A Tale of Two Stories.

Story 1: A pastor takes his family and church on a mission trip to Bolivia. On the mission trip his 12 year old daughter is abducted. They spend the coming days, months, and years looking for her before they finally give up hope and go back to the States. Fifteen years later the pastor receives word that his daughter is alive and living with her captor. The pastor learns that from the time of her abduction until the present time she has been raped by her captor and is now pregnant. The pastor boards a plane to Bolivia to find and rescue his daughter. The pastor arrives and after much searching finds his pregnant daughter and her captor. In what can only be described as a miraculous move, the pastor begins to “witness” to the man who was raping and holding his daughter captive. The man, remorseful for his many sins, “gives his heart to Jesus” and begins to “follow Christ”. The daughter gives birth to their child and the family lives happily ever after.

This is the story that I heard a few days ago. It is a story that you would not find uncommon should you walk into any evangelical church on a Sunday morning. It is a story that would bring tears, emotions, and Amens. It is a story that would be used as a tool during an “invitation” to get people to turn from their wicked ways and turn towards God. It is a story that would be used as a tool to teach people about forgiveness, sacrifice, mercy, and ultimate love.

For me, it is a story that repulses and angers me. For a variety of reasons, the least of which would be that I’m almost 100% sure it is not true, yet was presented in such a fasion as if it were. But mainly because it is a story that most evangelicals would have no problem backing and applauding. They would say that we all need to be like the pastor. And be willing to forgive in extreme circumstances. To look past the “sin” and see the “sinner”. To forgive and love like Jesus forgave and loved us.

My problem is that while this story would be put on a pedestal and worshiped, Story 2 would not receive near so kind of a treatment.

Story 2: A pastor takes his family and church on a mission trip to Afghanistan. On the mission trip the entire group of people get abducted by Islamic extremists and taken into the foothills of northern Afghanistan. The extremists begin broadcasting their treatment of the “infidels” over the web. They are blindfolded, they are gagged, and their are cuts and bruises on their face. In the background one of the extremists burns an American flag and another warns that we will not only kill these people in our possession but we will attack again and again until there are no more infidels. Fifteen years go by without any acknowledgment to their health or whereabouts until a member of the original mission team somehow escapes and finds his way to “allies”. The “allies” immediately get him in touch with the White House and a major cable news outlet. As reporters are flown out in droves to meet him and the story blows up, the man who escaped tells the world all the awful things that the Islamic extremists did to him and his friends and how he watched them behead one of his friends and torture everyone else. But the good news is that he knows where they and that he can lead us to them.

Why is that Story 1 would evoke immense respect for the forgiver amongst evangelicals. But in Story 2 most evangelicals would fly into a bloodlust state of mind and want nothing more than to torture and kill the extremists. Why is that when taken in the context of individual forgiveness evangelicals, while not always modeling it, at least respect and applaud stories like Story 1? Yet when America gets brought into the equation in Story 2, nationalistic pride trumps civic, social, and spiritual themes of forgiveness and civility?

When I heard Story 1 this week I was troubled with the apparent divorce from the ideals of the Christian faith when America enters the equation. Forgiveness, love, charity, and mercy go out the door and a new kind of venegance hopped up on steroids and red, white, and blue takes over.

What is it inside of us that longs to forgive and believe in a grander story on a personal level? What is it inside of us that pushes back and resists the longing to forgive and believe in a grander story on communal or universal level?

Surprise, Surprise: Churchgoers More Likely To Support Torture.

So the one group of people who had their very own “hero” tortured are more likely to support torture of their enemies. Honestly, I don’t blame people with no faith background for being pro-torture. They have no turn the other cheek mantra to live by. Why not be pissed and retaliate when someone punches you in the face? But Christians . . .?

Turn the other cheek. Do not lift your sword. Beat your sword into plowshares. Love your enemies.

The very tenets of their faith and the example of the Christ is that of creative non-violence. Yet the leading propoents of torture in today’s society is Christians.

Oh what an odd upside down world we live in.

More Fun.

Well I’m Back.

At least long enough that I deemed it worthy to do a slight redesign on the site. While I may have forsaken Facebook and Twitter and entered into a wide open world of paradise past the shiny gates of a glorious new trend, there may still be some life left in my blogging.

I think the reason I got so bored with blogging was that it seemed like the majority of my blogging audience resonated with what I said, i.e. were on the same page as me. Blogging became less of a theological and imaginative stretching process and more of a validation of what I felt was true. Bottom line, I was preaching to the choir.

So in order to reestablish the blogging order back to what it used to be for me, I hope to turn it back into a stretching forum. Where I can tease out my thoughts and push those who might read away from the comfortable. That sounds awfully pretentious but then again I’ve never shied away from lofty expectations.

Cheers. And I’m glad to be back.

Further Context.

Has social media failed or rather have we failed at using it properly?

I’ll give you the fact that much of my reaction is probably an overreaction. With me, it always is. But in a world in which Ashton Kutcher can become a king of an empire in which he has only been a citizen of for barely a month and a medium in which he has close to a million and a half followers but in turn only follows less than 150 himself . . . there is something terribly wrong.

Social media is no longer a conversation for the small. And not to rehash what I’ve already gotten off my chest, but empire validation is not an enterprise that I want to invest much time in.

I am of the personal belief that blogging, podcasting, Tweeting, and Facebook can all be profitable tools for community if used rightly and justly. But I am also of the belief that they can also be sewers of downward spiraling muck. When we spend more time and energy thinking about our next post or next Tweet moreso than we think about those who are in the same room with us . . . in that very moment our media has failed us and left us disconnected despite our hyperconnectivity.

I’m not advocating living in a hole without technology. Nor am I promoting the abolishment of all social media tools. But when the tools become weapons of propaganda and/or weapons of frivolous decadence, they should be beaten into plowshares.

Just to be clear about my position perched high on this white horse, I think there are many great forums and mediums out there that many fine and great people are utilizing to their fullest extent as community binders and conversational waterholes. For them the tools are still plowshares. Formative and connecting by nature. To these ends, I applaud them and their Tweets, blurbs, and commentary. Use it well. Use it wisely.

To Oprah and your horde of trendy, shallow followers and all others cut out of the same mold, I urge you to beware. Take caution. Beware of the calm numbing of the cute little icons with their gradient fills. Beware of a world in which you have more Facebook friends than where flesh and blood actually lives. Beware the day when what you do becomes only useful insofaras it serves as fodder and ammunition for your online image crafting.

Beware it’s subtlety. There is no substitute for the real life.

Perhaps, it is in this vein that I may rediscover my blogging voice.

Inspiration: Sharp, my cucumbers breaking ground, & Dispatch – Bang, Bang