Rick Perry makes Tim Tebow So Last Week

My new Advent meditation ran yesterday on Think Christian and is running today on The 12. I linked to it yesterday, but I can see it has had approximately 10% of the readership as my last post related to Tim Tebow. Click the link for a great read (in my humble opinion) about our cluttered lives and simplicity.

Speaking of Tebow, he engineered another amazing comeback yesterday against the Bears. That's six wins in a row and seven of eight. There is nothing like winning to shut up the know-it-all critics, those knights of the keyboard who do nothing but sit at home and lob criticism at the people out there actually doing something in the world.

But wait a minute, you say, weren't you one of his critics? "Moi?" I ask innocently. My wife's family lives in Colorado. I'd never root against Denver. And besides, Rick Perry proved my point about using Christianity to divide our culture much more powerfully than Tebow ever has. Have you seen Perry's recent ad about being a Christian and lamenting the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"? It's the one where he says that our kids can't celebrate Christmas in school but gays can openly serve in the military and calls that "Obama's war on religion."

Besides reminding me of what I'd written last week, Perry's ad also made me think of these two lines in the current issue of Time magazine: "The Republican Party has abandoned sobriety in favor of bombast. It has abandoned conservatism in favor of radicalism."

If you need proof of this, consider that Donald Trump is going to host his own Republican debate. Oh how I wish a great conservative thinker like William F. Buckley were still alive to weigh in on what's happened to the Republicans.

Speaking of weight, weighty issues like this are now occupying me. I'm officially done with Tebow. He was so last week. It's on to other things for me, and I start with my Advent post about our cluttered lives and joy. Hope you'll take a look.

Advent III: Modern Shepherds and Simple Joy

There is a relationship between joy and simplicity. The more we have, the more cluttered our lives become, the more difficult it is to find that elusive combination of delight, satisfaction and well-being known as joy.

Agree with that? If you do, I hope you'll read my meditation for the third Sunday of Advent, posted today at Think Christian and accessible by clicking here. The mystery of why the third Advent candle is pink is also revealed. Enjoy!

Tim Tebow and Uneasy Evangelicals

Ten days ago I quoted four friends who don’t appreciate the way Tim Tebow expresses his faith. Before 24 hours had passed, this became the most viewed post I’ve ever done. It would be a stretch to say it went viral, but it was mildly contagious. Thanks, Tim! Many people commented (although not actually on my blog, but through Facebook). The comments fell into three categories: 1) Get off his back, he’s living out his faith in a wonderful way; 2) I agree, he’s obnoxious; or 3) Judge not, lest ye be judged – which is sort of a variant on Rodney King’s famous “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Well, we don’t get along. According to the unassailable source Wikipedia, there are 38,000 Christian denominations worldwide, and even if their number is off by 10,000 or so, the fractured nature of the Body of Christ is still staggering. For the first thousand years after the time of Christ there was one denomination, until the Eastern and Western churches split. 500 years later Christian divisiveness really picked up after the Protestant Reformation. But still – 38,000? That’s embarrassing!

Within that wide spectrum of belief is a camp called American Evangelical Christianity (which is an ethos instead of a denomination). Even though this group has been making its presence known for about thirty-five years, many media commentators don’t understand American Evangelical culture and don’t quite get the story right. For many Evangelicals, the real issue in the Tebow conversation is how Christians should relate to the rest of the world and share their faith. Is Tebow a model of how to do that or a model of how not to do that?

I asked my friend Bob from Chicago, who commented here on Tebow last week, for some further thoughts about the question of how Christians should relate to the rest of the world. I would call Bob an incisive thinker and uneasy Evangelical. My observation is that there are Evangelicals and uneasy Evangelicals. Uneasy Evangelicals tend to begin a lot of sentences with “I’m sorry.” Other Evangelicals believe they have nothing to apologize about. (And in case you are counting, I believe the uneasy Evangelicals are in the minority.)

Here is a bit of what Bob the uneasy Evangelical said: “It comes down to how Christians define their purpose. Many Evangelicals define themselves in tandem with the ‘Great Commission,’ which says to go make disciples, and believe they are compelled to go ‘make Christians.’

“The problem with this posture is when Evangelicals carry out their mandate to make Christians at the expense of the great commandment to love God and love our neighbors. When Evangelical tactics divide our culture in the name of making Christians, it’s a problem.

“Many Christians believe it is their responsibility to ‘save’ humanity. If we could just convince our government and corporations to say ‘Merry Christmas’ instead of ‘Happy Holidays,’ then we’ll have a much better chance of saving our country. The flaw in this thinking is that they believe humanity can save humanity. That’s God’s responsibility. Humanity was created by God, for God, and for community. We were made to love and be loved.”

That’s worth thinking about, especially his line about Evangelical tactics dividing our culture in the name of making Christians. I take this to mean when the method becomes confrontational it is in conflict with the greater message of love. Hence the need for uneasy Evangelicals to apologize for things like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Jimmy Swaggart, The 700 Club, certain Presidential candidates, etc. Of course, some of this bleeds into the dorky Christian category that uneasy Evangelicals also feel the need to apologize for, like Jim and Tammy Faye, gospel ventriloquists, a lot of autoharp and recorder music, Pat Boone, Kirk Cameron movies, highway billboards in an Old English font, etc.

What do you think?

Thin Blue Smoke

I can’t remember ever wanting to taste a book as much as Doug Worgul’s Thin Blue Smoke. There are so many mouth-watering references to briskets and ribs and pulled chuck and even vinegar pie that I was tempted to bite into a corner of the book and see what it tasted like. Someone should at least market a scratch and sniff edition of this novel or send complimentary bottles of “LaVerne Williams Genuine TexiKan BBQ Sauce” along with each order.

This is a book about barbecue, but that’s not all – it is also rife with references to baseball, the blues, redemption, Frederick Buechner, Lake Charlevoix, turtles, Watership Down, race and religion. There, I just listed ten things, and I suppose one way to tell if this book will fascinate you as much as it did me is to rate the book on a ten point scale using your interest in each of these things. I scored ten of ten. And I didn’t even mention whiskey, which would take the scale to eleven. (Ours go to eleven!) Yet even that’s not entirely a good way to go, because the book is so universally human that a barbecue-and-baseball-hating non-drinking atheist would enjoy it. (Which sounds like a horribly depressing way to go through life, but who am I to judge?)

I’m tempted to write “this book had me at page one,” but actually I knew this was a book for me when the “author's note” before page one contained references to Satchel Paige and Frederick Buechner. Those are my guys – I thought I was the only person is the world who was an aficionado of each. Apparently, I’ve got company. Wish I could sit down over a pulled pork sandwich with the author and discuss our mutual interests.

The main characters are LaVerne Williams, barbecue expert, grieving father and one-time centerfielder of the Kansas City A’s; Ferguson Glen, alcoholic Episcopalian priest and faded literary star; and A.B. Clayton, trailer park kid who settles in as LaVerne’s right-hand man. I could go the conventional route now and describe the plot a little bit, but this was one of those books where I liked the people so much I was sort of frustrated that there had to be a plot. I didn’t want anything to happen to them and didn’t want my time with them to end. I feel sad that I don’t get to hang out anymore at “Smoke Meat,” as LaVerne Williams’ Genuine BBQ and City Grocery is known throughout Kansas City. Yes, I’ve eaten at Oklahoma Joe’s in KC, which is widely regarded as the best barbecue in the world’s best barbecue town (and that ought to count for something), but this is one of those times that the real thing is no substitute for a literary equivalent.

And theology? Did I mention the theology? It’s all over the place. How about this line for starters: “It’s only when we’re free to commit monstrous acts of murder, that we’re also free to love God and each other.” That ought to give you something to think about.

So if you like books that are funny, literate, heartwarming, intelligent and just plain good, get a copy of Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul. Before long you’ll be hankering for a plate of burnt ends, beans and sweet potato pie. Just remember they don’t serve fries and the beans are real beans, not those sugared-up pieces of candy that people call baked beans. Contemplate instead how patience and faith and a willingness to learn can take bitter things like smoke, vinegar and salt and transform them into something good and sweet. And remember -- too much or too little of the bitter and it's ruined.

"On the Waterfront" and Ratting Out My Peers

It's a new month, which means I have a new old film recommendation on Rednow. It's for the movie On the Waterfront, and you can read what I say about it by clicking here.

This isn't quite It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story, but if you get tired of feeling like you're supposed to be happy in the December gloom, this movie will fit that mood.

Now here's a confession to accompany the film. I lived on a floor of guys in college one year that named themselves the "mad dogs." We behaved like the 19-year-old boys that we were. At the end of one semester a commission of sorts was formed of governing officials in our dorm. Their mission was to find out who had damaged various ceiling tiles and door frames in the building. They were focused on a couple of the mad dogs in particular. I was brought into a room in the basement of our dorm by this official body and asked who had done the damage. I told them I did not know. I told them I'd heard the same sorts of stories everyone else had heard, but since I was not an eyewitness to what they were asking about, I wasn't going to say anything.

Did I believe the stories I had heard? There was no reason to doubt them. And I had seen other things, but they weren't asking about those things and I wasn't going to volunteer any information. I wasn't going to be a rat. Being a rat, as I point out in the commentary I did for On the Waterfront, was as bad as committing the crime.

One of the people asking the questions said, "We know you're a good kid, the kind who tells the truth. Tell us what happened." That made me feel guilty, but still didn't compel me to talk. One reason I wasn't compelled to talk was because I seriously wondered what the rest of the guys in my dorm would do to me if I did talk. I don't think I would have been physically injured (but wasn't 100% certain of that), but I was sure I'd be socially cast out.

I think of those pressures when I read all the self-righteous talk around the Penn State scandal. I realize there is no comparing the relatively victimless crime of damaging ceiling tiles to child abuse, but the pressures on the whistleblower would be the same. To tell what you know about something means kissing the system you are in goodbye. Whether it's a job, a college dorm, a church or even a family, to "name names" means your involvement there is done. Think of that pressure when you wonder why the graduate assistant at Penn State didn't do more. Systems put enormous pressure on people.

I have sympathy with those who have the strength to come forward and talk. As On the Waterfront illustrates, you'll take a beating if you do. But you'll take a different sort of beating if you don't. There is seldom a clear path. Most often we choose what appears to be the best of a number of bad options.

Advent II: Love in a Fickle World

Think Christian posted my second Advent meditation today, which you can access by clicking here.
I compare Mary and Joseph to celebrity relationships. Hope you'll take a look.

"Super 8"- Six Months Late

Our extended family has taken a weekend trip to Mackinac Island every summer for close to thirty years. I thought of that trip while watching the movie Super 8. (I know, I know, I’m only six months behind in reviewing this film, but give me a break. I see movies on my schedule, not the studio’s.) First of all, there’s actually a mention of Mackinac Island in the movie, which made me smile. But beyond that, there’s this:

Usually we head home on Sunday from the Island, but one year we stayed in Mackinac City an extra night. Some of our group headed for a water park, while I persuaded the less adventurous to go on the Sunday Evening Vespers cruise. Instead of going to the island, our ferry boat meandered under the Mackinac Bridge for a while. There is something unique about looking up at the bridge from the water. While we were there, my step-mother, a picture-taking enthusiast, made me chuckle when she pointed her camera upward and said, “I’ve never taken this picture before.”

It was a Yogi Berra-esque moment. Of course whenever you snap the shutter on a camera you’ve never taken that picture before, but I knew exactly what she meant. Over the course of thirty years at Mackinac she’s taken every picture there is to take again and again and again. But she’d never taken pictures of cars and trucks going over the bridge from 200 feet below them.

Why did Super 8 make me think of that? Because Super 8 gave me the exact opposite feeling. I kept saying to myself, “I’ve seen this movie before.” I just couldn’t decide which movie it was. There’s a bus crash straight out of The Fugitive. I thought of Harry Potter when watching a home movie of a deceased parent and infant child. The kids keeping a secret made me think of Stand by Me and there are a several scenes straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Mostly, though, I thought of ET. Steven Spielberg could have sued JJ Abrams for plagiarism, except Spielberg produced the movie, so one suspects the liberal borrowing was done not only with the master’s blessing, but with his help.

Now let me say this: I enjoyed the movie. It was a lot of fun to watch. Or I should say the first thre-quarters or so were a lot of fun. The scene early on where Alice rehearses what she’s going to say when the camera starts rolling in the zombie movie the kids are making and the boys are dumbfounded by the emotional energy she is able to summon up is solid gold (or, better yet, "mint," to use the language of the movie). Having lived through junior high school, I can attest to the truth of that scene – early adolescent girls have so much more going on inside of them than early adolescent boys. All the riddles of the first half of the movie were wonderful. Abrams the student imitated Spielberg the master extremely well. But as the movie kept going, Abrams’ level of excellence slipped. I didn’t feel the resolution of the riddles that were so wonderfully set up carried the emotional heft that the early Spielberg films carried. By the time total chaos had erupted in the town with tanks riding out of control and bullets flying everywhere I felt like the film had gone out of control, too.

Some may complain that the movie was too over-the-top, but I think we actually needed a bit more, not less. (Plot spoiler alert!) We needed to know more about the hatred between the two fathers and how they resolved their differences. We needed to know more about the government’s involvement in this project – was the decimation of the town only the work of a rogue Air Force colonel or were other, more powerful forces behind his actions? And, ultimately, it would have worked much, much better if the creature needed something to escape that young Joe Lamb was able to provide. (Why stop channeling ET now?) As it was, things happened but weren’t fully explained. For the first hour or so, I felt I was watching a great movie. By the end I felt like it was almost a great movie. Still, I’m glad I watched it. I haven’t enjoyed a bunch of kids in a movie together that much since the aforementioned Stand by Me. I especially enjoyed Dakota Fanning’s little sister Elle as Alice. But all the kids were great, from the Tom Petty look-alike kid who constantly wanted to blow things up to the overbearing kid who was directing the film within the film. Plus any movie with the line, “I guess I could get back into disco” is worth watching.

So, if you took a pass this summer on Super 8, give it a whirl now that it’s out on DVD. Especially make sure to watch it if you loved the films Steven Spielberg made “back in the day.” I give it an affectionate three stars out of four.