The Christian Bubble

I expounded a bit on this last night at http://mtlproject06.blogspot.com but this past week has been like trekking out into the desert from a beautiful oasis. The only problem with this analogy, that oasis is no longer there. It's gone... never to be seen again. Allow me to explain.

This week seems to have killed my innocence. Let's have a moment of silence for it then move on. The reason that I say this is because although I knew that there was something hugely different about Christian and non-Christian conversation, it was all head knowledge. Because I was incredibly selective about the friends that I hung out with when I was in elementary and high school (and thus far in university) the conversation was always either about spiritual things (i.e. debating particular points of theology with other Christians) or just every day mundane things or video games/card games. Whenever the subject of girls came up, it was almost always in the context of the Christian setting and almost always about how one can be a godly man towards the women that he loves. Whenever the subject arose in my video game/card game circles, it usually killed the conversation so we moved on. This is starting to change, but that's a different story.

But just the other night, I was walking around campus with a bunch of fellow frosh bosses and after they took a few pulls on a joint, the conversation invariably turned to girls. But this conversation took a turn that I have never seen in my life, which was interesting to observe (now that I'm properly awake and not dead tired.) They began talking about the girls that were eye-f-ing them and then about frosh that were hitting on them and that they weren't allowed to hit on back etc. From this conversation, I gathered that normal modes of conversation suddenly change and that little things that you do are apparently signals as to how desperate you are or how dominant you can be in a relationship.

After listening to this conversation, I was totally blown away for a while. I didn't even REALIZE that this was how many men thought about relationships with girls and thought to myself, no wonder relationships are so screwed up these days. So if I'm polite and caring for my girl, I'm suddenly desperate and putting the - in their words - the "cat" on the pedestal (insert proper word in the quotation marks).

On a seperate tangent, I also went to Yuk Yuk's the other night. I'm glad to say that I found very little about the show funny, and what astonished me even more was that people were laughing.

"So years ago I was studying to be a protestant minister. - pause as people scoff incredulously - No I kid you not. But this comes back to bite me in the a** because now whenever my friends are looking for a babysitter they initially ask me and then say no wait, you'll just f--- them."

For me... this is a moment when the crickets should be going. First point, he's talking about the wrong sect, and second since when was pedophilia something to be laughed at or even be poked fun at. But the rest of the crowd starts laughing and I turn to everyone and think to myself WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE! That garbage isn't funny.

Or course, he doesn't stop there... he keeps on going by saying "Your kids aren't even hot."

Now I'm thinking that the crickets should REALLY get going at this point, but of course, he gets a lot of laughter yet again. See the problem is that since we're at a comedy club, the idea is that if you don't like the joke or disapprove, you don't laugh. And (excuse me here) but that shit wasn't funny. At all. And this is what the night was like pretty much the whole time. Some guy going up telling stories about throwing his feces at people, another guy talking about how he found out his best friend's dad made child porn and wondered why he was never approached, and it only gets worse from there. Interestingly, the only bits I actually found funny was when they stopped talking about sex and dirty things and started doing imitations, poking fun at the government, and anglophones (there was a Quebecois comedian there).

The funny thing about all this is that four months ago, I probably would have laughed at those other jokes. I'm glad now that a sense of decency has returned to my train of thought, because that other way of thinking was most DEFINATELY a runaway.

The point of all this is that the world is indeed a strange and scary place to be in. A good friend of mine from Montreal project reminded me last night about the spiritual warfare aspect of this whole life and it also reminded me that I haven't done a proper devotion in a very very long time. So if you could pray for me that as I finish off this week that instead of these guys and these things being an influence on me, that I would be able to - through God's strength - be an influence on them and shine a light in the pitch blackness of darkness.

And FYI

Although I call myself a nerd, apparently I'm actually not that nerdy. I am deeply ashamed.

Tolstoy = genius

Brad, I'm going to have to thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart for suggesting Anna Karenina. At first it was kind of tough going, but it's SO interesting.

For the rest of you, if you don't like to read and it's a chore for you to do so, Anna Karenina MAY seem boring and pointless. Russian literature takes some refining to get used to. Books like this truly are an acquired taste.

Just today I read in the part of the book where Constantine Levin's older brother comes to visit him at his farm, and Levin realizes just how sick his brother is and that he will probably die very soon. This gets him off to thinking about his own plans (because at this point in the book has began to undertake some apparently amazing theory of how to make a farm much more productive by involving the labour - lots of socialist and political economy talk) and starts moping about how in the end we all face death so what is the point of starting anything? If we all die then what is the point of doing anything? But he then picks up and says but while we are alive we cannot do nothing, so he clings to this idea of his that he is formulating with all his might in the hopes that it will at least guide him until that final moment of death arrives.

But then a few chapters later (by which I can only divine is a few months later... Tolstoy is so bad at conveying the passage of time) he meets up again with the women that he proposed to and was rejected by, and finds that she is suddenly now interested in him. This suddenly lifts him to the heights of heavenliness (as I'm sure it would me if I were suddenly noticed by a women that I loved).

The point of this long shpeel is that I find myself acting a lot like Levin. When a sudden depressing thought hits me, I let it get me down even though there isn't anything that I can do about it. Then when a glorious moment approaches, my mood swings back up into high mountain top head in the clouds, until the next sobering thing brings me crashing down into the deepest valley. (Do NOT tell me what happens to Levin and Kitty if you have read this book)

There is a counterpoint to all this, though. Ever since I was in high school, I have been working on my erratic mood swings, and I realized that I don't let myself get SO excited about things anymore, and so at the same time when things go wrong, I don't swing down as much. I don't know which is better, whether to be completely elated and completely down at the dumps in intervals, or to just fluctuate between weak emotional states here and there.

It's quite a befuddling conundrum now that I think of it.

How we are raising our children

Minister Vic Toews has suggested tabling legislation in the Canadian House of Commons lowering the minimum age that a child can be charged criminally from 12 to 10 years of age. The current justification for the minimum of 12 years old is, in a nutshell, that children that are that young "did not know any better" and that other methods other than criminalization are a better answer to delinquent behaviour. Maybe these people are right. But I have very little hope for the children that fall into these people's hands and here's why.

I quote from the Toronto Metro, "Dr. Leena Augimeri is the director of the Centre for Children Committing Offences at Toronto's Child Development Institute, which specializes in research and early intervention for youths under 12..." Dr. Augimeri is clearly in an incredibly high position to do something about delinquent youth before they fall under the umbrella of the criminal justice system and its questionable ways of dealing with young people these days. However, this is her take on Toew's proposal. "Criminalization equals punishment, and we know that doesn't work."

*crickets*

Excuse me? Punishment doesn't work? So you're telling me that when my parents punished me for lying when I got into trouble, that didn't teach me that lying was bad and that I shouldn't do it? You're telling me that when my parents disciplined me for flipping a bird at my grandmother when I was 11 years old that I didn't realize that was a bad thing?

Martha Mackinnon (I think I washed this lady's windows) the executive director for Justice for Children and Youth, a legal-aid organization, says in the same article that "Deterrents as a principle don't work fo ryoung people. Most of their conduct, whether it's good or bad, is impulsive." She also says that "the brains of most offenders under age 12 are not developped enough for the court system to be effective."

So what she's saying is that when kids get in trouble, they're too stupid to learn from the fact that actions have consequences? When we grew up we magically gained the ability to suddenly discern that bad actions means bad results? Or did she, when at the young inquistive age of 4 years old, not realize that the element on a stove was hot when bright orange after burning her fingers and keep on touching said element?

Now don't get me wrong here, I am not at ALL arguing that we should be sending children to jail or creating more delinquent centres etc. All I'm saying is that if these are the people in charge of coming up with alternate punishments and rehabilitations, then I am very scared for today's children who are being told that their impulsiveness is only natural and should not be curbed. Heck I'm not just scared for the children, I'm scared for the world when these kids grow up having been told this, and then as adults making impulsive decisions because they were never reprimanded or forced to face the negative consequences of negative behaviour. Our world will not only just be run by blithering idiots who yell at each other all the time, they will be run by blithering immature idiots that will start bombing each other not realizing the consequences. I sincerely hope that someone intervenes in these children's lives before it escalates to such as this.

Mordecai and 1 Peter

So I was just listening to Adventures in Odyssey and heard the story of Esther again. Great story... crazy Esther and her courage.

But that aside, the main point of this post is about Mordecai. Now according to Adventures in Odyssey and corroborated by my own checkup in the bible (see Esther 3:2), the king had commanded that all must pay honour to Haman by kneeling down before him. However, Mordecai refused to do this because he was a Jew (i.e. bowing down only before God). He even refused to rise in his presence or pay him ANY honour at all (Esther 5:9).

Yet we see in 1 Peter 2:13-15, that we are commanded to "submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors..." Now, don't get me wrong, Haman was a nasty evil man and I'm not defending his actions at all. However, the book of Esther also says that Haman developped hatred and his desire to commit a genocide against the Jews because of Mordecai's disobediance to the king's command. Now I wonder, and I'm sure God knew better on this and thus worked things out for the best (or despite certain people's actions worked things out for the best) but wouldn't it have been better for ALL involved if Mordecai had obeyed the king's command and knelt before Haman (or even just showed him respect... which it seems he didn't even do that.) Was it not dishonouring to God when one of his people couldn't show the respect and courtesy one shows to his superiors? I'm sure that more people got turned off about God and the Jews than just Haman - although his reaction was quite drastic - because of Mordecai's irreverance.

On the other side, most accounts that I've heard of this story has been in the light that Mordecai defends his actions by saying that kneeling down to something is akin to worshipping it and he worships only his God - a stance with which I do not entirely disagree as well. So then, where does one draw the line between submitting to the authorities, a command given to us by God through his Word, and defying the authorities in God's name?

The other reason I really got to thinking about this was because in Korean culture, at New Year's (and whenever one meets one's elders) they will do something which is called 큰절 (very literally translated meaning big bow) where you fall on your knees and genuflect before said elder (grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.). Would this be considered worshipping my elders or simply showing respect by keeping to the tradition of my culture?

Or am I missing an entire angle here? Was there something about bowing down to people/things back in those days that elevated them to "god" status? (god is not capitalized intentionally) Hey if you read this, let me know what you think.

The Emergent Church and Young People

So I was bored and scrolling through Lydia's blog and noticed a nifty little link

http://www.desiringgod.org/media/mp3/conferences/national2006/20060721_piper_qa.mp3

Yeah, I don't know how to make that look all cool and stuff.

But it got me to thinking that the Emergent Church kind of movement sounds vaguely like people of our generations (and the generation preceding us) obsession with "down with the system!" Personally, I have never understood the infatuation with the idea that anarchy is best and that people shouldn't be enslaved to the system of things (blah blah blah, so on and so forth). Pop culture artists in my opinion are just taking advantage of people's need to blame someone else for their failures in life and making money off of it (cynical? yes... and maybe not even true, I don't know).

For if one is doing poorly in life, is it NECESSARILY the fault of the system that supposedly keeps kicking you while you're down? Plenty of people have overcome this and gone on to be, if not huge successes, at least doing well enough and being generally content (materially speaking). Now I would like to take a quick pause here and say that I'm not arguing that life doesn't throw curveballs. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I AM saying is that when life throws you a curveball, people are smart enough to figure out what to do about it and move on instead of wallowing in pity because they've been dealt a bad hand (WOW that statement was wrought with cliches).

So connecting this with the Emergent Church, I like what John Piper says about Mark Driscoll's emergent movement. The idea is that young people (my age and slightly older) need to grow up, stop acting like rebellious teenagers - blaming governments, teachers, school, and life for our problems - and be real men and women of God. Although I think a "reinvention" of the way we do church may be necessary in many settings, shunning doctrine (to plagiarize from Piper) is extremely dangerous for one's spiritual walk with God.

On movies and thinking

I saw Talladega Nights today. Yes Brad, it is Will Ferrell... and yes it was not above reproach (but no worse than any of the other movies one finds out there... which is really weird for Adam McKay and Will Ferrell). It got me to thinking about the plethora of different kinds of filmmakers out there.

First you have good filmmakers. People like Paul Haggis (Crash), Ron Howard (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13), Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator). These are the people that, although many people MAY argue with my taste in films in terms of the films that these people have made, make you appreciate the cinematography, the art, and the beauty that the camera can bring to the big screen. Sure they're Hollywood... sure they make formula movies and cliches... but who said a cliche can't be well done. It wouldn't have become a formula if people didn't like it you know. And a cliche didn't become a cliche because people hated the genres.

Then you have the filmmakers who have their moments, make interesting political statements and otherwise, but in such strange ways that you really need to dig to understand what they're getting at. Filmmaker like Kevin Smith comes to mind (Clerks, Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks II... you get it). Sure he makes a great commentary about some of lifes realities (the Catholic church, life, love, America) but does he have to do it in such a crude manner? Or have people become so unsophisticated that they can't understand deep truths without references to sex or crudity?

Then you have filmmakers like Adam Mckay et. el (Anchorman, 40-Year old Virgin, Talledega Nights), Michael Moore (Farenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine)... I'm sure there's plenty more who are just crap. I mean, tell you the truth, I liked Anchorman, thought it was hilarious.... but I don't like anything else Adam McKay/Will ferrell really. No REAL plot, crude and strange for it's own sake, and it's not even funny 3/4 of the time. Michael Moore just takes "facts" that he pulls out of goodness knows where and then makes people believe them by asking people in high positions completely loaded and biased questions that cannot properly be answered without an answer that would require words to be redefined. (Heck whole books are written on single phrases... video interviews do not do intellectual debate justice).

I guess the point here is that the vast majority of movies are a huge waste of time and I can't believe that I just spent so much of the past two years of my life watching movies. Most of them weren't even good... not to mention the fact that it's an expensive habit to get into. Watch your movies selectively and carefully people... let the people that get paid to watch movies (like movie critics) do that... read their reviews, go watch the movies that you really want to see then see if you agree. Word of advice... the Toronto Star movie critics are a bunch of morons.

Good night all.