You can find out if re-sending that email will really get Apple and Microsoft to give money to that poor little cancer patient child (they won’t) or if Jon Bon Jovi is really dead (that one was funny) or if you really need a facebook copyright disclaimer on your facebook timeline (you do not).
This is why it still burns me up when people quote facts at you that aren’t facts. When people re-post rants from Morgan Freeman that he never said, commencement addresses from Bill Gates (or Kurt Vonnegut) which he never gave, facts to skew your views during an election season that are lies or touching stories about heroic acts that are made up.
But worse… there are the folks who hang onto this stuff like it’s LIFE or something. I’m talking grown-ups. (If you are one of those people and you are reading this, I am NOT sorry for offending you.)
Recently, I heard one of those certain old “facts” about our current president from someone who heard it from their very right-wing conservative pastor at their church, and I immediately retorted, “but that is not true at all.” This individual, rather than engaging me in any kind of further discussion, simply said, “I guess you’re the wrong person to talk about this with” and left it there. (for the record, I am rather conservative myself, but I despise stuff like this.)
Ignorance that you enjoy engaging in and hold onto rather than checking your facts or even questioning whether it might be true or not… is something far worse than ignorance. It’s the kind of stupidity that leads people to demonstrate at funerals against our country using horribly obscene rhetoric, it leads people to believe, for generations, that the color of your skin or the religion you practice or the country you live in or come from determines your value to society and to God, it leads whole societies to commit genocide, it leads people to fly planes into buildings and it leads people to train children up believing things that are not so, raising up future generations of bigots, terrorists, fascists and extremists.
The truth, I PROMISE you… will set you free… but only the truth will. Not some lame approximation of truth, and not some lie that got told so many times that everybody believed it. You might have to google it first…
When your Harry Potter books (and then movies) first exploded onto the scene, many of my Evangelical brothers and sisters got very bent out of shape about the apparently “anti-Christian” themes of witchcraft and wizardry. I confess I didn’t read your books, but found absolutely nothing objectionable about the movies.
Fast-forward to this year, when my son, Charles, who hated to read, decided to start reading the Harry Potter books. I bribed him, telling him that he could only see the movies after finishing the books. As of today, he is almost done with the sixth book (after which we will watch the sixth movie, we watched the fifth, and best, last night), and he’s only 10. Your books have turned him into a real reader. Thanks so much for that!
But that’s not all, Miss Rowling.
The other day at breakfast, Charles started up a conversation with me about how the characters in the Lord of the Rings (he’s seen the movies, he hasn’t read the books yet… gimme a break, he just turned 10!), the Chronicles of Narnia and your Harry Potter books are… well… a lot like the characters in the Bible.
He thinks Dumbledore is supposed to be like Jesus, and “he who must not be named” is like, “the guy down there”.
So, not only is he reading a lot more than most grown-ups I know, but he’s getting a whiff of the “history of redemption” that seems to be flowing through all things. Obviously, it’s a lot more obvious in your final Harry Potter book. I can’t wait till he reads that one!
This morning, we had this short time during church where we found someone we didn’t know and shared how we’d seen God at work, basically.
So I introduced myself to the young couple in front of us and the husband shared about all the fascinating bits and pieces of nature he noticed during this particular part of the season. He’s a farmer (how often do you meet a farmer these days?) and you could just see his eyes light up as he talked about it.
It made me want to drop everything and become a farmer (except I would totally stink at that…).
I hope I can always love what I do enough that somebody else notices…
Some of the things I’ve read the past few hours about reactions to the jury verdict in the Jerry Sandusky trial are, to be honest, disturbing. Cartoons that depict him entering prison, comments shouted at him as he was leaving the courtroom (“Rot in Hell!”). Comments on facebook.
I’d like to suggest that our pity and humanity can extend not only to the victims of crimes like the ones he’s been convicted of, but to the perpetrator himself, not only because his life “as he knows it” is likely come to an end, but because assuming he really committed these horrible acts, there is something sick (as in unhealthy) and twisted beyond the evil that may be in him to drive him to do these things.
I wonder, if we can’t learn to have pity on Jerry Sandusky, can we learn to have pity on anyone…
So… my son can teach us all a lesson or two about sharing.
First… he’s not allowed to just chow down on candy, since we figured out that he’s the type of metabolism that will end up being 800 pounds if he does. So, he only gets a couple pieces out of his halloween/christmas/easter/whatever-is-the-recent-candy-holiday at a time.
So his Halloween and Easter candy lasts him nearly all year. I guess he figured out that he wanted to share it then, and when we have lunch at home and he gets candy after, he has taken to always asking my wife and I if we want a piece. My gut is to say, “No, Charles. That candy is for you, you don’t have to share it.” But I figured out that he may as well learn the habits and blessings of sharing, so lately, I often let him share it with me (hey… I also live for chocolate).
So the other day a friend gives him a couple dollars for ice cream or what have you. What is the first thing he does? He says to me, “Dad, can I put one of those dollars in the offering at church?”
So… every single baseball player in Major League Baseball is wearing the same number today… 42… to honor a truly great athlete and great American, Jackie Robinson. When Jackie first started playing in the Major Leagues, he was working his “day job” in places where people of color weren’t allowed to come watch him play! He truly “broke the color barrier” and I think it’s awesome that his number is the only one retired throughout the entire sport (except today, of course, and except for Mariano Rivera, who gets to use that number till he retires… as the last player to have that number). Jackie was a true hero.
I hope, though, that perhaps we honor some other people with that celebration today. The people who said “I don’t care about skin color, let him play.” The ones who played with him, coached him, hired him, cheered for him… Some of those folks also did a heroic thing.
The other day I was traveling behind someone whose brake lights were on the entire time I was behind them… even uphill. You might know what that means. That means that they have decided that the proper way to operate a motor vehicle with an automatic transmission is to have one foot on the break and one on the gas at all times, so you can approach the operation of the automobile as if it had a manual transmission, where you often have one foot on the clutch and one on the gas.
No doubt this person thinks that this is a sound way to operate a motor vehicle. But based on what? Any conversation with a mechanic will likely result in that mechanic’s eyes going wide with disbelief, saying “Good LORD! Don’t DO that. You’ll RUIN your car!” But they never asked. They made an assumption that resulted in a habit that is likely to eventually result in some incredibly costly (and ultimately unnecessary) car repair bills.
We approach faith the same way. We take a scripture out of context or we make assumptions based on comforting words that we’ve heard from others (who mis-interpreted a scripture or took it out of context) and perpetuate what might end up being really dangerous behavior.
I heard a song on Christian radio this morning (which I occasionally listen to) and in the course of the song, the singer (who is singing to an un-named young person facing identity challenges) makes a promise to the “object” of his song along the lines of “everything will work out for you.”
I turned off the radio and shouted, “That is a LIE!”
Because what if it doesn’t? What if that person ends up in a horrible life because of bad choices they make and everything doesn’t work out for them. It happens to people all the time. You know some of them. So do I. You might be one of them. Sometimes I am pretty sure I am.
You know what they call it when you make a promise like that, that doesn’t really come true…
It’s a little like the line that we always give at the funeral. “Everything happens for a reason.” Really? Is that what the Bible says? Or does it say that God will MAKE everything (even the bad stuff) work out for good for those who love Him? They are not the same thing. We shouldn’t say that they are.
It’s a little like our attitude (sometimes) towards the posts on facebook that end up being scams. The incredible photo of some severe weather that is a Photoshop-generated hoax. The story about Tom’s shoes giving away free shoes. The story about AOL and Microsoft giving trying to give everybody ten thousand dollars. (I try real hard to be super-selective in which ones of those I address, and which I do not… Mostly, I just ignore them…)
When we get those things wrong, it’s not a big deal. But when we insert our own ideas about Scripture into God’s thinking… is that really what we want to do? Continue living with a shallow and incorrect understanding of how God actually operates in creation?
Not too long ago I heard a portion of a sermon by a really well-known very young pastor of a very new and quickly expanding church that is a current “key influencer” in the Christian community. He took a portion of Scripture that talked about God’s sovereignty and turned it into a lesson about our own personal victories. Really? I found myself praying that he had someone in his church or on his staff that could tell him, “Dude, that was off…” (I am omitting details, because I’m still a fan of people who don’t get everything right all the time… like me…)
In the Bible’s book of Job, Job’s friends thought they understood how God worked, and thought they spoke truth into Job’s words. If you read their speeches, they make COMPELLING arguments against Job. God basically answers “Who do you think you are?” Job ends up having to pray that God won’t annihilate them.
It’s probably better to say nothing than to say something that isn’t true. Lord, I pray that I can take that to heart.
I love Jesus and, I’m sorry, but I hate this video. Yes, I know it is a piece of poetic art, but it is misguided.
This video has been floating around facebook and the internet the past few days, and it is filled with so much wrong-headed thinking and bad logic that I felt I just had to say something, for anybody who cares to engage.
I truly do understand when people buckle against the kind or religion that is stark raving legalism, but to lump all religion in with legalism and all legalism in with religion is just reactionary. Much of proper and what James (in the Bible) would call “true religion” does not produce legalism. Much of it produces people who are generous, giving, kind to the poor, even selfless. To put all religion in the same category as legalism seems to me to be… well… legalistic, and incorrect. Jesus was opposed to the ways that the religious establishment of his day added to and twisted the religion of their ancestors, no doubt, but not only did he not hate that religion, but he apparently practiced it well. (You will say he broke the Sabbath. In point of fact, he did not. For instance, telling a man to stand up and walk was not a violation of the Sabbath, but was, rather, a violation of rules that had been added by men who used religion for power, not for spiritual purposes, and that kind of religion is detestable, for sure.)
Our friend starts this “diatribe” with a lie, plain and simple. “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?” Well, then you’d be telling a lie, since Jesus says he came to seek and save the lost, and also not only mentions that he didn’t come to abolish one single shred of the ancient law, but rather, to fulfill it. Did he change some things (like declaring all foods “clean”)? For sure, but he also raised the bar on some of the Law. No longer was murder a violation of the commandment. Now, even hatred is going too far.
“If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars?” Look into history a little more, and it becomes obvious that these “wars” that are being referred to were started by rulers who used and abused religions and religious traditions to further their own agendas, much like the Pharisees abused and twisted what had been excellent and godly religious traditions. Many of the “religious” of those days understood the errors of these ways, in fact. “Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?” In fact, religions and religious have done and continue to do amazing things for the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. The Catholic Church, a huge “religion”, often leads the way in this area throughout the world, and many relief organizations are run by people who would, themselves, qualify themselves as “religious” Christ-followers. Many of those organizations, like Compassion and World Vision and others, are funded by people who give out of “religious” fervor.
A little later our friend says “Now, I ain’t judgin’…” Uh, yeah… he is… and badly, based on bad information, bad assumptions and what appears to be a lot of bad anger, but I think he’s only doing it because it makes for a provocative piece to get attention. Great motives. Bad execution.
The second half of this is a great exposition of Grace and what Christ does, but for me, the whole point is weakened by the vitriol against all religion that keeps seeping in, and people I know and love are applauding this thinking without thinking critically.
Jesus hated hypocrisy. He did not hate religion, in fact, he practiced his own religion, Judaism, right to the very last, celebrating the Passover feast with his Apostles as his last act before being arrested and killed for our sins. We probably need to remember that very “religious people” came together in councils and meetings over the centuries and chose the books that we call our Bible, and those same religious people continue to be the ones who translate it into the vernacular that you now use in a book or on your phone or your tablet or computer.
The fact is, it’s currently trendy to hate religion but love Jesus, and many well-meaning Christ-followers take this tack because it allows them, they think, to connect better with the people they feel they need to reach with the Gospel. In short, the strategy works, so it must be right… right? In fact, doing a wrong thing (like not thinking about what you’re saying when you lump all religion in the same category as all “negative” legalism) is always wrong. Do the right thing, say the right thing… and God will, in fact, honor it.
Religions does not always equal legalism, and legalism is not necessarily always religion. Characturing people in this way leads to the same kind of misunderstandings that the hero of our video is trying to fight against.
I love Jesus, in my own faltering way… and I love and am thankful for the religions and religious traditions of my Christian tradition.
Update: I have removed a few comments. Sorry, but my blog isn’t the place to bash religion. You are welcome to start your own.
My awesome son, Charles and I went out for Ice Cream today. How sweet. (we had a gift certificate, so it cost us all of eight cents –I am not exaggerating… eight. cents.– … here’s my official public anonymous thank you to the wonderful person who gave that to us.)
As we walk away from the counter, we notice another kid about Charles’ age who has the largest banana split ever in front of him. It probably weighed eight pounds (exaggeration alert). And he’s making headway, but both Charles and I know he can’t finish it. In fact, we know that all three of us together can’t finish it. (Charles says as much to me.) About the time we finish, his mom comes over and takes what he can’t eat, and throws it away, saying, “Well, that is the last time, ever, in your life, that you are getting a banana split.” (I don’t remember the exact words, but I promise you, that was the exact sentiment. And she said it twice for emphasis.)
I wanted to scream, slap the mom, and tell the boy, “Buddy, be cool. You WILL be allowed to have ice cream again. Even if I have to buy it for you,” and then I wanted to scream and slap the mom again…
Wisely… I kept silent (not one of my gifts… but I did.)
There are at least two possibilities. One… the mom let the kid have whatever he wanted and gave no guidance. Two… that the kid ordered something too big and got frustrated, and the mom got frustrated. There’s more, but how much do you really want to read tonight… huh?
Either way… something that was supposed to be joy for a kid turned into torment. I don’t normally fault parents but in this case, I have to think… “What the heck were you thinking? Guide your kid. PLEASE! Say… ‘Son, that’s too big, you’re not getting that, here’s what you’re getting’”. Or… if it works out bad, don’t promise the kid that he’ll never have Ice Cream again (no doubt what he heard… even if it wasn’t exactly what was said)… and turn this wonderful joyful experience into a living nightmare… for goodness’ sake…
Charles ordered, under my guidance, something just the right size for him (but was still sugared up the rest of the afternoon… which was actually a great time for both of us. I re-strung a guitar and watched a concert with him. TobyMac… one of both of our favorites.) We had a totally awesome father/son moment and, yes, I had Ice Cream, too. DUH! (yeah, I got sugared up, too. That’s all the world needs. Me and Charles both sugared up at the same time… but that’s another blog post.) That kid went home and sat and stewed and is now afraid of ice cream… maybe afraid of going out for ice cream with the very people who he’s supposed to share the most love and joy with… Scarred for life? I dunno… but, you know what? Maybe…
Maybe it was a bad day for the mom, maybe it was a worse than bad day… (I’ve had some really crummy days lately, so I know of what I speak here.) maybe there is more going on than I know… I recognize that… but for goodness sake… please… do NOT turn ordinary kid-joy moments into nightmares… Just… don’t… Trust me, I’ve made boneheaded parenting moves, and I haven’t been a parent for long, so I’m no expert… but I do know… this was worse than stupid. It was nuts.
Guide your kid… into joy… into good choices… into life… not into fear… especially fear of ice cream. And if he messes up, don’t tell him he can never have a banana split again as long as he lives.
