Watching television yesterday and there was a commercial for the 20th anniversary of Dirty Dancing. I wasn't paying attention until I heard Patrick Swayze make the follow statement:
 "It was a film about the rediscovery of innocence."
Really, Patrick? Because besides the whole "nobody puts Baby in the corner" thing, I'm not sure the flick rediscovers anyone's innocence. You sure you're thinking about Dirty Dancing and not To Wong Foo: Thanks For Everything?
I guess one of the reasons I have distrust of the environmental lobby is their elevation of the importance of the earth above we who inhabit it. Case in point, this new study that recommends that saving the world is as easy as not having kids. Crazy. I thought the point of "going green" was to preserve the world for the next generation. But in order to preserve the world we need to eliminate the next generation?
I'm confused.
HT: Tyana
If you haven't already, set the DVR to Wednesday's edition of ABC 's Nightline for the great atheist debate . There is already some leaked footage out on the interwebs [here and here] and it does not look good at all for our side. I'm not sure how ABC will edit it, but it from what I've seen, it looks brutal. Pray for a video malfunction that destroys the footage. Or if you have a time machine, now would be the time to go back a few days and stop this thing from taking place. You know the adage, "never take a knife to a gun fight"? Ray and Kirk were certainly not packing. And they had butter knives. Plastic butter knives. With butter still on them.
If anything, maybe this will be a good thing for evangelical Christianity in the western world. It could be a watershed moment when we finally realize that the rest of the world won't let us get away with surface scientific knowledge and hollow metaphors.
I know I'm coming off as extremely critical, but it was rather arrogant of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron to think they could walk into this debate with pretty little arguments that work on inebriated folk enamored by a television camera and convince them that God is real. It's just not that easy.
Welcome to the revolution, guys. These people don't play nice. Either you have to go into these things with double-barrels-a-blazin', with a solid philosophical/epistemological background, or don't bother showing up to the O.K. Corral.
I'll be watching tomorrow night. But I'll probably be embarrassed.
Now for something cool that you might not care about: they've discovered the tomb of Herod the Great. This is the Herod who ruled when Jesus was born, the same lunatic who ordered the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem in about 4BC [wrap your mind around the wonderful dating: Jesus was actually born four years before he was thought to be born]. As we've been studying the book of Matthew at Echo, I actually taught an entire message about Herod [audio here].
As bad as Herod comes off in the Biblical narrative, he looks even worse in other sources. Herod was paranoid, to the extent that he had both his favorite wife and son killed, prompting the Roman Emperor to remark, "better to be Herod's pig than his son." He also wanted all of his officials to commit suicide upon his death; nobody followed through. Herod was buried in the Herodian, a massive mountain-like structure a few miles away from Bethlehem. It was here that archaeologists finally found his resting place. But, since Herod was so hated, it appears that the grave was desecrated shortly after his death.
Of course, this discovery doesn't prove that the Christian faith is true, but it does continue to reaffirm the historical validity of Scripture. I take certain delight in the way people unfamiliar with the Bible quickly dismiss it as fake or unimpressive. The Bible continually goes out on a limb by citing historical events and locations; and these facts are continually proven to be legitimate. When deciphering the meaning of life, it's difficult to ignore the Bible.
Oh, and Herod's still dead. But Jesus is alive.
Here's what I'm thinking tonight: I've found myself engaged in quite a lot of dialogue lately concerning theology. While I always welcome lively conversation, I find it can be especially frustrating.
I feel like I live between two worlds.
One one side, I'm a fundamentalist. Because I hold certain doctrines such as the divinity of Christ and the authority of Scripture to be non-negotiable, I'm seen as an old school Bible thumper. Because I believe that Jesus is the only way for salvation I'm called "intolerant" or "bigoted."
On the other side, I'm a liberal. The church tradition from which I come, the independent Christian Churches, is known for being anti-intellectual, and rightly so. In the early twentieth century the intellectual movement among Western Christianity was driven by Biblical liberalism. People questioned essential doctrines and our churches responded by rejecting any intellectual approach to the Scriptures. It was a "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" response. So now, among some people in my fellowship, I can be perceived as a liberal; since I refuse to endorse certain extra-Biblical teachings, I'm just as wrong as the agnostic or the atheist.
So on one side I face people who believe nothing is concrete, a laissez faire approach to spirituality where everything goes. And on the other side, I'm confronted by those who believe that we know everything about God and there is no room for disagreement.
And there I am, the middle child, trying to play peacemaker. It's a good life.
I'll admit, it's an easier existence to live in one of those two worlds. When you live in the liberal world where everyone's right, you think it means everyone will be happy. But inevitably, someone's "rightness" infringes on your "rightness."
When you live in the fundamentalist world where everyone's wrong, it makes identifying the wrong people easy [anyone who disagrees with you is wrong]. And that's all well and good until you realize that everyone else in the entire world, in addition to 99.9% of all the people who ever lived, are wrong.
So, in which world do you live?
I'm naive enough to believe that there is room enough to live between the two worlds. There is truth from God that needs to be recognized, but there is also much that is mysterious about Him. There is voluminous information that can be discerned from examining creation and the Scriptures, but there is a limit to what we can pronounce undeniably. Unless we're prepared to dwell in a faith that's black and white with shades of grey, we'll beat our heads against brick walls trying to grasp the complexity that is God.
So even though it's a pain, I choose to live between these two worlds with the hope that dwelling here will somehow make a difference.
And that's what I'm thinking about tonight.
I like a wide variety of sports. And since I'm ticked off at the Reds bullpen [again] for blowing the game tonight, I thought I'd give a little coverage to some of those sports I don't discuss much. Soccer: I love the sport but I don't get to see a lot of games of my favorite team, Manchester United. They're having a pretty good year in the Premier League [English Soccer League] and the FA Cup [tournament of all the teams in England, like the Florence Freedom getting a chance to play the Yankees], but the big deal has been their performance in the UEFA Champion's League. This is a tournament of all the best club teams in Europe, which Manchester United won in 1999. Man Utd was in this year's semifinal and all they had to do to advance was win or tie against Italian team AC Milan. I watched the game Wednesday and they got thrashed. Seriously, it was like watching the Buckeyes lose to Florida in the BCS Championship game all over again. Not a good showing, at all.
Hockey: I've probably watched 24 minutes of hockey all year. Doesn't help that almost all the games are televised by a network that nobody has. But I've had to take note because my favorite team is doing pretty well. In the mid-1980's, my neighbor took his son and me to watch a exhibition hockey game down at Riverfront Coliseum. It was then that I became a New York Rangers fan. I watched their entire Stanley Cup run in 1994. It's been a rough few years but they've had a pretty good playoff run this year. They swept their first series and, after a slow start, evened up their current series with the Buffalo Sabres. They got a gimme non-goal call this last game that helped them out. Me and The Dale [fellow Rangers fan who grew up a little closer to New York than me] might have to wear our Rangers jerseys to church on Sunday.
Horse Racing: Ever since I married a Kentucky girl, and inherited a father-in-law who is fascinated with race horses, I've enjoyed watching the Triple Crown. And since touring Churchill Downs a couple of months ago, I'm pretty excited for the Kentucky Derby this Saturday. Street Sense is the easy pick, a 4-1 favorite, but I'm really liking Any Given Saturday right now. I'm not going to lock in my pick just yet, but that's where I'm looking.
Curling: Currently, no news to report.
Today is the National Day of Prayer here in America. Nice for Christians, annoying for atheist. An atheist blogger I regularly check out made this observation about today:
Today's the day to take action instead of idly praying. Worthy actions include: Giving blood, signing up to be an organ donor, helping a stranger, or donating money to your favorite secular non-profit so they can continue the good work that they do!
So his take [obviously a result of his atheism]: prayer is a futile, so be productive and do something that will make a difference. But I think if you remove one or two words from that statement, it could've been made by today's social-justice-inclined church-- that worshipping the Living God on Sunday is not as effective as getting out and performing good deeds. Just this past week during the evening news, I heard a minister state that "unless the church gets out and does something, then we're useless." Staple that to a phrase a read from another minister this week: "if your church shut its doors, would your community protest?"
Sounds Biblical, right? But is it?
I recognize that for years the church was inwardly focuses, too much so, that we began to support random acts of kindness. It was all well and good until people begin to adopt it as their driving theology; that eradicating hunger and poverty ought to be the church's top priority. While that can be a positive byproduct of the gospel, it isn't its focus. We Christians are called to be more than good-deed doers.
There's much more that I need to write about this, because some of you might be offended that I hold this stance. I'll try to get some more thoughts up about it soon. But I will say now that if we, as the church of Christ, exists only to perform good deeds and make our communities like us then we seriously need to check our priorities. Christians don't own the market on trying to make the world a better place.
Even the atheists do that.
So check out this quality video: The Day They Kicked God Out Of School. In response, I say, "yikes."It made me feel icky.
Here's a thought these people never pondered: can you really kick God out of anyplace? I mean, He is God. Orthodox Christianity holds that He is all-powerful. So if we can just kick God out of places, doesn't that mean He couldn't do anything we wanted him to do in the first place?
With the reemergence of atheism as a legitimate presence in the United States, you might think a debate about God would be a good thing. Ray Comfort has challenged the two creators of The Blasphemy Challenge to a debate that will be televised by ABC. Who is Ray? Perhaps you know better his BFF Kirk Cameron. Yes, that Kirk Cameron. Ray and Kirk have their own evangelistic organization that's all over TBN. Part of the deal is that Ray and Kirk won't mention their faith to prove that God exists, but only scientific evidence. This is dumb. Sorry to burst your closed-to-the-world Christian bubble but you can't scientifically prove that God exists. That might tick some of you off, but neither can you scientifically prove that God doesn't exist. Now you can definitely use systems of logic to demonstrate that the odds lean towards the existence of a Creator, but there are many better qualified and experienced Christian apologists who have already debated atheists artfully than this Aussie and former friend of Boner will be able too [long sentence there, but I like it].
So get ready to witness some embarrassing prime-time coverage of our faith. You know I'll watch.
We're still watching American Idol. I think it's almost like a school assignment: something I need to see all the way through. If we didn't have DVR, I'd never watch this crap. I say "this crap" because I still think this is a pretty rough line-up. You have Melinda, who has the pipes, but should be auditioning for a Broadway show. Jordin has another phenomenal voice, but she's hit and miss. Everyone else is lucky to be there. So why do I put myself through this torture? For little gems like tonight:
Bon Jovi songs.
So I go into the evening excited because I'm a huge Bon Jovi fan. I know, I lose a little street-cred for liking a ballad singing, big-hair band who know release country music but I can live with myself. They rock. Everyone knows it.
True Story: when I was visiting my sister's family a few months ago, we were driving around in their car. Her kids wanted some tunes and she popped in Bon Jovi's Greatest Hits. I asked her if they liked his music and she stated that they loved it. I was skeptical until I heard the twins' four-year old voices belting out in unison, "Whoa, we're haf-way there! Whoa, livin' on 'ta prayer!" Classic.
Anyway, while I thought I would be excited about Bon Jovi night, I forgot that I'd have to endure the contestants singing his songs. Quick recap for you:
So, again, another forty minutes of my life [thanks for shaving twenty minutes, DVR] that I cannot get back.
We can only hope that a performance by the man on tomorrow night's show will redeem this evening's display of torture.
But Jon Bon better bring Richie Sambora with him tomorrow. Not doing so would be more tragic than Sanjaya.
Some people were saying they couldn't read all the content so I changed the colors of the layout. Let me know if you're still struggling. I'm such the people pleaser.
Rough weekend around here as I came down with another sinus infection. Imagine someone hitting your forehead with a hammer and you get a good idea of what it feels like. Additionally, while I was still wallowing yesterday, Kaelyn started feeling warm. She posted fevers of 103 and 104.5. And we were a little worried as we just switched her doctors and our new insurance didn't kick in until today. But the new pediatrician was awesome and said to give her drugs and liquids. The little trooper is feeling much better today.
Also, this past month was also great learning experience in the lesson of bandwidth. The good news is that lots of people are downloading our Echo Church podcast. The bad news is that I left the files so big that we used up all of our bandwidth this weekend. That meant the church website, this blog, the family website, and our Echo Church all shut down. It resets in May, so we're finally back up. I did some website maintenance [thanks, Brian Coates] and we shouldn't have this problem again. I learn something new everyday.
You know while the blog was down I thought of a hundred things to post about. And now, I think I've forgotten them all.
Pat Forde, columnist for ESPN, takes a shot at breaking down the idiosyncrasies of Cincinnati. If you're a local, give it a read through and let us know what you think.
Depends who you ask.
That's a pic of David Beckham, international soccer star [who was awesome when he played for Manchester United], sporting a Cincinnati Reds hat. Apparently a tabloid paper in London thinks this is a faux pas, possibly offending LA Galaxy fans.
Someone should tell them that there are no LA Galaxy fans.
Low blow, but Becks has it right; he knows the Reds rock.
. . . do I find myself constantly watching this commerical?
Last week's copy of Entertainment Weekly was the summer movie preview. Kelly and I have decided that we're going to have to put Kaelyn in day-care to see all the movies coming out this summer. Many of them are sequels, but how can you go wrong with
That's more than 24 hours of footage there. And that doesn't even include any non-franchise movies that could be good.
My question is, with all the crappy movies they've been releasing lately, why do they have to cram all of these good flicks into one summer?
FYI, I haven't had hardly any comments since switching over to the Wordpress format. I think I accidentally had something regulated that stated you had to be registered through Wordpress to comment. I switched that off. So maybe I'm just not saying anything interesting enough to comment on, which is fine, but far be it from me to suppress the populace.
Welcome to Cincinnati: land of paranoia. A few local politicians looking to make some waves [and I'm sure that it's an election year has nothing to do with it] have come up with the idea of publishing a "likely killers" list. They created a database of criminals who committed a violent crime during the past year in addition to having a prior offense involving guns or drugs. This search yielded over 1500 names. The goal of the list, one of its developers stated, is that these people move out of town. "Let all the knuckleheads move to Covington," he offers.
Yeah, that would solve everything. Most criminals would get confused on how to get back to Ohio. Bridges can be confusing like that.
Now the great debate is whether or not to publish the list. The reality is that the same information is available to any citizen who searches public archives. The motivation of these politicians is to make it easy by compiling it, oh and giving it a catch title. Nothing draws in the reader like "READ THIS LIST BECAUSE SOMEONE ON IT WILL TRY TO KILL YOU."
Look, I'm all for fighting the crime, but not to the extent that we use the Bill of Rights as toilet paper. Sure, there are criminals that are beyond rehabilitation, but we can never be certain who will or won't commit crime again. That might frighten some, but that's a cornerstone of our republic. I'm not sure if sacrificing our liberties is a good exchange for safety. I sympathize with one of the politicians who proposed this, as her husband was murdered last year by someone who would've been on this list. But you can't say that a list like this made public would've prevented this murder.
I know quite a few people who would be in favor of such a list being published; it would make them feel safer. But is this really the solution that we need?
Could it be that now, more than ever, our city needs Jesus?
I'm secure in my manhood and not afraid to admit that I have an eclectic taste in music. With the advent of iTunes, I'm afforded the opportunity to mix and match my tastes. A few weeks ago I downloaded a song that I can't seem to get out of my head. It's by a guy named Mika and the song is Grace Kelly. It sounds just like a Queen song, intentionally, since he even references Freddie Mercury in the bridge. Yeah, it's a cotton candy song, but it's a good kind of retro. And I'm really torn by Avril Lavigne's new song Girlfriend. It's sorta catchy in a Toni Basil kinda way. Entertainment Weekly's review of Avril's album stated listening "will make your SAT score drop retroactively." Her lifeless Saturday Night Live performance [why do you think they keep on showing the back-up singers?] has kept me away from embracing it.
I still think Metallica's awesome. Have to add that in there for the street cred.
Not only is Mason County the birthplace of my mother, but it is now my favorite local municipality. For those of you not in the Cincinnati, you might not be aware of the Marcus Fiesel incident. Marcus was a special needs child whose foster parents left him tied up in a closet while they attended a family reunion. When they returned, the boy was dead. In an effort to cover it up, they burned the little boy's body and threw the remains in the Ohio River. The key testimony that helped convict the foster parents was that of a woman who was a live-in girlfriend. Amy Baker received full immunity for her testimony, despite the fact she was probably as equally involved as the foster parents.
But while the immunity covered Baker in the state of Ohio, it meant nothing in Kentucky, where Baker helped to dump the child's remains. Enter Maysville police who have brought up Baker on charges of tampering with physical evidence that could bring five years in prison.
Normally I don't gloat in punishment, but this is deserved. I really question whether the Clermont County prosecutor needed Baker's testimony to seal convictions. They seemed convinced that Baker was not involved, but to the general public, this seems incredibly unlikely. Many in the community were outraged that she received no punishment. This might not be much, but it is something.
The Clermont County prosecutor is ticked because he's losing face on this deal. He should settle down and realize that anyone involved in the killing of this child should have to pay for it.
They don't take too kindly to that kind of thing on the other side of the river.
