Fit into the system or get out!

If you were privy to this URL before my recent 2-year blog shutdown you probably already know everything I’m going to say in the following paragraphs.  For years I ranted about the state of Christianity in the western world (particularly the American brand) and how off-track it has seemed.  Since then I’ve read many books, attended a few different churches for months at a time, and tried to find out why I was wrong.  Afterall, EVERYONE was telling me I was wrong.  I sought earnestly after justification of what seemed so wrong to me.  I tried to fit into a church and be a “good Christian”.  I even thought about joining a small group (if you’re outside the faith, think of these as manufactured friendships that you’re required to have ;)).  But ya know what I found on that journey?  Ya know what I realized after many years of honestly and earnestly seeking a proper view of church?

I was right all along.  The modern church is jacked up and has virtually nothing to do with The Bible or Jesus Christ.

It’s funny because the above statement will evoke two opposite responses depending on who you are.  If you’re a Christian who attends church weekly, is part of a small group, gets your paycheck from a congregation, or otherwise accepts the modern church as “the will of God”, you’ll write me off as another angry person who was somehow hurt by the church and now has an agenda against it.  If you’re a non-Christian, someone who has been turned off to faith because of the church you’re reaction will be quite different.  It’ll be more along the lines of: Yeah.  I already knew that.

So, what’s wrong with the church?  Why do I have such strong statements about it?  As I said, I’ve gone over this a million times and don’t really have the energy to say it again.  So, here’s just a few bullet points of the issues as I see them.

• Above all the church, and by extension the brand of Christianity we profess, is systematic. “To be a good Christian you do this, don’t do that…you live like this, you give your money here, you pray like this, you study the Bible this often….blah blah blah”.  It’s all crap.  Jesus came to destroy the systematic living of the Old Testament and we’ve done nothing but reestablish it.
• The church is no longer a group of believers. It’s a 501c3 non-profit business style entity.  It has policies, procedures, paychecks, mortgages, janitors, and boards.  It spends more time managing all this worthless junk than it does living the life Jesus calls us to.  It’s a waste of time, money, and in the end because of an incorrect focus, it’s giving many people a wrong impression of the faith and what it means to be The Church.
• The church is disconnected radically from everyday life. When you walk into a church you’re supposed to dress differently, act differently, talk differently, pray differently, and sing differently.  If you swear outside the church, you better not do it inside.  If you have a naturally loud voice, you better not even TALK inside the church…or else.  Again, Jesus came to abolish all this disconnection and false piety.  It’s the stuff of the Pharisees.
• Churches now fall into 2 categories:  Old & dead or Entertainment. Neither has anything to do with Christ.  Both bore me or make me angry because they’re leading people astray.

Let me clarify that I’m not talking, here, about little things that need to change about the church.  I’m suggesting that our entire concept of “church” is wrong. We would need to tear down our buildings, dismatle the staff and boards, and start anew if we were to get closer to what I believe God intends for us to be.  Too many times when I talk about the church being off track the answer I hear is “Well…OUR church isn’t off track”.  If your church has a building, a full time staff, ‘ministries’, or a board…then yes it is (according to my defintion).  So, a change in worship style, getting younger leaders, or becoming a more ‘organic’ church with new branding doesn’t fix anything I’m talking about…just in case you’re missing my point.  Let me also say that I want the church to be healthy and everything God wants.  I don’t want to see the church go away…I want it to be the church of the Bible..healthy and pleasing to God. (and if you’re thinking I’m talking about the house-church movement or ‘Acts churches’, again, you’re missing the point)

Once in a while God steps in and gives me a little nudge in a direction I need.  He did this yesterday and it was some much needed encouragement to say with boldness everything that you’ve read above.  He put a book into my hands called Pagan Christianity which exposes much of what I say above, but on a much more studied and in depth scale.  It was the encouragement I needed to move ahead bravely with the belief that the Christian faith as become systematic and disconnecting from this system is ok (or possibly even something God wants).  I’m not talking about disbelieving the Bible or ceasing my relationship with Jesus. These have nothing to do with the systematic problem.  I’m a believer in Christ and, as long as He continues to help me believe, I always will be.  The church, and the mess that it is, will never change that.  But there is a point where I no longer am willing to be a part of the system as an active supporter of this mess.

However, here’s the caveat to disconnecting from the church:  If you do that, you must continue to meet and study and pray with fellow believers, and this I am doing.  I’m not saying it’s ok to make your faith “a personal journey” and still be a follower of Jesus.  That flies in the face of everything the Bible teaches.  What I’m saying is that you can have real relationship, real study, real Christian life outside of this systematic church. It’s harder, but it’s also the real thing.  It’s not a systematic solution, it’s an organic one and it’s the one Christ intends for us.

So, while I’ll probably continue to attend a systematic church (if I’m honest, it’s more for my daughter than for me or my wife) I won’t put much stock in it.  I won’t support the system in any way.  I won’t be bullied or insulted into being a part of something that Jesus neither envisioned or (in my opinion) entirely approves of.  But I will continue to be a person who follows Christ the best I know how.  Nothing a systematic Church can say or do will stop this real relationship from growing until the day I go “home”:  A place without system and a place of pure relationship.

See all that grass behind me? That's how I roll...

In the Fall of 2008 my eating started to change pretty dramatically.  Mostly it was due to some wakeup calls by all the clichely referenced authors of my generation (Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, Mark Bittman, et al) where I realized that, as Jamie Oliver puts it:  “We demand the best of everything from our beer selection to our running shoes, but we’ll put just about anything in our mouths”.  We have such high standards for things that don’t matter, yet we never think about what we’re putting in our bodies to be our fuel and, literally, our biological makeup.  So, one day last Autumn…I started paying attention.

Now, when I talk about “paying attention” I, of course, mean paying attention to the quality of food that I’m eating, the amount of processing that happened before it went down my gullet, and the actual ingredients that went into making what I was eating (as a side note, it’s it strange that foods we buy have “ingredients”?  That tells you how little we prepare our own foods anymore.  Ingredients means you’re trusting someone else to prepare your food for you….ok, tangent over)

However, thinking about what made up the food I ate wasn’t limited to the ingredients.  Every single food item we purchase has massive political, social, ethical, and even religious implications. (Do you think I’m overstating it?  If so, spend some weeks reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, Fast Food Nation, or go see Food Inc. and then let’s talk.) It’s not all about the food…it’s also about the way the food was made, who made it, how they were treated and compensated..and it’s also about how the FOOD was treated before it became food.

I’m no bleeding heart…but I do have a responsible conscience.  I also have a faith that presides over all of these decisions, which is why, to all outsiders, it looks like I’m a vegetarian.

Years ago when I was having some tattoo work done, the artist and I spent lots of time talking.  He was a vegan and I was a Christian and we were both interested in each other’s views on the world.  One question he asked that stuck with me to this day was “Why aren’t there more Christian vegetarians? Afterall, that’s the way your Bible says God originally  made us, before original sin”.  Bam. There it was.  My first exposure to faith and food issues intersecting.

Years later, this question still haunts me.  Not just because this is “the way it was in the beginning”, but for a more pressing reason:  This is God’s planet…people are God’s people…animals are God’s animals and, to put it bluntly, our food system (and therefore us, as consumers) treat all of them like shit.

I can’t possibly describe the conditions that the laborers experience in animal processing industry, but I can assure you:  It’s degrading, neglectful, and very, very dangerous.  These are God’s people and when I support the company that treats them like this, I’m responsible. Then, there’s the animals.  They are packed into areas where they stand knee high in their own crap for months on end.  They aren’t allowed to move so they get fatter quicker.  They get sick because of how they’re treated and fed and then we shoot them up with drugs so they’ll last just long enough so we can kill them in a pretty inhumane way.  These are God’s animals and when I support the company that treats them like this, I’m responsible. At the risk of sounding like a hippie, I’ll also point out that our industrial food system is destroying the planet with it’s monoculture, massive amounts of fertilizer, and total neglect for soil health.  And yes, if I buy from those companies, I’m responsbile for that too.

So how does all this lead to my title-question?  People see how I eat and they assume I’m a vegetarian. When they ask why I eat this way, they don’t really want the full answer because it makes them feel like I’m judging them (which, truly, I’m not…not everyone should be expected to come to the same conclusions just because I have).  So I respond with the easy answer:  I simply tell them “Yes, I’m a vegetarian.”  But it’s not true.

I’m not someone who thinks meat is bad for us.  On the contrary, I think it’s healthy.  I think God made animals for our use…But, the kicker here is that I think that 99% of the meat available to us is irresponsible (and an insult to God and his creation) and I won’t eat it or support companies who make it.  The ‘easy’ answer, the ’systematic’ answer is to become a raving judgmental and political vegetarian. But I refuse.  That’s just buying into a different system..one that is equally unthiking and indiscriminate.

So, what’s the answer?  It’s harder, but I believe it’s correct:  You must think about every piece of food you put into your body. How was THIS food grown?  How was THIS animal raised?  What does it mean for my faith?  What does it mean for my politics?  If you think through this every time you put something in your mouth I can almost assure you that, in a short time, you’ll also find that the only option is to eat very differently than most of us do now.  We might all look a whole lot more like vegetarians.

In practice, here’s what I’ve come to.  I don’t think it’s systematic and I think it’s in line with the principals of my faith:

• I eat no  factory produced meat (which is literally all meat you get anywhere except directly from a local farm)
• I eat as little processed food as possible. (anything in a box, bag, wrapper, or bottle is going to be processed)
• Generally (although not a hard and fast rule) I eat local meats only once a week. This is more of a personal preference since I actually enjoy eating mostly vegetarian.
• If I buy meat, I talk to the farmer face to face first.  I ask about their farm, their animals, and I listen to their passion and love of their work.  If they don’t love their animals and have a commitment to raising food how it was intended, I won’t buy it.
• When talking with the farmer, I try to build them up and encourage them.  Imagine how hard it must be to be a small farmer fighting the enormous system that says you should be raising your animals feedlot style.

So, am I a vegetarian?  Not really.  Do I eat like one?  Most of the time, I do.  So, next time we have a discussion about this and you ask about my eating habits, don’t ask unless you really want to know the full story.  If you want a short version that just writes me off as crazy so you don’t have to think about changing, don’t expect the truth.  My answer to you will simply be:  Yes.  I’m a vegetarian.

Hi.  My name is Bob and I’m a recovering right-wing Republican.

If you knew me a handfull of years ago, you no doubt knew my politics.  I talked about John Kerry like he was an idiot, I thought anyone who was pro-tax-increases was a communist, and I had a 8 foot wide George W. election sign in my front yard (which I replaced every time the neighborhood kids tore it down).  I still think Kerry is an closer to an idiot than a saint, but lots of other things have changed over the past few years and my outlook on politics has changed, quite dramatically, with them.

You see, I’m a person of faith…a follower of Jesus.  I used to think that the obvious outpouring of my faith was to be a Republican.  I never really questioned that.  I think I’m at least a quasi-smart and thinking man, so it’s not like I was being led there blindly.  Many of the arguments and statements made by the party made lots of sense.  I found reason after reason to support my right-wingedness and I could out-argue any Democrat I came in contact with.  Then, one day, things started to change.

I hate to narrow this change down to a single moment because I think it had been a long time coming.  But, to make a longer life-story shorter, when I started reading The Great Awakening by Jim Wallis I was a confident, learned Republican.  I picked it up (without knowing who Wallis was or what the book was really about) because I was tired of the way the American church operated and the cover seemed like it addressed (and sympathized) with my current state of mind.  As I read, I got angry.  As I read further, I became furious.  “How could someone be so stupid” I thought.  “How could a Christian be so politically liberal?”  But for some reason, I kept reading.

I realized by the end of the book that while my anger was directed at Wallis (the book’s author), it was actually more directed at myself.  My way of thinking.  My way of living.  In the process of being so “right” (or Right), I was forgetting that there’s people behind those politics that Jesus loves and that Jesus cares about, regardless of their situation, their beliefs or their politics.

That’s when I started to see through the lies of the Republican Party.  I never realized before how hateful Right wing politics had become.  It totally neglects people for the benefit of The Free Market and lower taxes.  It says “if you don’t work hard you deserve to be poor and miserable”.  But guess what?  Jesus doesn’t think so.  Poor if it’s your doing, maybe…but miserable and living in deep dark despair?  Absolutely not.  I started to realize that even though the Christians I knew weren’t racist or sexist or thought the poor should suffer, they (and I) were supporting politics and policies that were exactly those things.  So, I knew I had to move away from that Right Wing.

So, did I become a Democrat?  Absolutely not.  In my years as a Republican, I saw all the problems with the Democratic party…so that part didn’t take any research.  I now understood why the Left Wing took many of it’s positions on issues (out of compassion for the poor, the minorities, those who are up against the world every day) and I agreed, in principal, with much of what they said. The problem was, it was still politics. It was still a game that they needed to win to stay in power.  They still took advantage of the average American to stay in power, which in the end, was their goal much more than helping those in need.

So there I was.  Searching for a systematic political structure to fit into.  Systematic living was the easy choice when it came to politics but it was the wrong choice. I could be a Republican or a Democrat (or one of the many other fringe parties) but none of my choices were fully right.  Politics (and the parties) could never be completely compatible with who Jesus wanted me to be.

These days I find that it’s really hard to willfully exist outside the political system (just as it’s always hard to exist outside of systematic living).  My Republican friends think I’m a baby-killing Democrat and my Democratic friends think I’m a cold-hearted Republican.  But this is where we all should be living. (I don’t usually presume that everyone should make the same choices I have, but I’m 99% sure that this is exactly where all people should be, or at the very least, where all Christians should be).  I’ve clearly seen both sides and I truly believe much of what they say is right (while much is wrong), and I think that anyone who buys into either fully is an unthinking systematic pawn.

Every time I talk with a Christian Republican and I hear the party-line being spit back at me, all I can see is their ignorance.  They’ve been hoodwinked by the Republican party into supporting Right Wing views because they’ve been convinced that it’s the “Christian party” to belong to. I don’t try and convince them otherwise, because I know that for me it truly took God’s intervention (through many experiences and one tough book) to help me see Truth.  I couldn’t possibly presume that a few words from me could change any minds.

At the same time, every time I talk to a hard-core Democrat (Christian or otherwise) I know that they’ve been fooled into thinking that the Democratic party actually cares about the poor and the downtrodden.  If they’re Christian, they’re often the “cool” Christian who thinks that being a Democrat makes Faith look “hip” to their Democratic posse, which is just as foolish as thinking tattoos or a pierced-nosed follower of Jesus will make Christianity seem less lame.  I let them be as well…there’s no out-arguing ‘hip’.  There’s no convincing them that Democratic leaders only really care about staying in power and are using the poor to keep themselves there.

Buying into any part of this system is counter to who Jesus wants me to be. Sure, we should vote.  We should be involved in the political process (it’s our duty as a citizen) but the second we identify ourselves as a Democrat or Republican, we’ve lost.  We’ve declared ourselves slaves to the systematic politcs that is so sick and clueless when it comes to real people and real issues.

So, next time you’re talking to me about politics, don’t expect me to take either side.  I refuse. I’ll support the individual issues and people that seem like their the most competent to keep our country functional.  So, I’ll see you at the voting booth, but know that I’ll be checking more than one big party-affiliated box on that voting form…I’ll have done my research and will be voting outside the system of brainless and easy politics.

"Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

In this first post in a series on Systematic Living, I’m going to, more than once, tackle the issue of the stuff we put in our mouths (for most of us, that’s food).  What we eat in America (and much of the Westernized world) is one of the most systematic things I can think of, and it seems that no one (including myself until a couple months ago) noticed.  We thought we were in control of our own choices.  We thought Americans had the most varied diet of anyone in the world, afterall, we have 45,000 product in our grocery stores, who else has that?

If you recognize where the previous line of argument is going, you’ll see that this new popular thinking stems much from the writings of Michael Pollan, which is so cliché I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’ve read everything he’s written (almost…).  Pollan is the gold standard in the analysis of this current systematic food system we’re a part of, pointing out that most of that vast variety of 45,000 products in our stores are actual reconstructions of a single ingredient (which will go unmentioned here to avoid some clichés).  The bottom line is, we eat like crap in this country and one of the main reasons is because we don’t look at human history or culture for clues on what we should be eating. Instead, we consciously (or unconsciously) listen to food companies, trends and fads, and most of all….Diets.

In the past, when I’ve talked with people about my “diet”, they immediately (in their minds) use the modern definition when I mean it in the most traditional way.  The modern definition of diet is commonly thought of as:

Of or relating to a food regimen designed to promote weight loss in a person or an animal

The problem is, this definition of ‘diet’ didn’t exist until fairly recently.  The traditional meaning of diet is simply “what I eat on a regular basis”.  As in “I tend to eat a healthy diet”.  So, how does all of this fit into systematic living?

I think one of the reasons we eat such a horrible diet in this country is because we systematize what we eat. None of us feel qualified to actually make decisions about what is healthy for us and what is not.  We feel like there’s SO much variety out there that we need to be a food scientist to determine what we should be stuffing down our gullet.  So, because of this, we prescribe ourselves to the modern definition of “diets”.  We listen to what Dr. Atkins has to say or we read the latest Low Fat publication in order to find out what’s good for us to be eating.  The stupid part is, we KNOW what’s good for us to be eating…it’s so obvious that we miss it.  Let’s do a little test:

If I want to eat something that’s good for me, that keeps my weight down, that gives me energy and that generally keeps me healthy, which should I grab?
A) A piece of fruit  or
B) absolutely anything out of a prepackaged box (seriously, pick anything).
If I want to feel good, stay slim and fit should I eat pounds upon pounds of meat avoiding any vegetable that’s an ‘evil carb’?  Or, should I eat a balance of meat, fresh veggies, a little grain, and a small amount of fruits?

My point is, it’s not that hard. Modern diets (and almost all popular health fads) are attempting to do one thing:  Give us a way not to eat vegetables (while putting money in their pockets).  Think about it…eating plants is one of the most healthy things we can do, yet it’s the one thing we try and avoid at all costs.  The Food Industry knows this, so they try and come up with every way possible for you to be ‘healthy’ eating their boxed products (don’t get me started on the stupid health claims on processed foods) when what you should be doing is grabbing a carrot.

In the end, “diets” are a symptom of a culture that
1) doesn’t want to eat vegetables
2) has been made insecure, thinking they don’t know what’s healthy, and
3) is too lazy to go to a farmer’s market on Saturdays or too cheap to buy fresh fruit instead of fruit-bars.
It’s a system that’s been imposed on us and most people accept it as fact…something they have to live within.  And that’s crazy.

So, to live outside the system means to stop eating what diet books and Food Inc. tells you to. Instead, ask yourself “would my great-great grandmother recognize this as food?”.  If it’s in a box or tube, she wouldn’t.  If you know it’s healthy, eat it.  If the box tells you it’s healthy…grab something that doesn’t come in a box.

The best source I’ve found for people that understand this are not nutritionists, not diet gurus…but chefs. The really good chefs will never tell you to use anything out of a box or can or bag.  They’ll demand only fresh ingredients from the garden, local farmer, or produce section, which is what you should be eating anyway.  Pick up a cookbook, plant a garden, and get yourself out of this dumbed down, systematic way of eating.  Forget “diets” and develop a “diet” that our ancestors would recognize.

All aspects of our lives get squeezed, pushed, folded, or jammed into one of these ready made boxes. Republican or Democrat.  Vegetarian or Meat Eater.  Christian or Non-Christian, Atkins or Low Fat, Workaholic or Lazy Freeloader, Hippie or Yuppie.  These pre-defined ways of living help us easily make choices.  It makes it easy to see a piece of meat and decide to eat it or not because I’m either a herbivore or a carnivore.  It’s much too difficult, every time we’re presented with a choice to make an unique decision, rather than give a stock answer determined by our “-isms”.

In my view, systematic living and systematic thinking is one of the biggest problems in Western culture.  We’ve been told that we only have x-amount of options and that we must choose one.  I reject this false choice.  My experience and my soul tells me that the options are infinite and that I’m able to, not only choose from these pre-fab decisions, but that I’m able to mix and match without regard for the system.  I’m able to be a chef with the world at my fingertips instead of a consumer who orders off a limited McMenu.

Is this sounding a little idealistic to you?  Maybe a little naive?  If I was an 18 year old kid fresh out of high school, that might be true.  But the longer I live, the MORE I see this reality of “the man” implementing pre-sets on my life.  My daily addition of knowledge only confirms that society praises group-think and punishes individualism.

So, as these next few blog posts move forward, I hope you’ll evaluate some of your life choices and worldviews along with me.  It’s easy for all of us to think that we’re unique and that our choices are our own…but the insane popularity of chain restaurants, pop culture, and Coca Cola betray you.  They instead tell us how the large majority (including you?) only sees the few options laid out in front of them and chooses one without any second thought.