At church today and doing the worship, we sang the modern hymn ‘In Christ Alone’. After reading and singing the last verse

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

It was so liberating to read, sing, and actually feel that truth in light of a ‘pediatric pentecostal’ still within me trying to convince me that what was taught as a child of losing your salvation at every sin (intentional or unintentional) is truth instead of the reformed theology of salvation.

Even though I addressed it many years ago in this article, I woke up this morning feeling rejected, inadequate, inferior, imperfect, incomplete, unprepared, and incapable of being a Christian, a co-worker / employee, a future husband, a human being, a son, a brother, and a friend. I woke up this morning feeling physically like I was involved in a back alley street fight gang attack left for dead and took the worst of life’s beatings mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Arriving at church today single and alone and seeing the evangelical version of Stepford housewives and ‘the Joneses’ couples and families smiling seemed to further reinforce and enhance the feelings. I felt like I was 60 and my mind went numb and in migraines.

After the worship was over and I dropped the offering in the plate (to keep the ‘protection’ feeling that God will not drop his guard from me) [another theo'illogical' concept I will discuss in a future post], I left and came home because I felt as if the song verse posted above was in essence almost all that I needed today. The reinforcement that I am God’s child and no dirty word spoken in anger, no failure to see a stop sign to wreck and die (before confessing my sin, breaking the stop sign is breaking the law which is sin because it is not obeying the laws of the land - hey, we were taught this to emphasize the point of losing salvation….), no grand mega satanic attack, no failure to give a televangelist money, no deciding to vote for a democrat on the school board, was almost all I needed to receive today from church.

But I needed more…..

A touch from God……

To know of God’s presence even though I am still single and never been married (you go to some evangelical churches and you get the impression that God doesn’t like single people for some odd reason - ten years ago it was divorcees before pastors divorces and remarriages became the ‘cool’ thing to do). To know of God’s presence even though you have hit age 40 and both the wheels of time / life and the church is passing you by as if they have given up on you which makes you wonder if God Himself has also given up on you.

To quote the Navin Johnson (Steve Martin) character from the movie ‘The Jerk”:

And that’s all I need…..

Hearing and reading the news the past couple of weeks about Sarah Palin and her ‘Christian’ viewpoints ranging from the Assemblies of God to some ‘quazi domionalist, word of faith, New Apostolic Reformation’ slant (the slice is reporting that they received e-mails from people claiming that the foolishness of “demons being barfed up on towels” was practiced there), I started thinking about something that we hear about quite regularly in a sermon on Sunday morning…..

Culture

One of the many definitions of culture as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is:

the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group ; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time

As I thought about that definition more and more and thought about how the religious right and the liberal left want to redefine the term, a very interesting observation came to me:

The same culture that “Americanity” (American Christianity) obsesses with in terms of being “relevant” to is the same culture that “Americanity” is spending millions of dollars “warring against” to expose and eliminate “moral depravity” within that culture. (along with eliminating anyone else who doesn’t ‘agree’ with their ‘official leaders’ who self-appointed themselves to those positions to begin with)

At the same time, “Americanity” is spending (in addition to monies spent to fight the culture war) millions of dollars trying to create ‘cheezy Christian alternatives’ to become ‘countercultural’, ‘theocratic’, and ‘domionalistic’ in order to one day ‘evolve’ into the new ‘official Christian definition’ of ‘culture’ that will be dominant practice in America and eventually the world.

We went from living in the world of ‘us and them’ to ‘us versus them’ to ‘them versus us’.

Just go into a Christian book store and see the Christian alternatives being marketed. From ‘Christian music’ with certain artists deemed as “Christian (insert rock singer here)” to books by “Official Christian Moralist”, “Official Christian Chef”, “Official Christian Global Conspiracy Y2.009K Philosopher”, “Official Christian Mom”, “Official Christian Grief Recoverist” “Official Christian Nutritionalist”, “Official Christian Child Psychologist / toiler trainer” to ‘Official Christian Painter of Light’ and ‘Official Christian Toys and Cartoons’ (I Wonder if Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber are saved??? LOL! and being snarky and sarcastic at the same time) .

Just listen to Christian radio preaching ‘right wing’ politics from the ‘left end’ of the dial deeming the change from ministry to ‘information and analysis features’ telling you your ‘official Christian Perspective / worldview’ and our ‘official Christian truthful news source’.

Just go online to many of the ‘Christian Internet Portals’ and get the ‘latest’ news, latest artists and latest book reviews. See the ads from Christian vitamins to increase your metabolism, Christian cruises, Christian jewerly, to Christian stockbrokers who promise not to invest in companies that advertise on controversial prime time television shows (what ever happened to that ‘Christian long-distance’ company that promised not to trunk your telephone communications over a giant telecom’s network because they had same-sex domestic partner benefits… and by talking on a ’straght’ telephone fiber optic, the light will shine, we feel some tingles, and America will be saved…….?).

Just look at a Christian youth group targeted for relevance to reach their peers and how many of the are either home-schooled or go to Christian private school? The vast majority.

All with the implication and fear (not Godly fear) basis of:

If you read our books, listen to our music, vote for our candidates, homeschool your kids, listen to our ‘unbiased news’ (equal bias from an ‘opposite extreme’ while making a biased statement about being unbiased), follow our diet plan, ‘court’ instead of ‘date’, buy our Jesus Junk, have six kids to vote Republican twenty years from now, buy ‘testamints’ at the ‘Christian bookstore’, and watch only our television networks, you will be healthy, wealthy, wise, your kids will do well in school, you will not miss the rapture, prayer will be back in the public schools (and a voucher will be available for you to send your Christian kid to Christian schools), abortion and the lotto will be outlawed, terrorism will be defeated, political correctiveness will be eliminated, no more social security and welfare, homosexuality will be completely extinct, taxes will go down on families (but go way up on Singles because the church views singles as ‘cursed’), the secular humanists (sheck-you-lurr u-men-nists) will no longer teach college and have their PhD’s revoked, the democrats will be imprisioned and persecuted, and God can finally come back to America and be sovereign and provident again, etc. to help establish the kingdom James Dobson, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, Donald Wildmon, Jerry Falwell, and R.J. Rushdoony dreamed of.

We’ll be perfect because only perfect people can be president, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, or a ‘real Christian’.

or

If you don’t read our books, don’t listen to our music, don’t vote for our candidates, don’t homeschool your kids, don’t listen to our ‘unbiased news’ (equal bias from an ‘opposite extreme’ while making a biased statement about being unbiased), don’t follow our diet plan, don’t buy our Jesus Junk, and don’t watch only our television networks, you will be poor and sick, your sons will smoke pot, your daughters will get pregnant or die from a botched abortion, or will end up in prison, you will miss the rapture, Islam and Evolution will dominate the public schools, people will not get married, you will lose your salvation, abortion will run more rampant, the democrats, minorities, illegial immigrants, and gays will run rampant, etc. and God will leave us and hate your soul.

If God did leave us, then why do we still go to church on Sundays and proclaim that God is in our presence (like God found the secret unlocked door that was unguarded and ’snuck in’ to ‘quickly bless us’ before being discovered and having to escape to be free)? Time Magazine may have said that ‘God is Dead’ but I can feel everyday the sovereignty and providence of God everyday

Since we voted for “God’s Candidate”, then why do we see high unemployment, tragedy and natural disaster as ‘excuses’ to raise the prices of food and gas, terrorism still rampant, increased hysteria and paranoia, and an attitude that your unemployment, poverty, terminal illness is due to secret sin, lacking faith, voting democrat, not giving a televangelist money, failing to stand with a sign at the annual pro-life rally on the first Sunday in October and/or disagreeing theologically with your pastor? In fact, complain about “God’s Candidate” and see how many Christians bring up the Aaron and Mirian / Moses’ Ethopian woman scriptures and the ‘constant manna’ and ‘touch not mine anointed’….?

Where is Osama Bin Laden? Nobody has answered the question that started the war on terror…..

If we are God’s Children, then why do we constantly look for ‘loopholes’ in laws we do not like in order to ‘attempt to escape the feeling of guilt and remorse that you are supposed to feel when you have done something wrong, illegial, or immoral’ and when we find the loophole, praise God for giving us ‘divine revelation’ to circumvent the law that we are supposed to obey per the Scripture?

How come when it’s Nielsen ratings time, one Christian television network encourages it’s viewers to leave the TV on their network 24/7 to affect the ratings using the threat of if Nielsen determines no one watches Christian TV, then Christian TV will be eliminated permanently and we will be further persecuted….

When the secular media services does a better job of exposing the shallowness of evangelical Christianity (the “Saved” movie and the ABC exposes of Robert Tilton, W.V. Grant, Larry Lea, and recently Todd Bentley) we cray ‘foul’ and demand a boycott and tell Christians to watch Christian TV instead.

Why are we always trying to ‘go back’ to a ‘time of innocence’ or go back to ’some enforced legalism’ when in those times of innocence and enforced legalism, the same sins were occurring but on a smaller scale thinking that by going back to the ‘time of innocence’ or ‘reinforcing the legalism’, the sins will be eliminated because ‘en mye day sunny, we never saw dem teenage pregnancies’ [but the girl was sent to a relative in the 'big city' to 'straighten her out' (aka, teenage pregnancies were more 'normalized' in that society but shamed and shunned ostracized in Southern Christian America)]

There will always be a war. The Bible tells us so. If it wasn’t so, would we need Ephesians 6 in the Bible? There will always be persecution on the church. The book of Acts clearly tells us this. We can live a New Covenant lifestyle by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and not by modernizing and re-legalizing some Old Testament Ritual made into a Third Wave prophecy and numerology scheme.

The war on drugs, prostitution, out of wedlock pregnancies, homosexuality, terrorism, racism, and other unmentioned depravities and social ills will always be with us and in many ways in greater force in the days to come. The church in Acts realized this and the church was built and grew on individual holiness and repentance. They relied on miracles to exist and not some buddy who could bribe a favor from a politician. They met in small groups in order to not get further persecuted and not because that was the ‘only gateway to personal ministry within the corporate church’. They sung quietly with no music to not get further persecuted and not because instruments were ungodly or a 2-4 beat was the devil’s beat.

Paul was a tentmaker who became a Christian, not a maker of Christian tents with a cross sewed on the material in order to charge double the price claiming blessings if you purchased his tent or curses if you purchased one from the competitor. We have forgotten how to be in the world and not of the world because we believe that to be in the world, we have to create a world to control and be of in order to feel safe, secure, and loved by God. Why can’t we teach people how to live in the world and be able to overcome temptations and persecutions? No, we either fight to eliminate the temptation and persecution or we just get by hoping we are raptured or we hope that we die and let the next generation deal with the problem.

The Bible tell us to flee temptation, not eliminate it. Fleeing is not eliminating. Fleeing is overcoming. New Testament Christianity was never designed to war to eliminate to reconstruct the earth. New Testament Christianity was designed to overcome the enemy to be the church and to rebuild the heart. We never saw New Testament Christians promoting voting guides telling us to vote against Caesar? We never saw New Testament Christians push clothes made by the official Christian seamstress dyed in Lydia’s ‘official Christian purple dye’ promising us favor. We never saw New Testament Christians consult their ‘official Christian lawyer’ on how to find a loophole in order to proselytize their co-workers and not get fired, persecuted, and killed and then sue with the Christian rights lawyers taking the case on contingency. We never saw New Testament Christians stand outside of a building where infanticide occurred with their two year old kids holding signs saying ‘abortion is murder’. We never saw New Testament Christians place property stakes around the government buildings calling it ‘God’s building’

We saw people who lived life according to the Bible. We saw people who sold dyes, animals, tents, etc. in the day with the Christian principles they learned at the secret, small, and silent housechurch at night. They did not have a choice of umpteen different bible versions geared for every socio-demographic group. They heard the scriptures and memorized them. They didn’t have a minstrel playing their favorite worship song three times a day hoping that they will sing it at the next bretheren meeting. They didn’t care about Gog and Magog being the modern day USSR, Finding Caesar in Bible Prophecy, or decoding John 3:29 for the new revelation. They didn’t send in money to get their personal prayer prosperity hankie, miracle manna, or their blessing on Yom Kippur. They didn’t have their parachurch ministry entitled “Fill in the blank” For Jesus…… It was “Everyone Sees Jesus by the Lifestyle I Live”

They learned to live in culture, not fight and reconstruct it. They didn’t throw money towards how to discover their purpose driven life. They lived their life guided to fulfill His calling. They overcame their trials and temptations because Jesus was the author and finisher of their faith, not a personal ideology made corporate theology to become their apostolic Joel’s Army manned by Joshua’s Generation and Ezra’s Templebuilders defeating the demon of gambling on eight avenue. They saw, felt, and lived a life experiencing the sovereign and providential move of God in the midst of an oppressive government and we cry ‘foul’ when a democrat becomes the register of deeds. They didn’t have Christian lawyers design a sermon to preach on “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”. They preached the Word and not the government. The church was the church and the state was the state.

We made Christianity complex while calling it ‘next-level, cutting edge, fresh revelation’. We looked for a sign when the Scriptures give us clear directions. We cry out for ‘revival’, experienced a crock of deception called Lakeland, while the early church experienced ‘vival’ (life) and saw souls saved and added, and fellow brothers persecuted freed from prison while some were martyred and their faith became sight. The early church saw true miracles via the laying on of hands while we saw a pro-wrestler wanna be, snake-oil salesman named Todd “Bam-Bam-Bam” Bentley performed false signs when he kneed the stage four metastatic colon cancer patient. The early church casted off evil spirits instantly but we spend years fighting the territorial spirit of gang murder on main street from our sanctuary located in the megachurch on Apostle Paul Drive while crime goes up, drugs are rampant, and food and gas is going up with people become homeless blaming it on God hating them. We are dumbfounded when we lack the discernment and can no longer tell the difference between a pastor and a pimp, a church and a corporation, a sermon from a pep talk, and a worship service from an old episode of Solid Gold (and the Solid Gold dancers danced better in my personal opinion).

We have our coffee ‘bar’…. We have our relevant sermons…. We have our modern music…. We have our entertainment centers and babysitters…. We have our cool hypnotic special effects in the background of the worship song lyrics projected on the projection screen…..

However, I have to ask the hard question…

Do we have Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit at work in our life?

The air conditioner, the computer, and the iPod did not cause the quagmire of a mess we call ‘church’. We caused it when we decided that consultants, ANALysts, salesmen, (I meant it the way I spelled it), psychiatrists, and sociologists could call themselves pastors, teachers, apostles, evangelists, and prophets because we thought they had a ‘new and improved’ way of doing Jesus and the church and we allowed them the freedom to self-title themselves and self-appoint their own authority schemes. Marketing replaced ministry. Holistics replaced healing. Mission statements replaced missions. Trends replaced Trinity.

We are desperate. Our christian cliches, our Christian softball leagues, “God’s President named W”, our Christian music, Mel Gibson’s Passion movie, and the Promise Keepers didn’t change society. Why? Because society was never designed to be changed to begin with. We were supposed to change and be conformed and transformed by the renewing of our minds. The battle was never supposed to be ‘us versus them’ and / or ‘them versus us’. It is the Holy Spirit within us versus the flesh that constitutes us fighting to destroy us.

The battle all along is really “Us versus Us”

Not us against culture. Not God against the democratic party. Not the Holy Spirit against the state education lottery. But us against us and the choice to fight and not ‘us versus them’ and / or ‘them versus us’ with the choice of flight back to our bunker called church with it’s coffee bar, Christian resource library, entertainment concerts, and gymnasium where we play “BaptistBall” where a slam dunk is a technical foul (pride).

We are supposed to fight the fight and finish the race, not pick the fight and rewrite the rules to the marathon. Culture will always be around us. It was here before i was thought about, around me now, and will still be here hundreds of years after I die. Do you think that after thousands of years if the culture didn’t change, that it is somehow going to instantly change if we ‘humble ourselves’, vote Republican, defeat the drug demon on First Street, and put some more money in the offering plate?

Remember, in closing, that in the Bible, the change we saw eventually became ‘the same’ as the ’stagnation’ that was deemed to be eliminated. It wasn’t society that changed. It was men and women of God who did. If society really changed permanently for the better, then why did Israel repeat a vicious cycle of repenting to only sin again years later to repeat the cycle but we do not see this pattern mandated in the New Testament? We do not need to change culture nor war against it. We need to change by crucifying this flesh daily and take up our cross to war against our filthy rotten stinking flesh.

That is the only change we are expected to see manifest.

Anti-Christ of the week 9-13-08 is:

The big oil companies..

Using a hurricane as an excuse to raise gas prices. I saw gas prices go from $3.65 a gallon up to $4.09 to $4.25 a gallon with limit cutoffs at 10 gallons max.

I thought that the televangelists on T.B.N.; I.N.S.P; and God(less) TV were bad enough. There is another network that has a lower and more degrading group of televangelists

B.E.T.

Just watch from 3AM to 7 AM EST weekdays or on the weekends especially the Sunday Night / Monday Morning lineup consisting of such televangelists such as

Joel (smiley) Osteen
R.J. Washington
Peter Popoff
Don Stewart’s
Robert Tilton
Travis “Action” Jackson (and the embedded church backdrop)
Kerney (GAWDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD) Thomas
E. Bernard Jordan
The Jeremiah Circle Gold Key Plan

The shock and humor value beats watching P90X, SMC, The Shark vacuum cleaner, colon cleansing, foreclosures, and make money off e-bay infomercials. But there is something that also takes place after I watch.

Disgust and anger.

Most of these guys had pulled some alleged shenanigans in their past that could easily be researched using Google. However, we see re-invention of their money making schemes, re-demographics of going after the minority in deep poverty and despair, re-emergence to an audience that have never heard of these people, and more importantly the re-establishing the direct marketing to the poor individual with low self-esteem who is at their ropes.

The gimmicks ranging from miracle manna, the green prosperity handkerchief, the personal prayer packet, the personal prophecy, the mini book, that can be yours along with the healing and breakthrough……..

If you ’sow the seed’ (aka send in the money). Just like the their counterparts on the TBN, INSP, or God(less) TV.

The desperate, the poor, the one who chooses between paying the power bill and giving to the televangelist, the sick who are dying or chronically ill.

Lord help these people mentioned above and meet their needs.

I received a link to this article by Julie Neidlinger that talked about a recent visit to a church that she ended up leaving in the middle of the service because she already saw that she could not fit in….

In her article, she discussed every demographic from the trendy hip youth pastor to the starched-collar christian to the pastor turned infomercial salesman (sermon about children turned into pleas for children’s ministry workers) to the corporate business atmosphere of being demographed and flow-charted.

I identify with you

I am the square peg in the round hole
I am the one who swims against their streams
I am the one who cuts against their woodgrain
I am the one who they can’t figure out and can’t place a label on.

I am the one no one really wants (but they want my money) because I can not be force-fitted in your family focused, theo-political, purpose-driven, gotee-gospel, seeker-sensitive, feminized dad of eight homeschooled kids, working in the financial management / real estate sector idea of ‘manhood’.

Face it! Boston had it right in this song

If I said whats on my mind
Youd turn and walk away
Disappearing way back in your dreams
Its so hard to be unkind
So easy just to say
That everything is just the way it seems

You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you see
A man Ill never be

If only I could find a way
Id feel like I’m the man you believe I am
And it gets harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see
A man Ill never be

I cant get any stronger
I cant climb any higher
Youll never know just how hard Ive tried
Cry a little longer
And hold a little tighter
Emotions cant be satisfied

You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you see
A man Ill never be

If only I could find a way
Id feel like I’m the man you believe I am
And it gets harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see
A man Ill never be

I cant get any stronger
I cant climb any higher
Youll never know just how hard Ive tried
Cry a little longer
And hold a little tighter
Emotions cant be satisfied

You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you see
A man Ill never be

If only I could find a way
Id feel like I’m the man you believe I am
And it gets harder every day for me
I can’t keep hiding this feeling

In the evangelical church’s eyes, I am ‘A Man I’ll Never Be’
I will never be the clone. the effeminate. the ‘yes-man’. the brainwashed. The Pretender (the happy idiot……)

but in my eyes, I see myself as “The Man They Despise”….
The free-thinker. The warrior. The discerning. The hermit.

Try being a single Christian man who just turned 40 and see that ’shingles’ “singles” groups cut you off at age 39. Try being a single Christian man who just turned 40 and see the young come back from “The Call Gall 2008″ (why did they go to begin with?) and their faith in this new ‘Joshua Generation’ (remember, you were once called a Joshua Generation whose name got changed to Moses) to ‘create the theocratic state that will get rid of the terrorists, abortionists, and the Democrats’ and made to feel that all faith in you has now been lost because you were supposed to already have six homeschooled kids and listen to Butterfly Kisses all day long. I walked out on that one.

Try being a single Christian man who just turned 40 and does not have a financial management / real estate career and see if the Christian women want you. Foot, being a 40 year old single man in any church gets you profiled as aloof, ‘not mentally stable’ guy who jacks off at Internet porn at 3 AM’ who will never amount to anything and therefore is deemed as being ‘annoying’ and not ‘anointed’ because if he was ‘normal’ he would be married by now. In some churches, that same 40 year old single man gets followed everywhere because they profiled you as a potential pedophile.

In fact, single Christian women are told that the single men who does not have the non-finanicial sector career, who refuses to be effiminate, who refuses to go along with the status quo, who has buddies outside the church, who is not there everytime the doors open, who questions everything even the pastor’s sermon and their motives, who watches sports on television, who disdains politics, and who repairs his own car and is a ‘do-it’yourselfer’ to his own home is a ‘bad guy’ that is ‘in the flesh’ and not ‘of the spirit’. Stay Away!!!!

The evan’smell’ical church doesn’t want you. If you can’t access money, They do not want you. If you can’t acquire power, politics, and influence that attracts publicity, power, and money, they do not want you. Wait until late October when the sermons become covert political rallies where lawyer statements written to circumvent 501c3 laws replace sermons.

Today’s sermon at church, for example, was on the importance of children’s ministry. I walked out at the part where we were told, as the call-to-action part of the sermon, to do our duty and sign up for the various children’s ministries. This was right after the explanation that children’s ministries accounted for the largest chunk of the church’s budget because kids won’t pay attention if you just show up with a Bible; you have to have all kinds of programs and themes and activities…

I left.

I had to.

Julie. I don’t blame you. I would of too knowing that sermon was reduced to infomercial and instead of a timeclock telling me I have 1:25 left to call and place my order, you get a guilt trip stating you have 1:15 left to ‘get blessed’. I went through that at my last church when tithing was never preached until the new building plan was to be unveiled and when ministries needed volunteers…..

If I want an infomercial, I would watch the P90X, SMC, e-Bay, foreclosed properties, mega detox colon cleanser (that guy looks like the devil) infomercials completely. If I want a Christian infomercial, the early Sunday Morning and Sunday Night / Monday Morning lineup on Black Entertainment Television does just fine with Peter Popoff, Don Stewart, Robert Tilton, Travis “Action” Jackson, Kerney (GAWDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD) Thomas (O.J. Evans is my nickname for him , he looks like a cross between O.J. Simpson and the James Evans, Sr. character from Good Times), and the Jeremiah Circle Gold Key plan does just fine and I get alot of laughs in the process.

As it is, I, and others like me, will walk out of churches. The coffee bars in the foyer, the casual attire, the buzz words, all the programs and activities imaginable, the big-screen video monitors, the contemporary music — it is actually repulsive and fake to a large chunk of people.

….They don’t want to be part of a flow chart or be managed as part of a Church-as-Corporate-Hierarchy system. They don’t want a polite follow-up call or to hear a voice on the other end say that they just wanted to “touch bases” with them to let them know they’re important. Even if those actions are sincere and the only plausible route when a church is so huge, they ring insincere.

They are insincere. It comes across as a recruiter that is head hunting for people to fill open positions. They do not care about you. They care about filling a position so one of them can quit. Then they tell you to ‘connect’ by going to a small group consisting of the same people who don’t want to know you but want their needs prayed for but your needs are ’selfish’.

I don’t want their coffee (but if offered, I will take the opportunity to crack a Sally Struthers Christian Children’s Fund joke). I don’t want their ‘authentic worship’ played to the beat of an electronic drumset with canned pre-programmed beats. I don’t want their programs and sub programs, their dinners called ‘fallowship’ and their ‘groups’ that seem to care only about their leaders and agendas.

I want to be accepted for who I am because that is who God made me to be and loves me no matter how much a ‘theo-political effeminate charismatic dad of seven’ wants to believe that God hates me and wants to zap my holy heiney with holy hexes because we disagree.

My most sincere Christian friendships are my three best friends now in various parts of the country, a co-worker, and the many Internet online friends I have made throughout the years not at church

I haven’t given up on the dream…. I haven’t given up on myself. But I feel that the evan’smell’ical church has given up on me and I have almost given up on them….

Rush - Grand Designs

A to B
Different degrees…

So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It’s hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while

Like a rare and precious metal beneath a ton of rock
It takes some time and trouble to separate from the stock
You sometimes have to listen to a lot of useless talk

Shapes and forms against the norm
Against the run of the mill
Swimming against the stream
Life in two dimensions is a mass production scheme

So much poison in power, the principles get left out
So much mind on the matter, the spirit gets forgotten about

Like a righteous inspiration overlooked in haste
Like a teardrop in the ocean, a diamond in the waste
Some world-views are spacious
And some are merely spaced

Against the run of the mill
Static as it seems
We break the surface tension with our wild kinetic dreams
Curves and lines
Of grand designs…

Against the run of the mill
Swimming against the stream
Life in two dimensions is a mass production scheme

I went to LoriKate’s page to thank her for talking about my satirical prophecies of 2009. At the bottom of the page, her “School Name Generator” is more hilarious!!!! Go check it out

Hanna is getting ready to hit the Carolinas late tonight / early Saturday morning. Like most every person who lives in “Hurricane Alley” (the area of the Carolina coast between Charleston, S.C., and Hatteras, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina), I have my batteries, water, ropes, tarps, portable radio, bread, gas in the truck, flashlights and duct tape ready if needed.

Continue reading…