Ketchup.

My first job was flipping hamburgers at a Fuddruckers restaurant. Well, eventually I got around to being the guy who flipped the hamburgers; at first I was a cashier. But after a time, I became the guy who cooked all the meat for everyone who came in to have dinner on the nights I worked. I cooked hundreds of hamburgers to different levels of doneness with all sorts of garnishes. I did it fast and I did it well and I went home covered in a thin film of melted cow fat (the smell of which could never, ever come out of my work uniform) and I enjoyed it.

It was at my first job that I began to learn to speak Spanish. I would converse with the cooks, bussers and dishwashers at whatever level at which I could, each of us slowly learning bits of the other's language. Eventually, restaurant work would teach me enough Spanish that I could function in Spanish-speaking countries with minimal difficulty.

In the early stages of my informal Spanish eductation, I learned primarily from Mexicans. In doing so, I developed a strongly pronounced Mexican accent with my Spanish. It was heavy and entertaining enough that one of my coworkers began to address me only as "Mexicano," which quickly caught on. (Hispanics in restaurant work like to develop nicknames for most everyone who works with them; ten and a half years of foodservice work in many locations gives me license for this sweeping generality.)

The woman who gave me this nickname was named Gloria. She was very kind and she stayed at Fuddruckers for years after I left. She was normally very reserved and proper at work, unless Juanes was playing on the stereo in the prep area. That man's music had a remarkable effect on gloria...

The funny thing about working with Gloria (at a hamburger restaurant) was that she could not, for the life of her, pronounce the word "ketchup." A lot of Hispanics in the kitchen would just say something like "keh-chah," which is probably the most common pronunciation of "ketchup" in the world of Hispanic immigrants with limited English working in foodservice.

But Gloria didn't say keh-chah, or ketchup. She said "kep-chuh."

Kepchuh.

I like ketchup. Ketchup tastes pretty good. I like really good homemade ketchup, but even normal fakey ketchup is just fine. It makes food that's kind of lame taste a little saltier, a little sweeter, a little better. Really lame fries? Grab a little ketchup. Crappy dry meatloaf? Squirt o' ketchup, good to go. Severely overcooked hamburger? I'd like some ketchup for that.

Remember when they came out with ketchup in all those bright, disturbing, you're-about-to-poison-my-child colors? That was funny. Even funnier still was when Heinz, in a moment of hilarious self-deprecation, released their ketchup with all those cheeky phrases on the labels, one of which read "still available in red." Awesome. Probably my favorite food packaging ever.

Ketchup is good for taking familiar things of low quality and making them more palatable - ketchup has its place.

But there are things for which I would never, ever use ketchup.

Really good food - aside from being really good - is often also an expression of the taste or the understanding or the philosophy of the person who prepared it.

I currently work at a really, really nice restaurant. Our kitchen puts out some of the best food you can get in the Twin Cities. If you order dinner at the restaurant, the food you'll eventually have put in front of you is a reflection of a very specific style. You'll get top-quality ingredients from farmers and ranchers in the region (most of which come from within 200 miles of the restaurant) put together in a way that is reflective of an understanding of Midwestern cuisine with a deep appreciation for classic French and Italian influences. It's really, really good food.

Sometime's I'll put a guest's order in front of him or her and the guest will ask for some salt and pepper. I usually say "of course," retrieve salt and pepper, and give it to the guest. Then I'll walk away thinking that this person is silly. I walk away thinking that the guest is silly because the guests who ask for salt and pepper haven't tasted the food. They have no idea whether the food is adequately seasoned. They have no idea whether what they ordered measures up to the expectations they developed while reading the menu's description of the dish.

After I (almost) get over the silliness of asking for things with which to change the taste of one's food before one even knows what it tastes like, I think about how a guest might be used to a certain way of eating food, might not have very refined taste, or a number of other things that might be a reason to give the guest a break.

But what about ketchup? Keh-chah? Kep-chuh?

What if a guest asked me for ketchup upon receiving his or her meal?

At this point, I don't know that I'd immediately comply with the request. I think I might try to reason with the guest, cautioning them that the addition of ketchup would likely introduce flavors into the dish that weren't intended to be there (an argument that can also be made in many cases with regard to black pepper, by the way). Sir, are you sure? The duck breast on your plate (which has had the fat from its skin gently rendered, leaving the skin crisp as the meat has been turned over to heat it just to a perfect medium rare, at which point it is paired with an extreme reduction of duck stock blended with local grapes and placed on a plate with other seasonal accompaniments) may not benefit from the addition of ketchup. In related news, you may want to taste the food before you try to alter it in any way, you completely crazy person.

I feel like I'm professional enough to be a little gentler than that were this to actually happen at the restaurant, but that is not the point.

The point, which I may have weakened by tying it to food (about which many people have wildly different opinions) is this:

Some things don't need to be altered. Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

I get an awful lot of ketchup at church. Like, a lot.

The ketchup doesn't come in a bottle, and isn't served alongside communion wafers and grape juice. I do usually ask an usher for salt and pepper before I've tasted the elements, though.

I often get a pretty staggering dose of ketchup during musical worship at church. The entire congregation joins together in song, pouring their hearts out while they drown in vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, and just a touch of onion powder. It adds such a savory depth to the whole thing. Plus you get all that lycopene. Good antioxidant properties, you know.

I was inspired to write about ketchup a few weeks ago while I was at church.

We were singing a couple of really old hymns, namely Amazing Grace and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

The thing is, we weren't really singing these old hymns. We were singing the infuriating "updated" versions of these hymns. The ones where somebody decided "these hymns are so old and awesome that I'm going to stick a crappy bridge into it so that I may call it my own and release it on a record."

A lot of people are familiar with Amazing Grace. Some may not be familiar with the added bridge, which tragically cannot be burned with the fire of my anger:

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood, His mercy reigns

Unending love, amazing grace

The third line of the bridge is particularly infuriating. For one thing, floods don't reign over anything. Yes, one can stretch the meaning of the word "reign" to include something akin to what a flood does. But nobody in a church means that when they say "reign." Additionally, even if the word "reign" is applied to what a flood does, I don't think that draws a favorable comparison to God's mercy. This, however, is not the point. The point was made in short earlier and will continue to be made upon inspection of the crappy new bridge for Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

Come Thou Fount, come Thou King

Come Thou precious Prince of Peace

Hear your bride, to You we sing

Come Thou Fount of our blessing

My big problem with this one isn't a confusion of definitions; rather, it is just straight-up hackery. When choosing to "update" a centuries-old hymn which has been used in the church for ...centuries... somebody chose to rhyme the word "sing" with with the word ..."blessing." I hope it sounds stupid when you read it, 'cause you better believe I feel like a dingus when I'm standing in a room full of people singing it. It's just really shitty songwriting, which is less of a problem on its own than it is when used to augment a centuries-old hymn which needs no augmentation.

One of the parts of church I really enjoy is singing old hymns. I feel really, really good about singing the same song with which people have connected for decades, sometimes centuries. It gives me a pretty great feeling to join in that particular part of the tradition of Christian worship. It makes me think about all the good things that have persisted. It fills me with hope and, quite often, moves me to tears. It makes me think that I can understand some small part of the way in which people who have come before me have received God's message of love and hope and grace for all people.

And then we pour ketchup all over it.

Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

Some things don't need to be altered.

Flashback.

You ever see a movie where a character sees, hears or touches something that sparks a vivid flashback? Something will fall on the ground in front of the actor, or someone will use a particular word or phrase, and there will be flashes of scenes from the character's past or from earlier in the film? It usually happens with something that seems insignificant that ends up being significant, and it's usually accompanied by sort of nondescript "flashback" sound effects that are never used to describe anything else. I assume that you've seen enough movies to know what I'm talking about.



Well, in real life, there are no sound effects.



I learned this by way of having a conversation with a little Colombian girl named Yiselis. This came on the evening of my last day as a short-term staff member at Proyecto Libertad, a missionary base located on Isla Tierrabomba off the coast of Colombia. I had just spent five weeks doing hard, hard work and hanging out with the locals, and I was sitting on the front porch of the base, looking out into the bay. The sun had just gone down, and I could begin to see stars coming out. The bay in front of the mission is big enough and lonely enough at night to be really good for people who like to stare into the expanse and wonder about their lives. Being such a person, I frequently spent extended periods of time doing this at night. It was my last night at the mission, so I was really into it at this point.



She came up by the porch and sat down and we talked for a moment. We quickly came to discuss the fact that I'd be leaving in the morning. She asked me if I was excited to return home. I told her I wasn't.



I told her I wasn't, but there wasn't any genuine sadness in my saying it. I was trying to manufacture the feeling because I thought that it was what I was supposed to feel. I was sitting on the porch about to leave a place I love, about to leave a bunch of people to whom I had become connected, and I couldn't muster an ounce of emotion.



Instead of sadness, my mind was occupied with a strange and steady contentment. I knew that my time at the mission, for the moment, had come and gone - and though I had no sense for what was to come next, other than that it was to take place in Minnesota, I knew it was right and that I needed to know no more about it.



But I told her I wasn't. She responded: Por que no?



Little kids are awesome. They have no sense of consideration or propriety in conversation. If you say something to a child and it doesn't make sense to her, it will be questioned or rejected, forcing you to examine it. You don't want to go home? Oh, that's stupid. Why not?



Porque me gusta estar en la isla.



I like to be on the island. Again, my response to her question was rejected: pero Dios te necesita en tu propio pais.



"But God needs you in your own country."



God needs me in my own country. ...aaaaaaaaaaand flashback!



At that point I flashed back a little over three years, without any cinematic flashback sound effects, to a moment in my life I will never, ever, ever forget.



I was sitting on top of the roof of an orphanage in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, right next to the border it shares with El Paso, Texas.

If you are close enough to the border, you can sit on top of the roof and see something striking. Juarez is a poor, poor, crime-ravaged border town. El Paso is not. In Juarez, there are not many lights. Sitting on the roof of the orphanage, you can see the sparseness of the lights in Juarez, and then you can clearly see the border - immediately on the other side of it is the rich, developed land, teeming with lights and with people that are about a thousand times more well-off than the people on the Juarez side. It'll make you think, not that some of us ever need any prompting to enter the world of maddening introspection...



I was sitting on the roof, and my good friend and former roommate Drew was sitting next to me.

Drew is a missionary. It's just who he is, and anyone who knows him could tell you that. I am not. I have a lot of experience with mission work, but I am not the same thing this guy is.

So we were sitting on the roof, staring into this beautiful and unsettling juxtaposition. This was right at the end of our short experience at the orphanage, and I was (surprise!) working on manufacturing some emotion, as it seemed appropriate. I was trying to really want to be a lifelong missionary like some of the people I saw around me. It seemed like what I was supposed to do, to get really inspired and selfless and devote my life to the service of others.

So Drew and I talked for a few minutes, staring at the border and all its lights. Eventually, I stopped trying to feel the way I was supposed to feel, and I just sat there and stared. Wasn't thinking about a thing in the whole world. At that point, Drew asked me, with his gaze still fixed on the lights of El Paso:



Isn't it so much better on this side?



Somehow, in that moment, I resisted the urge to say what I thought I was supposed to say (and the greater urge to respond in a way that connected with what my friend was feeling), and I responded without thinking about it for even a second:



"I don't know. I think they need me over there."



I'll never forget it. It just came out of me.



And I meant it. I honestly believe, despite the number of international experiences I've had, how well I've functioned in them, and what they have meant for other people, that there is some reason I'm supposed to be where I am.



I couldn't begin to tell you what it might be. I don't get the sense that I do much here. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence young people, but I don't hardly even do that anymore. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence people in connection with my church, but I've recoiled so hard from the effects of my time being a "really good Christian" that I don't know when I'll ever do anything like that again. I don't do much of anything significant here.



Come to think of it, apart from physical evidence of my presence in other countries in the form of medical centers, latrines, homes or cement floors, I don't get the sense that I've done much in any of the "theres" either.



But somehow I still believe that I am (for the moment) where I need to be. The answer I gave to Drew's question was incredibly honest. It just came out without my mind devoting any attention to it.



I couldn't begin to tell you why, but I believe it.

Burning Upon Re-entry.

It's been a long, long, long time since I've blogged.

I'd tell you about all of the things that have distracted me from the practice, but I'm not sure they'd interest you, even though blogging, at its outset, requires a belief in the existence of some interesting quality in one's thoughts, opinions and experiences. Instead, I'll just skip right to the thoughts and opinions stemming from a particular experience.

I've been volunteering with a particular youth ministry for about nine years now.

There are any number of directions in which I could take this blog entry given that starting point. I have more stories about people going through the most awkward and confusing phase of their lives than I know what to do with.

You see a lot of things when working in youth ministry. You see a lot of different kids from a lot of different situations reacting to a lot of different things in a lot of different ways.

And then, when you thought it couldn't possibly get any weirder, when you believe you've reached the pinnacle of human strangeness, when you begin to look back on your own adolescence with a sense of comfort because of the baffling peculiarity with which some of these people conduct themselves - then you meet their parents.

I suppose that not all youth ministries attract the same sort of people. To give you some idea of what I'm dealing with, this particular youth ministry belongs to a moderately-floundering suburban megachurch. I'd try to give a general description of many of the people there, but that requires a lot of sweeping generalities and I'm going to do more than enough writing that people would consider "negative" in this entry.

So, back to the parents. Parents do many, many things in the name of protecting their children. Many of those things actually end up protecting their children. I'd like to tell you about one of the other things.

I hang out with some students from the youth ministry when I can, as I believe that spending time with positive influences is good for young people and, every now and then, I conduct myself in such a way that suggests that I'm a positive influence.

I was hanging out with a student at a coffee shop which is normally occupied with a disproportionately high percentage of Christians. It's located near a couple of private Christian universities, so it's a convenient place for them to have coffee. It's a Caribou Coffee, which, for whatever reason, is loved by suburban Minnesotan Christians. They're obsessed with it. None of that information is particularly relevant, apart from the fact that being around this particular group of people intensified my reaction to what the student told me about when we were having a cup of coffee together.

He was telling me about a discussion he and some students had with volunteer youth ministry leaders (many of which are parents of students involved in the program) at the latest of his semi-weekly house group meetings (this youth ministry meets at the church every other week, with the other weeks devoted to several smaller gatherings located in a few houses spread throughout the cities).

Conversations with teenagers can go a lot of different ways. Teenagers have active and growing minds, and a "normal" conversation with a teenager will likely deviate from one subject matter in favor of another with regularity. They are a curious bunch, if nothing else. It is one of the few consistencies I find in having discussions with people of that age group. I really like that about them.

The conversation this student was having (with other students and some volunteer leaders, a couple of whom were parents)? It was about Harry Potter.

Youth ministry exists in large part to guide the next generation into carrying on the tradition of faith which their parents have adopted, in a manner that helps the students grow into healthy, morally-sound people of faith. This involves a lot more conversations about a lot more things like Harry Potter than one without any youth ministry experience would expect.

I don't know much about the particular demographic of the people who happen to read my blog every now and then. I don't know how many of them have had consistent exposure to the kind of religious environment into which I regularly thrust myself in the name of hope for the youth of this world - but I know that I think that the following should be troubling to all of them:

Parents spend time telling young people about the spiritual perils of exposure to Harry Potter.

Doing this requires a worldview that is far, far more intense than I am willing to hold. I grew up hearing a lot of things about "spiritual battles." My parents never told me about anything like that, but I spent a lot of time at church to make them happy, so I heard a lot about it. I do believe in many spiritual things, and that in some way there are spiritual forces at work in this world, some good (those associated with the being to whom I refer as "God") and some opposed to those I consider good.

And I know that I have never read any of the Harry Potter books. That, however, has a lot more to do with my nonexistent level of interest in them than it does with a pervasive fear that one of the devil's little nasties is going to jump out of page 142, punch my spirit in the groin in order to incapacitate it, then tying it up, taking it captive until I experience deliverance from that damned Harry Potter and his band of spiritual goons.

That's the title of the next one coming out, right? Harry Potter and the Band of Spiritual Goons?

Come to think of it, Christians ought to rename the books that have already been released to more accurately depict the effects they might have on one's spirit:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? No good. How about Harry Potter and the Eternal Lake of Fire Into Which He Will Plunge Your Screaming Children If You Let Him?

I was going to rename more of those, but couldn't get past ideas that were wildly inappropriate.

Really though - just imagine it, the event of a lifetime, the long-anticipated, winner-takes-all, ultimate spiritual confrontation of the universe...taking place at the famed MGM Grand Las Vegas, with Michael Buffer doing the introductions:

DING DING DING!

And now...in this corner...standing five-foot-nine, one hundred forty pounds - the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords - Jeeeesuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussss Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist!

[wild cheering]

...and in this corner...standing five-foot-six, one hundred sixteen pounds - the Stealer of Souls, the Slayer of Spirits, the Devil's Dastardly Deputy - Harr-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Pooooooooo-tterrrrrrrr!

[raucous booing, children and their parents cursing and throwing garbage]

Ladies and gentlemen - llllllllllllet's get rrrready to rumble!

And then they duke it out. Imagine the pay-per-view sales.

Christians are taught (both by their Bible and by those who preach from it) that they are empowered by and have living inside of them the same spirit which raised Christ from the dead.

Gotta watch out for that Harry Potter, though.

Death.

Some friends and I drove down (which means "south" if you live far enough north) to Iowa today.

At face value, this might seem like a fun little field trip. We did end up having a good amount of fun, but this trip was founded on highly unfortunate circumstances.

My friends Ann and Taylor, who recently moved to India to do two years of mission work, have come back stateside to be with family because Ann's sister passed away. The funeral was today and so my friends and I drove down (again, south) to support Ann and Taylor, as being uprooted immediately after putting down roots in a foreign country because of the death of a loved one is probably one of the more difficult things through which one can go. Hell of a sentence, that one.

The funeral was in Webster City in a big, solid Lutheran church that was erected in 1953. The way that I know the church was erected in 1953 is that there's a big stone slab built into the outside wall with "1953" etched into it. My observational skills are unmatched. I've seen those things on multiple churches, but I don't think I've seen them anywhere else.

There was a sermon preached by a minister who sounded just about exactly how a non-Iowan might expect a small-town Iowan Lutheran minister to sound.

Oratorically, he wasn't the most captivating guy ever. I'm not bringing this up to knock the guy, but rather to give you an idea of how difficult it may have been for him to hold the attention of several of the funeral's attendees solely on the merits of his public speaking ability. I'm not pointing that out to knock the guy, either, but to give you an idea of how gripping his subject matter was for me when he got to this point:

Sometimes a person dies and, for a while, the only thing we can think is why? Why this person? Why now? Why in this manner? Why something that seems so wrong? Why not something that seems more right, more fitting?

These sorts of questions are especially appropriate in the case of Ann's sister, Emily, whose mind never developed past a certain point, leaving her mentally much younger than the 34 years she lived on earth. She had a series of seizures, her brain went without oxygen for several minutes, and all normal brain activity ceased. Her family made the unenviable decision to remove life support and Emily stopped breathing and died peacefully. When the minister started pulling out the whys, though I had never met Emily and was not in any way connected to her life, you better believe I was paying attention.

This line of questioning by the minister reminded me of my favorite co-worker, whose name is Gustavo. He's from Oaxaca, Mexico, and he's short enough that a lot of us in the kitchen just call him Pequeño, which means "small." Gustavo is possibly the hardest-working man I know, in addition to being hilarious and more than a little bit feisty. More endearing to me than all of these things is his big heart. He genuinely and deeply cares for the people around him.

Gustavo and I will talk about things of a religious nature every now and then, as we share faith in the same God. When we do, things often come to a line of questioning like that of the Iowa minister. Gustavo is a very sensible, reasonable person, and that quality works together with his big heart to frame these sorts of questions in a way that hits me much harder than when other people ask them. Additionally, we're often talking in Spanish, and so I'm concentrating harder on each word and its meaning.

He'll ask me why. "Por que, Jon?" We'll talk about his ailing mother and Gustavo, who wears his heart on his sleeve will ask me why. We'll talk about large-scale human suffering and I'll see how much the troubles of others can hurt him and it just punches me in the gut. I just stare at him and say "no se." I don't know. I can never answer his question. In that situation I can't get past empathy and start articulating thoughts on a complicated matter.

I don't know why. I can't answer the whys. All I can say to the whys is that I know that God understands it better than I do, is more compelled by human suffering than I am, and is more capable to deal with it than I am. That's enough to keep me walking. It doesn't always convince the other person in the conversation.

But I am comforted when I think about certain realities of death. Regardless of how much death can confuse us - Why? Why this person? Why this way? Why do they have to suffer? Why must we lose them? Why did you let this happen? - regardless of how much we think God has to do with our death, whether by permissiveness or deliberate action, regardless of how wrong it seems that we die, often in ugly, grueling, and terrible ways, regardless of the worldly circumstances surrounding our death and whether or not God was interacting with them...

Whatever was wrong about when or how or how soon or how tragically we die, something will be right. Whenever I die, God will then do whatever is most pleasing to him to do, whatever is most right in his eyes to do.

How much time and energy do we spend on that here? A lot of the people I spend time with spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is most pleasing to God to do with their lives, trying to figure out what God's will is for their lives.

When Jesus taught us to pray, he asked God to let his will be done. Whenever I die, that will happen. I will be removed from the influence of the things of this world and be placed in the hands of the most wise, most skillful and most compassionate of caretakers.

Something will be right. Something will be made absolutely right.

Blessings.

I recently read a blog post by my good friend and roommate Drew. He laid out some thoughts on blessing and how modern-day Christians define it in comparison to what Jesus said about it in the book of Matthew.

Some of these thoughts, as well as others about which I am to blog, popped into my head this Sunday when I was sitting in church.

A man who works at my church was up front talking about the church's financial situation, noting the recent considerable drop in offerings collected. After sharing some details, he lead the congregation in a prayer in which he asked God to bless those who are hard-up with full-time jobs that pay better than the ones they had before, jobs with benefits so that families can be adequately taken care of and so that people can live with a little more peace.

I want to be very clear about this: I take no issue with the things for which that man prayed in front of the congregation. I have no problem with praying for and trusting God for provision; in fact I endorse it. I regularly pray that God would provide for me and that I would be able to trust him to do it, especially in circumstances in which it's difficult to see how things will work out for me financially.


But the word bless reminded me of Drew's blog entry and made me think of the way I think about blessings. Drew lays out some of the ways we've turned blessing into materialism - it's plain to see that there's some truth to that.

I started to think about how I define blessing and how that measures up to Jesus's words in Matthew 5. I started to think about the things with which I ask God to bless me.


My mind's definition of blessing (as evidenced by the "blessings" for which I ask God) is both different from and exactly the same as everyone else's.


When it comes to blessings, I don't spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the material things I have. I've never been a person who's been very strongly concerned with those sorts of things. If it sounds like I'm putting myself above anyone else, it's only a matter of sentences before I clearly explain how I'm at the exact same level as the most selfish and materialistic of men.


The blessings I ask for are generally immaterial and most often have to deal with my interactions with others. I ask to be used by God to make an impact in other people's lives. When people I know are in particularly difficult situations, I ask God to use me to bless them by bringing them comfort or encouragement. When I'm at a ministry event or going to hang out with someone I know primarily from a ministry setting, I ask God to use me to bring love and hope to them.

At a quick glance, the "blessings" I ask for are way better than materialistic blessings - they're philanthropic, humanistic. They seem less selfish than wanting to be blessed with a big house or a bunch of money or some other material excess. I mean, the things I'm asking for are "more right" or "less bad" than materialistic wishes, right?

Maybe not.

On a basic level, a person who's pursuing materialistic or financial "blessings" is just putting their energy toward interacting with God and hoping that it gets them what they want. Success, comfort, riches, ease of living, whatever.

What am I doing? I'm putting energy toward interacting with God and hoping that it gets me what I want. I want a different thing - something that might seem much nobler or more worthwhile - but when it comes down to it, I'm doing the same thing as the guy who's actions tell you that he thinks God exists to make him comfortable.

The materialistic, health-and-wealth gospel guy is doing what he can to fill his need to feel comfortable and secure. I'm doing what I can to fill my need to feel significant.

I'm doing the same thing.

Does it matter that I'm pursuing a different end if I'm using the same means? I don't know.

My definition of blessing is the same as everybody else's: the next thing I want.

Let's take a look at Matthew 5.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You likely noticed that I bolded the "for" after the comma in each of those. It can be easily replaced with a word like "because" and still hold its meaning.

Because theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Because they will be filled (with righteousness). Because they will be shown mercy. Because they will see God. Because they will be called Sons of God.

When you look at it this way, it's easy to see the second half of those sentences as what Jesus is defining as blessing in that particular moment; if you are blessed because you will be shown mercy, being shown mercy is the blessing.

Being shown mercy, being filled with righteousness, seeing God, being called God's son - these are blessings. Not just having the next thing you want. If you want those things, sweet. Looks like you're after true blessings. I hope that my efforts sometimes stray far enough from just fulfilling my need for significance that they approach pursuing true blessings.

Jesus Loves the Little Fascist Zombies.

I recently saw what I expect is a pretty old clip - a couple years anyway, though I don't really have any idea as to when it would have first been aired. It was from a series of stories CNN did called "God's Warriors," looking at different aspects of modern expressions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

This particular segment was following the events surrounding something called BattleCry. Here's a little exerpt from the main page of BattleCry's website:

In America today, we have the largest number of teens since the baby boomer generation. These teens hold the future in their hands. BattleCry is here to answer why and how to reclaim our youth for Christ. At this very moment, an entire generation of young people is at risk. Giant corporations, media conglomerates, and other purveyors of popular culture have leveraged every dollar they can spare, as well as every waking hour, into claiming the souls of today's youth. BattleCry is answering the call.

There are a lot of things about stuff I'll reference in this post that are troubling to me. One of them is the second-to-last sentence in that snippet. Giant corporations, media conglomerates, and purveyors of popular culture (three super general, mean-nothing phrases that only ever are used to describe something that's about to be demonized) aren't advertising with billboards and magazine ads and television commercials and product placement to get your children hooked on products and to fuel consumerism for financial gain. They are, apparently, making an effort to harvest their souls, to capture the very essence of their beings.

If you drive into the city, to one of the very tall buildings, and you travel up the elevator to the highest floors where the most important business is being conducted by the people with the most power - there, in those very rooms, there are the people in charge. They're wearing suits with pocket squares that cost more than my college tuition, they're smoking cigars and drinking cognac - and they're all talking about how they can get more little kiddie souls to feed on. They hunger for them, as you or I do for common vittles. The only problem is, once you've had little kiddie souls, it's hard to go back to casual restaurants or to eat last night's leftovers. Unless it's leftover little kiddie souls - those are almost better reheated on the second day, like your mother's lasagna.

What better way to provoke the overprotective suburban Christian mother than to convince her that the man or woman in charge of the company that's making little Eric's blue jeans is really out to eat his soul?

Anyway, here's the video. I'm not sure where it'll pop up, because I don't know anything about embedding videos in my blog. Let's talk about the video.




The video follows a guy named Ron Luce around during one of these BattleCry events, which is being held in San Francisco. The students, who have received considerable emotionally-charged ramping up from leaders, are demonstrating in the streets of what is widely referred to as one of the most liberal cities in the United States, largely because of its close association with homosexuality.

This sounds like one of the more productive things one could do with a few hundred teens, right? Get 'em all hopped-up on Jesus, convinced that they have to be a cultural force by being loud and confrontational, and then turn 'em loose to go combat homosexuality when they view it as a behavior and homosexuals mostly believe it to be directly linked to their identity. This brings us to another reality that troubles me: out of all of the many, many people it takes to organize something like this, there weren't a big enough number of level-headed people there to say "good God, what good do you think this will accomplish?" to stop it (or at least to talk about a better way to move forward).

Not far into the video clip, you'll hear a man with a megaphone yelling out: "BattleCry is a tool to turn the kids into little fascist zombies." No, you silly man; read their website. BattleCry is combatting the soul-eating practices of corporate big-wigs. Duh.

Another thing that troubles me about this video is that the guy in charge of the thing doesn't expect or understand this great ugly shouting match he's instigated. The reporter notes that Luce "professes not to understand the anger" directed at him and his demonstrators. He was "shocked...with the amount of anger and hostility from the protestors."

Are you kidding me? How can a person choose these methods and be honestly surprised at these results? Take a bunch of teenagers and rile them up about sexual purity and morality and then make a public demonstration in San Francisco - how do you think that's going to be received? You think nobody's going to feel like it's hateful or gay-bashing? This is the guy who's the public face of the whole operation. He's got his teen followers chanting in the streets: "We won't be silent! Our voices will be heard!" and honestly expects a softer reception? As a person who is often put in charge of many teenagers, this is awfully unsettling to me.

But the thing that's most troubling? It's not that the public accepts these things as hateful, gay-bashing, fascist zombie-making teeny parties. It's not that the guy who runs the thing seems to be about as brainwashed (or out-of-touch, I guess) as his critics think he's trying to make the teens. It's not that there's a big ugly scene and everyone's screaming at one another thinking they're more and more right while others are more and more wrong and that the divide between people who think differently gets wider and wider and wider and wider.

It's a single sentence, beginning at the 1:27 mark:

This is the intersection of faith and the secular world.

We're screwed. If these things, these events - if the screaming and hating and not listening and being shocked that others think differently and just getting more and more riled up about what we think without listening to anybody - if this is the intersection of faith and the secular world, we're screwed.

But if it's just people connecting with people, in conversation and in action, in living and working together and learning from one another? If that's the intersection of faith and the secular world, then there is hope. If it's something we do together and not against one another, then there is hope.

I don't know exactly what it looks like in all situations, but I know that being open and honest with those around me is a start. If we can have honest conversations about what is most important to us and learn from one another as a starting point, I can deal with that.