The Greater Hope--And on Prime Time TV!

It has been a little busy around here. Last week I fell and sprained my wrist and bruised some ribs, had my phone/PDA stolen and all of my contacts erased, got a ticket for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, watched as my 4-year old West fell from the kitchen table and split open his nostril while trying to play Tarzen on the blinds' cord, missed a $150 check on my checking account causing 6 overdrawn charges of $35 from 6 cups of coffee at $1.75 each from Starbuck's, caught the flu and was laid out for a few days, fought with my wife and felt a great distance for 3 days, escorted a neighborhood friend of my children back to his father and mother to apologize profusely for the cuts on his black eye from the pounding he took from one of my sons, and took a verbal lashing from a guy at Home Depot who when I calmly asked which checkout line he was standing in, angrily replied, "WHICHEVER LINE COMES OPEN FIRST!"

I tell you this less to receive your empathy, although I wouldn't reject it, and more to give you something to laugh about. For the reality is, and this is NOT rhetoric, all of the above seemed less hopeless after I witnessed the following clip on UTube taken from an E.R. episode.

You will be amazed at what NBC allowed to be viewed during Prime Time on national TV. You will be even more amazed at the fact that you know there is an answer to this desperate man's plight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNuSBGa1mLM

Our First Snow in Atlanta. IT DOES SNOW HERE!

A very large snowflake on our deck, West on our deck, Bud by our mailbox, Bud with a snow man, and West catching one of the several hundred flakes that fell with his mouth.

Well, we had our first Atlanta snow and we were all very surprised. The forecast called for cold rain mixed with sleet. By 9:00 PM Wednesday, however, we had already exceeded our January monthly average for snow--in only 4 hours!

I must admit I got my boys hopes up about their school closing on Thursday. When we went to bed it was 31 degrees and supposed to drop a few more degrees. Unfortunately, it actually warmed to 33 and melted the streets.

Nevertheless, it is possible that we could quadruple our monthly average with another storm that is supposed to come through tommorrow. Believe it or not, there is a potential for three whole inches!

If that happens, Atlanta will shut down.

Kicking the 'Golden' Dead Horse One More Time

Well the movie’s debut came and went and from an entertainment economic standpoint “The Golden Compass” did not live up to its billing. After 5 weeks in the theatre, its gross revenue in the US was just north of $55 million. In comparison, “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” earned $47 and $65 million, respectively, in just their opening week.

By the way, this wasn’t due to any boycott of the movie but rather due to an unfair, pre-mature marketing of the movie as the alter-ego of Narnia and T.L.O.T.R. (Note to self: If I ever decide to become a movie producer, avoid and eradicate all comparisons to blockbuster productions prior to the release of my work).

Although the point is nearly mute now, for those that would be interested, this is a message I posted on a Christian forum hosted by Crosswalk booksellers:

“Regarding (the dead-horse becoming) Golden-Compass issue I would suggest that it is, at least to some extent, naive to think that by avoiding a movie one can avoid competing and even hostile world views to historical Christianity. Unless you live isolated in a bubble on a desert island somewhere (which you most likely don't if you are reading this) than you cannot escape living in a reality which has a supreme Creator but is also pervasively tainted by the effects of the fall. Jesus says, "You are either for me or against me." There is nowhere in between. There is no middle-ground. Therefore we are constantly bombarded with messages (verbal, non-verbal, print, visually, reality, etc.) that either promote the kingdom of God or oppose it.

At the same time, we must also know ourselves very well (in addition to those whom we have relationships with and for who we care for) so that we don't place an insurmountable stumbling block in front of us. There are a vast amount of decisions that you and I have to make every day based on kingdom principles. God has seen it in his good pleasure to not tell us the answer to every predicament we will find ourselves in (that conversation would never end, by the way). Instead, he offers a Way which if followed doesn't answer all of the questions but rather redeems our motives. Contrary to what many evangelicals would like to propose apologetically to a relativistic culture and, in spite of the existence of absolute truth, most issues are not black and white. Life is far too complex for them to be. This is a good thing. It requires us to use the God-given brain and heart that we have. In every decision we make we must consider the fact that we as Christians are still divided in our loyalties, we have a mixed bag of motives, we live this side of heaven for the purpose of propagating the kingdom of God in a kingdom opposed to that reign, and we must understand how to communicate with that kingdom.

BTW, even if you are isolated on a desert island, unless that desert island exists somewhere post-second-resurrection, you still are having to deal with contrary-to-God tendencies and proclivities--in other words, you and I have yet to turn our entire lives, thoughts, actions, inactions, etc. over to God in order to love him with all of our heart, strength, and mind. In other words, we still are communicating (hopefully very, very inconsistently) that we don't fully and wholly believe and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and therefore are communicating something anti-kingdom of God!”

Ban on Gift Cards

For the New Year I have decided to call for a ban, or at the very least a moratorium, on the use of gift cards as a viable option for gift giving for Christmas. However, I am not doing so for reasons which you might surmise.

When it first became an option for a birthday or Christmas gift, I was vehemently opposed to the idea of giving gift cards. It seemed so impersonal. It seemed so shallow. It seemed so thoughtless. I thought to myself, "Only a gift that is offered after thoughtful contemplation of the recipient’s tastes, likes, and/or needs is a considerate one.”

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the essential nature of gift cards, that is, putting the actual choice of the received gift in the hands of the recipient, was nothing new. Mankind, especially Grandparents in my case, had given gifts in the form of cash for years. I don’t remember one time when I thought to myself “My, how insensitive my Grandparents are!” Surely it is not merely a matter of generation difference that qualifies one as an appropriate giver of such a gift?

This year, however, the want of gift sensitivity increased even more with the dawn of the e-card (at least it was a new phenomenon to me). That’s right, now you can just email a document to someone which they print out and use like cash with the designated merchant. Why not? It’s cheaper than Western Unioning cash.

Consider the forerunner to the gift card—the department store registry. Predominantly in bridal form, the idea is that the bride herself (the groom only begrudgingly participates in this procedure) is able to choose a comprehensive selection of items she wishes her wedding participants to give her for her wedding present. Therefore, at least to some degree, the actual choice of the received gift is put in the hands of the recipient. This in fact is more advantageous than a gift card for once one takes just a few hours to select her desired items, her labor is complete in the matter. She has nothing else to do except wait to see what will be chosen from the selection pool.

Not only is it not due to the insensitive nature of gift cards, that I am calling for their ban at Christmas, it is also not because I am anti-market or anti-capitalist. It is not because that merchants benefit more than the consumer in that they actually earn interest on the cash they receive before the merchandise has even been removed from their inventory—in other words, before they have paid for it. It is not because some merchants charge an administrative fee if the card lays dormant for more than a specified amount of time. Finally, it is not even because some estimates suggest that nearly 20% of all gift cards go unredeemed. That means that the value of a gift card sold is actually 120% of the price for which it is sold.

No, the reason is that essentially for many it is merely an exchange of equivalent quantities of credit. In the case of a friend of mine, his family had to assign specific merchants as the issuer of the gift card to each family member so that Christmas didn’t become merely the exchange of $25 Starbuck’s gift cards from each to the other. The only true beneficiary to such a transaction is Starbuck’s. For in a family of 6, Starbuck’s bottom line increases by $150. However, for each individual family member the net value of their giving/receiving transaction is $0. Now you tell me, who really has the Merrier Christmas?

I know, I know, essentially the net value of gift/receipt transactions for each individual at Christmas is generally $0 even when actual gifts are used. However, nearly all of the mystery of gift-giving disappears the moment the little, flat, rectangular present is wrapped. Imagine ten, twenty, or thirty of these little presents stacked around the Christmas tree. The only remaining mystery is whether it is a MARTA bus pass or some sort of merchant gift card.

Finally, Santa Clause will become an irrelevant, extraneous, has-been little elf. Can you imagine jolly old St. Nicholas picking up little Johnny or Suzie into his lap, smiling and ho, ho, hoing in his deep, guttural laugh, and then asking the question, “So, little boy, from which merchant and in what denomination do you want your gift card issued this year?”

I’ll not have it.

Be Prepared to Grap a Box of Tissues

If you have not been introduced yet to the opera tenor, Paul Potts, now you have been. Two months ago he was an unassuming mobile phone salesman. Now he is the latest winner of 'Britain's Got Talent' (the forerunner to 'American Idol').

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDB9zwlXrB8 Enjoy.

Also, here is his web site.

http://www.paulpottsuk.com/frontpage?cmd=cookie/check

A 'golden rule' response to The Golden Compass

Recently there has been much dialog among Christians regarding the recently released movie, 'The Golden Compass.' Most of the conversations I have been exposed to have been encouraging a very fearful approach for Christians to this movie. This is not surprising nor is it a new approach.

However, these issues are much more complex than the manner we generally handle them suggests. That we have a tendency toward this approach is evidenced by how, when we begin to read someone’s opinion on a topic, we are quickly wanting to ascertain on which ‘side’ of the issue they fall. For this reason, it is generally very difficult to persuade someone who is passionately in disagreement with your position to even entertain your argument.

Nevertheless, I have decided to engage. And in spite of the risk, I am doing so for two primary reasons:

1. I have young children who no doubt will bump up against others who have read these works and to whom I have a responsibility to bring up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Anytime a claim is made that by engaging in something (such as seeing a particular movie) that responsibility would be compromised, my ears perk up, especially when it comes from my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. In other words, when they speak, I listen!

2. I once entered a secular university where my faith was continuously challenged both by atheistic and agnostic professors as well as hedonistic roommates and acquaintances. Due to my deeply sheltered upbringing, I was ill-equipped to survive in such an environment, much less to faithfully proclaim a prepared defense of the knowledge of the truth that was in me and display an engaging and attractive life that I was called to in order to be a salt and light to those around me. I now mourn for those unbelievers who knew me whose embers of indifference and even scorn for Christianity were only fanned by the timid life I led.

Instead of defending a position, I want instead to focus on what I believe to be the much more important and fundamental issue. When Jesus was pouring his heart out to his Father in the garden prior to his betrayal and death, his dying ‘wish’ was for his people to know true unity as he enjoyed with his Father. This is Paul’s concern for the early churches when he challenged those who attempted to bind other’s consciences about partaking or not partaking, celebrating or not celebrating, circumcising or not circumcising, etc (Colossians 2:16-23). At the heart of our Savior and of the first church planter, Paul, was the longing for the body to look like an organic body. Will we be free of conflict and differences? Of course not. This is not what Jesus is calling us to. What he is calling us to is that in spite of our internal quarrels, the world sees an organism which is able to cling to its foundational source of unity in order to display true, intimate love and self-sacrificial service.

I believe that the evil one uses such issues that we are presently engaging in less to weaken our intellectual understanding of Biblical, Christian Theism, and more to weaken our fellowship. In the end, in matters that are of less than orthodox significance, a strengthened fellowship does far more to promote the Kingdom cause than a corporate statement, stance, or attack against a challenge to the Biblical revelation. That this is such a vital concern for the church, is manifested in what Paul tells us occurs when the church divides itself into poor and rich, influential and insignificant, especially at the Lord’s Supper. After rebuking the Corinthians for the divisions that exist when they come together, he says that judgment is pronounced upon the man that hasn’t examined himself (I Cor. 11:17-33). He finishes his warning by exhorting them to ‘wait for one another,’ as a visible display and reflection of their unity. Taking the teaching of God’s revelation as a whole, especially in the NT, we are taught that a divided body is an impotent one.

Furthermore, regardless of whether we deem it appropriate or not for us and our families to view, we must at least engage Pullman’s charges that he levels against the church. There is a degree of legitimacy in these charges. We would be very disingenuous and predictably hypocritical to not own up to the reality that the church has engaged is some of the most heinous crimes in the history of mankind—the crusades, the inquisitions, the promotion and excuse of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In addition, to resist an engagement of his charges would support his most essential charge—that we are among the most thought-oppressive organizations in the history of mankind. Perhaps that is unfair and an overstatement to his charge, but nevertheless, it is close to the target.

Instead of oppressing opposition to the truth, the best apologetic to Christianity is one which engages the opposition. The fact that we believe and claim that Jesus is the only way to Truth and to God, himself, is not the same as being thought-intolerant. Because we have access to the very revelation of the Creator of all things, himself, we should not fear untruth. Instead we should eagerly invite the conversation. This is what it means to always be prepared to give an answer to those who ask for a reason of the hope that is in us. But not only that, unfortunately the Kingdom rules that we as believers are called to play by are not the same tools that our opposition will utilize. For in defending that hope within us, we are further called to do so in gentleness and respect (I Peter 3:15-16). The bar is just set much higher for those of us who follow Jesus Christ. The use of slander, for instance, is therefore banned from our engagement. Certainly the Golden Compass is a promotion of a competing world view, but when properly and gracefully held up to the straight edge of the truth of historical Christianity, its incomplete and jagged edges will be revealed.

In the end, the decision of whether the most appropriate manner in which to raise our covenant children in the fear and admonition of the Lord is to avoid the movie and the books or not, is the decision that each of us parents must individually decide based on our consciences and our duty before the Lord. Before we decide to attend or avoid, however, let us thoughtfully and prayerfully determine the most effective missiological approach to a darkened world.

A Few Quick Puns

I apologize for marketing a stillborn blog nearly 2 months ago. Recently, I have been gently encouraged by a family member to update my blog.

So I will do so today with a bit of a lighthearted entry.

Some of these puns will likely produce the "da dum" sound
of a drum--that sound that follows the blank silence after a poor joke. Some of these will possibly produce at least a momentary chuckle. Most of these, hopefully, will at least produce a smile.

I have highlighted the ones that produced the most positive chuckling response in me.

* Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

* To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

* The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium atlarge.

* When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U C L A.

* The dead batteries were given out free of charge.

* I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

* Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

* A backward poet writes inverse.

* In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's yourCount that votes.

* A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

* If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

* Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A -flatminer.

* A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France , resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.

* A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.

* He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

* A plateau is a high form of flattery.

* Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

* When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

* Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

* Acupuncture: a jab well done