You Don't Know What You Missed.

DramaQueen’s spring recital is finally over, and I am so damned happy about it. It was the longest recital in world history, and possibly the history of the galaxy.

The school put a lot of effort into the program, and they have the best of intentions and I’m sure their choices are heartfelt. But. There’s always a “but” for me, born of my natural cynicism and aversion to most contemporary expressions of Christian culture. I have this snotty opinion that however fair the intention, bad art is just bad, and we aren’t doing Christianity any favors by training children to deliver pabulum to the masses.

First, the story was as pious and moralistic as something from an old McGuffey Reader: Girl wants doll in the woodcarver’s shop. Girl’s mother lets her earn the money through extra chores. Girl is very diligent, not neglecting her work for pay. Girl saves money and buys doll. But, lo, she spies a poor beggar woman, and returns the doll so that she can give the money to the beggar. Meanwhile, the one griping, mean-spirited person in the story learns an Important Lesson and vows to change her ways. A group of angels watch and rejoice. Meanwhile the beggar uses the money to score some heroin and shoots up. Well, no, but that probably would have improved the story.

Now, imagine that dragged out over three hours, with dance numbers folded into every possible plot crevice.

Keep in mind that this story was set in a sort of fairy-tale ye olde Alpine village. Now, imagine them folding in a hip-hop number as well as jazz.

And then imagine them all done to contemporary Christian music.

Afterwards, Dear Husband said that we are not sending her to another faith-based arts school - something I never expected to hear from him. He does surprise me sometimes. Recently when we were pondering him homeschooling DramaQueen, he said that he refused to use a religious curriculum. That’s the sort of pronouncement I would happily make, but I’m half heretic and he’s straight-line orthodox. Well, close, anyway. At least compared to me.

DramaQueen will be pleased. She told me that she was very tired of doing plays about God. Bless her.

Merging onto the Highway to Hell, or Happy Easter, Ya'll!

I’m not feeling very Easter-y. This year the whole narrative arc leaves me cold. I think I’ve been so wrapped around in religiosity that I want to rip off the garments. I have no capacity for the emotional cataclysms people seem to feel when they think about God and Christ. I had no sudden conversion, no breaking down in tears at the awesomeness of it all. I find it almost impossible to worship in environments where people sing songs like “My God is an Awesome God” (I mean, blech) or wave their hands about (“lifting holy hands,” which is a phrase I would like to banish entirely from everyone’s speech as one of the most overused expressions ever). I don’t feel like I’m worshiping anything. I feel like I’m at a concert and might as well flick a Bic while I’m at it. This double-mindedness is about to drive me nuts. I can’t just let it go or put in on Jesus or whatever—pick an evangelical phrase about how I’m supposed to behave.

I am a natural skeptic. I’m not cold, but I find it hard to suborn logic to feeling. I so often feel like a fraud among Christians that I think I ought to just hang out my sign as an agnostic. After all, if you don’t buy half of what the church tells you, most of Christendom will pronounce you an agnostic or heretic anyway. Take the crucifixion. There is no way in hell (and perhaps that’s where I’m headed) that I really believe that God demands a blood sacrifice as part of the divine justice system. He’s supposed to be the supreme deity and not Moloch, right?

Second, I seriously doubt that you go to hell if you don’t say the magic Jesus prayer, that God set it up that way just because he wanted to and he can do anything, including being a petty tyrant. And I do get tired of hearing how God’s ways are not our ways, as if we are simply supposed to swallow that God’s ways are better than ours when we can bloody well see that our ideals at least are more humane and loving than consigning people to the roaster for all eternity. God has to be more moral than George W. Bush, surely.

Third, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t like evangelism. Yes, it seems to have come a long way since the days of just knocking on doors and harassing people on the street, but it’s so agenda-based. Is that really what Christ meant by the Great Commission? Tell people they need to believe in Jesus? Now we’ve started wrapping this up in “outreach” and good deeds and community action, and seeker friendly churches (crap music, cappuccino and no dress code). The agenda’s still there. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many frakking books to tell people that it’s good to form relationships and meet the needs of the community. Someone’s making a lot of money out of relational evangelism. Relational evangelism means be friendly with them until you can haul them into the fold, add their tithes to the building fund, indoctrinate them and then launch them into the heathen waters as relational bait to lure others. That’s called being winsome.

To completely empty love and works of the agenda is called “Social Gospel,” which I’m told is extremely bad for you, because it doesn’t forcefully enough shove a dose of Jesus down the throat of the lost. No totting up souls on a scorecard. No carefully schooling seekers that there’s Jesus and then there’s the highway to hell and calling that “loving your neighbor”. No stoking your personal sanctification engine.

I’ve got to this point and I don’t know why I’m so annoyed. It isn’t as if there are no Christians out there doing good without an agenda. There are plenty. There are plenty at my church. They do a hell of a lot more than I do. I just have a head full of religious catchphrases that I hear day in and day out, and trite expressions about Christ and why He came and what it means. Impatience with the same old outpourings. Impatience with my own inability to “get” it. Impatience with the noise and franticness of contemporary worship. Impatience with always being careful about what I say.

I’m just plain tired of Christianity.

Selling Our Soul at the Crossroads

Do you know who Louis Giglio is? In our Sunday School class we’ve been watching snippets from the movie Expelled along with some video of Giglio performing preaching. I guess the point of these sessions has been to reassure all of us that evolution can’t take our God away from us. At least that’s how it’s felt to me—a big warm hug and it’ll all be okay as long as there’s Intelligent Design. Huddle round the wagons, folks, the atheists are coming. So we hear some scientists speak vaguely about a first cause and how nothing so complex could just come about spontaneously and the big bang as God shooting the starting gun, and then we listen to Giglio wax poetic over the wonders of the universe.

I find this sad and problematic.

First, I think Intelligent Design is a lot of hooey. There’s nothing wrong with evolutionary theory. It works just fine. Why can’t we get over the debunking of a 7-day creation? It’s like we feel the need to stand heroically in front of God, protecting Him from the light sabers of science.

I don’t see how it makes any difference to science if scientists acknowledge God. Does it make any difference to my pipes if my plumber is Christian? So what if we say God started it all? God started it all and then, well, ah, oh, evolution carries on. Or, no, I guess we have to have God tweak it all the way along. Who knows why we had dinosaurs. One of God’s fun experiments, I guess. Maybe they existed just so we could have fossil fuel. Not very far-thinking, though. And hominids, what were they all about? Did God love Neanderthals? Gee, we’re back to the same bloody questions we had in the first place.

On to Giglio. Maybe he’s a fabulous guy. Maybe he’s an amazing preacher and loves God a whole bunch. Me, I tend to distrust preachers who fill auditoriums and sell tickets to their worship services. Giglio loves the universe. Its beauty astounds him. That’s great. He’s got lots of beautiful photos. The universe is beautiful. God’s creation is astounding.

Then he starts talking about something called laminen, a protein molecule that “holds us together,” as he puts it. He shows us a diagram of the molecule. It’s in the shape of a cross. Lots of ooos and aaaahs. Then he shows us a picture of laminen taken by an electron microscope. There’s the cross again, a bit squished and toppled. More hushed admiration.

Alarm bells are going off in my head. Is this guy telling me that God built us out of crosses just so he could make a point gazillions of years later about Jesus dying on a cross? Is that what he’s saying? That God would do something so ridiculously pointlessly stupid just so we could stare slack-jawed at a photo as if we were watching a freak show? Does laminen even really look like this?

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t look much like a cross at all, actually. Or no more than about a billion other cross-shaped things in the universe. If a cross (as we know the cross) was even what Jesus was nailed to. I don’t think anyone drew a diagram at the time.

Next he shows us photos of constellations. Lots of wowie zowie isn’t this just fab-u talk. He has a letter from an astronaut that acknowledges God (take that, you atheists!). I decide to pass over the “eye of God” comments. I give Giglio the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t think the center of the constellation is literally God’s eye. We see a photo of the furthest constellation that’s been photographed. “Now I’m going to take you even further out,” he says.

Oh, no. He’s going to show us a picture of the crucifixion, isn’t he? He’s going to be that obvious, that banal. Yep. He beams and nods sagely as the audience laps it up. But that’s not all. For the grand finale we get to see a special photo of a constellation, with, you guessed it, the shape of the cross in the center.

Groan.

Evangelism has sold its soul to the scientific method but still can’t tell the difference between metaphor and reality.

Do we really think that if we pile up enough scientists who believe in God it will erase the doubts and fears raised by what science reveals? If we see enough crosses in the world, will we finally be certain that God’s eye is watching us?

Ring of Fire

I finally saw Fireproof this weekend. I have resisted seeing it because I didn’t like Facing the Giants, and What’s-His-Name who plays the lead irritates me. All that stuff about not kissing anyone but his wife, even for a movie. Sheesh. That seems like one of the advantages of being an actor, getting to kiss lots of people, maybe even of both genders. But I shouldn’t make fun of him for that. I guess. Maybe. He has principles and just because they make me giggle doesn’t mean they aren’t serious business for him, and rather noble and all that.

Anyway, Dear Husband got hold of a copy and it was clear there was no avoiding watching it at some point. I enjoyed it much more than I expected. The acting was pretty good, and where it was amateurish it seemed churlish to make a fuss about it. Here were all these people working for a film they believed in, and gosh darn it giving it their best shot, and I ended up rooting for the poorest actors just because they were trying. There were some parts that were quite humorous, although I wasn’t sure what they were doing there except adding some levity, and I’ll concede that some levity was much needed. The firefighter who gave a little performance in front of a mirror should have his own sitcom.

Fireproof (and Facing the Giants) was filmed in my hometown. I find that not a little amazing. Albany has to be one of the most boring places on the face of the earth. At least that’s how it was for me. I’m a big city girl. I can’t stand to be that far away from a cultural center. Albany isn’t small enough to be considered a small town, big enough to be a true city (not enough books, education and culture) or rural enough to be the country. It’s a bit like an extended suburb with elements of city and country scattered over and around it. It was interesting to see it in film. It’s very flat there. Pancake flat. Lots of trees hanging with Spanish moss. Lots of gnats (The final shot is of a wedding cake, sitting out in the open. My thought was: if that were truly sitting out in the open in Albany GA, it would be covered with insect life and half melted.). I hated that place. A lot. So I’m glad to see that Sherwood Baptist Church has sown a little acre of creativity. If I ever go back to visit, perhaps I’ll see the Good Life City with new eyes. Or at least without the feeling that I could be snared by its sticky web and stuck there forever, gnawed on my giant spiders. Ahem.

For the most part the movie avoided squirm inducing Christian-y dialogue. I was so thankful that What’s-His-Name didn’t go all gushy about Jesus that I could have phoned him up and praised him for his restraint. There was one scene that made me roll my eyes, when the Fount of All Wisdom father talks to What’s-His-Name about forgiving however much you are rejected, and he ends up standing right under a cross. That conveniently placed cross, ready to glow in the light of grace and a beautiful sunset. Barf. Then we get the usual blood atonement speech which miraculously convinces What’s-His-Name that he needs salvation. Just like that. The kind of little talk that would have made me run screaming for the blessed hills of atheism. That’s just me, half heathen that I am.

But like I said, I was so thankful that What’s-His-Name didn’t start talking like a reject from TBN that I could have kissed him, if kissing were allowed. He didn’t run to the firehouse and babble excitedly to everyone who didn’t want to listen, or institute regular prayer meetings at the ol fire station, or go home and announce his conversion to his wife and drag her off to church where she too sees the light and is baptized on the spot, start handing out tracts at the local bus station, or make himself into an obnoxious idiot in any way. He even managed to look like a regular person instead of a Godly Man. Amen.

The message of the movie was great. I had nothing to complain of there. Love is an action and a choice. The situations were believable. He was an utter dick and he finally came to understand his essential dickishness through a series of deliberate actions he had no desire to undertake or any real hope of completing successfully. Christ will work a change in you, and you don’t have to sound like a bad evangelical preacher to convey that.

Now, a little confession. I have to admit that for much of the movie I kept thinking that What’s-His-Name was looking kinda hot. I seem to remember him looking like an utter goofball, but he was definitely easy on the eyes in this film, lean and wiry, hair cut close, revealing, much to my surprise, a rather nice face. The man who played his friend and fellow firefighter was also pleasing in all aspects of his being. I’m not sure that’s what the director and writers had in mind. I am probably very bad.

Oh, yeah. Kirk Cameron. Why can I never remember his name?

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd.

I wonder if I’m doing okay? Sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m that in touch with myself. Maybe I could send myself an email. My thoughts have been soggy. When we passed the anniversary marker for Firecracker’s surgery, and when I remember it, my stomach clenches its fist and looks balefully at me. What were you thinking? To put your child through that? And for what? Nothing!

I feel death wafting around me. Perhaps I will die this year. I don’t want to die. I’m really opposed to it. My nephew, my friend. My friend. Is it easier to meet death deliberately instead of waiting for it to snare you? Why did she feel that dying was better than living? I miss her. And what about me? I think of estrogen. Perhaps I should have gone on tomoxifin. Maybe estrogen is the enemy. I’m overweight, so I’m even producing more of it. I’m practically swimming in it. Perhaps it’s wreaking havoc even as I sit here so indecisive. Perhaps I’ll die from indecisiveness. And then there’s Dear Husband. Whenever he has a flair up I wish I could peek into his bladder and make sure all the cells are behaving, no proliferation. Everyone’s health panics me. What is going on that I cannot see? Death and his demons, where are the creeping?

It’s amazing what plastic surgeons can do with reconstruction, it really is. But my new breast will always be a…a… construction. It is better than cancer, but it is still this alien sculpture perching on my chest. How I wish they could have done the TRAM. I’m still sad about that. I’ve never intended to have another child, but the knowledge that I could never nurse one if I did makes me cry. Isn’t that weird?

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not doing what I was intended to do. The problem is that I have no idea what I was intended to do. You know, that idea that God has a plan with a place for everything and everything in its place. Do I even believe that? What do I believe? How can I believe? When I think of death, it seems the most preposterous suggestion that we would go somewhere after. It pretty much looks like a blank wall: bye bye. But there are these stories, this scripture that says otherwise. I find it hard to swallow.

I find it hard to chew on most things Christian these days. The claims, the glib prayers, the churchy stuff, the inspirational books, the enthusiasm, the dull dull tumbling of words. The bright shininess and maudlin spectacle of it all. The music. Oh god the awful sameness and bouncy bouncy of it. Sometimes it seems that if I jumped in the river it would come up to my ankles, so shallow the water is full of silt.

And then there are these longings that I don’t believe in: to home school my children, or at least to be a SAHM there when school is over, when the bus drops them off. The mom who can visit the class with the cupcakes and a story to read, who may actually someday meet the other mothers whose children my daughters spend more time with than with me. It seems so out of balance, but who am I kidding? My salary is essential and always will be, even after we pay off the cars and the student loan. Besides, I can’t organize my own time. I’m useless at it. How can I organize anyone else’s?

There, I’ve written it out of me for now. Tomorrow Firecracker is having a birthday party. I’m afraid no one will come. That happened one year, or nearly. Only one child showed up. I’ve tried calling, and the moms either don’t speak English or act as if they are reluctant to admit that the live in this universe, the universe with the invitation, my child, their child, and their common classroom.

More on my adventures in dyspepsia later. The title of this post, btw, is from Black Adder, and it gave me the day's first laugh. If you aren't familiar with Black Adder, you need to correct that deficiency right away before it becomes a way of life.

Head for the Exit

Our workplace is offering a screening of Fireproof, that new moving staring Kirk Cameron, an actor I generally like to avoid. I’m wondering—do I go? Do I have to go to avoid everyone wondering why I didn’t go? Will they be asking questions about it later? I think I have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that looks even remotely like a vehicle for a Christian-y message. And by Christian-y, I don’t mean that it addresses the pressing issues that Christians should be concerned about, such as poverty, hunger, oppression and the like—a film like Amazing Grace, for instance. I mean the kind of film that addresses whether or not you’ve said the magic Jesus words. Remember that beyond-hideous Left Behind, also staring the underwhelming Kirk Cameron? Shudder.

Fireproof is from the same folks who did Facing the Giants, which I thought surprisingly well acted and well-produced but utterly predictable and bland. In fact, I don’t think I can remember the storyline now. Everyone gets saved and we get to go home. Anyway, both these movies were filmed in my hometown, which astounds me to no end. I detested the place and couldn’t wait to get the bleep out. It was boring, backward and bigoted. Either things have changed or the place has been digitally enhanced.

Fireproof is about a firefighter whose marriage is falling apart. His parents (newly saved, of course, and just oozing wisdom) challenge him to some sort of endurance test of making loving gestures to his wife (Yeah, that part sounds a bit like a Hallmark movie). Which of course will inevitably lead to him seeing the vasty emptiness in himself and saying the magic Jesus words. We can all wipe away a few tears and go home.

My jaundiced view makes me look like a total s**t, because here are these good people making a warmhearted film with the best of intentions. They even have some flair and talent. Dear Husband would say that I’m weak on the necessity of salvation. I wouldn’t say that, although I think subtlety has a lot going for it, unless they just want to preach to the choir. It’s the cynics like me who need God, but we are the ones who are going to run screaming from this sort of film, however good the production values.

When a film (or any form of art) has an agenda, it seems to me that the tail is wagging the dog. To me these films smack of art slapped over some Campus Crusade tracts.