From a theological perspective I really love this protest. I agree with these companies that these bills are a bit limiting, even if the idea behind them isn’t bad. The urge to try and protect American jobs and intellectual property is a great thing. The way this bill goes about doing it may not be the best way in doing so. I understand the objections. I am not up in arms about the bills, but I get why people are so upset by them.

But what intrigues me much more is the way these companies have gone about their protests. Oh, I am sure they have spent a lot of money (because they have it) on lobbying Congress about this bill. But using the internet itself and their withdrawal from the system, even if for a day, is a great way of trying to promote change. Sometimes the only way to make the system stop and take notice is to withdraw from it’s support. Not every circumstance calls for that type of response, but more circumstances call for it than certainly we as American Christians want to acknowledge.

Sometimes not voting is the best vote. Sometimes not buying a product, or any product has a greater impact. Sometimes we have to use the system to do our work and sometimes we have to abandon the system to make change. A lot more people will be aware of these bills and their impact after today. Regardless of what the bills mean and whether or not we should protest them, I am very intrigued by the actions of these companies.

What do you think? Are there any lessons for us in the church that we can apply from this?

1) Sandwiches. Sandwiches can change America. A sandwich can be hearty, healthy, delicious, practical and economically responsible. We need to help people eat more and better sandwiches. Just like earlier promises for a chicken in every pot, I pledge there to be a sandwich in every lunch box. A tasty one at that. We need to guarantee people their right to sandwiches. We need to use the sandwich as a guide for fixing our budgetary problems. Just take the issue and think, now if I was making this problem into a sandwich how would I do that?

2) I am immediately quadrupling what we spend on education in this country. Teachers are getting big raises, and we are going to go out and recruit the brightest Americans to the classroom. None of this money will ever be wasted.

3) Candidates for president should be limited to campaigning via social media and free airspace on TV and Radio. No more purchased TV ads, TV specials, or ridiculous campaign contributions. If you can’t let everyone know who you are and what you are doing via social networking, a couple of debates and an interview then just forget it.

4) I am proposing giving every candidate a mandatory test on world geography, world leaders, world religions, American history, the political system and the 1991 Washington Redskins and then publishing the results.

5) We are going to get rid of the designated hitter, prohibit lockouts from ever occurring again, get rid of all sideline reporters, and give college football a playoff system and impose the same rules about leaving a school that players have to follow to their coaches.

6) Let’s add more states! 50 maybe nifty, but let’s add more. Why not add Guam or Puerto Rico or see if some of Canada might want to come on down. Wouldn’t Bermuda or having the city of Vancouver as part of our country be kind of cool? Maybe we can even have an application process!

7) DC is going back to PG County. Those of us who grew up in PG County, MD know that we donated the land for Washington, DC in the first place. We want it back, they want to be able to vote like a real state and the Redskins already play in PG County. Done, that is a settled issue.

8 ) Congress will be paid via an incentive based performance review. The idea of reviews determining pay for teachers seems so popular that we can apply it to congress. Congressmen will be paid based on whether they made the country a better or worse place during their term. Of course this means that many will be end up owing the government money by the time their term is up.

9) I promise to love and care for old people, poor people, immigrants, women and children as much as I care for rich people, white people, and sandwiches.

10) I pledge to find a way to get the following TV shows that ended too soon back on the air somehow: Firefly, The Dresden Files, Friday Night Lights, and Arrested Development.

Slovenian philosopher and adept cultural analyst Slavoj Zizek (you may remember me talking about him in my series on the End of Evangelicalism?) recently visited the Wall Street group and had some interesting comments. An avid Marxist and critic of capitalism and its effects on the globe Zizek had some interesting things to say. This struck me as particulalry poignant.

“Carnivals come cheap,” he admonished. “What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know like, ‘Oh, we were young, it was beautiful.’ Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible way. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want?”

Carnivals come cheap, wow that is an important idea. If people truly want social change in our country it must move beyond events and grand standing into changing day to day living. If Occupy Wall Street has any real effect on our country it will most likely not be because of crowded protests, but instead because of alternative living. If we really want to change the way our country works we have to stop feeding the system. You want to effect capitalism, it is pretty simple stop consuming. Our voices, our votes, our money, and most importantly our relationships are our means of influencing the way our country works. But using them takes intentional choices about how we live and who we support and what we want from our lives.

Where we are right now as a country is the natural ending spot for the most individualistic and selfish consumer culture the world has ever known. Is anyone truly surprised that the system hasn’t worked? I am not sure Occupy Wall Street will do much more than lend a voice and give an identity to those who are frustrated, but it at least has some potential to motivate change. I am wondering how much this movement is similar to the Peace Movement of the late 60s that helped a generation that was disillusioned find an identity and voice. Of course that generation eventually shaved their hair, got jobs and contributed quite a bit to this mess, so maybe not.

Any thoughts? What do you see this movement doing, if anything? Is it important? Will it disappear next month and we will forget it?

That is the question perplexing me today as I read about the candidates positioning themselves for a run at the presidency. Not only are there no candidates I have encountered who are anti-death penalty, but the most prominent Christian candidates seem to be so pro-death penalty that they wear it as a badge of honor. Does no one else feel a disconnect from this?

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has been outspoken about his faith, even hosting prayer rallies. Yet he promotes proudly his record in regard to executions and lack of clemency as the governor of Texas. This should be more of an issue for us as Christians and yet I almost never hear the Christians I interact with on a daily basis bring it up as a significant issue for them, especially in regards to voting practices.

We are far too comfortable with the idea of the death penalty as Christians in America. It is not as if we are ruled by OT notions of an eye for an eye. We don’t hold onto a flat reading of scripture. We first and foremost evaluate all of these issues through the person of Christ and his work on the cross. We are a people of grace and redemption. As Shane Claiborne eloquently wrote over at Out of Ur recently:

It is this dual conviction that no one is above reproach and that no one is beyond redemption that lies at the heart of our faith. Undoubtedly it’s why the early Christians were characterized by non-violence, even in the face of brutal evil, torture, and execution. Of all people, we who follow the executed and risen Christ should be people who are pro-life, pro-grace, anti-death.

Beyond the overall issue of the death penalty is the reality that in our country the system is really bad. You are executed in our country based on what color your skin is, who you killed, and where you killed them. The statistics on the inequity of the American death penalty system are staggering. Further more the cost of killing someone verses keeping them imprisoned for life are also greatly unequal. The trials, appeals, and investigations into death row cases have almost bankrupted some communities. There seems to be so little justice involved in this attempt at ultimate justice. Is it ignorance or bad theology that keeps this from being a huge political and justice issue for so many Christians?

The justice/prison system in this country isn’t just broken, it is immoral and destructive. We imprison an insane number of people in this country, mostly for non-violent crimes. We execute a really high number of people in this country. And most of all we as Christians for the most part feel really comfortable with the system we have. Today I am just left asking the question, “Why?”

46 million people is the combined populations of the following European countries

Czech Republic – 10.5 million

Hungary – 10 million

Sweden – 9.3 million

Austria – 8.3 million

Bulgaria 7.5 million

Or it is the same as the entire country of Spain – 47 million people.

That is an astounding amount of Americans who are living in poverty while being residents of the richest, most powerful country in the world during a time of unprecedented access to information, education, and connectivity.

There are also now 49 million Americans without health insurance.

Our country is broken. We must be on our knees in prayer for our politicians and law makers that we can set aside the ridiculous spirit of animosity in Washington and find ways to make some real changes. This study just really hit home today for me. I pray that it won’t just be a passing thought for you either. This doesn’t even begin to talk either about how much better off even those in poverty in our country are then those in poverty around the globe. We must wake up, There is so much work to do.

Keep your friends close and your worship pastor closer

In the kind of story that you just can’t make up, a pastor at, (wait as I set the stage for the mother of all ironic church names) New Welcome Baptist Church in Alabama was tasered by his worship pastor after the severance check he handed him was deemed a little too small. You can go here for the full story.

I have heard of unfortunate violence in church, but never a pastor on pastor brawl. There are so many comedic, ironic, and painful directions to go with this story that it makes my head hurt. Needless to say, my lesson has been learned. Next time I have to give someone s severance check I will make it big and I will mail it to them, so that I am well outside of tasering distance when they see it.

Warren Buffett wants more taxes for the Super Rich, awesome!

Great comments form billionaire Warren Buffett on the need for congress to stop coddling the super rich. Every time I hear one of these debates about whether or not we should increase taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy in our country I just don’t get the objections. It is kind of like when celebrities show up at a restaurant and expect their meal to be comped. To take this issue to a spiritual realm, this is the conversation that has also been taking place within the Church of the Nazarene during the changing of our budgeting process.

For the first time all Nazarene churches worldwide are contributing to the burden of funding the global mission of the church. This is a good thing that reinforces our unity as a church. But the North American church funds the vast majority of the world mission, something like 90%. I never look at that and feel like somehow we are being taken advantage of or that we are going to stop giving towards world mission because of the percentages we pay to the denomination. We are so blessed and we bear an increased responsibility to give generously out of that blessing. I am down my man Warren B on this one.

Are You Ready for Some (Kinda lame, Pre-Season) Football?

Thanks to the wonders of the NFL Network and my DVR, I was able to watch a number of the preseason games this weekend. After the lockout and all the missed practices the question was whether or not the games would suffer. Preseason games are nothing very exciting to begin with, so the lockout could make them brutal. The results, however, were quite mixed. Several of the teams I watched, including the Eagles, Bucs, and my beloved Redskins, actually looked pretty sharp. (Even Sexy Rexy Grossman looked good. Insert necessary joke here…..) Other teams, however, especially ones with coaching changes, rookies in key spots, and even just some not really caring yet veterans, looked bad,.

The big effect from this lockout will come in the first half of the season. Some teams are not going to hit the ground running once the games start counting. In a league where the difference between 6-10 and 10-6 can be a couple of close plays, many seasons will be shaped by those first few weeks and how fast a team can start. For a team like the Redskins, a fast start could be a massive difference. We will see what the rest of the month of preseason games bring and how much of an impact they really have.

I am a big fan or prayer. I am a huge fan of the church coming together across denominational, ethnic, and socioeconomic boundaries and seeking God together. I am all for offering a different message during these days of turmoil and nasty discourse. But when a leading candidate (not official candidate, at least not yet) for president organizes an event like this in the days leading up to a presupposed or at least highly possible presidential bid I get skeptical and worried. I grow skeptical of the powers at work putting together such an event. This type of event screams “Christian Right” and “Jerry Falwell” to me, and that is no compliment. This seems like the kind of political maneuvering we saw during the campaigns for George W. Bush, when the evangelical church was mobilized as a powerful voting block behind a Christian candidate.

I am so willing to be wrong about this event. I am desperate for it to be a God honoring sign of the church at work in the midst of our countries struggles, but my skepticism is making that nearly impossible. What do you think? How should we perceive this event? How much does the evangelical nature of a candidate matter to you right now in such a pivotal moment of our countries history? I would love to hear some thoughts.

There is obviously nothing about these actions or the attitudes expressed by Anders in his manifesto that remotely match the Christian faith. That really isn’t the point. The point is that his own twisted view of Christianity and nationalism led him on this murderous rampage. In a world of religious extremists, it is really important for us to understand that the actions of Anders Breivik are similar to those of other religious terrorists. They are the actions of someone who has taken their fears and angers and used the covering of religion to justify their lack of humanity. These actions are a reminder that evil can show up anywhere at anytime through anybody.

We must always take heed not to use extremists to define a religion. Despite a gospel of grace through the sacrificial love of Christ, the Christian faith can be defined by others as militant, unforgiving, aggressive, and violent by the rest of the world. This is not just because of the actions of one evil man misusing the name of Christ, but because of the closely knit nature of nationalism and faith for many Christians. As we struggle to find a way to better dialog with and share our faith in the Muslim world we have to be aware of how we are perceived by the world and what we must work to overcome.

So today I mourn with millions in Norway for the destructive powers of evil. Lives have been lost, families have been shattered, a nation is devastated and it is all because of someone misusing the name of Christ. I pray that Christians in Norway and around the world will respond to this tragedy through a display of such amazing love that this act of evil will be dwarfed by the good surrounding it. I pray for the nations of Europe fighting nation altering financial battles and the changing societal realities of multi-culturalism. I pray for a reawakening of the church in Europe that will lead the way in creating a new society that fosters reconciliation and grace instead of extremism.

May God have mercy on us all and through his Spirit may we be empowered anew each day to do the work of his kingdom. May Your will be done Father, on earth as it is in Heaven this day.

First, is the passage of this legislation a win for the religious right? Huh? What does that question mean? Well, in order to pass this legislation there was an amendment attached to it that provides protection for religious organizations and clergy that whose beliefs do not allow for homosexual unions. With the increasing reality that our country is moving towards the legislative acceptance of same sex marriages, this is really the bigger issue for the church. Will we be provided with legal protection for not performing these marriages? In NY the agreement they reached seems to provide those protections. So maybe this is a win for religious groups that do not recognize these unions.

Second, who defines marriage for our culture anyways? One of the concerns regularly voiced over same sex marriage is that  are redefining marriage. Many within and outside of the church are greatly concerned about this change and the effects that it will have on our country. I understand the concern but why have we chosen this moment to get up in arms about the redefinition of  marriage in our culture? Marriage has already been redefined in our country as a short term commitment that is primarily selfish in nature. The proliferation of divorce, the vast number of people who choose to live together rather than getting married and the scourge of children born to parents who have never been together nor have ever intended on creating a family or life together have all served to radically redefine marriage in our culture already. Why now are we so scared about what is going to happen to marriage? From a strictly philosophical standpoint how is the fight for individuals who want to be together in a committed relationship a danger to marriage just because they are of the same sex? I am not saying there is a Biblical case for same sex marriage whatsoever, I am asking a sociopolitical question. Theologically I am asking why now!?! Why not fight for to redefine marriage a long time before this?

Third, what are we going to do to offer an alternative? Many churches have taken up the fight for marriage, and I don’t mean by working against same sex marriages, but by working to redefine marriage through the lens of scripture. God has a plan for marriage and it always begins with the self sacrificial love of Christ at the center of it. Marriages rooted in love of other instead of needs of self offer a radically different alternative to the marriages of our world.  We need to offer the world a different view of marriage and not rely on a history of Judeo-Christian morality and legislation to suffice anymore. Our failure as the church to protect marriage, to separate out God’s ideals from cultural norms, and to practice holiness within our marriages has redefined marriage. We have failed because we have relied on others to protect that which God has given us the responsibility of protecting.

Those are my thoughts on a rainy and cold summer day in Indiana. What thoughts have you?

But what has that spirit done to the evangelical voting block? It seems that one of the legacies of the Bush years is that the Evangelical vote is far more fragmented than it was before. I know a number of evangelicals who voted for Obama, not because of his faith (that is a debate all its own) but because they believed his politics were better for the country. It seems that there has been a shift for many evangelicals in what they look for in a candidate. Voting is no longer simply about abortion or gay marriage. I would suspect that many evangelicals are far more concerned about the economy and healthcare going into this election than either of those issues. That isn’t to say that abortion and gay marriage aren’t issues people are concerned about, just that they have been pushed back on the list.

Who will court the evangelical vote this next election? That is a fascinating question that will play it self out over the next year. At this point I am wondering if Evangelicals will vote for a Mormon candidate in large numbers? This will be interesting.