This book was recommended to me and so i asked for a copy for Christmas. Just a quick glance at the TOC lead me to believe this will be an interesting read.

i am curious to know what others think about the findings in this book. are there results accurate in your experience? and more importantly, what do we do about it?

the author, admittedly unreligious, paints a pretty slanted picture i think of this BattleCry group, as evidenced in the lead-in to the story:

“Jesus is really, really [angry] — at Hollywood, at the media, even at most Christians. But BattleCry, the nation’s largest and most radical youth crusade, is recruiting a new generation of Christian soldiers to fight back. Inside the shock troops of the religious right.”

as jaded as this guy is, there is something that strikes a chord with me too. i guess i just wonder if this article is another example of the “liberal” media’s agenda to slander Christianity [i don't really buy into that conspiracy theory by the way] or is there something to his assertion that Christian groups like BattleCry have simply replaced a “secular” culture with one that is no less harmful: fundamentalism, evangelicalism, acquire the fire, promise keepers, etc, etc.

i am not judging these group, just asking the question: what impact is the church having on our culture and society?

something Jesus said to the religious people of His day has been haunting me: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted…. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” [Matthew 23:12, 15]

an article this past month caught my attention, most likely because it included the word “naked” [isn't marketing wonderful?], but it kept my attention because of what it was saying. the opening paragraph read:

“Smart companies are sharing secrets with rivals, blogging about products in their pipeline, even admitting to their failures. The name of this new game is RADICAL TRANSPARENCY, and it’s sweeping boardrooms across the nation. Even those Office drones at Dunder Mifflin get it. So strip down and learn how to have it all by baring it all.” [WIRED]

as i read about this new ideal of transparency in companies i was both shocked and, i have to admit, comforted a bit. it just seems to me that a company that can admit its mistakes, share its secrets, be honest for a change is one that i can trust; a company i might want to do business with in the future.

of course there is the issue of reputation: reveal deep, dark secrets and your rep is down the toilet. it is a double-edged sword to be sure. but even, then, how healthy would it be to get it all out. i think people respect that kind of honesty.

a few years ago i gave a talk about king David and how when he was bringing the ark of God back to Jerusalem after it had been stolen by the enemy, he danced practically naked. he kind of made a fool of himself. his wife, Michal, even told him what a fool he had been, so undistinguished, exposed in front of all the people. David really didn’t care. he lived a transparent life and he was going to dance. a little like the kids in Footloose, the movie.

i totally understand why i took some heat from people when, at the end of that talk, i suggested we all “get naked.” probably not a good choice of words. what i meant to convey was that, of all places, the church should be a place of radical transparency. the church, of all places, should allow people to reveal themselves, the ugliness, the struggles, the craziness, the idiosyncracies.

i have to admit the whole proposition of transparency scares me. i worry about my reputation. and i know what is really there, just below the surface. but maybe this fear is less that of terror and more like the seconds before a bungy jump, or a cliff dive. once you take the leap, you wonder why it took you so long.

it is, hopefully, very premature to begin any eulogies of my father, but i have just been reflecting a bit on his amazing life and figured this might be a good time to share some stories about him. well maybe one, it is getting late and the fire is starting to go down in the fireplace…

WHEN I WAS IN 9TH GRADE dad had all six of us pack up our backpacks and we headed out for a spring break trip to mexico. we had never been and so he thought this would be a good opportunity. of course, the dunham idea of spring break in mexico is not mazatlan or cancun; no senor frogs or margaritaville for us. we get to go “native,” to mexico city. one of the world’s dirtiest, crowded and most impoverished cities.

i can remember landing in mexico city and being overwhelmed: the size, the masses of people [close to 50 million inhabitants if i remember correctly], the extreme poverty [kids by the hundreds homeless and living in the streets], the filth and stench [the waves of diesel fumes would nauseate even the most rigorous of constitutions]. we had seen all this before, but somehow the concentration and sheer volume of this third-world left a profound mark on me. i can remember asking, wondering, why didn’t someone do something? why was there no help? it was if they had given up. as if the city was not even trying any more.

in the midst of all this we still were able to enjoy ourselves, take in some of the mexican culture and a fair amount of the city. we often would find ourselves in out-of-the-way places or riding along in crowded busses or trams. and while it was not always comfortable, convenient or even very efficient for us to travel this way, it did give us the opportunity to feel a little closer to the locals. and we like that feeling.

we had been in the city for maybe one or two days when we found ourselves on a very crowded tram in a less than reputible part of the city. we had all clamored and struggled on board at the last minute with about 20 others and so we were a bit split up. tim and i were together near the back; joe and jon near the middle. up towards the front, standing and clutching the overhead rail was my father. my mother had found a seat mid-tram.

now if you know my father, you know that he is given slightly to hyperbole and over reaction; he stubs his toe on a chair and you might think it had been chopped off for all the screaming and yelling. we all know this about him and so we were not all that surprised when we noticed our beloved dad in the center of a growing commotion at the front of the tram. we were however [also knowing him to NOT be a violent man] quite surprised to see him throwing indiscriminant punches at his fellow passengers.

being somewhat devoted to this man, we pushed our way to the front to reconnoitre the situation. once closer, we could hear him yelling, “sandy! get off the tram! get off the tram! everyone off the tram!”

we were also used to be somewhat obedient so we did; we got off the tram [along with about 10 confused, bilingual mexicans], wondering quite what had just happened. it wasn’t until dad had descended the stairs and caught his breath [it was quite a flurry of fisticuffs] that we learned he had been pickpocketed and the punches were aimed at all who he thought were accomplices to the crime. it was all we could do to convince him that they were long gone by this time and it was pointless to start off running on foot in hope of apprehending the culprits.

saner minds [ours in this case] finally prevailed, but it always impressed me my father’s tenacity, his unwillingness to give up. i think, if we had let him, we would be, to this day, in mexico hunting those pickpockets down. just for the principle of it if nothign else.

i know that one day we all must die. and my father will one day pass into the next life, a better life i am sure. but i hope if i have gleaned one thing from him, learned one lesson from all the years of watching him, following him around the globe, through foreign, sometimes hostile lands, i hope i have learned to never give, to always try, to always hope for a better world, a better life for those around me. and i hope that i have learned to never give up.

“MY FRIENDS, I MUST ASK YOU AN IMPORTANT QUESTION TODAY: Where do you stand on God?

“It’s a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I’m afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three and a half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.

“This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.” [WIRED/14.11; note: read the full article here: not for the weak of faith]

The preceding thought is the lead from an article in a recent issue of WIRED magazine. Needless to say i found it a rather provocative assertion: that faith is a curse, that faith, belief in God not sin or the human condition is the root cause of human suffering, evil and all that is wrong with the world. The foil to faith is, of course, reason and science. The New Atheaism touts that if we will only abandon God, any unreasonable belief in Him, reason will lead us to a better world, a brighter tomorrow.

Of course, any historian easily recognizes the repetition: the Enlightnement made similar promises only to lead to the horrors of the first World War [mustard gas], Hiroshima, Stalinist Russia, etc. Freud has an interesting read on the subject called Civilization and Its Discontents that describes the horrors of a purely technological/rational society. Of course the enlightenment gave rise to the Romantics, like Blake, who revolted against a purely rational world-view, deeming it unliveable. Even a champion of Skepticism, David Hume, realized a totally empirical, rational epistemology left one inextricably mired in solipsism, loneliness.

I don’t really want to dive into that old debate. What really was interesting to me about this article was the amount of evangelical energy there seems to be emmanating from the atheist camp. They are on a crusade for converts, there is no doubt.

To be quite honest i have no beef with that. More power to them. The lesson I take from it has more to do with their tactics. They, like many fundamental Christians, tend to take the approach [implicitly, sort of] that if i belittle the other guy and show him where his beliefs fail, conversion will soon follow. Let’s argue them into our position, to side with us.

In their defense, their postion that the means to truth is through logical argument, pretty much requires they argue with us believers. I kind of feel sorry for them. Arguing just doesn’t work that well, when you are trying to win someone over. I know, i have tried. We kind of tried with the Crusades too. And we are still paying for that one.

It seems to me that the better tack, where it concerns evangelism is love. It is just more practical, ergo reasonable? Maybe the New Atheists should try that.

SENIOR HIT DAY [this poem recounts a tradition we had at my high school where the senior football players got a free hit on a skinny little freshman of their choice. luke mickelson picked me. the deeper issue it addresses is how do we deal with "hits" we take in life? betrayal? disloyalty? jesus took some pretty big hits from those close to him. and i think he did it by just letting himself get hit. he just let it happened, didn't brace or try to protect himself. he just took the hit.]

PHONE BOOTH [this poem came out of a genesis workshop where we were exploring the concpet of grace. the apostle paul maintains that it is the grace of God that, though he is weak, enables him to be strong. i thought that the phone booth, superman's locale for transformation, is a pretty good metaphor for grace, in that sense.]

LEPERS [i wrote this poem as part of talk i did at h2o one thanksgiving. the premise of the story is the band of lepers Jesus healed. only one returned to thank him. the poem kind of extrapolates on the question Jesus asked, "where are the other guys" and implicitly, "why did you come back to thank me?" i think the reason he came back and the power of saying thanks is that it helps us to not grow bitter at the time we have lost being "lepers," being without.]

i forget the context of the story [it is really more of an anecdote], or why i was telling it on a sunday, but this is what i rememeber…

i have a daughter named grace, who just turned four. every night when i put her to bed, we read a bible story, pray and then i will sing her a song or two: usually jesus loves me, jesus loves the little children or country roads [we live in WV after all].

this particular night i asked her what she wanted me to sing. she paused for a moment and then responded “amazing grace.” after a slight pause, she ammended her request.

“and then sing ‘amazing daddy’”

what can i say?

i am curious how other, more seasoned, bloggers overcame this trepidation. how can i expect to adapt to the notion that a part of me is to be broadcast to the world? [i hesitate posting pix of myself or my daughter, for i know the power of photoshop]. and yet, what good is this blog if it is not the real me?

for some reason, the picture of king david, practically undressed, leading a parade to jerusalem, comes readily to mind. risky.

i believe transparency, honesty, is a key element of faith; i believe it is to be a hallmark of our relationships with God and others. but you, i am not sure we have a? relationship, or do we? for me blogging [and mySpace "friends" for that matter] raises some complex issues with repsect to the nature of relationships and community and, ultimately, my ability to be transparent in this forum. 3.

for every teaching series we do i create the visuals [sermon backgrounds, worship backgrounds, etc.]. here are a few of my favorites: