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!

• Furl • StumbleUpon • Technorati Tags: Macrumors Kim, Christian humor, satire, humor

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."

• Furl • StumbleUpon • Technorati Tags: Gospel For Asia, Christian humor, satire, humor

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?

• Furl • StumbleUpon • Technorati Tags: bicycle homeless, Christian humor, satire, humor