Upon learning that somebody else’s name was affixed to my credit report, I took appropriate action.  In addition to alerting every credit agency to the crime, I also immediately implemented a credit freeze, blocking all non-approved access to my credit report.  This was long before Todd Davis proudly put his own Social Security Number on the sides of billboards and trucks, all to promote his LifeLock security service.

(By the way, Mr. Davis himself is up to about 17 different thefts of his identity in the years since launching his company.)

There is a problem with a “credit freeze,” though.  Once applied, it can take an act of Congress to get it lifted.  If you don’t happen to carry your credit freeze pin code and personal identification numbers around with you at all times – one for each of the major three credit bureaus – you might just find yourself hitting a brick wall when you try to do something as innocuous as signing up for cell phone service.  The retailer will contact the credit bureau to look up your status only to find what should be a quick, painless process grind to a screeching halt.

Such was the case yesterday, when our family attempted to fire up new lines of service at Verizon Wireless.  I blissfully forgot that I had credit freezes in place and received the jolting news mid-way through the account creation process.

What ensued in the half hour after that revelation is a cautionary tale that you would do well to keep in mind for yourself.

The clerk at the Verizon Wireless store said, “Mr. Pearl, do you have a credit freeze on your account?”

Suddenly I remembered that, yes, I had locked down my credit tighter than a shipment of nuclear waste.  No worry.  TransUnion was on the line and by simply answering a series of questions about items contained within my credit report I’d be off to the races.

If only it were that simple.

On the other end of the line was a gentleman with a thick – almost completely unintelligible – accent.  Though his English was solid, his pronunciation of various words left me grasping at straws.  If only it were as simple as verifying my social security number, name, and address life would be just fine.  Unfortunately, TransUnion required me to answer a series of complicated, multiple choice questions designed to weed out whether I was in fact that person I claimed I was.

The first question had to do with our home address.

Strike one.

Somewhere along the line someone had added an apartment number to our address.  Though we lived in an apartment about about 20 years ago, every address since has been standard fare.  Street number, street name, town, and zip.

I have no idea what address they were looking at, but simply providing our current address was – as my son would say – an epic fail.

The second question had to do with mortgage payments.  This is where things start to get dicey.  Simply speaking an address to the man on the other end of the line was a study in frustration, to be true.  But it was a study in frustration because the data was wrong, not because I couldn’t understand him.

The mortgage question, though, was one of those multiple choice affairs that involved him reading a series of mortgage companies and me confirming the name of the one to whom we paid our bills every month.

In addition to me not understanding a word he was saying, the name of the mortgage company had been shortened to a bunch of initials, none of which made any sense to me.  ”Are you saying, ‘C’ or ‘B’ or ‘V?”  I simply couldn’t understand anything through that thick accent.  I finally punted.

“All I can tell you is that we don’t write checks to any of those companies you just named, but if I have to pick one, I’ll take door number 3.”

(Funny thing…  They can’t tell you if you get the answer wrong until they’ve tortured you with the entire slate of questions.”

Before I totally threw in the towel I took a stab at a third question.

It was on this third question that I nearly broke down and wept right there at the counter in the Verizon store.

“On or about April 2009 you took out a consumer loan with which of the following four companies…”

Friends, I still have no idea what he said to me.  The four multiple choice options he read bore absolutely no relationship to any English words I’d ever heard.  I knew the loan he was talking about.  It was the only loan we had taken out in April 2009.  I knew it was with one of two credit unions, so I offered the first one that came to my mind.

Wrong.

“I’m sorry Mr. Pearl…”

I understood the, “I’m sorry…” part clearly.  Perhaps because he’d had so much practice using that phrase, or perhaps because my ears had finally tuned into his accent, but either way I got the message.

Epic fail.  Again.

As he was reading his scripted litany of disclosures and “…You may call TransUnion at…” I stopped him.

“Excuse me… I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because this is nothing against you personally, but I need to get this on the record.  Your accent is so thick I had no idea what you were saying half the time and it made this entire experience excruciating.  I could have given you completely wrong answers not because I didn’t know my own credit report but because I couldn’t understand a word you were saying.”

Ouch.

He kept on going without missing a beat.  ”…and if you’ll call back once you have your pin code in hand…”

Here’s the tragedy.  That guy might just have his PhD from his native country.  He sounded articulate and intelligent from what little I could make out.  Every time I turn around I see another immigrant from some other country bringing way too much talent working in way too menial a position for their talent.

I just couldn’t understand the words coming out of his mouth.

Like it or not, there are some jobs in some English-speaking countries which are best left to native English speakers.  A telephone support person tasked with handling detailed personal information such as the kind found in a credit bureau report would be such a job.

At the end of the ordeal I was flushed, frustrated, mortified, and embarrassed.  My wife said I made something of a spectacle of myself.  I talked too loudly.  Call it a knee-jerk response.  When we don’t think people can understand us we instinctively fall into the mode of, “Maybe if I say it louder they’ll hear me better.”  It took me a full 15 minutes to finally feel my blood pressure subside.

We live in a melting pot.  I’m proud of that fact.

We live in a society where we genuinely believe that any person should be able to achieve the pinnacle of their capabilities as long as they work hard enough at their goal.  I’m proud of that, as well.

And the sad truth is that language is still a barrier in some circles and some jobs.  The man I spoke with probably makes short work of handling someone who speaks Spanish as their first language.  English, however, proved a nightmarish trip to abject frustration.  That’s not a slam on the man with whom I spoke.  That’s a slam on TransUnion for putting him in the position to fail in the first place.

I think we’re a richer country for having immigrants in our midst.  Without them, I wouldn’t be here.  My father is a first-generation American, the son of immigrant, Austrian parents.

At the same time we can’t ignore the fact that language is a barrier to some jobs.  If you’re going to have someone working the phones, make sure they are equipped with the tools it will take to succeed.  What I experienced yesterday should not happen again.

The problem with “the middle,” where thoughtful conversation and rampant curiosity trumps screaming pontification and stubborn narrow-mindedness, is that I often hear strident voices screaming into either ear with all the subtlety of a police bullhorn.  Looks like this is going to be one of those times.  I guess I better get some ear plugs handy.

In the last election, the mantra “Drill, Baby, Drill!” really translated to, “Our economy is Jonesing for cheap oil, so we don’t really care where you have to go to get it or what the risks!  Just get us some cheap, domestic, no-terror-funding oil!”  The great fallacy behind that slogan, “Drill, Baby, Drill!”, is the notion that drilling new oil wells turns on a dime, dropping in like parachuted MREs for a quick energy snack in the middle of protracted battle.  By the time you get all the paperwork done, insure that the environment won’t be decimated by the new well, and verify that the proposed owner of the well is a decent enough environmental steward, you’re talking turn-around times measured in years, not weeks or months.  Payback from all that, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” breathlessness is not immediate.  Anyone who thinks otherwise ought to go get their IQ checked.

On the left, standing equally stridently against the, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” crowd, you had voices literally crying in the wilderness, warning of the potential for cataclysmic impact in the most pristine of environments should anything go awry.  These folks blissfully deny the reality of the economic impact of doing nothing.  The oil-based economy isn’t going away overnight.  Our dependence on foreign oil is indeed undermining our national security and sovereignty.

The fundamental premise in this endless debate pivoted on a single, common theme.  Nobody trusts the government to do the job of oversight properly.  The left worries that the government is too lax, the right worries that it can’t make enough of a profit under government regulation and oversight.

Somewhere in the middle lay a more reasoned perspective; we are the government and we had better do a good job of insuring that the oil industry is working on behalf of not just the profit motive but the good citizen motive.  The notion that the government represents the interest with the deepest pockets is specious.  Industry, left purely to its own devices, exists to make a profit regardless of environmental or social impact.  Government, left purely to its own devices, would attempt to control everyone and everything, dictating reality down to the most minute level.

The mess in the Gulf represents too little, too late, by too few. It was no surprise that lax oversight of the oil industry accelerated under the Bush administration.  (Dick Cheney didn’t get to be the Chairman of Halliburton for nothin’.)  But it didn’t start there.  Most studies I’ve read indicate that the Bureau of Minerals and Mines, under which oil industry regulation apparently falls, was way-too-cozy with the very industry it was tasked to regulate dating back years prior to the oilman Bush (and his buddy Dick Cheney) coming to power.  To behave as if this was a disaster nobody could see coming is to deny reality.  When you conduct business one mile beneath the surface of the ocean it’s flat out dimwitted to expect that everything is going to go smoothly in perpetuity. Just because we never had a major disaster off-shore didn’t mean that vigilance could be relaxed.  If anything, strict environmental and government oversight should have been endowed in perpetuity.  Things one mile beneath the surface of the sea tend to get a tad dicey when left without proper maintenance and care.

So now the finger-pointing begins.

Did BP bungle the job?  Having watched CBS’ 60-minutes report two weeks ago I find it hard not to believe they did.  BP’s pressure to rush through the mud-capping procedure in order to make the well easier to uncork later on smacks of unrepentant greed out of a company whose profits measured in the billions prior to the catastrophe.  And BP’s overruling of TransOcean’s managerial cautions to go slower is well documented.

Worse yet, nobody – not BP, not Transocean, not Halliburton (who also had a part in this mess), nor the US Government had a contingency plan in place for when – not if – such a blow-out occurred.  Everyone just “assumed” that the blowout prevention mechanism would function perfectly, a silent sentinel against the disaster with which we now find ourselves confronted.  Here’s the problem with silent sentinels; ya gotta feed and clothe them once in a while or they tend to expire on the job.  With a bum battery and a blown control module the failure of the blowout prevention mechanism thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf was practically screaming that it was on its last legs.

But in classic Alfred E. Newman fashion, BP behaved as if all was well with the well, ignoring the clear warning signs of impending disaster.

How’s all that, “Government must get out of the way of business!” rhetoric sitting with ya now that your shrimp are delivered to your plate in a shroud of tar and oil?

How’s all that, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” sloganeering working for ya, chief, now that we’re looking at a decade of cleanup ahead of us, with thousands of jobs lost in a fishing business gone straight to Hell, from Louisiana all the way down and around the tip of Florida?  (EDITORS NOTE 8-10-2010:  Looks like the cleanup is going better than anticipated.  Probably won’t take a decade to return the Gulf to it’s original state.)

There is an appropriate level of government regulation required to insure the safety of our ecology and our food chain.  Without government regulators – with enough clout behind them – looking over enough for-profit shoulders disasters such as this will happen.  How did Gordon Gecko put it in the movie, “Wall Street”…

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

Oh, and this final note…

This is also a telling tale of the fallout faced when you underfund government to the point that it no longer serves its core function; protecting the lives and freedoms of its citizens.  Make no mistake, the spill in the Gulf will have fallout far more lingering than even that of 9/11.  No, lives will not be lost, but economic and environmental treasure will take decades years to recover fully.

And that assumes we don’t see another disaster like this somewhere else off our shores or in our wilderness.

It’s time to take the blinders off, adopt an “appropriate” level of regular funding (aka: taxation) for the oversight function (aka: government regulation) to insure that business behaves itself.  It’s time we insure that mega-business like the oil industry looks out for the health and welfare of our citizens as much as for its own bottom line.

Friends, I’m not big on national standards for too many things, but this is one area where I think a few standards are long, LONG overdue.  For one state to get away with re-casting broad swaths of history in ways utterly devoid of factual support and then have those decisions impact school children across the nation is unfathomable.  The truth is that what Texas does to its history curriculum other states will wind up following purely for economic reasons; it’s too expensive for textbook manufacturers to customize different curricula for different states.

Write your member of Congress and raise the red flag, warning them that what is going on in Texas is bad for all of us, conservative and liberal alike.  When we lose respect for the factual nature of the historical record, or even for the critical importance of devotion to fact over perception regardless of political ideology, we lose our identity as a nation.  This nation grew and thrived over the years precisely because minority dissent moved us to action.  If politicians in Texas are allowed to pretend as if minority dissent was inconsequential to the molding of the American personality, it will be a grievous wrong that will ultimately impact us all.

Q:  When is a “slave” not a “slave?”

A:  When that person is actually a piece of property in the “Atlantic triangular trade.”

Huh?

That’s right.  Those perpetually cheery individualists in Texas have grown tired of accepting the notion that white folk traded in humans way back when – aka: “the slave trade” – so they have decided to rewrite history to portray all-things lily-white in a more genteel, less offensive way.  The slave trade is now known as the, “Atlantic triangular trade.” (Read all about this at the BBC.) Notwithstanding the fact that the “proper” name for the slave trade was “Atlantic triangular trade” – in which human trafficking served as one leg of the three legged stool, stripping the words “slave trade” from textbooks serves one purpose and one purpose only; stripping the pure impact and horror from the actual events of the day.

Friends, you couldn’t come up with stuff this dopey if you had a room full of Hollywood screenwriters at your beck and call.  George Orwell wasn’t far off the mark, was he?

I am not sure if this is the chicken or the egg, but such mindless behavior by the people allegedly in charge of crafting “curriculum” portends a cycle of further shenanigans, dooming future generations of Texans to a less than complete telling of the truth.

Don’t like the concept of “separation of church and state?”

Just ignore Thomas Jefferson.  You know, the guy who pretty much single-handedly drafted our Constitution.

Don’t like the fact that someone fought really, really hard for the right for women to vote?

Ignore it.  Just write it out.  Strong-willed women never really had much of an impact on our history anyway.

Don’t like the fact that a nice man named McCarthy got way too much heat for being a blind, communist-fearing, hate-monger who used the power of the Congressional subpeona to strike fear into thoughtful dissent?

Tone it down.  Better yet, ignore the whole thing.  It never happened.

What’s next, gang?  Ignoring the Holocaust?

Oh wait, that’s right.  Iran already does.

The thing that has made this country great for so many generations is not that we run from our sins, but that we embrace them. Then, once we do embrace the truth of our sin, we do something about it. We attone for our sins.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

Facts are facts.  Fiction is fiction.  When we let fiction start masquerading as fact then “the truth” is nothing more than a comfortable lie.

And for those of us who believe in the God of the Universe, the Jesus in human form who died for our sins, we know that truth is sometimes painful to acknowledge.

What’s next, Texas?  Rewriting police blotters?

Original:  “The father was an abusive alcoholic drunk who beat the mother into a coma.”

Texas-style Rewrite:  “The alleged perpetrator was a poor, misunderstood guy who merely disciplined the mother with a stern rebuke.”

Or how about writing away the KKK, cross burnings, and lynchings?  Where does it end?! For all those arch-conservatives who like to flame on about how America is sliding down a slippery slope, Texas’ conservatives just threw a 55gal drum of McDonald’s fry oil on the incline.

Democracy is messy, friends. Our shared heritage is messy.  We must embrace the “truth” about our past even when such “truth” may cause us a chafing sensation deep down in unmentionable places within our collective soul.

As a proudly “conservative” Christian I find this whole matter of “de-liberalizing” history distasteful and repulsive.  The self-proclaimed “conservatives” in Texas who want to ignore the messier parts of our collective history rather than embrace them and learn from them are giving the rest of us a bad name.  My children will learn about our country’s history – good bad and otherwise – in all its fullness. They will embrace this painful reality – that we are not some gleaming picture of perfection, but rather have stumbled badly along the way – and they will work for a better future because they have seen the fallout of an occasionally ugly past.  My children will learn – for example – that unions once saved the country from its own unrepentant greed.  They will also learn that labor unions as well can abuse their power, underscoring the timeless message that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And they will most certainly learn and appreciate the importance of keeping the state out of the church and the church out of the state.  Where a prophetic faithful voice is free to cry in the wilderness, there God’s heart will be.

So imagine my shock this morning when I flipped on the FiOS box and was immediately met with a different kind of morning wake-up call.  I guess I accidentally left the Gospel Music Channel on after watching a rerun of a rerun of a rerun of “Sue Thomas: FB-EYE” on GMC.  There on my TV screen, begging for cash with the breathless earnestness of a man on the verge of starvation, was a guy I’d never heard of.   Mike Murdock was his name.  He was literally shouting into my face, “Don’t let your seed stay in your hand!  If you don’t plant your $1000 or $2000 seed you won’t get your harvest!”

‘Scuse me?

For a brief, appalled, moment I impulsively flipped the channel back over to Action News.  For as sad and depressing as murder is, I’ll take praying for a murder victim’s family any day of the week compared to indulging a screaming, greedy televangelist for even a moment.

The math is simple.

Murder = real life.

Televangelist = big fat phony.

But Murdock’s lure was too strong.  I felt compelled to return, instinctively drawn as one might be drawn to an unfolding train wreck.

When Murdock’s face again filled my screen I felt a curious sense of deja vu.  Mike Murdock reminded me of someone.  Who was it?

OLIVER STONE!  Yeah, that’s the guy!  Mike Murdock is Oliver Stone with a southern accent!

Now, Oliver Stone has this penchant for playing creepy, untrustworthy characters on the big screen.  Yep.  Mike Murdock immediately struck me as a creepy Oliver Stone-esque kind of guy.

Mike Murdock is but another in a long line of thieving, greedy televangelists, all of whom represent variations on a common theme.  “Name-it.  Claim-it.”  Or, you could also pinpoint them as a part of the Word-Faith club, but whatever you call them, the words “scam artist” should also pop to the fore.

As I lingered on Murdock’s urgent, mock telethon, I also got a chance to see the biggest, whitest, nerdiest Gospel choir led by the fattest, nerdiest, hair-pluggiest white guy on the planet, all doing their darndest to sound black, hip, and rhythmic.  You can’t make this stuff up, folks.  I don’t know who those pasty-complected, baby-faced, college-aged kids were, but they were pouring out their black-gospel best for the world to see.  Only thing was…  their bodies were all going every which way in the process.  It was like watching a giant, mass, convulsion set to Gospel music.

But I hung in there.

Mike Murdock then came back on screen and at first opened with a whisper…

“All we’re trying to do…”

He paused for dramatic, emotional effect.

“…is seed the kingdom for God…”

…Blah, blah, blah…

“…and if you’re sitting there, holding your $1000 or $2000 in your hand…” (intensity building)

…Blah, blah, blah…

“…YOU HAVE A JEHOVAH JIREH!  YOU HAVE A JEHOVAH JIREH!  YOU HAVE A JEHOVAH JIREH!”

Uhhh…  Riiight.

(For the uninitiated, “Jehovah Jireh” is often used by the name-it, claim-it crowd to signify the name of the cosmic sugar daddy known as God.  Any time you hear a preacher shout out, “Jehovah Jireh” you can take reasonable assurance in the notion that he (or she, ‘cuz charlatans are increasingly equal opportunity offenders these days) is a big, fat, money-grubbing phony.

You heard me right.

PHONY!

“But, Mr. NoMoreGreed,” you might be thinking to yourself.  “Who are you to say that these people are phonies?”

The Bible gives me that right.  God gave me a brain, gave me the Holy Spirit, gave me the gift of discernment, and called me to use the gift of discernment to expose money-grubbing thieves in sheep’s clothing.  The Bible warns us that in the end times people will do this kind of stuff, leading astray innocent, well-intentioned Christians with messages that promise an easy path to eternal life.  (“Broad is the road that leads to destruction…” [Matt. 7:13])  You, I, our offspring and all other believers are all called to be so steeped in scripture that we immediately, through the power of the Holy Spirit, recognize big, fat, money-grubbing phonies for what they are, whether they claim to be Christians or not.

But there is something else about these guys that is always a tip-off…

Obsession with Old Testament promises and prophecy.

You see, Christian scam artists all tend to rely heavily on the Old Testament ‘cuz they don’t much like the simple, other-focused reality of the New Testament.

Jesus said it best…

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor.  Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”  (Luke 12:33)

Hmmm…  I might be wrong, but didn’t Jesus clear the temple of people who cashed in on the religious fervor of faithful believers?  Jesus also roamed around proclaiming the Good News with little more than the coat on his back.

These guys – Mike Murdock included – divert our attention from the real prize.  Regardless of what they say, the prize isn’t money, or a black BWM 7 series, or even a 4000 sq ft McMansion.

No, the real prize for the Christian is salvation in Christ and an opportunity to share the gift of salvation with as many people as possible.  Guys like Murdock appeal to a deep-rooted, secret sin; our selfish desire for a comfortable, trouble-free life.  These people get us zoned in on assuring our comfort in the here and now to the detriment of preparing people for eternity.

Or maybe they are really doing us a service?  Perhaps if we just make our lives comfortable enough in the here and now the overwhelming perfection and paradise of heaven won’t be such a shock to our systems.

So the NoMoreGreed scam alert is up for Mr. Mike Murdock.  Send your money to Haiti before you send a nickel to this charlatan.

Let’s face it.  He isn’t the only person worrying about stuff like that.

And then my Christian friend said something that caused me to pause and draw a long, deep breath.  His words were something to the effect of…

“…and I worry that some day this is all going to get to the point of armed conflict…”

His point was simple.  Our “government” is out of control.  Congress is spending like a bunch of drunken sailors.  One day it is all going to come back to bite us or, more likely, our children, in the keister.

Worse yet, it might just take an armed revolution in order for “the people” to regain control of this mess.

In a moment I’ll dive into the weighty theological baggage hanging around the neck of the notion that we as Christians have either the right or the calling to raise arms against our government.  For now, though, let’s consider the implications of his concern from a Constitutional perspective.

Like it or not, we live under a system of simple, majority rule.  And just so we don’t forget recent history, the Democrats came to power not in some bloody coup, nor through the power of a rigged ballot box.  No, the Democrats came to power because conservative Republicans (and many conservative Christians who supported conservative Republicans) squandered their opportunity to do a better job of governing.  There was corruption.  There was secrecy about shady, backroom deals.  There was the Iraq war.  There was also run-away spending.

Let us also not forget that the vote to oust the Republican majority in 2008 wasn’t even close.  For one party to dominate not only the bully pulpit of 1600 PA Ave but both houses of Congress was a resounding slap in the face both to the Bush regime and Rovian politics in general.

Like it or not, friends, to imply that last weekend’s vote was somehow “unfair” or evidence of a government run amok is classic head-burial in the sand denial.  Forget the fact that Nancy Pelosi evokes nausea among many (including Mr. NoMoreGreed) at her very sight.  Get over it, Christian friends.  No, the Democrats merely did this past weekend what George W. Bush once so eloquently described as, “spending political capital.”  Nothing more, nothing less.

The Constitution is still intact.

The Union is still in one piece.

We may not like the outcome, but cries of “foul,” or suggestions that somehow the process was rigged are both disingenuous and specious.  Worse yet, recent threats of violence against members of Congress who voted for the bill belies the lowest form of animalistic behavior among our fellow citizens.

Here is a dose of reality for the poor losers now stomping through the halls of Congress and elsewhere around this great land.  The Gallup Poll reflects the fact that 49% of Americans (that mythic “will of the American People” so many pundits claim) actually approved of what Congress did last weekend.  40% think it was wrong and 11% are undecided.

A 49% majority approval rating is hardly the stuff about which armed conflict results.

So by one very civic, very civil measure, it is time for the Tea Party and the Republicans to quit whining and accept defeat gracefully.  To foment followers to the point of armed rebellion is not only anti-patriotic, it’s flatly stupid.

But let’s stop and consider this from a more practical perspective.  Is one vote on health care reform really worth armed rebellion on the streets of the capitol?

Didn’t think so.

Now, if the government were to tell me that I were only allowed to have one child and that my wife and I must abort any additional children…

Yeah, that might drive me to the point of armed rebellion.

But not this.  Not now.  What happened this past weekend was nothing more than the periodic pendulum of political power swinging back to the left.

For a time.

I predict that in just 2 years time it will start swinging back to the right.  Odds are that in 2012 the presidency will once again be back in Republican hands.  Let’s face it.  The Dems are on the path to screw up just as badly as the Republican majority did from 2000 to 2008.  As they do, they’ll find themselves hitting the bricks with all those Republicans who got swept out in 2008, all of them looking for new jobs.

Now let’s stop and consider all of this from a faith perspective.  Because the issue of armed conflict was raised by a brother in Christ I feel compelled to look at it from the perspective of my responsibility as a self-proclaimed Christian.

As a Bible-believing, Jesus-following, fellow Christian, my friend’s concerns gave me long pause.  Though I don’t deny the necessity of a little armed revolution now and again, (1776, anyone?), I nevertheless must turn to the Bible for guidance a little more sublimely spiritual than that available from the likes of Sarah Palin (“RELOAD!”), John Boehner (“Hell No!”), and many other hard-right, politically-motivated, Machiavelli-loving power-mongers.

(Matthew 26:47-55, NIV)

47While [Jesus] was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” 49Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

50Jesus replied, “Friend, do what you came for.”[d]

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

52″Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

55At that time Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. 56But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.

Gethsemane.

The pivot point in Jesus’ ministry.

Lest we forget, Jesus was fully God and fully man, fully tempted as a human yet fully focused on His divine calling and mission as God in human form.  Jesus was not immune to the political power plays of the day, he just had a more persistent, consistent, Godly view from the top.

In that one, critical moment in the garden Jesus made a bold, though often-overlooked, theological statement.  It is the events of the garden that must inform us as we wrestle with being thoughtful citizens of this imperfect country and this mortal realm.  Absorbing and adopting the lessons of Christ on the way to the cross will empower us to rise above the shouting and screaming we have seen come out of the health care debate and equip us to bring a more disciplined, spiritually enlightened perspective to earthly matters both great and small.

I have power.  I don’t always need to use it.

I have nothing to fear.  My ultimate fate is in God’s hands, not man’s.

In Jesus’ time polarized, political powers lurked behind the scenes of religious life.  Zealots and Pharisees played tug-of-war with the theo-political spectrum, one group seeking continuance of the religious and political status quo, the other seeking overthrow of the government by any means possible.

In the middle stood someone markedly different, someone who cared nothing about involvement in the power plays of the day and everything about drawing people to and equipping people for an eternity in paradise.

Standing squarely in the breach was the sacrificial lamb, Jesus.

The Jews expected a physical, political Messiah, one spiritually empowered to free them from seemingly unending captivity at the hands of this dictator or that.  Jesus offered something they hadn’t expected; God in human form, dedicated to freeing people from spiritual bondage, launching them toward eternity with God in a paradise beyond the capabilities of their imagination.

Jesus’ disciples were an interesting bunch.  At times they were ready to go to battle for Jesus.  At times they had spines of spaghetti.  At times they understood Jesus and his mission with great clarity.  At times you’d think they’d just dropped in from Mars.

So when the authorities came to arrest Jesus it was anybody’s guess who would do what in His defense.

As depicted in the Gospels, Jesus’ “majority whip,” Peter, drew the sword swiftly during the incident at Gethsemane.  He saw the authorities coming to take away his Master and he impulsively chose to fight back.  Though the narrative differs slightly depending upon which Gospel you read, (Jesus heals the soldier’s ear in Luke’s account, Mark and Matthew make no mention of the healing), the outcome is the same.

52″Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?

At the risk of over-paraphrasing God, I think Jesus’ point was pretty clear.

“Peter, relax!  God is in control of these events!  Don’t rely on violence or earthly power to achieve God’s spiritual plan.”

Humanity lives in the moment, blown by the winds of comfortable self-interest and myopic thinking.  God exists in the eternal, unfazed by the machinations of man and with a window-pane view of every human heart.

Jesus exemplified unwavering faith in God’s overarching plan by denying Peter his earthly need for control over Jesus’ destiny.  It wasn’t the first time Peter evidenced short-sighted, earth-bound thinking.  (Remember when he wanted to build Jesus a chalet after he witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration? Luke 9:33)  It also wouldn’t be Peter’s last chance to think in the “now.”  Just a short time later Peter would deny Jesus, caving in to mortal fear in the face of a resoundingly spiritual battle.

We, like Peter, seem to be stuck in a rut in this present age.  We hear rumors of conspiracy, communism, corruption, or government take-overs and we react with knee-jerk passion and easily-manipulated, lemming-like servitude.  Before seeking God’s will, we willingly subject ourselves to the leadership of people whose faith in Christ and commitment to God’s plan of salvation is suspect, whether Republican, Tea Party, OR Democrat.  We are so fixated on our present comfort and sanctity of the pocket book that we lose sight of our calling to be both salt and light to a world gone tasteless and dark.

We are called to bring something different to this debate.

We are called to bring peace in the midst of the storm.

While others may spew fire and venom toward their opposition, we are called to be a people apart.  We are called to reflect the heart of Christ in everything we do and say.  We are called to speak the truth in love, something I find woefully absent on both sides of the aisle in this present debate.

If Barack Obama ever had reason to ring up his local branch of FTD, today is the day.  Mssr. Woods managed – single-handedly, I might add – to push the Tea Party, the health care bill firefight, and just about every other global crisis into the nether regions of the morning news cycle.

“Hi, FTD?  This is the Prez.  I was wondering how much a gigantic bouquet of roses wrapped up in a green sport coat emblazoned with the words ‘Augusta National’ on the breast would cost me…?”

Bimbos, Busts, and Boneheads

There is nothing as pathetically precious as a beauty pageant contestant with skeletons in her closet.  You always get the feeling that opening the door could lead to a cascading waterfall of dusty bones.  It’s like watching the the David Letterman scandal unfold only she’s wearing a string bikini instead of orthopedic socks.

Vanessa Williams set the bar for future contestants pretty high back in her day.  Beautiful, smart, and talented, Williams burst onto the national stage in a blaze of glory when she won the national pageant.  Then she flamed out in a flash when revelations of erotic photos hit the press.  Of course Williams’ career later recovered with songs such as, “Save the Best for Last” and movies like, “Eraser.”  Now she has a hit TV series (who’s name we will not pronounce) on her resume.  So Vanessa is now A-list material and those nasty photos are a distant memory.

Back in the day, though, her career looked pretty toasty.

Fast-forward to the latest poster child for all things Fox and conservative family values – Carrie Prejean.

Let’s face it, folks.  The original revelation of Prejean’s “boob” job was humorous enough.  You mean to tell me that the Miss California pageant officials actually paid to buy the girl a pair of bolt-ons just to enhance her strut appeal?  I used to say, “Nothing stuns me any more.”  Then I heard about the California organizing committee buying silicone implants for its up-n-coming star.  Buying a soldier a prosthetic arm is a good use of corporate spare change.  But buying beauty contestants pump-up breasts…?  What have we sunk to in this country?

Then there was that little “wardrobe malfunction” photo session Prejean made when she was…  well, I’d say “young and stupid,” but she’s still young and, judging by the way she handled Larry King the other night, still a tad on the dopey side.

Then there was the news of the sex tape.  Oh, this just gets more and more precious, doesn’t it?

All of this would be hysterically funny if it didn’t also carry with it a hint of ironic tragedy.  You see, my friend in the conservative religious right, we all jumped right on Prejean’s bandwagon immediately after she uttered the words “man and woman” and “marriage” during the national pageant.  “Poster girl alert!  Poster girl alert!”  We didn’t bother to do the due diligence necessary to assure our messianic hopes weren’t pinned to the bare-shouldered sarong of a borderline bimbo.

From what I have seen this past week Carrie Prejean forgot the one thing to remember about life in the public limelight.  Today’s press is lousy at telling the whole story and uniquely gifted at finding the most embarrassing dirt you’d rather leave swept under the rug.  Prejean seemed positively stunned that someone – “Softball” Larry King, in this instance – would ask her about her (gasp!) sex tape.  I watched the interplay later, with Prejean calling Larry’s mostly vacuous questions “inappropriate.”  Earlier in the day I watched as Prejean brushed away questions by Meredith Viera on the Today show with some drivel about, “When you’re a model you do things to further your career…”

Bleh.

Carrie, dear, if you’re going to go out and hawk a book about your life you might want to be prepared for some folks to be interested in the most prurient, lurid details.

To dear friends on the religious right, let me remind you of this truth.  “The enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.”  Just ‘cuz Carrie Prejean was openly homophobic on the national stage does NOT make her a poster child for all things theologically enlightened and family-friendly.

I have no clue whether Carrie Prejean is a Christian or not.  Whether she is or not is irrelevant in the grand scheme of this present circumstance.  What I do know is that it would be a whole lot easier to support Prejean if she would just come clean before people like Viera and King and say something along these lines…

Listen – I am not proud of what I did back then.  I am a changed person.  I am looking to the public to forgive me for doing stupid stuff that I thought would further my career and help me get an even more important message out; that marriage is rightfully between a man and a woman.

Now THAT would be a story worth listening to.

“Ti-i-i-ime, Isn’t On My Side…”

Dear Mr. President,

You know, I fully “get” the fact that you are a thoughtful, intellectual dude.  I can tell you are the brightest guy in the room, even when you say you aren’t the brightest guy in the room.  No, I don’t think you’re some secret Muslim trying to drop the guard of a trusting nation and then swooping in to implement Shari ‘ah law.  I’m no paranoid conspiracy theorist.  The sinful, greedy nature of man is sufficient enough to cause anyone, let alone a guy with your level of power, to make silly, universalist choices.  I, for one, don’t think Satan needs to be pulling your puppet strings in some grand, Machiavellian plot in order for you to do dumb things.

What I do think is that you now risk making the great waffler, Bill Clinton, look like a hot-headed, knee-jerk gunslinger.

I fully understand that you want to do the “right” thing in Afghanistan.  I understand that you are more sensitive to the needs and wants of the Muslim world because you are trying to over-compensate for the hair-triggered, cowboy-esque policies of the Bush Administration.  More than anything, I know you don’t want the lives of innocent civilians on your mind.

But as a wise man once told me…

“There are no good answers to this one, son.”

Afghanistan is a quagmire you didn’t create but which you must now navigate.  To paraphrase that musical genius Gerry Rafferty, “Clowns to the left of me, Taliban to the right, here I am – stuck in the middle with you.”

At this point, Mr. President, your self-conscious reticence makes you look weak.  You appear vacillating and indecisive, not thoughtfully conclusive.

Enough delays!

Pick a course, knowing full well that it will be a compromise at best.  Pick a course knowing that you will almost of necessity make a “correction” six months down the line.  Innocent civilians will die in the cross fire, the Taliban has made certain of that.  Every day we are there we increasingly look like the bad guy, not the liberator.  Young American men and women will be killed and maimed whether you send more troops or withdraw unilaterally.  That is the price of this war.  It is also the price we will pay for remaining there another day longer.

But pulling out in a rush is equally unacceptable.  Notwithstanding the fact that the Karzai government is a ship of corrupt fools programmed to screw up whatever we do, we owe it to the Afghan people to not simply uproot and run without doing a little bit more to give them a fighting chance against the Taliban.

My proxy and yours, Mr. President – the American service person in country – will inevitably pay the price.  I can understand why you are dragging your feet knowing that the stakes are truly life and death for people who are merely following orders.

At this point foot-dragging is putting our in-field fighting force at greater risk.  One way or another, Mr. President, it is time to make a choice and live with the consequences.

You have had more than enough time to weigh all the options.  It is time to make a decision.

Gotta Git Me Outta Gitmo

Greg Craig’s abrupt resignation this week marked a dramatic milestone in the Obama Administration’s race through 2009.  The once frenetic pace of Obama’s campaign agenda hit yet another redwood-sized speed bump and Craig’s departure was the most obvious sign.  Craig was ostensibly charged with shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center in which some of the world’s skeeviest ne’er-do-wells are now housed.

He failed.

Obama made a grand promise when he ran for office.  Within one year he planned to shut down the Guantanamo detention center, holding and trying terror suspects the old fashioned way; in American court on American soil.

Small hitch.

Nobody – neither Democrats nor Republicans – wants these turkeys on American soil.

So Craig hit roadblock after congressional roadblock as he sought solutions to enact Obama’s promise.

Now Craig, a long-time Washington insider dating back to the Clinton administration is on the outside looking in.  Now we see the date of Gitmo’s eventual demise through binoculars, not reading glasses.

Where to next?  We saw a clue later in the week as Eric Holder announced that the mastermind of 9/11 and some of his bosom buddies are being shipped to New York for housing and prosecution.  (In an interesting side note, it appeared even “O” was a bit surprised by Holder’s announcement.  More on that another day…)

The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his chums is a pivotal point in our reckoning with the fallout of 9/11.  Outside of strident Bushies and Fox News there aren’t too many folks who think that Gitmo represents the pinnacle of American jurisprudence.  After all, this country was founded on the notion that the justice system can handle just about anything we can throw at it.

There also aren’t too many folks who want an Islamic Jihadist living in the next cul-de-sac over, either.  The notion of bringing people onto our soil who could elicit further retaliatory bombings should we take them to trial is pretty frightening.

So where do we go from here?

The answer is uncertain and the options are murky.  Close Gitmo and you no longer have a safe, off-shore location to store the worst of the worst.  Leave Gitmo open and you send a tacit message to the rest of the world – Islamic extremists included – that America is a frightened country not truly ready to live up to its highest, stated ideals.

There is no good answer to this dilemma.  Solomon himself would probably choose to punt because there is no baby to split.

What I do know is this.  If we bring guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into downtown New York we put millions of people at risk.  Put it on the calendar, friends.  This won’t just be a media circus.  This will be like dropping a gigantic terrorist magnet mere feet from the location of Ground Zero.

If we are so dead-set on doing this in America, perhaps the better thing to do would be to drop it in the middle of the Great Plains somewhere.  It might be one way of getting all those radicalized militia groups to actually serve a legitimate purpose for a change.

I’m just sayin’…

(LOVE that 50mpg I get with the Prius, by they way!)

Pants?  Dockers.  They just hold up for the long-haul.

Shoes?  Florsheim Comfortech.  (Bad arches will do that to a guy.)

Mountains or ocean?  Mountains.

Target or Walmart?  Target.

Mac or PC?  Once you taste an Apple you never go back.

Paper or plastic?  Well…  Actually, let me get back to you on that one.

About the only time I get un-predictable is when I do my bread-winning job.  Technology.  With the exception of that whole “Mac -vs- PC” thing and my personal choice of laptop, everything else I do in the field of technology is about staying fresh, relevant, and cutting edge.  Blade servers, SANs and virtualization are right up my alley.

(Sorry for that geek side trip.  I won’t do it again.  Promise.)

So it should come as no surprise that where theology is concerned I tend to be a pretty “need based” dude.  ”Does this theology ‘need’ to be changed or is it perfectly fine the way it is?”  I may be a reasonably intelligent dude but there were a lot of smarter theologians looking out for my well being a long before I was even a twinkle in my mammy and pappy’s eyes.

It’s called theological inertia.  It’s pretty hard to steer it too far right or left once it has a head of steam.  I always like to go back to guys like Luther, Wesley, and Calvin for my theological comfort food.  Smart guys.  Guys who managed to de-clutter the landscape and keep it simple.  A little tough to read in the native pre-modern English (or was it German?), but smart nonetheless.

So when I hear people unveiling “new” theology or “new revelations of God” my Holy Spirit “crap detectors” go into overdrive.  You know who these people are.  They tend to write things like, “The Secret,” or, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” or “The Dream of God.”  (Another telltale sign is when they show up on Oprah, but that’s another story for another day.)

When Verna Dozier penned her book, “The Dream of God,” I doubt she anticipated that it would have quite the subversive impact it has since achieved.  To sum up the book simply, she argued that it was time for Christians to stop merely “worshipping” Jesus and instead “follow” Jesus.  The implication – correction, the clear message – was that we Christians spend way too much time thanking Jesus in worship and not nearly enough time living like Jesus.

On its face, I really like the concept.  In recent years I, too, have become concerned about Christianity’s penchant for self-centeredness, not engagement.  At least as it was defined in the political power-base terms that ultimately got a lot of so-called “conservatives” elected, Christianity felt like it had become a little too detached from the pains and struggles of average humans.  So the notion that someone would come along and urge us back to balance with the more practical side of the faith is, on its face, refreshing.

It’s not until you think through the implications of the title of Dozier’s book that you start to draw a deep breath.

(Here comes that side of me that gets all stodgy and old-fashioned.  Time to put on my Florsheims.)

I think it can best be summed up with that classic WWII question, the one they asked all the time when oil was scarce and rubber even more so.

“Was this trip really necessary?”

Having a “need-based” perspective on theology means that I hold “new” stuff up to a higher level of scrutiny than seems to be the norm for many post-modern pastors.  Dozier’s book, and the very title itself, seem to have percolated their way into the teachings of many of today’s Protestant pulpiteers.  People who are desperate to reenergize their flocks and keep the faithful moving forward are grabbing for anything that even remotely looks like it can reach and move a generation raised on ramping levels of non-Christian mysticism.  So characterizing God’s plan in terms of a “Dream” sounds perfectly fine and a wonderful antidote to the alternative; people who are so turned off by the hard edges of Christianity that they stop showing up in the sanctuary altogether.

Where “The Dream of God” is concerned I think we have dropped our theological guard a tad too much.

I don’t have a problem with Dozier’s urging to Christians to be more like Jesus.  Not nearly enough of us so-called Christians behave with the compassion and concern of Jesus, engaging our own modern-day version of “lepers” and “Pharisees” with truthful, Christ-like dialog.

The problem I have is with Dozier’s over-personalization of God’s divine “plan” for humanity in the human form of a “dream.”

As I read the Bible, and embrace it end-to-end, confusing passages and clear passages alike, I don’t see anything other than prophecy resembling a “dream.”  ”Dreams” imply “potential,” not “projection.”  Dreams makes God look far weaker in the grand scheme of the universe than in fact He is.

Ask yourself a practical question.

If God has a “dream” doesn’t that mean that God isn’t in control of every aspect of human existence?

If man doesn’t help God achieve every last one of the end goals of His dream, does that mean that God has failed, man has failed, or both?

Was it a “dream” that Jesus went to the cross and spilled His blood, or was it a part of a specific plan designed to bridge the gap between humans and the Creator of the Universe?

I won’t take the side-trip down the path of “predestination,” the notion that we are all just puppets playing out scripts long-ago written by some puppet-master.  That seems a little too extreme, even for a God with a “plan.”

But when we shift our language and our focus from the idea that God is “in control” and “has a plan” to “God has a dream,” are we really thinking through all the implications of such a subtle linguistic shift?  Have we considered for a moment that we have just tackled a decent problem – lack of Christian engagement in the world around us – with an indecent dumbing down of the Holy Other’s plan for humanity?

This all came full circle for me recently when I read the new vision statement that a pastor had crafted for his church.  In it he referenced “The Dream of God” in terms of our role as Christians in doing the work necessary to bring heaven to earth.  Now I’m not going to dive into the whole “heaven coming to earth” part of the equation, I’m still wrestling with that one.  I’d like to think Heaven is a place God has already created for us, not a place we are helping God to create.  I am still reading up on the whys and wherefores of that new twist on orthodox theology.

What I am diving into is the notion that we as humans are somehow pivotal in God fulfilling his “dream” versus execution of God’s “plan.”

“Dreams” imply the potential for failure.

“Dreams” imply that you can make things up as you go along, taking any number of alternative paths to the goal.

“Dreams” imply that you haven’t thought through all the challenges you may encounter along the way.

“Dreams” imply that the end is some far-off possibility, not a foregone conclusion.

“Dreams” imply that outside forces have the power to derail the process.

“Dreams” imply that the conclusion is more “vision” than “certainty.”

In other words…

If I buy this idea that God has a “Dream,” in the same spirit that Martin Luther King’s “dream” inspired a generation to lay the foundation for the first Black American President, then I do not fully buy into the notion that the end-game has already been defined.  When Martin Luther King uttered his now famous words, “I have a dream…” I highly doubt that he could have anticipated Obama taking office 40 years later.  Is God somehow equally unsure of the end-game of the universe He created and the humanity he sent Jesus to save?

On the other hand…

When I buy the notion that God created this world and all of us in it in the framework of a larger “plan,” it makes all the struggles we face each day so much more understandable.  It also makes our role in meeting our own struggles and the struggles of those around us more clear.  The boundaries of our physical world were created by a God beyond our comprehension and, as the Bible says, God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.  It all fits into a plan, a structure, and a timeline of God’s knowing and an outcome of His definition.

For this guy who accepts the notion that we are made in the “image” of God, the notion of God as a “dreamer” seems like a way-too-personalized understanding of God’s transcendent, divine, omnipotent nature.

I probably never will figure out that whole “paper -vs- plastic” thing.  Some mysteries are just too vast and unfathomable for my pea-sized brain.

What I have figured out is that when people over-personalize God in man’s image, changing His divine, master “plan” into a mysterious, open-ended “dream,” I need to ask a simple question…

“Was this trip really necessary?”

“Who am I to judge…?” Part I : Christianity Goes Ramadan

“Who am I to judge…?” Part II: Rhetorical Road Blocks

“Who am I to judge…?” Part III: Doubting McLaren, Doubting God?

“Who am I to judge…?” Part IV: So Many Questions, So Little Time.

“Who am I to judge…?” Part V: Getting Discerning