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October 31, 2006
"People always focus on the loud minority who ruins everything"
There's a webcomic I read a great deal called Something Positive, drawn by Randy Milholland.
It's not a webcomic I will recommend to the broader populace. It's really not "positive." It might well be the most misanthropic story ever told, and it has been since the very first comic. It is about a comprehensive, equal opportunity offender (not to mention, from time to time, hideously obscene and vulgar - the comic I link above is one of the mildest ones, honestly).
But at the center of the story is a Southern Baptist patriarch - Fred MacIntire - who can be a curmudgeon, a bitter soul, potty-mouthed, who has never had as much interest in church as his late wife - but who genuinely believes and has shown grace to the most unexpected people at the most unexpected times. I first really started to get Fred's character in the midst of this story about the MacIntire's church getting taken over by a money-woman - one of the most moving drawings I have ever seen was the couple sitting quietly in the church despite the damage they'd taken. (It's even more moving knowing that Fred had less than a year with his wife left at that point - and that Fred has Alzheimer's and never got up the nerve to tell Faye. Warning - that last comic involves Fred's son Davan, and is therefore VERY potty-mouthed).
So that brings us to the current story. The widower Fred, now shaking off the shackles of his overprotective daughter, is going to a Haunted House. Only this isn't just any Haunted House.
If you dare, read forward from there. The story has ten parts. Part 6 is especially devastating - and I'm pretty sure seeing something like that would send me over the edge too. Obviously, there's more than a bit of gleeful ripping on fundamentalism here.
But this is the most devastating part: At the point where everybody is doing their "oh that was awful let's go somewhere and have fun", Fred stands up and witnesses. And he gets stunned at the response.
It strikes me that this foul-mouthed and misanthropic webcomic drawer has drawn, quite simply, the most believable Christian I've ever seen in any media, sacred or secular.
And then I read the newspost below. And it's pretty troubling.
...to my Christian readers: I am sorry. I am sorry many of you do get stereotyped or find yourself having to defend your faith against those who've been jaded by the [crazy-as-a-bat] insane. More than a couple of you (and one or two people who'd never read my comic before and only read enough of the archives to justify feelings of persecution without realizing I attack pretty much everything, but to you I don't apologize - to you I offer [something I won't bother to mention on a family blog]) felt this storyline was portraying Christians as the likes of Phelps. This was not my intent. However, I have some awful news for you.The problem of being lumped with them won't go away until you become more vocal.
People assume most Christians are heavy-handed, pushy, intolerant bigots bent of dominating any other culture or idea and supplanting it with their own whims because, for the most part, the ones who speak up the most ARE heavy-handed, pushy, intolerant bigots bent on dominating any other culture or idea and supplanting it with their own whims. It sucks. It's horrible. And it's the what everyone of any faith, political idea, or lifestyle has to deal with. People always focus on the loud minority who ruins everything. And like any other group, the only way you can combat this is making your views and, in this case, your kindness and actual testimony louder than the hateful prattle of those hurting your beliefs.
I could go on about my history with Christianity (yes, I was once a Christian. I even, as a teenager, drew comics for a Christian Magazine called TeenQuest - TQ - published by Shepherd Ministries)- but I have a date tonight and it's Halloween. Maybe another time.
I'm not going to stand here and tell you that I'm something I'm not, here. I am an evangelical. I buy into the Great Commission. I believe in making disciples, not just of this nation but of all nations.
But: You're reading the words of somebody who once believed, and who no longer believes, and who you can be pretty confident no longer believes in part because he became embarassed to be associated with all the blowhards around him who believed.
Christianity is about Jesus first and foremost. But we remain the body - the Bride - of Christ. And we have an obligation to represent Jesus as best we can. And I simply can't shake the feeling that, in this day and age, we do a flat-out horrible job of it.
And why do I need a foul-mouthed comic to remind me of this?
Posted by Chuck at 09:32 PM | TrackBack
October 15, 2006
Learning biology the Buckeye way
If you or your son or daughter is having difficulty with respiration and photosynthesis in a high school or college general biology course, they can do worse than watching these two videos. (Upper-division biology students should spot a few flaky moments in the descriptions, but hey, what do you expect when it's the band and the football coach doing the teaching?)
(Permalinks for the Krebs Cycle and Z-scheme videos. Hat tip, in what is surely an all time first for biology content, to Deadspin. Twisted pride in alma mater is all mine.)
Posted by Chuck at 05:26 PM | TrackBack
October 14, 2006
The Methodist Blogroll
I'm thinking one of these days I'm going to add this humble site to the Methodist Blogroll. One of the requirements is that we link the Methodist Blogroll is our own blogrolls. For how I have this fair space laid out, that would be a Royal Pain In The Posterior - it's a one-way ticket to a page that's four times as long and that has a right sidebar that goes on forever. If I get more Moveable Type sophisticated, I might find a way around that - but right now, with what I have on my plate, it's a non-starter.
So I'm thinking I'm just going to link this post instead. If all goes well, beyond the jump you'll see the Methodist Blogroll in all its glory - Methodist connectionalism for the internet age. There are some wonderfully deep thinkers there - I listen to what Shane Raynor has to say every time he posts, I would read Brian Vinson even if he wasn't Jenny's brother, and I've really grown to appreciate Jason Woolever's questioning spirit. (Oh, and one of the most intelligent milbloggers is a Methodist pastor too.)
And there's a lot more in there that I'm sure I've never read. Feel free to browse and think and wonder.
Posted by Chuck at 10:27 AM | TrackBack
(Boring political post, feel free to avoid.)
This is one of the most interesting political letters I've read pretty much ever.
Mind you, you should not be confused about its intent - it is an advertisement for FreedomWorks, a grassroots conservative/libertarian PAC and thinktank. Mind you, you should not be confused about its author, who was one of the firebrands of the Republican Revolution in 1994 (back when I was excited about the idea of being a Republican) - and one who still has those central passions still plainly in display.
But to read this kind of principled, conservative - and even Christian - takedown of how much Republicans have comprehensively gotten wrong over the past six years is stunning. Case in point:
Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism— including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties— have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of "righteousness" on others through the hammer of law.
We must avoid the temptation to use the power of government to perfect our society and its citizens. That is the same urge that drives the Left and the socialists, and I can assure you that every program or power we give government today in the name of our values can be turned against us when the day comes where a majority of Congress is hostile to us.
Again, disagree with the motivations of that statement if you will - and many of you will - but understand that there is a sea change in American political thought coming, if you can consider anything in the W era "political thought" at all. And it is not purely a rise of Democrats to overthrow a corrupt GOP - in fact, the thing that keeps me from pulling a straight Democratic ticket in November is the fact that I have never seen this sophisticated a debate about what government is and what government should be from Democrats. Ever. The Dems have never even come close. The sophistication and rigor comes broadly from conservatives and libertarians.
(Hrm. I didn't start this post with the intent to make that kind of turn, but it is how I feel, so why stop now?)
The hat tip for the above take goes to - as seems to be the pattern for these sorts of things - Andrew Sullivan's blog. Talk about a guy who you might or might not agree with - Sullivan is one of the most polarizing writers I read, who can offend in one post and tug at the heart strings in the next and argue intelligently and passionately in the next. He shoves the homosexuality issue in my face, which is at the core of so many of my deepest spirutal questions and even now (in this supposedly enlightened age and in my supposedly enlightened phase) I'm not entirely comfortable with.
But the debate - about what government is, about what faith is, about what terrorism is, about what conservatism is, about what Christianity is, about what this war is, even about who we are as the heirs of Western civilization - is there on his pages. It is all out there, it is argued fiercely, and I am exposed to more thinking from ALL corners of political thought than I would be otherwise. And it is important to see how as many people think as possible, rather than closeting ourselves into one small corner of the political spectrum and simply being comfortable there.
And that's probably the best conclusion I can come up with for this collection of thoughts, so I'll shut up.
Posted by Chuck at 07:25 AM | TrackBack
October 09, 2006
Need for prayer
Usually I don't like anonymous academic blogs - too many of them strike me as excuses for people in an absolutely charmed vocation to moan about administrators or students mercilessly. (For examples, browse through Inside Higher Ed's Around The Web section and the associated blogrolls. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which anonymous blogs really hack me off.)
For better or for worse, though, some anonymous blogs are absolutely invaluable. They work when you have an individual who gives you insight that there is no possible way anyone could give without being anonymous. The blog Confessions of a Community College Dean is the pinnacle of those blogs. I understand more about how administrators work, and why, for having read this blog than anything else academic I have read. I learn about hiring presidents. I learn about professorial politics. I learn about cultures of departments. And that's just in the last month.
Today, reading the latest post where Dean Dad is being necessarily non-specific...I feel like he knows what I'm going through right now.
I'm confronting a happy-fog vs. truth-teller issue, and I'm starting to get worried. Without getting too detailed or revealing, I'll just say that it involves the limits of what internal reform can accomplish in the face of negative external demographic changes. The happy foggers say that there is no limit to what internal reform can accomplish, as long as everyone stays focused. More darkly, they intimate, people who mention limits are saboteurs or malingerers, dooming the college with their self-fulfilling negativity. (To be fair, curmudgeons frequently like to style themselves truth-tellers, when in fact they're just bitter and nasty. So the intimations don't come out of nowhere.) The smarter truth-tellers actually support internal reform, but suggest that expecting too much to come of it can only end in tears.
We're at the point at which a significant number of painful internal reforms have already taken place, but their impact has been disappointingly small as against external changes. This is where the conflict gets tricky. Both groups agree that the payoff has been frustratingly small, but they offer different explanations. To the truth-tellers, the payoff was probably the best that could be expected in a hostile external climate. The next job is to face up to the reality of that climate, and start making some really unpleasant decisions. To the happy-foggers, the payoff was small because too many people don't like change, too many nay-sayers are running around, and too many people just refuse to get with the program. There's nothing wrong with the program; it just needs to be amped up.
Of course, I'm still trying to figure out how I became one of the happy-foggers.
So pray for Dean Dad. And pray for me while you're at it.