Herbie Hancock on Christianity

I mean, having been brought up in the Christian tradition, I had my own spin on Christianity. And most people that I knew that were Christians had their own spin on it.

Via

Animals are people too

I love animals a lot, probably more than the average person. I prove this every night when I cuddle a miniature Dachshund and a Cocka-Poo as I drift off to sleep. My affinity for animals, however, is not limited to cuddly little dogs. I easily become attached to everything from cows to monkeys. Despite this being the case, when I read this article the thought I had may anger some people.

War has flared up again in the chaotic Democratic Republic of the Congo and the endangered mountain gorillas are in the crossfire. Only 700 mountain gorillas, the males known for their moonlit silver-haired backs, exist. More than half live in Virunga National Park, a conservation area in eastern Congo that stretches into bordering Uganda and Rwanda. But last weekend rebels loyal to the dissident Congolese general Laurent Nkunda, took over the last protected section of the gorilla habitat in the park, raising questions over the fate of this last known population of the great apes.

After reading that I right away thought of my friend Mushi and his family. How come there wasn’t an article on Time.com when his parents were murdered by Congolese rebels? Where was the outcry when they were forced to spend a year hiding in the jungle? Why didn’t anyone shed a tear for the four years they spent in the Kakuma refugee camp?

I don’t want to see those beautiful gorillas suffer the same fate that far too many people in the Congo have. I just wish people would learn to express the same kind of outrage and deep concern for the welfare of human beings as they do for animals. The thing is, maybe if we got better at taking care of each other our beloved animals would be a whole lot safer too.

The worst kind of politics

Yesterday I wrote about the difficulty I am having deciding which provincial candidate to vote for. Last night I came home after work and found some campaign material on the kitchen table from Pat Atkinson’s campaign. Inside it was a section devoted to a new website the NDP have set up, Same Old Sask Party.com. The clever wolf in sheep’s clothing graphic above was borrowed from that site.

This truly is the worst kind of politics. I think I would rather lose an election by focusing on my plans and what I want to do than win it with a smear campaign. When a party goes to such lengths to disparage their competition it makes me wonder if they do so because their own policies are lacking. Could it be that the NDP don’t really have any new ideas after being in power for so long? Are they so weak that the only leg they have to stand on is the bogey man that is the Sask Party? If that is the case, I am afraid that is not much of a leg at all.

Three lemons

My beautiful province of Saskatchewan is going to the polls on November 7th so last night I began researching the parties and their platforms in the hopes of making an informed decision. As this excellent Wikipedia page shows (someone has put a lot of time into it!) my riding of Saskatoon Nutana has exactly three candidates. The incumbent Pat Atkinson, who hasn’t exactly set the world on fire in the three million years she and the NDP have been in office, the Saskatchewan Party’s Don Johannesson, and Green Party leader Sandra Finley.

The Saskatchewan Party (or Sask Party as they are known) are basically the remnants of the old PC Party, hardly my favorite political entity of all time, and looking at Sandra Finley’s website has me convinced to not vote for her. Shouldn’t the leader of a political party at least be able to pony up a half decent web portal?

The NDP have all these great initiatives they want to start, my question is why didn’t they do it while they have been in office for the aforementioned three million years? The Sask Party want us to have nice campsites and has a great idea about drug benefits for children, but what about low income adults who aren’t getting the meds they need?

This is going to be a difficult decision. I don’t want to vote for the NDP and I’m not crazy about voting for the Sask Party either. Both parties have been throwing around expensive promises over the last few days that have left me wondering how exactly they plan to pay for it all.

Perfectly sickening

Last Saturday night after watching the race with me, Tiff was channel surfing looking for something a little less gasoline fueled for entertainment. She came across a TV show called “The Perfect Housewife” that we ended up watching. Being that I live with three women, I get to watch my fair share of shows like “What Not to Wear” (though I must confess that they also watch more than their fair share of shows about tattooing, cars, and NASCAR) and from time to time I am bothered a bit by the cruelty with which they tear apart their makeover candidate’s taste in clothes. After seeing The Perfect Housewife, I am now convinced that their cruelty is almost non-existent.

The whole premise of the show is that a woman by the name of Anthea Turner (aka “The Perfect Housewife”) visits two women in their homes and critiques everything from the cleanliness of their sinks to the organization of their cupboards. Ms. Turner’s disgust is evident throughout the visit and it ends up being a pretty degrading exercise for the contestants. Later Anthea saves the day by giving them some tips on cleaning the grout in their bathrooms and setting up a proper makeup table.

The women are then left to their own devices to clean the house from top to bottom, organize all their cupboards properly, and host something called a “ladies lunch.” Apparently this last item is very important as it has great bearing on their eventual score. While the contestants work on their homes they are monitored and occasionally visited by Turner. Her disgust and lack of understanding for the contestants continues unabated throughout the program.

At the end of the show a winner is chosen from among the two contestants. The prize is a large bag of cleaning supplies – seriously, I am not making that up. Second place wins a slightly smaller bag of cleaning supplies. At least the women on “What Not to Wear” get a whole new wardrobe. This is one contest where I think I’d be OK with finishing second.

Watching this show was one of those moments where I kept asking myself over and over, what year is this again? I thought we had shed the misogynistic idea that home cleanliness was strictly a responsibility of the wife. One of the contestants was a mother of two small children and pregnant with a third, no kidding she has trouble keeping the house spotless. Lucky for her, she was the eventual winner.

After the recent happenings in Jena, Louisiana and watching this show I am becoming convinced that 2007 is the year of demonstrating how far we still have to go as a society. A marriage is a team effort, and that includes making sure the house is tidy. People are equal, no matter the color of our skin.

I am going to go do some laundry now.

The devil comes to church

Jordon’s post brought to my attention a small protest that occurred outside the Matthew Good show at Lakeview Church here in Saskatoon. Matthew Good writes:

Last night’s venue in Saskatoon was a church. It was a state of the art facility with a great stage and great amenities. From what I could gather afterwards, the new facility was the project of a church that has seen a division in its congregation over the new expansion, and one that also prompted a small protest outside the show last night by individuals claiming that I was playing ‘the devil’s music’.

My use of expletives on stage last night was also something that wasn’t welcomed, though it matters little to me. If you’re going to book a show in a church and know that the artist performing is, well – me – you have to expect that sort of thing.

I am relieved to know that the protest was small. However, churches often have meetings discussing ways to bring people into the church who would otherwise not attend. Here was an auditorium full of people, many of whom may never set foot inside a church, and they were protesting. Granted, I am not even sure if the protesters were from Lakeview Church, but the irony was not lost on me.

Matthew’s post ends with this:

Interestingly, the next show being held at the venue is Tegan and Sara, which means that the heads of those that show up to protest will no doubt explode when they discover that not only is the music of the devil being performed, but that it’s being performed by gay women.

Photo Friday – Real Life

My entry for this week’s challenge “Real Life.“

Ann Coulter – super Christian

Understandably, there is a lot of concern over the remarks that Ann Coulter made on Monday. The things she said and the ideas she conveyed are repugnant, they are also very Christian. Or, at least they are very much entrenched in the thinking that drives Christian theology and Biblical exegesis. Her ideas are not that far removed from things I have heard pastors and other Christians say to me in the past. Sure, she is a little more extreme, but the basic ideas come from the same place.

The Bible teaches Christians that Jesus is the Savior of the world. It also teaches us that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ. Most importantly, it teaches that we are to go out and share the good news with the entire world. Now, believing that you hold the key to the salvation of mankind should be the kind of thing that gives you a dose of humility and the feeling that you have a very important task to complete. Ironically, the opposite is the case, at least for the most part. Christians are often self righteous, judgmental, and only interested in their own self interest.

She says that her dream for the US would be to have it be like the 2004 Republican National Convention.

People were happy,” she said, according to a transcript provided to CNN by CNBC. “They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America.

Obviously Ms. Coulter’s understanding of what tolerance is differs with the understanding of myself and many others. Tolerance does not call for a country, or a world, where everyone thinks exactly like you, and it certainly does not encourage us to “perfect” Jewish people – or anyone else for that matter. True tolerance and understanding accepts people for who they are, just like Jesus did.

My hope is that when other Christians hear the things that Ann Coulter said they will be convinced of the poverty of this school of thought. Maybe, just maybe, hearing this will force us to face our theology and the way we live it. Sadly, I expect Sunday will bring many sermons praising Ann Coulter for “speaking the truth to America” or something similar.

A new perspective on Paul

Reading a couple of chapters from Romans last night got me thinking. When Paul wrote his portions of the New Testament they were not what he would consider to be scripture. In fact, they were nothing more than letters to people in certain cities like Corinth (hence first and second Corinthians). These letters were meant to guide the Christians in these cities on living the Christian life, but they were not without error.

When Paul wrote the first letter to the Corinthians, he encouraged them to dismiss a person from their church because of immoral behavior. Sometime between that first letter and the second letter the people of Corinth contacted Paul and protested, they felt he was being too harsh. In the second letter Paul relents from his earlier pronouncement.

The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake (2 Corinthians 2:9-10 NIV)

It is obvious that Paul was not infallible in his writings. His letters were merely a guide to living the Christian life and while they included many great insights into being a Christian, they also contained some of the limitations that his own understanding and experience naturally gave him.

This gives us Christians a serious problem. We have argued for so long that people should become Christians because of the authority of the Bible that we have painted ourselves into a corner that says the Bible must be infallible. As the reality of the fallibility of scripture becomes more and more apparent, we will have to rethink everything we do, including, and especially, evangelism.

One other thought. If Paul were here today, I bet he would be a blogger. Think about it, his epistles were meant to be read by large numbers of people many of whom he did not know. Come to think of it, maybe he was the first blogger.

Religious holidays Indian style

That’s the way India deals with its religious plurality — not by denying it, but by officially embracing what can sometimes seem like every religious holiday known to humanity. Almost every other week, some national or state holiday shuts down at least part of the country: There are the big Hindu holy days (Diwali, Dussehra) and those in Islam’s calendar (Eid-ul-Fitr, Muharram); you get a day off for Buddha’s birthday and also for the biggest Christian holy days. If you’re Sikh or Jain or Parsi, there’s a holiday for you. And if the holy day you want to mark isn’t on the main list, there’s also a secondary list of so-called “restricted holidays” from which each person can choose a limited number every year. Throw in secular days like this week’s national holiday marking the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, and India has some 17 official holidays a year plus dozens of others that people can choose to observe. (The U.S. has 10.) The World Economic Forum says that India, an emerging economic powerhouse, actually has one of the world’s shortest average working years.Having all those holidays doesn’t guarantee religious harmony, of course — tensions persist between India’s various communities, and sometimes these flare into violence — and they do take a toll on the economy. The All India Association of Industries says the glut of non-working days costs India hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Still, official recognition that there are many faiths with their own traditions and days to celebrate, also brings a basic acceptance of the principle of diversity that other places — a Chicago school district that strips religious holidays from its calendar, or a French school system that bans Muslim head scarves — will never achieve. As confusing and economically inefficient as India’s rainbow of religious holidays can be, it also seems more honest and inclusive. In school, my three-year-old daughter has already learned about the Hindu deities Lord Krishna and Lord Ram. She is about to start work on an Eid art project, and will no doubt celebrate Christmas with her school mates in the way of children everywhere: by asking for the latest toy. She doesn’t understand the nuances and differences, yet, but she does know that different people have different beliefs and that those beliefs all deserve respect. That’s got to be healthier than papering over those differences by renaming religious festivals with meaningless malarkey.

Full story

India has got it right. We must embrace other faiths, not to supersede our own, but to foster a culture of tolerance and respect. By learning about them and how and why they practice their faith the way they do, we can move away from our religiously segregated culture and live in true community.