A Hollywood Ending...

My favorite movies are ones that allow me to walk in another person’s shoes for 2 hours. A great movie always leaves me with a new perspective on life because after watching it I’ll know how it feels to eat, drink, sleep and love in different place, time, culture or class. The best movies make these little voyages into another life seem real even if the situation isn’t one that I would normal think was possible. Making us believe that a giant shark could hunt down and kill people or that aliens could land on earth and communicate through a 5-note song is an incredible talent. Through a movie I can experience joy and sorrow or even get a taste of what it might be like to survive a plane crash and live on a deserted island. I really appreciate all the people who write, direct, produce and act in good movies.

The worst movies are ones where Hollywood has taken an event and pushed them right over the top to the point that I don’t buy it anymore. The worst over-the-top ploy in movies is the ridiculous use of computers (the ones where computers think for themselves and come to life or where someone configures a computer on the spot to control all the other computers in the world). Do you remember when Jeff Goldblumb implanted a virus into an alien mother-ship with his laptop in Independence day? Crap! It is freakin hard enough to get 2 software applications running on the same computer that were already designed to work together to actually communicate properly. Oh well, not all movies are supposed to be taken seriously.

I say all that because I feel like the religious belief system that I’ve followed all my life was a really bad sci-fi movie. For most of my life I have held tight to a set of religious beliefs. I realize now that those beliefs were hollow. My belief in them was deep and true but the actual concepts I thought were so important turned out to be shallow and false. I think that is why the concepts never completely saturated my life. I just never bought it 100% because it just didn’t add up. There are all these words like “born again”, “saved”, “sanctified”, “trinity” and phrases like “cleansed by the blood”, “filled with the spirit”, and “the body of Christ”. These ideas sound like they would be more at home in a summer block buster than a real life experience that is supposed to change my life.

I’ve been in church all my life. I know what all the buzzwords “mean” and I can give you a definition of all those words and phrases complete with scripture references, but now that I really think about it I realize you just can’t explain them in a way that is even remotely believable to someone that isn’t already indoctrinated to the language. At some point I just stopped thinking about what they meant and started using the words myself.

Today I went with some friends to the “visitor orientation” at my church to help them get introduced to the staff and our basic beliefs. It was a great opportunity to hear a 30 thousand foot view of our theological views. Nobody ever really goes back and reads that stuff once you are “in” so this was my chance to review it. My friend Chad gave us a quick 5-minute explanation of “salvation”. I sat there and wondered what that must sound like to someone from completely outside the church. I realized that most people couldn’t explain these terms without just using more goofy terms. We just give the canned responses and quote the scriptures we were told to quote, but the explanations are not there. I guess we are supposed to assume that programmers on mars use the same standards for interface protocols as they do at Apple computers and the virus will load right up to the alien mother-ship without a problem. I have to give Chad a little credit, because he really did put some thought into presenting the ideas in a non-threatening way, but what I realized is that the problem isn’t with “how” you present the concepts. The problem is that the concepts are flawed from the beginning and rewording the message or simplifying the language doesn’t change the fact that the concepts are a bit too “Hollywood” and no amount of editing is going to make the ending more believable.

My concept of God has changed in the last couple of years and I think I know what Dorothy must have felt like when she found the man behind the curtain and realized that the wizard is much different than she first thought. I’m not renouncing my belief in God, but I feel like I’m learning that just because the wizard isn’t what I originally pictured, it doesn’t change the fact that finding him is a critical step in the process of getting back home. And this new slightly shorter wizard, without all the smoke and mirrors, is even more powerful when it comes to changing my life. Why would anyone in his right mind want to hang out with a big scary wizard?

Mike's Card Room...

My basement is now officially a poker room complete with my own custom chips (see design by Chris Harrison). I finally go off my butt and fixed the place up. The first poker night is Sat. August 20th @ 7pm.

I orginally finished in my basement and put way too much money into making it a recording studio. After a couple of projects I realized I was too old for music and now I wonder how I ever even liked playing or listening to music since it is completely against my personality type. I'm glad I finally found a good use for the space. It doubles as a photo studio for my wife now but it was really going to waste.

Do I have to be a liberal to be "emerging"?

I still think that more people are Libertarians but just don't realize it because they don't think about things from a "big picture" standpoint. Conservatives and liberals usually choose a side because of one or 2 narrow issues.

The following post really helps lift you out of the small details and up to the big picture of the Christian worldview...

Link to full story'