A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Donald Miller’s latest book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a dangerous book. Do not read this book unless you are ready to radically alter your life. Donald wrestles with the idea of editing his life for the script of the Blue Like Jazz movie. What would it look like to edit our lives? If we could take our story and turn it into the thing that movies are made of, how would we live?

This idea is so incredible to think of. Don takes us through his process of creating a story from his life that is work putting onto film. The transformation from sitting on the couch watching TV, to hiking the Inca Trail and riding a bike across America. Using the elements that go into a good story and applying them to his life, Don shows us what a good story can be. He shows us not just the impact it will have upon our own lives, but the intoxicating effect on those around us.

In the book there is one story in particular that really affected me. One of Don’s friends had a daughter who was living a poor story. So the father decides that their family will create a story that she will want to be a part of.

This book is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to live a better story.

The Microwaved Life

So last night I was at a friend's house having dinner with a group of people. We had just finished dinner and were sitting around the table discussing a certain question that had come up: "Why are you still a Christian?" Now I could write books on that question and the implications and answer(s) to it. But that is not the purpose of this post. Throughout the conversation, one of the guys was talking about the difficulties of living as Jesus wants us to. He made a wonderful, simple, yet very profound statement: "Why can there just be like a microwave for this?"

How wonderful is that statement? We go through life doing our best to follow Jesus. We know that we cannot truly attain any holiness on our own, but rather we have to rely on God. It's a long and difficult process. Somedays I just wish there was a microwave for this life.

I started thinking about that statement. And it's completely clear why there is no proverbial microwave. Have you ever heard Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pockets Stand up bit? He talks about how you are always excited when you put the hot pocket in the microwave but feel like death afterwards. It's really funny, because it's true. Microwaves just destroy everything that you put into them. The destroy all good nutrients instantly with the incredible heat they put out. The only thing that is left after 2 minutes is a soggy (the crisping sleeve never really works) nuclear hot, carb and "meat" disaster area with cheese spilling out of one side. Microwaves are fast, but they ruin everything that goes into them.

I'm pretty sure that's why God doesn't microwave our lives.

God wants to grow us into incredible people. He loves us like we could never believe. He wants to slow roast us. I was watching a show on the Food Network, I can't remember what it was now, but they would slow roast whole halves of pigs in a smoker for 18 hours. Then you can literally pull the pork off the bone with your hands. It is so soft and juicy. It makes some of the best barbecue in the whole world.

That's how God wants our lives to be. He slow roasts us for a lifetime. He constantly makes sure that the right temperature is used. He tends the pit, lovingly knowing that we are truly something worth all this time.

So lets all wait for God's timing in everything. He is slow roasting us so that we come out perfect, sure, it takes a lot longer, but this way we won't end up with cheese spilling out through our sides.

Grace and Peace

Tarantino's Inglorious World

Disclaimer: Before I begin this post you should know that if you read past this intro paragraph there will be spoilers. So if you have not seen a certain Quentin Tarantino movie about WWII and have a desire to see it in the future, come back to my blog after you have seen it. I really encourage you to read this, but I do not want to ruin the movie for anyone. That being said...

Thursday night I went to the midnight showing of a certain Quentin Tarantino movie. It was an interesting movie set in an alternate world where Redemptive violence is not only not a myth, but it is the best way.

The movie is set during WWII. It begins with a man hiding a Jewish family at his farm. An SS officer comes to his house and eventually brutally murders the whole family. One daughter escapes however to play a large part in the movie later. The Nazi officer was laughing and having a generally good time doing his duties. So from the very beginning you are instilled with a new and passionate hatred for the regime and especially this officer.

Enter the "Basterds" [sic]. This small company of (largely) Jewish American soldiers' sole job is to do to the Germans what they have done to the Jews and other people who have been brutally murdered by the Nazi Regime. They would kill them in brutal cold blooded ways including one member of the group nicknamed (by the Nazi's) "The Bear Jew" who had a particular affinity for a baseball bat. Their methods were very specifically designed in a manner that would strike fear into the Nazi's and they did a particularly good job with certain theatrics they performed (i.e. the Bear Jew would be in a tunnel where you could not see him but you could hear his baseball bat knocking against the concrete with the knowledge of what was to come being slowly and methodically tapped into the head of the soon to be victim).

All of this was to be expected in the movie however. But what was truly hard to see was that in this world (created by Mr. Tarantino) is that this redemptive violence proved to be truly redemptive. In the movie there are actually two plots to kill hitler and all 4 heads of the Nazi Regime (thus ending the war) that are planned by two different parties but at the same time and place. The first is by our Jewish girl (Shoshanna) who survived the initial scene of the movie. Shoshanna has now taken the french name Emmanuelle Mimieux. Through a series of unfortunate turned fortunate events she inherits a cinema. And again fate moves to create an opportunity for her to host a movie showing for all the high officers in the Third Reich. She concocts a plan to lock them into the theatre and subsequently burn it down. At the same time the British OSS find out about this event and concoct a plan of their own. They will use Pitt's special little band to infiltrate the gala and blow it up.

Well after several hiccups in the plan it all comes together. This scene is more violent than most scenes I have ever seen. The theatre explodes into flame with the backdrop of Shoshanna's laughing face projected onto the smoke. Dynamite is going off. People are screaming and the Soldiers from Pitt's unit are shooting wildly into the crown with machine guns. Their eyes burning with the hatred and blood-thirst of the deaths of millions of people in them. They use whole clips on the Führer himself until he is just torn to shreds. Though these men are shown to use inglorious methods they pay off in a "glorious way." The movie ends with the war ending at that point. D-Day was not necessary and millions of lives are saved by this violent plan.

Well that was in Tarantino's world. And I thank God that this world is different. You see in history there were some 15 assassination attempts on Hitler's life. One in particular illustrates my point the best. Dietrich Bonhoeffer the great Christian author and theologian was actually a part of the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life (recently made into a movie called Valkyrie). This attempt used a bomb and the bomb actually went off. It killed 4 German high officers but Hitler himself was barely hurt. This attempt actually spurred Hitler on to more cruelty. He even brought Mussolini to the spot to show him how God had protected him from such a close threat (the bomb was mere feet away but moved behind a heavy table leg). Hitler was more convinced than ever before that God was protecting him and his mission. Violence galvanized violence. As Shane Claiborne put eloquently in his book Jesus for President, "Another attempt to pick up the sword went haywire, not only fueling further bloodshed but costing our brother Bonhoeffer his own life as he was executed by the Nazis. Once again the cross lost, and the devil laughed."

Jesus came to this earth to end violence and injustice. He did it however not with more violence as he very well could have. Instead, he showed us all that there is a third way. This way was to use non-violence to end the cycle of violence. He sacrificed himself so that we could be saved from future death as well as from violence that we commit here on earth. Jesus' way is truly glorious.

So often we try to justify violence and pass it off as a tragic but necessary part of the fallen world that we live in. But Jesus came to proclaim a new way. We don't have to live like this. It's beautiful and effective for true change. Look at the example of Matin Luther King Jr. and the difference that his non-violent practices made in the world.

So I challenge you to live differently. Do not be a part of the world that Quentin Tarantino has created. Live in the kingdom of God, in this world but not of it.

Grace and Peace

A Terrible Epiphany...

Tonight I was sitting in Starbucks reading as I do on most nights. I am reading Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion when I suddenly had a terrible epiphany: The New Atheism is our fault.

The New Atheism movement - led in part (de-facto) by professors: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens - is an evangelical form of atheism that is a departure from the atheism of the past. For most of history, those who do not believe in God have simply not believed in God and let those who do, believe what they wanted to believe. Today however that is not the case. We are seeing them now move into an evangelical wave that wants to convert the world into no-longer accepting God.

At first look this seems peculiar. An evangelical (in nature, not conservative belief-structure) Christian makes sense. I want to share my beliefs with those around me (and the world for that matter) because I have found salvation. The world is broken and I know the answer and the redemption. But why would an atheist care to want everyone else to believe as he or she does? What is appealing and worthy of proselytizing about believing that this life is the only thing we have? Well they have a few other answers for this, but one in particular came to me tonight in a terrible flurry of clarity:

The Gospel is no longer good news.

Now, before you decide that I am a heretic, listen to what I mean by that statement.

Christians today are known (most popularly) for many things including: the crusades, hating homosexuals, and blowing up abortion clinics. The men and women preaching the gospel of rationalism and atheism are trying to save the world from the intolerance and hatred that "Jesus' followers" are inflicting upon our world. When you see it this way, it makes perfect sense that they are evangelistic. Why wouldn't they want to spread this?

When Jesus spoke of his followers he said that they will be known by their love. (John 13:35) Why is this not what we are known by? We have turned the gospel into something that it is not. Now, obviously we cannot change the past. The crusades will always be a huge scar on Christianity that we cannot change, but we do not have to continue in our ways.

Imagine what the world would be like if all Christians truly followed Christ. The Bible repeatedly tells us that what God requires is: To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8). What if we loved? The world would be a different place. If we defined our lives by caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt us. (James 1:27) That's truly good news.

If we were living like this, perhaps Richard Dawkins and his colleagues would join our little revolution of love, or if nothing else, pat us on the back for doing something good in the world. There would be no reason to evangelize atheism. What would they be rebelling against? What would be upsetting about people changing the world in Jesus' name?

So, though I don't think they will ever read my little blog, I want to apologize to Mr. Dawkins, and Mr. Hitchens, and Mr. Harris: I am sorry for all the terrible things that have been done in the name of Christ. We have messed up. I hope that you can begin to look past the things that have been done and look to the future and what we can accomplish. I hope that you will see the love of God in us.

I say all of this because I do not think we will ever find the perfect "proof" for God. Or perhaps amass enough evidence that it is impossible for a rational person to not believe in God. So why don't we try love? Let's start loving as Jesus did and commanded us to love. Let's see if that can have an impact. I believe that this is truly the only way that we can change people's hearts. That is the proof that the world is crying out for.

Grace and Peace.

The Great Dictator...

Who knew that Charlie Chaplin was epic? This is an unbelievable and profound message by a comedian who almost never spoke. Charlie Chaplin made this in 1940. He had identified the true evils of the Nazi regime before America ever decided to do anything about it. He showed us that the injustice was not entirely in the deaths that were being caused, but it was in the dehumanization of everyone involved. The Nazi's themselves were being dehumanized by their machine-like devotion and the things that they were forced to do. At the same time of course there was dehumanization of the people that were oppressed by Hitler and his regime. This video is just wonderful. I had to pass it along...Grace and Peace.

Jesus was in the student center...

The hallways of my conservative Christian college - which is currently constructing a $20,000,000 new chapel building - are currently stained with the smell of cigarettes and poverty.

Let me explain, A Meijer store is opening almost across the street from the college that I attend. The county in which we are located has one of the worst unemployment rates in the state and the depravity and poverty are evident. The new store will be offering hundreds of jobs to both students and residents of this county. Our school agreed to be the location for the mass interviews that are happening for this store. Over the next few days the store will interview more than 1000 people for these positions. The people who are filling the hallways are surprising in many ways. They are first noticeably different than 95% of the student body here. The tuition at the school is nearing $30,000 per year and most of the people in this snaking line of people are not only unemployed but even while employed, were not making that much in a year.

Most of us here at this school have never lived in any sort of poverty or even what it is like to be a part of even the “lower class” in America. (I will abstain from discussions of what Poverty is for now, and believe me I know that $30,000 is not that terrible a salary, unless it is accompanied by the more than $100,000 debt that many students and families accrue at this school.) The second reason that these people seem out of place is their age. Many of the people standing in this nearly endless line are well over the age of retirement or at the very least above a minimum wage job such as this.

The tragedy of this is that people who were promised pensions for their many years of hard service are not receiving them either because of the fund no longer existing or that they were laid off. The others in the group are Mothers and Fathers and Aunts and Uncles who lost careers because of the squalor that is our current economy. They are now forced to take a job that high school and college students are the usual recipients of. The last demographic that could be seen in this group were those who have been driven all the way to homelessness, and were looking for a way out of a system that had (and still has) everything moving against them.

Now the really sad part of this is that these people were being stared at by so many of the students that passed them on the way to Chapel or to lunch. (As an aside, I think it’s beautiful that, though it has become so easy to remove ourselves from the “unsavory” parts of town and to see the poor and homeless as something far away, God brought them to our doorstep this week.) There was this general feeling throughout the hallway that “these people do not belong.” But the beautiful thing is that God had some teaching in store with this. This week is “Missions Week” in chapel and there are missions reps in our student center for all sorts of Global and domestic missions.

It is perfect that in these days it can be seen by all at the school that we do not have to travel thousands of miles to reach a need. There is a mission field right here only miles from where we live, and for a few days in our midst. But then we are confronted with the dilemma of what to do about this.

How do we proclaim a good God in a world that has good reason to believe otherwise?

Well the first thing that we need to do is to form relationships. When we look at these issues as issues then they are distant and abstract. But when we think of poverty and are reminded of friends of ours who are stuck in poverty, then suddenly poverty is not an idea, but it is a person. It’s so much easier and useful to help a person than to attack a “problem” or issue. I don’t know where you come from or what your background is, but we could all use some people in our lives who are not like us.

I guess in the end that’s all I’m trying to say. If we can expand "our people" to include those unlike us, I don’t think we’ll have to be told to move into action. I believe that we will do all that we can to help our friends. And maybe next time there is a line of people waiting for their chance, we won’t stare, but we’ll do something about it. Because our friends are in that line... because Jesus is in that line. Grace and Peace.

The Elephant Men...

So we watched the movie The Elephant Man in my Philosophy and Theology of Film class last night and I was heartbroken. That is such a beautiful and tragic and just plain amazing movie. For those of you that don’t know, the movie is based upon the life of a real person named Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the movie) who had horrible deformities all over his body. He was nicknamed the elephant man because they say he looked like an elephant, and his mother had been mauled by an elephant when she was 4 months pregnant with him. His life was of course a living hell because of his deformities and he was actually a sideshow freak in the circus for many years. Well eventually a doctor finds him and takes him in to the hospital. The doctor knows that there is nothing he can do to physically help the condition of John, but he tries to give him a more dignified life. At first everyone assumes that John’s brain is in about the same shape as his body, which one character actually comments: “God, I pray he’s an imbecile” because he can’t imagine what it would be like if that man was cognizant for all the ridicule and hatred that he received. The doctor soon realizes however that John is a (somewhat) cultured and smart man. From this point we see the progression of John from being (seen as) a freak, to him becoming a popular guest of many people in high society in England. Throughout the rest of the movie there are people who continue to treat him like absolute trash and I wanted to cry at times. The real hard part came however when my professor asked us “Who are the Elephant Men in our lives?” At first I was convicted by this and then it really hit me: It’s easy to feel for people like the Elephant man, or for the poor and homeless, because their need is easily perceived (once we look through all that extra tissue and skin) but those aren’t our Elephant Men. We are to love those people, but we are also to love those that are hard to be around. The “cool” guy who is really just a jerk, he needs love as much as anyone. The Risk Management lawyer at my college. I could think of plenty more but you get the idea. The Elephant Men of the world aren’t just the marginalized, but they are also those people that we generally don’t like, even if it’s for good reason (at least in our minds). Let’s remember to love our neighbors and our enemies. Well everybody should see the movie, it’s great. Grace and Peace.