YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN

When a complete stranger can take something like this...


And make it into something like this.

Got an email this morning giving suggestions for Churches and how they should react to the epidemic/pandemic/plague known as "Swine Flu" or medically as H1N1 Flu. I'd love to know your thoughts. Here's an expert:

Specific recommendations for the faith-based community include:

• Avoid large gatherings for special events, not including weekly scheduled worship services.
• Send out information to congregant or parishioners that if they are ill or are experiencing symptoms, please do not attend worship services.
• Post information or have information available on swine influenza and ways to protect their families (fact sheet included with this information).
• Separate cups and individual wafers should be used for Lord's Supper or Communion.
• Consider suspending "Welcome" time where attendees are invited to shake hands or hug/embrace.
• Post information on outside doors of changes to service procedures (i.e., no shaking hands or hugging during "Welcome" time).

I want to keep this short so here's the main question. Has culture gotten to the point where it solves our struggle of trying to contextualize Scripture to accommodate the culture? That's the question. Here's what I'm asking.

It has been a popular method of Christian culture to copy, emulate, steal, lift, flat out ripoff certain cultural characteristics and place a Christian spin on them. See this, this, this, this, and this for examples. Doug Wilson said, "Whatever the world can do, we can do five years later and not as well." (I have no idea who Doug Wilson is but I thought it was a good quote).

While I would agree that not all of this technique is bad and that I've used similar methods myself... what are we going to do when our culture gets so bad that we are forced to be creative ourselves. Certain aspects of culture are already there but by in large we still have a good pool to pull from.

I doubt you'll see a Youth Camp this summer entitled "My Life Would Suck Without You..." or a sermon series named "10 reasons Why I Kissed a Girl and Liked it" (unless of course it was a men's series on pornography).

Maybe I'm reading this too black/white. I'm not one who typically likes to compartmentalize my Christianity into secular vs sacred (although I am guilty from time to time). However, is the "secular" culture solving the age-old contextualization problem for us? Is the culture getting so outrageous that we can no longer steal its ideas without condemning ourselves simultaneously?

Just asking...

Read THIS in order to make sense of this blog.



Welcome to McBaby may I take your order?

Yes... I'll have the Number 2. Oh wait, not the Number 2, that sounds messy. I'll have the Number 7 with extra sweetness and a side of loveable please.

Coming right up!

This Summer if you are a teenager in Sanger, TX you have no excuse for being bored. Yep here's what we have to offer.

Champions Camp (6 weeks long), Girls Basketball Camp (1 week long), Boys Basketball Camp (1 week long), Volleyball Camp (1 week long), Football Camp (1 week long), Cheerleading Camp (1 week long), Choir camp (1 week long), etc, etc. etc.

Remember when sports were played during the school year? Remember when your summers were filled with watching Bob Ross paint pictures and wishing you could drive. Summers were packed with late nights of playing Mario Brothers and if you were lucky a trip to the city pool (I was never so lucky). But now all we offer kids is a relentless barrage of sports camps often overlapping and typically very expensive. How do we get by with this unsanctioned "off-season" training anyway?

But here is my question. With the addition of ALL these sports camps intended to train the atheletes in skill, speed, and performance... WHY ARE WE NOT SEEING MORE STARS ARISE?

Think about it, I don't see any more amazing athletes coming out of our high schools than I did 10-15 years ago. You would think that as much as we push our kids to excel in sports that we would see a drastic influx of gifted ball players and talented speed demons. But the output is relatively the same as it has been.

Do you see it as an advantage? Cause I sure don't.

You know what? I LOVE THIS PLACE. But here's the thing. I don't love it because it is culturally cool, or trendy, or because I have a Mac, or because all cool ministry-type people use it as a second office, or because they do great things for the countries where their beans come from, or any of those reasons. 

Read the story here... 

The other day I posted a very interesting blog entitled "Uncalled-for Rant" you should read it. However, I was told that my images of the indoor Ski Lift did not show up...

Here they are.

You know what I'm getting tired of? Emails from people trying to prove to me that I should hate Arabs because they are making my gasoline prices so stinking high. Quit sending me this American Supremacist propaganda people! Here's a quick rundown of how the emails go. I get multiple pictures of lavish Arabs mansions, Silver-clad cars, or even billion dollar investments like indoor ski lodges. Then they say, "no wonder gas is $3.00 a gallon over here." As if to say because these sheiks are living excessively I should wage war against the entire Muslim nation. 

Anyone see anything wrong with this picture? Does this girl look like she needs to lose belly fat?

Here's a hint: How do I keep crap like this from infiltrating the minds of my girls and becoming normative? Shouldn't they have put the patch on a belly like... i don't know... mine? Because the message is clear. 1) Wear this patch and you'll look like this chick. Or 2) Even with a body like this you still need an edge so put this patch on ladies.

Oh, while we're at it... can we include in the patch medicine that will

• Allow me to go 13 years without a period
• Keep me from having any of those what-do-you-call-them?... kids
• Curb my appetite for chocolate
• Reduce my addiction to cigarettes
• Give me one cup size bigger chest
• Release a man-hungry pheromone
• Give me better parking spots at the mall
• And increase my attention span to 5 or more minutes?

Dang it... stuff like this makes me mad!

Can someone help me chew on this?

When did obscurity become a prerequisite for creativity? I see it all over these days… in songs, in poetry, even in art. Why is the obvious no longer poetic, artistic, and creative? Why must good poetry be veiled and elusive?

This of course is in contradiction to popular movies though. Our movies today show everything: sex, gore, violence, the answers, etc. There is no mystery left in them. Yet write a song, pen a script, and in order for it to be successful it must be ambiguous to say the least.

Which leads us here: For something to be creative and artistic, must its mass audience be able to interpret or simply recognise its obscurity by the author?

Bottom Line: If I don't know what a poem means, if I can't interpret what it is saying, if I don't see it or the author more clearly, then is it good poetry? Is it a good song? Is it a good movie? Etc.