The True or False Game.

True or False?

The Christian who does not adapt Jesus and the gospel message to culture is hypocritical and has anti-Christian motivation.

If you read this, response is required.

Valentines in April

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't post for three weeks, however, my fingers were growing hair and itching to post something. How could I let a momentous occasions such as Valentines pass by without comment? Exactly. So, with a brief hiatus from the worship series I bring you February Fools.

Have you ever thought it strange that Valentine's Day is in February instead of April? I mean seriously, April Fools Day, (which is only a holiday to pranksters and moms who want to get back at their teenagers for the years of abuse they put them through), could be any day of the year, say for example like February Fools - it even roles off the tongue better! Valentine's Day would naturally fit much better into April; you know, the birds and the bees, spring is in the air, Mickey meets Minnie, boy meets girl, lovey-dovey-role-in-the-bushes-mumbo-jumbo?! It all would work so perfectly! Nevertheless, Valentine's Day is in February - the dreariest, rainiest, cloud covered, coldest, and, thankfully, shortest month of the year.

Seeing as we are fated to celebrate this special day in February, we may as well make the best of it by celebrating with a challenging game. Here are the rules:
1. Guys can communicate to girls i.e. phone calls, emails, sign language, billboards, showing off, and those pesky little notes that say, "Please check yes or no."
2. Girls must ignore.
Simple, fun, and exciting! Girls, feel free to thank me later with large unmarked bills.

Love, and feelings of love, have had a tendency to manipulate, confuzzel, drive to insanity, drive to heroism, or simply leave the mind of a man completely blank for centuries and centuries and centuries and centu......a long time. I've seen guys do the funniest and strangest things to get the attention of a certain girl - it's nothing I obviously ever would have done - but I'm telling ya, some guys make the rest of us look really bad...

So I wonder why God created us with this incredibly strong instinct to love and be loved by people? It's not as if we gain or accomplish anything measurable or even live at any higher standard of living. In fact, if love was measurable it would be bought and sold like a common commodity - traded freely on the Toronto Stock Exchange or TSX NASDEC at an extraordinary price; much beyond what the common person could afford. So why such a high price? Supply and demand. All of us hunger for genuine acceptance, love, and support from somewhere; meaningful deep relationships in our lives that add support, passion, and life to the mundane Monday morning that is today. Unfortunately, our homes, schools, churches, and whatever else we are involved in are increasingly becoming love-less - not loveless, but love-less. There is less love going around. As a result, there is greater demand for it from all sides. Parents, children, spouses, employers, employees; all are feeling neglected from not receiving a full portion of love from the people who are closest to them! And we wonder why job satisfaction is low, why there is a high divorce rate in our country, and why there is an alarming number of children disassociating from their families. We have forgotten to love.

In February we see all kinds of love symbols. We eat candy hearts, we make lacey Valentine's Day cards out of last years male lingerie, and we sing along to teary-eyed emo love songs on the radio that are trying to trick the masses into believing that love is wrapped up in a Hershey's Kiss or having friends with benefits...it's not. Love is patient and it's kind. Love does not envy, love is not boastful, rude, selfish, easily angered and it does not keep a running total of all your rights and wrongs, victories and defeats. Love finds enjoyment and satisfaction in the truth and hates evil. Love protects. Love trusts. Love hopes. Love stands the test of time.

Some of you have forgotten how to love and must love more - your families and your friends depend on it! Some of you have lost all hope that you are loveable or even acceptable - you are loveable! In fact, the whole reason that Jesus left the glory of heaven to live in a smelly human-skin suit was because he loves you. It is my hope that this will be a time in each of your lives where you experience long-lasting love and acceptance and a time where you move beyond superficial relationships to deeply-rooted friendships that are based on a God who loves you and a Jesus-following community of people who love each other.

Would you like to get together.....say in 3 weeks at 11am?

Hello and welcome to an ongoing rant. As you may have noticed, this blog is not an online journal. I'm not too fond of any weirdo and wingnut having the ability to peer into my life.....though most of the people in my life are, in fact, weirdo's and wingnuts!

Anyhow, I would direct you to continue to add your thoughts to some of the discussion below on the topic of worship, significance, and creativity. I will certainly be keeping tabs on how that conversation plays out and responding in kind. However, due to 2 weddings, 3 conferences, moving day, snowboarding, and a crazy speaking and teaching schedule all with in the next few weeks...I will be taking a short sabbatical from writing here.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation on worship.

Apply inside.

Worship: the splattered paint canvas.

And if beauty is hard or impossible to describe where does that leave creativity?

Some would say that creativity is as impulsive and essential as breathing. Really? Maybe. Probably not. I would say that it is more important then breathing.

What is life? It is only the result of a creative process of combining carbon and protein into long twisted hexagonal chains of genetic information that make up a staggering 100% of carbon based life which, I’m told, excludes Pam Anderson, Twinkies, and paint. Life. A byproduct of creativity. Interesting to think about isn’t it? I trust you find it fascinating.

It is no wonder people are trying to bring back the baby mullet, jump canyons on motorcycles, wear silk underwear, write follow-up film scripts to blockbuster films, and photograph pregnant nudes and hang them – the photographs - in coffee shops (which was an unusually stimulating caffeinated experience for me). Why are such tragedy’s allowed to happen? Autonomy, diversity, and creativity. Apparently, creativity is like that greased up potbelly pig that nobody could ever quite catch at summer camp; you just can’t quite hold on to it long enough before it slips away and paints a beautiful masterpiece or drives a scientist mad.

Funny thing about creativity – it belongs to no one and everyone.

Worship is a creative act, thought, or moment where time slows and maybe space is tweaked enough that the velocity of our creativity is pointed towards something….something…..something, lets say, significance, irreplaceable, or otherwise. Have you noticed what happens when creativity is pointed at something? Life. Life happens. Not the kind of life that is found under a scientists microscope, but rather, the kind of life that evokes the mystery, longing, and enjoyment of something beyond the basic sensual. A spark in someone’s eye, hope in someone’s heart, dreams in someone’s cerebral, and life in someone’s life. We don’t get creative in how we worship; we worship when we get creative.

Creativity births life.

Snow Report: Deep.

This morning I woke up to sunshine and 36cm of fresh snow at Mt. Seymour!
I could describe how it looked, what it felt like, and the sick lines, pillows, drops, and cliffs we pillaged all day.

however....

I don't think I could ever really describe it's beauty; today was purely something that you should experience at some point in your life in order to understand it.

I'm not sure beauty is something that can be described.

Worship: the insignificant.

Did you know that the average oreo is 29% creamy icing and 71% cookie? I love oreos.

I have a family of five furry farrell squirrels who live outside my window. Did you know that squirrels can climb trees faster then they can run on the ground? I love my family of five furry farrel squirrels.

American soldiers in Vietnam sometimes used Slinkies as radio antennas. I love Slinkies.

The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, has a 6,000 year lease. 6,000 years! That’s at least a little bit weird. Whoever forged that deal loved a little too much of their druidy-celtic-moonshine.

Isn’t it so interesting how we use the term love? We often say that we love a certain brand of 1984 Swedish station wagons, how we love a certain brand of pen, or how we love a book, a flavor, a color, a design, a hairstyle, or European men in spandex at the swimming pool. Why do we love things that don’t love us back? Shouldn’t what we love at least have the capability and the capacity for loving us back for it to be genuine love?

Now begin to use the grey matter between your ears and imagine that this might be the highest ranking qualification for love – something to love back. It severely limits what we actually can love: people, a god (if you were to believe in such a thing), and maybe a few species of animal that seem to show love and affection back to mankind. So, in reference to Worship: the instinct, if what we worship is really based on our value system and our value system places the most value on something other then people, a god, or Rover and Flipper > then that object of worship is an insignificant piece of worship. Why? Because it is incapable of loving back.

The truly sad thing is that insignificant worship leads to insignificant meaning and purpose in life.

It seems as though many people worship in a world of insignificant.

Worship: the instinct

Humans are hardwired for worship.

Humans see beauty, greatness, natural phenomenon, mystery, the terrible, vastness, and enormity and can not help but to stand in reverent disbelief, disgust, appreciation, or awe. Our response to anything, no matter how flashy or mundane, is the same; we place value on it. Try as we might, and we have tried, humanity cannot get away from the inescapable furrow of placing value and importance on the many possessions, ideologies, relationships, and knowledge that is the atmosphere we breathe and clog our lungs with. We subscribe to each thing some tidbit of value and appreciation, which, would suggest that we value some things more then we value others, which, would suggest that we value one thing most and one thing least. What we value most is what we worship; what we value least is its adversary.

Humanity possesses this bottomless myriad of these deep and internal motivations to move, to create, to communicate, and to express themselves all the while attaching worship or adversary to these actions. Each of these internal motivations, with there cling-on attachments, is actually ruled and fed by the old adage, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” And so it is with worship; humanity will take upon themselves the insurmountable task of attaching worship or adversary to every move, creation, communication, thought, and action. We have to worship something – it is hardwired into the very make-up of the human existence. Don’t believe me? Try and not give value to something.

Nobody should have to teach us that, when our stomach rumbles and we have this undeniable ache and desire for food, we are hungry; in fact, it is impossible to teach hunger. Hunger is simply known.

Worship is simply known.

In fact, worship is so wired into the humanness of humans that some people even go to the great extent of building a religious belief, icon, or image just to have something to worship.

In Definition of: in definition of.

Given a chance, language would try to kill us.

Words and phrases strung together to create brilliant sentences and paragraphs by the equally brilliant word-smiths behind them, who, in their engineering prowess, have only a limited idea of the effect of those words.

Not that language could kill us, but it would try.

Words and phrases gathered together and made coherent by commas, apostrophes, and exclamation points to create morsels of communication that only sometimes generate the idea behind the sentences and paragraphs.

And try as it might, language will never win.

Words and phrases jumbled, mixed, diced, and fried together in a sauce pan of conflicting idea and thought which has nullified and neutered the meaning of words and language.

Taken the chance, we have killed language.

A Conclusive Mess

People get fired, bombs get dropped on the wrong people, (assuming there are good people to drop them on), Sunday morning church people miss the point completely, and mapquest makes you turn right instead of left. One generation looks in confusion at another generation, high school girls across the country are crying in bathroom stalls at this very moment, and people trying to figure out spirituality see it about as clear as the colored air hovering over Vancouver. Why? Simply, we have killed language to the appeasement of the gods of poor communication. This is a problem of blockbuster proportions.

True enough, the hollow shell of it does still exist; we have great pieces of literature, a million emails a day, libraries of unread doctorate papers, text messaging, and, if you like scarves art shows and finger gloves – there’s emo music. But, what has become of the depth, the width, the height, and weight of the meaning of words?

Who is it who is issuing the license to drag the meaning of words up to le guillotine and steal the life and meaning from them? I would submit that the hooded executioner is anyone who uses language and attaches new ideas and definitions to words. The collapse of definition leaves room for the building of a gloriously sexy but severely contradictive and handicapped mosaic of conclusions.

If we are not working from the same definitions, then we will come to very different conclusions.

Augustus' Toto

In my spotlessly clean bathroom, sitting beside an impressive stack of G-rated magazines, I have a toilet.

My toilet is not so G-rated. Proudly advertised on the back seat of this modern day porcelain throne, is the name of the company that makes this particular masterpiece of indoor plumbing: Augustus by toto. I see this logo every single time I make use of my toto, thinking, “Augustus. Hmm, that’s kind of a witty throw back to centuries and centuries of people who sit on thrones.”

An east Indian friend of mine decided that he needed to use my bathroom. Fine. However, the sound coming from the bathroom while he was using it, was, well, unusual and a bit disturbing - I heard giggling. I made a mental note to turn the music up next time he used my bathroom and to mention that it was a lavatory and not a laboratory. He opened the door all smiles.

“Do you know what your toilet says?”
“Yeah – kinda witty hey?”
“How do you know?”
“Well, Augustus and thrones, and it’s not that funny…”
“No man – do you know what toto means?”
“No.”
“Penis.”

Someone in the marketing department of Augustus by toto is smugly smiling right now.