Stripped and Savvy: Church Rob Bell Style
Matthew Halbe
Biographical Essay
3/24/09
Stripped and Savvy: Church Rob Bell Style
By American University standards, Rob Bell wouldn’t be considered radical. He dresses in stylish, minimalist clothing and wears black, square framed prescription lenses. He’s a Christian pastor, which is a unique career choice by any standards but in his sermons to the church he founded in Grand Rapids, he spends time talking about global inequity, environmental hazards, micro loan programs and fresh water initiatives. When I attended a service there a couple of weeks ago, he played “Dirt off Your Shoulder” by Jay-Z as a teaching aid for the book of Lamentations in the Bible. That’s not radical by AU student standards. In order to understand his role as a resister you have to step into the world of Evangelical Christianity.
The term “Evangelical” is a catch-all for popular Protestant Christianity in America. Evangelicals tend to be associated with the norm because they are constantly engaged in getting the word out, or evangelizing. They have a highest profile because they produce the most well known TV shows and books. And they draw the largest crowds. The Evangelical Church’s most famous parishioners are Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Max Lucado, Philip Yancey, Charles Colson, James Dobson and George W Bush. These individuals, and the Churches and political causes they represent create the closest thing we have to a norm of protestant Christianity in the United States.
In addition to being a set of political or spiritual beliefs, Evangelicalism is a vast culture of music, books, TV shows, rock concert worship services and celebrity preachers. In the United States, national chain stores exist to distribute and deliverer this material. Often times, media products found at these stores bear strange similarities to secular culture equivalents. For example, instead of buying a Superman costume on Halloween, the Christian parent can buy a “Bible-man” costume, complete with cape and mask. For a teenage girl, they can buy an album of the N’Sync equivalent boy-band Plus One. In creating alternative material of scrubbed vulgarity, sexual immorality and violence, Christians in the US have created an alternate culture full of norms and standards that are not directly tied to one denomination, creed or leader but fall under the vapid, catch-all, “Evangelical.” The norms exist. And they are defined primarily from the loudest voices and most inclusive group inside the church, Evangelicals.
Rob Bell has an odd place in this culture. In one sense he conforms to the norm. He is a celebrity preacher. His video series, Nooma (Greek word for spirit) is distributed nationally and shown at Churches across the country. He has numerous best selling books. And about 10,000 people attend the weekly gatherings at his church. He has credibility with the Protestant, Evangelical leaders and parishioners that buy his books and movies–much in the same way that Rick Warren does. But, contrary to the norm, he has achieved this level of influence in a way that has challenged the existing structures of the American Christian community. He changes the norm that says, a good Christian should only consume media that that is sold at Christian bookstores. He rejects the consumer-based model of Church, which is known for its 10-step programs and its multi-million dollar facilities. And he resists the norm that says a Christian can only associate with social causes that are explicitly Christian-Mission oriented, thus enabling him to endorse secular micro-loan programs and fresh water initiatives in the Third World that focus on material need.
The first and most evident strain of resistance in Rob Bells teaching is his embrace of secular culture. As I mentioned before, he uses Jay-Z as a teaching aid which contains all the vulgarity and sexual immortality that is shunned at the Christian bookstore. He explains in his first book Velvet Elvis, that one of his goals when starting the Church was capture the rawness of some of his favorite bands like the Pixies, Talking Heads, Violent Femmes and Midnight Oil (Bell 98). Drawing inspiration from these secular sources scares some Christians because it challenges the belief that in order to effectively reach the lost, a Christian has to be separated form the corrupting influence of the culture.
I grew up in what might be labeled as “the Evangelical world.” I was taught that I should memorize Bible verses, avoid sin and sin-inspiring music, movies and books. This way, as a Christian, I could present my life as an example to non-believers. The culture was seen as something that should be to be avoided. To live in the culture was to be indistinguishable as a Christian; someone that’s saved but doesn’t act saved. The approved forms of media were drained of their most attractive qualities. They take the nihilism out of punk and the vulgarity out of hip-hop and slap on the Christian title; thus persevering the otherness implicit in the “saved” life. This is just one view that is prevalent in the evangelical community. Bell takes a different approach to the role of media in the functioning “saved” life. He challenges the claim that media, bought, sold and consumed under heading of “Christian” is spiritually uplifting by default. And secular culture is implicitly harmful to the spiritual life—or at least neutral.
In Velvet Elvis he explicitly names a moment when a “non-Christian” source helped him to in his spiritual journey. “I remember the first time I was truly in awe of God. I was caught up for the first time in my life in something so massive and loving and transcendent and… true. Something I was sure could be trusted. I specifically remember thinking the universe was safe, in spite of all the horrible, tragic things in the world. I remember being overwhelmed with the word true. Underneath it all life is somehow…good…and I was sixteen at a U2 concert. The Joshua Tree tour. When they started to play “Where the Streets Have No Name”, I thought I was going to spontaneously combust with joy. This was real. This mattered. Whatever it was, I wanted more.” (Bell 72). He mentions other similar transcendental moments surfing and playing with his kids. Then he says, “These moments can’t be tangent. They can’t be experience that detract form the ‘real faith.’” (Bell 74). Some evangelical churches would call U2 a detraction from the faith. When he admits that he had a spiritual experience at a U2 concert, he’s not pretending to be removed from popular culture. He is in it, experiencing it. Many evangelicals would say this undermines a foundational idea, that in order to evangelize the individual and the church have to be removed from the culture.
The second strain of resistance is the stripped down quality of Bell’s Church. It is intentionally minimalist in an era when elaborate churches mark the landscape. It’s so stripped down that it’s hard to find. During my recent trip to Grand Rapids I drove past the building three or four times until I found it. You’d expect a church of 10,000 people to have billboards on the highway leading the way. There were no giant signs, just a sticker on the door of a remodeled shopping center that looked something like this:
“Mars Hill Bible Church
Sunday Gathering: 9AM 11AM”
The Mega-Church consumer style model tends to stress bigness, convenience and personal preference. Sadly, the same discontentment American’s have with material belongings is mirrored with the discontentment with Church. Stephen Ellingson, in his book Mega Church and the Mainline, describes the mega-church trend in this way, “Evangelicalism and the church growth movement speak in language of business and the shopping mall, of individual choice and experience, and of expedient efficiency and, in so doing, make their version of Protestantism familiar, relevant, and appealing to Americans whose daily lives are organized by the codes of individualism and the marketplace” (180). To create this palatable version of Christianity, Churches hire Evangelical consultants in the same way that business hire advertising consultants. As a response to the mega-church trend of Church growth, Bell says “The thought of the word Church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick” (Bell 99). Maybe this is why his church is so hard to find.
The aforementioned differences in Bell’s church are relatively superficial. The Protestant Church is accustomed to changes in the way it looks and engages with culture. Protestantism was founded by a resistor in Martin Luther. The Church currently undergoes changes in every new Protestant Church which is founded, not just with Bell’s church. The more contentions differences between Bell and popular Christianity surrounds his views of explicitly theological issues, like the role of the Bible in the life of the believer, the nature of salvation and the usefulness of secular social programs. Its within these discussion where the real differences emerge.
Bell’s describes his foundational beliefs by analogy in Velvet Elvis. He compares the life of faith to jumping on a trampoline. He and son love jumping on the trampoline. And apparently, Bell loves living the Christian life. He explains that he’d much rather invite people to enjoy the experience joy of jumping on the trampoline than engage in a conversation about the physics behind springs. In the same way, he’d rather invite people on the experiential journey of Christian spirituality than get weighed down talking about doctrine. Springs are the doctrinal issues of Christianity concerning the Bible, Salvation, and the law which are subject to constant dispute.
His experience oriented idea of faith is appealing because there is a common perception that Christianity requires believing a set of beliefs in order to secure a blissful existence in the afterlife. In this thinking, when the required-beliefs conflict with the individually held beliefs it naturally excludes people from participation and membership into the Church. Bell presents a different picture. He says, essentially that, Christianity is a process of doing as Jesus did: healing the sick, feeding the poor, loving God and loving others. Correct doctrine helps this process along, just like the springs help jumping but they aren’t the point. Bell shifts the focus away from contentious arguments about salvation toward the experiential process of the Christian life.
Some leaders accuse Bell of ignoring clear teachings of the Bible. They see his verbiage as desire to avoid conflict on the exterior, but underneath, it is actually a preference for the popular secular post-modern culture. Scot McKnight of Christianity Today describes the suspicion of post modern Christianity this way:
It is said that emerging Christians confess their faith like mainliners — meaning they say things publicly they don’t really believe. They drink like Southern Baptists — meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious. They talk like Catholics — meaning they cuss and use naughty words. They evangelize and theologize like the Reformed — meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time. They worship like charismatics — meaning with their whole bodies, some parts tattooed. They vote like Episcopalians— meaning they eat, drink, and sleep on their left side. And, they deny the truth — meaning they’ve got a latte-soaked copy of Derrida in their smoke- and beer-stained backpacks.
Many serious Christians are deeply concerned about the perceived negative effects of homosexual marriage amendments and legalized abortion. In political debates that depend on taking a clear stand, Bell refuses to give one. He is not using his popularity and influence to effect the law, rather, he avoids talking about it all together. This makes some Christians resentful and suspicious.
The tension is further magnified by Bell’s association with the controversial leader of the post-modern, “emergent” view of Biblical interpretation, Brian McLaren who is frequently the subject of attack by conservative evangelicals for the supposed weak view of scripture outlined in his many books. The emergent movement is characterized by a move away from modern forms of Biblical interpretation involving systematic theology to a post-modern view of the Bible which asserts that the entirety of Biblical knowledge cannot be known, summarized or embodied by one interpretation.
In an often cited article in Christianity Today title “The Emergent Mystique”, Kristen Bell (Rob’s wife) was quoted as saying that McLaren’s book New Kind of Christian was their “lifeboat” for escaping suffocating Biblical fundamentalism. This disclosure and the attention this article received implicates Bell in the emergent movement even if he doesn’t use it as a personal or communal title. Using the subtle implications of Bell’s association with McLaren, attacks on emergent churches and specifically McLaren are sometimes backdoor ways of criticizing Bell.
Take for example what a well-known conservative evangelical John Macarthur had to say in a sermon dedicated to debunking the emergent church, “The emerging church movement is an amorphous sort of loose knit association of Churches that have decided that there is value…there is even virtue in uncertainty about Scripture. The bottom-line in the movement is they believe that we aren’t even suppose to understand what the Bible means. And to me, that’s a big issue. Its an attack on the clarity of the scripture. And they elevate themselves as if this is some noble reality” (Macarthur).
Now compare that with the frequently repeated line of Bell’s in books and interviews: “Being a Christian is more about celebrating mystery than conquering it.” (Bell 34). In Velvet Elvis, he goes on to talk about the impossibility of the unbiased perspective, “the idea that everybody else approaches the Bible with baggage and agendas and lenses and I don’t is the ultimate in arrogance. To think that I can just read the Bible without reading any of my own culture or background or issues into it and come out with a “pure” or “exact” meaning is not only untrue, but it leads to a very destructive reading of the Bible that robs it of its life and energy.” At the heart of these two quotes–essentially two pastors accusing each other of having arrogant and destructive views regarding the Bible– is the debate about what it means to be a Christian. Its been raging for hundreds of years. Conservatives accuse McLaren and Bell of hiding behind post-modern arguments so that they can ignore clear and binding principles of the Bible, especially related to homosexuality and the salvation of non-Christians. And the loosely titled Emergents accuse the conservatives of toxic fundamentalism that robs faith of joy, vitality and relevance.
Perhaps the most salient line of argument against Bells theology comes from Dallas Willard in his book, The Divine Conspiracy. He doesn’t name Bell specifically. Bell’s church didn’t even exist in 1997 when the book was published. But He describes a period of time in the 1960s when advocating for the rights of African Americans was the social ethic of day. The National Council of Churches (NCC) actively adopted a policy of direct participation. This is similar to the way Bell has endorsed micro-loans and fresh water programs. Willard claims is that engaging in social causes minimized the effectiveness of the gospel for personal transformation and replaced it with the experience process of marching behind charismatic leaders. The problem is not that the causes are not worthy, but rather, the force behind them is not rooted in Christianity. The Christian message gets transformed into something its not. Willard describes this processes, “To be committed to the oppressed, to liberation, or just to “community” became for many the whole of what is essential to Christian commitment. The gospel, or “good news,” on this view, was that God himself stood behind liberation, equality, and community; that Jesus died to promote them, or at least sake of them; and that he lives on in all efforts and tendencies favoring them. For the theological left, simply this became the message of Christ” (Willard 51). This type of social ethic goes against the traditional Christianity because the exclusiveness of the gospel is seen as oppressive force that has to be overcome. Christian spirituality that focuses on the transformational power of the resurrected Christ is trivialized by non religious movements.
Bell has always resisted the claim that he ignores the authority of the scriptures. Or that he trivializes the role of resurrected Christ. In his mind, he is a bible teacher and Christ follower. Scripture is central to the life of a believer. And he is actively trying to live as Christ would want. He interprets this to mean focusing more on the Biblical imperatives related to serving the poor than legal restrictions against homosexuality and abortion. To him, following Christ means working with secular organizations to elevating global poverty, the eradication of environmentally harmful consumer practices. His feels entitled to take liberties in regard to music, books and movies. And he avoids talking about abortion and homosexuality altogether. He explicitly rejects the prevalent mega-church model in the United States. Weather or not this version of Christianity lines up with the essence of Christ’s teaching in our contemporary culture, is a discussion rages on and its certainly not going to get adjudicated by me.
Works Cited
Bell, Rob. Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.
Ellingson, Stephen. The MegaChruch and the Mainline. Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press: 2007.
Macarthur, John. “The Emerging Chruch Movement Faculty Lecture Series.” Podcast. Masters Seminary. 24 January 2006. 06 March 2009. < http://audio.tms.edu/ downloads/01_24_2006_John_MacArthur_Emerging_Church_Movement.mp3 >.
Crouch, Andy. “The Emergent Mystique” Christianity Today. 01 November 2004. 06 March 2009 <http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/ 2004/november/12.36.html>.
Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. San Fransicso CA: Harper, 1997
McKnight, Scot. “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” Christianity Today. February 2007: 35-37.
LSD! (Important Info for All You Hippies Out There)
I was organizing all the documents on my computer and I came across a paper I wrote last year about LSD. I enjoyed reading it again. I figured I’d post it on here for the world to enjoy. I got most of my information from a book called Licit and Illicit Drugs By Edward Brecher. If you ever want to learn about the science, history or psychology of popular drugs, be it caffeine or heroin, it’s a good book to consult. Its very accessible, not daunting at all. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
But without further ado….Here’s my LSD paper.
Matthew Halbe
College Writing
29 November 2008
LSD Tripping
Illicit drugs have a powerful appeal. They are a quick and powerful release from the mundane, painful and frustrating realities of life. According to type, they might offer extreme levels of pleasure, an excited state of being, an altered perception of reality or, in some cases, a combination of effects. Its no wonder, humans beings seek out drugs. To quote an expert, it’s “that innate propensity of mankind to supply some grateful means of promoting the flow of agreeable thoughts, of emboldening the spirit to perform deeds of daring, or of steeping in forgetfulness the sense of daily sorrow” (Stille). As much as drugs might quickly serve these ends, they are not without negative consequences. It’s important to understand the consequences lest one fall into addiction or a debilitating mental or physical condition. The purpose of this paper is to educate the laymen as the effects and consequences of LSD. I will describe the effects, give a brief history and end by offer my own advice. The conclusion might surprise you.
LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) AKA “acid” is a substance derived from argot, a fungus that grows on cereal grains. The effective human dose is a miniscule one-thousandth of a gram. It can come in the form of a saturated bit of paper with a graphic, a saturated sugar cube, a pin-head sized pill or a thin gelatin square (placed under the eyelid).
LSD is considered a pseudo-hallucinogen. It affects serotonin receptors in the brain to cause “intense auditory and visual distortions and hallucinations” (Iverson 94). Unlike a true hallucination, the LSD user doesn’t see things that don’t exist, like three headed monsters or psychedelic butterflies. He merely sees, hears and experiences things in a “distorted, wavering, or kaleidoscopic” way. (Brecher 348). He may see patterns, geometrical figures or panoramas that aren’t there, but the visions are perceived by the user as drug induced, rather than a genuine perception of the concrete world.
LSD is a recent invention but can be grouped into a family of similarly effecting drugs that include pyote, psilocybin and mescaline. LSD was discovered by a Swiss chemist named Dr. Albert Hofmann while experimenting with argot. He was unintentionally exposed to the new compound during his research and was startled by the powerful effect it had on him. He described the experience in his journal as “fantastic visions of extraordinary realness with an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors.” After the trip subsided, he tried the drug a second time to corroborate the effects in a more controlled way. He didn’t have an agreeable response. The side effects he listed were vertigo, visual disturbance, grotesque perception of faces, “motoric unrest” and an “intermittent feeling in the head, limbs and the entire body, as if they were filled with lead” (Breecher 346-7).
As the news of LSD’s effects spread through the scientific world various uses for the drugs were considered. The Untied States Army tested its usefulness for brainwashing in interrogation. For a time it was later stockpiled as a weapon for it’s disabling effects but was abandoned as a weapon in favor of more effective biological agents. The most substantial claim was as an aid to psychotherapy (Breacher 349).
In Edward Breacher’s famous consumer report “Licit and Illicit Drugs”, he compiles numerous studies that measured the effects of LSD is psychotherapy. Certain studies recorded positive results for the treatment of alcoholism and depression, enough that psychiatrists took notice. They claimed that in the proper setting LSD can lower a patience’s defenses and encourage a sense of closeness with the therapist. Negative findings usually involve the unmanageability of mind-altering effects by the patient. This lack of control can cause paranoia, delusions and unpleasant feelings. Patients panic or behave wildly. The logic of the psychiatric use is that, if the environment and the expectation of the patient can be effectively controlled, these negative effects could be mitigated and the beneficial aids to therapy maximized (Brecher 350).
It should be mentioned that positive experiences with LSD are taken by some to have intense spiritual or educational potential. A famous and controversial LSD advocate during the 1960s counter culture movement, Timothy Leary, has described LSD in an explicitly religious way: “LSD, marijuana, piody and similar chemicals which expand consciousness are sacraments. A sacrament is a visible object, which is a key to the inner divinity; something which helps you find God. For those of us in this country who use these sacraments in our worship they play the same part in our religion as the aids to worship in other religions.” Leary wasn’t the first to see hallucinogens as a religious tool. Their use in religious practice has a history that goes back to the Aztec Indians who ingested Peyote, a spineless cactus, as a mystical means of obtaining a deeper understanding of the world.
Just like LSD, peyote powerfully effects visual and auditory sensations. Users sometimes report a synthesis of senses as in “seeing” music or “hearing” a painting. For the Aztecs and other Indian tribes in Mexico, this experience was God’s gift to man and a means of gaining wisdom. One of the chief propagators of the spread of peyote to American Indians, Quanah Parker (a Comanche), claimed that the “Great Spirit” spoke to him in a vision and told him that the flesh of the Great Spirit was planted in peyote. And he should lay down his arms against the white man and unite all the tribes with the drug. Indeed, the use of peyote in religious Indian religious practices helped create a sense of solidarity and brotherhood among tribes, which helped against a shared sense of subjection under settlers. By 1954 it was estimated that one half of all American Indians had tried pyote (Brecher 338). Users formed the Native American Church of North American claiming to represent 250,000 American Indians using pyote. At times, they successfully blocked Congressional action against the drug by appealing to religious freedoms guaranteed under the constitution (Brecher 339).
Another advocate of hallucinogens, the well-known writer of Brave New World, Adolous Huxley gives an account of his experience with mescaline (the hallucination-inducing component of peyote) in an essay called “The Doors of Perception.” In it, he describes how the drug changed his perception of the flowers in his office: “At breakfast that morning I had been struck by the lively dissonance of [the flowers] colors. But that was no longer the point. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation-the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.” Huxley expounds upon the mind-expanding qualities of the drug while frequently inciting religious terminology. “I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing -but of a breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning. Words like “grace” and “transfiguration” came to my mind, and this, of course, was what, among other things, they stood for.”
The most famous hallucinogen users of all, the Beatles, describe the LSD trip in their song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”
At this point you may ask, whats so bad about LSD, if American Indians, pop icons, famous authors and psychologists can recognize the good in it, what the harm of trying it? What consequences, if any, exist?
An interesting aspect of LSD which has been studied vigorously, is the influence of expectation and environment. The expectations the user has, weather positive or negative, going into the event, largely determine the outcome. Paranoid, fearful, and lonely thoughts generally lead to a bad trip. And conversely, positive and socially minded thinking make for a good trip. Psychologists recognize the harm LSD can cause in people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as broadly as a “severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.” A person with these symptoms doesn’t need any more detachment from reality. The mental instability is only heightened with LSD.
Unfortunately, the appeal of drugs is especially potent for people that are lonely and detached from society. Their pre existing condition and effects of LSD makes for some devastating consequences. Most of us have herd stories of people committing suicide while on LSD and while no studies I have read conclusively link the two, according to the logic above, LSD will have a negative effect on someone with suicidal thoughts.
The most extensive study of the long-term effect of LSD comes from Drs. William H. McGlothlin and David O. Arnold. In the study the benefits listed were fairly consisting with the experience of the American Indians and popular figures I refered to. The studies respondents reported, “more understanding of self; more tolerance of others; less egocentricity; a less materialistic and aggressive orientation; and more appreciation of music, art and nature” But, the negative evidence against LSD comes from its unreliability to consistently provide those effects. Only 22 of the 247 respondents admitted to using LSD more than ten times after their initial experimentation. Only 3 formed a habit, in this case, once a week. What Mcglothlin and Arnold found is that users didn’t develop long-term patterns of use. The drug couldn’t consistently deliver the sought after effects because it is dependant on mood. Also the power of LSD is in its novelty. When the altered perceptions provided by LSD cease to be novel, they lose their ability to provide relief from the day-to-day ailments of life. The escape is no longer an escape.
The most damning caution against LSD, surprisingly, is not directly to its effects, which can be controlled but to its distribution which cannot. Because LSD is only available on the black market, those controlling supply have no pharmaceutical standards to comply with. The supplies could be easily contamination or might include other substances from Argot that were mistakenly included during processes of the black market chemist. LSD also requires a bulking agent to administer the miniscule quantity of LSD. Illicit Drug makers sometimes use amphetamines to bulk the drug and provide a more instantaneous kick before the effects of the LSD start. The bottom line is, you never know what you’re getting when you purchase a drug on the black market. It might be laced with harmful drugs. Or it might contain an unmanageable or toxic amount. There are no standards to ensure safe delivery (Breacher 375-380).
My personal aversion to LSD comes from a combination of factors. Obviously it’s against the law and subject to punishment in the form of fines, a criminal record or jail time. And as I’ve said, the black market is not a safe or reliable place to obtain the drug. But even if neither of these were true, I still wouldn’t use LSD. I’d rather develop a natural appreciation for art, music and nature as opposed to a chemically induced one. Second, I don’t trust that I could control the effects. And third, when I listen spokespeople for LSD like Timothy Leary, I don’t hear a wise man. I hear a crackpot. If LSD causes me to think like him, I’ll abstain. The same idea applies to the Beatles, although I’ll still listen to their music.
Works Cited
1. Breacher, Edward M. and Editors of Consumer Reports. Licit and Illict Drugs. Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1972
2. Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception and Heaven & Hell. New York: HarperCollins, 2004
3. Inverson, Leslie. Drugs: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford, 2001
4. Leary, Timothy “TIMOTHY LEARY DRUGS & LSD.” 6 Mar 2007. YouTube 10 Dec 2008.
5. Stille, Alfred, M.D. Therapeutics and Materia Medica. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea, 1868
Err on the Side of the Abused
Its clear that the Iranian government is willing to commit violence against their people to prevent voices from being herd. In the absence of evidence in the previous election I think its safe to err on the side of those on the underside of power– the unjustly abused and the improperly detained. The behavior of the Iranian government is evidence in itself. And so, I feel compelled to make this caveat after my last post that more or less tried to view the two sides objectively.
Conflicitng Testimonies of the Truth
In news reports coming out of Iran two competing versions of reality are being presented. One is propagated exclusively by state media in Iran. And the other is broadcast in the international media. The individual observer doesn’t have enough information to conclusively determine which version is true. Either Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won or Mir Hossein Mousavi won, both can’t be true. But no one knows for sure. In the absence of the clear evidence, I would like to present the competing claims and discuss the implications of each.
1. The Iranian Government is wrong.
The US media has generally adopted this conclusion. It means that the leading national politicians and the Supreme Religious leader are either misinformed themselves or they are intentionally participating in an act of deception. Deception of this magnitude, displayed through a worldwide broadcast of a forgery, would show that that government officials and leaders of Iran are maliciously protecting their own interests at the expense of the truth. They have very little respect for the people’s right to know the truth.
Such a blatant lie could only be justified with the belief, common among dictators, that a human beings are no higher than an animals and they must be ruled over in the same way that a Shepard herds his sheep. Sheep don’t need to know the truth because what is in the best interest is making sure their physical needs are met–food and shelter (economic wellbeing and national security). If people of Iran are nothing more than sheep then all they need to know is what their benevolent Islamic shepards tell them.
2. The Iran Government is right.
This would mean that the western media has failed. And if they failed, we have failed. It would mean that our western perception world events is deeply flawed. It means that somewhere along the line we have either chosen to ignore the facts or we have been too weak to discern them. All the frenzy that we have stired in minds and hearts of the people is based on a lie, made worse by our appetite for sensational news. A misreading of this magnitute would strike a nasty blow to the hope of seeing eye to eye with the Iranian government. In the event that we are wrong, it will take us a long time to realize our mistake. We will go on talking the cruelty and injustice the Islamic Republic of Iran for the next 10 years regardless.
Conclusion:
The truth can be discovered through a simple process of aritmatic. The paper ballots exist, human beings are capable of counting them. One guy recieved more votes then the other. Its a black and white matter, that sadly, might never be exposed to the light. The tragedy is the darkness that has been created. No one can be sure who to trust or what to think. We are forced to either vilify the regime in Iran or vilify the international media.
Many have already formed judgments. Some reading this will think I’m doing a disservice for not falling in step behind the popular beliefs communicated in the International media. I do lean heavily to the side of those that accuse vote rigging. I find it difficult to see it any other way. However, its sad when people are driven to such extremely divergent views, regardless of who is right.
Someone is doing massive harm by lying. The Iran people suffer. And the prospects for improved relations between the US and Iran are seriously diminished. I hope that someday someone will write a book on the facts of what transpired in the election of 1388 in Iran. Until then, the unrest will continue…
Mason Jennings: Blood of Man
One of my favorite artists, Mason Jennings, is coming out with a new album at the end of the summer called Blood of Man. I can’t find much news of it on the internet other than a few youtube clips. I can’t find an official list of songs but it should contain: “The Field”, “The Tourist”, “Black” and “So Many Ways to Die”
The Field and The Tourist will definitely be on it. “Black” and “So Many Ways to Die” are just speculation.
I’m anxious for some more news. Posted below are clips of Mason Jennings performing two of the new songs in an office somewhere. Some might say that it spoils the songs to raw acustic versions, as the first listen. If you’re not already a fan, I’d agree. But if you ARE a fan, and you’re impatient like me…. then you’ll probably like these, if only to get you excited for the studio versions.
Genesis 1-35
For the past 18 days I’ve been reading Genesis as a part of a 40 day project to read a chapter of the Bible per day. I’m starting with Genesis because…. well, thats where the Bible starts…. “In the Begining….”etc etc.
I would like to share with you, the blog reading public (mostly Miguel, Sandy, Nick, Bepa and various other family and friends), my thoughts as I’ve tackled these age-old stories. So here we go…
1. Did you know that Jesus’ linage can be traced back to Adam? Everyone knows that it can be traced to Abraham that much is obvious from the first book of the New Testament because its written. But Abraham can be traced directly to Noah (Genesis 10 and Genesis 11: 10-26). And Noah can be traced directly to Adam (Genesis 5). So there you go. You can find father, son, father, father son, all the way from Adam to Jesus. So if Jesus was around the time of year 0 on our calender, tack on a few thousand years after that and then you have the age of the human race, according to the Bible. I didn’t actually know this until I read Genesis myself. I figured there were large gaps in genealogies between Adam and Noah and Noah and Abraham. Not so.
2. Its sad to me that Lot was saved from Sodom only to have his wife turned into salt and his daugters con him into sleeping with them. He might have been better off had he just gotten burned up in Sodom. The ironic part is that God’s opinion on this matter isn’t clearly stated. In fact, God’s judgement is mostly left up to the reader to decide because after he sleeps with his daughters we don’t hear very much from Lot after that. We don’t know what becomes of him. I think the account of Lot’s life in the Quran paints a much rosier picture. At least thats the impression I get from the sundry Islamic sources I’ve herd on TV, Movies, Documentaries etc.
3. Obvious question, how did Noah fit all the animals (two each) in the Ark. The boat wasn’t big enough according to the specs given. How large would a boat have to be to fit all the different types of animals in the world? I actually had a dream about this after I read the story. I dreamt that God shrank all the animals in order to fit them on the ark. He is God, so he is all powerful, this wouldn’t be beyond the scope of his powers. What other explanation is there?
4. Its deeply troubling to me that God lamented ever having created the human race Genesis 6:5-8. The impression I get from this verse is that if it hadn’t been for Noah, he would have completely destroyed his creation. And before this point we don’t receive qualifications for righteousness. Noah was different. He behaved righteously, but before this point the differentiation between righteous and unrighteous the abstention of Rape and Murder. The evil people mentioned are mostly murders and rapists. How could a All-Powerful creator of the universe not foresee such occurrences? Was he surprised that human beings acted the way they did? How do you surprise omniscient, all powerful, all knowledgable, God?
Imagine for a second that you have a science project with ants. You place a bunch of ants in a fish tank and they wind up eating each other. And then you say to yourself, it would have been better for the ants if I had never put them in this tank to begin with. Whose fault would it have been for the ants for eating each other? You for for creating the conditions inside the tank? Or the ants for succumbing to their hunger?
Also, would God be showing the world mercy by killing the human race? Or would he be exercising wrath?
5. Why did he chose Abraham? What did Abraham do to deserve favor from God? And another thing, who would want God’s favor when he asks you to do things like murder your son? And live hundreds of years with a wife that can’t give birth (apparently these Ancient Jews really cared about having kids, it was super important). Abraham was favored, but he didn’t receive any of the benefits of that favor in his lifetime. He didn’t receive the inheritance of billions of children and the promised land. I guess he’ll have to watch his children obtain it from heaven.
6. All the men seem to have multiple wives, yet such behavior would be condemned by Jews and Christians today. Men considered to be in good standing before God had children with as many as 4 (if not more) women (see Jacob, Genesis 35:22-26)
Thats all for now.
Here is YouTube clip produced by Jonathan Goldstein entitled “BibleTap.” I got a laugh out of it. Enjoy.
Heres another… “Bible In a Minute” by Barats and Bereta
God as Perfect (random thoughts I’m thinking currently)
It always bothers me when people go on and on about how perfect God is morally. I don’t think I am in a position to judge God. I’m just a speak of his creation. What does it matter what I think, he created the brain that I think it with. That said, if you want to know my opinion about the moral perfection of the God as described in the old testament, I have some question.
Speaking about the Old Testament account, it reminds me of a line in a song by the Hold Steady called The Cattle and the Creeping things… It goes like this….”I guess I herd about original sin. I herd the dude blames the chick. And the chick blames the snake. And I herd they were naked when they got busted. And I herd things ain’t been the same since.”
So, doesn’t God bear some responsibility for putting the snake in the garden with Adam and Eve. Also, isn’t it funny how quickly we go from peace, love and harmony in Eden…. to totally debaucery of Sodom…. just a few chapters.
God creates the universe and it goes to crap after a few hundred years. How is that my fault?
Anyway, I’m not mad at God so long as he doesn’t banish the majority of his creation to eternal suffering. How fair would it be if he created a situation where there is a propensity to sin and then immediately follows with the radically severe punishment? I would say he made us faultily and then punishes us for faulting.
But supposing he offers help…. or provides a way out…. or just kills us off so as to prevent us from screwing everything up. Is eternal suffering the proper punishment for a crime we have no help but comitting?
Hopefully, those in Sodom aren’t in hell, maybe God ended their lives so that they evil would stop but there is still a way out if they accept it. Like a parent telling a kid they can’t watch TV anymore because its rotting their brain. Now they are gonna spend 40 Million years paying off their debts to the people they murdered and raped…. and then God will have some kinda plan from that point on… but eternal punishment…. come’on does that sound morally perfect to you?
Bumper Sticker
Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and atheism exist. They coexist. That is a given. Its not a goal to be achieved. It already is. So, done, we have reached the promised land of diversity.
Is the status quo a goal? Is to simply not assimilate one group into another what we must achieve? To, in effect, do nothing. Because we already coexist. Don’t kill each other, don’t assimilate, don’t say one is better than the other….don’t do, or say anything…. and walla, we coexist. Isn’t COEXISTENCE a weak goal. Why not have a bumper sticker that says LOVE ALL RELIGIONS (and of course surround it with a bunch of religious symbols). Existence is passive. Love is active. You don’t see a bumper sticker like that because its too hard to love different beliefs. Some religious beliefs are repugnant. Its much easier to passively allow their existence in some far off corner of the world than to actively love what they believe. The more I think about it, loving something you disagree with is impossible!
I have no problem with coexistence because it is a natural fact of life. You believe one thing, I believe another and we both occupy the same space. You believe on thing about Christianity I believe another and we coexist. There is no unity inside each religion much less outside. So even if we all lived under the banner of one religion there would be the coexistence of diverse beliefs. Even if a supposed Christian nation killed off all the supposed Islamic nations there would still never ever be full unity of belief in the world. Because the Christian nation wouldn’t be full of only Christians.
Fine, let’s coexist. But we can’t say its all the same–that essentially there is no difference. Because if we do, we lose equilibrium. We lose all basis for conversation. The conversation stops because we have decided that blue is green that 4 is 5 and I am you—and that is mental oblivion. If we say that a car is the same as a boat we can no longer talk about water or land travel with any credibility. If we say that hatred is the same as love then we don’t know the right way to treat each other.
I’m more comfortable saying that ALL RELIGIONS fail to capture the entirety of the TRUTH Christianity included, than I am saying ALL RELIGIONS are TRUE.
Avett Brothers
I have a couple of things to say about this video… first, look at size of those beards! Second, I have a capo exactly like the one shown on the guitar.
Enjoy (if you can get past the beards)
