing their hat into the proverbial hip debate ring, funk monolith Tower of Power have a few things to say on the issue:

Evangelical? Pt. 2 5:17 PM

I did a bit of digging following my previous post concerning Christians criticizing the Church. What I uncovered in my interweb archaeology was a site called Hipster Christianity. Thanks, Max, for telling me to check out the site.

Now this site was created by the fellow Robert McCracken who is the author of the one of the opinion pieces I talked about in that previous post. As it turns out, McCracken is an author of a new book called (you guessed it) "Hipster Christianity." You can read the first chapter for free through a link on his site.

After taking a look at this site, I have sort of reached a point in which I throw up my hands and say "what next?"

There's a ton I could say is response to the material found on this site, but I'll just say a few things and then find something else to talk about.

The first thing I will say is that I see in McCracken a sincere desire to help the Church become what it is called to be.

The second thing I will say is that sincere desires do not always result in the most promising of actions. Case in point: there is a quiz on the site that you can take. It will tell you whether or not you are a Christian hipster.

If you want to go even further, you can look at the "anatomy of a hipster" and be presented with a picture of such a "hip" person and ironic little descriptions of what they all consume and why.

Now I just have to say that these site features are reductive, borderline offensive, and degrading.

I guess it doesn't seem out of line when somebody makes fun of a "hipster" because it happens a lot these days. But just because something has become permissive in our society does not necessarily mean that it is right. There's lots of places we can go these days to hear about how jaded "hipsters" are, and then we laugh and feel better about ourselves.

You know, people might also chuckle a bit in Italy if there was a site called "europeangypsy.com" and you could go on said site and view the anatomy of a "gypsy" and take a quiz that told you whether or not you fell into that classification. Why? Because in many parts of the world - especially in Europe where "gypsies" are abundant and in tension with the government and larger society - it's become okay to criticize and poke fun at gypsies and all the "crazy and weird things they do."

Likewise, we look at the hipster and laugh because in North America, it's become okay - in fact encouraged - to poke fun at "hipsters" and all the "crazy and weird things they do."

But just because that happens, doesn't make it right.

Imagine a site called "orthodoxjew.com"... with all the same features of McCracken's site. What would your response be to such a site? "No" you'd say, "that's going too far." And I would agree with you.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?

The minute we allow a particular group of people to be singled out in a culture and begin to blame them for the problems occurring within a certain institution - much like McCracken has pinpointed "hipsters" and "hipster pastors" as a reason for the Church not being what it should be - we are risking entering into a territory in which bigotry and prejudice become unavoidable results of what began as "satire" and a "genuine desire to provide critical opinion."

Some might say that I'm too paranoid here, but I need to respond with the following: even if criticism of "hipsters" doesn't move past the point it is at today, is the way in which many of us our treating and talking about them reflecting the love of Christ?

Is this what Jesus called us to be? People who point and laugh at other people who are lost in the sea of confusion brought on by this fallen and broken world? Cannot McCracken - and people like him - see that "hipsters" are a direct result this messed up world we all live in? Because they are - they do what they do and say what they say as a reaction to the world around them. Whether what results in that reaction is right or wrong, this does not make them any less of a person, or any less Christian, than say, a fundamentalist Christian, a practicing Catholic, or anyone else who adopts a certain way of doing and saying things as a response to the overwhelming weight of this world we live in.

Wouldn't we get further in this world together by loving instead of laughing (at)?

That to say, I'm not arguing that McCracken's book shouldn't deal with the issue of "hipster Christians." Instead, I am arguing that wholly focusing on that one group and ironically/degradingly representing them on his website does nothing but alienate people from Jesus; I'm saying that finger pointing is wrong. Even though - like Bob Dylan says - "I only have so many fingers" to point with, I am no longer going to be a person who looks at everyone else and says "this is why Church isn't what it should be." Instead, I'm going to wake up every day and pray that God will lead me into an awareness of what I can do to make His Church beautiful.

Because if we take what McCracken is doing, and produce a formula, we end up with this: Christian "hipsters" are a problem. Churches trying to be"hip" is a problem. Therefore, take the "hip" and "hipsters" out of the Church and there won't be a problem.

And that's a scary friggin' formula if you ask me.

I thought that Church was meant to be a place where all people - Gentile or Jew, sinner or saved - are welcomed with open and loving arms. To me, there's not a lot of love and acceptance to be found on hipsterchristianity.com

Instead, there's a whole heap of irony, sarcasm, and features that are reductive.

When did Jesus ever approach someone in the Gospels and say "oh man, I have you so pegged. You are a tax collector, you steal money from your own people. You're greedy, you hoard your wealth, and have only the nicest things."

He didn't. Instead, He asked if He could spend time with them to get to know who they really are. He knew that the way they looked, acted, and what they consumed was only the tip of the iceberg; He dived deep beneath the surface and found a whole lot more.

Even if I believe McCracken when he writes in his book that he loves all Christians ("hipsters" or not) in the chapter he provides on his site, I am also going to outright question the fact that his actions at times are telling us otherwise. Because we can say we love someone, but we can also act like we don't love them at all.

And I just have to quote this excerpt from his book. Talking about how Church was transformed in the 90s, McCracken writes:


"And in church itself, services were becoming completely different from the hymn-via-organ styles I grew up with. We started having guitars, drums, wireless mics, and bongos, and people began to dress like they were at a pool party. Church became entertaining, and people I once thought to be the world’s worst sinners were increasingly welcomed with open arms. This was both a good and bad thing. People coming to church out of their own free will? Always a good thing. But what was it about church that was suddenly so appealing? This was what troubled me." (11)


I have to draw one sentence out of this quote in case you missed it: "Church became entertaining, and people I once thought to be the world's worst sinners were increasingly welcomed with open arms. This was both a good and bad thing."


Sinner's being welcomed into Churches with open arms is never a bad thing, always a good thing. End of story. Disagree? Look at the Gospels, look at Jesus, and you can't argue anything different.

For those who might see this as a piece focused only on McCracken, I will say this: I am not focused on him, so much as I am on people like him - and there are lots - who call themselves evangelical Christians and are so quick to criticize others and their way of doing things. In this particular context, it is "hipsters" who are getting criticized and it is people like McCracken who are doing the criticizing. I used to be part of this critical group, but now have to check out and seek a different way to contribute to the Body of Christ.

And my conclusion out of all of this is that we need to be very careful. Right now, we are at a point in which people aren't getting too ferocious and divided about this topic. But what happens if we allow the lampooning of one specific "type" of Christian to continue without any sort of discussion around why it is happening, and should it be happening in the way that it is? Right now, sites and books like this might ruffle a few "hipster" feathers. With time, those feathers might take flight, though, and those "hipsters" - who were, just like you and I, created in God's own image and likeness - might simply say "I'm done" and walk away from the Church.

This is not something I want to happen.

Author's note: the reason why I keep putting the word "hipster" and its variations in quotations is because I feel to write it without quotations is to contribute to the ongoing transformation of a word in our society that for now, has reached the status of "mysterious outcast, deplorable existentialist youth." If we keep using this word without quotations, however, who knows what it will mean in a year or two and what that meaning will implicate...

The Book of Genesis Illustrated! 11:21 PM

I think summer is a great thing. Why? Because my reading list gets a bit of breathing room and I am allowed to discover and then read awesome books like this.

I suggest this "graphic novel" or "comic" - depending on how you would choose to describe such media - as a read for anyone who enjoys it when people take on the daunting task of illustrating the Bible. 

Note: This is where you can ask me about the awesome 1980s "picture Bible" I also found this summer (if you haven't heard about it).

Anyway, Robert Crumb, who is also of Fritz the Cat fame, meticulously put together this comprehensive graphic and textual representation of the Book of Genesis, and has ended up with a pretty interesting piece here. I urge you to check it out.

Evangelical? 5:47 PM

Over the past week I've encountered quite a few distressing articles in the media. Whether it was in newspapers or on blogs, one thing was being made very clear to me: some people have become very critical of and frustrated with the Christian Church. 

Wow, big surprise, right? 

In reality, no. This is not the first time people have been frustrated with the Church and have vocalized it any way possible.

That being said, what did surprise me was the Church, and those who attend it, were being criticized for things that broke outside of the usual "Church slams" I've seen in the media and secular world before. Though there was a bit of talk about the usual "dry, rule driven, guilt inspiring" aspects of Churches and Church communities, these articles didn't seem to focus on those usual points so much as they were did on something else: the apparent hypocrisy of Christians today who say they follow Jesus, but don't actually reflect who Jesus is and what a life of discipleship actually looks like; the way in which many Churches are attempting to bend and contort themselves so that they fit with "this world" and seem cool. This article in The Province is a good example. 

The second thing that really surprised/scared me was a lot of the criticism was not being put forth by atheists. Instead, the Church was being openly, and harshly, criticized by people who refer to themselves as "evangelical," or people who are in the public eye, have influence, and known to be Christian (Anne Rice, as seen in the article above). Also, have a look at this opinion article that I was directed to by the "Mars Hill Church Blog."


Now first off, it was rightfully pointed out on the Mars Hill Blog that Mark Driscoll has never preached sermons with those titles.


Secondly, although some of the critical points brought up - as I mentioned before - are surprising in that they are both valid and atypical of the usual Church lampoons I encounter when people get going on "why I don't go to Church," many other points sorely miss the mark of what the Body of Christ stands for today.


I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. The fellow in the Wall Street Opinion Article speaks pretty harshly about the fact that many Churches are now speaking openly about sex in sermons. He argues that this is a bad thing, because, according to him, it is illustrating a feeble attempt to boost attendance numbers with shock and awe tactics.


Of course, there are always going to be people who use "racy topics" to attract more people, but saying that the only reason why Churches are talking about sex is because they are trying to be "culturally savvy" is completely wrong.


Why is such a statement wrong? Because for too long, the Church has tried to dust the issue of sexuality under the carpet and not talk about it.


The truth is this: pastors are talking about sex because it needs to be talked about. 


The reality is this: if we aren't taught about sex in Churches and what constitute's God's image and plan for sex and relationships, there are countless people and things outside of the Church that are lined up just waiting to
"teach us" about what sex is and when and how it is meant to happen.


So that's my first point: Maybe it's not all shock and awe; perhaps for the first time, we Christians are allowing people in the Church to encounter and deal with issues that they are struggling with in a way that is supportive and helpful. Yes, there might be a few who talk about sex to "be cool and relevant," but that's between them and God - not for us to condemn. Would you rather have it that we don't talk about sex and let people fend for themselves? I sure wouldn't...


Second point: is it wrong that a Church decides to incorporate different styles of music in their worship services? Doesn't the Bible, and the God who created this world, invite creativity, diversity, and uniqueness? Why should we always stick to "one way" of telling God we love Him? Whether we are telling Jesus we love Him with indie music or an organ and a hymn book, the truth is: we are still saying we love Him. Again, don't let the few "cool hunters" cause you to condemn a far larger number of individuals who have creative gifts and passions and want to use them to seek, find, and worship God.


So that stands as my rebuttal to some of the inaccurate accusations made against the Church.


The second thing that scares me is this: the people doing the criticizing call themselves Christian, are doing nothing but criticizing. Sometimes their points are valid, sometimes they aren't. But whether or not a point is valid, neither article offers any sort of solution to the problems they so harshly present us. Instead, they leave us with two choices: either stop going to Church altogether (like Anne Rice) or  search for what is referred to as "real' - and I quote McCracken in the Wall Street Journal: "As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real."


Interesting solutions on both accounts. 


Completely nihilistic and unproductive.


Question: what is "cool" and what is "real?" Where do I go to find a "real Church?"


Example of how the cool vs. real argument is broken down when we think about it: last time I checked, it was far more "real" than it was "cool" to openly talk about sex both in and outside of the Church walls, and say that when it happens before marriage it is wrong. Telling people this is not typically viewed as "savvy" and "relevant."


So the problem to me, doesn't wholly rest in the fact that these Christian individuals are criticizing some of the questionable aspects of the way in which Church is being done these days. Criticism is a good thing, but when we start and end with criticism and fail to move past that, we are doing nothing more then looking at a horse that is half dead and delivering the kill blow - then we continue to knock it around a few more times just for good measure.


Instead, why don't we look at the wounded horse, and try to heal it? Why don't we look at its faults, and seek to strengthen the parts that are weak?


While the Body of Christ may appear weak to some - even people who refer to themselves as "evangelicals" - there are many who are willing to receive the Spirit of Jesus Christ and do everything they can to make His love and grace apparent.


"Are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Mark 14:37-38)


Are we being tempted into falling asleep? Can all we do is criticize? In many cases yes. Why? Because it's easier to fall asleep and dream about what God's Church can be than it is to wake up and do what we can to make those dreams a reality.