Romantica - America

If you want to hear some good music, you can hear Romantica's latest album here:

http://www.romanticamusic.com/music.html

I give it an A+.

"The wakeup call of my adult life"

Have you seen this Bill Hybels lecture on how Willow Creek's strategy for maturing Christians has been wrong all these years? It's a great discovery...but, the video disturbed me a little.

http://revealnow.com/story.asp?storyid=49

I'll start with the Greg Hawkins interview (the pastor who discovered this problem at Willow Creek). Here's a quote:

"And I sit there Sunday after Sunday and I wonder, are we spending those folks money in the right way? Really...would they feel great about how we're investing their resources?"

I understand the need to be good steward of the money God trusts us with. But, really, the standard here seems a little fishy to me. I know I'm bordering on judgmentalness and over-analysing a single two and a half sentences...isn't there a bit of an overemphasis on the people in the pew? Should our motivation stem from the fact that we're misusing money...or, even better/worse...because people wouldn't "feel great" about how we're spending their money? Something seems awry here...shouldn't a church be wondering: How does God feel about how we're spending His money? What does the Bible indicate I should do with the money? These are oversimplistic questions...but, I don't get the vibe that Greg Hawkins started with anything except wondering how he could give people more bang for their buck.

Here's what I like, though. I like a big church admitting that they made a big mistake...I like the fact that they aren't trying to hide anything. I like the fact that the crowd applauds when he says: "...we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become self-feeders."

I'd like to be optimistic because I think Hybels hits the nail on the head with the problem...people are relying on the church too much and not learning how to grow on their own. But, the solution to the problem - a health club style discipleship program? - seems like more of the same to me.

Lee Strobel dot com

Here's a resourse worth spending a few minutes at:

http://www.leestrobel.com/

Think YouTube...apologetics...and evangelicalism.

Bioethics: A Primer for Christians by Gilbert Meilaender

Little Miss Sunshine Revisited

So, I got two comments and a taunting Email from my last post. Naturally, I’m thinking Little Miss Sunshine is really bringing in the hits to my blog, so I better give the fans more of what they want. So, here’s a snippet into my mind where I overanalyze the movie and life in general.

I’m pretty sure society is extremely wicked, screwed up, troubling, sinful…pick your adjective and/or verb. But, I have a hunch that in some sense it’s about a gazillion times worse than what we think it is. The reason it’s worse is because people show you what they think they want you to see. They pretty up their problems and misery so that they can keep up with the “prettiness” their neighbor has created in their own life. If the dressed up version is as bad as some of the dressed-up-versions are, I have a hunch that there’s a lot of crap going on behind people’s doors. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, internet porn of all shapes and sizes, prejudice, hatred…

But, what if people didn’t hide how depraved and flawed they really are? Think about it for a second.. Let’s imagine a church setting. What if the guy next to you in church told you that he looked at porn for two hours the night before? What if the lady next to told you that she beat up her husband with a frying pan the night before? …I think the cringe factor that I feel as I type those things is symbolic of the problem. We don’t want to know about it…probably for the same reason we don’t want to be part of a big brother program in the community or volunteer at the hospital or ask the family with the handicapped kid over for dinner. It’s inconvenient, it’s uncomfortable, it takes investment and follow up…etc.

…here Little Miss Sunshine enters into the equation. It’s a movie that shows a screwed up, “potty mouth” family coming to grips with who they are. Then, instead of prettying up who they are they celebrate their discovery. The reason I love the ending is that in about 5 minutes it tells the whole story of the movie in an allegory. I’m not going to argue that it doesn’t step over the line a little…but, I wouldn’t argue too much that it does, either. The reason why is that a naïve girl who has been taught an awful dance by her dirty grandfather is sort of what’s going on with us. It’s my belief that we’re made to be God-glorifiers…typically when we stumble into sinful actions in our life we do so naively…and, then we look as out of place as that girl did on stage. The comedy of the scene…the unusualness of seeing someone who isn’t pretending in that setting…the dark streak that goes through it all…there’s so many things going on all at once…this tension is what feels good and (for lack of a better word) “real” about the scene.

I think this brings us back to where I left off with my explaining-what’s-wrong-with-the-world paragraphs. Admitting the problem isn’t only part of the answer. Little Miss Sunshine ends with a celebration of the freedom of admitting your problems. If everyone went around admitting their problems all the time without doing anything about it, I think the digression may be exponential. But, I think part of the beauty of really expressing what’s wrong with you is that this release looks so ugly that we want to take care of it. Taking care of it appropriately is what Little Miss Sunshine is missing. Problems and ugliness appear too much like a yellow Volkswagen van that doesn’t run properly...if everyone pitches in together, then a community of people makes a bad situation not as bad and, in fact, the bonding experience of going down together is the beauty of it all.

…and, I think that’s all I have to say for the moment on Little Miss Sunshine. Be careful in the comment section, 3 comments and an Email might point toward more needless ramblings and run on sentences.

Little Miss Sunshine

We watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. I love (for the most part) the message of this movie. My take...feel free to provide your take...is that the movie is saying that most people's lives are like a child beauty pageant. We take our lives and dress them up with our screwed-up, self-centered ideas of perfection...and, in essence, create some sort of a freak show. In reality, we ought to be real about our problem filled lives, because everybody's lives are full of problems. The movie's answer to this issue seems to be that we should celebrate our troubled lives, without any emphasis on fixing the trouble. I think they're on to something...our lives are filled with hypocrisy and fraud (I was reminded of this just a few hours ago as my wife and I had a mini-fight in the back yard and all I could think of is "be quiet, so the neighbors don't hear")...however, there are answers to our problems. And, while we shouldn't pretend that we're perfect we should continue to address the problems.

Also, the second half of this movie is hilarious...the last scene of the movie is one of the funniest endings I've seen in a very long time. And, for those interested, this one definately deserves its R rating.

Stephen Colbert - Bruce Springsteen

"Living in the Future"

This is disturbing...

"A UK couple has received approval from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to have their IVF embryos screened for early onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD). "

(...full article)

(Also see this article)

For some reason, I thought the world couldn't get any more screwed up... The sci-fi world you see in movies like Gattica is probably prophetic of what is to come.