Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

From Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (click the link to look at Amazon.com and find out more about the book - if you buy it I get a slice of commission!  Hint hint.):

The calling to seek first the reign of God and God’s justice means orienting our public deeds away from imposing our moral will onto the social fabric and toward giving tangible experience of the reign of God that intrudes as an alternative to the public principles and loyalties. (p. 109)

Efforts like Focus on the Family to influence public policy would seem to be beyond the purview of Jesus’ mandate for us, his church. FOTF do a lot of wonderful things to support and encourage families, but preaching condemnation to secular America doesn’t seem to be doing much good - in fact, it works against the gospel as people associate “impositions” with all Christians resulting in doors closed to the gospel.

I think as individuals and as people we have the right and duty to declare what we would have of our government, within the framework of rights and responsibilities that the government is there to deal with - whether it stems from our religious beliefs or not. However, I am not sure to what degree we should be acting as organizations and lobby groups for certain political ends.

Our goals and aims should be different.

Something to think about.

Whilst meandering through the many lists of Cracked.com (not recommended reading if you don’t like coarse language, but for trivia nuts like myself, quite interesting), I encountered this little bit on a band whose lyrics seemed disturbingly religious for a goth-pop act.

Christian rock ranks right up there with Buddhist action movies in bad religion/entertainment combinations. It’s therefore no surprise that, since becoming popular, Evanescence have tried to distance themselves as much as possible from their murky religious origins. Although the band strenuously deny that they have ever considered themselves a Christian rock group. It’s no secret that its Christian members were once happy to use Christian radio stations and Christian retail outlets to shamelessly whore out their Christian influenced music. Just don’t call them Christian rock, OK?

Became famous because…
Depressed teenagers the world over have managed to find inspiration in the faux-gothic, metal-lite of Evanescence. Admittedly, it inspires most to mope around and be even more miserable than usual, but at least it’s making a difference. Lead singer Amy Lee, seems to account for a large part of their popularity, although in the eyes of most horny 15-year-old males, her vocals take a back seat to the fact that she was recently voted one of the hottest women in rock (clearly, some kids have a thing for Lily Munster).

Since rising to prominence in 2003, the band has sold a crapload of albums and picked up several prestigious awards (as well as a couple of Grammys), proving that you don’t really need to be happy to be successful.

Became famous despite…

If there was an award for the rock star most likely to have his head flushed in the toilet by other, much cooler rock stars, then it would almost certainly go to former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody, who said, “The message we as a band want to convey more than anything is simple–God is Love”.

While the sentiment behind this statement is commendable, it doesn’t exactly conjure up your typical rebellious rock star image of someone who bites the heads off bats or urinates on the audience. However, when you hail from Little Rock, Arkansas and are faced with the challenging task of trying to peddle gothic-influenced pop music to a population more interested in dueling banjos, some kind of marketing strategy is probably necessary.

Evanescence seized the large Christian market to flog copies of their demo CD, Origin. While not exactly in the Stryper league of hurling bibles into the crowd, they were more than happy to run with the Christian angle, as long as it garnered them an instant fan following. Of course, as soon as it became clear they could sell records the normal way, they dropped the Christian thing quicker than a flaming bag of dog poo.

The cross-pollination  of Christian music and pop has always been a fascinating process to watch.  From Amy Grant to bands like Evanescence, to the rumoured Christianity of Creed, to the short-lived mainstreaming of Jars of Clay, it doesn’t seem to end.  Some acts, like Evanescence, begin as Christian acts.  They go mainstream and to varying degrees downplay their origins.  Others begin with a mainstreaming and are marginalized because they never renounce their faith enough to appease their marketers, like Jars of Clay.  As a Christian, I wonder to myself, how much pop stars really renounce their faith, and how much is “positioning” but then stories like Scott Stapp’s escapades with Kid Rock come along and I wonder if they were ever saved at all, like this article seems to imply about Evanescence, suggesting they just used the Christian market to launch their careers.

But then again, questioning someone’s salvation is never a good pastime to dwell on.  It is God who judges.  What I am responsible for is myself, and dwelling on what is good and pleasing to God.  Sometimes there are wonderful messages conveyed by secular music.  Sometimes there are wonderful messages conveyed by Christian music.  I try to let music stand on its own merits, though the longer I live, the more I am realizing that while some music is “good” musically, the message of the lyrics can be very bad for your heart.  I try to stay away from that kind of music now.

I am going to get real flaky here.  This is complete speculation.

• The weekend I have my first preaching assignment, my wife gives birth.  (Birthing a calling to preach?  Thanks Jason.)
• After years of having no allergies to food, I suddenly develop a bunch in the last 6 months.  Most specifically to milk and cheese (cheese is a passion of mine).
• The only cheese I can now enjoy?  Sheep’s Milk.  (Get it?  Sheep’s milk?  Lamb of God?  Feeding on the Lamb of God?)

I dunno.  Funny coincidences.

As you were.

The pyromaniacs talk about legion, and point out the real source of fear in this little 1st Century vignette.

And it ain’t the demons.

It has now been accepted.  In point of fact, it was accepted last week, the day after I last posted.  However, the rest of the week was lost in a quagmire of competing demands, lack of sleep, and pecorino romano.

This week, my goal is to get the interview questions knocked off, as they need to be submitted for ethics review before I can use them.  Deadlines are beginning to loom, so this needs to be in ASAP.

There are two things I am hoping to gather from pastors and church planters in the target communities.  The first is  what they see as the greatest challenges in their particular context.  The second is solutions they have used to address these problems.  Perhaps a third area of questioning will be what resources have been made available to them that they felt were helpful.

Now to phrase them.

I have submitted a thrice-edited grad essay proposal now to my seminary and am waiting on approval. I think it should come pretty quickly, then the real work begins.

It is already February, and it sounds like I will need to get approval from the TWU ethics review board for some interview questions. This could mean I won’t be able to do the interviews until March. However, I can focus on the rest of the paper in the interim, and then hammer out the interviews and slot them in before the March 25 deadline. I need to have a draft in by March 25 for review so that I can make changes if necessary before grad in April.

If I don’t make the deadline, I won’t graduate this year. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I am still hopeful it is possible.

Shake Hands with the Devil was released to DVD last week.  It is based on the autobiographical book by Lt. Gen Romeo Dallaire, now a sitting Senator in Canada.  I had been anticipating its release since we were in Rwanda in 2006.  The movie was being filmed in Kigali while we were there.  A friend of ours was actually cast as an extra for several scenes.

It is my understanding that it was filmed by a Canadian company, which makes it one of the few examples of Canadian cinema that I have actually enjoyed.  But more on that later.

Roy Dupuis as Gen. Dallaire was uncanny.  Not only does have more than a passing resemblance to the man, but from the very first scene, a cut of Dallaire in a counselling session, where only one question is asked and is not answered until the end, “Do you want to live?”  The depth of inner turmoil and struggle conveyed through his silent visage had me riveted through the rest of the movie.

The genocide that occurred in 1994 in Rwanda is something that I think everyone should be more aware of.  It has so many lessons to teach us even today about how we allow the media others to tell us what is important and what is not.  It illustrates how little intervention is necessary in many hot-spots around the world to actually save lives.  And it stands as a finger of condemnation to the world of how callous we can be when the blood being spilled is “not our own”.  It is all our own.  It is humanity’s blood, no matter the nation, no matter the reasons for conflict.

But perhaps the most important reason in my mind for this reccomendation is the story of Dallaire himself.  Here was a man who never really knew where he was going, and was never given the resources to do anything to help.  He was blocked at every turn with procedure and red tape and was rendered a nearly helpless witness to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents.  I cannot imagine how that would affect a person to be a witness of that.  This movie perhaps gives the most insight possible without actually going through it yourself.  The flash-forwards to his counselling session where the ghosts of the dead taunt him, reason with him, and sometimes salve him are intense and moving.  The scene of Dallaire sitting alone in a room in his briefs, slicing into his arms and legs with a little razor and describing how the physical pain of the cutting brought welcome relief from the emotional pain he felt in seeing death and pain at every turn, and being helpless to prevent it - it was so visceral, but yet I could understand how he could feel that way.

In the end, I had so much respect for this man.  From my time in Rwanda, walking and driving through the locations where the film was made (which are all the real places where the genocide happened), I recognize now much more what really happened there.  Like the Rwandan people, who in their national genocide museum have a large tribute to all the good he accomplished despite his bureaucratic shackles, I salute his bravery and his effort to save those whom he could.  He might feel like he failed to this very day, but his victory was assured in the faces of the thousands of Rwandans that are alive today because of him.

I don’t know how to end this except to say, watch it.  It is an incredible movie.

First Scripture this week to memorize (actually rememorize) is Matthew 6:33 - “but seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.”  (FYI - these things are your needs - food, shelter, clothing - God will take care of them if you seek after God first.)
The thing about memorization, is it feels in my mind like they are all running together.  I’ll just keep plugging though.

I can’t say enough about the power for me of hearing these set to music.  They stick real fast for me that way.  For example, Pastor Jason wrote a song based on John 1:10-12 and I simply can’t get it out of my head, it’s so good.

A friend of mine at work put me onto these guys.  “NGO 2.0″ idea?  Looks worth supporting.  Have a look.  They have an interesting strategy.