Love Is Not A Commodity

I'm reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller for the third time. I bought it a couple of months ago, perhaps three and I just can't stop reading it over and over. This book, along with several others I have read lately have become almost something like investigative journalism to me. These books investigate my own soul and show me what I've been feeling and thinking about for the last several years, especially when it comes to the church and my role in it.

Anyway, I've been struggling lately again over the whole situation with my former church. Struggling may be too soft of a word. The bitterness burns deep.

I guess the thing that bothers me the most about this situation is that ever since I left this church, I haven't received one phone call. Not one. I have made some phone calls, and I appreciate (I guess) the kind words that people have said to me in those conversations, but yet not one person has called to see how I am doing or how my family is. It's like once we left the church staff, we ceased to exist as living, breathing human beings.

It's been quite some time now.

Anyway, reading is always a cathartic exercise for me, and so I was relieved recently to read towards the end of Blue Like Jazz a section about one of the differences that Miller finds between Christian and non-Christian groups. He uses his own life experiences to compare these two groups; growing up as a Christian he obviously has a large case study of what they do; and he compares those experiences with the experience he had for a month, living in the woods with some non-Christian hippies. His conclusion is that he felt more accepted, more loved by the hippies than by any Christian group that he has encountered or experienced.

An excerpt:

And that's when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...I could see it very clearly. If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and perhaps, we feel they are priceless. I could see it so clearly, and I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled rotten all these years.

Love is not supposed to be a commodity. I have felt the opposite for awhile now. I feel that when I was on staff at church, when I was leading worship or putting together a video announcement or developing a graphic for the bulletin or participating in a staff meeting or leading a small group - only then did I really have value in the eyes of the Christians at church. Once those responsibilities were gone, once I no longer had any of those things to offer, I no longer had any value in their eyes - and to prove it, no one has even decided to do something as small as check up on me, to make sure that I'm even still alive.

My wife works at a "secular" place of employment, and everyone there knows of our situation. We have received calls and e-mails and notes of encouragement from non-Christians hoping for the best and checking in to make sure everything's okay or to see what the latest development is in my quest for a new ministry. Everyone at her work has been very supportive. I do know that when I do become involved in a church again, I will go out of my way to make sure that I do not allow love to become a commodity in the way I treat others - whether they be staff members, church members, seekers, or someone else.

America #1?

Here is a great article about whether America is really #1, as we Americans like to think it is. The only point that I would argue with is the area of health care. The writer of this article seems to think it's a shame that we don't have socialized health care or something. I understand his/her point (they are making the point that everyone but us and South Africa among developed nations provide some kind of health care to all of its citizens), but I would rather see something different than socialized medicine.

Anyway, here's the article:

America No. 1?

America by the numbers

by Michael Ventura

02/03/05 "ICH" - - No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:

• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
• Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
• "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
• Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
• The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
• "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
• "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
• "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
• The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
• U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
• Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
• Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
• Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
• One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
• "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
• "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
• Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
• "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
• "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Reprinted from the Austin Chronicle. www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

St. Bono's Venture

If you know anything about me, you know that I love U2. My love for them started when my older stepbrother had the opportunity to see them in concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado - yes, the same concert where parts of Live Under A Blood Red Sky was recorded, as well as the video for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

In the other blog I frequent, Geezerville USA, one of the members there commented on the lack of credible voices in Christendom today, and offered up Bono as perhaps the only one who we really can look to right now. Yes, Bono. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Here's a post from another journal I have concerning Bono, his mission, and what we should be doing:

There are a couple of comments that I just can't stand as a church staff member from members of the congregation.

#1, which will always be #1 in my mind, is some kind of derivative of "I really got a lot out of worship today."

But #2 is right behind #1. It's the statement that you often hear people say as they're leaving your church - "This church just isn't deep enough, and we want to go deeper."

Our staff talked about #2 this week as we are dealing with a couple of our members who are struggling with how "spiritually shallow" our congregation is. The youth minister said something which I'm still thinking about two days later: "You're never gonna go deeper in your faith than when you apply to your life what it says in the Bible."

If so, then U2's Bono is the deepest Christian I know.

Bono isn't just trying to get deeper into the Bible - he's living out what the Bible commands us to do.

'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

He has founded an organization called DATA, which attempts to get countries to cancel debt that African countries owe, so that those countries can use their own money and resources to take care of their people rather than paying back countries who really don't need the money. (check out the website at www.datadata.org)

He has been involved in Operation Christmas Child, a program of Samaritan's Purse (Billy Graham's son Franklin is founder and president) that delivers Christmas shoeboxes to thousands of kids who usually never receive presents of any kind.

He has become the hands and feet of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, speaking at churches and in front of dignitaries around the world to inform them of the problem and to encourage them to show compassion to the African nations who are struggling under the weight of AIDS.

You may question his music, his interviews, his lifestyle - but never question this:

Bono is a saint.

A saint who is "walking as Jesus did".

And an example of a deep Christian.

Will St. Peter Be At The Gates, Or Will It Be John Waters?

I'm one of those people who roots for the underdog.

Which is one of the reasons why I was rooting for Sideways at the Academy Awards. Heck, I knew it had a snowball's chance in you know where of winning. Anyone who had a brain bigger than the size of a pea knew that either Million Dollar Baby or The Aviator was going to win the big prize of best picture. I have to confess I didn't see either of those movies. I did see Sideways, and I believe that it deserved to win.

And when the winner, Million Dollar Baby, was announced, I turned off the T.V. and realized that a lot of times, the underdog doesn't win. It really doesn't. The small guy usually has no chance of being on top at the end. That's what makes us like movies like Hoosiers - a true story of a little high school basketball team who won the state championship in Indiana.

I'm trying to be the small guy. The underdog. The one who seems to be last, but according to Jesus, will be first.

There's a book I love. It's a novel by a man named Reed Arvin, who was a close friend of Rich Mullins and who produced several of his albums. It's called A Wind In The Wheat. It's a story about a musician with an amazing gift from Rose Hill, Kansas. He uses his gift at a small church, as well as a convalescent hospital. Until he's discovered by a music producer from Nashville. Then his life takes a completely different turn and he makes a CD and becomes famous and gets signed by Atlantic Records and becomes this huge Christian and secular artist. I don't want to ruin the book for you, but he eventually bottoms out and realizes that he isn't called to be that big guy. He's called to be the little guy. At one point in the book, he talks to his manager, the guy who found him in the first place, and he talks about who he's thinking about the chair stackers in his church back in Rose Hill, and how these same guys would stack the chairs week after week, never getting any recognition, but yet serving in the small things. Basically, the underdogs. While you have the big dogs preaching and leading and being upfront and whatnot, every church needs the servants in the church, the ones who do the behind the scenes stuff, the ones who get no recognition.

I want to be one of those people. As a worship leader, and one who is recognized as being pretty successful, whatever that means, I'm beginning to realize more and more that I want to be the underdog. I want to be the one who's stacking chairs and who's behind the scenes and who is doing what Jesus has called us to do - to be the ones who serve - not for attention, not for fame or fortune or recognition or popularity, but who simply serve.

Sideways won pretty much every Spirit award possible. The Spirit awards are the Independent film awards that are given out the night before the Academy Awards. I have watched the Spirit awards ever since Memento picked up everything a few years ago from the Spirit Awards. The Spirit Awards are essentially the Underdog Awards.

My prayer is that when I exit this life and enter the next life, I will be awarded the Spirit Award, the underdog award - and not the Academy Award.

Spongebob, Tinky Winky, And Other Liberal Sinners

I know that the original story is a little old, but when I was leafing through Entertainment Weekly today, I saw a hilarious article on it.

If you haven't heard what happened a few months ago, I'm sorry to have to personally inform you. Both Dr. James Dobson and the American Family Association came out and lambasted Spongebob Squarepants because he was included in a video that promoted tolerance. This led Dobson and the AFA to declare that Spongebob was gay.

No, not gay as in stupid. Gay as in gay.

I'm not making this up. Really.

So, the Tony and Grammy award winning team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman wrote a song about other cartoon characters and what might be wrong with them too. Unfortunately, it didn't make the Oscars, but it should have. I am giving you the song in its entirety because I'm beginning to despise Dobson's insistence in leaving his comfortable Christian area of promoting families and whatnot, and going into what should be for him the unfamiliar and awkward ground of Christianity marrying politics. Enjoy.

Pinocchio's had his nose done
Sleeping Beauty is popping pills
The Three Little Pigs ain't kosher
Betty Boop works Beverly Hills

Superman is on steroids
Tinky Winky is in the pink
Dammit to hell, wake up and smell
The stink beneath the ink!

Chip n' Dale both are strippers
Scrooge McDuck is really tight
Bugs Bunny is a sexaholic
And Snow White has been up all night!

There's something fishy 'bout Nemo
Batman and Robin share a sink
Winnie the Pooh, we know what he's into
The stink beneath the ink!

Fred Flintstone is dyslexic
Jessica Rabbit is really a man
Olive Oyl is anorexic
And Casper is in the Ku Klux Klan

Cinderella's into identity theft
Pocahontas is addicted to craps
Dumbo's an overeater
Josie and the Pussycats dance on laps

It's clear the Road Runner's hooked on speed
Charlie Brown is seeing a shrink
People of America, take a whiff
Smokey the Bear just lit a spliff!
Tom and Jerry are dating 'N Sync

Oh the stink...
Beneath the ink! (Don't blink)
The ink! (The kink!)
The stink beneath the ink!

And those of us who are trying to live out what Jesus is actually calling us to do just continue to hunch down, shrug our shoulders, and wish that moronic Christians would stop making it harder and harder for unchurched people to take us seriously.