Hallmark Jehovah: A Musical For All Ages

or, the Book of Job, part deux.

Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands. For those of you who don't know much about them, originally, Pink Floyd was a psychedelic/experimental rock band. Most of their early material was written by their lead singer, Syd Barrett. Syd Barrett was, to use a technical term, bat-sh*t crazy. Eventually he stopped playing with the band, mostly because they stopped inviting him to concerts. He would just stop playing in the middle of the concert, or he would play the same chord for the whole concert, or he would detune his guitar. Some people blamed his insanity on his almost constant use of LSD. Some people blamed his almost constant use of LSD on his insanity. Either way, they stopped taking him to concerts. Eventually, the bass player, named Roger Waters, took over a lot of the writing aspects of the band's material, especially the lyrics. He was the creative force behind most of Pink Floyd's recognizable material, such as The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. In 1985, Roger Waters left Pink Floyd and started doing some solo work. His most critically acclaimed solo work came in 1992 with his album Amused to Death.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my frustration with the book of Job. I got some feedback about what I wrote. Some was good, some was random, and some talked about God's sovereignty. I guess that was the whole point of what I wrote. If the book of Job is all about God's ultimate control, that's depressing. Job was God's number one guy, and he really gets the shaft. Even when he gets rich again and he has more kids, that doesn't take away his previous loss. It's not like, "I lost a penny, but then I found one on the sidewalk, so it's all good." Losing people sucks. And nothing makes that go away. Not even connecting with other people, really.

Right after I wrote all of this, a friend of mine bought me a copy of Eugene Peterson's The Message. I really love reading Job in this paraphrase, and I found the introduction to the book very interesting. Peterson points out the fact that most of the book is Job talking with his friends. His friends say a lot of stuff about God that we wouldn't necessarily disagree with, but Job argues with them. Seriously, read Job 5 without the context. It is a beautiful poem about God. In the next chapter, Job says he wants to die. Flip to chapter 42. God says to Eliphaz, "you have not spoken of me rightly, as Job did." That doesn't make sense.

I really love Amused to Death. I have thought about writing an in depth review of the album. I think I would call it "Nihilism: the Musical". Waters deconstructs our modern concepts of war, religion, government, and economy, all in reference to how the media has desensitized us to the reality of these things. The album includes a 3 part song called "What God Wants". Here are some lyrics:

"God wants peace. God wants war.
God wants famine. God wants chain stores.
What God wants, God gets, God help us all."

What makes something real? Is an ice cream cone real because I can describe how it tastes? Is a baby real because I know the biological processes of conception? Is a lamp real because I know that it's purpose is to provide light?

Why would God back the suicidal guy and reprimand the guy who said all of the right stuff?

I hate Hallmark. They are a corporation. They overuse pastel colors. They use kitschy poems extensively. Three strikes. Don't get me wrong--I think cards can be meaningful and special. And, if I am going to buy a card, I generally prefer Hallmark cards. But I think that Hallmark represents something larger. To me, Hallmark represents society's trend to commercialize everything that should be sacred. Birth, death, birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions--all commemorated with cute phrases and partial Bible verses. It disgusts me.

I have this theory about discrimination. It all started while I went to Maranatha. In my sophomore year, I took Advanced Writing with Midcalf. I was writing an essay about working landscaping with this stoner, when I realized that I had all the same issues as this other guy-- just without constant marijuana use. I realized that this stereotype of "stoner" was pretty useless, because I wasn't any better than he was. Sure, I was probably smarter, in an academic sense, but he understood a lot of things that I didn't. My theory is that discrimination only happens because you haven't interacted with that "type" of person. So you build up this mythical idea of what that "type" of person is like. Whether it is about race, or sexual orientation, or religion, it is easy to hate when you have never talked with them, or lived with them, or worked with them, or built a relationship with them. I would love to walk up to some gay marriage protester and ask them how many gay people they are friends with. How many they have gone out to eat with. How many they have invited over to their house. Discrimination only works in your mind. Discrimination doesn't make sense in reality.

So what am I trying to say? What do Roger Waters, Hallmark, homophobia, and the book of Job have to do with each other?

Reality.

Reality is not something you describe. It is not something you understand. It is not something you control. It is something you live. Reality is what is actually happening. All the time.

God is with Job because Job is living in reality, not in trite sayings. He is walking through the fire, not making cliche statements about fire as a metaphor for God's holiness. God tells Eliphaz to get Job to pray for him because Eliphaz has no connection with God. He mentally understands all this stuff about God, but it is totally useless. It does him no good.

So Eliphaz starts a church. And he says all of the right things from the pulpit. His worship team is very musically sound, and they are all dressed nice. His church building in the suburbs looks like the lobby of some expensive hotel, with couches, and plants, and a table with coffee from the trendy local barista. His outreach programs are centered around some catchy play on words from a well known Bible verse. He is still saying all of the right things.

Then this guy named Roger walks in. His dad was a political activist, but volunteered to join the Army when war broke out. HIs dad died when he was only 5 months old. He grew up, experimented a little with drugs with his friends, and now his best friend is addicted to psychedelic drugs. Everything about him was searching for some bigger reality. And when he walks in, everyone looks at him funny because he doesn't fit their mold. And he hears a sermon that is saying all of the right things, but somehow feels shallow and cheesy and Hallmark. There is no reality. So he writes a song.

"And the Germans killed the Jews, and the Jews killed the Arabs,
And the Arabs killed the hostages, and that is the news,
Is it any wonder that the monkey's confused?"

The deification of a chemical, a myth, and a chubby 7 year old with a magnifying glass.

Or, the Book of Job.


A couple weeks ago, I was walking to my car after class, listening to Damien Rice's "Amie", when I looked up from my red shoes, and everything was perfect. The sidewalk I was walking on stretched out perfectly towards its vanishing point, the little trees were budding, and Damien was begging her to read the stories of old. There was just enough wind to brush my hair across my forehead and to make me realize that even the kitschiest descriptions with sunshine and vanishing points and narrative told in dependent clauses could only disgrace this moment. I turned the corner towards my car only to interrupt some guy comforting a sobbing girl standing next to him. The water in his eyes and on her cheeks tasted like redemption.

I've talked about my epiphanies before. Once, it was a perect morning, one time was about a little town in the middle of nowhere, and one was all about a book. They are these moments where I break through the mundane and experience the profound. Like diving through the riptide of living into the still waters of life. And then, just as suddenly, I float back up into the current. And I've started having them more often.

Like last night. I was reading Fitzgerald and listening to Elliot Smith instead of sleeping. And then I slowly slipped away from the frustrations and struggle and weight of this past week to find myself in Amory's side of Paradise.

Or the first time I brought the bike out this spring. The weather was nice for a Wisconsin April, but certainly not warm enough to keep my fingers from going completely numb at 55 mph. But it was beautiful. It was more than just an adrenaline rush. Reacquainting myself with the century mark was like being at home and my frozen fingers felt like peace.

But my life isn't just a collection of random moments that I find poetically beautiful. Mostly my life is like a craps table in the movies. Short periods of success followed by the inevitable run of impossibly bad luck. Last Tuesday, as I tried to gut out a random bout of psuedo-flu, it started pouring rain just as I started home from class on my motorcycle, a piece of glass ripped a hole in my back tire, and I found out that the mechanic had found a crack in the head while trying to replace the head gasket in my remaining car. (My other car died a couple weeks ago in a blaze of comic tragedy.) For those of you keeping score at home, none of my 3 vehicles are driveable, I'm trying not to puke, I'm behind on homework, and--oh yeah, I forgot-- our refrigerator died.

Ah, depression. It isn't necessarily that I'm depressed all the time. It's just that being beaten down and pessimistic is what feels normal for me. My comfort zone is that streak of crappy luck. I just settle back and drink it up. I can relax because I know the rules to this game. I just limit my emotions to this narrow range and let that range sink to right above "dangerous". Whatever that means. It works great. That way the bad stuff fits in the "normal" range, and the good stuff is shockingly good, and I don't actually have to deal with it. It is awesome, a blur of seratonin and then it is gone.

There is that one verse that says "All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." The way I always thought, there was this big file cabinet in God's office. And once we got to heaven, we will be able to page through our file, and see how everything fit together.

About 2 o'clock Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning, towards the end of my shift, while I was standing on a package marked fragile, Jess called me. She told me Pastor Tipmore was dead.

Now I wonder what that verse means. I wonder if it has more to do with Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is this passage that describes a life that is "blessed". And the way I thought of it as a kid was, "if you do all this stuff and avoid these people and don't go to these places, you'll get a cookie." But if you really look at the passage, it's actually saying that living this sort of life is the blessing itself. So maybe that verse in Romans 8 isn't saying that there is some heavenly flow chart of all the crappy stuff that happens to you. Maybe it's saying that this life that is connected with God takes the problems of this life and deals with them, and even turns them into positive experiences. Or, maybe--if you can only think of Romans 8:28 in terms of cliche-- whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I don't know what to think about the book of Job. It almost makes God look like some 7 year old squatting on the sidewalk, frying ants with a magnifying glass. There's this guy with apparently really bad luck. Then a bunch of this guy's friends turn into douche bags. He yells at them, God yells at him, and then there is this ridiculously cheesy, feel-good ending. This should be a really meaningful part of the Bible for me. But right now, I just don't get it. Don't try to explain it to me. I know what it is supposed to mean. I'm just not there yet.

Some people react to circumstances in exactly the opposite way as I do. Some people go numb and smile. They can't deal with anything outside of their little zone of comfortable happiness. They have these bursts of sorrow and brutal emotion, and then they float back to smiling and not dealing with it.

I think those people are doing essentially the same thing as me. They find an emotional comfort zone and try to stay there. Sure there are moments that they allow themselves to reach beyond, but it is always in relation to their comfort zone.

I don't want to live in a comfort zone. I want to live in epiphany and pain and anything in between. Just not comfort.

Manifesto

I want to love who I am.
I want to love who God is.
I want to always be finding, but never have found either one.
I want to live without permission.
I want to live without validation.
I want to exist without pretense.
I want to live a life that is free of cliches, but will only be describeable by cliche.
I want to tear apart the little boxes that I put myself, my relationships, and my God in.
I want to tear apart the little boxes that you put me, my relationships, and my God in.
I want to experience everything and everywhere I am.
I want to live now.
I want to live outside of an agenda.
I want to go past the shallow and tap into reality.
I want to break out of being who I am supposed to be.
I want to break out of being who I think I am supposed to be.
I want to be someone I don't resent.
I want to embrace my failure the way I embrace my success.
I want to base my life on something different, broader, and beyond you, so that just maybe someday I will be worthy of you.
I want to be more than you can love, accept, and control because I can't love, accept, control all of who you are.
I want to embrace your success the way I embrace your failure.
I don't want to explain this post. If you get it, great. Have a cookie. If you don't, I'm sorry.

Hermeneutics and sex

Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in economics, of all things. His concept, micro-finance, is based on the idea that poverty is a cycle. And once you are in this cycle, it is nearly impossible to get out of it. He asked the question, how much would it cost to offer individuals from some of the world's poorest economies just enough capital for them to break the cycle of poverty? He believed that credit is not something that should be extended only to the rich. So he founded a bank in Bangladesh, and loaned extremely small amounts of money to more than 2 million poverty stricken people from Bangladesh. Not only have these loans changed the face of Bangladesh, but repayment rates are almost 100 percent.

I heard about this concept from a church in Grand Rapids, MI. I like this church's outlook on ministry, and I really like their pastor's preaching. I have their sermons podcasted weekly, and I try to check their website about once a week. This church is involved in organizing a micro-finance program for the nation of Burundi. They are estimating that most of the loans will be around $40, and that it will be enough capital for these people to completely change their way of life.

Think about that. Forty dollars would be enough capital for someone to start their own business, build a house, provide food and fresh water, and send their children to school, provide school supplies, and repay their loan. I can't remember the last time I paid less than $40 for a pair of pants. Every pair of pants that I own equals economic solvency for an entire family.

I recently read a book written by the pastor of that church in Grand Rapids. It was called Sex God. The idea behind the book is that there is something bigger going on with sex. That it isn't just a physical expression of an emotion. Maybe it is a symbol of something bigger. Of a bigger connection or connectivity intended for man. Maybe sex is a spiritual act, intended to symbolize the way humans connect with the divine. And maybe sex is made up of emotional and physical parts. Without the physical, the emotional only goes so far. And without the emotional, the physical is empty.

Christians are a weird bunch of people. There are all of these people that are human rights activists and social aid workers and environmentalists, and they claim to be Christians, and then there are these other Christians that are completely unconcerned with all that. Those people talk about God's gift as a personal, internal thing, and read the Bible in terms of personal deliverance. Both of these people seem to be able to quote tons of verses to support what they think, and both of these people think that the other group is misinterpreting scripture.

And then I started thinking, maybe Christianity is something bigger. Something made of up of more than just an internal repentance. Or maybe I should say that if it is only an internal repentance, it only goes so far. And if it is just goodwill and activism, all it's empty. Maybe, if you want to grasp the whole picture, you have to realize that both ideas work together.

My friend and I have been talking about participating in this church's micro finance program, and he decided to tell some of the people that lived in his dorm about it. The response was unbelievable. The first question was, "Did you hear about this in an email? From a Nigerian Prince?" The rest of the responses ranged from "Hmm, that's nice, but..." to "Forty dollars is a lot of money. I don't know if I could really give forty dollars. I mean, I really wouldn't have very much money for the rest of the semester..."

I said that the response was unbelievable. The problem is that it's not.

Now the easy connection to make is that these people are only concerned with the internal work of God in their heart, and therefore, just missing out on some of the fullness of. But I don't think that totally covers it. I think it's something different.

I think it's masturbation.

I think that attitudes like that show self-absorption and narcissism. Attitudes like that have nothing to do with God. And I think that those attitudes are everywhere.

Think about it. Be honest with yourself. How much of Christianity is about glorifying God, whether it is through the rebirth in our own lives or redeeming this world for the kingdom of God? How much of what you deal with is about self-gratification? Is a pastor that talks about a different demonination or church in a derogatory way building or strengthening his relationship with God, or his congregation's relationships? Or is he trying to make himself feel better because he is "right"? What if we all got together and had a conference about why we were "right" and how we can prove our "right-ness" to everyone else around us? How much of that would be useless self-gratification? What have you been thinking while you have been reading this? Have you been looking for reasons that I am wrong? Or have you been trying to understand what I'm saying? What about what I've been saying? Is it just a twisted form of self-gratification for me?

I know you will want to do something after reading this. I want you to go ahead. React. Respond. Rebutt. Say what ever you need to say. Tell me I'm a genius. Tell me I'm a heretic. Ask me how to be involved in Burundi. Explain how your hermeneutic interprets 2100 Bible verses dealing with the poor. Explain to me why internal redemption isn't necessary. I want to hear what you think. But please, be honest and think. Because I have already heard the rest of it.

when the cars align...

I have these epiphanies every so often. They are these moments where everything lines up. And I’m not always sure why. This morning lined up. And I have no clue how or why.

I woke up and watched sportscenter and looked over my Spanish homework.

I ate dry cheerios and orange juice.

I sang Fallout Boy’s new song “It’s not a scene, it’s an arms race” with slightly modified lyrics while I showered. (“it’s not a song, it’s a *** **** sell out”)

I listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois while I drove to school. The weather was kind of weird, through. It was really overcast, but still bright because of yesterday’s snow.

And that was it. Nothing special. But nothing will ever be as special.

el fin de semana

It's been a good weekend.

Saturday night was Brier's recital. Amazing. I don't really know how to describe it. Just absurdly good.

Sunday night was the Super Bowl. That was beautiful. Rex Grossman for Super Bowl MVP!!

I quit my job as a mindless drone of the coporate overlords. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders.


Here are some lyrics from the Cold War Kids. Enjoy.

Look up from the hymnal,
Look 'round at the faces
Of families closing their eyes
We're taking Communion
And passing the offering
Hat around at the same time

I reached for the hat and take all the cash
And slide it into my ragged coat sleeve
And leave in its place a note to explain
All of the reasons that Spirit has led me to leave

If there was a worthy cause for to give to,
May I be so bold as to say?
The givers not knowing where their money's going
Is as sinful as throwing away.

I love first novels and classic rock

I love first novels and classic rock.

I started classes and a new job last week. Community college pre-reqs and hotel graveyard shift rent-a-copping.

I read Generation X, Douglas Coupland’s first novel, the other night.

I started it about 11:30. It was one of those consuming experiences. A book that wipes away other sensory stimulation. An immersion.

I finished the book 5 minutes after the paper guy dropped his responsibility on the front sidewalk. Bright colors instead of real journalism.

It was one of those moments where time freezes and everything is right. I closed the book, and Freebird came on the ancient radio. I wasn’t really even listening, I just left it on to cover the creepy silence of computers and lightbulbs. But the 7 minutes of broken arpeggios cemented the book into my soul.

All novels are a sometimes unintentional disclosure of what an author thinks, feels, or believes. I realize that I should listen to more Steve Miller Band. I kind of like them. But first novels are a confession of who an author is. I love that.

Writing is one of the few things I truly love doing. I’m too jaded for much else. But I’m afraid of writing a novel. I’m afraid of the possibility that a perfect stranger would read me and know me better than one of my friends. My left shoe starts squeaking as I pace to Hell’s Bells. I’m afraid that all the stuff that goes into becoming friends—the late night phone calls, eating tootsie rolls, watching crappy movies, sitting on the hoods of cars staring at streetlights, smoking cigars after chick fliks—I’m afraid that all of that would somehow be wasted. That by writing I can bare my soul to perfect strangers in a way that I can’t seem to with my friends. The ironic thing is that I am doing so right now. That scares the crap out of me.

I can be an anti-social prick. In fact, I worked really hard to become one. I think it started as a defense mechanism. But I don’t know when that was. And I don’t want to be a prick anymore. It’s just so hard undoing all of the time and effort that I spent burning bridges.