The Pub

Disillusioned Twenty Somethings

I was recently contacted by a girl named Sarah.  Sarah is working on a book that will be released by Zondervan in 2006 about twenty something Christians that have been disillusioned by the Institutional Church.  (Yes I still consider myself a Christian).  I will be giving her some feedback on the book and she is looking for others to do the same.  I know there are some here that meet that description, (twenty something, disillusioned, etc.) and if you are interested in helping Sarah out then please drop her an email at sarah@portalministries.org.   I think she is also looking for feedback from people that aren't twenty somethings.  So all of you oldies out there should feel free to drop her a line as well. 

The Big Day

I've edited my last post to include the actual Google bomb towards the bottom of the post.  Oops.  I also edited out the expletives.  I decided that as much as I want these folks to see how what they do makes people like me feel, I do want to start a conversation with them and some people just don't respond well to harsh language. 

Also, tomorrow is my big day.  I take my physical for the state pension board.  If I pass that then I will begin working for the fire dept on July the 11th.  I may even start as early as the 4th.  Send some good vibes this way if you happen to think about it. I'll find out the results the very next day so I will let every know what happens.  Whether you care of not, which you should if you were a good person. :)

"Sixty Second Theodicy" and my first google bomb

So good news!  After thousands of years of agonizing over the Problem of Evil the human race finally can rest assured that it is no problem at all.  The best part about this whole answer is that you can be convinced in 60 seconds or less.  Let's all bow our heads and thank God for the good Christian Apologists at Stand to Reason who have provided not only this quick epistemological fix to Theodicy, but who also have quick fixes for such mind boggling questions as "Do Animals Have Souls", "Can Computers See: If yes, does this defeat Christianity", and their easy answer to the incompatibility of Homosexuals and Christianity in their compassionately titled article, "Fags Doom Nation".

I've had about all I can take of this pseudo-intellectual garbage.  No wonder most of the non-christian world don't take Christians seriously.  We have people like this that are giving smart people a bad name. 

I'm not even going to address the latter articles I mentioned.  I think the titles speak for themselves.  But "60 Second Theodicy" (SST) makes me want to vomit all over myself.  They don't even get the Problem of Evil right in the first place.  Then they act like it is an attack on the Christian God.  Uhh, NO!  The Problem of evil is a problem for God!  Any God! and more specifically for the classical conception of God.  Why the hell do so many Christians think that the rest of the world is waging war against them?  Go into any conservative church, listen to a conservative Christian Republican in our congress or watch 30 seconds of Dub-ya talking about the rest of the world and all you ever hear is war, fear, and how we need to crush it. 

There solution is to get people to say that we have to be able to choose evil in order to have moral freedom.  But the way they start is to get people to decide if we should have laws against homosexual behavior, premarital sex, or abortion.  You change the question depending on how liberal someone is.  Your supposed to get them to say no so that you can prove the supeirority of moral freedom which requires evil to exist.  To make no mention of natural evil.   But the problem is that these aren't even moral issues for a lot of people.  Why not say Murder, or Genocide, or Torture, or Equality.  Because then the whole plan takes more than sixty seconds and you can't manipulate the conversation (which was indirectly expressed as a goal in the preface to SST).  So right off the bat the only way to move on is to not acknowledge the complexity of the issue at hand.  Which is not surprising given the simple mindedness of so many church folks I've met, or more specifically the people who want to control those church people. 

Their conclusions either didn't follow logically from their premises or their premises were so severely flawed that the only thing to do is to get rid of them forever and pass laws making it illegal for people to use such ridiculous irresponsible and un-critical premises.  The title should be changed from "Sixty Second Theodicy" to "Sixty Second Non-Sequitar" or "Sixty Second Violation of Every Logical Fallacy Known to Man".  Yeah, I like that.  It pretty much sums up the whole web site. 

I can't stand people simplifying issues like this.  Not only is it "intellectually irresponsible" but I also find it to be arrogant to no end to pretend to take issues that involve so much of peoples lives and solve them in a few paragraphs or God forbid, sixty seconds.  I'm so pissed about this site that I think I will start my own little Google bomb, if anyone wishes to help.

The Bomb will be:  Stand to Reason, or Christian Apologetics

For the Engines:  Stand To Reason, Christian Apologetics, Problem of Evil, Sixty Second Theodicy, STR. 

Christian Aversions

I've been watching a television series called "Rescue Me".  It's Denis Leary's new show about FDNY post 9/11.  It's an amazing, hard nosed, show about a group of firefighters and their emotional/relational struggles after the bombings.  Anyway, they play some really great music on the show.  One of the episodes has a song by a guy I had not previously heard of named Tyrone Wells.  It was a really great song and I went to I Tunes to download it and started checking his info.  Turns out he is a Christian Music artist and is currently working on some praise music.  The problem, for me, is that whenever I hear the word "Christian" attached as an adjective to anything, I'm automatically suspicious and, in many cases, biased against whatever it happens to be.  i.e. Christian books, Christian concerts, Christian music, Christian camps, Christian porn, or whatever. 

I went on a date this last Saturday with a girl that is a Southern Baptist and her family goes to a conservative SB church.  This bugs the hell out of me even though I think she will turn out to be a pretty cool chick. 

Part of this tendency is harmful.  It automatically puts people into categories a priori.  Which I hate being done to me because it means they don't have hope in me any longer and automatically assume they know all about me which defeats any attempt at dialogue.  But I think the same tendency is also very informative in that it speaks to something I perceive to be wrong with our use of "Christian" jargon and ideology. 

Whenever someone places "Christian" as an adjective on to any other idea or subject matter the usual usage is to try and say that whatever this "Christian" thing happens to be is somehow superior to anything else of its kind.  Because it's "Christian" it is better.  The reason I don't like this is that it discounts the rest of the known world as a priori inferior to some indiscriminate Christian ideology. 

I would like to know why Christians aren't concerned about what actually is best instead of what is supposedly Christian.  If all truth is God's truth then shouldn't it be the case that whatever is best should be the view that Christians hold or the thing that Christians participate in.  If we all operated under this rule of finding out what is best first, we wouldn't have so much shitty "Christian" stuff.  We wouldn't have so many drones walking around that can't think for themselves, and most importantly, I wouldn't have so much angst about whether or not to listen to "Christian" music or dating a girl with a "Christian" family.  Because as it stands now, in my mind at least, "Christian" doesn't mean "Better or Best" it means "Probably shitty or half-assed and intellectually irresponsible".

Church People and My Hatred of Them

So I am sitting in a Coffee Shop minding my own business.  I found a quiet little room where I didn't have to be bothered and I could Internet in Peace.  When in comes about six people in my quiet room being loud.  One guy asks, "Is anybody in here?" He looks right at me and evidently I am completely translucent because he concluded that there wasn't anyone in the room and in they storm.  They are conference goers from Rhema Bible Church (One of the largest most annoying churches in the world) and decided to barge in on my world so they could work through their handouts before tomorrow.  They have been laughing and talking excessively loud for about an hour.  What's worse is that they all look like they should be on TBN.  Big blond or brown hair with colorful shirts and long ugly skirts.  The husbands are all balding and all dressed in collared shirts and slacks.  They are all middle to older aged white people and strike me as easily middle class.  I want them dead.  I don't want to kill them but I wouldn't mind if they just sort of disappeared into the abyss of nothingness never to return.  The world would be better without them, I'm sure of it. I thought about saying something but I decided that would just make me more angry.  So I'll just sit here, say nothing, and hope that, if God exists and God is Just, that She will smite these motherfuckers on their way home.  Perhaps death is too good for them.  Maybe what they need is a case of genital herpes and chronic hemorrhoids for the next 20 years.  I don't expect them to make it past twenty, because after disease sets in all of these "healed by faith" people seem to lose their faith and die.  So I would be covered.  I figure I'll get about 30 years of purgatory for this.  But to be honest, It might be worth every second. 

Just kidding... No, no I'm not.

Theologian test, Blaahh!

I took this test just now to find out what Theologian I was most like.  Here is the results.

                                                                                            

You scored as Paul Tillich.
Paul Tillich sought to express Christian truth in an existentialist way. Our primary problem is alienation from the ground of our being, so that our life is meaningless. Great for psychotherapy, but no longer very influential.
Jürgen Moltmann 53% Paul Tillich 53% Charles Finney 40% John Calvin 33% Karl Barth 27% Augustine 27% Friedrich Schleiermacher 20% Martin Luther 13% Jonathan Edwards 13% Anselm 7%

A couple of things here.  1) Fuck this test and 2) Why couldn't Socrates have been on here?  I would have been okay if I was most like him. They got Anselm, and Socrates was far cooler than Anselm. 

Random Friday Episode #4

- I bought a new pair of shorts today from Aeropostale and I love them.  I haven't bought new short in probably four years.  I'll probably wear them every day for the rest of summer.  Sounds gross, but if you saw how cool they were you would understand.

- Life is looking up recently.  Nothing major has changed but I've felt a lot of better.  I guess I'm just tired of acting like I've already lost.

- The West Wing is an amazing show.  I just finished the first season in like a week.  Kudos to Cheek for getting me hooked on Aaron Sorkin with Sports Night.  The guy is a fucking genius.  I have three whole seasons of West Wing to see.  Life is good.

- Saw Cinderella Man the other night.  Definitely worth the watch.  I'm going to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith tonight.  Why? Because Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the two best looking people on the planet and even if nothing else is good, it will be good to look at them for an hour and half or so. 

- Finally I would like to thank everyone for their encouragement recently.  Whether it was through a comment or an email, they have all been very uplifting.  I consider you all to be friends.  Thank you.

p.s. Bush is still a cock-face.

Gambling Therapy

Yesterday was a new day.  I mourned the loss of my friend and struggled with whether or not I wish to continue to live like God exists and cares.  It was a tough couple of days.  But yesterday was new, and life moves on whether we like it or not. 

I've started playing poker with some friends on Weds. nights.  It's only a five dollar buy in so I never lose much money and in fact I think I've come out on top over all.  I won again last night for the second time.  Good feeling to leave with more than you came with.  But I don't really even care about the money that much.  I love the excitement of learning all of the intricacies of the game.  The fellowship and playfulness that accompanies good people and fermented beverages and the good hearted competition from everyone at the table makes for a rather therapeutic experience.  None of us are really any good. But that doesn't stop us from upping our raises, going all in and bluffing, as terrible as we are at it, till we are blue in the face.  We keep a quote sheet every night for whenever someone says something that, when taken out of context, sounds completely ridiculous.  Like, "If you pull on it and pee your pants, you should let it go".  A little jewel from last night.  Nobody cheats, nobody yells, nobody gets mad, nobody gossips or backbites.  There is no animosity at Poker Night.  What a beautiful, beautiful thing gambling can be!

How appropriate

Perhaps it is only a strange coincident.  Perhaps it is my just reward for my doubts and struggles.  Perhaps it is only the way things work in this broken world.  But all the same, the events this morning are a profound and sad follow up to my letter yesterday. 

I come to Panera Bread Co. almost every day to drink tea or coffee and use the internet.  I was on a first name basis with many of them and like all of them.  There was this one girl named Amanda.  Amanda was as sweet and as lovely as any person that I've ever known.  She had beautiful, long, flowing red hair, a smile that made you feel like she had known you her whole life and appreciated everything about you.  I did not know her extremely well, but I appreciate her very much.  We had talked several times and there were so many amazing qualities about her that I think I even found myself having a mini-crush on her.  Amanda had just graduated from high school and was excited about here future, even though she didn't have grandiose plans, she was excited about it all the same and talking to her made you excited for her.  I hadn't seen her the last several days and wondered what was going on, but just figured that she was on vacation or something.  But today I come into Panera and many of the employees were dressed in rather nice clothes.  I thought they might be having an employee meeting because a whole section of the store had been closed off for them.  I was standing in line for my tea and saw the manager putting a large picture of Amanda in a frame that had her name tag resting in front of the picture.  There were roses sitting behind the picture.  My heart sank.  I knew what had happened but was trying frantically to think of some other reason her picture and those flowers might be there.  I ordered my tea and asked Mike, another of my favorites here, what happened.  She was on her way to work a few days ago and was killed in a car accident.  Today they were having a small memorial for her here at work. 

I will never see her again.  Nobody will ever enjoy her smile or her welcoming spirit again.  The world is a worse place today because she is not here.  Where was God in all of this mess?  I don't know, probably nowhere.  But I do believe this, that we live in such a broken and desparate world. 

I am sad today.

A Letter for God

Dear God,

I haven't talk to you in a while.  Mainly because I have Philosophical issues with your existence.  Even if you do exist I have a hard time understanding how you can hear what I'm saying or know what I'm thinking.  All the same, here it goes.

I've missed you.  At least I've missed whatever it was I thought I had.  I can't remember when it happened, or even why.  But at some point along the way you disappointed me.  I remember believing everything I thought you were saying and knew, just knew that you had my best in mind.  That you could do ANYTHING and that EVERYTHING in my life was working for my good and the good of those around me.  But not anymore, not today at least.  I'm not sure if it was a great work in philosophy or if it was a quiet moment of desperate loneliness, but in an instant the great monument and rock that my faith was built on began to crack and fall apart and you didn't do a damn thing about it.  You just watched while I struggled and while I decided that either you are playing a cruel joke on me, or that you are weak, or you can't do anything about it, or you weren't there.  The worst part was I couldn't ever figure it out.  My world of presuppositions stands in ruins and I'm mad, NO,  I'm FUCKING FURIOUS AT YOU!  The whole idea of you is a big god-damned farce isn't it?!  I'm still trying to figure out why I wasted so many years of my life building my world around you.  What a colossal waste of time.  Now I'm nowhere.  Just moving from day to day trying to figure out what's right and wrong and I'm getting very tired.  I hope this isn't it.  I hope you don't really hate me.  I hope with all my life that this isn't all there is, that we aren't desperately alone. 

"Ask and you shall receive" you said.  So I'm asking you now to respond to me.  I don't think I'm alone in this one God.  I'm pretty damn sure there are thousands and thousands who would like just a word or two from you, if you can.  Cause I'm all prayed up, all believed out, and so very, very tired of walking in the darkness and being afraid.

For what its worth
Adam