Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Next, the 'Soylent Green' Bible

The Green Bible has sprouted on the religious publishing scene, and has even received a stamp of approval from the Sierra Club. The new version, which costs $29.95, "will equip and encourage you to see God's vision for creation and help you engage in the work of healing and sustaining it."

This New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins highlights environmentally significant passages in green, is printed with soy ink on water-coated recyclable paper and bound in a cloth-and-linen cover.

The only drawback is that the book is not totally edible.

If Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and the Sojourners crowd are "Red Letter" Christians, then who are "Green Letter" Christians? Well, Brian McLaren explains "Why I Am Green." And Matthew Sleeth, N. T. Wright and Desmond Tutu contribute, along with Earth-conscious essays and poems from Wendell Beery, St. Francis of Assisi and Pope John Paul II.

Why do we need a Green Bible? Because "with over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth."

On the other hand, out of the 773,692 total words in the Bible, "and" is used almost 70,000 times. Forgive my quibbling, but the scriptures carry a powerful message for conjunctions, too.

In one essay by J. Matthew Sleeth, a good point is made that the Bible starts with a tree in Genesis and ends with one in Revelation. That's cool. I like that. I also understand most of the green-highlighted passages I read in the online sample-- they call it the "Green Bible Trail." Sort of like W. A. Criswell's "Scarlet Thread through the Bible" except about landscaping instead of salvation.

But I'm confused about why some passages were left out.

For instance, in the sample given from the book of Ruth, nothing was highlighted in green at all. In the story about Ruth gleaning in Boaz's field, it says he "heaped up for her some parched grain. She ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. " Why isn't that in green? Is it because people are messing with nature here, taking dominion over it, using it to feed themselves?

Just askin'.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want us to all have to scramble for survival on a planet blighted with toxic waste, choking on pollution and divorced from nature by our technology. (Oh yeah, never mind, that's already happening). But don't cheat me by rationing my green-highlighted Bible passages!

Environmental checklists can get ridiculous. At the bottom of the screen on the publisher's web site, I noticed it proudly proclaims: "This site was made without using paper."

A website without paper!

I wish that would catch on, because I'm tired of getting ink all over my hands when I click through the New York Times headlines links. Thanks, HarperCollins.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Green Bible, Christian humor, satire, humor

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Olympics, and achievement just out of reach

Before our morning Bible study some of us walk up to the local coffee shop, bypassing Starbucks. We're friends with the owners and the staff and we've been walking up there almost every day for a decade.

When Bill opens the place, he takes some time to banter with us, mostly making fun of our friend Gary. With nonstop Olympics coverage this week, Gary's been regaling us with stories of his glory days when he almost made the U.S. Olympic team in gymnastics in 1964.

Many of us have such stories-- the if-only tales of fame and success just out of reach.

Gary was amazed that the gymnasts were doing routines that his generation never even imagined were possible. A French guy's "Victoria cross" the night before was especially shocking, he said. He shook his head. Gary is 65 and somewhat out of shape, but occasionally he does a handstand for us, and all the change falls out of his pockets. It's pretty funny and sort of amazing, too.

If-only tales. We've learned to embrace these missteps in life, because without them, we might have missed God along the way. Instead of being bitter about getting a silver medal instead of a gold one, Gary is just happy for what he's been given. That's rare.

But stories of almost-success will never be the same for us now.

A chance encounter

A few weeks ago, Bill said he'd been riding his bike around the lake when he heard someone shouting or crying, he wasn't sure which. He turned the bike around and pedaled back down the road and saw a woman inside a security fence that enclosed one of the large estates that face the lake.

She explained her daughter was out of town, and she had come by her house to check on things, and the electronic gate had shut and she didn't have the code to get out. She was trying to reach her husband on her cell, but there was no answer. She broke into tears.

The real cause of her distress was her son-in-law, she said. He had been hiking and climbing in the Sangre de Cristo range in Colorado, and his family had not heard from him for a few days. They were all greatly concerned.

It was a rare moment of transparency and weakness shared between two strangers. Bill used his phone to get in touch with the husband, and finally got her out of the gate. Then he continued on his bike ride.

A few days later he found her husband's number in his phone and decided to call to check on the situation.

No, the husband said, they still hadn't heard anything. They were assuming an accident had happened.

Life can be strange

We'd been following Bill's bulletins on the situation since his first encounter. I prayed for the guy and his family as we walked home that day, if memory serves.

A few days after that, the report came in-- the man had fallen off a mountain during a hike and was missing.

Today, as Gary was ending his Olympics story of how gymnasts used to do things in the old days, Bill came over with the newspaper. There was the obituary. The man had fallen 1,700 feet to his death. He was 44.

Another tale of success just out of reach, I guess. This time a true tragedy.

As we lamented the man's fate and expressed amazement at Bill's happening upon the mother-in-law and the whole quirkiness of coincidence, Bill mentioned he was getting ready for his long-planned vacation next week.

Maybe he hadn't connected the dots on everything until that moment, but we did, and we sort of just looked at him, blankly.

Bill's going to Colorado to climb Long's Peak.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Olympics tragedy, Christian humor, satire, humor

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Maybe I made a mistake

Maybe I made a mistake.

Summer finally caught up to us a few weeks ago, just as my bike commuting was becoming routine. We've had 17 straight days of triple-digit heat. It's taking me longer to recover, and it affects my judgment.

For instance, last week I was wheeling through downtown one afternoon, past City Hall, past the homeless hangout, into the Farmers' Market district. There's a flower market there that's sort of an oasis on my trek. It's beautiful, especially in contrast to the baking heat of the concrete around me.

I jumped the curb to get a better look, lost control of the bike and slammed directly into a concrete post on the sidewalk. With my cat-like reflexes I embraced the impact and did a controlled collapse, ending up hugging the street. The bike's fork was bent and wouldn't roll. I was scratched and bruised, but nothing was broken.

It was late enough that the market area was pretty deserted. Like many urban areas, downtown Dallas goes dead after work, although that's starting to change. Still, the sun was up just high enough to fry me. I tried to drag the bike into a patch of shade. At more than 100 degrees it was starting to sap my energy.

I called my wife. This concrete post sort of jumped out in front of me, I told here. She said she'd come pick me up after she finished watering the garden. Fine.

I couldn't sit down because the concrete was too hot. I wanted to go over to the flower market, but I didn't want to leave my bike. I was embarrassed and sort of stunned.

In an instant, my whole afternoon had changed.

I was about to lodge a private complaint to the Lord about my condition, when I noticed Big Bob.

I'm calling him Big Bob, but all I saw was a large homeless man, clutching a beer bottle in a paper sack shuffling past me down the sidewalk. He didn't acknowledge me, and he didn't pass close enough for an exchange of greetings.

I almost felt like Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense. We were in two separate dimensions. Although I was sweaty and haggard-looking by this point, I was obviously not from his world. I was dead to him, and under normal circumstances he would have been to me. So, what was God trying to tell me here?

Big Bob walked over toward the wall of a building, until he almost had his nose to it. What the...

He unzipped and peed right against the wall. Broad daylight. Didn't even set down his bottle. Then he shuffled off.

Gee. That puts a cap on today's experience, I thought.

What brings a man to the place where his city serves him merely as a latrine? What mistakes, wrong turns and blind alleys in life brings you to this place?

Well, maybe in an instant, his whole life had changed.

And that bottle in a bag. One thing we learned early on when our community started taking in homeless people is that when they tell you they only had a few of beers, they're not talking about that little frosty bottle of Heineken you share with a friend at the local pub. They're talking about a 24-ounce bottle of Bud from 7-11. Two or three of those better explains why they, for instance, might have set fire to a dumpster.

One man who lived with us for several years explained that the bottles also come in handy at night. Just before you lie down under the bridge, you very loudly smash the bottle, making sure everyone else sees the remaining jagged edges of what's left in your hand just before you curl up. And the leftover broken glass can serve as a warning if anybody sneaks up on you while you're asleep.

But I didn't have to worry about any of that. I just had to get what was left of my bike back to my renovated two-story home in an old East Dallas historical district.

No wonder Big Bob relieved himself on his city.

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe we all did.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Bike Commute Homeless, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Beastie: Tip of apocalyptic iceberg

There's am alarming development that I see eventually causing the breakdown of civilization as we know it.

Consider the story of Dr. Arnold Kim, physician-turned-blogger.

Sure, blogging can be emotionally rewarding and intellectually stimulating. It can also be addictive, a huge time-suck and eventually grind a person down into millions of cynical bits. Usually it produces a weird combination: the blogger doing Leonardo DiCaprio's "I'm King of the World!" on the doomed Titanic.

But there's something socially and morally wrong about Arnold Kim, who heads up MacRumors.com, the website of Apple gossip and rumor, leaving his medical practice ...to blog.

That's right. He stopped treating kidney disease, abandoning the sacred role of the healer, to practice his blogging hobby full time.

Of course, it's a lucrative website-- he can draw a six-figure salary at either job (something we at The Door know nothing about).

But as a society, can we really afford to have valuable contributors just drop everything for the brief thrill of seeing their name in print? In the past, writers and journalists toiled for years hoping they'd eventually offer as much to humankind as a doctor does on his first day out of medical school.

Forget about rising oil prices, terrorism and Brokeback Mountain. This truly fills me with dread.

Think of the consequences if this catches on. Do we want our firemen ignoring the bell just to spellcheck their latest blog entry? Homeland Security agents working on their trout fishing blog while aliens sneak into the country hassle-free? Judges turning in their robes merely to service the Internet uber-feed? Engineers fiddling with their youtube subscriptions as bridges collapse under rush hour traffic?

Someone call Sen. Grassley! This can go nowhere good. The vision is disturbing, even here in my cozy cubicle. Affected as if by the strange, deadly malaise in The Happening, people will start jumping off of buildings, texting their posts as they drop. I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere as a sign of the apocalypse.

No, better to leave blogging to the desperate and wicked social substrata of geeks and losers who currently dominate the field.

When the smart, the successful and the beautiful begin to post their opinions in the blogosphere, the real world is put in deadly peril.

And we bloggers might then have to take some responsibility for it.

LOL! As if!

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Macrumors Kim, Christian humor, satire, humor

Monday, July 14, 2008

Help us cease from striving

If you're burned out on televangelist appeals for money, megachurch ministry-bloat and evangelical politics, it might be refreshing to take a look at an organization that's trying to give a life-long, no-strings-attached hug to a few million of the poorest, dirtiest, most despised people on earth.

I dropped in on Gospel for Asia's annual conference last weekend at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas. Their main topic was how to accommodate more poor people in their churches.

It seems that back in 2001 about a gigagillion Dalits-- India's lowest-caste "untouchables" -- got together and announced that Hinduism just wasn't doing it for 'em any more. The thrill was gone. So they offered the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists and any other religion an opportunity to pitch their version of spiritual reality to them.

The result is that GFA is scrambling to establish thousands of schools and churches around India to accommodate an increasing influx into their ranks of people who literally define the word "outcast." The word Dalit actually means "broken people."

Dalits can't be squeezed for big tithes and offerings. They don't bring anything to the table. In fact, they always show up with deep and often tragic needs. One Dalit who spoke at the meeting recalled how his parents somehow managed to claw their way our of grinding poverty to get him into a school, but he was only allowed to sit in one little spot in the corner on the floor away from the others. He wasn't allowed to drink from --or even get near-- the water faucet. "I experienced poverty, starvation and untouchability," he explained. "Now I am touched by the gospel of Jesus."

When I traveled to India a couple of years ago with GFA, I saw hundreds of these poorest of the poor along the roads everywhere doing the dirty work, squatting over little cooking fires, begging, defecating at the side of the road, scrounging for scraps of plastic or bits of cloth. These probably aren't the outsourced customer service guys from India you talk to when your computer goes on the blink. They're what St. Paul called the "offscouring of the earth."

The apostle understood, like GFA does, that these are the very people Christ died for. And He can only touch them through us.

But then, this Dalit's prayer caught me off guard: "Lord, help us cease from striving."

Huh? Isn't that what evangelism is all about-- striving to get the main thing done, accomplishing the mission, working the plan, doing it right?

Maybe not. The speakers all seemed to be talking about servanthood, being bondslaves. Slaves don't have many plans, and the pay isn't very good, besides.

At one GFA session, Gayle Erwin, author and a member of the GFA board, understated the case when he observed, "nobody comes out of GFA with million-dollar homes." In other words, Sen. Grassley is not interested in this group. It has too much obvious integrity. Despite the decreasing value of the dollar, there was little agonizing over the economy at the conference. The only mention of it was a suggestion: "You better hurry up and give quick."

GFA President K. P. Yohannan eloquently described the plight of the Dalits, but didn't mention that he still drives his early '60s VW when he's in the States. No air-conditioning. A native of India, Yohannan started GFA back in the 1970s after studying for the ministry in Dallas. Since then he's gone from looking goofy to looking grizzled, but carries himself with an air of peace and self-detachment that puts everyone around him at ease. GFA now has more than 16,500 native missionaries serving in 11 countries in South Asia. You can support one of these native missionaries for a ridiculous total of around $50 a month.

These Gospel for Asia people take Jesus very seriously but without our western/American overlay of overachieving busy-ness, guilt, arrogance or attachment to political causes. In the Indian state of Kerala, where GFA's largest seminary campus is located, the government is run by communists who sometimes work in cooperation with Christian groups. Yikes! Jerry Falwell's rolling over in his grave. It's a different world. Of course, GFA is as conservative as can be, except when it comes to the poor. Then they're liberal in the New Testament sort of way, with the emphasis on "liberality."

Lots of news came out of the meeting. One native leader from Burma told about delivering aid to victims of the devastating cyclone and people being saved as unburied bodies littered the fields. One of the native missionaries in Nepal who served time in jail for his faith described radical changes that have opened up that country to religious freedom.

And the media noticed one interesting angle-- while hundreds of supporters of Gospel for Asia prayed and sang, hundreds of Harry Potter fans at the opposite end of the hotel gathered--in full costume-- to role-play, buy Quidditch sticks and Hoggwart's capes and hear speakers delivering scholarly papers on the book and fantasy film series. (The two groups' wary interaction was discussed by the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog).

For me the big news from the conference was, when faced with a world of screaming need, the only effective response is to pray like the Dalit convert did, "Lord, help us cease from striving."

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Gospel For Asia, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I lost my shorts downtown

I've been riding my bike to work lately. My eight-mile route goes right through downtown Dallas, and it allows me to take the pulse of the city, not to mention its temperature and humidity levels, estimate its ozone pollution and gauge the mental state of its citizenry.

I can often taste its urban grime in my mouth, too.

The other day I waited at a light behind an old pickup truck driven by a spikey-haired middle-aged woman. As I breathed her exhaust, I read her bumper sticker: "My body's not a temple, it's an amusement park." Hmm. She did look sort of like a Coney Island carny.

My own body's feeling more like a junkyard of worn out parts these days. Drivers usually ignore me, but I can't ignore the terrain. Our streets are terrible for bicycles. A previous mayor vowed to fill in the potholes, but that never happened. Oh well, the ride helps me "buffet my body," as St. Paul put it, so I guess it's good for me.

Down near the soup kitchen a long line of homeless people snakes around the side of a building. On a bike, this can be an intimate encounter. I can look right into their eyes, and I wonder what they're going to do, how they got here, where they came from. They must think I'm crazy. Dallas just opened a big new homeless shelter. Why aren't these folks over there?

Our church has taken in homeless people for years, so I have no illusions. These are all humans, in dire situations. Some are addicts. Some are just on a streak of bad luck. Some want friendship and a sanctuary. Others don't.

When I got to work, I realized that somewhere downtown, a bungee cord came loose and I lost my shorts. I carry a rolled up pair of shorts for the ride back in the afternoon when it's extra hot, and they were gone. Darn! I really liked those shorts.

Maybe one of the homeless guys found 'em and they're walking around downtown, pockets filled with other people's spare change and a crumpled up pack of cigarettes. I hope so.

On the way back it's twice as hot, and slightly uphill most of the way. I'm sweating in my khaki slacks and my goofy helmet. I pass by the homeless crowd again. This time they're in the shade, trying to stay cool. Some are sleeping. Some are arguing. A couple of guys are tossing a ball around. There's a big van from the health clinic parked across the street. That's nice to know. No telling what medical problems they're dealing with on the street.

None of the guys are wearing my shorts.

I began riding my bike for several good reasons. Gasoline is too expensive. I want to fight terrorism by not sending my money to the Middle East. I'll get more exercise. I'll experience a moment of zen. I'll reduce my carbon footprint. Blah blah blah. My plan was efficient, logical, maybe even prudent.

But seeing the homeless crowd every day has become the biggest part of my new routine. They live in a world that is never efficient or logical. It's crazy and out of control. I've started praying for the ones who stare at me as I peddle by. Viewed from a car, they don't seem so desperate, so hot, or so many.

I lost my shorts downtown the other day.

Maybe I'll lose my heart next, who knows?

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: bicycle homeless, Christian humor, satire, humor

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Prepare to be tweeted like dirt

I’ve never tweeted.

I confess, I’m a tweet virgin. Never even gotten a tweet, let alone sent one.

Yes, I’ve thus far avoided joining the Twitter community. Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"-- text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to each other through the Twitter site. This way people can keep up with what you’re doing between blog posts and website updates and e-mails and phone calls.

Amazingly, Twitter touts itself as a “solution to information overload.”

On the other hand, if you join someone’s Twitter group you’re a “follower,” which has a nice discipleship-like sound to it.

Here’s the kind of stuff I’ve probably been missing:

George: Seething in anger at my coworkers and boss who are slowly draining me of creativity and the spark of human kindness. 2 minutes ago from web

Bob: This scabies medicine feels really weird. I almost don't want to put my shirt back on. Yech. one hour ago from txt

Gloria: Instead of praying today, I’m tightening up my prayer list. Just eliminated David cuz we haven’t talked in, like, forever. 9:45 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Alicia: Almost finished reading Thomas Friedman's NYT column. Malaise set in after realizing world is flat, and passed out. Woke up in pool of own vomit. 7 a.m. June 24, 2008 from web

Louis: Should I worry about my Dish TV spying on me after Bush signed that telecom bill? 11:35 p.m. June 23, 2008 from web

Albert: Jst gt carjacked. Mistakenly grabbed phone to twitter instd of handgun. Damn! 9:47 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt

Steve: Hey, lightening alrt. Run for co 8:43 p.m. June 23, 2008 from txt
I’m willing to give Twitter a shot, though. Should The Door start a Twitter group? Do we really want to know what Joe Bob is up to at 1:30 in the morning? Do we?

Discuss.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Twitter, Christian humor, satire, humor

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Monkey business

It's easy to overlook the obvious.

The biggest mistake many businesses and project planners make is to forget to place a deity on the payroll.

The Dallas Cowboys certainly learned this lesson back in their heyday. They were God's team as well as America's team, and it worked (until Deion Sanders sort of overdid it).

This month a business school in India was looking for a chairman for their institution. "We scanned many big names in the field of technology and management. Ultimately, we settled for Lord Hanuman, as none was bigger than him," said Vivek Kangdi, vice chairman of The Sardar Bhagat Singh College in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. The school awards bachelor's degrees in engineering and management.

Hanuman the monkey god is one of the most popular gods in the crowded pantheon of Hindu deities. According to the report on CNN, his most famous feat, as described in the Hindu epic the Ramayana, was leading a monkey army to fight the demon King Ravana and rescue a kidnapped princess.

This reminds me of the liner notes on the Christian music album my friends and I put together back in college. "Produced by the Holy Spirit" we wrote then. We meant it in the most humble way, rather than as total presumption. But, hey, we were young. One reviewer pointed out that the Holy Spirit must have neither taste nor skill if our album was any indication.

Let this be my public apology to God. Blasphemy pops up so easily in our thoughts, I suppose, that we come to think of it as piety.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Hanuman Hindu God, Christian humor, satire, humor

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Beastie: Bonfire of the Anglicans

An alarming report from across the pond--a motion calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England has been listed in the House of Commons as No. 666, the Number of the Beast.

As we all know from watching The Tudors, the Church of England was created so those in charge could suppress their enemies and justify their actions by using religion in order to control their own political destiny. Sort of like Church-State relations in America today, except without the torture. Well, OK, it's pretty much exactly like today.

Wrapped up in personal business as I've been, toiling like a Hebrew slave at my day job, I was shocked out of blogging slumber by this report, and decided to investigate.

It seems the proposal was registered just as Parliament debated scrapping Britain’s blasphemy laws.

Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester and one of the signatories, said: “It is is incredible that a motion like this should have, by chance, acquired this significant number. This number is supposed to be the mark of the Devil. It looks as though God or the Devil have been moving in mysterious ways."

I've visited Britain and surrounding areas, and I can assure you that the whole place is ripe for demonic mischief.

I was constantly feeding strange coins into their odd telephone boxes. I visited their pile of New Age rocks at Stonehenge and became extremely wired after drinking about 20 cups of their tea. The language makes them particularly susceptible to devilish deception. I tried to get someone to accurately repeat, "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" without success.

Or take this example from the BBC's sports desk: "It is the first time since 1884/5 that England have named the same line-up for five successive Test matches." England "have"? If they can't distinguish singular from plural, how will they fare in a test of wills against the Prince of Darkness?

I wheeled out the Beastie Machine and carefully wiped dust from its delicate gears as it's battery warmed up for the task.

I typed in "Jolly Old England." Calculating from my patented mix of Gematria and random quotes from NYT puzzle master Will Shorts, Beastie immediately spat out the number 251. I then tried "United Kingdom." That came to only 206. "Great Britain" only to 493. "British Empire" was too much at 866.

With trepidation I entered a word said to be the longest in the English language, and somehow seemed to apply now: "antidedistablishmentarianism." But it was way over the top at 1,683.

Many mysteries in the scriptures are said to be "sealed up" even to the prophets themselves. Could this be a secret that had no interpretation?

Worried, I mixed a cocktail of ginseng, caffeine, taurine, guarana, maca and Tang, took a nap and awoke refreshed, but still with no clear direction.

Maybe I should focus on the Church of England itself. "Church of England" came up as 633. Bingo!

"Anglican Church"--659. Getting closer. Ol' Beastie was emitting a whine not unlike the call of a lovesick wallaby as it struggled to crunch the flood of numbers.

"Unholy Anglicanism" came out as 694, over the mark.

Darn! So close-- within a boar's whisker of exposing the plan of the Evil One. Now what?

I made the sign of infinity in the air over the shuddering and smoking Beastie Machine, and typed in my very last idea: "Bad Anglican Church."

The machine squealed and lost several bolts and washers out its intake valve before the numerals appeared on the screen: 665.

665 is practically 666, if you take into account Greenwich Mean Time. So take that on your stiff upper lip, Old Scratch!


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Anglicans 666, Christian humor, satire, humor

Monday, May 5, 2008

Turkmen Tales

Let's hope this marks the final chapter in the story of Saparmurat Niyazov, the "Father of All Turkmen," who was absolute dictator of Turkmenistan for 20 years until his death in 2006.

The new ruler, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, ordered the rotating golden statue of Niyazov removed from the center of the capital, Ashgabat, to stand beside a highway near the edge of town with tacky billboards and other roadside curiosities.

The new president also restored the former calendar, which had been changed by Niyazov to name the months after himself, his mother and other family members.

A friend of mine-- an aid worker-- lived for a while in Turkmenistan several years ago, and came back with hilarious but also disturbing stories about this guy. That's when I started to notice reports in the press of his harrowing antics.

He banned ballet, gold teeth and recorded music; he ordered the construction of a lake in the middle of the desert and a ski resort on the snowless foothills of the Iranian border.

Using oil revenues, he undertook massive building projects to glorify himself, including a theme park --"The World of Turkmen Fairy Tales"--based on his country's folk tales, and made his book, a "spiritual guide" called the Ruhnama, compulsory reading for students, workers, and well... everybody.

I guess the books (and the old calendars) are now being used to heat people's homes as the country claws its way back into the 19th century.

The new administration isn't exactly all sweetness and light, though. Turkmenistan has promised to amend its Religion Law to become more liberal, but the majority Muslim population still can't leave the country for the haj to Mecca.

And on April 11, officials from the local Religious Affairs Department and the secret police, raided a Bible class held by the Greater Grace Protestant church in a private flat in the capital.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev told Forum 18, a human rights watch organization, he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its own members without permission from the government's Religious Affairs Committee (even though that conflicts with its officially recognised Charter). Officials told Tolmachev further warnings could lead to the church's registration being stripped from it, rendering all its activities illegal.

The church has no building of its own and has already had to move its services ten times this year, the report said.

This is definitely not fertile soil for a prosperity-gospel church.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Turkmenistan Niyazov, Christian humor, satire, humor

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Suffer the little children...

With all the discussion of child abuse at the polygamist ranch in West Texas recently, you might be thinking, "Surely they're not the only folks to mistreat their kids." And you'd be right.

In fact, people never get tired of finding novel ways to put their kids in jeopardy for what seems to be a good idea at the time.

Take the devotees of a Muslim shrine in Solapur in western India's Maharastra state. For more than 500 years they've been observing a bizarre ritual--throwing their young children off a tall building for luck and to improve their health. They believe it will make their children strong, and they say no accidents have ever happened.

(In fact, Maharastra is just teeming with good luck. The poverty rate is only 24 per cent, down from 38 per cent back in the '90s. Presumably, the impoverished didn't get dropped).

Closer to home, a Corpus Christi, Texas, judge reduced felony charges against the director of a Christian boot camp and an employee to simple assault in connection with the alleged dragging of a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind during a morning run. The 32-day boot camp for girls ages 13 to 19 includes 28 days at a facility near San Antonio, then four days at a camp in Banquete, about 10 miles west of Corpus Christi. The boot camp is run by the embarrassingly named Love Demonstrated Ministries of San Antonio.

But then, sometimes kids just need an old fashioned spanking.

It's too late for 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger, a straight-A student who planned to blow up his South Carolina high school. He intended "to die and go to heaven and once he got there, he wanted to kill Jesus," according to police who arrested him. (Kids say the darnedest things). They discovered his journal, which lauded the Columbine killers, contained notes on more than 10 types of explosives that Schallenberger experimented with and evaluated a year ago.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Baby Dropping Abuse, Christian humor, satire, humor

Monday, April 21, 2008

Shatner does Moses

We knew someone would step in to fill the shoes of Charleton Heston. But .... Captain Kirk?

It's too late for Passover, but you can hear William Shatner's unique vocal stylings as he reads passages from the book of Exodus and the Passover Haggadah, accompanied by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra playing music from Exodus: An Oratorio In Three Parts.

Didn't know Shatner was Jewish? All four of the Star Trek and Boston Legal star's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. So he's got street cred for this role.


You can listen to clips from the opus here.

(Via Jewcy.com)

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: William Shatner Exodus, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Beastie: Can any good come out of Idaho?

Forget about political gaffes, missteps and the fickleness of the polls. We can all relax. The election's already decided.

Zodiac vodka has determined America's next president by comparing the astrological signs of past election winners.

(The zodiacal "signs" link people's birth dates to star "constellations" that many claim can be seen out in the country, in the desert or from the deck of a cruise ship. Good Christians are already in bed by that time, anyway, so I wouldn't know.)

FYI-- It's Obama. The company's press release [slightly suspect because it was released April 1] was triumphant:

"ZODIAC Vodka, a luxury potato vodka handcrafted and distilled in Idaho, USA, has concluded that the Leo Barack Obama, will defeat the Scorpio Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, as well as the Virgo John McCain in the general election.

"ZODIAC researched every major presidential contestant since Washington and Adams in 1789. Statistics were compiled for each of the twelve zodiac signs. The Leo/Scorpio match up in the Democratic Party heavily favors Obama. Leos have a 12-point advantage in the win percentage category, with Scorpio at 24 percent and Leo at 36 percent. Leo has never lost to a Scorpio. Scorpio, however, has lost to 11 of the 12 signs and has the greatest number of election losses, 16."
Uh, hey, watch it! ... I'm a Scorpio, that is if you don't take into account Ophiucus, in whose sign the sun actually sits on my birthday. (I've never seen that adequately explained, but never mind).

Zodiac’s methodology accurately predicted in January that John McCain would be the Republican nominee, so there you have it.

All the more reason for us to get back to calculating more important things, like the spiritual Sons of Belial lurking behind the Number of the Beast.

Come to think of it, Idaho is the last place anyone would think of finding the Antichrist. Or vodka, for that matter.

Hmm.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Obama Zodiac, Christian humor, satire, humor

Friday, April 11, 2008

Gird up your loins with the 'Carb-Load Seder'

Jewish marathon runners are in a quandary. This year, Passover begins just two days before the Boston Marathon April 21. The holiday's strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can't eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

For Jonah Pesner, the answer is matzoh, the unleavened bread used in the Passover ceremony. Besides matzoh, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare "carb-load seder" the night before the race.

The "carb-load seder" might strike some as strange, but it sort of fits with the historical circumstances of the Exodus. The Jews had to high-tail it out of Egypt into the desert carrying all their stuff. Things went well until they hit "the wall," which for marathoners occurs about 20 miles into the race when the carbs run out, glycogen runs low, and the body starts burning fat instead.

For the Israelites, "hitting the wall" meant running into the Red Sea with Pharoah's chariots closing in fast. Something had to give. For Moses & Co. it took a miracle. For some of the Jewish marathoners, it simply means breaking the religious restrictions. One Jewish runner says he'll eat some oatmeal and maybe a bagel on race day.

"It's not like I've been perfect in my religious beliefs. I'm beyond that," he said.

The question he needs to ask is: What would Charleton Heston do?


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Matzoh Marathon, Christian humor, satire, humor

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Et ne nos inducas in sputum

This week's religious "people person" award will have to go to Rev. Dr. Tom Ambrose, 61, of St. Mary and St. Michael Church in Trumpington, England. The vicar was accused of spitting on his parishioners and exhibiting "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty behavior."

The vicar denies the spitting part. "I do not spit and I never swear," he insists.

Apparently, Rev. Ambrose upset older parishioners by using slide shows instead of sermons and using so much incense in church that some worshippers felt sick. He was relieved of his post by his bishop after a tribunal investigated the charges.

As the good vicar should have realized, slide shows are just the first step on a slippery slope toward flash animations, youtube videos and God knows what else. Glad they caught it so early.

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: The Spitting Vicar, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Damn, dirty apes!

In memory of Charleton Heston's passing, I'd like to reprise a guest column contributed by Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, that ran last summer.

"There is no contradiction between faith and science... true science. I think the sacred scrolls are clear on this. It may be more true now than ever. Man is a menace. A walking pestilence."
Dr. Zaius' entire article "Intelligent Design, Live Earth and the Shaping of Simian Behavior" can be read here.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Charleton Heston, Christian humor, satire, humor

Monday, April 7, 2008

The use and misuse of numerology

The BBC ran a story today examining how entrepreneurs are using numerology to launch new businesses and further their careers:

When Samantha Roddick, the daughter of Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick, launched her business, she crunched numbers with her bank manager, her accountant - and her numerologist.

"When I pulled the whole team together, I just got everybody's numerology done," she says, describing how she used numbers to organize her new staff into efficient working groups.

"And then you just look at the overall numbers and how they interact. Ones are very ambitious, hard-working, career-centric, money-driven, Threes are very creative, as are Sixes. Fives, they're very apt to a lot of change."
But what about all those Six-Six-Sixes? That's something the article didn't discuss. A closer looks reveals the sad underbelly of this marriage of business and mysticism.

Face it, in most offices you'll find some employees whose names add up to 666, the dreaded Number of the Beast. In an office environment in which numerology reigns, these employees are shunted off to dark cubicles, given make-work tasks and kept off the upward career ladder. No one sits with them in the corporate cafeteria. Often they're even denied coffee privileges.

As a longtime leader in rooting out possible candidates for The Beast, I'd like to take a stand today for the little guy, the employee who is being discriminated against just because his or her numerological equivalent just doesn't pass muster according to some self-appointed, mystical number-crunching numerologist.

Numerology is a delicate affair. Circumstances, mood, current events, LDL cholesterol levels, all must coalesce in a carefully choreographed pattern, a dance enlivened by the music of the spheres. Employing this hidden power as a blunt instrument for financial gain is not only a travesty, but grounds for a lawsuit under the Equal Employment Opportunity laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. (Numerological evaluation is implied).

And just who or what is this "BBC " anyway? I decided to turn the tables to test my hunch that this is just a "front" organization masking a ploy to bring in the worldwide reign of the Antichrist.

Flipping on the Beastie Machine, I entered the broadcaster's well known moniker, "BBC." It totaled only 104, nowhere near 666, the Number of the Beast. I admit, I was disappointed.

Then I tried the BBC's full name, "British Broadcasting Corporation." That was way too high at 1,863.

Next I pulled random associations out of the air: BBC News:, 460; BBC World Service, 960; the BBC's weird, foreign-looking domain url, bbc.co.uk, 230. And the BBC's dangerously one-worldy slogan, "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation," 1,248.

This was going nowhere. But nothing worth doing is easy.

After a sleepless night of continuous nose-to-the-grindstone sleuthing, I paused. Was I ready to accept that my powers of interpretation were finally in decline? Could I confront retirement, rocking on the front porch with a cup of tea, watching helplessly as a world disintegrated before my eyes?

I went back to work with a new resolve.

"Heinous BBC Trust" produced an interesting twist-- 999, (i.e. 666, but flipped, perhaps indicative of a world turned upside down under the onslaught of the Beast).

Several hours later, I felt I was seriously closing in on my goal.

"Fiendish, unholy BBC" produced a total of 664-- tantalizingly close.

"Ghastly, bad, unholy and vile BBC" was a tad too much at 668.

Finally, I typed in "Spitefully bad BBC" and the Beastie Machine, almost exhausted, produced a sluggish whirring sound. The numbers popped up: 6-6-5.

Consulting my logarithmic tables, old sea charts and time-zone maps, I hoped that with a little tweaking, the numbers would actually add up to 666. And I was right!

Brilliant! as they say in old country. I've whacked off another sleazy noggin of the multi-headed Beast of Revelation.

But we should have known, really. What kind of TV network charges you a license fee just to own a television set?

A Communist one, that's what.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: BBC Numerology, Christian humor, satire, humor

Friday, April 4, 2008

Battlestar Gospelactica?


The first episode of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is titled "He that Believeth in Me" and was promoted with a publicity photo from the SciFi Channel that recreates Leonardo DaVinci's The Last Supper masterpiece. What the frak is that all about?

I plan to find out tonight.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Beastie: Sticky-tab Spirituality

Followers of a spiritual group called Summum want to add their "Seven Aphorisms" to a Ten Commandments display in a park in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

Summum (as in summum bonum, Latin for "the greatest good") adheres to the teachings of the Gnostic Gospels and promotes... mummification. They believe Moses received two sets of stone tablets on Mount Sinai -- one inscribed with the usual Commandments, the other containing seven divine principles: psychokinesis (the power of the mind to control objects), correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender.

OK. This seems not only superfluous but tacky. Besides making a total of 17 things, a number that has no spiritual significance in any discipline, it might open the floodgates to sticky-tab spirituality. Next we'll be seeing extra blessings tacked on to the Sermon on the Mount, like "Blessed are the mummies, for they shall leave well enough alone" or some such thing. Really, do we want constant tinkering with our established cliches?

In a previous post, I rambled on about launching my mortal remains to the lunar surface. The Summum group has a more down-to-earth approach--mummification. The practice "assists the progression of one's essence," they claim.

"Some decisions are too important to leave to anyone else. Modern mummification is available through funeral homes worldwide. Please have your local funeral home contact us to begin making arrangements."
There's even a creepy "kids" version of the website featuring a character called Mummy Bear.
"In 26,486 BCE, a small, fluffy, bear is born in Atlantis. His name is Ankh Amon...."
Children are supposed follow his adventures and learn the origins of mummification. (The label on the bear's downloaded image says his name is actually Verne. Hmm).

All this got me to thinking--could the Antichrist himself be lurking within these web pages? I wheeled out the Beastie Machine, poured a cup of java and started entering cryptic phrases to send through the gematria converter.

"Bad old Mummy Bear Verne" totaled only 634, not quite 666, the fabled Number of the Beast mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

The rest of the afternoon was spent crossing off adjectives that didn't quite capture the slippery, demonic little furball. (I guess his essence kept progressing or something).

Finally I typed in "bad dead zombie Mummy Bear Verne" and punched the red button. The gears screeched as the numbers popped up in the viewscreen: "6-6-7."

Close enough for the Acrostic Gospels. Summum Bonum, ipso facto, ex libris, ecce homo.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Summum Ten Commandments, Christian humor, satire, humor

Friday, March 28, 2008

Fly me to the Moon

I just can't wait to die.

Celestis, Inc., a company that pioneered the sending of cremated remains into suborbital space on rockets, said it would start a service to the surface of the moon that could begin as early as next year.

Depositing one gram of your ashes on the moon will cost $9,995.

"About 1,000 capsules containing ashes will be launched on the first lunar mission, expected in late 2009 or early 2010, and about 5,000 on future flights," according to a Reuters report.

"The moon is a special place," Celestis president Charles Chafer said, adding a half dozen people had already signed up for the service. "For many people, it would be a romantic notion to look up into the sky and see the moon and know that your mom or dad or loved one is up there memorialized."

Yeah, there are several people I'd like to see up there right now.

But, seriously, I can't "off" myself just to get my ashes on the moon. That would be wrong.

If I had a touch of asthma, though, I could use the allergy drug Singulair, which is suspected of inducing depression and suicide.

And if finding that out depresses me, I could take one of the popular antidepressants on the market, which the FDA has warned can cause suicidal thoughts, the very thing it's supposed to prevent.

There are plenty of reasons to leave this planet. The new episodes of Lost are being discussed around the office water cooler again. The Democratic convention this summer should be about as amusing as an episode of Itchy and Scratchy. The antarctic ice shelf is splitting off into the sea. Britney Spears is due for another round of rehab.

Yeah, it would all look much better in a powdered state from the cold lunar surface.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Ashes On The Moon, Christian humor, satire, humor

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Holy War, The Game

Sometimes you find something that so succinctly encapsulates a concept that no further information is required.

Take for instance the human tendency to hate, a passion that has brought us jihads, crusades and witch hunts through the ages. Cartoonist Christopher Stetson Wilson likes to take on philosophical ideas in his weekly strip The Invisible Life of Poet. He's nailed it this time.

The cartoon is titled "Holy War, The Game."


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: The Invisible Life Of Poet, Christian humor, satire, humor

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Trust the Force this Easter

Sorry for the delay in posting. I just got out of the hospital after a kidney stone attack. (!) It got me to thinking about the impermanence of life, the sensitivity of the human waste removal system and the sad state of our nation's health care establishment.

So, to get my mind off THAT, I searched for the perfect antidote and found it: The Skywalker Last Supper mosaic. Just in time for Easter.

According to the Gizmodo blog, computer nerd Avinash Arora used an Asus M2N SLI motherboard with AMD 5400+ X2, eVGA nVidia Geforce 8800GTS 640MB and 2GB DDR2 Corsair XMS memory and took Eric Deschamps' Star Wars Last Supper painting done for Giant Magazine and created a mosaic using 69,550 images from all the Star Wars movies.

With a magnifying glass, you can just make out Jar-Jar Binks over in the corner there, taking the sop from Luke.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Skywalker Last Supper, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Any candidates claiming to be funniest?

This is primary voting day in Texas, where I live. I went to the local library where I've always voted, but noticed it said "Democratic Polling Place." I wanted to vote in the Republican primary.

"Oh, you can only vote Democratic here," a nice lady told me. She mentioned a Baptist church some blocks away as the Republican polling place.

I've never seen nor heard of this Baptist church in my neighborhood, and I'm a Baptist from way back. I didn't have time to look for it either-- I had to get to work.

As I drove away without being able to exercise my constitutional right, I wondered: "Is this one of those double-triple-cross schemes cooked up by Karl Rove to make it seem that there aren't any Republicans left... and then they can jump out and ambush the other party in November? Sure, that must be it. What would we do without Karl, always one step ahead of everybody."

Over the years, I've agonized over the correct position on Christians in politics. I've carefully considered the scriptures recounting the choosing of David as king by the Israelite tribes, Paul's teaching on authority in Romans 13, Jesus' parables on helping the poor and the apocalyptic viewpoint on government as Beast from the book of Revelation. I even parsed the political commentary of both Jim Wallis and Richard Land--a thankless job.

In the end, I decided to vote for the funniest candidate.

George Bush got my vote last time, and that worked out really well. Everyone can agree that over the course of his presidency Bush has brought laughter and comic relief to millions.

This year I felt Obama and Clinton were both taking themselves way too seriously. Huckabee, although he has a great delivery and can banter easily with the talk show hosts, takes himself even more seriously than Obama and Clinton, if you scratch beneath the surface. (Of course, Ron Paul would have been the funniest looking candidate, but that's not my standard).

So I'm voting for McCain. On the Straight Talk Express bus, he tells the same jokes over and over, and laughs at 'em every time. He's always poking fun at his staff, the press and himself. Back in the Hanoi Hilton, he even took satirical potshots at his torturers as they beat him to a pulp and broke his arms.

We need a president who can stare into the face of adversity with a wink and a bad joke. Like Davey Crockett, John McCain could probably win a grinning contest with a grizzly bear.

But now I feel like the joke's on me. I can't find my polling place. Primary day is slipping away. Thank goodness, voting for the funniest candidate allows you to keep your expectations low. Humor, after all, is relative.

Even if I never get to vote for him, I plan on going down to join McCain at his victory party at Dallas' Fairmont Hotel tonight. I just want to shake his hand.

But I've always been partial to slapstick. So I'll be wearing my coonskin cap and carrying a concealed hand buzzer. The other celebrants probably all used a different political criteria than funniness. They may not get the joke.

I'll let you know how long it takes 'em to throw me out on my butt.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: McCain Primary Voting, Christian humor, satire, humor

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Beastie: Hillary back on the radar

The headlines were awash in apocalypse:
Widespread power outages in South Florida,
Norway Formally Opens Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault,
Scientists Predict When World Will End,
Starbucks to close all U.S. stores for three hours.

Shocking.

Politics continued to boil. Not yet recovered from the McCain thing, the public was treated to press scrutiny of a questionable land deal by Barack Obama, and a campaign donation from a British-Iraqi billionaire.

Reports from the world of science were even more disturbing. Arrogant, secular humanist technicians actually filmed an electron circling an atom! (These presumptuous "men of science" are no better than nano-scale paparazzi in my book. Curiosity killed Schrödinger's cat, guys--remember?)

I'm sure it's taking every bit of restraint God can muster not to vaporize us with a large lightning bolt, and I feel his pain.

Indeed, as I stared down into the swirling red depths of my half-consumed bottle of fizzy IZZE pomegranate juice--my only vice and itself a sign of my own increasing self-indulgence-- it seemed the world was teetering on the very cusp of oblivion.

I had been hesitating for months to employ the Weekly Beastie machine on political suspects. My previous investigation of John McCain and Barack Obama had left a bad taste in my mouth and a thin film of crud on Beastie that came off only with tincture of tea tree oil and elbow grease.

Still, the urgency of the times and the lateness of the hour were driving me to feed Hillary Clinton's name through a similar "trial-by-Beastie."

Luckily, the Beastie Machine was cleaned, serviced, tanned and rested. I could not, however, completely remove the irritating anti-creationist fish-with-legs bumper sticker somebody stuck on its rear end during our New Year's Eve party. I hate that kind of sophomoric humor.

Anyway, with trepidation and great reticence I typed in the simple words, "Hillary Clinton" and spun the start-up crank. A shudder, a chug and then nothing. I tried it several more times, but Beastie was choking on Hillary Clinton.

Going in a completely different mental direction, I typed in "I am woman hear me roar." This time I got a response, but the number was ridiculously high-- 791, nowhere near 666, the legendary number of The Beast from the Book of Revelation.

"Bilhillary Clinton" was closer at 576. Entering her real given middle name, "Hillary Diane Clinton," inched the number somewhat higher, to 598.

On a wild guess I typed in "Wellesley H. D. Clinton." The machine let loose a series of mysterious sounds not unlike the notes signaling the extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and then spat out the number: 664.

This is usually close enough to call immediately, but the seriousness of the endeavor-- we were, after all, challenging the forces of wickedness and hideous perversity-- led me to try one more test.

Remembering a derogatory slang term from a Rush Limbaugh program I heard one time, I tapped in the phrase "Alpha Female Hilldebeastie." The machine whistled as the numbers appeared: 665.

After factoring in for stagflation and the percentage drop in the stock market ticker that day, the message was unmistakable. A hair's breadth away from 666 is close enough for theological work.

Hillary was back on my radar.


FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Hillary Clinton 666, Christian humor, satire, humor

Saturday, February 23, 2008

McCain, nip this rumor in the bud!

As I was driving home from work the other day, dodging falling satellite debris and listening to NPR, I heard a rumor that I hope was a mistake.

Since Condoleeza Rice has said she definitely won't serve as John McCain's black/woman running mate, some fool suggested the name of charismatic and successful televangelist Creflo Dollar.

Sure, I can understand the desperate reasoning. On the surface it looks like a brilliant political move.

One: He's black.
Two: He shores up Religious Right support.
Three: He's a capitalist, free market entrepreneur.
Four: McCain's fundraising problems would be over. Forever.

McCain has been bickering with Barack Obama about their pledge to use the federal matching funds program. Then McCain sort of decided to opt out himself. Creflo Dollar would make that whole argument go away. There would be no need for fund raising at all. The money would just pour in from heaven.

Example: Dollar's Georgia headquarters church building, the $18 million World Dome, was constructed without any bank financing at all.

Having Creflo's super-hot wife Taffy (and her 2008 Virtuous Woman Conference) on the ticket would blunt questions about McCain's relationship with a possibly non-virtuous female lobbyist.

Dollar's ministry is undergirded by more than a million "partners" who support him with a monthly "pledge." This army of supporters would impressively swell the numbers of McCain's campaign worker bees for the duration of the campaign.

No longer would McCain get in trouble for flying around on lobbyists' airplanes. Dollar has two jets, a Gulfstream-3 valued at $5.3 million and a Gates LearJet valued at nearly $1 million, to put at the service of the campaign. They're sort of magical planes, too. "Every time I step out of my plane, devils better get outta the way," Dollar says. That could come in handy during a campaign filled with dirty tricks and innuendo.

McCain could even borrow Dollar's vapid ministry slogan, "Solutions for Change, Understanding for Life," undercutting Obama's own vapid campaign theme.

McCain might also want to incorporate some of Creflo Dollar's theological ideas. The Prosperity Gospel philosophy might allow big government to shrink, with most of the funding for the poor taken over by God himself rather than draining government coffers. "The Bible makes it so very clear," Dollar told Business Week magazine. "Preach the Gospel to the poor. What's the Gospel to the poor? You don't have to be poor anymore! "

Now that's a proposal that could cut across racial, class and party lines.

This would also solve a few problems for Creflo Dollar. Sen. Grassley can't really investigate you for tax fraud if you're Vice President of the United States.

But think about the downside. Dollar is a sleazy, money-grubbing heretic who sucks the life out of the most vulnerable in society.

(Come to think about it, he'd probably make a better politician than pastor).

Let's just hope cooler heads prevail.

(Thanks to Jeff Johansen for his keen political insight and help on this article)

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: McCain Creflo Dollar, Christian humor, satire, humor

Friday, February 22, 2008

How rood! Crucifixion nails for sale?

Three of the nails used to crucify Christ are for sale on the French eBay site for 10,000 euros.

If genuine, these suckers have done a lot of traveling.

Tradition says the Holy Nails were discovered by Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, about 300 years after the Crucifixion. ( See Skippy at the Kimbell: Where's the Cross?).

According to legend, one nail was tossed into the Adriatic to calm a storm. The other two were used by the Empress to protect her son. One was placed in his crown and another formed into a bridle for his horse, bringing to pass what had been written by Zecharias the Prophet: "In that day that which is upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord" (Zechariah 14:20).

But that's just one of several traditions about the nails.

The French seem to have been the busiest collectors of the nails over the centuries, so it makes sense that they would be on sale at the French eBay site.

A Holy Nail was embedded in the celebrated Lance of Longinus, also known as the the Spear of Destiny, which by tradition pierced the side of Christ. Its tip was said to contain a nail or nails from the crucified Christ's hands and feet. Charlemagne kept the tip of the lance in the hilt of his famous sword, Joyeuse, according to The Song of Roland. The lance was an object of political and religious authority in Europe for more than a thousand years. It has also inspired several mediocre novels and even a video game.

Hitler put so much stock in the spear's occult powers that he made special arrangements to take possession of it when he gained control of the Schatzkammer imperial treasury in Vienna. At the end of the war, it was recovered and returned there by Gen. Patton. You can see the lance on display there today.

So now, apparently, the Holy Nails are all for sale... on eBay?

I'll start the bidding off with a used foil gum wrapper, but my "buyer rating" isn't very high. I'm sure Pope Benedict has a guy with an unlimited Visa card whose only job is to scan eBay all day long looking for bargain relics just like these.

He's probably already snapped 'em up.

(via Boing Boing)

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Holy Nails Lance Of Longinus, Christian humor, satire, humor

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Crowns of thorns and jewels, Part III

(This post appeared first as Skippy at the Kimbell: Where's the Cross? at www.wittenburgdoor.com)

The first Christian "art" must have been the fish symbol that believers could trace in the sand to covertly identify themselves and then immediately erase. (This reminds me of the intricate sand drawings by Tibetan monks, which are also eventually erased. Both show the transitory nature of this world).

Over the centuries Christian art evolved into mysterious icons, then magnificent cathedrals, and currently has exploded into a variety of media including Contemporary Christian Rock, Veggie Tales, fish bumper stickers and Thomas Kinkade.

One question grew as I walked through the Kimbell Art Museum's excellent exhibit Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art . Where was the cross?

You have to navigate through several rooms filled with early Christian art before you find what has become the dominant symbol of Christianity. The earliest Christians apparently were still freaked out by crucifixion. After all, it was a death that could happen to any of them, and it was horrible, excruciatingly painful and usually reserved only for political rebels and the basest criminals. The cross evoked shame. Using the cross as a public symbol would have been a public relations disaster for the earliest believers.

Still, the cross was used by early Christians occasionally in seals and certain manuscripts. Tertullian mentions marking the cross on the forehead as a talisman against evil, but this also could have been taken from Ezekiel Chapter 9, in which a "mark" (the Hebrew letter tau or a cross) is written on believers' foreheads as protection against God's wrath.

Constantine had seen a "cross of light" in his vision before the battle of the Milvian Bridge-- the chi-rho symbol of a cross with the top bent round. He put the sign on all his soldiers' shields. After he became emperor, he ordered construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where his mother Helena "discovered" the true cross under some rubble. In 341 A.D Constantine outlawed crucifixion as a means of execution. The horror of the cross began to fade in the popular imagination. Soon, it was off to the races. Only a few years later, manuscripts begin to record the veneration of the cross.

By the end of the fourth century the paradoxical "jeweled cross" became popular among those who could afford it. This contradiction would have boggled the mind of a first-century follower of Jesus.

Christ hanging on the cross was not depicted until the end of the fifth century, but even then he was triumphant, with eyes open and no sign of suffering. It wasn't until the ninth century that Byzantine art began to show Christ with eyes closed, possibly reflecting a theological focus on the mystery of his death.

One of the last pieces displayed in the Kimbell's exhibit is the Reliquary Cross of Justin II dating from about 570 A.D. Made with gilded silver over a bronze core, with inlaid gems, this is veritable amusement park of religious symbolism. Precious gems dangle from the arms of the cross. On the back are engraved images of the Emperor Justin and his wife Sophia with arms raised in praise.


Why all the razzle-dazzle? According to the accompanying notes on the piece, "Under threat from barbarian invaders, the emperor was sending a message that he would provide protection with Christ's own authority."

Thus a new art form was born that in future centuries would be honed to perfection--rulers using Christian symbols to send political messages.

All I could think of when I saw this jeweled cross in the center of the room was the Trinity Broadcasting set of Paul and Jan Crouch and the phrase "over the top."

This piece is described as "reliquary" because inside is a compartment meant to contain a piece of the true cross. The compartment is now empty.

Could the Kimbell exhibit's centerpiece be a comment on the state of modern Christianity-- all razzle-dazzle and no cross?

Let's hope not.


Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art runs through the end of March.

(I discussed the exhibit previously in Part I and Part II).

FurlStumbleUponTechnorati Tags: Kimbell Cross of Justin, Christian humor, satire, humor