Haven’t seen you in quite a while
I was down the hold just passing time
Last time we met was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time
Except you
You were talking about the end of the world

I took the money
I spiked your drink
You miss too much these days if you stop to think
You lead me on with those innocent eyes
You know I love the element of surprise
In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart
You
You were acting like it was the end of the world

Love…

In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim
Surrounding me
Going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You
You said you’d wait
Till the end of the world

It brought me back to a conversation I had with a Pastor who adamantly believed that Judas was the ultimate traitor, and that his destination was hell. Ever since this conversation I questioned that passage, the thought process, and the true power of a graceful king. 

10/26/2009 Update:  I’m not sure how many people are hearing about this CBS report on swine flu cases being overestimated, but it is worth reading.  Here is a snippet:

In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases.

I can’t encourage people enough to read this article.  Now on to your regularly scheduled post.

What to do about the swine flu and its just as questionable vaccine?  The amount of information (and disinformation) out there is growing every day, so now is definitely NOT the time to over-react or just do as we are told.  Now is the time to think and research, so here is some information to ponder.

CNN ended an August article about the swine flu with the following:

“More than 1,490 people around the world have died from the virus since it emerged this spring, a WHO official said last week.”

This line leaves the story ending on an ominous note instead of a more reasoned and level tone.  With the mere changing of one word and the adjustment of the number by ten people and we have a completely different note on which to end:

Less than 1500 people around the world have died from the virus since it emerged this spring, a WHO official said last week.

So now that we are in the height of the H1N1 season, is all the hype playing out?  So far, no.  Sure a lot of schools are closing, but what about the massive death tolls?  So far it seems that the swine flu is just a nasty flu.  But just because the deaths haven’t happened yet, doesn’t mean they won’t, so we should all be smart and try to inform ourselves as much as possible.  Not just from the swine flu, but also from the vaccine.

Now I know Louis Farrakhan called the vaccine a government plot to kill an unsustainable population, but I don’t want to go down that crazy path.  People either cling to crazy or dismiss it altogether, neither is a smart option.

Here are my concerns about the vaccine:

H1N1 vaccines are being produced under EUAs.  What is an EUA?  According to the CDC website:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) may be issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow either the use of an unapproved medical product or an unapproved use of an approved medical product during certain types of emergencies with specified agents.

 Basically, based on scientific knowledge, the government can fast track certain drugs to stop an emergency.  This measure is a double-edged sword.  It can be potentially life-saving, but without adequate testing, the unknown side effects could be potentially deadly as well.  So this can leave a person at a crossroads about what to do medically.  Since the first rule of medicine is “do no harm,” we tend to trust the doctors in our lives.  And many times, if not most, they are right.  But what if the information they are basing their advice on is wrong at worst or incomplete at best?  If you take that advice, is it the doctor’s fault or the source of the information?

It doesn’t matter, because you have no recourse if the fast-tracked drug kills a loved one thanks to the PREP Act:

The PREP Act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“Secretary”) to issue a declaration (“PREP Act declaration”) that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary…

Basically, even if the government mandates that people get vaccinated, and that vaccine goes terribly wrong, because it was deemed an emergency situation, you have no recourse for the damage done.  There is supposed fund to cover such problems, but it unfunded.

So far there are five (5) EUAs in effect for H1N1: 3M’s N95 respirator, 2 types of test kits, as well as Tamiflu and Relenza.

Here is why I grow concerned about the vaccine.  One of the EUAs went to Quest Diagnostics for their swine flu test kits. 

While the term Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) sounds urgent, the products being authorized have been in development for some time, usually at a significant cost and the government has been in contact with the company about the EUA.

 So when the press release is more focused on the product being “first to market” and having a monopoly of the U.S. market, some red flags go up for me.  Here are some snippets:

 …the only company in the U.S. to offer test kits for detecting the pandemic 2009 H1N1 virus that the FDA has authorized for emergency use by CLIA high-complexity labs, which include certain hospital and regional labs.

The new test offering is one outgrowth of an exclusive global distribution agreement formed between Focus Diagnostics and 3M…

Quest Diagnostics’ Focus Diagnostics has a track record of being first to market with new laboratory testing services for emerging infectious diseases.

Of course this isn’t all bad, the test ”provides results in 30-75 minutes” in conjunction with a 3M machine “and can process up to 96 samples per run.”  So there is a hugely faster turn around time.  And if I thought I had the swine flu, I would want to know as soon as possible.

But take a look at Quest’s financials.  Just two days ago they upped their profit outlook, right on the heels of the newest EUA.  Coincidence?  I don’t know.

All of this just for the test.  Now consider that instead of a one dose vaccine, the government and companies say that we need a two-part vaccine.  Could be construed as double profit?  I don’t know.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, but just some musings and questions.  These are difficult times, not because much has changed, but because we went from having little information getting out to the public to information overload.  Who to believe or trust is almost impossible.

What are your thoughts?

-mike

I picked up a copy of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier at a used bookstore the other day.  While 1984 and Animal Farm may be more widely known for their commentary on the future intrusiveness of government and the human condition, Wigan Pier is Orwell’s eye-witness account of the squalid conditions of Northern England in the 1930s and a critical view of socialism in England at the time.  While I am still reading it and cannot comment fully, a passage  from early in the book got me to thinking about a brief exchange on post I wrote about war photos being released for public consumption.  In this excerpt, Orwell is speaking about a poor, filthy couple, the Brookers, who ran a bit of a boarding house:

But it is of no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind.  For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world.  You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilisation that produced them.  For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us.  …[A]nd this is where it all led – to labyrinthine slums and dark black kitchens with sickly, ageing people creeping round and round them like blackbeetles. 

It is a kind of duty to see and smell such places now and again, especially smell them, lest you forget that they exist; though perhaps it is better not to stay there too long.

In the war photo post, I asked if graphic but truthful photos of American soldiers injured/dying/dead on the battlefield should be shown to the American public.  AnnaK said she wasn’t going to go out of her way to find them, but that yes, they should be shown, but in measured doses so to keep us aware of what is going on in the world.  Orwell seems to think along the same lines as well.  And if the goal is to keep such things as the reality of war or poverty merely on the radar of the general public, then I too agree that such things could be taken in small doses.

But I have to wonder if the point of exposing the American population to various harsh realities is merely to get them to remember.  Or is the hope to get them to respond, to act is some way to such harsh realities?  Is it to get them to feel once again?

I fear that small doses of reality over time, such as the picture of a disfigured, dying soldier or the account of living conditions in 1930s England, only serve to inoculate the population from taking any action.  Consider the vaccines we all have received over the years.  When was the last time you worried about Measles or Mumps, or Rubella?  We don’t because we were inoculated.  We were inoculated so we could go about our business without worrying about a nasty disease.  The same is true for being made aware of the tragedies that go on around the world.

 A case in point: even though the ban put in place back in 1991 was lifted finally, we do not see photos of flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.  I recommend reading this piece by Byron York at The Washington Examiner.  And this one from The Edmonton Sun’s Andrew Hanon.

- mike

Liberal or Conservative, War Made Easy is a must see film; especially in our culture of 5 minute attention spans.  History matters, no matter how inconvenient it may be.

During World War I, 10% of all casualties were civilian.

During World War II, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.

During the Vietnam War, 70% of all casualties were civilians.

In the war in Iraq, civilians account for 90% of all deaths.

-mike

Recently this year, my wife had started to study about the necessity to eat organic foods. It’s good to marry a smart person as you can reap their added knowledge. Obviously you can live off of non-organic food, but there are many unanswered questions in regards to what non-organic foods would and could do to the human body.

As Chris Rock eloquently put, he wasn’t worried about eating “red eat”, it was the “green meat” that seemed problematic.

After reading and learning, I too agree that organic food is a safer and healthier way to go, as it lends to a more natural digestion for our bodies, and as we have eaten this way I do feel healthier and have lost some weight.  It’s good for us, it feels right (something inside us wants natural organic things), and we believe it will help our lives down the road.

Along these lines, I have heard much about the Organic Church, or how a church must be organic to grow healthy, etc. So to compare organic food and organic church, you have to look at what is truly organic. I mean organic labeled food is still planted in a very systematic way, the end result being a consumable product. Truly organic food probably looks more like a random apple tree growing in the wilderness in the Adirondacks; I stumble upon it as I am trailblazing, pick and eat. You can pick and eat this apple because there aren’t pesticides or wax all over it, but there may be a worm lurking inside. 

So an organic church may be systematically placed, or planted using books, such as Neil Cole’s Organic Church or Frank Viola’s Finding Organic Church, or by using a home or house church model. These books have good insight and information but by reading them and using techniques and tools to create an organic church, you may in fact be creating an organic labeled church. It still may be healthy, very good for you but in fact not truly organic. It may become less relevant in time, and as you peel away the layers, it might just be less organic than the label led you to believe. 

Organic seems to be the church lemming at this point, I believing the Emerging/ Emergent lemming has jumped already. The House Church Lemming may be lumped in with the Organic, but it may have jumped as well. Church marketing plays heavily on what is in vogue with our community and culture, and therefore the hot button topic, word or phrase becomes the next lemming which many begin to follow, not knowing that ultimately it is headed for the same cliff as the others before.

The church needs to stop. Stop trying to be cool, relevant, be-all-end-all fix for everyone’s needs for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and brokenness. This is Christ’s job. The church is people, spanning over time and space, we are linked through this one belief that we love God and that we love everyone else too. We join together in saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing our redemption songs with all believers past and present, and when we sing and pray together, God hears us as one united voice, undivided by names, places, theological or liturgical differences. He hears the body working as one organic body.

My advice is to not seek out organic food or churches without doing your research. Understand what you may be getting yourself into, and realize that you may be disappointed with the taste. I recently created a beautiful salad with organic lettuce, only to realize that there were tons of small bugs in the depths of the romaine. It wasn’t bad or rotten; in fact it was truly organic as there were no pesticides to keep these little bugs away from my pure lettuce. When we go organic, maybe we have to be open to the bugs and flavors that we are not used to, and to beware of the lemmings that run through our gardens on the way to the cliff. 

Disclaimer: Disney made up a big lie documentary and pushed lemmings of the cliff, I guess they don’t commit suicide, thanks Walt you inhumane liar.

-Dan

As millions of kids go to public school to be indoctrinated by their teachers everyday, some from the more conservative slant decided to keep their kids home for fear of the dreaded Obama speech.  

Yes, that’s right folks, in less than 20 minutes Barack Obama was going to turn your kids in mindless, communist, socialist, marxist, godless zombies.

Look out, it's the indoctrination disease!

(Thanks to Carolita Johnson for drawing such a great cartoon.)

Now I’m not saying public school is bad, but kids do spend more time with their teachers during the waking hours of a day than they do with their parents.  And the fact is indoctrination takes place all the time.  From advertisers to church to school to family interaction, there is a certain prescribed way of doing things.  And if those things are questioned, the questioner is forced back into line.

Yet we know of many who bucked such indoctrination and changed the course of history, for both good and bad.

So here’s a real question for those people who yanked their kids out of school so they wouldn’t have to hear Obama’s speech or bitched so loud that the speech wasn’t shown in their schools:

What does it say about your parenting skills that you dump your kid off for almost 15 years into a system where you have little to no control as to what is being taught, but are afraid of a 20 minute speech?

Not to put too fine a point on it though.

-mike

As I sat down earlier on Friday to scan a few news sites before heading off to a dinner, I came across a headline in the New York Times about a Marine’s picture.  Not just any picture, but one showing his mortal injuries sustained during combat in Afghanistan.  Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard was hit by a rocket propelled grenade severing one leg and almost the other.  He later died of his injuries.  This all took place on the 15th of August.

An embedded Associated Press journalist, Julie Jacobson, was with Bernard’s unit when it was ambushed and while under fire snapped a somewhat blurred photo of Bernard after sustaining his injuries and being tended to by two Marines.  The AP decided to release the photo today, though in her journal written at the time of the attack, Jacobson doubted that the photo would ever “see the light of day.”

I shot images that day well aware that those images could very possibly never see the light of day. In fact I was sure of it. But I still found myself recording them.

I as read through the comments section there were people arguing for freedom of the press and those arguing for to honor the wishes of the parents to withhold the picture from the public.  Ostensibly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates came down on the side of withholding the photo to prevent more anguish for the family.  But since we first invaded Iraq, pictures of dead American soldiers (flag-draped caskets or otherwise) has been kept to a minimum because our politicians have learned the hard political lessons from Vietnam.

Enough gruesome photos will eventually cut through the fog of obliviousness that most Americans live in, so the spin becomes that the AP is callous and looking for exposure.  And what gets lost in that spin is the fact that war is brutal and costly, not only to Americans, but to the people of the land we are currently invading.  And we in America do not like to be bothered by such unpleasantries.

So my question is this:

Should photos of American war casualties be allowed to be published to make the American public aware of the reality around them or should the American population be shielded from such realities?

-mike

I love music. I love worship. I love to worship with music. I don’t love much worship music. 

We are creatures of habit, and maybe I have gone since a child, and maybe I think there may be something uniquely different about this or that gathering, or maybe I am prompted by a Spirit that is Holy, or maybe driven by my own sense of guilt that I know is not from my maker but I cannot surgically remove it from my Americana psyche, or maybe I have an insatiable desire to find good broken people seeking the I AM. I did indeed enter a house of worship, a congregation, a local body of believers, a weekend service, program, the basic idea and understanding of “going to church” this past Sunday with my wife.

We had heard of this “church” through a good couple who owns and runs the most beautiful (quality, aesthetics, taste) coffee roaster/house in our city. It is a newer church with an unattainable vision to reach every man, woman, and child in our city with the gospel  of Jesus. Seemed like good people, good worship, just good in the context of a typical evangelistic worship service.

As I sat and soaked in the experience that I skip on most weekends which almost always starts with song and instruments, I wondered who is  the Sunday Service for? If it was a book, the introduction begins with the act of singing worship which I believe will cause many of “the lost” to close the book before the first chapter. (I may start including myself in the lost category)

In a previous post I mention the song “The Secret of the Easy Yoke” by David Bazan or Pedro the Lion to be clear. In it he sings;

I can hear the church bells ringing
they pealed aloud your praise
the members faces were smiling
with their hands out stretched to shake
it’s true they did not move me
my heart was hard and tired
their perfect fire annoyed me
I could not find you anywhere

In it, you find the experience that many of us find on any given Sunday. It is a real worship song stating to a  personal God that something is wrong with this setup, and so we are clear God, “sometimes I don’t love you at all”. This is the song I hear (it drowns out the voices in my head) during the 20 minute worship set. I cannot tell you how many churches I have been to that have found this to be the most effective amount of worship on a Sunday. Now I am pretty sure anyone who is not a regular attender, church goer, attendee for any given amount of time throughout their life,  will find even 5 minutes to be foreign, odd, and bizarre at best. “The lost” rarely if ever sing songs of praise and adoration to anyone, let alone a god. So the worship part cannot be for them.  To me, worship is about meeting God wherever we are at and trying to connect with him in some way. A good portion of worship is just our anger towards God for the situations of our life (King David at times used this as a method to vent and release I believe). And as Dustin Kensrue sings, he is using a form of worship that could reach those who may not know our God, but sings of a setting and structure that more could relate to.

Come all you weary move through the earth
Surrounded by rest stones and kicked out of church
A couple of loaves sit down at my feet 
Lend me your ears and break bread with me

To sit and eat and talk and communicate with the divine would  make life so much easier, yet we must rely on humans to translate the message of grace and love through bodies and minds of brokenness and desires of success that are less than pure. Perhaps the Sunday Service was an easier, more programmable solution to the human element. Maybe losing the human element of social connectedness (read Bowling Alone)  may be what is driving “the church” towards irrelevance. And the element of  unrighteousness is our flaw, it is our curse from birth, but does not separate us from God or each other. Bob Dylan worshiped through these words; 

When a man he serves the Lord, it makes his life worthwhile.
It don’t matter ’bout his position, it don’t matter ’bout his lifestyle.
Talk about perfection, I ain’t never seen none
And there ain’t no man righteous, no not one.

Now this song seems like a worship song that anyone could sing and feel like they are part of something bigger. It is okay to be broken with imperfection and that in our lifetimes we may never taste the good christian life that facades on Sundays. So I wonder how we have come to where we are, but the weekend deal is not for the new but for the old, and for many of the old it feels sterilized, distant and disconnected.

I have been to many shows and concerts throughout my 32 years, and some of the best have been bands of no consequence that I paid $5 bucks to see and they sang and played with such passion and urgency that they left indelible marks on my life (thank you snapcase). I have also paid and walked out of a show 5 minutes into a bands set because they didn’t move me, and the vibe was all wrong, and the crowd was just not my crowd, and if it wasn’t going to happen in the first 5 min. the last 20 wouldn’t be much better. Not sure what “the church” should be, but it has to at least have the passion of a punk rock band.

-dan

I had the opportunity to attend the Willow creek Leadership Summit last week whereby Bill Hybels taps into all his resources and brings in quite a diverse class of leaders. This year I was pleasantly surprised by many of the speakers. Some stand out, some where typical Willow creek style. One in particular was Gary Hamel, and by this snippet from the World Business Forum, he is quite the intellect in the realm of management and leadership.

“The Wall Street Journal recently ranked Gary Hamel as the world’s most influential business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him “the world’s leading expert on business strategy.” For the last three years, Hamel has also topped Executive Excellence magazine’s annual ranking of the most sought after management speakers.”

Mind you, the great majority of attendees are pastors and their staff  from across the world listening to whomever Bill Hybels puts on the stage (Blair, Gergen, and Bono graced the stage as well this year).

As I listened, I was amazed and somewhat shocked to hear Hamel present a session titled Manage Differently Now. He was stating what I think and believe, that in a nutshell, our model for church organization and leadership is broken and flawed and in disarray. He jabbed that the modern church, follows more of a Roman Empire design and structure and is quite different from that of the Acts church.  And I quote,

The early church was spiritually powerful and institutionally weak, and the modern church is institutionally powerful and spiritually weak.

Now when “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” can look at the church and say the problem lies in the lack of spirituality and the misguided focus of institutional power, would any church leaders listen?

I then learned about an organization called Kiva.org, very innovative, seems like it could truly put some power back into the poorest people’s hands with a little help from the richest (you and me) people in the world. Check it out.

Dave Gibbons, pastor of Newsong Church in Irvine, CA, had a great presentation about the 3d Culture Church. He eloquently stated that we spend too much time on vision statements, and that the vision statement was given to us and hasn’t ever changed, it is “Love God, and love people.”  His 4 acts to change the world were: 1.deeper collaboration (intra-church relationships), 2.communal living, 3.prayer, and 4.radical sacrifice for outsiders. He had my attention needless to say, but did discuss how they moved into a 65,000 sq ft facility, and the trials they encountered talking about 50-75 million dollar price tag for such spaces.

 Imagine the cost of overhead and up keep on a space like this, I can get into it, you have just committed your congregant tithers to an annual cost that could have gone to direct health care, food, water, and shelter for those in the greatest need. I do not question his heart, just the methods that tie up the financial resources.

Bono was then interviewed and he gave a glowing report that over the last 3 years, the church had truly stepped up its efforts in the battles against AIDS and poverty throughout Africa. Bill H. then asked him why he still was not part of a local church. Bono tried to redirect, but when an answered was pressed, Bono stated that he and his family had been to numerous churches throughout the US and what he had found were “lifeless ceremonies”. I may be the only one who gave an ‘AMEN’ in the room, and Bill H. was stuck. Only Bono could craft such a perfect description of the state of the church in 2 words.

I’m telling you, the conference (in my contrarian cynical mind) was on a high note. Willow had diversified its speakers, gave an alternative direction for church leadership (though they probably won’t follow it), and had clips of U2 playing ‘Magnificent’. Then Bill stepped up to the plate late on Friday.

There were presentation materials by Compassion and World Vision (I was able to get The Hole in Our Gospel at a discount price), and I do believe people felt moved towards the causes at hand. Then Bill drops the giving bomb. He stated that if anyone felt lead or moved to give to Africa relief or to any of the other causes (World Vision, Compassion), that it was their obligation to get right financially with their local church first. To in fact not give to any of these causes before they had come in line with their tithe at their local church. I was shocked, in awe, and devastated to hear him explain that it is our duty commanded by God to do this first. All local pastors were shaking their heads in agreement (this is my belief) and the conference had ended on a sour note for me once again. If only Bono knew that his interview would be followed up with the tithe sermon.

Will any change occur?  This is the rub, you see church leaders would then have to question how, what, and why they do the programs they do to fund the machines that they create, and ultimately deconstruct all of what they have helped to build in order to become relevant again. Then I question can relevance even be subversive, or was Jesus the only human to pull of subversive relevance?

Back in April, I wrote a two-part review about the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins.  It seems that my post pops up for people who are searching for that book, but with an additional word added to their search: DEBUNK.

Now I agree that we should all be suspicious about broad-sweeping accusations such as the ones leveled in Perkins’ book.  But before all of you looking to write Perkins off as a whack job close the case in your mind, I recommend you watch a documentary from 2001 about Jamaica’s economy and the IMF.  Life and Debt by Stephanie Black uses the stark contrast between the tourist side of Jamaica and that of the native population to highlight how post-colonial Jamaica was exploited by the IMF.

I know a term like exploited is harsh and that the IMF is not only to blame, but Michael Manley, former Prime Minister of Jamaica and by no means a saint, asks a tough question about the IMF.  He says that to find out whose interest is served by the IMF, one must look at who setup IMF up in the first place.

The U.S. currently has  16.79% of the vote in the IMF.  While 16.79% seems like a small percentage, when compared to the next closest country Japan, who has a whopping 6.02%, the disparity starts to stand out.  When that disparity is shown in real numbers, the U.S. has 371,743 votes and Japan 133,378, a difference of 238,365 votes, it becomes obvious who calls the shots.

So when a documentary like Life and Debt shows how the Jamaican dairy industry is devastated by U.S. companies dumping powered milk into the country at prices far below cost, one has to ask how those U.S. companies got the right to do so in the first place.  Considering that at the time milk powder had a 137% subsidy from the U.S. government and America’s dominance of the IMF, dairy farmers in Jamaica didn’t stand a chance.

Good luck in your quest to debunk.  I hope you don’t pass over the truth however by blindly trying prove America’s innocence, and by extension yours.  I think we all wish what he said wasn’t true, but the lives of others prove differently.

-mike