Free Association: Janet Jackson, High School, Coincidence, Theology & Friendship

I heard from a friend today
And she said you were in town
Suddenly the memories
Came back to me in my mind...
-Janet Jackson, "Again"

I've been on a real Janet Jackson fetish this week. I watched Poetic Justice late Monday night, and I've been intoxicated sense. Watching old and new videos on YouTube. Remembering my gratitude for her help in puberty. Lamenting her obvious shift in trajectory from Rhythm Nation to The Velvet Rope. Wondering about the trauma that might have precipitated such a dramatic detour.

How can I be strong I've asked myself
Time and time I've said
That I'll never fall in love with you again

My love affair with Janet was primarily middle and high school. So it only stands to reason that last night I should stumble into someone else online whom I've loved deeply since then. It's amazing how such coincidences occur.

This person too was instrumental in my emergence from childhood. She was one of my campus mothers/big sisters in high school. Campus kinship was tremendously important to my intensely relational personality, being away from home at such a formative time in life.

Well, life has led us down similar yet incongruent paths (to draw upon a HS algebra expression). We both live lives on terms other than those we were raised to define as "right". The difference is that she still affirms intellectually the rightness of the SDA message; I do not. More accurately, I no longer view "rightness" as a thing to be pursued.

A wounded heart you gave,
My soul you took away
Good intentions you had many,
I know you did

A conversation with this friend about 5 years ago at my buddies' ordination (curiously enough, back on our old HS campus) was one of the impeti that propelled me toward the Emergent conversation. One of the questions I was asking at the time was "What keeps people so intellectually loyal to a religious system that isn't compelling enough to keep them committed to the actual practice of it?" Such pseudo-fidelity is puzzling to me.

I come from a place that hurts,
and God knows how I've cried
And I never want to return
Never fall again

So she and I spoke last night...

So here we are alone again,
Didn't think it'd come to this

...and because the conversation natural went this direction, I was quite honest about all the theological questioning she had stirred in me (probably to a fault). I shared that since our conversation I had deconstructed much of what we had been raised to believe...

I've come too close to happiness,
To have it swept away

...(not that Adventism isn't a valid path, but it surely isn't the last or definitive word on things). I shared furthermore that I do not believe that her choices to live contrary to her stated doctrinal beliefs are solely indicative of some great moral deficit in her, though she freely expresses such self-indictment. She responded to me like I were the anti-Christ.

Don't think I could take the pain
Never fall again

Well, as fate might have it, this morning I awoke to an e-mail that linked me to this post by Peter Rollins which articulates so well what I was feeling last night:

People who label themselves as ‘backsliders’ [are of particular concern to me]. Here the individual, whether they have left the church or not, are still under the sway of that evangelical [or fundamentalist] worldview and thus any positive step forward is still thought of negatively.

The choice to leave is made within the confines of the evangelical system itself and is thus understood within that system. In this way the explicit rejection of it is implicitly an affirmation of it (I reject it not because it is wrong but because I am wrong). The result is that the majority of people who see themselves as ‘backsliders’ will either return to the group they left or continue to define themselves in opposition to it.

The real choice to be made is thus not between staying or going from a particular church. Rather it is a meta-choice concerning whether I continue to interact with the linguistic system that sustains the church or step into an unknown space outside that linguistic system.

I wish I knew what I might say that would free my friend from believing that it's just her...

Kinda late in the game
And my heart is in your hands

...and open her eyes to the fact that the sheer number of people like her (myself included) who wind up in the same place for very different reasons would suggest that its not just total depravity creating the disconnect. But Adventism does its denominationalism work well (the passing on of language, culture and judgement). I've found that even for former Adventists, some who even consider themselves atheist, its a struggle to comprehend or articulate the world in terms other than those given them by their fundamentalist upbringing. What a horrendous prison?

Don't you stand there and then tell me
You love me
Then leave again

This singular reality would foster great resentment in me, absent the grace and forgiveness I've learned in the way of Jesus. But with it, I think I'm okay, and hopefully resurrected enough to be a good friend.

'Cause I'm falling in love with you again

Love It!

5-y-o Voted Out of His Class

What is this Kindergarten Survivor? I have no way of making sense of this, except to say this reinforces Leslie and my choice to home-school our children. We want to instill in them what they need so that they would never participate in something like this, and by God's grace, one day know courage enough to stand against it.

What to Do About a Changing World

Hey, Democrats never claimed to be the party of Lincoln...




He's the man who puts conservationism back in conservatism...

Finally an Honest Billionaire

I've been told more times than I can count that reason I feel the way I do about money made through capitalism is because I have none. I finally found someone with plenty of money, George Soros, who admits that there is no such thing as self-correcting capital markets. Rather capital markets are always externally managed to some degree. Corporations and other "free"-market fundamentalists don't like to admit this because they want to perpetuate the myth that markets are inherently and inerrant-ly self-regulating, so that those on top can work to keep themselves on top (e.g. public policy, lobbying, externalizing costs, off-shoring, tax evasion, exploitation, usurping the labor pool) without fear of exposure.

Soros was interviewed today on PBS's the NewsHour with Jim Lerher. I've got to read his book.

The Non-Attack!

"Hamaus, Foreign Policy, Inexperience, George Bush's 3rd Term, Iraq, Age--all of it on the table--in one exchange!"
-Tim Russert, Meet the Press

If Obama remains true to the high road that is 3 weeks from bringing him the nomination, dyed-in-the wool Republicans will only be left with having to manufacture scandal against him. We got a taste this past week of the non-Attack accusations that are likely to be levied in the general election this fall (yes, I'm feeling hopeful again, possibly for no good reason)...

How Deep the Hole

The code continues and the algebra evolves: 'real Americans' now becomes 'working Americans = hard working Americans = white Americans'.




How is 'working Americans = hard working Americans = white Americans' less alienating than 'the bitter comment'?

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Watch first this NewsHour segment regarding the Presidential Campaign since the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on last Tuesday (up to 6:17).





Now analyze that in the light of this NewsHour segment regarding the reporting of race in this race.


I think the Clintons are brilliant and have understood how to exploit these dynamics long before and far better than many. This is why my biggest contention with Hillary ("since the very beginning") has been that she scares me--particularly her commitment to political expediency.

*I have no desire to perpetuate negativity. This is satire. If any of it comes off as just mean, tell me why and I'll take it down.

If a Candidate Said This...

If a candidate said this, would s/he be castigated for elitism and racism? If so, by whom?

The Whims of a Highly Partisan Supreme Court

I found this editorial by Cynthia Tucker highly representative of my thinking about the issue of requiring voter IDs. I just hate having conservatives claim the laws address voter fraud when it is clear they do no such thing, and those same conservatives are unwilling to address absentee voting which has been empirically linked to fraud.

The Bush-McCain Challenge

I get these e-mail updates from MoveOn.org periodically. I don't really know how I got on their mailing list, but I haven't bothered to undo it yet. Although they can be over the top at times, they're no worse than any other political action org. I agree with many of their policy positions, although often I arrive there for quite different reasons.

This is what their most recent e-mail said:

We've been trying to come up with some ways to make it clear to everyone just how similar McCain is to Bush.

So we did some research and built a new online game called "The Bush-McCain Challenge." Kind of like the Pepsi Challenge, if you remember that.

Thing is, it's way harder to tell them apart than we thought.

Can you test it out here, and tell us if you think it's too hard?

I failed. Perhaps you would do better. Check it out.

Just Mad!

As I watched Barak Obama on Meet the Press yesterday, I was just mad. Yet I couldn't tell who to be mad with. Is it Obama's own intuitions that compel him to step further and further away from the prophetic tradition of the church—embodied in the untimely protests of Rev. Jeremiah Wright—or is it the dominant culture (of all races) demanding this kind of political expediency from him in an effort to maintain their delusions of blamlessness?

I don't know. What I do know is that the net result is to establish a public square in which no critique of America is ever considered, whether just or not. Such a mindset is just mad within a democracy.

Twisting "God Bless Us" by Christopher Beam

This was posted on Slate.com this morning [the bracketed statements are my commentary]...

On today’s “state of the race” conference call, a reporter asked about an exchange between Hillary Clinton and Bill O’Reilly on yesterday’s show in which Clinton uttered the words, “Rich people—God bless us.”

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson denied that’s what she said: “She said ‘God blessed us.’ B-L-E-S-S-E-D.”

That may be what she meant. But it’s definitely not what she said. I just watched the video again with headphones and cranked the volume way up. Not a trace of plosive after the sibilant.

Here's the full context, as described by the Huffington Post:

[O’Reilly said,] “I'm not middle class, I'm a rich guy.” Clinton responded (in an awkward moment), “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue until the next generation.”

This is not controversial. People know Clinton is rich. It's common for [some] Christians to believe that wealthy people are blessed by God. And the phrase "God bless us" used in this context doesn't mean she's demanding that God smile upon the rich [(that's what the follow-up sentence was for)]; it's clearly a lead-in to her point that wealthy people don't need all their money. Don’t get me wrong—it will make a great clip for the next MoveOn.org ad. But in context, it's a reasonable statement.

So why lie about it?

The Vicissitudes of Agreement

Although the results aren't outside of realm of the expected, someone please help me understand: When did 618 people become a representative sampling of anyone but themselves? What intentionality do you imagine was given to making sure a multiplicity of demographics were represented?

The Democratic Race in 7 Minutes

Thanks to Pat Hannon for sending me this. It's amazingly thorough. The only line I don't get is "Obama gets pissy." I have no recollection of such an event. ;-)

More seriously I hate all the unnecessarily negative characterizations: "hillary cackles," donnie mcclurkin as "homophobic," "latinos don't like Obama," even "hillary is a monster." Though some may ring true, they are not helpful public discourse.



If we could do it in 7 minutes, why does it feel like an eternity?

Resurrection: Writing New Stories

I manage to write my first 750-word anything (well actually a thousand words when you add in the quote from Debbie Blue, but who's counting) and GP decides to post it in 2 parts—such is life...

As did McLaren, I too recently read the conversation between N. T. Wright and Bart Ehrman, hosted by Beliefnet.com. I must admit my incredible bias upfront. I came to this assignment with a deep appreciation for Tom Wright and embarrassingly was quite ignorant of Bart Ehrman. Wright had given me the language and academic credibility for a narrative theology at which I had arrived serendipitously. Furthermore, I had long appreciated Wright's scholarship for challenging the Christian tradition to reckon with the contextual realities that shape biblical claims. Although my faith may require less now in terms of traditional apologetic constructions to substantiate it, I am grateful for Wright's insistence that Christians strive for intellectual honesty when interpreting scripture.

So I freely admit that I brought this bias to my reading, but was immediately captivated by Ehrman's story. It was the best thing he could have done for me. While a fan and student of the quality of thinking that Wright epitomizes, I adamantly believe that everyone has the right to tell his/her own story.

Ehrman's concern for the pain of others, sounding very Jesus-like, completely resonated with me over the course of the first 3 postings. But then Wright's comments took a turn that was seemingly unexpected for Ehrman. Wright introduced Resurrection as God's unprecedented response to suffering that, in a linear sense, infuses the pain of suffering with a promise that heretofore had not existed. Wright's insistence as to the significance of resurrection is not landmark within the Christianity, but his understanding of resurrection is somewhat different from what has come to be viewed as traditional. From that point on, Wright's conversation took a trajectory that embraced the legitimacy of suffering but asserted that it was not the end of the story. Ehrman, however, continued to make his case against the church's traditional and, for Ehrman, insufficient or contradictory explanations of suffering. It seemed as if he could not hear Wright's disassociation from penal-substitution as the only way to tell the story of God at work in the world.

There is a quite subtle form of intellectual dishonesty that dismisses others concerns and insists on making parallel presentations that are not open to conversational refinement. I did not get the sense that this was what Ehrman was doing. Rather Ehrman seemed so use to hearing the language Wright uses (the basic claims of Christianity) aligned in such a way as to bracket out any possibilities except the party line, that he did not appear to recognize that it was not happening quite that way this time.

My heart ached for the experiences Ehrman must have suffered that make his expectations and response ever so reasonable. I wonder how many others have grown accustomed to having their concerns bracketed out of the Christian conversation.

Read more on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 (comments), Part 2