Lessons From Bad Newz

I wonder who will play Michael Vick in the destined to be released: “The Michael Vick Story.” If they wait five years, maybe Vick himself will play the roll. Or Denzel Washington. Or perhaps rap artist Snoop Dogg (for pun alone).
As another celebrity’s downfall dominates our media, I call the attention back to us. But first, the dogs. ‘Jane’, ‘Big Boy’, ‘Magic’ and ‘Tiny’ were just a few of their names.

We know the story. In 2001, the same year Vick became the number one pick in the NFL draft, he joined the multi-million dollar subculture of dog fighting. Six years and an army of trained killers later, Vick, 27, has pleaded guilty to felony charges and awaits a December trial deciding the next 1 – 5 years of his life—his NFL career suspended indefinitely.

While Vick called his actions “very immature,” I struggle to relate to a time in my life when I “matured” out of hanging, drowning, and electrocuting dogs. Some 6 – 8 dogs were killed during his “Bad Newz Kennels” (codename of this group) training sessions. Now the fate of the 53 remaining pit bulls, found in a blood-stained building, is up to you. Or at least it was until Thursday, August 23.

Prosecutors set Thursday as the deadline for all dog-loving Americans to adopt a ‘Magic’ or a ‘Tiny’. Unfortunately, no adoptions were made. What is to become of the remaining animals that Michael Vick didn’t kill? They become U.S. property and will be exterminated.

Initially, I struggled with this irony. Michael Vick kills half a dozen dogs and goes to prison for five years; authorities react by killing 53 more.

“These dogs are ticking time bombs and a threat to society. Euthanasia is the most humane thing for them,” a spokeswoman for animal rights argued. Well, if we’re now eliminating all threats to society, what about terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay—should they be euthanized? As a Christian, I obviously value human life over canine, but not all people do. The decision to kill Vick’s dogs because of what they could do in society made me wonder: where is the line of applying human morality to animals?

Working in Yellowstone National Park this summer, I was in the heart of bear country. I avoided one Grizzly encounter while hiking with nothing but a book entitled “Death in Yellowstone.” Not comforting. So when an 11-year-old boy was killed by a bear in June, I was not surprised. 26 search dogs and a helicopter SWAT team hunted down and killed the bear that had been labeled a murderer. Something here reminded me of the infamous 1916 trial of “Murderous Molly”—a 5 ton circus elephant who was hanged for trampling two men in Tennessee. Surely I would want the aggressive bear that attacked my son in his tent destroyed, but we must be careful not confuse animal instincts with human motivations like revenge, greed, or meditated anger.

While ethically weighing what Michael Vick did, it is clearly not about killing dogs. If it was, the government would be equally guilty for euthanizing—a decision that is probably justified. Instead, this case is about the corruption that happened within Michael Vick, reflecting an idea Christ taught when he said: “…Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt. 5:28). Christ here is cautioning us against treating our thoughts and attitudes lightly.

It is unfortunate that this man’s mistakes have been sensationalized to the point of a Long Beach minor league team allowing free admission for fans who burned their Michael Vick jerseys. As citizens we need to control the attitudes within our heart, as Vick is learning, before we judge others’ actions.

Thankfully, it is the dogs who take the last bite out of this ex-star quarterback. And rightfully so. For just $10.99 your dog too could have its own Michael Vick chew toy from vickdogchewtoy.com. Who knows, I may buy one for myself.

Back to being back

I have discovered much, much of the same. Something happened out in the Northwest corner of Wyoming that completely jolted me out of the timeline of my life. I don't know whether to put "Yellowstone" on a dusty shelf marked "?", a photo album marked "!", or in some stash under my pillow marked "XXX." Wherever and however we learn to classify this past summer, it all serves to remind us: there is never a limit to the amount of experience you can have in life. As we predicted, we're all now back in wooden desks listening to lectures and waiting for bells. I check my emails 6 - 8 times a day. I have not been able to find a moment to appreciate anything outside of fluorescent-lit rooms with 1907's clocks. I have not been able to completely "leave" when I play the piano as I did in some soon-to-catch-fire wooden rec room 2,000 miles away. I go to Sonic everyday. TV remotes are easy to come by. Those moments this summer of craving the Southern Groove and Humidity, I am in them now and feel nothing but lazy and sweaty. Gross mostly. Surrounded by thousands of people wearing clean Lacoste shirts (collars popped) and the whitest teeth I've ever seen. But did they drive for hours past nothing but mountains and hold postcards of the Avalanche Peak in their eyes? Did they ever wonder on their way to buying those Costa Del Mar sunglasses if they would ever use to them to stare at the sun reflecting off mountain snow, or to judge a rapid on some Snake River, or a joke by some Jack Daniel inspiration... or a Bison that may or may not charge?

I know it is natural to romanticize every "checkpoint" in life. Every point where before it and after it look completely different. But somehow, this summer seems even more complicated than that. Like Yellowstone is buried as some time-capsule within my mind. At times like this (2:50 on Thursday 8/30), I am for some reason aware of it. But at other times, I completely forget this summer. The capsule may prove to be something that surfaces 30 years from now--maybe when my kid wants to go to Yellowstone, or I hear Yellowstone exploded on the news, or I hear that Luke is finally getting married. But wherever I am in life when I FINALLY understand the truths that were shown to me this summer, I will undoubtedly smile and think about all those small things that for a small time seemed to be all that life was (and should be) about.

The Abundant Life of Ian Terry

Searcy, Ark.- Pass Frozen D’s ice cream and the razorback factory mural and you’ll spot the globe at Truth for Today. It is the only building on Great Commission Avenue.

Inside, a team led by Eddie Cloer prepares Bible materials to ship as part of their “Into all the World by 2015” project. Standing in the lobby among foreign flags and clocks with international time zones, I sense an urgency that must be unique to an organization concerned more with the souls, than the checkbooks, of their consumers.

Thirty-eight years ago, New Zealand’s music scene was buzzing about the boys in white vests and the flyers announcing: “Hear... Dave, Ian, Alex, Billy, and Frank of Hogsnort Ruperts’ Original Flagon Band.”

A second place win on the American Idol equivalent of 1968 launched their first album. Known for their musical style of skiffle—a form of homemade bluegrass—Hogsnort Rupert took their pub-based show of eclectic rock and comedy on the road to growing populatiry.

After “Gretal” became an overnight hit, the band’s future as a major-label force looked certain until half the band suddenly dropped out in 1970. The cause? Christianity.

Today I sit in a conference room at Truth for Today with Ian Terry, 61. Once the lead guitar player and vocalist for Hogsnort Rupert, Terry is now an evangelist at Truth for Today where he has turned his last thirty years of experience since leaving the band into a seminar on Christian outreach

He flips through an aged scrapbook of albums and photos from his days as pop’s next-big-thing.

“Here we are at #2 with ‘Gretal’,” he says pointing to Wellington’s Pop-O-Meter. “And here’s the Beatles’ ‘Let it Be’ at #3. See? We were above the Beatles.” His English accent seems only fitting for such topics as rock n’ roll.

Born in Bradford, North England, Terry was raised by his grandmother at the height of the British music invasion. A telecommunication technition by day, he was “The Intruders” lead-man by night.

“My greatest ambition as a young man was to be a pop star—a popular star,” Terry says with a certain ‘pop.’ He further pursued music by sailing around the world to New Zealand as a 21-year-old and forming Hogsnort Rupert with Dave Luther, who arrived from England the same day.

As the band developed into a local pub favorite, Terry keeps reminding me, pointing to the beer and cigarettes in a club performance, “This was before I became a Christian.”

1969 proved to be the year of the dream and the wake-up call for Terry. With “Gretal” climbing the charts in their first hit, a Bible professor from Libscomb University named Joe Gray arrived in Wellington, New Zealand.

Growing up, Terry attended a Church of England school while frequenting the Pentecostal congregation where his grandfather preached.

“I rejected both extremes—the emotional miracle-promising Pentecostals and the rigid Christianity of England’s Church,” Terry said. “I knew if there was such a thing as true Christianity, it was somewhere in between. A balance.”

Once drummer Billy Such converted on Joe Gray’s campaign, Terry found the balance he’d been looking for and was baptized in April. Bassist Frank Boardman followed.

Hogsnort Rupert—a band whose identity cannot be separated from late night clubs; a band that drinks alcohol on stage; a band with a top five single—was now majority Christian.

“I sacrificed my dream of being a well-known pop star because of my Christian commitment,” Terry says. “So the band folded.”


Following the reordering of Hogsnort Rupert, minus Terry and the other converts, the band released “Pretty Girl,” their only #1 hit, and are regarded today as New Zealand’s longest-running pop band. EMI released “The Very Best of Hogsnort Rupert” featuring Terry’s “Gretal” in 2001.

Terry was eventually supported through Ivan Stewart’s school of evangelism and has been preaching in California, Louisiana, and Texas for the past twenty years.

“Did I do the right thing?” Terry asks himself. “If I’d stayed in the band, I wouldn’t have married the woman I did. I wouldn’t have had the kids I had. I wouldn’t be in America… so, yes.”

His work at Truth for Today on a 6-session seminar and DVD series is finished. He slides over a blue pamphlet titled: “Sharing the abundant life.” A product of the great commission himself, Terry now looks to share with others the abundant life that was shared to him by a missionary in 1969.

Though Terry occasionally plays the guitar for his College Church of Christ care group, I detect nostalgia in him as he signs a Hogsnort Rupert poster for me. Staring down at the five boys in white vests, he says that on returning to New Zealand in 1999 for a campaign, he heard the local radio station play “Gretal” one afternoon.

“It was almost like they were welcoming me back,” he says.

Christ Cove

I took this photo in front of the World Outreach Dome (W.O.R.D.) in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Statue of Liberty, now wearing Jehovah’s Crown, defiantly raises that old rugged cross.

My car magically found its way into park as my hand found the camera zoom. I stood, speechless, marveling up at the revised icon. Yet again, Christians have put more dollars than brain cells into their collection plate, erecting an idol to ignorance that symbolizes the belief that a Christian’s job is “to return America to Christ."

In 2001, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore for displaying a wooden set of the Ten Commandments. Moore retaliated with an even larger 5,280 lbs. granite version (paid for with taxpayers’ dollars). Mt. Sinai became the Alabama Supreme Court rotunda as Moore unveiled the Ten Commandments saying, “May this day mark the…return to the knowledge of God in our land.”

Both Moore and the monument were eventually removed, to the dismay of thousands of protesting Christians who had spent weeks outside the courthouse.

Earlier this month a sculpture titled “My Sweet Lord," depicting a crucified Jesus made of chocolate, was banned in New York after much controversy. Some Christians called in death threats to the artist, Cosimo Cavallaro.

Bill Donahue, leader of the watchdog Catholic League, called it “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” Mr. Donahue, if that was the worst attack on your Christian sensibilities, then you’ve been a very lucky man (and haven’t traveled much).

These are just two examples of a good motive—standing up for moral sanctity—turning into further pettiness and inconsistency within the religious community.

The issue of God’s name on our currency is another controversy that will intensify as it is most likely removed in the coming decades. There are sure to be Christians picketing. There are sure to be bumper stickers. And I all can think of is the spec of white powder brushing up over God’s printed name and into the nose of some junkie who just shot a convenient store owner for his daily wage. “In God” the gangster trusts. “In God” the prostitute trusts. “In God” the congressman trusts. And it is at that moment that the hatred from Muslim extremists towards America’s hypocrisy becomes perfectly clear.

I don’t fully understand the politics behind our Constitution, our First Amendment, or the separation of Church and State. I don’t pretend to. But as a Christian, I can voice my frustration with those who still believe in some “manifest destiny” for this ungodly nation. They vote for a President like they’re voting for a preacher: “Whichever Republican prays the most will get my vote.”

Before Jesus offered his famous “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” the Pharisees said of his personality: “Teacher… you aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are (Mt. 22:16).” Jesus used no bullhorn or billboard, but offered a lifestyle to the world.


I am not politicking for either side of current-day controversies; I am simply tired of the over-reliance on symbols to speak for our faith. Christians shouldn’t need statues, t-shirts, tattoos, or even a moral President to follow Christ. If our President supports gay marriage or abortion, we are to follow Christ. If our media begins saying the “F” word on the 6 o’clock news, we are to follow Christ. If our artists begin making sacrilegious sculptures made of mozzarella cheese, we are to follow Christ. If our retailers stop saying “Merry Christmas,” SO WHAT: we are to follow Christ. And if our government begins hunting Christians down, throwing them in jail, and nailing them to posts along our interstates, we are still to follow Christ because we are not responsible to change the world, but, as Gandhi said, to “be the change you want to see in the world.”

God bless America? God bless the USA? God bless Texas?

God won’t bless one lazy acre of this country before he blesses the woman in India who has nothing but still gives to her children, the man on death row who prays at night but has never told anyone, and the child in Africa who has never tasted communion or worn a tie to church, but knows more about Jesus because he actually loves his brother more than himself.

God has blessed America. Is this how we repay him?

The Decemberists

It is refreshing to hear a band that’s not trying to change the world.

Last night at Nashville’s City Hall venue (essentially a concrete box with fancy bathrooms), I heard the Portland-based rock group The Decemberists.

Consider the month of December. Its collection of faded reds and visible breaths (I’ve often thought it would be the best month to kill someone and get away with it) and mix in the wooded mysteries of the Northwest with its foggy fish markets, and you’ll have the inspiration for one of the most unique indie rock bands today.

Stephen Colbert’s “hyper-literature-prog-rock” description of The Decemberists oddly fits the band that dresses like Victorian funeral directors and writes songs about tall tales and Japanese folklore—such is the case with “The Crane’s Wife”.

Released in October of last year, “The Crane’s Wife” is their fourth and most successful album, produced by Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla. (Picture below- Lauren and I outside City Hall)


On stage, the members seem like winners in an American Idol-Mental Institution edition. Guitar-player Chris Funk, playing under the alter ego “Crutchy McGee”, goes 300+ lbs. belly-down crowd surfing while accordion-player Jenny Conlee is in need of another remake of “The Shining.”

Gillian Welch guest appeared and played two songs with lead-man Collin Meloy in the most normal moment of the night.

I highly recommend downloading their 12-minute masterpiece “The Island” as well as attending a show for a first (or possible last) date. Check tour listings here: http://www.decemberists.com/tour.aspx"

As The Decemberists closed with “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”, featuring a giant whale swallowing the band members on stage, I could not help but apply the last verse to my entire experience as I walked to my car:

Don't know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth

But, oh! What providence!
What divine intelligence!
That you should survive
As well as me

History Class, part 2

Woodrow Wilson was a Democratic President elected because of a Republican split in an iPod headphone wire. Unfortunately for the Bull Moose Party, Taft led the PHAT Farm campaign into a final exam reference as I looked into his plasma screen life.

Her St. Louis Cardinals’ hat caused a scare when the railroad trust was hit by anti-Sudoku legislation. The 3’s and 2’s already marked out in box 5, Washington D.C. became a place for merely text messaging your girlfriend. The popped-collar Congress of 1916 feared World War Warcraft was going to spill over into the 2007 Honda Civic guide. A “so what” here and, oh, there’s the professor’s belly fat poking through his shirt’s low tariff issue.

His lecture stuck in the presidential bathtub.

This class is study hall and every class but the suburban middle-class who has been to the water-fountain 3 TIMES since the bell rang (to the tune of “My Humps”). Blah blah blog this tonight Tyler F. Kennedy’s father was in the mafia of I wonder what Martin Scorsese’s next movie will be about. All turn-of-the-century election fraud power-pointed to a quiz written four years ago! Before Britney got KFed up. Before Nicole Richie lost her shadow and James Brown began feeling really, really bad. Before all we did was watch YouTube on FaceMySpace. The socialist candidate shut his eye on the drooping head with the dribbling drool on his and her and his and her sleeping, but not so beauty. Everyone is zzz-topping.

Except the guy behind me passing a Zimmerman Note over Rosie-the-Riveter asking: What was so great about the depression? Upton Sinclair’s The Coolest Carabineer on a Key-Chain Ever was highly influential in changing the temperature, please, Mr. History Professor-

And the bell buzzes over cell phones rings... The dream ends. The last hour is gone with the guy-behind-me’s broken wind.

Nuggetized

Listen carefully:
I am aware of the danger of writing this. I am aware of the powers-at-be who are watching me here in history class from dozens of well-placed cameras purchased from Japan. They are zooming in, which is why I am writing small, quietly, and in Hebrew.

Ms. Pencilbehindear is sitting in the row beside me with a gray, greasy box of Chick-fil-a nuggets. By now the grease has most likely seeped through the packaging flaw (see bottom of box) and is chemically reacting with the wood grain on the desk. There are 8 nuggets in there. And they’re getting a lot more than they were fried for: an awful lecture on America’s history of urbanization and its relationship with the frontier migration from 1880 – 1920. They soak up dates and names through their simmering bodies of peanut oil and a whole lot of mystery. If only they’d been waffle fries... all the information would pass right through those large waffle windows.

Captive in a sauna box of death… they’re so weak. If they were still birds they could fly out. Spread their wings. Poke their beaks out of the egg like they still remember how (and they do, believe me). Soon the nuggets and all the history they’re learning will just be toilet bowl attractions in a stall near some creepy guy.


And yet, there are 8 people in this classroom—and we’re all nuggets in a box. Fried a certain way, packaged a certain way, and served a certain way. Wings clipped; minds leveled. Sold and eaten up by men in corner offices who won’t listen to us because they can afford—and are often paid—not to.

Look at him. A MASSIVE nugget: processed, mashed, re-formed, re-colored, and ultimately something very different than what he started off as. And if you’re unaware of Chick-fil-a’s “Million Nugget Giveaway” sweepstakes, I have but one word for you: Genocide.

Society, through celebrity and trends, deep-fry us into compacted uniformity—causing people to like us for what we do (fill their stomachs) rather than what we are.

So be a bad nugget. Contain a bone, a disease. Be spit out. You’ll still be thrown away and probably eaten by cats, but hey... at least you’re not like everybody else.

Signed,
Watched and loving it