Katdish.net

I awoke Thursday morning to a news alert via email: Nine dead in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter had not yet been apprehended, but unless you’ve been on a media sabbatical, I don’t need to elaborate any further as to who was murdered or who the murderer is.

I’ll be honest–I didn’t turn on the news. I avoided social media for much of the morning. Because I knew that this would become what it had become: a fight about what this was and what it was not. We can’t even mourn the loss of human life without it becoming a political debate. Instead I prayed for the families, the church and the city of Charleston. I just needed to wrap my head around such a senseless and despicable act.

When I did steel myself enough to venture onto Facebook, one of the first things I read was a post condemning those who had not posted anything about the events in Charleston, telling me that if I hadn’t made my opinion known via social media that clearly I “did not give a shit” about what happened to the members of Mother AME Emanuel Church. That’s just not true. Not everyone posts every thought and opinion on social media. I would argue that sometimes it’s best to think and pray (if you’re so inclined) before you share your thoughts with the rest of the world.

But then something amazing happened. Rather than granting the wishes of the evil, despicable person who perpetrated this act to “start a race war”, the people of South Carolina joined together in mourning and in prayer.

“Though they plot evil against you and devise wicked schemes, they cannot succeed.” Psalm 21:11

They acknowledged the scourge of racism while turning away those who would use this tragedy to advance their own political agendas. I have always been proud to be a Southerner, but today I’m just a little bit prouder.

Which is not to say racism isn’t still a problem in this country. It most certainly is. As a friend of mine pointed out last week, every time some racially motivated incident occurs, the first thing you hear is, “We need to have an open and honest conversation about race relations in this country”, and then we don’t. We just express our own opinions, or retweet and share those voices we agree with. That’s not a conversation. A conversation involves listening to each other.

So here I am attempting to begin an open and honest conversation about race. I read an excellent post by Deidra Riggs, who paraphrased Randy Alcorn’s book Deadline: “For black people, race is like a marinade. It is soaked into us, all of the time. We cannot escape it. It infuses everything we do. But, for white people, race is like a condiment, If you want to deal with, you can. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

I do not know now or will I ever know what it means to be black. Although I do know what it’s like to feel less than. I was born in 1965 to a white father and a Japanese mother in Virginia. My early elementary school years were spent at a public school in Charlotte, North Carolina, and while there were probably close to an equal number of black and white children at that school, the only faces that looked like mine were my siblings. I had friends. I didn’t identify them by their race, but I’m guessing my friends’ parents identified me as “the Chinese looking girl”. (As I said before, I’m half Japanese. But in the early 70’s, it was my experience that whites assumed Asian countries of origin were interchangeable for the purposes of describing physical attributes.) We did not talk about Japanese culture in our home nor did we eat Japanese food. We all just did our best to fit in with everyone else, with varying degrees of success.

But I’m not white. Legally speaking, I can choose to identify as either white or Asian/Pacific Islander, but I am not white. As so succinctly described in the above description of what it’s like to be a person of color, my heritage is soaked into me.

Here’s how I know that to be true: I cannot watch any war movies about Vietnam or World War II that depict the deaths of Asians. The famous black and white photo of the naked girl running in terror as her village is being bombed by Napalm? It rips my heart out just thinking about it. I have a knot in my stomach as I type these words. Not because I think Asian lives are somehow more valuable or sacred than other races–ALL lives are sacred.

No, it hurts because it’s personal. It hurts because she looks like me.

Am I correct to assume that even though the deaths of Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., Rev. Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson are heartbreaking, that if your face looks like theirs, your heart breaks more?

I’m not saying any of this to be provocative. I’m trying to start an honest conversation. I need to acknowledge my own biases–not against anyone else, but for the people with whom I identify. I’ve shared this clip before, but I think it speaks to what we’re facing. I would like to face it together as a community acknowledging our differences while finding common ground.

Neither NFL team I was rooting for on Sunday won.

Not that I had any strong allegiance to any of the four teams playing for their respective division titles. It mostly came down to picking Green Bay for sentimental reasons and Indianapolis because the Patriots just bug me–the team as a whole and Tom Brady in particular.

Now it turns out that the NFL is investigating allegations of cheating by the New England Patriots. The focus of the investigation is whether the team intentionally deflated footballs used in Sunday’s game, which to me seems incredibly silly considering that the Pats tromped the Colts 45-7. I hardly think properly inflated footballs would have made much of a difference. Indianapolis was simply outmatched and outplayed on this particular Sunday. If New England cheated, they didn’t need to, and if found guilty, the punishment will most likely be the loss of a couple of draft picks. They’re still going to the Big Game.

“Deflate-gate” is just the latest in a string of accusations of cheating by the Patriots and will likely come to nothing. What’s the big deal? Should we simply follow quarterback Tom Brady’s lead and laugh it off?

“I think I’ve heard it all at this point. That’s the last of my worries. I don’t even respond to stuff like this.” –Tom Brady

Maybe. But maybe not. I don’t know what will come of this latest investigation, but I do know that in previous controversies involving the Patriots the team wasn’t technically cheating. They stay within the rules, but many question whether they conform to the spirit of the rules and fair competition.*

That’s what bugs me.

It’s only cheating if you get caught.

Wait, check that. It’s only cheating if you get caught AND they can prove beyond any doubt that you cheated, in the meantime, quit your whining and accept that WE ARE WINNERS! I’m not picking on the Patriots, the world is awash in people taking short cuts, taking advantage and jumping through loopholes to get to the top.

Between 1999 and 2005, Lance Armstrong was credited to have won the Tour de France an unprecedented seven consecutive times.

He became a larger than life symbol of excellence and overcoming adversity, all the while consistently and voraciously denying any accusations that he used performance enhancing drugs. He even went so far as to sue journalists, friends and colleagues who accused him of doping. If he was cheating and getting away with it, there had to be a massive cover up involving numerous people, which is exactly what happened.

In the aftermath of his finally admitting that he was cheating all along, he not only brought shame on himself and the sport of cycling, but sullied the name of LiveStrong, his cancer awareness charity which has raised over 500 million dollars. (They have since cut ties with Armstrong.)

Cheating created an international superstar far beyond the sport of cycling, but Armstrong will forever be remembered for his deception, not his contribution to the sport. Meanwhile, a $100 million law suit and an arbitration for multiple millions more threaten to take away his considerable personal fortune.

Winning isn’t everything.

Especially when it costs you everything.

*One notable exception: The NFL determined that the Patriots illegally videotaped opponents from 2002 to 2007. Roger Goodell fined the team $250,000, and stripped New England of a first-round draft choice. Coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the largest financial penalty against a coach ever.

Yes, people. It’s a real book.

Last Saturday I was scrolling through the latest Facebook fodder and came across this post from Christian writer Tricia Goyer’s timeline:

And while the majority of the responses (and there were several) were not in favor of limiting themselves to only Christian Fiction, I was surprised that there were some who felt that Christians should not read fiction that was outside the genre of “Christian”, arguing that we should not expose ourselves to the bad language, sex and violence so often found in mainstream works of fiction. Although to be fair, most stated that this was a personal conviction not a condemnation of those who read secular work.

But still…

It bugs me.

Maybe it shouldn’t. It’s certainly none of my business what people choose to read or not read, but if art imitates life–and I believe that good art mirrors real life–then much of what passes the muster of “appropriate” Christian Fiction is a poor imitation of what makes a good story. It’s a white-washed version of realistic prose. There are words that cannot be used, acts of violence and depravity that can only be suggestively danced around so as not to offend a Christian audience.

And that bugs me…

Writing for a Christian audience. So much so that I put in my snarky two cents:

Do you know what the hottest thing in Christian Fiction is right now?

Amish Fiction.

Written by people who are not Amish.

I’ve struggled to understand why this is so popular, but I think I’m beginning to understand. Just as teenage vampire romance novels are an escape from the banality of everyday life, Amish life (or at least the idealistic version of it) is an escape from an increasingly crude and immoral one. And I suppose both have entertainment value, but neither imitate real life. Pre-teen Twilight audiences are spoon-fed sexuality disguised as taboo vampire romance and Amish fiction audiences are spoon-fed an ideal, profanity-free communities where bad things may happen, but really bad things never happen to good Christian folks.

But that’s not real and that’s not real redemption.

Many of you know that I’m a big fan of Stephen King. There are those who refuse to read his work because he uses, among other things, profanity. I once read a discussion board where several posters maintained that his use of cuss words is simply laziness. That his books could be every bit as compelling if he left out the profanity.

To them I say, bullshit.

Take this passage from The Stand concerning a young deaf mute’s encounter at an orphanage:

He stopped wanting to communicate, and when that happened the thinking process itself began to rust and disintegrate. He began to wander from place to place vacantly, looking at the nameless things that filled the world. He watched groups of children in the play yard move their lips, raise and lower their teeth like white drawbridges, dance their tongues in the ritual mating of speech. He sometimes found himself looking at a single cloud for as long as an hour at a time.

Then Rudy had come. A big man with scars on his face and a bald head. Six feet, five inches tall, might as well have been twenty to runty Nick Andros. They met for the first time in a basement room where there was a table, six or seven chairs, and a TV that only worked when it felt like it. Rudy squatted, putting his eyes on approximately the same level as Nick’s. Then he took his huge, scarred hands and put them over his mouth, his ears.

I am a deaf-mute.

Nick turned his face sullenly away: Who gives a fuck?

Rudy slapped him.

Nick fell down. His mouth opened and silent tears began to leak from his eyes. He didn’t want to be here with this scarred troll this bald boogey. He was no deaf-mute, it was a cruel joke.

Rudy pulled him gently to his feet and led him to the table. A blank sheet of paper was there. Rudy pointed at it, then at Nick. Nick stared sullenly at the paper and then at the bald man. He shook his head. Rudy nodded and pointed at the empty paper again. He produced a pencil and handed it to Nick. Nick put it down as if it were hot. He shook his head. Rudy pointed at the pencil, then at Nick, then at the paper. Nick shook his head. Rudy slapped him again.

More silent tears. The scarred face looking at him with nothing but deadly patience. Rudy pointed at the paper again. At the pencil. At Nick.

Nick grasped the pencil in his fist. He wrote the four words that he knew, calling them forth from the cobwebby, rusting mechanism that was in his thinking brain. He wrote:

Then he broke the pencil in half and looked sullenly and defiantly at Rudy. But Rudy was smiling. Suddenly he reached across the table and held Nick’s head steady between his hard, callused palms. His hands were warm, gentle. Nick could not remember the last time he had been touched with such love. His mother had touched him like that.

Rudy removed his his hands from Nick’s face. He picked up the half of the pencil with the point on it. He turned the paper over to the blank side. He tapped the empty white space with the tip of the pencil, and then tapped Nick. He did it again. And again. And again. And finally Nick understood.

You are this blank page.

Nick began to cry.

Tell me how that could have been written as powerfully without the use of profanity.

The difference between that passage and one written without profanity is the difference between hitting a sacrifice fly with one out in the bottom of the ninth to win by a run and hitting a grand slam with two outs and a full count in that same inning.

The end results may be the same, but the latter is infinitely more memorable.

******

I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t read Christian Fiction. I happen to know that some of it is excellent. All I’m suggesting is that we don’t limit ourselves to it thinking the hand of God only moves the pens of those who call him Father. Rather than looking for the devil under every secular rock, maybe we should open our mind’s eye to see that God is at work in the most unexpected places and even through those who don’t know Him.

I recently read an article on Grantland.com, a site which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to visit on the interwebs.

It wasn’t so much an article, actually. It was a fascinating email conversation between contributing editors Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman concerning the Manti Te’o story. You can read it in its entirety here.

The conversation begins with Klosterman asking what most of us ask when presented with a story of high profile people in the midst of a scandal:

What did they know and when did they know it?

Klosterman presents three scenarios:

1. He was completely fooled all season (only realizing the depth of the deception a few days before reporting it to Notre Dame authorities on December 26).
2. He was initially fooled, yet continued to perpetuate the hoax even after he realized he’d been duped (either for the benefit of public relations or to hide his own humiliation).
3. He was totally complicit the whole time.

His assumption was the same as mine, and most likely most of yours: Option 2.

But in typical Malcolm Gladwellian form, Gladwell is not much interested in what Te’o knew and when he knew it, but rather is fascinated by the narrative of the hoax:

Hold on. Hold on. I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Before we get into the question of what Manti Te’o did and didn’t know, can we go back and reflect on the singular genius of the hoax itself? The young girlfriend of a prominent football player is severely injured in a car crash and then dies of leukemia. It’s so good. It’s three of the great modern inspirational narratives, all in one.

The first element is: beautiful young girl dies of leukemia. It’s Love Story, right? The most influential Hollywood tearjerker of the past 50 years. Ali MacGraw dies tragically of leukemia, leaving Ryan O’Neal bereft: Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Then there’s the “inspirational outsider” motif, which goes all the way back to Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, and the famous “win one for the Gipper” speech. Notre Dame’s star, George Gipp, is on his deathbed with pneumonia. He says to Rockne (at least in the movie version):

“I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Sometime, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

On the strength of that inspiration, Notre Dame rises up and beats previously undefeated Army 12-6…

The crucial element of this kind of story is that the off-the-field tragedy does not diminish the importance of the game (as you would expect, logically, that it might). It makes the athlete take his task even more seriously…When Pittsburgh Pirates manager Chuck Tanner’s mother died just before Game 5 of the 1979 World Series, Tanner, famously, goes ahead and manages the game because his mother would have wanted him to keep working. That’s why it’s so crucial, for narrative purposes, that Te’o didn’t go to his girlfriend’s funeral — even though, you know, a man might reasonably be expected to want to go to his girlfriend’s funeral. She told him, he said, that she didn’t want him to miss a game.

Then comes the third part — the Icarus myth. Our hero flies too close to the sun. This is the story of the star who dies tragically in a car or plane crash. The examples here are almost too numerous to mention: Steve Prefontaine, Thurman Munson, Roberto Clemente, Jerome Brown, Ayrton Senna, Derrick Thomas — not to mention the granddaddy of them all, James Dean. Too fast to live, too young to die.

Typically, these are entirely separate narratives. In a way that might not be appreciated today, Love Story is very much about leukemia. That was the culturally resonant disease of that era. It struck healthy, innocent young people, entirely at random. The death rate was close to 100 percent. The Icarus narrative is completely different. It’s not about innocence. It’s about the heroic self-destructiveness of youth. James Dean was a rebel without a cause. Jerome Brown was a man-child. The whole point of Pre’s genius is that he pushed himself to the absolute limit…

So what is so fantastic about the Manti Te’o story? It is all three narratives, all in one. It’s Love Story meets Icarus meets inspirational outsider. It wasn’t enough that Manti’s love affair be doomed, that his girlfriend had leukemia, and that he drew from her death the inspiration to go out and get 12 tackles in the crucial defeat of Michigan State. She also had to be severely injured in a car accident. It’s a combo platter! It’s so over-the-top I am in awe. You couldn’t be more right that this is an “aggressively modern” scandal. Why would anyone in the 21st century settle for just one played-out story line?

I’ve posted just a small snippet of a rather long but riveting article. If you have a few minutes, it’s definitely worth a read.

I suppose what I find surprising about the Manti Te’o story was the realization that I wasn’t all too surprised by it. The rose colored glasses which once adorned my eyes have long since been replaced by a skepticism of all storybook, “against all odds” back stories. Because Gladwell is exactly right. We’ve come to expect the myth. Being ranked as the fourth best college football player in the nation and being virtually guaranteed as a top NFL draft choice isn’t compelling enough. Losing your beloved grandmother on the day of the big game? Compelling. Losing your girlfriend to leukemia within hours of your grandmother on the day of the big game? Epic–you can’t make this stuff up…

Oops. Apparently you can.

Does the debunking of the Manti Te’o myth bother me? Sort of.

But not because I feel duped by Te’o or because I feel sorry for him for allowing himself to be duped.

What bugs me is that no one bothered to fact check his story. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, the first core principle of journalism is its obligation is to the truth. “Its essence is a discipline of verification” comes in at number three.

A five minute search on Google would have contradicted most of Te’o’s story. But instead, the myth plays out over and over again on glossy magazine covers and heart-wrenching, Lifetime-movie-of-the-week-worthy televised stories, all the while, not one journalist daring to question the validity of what in hindsight is a mostly implausible story.

Shame on them for breaking the cardinal rule of journalism.

And shame on us. Not for buying into a false narrative, but our need for any narrative other than the one which pertains to the God-given talent, training, hard work and personal sacrifice it takes to be an athlete the caliber of Manti Te’o. Shouldn’t that be enough to garner our attention and our respect?

More shameful still is the fact that we only become truly riveted by the narrative when it turns out to be a lie.

Citius, Altius, Fortius, which is Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger”

This is the official motto for the Olympic Games. The 2012 London Games are historic. London is the first city to host a modern day Olympic competition three times. These games also hold the distinction of being the first in which every country has a female athlete competing in the games. The United States contingent actually has more women than men for the first time.

And I think that’s awesome.

I love the back stories for some of these athletes. Stories of great sacrifice and determination, physical, emotional and financial for the athletes and their families. Thousands of hours spent training, thousands of dollars spent on trainers and equipment, in some cases, money these athletes can’t afford to spend, but their families find a way. All in pursuit of their Olympic dreams. Some dream of gold, others simply dream of being good enough to qualify. For every one that does qualify, there are hundreds who try and fail. Which is why I hold each and every one of these athletes–whether they medal or not–in the highest regard. Because just to qualify is a victory in and of itself.

And then there’s Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani.

At first glance her story is an inspirational one. One of two women allowed to compete from Saudi Arabia. This is a milestone for a country where women are considered little more than property. Shahrkhani would represent her country in Women’s Judo.

Her dream seemed to be coming to an end before it started when the IOC informed her that she would not be allowed to participate in the games wearing a head covering, as it might pose a danger to herself and her opponents. She was only able to compete in judo after a compromise between Olympic organizers, the international judo federation and Saudi officials that cleared the way for her to wear a modified hijab. The following story from ABC paints a pretty picture of boundaries being overcome, milestones being made:

What the story doesn’t mention is that, unlike most athletes who have devoted the entire lives just for the Olympics, Shahrkhani wasn’t even required to qualify for the games. So enamored with the idea that Saudi would allow women to compete at all, she was given a free pass to an event hundreds of athletes tried and failed to qualify for.

That bothered me. A lot. But I was willing to give her a pass because what she would do was historical, and I actually began to feel sympathy towards her because she seemed to be a pawn in a game of international political correctness run amok. Until I learned of her Judo ranking. With the exception of Shahrkhani, all competitors in Olympic Judo hold advanced black belts.

Shahrkhani? She’s a blue belt.

judo belts

If you’ll notice, a blue belt is an entire belt color away from a black belt–let alone an advanced black belt. I have a friend who’s son just earned his orange belt in Karate. He’s the same distance away from her blue belt as she is from the other competitor’s black belts. He’s 8. He still wears Sponge Bob pajamas.

Now, you may be saying to yourselves, “But katdish! I watched the video! She is clearly wearing a black belt!” Yes, she is. But only because she and her father were whining because it was unfair that everyone else was wearing a black belt and she had to wear a blue one.

And once again, people who should ensure the highest standards in Olympic competition caved to political correctness and allowed her to wear a belt she didn’t earn while competing in an event she never should have been in in the first place.

You can call Shahrkhani’s story historic and ground breaking.

Me? I calls them likes I sees them.

A slap in the face to every athlete that actually earned the right to represent their country.

Despite this black eye to the integrity of the games, I’m still loving me some Olympics, though…

I was scrolling through my Facebook timeline the other day when I came across this picture:

original photo posted on deviantart.com

My first thought was, “What a cool picture.”

But then I read the caption. Something about a reverse albino condition which explains why the lion was black.

Pfft!!! Um, if black lions exist in nature why am I just now hearing about them on Facebook?

The picture is photo-shopped. If you click on the image it will take you to the website where it was originally posted. The creator of the photo says that it has been manipulated. But I suppose someone figured a real black lion is a much better story than one created by photo editing software–the truth be damned– and so a Facebook legend begins. There were a few comments which suggested that the picture was digitally altered, but the vast majority simply commented about how beautiful the black lion was. Maybe I’ve become a cynic in my old age, but it bothers me that not only do we easily believe the unbelievable, but choose to pass it on as truth without thinking twice about it.

When I went to snopes.com to confirm my suspicions, I was struck by how beautiful the original, un-retouched white lion was:

photo from snopes.com

And that bothers me even more; that we overlook authentic beauty in favor of its deceptive counterpart, that it’s not enough to say, “This is what a black lion would look like”, but instead choose to say “This is what a black lion looks like.”

Fiction intentionally disguised as truth is manipulation born of a deceitful heart.

Truth disguised as fiction is an art form born of a courageous one.

I prefer the latter.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

What is Klout you ask? Good question:

From Wikipedia:

Klout is a San Francisco based company that provides social media analytics that measures a user’s influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data taken from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person’s network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content.

The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

True Reach is the size of one’s engaged audience and is based on those of their followers and friends who actively listen and react to messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that one’s messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential one’s engaged audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people. The accuracy of Klout Score has been questioned several times by different researchers however Klout Score is being used by most social media marketers as a barometer of influence.

Klout’s increasing popularity over the past several months and its own influence over high profile people in social media has garnered a typical response from me.

I make fun of it.

A lot:

And because, according to my high-falootin’ Klout score of 60 and my Klout title of Broadcaster (Broadcaster: You broadcast great content that spreads like wildfire. You are an essential information source in your industry. You have a large and diverse audience that values your content.), immediately following my mafia refrigerator tweets, many of my “broadcastees” headed over to Klout to boost influence in both categories:

My inclination to make fun of Klout as a measure of online influence certainly isn’t an original one. Alise Write wrote a great post about her Justin Bieber influence and Naomi De La Torre wrote another about her influence in the categories of Unibrows, Vomit, Tuna, Poop and Placenta. I’m sure many have put their two cents in on the subject.

I think our collective need to make fun of Klout’s measure of influence stems from a common realization:

Because how can anyone tell me with a straight face that they are influential about Christianity, Social Media, Writing, Publishing, whatever when the same brain trust which measured that influence also tells me I’m influential about Cats, Angel Investing, Mafia and Refrigerator?

All I’m saying is this: While I suppose Klout has its place in the narcissistic world of social media, how they measure your influence should have very little to do with how you measure your influence. Heck, maybe even the powers that be at Klout have recognized how inaccurate their influence measurements can be, because my high falootin’ score of 60 on Wednesday morning had taken a substantial nose dive when I checked it on Thursday:

Either that or I have angered the influence gods…

Google Search: “church authenticity” Results: 2,910,000
Yahoo Search: “church authenticity” Results: 37,000,000

Google Search: “church transparency” Results: 1,600,000
Yahoo Search: “church transparency” Results: 13,000,000

Google Search: “authentic worship” Results: 287,000
Yahoo Search: “authentic worship”: Results: 9,210,000

What can we learn? For starters, Yahoo seems to be a superior search engine to Google.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the church should be about all of the above. But when we say, “Our church is all about being transparent and culturally relevant with authentic corporate worship that draws people closer to God,” to me, it sounds like we think we already are. Or at least we think that’s what we should be. Must we overuse those terms to a point where they begin to sound laughable?

I suppose it is helpful to know our target audience. If we hope to increase the membership of our individual church bodies by targeting Christians who haven’t been to church for awhile, or those who are currently part of another congregation but are shopping around for a better offer, then I suppose that’s a pretty good slogan. But if I had never stepped inside a church building before in my life, I would read that description and think, “What in the hell are they talking about?”

I love the fellowship of believers. My brothers and sisters in Christ support and encourage me. They also give me some much needed accountability. Having said that, I think it is very easy for us to become so comfortable with only being around other Christians that we forget the task at hand, or worse – we become judgemental and Pharisaical.

I’m not a big fan of Penn and Teller. I really don’t care for magic shows of any kind. Not so much because of the negative spiritual undertones sometimes associated with it. The main problem I have with magicians is that they practice deception as a trade. I really hate dishonesty. I certainly don’t want to pay someone to lie to me. I already do that — I am a taxpayer. (Sorry – tangent.) Many of you have already seen the following video. Whether you’ve seen it or not, I’d love to get your thoughts on it and the post in general: