Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

I probably don’t get this for the same reason I don’t get the government apologizing for incidents long past.  I mean, yes, it happened.  Yes, it was bad, and if there was something I/we could do to undo it, I/we would do it.  But I/we can’t.  We can learn from those errors, and we will, but throwing out apology after apology doesn’t do a thing.

I am glad it has meaning for some who have been hurt by Christians, but for me, I want my apology to be lived.  I want to be a Christian that brings credit to the name of Christ.  I want people to look at me and say, “I wish more Christians were like him!”  I don’t know what it will take to be that guy, but I am doing my best to find out.

Real life has definitely crossed over into la-la-land.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like Joss Whedon’s work.  Buffy was funny and fun, and much better than the title or its origin movie lead you to believe.  Firefly and Serenity were triumphs of television and film, I don’t argue that.  But isn’t it a bit of a stretch to think that whatever this man touches turns to gold?

His new series, “Dollhouse” has been greenlit and upped to 13 episodes, and it doesn’t even premiere until 2009.  So clearly the studio thinks it’s not bad.  But how is it that Whedon fans think it’s necessary to begin a campaign to save the show before it even premieres???  How can you save a show that hasn’t premiered?  How can you save a show that has been greenlit and has the support of the network?  A touch fatalistic you think?  I can’t even compare it to anything - defibrillating a guy walking down the street?

From William Lane Craig, research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.

Read the article - it deals with some of the classic arguments for the existence of a god, revised by modern philosophy.

I am more startled by the below quote:

The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that’s not postmodernism; that’s modernism! That’s just old-line verificationism, which held that anything you can’t prove with your five senses is a matter of personal taste. We live in a culture that remains deeply modernist.

I’ve been reading so much on postmodernism that I don’t know what to do with this idea.  I’ll need to think about it for a while.

Hollywood is trying to figure out why marketing approaches like the ones used for The Passion of the Christ haven’t worked with other “faith”-type movies, like the newest Veggietales, The Nativity Story, or Evan Almighty. (Hat tip to Goodmanson)

I have a clue for Hollywood: Christians can smell a rat.

The Passion of the Christ was made by Mel Gibson.  While he may be a closet anti-semite, he made The Passion with passion.  He made that film out of a genuine love for Christ and a desire to tell the world about his story.  This passion came through on every shot.  Some will quibble about the fine details like personifying Satan as an androgynous thing with a creepy baby and bugs crawling about her face, or about the graphic nature of the violence in the film, but taken as a whole, this was a film about God’s overwhelming love for humanity and a filmmaker’s overwhelming love for Jesus.  (It also helped that the movie’s star, Jim Caveziel was a devout Christian as well).

These other films are blatant attempts by Hollywood to make money off Christians.  Evan Almighty, while entertaining for its actors (Morgan Freeman and Steve Carrell) and riding on the coat-tails of the original Jim Carrey vehicle, Bruce Almighty, it was a fairly crappy movie.  Its only Biblical connection was one of light mockery, conveying in its subtext a mockery of the story of Noah, right up to the impossibiilty of a dam breaking in a mountain valley in the Appalachians flooding everything all the way to Capitol Hill.  To think that Christians would engage in this movie in a similar way to The Passion should have been ludicrous from the beginning.

The most recent Veggietales movie should have had a shot.  Veggietales has been a strong Christian brand of children’s entertainment for going on two decades.  What brought this movie down was a combination of two factors: first, the first Veggietales movie, Jonah was definitely in the style of their shorter serials but was not well-scripted and simply wasn’t that good.  This set lower expectations for a followup.  Second, the production compant, Big Idea, was bought out by another company, and with that went the overt Christian, Bible focus.  All subsequent videos produced by them have had Bible verses removed, and relied on the story to create an “inspirational” message instead of a Christian one.  The same was true of The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.  They were great characters, introduced and well loved in the serials, but because the movie had nothing to do with the Bible, Christians simply didn’t see the attraction.

The Nativity Story was the closest to really trying to recapture the The Passion’s market.  It was brought low by several things - first, the production’s lack of passion for the subject.  Second, its cast - the girl who played Mary in fact was pregnant at 16 with her long-term boyfriend.  Christians really find it hard to take seriously a religious message presented by an unrepentant sinner.  (Note: I said UNREPENTANT!  Everyone sins, we all blow it.  The issue is when someone sins then denies what they do is sin.  That person has no moral authority.)  Third, the film really wasn’t a significantly new take on the Christmas story.  Gibson did something with the Passion that had never been done before.  The Nativity Story did not.

There are new, unique takes on Biblical stories that have yet to be told.  The Bible is full of excellent source material for Hollywood to make real money off, and successfuly sell to Christians.  However, the missing ingredient for them is earnestness.  If they want to pull off another Passion, they need a good, unique take, and they need a production team and cast that actually value the story they are telling.  If it’s just a quick buck they are after, it’s doomed to fail.

This hit hard.

Hat tip to Chris Reeder.

The French think the tale of King Arthur is propaganda eh?

Wonder what they think of Monty Python’s version.

It must have been months ago that my oldest was introduced to Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.  Maybe years.  We were staging for our first family Disneyland trip and Cheryl wanted to introduce him to what we’d be doing.  The neat thing about VMK.com is that not only is it a MMORPG style game, it is set up so you are exploring Disneyland at the same time - the most famous rides sights and everything are there.  (Update: looks like they are shutting it down shortly, though there are some resisters…)

One day whilst playing around with that, I noticed a link to something called “Disney’s Toontown“.  I signed Dylan up for it and watched it a bit, helping him to learn the basics.  It was cute but too simple to interest me, or so I thought.

Flash forward a few years.  He’d played it a bit more and Lyndan was now big enough to find it amusing to play his own.  I thought I would make myself a toon and log in.

They were thrilled.

They’d run back and forth between the desktop and me on my laptop, yelling about where they were and “Oh!  There’s a cog!  Let’s get it!”  They would follow my character around like puppies, help me with quests, and in general just love being “a team” with Daddy.  I was astonished.  I think they really enjoyed teaching me how to play too.  Dylan had been playing long enough that he had explored a lot of the areas, and he knew what was allowed and not allowed to non-paying players.

Now I am semi-hooked.  I can’t wait to play again - both because I enjoy it and because they enjoy it with me.

Problem is, I should really be working on my paper…

Just ran into this umm… well, it’s not really a dating site. It is a marriage proposal site. It facilitates arranged marriages, based on the old testament model of bride price.

It is an interesting idea on a number of levels, if a bit foreign to North Americans coming out of the European pattern of marriage.

The bride price concept is not meant to assign a monetary value to women, so much as to establish how much the husband is willing to sacrifice - a demonstration of his commitment and seriousness in pursuing marriage. It was in the past a nod to the expense of raising a daughter, who could not do as much physical work as a boy could, contributing to the production and wealth of the family. Today, this isn’t as true (physical labour is rarely the primary driver of income in families today), but on the other hand, the cost of raising any child has gone up substantially. If you ask around couples these days how many kids they desire, the answer is always a very low number as compared to previous generations. If you follow up with a why question, the first reason is invariably, “kids are EXPENSIVE!” If that is true, then paying a bride’s family makes a certain amount of sense.

The second major area of discomfort is the fact that the site caters to families who are offering their daughters for marriage young. Some as young as 13, though it is unclear if they actually expect the marriage to be conducted and consummated before a reasonable time has passed and legal ages are attained. This brings to mind some of the bad press around the FLDS, and the commune that made the news in Texas, as well as the Bountiful, BC situation. Certainly nobody advocates such nonsense, least of all me. Coercion is probably the biggest issue in both those news stories.

It is a fact, though, that girls are attaining puberty at earlier and earlier ages. With the onset of adult hormones comes adult desires, and the tremendous volume of teenage sexual behaviour is now a fact of life. As Christian parents, who seek to see their children into marriage without having fallen to sexual temptation, we are faced with two choices: teaching children self-control and modelling proper relationships, and supporting them in remaining celibate until their wedding at whatever age (which is also moving later and later into the twenties on average), or finding alternative ways to help our children express themselves sexually - while maintaining God’s will for us in marriage. Practically speaking, that means marriage.

In the mainstream, there has definitely been broad-based support for and creative approaches to the former approach. I have heard of father-daughter balls, and other types of approaches to building strong loving relationships between young girls and their dads. Statistics seem to bear out that the stronger a girl’s relationship with her father, the less likely she will be to seek affection prematurely from young men. On the other side, chastity rings and other ceremonies meant to create and support agreements to remain a virgin until marriage are becoming increasingly popular. The sexual urge is a strong one though in young men, borne out by the entirety of human history. It can be used to drive the young men to prepare, if they believe that they cannot have what they want until they accomplish certain things. There is something to be said for directing boys that way, to prepare for marriage, and to prepare for their future that way.

Every person is different though. Some may find it easier to maintain their virginity and resist temptations while others will find it harder. Paul seems to recognize this in his writings - talking about whether people should get married or not (1 Cor 7:8-9). He also points out that this drive should be given freedom in marriage (1 Cor 7:2-5). Some consideration should be given, in my opinion, to Christian parents endorsing earlier marriages amongst their children. Some will be better served by an early marriage. With rates of some STD infections as high as one in four in the USA, there are serious dangers to not keeping it in your pants until marriage.

Now to consider the negatives to early marriage. First, there is next to no way for teenagers to earn a living wage independently. Sure they could get minimum wage jobs and live in cheap housing, but it would take a lot of discipline to get them ahead, and get them the educations they need to be successful in life. It is possible, but very hard. Most parents support their children financially and in terms of education well into their child’s early twenties. If they are already willing to do this, why would loving parents stop if their child was married?

There is also the maturity factor to consider. I firmly believe that a big reason for the historic rules and customs in cultures around the world that restrict the young from marriage were there is because of the basic fact of life - wisdom comes from experience. There are exceptions, but it is true in the vast majority of cases. Young people make dumb decisions which is why the old almost invariably, are the ones who make the important decisions in culture and society. Respect for elders is a preservative against stupid, rash decisions anywhere. The idea of arranged marriages is premised on this - that your parents because of their experience and wisdom, and their impartiality as compared to the child’s position, are better prepared to make a choice for a life partner for their child.

So is it wise to simply let kids marry younger? Probably not if they are making their own decisions unfettered by wisdom and experience. However, the system that the website seems to support is insulated against that by the tradition of arrangement. People don’t go there to “buy” a girl for their son. They go there to initiate a process of evaluation and examination to see if this is a “good” match. If the two young people have much in common, similar values, similar goals, then there is a reasonable expectation that their marriage can work. As I understand it, once the parents on both side approve of this potential marriage, then the potential couple can commence some kind of courtship to get to know one another and decide if there is the attraction that needs to be there for a successful marriage. Loving and supportive parents will give their children the opportunity to veto the match, so nobody is bullied or pushed into anything. “Arranged” does not need to be synonymous with “forced” or “coerced”.

From reading on the site it also appears that most of the girls listed are consenting to the process. They want to be matched for marriage. Now, as we have seen, this process can be abused, as in the case of the FLDS (if you think that your salvation is based on marriage, you are sorely deceived!) But if the children understand that this is their choice, but informed by all kinds of processes and people who have their best interests at heart, I see no reason why it could not be successful.

So am I in favour of arranged marriages? Mine wasn’t. But there is something desperate, random, and unsafe that comes from the ubiquitous quest for “the one” that has been popularized by romantic writings for the last 400 years. I also think that certain pitfalls that I fell into as a young man, and even while I was dating and engaged to my now wife, could have been avoided had our relationship been guided by such a process. As I understand the process - intiated at the consent of both the son and the daughter, assessed by their parents with the view of long-term marriage, then courtship entered into with the goal of determining for each of the betrothed the suitability of the other for permanent marriage, with the potential for veto of either party, and finalized by a bride price to demonstrate the earnestness of the suitor, certainly seems both practical and efficient.

UPDATE: It turns out the site itself is a fake.  As I mentioned, the site was short on details, and abiguous about when a child can legally be married.  However, I stand by my above comments in the sense that I don’t have a problem with people arranging marriages, assuming that rules of human decency and the guidelines I mentioned above are followed.  Anything else I would have big problems with.

I love the internets.

After all, Og mean different things to different people. For instance: some think of Og as ruthless tyrant, splattered with the blood of his enemies. But me remember a gentler Og: modest and soft-spoken, splattered with the blood of a few close friends.

Hat tip to the Macadamian.

I was reading this book last night, which talked a bit about calling.  It got into what it takes to lead in a church, and one thing it did that I found especially thought provoking was look at the qualifications outlined in 1 Timothy 3:1-3.

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

I like to think I am on the way or arrived at most of that.

• One wife - check.
• Sober-minded?  Well, I am pretty serious most of the time.
• Self-controlled?  Hmm.  Need to work on that.  I think I let myself wander into self-absorption more than I should.
• Respectable?  Well, you’d have to ask around but I think I am getting there.
• Hospitable?  I love having people over, but I think there is a missing ingredient there, in the sense that I don’t do enough to prepare my house to be open.  And I let “things” keep me busy.
• Able to teach - I am getting there I think.  The more I do it the more comfortable I feel in it.
• Not a drunkard - yes.  That is for sure two so far.
• Not violent but gentle - only one person has ever angered me to the point of violence.  It’s been a good ten years since that one occasion.
• Not quarrelsome - I used to be pretty argumentative, but I am slowly learning to rein that in.
• Not a lover of money - I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with that, but even more so lately, I see money as a means to an end.  I think of what can be done with money, not the money itself.

But you know what gets me?  The above reproach bit.  I think it is a call for personal holiness.  Man, I just feel very inadequate in that field.  I don’t pray enough.  I don’t spend enough time in the Word.  I don’t let Phillippians 4:8 guide my thoughts nearly enough.  When I wander off on the internet into “gossip” sites (which are more and more passed off as “news” but that’s no excuse) and junk like that, I can feel it sap my vitality.  It’s actually beginning to physically affect me.  You’d think that would drive me away from it, but oh no.

I do realize that I can’t overcome this stuff on my own, that I need to enlist God in it.  But you know what?  The Bible says flee from sin.  I don’t do that enough.  It also says I actually have to ask for help from him.  That I don’t do enough of.  So it’s my own fault.

I think I’ll quote the Paulmeister.

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Like Paul, I know the answer.  Now if only I would actually take advantage of that rescue more regularly!