Finishing School

Rob Schrab did a semi-surrealist comic book in the '90s, called Scud the Disposable Assassin. It's a sci-fi comic full of ideas I wish I coulda had.

Schrab moved on to other things, and left the story hanging, but to hear him talk now (full interview at Newsarama.com), he seems more inspired and productive than ever.

Now he's finally finishing Scud, following his own instruction. Advice I would like to learn too:

And always finish what you start. Even if it sucks, it’s better to have a complete project than an incomplete project. And it’s better to have a complete piece of ____ than nothing at all. Finish. Finish everything. Never leave anything unfinished.

Good Medicine

This just in from LiveScience.com! New Depression Rx: Get Married.

So far it's working well. I sure do love my wife.

Mother Teresa: Atheist?

A priest is putting together a book of Mother Teresa’s letters. In some of them, she admits that she maybe doesn’t believe in God.

This is interesting, but not shocking. Avoiding the intellectual steamroller of atheism is a minor modern spiritual challenge. Evangelical atheists are quite compelling, and I’m not skilled or wise enough to parry their rhetoric.

I listen and bob in the atheist pool for a while, but eventually I get out, towel off, and go back to theism. Basically just because I like it.

Atheism is pretty unlikeable. (Though I know several wonderful atheists.) The main draw is its patina of intellectual inevitability, but after you've gotten pulled in by it, you're stuck in some ugly territory. Once I’m lost and conflicted, directionless in a dark forest, the only path out seems to be going with what I like.

Aside from basic gratification, this is useful because knowing what I like is a dim wisp of truth. You can’t bamboozle me out of simple joy. I can't think my way out of just basically liking comic books and cartoons and long walks alone. So if I stagger in the direction of that small truth, it’s bound to lead to larger truths. And by choosing a series of escalating truths, you can’t escape choosing God.

A compelling question I heard in a sermon once, and again in less official settings, is: “Would you still follow Christ if there were no Heaven?”

I’ve been through every shade of answering that question. First, I rejected the question, revulsed by it. Then I realized I didn’t know if I would. Then I thought I wouldn’t. Eventually, I concluded that I would, and by now, I’ve decided the question is sort of silly.

Following Christ for the reward is legitimate theology. It’s a fundamental way God draws us to him, by promising carrot over stick. Nothing wrong with that.

But after you run with God for a while, after you show up for the handout enough, it dawns on you that you’re in the relationship for the irrational-but-true reason that you’re in the relationship. You are because you are. You want to leave? There’s the door. But sucky as following Christ can be, it's really quite nice, and all your alternatives are suckier. And since you’ve already got this relationship, you might as well stick around and keep having it.

It would be wild, goofball speculation to say that Mother Teresa’s line of thinking veered near mine on this. Almost unquestioningly, I give her credit for being deeper, wiser, and more honest than I am. But I don’t know what other reason there is for continuing to do something so hard when your faith in God is so tenuous. You have to have faith in SOME thing, and I’ve noticed as you follow truth, you wind up back at God’s porch, even if you don’t recognize it during mortality.

That’s what I think. That’s what I hope. That’s the basket where I’m keeping my eggs these days.

Mother Teresa had agonizing doubts about whether God exists. Even if she didn’t pray, even if she felt lost from why she did what she did, she still did it. If you needed a reason for her halo to shine brighter, that’s it.

TANGENT: The priest gathering the letters for his book says,

The letters were gathered by Rev. Kolodiejchuk, the priest who's making the case to the Vatican for Mother Teresa's proposed sainthood. He said her obvious spiritual torment actually helps her case.

"Now we have this new understanding, this new window into her interior life, and for me this seems to be the most heroic," said Rev. Kolodiejchuk.

Heroic? Pfft. This isn’t hero work. This is saint business. Heroes triumph. Saints persevere. That’s how you sit at the right hand of God.

I would be ecstatic for more American clergy to be in the same position.

Whence Ben Stein's Money?*

Note: This entry has been sitting around for most of a year in my "potential blog posts" file. Oops.

This article, about how the rich fail to pay their share of taxes, was written by celebrity Republican and conservative, Ben Stein, for the New York Times. It is titled: In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning.

Let my boy, Warren Buffet, as quoted from the article, ruin the suspense for you:

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

The article is filled with clear thinking, the likes of which I am not used to seeing from card-carrying "conservatives." When I read it, I find new hope for the calm emergence of truth in our society.

*Did you watch that show? I loved that show. Why did it stop?

Commercenary

I'm contracting at an ad agency right now. Last week I worked on stuff for an anti-cholesterol drug, and for a chocolate candy.

We OWN both sides of the street.

Good-Byes Are So Hard

I was getting off the phone with somebody today and I said,

"Talk to you later."

and he said,

"Talk to you soon."

and we both meant the same thing.

Don't Be Fooled by the Crocks That I Got

I’m still Jeffty from the block.

We have a house now to fill with our very own consumer goods. Among the wedding gifts we are bringing out of storage and sorting through: two George Foreman grills, two sizes of crock pot, nine thousand plates (approximation), and two irons, in addition to the perfectly usable iron I brought to this union.*

So with three irons and zero couches, we’re trying to figure out how to live well. And by "well" I mean comfortably, but without stagnation.

I already had a set of pots. And flatware. And glasses. Our new kitchen is small and in Philadelphia, which means it was built at least 80 years ago, when apparently no one stored anything in their houses. So. We'll find good homes for the surplus of course, but why did we ask friends and relatives to buy new things when we already had good enough things?

I know how to spiritually and fiscally reconcile a new book or game. I don't know how to do that with a new dinette set. Marriage ratchets up the complexity of this calculus, when my wife wants a thing and I'm not even sure it's a good idea to have arranged atoms into that particular shape, much less to trade money for it.

I’ve never even felt entirely convinced that a "house" was the best thing. Birds have nests and foxes have holes, dig? As long as I lived in an apartment, or with friends, I felt mobile enough. Now... now what?

Now I guess we need to find some people to love with this thing.

*Ironic: Neither one of us irons our clothes.**
**Also, punny.

Checked Off

Checkers 'solved' after years of number crunching

Now let's get cracking on Monopoly.


Update October 2009: Thanks Cornell mathematicians!

Evan More Bad News

A follow up.

I don't so much care if Evan Almighty stinks (which I'm told it does), or if it's a commercial flop (which it seems to be floating toward). What I care about is if it tells me true things about God and faith and reality. This Slate review sums it up well. Good parts:

If they succeed, it will be tragic, not because Evan Almighty is unfunny (although it certainly is), but because it will validate Hollywood's embarrassingly stupid approach to religion and faith.

And,

...what's disturbing about Evan Almighty is its flaccid approach to faith. All that is compelling, moving, and profound about the Noah story has been systematically excised. In the Bible, God chooses Noah to survive because Noah is a righteous man. But Evan is faithless and stupid, and comes to believe in God only because God hammers him over the head with about 137 miracles.

Well, I won't pretend I'm not faithless and stupid. I suspect I frequently ignore miracles. But the point is valid. Finally,

Evan Almighty also strips away anything Christian (or Jewish) about the story and replaces it with a message of universal hokum. God's entire instruction to his flock? Practice "acts of random kindness." (Look at the initial letters of that phrase.) That's not religion or even morality. It's a coffee mug slogan.

There's the stake in that vampire. You can tell a dumb story, but take out the true parts, and it's a waste of everyone's time.

Okay, I think I've spent enough brain cells on this. As always, thank you for your patience.

Almighty Dollar

Just yesterday I was thinking that I hadn't seen any enormous, secularly funded attempts to grab Christian cash lately. Is my trend-spotting spotty?

Probably! But then today I read this article from the Houston Chronicle about Evan Almighty:

...if Evan Almighty turns into a summer hit, as several competing studio executives predict, the movie could put Hollywood back in the business of making big-budget movies that intentionally embrace sacred subjects.

"For some reason, Hollywood doesn't make this kind of movie," says Tom Shadyac, the director of both Evan Almighty and its racier predecessor, 2003's Bruce Almighty, whose religious message was less palpable. "I don't know if it's out of fear. I really don't. Maybe we're not living as closely to these themes."

For some crazy reason, they're not doing it, huh Tom? Well it's not JUST fear. Don't forget ignorance and disdain!

Our man, John Bock is back too, with ArkALMIGHTY.com, a Craigslist for churchy good deeds. John Goodman (what's in a name?) even pops onto the site to explain the deal:

1. Register your church.
   
2. Tell people in your church to post needs to the site.
3. People at your church check it out and volunteer to meet needs.

This is a not-terrible idea, except that arkalmighty has a movie commercial with viral aspirations artlessly tacked on. Also, the execution is dumb. From the About page:

Maybe there’s a college student who could use help moving into her first apartment, or a widow that could use a helping hand washing her windows, or a recently laid-off worker who could use help polishing up his resume. There are countless needs out there that, up until now, have had no way to be met. But now they do, thanks to ArkALMIGHTY.

Really? There was no way to meet needs before you dropped arkalmighty on us? We couldn't have, say, set up our own mailing list? Or maybe just talked to each other like Christians have been doing for thousands of years? And what if I don't go to a particular church? Do I not get to help people from other places?

I just did a quick check of Philadelphia churches. Thirteen are signed up. Zero have "needs posted." This never-before need-meeter is lighting the Philadelphia church community ON FIRE!

Turns out, Christendom in flyover country was already doing fine, sans condescension.

The privacy policy isn't awful, but the usual marketing stealthspeak means the only information they get out of me is that someone from my ISP visited them and clicked around.

==

Look, you can make the not-unconvincing argument that we can promote a movie AND encourage people to do good things at the same time. I am on this boat! Capitalism and kindness can co-exist! Kinditalism, maybe. Have to work up a better portmanteau.

But the boat I'll watch from the pier is the one where we try to float two gods. That boat will sink. A web site for Jesus with a URL and graphics that clearly indicate its commercial origin does not need a blatant advert on its front page. It does not need to detail my marketing opt-out options. It does not need the avuncular aegis of John Goodman to help sell it. Once again, a Grace Hill Media joint has uncomfortably strange bedfellows.

I'm still willing to give Bock some room. I've never met the guy, and maybe he's glorifying God. I'm willing to be convinced. However, I see more signs of nascent cupidity here than the Big Theta, and that's not the order we've been told to do things in.

One thing I feel pretty good about though: Morgan Freeman plays a better God than George Burns.