Each year the Nashville Scene runs a contest for readers to submit phrases which complete the sentence “You are so Nashville if…” Past winners have included.
…1993 Your church congregation is referred to as �the studio audience.�
…1997 You�ve checked your flower bed for Janet March.
You get the picture.
Anyways I was browsing the web and came across this picture and it reminded me of how you could complete the sentence…You are so Mt. Juliet if….
…Your church basketball team wins a tournament and you don’t recognize half of the players. In laymans terms they could be called ringers?
(Actually I didn’t even know we had a men’s basketball team)
Jesus Camp
I recently rented “Jesus Camp,” which is a documentary about a Pentecostal summer youth camp in North Dakota.
During the first few minutes of the movie, Becky Fischer, a fourth generation Pentecostal preacher had my attention. Somehow she lost all creditibility when she started speaking in tongues (and encouraged the kids to do likewise). For the rest of the time with the movie, she and her supporters seemed little more than a bad joke gone wrong.
Critics of the movie charge that Fischer is indoctrinating the kids with a political message way too early. I would tend to agree with them. Preteens don’t need to worry about overturning Roe vs. Wade. And yet throughout the movie they are fed a meal of the Christian Right’s politics with an extra helping of emotionalism thrown in for good measure.
Being familiar with the Christian Right movement, none of the actions in the movie were surprising to me. I had heard or seen this before.
During the movie it was awkward to see a young girl proselyze by making cold calls to people she met on the street. I think her heart was right, but she was going about it the wrong way.
Conversions are made primarily through close relationships and not through door knocking.
The Most Hated Family in America
Lately I’ve been intriged by a report from the BBC reporter Louis Theroux in regards to his time spent with the Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church – the same group which pickets American soldiers’ funerals among other things.
The report can be found on YouTube here (Warning: Strong Language and plenty of hate)
The Most Hated Family in America (Part 1)
(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7)
Several things spring to mind while watching this video. The first is how these people have been feed so much hatred by “Gramps” that they themselves say things that you wouldn’t normally hear in today’s vernacular. The words “split hell wide open,” come to mind, both said by Pastor Phelps in regards to the pending death of Billy Graham and by one of the parishiners in regards to Princess Diana’s death.
These people are taught to hate, as evidenced when the reporter interviews the children of the church. How sad it was to see the grand-daughter almost realize how absurd it is to laugh at someone who they believe is going to hell. How sad it is again to hear of how, even from childhood onwards, that she was shunned by the outside world due to their extremist views that she feels she must take on to please her family and her God (see Part 7).
And yet it was surprising to find that this family, apart from the pickets, is relatively stable and polite to Louis the interviewer.
Rick Warren and Anno Domini
Apparently Rick Warren, author of “A Prupose Driven Life,” doesn’t know when A.D. started:
“But the truth is Easter is the greatest significant event in history. In fact it split history into A.D. and B.C. Even people who don’t believe that Jesus Christ died and was resurrected for our sins use Easter as a reference point every single day of their life. When you write a date…April 3rd…April 4th, 2007, you’re using this. So what’s the focal point? It’s Easter because God came to Earth and split history into A.D. and B.C. It’s the most significant event.”
Rick Warren on “What Would Jesus Really Do?” CNN, April 8th, 2007.
No, Mr. Warren. Anno Domini (A.D.) by definition started when Jesus was born, not on Easter. This is pretty basic stuff for your average Christian scholar. Amazing that Warren doesn’t know otherwise.
OCD
“He lost his mind,” he told me. That’s what happened to him, when I asked about a mutual friend. It was somewhat blunt and to the point. Later I found it was more of less succuming to the debilitating effects of obssesive compulsive disorder. Lost his job as a minister because of it.
So at what point does these rituals become a disorder? Possibly when it starts interferring with everyday life. For example, all of us think about if we locked the door or turned off the stove when we leave our houses. I ponder about whether or not I closed the garage door. Sometimes I merely go back and check if I closed it. Deep down I know I closed it, but just to be sure I go back and check on occasion.
An OCD person would have to check it several times just to be sure. Contamination is another big fear of OCD people. Germs. Washing rituals. Overwhelming thoughts of fear and dread if things aren’t done properly.
A little bit of me says that one has to be slightly OCD in order to work my job, after all it does have to do with detail. And for the most part I’m concerned about the details. And unfortunately I’ve been known to take my work home with me, if not actually doing it, but playing out work scenerioes in my mind. I know it isn’t healthy, after all…all work and no play makes Jack Jeff a dull boy.
The good thing is that OCD can be treated, with meds and counseling. So there is hope for our mutual friend. He didn’t necessarily “loose his mind.” That’s an overused term anyways. I think he just had a temporary mental breakdown. I for one can understand what he might be feeling. And I want to wish him the best. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Pain
I don’t know if it is fate or coincidence, but the book I’m teaching from for the 5th and 6h graders is more for me than it is for them.
We’ve studied depression, forgiveness, negative vs. positive. Tonight’s lesson was on emotional pain. While I know that most of these chapters, the kids really don’t understand yet….somehow I’ve found that by studying it seemingly I’ve seen how I can apply it to my own life.
I think we’ve all been hurt emotionally at some point and by some degree at one time or another. Some of us let others hurt us more than what we should. The problem happens when we want to move on with our life but somehow that hurt always plays a role in where we are at certain places.
Men and Depression
Newsflash: Men get depression too. If you had asked me that just 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have known what depression was. I never knew that anxiety was just a part of depression. We hear so much about the blues..a case of the Mundays. But sometimes we don’t hear about the anxiety and fatigue that goes along with it.
It’s the anxiety that kills us. The feeling of being trapped, with nothing you can do to get out of a bad situation. From going through depression I know why people choose suicide to alleviate the pain. I understand why some people may seem grumpy, aloof in some aspects. It’s not that they think they’re better than you. It’s that they don’t think they have anything worthwhile to say.
It is good to know that other people are experiencing the same thing that I went through…and in some aspects am still going through. At the point I began to feel depressed I thought it was extreme stress. I never knew there was a word to what I was feeling.
Things are getting better. I am able to carry on normal life, for the most part, and smile. There are things that I fear. Loosing my job is one of the things I fear. Not that there is much chance of that at this point. I’m busier than ever. For the most part, my job is my life. I am told I need to take more vacation, yet I’m not sure what I would do without it, and I dread going back into the office and working twice as hard getting things back to normal.
“Are you planning any big trips this year?” I get asked that question alot. And yet, sometimes I feel a sense that I can’t ever venture too far from my home into an unknown area. This coming from someone who’s been to China twice, Canada and El Salvador once respectively. How does one change from being a fairly happy-go-lucky…for the most part….to a reserved cautious quiet individual? I’ve been there, done that. And I can’t explain it. Part depression and part growing up, I guess.
Men’s Retreat
Did the Biblical character Job do anything particularly special? That was one of the themes at Center Chapel’s men’s retreat which I attended this weekend. As it turns out Job really didn’t do much. However it was what he endured that made him memorable. Sometimes we might be Jobs ourselves, not necessarily doing something great, but instead enduring hardships and staying faithful.
I found myself in the equivalent of a men’s business meeting during the last group session of the retreat. I was able to keep myself quiet from saying “At Mt. Juliet we do it this way….” Still I guess it is not unusual to know that even at Center Chapel the problems are the same. Parking problems. Attendance. Time on the services. The problems are not unique to Center Chapel. We’ve faced and are facing the same problems at Mt. Juliet.
It was somewhat like a homecoming of sort. I had been to the group lodge at Cedars of Lebanon State Park before. My very first time was my first church retreat. 5th grade.
Camp Cleanup Day
I spent the greater part of Saturday visiting Taylor Christian Camp during their Spring cleanup day. Initually my job was to take pictures of improvements to the camp (after all I do maintain the camp webpage).
Going back to camp always brings back great memories. While we were cleaning, another adult remarked about how many lives this camp has touched over the years. I’m one of those who has been touched by my experiences at camp. Even though my experience at camp started in 1991 when I was 16, my memories will last a lifetime. There have been so many friendships garnered, spiritual lives made stronger, and overall goodness which come from a week at camp. Many many times I have come back from camp being spiritually renewed, with enough positive feeling to last a lifetime.
Marching Band
Last night I dreamt about something I hadn’t done for 14 years. I dreamt about being in the high school marching band. Somehow in this dream I was on a band trip. Our band director was somewhat of a disciplinarian, and in this episode he disciplined us for talking and disrepect by sending us back to the buses on a band trip.
I was more of less a placeholder in band. I held an instrument, played occassionally, but never practiced. I always got A’s in band (as everyone else did, but I’m not so sure I deserved it). I’m pretty sure my less than stellar effort was overlooked because my parents were so involved in the band fundraising activities.
In the dream I stood up to our band director. This is in contrast to real life, I never found myself standing up to our band director (as I never stood up against any other teachers). He demanded hard work, but was fair. I never walked away from band class thinking I had been done wrong. Band was just an activity that took up much of my time in the Fall. The reason why I quit was that I wanted more free time. I think myself and a group of my friends collectively decided to quit at the end of our junior year. And yet there was no waivering in it. Once I had made the decision that was it. I never wished to go back.
That senior year of high school served as almost as a transition period between high school days of band to the college days. I’d consider those sophomore and junior years in band as being almost identical. My senior year was different, as it is different for most everyone else also.