The Gimcrack Miscellany

At least, that’s what they think. The Westboro Baptist Church is protesting across from the convention center, which is where the Southern Baptist Convention is being held this week. They’re the ones with the God Hates Fags website.

I saw them on my way to work this morning. There’s even a little kid out there holding a sign that says “Your Pastor Is A Whore”. I’m really just amazed at how they have managed to hate everyone in the world. Here is a list of people they hate: homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Chinese, Canadians, Mexicans, Swedes, Irish, British, and Americans. Now, the WBC, which calls itself Baptist, hates Southern Baptists.

I just think the WBC is a good case study for people who are trying to grow their church and reach out to people. They’ve got it going on, in my opinion, and I think in the end it will work.

I have one more thought about these picketers. I noticed that there were about 6 protesters and about 9 police officers standing behind them, making sure no one throws a molotov cocktail directly at their eyes and faces. Do you realize how much of a waste of resources this is? There are 9 police officers, earning their well deserved $28k per year, who have been effectively incapacitated and removed from the system in order to make sure no one kills these people.

I guarantee you a crime will be committed against a person somewhere out there today that would not have happened if those extra 9 cops were on patrol.

Of course, there will also be 9 less speeding tickets given out. Maybe the WBC isn’t so bad after all…

Check out this short preview clip of a BBC documentary called The Most Hated Family In America:

“Fags eat feces. That’s a fact, hon.” REALLY? Wow.

Here’s the whole documentary:

I was recently directed to read a brief article about the current state of Orthodoxy in America, written by Bradley Nassif. This article sums up exactly what I’ve been recently discussing with my wife and friends, and I agree whole-heartedly with the author.

For anyone who is Orthodox and has not yet read the article (I believe most of my reader(s) were sent a link to it via email) I would highly recommend the 10 minutes it takes to read. You can read it if you’re not Orthodox (this isn’t Scientology) but it might be mind-numbingly boring, unless you are experiencing the same kind of troubles in your church, in which case you will be able to identify.

I’ll highlight a few good points:

“Parishioners are coming and going in and out of church with little visible change in their lives. In short, they do not know the core content of the gospel or how to integrate its meaning into their everyday lives.”

“Bishops and priests must not take for granted that everyone in the Church is converted and has no need to hear the basic gospel message.”

“Outside of Orthodoxy, have you noticed how the healthiest Christian communities around today are the ones who preach Christ, not their own denomination? … Yet, all we seem to hear from our pulpits is “Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy!” We are obsessed with self-definition through negation. It is a sick religious addiction.”

“The Orthodox Church has such a long history and rich theology that it is easy for us to lose sight of the forest for the trees. But we must never lose sight of the simplicity of the gospel and its far-reaching consequences for everyday life.”

This is something I have been struggling with for a long time now. I do not feel like I’m getting anything out of going to church. I’m also sick of people telling me that you’re not supposed to get anything out of going to church - that it’s supposed to be work and that you’re doing it for God and not yourself. That’s silly talk. That sounds like something people under a tyrannical regime say. If that’s really what I’m supposed to believe as an Orthodox Christian, then count me out.

I think the solution starts when our priests and bishops start preaching about the life of Jesus Christ in the Gospels and how I should adjust my life to live as my Creator would have me live. Not about Orthodoxy. We’ve been saying Orthodox prayers for an hour. We’re standing in front of a tremendous iconostasis. We KNOW we’re Orthodox. It’d be nice if we could at least distract ourselves from that during the sermon and focus on Christ. I don’t care about vestments, narthexes, finances, or relics. I mean I do care about about those things, but not during the sermon.

Most Importantly, if I, as an Orthodox Christian, don’t want to hear about those things during the homily, then surely my Protestant, Catholic, or non-Christian friend that I bring along as a visitor doesn’t. Wish me luck convincing my friend to ever come back. Don’t we want to grow the church?

In short, God is not Orthodox. To hear it put much better than I ever could, read the article I’m talking about. The guy who wrote it looks pretty distinguished to me, and appears to hold influence in the church.

Here’s the link: Reclaiming The Gospel.

This has to be the most overused image of Lewis. That’s because it’s awesome. Look at the expression on his face as he stokes up the ol’ Longbottom Leaf. It’s like I just told him the punchline of a joke right as he struck his match, and then he looked up at me and began to puff his pipe with fervor for my joke, as if to say “I’ll laugh in a ripe jiffy, just gotta get this bloody thing working first, cheerio chap. Blimey.”

I can’t wait for tonight. There will be turkey and beer and pie and excerpts from C.S. Lewis. It is our annual men’s group Thanksgiving feast and Lewis tribute night. As I was thumbing through the Intarwebs, I came across some quote archives and hand selected some of my favorite Lewis quotes. Since I probably will only read one or two of them tonight in between mouth fulls of Stroh’s-glazed Turducken, I thought I’d post them here so I can remember them for eternity or until my web host goes out of business.

I could write an individual post about each of these, but why spoil a good thing? C.S. Lewis is an amazing person and has an extraordinary gift for putting the most complicated philosophical issues into layman’s terms. I fear I would only ruin his points by expounding upon them. Have I not already ruined this whole thing with what I’ve already written? Yep, I have. Forget it.

Ok ok, here they are. I know the last one’s long, but read it because it’s my favorite.

“Without sin, the universe is a Solemn Game: and there is no good game without rules.”

–A Preface to Paradise Lost

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done…”

–from a letter “To Mrs. L.” (50)

“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?”

–Encounter with Light

“Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”

–Mere Christianity

“No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that ‘In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth’.”

–Miracles

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

–not sure, a little help? Art would probably know since I stole this quote idea from him.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

–I’m guessing Mere Christianity, anyone know?

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist–in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless–I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

–Mere Christianity

I hope none of my men’s group reads this until tomorrow, because otherwise they’ll know the quotes I picked before I read them tonight. You know what would be funny? Someone should print this out and take it to group tonight and read it like these are their favorite quotes and pretend they spent all day looking for them and then I would spit out my mouth full of Turducken and say “you FRAUD!”

I am no politician and I never will be. I have no idea what the political ramifications are of stating that the death penalty equals abortion. I am coming from a Christian conservative background, but being non-political means you can pretty much remove the “conservative” and say I’m simply coming from a Christian background. I know that being Christian implies a certain level of conservativeness, but I’m trying to remove any elements of politics here, if you can’t tell.

I came across this pro-death penalty quote on prodeathpenalty.com (go figure):

“If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.”

John McAdams - Marquette University/Department of Political Science, on deterrence

Well, John, I don’t know who you are (well actually I guess I do since it says next to your name), but I don’t agree with you at all. This, to me, IS a tough call, and the amount of disagreement on the subject is proof. Instead of convincing people that capital punishment is right or wrong, I’m going to compare it with another subject that is likely opposed by a lot of people in favor the death penalty: abortion.

Let’s take both subjects to the extreme, because if you look at something in the most extreme example and make a statement about it, you can apply your findings to all the other examples under the umbrella of the subject at hand.

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I had to title this ‘conclusion’ because I previously stated that the ‘conclusion was to follow’, but I tacked on the question mark to confuse you so you don’t know if this is really the last post about the orthodox paradox. See, that’s what you have to do - you have to use your mind.

Since I wrote parts I and II our parish has conducted two “vision” meetings. These meetings were geared towards the 18 - 40 age range and they were originally planned in order to gather the thoughts of people who otherwise might not be compelled to give their opinions - whether out of fear, laziness, or simply that they don’t think it’s right to complain whenever something doesn’t go exactly how they want it to. I fall into all three of these categories, which is why I was so grateful that the vision meetings took place.

Amazingly, the second meeting had as many attendees that I thought didn’t fit the meeting’s demographic as those who did. I’m obviously not going to name names (with the exception of my own and possibly my parish’s rector), but there were two people in particular who I thought sabotaged the meeting.

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