The longer I think about who Jesus was and the harder I look at the Christianity that surrounds me here in America, the more I think the church is starting to look a whole lot more like the Pharisees than Christ.

When Did It Change?

I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m an anti-establishment soul.  Red tape, processes, and administrative boards make me incredibly angry.  So, maybe it’s this fact that causes me to view Jesus different than others might, but the more I look, the harder it is for me to believe that I’m seeing Him through a personal bias.

I’m just as tired as anyone of these “Radical Jesus” books and ministries and view points.  There’s been a recent surge in pop-Christianity that has emphasized this Hippie Jesus, turning Him more and more into a drug-free Jim Morrison.  So, don’t hear me supporting that movement with what I say here….but….

Jesus was a Radical.  Jesus was anti-establishment. Jesus loved the unlovable and helped the untouchable.  Jesus was angry with the traditions that prevented ‘regular people’ from worshiping God, and rejected the dogma of The Church at the time.  Jesus derided the ‘personal improvement’ piety of the establishment and forgave those who were a miserable mess (telling them to simply be forgiven and go sin no more).

Where has this Jesus gone?

These days, I can’t pass by a church without hearing a message of self-improvement shouted from the pulpit. Many try and mask it by making them ’spiritual improvements’ or simply calling them something else.  Improve your marriage.  Improve your prayer life.  Improve your financial situation.  Improve your connections with people.  Stop drinking.  Stop doing drugs.  Stop being gay.  Stop having abortions.  Stop voting for baby killers.  Stop hating your job.  Stop, basically, sucking at being human.  You can be a good person.  You can live up to our invisible standard.  You can do it if you just stop sinning.

I hope we all understand how asinine that last paragraph really is. Because, guess what?  We CAN’T stop sinning.  We CAN’T improve ourselves.  And we CAN’T be anything but a broken mess.  All of us.  Pastors.  Homosexuals. Bible Teachers.  Abortion Doctors.  Small Group Leaders.  Rapists.  And everyone in between.  We’re all broken and we’re all helpless…there’s nothing we can do to improve ourselves.

What does this mean?  We need to stop thinking about ourselves so damn much.  It’s not about us. Jesus made that clear.  When he preached a message of “Lean on God because you can’t save yourself” that was pretty radical.  That was pretty anti-establishment.  Where has that message gone?

If I were a church

So, here’s the segment where I talk about how churches should change.

1. They need to start being honest with their messages.  They need to honestly identify these sermons of self-help (which they call by many ’spiritual’ names) and jettison them.
2. They need to start preaching brokenness (see previous blog entry)
3. They need to start preaching the REAL Jesus.  They need to stop preaching “suit and tie, Leave it to Beaver, become a better person” Christianity and start preaching “insane John the Baptist, congregating with sinners, knocking over tables in the temple, homeless, mystical, irrational loving, anti-establishment” Christianity.  A Christianity that looks foolish because of it’s over abundance of grace, love, and trust, even when others don’t ‘deserve’ it.

But I’m not a Church. And I don’t want to be.

The problem is, I’m not a church.  I’m not an institution.  And I’m not going to get tangled up in the structure to try and change it.  The structure IS the problem…we don’t know how to live as Christians outside of that structure.  So, if I can’t/won’t change the structure, I’ll continue to chip away at it.  Hopefully, as an archeologist does when uncovering history encased in rock, I’ll be able to destroy the rock without the treasure inside.  Hopefully I’ll be able to slowly destroy the structure of American church while preserving the precious faith encased (and paralyzed) inside.

How?

The other day I saw a news report about The Tea Party Movement. (I’m going to offend people’s politics here, I’m sure, but…whatever.) They were described as a movement based on anger and backlash without any substance of their own.  A politician (believe it or not) made a wise statement when he said “Anger is fine, but a government RUN by anger (if they were elected) is not a healthy thing”.

I immediately thought of my constant attack on the church. Are these blog posts and my frequent rants Tea-Party-esque in the sense that it’s a lot of anger without much substance?  If I could actually change the structure, would I have any ideas based, not on anger, but on positive progress?  If I could be a local church would I be more like the Radical Jesus or would I simply continue reacting negatively to the old ways that angered me so much?

I think it’s hard for me to answer because I see things more complicated than that.  I think my solution would be to destroy the system completely and continue to work outside of it as an individual.  The following of Christ shouldn’t be a systematic thing. If there’s anything that the Lost Radical Jesus showed us this is it.  We should be striving, not to be a ‘good person part of a good system’ but to be a broken person leaning on God and trying to do our best to heal those around us.  We should be more like that individual Jesus I see in the bible and less like the systematic church I see in America.

So, do I have a solution?  I think I do.  But it’s a solution that exists outside of the local church.  It’s wholy dependent on people disconnecting from the system and learning to Live Christ as individuals…so that solution looks different for everyone.

I hope, in some way, you’ll join me in this. Call out your local church on it’s self-help messages.  Reject ‘button down’ Christianity.  Embrace irrational love of your neighbors and personal responsibility for faith. As the famously over-used quote from Gandhi says: Be The Change You Want To See In The World (and, I’d add, ‘dont wait for the church to be that change).   That’s the best I can do, in my own broken way, each and every day.

One of the most important experiences any Christian can have is to to be philosophically outnumbered.

Yoga

About a year ago now, I discovered the awesomeness that is yoga. I always hated working out…I found it boring and repetitive.  I found lifting weights the mental equivalent of watching Everybody Loves Raymond.  I’m more of a PBS guy myself…so when I discovered the amazing mental practice involved in yoga, I finally found some exercise that worked for me.  I actually go more for it’s mental and spiritual benefits than it’s physical ones (although those are a killer bonus!)

I arrive at yoga each time looking forward to a deep rest period (albeit, one that makes you sweat your ass off).  When I step in the room, the air is just different.  Life looks different.  People in the studio with me seem different.  Everyone is suddenly more cerebral, more spiritual.  In my experience, this is something I haven’t experienced anywhere outside of a place of worship (and only very rarely at this level, even in a church). There’s a heavy focus on the soul..there’s a different view on the world from inside that room than outside it.

Worldviews

As you may expect, when in that yoga class, my worldview often collides with that of those around me. Not in an obvious way, but in an internal way within myself.  Since yoga is based on a spiritual worldview different than my own, I’m challenged to reconcile what I hear and what surrounds me with the world that I’ve experienced through Jesus Christ. I’m in that environment I was talking about:  A place where I’m greatly outnumbered philosophically.  And, ya know what?  It’s been extremely healthy for my worldview and my faith.

This is gonna get uncomfortable

Ok, for all my Christian friends, this discussion is about to get uncomfortable.  It’s about to get extremely challenging.  And it’s about to get truthful.

You see, when you’re surrounded by folks outside the faith you find that they’re no different than yourself in most ways (duh!), but when you surround yourself with folks of a different spiritual or philosophical worldview you find something even more shocking (at least if you believe most popular Christian thinking out there):  Modern Christians aren’t very different (mentally, spiritually, morally) from those that follow other spiritual practices.  Not very different AT ALL.

This statement isn’t shocking to folks outside the faith…I hear a collective “duh! we already knew that” as I type this.  However, for those inside the faith, this is blasphemy.

What We All Share

When in this environment of being spiritually ‘outnumbered’, you find out some things about both yourself and others pretty quickly.  Contrary to what modern Christians may preach, the “world out there” isn’t any less spiritual than we are. Folks outside the faith understand prayer, they understand forgiveness, they teach love and respect, they know humbleness.  These things are all cornerstones of other faiths (and of just normal, everyday, ‘be a good guy’ living).  Folks “out there” know what real love is…they know what sacrifice is…they know what it means to submit yourself out of love for others.  They are kind to their children and their friends, they are seeking spiritual truths and trying to better themselves.

Contrary to what many Christians think (and goes unsaid in churches all over the US each week): The people outside the church walls are good people.  They’re moral people.  They’re spiritual people….just like us Christians.

So, what’s the difference?

As I thought about this I was stopped suddenly in my tracks.  I realized that if you look at 95% of what we believe the Christian faith to be…nothing about it is unique. We’re just like anyone else.  So, take this one more shocking step:  I would suggest that since we share this 95% of what we think our faith means with everyone else, this isn’t what Christianity is about.  If we’re trying to find the difference between Christianity and every other religion (including many secular atheists) it’s not found in love, or humility, or sacrifice, or prayer, or honesty, or the seeking of truth.  These things are found in many, many people (and are the bedrock of many faiths) outside of our own.

So, I ask you…what’s the difference between being a Christian and not?

Subtlety

At this point there’s two lessons to be seen:  First, for those outside the faith:  Christianity isn’t about good works.  It’s not about our love for each other.  It’s not what most Christians say it is. It’s much more subtle than that.  Second, for Christians: Stop thinking these things are unique to our faith.  “The World” is not full of evil people waiting to tear you down. The majority of people are spiritually VERY similar to you, and about as ‘good’ as you…so stop acting and talking like they’re not.

When we learn those lessons, we must ask again:  What’s the difference?  There obviously is one…somewhere. It must be a very understated, but VERY important one, otherwise Christianity might as well be any other religion (or no religion at all).

The Breaking Point

Some of you may be having an imaginary argument with me right now. You may be telling me I’m foolish because I think people are good, people are loving, and people are humble.  You’re invariably going to “The Hitler Argument” (where people in arguments about good and evil always end up) or you’ve written me off as a disconnected hippie.  If you are thinking that, you’re assuming that I said that people are ALWAYS good, ALWAYS humble, ALWAYS loving.  But I never said that. I said that when it comes to love and humility and goodness, people outside Christianity are about the same as those inside.  I never declared people always good…that’s too one dimensional and, obviously, just not true.

So, if on our best days Christians and Non Christians alike can be equally  moral and equally loving, that’s not where the difference is found.  So, what about the other times?  Just like we can all be loving, we can all be hateful.  We can all be cruel.  We can all be selfish and arrogant.  Christians and non-believers are no different…we’re all equally broken. The question becomes:  What do we do with our brokenness?  Our hate?  Our anger?

I would suggest that we may have stumbled onto the difference.

Watch Someone’s Bad Day

When work goes south.  When there’s death and sickness at the doorstep.  When we’ve been wronged.  When we step outside that yoga studio and resume life. These are times when, I’m starting to believe, the difference in being a Christian can be seen.  If you could watch someone’s bad day, I think it would tell you alot about their spirituality. It’s easy to be ’spiritual’ and loving when things are good (or at least not bad)…as I’ve mentioned, we can all do that equally well.  But how does a person see life when things are falling down all around them?  How do they react?  Who do they blame?  Where do they hide?

I’m not going to suggest that all folks who claim to be Christian become suddenly zen when things go badly.  But I am going to suggest that someone truly following Jesus will look different than someone praying to the Buddha.  I’m not prepared to predict exactly how they’ll look different…but they will.  Whatever difference you find in that moment is the core of Christianity. Who we are and what we do when ‘life happens’ is what separates worldviews and is proof of what we really believe deep inside.

Truth in Brokenness

I wish we, as Christians, would stop talking about how ‘evil’ the world is.  It’s a waste of breath and it’s a lie.  “The World” is no more evil than we are. It’s also no more loving. I wish we’d preach the difference in brokenness.  I wish we’d stop thinking we’re ‘better’ and realize we’re the same broken, loving, sinful, angry, good, beautiful, spiritual, prayerful, hateful, truth-seekers as everyone else.  For a faith whose birth lies in The Garden, we should know this more than anyone.

Let’s stop treating other faiths as something they’re not (inferior and full of lies). Let’s acknowledge that we have almost everything in common with others on their spiritual journey so we can peel away the layers and get to the difference, the piece that makes them incomplete:  the embracing of brokenness and the need for a Perfect Healer.

From now on, I’ll see the spreading of the gospel differently.  It’s not about love, it’s about healing. It’s not that other religions are completely “wrong”..they’re mostly just incomplete.  There’s just a statue or a story (or even a blank hole) where a Healer should be.  The difference is in the brokenness and where we go to be made whole again.

We are all made in His image.  We were all born in The Garden. We were all thrown out for our disobedience.  We are a mess of love and brokenness all mixed up.  The difference in our worldviews is all found in one question:  When we find this to be true…where do we go from there?

Learn, Don't Lean.

no time to proof read, spelling errors abound…enjoy!

As you may have guessed (it’s no secret), these blogs are born out of frustrating conversations.  Conversations which just make me smack my forehead and, after a second or two of resistance, give up because debate is obviously pointless.  I’m talking about conversations / discussions / debates where I just can’t respect the other point of view because it’s asserting a point of view that has, quite obviously, been pulled from elsewhere.  The tell tale signs to me are:

• They are one sided, not willing to even look at the other side
• They use the exact same examples I’ve heard on TV, radio, read in the news, or heard thrown around in the local coffee shop
• They rely on ‘common sense’.  They have a “well, everyone knows…” attitude about them without any actual facts or specifics

These conversations are frustrating not because I disagree with a point being made (sometimes I don’t) but because they smack of ignorance.  They are full of popular thinking which was handed down to the person by someone else.  There’s no fact checking.  No critical thinking.  No honest debate.  They’re beliefs without basis, assertions without learning.

One Side Learns, The Other Side Leans

Normally, there’s 2 (or more) sides to a conversation like this.  There’s a belief or point being debated.  We live in a world where ‘everyone is entitled to their own ideas’, but we never stop to consider the fact that some people’s ‘ideas’ are uneducated.  They’re talking points.  They’re never researched or investigated.  They’re easy to assert (maybe because they’re simple) but aren’t based on fact (sounds like sound-byte TV to me!).

For most issues I encounter, there is pretty obviously a side of the discussion which educates itself (usually endlessly) and one that doesn’t.  Now, it seems obvious that logic dictates that the side who is actively educating themselves on the issue is going to be closer to the truth, doesn’t it?  But in this ‘everyone has an right’ society, we overlook this point.  We think that, ignorant or not, everyone can be right.  Guess what?  That’s crap.

One side is usually learning and the other side is ‘leaning’ on someone else’s ideas without actually fact checking or learning anything for themselves.

An Example

Let’s take an example of the learning vs. leaning idea:  Ever since Food Inc. I hear lots of discussions about eating meat.  Some people are against it, some people want to be against it, and some people defend their God given right to devour corn fed flesh.  But did you ever notice something?  How many books are there about how great it is to eat meat?  How many scientists are out there saying “eating factory meat is great for our environment!”?  None, that’s how many.  On the other hand, how many people are writing books about the way meat-eating is wreaking havoc on our planet?  How many news articles are there about what factory farms do to their workers?  Generally, how many ‘for’ arguments vs. ‘against’ arguments are there?

This should tell you something:  The people defending meat eating, to their death, aren’t out there reading book after book about how great it is.  They aren’t pouring over the studies that show it’s great for our world and economy.  They’re not because these things don’t exist.  Yet, those out there against eating meat are sucking up book after book, study after study, learning all they can about the issue. They devour newspapers, news reports, and expert (and amateur) testimony on the subject.

Who here is learning and who is leaning?  Who, is a more reliably source of fact and information?

We didn’t deal with those who want to be meat eaters. These are the folks who saw Food Inc. and think they understand the whole situation.  They’re almost as bad as those defending meat in the sense that they’re simply taking pop culture thinking (and a single source) at it’s word, regurgitating everything they heard.  They don’t continue study, they don’t dive deeper.  They’re leaning (not learning) on a single film.  Better..but still leaning.

Learn to Say “I don’t know”

If we could all learn to say “I don’t know” more often, we’d be in better shape.  If you’re in a converation about food, or government, or politics, and you haven’t actually studied it, dove in, learned about it…just admit you don’t know.  There’s no shame in that.  Owning up to ignorance keeps it at bay.

On the other hand, next time you’re talking about how bad the president is, or how bad the economy is, make sure you’re basing it on concrete information.  Make sure you haven’t taken Rush Limbaugh’s word for it. Make sure you aren’t just believing everything the New York Times spouts off.  Read books & newspapers….LOTS of them.  Once you feel like you actually understand what’s going on (and can defend that with FACT instead of gut feelings) then converse.

But until then, stop leaning.  It’s really annoying (and embarasses you even if you don’t know it)

Ok, so….if you’re still reading, you’re someone who is attempting, more and more every day, to live the way God wants us to live, right?  You make a conscious effort to learn more about who God is and what he wants us to be as each day passes, correct?  You’re someone who believes God is difficult to fully comprehend, therefore believe that each day we can learn (or relearn) things that we didn’t know about Him…is that right?

If so, why have so many Christians buried their heads in the sand when it comes to eating animals?

Pretending To Sleep

I read a great quote in a book called Eating Animals recently which wasn’t written about Christians, specifically, but made me think of us directly.  Paraphrasing, it said something like this:

“You can wake up a sleeping man with the slightest sound but no amount of noise, no matter how loud, can wake someone pretending to sleep.”

Think about what this means for a minute.  It roughly means that if someone truly is ignorant of an issue, the slightest peek into it can wake a desire to learn more, to grow, and to understand what else lies beneath.  However, someone who is reamining willfully ignorant (ie. they know there’s more to learn but refuse to) won’t be driven to action by any amount of fact, any argument, or any otherwise convincing truth.

The Movie

I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing about Food Inc. when it comes to our food supply.  I know, I know.  I should be happy that it’s waking people up to some very basic ideas about where our food comes from.  But there’s two reactions that drive me insane when we talk about those ‘pretending to sleep’:

1. I don’t want to see that movie because… This reaction is extremely common and when I hear it coming out of the mouth of a Christian, I seriously doubt the authenticitiy of their faith.“Are you insane?  You’re saying because I don’t want to watch Food Inc. I’m not really a Christian???” Indirectly that’s exactly what I’m saying, but not for the reason you think.  By making a statement like this, you’re saying you don’t want to improve your life, your family, your responsibility, or who you are as a person simply because “you want to eat what you want to eat” and don’t want to change..  This unwillingness to better yourself, especially in a situation where you already know what the outcome will be, is a blatant spit in the face of God.  You know what’s right and you refuse to look it in the face.  To me this is the sign of an inactive faith.
2. The second thing that drives me crazy about the movie is that people see it, encounter the facts, but make no real change or, even worse, commit to change for a month or two, then fall back into their lives.  I applaud this group for being willing to change, but am sad that they lack the willpower to sustain it.  I guess I don’t judge the faith of these folks…only their priorities.

Back To Animals

Ok, that was a big tangent.  Back to Christians eating animals.

I’ve mentioned many times the question my tattoo artist asked me that began this change in me.  He asked why more Christians aren’t vegetarians (he truly didn’t understand).  He said “In Genesis God created Adam and Eve to eat plants, not animals…why don’t you try and live how He created you?”.   To me, this was the slight noise that woke me as I slept.  I couldn’t ever shake it.

Over the years that followed I thought more and more about this and asked lots of questions.  I never heard a satisfying answer.  In God’s  perfect creation, animals were not for consumption.  Shouldn’t we strive to be as close to what He intended as possible?

The Food Inc. rant wasn’t totally unrelated, I suppose.  As I read all of the books that lead up to the creation of that film, my eyes opened further. We weren’t only failing to eat as God originally intended, we were systematically harming His creation in the process.

The Earth Is The Lords And Everything In It…

This verse from Psalms sums it up.  The Earth is God’s as are all the plants and animals in it.  They are not ours.  They are His.  I think of this each time I think about eating animals.  Personally, I’m not going to argue that, at this point in time, God condemns us for eating animals.  I believe that when He told Noah that it was permissible, He meant it (even if it wasn’t ideal).  So, in theory, I don’t think we’re violating God’s creation or his will by eating meat.  The problem is that before our meat is meat…it’s a living, breathing animal created and loved by God.

Preparing Animals

In our society we forget that animals are alive. To share a phrase I heard recently which I loved for it’s simplicity:  “You know that the chicken you’re eating is a CHICKEN…right?”  Sometimes we forget something so simple. We treat them like wheat, or sugarcane, or corn:  A raw food product that needs to be processed so we can stuff it down our gullet.  The problem is these animals are not food, they’re animals.  They feel pain.  They panic.  They can be tortured.  And this, to put it mildly, is exactly how we treat God’s animals before we eat it.

Cows being skinned alive and dismembered while still conscious are not anomolies in our food system.  They keep statistics on this stuff and it happens consistently.  Chickens who are injected with drugs and cross bread so they are so huge (and so sick) that they can’t stand up and their organs can’t function isn’t an exception: It’s the method they use to raise the chicken you buy in the grocery store.  Cutting off pig tails, forcing sows to have piglets in a box so small they can’t move isn’t an exception:  it’s standard practice in the industry…it’s the way our food is created every day.

I could spend volumes on all the horrendous practices that are used to raise our food which are standard practices used every day in every factory but it could fill many thousand page books (and has), so go read those if you’re truly sleeping (ie. not willfully ignorant).  It is 100% guaranteed that if you buy meat from a supermarket, you’re buying meat that comes from animals that have been mistreated and abused.  It’s that simple.

Do You Care?

If you do a little bit of reading instead of remaining willfully ignorant, you’ll see that what I’m talking about here is not some hippie extremest liberal philosophy.  It’s the truth:  God’s living breathing creation is being abused because we can’t get enough bacon. As a Christian only one last question remains.  Do you care?

Personal Issue or Call To Action?

In the previously mentioned book, Eating Animals, the author makes another point that resonated strongly with my experience.  He says that sometimes it’s very difficult to distringuish between a personal choice, something I’ve decided to do for myself and my family, and something so important that you should ask others to stand with you.  Is the issue of Christians eating factory meat something I should be silent about or say “it’s just my opinion” or should I ask others to learn about and commit to standing together with me to fight?

Up until now, it’s been the former.  Sure, I’ll tell someone about why I don’t eat meat whenever they ask but I’ve never…EVER…asked someone else to make the choices I have (except my family).  I’ve never condemned someone else for eating meat.  I’ve never expected they should come to the same conclusions I have.  However, the more I learn about the issue, the more I see Christians “pretending to sleep” when it comes to treatment of God’s creation, I have a harder time staying quiet.  I have a harder time not asking people  to stand with me.

Are You Sleeping? (or pretending to sleep?)

If you’re a Christian, look at yourself and ask if you’re truly sleeping (in which case, reading this is a little sound to wake you) or if you’re pretending to sleep. If the former, then I ask you to learn more.  Read more about the issue (I’ve got a library of books I can loan or recommend). Think about how we’re treating God’s creation, His beloved animals. Think about what God thinks about how we treat them…does it make Him sad and angry?  The more you learn, I think the more you’ll be convinced that it does.

If you’re pretending to sleep and are remaining willfully ignorant of this issue (or any other about which so much is known), I view that as a sign that you’re not serious about following God. You value your selfish wants more than His precious creation.  I look at that and see not just a sinful person (which we all are), I see a willfully sinful person, which means a whole different thing.

Hear that little noise in the background?  It’s your wakeup call.  Will you wake or continue pretending to sleep?

I can’t afford to eat healthy food. It’s too expensive.

Whether you’ve said it out loud or not, alot of people use this as their reason for not eating good, real, healthy food.  Sometimes I think they’ve even convinced themselves that it’s true.  Today I want to look at this idea and share why I think it’s a complete cop out.

Tell The Truth

When people say this, I think primarily they’re lying. Not to me (necessarily) but to themselves.  They don’t really want to go through the hassle of finding out what it would cost if they actually ate real foods as opposed to processed junk.  They like processed junk and, honestly, just want the conversation to be over.  Afterall, money is a private issue so by saying “I can’t afford it” you basically shut down the conversation.  What am I supposed to do to convince you otherwise, ask for pay stubs?

I wish people would be more honest and just say what’s true:  “I don’t really care enough to change.” If they said this during a conversation, sure I’d probably think they were lazy, but at least they were honest.

Priorities

When people lie about their desire to eat healthier, they’re not really lying per se.  Maybe they really do want to eat healthier, but in reality they want something else more:  to stay the same. Human nature wants to be better, to improve…but part of who we are also fears that change.  Therefore we can want to change, but at the same time we can want to stay the same more.  It’s all about priorities.

When someone talks about changing what they eat, it’s really about priorities.  What do you want more than changing how you eat?  Do you want to keep eating in resturaunts?  Do you want to keep buying new clothes or living in a big house?  Do you want to (fill in any way you spend your money that’s not food and shelter here) ?  When someone says “I can’t afford to eat healthy” what they’re really saying is “I value eating healthy less than other things that take my money.”

If you live in America and have at least a minimum wage income, not being able to afford real food (like rice, beans, flour, fruits, and veggies) really means that you spent that money on something else…you had other priorities.  The poorest people in the world live on ‘real’ food (granted, much less of it)…and you’re telling me you can’t?  That you can only afford junk?  It’s simply not true.

Change What You Eat

When people say “I can’t afford healthy food” they also mean “I can’t afford healthy food AND all the processed crap I still buy, AND all the meat I want to eat.”  Affording to eat real food means eating differently. It means you stop buying anything in a box or bag and put that money into something better.  That’s step one: stop wasitng money on fake food.

Meat costs alot of money (not to mention the unspeakable system that provides the meat you buy..that will be saved for another post). If you want to eat better, it means cutting out a lot of your meat consumption and spending that money on vegetables, fruits, and grains.

“But…but….but….I don’t want to eat less meat!”

Do you love meat more than eating ‘real food’?  Again, it’s priority.  The rest of the world eats a TINY fraction of the meat people in America eat and are healthier than we are.  Most diets over the  course of history have contained very little meat.  Every study anywhere shows that people who eat no meat are healthier than those who do.  Americans have this “we need meat to live” mentality and it’s completely false.  God didn’t build us to eat meat (read Genesis if you’re a Bible person) and we certainly don’t need it.  I’m not asking you to be vegan…I’m just asking you to understand that this ‘necessary meat’ claim is totally bogus.  Oh, and not eating meat is cheaper than eating it.  More money for fruits and veggies (or at least tofu, which is REALLY cheap).

When you start eating like this, you’ll eat less because you’re getting the nutrients you need and not filling your body with processed flour and sugar. Eating less means saving money (and losing weight, if you care about that kind of thing).  Affording to eat ‘better’ means changing how you eat.  Is it a priority?

Pay Now or Pay Later

“I can’t afford healthy food” means, more than anything, that you will be sicker and die sooner than people who do eat healthy food. If you’re a parent, think about what that means for your children.  Seriously, stop and realize you’re giving your kids a shorter, sicker life than if you (and they) ate healthy.  You’re telling me you can’t afford to have healthy kids?  Talk about priorities!

So, you can either pay a little more for your food now, or a LOT more for medical care later.  Personally, I prefer to eat better, healthier food now (and enjoy myself) and not pay to feel crappy and be hospitalized later.

Other People

The price we pay doesn’t always come as a dollar amount.  Eating better means relationship struggles as well.  “My wife won’t eat it” or “my kids won’t eat it” is another often  heard excuse. Your relationships are your business but I’d just suggest two things:

First, you and your partner need to work on being a team. If they can honestly say they think it’s better (for you and your kids) to eat processed food than real food and want that as a role model to the kids, then there’s bigger issues here than food.

Second, if your kids won’t eat it? Too bad.  Until they can get a job and pay for their own junk food, you’re in control, not them.  Don’t want to fight these battles…again, that’s a priority.

Friends and dining companions are also a minor price you pay.  Eating healthier food means saying ‘no, thank you’ when someone wants to meet you at McDonalds or “I’ll pass” when they give you a bowl full of Doritos.  Sure, you may look like a snob, but it’s a price that has to be paid.  If people don’t understand that you want to make healthier choices and they give you a hard time, this is another problem bigger than food.

Don’t Buy Organic

Buying real healthy food doesn’t mean buying organic.  Can’t afford organic?  Fine.  Don’t buy it.  But the choice isn’t between organic food and Twinkies. It’s between Twinkees and a simple bag of rice or dried beans.  Don’t use organics (and their yuppie image) as an excuse not to eat healthy because it’s a false choice and another excuse.  Organics are more expensive but you know why?  I’ll let you answer that one….

What to Do

There’s really two choices here:

1. Stop lying (to yourself) and do your research. You can absolutely afford to eat good, healthy, real foods.  You can afford to stop eating processed crap.  You can afford to stop eating tortured animals.  You can afford to not kill your kids at a younger age.  You can afford to change.  Do a little research and see what it would mean to change how you eat.  It won’t cost nearly as much as you think, especially if you make it a priority.

Or…

2. You can just tell the truth. Rather than saying “I can’t afford it”, just be honest that it’s not a priority.  If you’re honest with everyone, then when you’re paying those large medial bills later in life for you and your kids, at least you will know exactly what got you there.  Just don’t say no one ever pointed you in a different and healthier direction.

This morning as I drove to my local Starbucks, I was listening to talk radio.  They were, of course, talking about health care and taking phone calls on the topic.  It was a self-proclaimed liberal talk show, so I was surprised that they took a call on the topic from an unashamed conservative.  The caller mentioned, right off the bat, that he wasn’t happy about the bill’s passage and a conversation ensued about the good and bad points of the bill.  I sat there shocked.  A conversation ensued. Respectful back-and-forth took place.  There was no yelling.  There was no name calling.  There were questions like “What don’t you like about the bill?” and statements such as “I can understand why you don’t like that…”  I was flabbergasted.  This was the political conversation of my dreams.  Respectful adult disagreement on an important issue which was totally devoid of hate. I felt like America had progressed, even for just a minute.

Now, let me say that I have no illusions about why this conversation came easier on a liberal talk show than it might have on a conservative one today.  It’s easy to feel generous and to be a good listener when you win.  It’s easy to respect the other side when you know you bested them, politically.  I won’t pretend I would be writing this blog entry if I was on the other side this morning…but good is good, even if I wouldn’t have felt like saying it after a ‘defeat’ of my ideals.

We Are A People Of Love

That brings this entry back around, as it always does, to my faith in Jesus and my involvement with Christianity.  After hearing this debate on the radio, I sat down to my computer and launched my social networks.  The vast majority of my friends on these networks are Christians and I was afraid to see what was being written.

Stop there for a second.

Why should I be afraid of what Christians were going to be writing this morning? Is it because I knew that a majority wouldn’t be happy about the outcome of last night’s vote?  No, I wasn’t afraid of disagreement (the radio conversation just inspired hope through the voicing of disagreement).  What I was afraid of was hateful disagreement.

The fact that I was afraid of this was based on previous experience.  In the past my political and religious math tells me that Christianity + Politics = Hateful Speech.  I can’t think of hardly a single exchange over the past years where a person of faith talked about political issues in a way that uplifted me or inspired me to follow Christ and love others more intensely.

Why is that?  Why is today’s Christian political discussion seemingly based on mudslinging hate against “the gays”, “baby killers”, and “liberals” instead of on love, hope and inspiration? If I was outside the faith, why would I want to sign up for such hateful religion?

The Proper Response

I want to bring it back to that radio talk show discussion.  Then I want to ask a question that I don’ t have an immediate answer for:  How should Christians who disagree with last night’s vote address today’s world in love? What would a truly Christian response look like?  Would it talk about killing babies or would it be thankful for the millions who will be helped through these changes?  Would it assert the positive (and respectfully voice overall disagreement) or only mention the negative?

I know, I know.  Christianity doesn’t mean being a hippie that only sees good. We know that there are evils that need to change.  Jesus clearly saw those and spoke out against them (but let’s not forget: we’re not Jesus either, so we need to take that behavior with a grain of self-doubt). Is the most effective way for us to change things an approach based on love and respect?  Or on hate and mudslinging?

I only ask for a loving response today.  I don’t ask for agreement. I don’t ask for acceptance of things that go against our faith.  But I do ask for love and respect.  How are you, as a Christian, responding to last night’s vote? In love (be it disagreement or agreement) or hate?

In my family we’ve made rejection of this a priority.  We try and keep work to a minimum.  We don’t over-commit (which means we often under commit) to ministry work.  We don’t sign our child up to do, well, anything. We don’t go out very often and we are getting good at saying ‘no’ when too many options present themselves on the weekend.  Doing all of this has been a great improvement in our lives.  We feel less hurried and we end up spending a crazy amount of time together as a family.  When an opportunity comes up to see friends, to help out with a project that is a good cause, or to just go play at a park we almost always have time.  Friends could call on a moments notice to hang out or to ask for help and we’re here just waiting.

But this is where the problem begins to surface  We’ve learned that making time in life for relationships, family, and friendships is the right path, it’s an awesome step in the right direction.  However, if no one else takes that step with you…it’s lonely and, quite frankly, boring.

You see, now we’ve got all the time carved out and, well, we don’t know what to do.  We sit around the house basically staring at each other because, while family time is awesome, eventually you want to connect with other families (be it friends or extended family of your own).  And, if none of them have the same vision you’re left sitting on the sofa hoping that someone will call.

So, this entry was born in frustration that we’ve made the step to build relationships, we’ve cut things out of our lives to make time…and no one else seems to be willing to put their money where their mouths are.  Why not?

I love my friends.  I love my family.  I understand that everyone isn’t on the same life journey as we are.  But it would be awesome if more people started taking time out of their lives like they say they want to. Everyone says they’re too busy, but no one actually does anything about it.

Sure, it’s a selfish request, but here’s my encouragement.  Stop complaining about being too busy and take some actual steps to simplifying your life.  If enough people actually start living this way, we won’t be so bored.  Now go out there and learn to say “no” more often!! ;)

“Most white suburbanites complain about their taxes being increased because they work hard and don’t want to subsidize a welfare state.  They feel they’re paying for those who are ‘lazy’ and don’t want to work or supporting those with drug or other habits that they don’t think their tax dollars should pay for.”

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard this same old argument about why people don’t want to pay higher taxes.  I’ve heard countless people who are otherwise compassionate declare that they don’t want their money going ‘down the drain’ to social programs that don’t work. I even used to think this myself.  Then three different things changed my view:

There is no qualifier

I’ll never forget the day that Dean made an offhanded comment that solidified something for me.  He was talking about the ‘more taxes for lazy people’ complaint above and pointed out that Jesus gave no qualifier for helping the poor.  He didn’t say “give to the poor…but only if they’re not on drugs” or “give to the poor….but only if they work hard”.  He didn’t even say “give to the poor…but only if it’s done directly and not through a larger government program.”  He asked us to give to the poor…period. There was no qualifier.

The Modern Tithe

The second perspective changer came from a book called Pagan Christianity, which points out that our modern tithe does not equate to the tithe of the Israelites in the Old Testament.  Back then, the Temple was much more like the government than a ‘church’.  The tithe was taken in by the temple for a couple of reasons, but the main reason was to support the poor and widows who can’t take care of themselves.  (do you see where this is going?) If the temple is serving as the government and the tithes are taken to support the poor, you’ve got something that looks a WHOLE lot more like our tax/welfare system than a church offering plate.  God mandated people to pay into the welfare system of the day…and here we are complaining about it (oh, and we conveniently forget about “giving to Ceaser what is Ceasers”)

Corn Syrup Welfare

Now we come to thought #3 that hit me yesterday and brings us full circle back to Rich Benjamin’s “Searching for Whitopia”.  After him quoting this oft-used thinking, he points out a very intersting fact about where our tax dollars are actually going.

Those of us outside the big ‘urban’ states think that our tax dollars are all going to big cities (New York, LA, Chicago, etc) to support these ‘welfare leeches’, but the facts don’t support this.  When you look at where tax money is going, these states that have big cities actually take in less taxes than they pay out.  This means that our Red State money isn’t going to their cities, their city-earned taxes are going somewhere else…so where?

As it turns out, all of our big ‘farm’ states pay in WAAAY less taxes than they get in return from the government as corn and soy subsidies.  Our tax dollars aren’t primarily paying for ‘welfare babies’…they’re paying for corn and, more specifically, processed corn products.

If you’ve read any modern writing on how our food system works, you know that the government is HEAVILY subsidizing our “Fast Food Nation” of processed and packaged foods.  Didn’t you ever wonder why a bag of Doritos is ridiculously cheap compared to, say, an organic zucchini?  It’s because your tax dollars are making up the difference.

So, this brought my mind full circle to an incredible irony.  We suburbanites are chowing down our McDonalds, Cheetos, and Corn Flakes faster than anyone in the nation.  WE are the ones who are benefiting from these higher taxes.  These aren’t “welfare subsidies”…they’re “junk food taxes”.  If you want to complain about higher taxes, you shouldn’t be complaining about social programs, you should be complaining about how our government is pushing cheap, unhealthy, processed foods with your tax dollars. Funny how it’s always easier to point the fingers at others, but much harder to accept that our fast paced, junk food driven lives are really a major cause of our complaints.  I’m not sure if YOU see the irony in this…but I sure do.

Think, don’t rant

I intended this blog entry not as a political debate starter, but as a thought starter.  That’s why I’m leaving comments off.  In the past I’ve seen that posts like this just cause a knee jerk reaction but my hope is that, if you can’t comment, you’re forced to think about it to yourself.  Whether you agree or not isn’t the point…hopefully it’ll make you stop and think about the little bits of truth all around us that are cut off by political hacks and media pundits.

Did you notice that I assumed that most people reading this entry were not people I know in real life?  Sure, there’s some exceptions (“Hi Mom!”) but most people who know me don’t need to read my blog because, well, they know me.  They see me at least once a week.  They run into me at Starbucks.  They stop in for coffee or we work on projects together.  In my new, more analog, life, connections aren’t made or fostered online…they’re carried out around a kitchen counter.  Literally.

I think our society expects us to have too many friends…too many connections. We’re encouraged to put quantity over quality.  We’re expected to stay in touch with people who move thousands of miles away.  We’re expected to run our kids from one friends house to the next.  We have the burden of popularity, the need to be loved by many, the drive to make more connections with our limited time an attention.  I’m done with that.  I will have few friends.  I will make few connections. I will spend most of the time with my family (both immediate and extended).  I will make those relationships deeper and willfully let quantity fall by the wayside.

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with you, oh dear blog reader.  I look at all the amazing connections I’ve made through my online life.  People I’ve tweeted with, blogged alongside, and facebooked.  People I then met in ‘real life’ at conferences, meetups, and trainings.  You are awesome and I wish I could be your friend.  However, I’m now fully convinced that relationships can’t be built online, only introductions or surface acquaintanceships.  I need some more serious weight on that corrupted word:  Friend.

How can you be my friend if I never see you to give you a man-hug (ya know, with the manly pat on the back so we don’t look too girly)?  How can I be your friend if I can’t give you a hand lifting something heavy or loan you a tool when you need to fix your car?  How can you be my friend if you don’t really know me through day to day conversation?  Sure, you can be an acquaintance.  But not a friend.  Not someone I can call in an emergency or someone I can lean on when I’m weak.  We have too many ‘friends’ in this Facebook-world and almost none in our actual living, breathing, human experiences.

So, (to take this question further to a problem it presents when the premise is accepted) with fewer, better, analog friends:  How do we stay in touch? How do we continue our friendship in a world built on Facebook and Twitter?

I ask this because I sit here in Starbucks alone. I yearn for some of those analog connections, yet to get them I have to fire up Twitter.  I have to text my peeps.  I have to use these ‘tools of distraction’ to make these connections happen.  We no longer live in a time when you can mail someone a letter (that would just be strange!) or even call them and say “let’s hang out”.  These methods no longer fit into lives crammed full of instant and unobtrusive communications.  We’re no longer able to just pop over to someone’s house or show up at their workplace because privacy and efficiency are more important than relationship.  We live in a world so separated and segregated that communicating directly is just plain rude since these connections are not run through our junk mail filter or archived in our Visual Voicemail box.

So, these two concepts sit side by side.  We need fewer and more analog friendships.  Yet, in this world we’re forced to use digital tools if we want those to happen. What’s the cure?  I suppose it has something to do with living closer together (this could mean city or small towns) and putting relationship over work…quality over quantity.

I strive for this change everyday.  The problem is…you can’t do it all by yourself.  So, who’s in?

Think back to the last political campaign (or any campaign you can remember).  During these campaigns, would-be presidents state what they believe about certain issues and what they will do in certain situations if and when they’re elected.  They hold to these core beliefs throughout the election cycle until one of them is in The Office.  Oftentimes, this is when things change.  When that person becomes president it’s a whole new world of information and insight.  They’re able to view top secret information, attend top secret briefings, talk to high level experts on issues, and otherwise fill their heads with a whole lot more information and perspective than they had before.

Now, let me ask this:  What would you think of a person who gains a whole bunch of information about a topic, information that is absolutely sure to change their perspective on some things, and yet still refused to change their opinion or stance on certain issues? What would you think of someone who got new insight which changed the game but they stayed stuck in what they believed before they got all that info?

I can tell you that, in this culture, we call them “confident”, we call them “sure of themselves”, and we call them a leader.  You know what I call them?  A prideful and arrogant person who can’t grow and learn.

When we learn new information about issues, situations, and life in general we should be changing.  We should be growing.  We should be thinking things like “that stuff I said last week was wrong now that I know this”.  And then we should be publicly stating that we lacked information and that we’ve grown since our last statement of belief.  But instead, we don’t.  In our world, changing our mind is seen as weakness. It’s seen as being wishy-washy or ‘passionate’ (in a bad way) or ‘flaky’.  It’s because of this perception that people continue down a straight and arrogant path, refusing to learn and grow, admitting that they may have been wrong in the past.

It’s funny to me whenever I listen to political commentary and “the other side” jumps all over a political figure as a “hypocrite” because they changed their mind on an issue.  How stupid is that?  I’ll tell you: incredibly stupid.  What’s the alternative?  You learn new information that should change your mind and you keep old and incorrect perspectives?  Shame on us for encouraging that.

Over the years I haven’t been afraid to change.  I’ve changed because I’ve learned life lessons and have learned that I was wrong in the past about various issues.  I’ve done this politically, spiritually, socially, and every other way you can imagine.  It’s funny because some people write me off as “passionate” or “wishy washy”, they think I change my mind and live in the moment. The reality is, I change my mind based on new information or personal interactions that teach me that my previous views were wrong.  I’m not afraid to admit that and no one else should be either.

As I always say, if anyone claims to have all the answers about anything (or even most of the answers, I don’t care the topic) I instantly don’t trust them and think them foolish. If you’re not willing to learn and grow, and in the process admit you’re wrong and make drastic changes to correct that, you’re missing out on living a life in the pursuit of truth.  I hope to see more and more people put down their egos, admit they’ve been wrong in the past, and change. I learn to do this more and more every day and have learned that change is the only thing that should be constant.

I’m not sure if everyone else has the level of nostalgia that I do, but it sure doesn’t look like it.

The more I thought about the disappearance of this world, the more I traced it to a single and monumental time in our history:  World War II. I used to think that our country had it’s most radical shift in lifestyles and ideas during the 1960s and Vietnam war…but the further I traced it the more I realized that the 60’s were only the practical and inevitable outcome of a post-WWII country.  The explosion may have happened during the Nixon years, but the fuse was lit on a quiet Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor.

Everything we are, everything we know is almost universally a product of the second Great War. (I can hear a big giant “duh” coming from the history crowd) Lifestyles and expectations of what we ‘deserve’ were all born into existence during my grandparents generation.  We entered the 1940’s as a mostly rural-focused, simple country.  We left that decade an industrial and political super power.

As an example let’s look at the women’s liberation movement.  The 60’s get all the credit for freeing women but it was actually done 20 years earlier when Rosie the Riveter beckoned women to the factories and away from the  kitchens.  This was undoubtedly a step forward for women’s equality (which I embrace and applaud) but it was done at the expense of putting industry and ‘career’ before family (which I heavily regret).  It was Rosie that made women strong but the family weaker.  It was Rosie who was responsible for helping to win that war but made McDonalds meals the inevitable replacement for women who no longer knew how to cook from scratch.

Speaking of McDonalds…WWII is where our concern for our body’s fuel (ie. food) fell by the wayside. We had better things to do, like win a war…we didn’t have time to worry about what we put in our stomachs.  We’d outsource that to Swansons or Kraft.  The problem is when the war ended our culture and habits didn’t change.  We continued to live in ‘war mode’ eating prepackaged or pre-prepared foods which, as we see now, was killing us just as efficiently (albeit a little slower) than a Nazi bullet.

This whole ‘organic’ food movement is a direct backlash on post-WWII life. When the war ended we have a whole lot of explosives material and factories that we no longer needed.  It had to so somewhere.  Then someone had the brilliant idea of putting it in our food.  No, I’m not kidding.  The fertilizer that we now buy in bags from Home Depot is the product of too many unexploded and left over bombs from WWII.  The non-organic food we buy in supermarkets is sprinkled with explosives, which is why it’s so huge and green.

How about The American Dream? (and subsequently our overachieving and non-stop lifestyle) A direct product of the War. We came home victorious and proud to a country untouched by the ravages of war.  We were strong and wealthy and we started to believe we deserved it.  The 1950’s were the living of this dream that we though we deserved. We lived high on the hog in our suburban houses, we all bought cars, we shopped for fancy clothes and built bigger buildings.  We all ‘deserved’ dishwashers and washing machines so we bought them.  We decided that we and our American Dreams were more important than community and relationship.  We worked harder (and more often) to buy more stuff…we neglected our kids and outsourced their development to Mr Rogers, Big Bird, and Ronald McDonald.

I could go on forever but I’ll stop here.  We think that this post-WWII world has always been ‘the way it is’…but in reality it’s only 60 years old. Our previous 200+ years were radically different in this country (not to mention our previous thousands of years before this country).  We shunned self for community.  We worked hard, but not so hard that we neglected family.  We raised our own kids and cooked our own food.  We talked with people instead of e-mailing @ them.  We knew our neighbors and our farmers and we lived with them and supported them emotionally and financially.

And now I wonder how to escape this post-WWII world. How do you live in this era connecting with your family, your neighbors, the land, and God without the distraction and pull of a post-WWII world that constantly tugs on your shirt trying to lead you to a more ‘fulfilling’ life?  I have no answer, but I can tell you that I yearn to disconnect from the hussle (not to mention the bustle).  I look every day for ways to discard digital life for hard cold reality.  Someday I might get there but until then I’ll live each day as an opportunity to move closer to December 6, 1941..just hours before the day that lives in infamy..and the day that changed America and American lifestyles forever.

Me and my new baby

I go through stages in life probably just like anyone else does. For a while I’ll be super lazy, I’ll watch lots of TV, I’ll eat crappy food, I’ll neglect or forget any hobbies or interests I have, and I’ll work too much (and I’m starting to suspect the last item in that list causes the previous items).  Then, suddenly (and seemingly randomly) I’ll start pulling out of the funk.  Usually one small change ends up affecting many others and quickly I’m back on track learning new things, feeling more inspired, working less and living more.  This turn around happened recently and it’s meant more than living healthier:  It’s inspired me to attempt a whole new set of things that I haven’t done before. I was learning new things and, hopefully, growing in the process.

A month or so ago I sold my car simply because I hardly ever drove anywhere but I owned an SUV.  It was dumb.  So, I chucked that big beast and cajoled an ancient memory back into my life:  My 1993 Jeep Wrangler YJ. It was what I drove in high school and my parents had taken it off my hands and were storing it in Florida. They were hesitant to give it back to me because it needed alot of work (and they didn’t want me to waste my money).  But instead, I saw it differently:  I wanted to USE my money and this car to learn something new…I wanted to learn the basics of auto maintenance and repair and this was the perfect opportunity.

Since getting my old ride back to Michigan I’ve been learning alot out of necessity about how a car (and in particular this car) works and how to do the things we normally just pay Mr Muffler to do for us.  I’ve hurt my self, broke things on the car, and have gotten really really dirty in the process, but I’m learning.  And there’s where our little lesson comes in….

Over the years the people close to me have told me I’m good at picking up something totally new, pursuing it, failing constantly until, eventually, I can become proficient enough to seem like I know what I’m doing.  I’m more convinced than ever that they key to doing something new is being willing to fail at it….ALOT.  I can’t tell you how important I think failing is to learning something new.  Those who aren’t willing to fail are those who aren’t willing to learn and change and grow. The odd thing is, I don’t see myself as someone who fails gracefully.  I’m an artsy guy with pretty thin skin….I take criticism pretty hard on the inside while looking like I don’t care on the outside.  But somehow, when I’m learning something I want to learn, my skin gets tougher.  I think it’s because when learning something new it’s important to be up front about your amateur status.  When I walk into an auto parts store, I’m not going to pretend I know an alternator from a distributor (although now I kinda do!)…instead I’m going to be open about knowing nothing, asking advice, picking their brains, and soaking it all in.  Being willing to learn means humbling yourself and looking ignorant for the sake of gaining knowledge. (I think most guys are especially bad at this, but I’ve found that my artsy side helps here…I’m not concerned with being ‘manly’ and all-knowing like some guys are)

This brings me to the second key to learning something new:  I find it essential to read (alot) about what you’re learning before attempting the hands-on stuff. To learn about my Jeep I purchased two big thick user-manuel type books and started reading them cover to cover.  I, literally, only understood about 5% of what I read, but it was starting to craft a view of the situations I’d face when underneath the hood, and crafting this perspective is what I was looking for.

Sure, when I actually crawled underneath the body for the first time nothing looked like the book..but with constant reference back to those pages, comparing with what I saw, I started to gain perspective on the hunk of metal in my driveway.  I think the key to these books for me was the relative safety I had while learning.  I could go at my own pace…I could make mistakes (privately) and I could re-read parts many times until I understood it.  Books are crucial to learning….there’s nothing like the info in them online anywhere, so I find that spending the cash (or heading the library) to read up on your new adventure is crucial.

I feel like I’m pretty good at learning new things and I think it’s a skill everyone should learn to master because it’ll open up a whole world of opportunity and interesting people and places.  Here’s my tips in bullet point form:

• Find a reason to learn. Don’t decide to learn about cars without a car that will stop running unless you learn.  Don’t decide to learn about boats if you’re 100 miles from an ocean.  Do something that has immediate impact on your life and even your wallet.  Put your money and time into what you want to learn so you have something at stake…otherwise you’ll quit too quickly.
• Be ready to fail…ALOT. You’re going to look stupid and ignorant about the topic for a while.  Embrace that.  Use this to submit yourself to those who know more.  Learn from them.  They may look down on you but who cares:  You’re learning something new which makes you more interesting than them :)
• Get into books. They help you learn privately and at your own pace.  Learning in groups or in classes is OK, but I’ll argue that making it personal and having all the time in the world to learn something (as opposed to before the next test) makes it lifelong knowledge that won’t fall out of your head 2 hours after you’re graded on what you’ve learned.  Also, don’t rely on the internet or TV..they just don’t have the detail you need.
• Be so passionate about what you’re learning that it consumes you for short parts of your life. Learning causally or learning too many things at once is asking for failure or distraction.  Pick one thing and do it alot…for months.  Everything I’ve learned on my own has had a dedicated space in my life.  Whether it be web design, ancient history, the life of Silent Film star Buster Keaton, or philosophy, learning takes intense dedication…to the point people will probaly think you’re crazy.
• Finally, and this sounds obvious, but don’t give up. Keep failing, keep looking stupid because in the end, you looked stupid for a short time, but you won’t BE stupid like the people who laugh at you in the short term but never learn anything because they’re too afraid to try.

So, get out there and grab something new.  Invest yourself in it.  Do something way outside your comfort zone which is totally unrelated to your day job..and have fun!  Which reminds me, why am I in here staring at a computer screen when I can see the sun shining and my YJ in the driveway that needs muffler work?

The pics in this post were taken by Erik Rambo who was my companion on the 1,500 mile trip, driving the Jeep from Florida to Michigan…the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me….

On The Road

Me and Erik at our final destination after 24 hours on the road

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.

While I don’t know what I’ll write about, I know why I’m writing.  I want to start thinking again. Back when I blogged frequently, my brain was functioning at a higher level.  I had new ideas, new thoughts, new opinions.  I didn’t write because I wanted to get them out….I had them because I wrote.  There’s something about a consistent writing habit that makes the brain move and operate in ways that it doesn’t normally.  It forces you to put ideas to paper (or keyboard) which means they have to be formed into words and sentences and paragraphs…all with a lucid point.   I think this is why Journalling is so talked about in Christian circles:  It’s the written word that makes spirituality, the un-seen, visible.  It’s thereputic but it’s also inspiring.

In the past, my blogs have mostly been a venue for bitching about the world, the church, or pop-culture.  It made alot of people upset and alot of people uncomfortable.  Those topics caused me to stress-out when people disagreed, but they also help me GET the stress out in a way that, honestly, is currently destroying me.  Keeping that inside makes you sick…and I’m tired of feeling sick.

I’m always passionate about the right and wrong paths that the Christian church in America is taking.  But I think, in some ways, I’m beyond that.  Not because I’ve gotten older or more mature…but because I see The Church (in general, yet not specifically) as a total mess which is beyond repair.  So, while I’m sure I’ll complain about and jab at Christianity, I have a feeling it will be with less vigor…kinda like a Mike Tyson who would rather just eat a cheeseburger than fight Holyfield.

So, here’s to blogging and it’s remedy for the soul.  May it (this time) live long and prosper.

(oh, and yes, this is a Wordpress blog for any nerds that care….)