I led the worst small group ever. I'm saying that as an indictment of my leadership and not as a criticism of the group. But they didn't exactly do me any favors. The idea for the small group was simple: give 20 somethings a place to gather together, study scripture, worship and pray. It seems simple enough. But in reality I was totally against the idea that people in their twenties needed a unique group. Why couldn't they just do this at church like normal adults? That's when I had my first stroke of genius: make a church wide announcement that it was a group for 20 somethings, but invite anyone else who was interested to also show up. That way, I figured, the group might have a little perspective and diversity. Read More
Seeking God's Peace
Jerry Seinfeld once reported that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death. Then, in his classic style, he reflected: we would rather be the guy in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. I have always related to this statement, not because I'm afraid of public speaking - I'm a sucker for the limelight - but because I would rather be dead than left alone. Read More
Advent is for Seekers
The purpose of Advent is that we prepare for the coming of Jesus. As we look forward to the celebration of his birth (anachronistic as the calendar may be), we should challenge ourselves to look for him with new eyes. Advent reminds us that whether we are believers or skeptics, Jesus draws near to us this season. Read More
God in the Hurting
One of my kids, "A" has recently been having a lot of allergic reactions. Most days she is breaking out in hives on her arms, legs, and tummy. We know in general what she is allergic to: cats, dogs, pollen, dust, etc. But the allergist is still testing her to get a complete picture of what we are dealing with. The cat and dog allergies are the biggies. "A" took the news that she wouldn't be able to go to homes with cats and dogs like a champ even though it meant that she wouldn't be able to play at her best friend's house anymore.
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Book Review: Afterlives of the Saints
A couple years ago I hosted a small group at my house with some friends. We decided to study a classic Christian text called The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks which has organized short stories and sayings from monks by topic such as Greed, Pride, Lust, etc. At the beginning of each group we'd struggle to articulate how utterly backwards we found these holy desert fathers. Their stories seem to advocate extreme, dangerous even, forms of Christian asceticism that no good pastor would recommend. So should we treat this book which is treasured by the church? Were we being exposed to how weak and pathetic our American Christianity had become? Or was there another purpose in reading these stories?
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Normal Christianity
Have you ever been at a church prayer meeting where a boy rushed in frantically and asked, with deadly seriousness, if there was a priest available because his mom was possessed by a demon and he really needed help? Me neither. I slept in that day. I got a call from my dad (not a priest but a pastor, which the boy decided was good enough) telling me that he and a couple elders from the church had gone to pray for a woman who displayed all the classic Exorcist symptoms of demonic possession, sans full head rotation and projectile vomiting. Read More
Boring is Good
A couple Sundays ago, while the priests prepared the sacraments, my oldest daughter leaned over to me and asked "can we go now? This is boring."
"No." I replied. "Boring is good."
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Tattoos Hurt More When You're Lonely
I met Jim at a tattoo parlor. There is a picture in your mind of who would frequent a tattoo parlor on a Thursday night. That picture is Jim. He has a bushy black beard. He's loud but not angry. He doesn't mind involving the whole group in his conversation. He'll ask a stranger in the chair next to him to agree on a point he's trying to make. He's spending another night getting his entire right arm tattooed. It's a dragon. Did you really have to ask what it was? Of course it's a dragon. Read More
King of Awana? Not While I was There.
Al Cedeno is a lot of things, obese, over-hyped, and not a friend of bald honesty, to name a few, but he is not the King of Awana. That title is all mine. Read More
Don't Hate Your Parent's Church
I got a lot of reaction on the last blog about Frustrated Christianity. Yesterday one reader emailed me to ask:
I am curious as to your background? Where you raised in a strict Christian home? Or maybe a hyper-fundamentalist background? I was, and I often wonder if that isn't why I feel what I do.
My church history goes like this. I was born in an Assembly of God church. When I was about six years old my parents found a Charismatic Lutheran church that we attended for a little while. One of the pastors decided that he wanted to plant a church in the Vineyard movement.
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Frustrated Christianity
There are a lot of frustrated young Christians in America today. I’m one of them. I know more of them. If I try to boil the frustration down it points to a discontentment with how little our experience of Christianity resembles something in which God would need to be involved.
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As Dumb as the Market Demands: How to Make a Crappy Argument
If there is one thing I can teach my kids before I die it will be Never use a post hoc logical fallacy. A post hoc logical fallacy declares that correlation implies causation. Our example today is provided by Bryan Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis, American Family Association. In a post titled "Homosexuality, Hitler and 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'"
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What Prodigies and Child Stars have in Common
Let me ask you a simple question. Did you know that Ryan Gosling was a child star on The Mickey Mouse Club? What about Seth Green? At ten he was in a weird film, The Hotel New Hampshire.
How about this one, did you know that MacCaulay Culkin acted as an adult? He starred in a "film" with Seth Green in 2003.
Ok. Um, that is disturbing. I thought MacCaulay had been on suicide watch since the late 90's.
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I Finished This Marathon 10 Years Ago
They say that the key to incredible athletic performances is equal parts physical and mental discipline. But those people are stupid. They obviously didn't graduate cum laude at 18. Tsegaye Kebede finished the Chicago Marathon in 2:04:38. Oh, wow. Well, I bet he never produced a 20 page research paper in less than 24 hours for an A. "Excellent Paper." That's what the prof said. You know what? Did I mention I did all the research during that time too? I was averaging like 1 complete page per hour. Those are sick stats. You don't just wake up and decide you are going to do that. That's pure talent.
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Robot and Law Firm Take a Trip
The Robot and the Law Firm formed a partnership. Each one appreciated the representation of the other but they understood it differently. To call the partnership a relationship would be pushing the metaphor too far. While to speak of it in contractual terms would cheat it of the spark it held for the participants, if such a spark could not be recognized by any outside observer. It won’t do to moralize either. Neither entity could be properly gendered. The Firm, it is inferred, tended towards masculine similes. The Robot instructed the Firm in traditional operating procedures as well as recommending a famous touristy bar and grill for dinner. The Firm drank too much and ate too little. The Robot recorded this but said nothing. It was not in his constitution to criticize explicitly.
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It Turns Out Religion has no place in Religion
Despite all of my education I haven't been able to break out of my old-fashioned religious beliefs. I know. It is embarrassing. It might also be harming society like Christopher Hitchens claims in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. That's pretty bad. Since I really want to be a good liberal American this is something I get bummed about pretty regularly. One of the ways I try to be a better person is by reading the Huffington Post every day to learn how I should think about things. Today I came across an article titled, "Wisconsin Temple Shooting Proves that Hate has no Place in Religion." I was immediately interested. Because I also think that hate has no place in religions. We I think it doesn't belong in my religion. If you want it in yours I guess that is ok. (TOLERANCE!)
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Preventing the Death of Baby Girls is "Hypocritical"
Some days I wake up and wish I wasn't the hateable-white-back-woods-patriarchal-moralist that I am. I really wish that I was more progressive and open-minded. But I'm so stubborn-stupid. Just yesterday I had begun to think that maybe I had shed some of my bigotry. But the internet reminded me that I'm still a hateful turd-head.
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5 Ways to Get Good at Goals
My brother Evan recently told me that he wants to get "good at goals." A noble pursuit if ever there has been one. And since I am a recovering child prodigy I am obsessed with public attention. So I thought I would give him a response here on the blog.
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I Don't Put Up with any Sh*t from Tigers Fans
Imagine you are at a White Sox game circa August 2008. The Sox are playing the Detroit Tigers. One unfortunate side-effect of this game is that fans of the Tigers attend. You are sitting with me and a couple of friends 10 rows up from the third base line. Two rows ahead is the enemy. The enemy is blond, loud, and a fan of sweat-shorts that hang below the butt. The enemy has taken a poster of Mark Buehrle (free to the first 10,000 fans) and made a sign supporting the Tigers on the blank back. The enemy is attending the game with his girlfriend who dutifully wears a Curtis Granderson jersey and half-heartedly rejoices with him after every Tiger's hit.
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The So-Called Scandal of College Sports
News of a University of North Carolina cheating scandal broke this summer dwarfing the 2007 Florida State fiasco. This month we learn that several members of Harvard's men's basketball team cheated on a take home exam. Shocking. Or not. College sports are a huge financial boon for colleges and universities. The cash cow is obviously football at close to a billion in annual revenue for TV alone. And