On Being Countercultural

In which two responses to a similar call are considered and a challenge extended.

Have you ever had an idea swimming around in your head and it just doesn't seem leave?  That where I've been this last week.  So I thought I put it all down here on this blog.

According to my past labels I have talked about my small group before.  However, I don't think that I have mentioned that we are currently studying Genesis¹.  We are currently studying Genesis².  There now that that is out of the way we can move forward.  Last week we looked at Genesis chapter 12 in it is God's original call to Abram, who would become Abraham.

"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your county, your people and you father's household and go to the land I will show you³.'"

I think there are a couple of interesting things going on in this one verse.  First, it should be noted that in Abram's time, in what is now Iraq, family was everything.  Many people were nomadic traders (including, it is believed, Abram's) and you stuck with your family as a sign of strength.  The wealth and power of a tribe was dependent on its size, so one way to bolster this power was to have kids and to have them stay with you.  When the patriarch of the family died one of the sons, usually the eldest, took control and the tribe continued on.  Secondly, when traveling you stayed on the same trade route that you always stayed on making the same loops through the same areas year after year.  This is partly because you got to know the people that you would trade with, but more importantly this took place in the desert.  Knowledge of the land, where to find food, water and shelter, was integral to your very survival.

Knowing this adds a certain amount of gravity to the call "leave your country, your people, and your father's household."  The Lord was telling Abram to leave everything he knew.  To leave the safe places he was familiar with, the power and safety found in the family, the material wealth of the tribe.  In essence Abram was asked to leave his life behind, to turn away from everything he knew.  God was asking him to be countercultural (see how I brought that around).

Things only get crazier in the second half of the verse.  God doesn't tell Abram where he is to go, he simply says to "go to the land I will show you."  "Follow me" he says, with no map, no compass, not even GPS.  And Abram goes.  Pretty wild stuff, but in return God promises to make Abram into a great nation (which is a pretty bold claim when your wife can't have kids) and to bless him.  Not only that but Abram's name will be a blessing and through him all people of the earth will be blessed.

Keep all of this in mind as we jump ahead a few thousand years and see a similar situation with very different results.

In Matthew chapter 19 Jesus is teaching people, blessing small kids, basically doing his thing.  When a young man comes up to him and asks him what good things he must do to gain eternal life.  Jesus tells him to follow the commandments.  The man asks which ones and Jesus says, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself⁴.'"  "Done-skies," says the man, "what else you got⁵."

So Jesus tells him that he needs to sell all of his stuff, give the money to the poor, so that he will have treasure in heaven, and then he needs to come follow Jesus.  The next sentence is very interesting.  Most translations, the NIV included, say "When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth⁶."  However, in his commentary on the book of Matthew, Dale Bruner says that a more accurate translation is, "But when the young man heard this teaching, he went away heartsick, because he had many things⁷" (my emphasis).

Let's come back to the translations in a moment.  The first thing that is important is how similar this is to God's call to Abram.  While things start off a little different, with the young man essentially seeking Jesus's blessing (eternal life), the two stories dovetail quickly.  God tells Abram that he must leave everything behind and follow where God leads without telling him where that is.  By doing so his name, which is a blessing, will live on forever by blessing all the people of the earth.  Jesus tells the young man that he needs to leave behind everything and follow where Jesus leads without telling him where that is.  By doing so he will have eternal life.  Unfortunately for the young man he is unable to make the sacrifice that he is called to make.  Which brings us back to the different translations.

So often this passage is read as a rich man talking to Jesus, the heading of the section is even "The Rich Young Man" (but don't get me started on the headings in general, they drive me nuts).  When we read it like that it is easy for us to shake our heads and think, those silly rich people, making idols of their vast wealth, how sad for them.  We distance ourselves from the young man, thinking, that isn't me, I'm not rich. And you know what; I don't consider myself to be rich.  So for a long time I didn't connect with this guy.  I do however have lots of stuff.  And I'm guessing that you do as well.

We live in a consumer driven society, we are taught that it is good to buy, or more importantly, to own things.  We think that the more we own the more control we have over our lives, and the things in it.  But more often than not owning a bunch of crap doesn't give us control, it controls us.  Still, though, we buy books and movies and clothes when we don't really need them, or could borrow them⁸.  We overextend ourselves financially so that we can have the newest, most updated gadgets.  And companies are more than happy to supply us with all of this nonsense (I'm looking in your direction Steve Jobs).

By reading this passage as a story about a young man with many things it seems to speak directly to the consumer culture of America.  Because in this culture whether you are rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle you most likely have many things.  Jesus challenges us, get ride of all the crap in your life and just follow him.  Live a life that is in radical opposition to the culture of the day.  Follow him, and we will be blessed, and will be a blessing to those around us.


So that's my challenge for you this week.  Take stock of your life.  What is it filled with?  Maybe it's time for us to consume less and follow Jesus more, because you know what, that dude had some pretty awesome ideas on how to live life.  Will it be easy?  No.  But living a life that is countercultural rarely is.
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¹ That would be the Biblical book Genesis not the British rock band Genesis.
² Do you remember the song I Can't Dance, I totally had that album.
³ Genesis 12:1 NIV
⁴ Matthew 19:18-19 NIV
⁵ That may be a paraphrase.
⁶ Matthew 19:22 NIV
⁷ Matthew A Commentary, Book 2 The Churchbook, by Dale Bruner, page 286.
⁸ For some great thoughts on this very topic check out my friend Sarah's blog, she hit on the topic not once, but twice.

On the Life and Legacy of Wendell Winkles

In which a quest undertaken leads unexpected places.

Mr. Wendell Winkles¹ awoke with a start.  He leapt from his bed and muttered to himself, "I need a fish."  This thought quickly left his mind as he looked down and realized that he was stark naked; which he found odd given that he had gone to bed in a flannel onesie.  He walked to his closet to find something to wear.  Would it be the black with green dots, the blue with red squares, or the brown with white stripes?  Wendell Winkles stood starring listlessly into the closet unable to decide when a massive shiver shook his paunchy, wrinkly body.  His hand shot into the closet and retrieved the first object that it touched.  Mr. Winkles wrapped the blue and red burlap cloak² around his body and strode out of the smallish room through his living nook and out the front door to retrieve his mid-day paper.

"I need a fish!" Wendell screamed to the heavens.  The sunlight shimmered off of his blondish-black stubble, "I need a fish," he bellowed again.  His neighbors looked at him with question marks in their eyes³.  Old Mrs. Zanklebabner walked over to where Wendell Winkles stood gazing at the noon day sun, mouth agape, breathing heavily.

"Are you alright, deary?" She asked softly.

Wendell's head snapped down and met her eye-line, crazy juice⁴ pouring from his nose and mouth.  His eyes widened as he screamed in the poor old woman's face, "I need a fish," and then took off running down the street as fast as he could go, all the time screaming, "I need a fish.  I need a fish."  Every thirty feet or so the screaming would stop as Mr. Winkles would pause and ever so calmly adjust his cloak and tighten his sash so as not to expose himself to the people he was running past.  Why no one suggested to him to simply double knot his sash is a mystery to this day⁵.

The screaming continued as the frantic Mr. Winkles entered the park.  He made a bee line straight for the large pond at the park's center.  After scaling the large boulder at waters edge he screamed one final time, "I need a fish," before belly flopping into the pond and swimming to the bottom.  Minutes passed and still Wendell did not emerge from the putrid waters, a crowd slowly gathered around the shore.  Suddenly, Mr. Winkles' blue and red cloak floated to the surface.  Quincy Adam Johnson, park ranger, family man, and three time grand champion of the Ologokie County Costume Contest⁶, approached the crowd and asked them what was going on.

"A man jumped into the pond and hasn't come up," a young mother of 3.14 kids⁷ said.

Ranger Johnson sighed and sat down to remove his boots when he heard a rustle in the bushes near the water followed by a giggle.  He approached the bushes with caution, pushing his way through the foliage.  When he reached a clearing he saw a single shaft of light illuminating the glistening, well known and somewhat controversial⁸ back hair of Wendell Winkle.

"Wendell, what are you doing out here?" Ranger Johnson asked.

Wendell's head turned, grinning he said, "I have a fish."

He raised his arms and proudly showed his prize.  In his hands was a slightly moistened and severely agitated squirrel.  The squirrel bit Wendell's thumb and scampered into the underbrush.  Wendell stood up and turned to Ranger Johnson.

"Balls."

Ranger Johnson looked at the very nude, still wet behemoth and simply remarked, "Indeed."

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¹ Of the Kansas City^A Winkles.
² The very same style of cloak that Minowag the VII Sovereign Mountebank of Greater Thanperia wore at his coronation ceremony.
³ All except crazy, old Tommy "Raven Hater" Billingham, who had no eyes^B.
⁴ Snot and drool.
⁵ Though some scholars contend that onlookers may have been temporarily hypnotized by the giggling fat, why others postulate that people were to busy mentally preparing themselves for the seemingly inevitable, yet entirely accidental, dong viewing.
⁶ For his first-rate portrayal of Lando Calrissian.
⁷ Don't ask.
⁸ For years there has been a debate amongst the townspeople about what Wendell's back hair looked like. Some said it appeared to be shaped like an albatross fighting a gazelle, while others saw a mermaid riding a mastodon.

^A That would be the Kansas City Kansas Winkles not the Kansas City Missouri Winkles.
^B Because a raven pecked them out.

On Paul's Prayer

In which a warning is given, serious issues are discussed, and maybe some heresy.

Content warning:  This week I step back from the cavalcade of absurdity that is the norm for this blog.  Some of you may be disheartened to hear that, for others you may be thinking that it is about time.  For those of you in the first category don't fear, I will try and think of something extra ridiculous for next week¹.

I'm not really big on New Years resolutions.  I really couldn't give you a good reason.  In thinking about it the only thing that came to mind was that it reminds me a lot like Lent.  For a lot of people they seem to make these resolutions because it's the thing to do, and often they can barely make it a week.  With Lent people tend to give things up, not because it is supposed to signify there giving something to God but because it's just what you do.  Now I just read what I typed and it sounds very judgmental, which is not really what I was going for.  I think that, if even for a week, people try and eat healthier, or give up swearing, that it is a good thing.  But for me personally, I didn't want to have a resolution, or give something up for Lent unless I felt called to do so.

Long story short, this year I still didn't make any resolutions but I did make some goals for myself.  Which may be splitting hairs over the difference between the two but I'm okay with it.  My first goal was to exercise consistently.  It is something that I have tried to do in the past and failed at repeatedly, so I decided to kick things up a notch and threw down cash money on a gym membership at the Sportsplex.  So far I have been successful, now I just have to keep at it.

My second goal is to spend time everyday in prayer and reading the Bible.  It might not seem this way based solely on my writing here but my faith is the most important thing to me.  It plays a part in everything I do.  How I interact with people, where I live, what I do with my time.  It defines who I am as a person.  I am a different person when I am spending time with the Lord.  I don't think that it is a coincidence that my consistency at the gym is synchronous with my consistency in the Word.

Paul is probably my second favorite guy in the new testament²; he really brings it in his letters to various churches.  And despite what the Catholic Church may tell you when it comes to defining early Christianity he is probably the most influential person whose middle initial isn't "H."  I took a class on Paul when I was in college, which is really when I began to appreciate his writing more, and I wish that I remembered more of what I learned in it.  But no worries because I have something even better to share with you about Paul.

Please note:  I apologize in advance for any offense that the following paragraphs cause you.

One of the last things I did while I was on staff with Young Life was to attend Winter Institute, a two week intensive training session.  We spent 8+ hours a day in lectures discussing such topics as, child development, developing theology, cross-cultural interactions, and a variety of other topics that have since dissolved from my brain.  While I was at the training I was rooming with Josh, a staff guy from Ft. Wayne, and two staff guys from Texas.  One night when we were all hanging out, and feeling especially smart (or maybe stupid because we'd been in class so long), we started talking about all of the messages that Paul preaches in his letters.  After a while we were able do boil everything Paul says to the churches into one simple, easy to remember phrase.  It certainly didn't cover everything Paul wrote, but it was the best we could come up with.  The more that I thought about it the more I liked it.  Here is was we decided.

"Paul says, 'Don't be a dick.'"

Now again I apologize for the language, and if this is the last you read of my blog I understand, thanks for coming around.  But time and time again Paul was urging Christians to not get caught up on petty issues.  To love the Lord, to love Jesus, and to love each other.  So I think it works well.

What does all this have to do with my goal of being in the word, or of the title of the post for that matter?  Let me tell you.  The first Pauline letter that I read this year was Ephesians.  No other letter that Paul writes has this message to put aside petty differences more than his letter to the church at Ephesus.  The first day of reading I came across a prayer that Paul wrote out for the church and thought to myself that it was pretty neat.  So I underlined it so that I would remember it.  Two days later I was reading chapter 3 and there was another prayer that Paul wrote that seemed to dovetail with the first very well.  I decided to see what they would look like back to back so I did some copy and paste magic and found that they flowed together perfectly.  I first changed the personal pronouns around so that it would be a first person prayer.  Then I realized that it would just as well as a corporate prayer.  That's when it became this:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for we who believe.  For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And I pray that we, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.   Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen³.

I have really been digging this prayer.  I think it is perfect for the community I live in, for the small group I am a part of, for the church I attend, and for the Church universal.  I try and pray it every morning before I leave the house.  And I hope that as the year progresses it becomes less of something I say and more of something that is always on my heart.

Blessings!  And remember, Paul says, "Don't be a dick."
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¹ Maybe double footnotes?
² Psst...number one would be Jesus.
³ Ephesians 1:17-19 & 3:14-21

On the Gritty, Hardboiled, Noir Side of Life

In which we peer into the seamy underbelly of crime fiction, enjoy childhood classics, and a short story is shared.

I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes¹.  I didn't always get the jokes, or understand the words that were used, but I loved sitting down and reading Bill Watterson's funny pages masterpiece.  One of my favorite personas that Calvin took on was Tracer Bullet, rough and surly private detective that stalked the streets trying to solves mysteries like who broke the lamp?² There was something about the stark use of shadows and the callous first person narration that seemed to strike a chord with me, it resonated in my consciousness.  I had my first run in with noir fiction, and I loved it.

Noir fiction is, most simply, crime fiction that looks at crime and violence in a realistic or callous way.  It just puts it out there; crime happens, it's the way of the world.  However, noir fiction, and with it film noir, will often lead to debates among academics.  What makes a story noir, is the characters, the subject matter, the setting?  Can one story be "more noir" than another?  You are on your own to answer those questions.  But in my mind there is something about a noir story (whether film or written) that defines it as such, the only thing I can think of to describe it is an attitude that the story has.  Something that runs deep with in the story.  Clearly it is a well thought out definition that I have going here³.

Last summer I read The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.  Falcon's main character, Sam Spade, is considered the archetype for hardboiled detectives⁴.  The book was a very fun read.  It had a great story filled with sex, murder, lies, femme-fatales and some interesting plot twists.  All from a book written in the 1930's (it was originally written as a serial published in a magazine).  I think that is one of the more interesting thing about this book, written in a time that had much stricter regulations on what would be in a book Hammett had to get creative with his prose to accurately portray the criminal lifestyle without offending anyone.  Here is my favorite example:
    
      "The boy spoke two words; the first was a short guttural verb, the second "you." (Hammett, 94)

When it comes to movies that list of those films that fall under the category of noir is....extensive, to say the least.  I haven't seen as many film noir movies as I would like to, but here are some of the ones that I have seen that I have greatly enjoyed.  Ronin (1998)⁵, L.A. Confidential (1997), Payback (1999)⁶, A History of Violence (2005), Brick (2006), Momento (2000), and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005).  The last three all play on the conventions of the noir style.  Brick takes a noir style story and dialogue and places it in the setting of a high school, leading to a fast talking, cynical high school student attempting to solve the murder of his ex-girlfriend.  Momento's main character follows a man who is trying to solve the murder of his wife, the plot twist here is that he has no short term memory, the film makers utilize an out of sequence style of shooting to allow the viewer to experience the same frustrations that the main character has.  Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a noir comedy that has a fictional noir story as a central lot point.  If you watch this movie you will get to enjoy Robert Downey Junior playing a thief pretending to be an actor who is learning how to pretend to be a detective.

Call them what you want, comic books, graphic novels, sequential art, anyway you say it comics don't get a whole lot of respect.  They are seen as juvenile and simple, and they can be, but there are also incredibly deep stories to be found.  And in this case an amazingly rich noir world filled with great characters, engaging stories, and wonderful art.  It is called Criminal, written by Ed Brubaker, drawn by Sean Phillips, and colored by Val Staples.  Criminal follows the world of two generations of crime in fictional Center City.  These stories are, quite simply, some of the best I've ever read, and you would do yourself a great service to check them out⁷.  Here is a sample for you from the second story line that follows Tracey Lawless as he seeks revenge for his brother's murder (click the pictures to see bigger versions):

In order to graduate from college I needed to take an intensive writing class so I decided to take creative writing.  It ended up being on of my favorite classes.  We read a whole bunch of short stories and wrote about seven of our own.  Our professor was a little weird and wouldn't grade our papers with letter grades; instead she would give checks and check pluses.  My favorite story that I wrote fits in well with this post because it ended up having a very noir feel to it.  It was not my highest graded paper, that would be the first one that I wrote which received a ✓++, this paper only received a lowly ✓+.  Here are some excerpts:

"The bar was dank and smoke filled, and the poor lighting only enhanced the drab décor.  A sparse number of age-old paper clippings were the only interruption to the primarily unadorned walls.  The entire atmosphere was designed to heighten the depression of the customers.  The more depressed they were, the more they drank, the more they drank the more money the owner made.  It really just came down to simple arithmetic.  Three men in suits sat on stools, nursing beers and staring off into nothingness, attempting to forget the day’s events.  In the back corner a man sat, anxiously looking around.  His eyes shot back and forth, scanning the darkness.  Eyes never resting, never focusing on anything in particular, neither did his mind.  One hand rested on the table, in an obvious attempt to appear casual, while the other clutched his jacket, which rested next to him on the booth’s seat.   A waitress walked over to his table."

Here is some dialogue from later in the story:

“Well yeah, I know that’s what we talked about.  But I just think that it’s worth more than ten.  If I give it to you for that then I’m just screwing myself over.”

Jackson clenched his teeth, banged his fist down onto the table.  “No, you listen to me.  We had a deal; the deal was for ten thousand.  There is no way that I’m going to pay anymore than that,” he said in a harsh whisper.

“Then maybe I’ll just take me business elsewhere,” Cal began to get up.

“Sit down, and shut up.”

Cal sat down and leaned over the table whispering fiercely, “Or what?  Are you threatening me?  That’s not how this works, Jacky.  You are the one who called me.  You are the one who was begging me to sell it to you in the first place.  You are the one who needs it so badly.  So the way I see it you are not in any position to be making demands of me.”

If you are interested in my story you can read the whole thing here.  Sorry about any formatting errors that may be there, it didn't translate to Google Reader that well.  Also, I haven't really done much to the story in year, so excuse any spelling or grammar errors.

Crime fiction, a great way to get in touch with your inner sociopath.
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¹ Images above created and drawn by Bill Watterson, found on Google Image Search, please don't sue me.
² It was Hobbes.
³ Or not.
⁴ Including the aforementioned Tracer Bullet.
⁵ Which has the distinct honor of not only having some of the best car chases ever filmed, but it is also the first DVD I ever bought.
⁶ If you want to check this movie out make sure you get the directors cut, not the original versions, it is much better.
⁷ Visit your local library.