Is This Site Read?

I have had only one comment in 5 weeks, so wonder if the effort is worth it to try and post as often as possible.

Let me know.  Else, I my free up a little time for myself and my weary fingers…

Imitation of Life

Imitation of Life

So many things are so weird these days.

People say one thing and completely mean something different.  Products make claims and yet the opposite is so often reality.  TV shows need laugh tracks because, hey, they are not in the least funny or the producers think we are too stupid to recognize humor.  Nothing in life seems to be as it should or was.

I witnessed the most interesting conflict the other night.  In a grocery store, two strangers got into a fight over whether an organic banana was really organic or not.  Since exportation of bananas requires spraying to kill tarantulas, I think we can definitely say no banana is “organic”.  Unless, you have been bitten lately reaching for one.  Yah, we are talking about poisonous tarantulas here.

We can not even agree on what organic means.  To the producers, whom want to charge more from a niche market, it means whatever they can get away with.  To the consumer, it could mean almost anything – as these two shoppers demonstrated.

Which brings me to this little item I saw in Seattle, Vegetarian Haggis!  Now, I happen to like haggis.  To those of you going, euwey!, try to remember haggis is nothing more than lamb sausage.  Maybe not as ground up as your average hotdog but contents are probably about the same.

So, how can you have this?  It contains no animal products at all, and yet haggis is completely based on lamb and oatmeal.  No, I am not going to buy this much less open it to find out what it looks like.  I am having visions of tofu poisoning…..

Artificial is what our society has become.  Even something which has had a definition for hundreds, if not thousands of years, is now classified as a vegetable product because it has been stripped of all meat products.  

Organic may only mean processed without salt any more!  Humor is whatever is loathsome and crude – the ruder the better.

I feel sorry for the youth of today - everything is artificial.  I wonder what will become of marriage, commitment, love?  There is no need for marriage because that is ‘old fashioned’, the way the prior generations have proven does not work.  Without marriage there is no need for commitment and even if you do get married, well that seems to mean very little to the wandering zipper.  And what of love?  Sex has definitely already replaced that one!  Infatuation is now the highest form or love – for as long as it lasts.

Reality replaced with nothing.  Everything is artificial.  This generation is lost and only imitating life…

Tofu and Neeps anyone?

Leary

On January 14, 1967, Timothy Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and uttered his famous phrase: "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

In full context, he said:

"Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out."

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'.

Leary began experimenting with psychedelic drugs in 1957, following the suicide of his first wife.  Beginning with psychedelic mushrooms on a trip to Mexico, he rapidly advanced to harder drugs such as LSD.  His belief that drugs were the key to spiritual enlightenment lead him to experiment on hundreds of college kids, as well as felons, to see if their experiences matched his own.  About 25% of those taking LSD found it to lead to spiritual enlightenment.  An amazing 80% of felons did not reoffend during the trial periods.

Drug usage was not an escape from reality for him, it was a way to god – which he discovered was in him the entire time.  His “discovery” lead him to share this experience with others.  Rapidly, he went from Professor instructing youth, to a peer of youth.  Perspective loss and importance of his responsibilities lead to firings as partying became more important. 

Those of us whom have worked in counseling are not surprised by this, we see this with every drug user we attempt to help.  It is as though they are trapped in adolescence, not able to neither accept nor handle responsibility.  They are always completely unaware of any difference between themselves and others which was not in their favor. 

In the end, unaware of his own condition, Leary became exactly what he criticized others for – a drop out.

Passive

I was listening to Christian radio this morning and all day long have found myself thinking through the words to, Testify To Love.  Not familiar to you?  Perhaps you will best remember it as the theme flowing through the Touch By An Angel episode, 151^st Psalm aka Petie.  As much as a tear jerker as that episode is, the song became one of my very few favorites.  The refrain is:

For as long as I shall live
I will testify to love
I'll be a witness in the silence
Says the words are not enough
With every breath I take
We'll give thanks to God above
For as long as I shall live
I will testify to love

So as I have hummed and thought on this for hours, I realized how true this song really is.  It is our passive witness in life which is the most important.  We always want to be at the right place, at the right time, with just the right words to reach out to the lost and hurting around us.  Yet, it is by living our lives day by day that yields the biggest testimony.

And, thinking back to something Martin Luther said, for which history has soundly criticized him for – you should be living each and every day as though it will be the last one.  And no, he did not mean you grab your soap box and head out, he meant in everything you do, you witness with your life, in word and deed.

I do not know where the creator of this song is in their walk with the Lord, but I hope she is walking close…

Musical Answers

Ok, to answer those questions:

What other Christian songs do I like?  Off the top of my head:

A Mighty Fortress

Amazing Grace

Color Song – Michael W Smith

Easter Song – 2^nd Chapter of Acts

Hollow Eyes - Petra

Old Rugged Cross

Shame - Newsboys

Testify To Love-Wynona Judd

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus – Newsboys

Why is Kris anti-music?

It is not that I am anti-music, I am just not pro-music, especially in the Church.  Music is great for youth gatherings, campouts and the such.  But, it is NOT worship, as it is continually portrayed in today’s Church.  If you want to have WORSHIP then the Church would need to have testimonies, prayer and praise – then yes an extremely small amount of singing might add to worship but certainly is not to be the emphasis.  Sorry, the Bible will not support any other interpretation…

For those whom say that music “sets” a mood, then you have a real problem because real Christianity does not need “a mood” to be set.  The Holy Spirit is supposed to be leading and setting any “mood” – not a music director attempting to toy with human emotion.

For those whom say that music is their “way” of worshipping God, I am happy for you.  But how do you then challenge the 21^st century believer whom thinks they can commune with God more fully in the woods by themselves?  Paganism is paganism, not matter where it occurs or under what label.  Sorry, you are pagan if you believe either of these ways. 

More fully, the minority of any congregation will believe this musical way, so when will the Church start to support those of us for whom worship is the heavy study of Scripture?  Will we ever get a Sunday where we can spend 40 minutes parsing a critical verse – as opposed to 40 minutes of blithely mouthing words so the music director and their ilk can “worship”?

Music has not been a historical part of the Christian Church, mid-18^th century saw the first real acceptance of this and that would be without instruments and only in a minority of churches.  There is a ton of bad historians out there that would have you incorrectly think otherwise on this subject.  If you believe music is historical – find the PRIMARY documents to prove this.  They do not exist.  If you want to argue that David wrote music and sang, ok – go be like David and dance naked through your town.  No difference, he was worshipping God after all.  In any event, the songs were Scripture not mood setting me-isms!

Sorry you asked?  Yeah, I am just not politically correct – ever.

Pope Benedict XVI

"Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption."

"I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who acutely do suffer violence and sexual exploitation `explain' that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely `entertainment?'"

"If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image, and debate and policy concerning the public good will be driven more by consequences than by principles grounded in truth."

It was Thursday, in Australia, when the Pope made these interesting remarks.  Interesting because seeds of truth are there to be found, condemning all of us.  Mind  you, I am not a lover of this Pope – his past is very hard for this post war German to “get over”.  Had he of been a champion of the Christian cause during the war and in the Nazi’s face – as was the last Pope – I would love him.  However, that is not true.

That is not to say I am anti-Catholic, some of the strongest Christians I have known were Catholic, even good ones.  I am just uncomfortable with this Pope and so take any sound coming from him with a grain of salt…

But, these are three really good lines!  Because they state the problem of the “Americanization” of western culture.  Not knocking Americans here, but the impact of the Hollywood and America has been immense upon changing the world’s values over the past thirty years.

The rich have always been materialistic, spending money on themselves seems to be one of the few universal hobbies.  However, it was the extravagance of the Church in the previous 1,500 years which leaves all tourists breathless in Europe.  A Church so consumed with consumption that food was literally taken from those whom would have none – to feed the bellies of the monasteries and convents – even at the point of the sword if need be!  The only Plattner I have ever heard of whom made a name for himself faced just this situation in the early 16^th century and took all comers at his potato field with a hoe.  He was even part of complaint filed by the local bishops because they wanted his potatoes and he flat refused to feed the church before his family! 

Imagine the shame of something like that in print…

Pornography, soft/hard/whatever, is a sickness in our world.  Sure I can point to times when there was far worse, but I can point to time more recent when this was not so.  I have had to council too many sexual felons to not know the truth behind how they got the way they are.  Even they know it.  I had a close friend whom was a Ted Bundy victim.  And many more whom have suffered assault to “satisfy” sexual fantasy.  Yet, this western culture refuses to hold those responsible for the exploitation of women and child.  In Kris’ perfect world, these people would all be dead.  Kris would even provide the bullets and the finger to pull the trigger.  I am fairly sure my conscious would not suffer a moment from removing these from the culture.  (Of course, I would offer them a chance to repent…  But, with or without repentance, justice would prevail.)  That is how resolute I am towards the flesh mongers of this society.

Having two members of my family in the “entertainment” industry, I can share with you that I viewed as a prude because I find it inexcusable for my female cousin to “pretend” and show her body to anyone and everyone.  I find it inexcusable for an uncle, a “gentleman” and “family man” to find pretending to have sex with her to be no big deal, it is only entertainment after all!  “Ok, so  you are in bed with your distant niece, pretending to have sex with her and your wife is ok with that?”  “She has nothing to say about my art!”  You hypocrite!

The lack of morality of this generation of Christians has indeed caused a vacuum to form.  If we will not stand for something, then the world will.  Our absence of having a standard and allowing ourselves, as well as our families to view such is what has fuelled it continuance!  Are we so self centered that we can no longer consider the harm caused to others, much less our youth, when this form of entertainment is accepted!

We have willingly allowed the basis form of religion to hold sway over us.  One of self aggrandizement, self satisfaction and the debasement of all others.

How will God ever judge us?