A Bridge Across The Stars.

The last time I updated this blog, I was well on my way to finishing a series of ten posts that I was writing up to illustrate my top ten list of general things I don't like about Christianity that are contributing to the rather awful state of affairs that Christianity is in. Yes, those two posts are still coming (for anyone left who actually cares!) but before I continue, I feel like I have something to say about why I feel like such a "Negative Nancy", and why, to be perfectly honest, I just don't feel like I want to do it anymore.

I know it's important to take a stand against what's clearly wrong - hate, injustice, intolerance - but how important is it to constantly go against the flow, against the tide, really, if it costs you your sanity and your happiness? Some may actually want to break free of the Matrix, and deal with all of the consequences which that kind of decision entails...but can you really blame people for being content to be little more than a faceless, nameless battery? Perhaps I am being overly harsh to fellow Christians when I make those kinds of comparisons (fair enough) but when people continue to not critically ask important questions about the things they do as Christians (or even worse, just fake it), to me it almost feels easier to just give up and either go back to joining in the current. Or, perhaps, to decide that it's time to step out of the stream altogether and see what life on dry land is like.

To me, Christianity always seems like that close friend I know who has other people consistently tell him (or her) not to do something which clearly wouldn't lead to anything good or useful or productive...and yet are left flabbergasted when they go ahead and do it anyway. In one ear and out the other. When the lesson is finally learned, it's too little, too late, and who's willing to be that they'll likely forget all about it tomorrow? (Or worse yet, twist it into a reason to keep on doing whatever it was they were doing, but harder, faster, better, stronger.) The token crowd of atheists/agnostics and such who love to rag on Christianity and Christians of course, conveniently ignore the fact that this is just as much a problem for people of other faiths and other belief systems (and them) as it is for Christians.

My point is that it just leaves me feeling frustrated, this constant desire to try to see Christianity improve beyond the constant closed-mindedness I see so rampantly, a closed-mindedness I see in how many Christians relate to the outside culture, to people outside their church, and people outside whatever social or economic grouping they belong to. It seems so sad when I look around me and find that as bad as I think things are, the reality is actually quite worse. I keep wondering when people are going to start getting tired of attaching and resting their faith and even whole theological world on things like the Culture War, and yet find that people are almost too eager to take up arms against Obama, the Homosexual Agenda, and modern science. It's left me feeling so alienated from Christianity that I find myself almost alienating myself from the Christians I know in my day to day life. I have a conversation with them and it feels like our minds aren't just on different levels -- they're on different planets altogether. And it hurt even more when you see that everyone's on that other planet, no one's on yours, and no one from over there isn't even trying to build a rocket to get to where you are.

Before this metaphor collapses under it's own weight, I just want to ask if it's possible to live on theological lonely planet - or if there's another way of building a bridge across the stars to span that distance.

Why Christianity Must Change...

Sometimes I wonder why it's worth feeling like the practice of Christanity in North America as it exists today is deeply flawed and in dire need of a massive overhaul of the socio-cultural precepts that are its underpinnings. Sometimes I wonder if its worth exerting the effort to try to swim against the current of cultural xenophobia, and capitalist consumerism that underlies much of the most visible elements of Christianity today, especially in the United States.

Then, three things happened to me this week.

First, my friend Mike told me about how much of a difference I'd made in his life during the time we spent together here in Fredericton, as part of VCF.

Second, today my supervisor asked me an almost desperate question: where are all of the Christian biologists who are interested in the intersection of science and sprituality and religion, who are truly scientifically honest without being tainted with the deviousness of Intelligent Design?

And third, this evening, off of Digg, I saw the video on this page.



Until the day comes when Christians will learn to live with their brothers and sisters of other lands and creeds, rational Christians who understand the value of love and respect must never rest.

The real threat to Christianity today only comes from within - from the cancerous presence of those who use Christianity to gather unto themselves vast amounts of power, wealth and prestige. They only teach outsiders that Christianity exists only as a mass-market hate machine bent on nothing less than the utter annihilation of anything that does not conform to its strictly narrow-minded beliefs. They must be opposed, for the price of their fame and fortune is our collective conscience.

I leave home for a few days and look what happens...

A funeral home royally fucked up a Chinese grandmother's funeral burial, Steve Harper's frolicking with Toronto Firefighters (AIDS epidemic? What AIDS epidemic?), a bright and promising 13-year old boy is stomped on and beaten to within an inch of his life, a dangerous criminal considered by Police to be "Armed and Dangerous" simply walks away from his West-End Halfway House (WTF is he doing out here if he's damned armed and dangerous anyway?), and two people nearly get killed in hit-and-runs (oh yeah, and there's a stabbing in there too).

And you still wonder why I want to get the hell out of Toronto?