A New Post … And Email!

I just put the linked post up at my website, lightsinthedarkness.net. Please go check it out!

‪http://lightsinthedarkness.net/?p=1387

Too Much

I remember several years ago having a talk with my supervisor at the time about mail. Specifically, we were talking about the sheer volume of mail he received every day, and he said something I don’t think I’ll ever forget: “We get so much stuff, I just get overwhelmed with it. I’m sure there have been good things that I’ve thrown away, but it’s just too much to keep up with.”

I’ve thought about those words often as the world keeps changing to bring us better and better access to nearly everything imaginable. There’s just simply too much stuff out there to take in. It flies at us from every direction every minute of every day. From our televisions, from our computers, from our cell phones, from our radios. We can’t even blame the professionals anymore. Suddenly, it seems everyone is capable of producing anything they put their minds to – albums, books, apps, podcasts, websites, movies, videos. You name it, we got it.

It’s just too much. Links to links to links to links to links. Independent music websites. Independent book publishers. YouTube. Hulu. Web series. Daily podcasts of programs that have already aired somewhere else. Spotify. Pandora. Online sites for newspapers and magazines you might have missed. Reviews of reviews of reviews. And the blogs. Blogs and blogs and blogs and blogs…

A lot of you reading this have been kind enough to follow this blog. I can’t thank you enough for that. Every follow notification I get is a tremendous encouragement to me, and lets me know I actually have something worthwhile to say. In all honesty, though, I’m not reading your blogs. I’ve looked at some of them, and they’re very nice, but there’s only so much information I can stuff into my tiny brain in one day.

So I’ve begun to cut some things out. For instance, if you post a video to your Facebook or Twitter feed that is “amazing,” “unbelievable,” “touching,” or “astounding,” I will more than likely not watch that video, since 99 percent of those videos I have watched are neither “amazing,” “unbelievable,” “touching,” or “astounding.” If an article is billed as “mind-blowing,” I’m skipping over it. If a video is “must-see,” it ain’t gettin’ watched by me. If an album doesn’t have at least one fast song on it, it will not be getting added to my collection. And so on and so forth…

I fully realize I could be missing some truly great stuff this way. Then again, I could be missing some truly great stuff by focusing on all these other things, too. Either way, I just can’t take it all in. And, in an odd way, having this many options has actually caused me to limit my horizons in some areas. Take music, for instance. With options like my iPod, Pandora, and Spotify, I can tailor the music I listen to into whatever categories I choose, which means I can basically not try anything new or out of the ordinary if I don’t want to.

I didn’t think this was a problem until I thought back one day to all the music I listened to in high school. Now, I’m more of a hard rock/borderline metal kind of guy with bits of Americana mixed in, but back then I also thought Bobby Brown, LL Cool J, Young MC, and Enigma were pretty cool, too. And as poorly as some of that music has held up, it broadened my sense of rhythm and wordplay and electronic music. But I heard it all in the natural flow of life – radio, friends’ cars, sporting events. It was just there; it just happened.

It’s hard to believe I actually feel this way. I mean, a world of infinite possibilities should be awesome, right? I should be more knowledgeable than ever, able to snap off information in the blink of an eye. Instead, I read a really wonderful and insightful article the other day on the relationship between teenagers and social media, and now I can’t remember the name of the book it featured, the author of the book, or the website I saw the article on. Whatever I got from it is crammed into all the other bits of data I’m consuming nearly constantly.

So consider this my apology for missing out on all the wonderful work some of you may be doing. Maybe one day I’ll give you the attention you so richly deserve. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here sorting through the day’s mail and trying to decide what I should keep and what I should get rid of. The trash can is looking pretty full already…

 

Sick Of Ourselves

Well, it finally happened last week: I became a narcissist.

I’m not sure if it happened all at once or just gradually crept in over time. I’ve never thought of myself as a self-occupied kind of person. As I sat at my keyboard last Monday night, though, I realized I was three-quarters of the way into a blog post that had no real reason to exist other than to get people to visit the site you’re on right now (Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?).

I wanted to think I was just following up a post I thought was pretty good from the day before (which can be found here, wink, wink). You know, generating traffic, building readership, providing enlightenment for the masses, etc., etc. After struggling through a few paragraphs, though, it became clear to me I was uncovering another uncomfortable truth about myself…

I really, really want you to like me.

When I first hopped on the Facebook bandwagon a few years ago, I was racking up “friends” like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, if you and I had even exchanged glances at the local Walmart, you were getting a request to add me. Even before the days of social media, though, I craved the praise of others. The internet has just sped up my journey toward being completely self-absorbed.

I’m making some of these statements tongue-in-cheek, but there is an element of truth to them as well. I’ve noticed lately I’ve been keeping a closer eye on my “likes” and checking in on the WordPress dashboard every morning to see how tall those little blue bars are. I still don’t get Twitter, but I always get a good feeling when someone acknowledges one of my tweets somehow. Sometimes it’s as if I’m building my own little cult of personality … and that is not a good thing.

I’ve noticed something else lately, too: Many of my social media friends seem to be posting less and less these days. They’re not talking so much about how they went to the grocery store or taking so many pictures of the food they’re eating or shouting as much about political matters. This kind of made me sad for a while, but then it hit me that maybe they all were starting to feel the same way I did Monday night. Maybe we were all getting tired of talking about ourselves.

So my lesson learned here is there is a fine line between self-promotion and just blatantly grabbing for attention. I dislike the idea of this space becoming my barometer for how popular I am or how well I write. I want to contribute something or help someone or make people think about things in a different way. That might sound too lofty for a little ol’ blog on the internet, but it’s the truth. Positive affirmation is great, but it doesn’t need to be the sole goal.

If you’d like to comment on any of this, though, I’m sure I’ll be checking WordPress every few minutes or so today to see how many views this post has gotten. At least I’ll be able to respond to you fairly quickly…

Crosses To Die On

For the second straight year, I barely watched any of the Super Bowl. I’ve just basically decided to stop even pretending I’m a football fan. A good game might draw me in, but a 35-point blowout like the one put on display last night definitely will not. Thankfully, though, social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook now keep on providing game-related entertainment long after any interesting aspects of the game have died, so I turned most of my attention there as the Seahawks continued to pound Peyton Manning’s big-game legacy into dust.

Sometimes when posts and tweets are flying by at a million miles an hour, you have to dig kind of deep to find an interesting angle. Halftime shows are always good for at least a couple of good lines, and last night was no exception. I guess Bruno Mars put on a good show; I didn’t watch that part either. Apparently a lot of other people did, though, including Christian music artists Bart Millard of MercyMe and Chris Tomlin. I only know that because they both posted on Facebook about it … and that’s where all the fun began.

Both Millard and Tomlin made complimentary posts about Mars’ (Or is it Mars’s? Whatever…) performance. This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except Millard and Tomlin have both carved out careers singing about fairly virtuous subject matter, and Mars had just finished singing a song about someone’s sex taking him to paradise. Obviously, the comments sections on both of their posts went nuts, which highlights both the cool thing and the ridiculous thing about social media giving fans the opportunity to interact with artists.

I noticed that by today, Tomlin had removed his post, but Millard decided to come out swinging. I don’t know exactly what irked him, but he apparently felt that folks were being a little religious and judgmental in their assessments of his earlier comments. So instead of removing the earlier post, he took folks to task on the MercyMe Music Facebook page with a response that included the following:

“I’m a huge fan of music regardless whether Bruno misuses it or not. I’m a huge fan of sex, so is my wife…so is God by the way, regardless if the world abuses it. I’m also a fan of the word of God REGARDLESS if some of you people twist it to make a point. In other words, I’m no longer living my life based on what people say or think about me.”

The choice of what music to listen to has got to be one of the finest lines to walk for an American Christian. I can count at least three times I’ve cleaned out my “secular” library, only to gradually build it right back up again. I don’t let my kids listen to a lot of stuff, but a quick run-through of my iPod will find all kinds of heinous stuff, from profanity to, well, Bruno Mars. I do believe it’s important to not fill our minds with a bunch of lyrical junk, but the good stuff can just be so boring and dull musically that I eventually start looking elsewhere.

So do I blame Millard for grooving to a little Peter Gene Hernandez between halves of the big game? No, not really. What I do have a problem with is when people don’t know when to stop running their mouths. For instance, one person’s comment to Millard’s post today mentioned how family-friendly Mars’ performance was. I’m not sure what kind of family they have, but I don’t really want my kids listening to a song about sex taking someone to paradise. And, sorry, Bart, I’m pretty sure he’s not singing about a husband and wife.

It’s difficult to defend someone who earns their living preaching purity lashing out at fellow Christians the way Millard did today. That may seem like a harsh statement, but if you’re going to present yourself in a certain way, you’ve got to be prepared for backlash. Millard points out in his post that the scripture in James that refers to teachers being judged with greater strictness was actually directed at overly-religious people who liked to judge others for their behavior. I say it means if you place yourself in a leadership position, you need to be more careful with what you say and do.

Who’s wrong here? Well, we’re all wrong. I’m wrong for being a music hypocrite. Millard’s wrong because he doesn’t realize the responsibility of his position. Those commenters are wrong because they’re either operating under the assumption that anything goes or they’re getting ready to burn all their MercyMe CDs because of some words on the internet. We all just look dumb. I think we all just need to shut up.

This will probably not be a very popular post, but I’m okay with that. If we don’t figure out we can’t just shoot our mouths off about every little thing, we’re going to run into some serious trouble. Millard said we all need to “find a bigger cross to die on.” I’d rather mine not have anything to do with the Super Bowl.

Five Blogging Lessons Learned In 2013

This was the year I decided to get serious about blogging … and I still didn’t write something every day. Nevertheless, I feel I learned some important lessons about the blogosphere in 2013, so I thought I’d share some of those on this final day of the year.

1) Famous names/people generate traffic

My most popular blog of the year was one where I referenced Christian deejay and radio personality Brant Hansen. The blog itself, though, wasn’t the key in getting more views. That was probably more due to the fact I could include “@branthansen” in the Twitter link for the post, which led to many of his followers checking it out. Yes, it’s shameless piggybacking, but it does work.

2) Don’t mention anyone you might not want contacting you

My second most-viewed post of 2013 concerned Doug Phillips, the former Vision Forum Ministries president who stepped down after admitting to an extramarital affair in late October. In that post, I referenced another blog, Jen’s Gems – Doug Phillips’ Ecclesiastical Tyranny and Abuse. As a result, I received several comments from followers of that blog, which wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. People are passionate, though, and I should have expected at least some feedback.

3) Other people apparently read blogs more than I do

At last check, 74 people were following this blog, which is pretty impressive when you consider it hasn’t had any real focus since I started it. I’ve been amazed by the diversity of the people who have subscribed to it. I’ve also felt slightly guilty because I don’t really read anyone else’s blogs, much less subscribe to them. Still, a huge thank you to the 74 folks who decided what I had to say was interesting enough to come back for more.

4) You can’t go wrong with kids

The outpouring of prayers, support, and encouragement when my daughter had her heart surgery back in May was overwhelming. My post first describing her condition wound up being my fifth most-popular entry of the year. I noticed over the course of the year, though, that pretty much any post relating to children always finds an audience. In a society where kids are exposed to so many crazy things, it’s good to know people are still so interested in them.

5) Blogging is easy; writing something worth reading is hard

‘Nuff said.

Happy New Year, everyone. Making that resolution now to post something tomorrow. 🙂

13 For ’13

I used to be funny. No, really, I did. I used to write all kinds of amusing things, earning me a reputation as … um … that guy … who, uh, wrote … funny things (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t enough of a reputation to earn me a cool nickname…). It was cool. Well, I mean, I wasn’t cool, but it was nice to be able to claim some sort of talent people recognized me for.

As I got older, though, I somehow began to develop the notion that real writers didn’t waste their time on funny things. They wrote depressing literary fiction where con men steal fake limbs from unsuspecting women (“Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor. Look it up. Or, better yet, don’t look it up. It’s weird.) or sprawling analytical columns pondering politics and crime and economics or deep ponderings on philosophy or religion. Dave Barry may have won a Pulitzer and had a sitcom based on his life, but odds are you won’t ever hear him mentioned in the same sentence as names like Faulkner or Hemingway or even Grisham or Sparks.

As a result, I’ve found I’ve become sort of heavy-handed over the years. I realized that this week, after I had worked and worked and worked to no avail on a follow-up post to the one I did about Doug Phillips of Vision Forum Ministries. I may finish it yet, but for the moment I’m sort of tired of dealing with it. In my attempt to wring something profound out of myself, I discovered I wasn’t having any fun, and I already have to go through enough experiences every day that aren’t any fun. Maybe it’s time I switched gears.

Since I’m supposed to be doing a better job of being thankful for things anyway, I thought, “Why not try to come up with a list of things that made me happy this year?”. And since 13 For ’13 sounded like a spiffy title to me, I’ve compiled a list of 13 things that made me happy over the course of the past year. This is in no particular order, so let’s jump right in with…

13) The Winery Dogs

Despite my best efforts over the years to cast myself as a musical sophisticate by loading up my music collection with everything from Wilco to Stanley Clarke to Mumford & Sons to Johnny Cash, I always wind up coming back to hard rock and hair metal. When I was in high school, I listened to everything any self-respecting male would be ashamed to have in his possession today – Poison, Warrant, Slaughter, Winger… I even owned a Trixter album at one point, for Pete’s sake. This was also the time of my life I became acquainted with the bass playing of Billy Sheehan in Mr. Big, and I remain a huge fan of his to this day. When I heard he was making an album with former Dream Theatre drummer Mike Portnoy and guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen, my ears perked up a little. When I heard their first collaboration as the Winery Dogs, I was hooked. Tremendous playing, sky-high singing, and surprisingly good songwriting taking me back to the glory days. My favorite album of the year.

12) Monroe Carrell, Jr., Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt

As a general rule, I hate hospitals. I hate the way they look, hate the way they smell, hate having to be in them. I’ve driven my wife nuts every time we’ve had a child because I always look for ways to sneak out of them. When we found out our then five-month-old daughter had a Ventricular Septal Defect (a fancy way of saying “hole in the heart”) back in April, though, I knew I was going to be spending much more time in hospitals this year than I wanted to. The Monroe Carrell, Jr., Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt told us the wrong day to show up for my daughter’s surgery, then proceeded to be the most awesome hospital I’ve ever dealt with. And an extra tip of the hat here to the Nashville Ronald McDonald House, which was a blessing not only to us but to others with children facing hospital stays.

11) The Basketball Jones/The Starters

I can sum up how I became a fan of these guys in two words: Dwight Howard. As he was busy turning the Los Angeles Lakers 2012-2013 season into an unmitigated disaster, ESPN decided to center every one of its basketball discussions on Howard and his poor fit with the team. One day, I just couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go looking for a podcast to fill the void. Enter five goofy guys from Canada just hangin’ out and talkin’ hoops for about an hour every day. A little of the cavalier attitude that made The Basketball Jones so much fun has been lost now that the show has moved over to NBA TV as The Starters, but it’s still the best hoops podcast out there by far.

10) Marvel movies

Okay, so Iron Man 3 kind of sucked, but even a crappy Iron Man movie is still so much more fun than heavy-handed fare like Man of Steel (which I actually liked, even if the climactic battle sequence seemed to drag on for infinity). Thor: The Dark World brought the goods, and the trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier looks tremendous. If Marvel Studios can keep churning out Avengers-level fare, I’ll even be willing to overlook their questionable decision to make an Ant Man movie.

9) R. A. Dickey

So what if Dickey narrowly avoided a losing record and saw his ERA balloon to over 4.00 in his first year as a Toronto Blue Jay? His autobiography – Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball – made its way into my hands this year and rocked my world. Sure, it was published in 2012, but Dickey’s story of personal hardship, moral and professional failure, and, ultimately, redemption is the type that will never grow old. If nothing else, Dickey’s book inspired me to work the words “owning it” into my everyday vocabulary.

8) Magazines, magazines, magazines

How deep did my love affair with magazines go in 2013? Far enough that I’ve fished a few out of the trash can at the post office near where I work. I may not read as many books as I’d like to over the course of a year, but I devour any magazine I can get my hands on. I’m especially a sucker for one-on-one, question-and-answer interviews. If anyone ever decides to publish a magazine of just those, I’ll be first in line to get a subscription. Heck, maybe I should start one myself.

7) Social media

That’s right, I said it: I’m a man, and I enjoy using social media. It’s taken me a long time to be able to admit that. A lot of men I know would consider Facebook or Twitter a waste of time. If you’re a writing-minded, extremely shy person like me, though, what better medium could there be to express thoughts and keep up with friends? Just don’t expect to find me on Pinterest. I might actually have to turn in my man card if I ever wound up there.

6) Glasses

Don’t get me wrong on this one: If I could afford LASIK eye surgery, I would go through with it in a heartbeat. I am not a fan of having to put on a pair of glasses every morning to see where I’m going. As I’m also not a fan, though, of attempting to insert small slivers of plastic into my eyes on a daily basis, glasses have suddenly become a more appealing option. I finally gave up on contacts last year in the midst of the spring allergy season, and I finally made peace with my spectacles this year. Transition lenses and everything. My eyes haven’t felt this good in years.

5) Rise of the Guardians

Technically, this movie came out last year. Also, technically, it lost a whole bunch of money for Dreamworks Animation. My family doesn’t do Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, so there wasn’t really a lot drawing me to the film when it was released on home video. As my children had seen, literally, every animated movie ever made except this one at one point this year, though, I decided to give it a shot. While they thought it was pretty good, it blew me away. Stunning action and animation combined with themes anyone could identify with. I’ve talked about it so much even my kids roll their eyes when I bring it up now. The blu ray may be going on my Christmas list anyway.

4) Mental illness

This might seem like an odd thing to be thankful for, but I think it’s already been established that I’m an odd type of guy. Being diagnosed with dysthymia was a blessing in disguise for me. I’ve learned a lot about being thankful, weighing my options, and learning how to own the decisions I make. I’ve been able to share on this blog some of my experiences, and that has opened the door to several discussions I never thought I’d be having. I still have my bad days, but at least now I know why I have those days. I’m just praying I can carry what I’ve learned this year with me through the rest of my life.

3) Smartphones

When my daughter was having her aforementioned surgery, I was still using a regular cell phone. Nothing wrong with that, but it seemed like every five minutes I was either having to call or text someone to give them a status report. Plus, there’s not a whole lot to do in hospital waiting rooms these days, so boredom was also an issue. My decision after that to try out a smartphone has been mostly a good one, although I think sometimes I’m getting a little too attached to it. There are times when I go all Gollum and get the thing out not because I really need it, but mainly because I just want to look at it. I expect to begin referring to it as “My Precious…” any day now.

2) Blogging

One day, I’m going to figure out a direction for this thing. One day, I might even learn to make some money doing it. Until then, I’m just going to keep throwing stuff out here and see who stops by to read it. I’m a writer. I may not be making my living doing it. I may not be doing it every day. But it’s who I am. And I can’t think of any better way at the moment to keep in practice. So, sorry, WordPress, I guess you’re stuck with me for a while.

And, last but not least…

1) God

God and I seem to be on better terms these days than we were for a while. I don’t seem to be angry with Him as much as I used to be. I guess when He spares your daughter from heart failure, your perspective lightens up a little. It goes beyond that, though. I don’t feel like He’s ready to drop the hammer on me whenever I get out of line (which is still, unfortunately, something that happens way more than I’d like it to). I’m seeing Him more and more in the bad times. I’m still a knucklehead, and I still get it wrong more times than I get it right, but I think maybe – just maybe – He was expecting that.

So, there it is. Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone. What made you happy this year?

2012 Olympic Observations

Every four years, I make some kind of silly statement about not really caring all that much about the Olympics and how I’m not going to watch very much of them when they begin, and then, every four years, I wind up spending several hours glued to my television set watching a myriad of sports I would never, ever devote 10 seconds to just because they’re in the Olympics.

Since this year marked the first Olympics to feature social media prominently (And, hey, I know that’s a fact because Ryan Seacrest kept telling me so every five minutes with that giant “Social Download” board in the NBC Olympic studio.), it was very tempting for me to hop onto Facebook or Twitter every few minutes and make some kind of observation about what was going on. Since I’ve been trying to ween myself from getting online so much after I get home in the evenings (which is much more difficult than I thought it would be), I managed to resist.

Watching that many hours of Olympic coverage, though, provides so much wonderful material to comment on that it has to come out somewhere, so what better place could there be than in the ol’ blog? So, from the inspiring to the embarrassing, here are a few of my thoughts on this year’s Olympics:

1. Speaking of Seacrest, what the heck was he even doing on the Olympics broadcast in the first place? My wife said she thought it was because he wanted to be the next Dick Clark, but I don’t ever remember seeing “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Medal Count” featured on any other Olympic broadcasts. The “Social Download” was the kind of scrub job they ought to saddling guys like Jim Gray with. Plus, the segment was totally worthless. I mean, really, did someone have to tell me Michael Phelps was trending on Twitter after winning the 22nd medal in his Olympic career? Hashtag: dork.
2. And speaking of Phelps, wasn’t it amazing how winning a handful of Olympic medals can make folks forget all about how you were sucking on a marijuana pipe just three years earlier? I know Phelps apologized, and I’m willing to forgive, but I did think it was odd that I didn’t see the pipe mentioned even once during the coverage I watched. That’s kind of like praising Michael Vick for winning the Super Bowl and not mentioning dog fighting.
3. Even if he did suffer from poor judgment with the pipe, at least Phelps managed to not embarrass himself and his country during the games themselves – which you definitely couldn’t say for his teammate, Ryan Lochte. Seriously, dude, nobody wants to know if you peed in the warm-up pool. Well, Ryan Seacrest might, but other than that…
4. One event I did comment on using social media was the women’s vault event, which I likened on Facebook to watching a reel of NASCAR crashes – horrible in a way, but impossible to turn away from. Thankfully, no one was actually seriously injured during any of the falls, and we actually got a bonus takeaway with Makayla Maroney’s medal acceptance face. My favorite “Makayla is not impressed” meme so far? Gotta be the Ali-Liston photo. Check out the front row.
5. I’m all for American pride, but did it seem like we barely got to see any of the other countries compete this year? Even in the team sports, it was almost as if NBC wanted to blot out the names on the other jerseys. Athletes from other countries worked their butts off to get to the Olympics, too. Let us see some of them compete.
6. The one major exception to that last statement came in track and field, which featured Usain Bolt and his merry band of Jamaican sprinters in what seemed like every other event. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for having to watch Bolt himself prance around like a peacock and listen to him shoot his mouth off after every race. I used to think smack talking was appropriate if you could back it up. Thanks to Bolt, I have now changed my mind. Bolt did get it right when said, “I am a legend.” Yes, Usain, you are – a legendary jerk.
7. So this year’s Dream Team was supposed to have been able to contend with the original Dream Team we sent to the Olympics in 1992 because their big men couldn’t keep up with the speedier, smaller athletes of today? After only beating Spain by seven points in the gold medal game yesterday, Coach Mike Krzyzewski said, “Their size hurt us.” He was talking about the Gasol brothers, Marc and Pau. Yeah, I’ll still put my money on Jordan and Co.
8. My daughters, who are 10 and 7, kept yelling at the television during the women’s beach volleyball matches. They weren’t cheering; they wanted Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh to put some clothes on. Dear Lord, may they never lose their sense of modesty.
9. I guess this is where I should say something about the closing ceremonies, but I only could bear about 30 seconds of it. I don’t even know what I saw. There was some kind of deejay in a giant octopus thingy, with a bunch of people dancing around in goofy outfits. I know if I was forced to come and watch something like this it would only greatly diminish my Olympic experience. Well, unless I were Ryan Seacrest….

If You’re Gonna Talk Like That…

Everyone wants to write their generation’s “Ninety-Five Theses.”

When Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, he set off a chain of events which would ultimately lead to what we now call the Protestant Reformation. Whereas Luther had a relatively new invention known as the printing press to aid him in the distribution of his message against church practices he viewed as objectionable, self-styled theologians of today have a much more powerful weapon at their disposal – the Internet.

Despite the technological limitations of the day, Luther’s views spread throughout Europe at a fairly remarkable rate, but he would have to be astonished today at the rate information can travel (and that someone like Lady Gaga would have over a million people following her every move on Twitter). Within minutes, an Internet blogger today can have their thoughts and opinions read by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. While this has undeniably provided writers everywhere with unprecedented access and influence, it has also provided anyone with an opinion (such as myself) a platform to spout off about whatever is on their mind, whether sharing that is beneficial to the rest of the world or not.

Not that long ago, Jefferson Bethke (who is a spoken-word artist … or something … I’m still not sure exactly who he is.), caused a mild Internet sensation with a video titled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” The video generated quite a bit of discussion, with everything from scathing Reformed analysis, charismatic fervor, unintelligent name-calling, response videos, and blog commentary upon blog commentary popping up on the Internet. Bethke had found his own castle door to post his theses on.

Personally, I wasn’t very impressed with Bethke’s efforts, not so much because of what he was saying but more because I had heard so much of what he was saying somewhere else before. The “I hate religion, but I love Jesus” line has been around for years, and most of the riffs Bethke took on it were arguments I had heard about a thousand times since becoming a Christian nearly 21 years ago. For young Christians, let me warn you: There are certain words and phrases you will quickly grow tired of. “Comfort zone.” “It’s not a good thing; it’s a God thing,” “That’s from the pit, and smells like smoke.” The list goes on and on, so when Bethke says “I mean, if religion is so great, why has it started so many wars,” I just kind of stop listening.

The positive side of Bethke’s video, though, was that it encouraged the discussion of actual scripture. When someone begins a poem (or rap or whatever it was supposed to be) with the words “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion,” any theologian worth their salt will head straight to their Bible to either – depending on their position – prove or disprove that statement. This approach should extend beyond theologians, though; it’s something every Christian who watched the video should have done. Saying, “Yeah, that’s how I feel, too!” just isn’t enough. If someone is going to question how Jesus or the church fits into Christianity as a whole, they automatically bring scripture into the discussion. There’s simply no way around it.

I bring this up because a friend of mine recently wrote a blog response to a post by Rachel Held Evans, author of the book “A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master,” titled “15 Reasons I Left The Church.” I’m always curious when someone shares their reasons for leaving a church, since my family and I decided a few years ago to leave a church we had called home for quite some time. Whether my curiosity is a good or bad thing is highly debatable, as my motivations seem to swing wildly from attempting to gain a better picture of how the world today relates to the church and simply wanting to listen in on someone else’s gossip.

Held Evans immediately strikes a sour note with me by beginning her post with a statistic with no attribution: “Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church…” She alludes to George Barna in the next paragraph, but the damage is done for me. You never quote statistics without stating exactly where you got them from. In my mind, that’s Writing 101. Lack of style points, though, is not why I’m writing this post here. Then again, maybe it is…

Held Evans goes on to list her 15 reasons, some of which are relatable and some of which are, well, not so relatable. There are two primary problems with her list of reasons. The first pertains to the title of her post. One look at her 15 reasons and it is immediately evident Held Evans didn’t leave the church, but rather her church. If God’s church is composed of the entire body of believers, Held Evans’ efforts to find a “faith community” would seem to indicate she’s not exactly done with church. Her issues with her church’s views on women in the pulpit, homosexuality, the age of the Earth, and evolution point more to a specific congregation than to a larger body of Christ.

The other flaw in her post is that of all the issues I listed in the paragraph above, never once does Held Evans address her feelings about them in a scriptural context. When you say, “I left the church because I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans share a common ancestor with apes, which I was told was incompatible with my faith.”, you need to be able to back up why you feel that way in a scriptural context, if you are a Christian. She does offer a couple of quotes from one of her other books – “Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions” – which is a fairly asinine line of reasoning. “I will now prove my opinions are correct by stating more of my opinions…”

Held Evans actually wrote a follow-up post titled “15 Reasons I Stayed With the Church,” but it really doesn’t fare any better. Even though it wasn’t quoted directly in the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther was drawing from a vast well of scriptural knowledge. He would go on to teach on that very scripture in the years following the posting. Luther had to know the Catholic church would not just let his accusations pass without a confrontation, so he had to be prepared to defend his positions. Where is the defense in statements such as “I left the church because I had learned more from Oprah about addressing poverty and injustice than I had learned from 25 years of Sunday school.”?

I may have kicked a hornets’ nest here, but I am weary of armchair theologians (and I use the term “theologian” very loosely here) simply tossing out ideas with little or no scriptural grounds to back them up. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How about we start there for a change?

The Lunchtime Take-Out: Life Is High School

If I could travel back in time, I would change nearly everything having anything to do with my high school years. I would start shaving my curly, unruly hair off. I would stop drinking milk at lunch, since, unbeknownst to me, I’m more than a little lactose intolerant. I would buy a small, fuel-efficient car instead of a gas-guzzling Camaro. I would swear off sodas, since they, apparently, make my face break out with zits. I would ditch my advanced chemistry and pre-calculus classes, head over to the vocational school, and learn myself an actual skill to earn a living with.

Unfortunately, I can never go back and make all those changes. Even more unfortunately, though, thanks to the miracles of the Internet, radio, television, and social media, I still can’t seem to get away from high school.

Let’s just take yesterday as an example. The top stories on ESPN Radio dealt with what Ed Reed said about Joe Flacco and what Rob Lowe tweeted about Peyton Manning. Mark Wahlberg had to apologize to the families of 9/11 survivors after telling the Men’s Journal he would have found a way to fight off the terrorists and land the plane. And, of course, the Kardashians did … well … something or other.

It seems to me we fret an awful lot these days about what people say about each other. I won’t deny it can be a serious issue. The book of James calls the tongue “a fire, a world of unrighteousness.” Obviously, when the Bible takes time to address something, it’s a pretty big deal. There are just so many things being said these days, though, that I simply don’t need to know about.

The whole Flacco/Reed thing reminded of two girls passing notes around about each other between classes. I’m interested in whether the Baltimore Ravens can beat the New England Patriots this weekend. Hearing ESPN’s analyst beat this thing to death yesterday was like walking through the high school cafeteria and hearing bits of conversations at the different tables. “Yeah, well, I heard Joe said Ed was ugly, too.”

And while what Wahlberg said was ill-advised, I’m sure it’s not something a thousand other guys haven’t thought at one time or another since the September 11 attacks. Should he have said it? Probably not. Then again, he’s a 44-year-old man who gets paid ridiculous amounts of money to dress up in costumes, stand under lights with makeup on, and pretend he’s someone he’s really not in made-up stories. Why, exactly, should we get all that bent out of shape about anything he says at all?

So much of our “news” today has been replaced by plain and simple gossip. What’s the headline you usually see after a presidential debate? “Contenders Go After Romney During Debate.” Yeah, well, how about you actually report what they said about specific issues? What would they do to stimulate the economy? How would they create more jobs? What do they feel the role of our military is in the current world climate? So Ron Paul and Rick Santorum yelled at each other (again). Not what I’m after here.

For those of us who would like to forget the past, let’s leave childish things behind and start acting like adults again. If Kim Kardashian marries and divorces three times in the next hour, who cares? I don’t want to go back to high school. Stop trying to drag me back there.